The subject is mixed up with some absurdity and deceit. The Dighton Rock has passed for Phœnician (Stiles’ Sermon, 1783; Yates and Moulton’s New York). At one time a Phœnician inscription in Brazil was invented (Am. Geog. Soc. Bull. 1886, p. 364; St. John V. Day’s Prehistoric Use of Iron, Lond. 1877, p. 62). The notorious Cardiff giant, conveniently found in New York state, was presented to a credulous public as Phœnician (Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., Ap. 1875). The history of this hoax is given by W. A. McKinney in the New Englander, 1875, P. 759.
[384] Cf. Johr. Langius, Medicinalium Epistolarum Miscellanea (Basle, 1554-60), with a chapter, “De novis Americi orbis insulis, antea ab Hannone Carthaginein repertis;” Gebelin’s Monde Primitif; Bancroft’s Native Races, iii. 313, v. 77; Short, 145, 209.
[385] A specimen is in M. V. Moore’s paper in the Mag. of Amer. Hist. (1884), xii. 113, 354. There are various fugitive references to Roman coins found often many feet under ground, in different parts of America. See for such, Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum; Haywood’s Tennessee (1820); Hist. Mag., v. 314; Mag. Amer. Hist., xiii. 457; Marcel de Serre, Cosmogonie de Moise, p. 32; and for pretended Roman inscriptions, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Nat. Civ. Méx., preface; Journal de l’Instruction Publique, Juin, 1853; Humboldt, Exam. Crit., i. 166; Gaffarel in Rev. de Géog., ix. 427.
[386] Procli commentarius in Platonis Timaeum. Rec. C. E. C. Schneider. (Vratislaviae, 1847.) The Commentaries of Proclus on the Timaeus of Plato. Translated by Thomas Taylor, 2 vols. 4º. (London, 1820.) Proclus lived a.d. 412-485. The passages of importance are found in the translation, vol. i. pp. 64, 70, 144, 148.
[387] Taylor, i. 64.
[388] Procl. in Tim. (Schneider), p. 126; Taylor, i. 148. Also in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. Mueller. (Paris, 1852), vol. iv. p. 443.
[389] Geogr. ii. § 3, § 6 (p. 103).
[390] Hist. Nat., ii. 92.
[391] The Atlantis mentioned by Pliny in Hist. Nat., vi. 36, is apparently entirely distinct from the Atlantis of Plato.
[392] Amm. Marc. xvii. 7, § 13. Fiunt autem terrarum motus modis quattuor, aut enim brasmatiae sunt, ... aut climatiae ... aut chasmatiae, qui grandiori motu patefactis subito voratrinis terrarum partes absorbent, ut in Atlantico mare Europaeo orbe spatiosor insula, etc. (Ed. Eyssenhardt, Berlin, 1871, p. 106).
[393] Martin, Etudes sur le Timée (1841), i. 305, 306. The passage in question is in Schol. ad Rempubl., p. 327, Plato, ed. Bekker, vol. ix. p. 67.
[394] Cited in Aelian’s Varia Historia, iii. ch. 18. For the other references see above, pp. 23, 25, 26.
[395] Ammianus Marcellinus (xv. 9) quotes from Timagenes (who wrote in the first century a history of Gaul, now lost) a statement that some of the Gauls had originally immigrated from very distant islands and from lands beyond the Rhine (ab insulis extimis confluxisse et tractibus transrhenanis) whence they were driven by wars and the incursions of the sea (Timag. in Mueller, Frag. hist. of Graec., iii. 323). It would seem incredible that this should be dragged into the Atlantis controversy, but such has been the case.
[396] Plutarch, Solon, at end. R. Prinz, De Solonis Plutarchi fontibus (Bonnæ, 1857).
[397] De Pallio, 2, Apol., p. 32. Also by Arnobius, Adversus gentes, i. 5.
[398] Ed. Montfaucon, i. 114-125, ii. 131, 136-138, iv. 186-192, xii. 340.
[399] Gaffarel in Revue de Géographie, vi.
[400] Platonis omnia opere cum comm. Proclii in Timaeum, etc. (Basil. Valderus, 1534).
[401] Ex Platoni Timaeo particula, Ciceronis libro de universitate respondens ... op. jo. Perizonii (Paris, Tiletanus, 1540; Basil. s. a.; Paris, Morell, 1551). Interpret. Cicerone et Chalcidio, etc. (Paris, 1579). Le Timée de Platon, translaté du grec en français, par L. le Roy, etc. (Paris, 1551, 1581). Il dialogo di Platone, intitolato il Timaeo trad. da Sb. Erizzo, nuov. mandato en luce d. Gir. Ruscellii (Venet. 1558).
[402] Birchrodii Schediasma de orbe novo non novo (Altdorf, 1683).
[403] The representation of Sanson is reproduced on p. 18. The full title of these curious maps is given by Martin, Etudes sur le Timée, i. 270, notes.
[404] Plato, ed. Stallbaum (Gothae, 1838); vii. p. 99, note E. See also his Prolegomena de Critia, in the same volume, for further discussion and references.
[405] Cluverius, Introduct., ed. 1729, p. 667.
[406] Examination of the legend of Atlantis in reference to protohistoric communications with America, in the Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. (Lond., 1885), iii. p. 1-46.
