Columbus recalled, when afterwards at the Canaries on his first voyage, how it was during his sojourn in Portugal that some one from Madeira presented to the Portuguese king a petition for a vessel to go in quest of land, occasionally seen to the westward from that island. Similar stories were not unknown to him of like apparitions being familiar in the Azores. A story which he had also heard of one Antonio Leme having seen three islands one hundred leagues west of the Azores had been set down to a credulous eye, which had been deceived by floating fields of vegetation.
The Basques.
There was no obstacle in the passing of similar reports around the Bay of Biscay from the coasts of the Basques, and the story might be heard of Jean de Echaide, who had found stores of stockfish off a land far oceanward,—an exploit supposed to be commemorated in the island of Stokafixia, which stands far away to the westward in the Bianco map of 1436. All these tales of the early visits of the Basques to what imaginative minds have supposed parts of the American coasts derive much of their perennial charm from associations with a remarkable people. There is indeed nothing improbable in a hardy daring which could have borne the Basques to the Newfoundland shores at almost any date earlier than the time of Columbus.
Newfoundland banks possibly visited.
Fructuoso, writing as late as 1590, claimed that a Portuguese navigator, João Vaz Cortereal, had sailed to the codfish coast of Newfoundland as early as 1464, but Barrow seems to be the only writer of recent times who has believed the tale, and Biddle and Harrisse find no evidence to sustain it.
Tartary supposed to be seen.
There is a statement recorded by Columbus, if we may trust the account of the Historie, that a sailor at Santa Maria had told him how, being driven westerly in a voyage to Ireland, he had seen land, which he then thought to be Tartary. Some similar experiences were also told to Columbus by Pieter de Velasco, of Galicia; and this land, according to the account, would seem to have been the same sought at a later day by the Cortereals (1500).
Dubious pre-Columbian voyages.
It is not easy to deal historically with long-held traditions. The furbishers of transmitted lore easily make it reflect what they bring to it. To find illustrations in any inquiry is not so difficult if you select what you wish, and discard all else, and the result of this discriminating accretion often looks very plausible. Historical truth is reached by balancing everything, and not by assimilating that which easily suits. Almost all these discussions of pre-Columbian voyagings to America afford illustrations of this perverted method. Events in which there is no inherent untruth are not left with the natural defense of probability, but are proved by deductions and inferences which could just as well be applied to prove many things else, and are indeed applied in a new way by every new upstart in such inquiries. The story of each discoverer before Columbus has been upheld by the stock intimation of white-bearded men, whose advent is somehow mysteriously discovered to have left traces among the aborigines of every section of the coast.