8o4 



NA TURE 



[June 24, 1922 



the islands do not exist as charted, the author estab- 

 lishes his reason for regarding them as indicative of 

 early ocean voyages. 



Europe and the North Atlantic are complementary, 

 perhaps even supplementary, in their influence on 

 the migration of peoples westward to populate a 

 New World with the race stocks of the Old. Both 

 the northern and southern seas emphasising the penin- 

 sular character of Europe are themselves the nurseries 

 of boatmen, and with their special archipelagoes have 

 invited and facilitated, from before the dim dawn of 

 history, the maritime adventures which in succeeding 

 ages led men to pass beyond the limits of the main- 

 land to the oceanic islands, ever gazing towards the 

 setting sun and wondering on the hidden mystery of 

 the western horizon. 



The physical form and phenomena of the ocean 

 have not changed essentially since the dawn of history. 

 Roughly circular in shape, the northern arc from the 

 seas of north-west Europe to the entrance of the St. 

 Lawrence is marked out by the island stations of the 

 Shetlands, Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, and 

 Newfoundland. The southern arc swinging between 

 the western coast of Africa with the island groups of 

 Madeira, the Canaries and Cape Verde, and the eastern 

 trend of South America with Trinidad and the Antilles, 

 is emphasised in the intervening regions by prevailing 

 Trades and equatorial currents. 



It is therefore not surprising that reasonably accurate 

 knowledge is shown of the various island groups that 

 form the thresholds of the North Atlantic from the 

 Mediterranean and the Northern Seas respectively. 

 But within the central region of southern weed and 

 northern storm and fog, and towards the west, casual, 

 and it may be involuntary, voyages might be made. 

 Here deceptive phenomena, begotten in part by un- 

 usual scenes and in part by fear and presentiment, 

 or by stress and hunger, caused mythical and legendary 

 islands to appear, with perhaps Rokel Rock or the 

 Azores as nuclei, and produced enigmas for solution 

 by later cartographical students. 



We need not stay with Babcock's treatment of 

 Atlantis. Few will disagree with his finding that 

 every solution of the problem must be conjectural, 

 and many will urge the same conclusions against the 

 other islands upon which the author bases his argu- 

 ments for the discovery of America in pre-Columbian 

 times. Legendary islands, such as Brazil and Antillia, 

 are not always located in the same regions of the 

 Atlantic, but, like archaeological remains, lie scattered 

 over the map. It would have been extremely valuable 

 if the author had plotted as accurately as possible on a 

 modern map the various sites of some of these islands. 



On many maps, of which the Catalan map of 1375 

 NO. 2747, VOL. 109] 



is a type, Brazil is shown as an annular island with 

 numerous islets within. This, it is contended, repre- 

 sents the pear-shaped Gulf of St. Lawrence with its 

 containing islands. Reference is made to the Sylvanus 

 map of 1 51 1 in support of this contention. 



" Nobody doubts that it [the Sylvanus map] illus- 

 trates the St. Lawrence Gulf region, though there has 

 been much speculation as to what unknown explorer 

 has had his discoveries commemorated here, thirteen 

 years before the first voyage of Cartier. Why should 

 not a like episode of discovery and imperfect record 

 have happened at a still earlier date ? " (p. 65). 



Antillia and its related islands as they appear on 

 the Beccario Map (1435), the Pareto Map (1455), and 

 others, are considered by Babcock to be the islands 

 hitherto regarded as the special discovery of Columbus 

 and his companions. 



" There are two names still in common use for 

 American regions which long ante-date Columbus, and 

 most likely commemorate achievements of earlier 

 explorers. They are Brazil and the Antilles. The 

 former is earlier on the maps and records ; but the 

 caseT for Antillia as an American pre-Columbian map 

 item is in some respects less complex and more obvious " 

 (p. 144). " Surely some mariner had visited Cuba 

 and some of its neighbours before 1435 " j 

 and again : 



" We may be reasonably confident that Antillia of 

 1435 was really, as now, the Queen of the Antilles." 



There is httle record but the maps, and it is extremely 

 difficult to determine whether these cartographical 

 approximations are intelligent anticipations or based 

 on experience. The Laurentian portolan (1351) with 

 its broad sweep of Guinea and the distinctly non- 

 Ptolemaic conception of South Africa, Schoner's globe 

 (15 1 5) with its Atlantic-Pacific passage, may with 

 Brazil and Antillia fall into that voluminous class of 

 verbal and cartographical descriptions from Homer 

 until modern times which suggest that all recorded 

 voyages and journeys are the outcome of innumerable 

 " feelers," the experiences of the many upon which the 

 triumphal entry of the discoverer is made. 



The contention that these fourteenth- and fifteenth- 

 century maps record adventures and voyages in 

 western waters reopens in a new form the question of 

 the trans-Atlantic voyages of Columbus and of Cabot, 

 and it is to be regretted that Babcock merely mentions in 

 passing the researches of Vignaud, and omits altogether 

 the contention of Biggar for the second Cabot voyage. 



The study of Greenland on the maps is somewhat 

 inadequately dealt with, and students of these early 

 maps would have welcomed a chapter on the relations 

 and adjustment of the names of areas carrying such 

 titles as Norbergia, Engronelant, Labrador, Bacallaos, 

 etc., as shown on the Pilestrina map (1503-5) and 

 others of a slightly later date. 



