Hubert Howe Bancroft, writing a century ago as one of the United States’ most renowned historians, likened historical fact concerning exploration to a coastline itself:

Sea monsters of the 16th century
(Institute of Texan Cultures, 80-218)

Those adventurous antiquarians, according to Bancroft who used the term in a beautifully insulting way, were false historians.

Continuing the metaphor, Bancroft said that this kind of speculator was one who

The style is that of academic contention of over a century ago. The opinion is still most clear. Bancroft thought little of the speculative historian. But he thought that the historian who engaged in speculation—properly labeled—was doing acceptable work, indeed even desirable work. In fact, after saying that he himself wanted to write carefully documented history, Bancroft went on to say:

Bancroft knew the value of speculation and imagination, but the last phrase makes a great deal of difference. One should know what one stands upon. The stories concerning the first Old World explorers traveling west to what became known as the Americas should be considered in the light of Bancroft’s cautions. And in a hundred years of modern archaeological search, few hard facts point to anyone—except the Vikings in Newfoundland just after C. E. 1000—having made landfall in the Americas before 1492. Yet the disputed facts and the questions, the possibilities and probabilities, even admittedly unproven hints have spawned scores of books and articles.

The trouble that confronts an investigator today is that what record remains is most often an incomplete reference, a shattered clay tablet there, a folktale with perhaps a basis in fact here, or a manuscript that is only a fragment and perhaps quite literally moldy. But a few things do remain. There are stories concerning arrivals in the Americas by early sailors, priests, princes, merchants, soldiers, mercenaries, traders, pirates, and private citizens among other explorers of unknown intent, all bent on seeing what was beyond an ocean or perhaps accidentally blown the wrong way much too far. (5)

Stories attesting, however unreliably, to a continent west of Europe and Africa have likewise been numerous for almost as long as humans have written. Before becoming specific concerning Texas and the Gulf of Mexico region, a few general concerns can provide the setting for explorers to the Texas area and background for deciding one’s position in Bancroft’s terms.

People, some people, that is, of Europe, Africa, and the Near East always thought there was a continent to the west or at least a collection of interesting islands. But these lands were not easily attainable. Their supposed distance, the dangers of the ocean, and the fact that few seemed to return from such a place made travel apparently risky.

The Earthly Paradise, as imagined by Europeans, was Eden, at first located in the Near East until politics, trade, and exploration showed that to be a poor choice...then moved to the unknown world across the Atlantic. Even Columbus mentioned he might have come close. Images of Eden were created by poets like John Milton and many artists. This engraving, showing Satan contemplating the creation, is from Gustave Doré's illustrations to Milton's Paradise Lost.

To most European and African travelers, the far east and far west were either places one visited very rarely or were entirely mythical. The west, to the eyes of the European Old World, was the place where the sun set and thus was poetically a place of haven, life’s end, or death. It was Hades to some or the location of the Isles of the Blest, even the location of the Earthly Paradise, to others. To the west might be Atlantis, the drowned continent, among a host of other ideas people at one time or another firmly believed in. (6) These ideas were not usually based on stories of voyages, however, but were rather what had to be true to balance earlier ideas of western philosophy, religion, or geography. (7)

Athenian merchant ship, c. 500 B.C.E., from a vase painting Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-238

Yet lands beyond the Old World were also real places. Even at the time of classical Greek civilization, say 400 B.C.E., the world was known to be spherical. (8) Europe and North Africa and Asia represented the known world (for the peoples of these places), and this area was clearly on one side of a sphere. Eratosthenes, in about 200 B.C.E., measured the correct size of the earth, and Crates of Pergamum built a globe in the second century B.C.E. showing the philosophically necessary but unknown continents to the west. Other maps (such as that composed by the Roman Macrobius in the fourth century C.E.) represented the faces of the world as two hemispheres, one adorned with relatively crude drawings of Europe, Asia, and at least part of Africa. (9) The other side was, in some of the more complete geographies, simply a blank circle. For this reason, in some scrolls and books, the second side was left out. Why waste space?

