it two unexpected passengers; the archbishop lost his architect, and the
proposed convent lost its unwilling abbess.

From this point both the Island of the Seven Cities and its escaping
lovers disappear from all definite records. It was a period when
expeditions of discovery came and went, and when one wondrous tale drove
out another. There exist legends along the northern coast of Spain in the
region of Santander, for instance, of a youth who once eloped with a
high-born maiden and came there to dwell, but there may have been many
such youths and many such maidens--who knows? Of Antillia itself, or the
Island of the Seven Cities, it is well known that it appeared on the maps
of the Atlantic, sometimes under the one name and sometimes under another,
six hundred years after the date assigned by the story that has here been
told. It was said by Fernando Columbus to have been revisited by a
Portuguese sailor in 1447; and the name appeared on the globe of Behaim in
1492.

The geographer Toscanelli, in his famous letter to Columbus, recommended
Antillia as likely to be useful to Columbus as a way station for reaching
India, and when the great explorer reached Hispaniola, he was supposed to
have discovered the mysterious island, whence the name of Antilles was
given to the group. Later, the first explorers of New Mexico thought that
the pueblos were the Seven Cities; so that both the names of the imaginary
island have been preserved, although those of Luis de Vega and his
faithful Juanita have not been recorded until the telling of this tale.



XVI