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HUMBOLDT'S HYPOTHESIS 149 Arabs navigated to some extent some parts of the great Sea of Darkness, and these monsters were among its generally credited terrors. The hardly decipherable inscriptions in the neighborhood of an island on the map of the Pizigani of I367 17 (Fig. 2), as we have seen (Ch. VI), seem to cite Arabic experience in proof of perils from fulvos (krakens) rising from the depths of the sea, coupling dragons with them in the same legend and illustrating it by a picture of a kraken dragging one seaman overboard from a ship in distress, while a dragon high overhead flies away with another. It is even true that Arabic tradition established a dragon on at least one island as a horrible oppression, long ago happily ended, and that another island (perhaps more than one) was known as the Island of the Dragon. But in all this there is nothing to connect dragons with Antillia, and that most hideous medieval fancy is out of all congruity with the fair and almost holy repute of this island as the place of refuge of the last Chris- tian ante-Moorish monarch of Spain in the hour of his despair and as the new home of the seven Portuguese bishops with their following. In passing, we may note that Antela, the version of the Laon globe hereinafter referred to, is identical with the name of that Lake Antela of northwestern Spain which is the source of the river Limia, fabled to be no other than Lethe, so that Roman soldiers drew back from it, fearing the waters of oblivion. But as yet no one has taken up the cause of Spanish Antela as the origin of the island's name. Probably it is a mere matter of coin- cidence. Humboldt admits that Antillia may be readily resolved into two Portuguese words, ante and ilia (island). He even cites several parallel cases, of which Anti-bacchus will serve as an example. But he objects that such compound names have been used in comparison with other islands, not with a continent. In the present instance, however, the comparison would be with Portugal, not with all Europe, and the other member of it would 17 [E. F.] Jomard: Les monuments de la geographic, ou recueil d'anciennes cartes europeennes et orientales . . ., Paris, [1842-62], PI. X, i.