[407] W. S. Blackett, Researches into the lost histories of America; or, the Zodiac shown to be an old terrestrial map in which the Atlantic isle is delineated, etc. (London, 1883), p. 31, 32. The work is not too severely judged by W. F. Poole, in the Dial (Chicago), Sept. 84, note. The author’s reasons for believing that Atlantis could not have sunk are interesting in a way. The Fourth Rept. Bur. of Ethnology (p. 251) calls it “a curiosity of literature.”
[408] E. F. Berlioux, Les Atlantes: histoire de l’Atlantis, et de l’Atlas primitif (Paris, 1883). It originally made part of the first Annuaire of the Faculté des lettres de Lyon (Paris, 1883).
[409] Thesaurus Geogr., 1587, under Atlantis. See also under Gades and Gadirus. On folio 2 of his Theatrum orbis terrarum he rejects the notion that the ancients knew America, but in the index, under Atlantis, he says forte America.
[410] Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias. Ed. De la Fuensanto de Valle and J. S. Rayon (Madrid, 1875), i. cap. viii. pp. 73-79.
[411] Taylor, in the introduction to the Timaeus, in his translation of Plato, regards as almost impious the doubts as to the truth of the narrative. The Works of Plato, vol. i. London, 1804.
[412] Thes. Geogr., s. v. Gadirus.
[413] Athanasii Kircherii Mundus subterraneus in xii. libros digestus (Amsterd., 1678), pp. 80-83. He gives a cut illustrative of his views on p. 82.
[414] Historia orbis terrarum geographica et civilis, cap. 5, § 2, hist. insul. I. C. Becmann, 2d ed. (Francfort on Oder, 1680). Title from British Museum, as I have been unable to see the work. The Allg. Deutsche Biographie says the first edition appeared in 1680. It was a book of considerable note in its day.
[415] De la Borde, Histoire abregée de la mer du Sud (Paris, 1791).
[416] J. B. G. M. Bory de St. Vincent, Essais sur les isles Fortunées et l’antique Atlantide (Paris, an xi. or 1803), ch. 7. Si les Canaries et les autres isles de l’ocean Atlantique offrent les débris d’un continent. pp. 427, etc. His map is given ante, p. 19.
[417] This is the second part of his Iles de l’Afrique (Paris, 1848), belonging to the series L’Univers. Histoire et description de tous les peuples, etc. Cf. also his Les îles fantastiques (Paris, 1845).
[418] G. R. Carli, Delle Lettere Americane, ii. (1780). Lettere, vii. and following; especially xiii. and following.
[419] Lyell, Elements of Geology (Lond., 1841), p. 141; and his Principles of Geology, 10th ed. Buffon dated the separation of the new and old world from the catastrophe of Atlantis. Epoques de la Nat., ed. Flourens, ix. 570.
[420] Quatres lettres sur la Méxique; Popul Vuh, p. xcix, and his Sources de l’histoire primitive du Méxique, section viii. pp. xxiv, xxxiii, xxxviii and ix, in his edition of Diego da Landa, Relation des choses de Yucatan (Paris, 1864). H. H. Bancroft, Nat. Races, iii. 112, 264, 480; v. 127, develops Brasseur’s theory. In his Hist. Nat. Civilisées he compares the condition of the Colhua kingdom of Xibalba with Atlantis, and finds striking similarities. Le Plongeon in his Sacred Mysteries (p. 92) accepts Brasseur’s theory.
[421] A. Retzius, Present state of Ethnology in relation to the form of the human skull (Smithsonian Report, 1859), p. 266. The resemblance is not indorsed by M. Verneau, who has lately made a detailed study of the aborigines of the Canaries.
[422] F. Unger, Die versunkene Insel Atlantis (Wien, 1860). Translated in the Journal of Botany (London), January, 1865. Asa Gray had already called attention to the remarkable resemblance between the flora of Japan and that of eastern North America, but had not found the invention of a Pacific continent preferable to the hypothesis of a progress of plants of the temperate zone round by Behring’s Strait (Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vi. 377). Unger’s theory has been also more or less urged in Heer’s Flora Tertiaria Helveticae (1854-58) and his Urwelt der Schweitz (1865), and by Otto Ule in his Die Erde (1874), i. 27.
[423] Sitzungsberichte der Math. Phys. Classe d. k. Akad. d. Wissensch. at Vienna, lvii. (1868) p. 12.
[424] The “Lost Atlantis” and the “Challenger” soundings, Nature, 26 April, 1877, xv. 553, with sketch map.
[425] J. Starkie Gardner, How were the eocenes of England deposited? in Popular Science Review (London), July, 1878, xvii. 282. Edw. H. Thompson, Atlantis not a Myth, in Popular Science Monthly, Oct., 1879, xv. 759; reprinted in Journal of Science, Lond., Nov. 1879.
[426] Etude sur les rapports de l’Atlantis et de l’ancien continent avant Colomb (Paris, 1869).
[427] Revue de Géographie, Mars, Avril, 1880, tom. vi. et vii.
[428] See p. 46.
[429] Ultima teoria sobre la Atlantida. A paper read before the Geographical Society at Lisbon. I have seen only the epitome in Bolletino della Società Geografica Italiana, xvi. (1879), p. 693. Apparently the paper was published in 1881, in the proceedings of the fourth congress of Americanists at Madrid.
[430] Winchell, Preadamites, or a demonstration of the existence of man before Adam, etc. (Chicago, 1880), pp. 378 and fol.
[431] Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: the Antediluvian World (N. Y., 1882).
[432] His work is much more than a defence of Plato. He attempts to show that Atlantis was the terrestrial paradise, the cradle of the world’s civilization. I suppose it was his book which inspired Mrs. J. Gregory Smith to write Atla: a Story of the Lost Island (New York, 1886).
