Peter Martyr’s Identification of Antillia
Both of these representations show Antillia far in the ocean dissociated from any other land, but in the work of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, contemporary and historian of Columbus, writing before 1511, we have an explicit identification as part of a well-known group or archipelago. He has been narrating the discovery of Cuba and Hispaniola and proceeds:
Turning, therefore, the stems of his ships toward the east, he assumed that he had found Ophir, whither Solomon’s ships sailed for gold, but, the descriptions of the cosmographers well considered, it seemeth that both these and the other islands adjoining are the islands of Antillia.[242]
Perhaps he meant delineations, like those we have yet to consider, and not descriptions in words; or writings concerning these islands may then have been extant which have since vanished as completely as the celebrated map of Toscanelli.
Among “the other islands adjoining” we may be sure he included that island of Beimini, or Bimini (no other than Florida), a part of which, thus marked, occurs in his accompanying map and has the distinction of owning the fabled fountain of youth and luring Ponce de Leon into romantic but futile adventure. Perhaps only one other map gives it the name Bimini; but its insular character is plain on divers maps (made before men learned better), with varying areas and under different names.