THE TREASURE REVEALED 213 



Brazil a great island, Florida another island, and Newfound- 

 land an island called Bacalar. The word ''America" covers 

 South America. Cypangu or Japan is shown floating just west 

 of Florida, with no record of the Isthmus of Panama, though 

 by this time that had been pretty well explored. This inter- 

 esting map illustrates the slow interchange of ideas about the 

 west. It also demonstrates one side of the controversy that 

 made some cartographers always draw the new discoveries 

 as part of a vast Asiatic mainland, and others, like da Vinci, 

 hold to the ancient Antillian theory of a series of islands 

 stretching west to Cathay. The globe of Orantius in 1531 and 

 after that the Mercator map of 1541 show the two connected 

 continents of the west, and for the first time extend the name 

 of America from the southern continent to both the Americas. 



Meanwhile, as Vespucius opened up the sea coasts to the 

 south, Columbus made his final tragic voyage to the malarial 

 regions of Honduras and Darien in 1503-4. Here Columbus' 

 obsession with a sea passage to Cathay probably kept him 

 from the discovery of the Pacific. He anchored in the Chiriqui 

 Lagoon and there natives told him of the narrow isthmus. 

 But harassed as he was, and blind to the importance of this 

 news, he passed by the mouth of the Chagres River. Then, 

 because of pressure from an unruly crew, he headed eastward 

 in his wormy ships. Within sight of Cuba he was forced to 

 scuttle down wind and beach his unseaworthy craft on the 

 coast of Jamaica. Columbus' son Ferdinand thus describes 

 their final landfall: ''Having got in, and no longer able to 

 keep the ships afloat, we ran them aground . . . shoring them 

 up on both sides so they could not budge . . . upon the fore 

 and stern castles cabins were built where the people might 

 lodge, intending to make them strong that the Indians might 

 do no damage; because at that time the island was not yet 

 inhabited or subdued by christians." 



After many months of hardship, and mutiny by some of 



