An Antillia of the Mainland
Again, at a much later time, when the exploration of the South American coast line had proceeded far enough to demonstrate the existence of a continent, some one speculated, it would seem, concerning an Antillia of the mainland. One of the maps[248] in the portolan atlas in the British Museum known as Egerton MS. 2803 bears the word “Antiglia” running from north to south at a considerable distance west of the mouth of the Amazon, apparently about where would now be the southeastern part of Venezuela. Also, the world map[249] in the same atlas ([Fig. 8]) bears “Antiglia” as a South American name, in this instance moved farther westward to the region of eastern Ecuador and neighboring territory.
But these aberrant applications of the name Antillia in its various forms were mostly late in time and probably all suggested by some novel geographical disclosures. The standard identification, as disclosed on the maps discussed below, at least from Beccario’s of 1435 to Benincasa’s of 1482, was with a great group of western islands; as was Peter Martyr’s, much later.
The Origin of the Name
Naturally the origin of the word has been found a fascinating problem. Ever since Formaleoni,[250] near the close of the eighteenth century, called attention to the delineation of Antillia in Bianco’s map of 1436, discussed below, as indicating some knowledge of America, there have been those to urge the claims of the suppositional lost Atlantis instead. The two island names certainly begin with “A” and utilize “t,” “l,” and “i” about equally; but “Atlantis” comes so easily out of “Atlas,” and the great mountain chain marches so conspicuously down to the sea in all early maps, that the derivation of the former may be called obvious; whereas you cannot readily or naturally turn “Atlas” into “Antillia,” and there is no evidence that any one ever did so. As to geographical items, both have been located in the great western sea; but that is true of many other lands, real or fanciful. Something has been made of the elongated quadrilateral form of Antillia; but Humboldt points out[251] that in the description transmitted by Plato this outline is ascribed to a particular district in Atlantis, not to the great island as a whole, and that, even if it could be understood in the latter sense, there seems no reason why a fragment surviving the great cataclysm should repeat the configuration of Atlantis as a whole. There seems a total lack of any direct evidence, or any weighty inferential evidence, of the derivation of Antillia from Atlantis.
Humboldt’s Hypothesis
Humboldt, in rejecting this hypothesis, advanced another, which is picturesque and ingenious but hardly better supported.[252] His choice is “Al-tin,” Arabic for “the dragon.” Undoubtedly Arabs navigated to some extent some parts of the great Sea of Darkness, and these monsters were among its generally credited terrors. The hardly decipherable inscriptions in the neighborhood of an island on the map of the Pizigani of 1367[253] ([Fig. 2]), as we have seen (Ch. VI), seem to cite Arabic experience in proof of perils from fulvos (krakens) rising from the depths of the sea, coupling dragons with them in the same legend and illustrating it by a picture of a kraken dragging one seaman overboard from a ship in distress, while a dragon high overhead flies away with another. It is even true that Arabic tradition established a dragon on at least one island as a horrible oppression, long ago happily ended, and that another island (perhaps more than one) was known as the Island of the Dragon. But in all this there is nothing to connect dragons with Antillia, and that most hideous medieval fancy is out of all congruity with the fair and almost holy repute of this island as the place of refuge of the last Christian ante-Moorish monarch of Spain in the hour of his despair and as the new home of the seven Portuguese bishops with their following.
In passing, we may note that Antela, the version of the Laon globe hereinafter referred to, is identical with the name of that Lake Antela of northwestern Spain which is the source of the river Limia, fabled to be no other than Lethe, so that Roman soldiers drew back from it, fearing the waters of oblivion. But as yet no one has taken up the cause of Spanish Antela as the origin of the island’s name. Probably it is a mere matter of coincidence.
Humboldt admits that Antillia may be readily resolved into two Portuguese words, ante and illa (island). He even cites several parallel cases, of which Anti-bacchus will serve as an example. But he objects that such compound names have been used in comparison with other islands, not with a continent. In the present instance, however, the comparison would be with Portugal, not with all Europe, and the other member of it would be a map island which, he says, is as long as Portugal and seems curiously to borrow and copy Portugal’s general form and is arranged opposite to that kingdom far beyond the Azores across a great expanse of sea. It must be remembered that illa is the old form of ilha, found in many maps, that either would naturally be pronounced “illia,” and that you cannot say “anteillia” or “antiillia” at all rapidly without turning it almost exactly into Antillia. The “island out before,” or the “opposite island,” would be the natural interpretation. The latter seems preferable. Notwithstanding the great importance which must always be attached to any opinion of Humboldt’s, there really seems no need to let fancy range far afield when an obvious explanation faces us in the word itself and on the maps.