[b. k. DAWSON] THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 22S 



APPENDIX B. 

 The Seven Cities. 



Among the mythical islands of the Atlantic was the island of An- 

 tilia, or the Seven Cities. The story is given shortly upon Martin Behaim's 

 globe, made in the year 1492, and now at Nuremburg, to the effect that : 

 In the year 734, after the conquest of Spain by the Mahometans, 

 this island, Antilia, was discovered and settled by an archbishop from 

 Oporto, in Portugal, who fled to it in ships with six other bishops, and 

 other Christian men and women. They built there seven towns, from 

 which circumstance it has also been called " Septemcitade " (the island 

 of the seven cities). In the year 1414 a Spanish vessel came very near 

 to it. 



Behaim and Toscanelli place this island close to the Tropic of Cancer, 

 but many of the maps put it a little further north, in the latitude of Lis- 

 bon. Everybody believed in this island for a long time after Cabot, and we 

 have in the name "Antilles" a survival of this universal belief. The 

 shape of the island as laid down on the maps is uniformly an oblong, like 

 the annexed cut, which is traced from Benicasa's map (A. D. 1482), in 

 Kretschmer. It is interesting to note that there are names on the map, 





Fig. 17.— The Island of the Seven Cities.— From Benicasa, A.D. 1482. 



and notches at regular intervals along the coast, probably the harbours — 

 all of which is encouraging to those who take these mediaeval maps so 

 seriously. As the island has disapjDeared, it is not worth while to spend 

 time over the names. The chief value of the island in this discussion is 

 that, as the latitude of the Seven Cities was never higher than 40° N., 

 the indication is of a discovery in a low latitude. There were other islands 

 to the north, laid down with equal precision. The Island of Mansatan- 

 axio was the next farther north — the island of the hand of Satan — where, 

 as some imagined, a great hand issued from the sea and dragged unfor- 

 tunate mortals into the abyss. Others have supposed the name to be a 

 corruption of San Athanagio (Athanasio), but the isle of demons which 

 lingered on the maps for more than a hundred years longer on the New- 

 foundland coast was probably a transference of this island. North of 

 this was the island of Brasil, west of Ireland, and Isla Yerde^^ and 

 Maida, both in the same part of the north Atlantic. All these islands 

 have disappeared, but reminiscences of them lingered on the maps as 

 uncertain dangers almost down to our own times, in names whose origins 

 have been long since forgotten. One of the islands off the Cavo de 

 Ynglaterra of La Cosa is the imaginary Isla Verde, and it is so named, 

 although Archbishop O'Brien finds it to be an island northwest of Cape 

 Chidley. It will be remembered that the abortive expeditions from 



Sec. IL, 1897. 12. 



