1 The Agnese Atlas of 1529 may be cited as an example.
2 See, for example, the so-called Stobnicza [Joannes,
Stobnicensis] map of 151a, and the Ptolemy of 1513
(Strassburg).
3 Muenster, 1540. Cabot, 1544, and Desceller, 1546, give "Y
de Pinos."
4 Mr. P. Lee Phillips, to whom I am indebted for references
to atlases of the time, also supplies the following:
Lafreri, 1575 (?) "S. Tiagoj" Percacchi, 1576, "S. Tiago;"
Santa Cruz, 1541, "Ya de Pinosj" and Dudley, 1647, "I de
Pinos." Hakloyt (iii. 617) prints a "Ruttier" for the
West Indies, without date, but probably of the end of the
sixteenth century, which contains the following; "The
markes of Isla de Pinos. The Island of Pinos stretcheth it
selfe East and West, and is full of homocks, and if you
chance to see it at full sea, it will shew like 3 Islands,
as though there were divers soundes betweene them, and that
in the midst is the greatest; and in rowing with them, it
will make all a firme lande: and upon the East side of these
three homocks it will shewe all ragged; and on the West
side of them will appeare unto you a lowe point even with
the sea, and oftentimes you shall see the trees before you
shall discerne the point."
When the name given by Columbus was dropped and by whom the island was named "de Pinos" cannot be determined.
Our colleague, Mr. Francis R. Hart, has called my attention to a second Isle of Pines in American waters, being near Golden Island, which was situated in the harbor or bay on which the Scot Darien expedition made its settlement of New Edinburgh. The bay is still known as Caledonia Bay, and the harbor as Porto Escoces, but the Isla de Pinas as well as a river of the same name do not appear on maps of the region. The curious may find references to the island in the printed accounts of the unfortunate Darien colony.
The Isle of Pines could thus be found on the map as an actual island in the West Indies; but the "Isle of Pines" of our tract existed only in the imagination of the writer. The mere fact of its having been printed—but not published—in Cambridge, Massachusetts, does not entitle it to be classed even indirectly as Americana, any more than Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress or Thomas à Kempis could be so marked on the strength of their having a Massachusetts imprint Curiosities of the American press they may be, but they serve only as crude measures of the existing taste for literature since become recognized as classic.
The dignified Calendar of State Papers in the Public Record Office, London, gravely indexes a casual reference to the tract under West Indies, and the impression that the author wrote of the Cuban island probably accounts for the different editions in the John Carter Brown Library, as well as for the price obtained for the White Kennett copy. No possible reason can be found, however, for regarding the "Isle of Pines" in any of its forms as Americana.
THE AUTHOR
Thus far I have been concerned with externals, and before turning to the contents of the tract itself in an endeavor to explain the extraordinary popularity it enjoyed, something must be said of the author—Henry Neville. Like most of the characters engaged in the politics of England in the middle of the seventeenth century, he has suffered at the hands of his biographer, Anthony à Wood,{1} merely because he belonged to the opposite party—the crudest possible measure of merit For the odium politicum and the odium theologicum are twin agents of detraction, and the writing of history would be dull indeed were it not for the joy of digging out an approximation to the truth from opposing opinions. Where the material is so scanty it will be safer to summarize what is known, without attempting to pass finally upon Neville's position among his contemporaries.
1 Athenæ Oxoniemses (Bliss), iv. 413.
The second son of Sir Henry Neville, and grandson of Sir Henry Neville (1564?-1615), courtier and diplomatist under Elizabeth and James I, Henry Neville was born in Billing-bear, Berkshire, in 1620. He became a commoner of Merton College in 1635, and soon after migrated to University College, where he passed some years but took no degree. He travelled on the continent, becoming familiar with modern languages and men, and returned to England in 1645, to recruit for Abingdon for the parliament Wood states that Neville "was very great with Harry Marten, Tho. Chaloner, Tho. Scot, Jam. Harrington and other zealous commonwealths men." His association with them probably arose from his membership of the council of state (1651), and also from his agreement with them in their suspicions of Cromwell, who, in his opinion, "gaped after the government by a single person." In consequence he was banished from London in 1654, and on Oliver's death was returned to parliament December 30,1658, as burgess for Reading. An attempt to exclude him on charges of atheism and blasphemy failed.