The Weimar map,[261] though long carefully housed, has suffered blurring and fading with some other damage in its earlier history. It is evidently a late representative of the tradition and begins to wander slightly from the accepted standard. It has been curtailed also from the beginning, like Bianco’s map of 1436, by the limitations of the border, which in this instance cuts off the lower part of Antillia, though the name is nearly intact; but enough remains to indicate a reduced relative size and a greater slant to the northeastward than on Beccario’s map. There is, of course, no room for Reylla, and there is none for I in Mar; but
Salvagio is given plainly and fully, with the letter S quite conspicuous. I cannot read more of the name on the photograph; but the Weimar librarian reads San on the original, being uncertain as to the rest. This map bears traces of local names arranged in places like those of Benincasa but fragmentary and illegible. Perhaps these names tend to show that the maps belong not only to the same period, but to the same general school of development. The other differences between this map and its predecessors are trivial. The general idea of the island series is the same so far as it is disclosed, and it is hardly to be doubted that all elements of the islands of Antillia would have been presented in the main on this map as they are by Roselli and Beccario, if there had been room to do so.
Fig. 22—Section of the Benincasa map of 1482 showing the Antilles, St. Brendan’s Islands, and others. (After Kretschmer’s hand-copied reproduction.)
The Laon Globe of 1493
The Laon globe,[262] 1493, though mainly older, certainly had room enough, but it appears to have formed part of some mechanism and to have had only a secondary or incidental, and in part rather careless, application to geography. It shows two elongated islands, Antela and Salirosa, undoubtedly meant for Antillia and Salvagio. Perhaps the globe maker had at command only a somewhat defaced specimen of a map like Bianco’s or that of Weimar, showing perforce only two islands, and merely copied them, guessing at the dim names and outlines, without thinking or caring whether anything more were implied or making any farther search. This is apparently the last instance in which the larger two islands of the old group or series, marked by their traditional names or what are meant for such, appear together.
Other Maps
It may seem strange that certain other notable maps, for example Giraldi 1426,[263] Valsequa 1439,[264] and Fra Mauro 1459,[265] show nothing of Antillia and its neighbors. Perhaps the makers were not interested in these far western parts of the ocean, or the narratives on which Beccario and the rest based their maps had not reached them; more likely they were skeptical and unwilling to commit themselves.
It is also true that the Antillia of Beccario and others is made to extend nearly north and south instead of east and west; that I in Mar is placed north of its greater neighbor instead of east; and that the whole chain of islands is moved into considerably more northern latitudes than the group which we suppose them to represent. Thus the eastern, or lower, end of Cuba is actually in the latitude of the lower part of the Sahara, and a point above the upper end of Florida would be in the latitude of the upper part of Morocco; whereas in the maps discussed the average location of the chain from the lower end of Antillia to the most northerly island, I in Mar, would run from the latitude of northern Morocco to that of southern France. There are slight individual differences in this matter of extension, but I believe Antillia always begins below Gibraltar and ends above northern Spain and a little below Bordeaux. But some dislocation, of course, is to be looked for in mapping exploration in an unscientific period. The changes of direction and extension are not greater than in the American coast line of Juan de la Cosa’s very important map of 1500,[266] not to mention even more extravagant instances of later date; and the shifting of latitudes may partly be accounted for by ignorance of the southward dip of the isothermal lines in crossing the Atlantic westward. Thus a Portuguese sailor on reaching a far western island or shore having what seemed to him the climate and conditions of Gascony would be likely to suppose that it was really opposite Gascony, though in fact it might be more nearly opposite the Canaries; and the same cause of error would apply all down the line. Cuba is not really directly opposite Portugal but may easily have been believed so.