Legendary Islands Of The Atlantic: A Study Of Medieval Geography - free ebook by William Henry Babcock

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Legendary Islands Of The Atlantic: A Study Of Medieval Geography

William Henry Babcock

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LEGENDARY ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC

LEGENDARY ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC

AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY RESEARCH SERIES NO. 8 W. L. G. Joerg , Editor LEGENDARY ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC A Study in Medieval Geography BY WILLIAM H. BABCOCK Author of “Early Norse Visits to North America” NEW YORK AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922 BY THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK THE CONDE NAST PRESS GREENWICH, CONN. COPYRIGHT, 1922 BY THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK THE CONDE NAST PRESS GREENWICH, CONN....

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Early Accounts of Big Ships

Early Accounts of Big Ships

Small coasting, and incidentally sea-ranging, vessels must be of great antiquity, for the record of great ships capable of carrying hundreds of men and prolonging their voyages for years extends very far back indeed. We may recall the Scriptural item incidentally given of the fleets of Hiram, King of Tyre, and Solomon, King of Israel: “For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, an

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The Atlantis Legend

The Atlantis Legend

We may be safe in styling Atlantis (Ch. II) the earliest mythical island of which we have any knowledge or suggestion, since Plato’s narrative, written more than 400 years before Christ, puts the time of its destruction over 9,000 years earlier still. It seems pretty certain that there never was any such mighty and splendid island empire contending against Athens and later ruined by earthquakes and engulfed by the ocean. Atlantis may fairly be set down as a figment of dignified philosophic roman

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Phoenician Exploration

Phoenician Exploration

It may be that Phoenician exploration in Atlantic waters was well developed before 1100 B. C., when the Phoenicians are alleged to have founded Cadiz on the ocean front of southern Spain; but its development at any rate could not have been greatly retarded after that. The new city promptly grew into one of the notable marts of the world, able during a long period to fit out her own fleets and extend her commerce anywhere. It is greatly to be regretted that we have no record of her discoveries. C

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The Greeks and Romans

The Greeks and Romans

We know that the Greeks of Pythias’ time coasted as far north as Britain and probably Scandinavia and had most likely made the acquaintance still earlier of the Fortunate Islands (two or more of the Canary group), similarly following downward the African shore. Long afterward the Roman Pliny knew Madeira and her consorts as the Purple Islands; Sertorius contemplated a possible refuge in them or other Atlantic island neighbors; and Plutarch wrote confidently of an island far west of Britain and a

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Irish Sea-Roving

Irish Sea-Roving

Ireland was never subject to Rome, though influenced by Roman trade and culture. From prehistoric times the Irish had done some sea roving, as their Imrama, or sea sagas, attest; and this roving was greatly stimulated in the first few centuries of conversion to Christianity by an abounding access of religious zeal. Irish monks seem to have settled in Iceland before the end of the eighth century and even to have sailed well beyond it. There are good reasons for believing that they had visited mos

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The Norsemen

The Norsemen

A little later Scandinavians followed along the northern route, finding convenient stopping points in the Faroes and Iceland, discovered Greenland, and planted two settlements on its southwestern shore in the last quarter of the tenth century (Ch. VII). Some of their ruins, a less number of inscriptions, and many fragmentary relics and residua are found, so that we can form a good idea of their manner of life. Such as it was, it endured more than four hundred years. To contemporary and slightly

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Moorish Voyages

Moorish Voyages

The Moors who conquered Spain took up the task of Atlantic exploration from that coast after a time. Its islands appear in divers of the Arabic maps. In particular we know through Edrisi, 8 the most celebrated name of Arabic geography, of the extraordinary voyage of the Moorish Magrurin of Lisbon, who set out at some undefined time before the middle of the twelfth century to cross the Sea of Darkness and Mystery. They touched upon the Isle of Sheep and other islands which were or were to become

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Italian Exploration

Italian Exploration

The Italians of the thirteenth century undertook similar explorations and temporarily occupied at least one of the Canary Islands, Lanzarote, which still bears, corrupted, the name of its Genoese invader, Lancelota Maloessel, of about 1470. On early fourteenth-century maps and some later ones the cross of Genoa is conspicuously marked on this island in commemoration of the exploit. It was probably at this period that Italian names were applied to most of the Azores and to other islands of the ea

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Bretons and Basques

Bretons and Basques

The Bretons shared in the Irish monk voyages, their Saint Malo appearing in tradition sometimes as a companion of Saint Brendan, sometimes as an imitator or competitor. Also their fishermen, with the Basques, from an early time had pushed out into remote regions of the sea. The Pizigani map of 1367 10 ( Fig. 2 ) represents a Breton voyage of adventure and disaster near one of les îles fantastiques , appearing for the first time thereon. Their presence on the American shore in the years shortly f

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The Zeno Story

The Zeno Story

It has been alleged that two Venetian brothers, Antonio and Nicolò Zeno, in the service of an earl of the northern islands, took part with him about 1400 A. D. in certain explorations westward, he being incited thereto by the report of a fisherman, who claimed to have spent many years as a castaway and captive in regions southwest of Greenland. The Zeno narrative, dealt with later (Ch. IX), was accompanied by a map ( Fig. 19 ), which exercised a great influence during a long period on all maps t