Donnelly’s book was favorably reviewed by Prof. Winchell (“Ancient Myth and Modern Fact,” Dial, Chicago, April, 1882, ii. 284), who declared that there was no longer serious doubt that the story was founded on fact. His theory was enthusiastically adopted by Mrs. A. A. Knight in Education (v. 317), and somewhat more soberly by Rev. J. P. McLean in the Universalist Quarterly (Oct., 1882, xxxix. 436, “The Continent of Atlantis”). I have not seen an article in Kansas Review by Mrs. H. M. Holden, quoted in Poole’s Index (Kan. Rev., viii. 435; also, viii. 236, 640). It was more carefully examined and its claims rejected by a writer in the Journal of Science (London), (“Atlantis once more,” June, 1883; xx. 319-327). W. F. Poole doubts whether Mr. Donnelly himself was quite serious in his theorizing (“Discoveries of America: the lost Atlantis theory,” Dial, Sept., 1884, v. 97). Lord Arundel of Wardour controverted Donnelly in The Secret of Plato’s Atlantis (London, 1885), and believes that the Atlantis fable originated in vague reports of Hanno’s voyage—a theory hardly less remarkable than the one it aims to displace. Lord Arundel’s book was reviewed in the Dublin Review (Plato’s “Atlantis” and the “Periplus” of Hanno), July, 1886, xcix. 91.
[433] Renard, M., Report on the Petrology of St. Paul’s Rocks, Challenger Report, Narrative (London, 1882), ii. Appendix B.
[434] A search for “Atlantis” with the microscope, in Nature, 9 Nov., 1882, xxvii. 25.
[435] The microscopic evidence of a lost continent, in Science, 29 June, 1883, i. 591.
[436] Origines Celticae (London, 1883), i. 119, etc.
[437] The discoveries of America to the year 1525 (New York, 1884), ch. 1. Cf. Poole’s review of this jejune Work, quoted above, for some healthy criticism of this kind of writing (Dial, v. 97). Also a notice in the Nation, July 31, 1884.
The scientific theory of Atlantis is, I believe, supported by M. Jean d’Estienne in the Revue des Questiones Scientifiques, Oct., 1885, and by M. de Marçay, Histoire des descouvertes et conquêtes de l’Amerique (Limoges, 1881), but I have seen neither. H. H. Howorth, The Mammoth and the Flood (London, 1887), is struggling to revive the credit of water as the chief agent in the transformations of the earth’s surface, and relies much upon the deluge myths, but refuses to accept Atlantis. He thinks the zoölogic evidence proves the existence in pleistocene times of an easy and natural bridge between Europe and America, but sees no need of placing it across the mid-Atlantic (p. 262).
[438] The naturall and morall historie of the East and West Indies, etc., written in Spanish by Joseph Acosta, and translated into English by E. G[rimeston] (London, 1604), p. 72, 73 (lib. i. ch. 22).
[439] Notitiae orbis antiquae (Amsterdam, 1703-6), 2 vols. The first ed. was Cantab., 1703. “Atlantica insula Platonis quae similior fabulae est quam chorographiae,” lib. i. cap. xi. p. 32. In the Additamentum de novo orbe an cognatus fuerit veteribus (tome ii. lib. iv. pp. 164-166) Cellarius speaks more guardedly, and quotes with approval the judgment of Perizonius, which has been given above (p. 22).
[440] Essai sur l’explication historique donnée par Platon de sa République et de son Atlantide (in Reflexions impartiales sur le progrès réal ou apparent que les sciences et les arts ont faits dans le xviiie siècle en Europe, Paris, 1780). The work is useful because it contains the Greek text (from a MS. in the Bibl. du Roi. Cf. MSS. de la bibliothèque, v. 261), the Latin translations of Ficinus and Serranus, several French translations, and the Italian of Frizzo and of Bembo.
[441] Recherches sur les iles de l’océan Atlantique, in the Recherches sur la géographie des anciens, i. p. 146 (Paris, 1797). Also in the French translation of Strabo (i. p. 268, note 3). Gosselin thought that Atlantis was nothing more than Fortaventure or Lancerote.
[442] Geogr. d. Griechen u. Römer, i. 1, p. 59; ii. 1, p. 192. Cf. Letronne’s Essai sur les idées cosmographiques qui se rettachent au nom d’Atlas, in the Bull. Univ. des sciences (Ferussac), March, 1831.
[443] Examen Crit., i. 167-180; ii. 192.
[444] The dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett (N. Y., 1873), ii. p. 587 (Introduction to Critias).
[445] Bunbury, History of ancient geography, i. 402.
[446] Etude sur le Timée de Platon (Paris, 1841), t. i. pp. 257-333.
[447] Paul Gaffarel, Etude sur les rapports de l’Amérique et de l’ancien continent avant Christophe Colomb (Paris, 1869), ch. 1er; L’Atlantide, pp. 3-27. The same author has more lately handled the subject more fully in a series of articles: L’Atlantide, in the Revue de Géographie, April-July, 1880; vi. 241, 331, 421; vii. 21,—which is the most detailed account of the whole matter yet brought together.
[448] One of the most recent résumés of the question is that by Salone in the Grande Encyclopédie. (Paris, 1888, iv. p. 457). The Encyclopædia Britannica, by the way, regards the account, “if not entirely fictitious, as belonging to the most nebulous region of history.”
