And, If
This Space Were Sea, It Might Be Easily Sailed Over In A Short Time; And
If Land, That It Would Be Much Sooner Discovered By Sailing To The West,
Since It Must Be Much Nearer To These Islands In That Direction.
To this
may be added what is related by Strabo in his Fifteenth Book, that no army
ever penetrated to the eastern bounds of India, which according to Ctesias
is as extensive as all the rest of Asia.
Onesicritus affirms that India is
a full third part of the world; and Nearchus says that it is four months
journey in a straight line from west to east. Pliny, in the 17th Chap, of
his 6th Book, says that India is a third part of the earth, and that
consequently it must be nearer Spain in the western than in the eastern
direction.
The fifth argument which induced the admiral to believe that the distance
in a western direction to India was small, was taken from the opinion of
Alfragranus and his followers, who computed the circumference of the
globe as much less than all other cosmographical writers, as they only
allowed 56-2/3 miles to a degree of longitude. Whence my father inferred,
that the whole globe being small, the extent of that third part which
remained to be discovered must necessarily be proportionally small
likewise; and might therefore be sailed over in a short time. And, as the
eastern bounds of India were not yet discovered, and must lie considerably
nearer us towards the west, he therefore considered that the lands which
he might discover in his proposed expedition westwards might properly be
denominated the Indies. Hence it appears how much Roderick the archdeacon
of Seville was wrong in blaming the admiral for calling those parts the
Indies which were not so. But the admiral did not call them the Indies as
having been seen or discovered by any other person; but as being in his
opinion the eastern part of India beyond the Ganges, to which no
cosmographer had ever assigned any precise limits, or made it to border
upon any other country farther to the east, considering those unknown
parts of eastern India to border on the ocean. And because he believed
those countries which he expected to discover formed the eastern and
formerly unknown lands of India, and had no appropriate name of their own,
he therefore gave them the name of the nearest known country, and called
them the West Indies. He was, so much the more induced to choose this
appellation that the riches and wealth of India were well known, and he
thereby expected the more readily to induce their Catholic Majesties to
accede to his proposed undertaking, of the success of which they were
doubtful; by saying that he intended to discover the way to India by the
west: And he was desirous of being employed in the service of the crown of
Castile, in preference to any other.
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