98 CONCEPTIONS OF COLUMBUS 



A priori, such a cartographical operation is not im- 

 possible. We are able to realise how a planisphere can 

 have been first constructed, in Lisbon or elsewhere, 

 setting forth the results of Columbus' earliest voyages, 

 and delineating Cuba according to geographical mis- 

 conceptions which he still maintained in 1495. To this 

 primary map would have been added, several years 

 afterwards, the Venezuelan and Brazilian coasts, bor- 

 rowed from charts brought by Hojeda or La Cosa, Nifio 

 or Guerra, Cabral or De Lemos, and the pilots of Caspar 

 Corte-Real who returned to Lisbon in October, 1501. 

 We should thus have the prototype of the Cantino and 

 of all early Portuguese charts. But is the Cantino 

 planisphere such a map? That is the question. We 

 propose to show that it is not, never was, and never 

 could be. 



In the first place, a map of that description could not 

 have exhibited the continental outline assumed to be 

 Cuba and, at the same time, the island of that name, 

 depicted insularily, and placed where it lies in reality, 

 between Hispaniola and the American continent. It is 

 evident that if Columbus and those who actually shared 

 the opinion — if there were any such in 1502 — did not 

 believe in the existence of the island of Cuba, they could 

 not have inscribed it on their charts. Then it is difficult 

 to conceive how cartographers or mariners, including 

 Columbus himself in 1495 or at any time, could have 

 given to the region which they called Cuba, even when 

 assuming it to be a continent, a shape so different from 

 the true form of the portions of the island actually seen 

 and surveyed by them, however incomplete may have 

 been their knowledge of its configuration. Nor could 

 they have represented their supposed Cuba as running 



