Note Back to Main Text — Chapter V · THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES. WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE.

Ptolemy's opinion as to the length of the Inhabited World was considerably modified in the minds of those writers who toward the end of the Middle Ages had been strongly impressed by the book of Marco Polo. Among these persons was Toscanelli. Toscanelli's calculation of the size of the earth, This excellent astronomer calculated the earth's equatorial circumference at almost exactly the true figure; his error was less than 124 English miles in excess. The circumference in the latitude of Lisbon he made 26 × 250 × 3 = 19,500 miles.[461] Two thirds of this figure, or 13,000 miles, he allowed for the length of the Œcumene, from Lisbon eastward to Quinsay (i. e. Hang-chow), leaving 6,500 for the westward voyage from Lisbon to Quinsay. Thus Toscanelli elongated Asia by nearly the whole width of the Pacific ocean. His Quinsay would come about 130° W., a few hundred miles west of the mouth of the Columbia river. Zaiton (i. e. Chang-chow), the easternmost city in Toscanelli's China, would come not far from the tip end of Lower California. Thus the eastern coast of and of the position of Cipango. Cipango, about a thousand miles east from Zaiton, would fall in the Gulf of Mexico somewhere near the ninety-third meridian, and that island, being over a thousand miles in length north and south, would fill up the space between the parallel of New Orleans and that of the city of Guatemala. The westward voyage from the Canaries to Cipango, according to Toscanelli, would be rather more than 3,250 miles, but at a third of the distance out he placed the imaginary island of "Antilia," with which he seems to have supposed Portuguese sailors to be familiar.[462] "So through the unknown parts of the route," said the venerable astronomer, "the stretches of sea to be traversed are not great,"—not much more than 2,000 English miles, not so long as the voyage from Lisbon to the Guinea coast.