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CHAPTER X ANTILLIA AND THE ANTILLES There are two names still in common use for American regions, which long antedate Columbus and most likely commemorate achievements of earlier explorers. They are Brazil and the An- tilles. The former is earlier on the maps and records; but the case for Antillia, as an American pre-Columbian map item, is in some respects less complex and more obvious. ANTILLIA A good many decades before the New World became known as such, Antillia was recognized as a legitimate geographical feature. A comparatively late and generally familiar instance of such mention occurs inToscanelli's letter of 1474 to Columbus, 1 recommending this island as a convenient resting point on the sea route to Cathay. Its authenticity has been questioned, notably by the venerable and learned Henry Vignaud, 2 but at least some one wrote it and in it reflected the viewpoint of the time. Nordenskiold in his elaborate and invaluable "Periplus" de- clares: "As the mention of this large island, the name of which was afterwards given to the Antilles, in the portolanos of the fourteenth century, is probably owing to some vessel being storm- driven across the Atlantic (as, according to Behaim, happened to a Spanish vessel in 1414), those maps on which this island is 1 E.g. in [Henry Harrisse]: Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima: Additions, Paris, 1872, pp. xvi-xviii; and Ferdinand Columbus: The History of the Life and Actions of Adm. Christopher Columbus, and of His Discovery of the West-Indies, Call'd the New World, Now in Possession of His Catholic Majesty. Written by His Own Son, transl. from the Italian and contained in "A Collection of Voyages and Travels, Some Now First Printed from Original Manuscripts, Others Now First Published in English," by Awnsham Churchill and John Churchill (6 vols., London, 1732), Vol. 2, pp. 501-628; reference on p. 512. 2 Henry Vignaud: The Columbian Tradition on the Discovery of America and of the Part Played Therein by the Astronomer Toscanelli, Oxford, 1920, pp. 9-10; and idem: Le vrai Christophe Colomb et la 16gende, Paris, 1921, Ch. IX.