Nordenskiöld, practically applying his test of the presence of Antillia and arranging his materials in chronological order, heads his list of “The Oldest Maps of the New Hemisphere”[254] with the anonymous map preserved in the Grand Ducal library in Weimar and credited to 1424.[255] But it seems that this map does not deserve that position, for it is not entitled to the date; Humboldt, inspecting the original, made out certain fragments of words and the Roman characters for that year on a band running from south to north between the Azores and Antillia; also, in more modern ink, the date 1424 on the margin. Whatever the explanation, he was convinced of error by subsequent correspondence with the Weimar librarian and admitted that it was probably the work of Conde Freducci not earlier than 1481. Apart from all considerations of workmanship and map outlines, the use of “insule” instead of “insulle” and of “brandani” instead of “brandany” in the inscription concerning the Madeiras marks the map as almost certainly belonging to the last quarter, not the first quarter, of the fifteenth century.
The Beccario Map of 1426
The second map on Nordenskiöld’s New World list is “Becharius 1426,” a Latinization of the surname of Battista Beccario and at least not so weird a transformation as Humboldt’s “Beclario or Bedrazio.” Apparently the year of this map has not been doubted, but there is a lack of first-hand evidence that the original contains Antillia. No reproduction of this map had been published prior to the writer’s paper on St. Brendan’s Islands in the July, 1919, Geographical Review, nor, so far as is known, has its extreme western part been copied in any way. The section there reproduced, and herewith reprinted only slightly curtailed ([Fig. 3]), is one of several sent me in response to arrangements, made before the war, for a photograph of the map, but by some mistake the very portion that would have been conclusive was omitted, and all attempts to remedy the error have failed. But, if there were any inscription concerning recently discovered islands located as in his later map, some part of it at least would probably be seen on what I have; and for this and other reasons I do not believe that Antillia is delineated or named on the Beccario map of 1426.
The Beccario Map of 1435
The addition to fifteenth-century geography of a great group of large western islands roughly corresponding to a part of the West Indies and Florida rests mainly on the testimony of the following maps now to be discussed: Beccario 1435, Bianco 1436, Pareto 1455, Roselli 1468, Benincasa 1482, and the anonymous Weimar map probably by Freducci and dating somewhere after 1481. Of these the most complete as well as the earliest is Beccario’s[256] ([Fig. 20]). He gives the islands the collective title of “Insulle a novo rep’te” (newly reported islands), which may refer to the discovery recorded by Behaim for 1414 or to some more recent experience. The interval would not be much greater than that between the first landing of Columbus and the narrative of Peter Martyr beginning with equivalent words. It is likely, however, that some lost map or maps preceded Beccario’s, for the artificially regular outlines of his islands, though in accord with the fashion of cartography in his time, seem rather out of keeping with a first appearance. The type had somehow fixed itself with curious minuteness and was repeated faithfully by his successors. In spite of these impossibly symmetrical details and some discrepancies as to individual direction of elongation and latitude, the fact remains that in the Atlantic there is no such great group except the Antilles and that the general correspondence is too surprising to be explained by mere accident or conjecture. Surely some mariner had visited Cuba and some of its neighbors before 1435.
Fig. 20—Section of the Beccario map of 1435 showing the four islands of the Antilles, St. Brendan’s Islands, Daculi, and others. (After Uzielli’s photographic facsimile.)
This map of Beccario had been somewhat neglected, with misreading of the names, before it was taken in hand by the Italian Geographical Society and reproduced very carefully by photo-lithography. As regards the island names in particular, this eliminated some misunderstanding and confusion and made their meaning plain. Thus rendered, the map affords a convenient standard for the others, which, indeed, differ from it very little as to these “Islands of Antillia.”
The Four Islands of the Antilles on the Beccario Map
This group, or more properly series—for three of them are strung out in a line—comprises the four islands Antillia, Reylla, Salvagio, and I in Mar. All these names have meaning, easy to render.