ANTE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES. 9 



versally are, should remain for ages entirely concealed from mankind ; and a suc- 

 cessful enterprise is often reluctantly admitted to have proceeded from the original 

 conceptions and intuitive sagacity of its author. 1 



Partly perhaps upon this principle, and it may be somewhat stimulated by 

 national jealousy, statements prejudicial to the claims of Columbus were early 

 circulated, and have- been since repeated as entitled to belief, or have undergone 

 investigation as questions of scientific interest. 



Thus Oviedo, in his history of the Indies, printed A. D. 1535, mentions, but as 

 a rumor merely, that about the year 1484, a certain pilot, in one of his customary 

 voyages, was driven by a violent storm to an unknown land, and on his return 

 was received, with a few survivors of his crew, into the house of Columbus, where 

 they died, leaving their papers in his hands. This, although disregarded by con- 

 temporary authors, was brought forward against Columbus, in 1552, by Gomara, a 

 writer not esteemed entirely trustworthy f and, one hundred and twenty years 

 after the event, was seriously narrated by Vega, in his commentaries of Peru. 

 Vega gives the name of the pilot and the number of his crew, with many other 

 details, which he professes to have heard when a child. He refers for confirmation 

 to Gomara, and also to Acosta, who, in 1591, slightly noticed the circumstance. 

 It is a good illustration of the manner in which a tale expands and develops itself 

 in the process of transmission. The fact that Columbus communicated his idea of 

 discovery ten years before the assigned date of the occurrence is believed to be 

 well established. 3 The same tendency to expansion is exhibited in the case of the 

 claim that, at a still earlier period, about 1464, John Vaz Casta Cortereal, a gentle- 

 man of the royal household of Portugal, explored the northern seas by order of 

 Alphonso 5th, and discovered the Terra de Baccalhaos, or land of codfish, after- 

 wards called Newfoundland. The descent of this remarkable statement is traced, by 

 the author of a memoir of Sebastian Cabot, from Cordeyro, an obscure Portuguese 

 writer, of the date of 1717, to "Barrow's Chronological History of Voyages," and 

 from thence to " Lardner's Encyclopedia," as a reliable fact, and to the " Edinburgh 

 Cabinet Library," where the event is spoken of as happening " nearly a century 

 before the celebrated voyages of Columbus and Cabot" ! 4 



The uncertain expedition of the eight Arabian brothers, who, it is related, 

 some time previous to 1147, sailed from Lisbon, and "swore they would not return 

 till they had penetrated to the farthest bounds of the Dark Sea," — which resulted 

 in the discovery of an island inhabited by a people of lofty stature and a red skin — 

 has by some writers been extended to the Coast of America; but the better opinion 

 seems to be that the island referred to was one of the Canary group. 6 



' Enunmot, Colomb n'est point du tout un genie transcendant, une espfece de prophete, qui ait devim? 

 le noveau monde, e'est tout bonnement un navigateur instruit et courageux, e'est le Cook de son siecle. 

 Son mente rdal est trop grand pour qu'il ait besoin d'une gloire imaginaire.— Geographie Mathema- 

 tique de Mentelle et Malte Brun. Tome XIV. p. 8, n. 



a Irving's Life of Columbus, III. Appendix, No. 11. 



3 Humboldt's Examen Critique, I. 12. 



1 Biddle's Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, Book ii. cli. xi. 



5 N. A. Review, XLVII. 17 8. 

 2 



