OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 645 



had been defended in the Imago Mundi by Cardinal d'Aillv, 

 whom he regarded as the highest authority*. 



Six years after Balboa, sword in hand, and wading to his 

 knees through the waves, claimed the possession of the Pacific 



* As the old continent, from the western extremity of the Iberian 

 peninsula to the coast of China, comprehends almost 130 of longitude, 

 there remain about 230 for the distance which Columbus would have 

 had to traverse if he wished to reach Cathai (China) ; but less if he 

 only desired to reach Zipangi (Japan). This difference of 230, which 

 I have here indicated, depends on the position of the Portuguese Cape 

 St. Vincent (11 20' W. of Paris), and the far projecting part of the 

 Chinese coast, near the then so celebrated port of Quinsay, so often 

 named by Columbus and Toscanelli (lat. 30 28', long. 117 47' E. of 

 Paris). The Synonyms for Quinsay, in the province of Tschekiang 

 are Kanfu, Hangtscheufu, Kingszu. The East Asiatic general com- 

 merce was shared in the thirteenth century between Quinsay and Zaitun 

 (Pinghai or Sscuthung), opposite to the island of Formosa (then Tung- 

 fan), in 25 5' N. lat. (see Klaproth, Tableaux hist, de I'Asie, p. 227). 

 The distance of Cape St. Vincent from Zipangi (Niphon) is 22 of 

 longitude less than from Quinsay, therefore about 209, instead of 

 230 53'. It is striking that the oldest statements, those of Eratos- 

 thenes and Strabo (lib. i. p. 64) come through accidental compensations 

 within 10 of the above-mentioned result of 129 for the difference of 

 longitude of the ofcov/itvjj. Strabo, in the same passage in which he 

 alludes to the possible existence of two great habitable continents in the 

 northern hemisphere, says that our olKov^tf.vjj in the parallel of Thinas, 

 Athens (see p. 557), constitutes more than one-third of the earth's 

 circumference. Marinus the Tyrian, misled by the length of the time 

 occupied in the navigation from Myos Hormos to India, by the erro- 

 neously assumed direction of the major axis of the Caspian from west to 

 east, and by the over estimation of the length of the land route to the 

 country of the Seres, gave to the old continent a breadth of 225, in- 

 stead of 129. The Chinese coast was thus advanced to the Sandwich 

 Islands. Columbus naturally preferred this result to that of Ptolemy, 

 according to which Quinsay should have been found in the meridian of 

 the eastern part of the archipelago of the Carolinas. Ptolemy, in the 

 the Almagest (II. 1), places the coast of Sinae at 180, and in his 

 Geography (lib. i. cap. 12), at 177^. As Columbus estimated the 

 navigation from Iberia to Sinae, at 120, and Toscanelli at only 52 , 

 they might certainly, estimating the length of the Mediterranean 

 at about 40, have called this apparently hazardous enterprise a 

 " brevissimo cainino." Martin Behaim, also, on his " World apple" 

 the celebrated globe which he completed in 1492, and which is still 

 preserved in the Behaim house at Nuremberg, places the coast of China, 

 (or the throne of the King of Mango, Cambalu, and Cathai,) at only 100 

 west of the Azores, i. c., as Behaim lived four years at Fayal, and pro- 

 bably calculated the distance from that point 119 40' west of Cape 