A few miscellaneous references, of no great significance, may close this list: Amer. Antiquarian, Sept., 1886; H. H. Bancroft, Nat. Races, v. 123; J. S. Clarke’s Progress of Maritime Discovery, p. ii. Geo. Catlin’s Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America (Lond., 1870) illustrates “The Cataclysm of the Antilles.” Dr. Chil, in the Nancy Congrès des Américanistes, i. 163. Foster’s Prehistoric Races, app. E. Haven’s Archæol. U. S. Irving’s Columbus, app. xxii. Major’s Prince Henry (1868), p. 87. Nadaillac’s Les Prem. Hommes, ii. 114, and his L’ Amérique préhistorique, 561. John B. Newman’s Origin of the Red Men (N. Y., 1852). Prescott’s Mexico, iii. 356. C. S. Rafinesque’s incomplete American Nations (Philad.), and his earlier introduction to Marshall’s Kentucky, and his Amer. Museum (1832). Two articles by L. Burke in his Ethnological Journal (London), 1848: The destruction of Atlantis, July; The continent of America known to the ancient Egyptians and other nations of remote antiquity, Aug. The former article is only a reprint of Taylor’s trans. of Plato. Roisel’s Etudes ante-historiques (Paris, 1874), devoted largely to the religion of the Atlanteans. Léon de Rosny’s “L’Atlantide historique” in the Mém. de la Soc. d’Ethnographie (Paris, 1875), xiii. 33, 159, or Revue Orientale et Américaine. Short’s No. Americans of Antiquity, ch. 11. Daniel Wilson’s Lost Atlantis (Montreal, 1886), in Proc. and Trans. Roy. Soc. of Canada, 1886, iv. Cf. also Poole’s Index, i. 73; ii. 27; and Larousse’s Grand Dictionnaire.
[449] Legends and Superstitions of the Sea and of Sailors in all Lands and at all Times (Chicago and New York, 1885).
[450] Légendes, croyances de la mer. 2 vols. (Paris, 1886.) See ch. 9 in 1ere série.
[451] L’Elysée transatlantique et l’Eden Occidental (Mai-Juin, Nov.-Dec., 1883), vii. 273; viii. 673.
[452] Paradise Found: the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole (Boston, 1885), 4th ed.
[453] Eumenius (?), in the third century a.d., is doubtful about the existence even of the Fortunate Isles (i. e. the Canaries). Eumenii panegyricus Constantino Aug., vii., in Valpy’s Panegyrici veteres (London, 1828), iii. p. 1352. Baehrens credits this oration to an unknown author. Mamertinus appears to know them from the poets only (Ibid. p. 1529).
[454] Saggio sulla nautica antica dei Veneziani, n. p., n. d. (Venice, 1783); French translation (Venice, 1788).
[455] Il mappamondo di Fra Mauro descritto ed illustrato (Venice, 1806). Di Marco Polo e degli altri viaggiatori veneziani ... con append. sopra le antiche mappe lavorate in Venezia (Venice, 1818).
[456] ii. 156, etc.
[457] D’Avezac: Iles d’Afrique (Paris, 1848) 2e partie; Iles connues des Arabes, pp. 15; Les îles de Saint-Brandan, pp. 19; Les îsles nouvellement trouvées du quinzième siècle, pp. 24. The last two pieces had been previously published under the title Les îles fantastiques de l’Ocean occidental au moyen âge, in the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages (Mars, Avril, 1845), 2d série, i. 293; ii. 47.
[458] Les îsles fantastiques de l’Atlantique au moyen âge. Lyon [1883], pp. 15. This is apparently extracted from the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lyon for 1883.
[In Poole’s Index is a reference to an article on imaginary islands in London Society, i. 80, 150.]
[459] “Zur Geschichte der Erdkunde in der letzten Hälfte des Mittelalters. Die Karten der seefahrenden Völker Süd-Europas bis zum ersten Druck der Erdbeschreibung des Ptolemaeus.” Jahresbericht, vi. vii. (1870). Accompanying the article are sketches of the principal mediæval maps, which are useful if access to the more trustworthy reproductions cannot be had.
[460] Sammlung mittelalterlicher Welt- und Seekarten italienischen Ursprungs, etc. (Venice, 1886), especially pp. 14-22, and under the notices of particular maps in the second part.
[461] The Life of Prince Henry of Portugal, surnamed the Navigator, etc. London, 1868.
[462] The position of these islands and the fact that the Arabs believed that they were following Ptolemy in placing in them the first meridian seems almost conclusive in favor of the Canaries; but M. D’Avezac is inclined in favor of the Azores, because the Arabs place in the Eternal Isles certain pillars and statues warning against further advance westward, which remind him of the equestrian statues of the Azores, and because Ebn Sáyd states that the Islands of Happiness lie between the Eternal Islands and Africa.
[463] D’Avezac, Iles d’Afrique, ii. 15. Géographie d’Abul-Fada trad. par M. Reinand et M. Guiyard (Paris, 1848-83). 2 vols. The first volume contains a treatise on Arabian geographers and their systems. Géographie d’Edrisi trad. par M. Jaubert (Paris, 1836-40). 2 vols. 4to (Soc. de Géogr. de Paris, Recueil de Voyages, v., vi.) Cf. Cherbonneau on the Arabian geographers in the Revue de Géographie (1881).
[464] Humboldt, Examen Crit., ii. 163; D’Avezac, Iles d’Afrique, ii. 19; St. Malo’s voyage by Beauvois, Rev. Hist. Relig., viii. 986.
