On some maps of the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries there appears near it a smaller island under thename of Sette Cidade, or Sete Ciudades, which is properly another name forthe same island. Toscanelli, in his famous letter to Columbus, recommendedAntillia as a good way-station for his voyage to India. The island is saidby tradition to have been re-discovered by a Portuguese sailor in 1447.Tradition says that this sailor went hastily to the court of Portugal toannounce the discovery, but was blamed for not having remained longer, andso fled. It was supposed to be "a large, rectangular island extending fromnorth to south, lying in the mid Atlantic about lat. 35 N." An amplebibliography will be found in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History,"I. p. 48, with maps containing Antillia, I. pp. 54 (Pizigani's), 56, 58.After the discovery of America, Peter Martyr states (in 1493) thatHispaniola and the adjacent islands were "Antillae insulae," meaning thatthey were identical with the group surrounding the fabled Antillia(Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History," I. p. 49); and Schoner, in thededicatory letter of his globe of 1523, says that the king of Castile,through Columbus, has discovered _Antiglias Hispaniam Cubam quoque_.It was thus that the name Antilles came to be applied to the islandsdiscovered by Columbus; just as the name Brazil was transferred from animaginary island to the new continent, and the name Seven Cities wasapplied to the pueblos of New Mexico by those who discovered them.
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