If All That Has Been Said Above Concerning So Many Imaginary Islands And
Continents Appears To Be Mere Fable And
Folly, how much more reason have
we to consider that as false which Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo conceits in
his
Natural History of the Indies, "That there was another discoverer of
this navigation of the ocean, and that the Spaniards held anciently the
dominion of these lands." He pretended to make out this assertion from
what Aristotle wrote concerning the island of Atalantis, and Sebosus of
the Hesperides. Thus, looking upon his own imagination as a certain
standard of truth, he affirms upon the judgment of some persons whose
writings I have duly weighed and attentively examined. I should have
omitted to enlarge on this subject, to avoid tiring the reader, and that I
might not be obliged to condemn the opinions of others, were it not that
many persons, to detract from the honour and reputation of the admiral,
have made great account of these notions. Besides, it appeared that I
should not fully perform my duty by merely recounting with all sincerity
and truth, the motives and incitements which inclined the admiral my
father to undertake his unparalleled enterprize, if I should suffer what I
know to be a manifest falsehood to pass uncensured. Wherefore, the better
to detect the mistake of Oviedo, I shall first state what Aristotle has
said on this subject, as related by F. Theophilus de Ferrariis, among the
problems of Aristotle which he collected in a book entitled De Admirandis
in Natura auditis, in the following strain:
"Beyond the pillars of Hercules, it is reported that certain Carthaginian
merchants discovered an island in the Atlantic, which had never before
been inhabited except by beasts. This island was not many days sail from
the continent, was entirely covered over with trees, and abounded in all
the usual productions of nature, having a considerable number of navigable
rivers. Finding this a beautiful country, possessing it fertile soil and
salubrious atmosphere, these Carthaginians began to people it; but the
senate of Carthage, offended with this procedure, passed a decree
forbidding any person to go to that island under pain of death, and they
ordered all those who had already gone there to be slain; meaning thereby
to prevent all other nations from acquiring any knowledge of the place,
lest some other and more powerful state might take possession, to the
detriment of their liberty and commercial interest."
Oviedo had no just grounds for asserting that this island must have been
Hispaniola or Cuba. As he was ignorant of Latin, he was obliged to take
such interpretation of this story as he could procure from some other
person, who certainly was very ill qualified for the task, since the Latin
text has been altered and misinterpreted in several particulars. This may
have misled Oviedo, and induced him to believe that the foregoing
quotation referred to some island in the West Indies. In the Latin text we
do not read of the Carthaginian merchants going out of the straits of
Gibraltar as Oviedo writes[9]. Neither is it said that the island was
extensive, or its trees large, but only that it was much wooded.
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