[465] Les voyages de Saint Brandan et des Papoe dans l’Atlantique au moyen-âge, published by the Soc. de Géogr. de Rochefort (1881). See also his Rapports de l’Amérique et de l’ancien continent (Paris, 1869), p. 173-183. The article Brenden in Stephen’s Dict. of National Biography, vol. vi. (London, 1886), should be consulted.
[466] 16 May; Maii, tom. ii. p. 699.
[467] La légende latine de S. Brandaines, avec une traduction inédite, etc. (Paris, 1836). M. Jubinal gives a full account of all manuscripts.
[468] St. Brandan, a mediæval legend of the sea, in English prose and verse (London, 1844). The student of the subject will find use for Les voyages de Saint Brandan à la recherche du paradis terrestre, legend en vers du XIIe siècle, avec introduction par Francisque Michel (Paris, 1878), and “La legende Flamande de Saint Brandan et du bibliographie” by Louis de Backer in Miscellanées bibliographiques, 1878, p. 191.
[469] Nova typis transacta navigatio. Novi orbis India occidentalis, etc. (1621), p. 11.
[470] Honoré d’Autun, Imago Mundi, lib. i. cap. 36. In Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum (Lugd., 1677), tom. xx. p. 971.
[471] Humboldt (Examen Critique, ii. 172) quotes these islands from Sanuto Torsello (1306). They appear on a map of about 1350, preserved in St. Mark’s Library at Venice (Wuttke, in Jahresber. d. Vereins für Erdkunde zu Dresden, xvi. 20), as “I fortunate I beate, 368,” in connection with La Montagne de St. Brandan, west of Ireland. They are also in the Medicean Atlas of 1351, and in Fra Mauro’s map and many others.
[472] Noticias de la historia general de las islas de Canaria, by D. Jos. de Viera y Clavijo, 4 vols. 4to (Madrid, 1772-83). Humboldt, Examen, ii. 167. D’Avezac, Iles d’Afrique, ii. 22, etc. Les îles fortunées ou archipel des Canaries [by E. Pégot-Ogier], 2 vols. (Paris, 1862), i. ch. 13. Saint-Borondon (Aprositus), pp. 186-198. Teneriffe and its six satellites, by O. M. Stone, 2 vols. (London, 1887), i. 319. This mirage probably explains the Perdita of Honoré and the Aprositos of Ptolemy. Cf. O. Peschel’s Abhandlungen zur Erd- und Völkerkunde (Leipzig, 1877), i. 20. A similar story is connected with Brazil.
[473] M. Buache in his Mémoire sur l’Isle Antillia (Mém. Inst. de France, Sciences math. et phys., vi., 1806), read on a copy of the Pizigani map of 1367, sent to him from Parma, the inscription, Ad ripas Antilliae or Antullio. Cf. Buache’s article in German in Allg. Geogr. Ephemeriden, xxiv. 129. Humboldt (Examen, ii. 177) quotes Zurla (Viaggi, ii. 324) as denying that such an inscription can be made out on the original: but Fischer (Sammlung von Welt-karten, p. 19) thinks this form of the name can be made out on Jomard’s fac-simile. Wuttke, however, thinks that the word Antillia is not to be made out, and gives the inscription as Hoc sont statua q fuit ut tenprs A cules, and reads Hoc sunt statuae quae fuerunt antea temporibus Arcules = Herculis (Wuttke, Zur Geschichte der Erdkunde in der letzten Haelfte des Mittelalters, p. 26, in Jahresbericht des Vereins für Erdkunde zu Dresden, vi. and vii., 1870). The matter is of interest in the story of the equestrian statue of Corvo. According to the researches of Humboldt, this story first appears in print in the history of Portugal by Faria y Sousa (Epitome de las historias Portuguezas, Madrid, 1628. Historia del Reyno de Portugal, 1730), who describes on the “Mountain of the Crow,” in the Azores, a statue of a man on horseback pointing westward. A later version of the story mentions a western promontory in Corvo which had the form of a person pointing westward. Humboldt (ii. 231), in an interesting sketch, connects this story with the Greek traditions of the columns of Hercules at Gades, and with the old opinion that beyond no one could pass; and with the curious Arabic stories of numberless columns with inscriptions prohibiting further navigation, set up by Dhoulcarnain, an Arabian hero, in whose personality Hercules and Alexander the Great are curiously compounded (see Edrisi). Humboldt quotes from Buache a statement that on the Pizigani map of 1367 there is near Brazil (Azores) a representation of a person holding an inscription and pointing westward.
[474] Fernan Colomb, Historia, ch. 9; Horn, De Originibus Amer. p. 7, quoted by Gaffarel in his Les îles fantastiques, p. 3, note 1, 2. D’Avezac, Iles d’Afrique, ii. 27, quotes a similar passage from Medina (Arte naviguar), who found it in the Ptolemy dedicated to Pope Urban (1378-1389). According to D’Avezac (Iles, ii. 28), a “geographical document” of 1455 gives the name as Antillis, and identifies it with Plato’s Atlantis.
[475] Formaleoni, Essai, 148.
[476] D’Avezac marks as wrong the reading Sarastagio of Humboldt.
