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1492-10-12

Columbus lands on a Lucayan island

Haitian

History. The Antilles, thrown in a long chain in front of the American continent, were the first lands recognized at the discovery of America; it was on one of the Lucayes islands that Columbus landed, on 12 October 1492, after his crossing of the Atlantic. The name of Antilles, which has been given to this vast archipelago, and which by chance seems to refer to its position in front of the continent, ante insulæ, has no such origin at all; it is linked to the obscure legend of an island Antilia placed far out in the Atlantic Sea by the cosmographers and the portolan makers of the late Middle Ages. M. de Humboldt and others have made long researches, without much result, on this island Antilia (Alex. de Humboldt, Examen critique de l’histoire de la géographie du Nouveau Continent, I, 250, and II, 173, 1835; d’Avezac, in the îles de l’Afrique of the Univers pittoresque, p. 24, 1848, etc.). It was not Christopher Columbus who introduced the name of Antilles into modern geography, as M. de Humboldt rightly remarks. The first application of the name Antiliæ insulæ to the islands of…

Rouzier tells this under the entry Antilles (les).

Source  ·  p. t. I, p. 34 Sémexant Rouzier, Dictionnaire géographique et administratif universel d'Haïti (t. I) (1892), p. t. I, p. 34