BELIEF IX ASIA 77 



Asia has been argued, almost exclusively, from the 

 standpoint of whether he was right or wrong. Since 

 he was very far wrong, it is an easy step to the in- 

 ference that he knew he was not on the coast of 

 Asia. The question should not, however, be ap- 

 proached in this way. We should endeavor to put 

 ourselves in the position of Columbus and ask 

 whether it were possible for another person to reach 

 his conclusion. As is well known, many people in 

 his time maintained that the land discovered by 

 Columbus was not Asia; there was a conflict of two 

 schools of geography: the Marinus of Tyre-Colum- 

 bian (as we might call one of them) and the Ptolemaic. 

 In view of the vague knowledge of the East, the 

 uncertainty as to the size of the earth, and the sur- 

 prising parallel of what Columbus had found in the 

 West Indies with what was then believed of the East, 

 there seems little reason to doubt that anyone in the 

 position of Columbus might well have believed or per- 

 suaded himself that he had reached Asia. Columbus 

 never discovered his error ; or, possibly, we should say 

 that it was never proved to him that he was in error. 



The Vespucius Voyage of 1497 



Incidentally, this discussion of the fourth voyage 

 tends to throw some light on the disputed voyage of 

 Vespucius of 1497. Fiske^^ and Varnhagen^^ believe 



34 Fiske, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 53-54. 



'* F. A. de Varnhagen : Amerigo Vespucci : Son caractere, ses ecrits 

 (meme les moins authentiques) , sa vie et ses navigations, Lima, 1865; 