[477] D’Avezac, Iles d’Afrique, ii. 29; Gaffarel, Iles fantastiques, 12. Fischer (Sammlung, 20) translates Satanaxio, Satanshand, but thinks the island of Deman, which appears on the Catalan chart of 1375, is meant by the first half of the title. The Catalan map, fac-similed by Buchon and Foster in the Notices et extraits des documents, xiv. 2, has been more exactly reproduced in the Choix des documents géographiques conservées à la Bibl. Nat. (Paris, 1883).
[478] Peter Martyr, in 1493, states that cosmographers had determined that Hispaniola and the adjacent isles were Antillae insulae, meaning doubtless the group surrounding Antillia on the old maps (Decades, i. p. 11, ed. 1583); but the name was not popularly applied to the new islands until after Wytfliet and Ortelius had so used it (Humboldt, Examen, ii. 195, etc.). But Schöner, in the dedicatory letter of his globe of 1523, says that the king of Castile through Columbus has discovered Antiglias Hispaniam Cubam quoque (Stevens, Schöner, London, 1888, fac-simile of letter). In the same way the name Seven Cities was applied to the pueblos of New Mexico by their first discoverers, and Brazil passed from an island to the continent.
[479] Humboldt identified it with Terceira, but Fischer questions whether St. Michael does not agree better with the easterly position constantly assigned to Brazil.
[480] The Bianco map of 1436 has, on the ocean sheets, five groups of small islands, from south to north: (1) Canaries; (2) Madeira and Porto Santo; (3) luto and chapisa; (4) d. brasil, di colonbi, d. b. ntusta, d. sanzorzi; (5) coriios and corbo marinos; (6) de ventura; (7) de brazil. West of the third and fourth lies Antillia, and N. W. of the fifth a corner of de laman satanaxio, while west of six and seven are numerous small islands unnamed. On the ocean sheet of the Bianco of 1448, we have (2) Madeira and Porto Santo; (3) licongi and coruo marin; (4) de braxil, zorzi, etc.; (5) coriios and coruos marinos; (6) y. d. mam debentum; (7) y. d. brazil d. binar. There is no Antillia and no Satanaxio, but west of (3) and (4) are two other groups: (1) yd. diuechi marini, y de falconi; (2) y fortunat de so. beati. blandan, dinferno, de ipauion, beta ixola, dexerta. There is not much to be hoped from such geography.
[481] Over against Africa he has an Isola dei Dragoni. On the Pizigani map of 1367 the Brazil which lies W. of North France is accompanied by a cut of two ships, a dragon eating a man, and a legend stating that one cannot sail further on account of monsters. There was a dragon in the Hesperian isles, and some have connected it with the famous dragon-tree of the Canaries.
[482] Examen, ii. 216, etc.
[483] For an account of the Irish MSS. see Eugene O’Curry, Lectures on the MS. material of ancient Irish history (Dublin, 1861), lect. ix. p. 181; H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, Introduction a l’étude de la littérature Celtique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1883), i. chap. 8, p. 349, etc.; also Essai d’un catalogue de littérature épique d’Irlande, by the same author (Paris, 1883). For accounts of the voyages see O’Curry, p. 252, and especially p. 289, where a sketch of that of the sons of Ua Corra is given. A list of the voyages is given by D’Arbois de Jubainville in his Essai, under Longeas (involuntary voyages) and Immram (voluntary voyages), with details about MSS. and references to texts and translations (Mailduin, p. 151; Ua Corra, 152). See also Beauvois, Eden occidental, Rev. de l’Hist. des Relig., viii. 706, 717, for voyages of Mailduin and the sons of Ua Corra, and of other voyages. Also Joyce, Old Celtic romances (London, 1879). Is M. Beauvois in earnest when he suggests that the talking birds discovered by Mailduin (and also by St. Brandan) were probably parrots, and their island a part of South America?
[484] The name is derived by Celtic scholars from breas, large, and i, island.
[485] Gulielmi de Worcester Itineraria, ed. J. Nasmyth (Cantab., 1778), p. 223, 267. I take the quotation from Notes and Queries, Dec. 15, 1883, 6th series, viii. 475. The latter passage is quoted in full in Bristol, past and present, by Nicholls and Taylor (London, 1882), iii. 292. Cf. H. Harrisse’s C. Colomb., i. 317.
[486] Cal. State Papers, Spanish, i. p. 177.
[487] Irish Minstrelsy, or bardic remains of Ireland, etc., 2 vols. (London, 1831), i. 368.
[488] This is very nearly its position in the Arcano del Mare of Dudley, 1646 (Europe 28), where it is called “disabitata e incerta.”
[489] i. 369. O-Brazile, or the enchanted island, being a perfect relation of the late discovery and wonderful disenchantment of an island on the North [sic] of Ireland, etc. (London, 1675).
[490] John T. O’Flaherty, Sketch of the History and antiquities of the southern islands of Aran, etc. (Dublin, 1884, in Roy. Irish Acad. Trans., vol. xiv.)
[491] On Hy Brasil, a traditional island off the west coast of Ireland, plotted in a MS. map written by Le Sieur Tassin, etc., in the Journal of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland (1879-80), vol. xv. pt. 3, pp. 128-131, fac-simile of map.
[492] In an atlas issued 1866, I observe Mayda and Green Rock.
[493] Harrisse would put it in 1482. See Vol. II. p. 90.
[494] Also in his Bib. Amer. Vet., p. xvi.
