Note 101-2 — JOURNAL OF THE FIRST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS

Las Casas, I. 279, says: “This map is the one which Paul, the physician, the Florentine, sent, which I have in my possession with other articles which belonged to the Admiral himself who discovered these Indies, and writings in his own hand which came into my possession. In it he depicted many islands and the main land which were the beginning of India and in that region the realms of the Grand Khan,” etc. Las Casas does not tell us how he knew that the Toscanelli map which he found in Columbus’s papers was the map that the Admiral used on the first voyage. That is the general assumption of scholars, but there is no positive evidence of the fact. The Toscanelli map is no longer extant, and all reconstructions of it are based on the globe of Martin Behaim constructed in 1492. The reconstruction by H. Wagner which may be seen in S. Ruge, Columbus, 2te aufl. (Berlin, 1902) is now accepted as the most successful.

According to the reckoning of the distances in the Journal, Columbus was now about 550 leagues or 2200 Italian miles west of the Canaries. The Toscanelli map was divided off into spaces each containing 250 miles. Columbus was therefore nine spaces west of the Canaries. No reconstruction of Toscanelli’s map puts any islands at nine spaces from the Canaries except so far as the reconstructors insert the island of Antilia on the basis of Behaim’s globe. The Antilia of Behaim according to Wagner was eight spaces west of the Canaries. Again Ferdinand Columbus, in his Historie under date of October 7 (p. 72), says the sailors “had been frequently told by him that he did not look for land until they had gone 750 leagues west from the Canaries, at which distance he had told them he would have found Española then called Cipango.” 750 leagues or 3000 Italian miles would be 12 spaces on the Toscanelli map. But according to the Toscanelli letter Cipango was 10 spaces west of Antilia, and therefore 18 spaces or 4500 miles west of the Canaries. Columbus then seems to have expected to find Cipango some 1500 miles to the east of where it was placed on the Toscanelli map. These considerations justify a very strong doubt whether Columbus was shaping his course and basing his expectations on the data of the Toscanelli letter and map, or whether the fact that Las Casas found what he took to be the Toscanelli map in the Admiral’s papers proves that it was that map which he had on his first voyage.