CHRISTOPHER
CHAP. I V ]
COLUMBUS.
life, or who resided in the vicinity of the ocean.
43
The recent
discoveries had inflamed their imaginations, and had filled them with visions of other islands, of greater wealth and beauty, yet to be discovered in the boundless wastes of the Atlantic. The opin ions and fancies of the ancients on the subject were again put in circulation.
The story of Antilla, a great island in the ocean,
discovered by the Carthaginians, was frequently cited, and Plato's imaginary Atalantis once more found firm believers.
Many
thought that the Canaries and Azores were but wrecks which had survived its submersion, and that other and larger fragments of that drowned land might yet exist, in remoter parts of the Atlantic. One of the strongest symptoms of the excited state of the popular mind at this eventful era, was the prevalence of rumors respecting unknown islands casually seen in the ocean.
Many
of these were mere fables, fabricated to feed the predominant humor of the public; many had their origin in the heated imagi nations of voyagers, beholding islands in those summer clouds which lie along the horizon, and often beguile the sailor with the idea of distant lands. On such airy basis, most probably, was founded the story told to Columbus by one Antonio Leone, an inhabitant of Madeira, who affirmed that sailing thence westward one hundred leagues, he had seen three islands at a distance.
But the tales of the kind most
positively advanced and zealously maintained, were those related by the people of the Canaries, who were long under a singular optical delusion.
They imagined that, from time to time, they
beheld a vast island to the westward, with lofty mountains and deep valleys.
Nor was it seen in cloudy and dubious weather,
but in those clear days common to tropical climates, and with all