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Columbus supposed to have sailed beyond Iceland, 1477.

There is, in the minds of some inquirers into the early discovery of America, no more pivotal incident attaching to the career of Columbus than an alleged voyage made to the vicinity of what is supposed to have been Iceland, in the assigned year of 1477. The incident is surrounded with the confusion that belongs to everything dependent on Columbus's own statements, or on what is put forth as such.

Our chief knowledge of his voyage is in the doubtful Italian rendering of the Historie of 1571, where, citing a memoir by Columbus himself on the five habitable zones, the translator or adapter of that book makes the Admiral say that "in February, 1477, he sailed a hundred leagues beyond the island Tile, which lies under the seventy-third parallel, and not under the sixty-third, as some say." The only evidence that he saw Tile, in sailing beyond it, is in what he further says, that he was able to ascertain that the tide rose and fell twenty-six fathoms, which observation necessitates the seeing of some land, whether Tile or not.

Inconsistencies in the statement.

There is no land at all in the northern Atlantic under 73°. Iceland stretches from 64° to 67°; Jan Mayen is too small for Columbus's further description of the island, and is at 71°, and Spitzbergen is at 76°. What Columbus says of the English of Bristol trading at this island points to Iceland; and it is easy, if one will, to imagine a misprint of the figures, an error of calculation, a carelessness of statement, or even the disappearance, through some cataclysm, of the island, as has been suggested.