[495] The various versions of the letter are as follows: Ulloa (Historie, 1571, ch. 8). Dalla città di Lisbona per dritto verso ponente sono in detta carta ventisei spazi, ciascun de’ quali contien dugento, & cinquanta miglia, fino alla ... città di Quisai, la quale gira cento miglia, che sono trentacinque leghe.... Questo spazio e quasi la terza parte della sfera.... E dalla’ Isola di Antilia, che voi chiamate di sette città, ... fino alla ... isola di Cipango sono dieci spazi, che fanno due mila & cinquecento miglia, cioè dugento, & venticinque leghe.
Barcia. Hallareis en un mapa, que ai desde Lisboa, à la famosa ciudad de Quisay, tomando el camino derecho à Poniente, 26 espacios, cada uno de 150 millas. Quisai’ tiene 35 leguas de ambitu.... De la isla Antilla hasta la de Cipango se quentan diez espacios, que hacen 225 leguas.
Las Casas: Y de la ciudad de Lisboa, en derecho por el Poniente, son en la dicha carta 26 espacios, y en cada uno dellos hay 250 millas hasta la ... ciudad de Quisay, la cual etiene al cerco 100 millas, que son 25 leguas, ... (este espacio es cuasi la tercera parte de la sfera) ... é de la isla de Antil, ... Hasta la ... isla de Cipango hay 10 espacios que son 2,500 millas, es á sabre, 225 leguas.
Columbus’s copy: A civitate vlixiponis per occidentem indirecto sunt .26. spacia in carta signata quorum quodlibet habet miliaria .250. usque ad nobilisim[am], et maxima ciuitatem quinsay. Circuit enim centum miliaria ... hoc spatium est fere tercia pars tocius spere.... Sed ab insula antilia vobis nota ad insulam ... Cippangu sunt decem spacia.
[496] Cf. “Les îles Atlantique,” by Jacobs-Beeckmans in the Bull. de la Soc. géog. d’Anvers, i. 266, with map.
[497] Of these collections, those of Kunstmann and Jomard are not uncommon in the larger American libraries. A set of the Santarem series is very difficult to secure complete, but since the description of these collections in Vol. II. was written, a set has been secured for Harvard College library, and I am not aware of another set being in this country. The same library has the Ongania series. The maps in this last, some of which are useful in the present study, are the following:—
1. Arabic marine map, xiiith cent. (Milan); 2. Visconte, 1311 (Florence); 3. Carignano, xivth cent. (Florence); 4. Visconte, 1318 (Venice); 5. Anonymous, 1351 (Florence); 6. Pizigani, 1373 (Milan); 7. Anon., xivth cent. (Venice); 8. Giroldi, 1426 (Venice); 9. Bianco, 1430, (Venice); 10. Anon., 1447 (Venice); 11. Bianco, 1448 (Milan); 12. Not issued; 13. Anon., Catalan, xvth cent. (Florence); 14. Leardo, 1452; 15. Fra Mauro, 1457 (Venice); 16. Cantino, 1501-3 (Modena). This has not been issued in this series, but Harrisse published a fac-simile in colors in connection with his Les Corte-Real, etc., Paris, 1883. 17. Agnese, 1554 (Venice). The names on these photographs are often illegible; how far the condition of the original is exactly reproduced in this respect it is of course impossible to say without comparison.
[498] The notions prevailing so far back as the first century are seen in the map of Pomponius Mela in Vol. II. p. 180.
[499] Vol. II. p. 36.
[500] Lelewel (ii. 119) gives a long account of Sanuto and his maps, and so does Kunstmann in the Mémoires (vii. ch. 2, 1855) of the Royal Bavarian Academy; but a more perfect inventory of his maps is given in the Studi biog. e bibliog. of the Italian Geographical Society (1882, i. 80; ii. 50). Cf. Peschel, Gesch. der Erdkunde, Ruge, ed. 1877, p. 210. Sanuto’s map of 1320 was first published in his Liber Secretorum fidelium crucis (Frankfort, 1811. Cf. reproduction in St. Martin’s Atlas, pl. vi. no. 3). Further references are in Winsor’s Kohl Maps, no. 12. It is in part reproduced by Santarem.
[501] Cf. Amer. Geog. Soc. Journal, xii. 177, and references in the Kohl Maps, nos. 13 and 14.
[502] Vol. II. p. 38.
[503] Cf. references in Vol. II. 38.
[504] Cf. Studi, etc., ii. no. 392.
[505] Cf. Desimoni’s Le carte nautiche Italiane del medio evo a proposito di un libro del Prof. Fischer (Genoa, 1888).
[506] Cf. Vol. II. 38 for references; and Lelewel and Santarem’s Atlases.
[507] Cf. Studi, etc., vol. ii. pp. viii, 67, 72, with references.
[508] Cf. Pietro Amat in the Mem. Soc. Geografica, Roma, 1878; Studi, etc., ii. 75; Winsor’s Bibliog. Ptolemy, sub anno 1478.
[509] Cf. account of inaugurating busts of Fra Mauro and John Cabot, in Terzo Congresso Geografico internazionale (held at Venice, Sept., 1881, and published at Rome, 1882), i. p. 33.
[510] Asa Gray, in Darwiniana, p. 203. Cf. his Address before Amer. Assoc. Adv. Science, 1827.
