LECTURES. 103 



ni. — GENERAL INTEREST OF A cnARTOQRAPniCAL CMDLLECTION. 



As the plant, springing from the shapeless seed, is gradually 

 developed into an object of symmetry and life, as the sculptured form 

 emerges from the rude block by reiterated blows of the mallet and 

 strokes of the chisel, so America, contemplated in its successive de- 

 lineations upon the maps of different periods, exhibits the growth of 

 that gigantic work with the gradual and laborious completion of which 

 astronomers and cosmographers have been occupied for centuries. 

 Only, here each step has occupied a series of years : every stroke of 

 the mallet is an adventurous voyage of a great explorer, every rude 

 chip that falls from the block is a large (even if imaginary) country, 

 every incision is a gulf or a river-mouth, and every touch of the 

 smoothing file is a complicated calculation, the result of the final 

 solution of a scientific problem, with which the minds of philoso- 

 phers had until then been occupied in vain. 



In looking at the earliest maps of the world, which were composed 

 before Columbus's time, we find, midway between Western Europe and 

 Eastern Asia, in the centre of the Sea of Barhiess, (as the Atlantic 

 ocean was then called,) that fabulous old land, adorned with many 

 attractive traditions, and called by such names as the " Island of 

 Antilia," the "Island of the Seven Cities," the " Island of the Holy 

 Bishop Brandon." Never stationary, however, sometimes it moves 

 more to the north, at others more to the south. On some maps it 

 approaches nearer to the Old World, on others it witlidraws further 

 into the hidden recesses of the dark ocean. The artists and painters 

 who made those early maps often represent this island as larger than 

 our present Cuba. They give it an elegant form, adorn it with purple 

 colors, or frame it in a gilded line. Sometimes all the seven cities, 

 with their towers and cupolas, are represented upon it. And in this 

 attractive shape it seems to invite the tardy navigator to venture upon 

 the unexplored ocean. It floats on the waters like that little patch of 

 sand and mud which Menahoshu cast upon the surface of the flood 

 after the deluge, and from which the whole continent of America de- 

 veloped itself, with all its branches, its peninsulas, its islands, and its 

 mainlands. Antilia is for the New World what the sacred lotus-flower 

 is for the Old, which, according to Hindu tradition, grew and unfolded 

 itself into the great islands of Asia, and bears on its branches and 

 leaves the whole structure of that continent. 



At last, with the return of Columbus, there arrived in Europe the 

 first good news of the new-found shores, and with it came a map or 

 sketch of that part of them which was first reached by the Spaniards. 

 The king of Spain ordered this map to be reduced to a very small 

 size, and to be inserted into the armorial bearings of the great dis- 

 ajverer. The original is unhappily lost to us ; but we may rejoice 

 that we possess at least that little reduced copy in the great admiral's 

 escutcheon, on which it is represented, by a ^q\n lines, as a deep and 

 spacious bay, embosoming a group of islands. When, soon after 

 Columbus, navigators had ventured to make further excursions to the 

 right and to the left of the Antilles, and had discovered some parts of 

 both divisions of the continent, they were at a loss how to place and 



