BELIEF IN ASIA 83 



Again, Thacher argues that this belief would have 

 been "contrary to the information received from the 

 Indians in Veragua, and which he himself accepted 

 as true, that from there westwardly by land was a 

 nine days' journey to another sea, . . . and that 

 this sea would carry him to Catha}^ or to Catigara." 

 Now the fact is that Columbus did not understand 

 the Indians to say this. He could not and did not 

 confuse the positions of Cathay and Cattigara: Ca- 

 thay was a great country situated north of Mangi 

 and facing the Eastern Sea — the Atlantic, according 

 to Columbus; Cattigara, on the other hand, was 

 placed by Ptolemy on the southeastern coast of the 

 Indicum Mare and hence was considered by Colum- 

 bus to be on the opposite side of the great peninsula 

 separating the Eastern from the Indian Sea. 



The next point which Thacher brings up is of some 

 importance. The belief, if entertained by Colum- 

 bus, would, he says, have been ''contrary to his 

 knowledge of distances tra^^ersed on the surface of 

 the globe both by land and by water." A glance 

 at the Bartholomew Columbus map will indicate as 

 much (Fig. 5). From the first and second voyages 

 it was evident that Cuba and Espanola were too 

 close to each other to correspond with the accepted 

 relative positions of Mangi and Cipangu, as which 

 they were respectively identified by Columbus. Some 

 compromise had to be made: the Asiatic main- 

 land had either to be moved eastward nearer Es- 

 panola or placed at a greater distance from it, as Bar- 

 tholomew Columbus did on his map. The distances 



