﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 19 



thus named, out before the Azores and opposite Portugal across a 

 great expanse of sea and curiously duplicating that kingdom in length, 

 breadth, minor details, and rectangular outline. Benincasa adds to 

 the appearance of accuracy by inscribing at intervals names, perhaps 

 of provinces, on all parts of this large island, but seemingly with special 

 reference to the bays and their neighborhoods, as well as on another 

 of similar general form, though shorter and narrower, which lies to 

 the northward somewhat farther than Florida from Cuba. Bianco 

 had called this rather fearsomely La Man de Satanaxio, commonly 

 rendered The Island of the Hand of Satan, a name abbreviated to 

 Satanta by one much later geographer and even changed to St. Anna 

 by another, both necessarily of but secondary authority in such a 

 matter. Benincasa, however, reverts to the earlier name Salvagio or 

 Saluagio of Beccaria, changing it slightly to Saluaga. Presumably 

 in both cases the " u " should have the value of " v," as was common 

 usage then and long afterward. 



This Beccaria 1 (Becharius), was the first delineator, so far as we 

 know, of this highly significant Antillian group of large far south- 

 western islands. He makes them four in number, including a rela- 

 tively small, but considerable island, north of Salvagio marked I in 

 Mar-Sea Island (or Islands), literally " in sea" — and Reylla (King 

 Island or Royal Island), bearing, in area, form, and position, approxi- 

 mately the same relation to Antillia that Jamaica bears to Cuba. 2 He 

 also applies to the whole group the conspicuous legend Newly Re- 

 ported Islands — Insulle a Novo Repte., which recalls the note accom- 

 panying Antillia on Behaim's globe of 1492, prepared while Columbus 

 was yet at sea on his first voyage, to the effect that a Spanish vessel 

 visited this island in 1414. Nordenskjold quotes also an anonymous 

 map of 1424 at Weimar, which Santorem has copied in his atlas, but 

 without Antillia by reason of incomplete westward extension ; but the 

 present Weimar librarian considers this to be certainly the work 

 (perhaps about 1481), of Freducci, a map-maker of the latter half of 

 that century. 3 Another map by Freducci made after the earlier 



x Studi Bibliografici e Biografici, containing papers of 1st and 2d Italian 

 Geographical Congresses, with maps appended, plate 8. 



2 Roselli 1468 shows all four islands, though the outline of his Roills is 

 faint. The original map is in the collection of the Hispania Society of 

 America, New York. Bertran, as reported by Kretschmer. gives it a different 

 name. 



3 My photographic copy of the original, made in Weimar, shows the upper 

 half of Antillia with the name in full, the lower half of the island being cut 

 off by the parchment border. Salvagio above it is in full outline of usual 

 form, but with only S legible. 