[511] The subject of these pre-Columbian claims is examined in almost all the general works on early discovery. Cf. Robertson’s America; J. S. Vater’s Untersuchungen über Amerikas Bevölkerung aus dem alten Continent (Leipzig, 1810); Dr. F. X. A. Deuber’s Geschichte der Schiffahrt im Atlantischen Ozean (Bamberg, 1814); Ruge, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen (ch. 2); Major’s Select Letters of Columbus, introd.; C. A. A. Zestermann’s Memoir on the Colonization of America in antehistoric times, with critical observations by E. G. Squier (London, 1851); Nouvelles Annales des Voyages (ii. 404); “Les précurseurs de Colomb” in Études par les Pères de la Compagnie de Jesus (Leipzig, 1876); Oscar Dunn in Revue Canadienne, xii. 57, 194, 305, 871, 909,—not to name numerous other periodical papers. Paul Gaffarel, in his “Les relations entre l’ancien monde et l’Amérique étaient-elles possibles au moyen âge?” (Soc. Normande de Géog. Bulletin, 1881, p. 209), thinks that amid the confused traditions there is enough to convince us that we have no right to determine that communication was impossible.
[512] MSS. de la bibliothèque royale (Paris, 1787), i. 462.
[513] De Costa in Journal Amer. Geog. Soc. xii. (1880) p. 159, etc., with references.
[514] Humboldt, Views of Nature, p. 124. He also notes the drifting of Eskimo boats to Europe.
[515] Tratado de las cinco zonas habitables.
[516] Respecting these Christian Irish see the supplemental chapters of Mallet’s Northern Antiquities (London, 1847); Dasent’s Burnt Njal, i. p. vii.; Moore’s History of Ireland; Forster’s Northern Voyages; Worsaae’s Danes and Norwegians in England, 332. Cf. on the contact of the two races H. H. Howorth on “The Irish monks and the Norsemen” in the Roy. Hist. Soc. Trans. viii. 281.
[517] Conybeare remarks that jarl, naturalized in England as earl, has been displaced in its native north by graf.
[518] It has sometimes been contended that a bull of Gregory IV, in a.d. 770, referred to Greenland, but Spitzbergen was more likely intended, though its known discovery is much later. A bull of a.d. 835, in Pontanus’s Rerum Daniarum Historia, is also held to indicate that there were earlier peoples in Greenland than those from Iceland. Sabin (vi. no. 22,854) gives as published at Godthaab, 1859-61, in 3 vols., the Eskimo text of Greenland Folk Lore, collected and edited by natives of Greenland, with a Danish translation, and showing, as the notice says, the traditions of the first descent of the Northmen in the eighth century.
[519] Known as the Katortuk church.
[520] An apocryphal story goes that one of these churches was built near a boiling spring, the water from which was conducted through the building in pipes for heating it! The Zeno narrative is the authority for this. Cf. Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S. i. 79.
[521] The Westribygd, or western colony, had in the fourteenth century 90 settlements and 4 churches; the Eystribygd had 190 settlements, a cathedral and eleven churches, with two large towns and three or four monasteries.
[522] R. G. Haliburton, in the Popular Science Monthly, May, 1885, p. 40, gives a map in which Bjarni’s course is marked as entering the St. Lawrence Gulf by the south, and emerging by the Straits of Belle Isle.
[523] Dated 1135, and discovered in 1824.
[524] Distinctly shown in the diverse identifications of these landmarks which have been made.
[525] On the probabilities of the Vinland voyages, see Worsaae’s Danes and Norwegians in England, etc., p. 109.
[526] Grönland’s Hist. Mindesmaeker, iii. 9.
[527] The popular confidence in this view is doubtless helped by Montgomery, who has made it a point in his poem on Greenland, canto v. De Courcy (Hist. of the Church in America, p. 12) is cited by Howley (Newfoundland) as asserting that the eastern colony was destroyed by “a physical cataclysm, which accumulated the ice.” On the question of a change of climate in Greenland, see J. D. Whitney’s Climatic Changes (Mus. Comp. Zoöl. Mem., 1882, vii. 238).
[528] Rink (Danish Greenland, 22) is not inclined to believe that there has been any material climatic change in Greenland since the Norse days, and favors the supposition that some portion of the finally remaining Norse became amalgamated with the Eskimo and disappeared. If the reader wants circumstantial details of the misfortunes of their “last man,” he can see how they can be made out of what are held to be Eskimo traditions in a chapter of Dr. Hayes’s Land of Desolation.
Nordenskjöld (Voyage of the Vega) holds, such is the rapid assimilation of a foreign stock by a native stock, that it is not unlikely that what descendants may exist of the lost colonists of Greenland may be now indistinguishable from the Eskimo.
Tylor (Early Hist. Mankind, p. 208), speaking of the Eskimo, says: “It is indeed very strange that there should be no traces found among them of knowledge of metal-work and of other arts, which one would expect a race so receptive of foreign knowledge would have got from contact with the Northmen.”
Prof. Edward S. Morse, in his very curious study of Ancient and Modern Methods of Arrow Release (Salem, 1885,—Bull. Essex Inst., xvii.) p. 52, notes that the Eskimo are the only North American tribe practising what he calls the “Mediterranean release,” common to all civilized Europe, and he ventures to accept a surmise that it may have been derived from the Scandinavians.
[529] Given by Schlegel, Egede (citing Pontanus), and Rafn; and a French version is in the Bull. de la Soc. de Géog., 2d series, iii. 348. It is said to be preserved in a copy in the Vatican. M. F. Howley, Ecclesiastical Hist. of Newfoundland (Boston, 1888), p. 43, however, says “Abbé Garnier mentions a bull of Pope Nicholas V, of date about 1447, concerning the church of Greenland; but on searching the Bullarium in the Propaganda library, Rome, in 1885, I could not find it.”
[530] Laing’s Heimskringla, i. 146.