Nordenskiöld in his elaborate and invaluable “Periplus” declares: “As the mention of this large island, the name of which was afterwards given to the Antilles, in the portolanos of the fourteenth century, is probably owing to some vessel being storm-driven across the Atlantic (as, according to Behaim, happened to a Spanish vessel in 1414), those maps on which this island is marked must be reckoned as Americana.”[239] The word “fourteenth” is probably an accidental substitute for “fifteenth.” The reference to Behaim undoubtedly means the often-quoted inscription on his globe of 1492, which avers that “1414 a ship from Spain got nighest it without being endangered.”[240] This seems to record an approach rather than an actual landing. But at least it was evidently believed that Antillia had been nearly reached in that year by a vessel sailing from the Iberian Peninsula. Little distinction would then have been made between Spain and Portugal in such a reference by a non-Iberian.
Ruysch’s map of 1508 is a little more vague in its Antillia inscription as to the time of this adventure.[241] He says it was discovered by the Spaniards long ago; but perhaps this means a rediscovery, for he also chronicles the refuge sought there by King Roderick in the eighth century.
Peter Martyr’s Identification of Antillia
Both of these representations show Antillia far in the ocean dissociated from any other land, but in the work of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, contemporary and historian of Columbus, writing before 1511, we have an explicit identification as part of a well-known group or archipelago. He has been narrating the discovery of Cuba and Hispaniola and proceeds:
Turning, therefore, the stems of his ships toward the east, he assumed that he had found Ophir, whither Solomon’s ships sailed for gold, but, the descriptions of the cosmographers well considered, it seemeth that both these and the other islands adjoining are the islands of Antillia.[242]
Perhaps he meant delineations, like those we have yet to consider, and not descriptions in words; or writings concerning these islands may then have been extant which have since vanished as completely as the celebrated map of Toscanelli.
Among “the other islands adjoining” we may be sure he included that island of Beimini, or Bimini (no other than Florida), a part of which, thus marked, occurs in his accompanying map and has the distinction of owning the fabled fountain of youth and luring Ponce de Leon into romantic but futile adventure. Perhaps only one other map gives it the name Bimini; but its insular character is plain on divers maps (made before men learned better), with varying areas and under different names.
Other Identifications
Peter Martyr was not alone in his identification of the “islands of Antillia.” Canerio’s map,[243] attributed to 1502, names the large West India group “Antilhas del Rey de Castella,” though giving the name Isabella to the chief island; and another map of about the same date (anonymous)[244] gives them the collective title of Antilie, though calling the Queen of the Antilles Cuba, as now. A later map,[245] probably about 1518, varies the first form slightly to “Atilhas [i. e. Antilhas] de Castela” and shows also “Tera Bimini.” This is the second Bimini map above referred to.
It is true that the name Antillia, often slightly modified, was not restricted to this use but occasionally was applied in other quarters. Beside Behaim’s globe and Ruysch’s map already mentioned, a Catalan map of the fifteenth century (obviously earlier than the knowledge of the Portuguese rediscovery of Flores and Corvo)[246] presents a duplicate delineation of most of the Azores, giving the supposed additional islands a quite correct slant northwestward and individual names selected impartially from divers sources. One of these is Attiaela, recalling the doubtful “Atilae” of the warning-figure inscription on the map of the Pizigani of 1367[247] ([Fig. 2]), which may have suggested it, being applied in the same or a neighboring region. The islands remain mysterious, perhaps merely registering a free range of fancy at divers periods.