The National Magazine, Vol. XV, No. 1, November 1891

by Various

Engᵈ. by E. G. Williams & Bro. N.Y.

The National Magazine.

Vol XV.

NOVEMBER, 1891.

No. 1

EXPLORATIONS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COAST PREVIOUS TO THE VOYAGE OF HENRY HUDSON.

One of the earliest Greek dreams, prominent in the classic literature, was that of a beautiful island in the ocean at the far West. Perhaps, nevertheless, we have been accustomed to think of the conception too much as a dream, a piece of pure imagination; for it is absolutely certain, as Pliny and Strabo prove, that bold Phenician navigators passed far beyond the Pillars of Hercules into the vast Atlantic, discovering and naming the Canary Islands, pushing their observations far and wide. Possibly, like Columbus, as on his first voyage, they sailed over tranquil seas, smooth as the rivers in Spain, and through ambient air, soft as the air of Andalusia in spring, until they reached the Edenic Cuba, and thus furnished the foundation of that Greek conception of an exquisitely fair isle, the home of the immortals, an Elysium on whose happy, fragrant shores the shrilly-breathing Zephyrus was ever piping for the refreshment of weary souls.

In the fifteenth century the islands in the west formed the object of many a voyage, but even in 1306 Marino Sanuto laid down the Canaries anew, while Bethencourt found them in 1402. The Azores and the Madeira Islands appear in the chart of Pizigani in 1367, and the sailors of Prince Henry the Navigator went to the Azores, the Isles of the Hawks, in 1431, as preparatory to those voyages which, beginning with the rediscovery of the Cape Verde Islands in 1460, were destined to prepare the way for the circumnavigation of Africa, and thus open the way to the Indies by the Cape of Good Hope. Long before this, however, the Spaniards were credited with the establishment of colonies in the western ocean, and on the globe of Martin Behaim, in 1482, may be seen the legend crediting Spanish bishops with the founding of seven cities in a distant island in the year 734. In 1498 De Ayala, the Spanish ambassador in England, reported to his sovereign that the city of Bristol had for seven years sent out ships in search of the island of Brazil and the Seven Cities, which were commonly laid down in maps, together with the great island of “Antillia,” by many supposed to refer to the American Continent.

FERDINAND OF SPAIN.