Note 117 — Chapter XX · Conjectures respecting the descendants of the tribes who built the Temples.—Knowledge and education of the Caciques and Priests.—Traditions of the arrival of white strangers from the East.—Las Casas.—Quetzal-Coatl.—Crosses found in Yucatan.—Gomara.—Legend of the flight of Spaniards by sea towards the West after the conquest of Spain by the Saracens.—Fabulous island of Antilia.—Columbus on his outward voyage steers for Antilia.—Trade-winds.—Considerations upon the probabilities of vessels being driven across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans towards America.

Antilia appears as a large island in the Atlantic in the rare maps of Andreas Bianco (1436) and Bartolomeo Pareto (1454). On Martin Behaim’s globe (1492) it is placed about eighteen hundred miles west of the Canaries. In the earliest maps published after the return of Columbus to Spain, Antilia is placed near the newly discovered islands of the West Indies.

The legend upon the accompanying map may be rendered as follows:—

“The island of Antilia was, at some period, discovered by the Lusitanians, but the exact time is not known. There have been found there in it families who speak Spanish as it was spoken in the days of Roderick, who was the last King of Spain in the time of the Goths, and they are supposed to have fled to this island from the face of the Barbarians who had then invaded Spain. They have here one Archbishop with six other Bishops, each of whom has his own proper city, hence it is called by many the island of the seven cities. The population are strict Christians and abound in all this world’s wealth.”