Thus, people looking at the picture—particularly those who could not read the accompanying Latin text—were unaware that the simple-looking circle represented half of a globe, and so they assumed the illustration was of a flat earth. (10) In the minds of the not-so-learned, the earth became a flat disc.

But even if some people knew the earth was round, there were other problems. Going to the other side was not easy. The earth, of course, consisted of various belts of climate. The northern part was obviously too cold for habitation, and the zone at the equator was just as obviously hot enough to set ablaze the sails of any ship taken there by an overzealous captain and hot enough to burn the sandals off anyone intrepid enough to try to walk that far south in Africa. A perilous world for travelers, indeed.

But the spherical shape also guaranteed that if there was any land further south of the equator, it should be temperate. Likewise, there would be two pleasant zones on the other side of the earth. (11) This was, of course, only theoretically known, but things had to balance. The catch was that the equator and its fearful heat bisected the earth one way, and an ominous ocean split the earth the other way.

Martin Behaim's map of the New World, 1492 Institute of Texan Cultures, 75-797

Europe, Asia, and North Africa were confined. There was even a moral question as to whether a person should try to cross into another zone. Why had the Lord made it so difficult?

But there is a curious thing about some men and women. They will often try to go precisely where much difficulty lurks. Now the motive may be obstinance or simple curiosity, gold or spices, wine or women, or men for that matter, but they will go. The motives vary. When the only female pharoah of Egypt, Hatshepsut, ordered an expedition through the Red Sea about 1460 B.C.E., she sailed for the usual gold and incense, ivory and ebony, leopard skins and curiosity—but also for cosmetics and men. (12)

So even though the heat of an equator promised to vaporize boats and the oceans to mysteriously swallow ships, there were mariners who dared the horizons and overland caravan leaders who steered by the stars. (13)

An Egyptian ship, c. 1600 B.C.E., from a rock carving at Deir el-Bahri, location of the funerary temple of Hatshepsut. Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-237

The first known mariners in the Atlantic—the Africans, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians—found it a strange place. Unlike the Mediterranean, the ocean had obvious tides, a very uncertain western shore (if any at all), massive storms, new colors, unexpected currents, and was undoubtedly filled with monsters.

But not everything was against them, The waters could be sailed much like other waters, and the weather and shoals, landfalls and passages could be learned. (14) Phoenician mariners circumnavigated Africa in the sixth century B.C.E., about two thousand years before the Portuguese Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488—but in the other direction. (15) Later, the Phoenicians and their kinsmen from their main colony, Carthage, sailed out of the Mediterranean to the west, setting up colonies on the Atlantic coasts of Africa and future Spain and Portugal. They sailed to Britain and some of the Atlantic islands. (16)

In the course of all this, more than a few boats were blown about considerably, and interesting stories began to circulate about rather large lands to the west. Some of the stories were certainly powered by myth. Some maybe not. Early maps and charts, of course, were heavily supplemented not only by the philosophical tradition of a western land, but also by the poetic tradition of lands which were places of paradise, rest, and haven gained after a life (or a voyage) of trouble. (17) In time, Hades—the more somber western tradition—was forgotten.

And some of the maps began to show scraps of ideas that looked real. Islands and shorelines flickered on the early maps limited only by cartographers’ imagination—or reputation. (18) When one is drawing a map, blank spaces are both boring and professionally embarrassing. Unexplored inland areas become peopled with strange animals, speculative mountains, specious hermits, ravenous cannibals, and questionable cities; reaches of unknown ocean are broken with complicated islands, erotic mermaids, colorful wind roses, and dreadful sea monsters. (19)

A 16th century sea monster devouring a ship Institute of Texan Cultures, 80-219

Accounts of voyages west which accompanied the charts ran the gamut from logical-sounding narratives to the science fiction of the day. (20)