Map of the New World from the time of Bartolomé de Las Casas,
published in the 1540 Basel edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia.

“It is a wonder to see how, when a man greatly desires something and strongly attaches himself to it in his imagination, he has the impression at every moment that whatever he hears and sees argues in favor of that thing.”

– Bartolomé de Las Casas,
a 16th century missionary who documented
the early period of Spanish New World discovery