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Can Pinto be found? He was located on valid, credible maps even in the legend of the 5 Isles charted for centuries... but forgotten today. Why? The Lequios identity was taken from the Philippines and given to another. No longer...

🪶 THE SMOKING QUILL | May 17, 2025

Finding Pinto — The Five Isles That Never Moved

Maps featured:

  • John Speed, A New Map of East India, 1676

  • Nicolaes Visscher I / Peter Schenk, Indiae Orientalis Nova Descriptio, ca. 1700

  • Willem Janszoon Blaeu, India quae Orientalis…, 1640

"There were five very large islands, near to where I shipwrecked..." — so recounted Fernão Mendes Pinto in his famed 16th-century travels. Colonial academia later twisted this into an implausible link to Ryukyu, far to the northeast, where no such “five large isles” exist. But the maps never lied.

Across three of the most authoritative early modern European cartographers—Speed, Visscher-Schenk, and Blaeu—we find those Five Islands unmistakably preserved, plotted west and slightly south of Bashee and Batanes, hovering in clear reference to Pinto’s original drift account.

📍 Map 1: John Speed’s East India (1676)

Clearly marks “5 Islands” due west of the Babuyanes and Ilocos. This placement mirrors the directional language Pinto used and visually anchors the Lequios story in Northern Luzon waters, not Ryukyu.

🔑 Insight:

The label “Ilocos / I Locos” below affirms trade links and ethnic continuity with Pinto’s "Lequios."

[View Full Map with Zoom]
1676 John Speed Map

📍 Map 2: Visscher & Schenk’s Indiae Orientalis (ca. 1700)

Identifies “5 Eylanden” near Batanes and Babuyanes again. While Goud Leques Eyland appears awkwardly near Formosa (likely due to Dutch mercantile revisionism), Batanes remains the center of the five-isle framework, consistently.

🔎 Note: Even when Lequios labeling is tampered with, geographic truth stubbornly persists.


[View Full Map with Zoom]
1700 Visscher Map

📍 Map 3: Willem Blaeu’s India Orientalis (1640)

Another Dutch masterpiece confirms the pattern — “5 Eylanden” shown directly above Luzon and west of Formosa, in perfect alignment with the Batanes region.

🗺️ Observation: Every Blaeu map was meticulously surveyed and reflects what the Dutch saw—not just what they were told.

[View Full Map with Zoom]
1640 Bleau Map

🧭 The Verdict

Over 150 years after Pinto's voyage, these maps still plot the same five-island formation, right where the shipwreck occurred—near Batanes, adjacent to Ilocos. There was no confusion among cartographers. Only later, as colonial narrative control tightened, did Lequios begin drifting north.

📌 Final Word:
The Five Isles never moved. Colonial cartography did.
But the Smoking Quill reveals what was once hidden.



🔒 Note: Regarding an Anonymous Fraud Who Assails in Ignorance

“We have long suspected this critic’s intent was never to seek truth but to destroy it—just as a demon would. He is not a researcher. He is an agitator: fabricating, mocking, and misrepresenting at every turn.His latest post contains nothing but distortions: blatant misrepresentations, provable falsehoods, and a willful ignorance of our actual position. Either he lacks the comprehension to understand our work or simply refuses to engage it honestly—weaponizing feigned debate as cover for sustained defamation and cyber libel.This is not intellectual discourse. It is psychological warfare of the dumbest kind, dressed in the rags of faux-academia. We continue to fully document this behavior and pattern for formal legal reporting.But we will not be baited by someone whose only goal is to erode, insult, and deceive.The facts stand. We stand. And this failed agenda will not.”
ADDITION:

🗺️ A Colonial Trail of Tears
The visual record of how truth was displaced, overwritten, and erased.

🎉 “The maps were never lost… only silenced. Now, the silenced speak.”
1502 Cantino Map

Cantino World Map

1502 

[See above]

Lequios of Zambales at 17N. Affirmed within.

1512 Francisco Rodrigues' Sketches

Jorge Reinel/Rodriguez Chart 

1512

[Click Image for Blog Link]

"The Main Island of Lequios" is charted and noted geographically near Luzon, not near Okinawa.
1527 Diogo Ribeiro Map

Diogo Ribeiro Map

1527

[Click Image for Blog Link]

Locates Lequios near Luzon, reinforcing the Philippines as the center of early Southeast Asian trade routes.
1535 Penrose Chart

Anonymous Penrose Chart

1535

[Click Image for Blog Link]

Lequios plotted between 17°–20° North Latitude, matching Northern Philippines, not Okinawa.

1539 Santa Cruz SPanish Government Map

Santa Cruz Map

1539 

[See above]

SPANISH GOVERNMENT MAP! Luquios as Luzon, Philippines With Visayas and Mindanao Charted With It.

 
1544 Sebastian Cabot Map

Sebastian Cabot Map

1544

[Click Image for Blog Link]

Cabot's 'Canal of Lequios' flows into the West Philippine Sea, cementing Lequios’ geographic tie to the Philippines. 10-15N.
1554 Lopo Homem Map

Lopo Homem Planisphere

1554

[Click Image for Blog Link]

Colonial Propaganda Begins! Homem still places Lequios closer to the Philippines; later maps begin shifting it northward under colonial reinterpretations.
1561 Giacomo Gastaldi Map

Giacomo Gastaldi

1561

Lequios Canal continues to be recognized near Palawan, and labels North Luzon as "Cangu", the likely Zipangu of Marco Polo.
1587 Urbano Monte Map

Italian Urbano Monti Map

1587 

Canal route for major trade between Palawan and Borneo still referenced where Lequios Canal is on previous maps.

 
1589 Maris Pacifici Ortelius Map

Spanish Maris Pacifici: Abraham Ortelius

1589

[Click Image for Blog Link]

Ortelius’ 1589 map silently reversed Portuguese propaganda by restoring the Philippines’ true heritage.
1613 Honsius Globe

Dutch Globe

1613

[Click Image for Blog Link]

Flemish and Dutch engraver and cartographer preserves Batanes as Pintos' location for Lequios while bending to Colonial pressure for Ryukyu.
1659 Dutch Map

Dutch Nova et Accuratissima Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula

1659

[Click Image for Blog Link]

Dutch Mapmaker Joan Blaeu maintains Batanes as Pinto's Lequios also offering the new Colonial bias of Ryukyu which fails.

1587 Urbano Monte Map

French Map

1752 

Just west of the Bashee Isles (Batanes), the map boldly labels:

“Les 5 Isles” — The Five Islands

Relating the legend from Pinto's shipreck with Batanes as Lequios.

 
1794 Spanish-British Map

Spanish-British Map

1794

[Click Image for Blog Link]

Lequios River, Batanes as Pinto's Shipwreck, Five Isles, and the Final Blow to Ryukyu Theory.
1799 Italian Map Lequios River, Pinto Account

Italian Map

1799

[Click Image for Blog Link]

Pinto's legend of The 5 Isles appears West of Batanes, as Lequios.
1589 Maris Pacifici: Abraham Ortelius

🪶 “History didn’t just speak — it sang… and the world finally listened.”
“The final page wasn’t colonial ink — it was joy, justice, and memory.”

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