On the other hand, the appreciation of Portuguese labours appeared earlier, as was natural, in Portolano maps. That of Andrea Bianco (1448) drew probably on a Portuguese original, showing the West African coast as far as Cape Verde. On the world map of Fra Mauro, already referred to, the Portuguese discoveries are mentioned in an inscription of considerable length.

In connection with prevailing ideas as to what lands lay in the Atlantic beyond the certain knowledge of men, it may be observed that the conception of a continent or island of Atlantis was very old, and there were other mythical lands which were also given places in distant parts of the ocean. Portolano maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show the island of Brazil lying to the west of Ireland, an island named Mam to the south of Brazil, and, still further away in the ocean, and to the south again, a large island in the form of a parallelogram, which bore the name of Antillia, and appears as early as 1426.

The sphericity of the earth, as has been seen, was revived as a theory by Bacon and Albertus; and to these inquirers may now be added the name of Cardinal d’Ailly (d. 1422), whose work, entitled Imago Mundi, may be mentioned because it is known to have been in the possession of Columbus. His copy still exists.

A name closely identified with Columbus’s preconceived ideas as to the voyage to the Indies by way of the western ocean, and his efforts to obtain recognition for them, is that of Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli (1397–1482), a Florentine mathematician, astronomer, and cosmographer, whose advice was asked by King Alphonso V. of Portugal as to the probability of this western route. He sent the king a statement and a chart in support of Columbus’s ideas. The chart is lost; but the author describes it as showing the Indies opposite and to the west of Ireland and Africa, together with the islands which were known to lie off the coast of the Asiatic mainland, and certain known landing places. A globe made in 1492 by Martin Behaim, of Nuremberg, is usually cited as giving the best existing representation of the views as to the extent of the Atlantic, and the route across it, at the moment when Columbus began his first voyage. Behaim had lived in Portugal, and had a high scientific reputation at court. He had probably visited the more northerly parts of the west coast of Africa and also the Azores, though he claimed to have a much more extensive first-hand knowledge, as having accompanied Diogo Cão. It is doubtful if he did so; but if he did, he made but little use of his opportunity. His representation of the west coast of Africa is not accurate; and for the rest, although he had the chance, and apparently an unusually favourable one, of carrying the results of Portuguese research into Europe, he made poor use of it. He was obsessed by Ptolemaic ideas; he showed in a modified form the old south-eastward extension of Africa, with Madagascar and Zanzibar as two great islands lying off it, Zanzibar being south of Madagascar. He also modified, but still retained, the Ptolemaic idea of the non-peninsular form of India and the exaggerated size of Ceylon. He gave a gross representation of the Malay Peninsula, and in general ignored Marco Polo’s results, and those of other Asiatic travellers. His representation of Scandinavia was indifferent, and even that of the Mediterranean was below the level of the Portolano maps. As regards the width of the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and Asia, he appears to have followed Toscanelli; and he showed the mythical island of Antillia and also that of St. Brandon (the existence of which on maps was an outcome of the fabled wanderings of a holy man of Ireland in the sixth century) in mid-ocean between the Euro-African and the Asiatic coasts.

Such was the view of the ocean barrier which lay between Columbus and the attainment of his ideal. It serves as a reminder, which, in view of the results he obtained, is sometimes necessary, that that ideal was the discovery, not of new lands, but of a new route to lands already known.

Chapter VI.
THE NEW WORLD

The period which witnessed, among other great achievements, the discovery of a new hemisphere, and included the voyages of Columbus, Gama, and Magellan, besides many of an importance only secondary to these, has been called the most brilliant in human history. The exaggeration, if such it be, is excusable; certainly in the department of geographical history no other period shares the peculiar lustre of this. Christopher Columbus (1446–1506) was born of humble parentage at Genoa. He went early to sea, and was attracted to Lisbon no doubt by the reputation of the Portuguese as navigators. He had voyaged to the eastern Mediterranean, to the Guinea Coast, and in the north as far, perhaps, as Iceland. It is not until 1484 that we find his great scheme of the crossing of the Atlantic to Asia matured and laid before the King of Portugal. It was refused by him; it was rejected also in Genoa, Venice, England, and France. Then he presented it at Madrid, and it was examined by a quasi-expert committee, which pronounced against it; but at last it came under the notice of Queen Isabella, and by her was taken up. Columbus obtained three ships, and sailed on August 3, 1492, from Palos, himself in command of one vessel, the others under Martin Alonzo and Vicente Yañez Pinzon. The expedition touched at the Canaries in September, and the story of its subsequent progress is well known—how difficulties were encountered in the Sargasso Sea, how the hearts of the crew failed them, how Columbus was driven to give them false reckonings of the position of the ships, but was at last enabled to point out to them signs of neighbouring land in the flotsam of the waters, and how at length land was actually sighted on October 11, and on the following day a landing in state was effected on an island to which the name of San Salvador was given, and which is now usually identified with Watling Island of the Bahamas. Columbus did not then, or at any time afterwards, suppose that he had done otherwise than reach some part of the archipelago off Asia. On the present voyage he observed a number of the West Indian islands, and he returned to Spain in March, 1493, to meet with a magnificent reception.

Among the effects of Columbus’s discoveries was the necessity which was immediately found for delimiting the spheres in which Portuguese and Spanish explorations respectively should be prosecuted. In the existing state of geographical theory it may be supposed that a satisfactory delimitation was no easy matter to obtain, and, indeed, the line which was chosen was found, in fact, impossible to demarcate. It was determined under the treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494), which followed upon a pronouncement contained in two papal bulls of the previous year, that to Spain should belong islands discovered west of a north-and-south line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, and that Portugal might claim all lands lying east of this line. The rule gave rise to such difficulties that Portugal is found later making a claim upon Brazil, while Spain did the same upon the Moluccas.

In 1493 Columbus led a new and much larger expedition to the scene of his triumph. There was now no lack of enthusiasm to be of his company. On November 3 Dominica was reached; the Antilles were subsequently surveyed, and Hispaniola or Haiti, which had been discovered on the first expedition, was again visited. Jamaica was found, the south coast of Cuba was traced—though this island was taken for a peninsula—and it is possible that the mainland of Central America was seen. Columbus returned in 1496 to Spain, and set out on his third voyage in 1498. Holding a more southerly course than before, he came to Trinidad, and subsequently recognized the neighbourhood of continental land by observing a current of fresh water of considerable strength in the open sea; this was from the mouth of the Orinoco. The settlers in the new colonies met with many difficulties, and created more. There was much hostility towards Columbus, and he was doubtless restrained from accomplishing much which might have been accomplished if his followers had been wholly loyal. On his last voyage, in 1502–4, his aim was to penetrate right through the archipelago and to complete the circumnavigation of the world. After coasting along Cuba he turned south, and came upon the coast of Honduras, which he followed for nearly four months before he was compelled to return to Spain. Within a few days of his arrival there, he lost his great patroness by the death of Isabella, and he himself passed the remaining months of his life in comparative neglect.