[74] Irving, app. xxxiii.
[75] H. H. Bancroft, Central America, vol. i. chap. iv., traces with some care the coast-findings of this voyage and the varying cartographical records.
[76] Helps says: “The greatest geographical discoveries have been made by men conversant with the book-knowledge of their own time.” The age of Columbus was perhaps the most illustrious of ages. “Where in the history of nations,” says Humboldt, “can one find an epoch so fraught with such important results as the discovery of America, the passage to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, and Magellan’s first circumnavigation, simultaneously occurring with the highest perfection of art, the attainment of intellectual and religious freedom, and with the sudden enlargement of the knowledge of the earth and the heavens?” Cosmos, Eng. tr., ii. 673.
[77] This manuscript is the Libro de las profecias, of which parts are printed in Navarrete. Cf. Harrisse, Notes on Columbus, p. 156, who calls it a “curious medley of quotations and puerile inferences;” and refers for an analysis of it to Gallardo’s Ensayo, ii. 500. Harrisse thinks the hand is that of Ferdinand Columbus when a boy, and that it may have been written under the Admiral’s direction.
[78] Irving, book i. chap. v.; Humboldt, Examen critique and Cosmos; Major, Prince Henry of Portugal, chap. xix. and Discoveries of Prince Henry, chap. xiv.; Stevens, Notes; Helps, Spanish Conquest; and among the early writers, Las Casas, not to name others.
[79] Columbus, it is well known, advocated later a pear-shape, instead of a sphere. Cf. the “Tercer viage” in Navarrete.
[80] Robertson’s America, note xii. Humboldt cites the ancients; Examen critique, i. 38, 61, 98, etc.
[81] Ferdinand Columbus says that the Arab astronomer, Al Fergani, influenced Columbus to the same end; and these views he felt were confirmed by the reports of Marco Polo and Mandeville. Cf. Yule’s Marco Polo. vol. i. p. cxxxi.
[82] By a great circle course the distance would have been reduced to something short of five thousand eight hundred miles. (Fox in U. S. Coast Survey Report, 1880, app. xviii.) Marco Polo had not distinctly said how far off the coast of China the Island of Cipango lay.
[83] Cf. D’Avezac in Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, August-October, 1857, p. 97. Behaim in his globe placed China 120° west of Cape St. Vincent; and Columbus is supposed to have shared Behaim’s views and both were mainly in accord with Toscanelli. Humboldt, Examen Critique, ii. 357.