Note 308 — Chapter VII · 1497-1521.

Ten years before this, says Humboldt, “Columbus distinctly learned, when he was coasting along the eastern shores of Veragua, that to the west of this land there was a sea ‘which in less than nine days’ sail would bear ships to the Chersonesus aurea of Ptolemy and to the mouth of the Ganges.’ In the same Carta rarissima, which contains the beautiful and poetic narration of a dream, the admiral says that ‘the opposite coasts of Veragua, near the Rio de Belen, are situated relatively to another, as Tortosa on the Mediterranean and Fuenterabia in Biscay, or as Venice and Pisa.’ The great ocean, the South Pacific, was even at that time regarded as merely a continuation of the Sinus magnus (μέγας κόλπος) of Ptolemy, situated before the golden Chersonesus, whilst Cattigara and the land of the Sines (Thinae) were supposed to constitute its eastern boundary.”—Humboldt: Cosmos. Otté’s trans. vol. ii. pp. 642, 643.