In 1512, in handwritten notes on an enigmatic map that he had prepared showing the newly discovered Americas, the Turkish Admiral Piri Reis offered an intriguing answer to all these questions -- at any rate for the particular case of Christopher Colombus, the most recent and most renowned of the ancient Atlantic dreamers. Piri's note, one of many on the same map, is written over the interior of Brazil: 'Apparently a Genoese infidel, by the name of Columbus was the one who discovered these parts. This is how it happened: a came into the hands of this Colombus from which he found out that the Western Sea [i.e. the Atlantic] has an end, in other words that there is a coast and islands on its western side with many kinds of ores and gems. Having read this book through, he recounted all these things to the Genoese elders and said, 'Come, give me two ships, and I shall go and find these places.' They said, 'Foolish man, is there an end to the Western Sea? It is filled with the mists of darkness.