There is indeed one well-attested voyage of 1480 conducted by well-known navigators, seeking this insular Brazil, and it was not the earliest.
The first appearance of that island thus far reported, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, is on the map of Dalorto[116] (dated 1325; [Fig. 4]) as a disc of land well at sea, westward from Hibernian Munster; but the Catalan map of 1375[117] ([Fig. 5]) and at least one other[118] turn the disc into a ring surrounding a body of water which is studded with small islands—apparently nine in the Catalan map photographically reproduced by Nordenskiöld, though Dr. Kretschmer draws seven on the other. These miniature islands have sometimes been thought[119] to represent the seven cities of the old legend; but islets are not cities, and there seems no reason why each city should require an islet. However, the coincidence of number, exact or approximate, is suggestive.
Antillia
Antillia (variously spelled) was a home for the elusive cities more favored than Brazil by cartography and tradition. In 1474 Toscanelli, a cosmographer of Florence, being consulted by Christopher Columbus as to the prospects of a westward voyage, sent him a copy of a letter which he had written to a friend in the service of the King of Portugal. Its authenticity has been questioned, but it is still believed in by the majority of inquirers and may be accepted provisionally. In it occurs this passage:
From the island Antilia, which you call the seven cities, and whereof you have some knowledge, to the most noble island of Cipango [Japan], are ten spaces, which make 2,500 miles.[120]
The name Antillia had appeared on the maps much earlier. As Atilae, or Atulae, it is doubtfully found in an inscription on that of the Pizigani (1367;[121] [Fig. 2]), identifying a “shore,” not drawn, on which a colossal statue of warning had been erected. The location seems to be somewhere in the region where Corvo of the Azores should appear.
We meet the island name, for the first time unmistakably, on the map of Beccario (Becharius) of 1435[122] ([Fig. 20]). It is applied to the chief of a group of four large islands, comparable to nothing actually in the western Atlantic except the Greater Antilles, or three of them with Florida (Bimini). They are collectively designated “Insulle a Novo Repte”—the “Newly Reported Islands.” Antillia itself is shown as an elongated quadrilateral having its sides indented by seven two-lobed bays of identical form, beside another and larger bay in the southern end. Several subsequent maps repeat the delineation with little change, and the map of Benincasa (1482;[123] [Fig. 22]) supplies local names for the bays or the regions adjoining excepting only the lowest but one on the eastern side, which bay is opposite the middle of the island name Antillia. The other names as read by Dr. Kretschmer are Aira, Ansalli, Ansodi, Con, Anhuib, Ansesseli, and Ansolli. It will be observed that five of them borrow the first syllable of Antillia. Nobody has explained these names, and they seem mere products of linguistic fancy. But again the coincidence in number is impressive, although somewhat offset by the fact that the next largest island in the group, Saluaga, has a similar arrangement of five bays of like form and carries the names, similarly applied, of Arahas, Duchal, Imada, Nom, and Consilla. They can hardly be extra bishops’ towns. At least we are in the dark about them. The anonymous map sometimes attributed to 1424 and preserved at Weimar[124] shows in photographic copy traces of names, or at least letters, on the part of Antillia which it represents. Its true date is believed to be about that of Benincasa’s map above cited. But the markings do not seem to be identical and are very meager.
The Legendary Home of Portuguese Refugees
However, there can be no doubt of Toscanelli’s meaning at an earlier date in the passage quoted. The same is true of Behaim’s globe (1492), though he discards the accepted form of Antillia. He appends a long inscription, translated by Ravenstein as follows:
In the year 734 of Christ, when the whole of Spain had been won by the heathen (Moors) of Africa, the above island Antilia, called Septe citade (Seven cities), was inhabited by an archbishop from the Porto in Portugal, with six other bishops, and other Christians, men and women, who had fled thither from Spain, by ship, together with their cattle, belongings, and goods. 1414 a ship from Spain got nighest it without being endangered.[125]