Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 10:57:05 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Hunt for Lost City of Atlantis
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3227295.stm
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Legendary islands of the Atlantic; a study in medieval geography

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 8 9   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Legendary islands of the Atlantic; a study in medieval geography  (Read 7151 times)
0 Members and 104 Guests are viewing this topic.
Autolocus
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 3198



« Reply #15 on: July 19, 2009, 02:22:32 am »

io INTRODUCTION

Portuguese name in the first half of the fifteenth century, and
several other islands accompanied it. They all certainly seem
to be American and West Indian.

COLUMBUS, VESPUCIUS, AND CABOT

Incidentally the Portuguese activity stimulated the enthu-
siasm of Columbus, guided his plans, and contributed to the em-
inent success of his great undertaking. In Antillia it provided a
first goal, which he believed to be nearer than it really was. He
fully meant to attain it and probably really did so, but without
recognizing Antillia in Cuba or Hispaniola, for he thought he had
missed it on the way and left it far behind. Vignaud insists that
Columbus did not aim at Asia until after he actually reached the
West Indies but sought to attain Antillia only. 11 However this
may be, there is no doubt that he found in the island a notable
prompting to his supreme adventure.

The discoveries of Columbus, Vespucius, and Cabot, with
their immediate followers, heralded the opening of an effective
knowledge of the western world and the ocean world to the
centers of civilization. Thereafter the delineation of new islands
did not cease but for a long time rather multiplied; yet they had
little significance or importance, being chiefly the products of
fancy, optical illusion, or error in reckoning. One of the latest
worth considering is the island of Buss (Ch. XII), reported where
there is no land by a separated vessel of Frobisher's expedition
near the end of the sixteenth century. Afterward it was known
as the Sunken Land of Bus, or Buss, to the grave concern of
mariners.

We are reasonably secure against such imposition now, though
perhaps it is not yet impossible. The old mythical or apocryphal
islands, too, are gone from standard maps and most others,
though you may yet find in cartographic work of little authority
one or two of the more tenacious specimens making a final stand.

Henry Vignaud: The Columbian Tradition on the Discovery of America and
of the Part Played Therein by the Astronomer Toscanelli, Oxford, 1920.
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 8 9   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy