Note 473 — Chapter I · (continued 2)
Reading edition
M. Buache in his Mémoire sur l’Isle Antillia (Mém. Inst. de France, Sciences math. et phys., vi., 1806), read on a copy of the Pizigani map of 1367, sent to him from Parma, the inscription, Ad ripas Antilliae or Antullio. Cf. Buache’s article in German in Allg. Geogr. Ephemeriden, xxiv. 129. Humboldt (Examen, ii. 177) quotes Zurla (Viaggi, ii. 324) as denying that such an inscription can be made out on the original: but Fischer (Sammlung von Welt-karten, p. 19) thinks this form of the name can be made out on Jomard’s fac-simile. Wuttke, however, thinks that the word Antillia is not to be made out, and gives the inscription as Hoc sont statua q fuit ut tenprs A cules, and reads Hoc sunt statuae quae fuerunt antea temporibus Arcules = Herculis (Wuttke, Zur Geschichte der Erdkunde in der letzten Haelfte des Mittelalters, p. 26, in Jahresbericht des Vereins für Erdkunde zu Dresden, vi. and vii., 1870). The matter is of interest in the story of the equestrian statue of Corvo. According to the researches of Humboldt, this story first appears in print in the history of Portugal by Faria y Sousa (Epitome de las historias Portuguezas, Madrid, 1628. Historia del Reyno de Portugal, 1730), who describes on the “Mountain of the Crow,” in the Azores, a statue of a man on horseback pointing westward. A later version of the story mentions a western promontory in Corvo which had the form of a person pointing westward. Humboldt (ii. 231), in an interesting sketch, connects this story with the Greek traditions of the columns of Hercules at Gades, and with the old opinion that beyond no one could pass; and with the curious Arabic stories of numberless columns with inscriptions prohibiting further navigation, set up by Dhoulcarnain, an Arabian hero, in whose personality Hercules and Alexander the Great are curiously compounded (see Edrisi). Humboldt quotes from Buache a statement that on the Pizigani map of 1367 there is near Brazil (Azores) a representation of a person holding an inscription and pointing westward.