43/48 America owes its name to an accidental landing. Nor is it at all improbable that the Phoenicians, in their voyage across the stormy Bay of Biscay, or the wild Gulf of Guinea, may have been driven far out of their course to western lands. Even in 1833 a Japanese junk was wrecked upon the coast of Oregon. Humboldt believes that the Canary Isles were known, not only to the Phoenicians, but "perhaps even to the Etruscans." There is a map in the Library of St.Mark, at Venice, made in the year 1436, where an island is delineated and named Antillia. |