2 See, for example, the so-called Stobnicza [Joannes,
Stobnicensis] map of 151a, and the Ptolemy of 1513
(Strassburg).
3 Muenster, 1540. Cabot, 1544, and Desceller, 1546, give "Y
de Pinos."
4 Mr. P. Lee Phillips, to whom I am indebted for references
to atlases of the time, also supplies the following:
Lafreri, 1575 (?) "S. Tiagoj" Percacchi, 1576, "S. Tiago;"
Santa Cruz, 1541, "Ya de Pinosj" and Dudley, 1647, "I de
Pinos." Hakloyt (iii. 617) prints a "Ruttier" for the
West Indies, without date, but probably of the end of the
sixteenth century, which contains the following; "The
markes of Isla de Pinos. The Island of Pinos stretcheth it
selfe East and West, and is full of homocks, and if you
chance to see it at full sea, it will shew like 3 Islands,
as though there were divers soundes betweene them, and that
in the midst is the greatest; and in rowing with them, it
will make all a firme lande: and upon the East side of these
three homocks it will shewe all ragged; and on the West
side of them will appeare unto you a lowe point even with
the sea, and oftentimes you shall see the trees before you
shall discerne the point."
When the name given by Columbus was dropped and by whom the island was
named "de Pinos" cannot be determined.
Our colleague, Mr. Francis R. Hart, has called my attention to a second
Isle of Pines in American waters, being near Golden Island, which was
situated in the harbor or bay on which the Scot Darien expedition made
its settlement of New Edinburgh. The bay is still known as Caledonia
Bay, and the harbor as Porto Escoces, but the Isla de Pinas as well as a
river of the same name do not appear on maps of the region. The curious
may find references to the island in the printed accounts of the
unfortunate Darien colony.
The Isle of Pines could thus be found on the map as an actual island in
the West Indies; but the "Isle of Pines" of our tract existed only
in the imagination of the writer. The mere fact of its having been
printed--but not published--in Cambridge, Massachusetts, does not
entitle it to be classed even indirectly as Americana, any more than
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress or [29]Thomas à Kempis could be so marked on
the strength of their having a Massachusetts imprint Curiosities of the
American press they may be, but they serve only as crude measures of the
existing taste for literature since become recognized as classic.
The dignified Calendar of State Papers in the Public Record Office,
London, gravely indexes a casual reference to the tract under West
Indies, and the impression that the author wrote of the Cuban island
probably accounts for the different editions in the John Carter Brown
Library, as well as for the price obtained for the White Kennett copy.
No possible reason can be found, however, for regarding the "Isle of
Pines" in any of its forms as Americana.