PREFACE



A Full account of the rediscovery of the Canaries in 1341 will be found
in Major's "Life of Prince Henry of Portugal" (London, 1868), p. 138. For
the statement as to the lingering belief in the Jacquet Island, see
Winsor's "Columbus," p. 111. The extract from Cowley is given by Herman
Melville in his picturesque paper on "The Encantadas" (_Putnam's
Magazine_, III. 319). In Harris's "Voyages" (1702) there is a map
giving "Cowley's Inchanted Isl." (I. 78), but there is no explanation of
the name. The passage quoted by Melville is not to be found in Cowley's
"Voyage to Magellanica and Polynesia," given by Harris in the same volume,
and must be taken from Cowley's "Voyage round the Globe," which I have not
found in any library.


I. ATLANTIS

For the original narrative of Socrates, see Plato's "Timaeus" and
"Critias," in each of which it is given. For further information see the
chapter on the Geographical Knowledge of the Ancients by W. H.
Tillinghast, in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America," I.
15. He mentions (I. 19, note) a map printed at Amsterdam in 1678 by
Kircher, which shows Atlantis as a large island midway between Spain and
America. Ignatius Donnelly's "Atlantis, the Antediluvian World" (N. Y.
1882), maintains that the evidence for the former existence of such an
island is irresistible, and his work has been very widely read, although
it is not highly esteemed by scholars.