The Discoveries of the World, by Antonio Galvano.
Antilia appears as a large island in the Atlantic in the rare maps of Andreas Bianco (1436) and Bartolomeo Pareto (1454). On Martin Behaim’s globe (1492) it is placed about eighteen hundred miles west of the Canaries. In the earliest maps published after the return of Columbus to Spain, Antilia is placed near the newly discovered islands of the West Indies.
The legend upon the accompanying map may be rendered as follows:—
“The island of Antilia was, at some period, discovered by the Lusitanians, but the exact time is not known. There have been found there in it families who speak Spanish as it was spoken in the days of Roderick, who was the last King of Spain in the time of the Goths, and they are supposed to have fled to this island from the face of the Barbarians who had then invaded Spain. They have here one Archbishop with six other Bishops, each of whom has his own proper city, hence it is called by many the island of the seven cities. The population are strict Christians and abound in all this world’s wealth.”
In the first voyage of Columbus the vessels left the Canaries on the 6th of September and arrived off Guanahani on the night of the 11th of October, having been thirty days at sea. They had traversed a distance, according to the Admiral’s journal, of 1,092 leagues or 3,276 miles. On the second voyage from the Canaries to Dominica they left on the 3rd of October and arrived on the 3rd of November. Upon the last voyage, Columbus left Ferro (one of the Canary islands) on the 26th of May and reached St. Lucia in the West Indies on the 15th of June. This was a quick passage and only occupied twenty days.
In the Vestal, a sailing frigate of 26 guns, we left the island of Gran Canaria in the year 1852, on the morning of the 27th of September, and passed between Antigua and Guadeloupe at noon on the 16th of October after a voyage of nineteen days, having sailed over a distance of 2,800 miles. During the whole of this time we were running before the wind with our studding sails set, steering West. A favourable N.E. wind prevails from Florida to Yucatan and the Mexican coast. With respect to Columbus’s first voyage it should be observed that his landfall at Guanahani was four or five days’ sail further west than the islands of Dominica and St. Lucia.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Redundant title page has been removed.