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Portuguese Discovery

Portuguese Discovery

This brings us down to the rise of Portuguese nautical endeavor, which seems to have begun earlier than has generally been supposed but became most conspicuous under the direction of Prince Henry the Navigator. Its achievements included the rediscovery of Madeira and the Azores, which in many quarters had been forgotten, the exploration of the African coast, the accidental discovery or rediscovery of South American Brazil by Cabral, and the voyage of Vasco da Gama to India around the Cape of Goo

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Columbus, Vespucius, and Cabot

Columbus, Vespucius, and Cabot

Incidentally the Portuguese activity stimulated the enthusiasm of Columbus, guided his plans, and contributed to the eminent success of his great undertaking. In Antillia it provided a first goal, which he believed to be nearer than it really was. He fully meant to attain it and probably really did so, but without recognizing Antillia in Cuba or Hispaniola, for he thought he had missed it on the way and left it far behind. Vignaud insists that Columbus did not aim at Asia until after he actually

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Elements of Fact and Fancy in Plato’s Tale of Atlantis

Elements of Fact and Fancy in Plato’s Tale of Atlantis

It is evident that the Atlantis tale must be treated either as mainly historical, with presumably some distortions and exaggerations, or as fiction necessarily based in some measure (like all else of its kind) on living or antiquated facts. Certainly no one will go the length of accepting it as wholly true as it stands. But, even eliminating all reference to the god Poseidon and his plentiful demigod progeny, we are left with divers essential features which credulity can hardly swallow. Atlantis

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Significant Passages from the Tale

Significant Passages from the Tale

The Atlantis narrative has been so often translated and copied, at least as to its more significant parts, that one hesitates to quote again; but there are certain items to which attention should be drawn, and brief extracts are the best means of effecting this. The following passages are from the Smithsonian translation of Termier’s remarkable paper on Atlantis reproduced by that institution. It differs verbally from the translation by Dr. Jowett but not in the broader features. Of the two quot

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Atlantean Invasion of the Mediterranean

Atlantean Invasion of the Mediterranean

There seem to have been some rumors afloat of very early hostilities between dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean and those beyond the Pillars of Hercules. That geographical name bears witness to the supposed exertion of Greek dominant power at the very gateway of the Atlantic, and the legend connecting this demigod with Cadiz carries his activities a little farther out on the veritable ocean front. The rationalizing Diodorus, writing in the first century before Christ but dealing freely

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Location and Size of Atlantis

Location and Size of Atlantis

The location of Atlantis, according to Plato, is fairly clear. It was in the ocean, “then navigable,” beyond the Pillars of Hercules; also beyond certain other islands, which served it as stepping-stones to the continental mass surrounding the Mediterranean. This effectually disposes of all pretensions in behalf of Crete or any other island or region of the inner sea. Atlantis must also have lain pretty far out in the ocean, to allow space for the intervening islands, which may well have been, a

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Improbability of the Existence of Such an Island

Improbability of the Existence of Such an Island

Now, was there any such great island and populous magnificent kingdom in mid-Atlantic or anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean about 11,400 years ago? If not absolutely impossible, it seems at least very unlikely. Through the mouth of Critias Plato tells how the people of Atlantis employed themselves in constructing their temples and palaces, harbors and docks, a great palace which they continued to ornament through many generations, canals and bridges, walls and towns, numerous statues of gold, founta

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Termier’s Theory of an Ancient Atlantic Continental Mass

Termier’s Theory of an Ancient Atlantic Continental Mass

Nevertheless, inquiries as to an ancient Atlantic continental mass have an interest. We may cite a few of the recent outgivings. Termier tells us of an east-and-west arrangement of elevated lands across the Atlantic in earlier ages, as opposed to the present north-and-south system of islands and raised folds. By the former there was a very ancient continental bond between northern Europe and North America and ... another continental bond, also very ancient, between the massive Africa and South A

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Floral and Faunal Evidence of Connection with Europe and Africa

Floral and Faunal Evidence of Connection with Europe and Africa

Professor Schuchert, reviewing the paper of Termier above quoted, agrees in part and partly disagrees. He says: The Azores are true volcanic and oceanic islands, and it is almost certain that they never had land connections with the continents on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. If there is any truth in Plato’s thrilling account, we must look for Atlantis off the western coast of Africa, and here we find that five of the Cape Verde Islands and three of the Canaries have rocks that are unmistak

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Evidence of Submergence

Evidence of Submergence

The great final catastrophe of Atlantis would surely write its record on the rocks both of the sea bed and the continental land masses. As to the ocean bottom it would be the natural repository for vitreous and other rocky products of volcanic and seismic action occurring above it. Termier relates what he considers very significant indications at a point 500 miles north of the Azores at a depth of 1,700 fathoms, where the grappling irons of a cable-mending ship dragged for several days over a mo

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Relation of the Submarine Banks of the North Atlantic to the Problem

Relation of the Submarine Banks of the North Atlantic to the Problem

There remain to be considered a small array of undersurface insular items which seem germane to our inquiry. Sir John Murray tells us that: Another remarkable feature of the North Atlantic is the series of submerged cones or oceanic shoals made known off the northwest coast of Africa between the Canary Islands and the Spanish peninsula, of which we may mention: the “Coral Patch” in lat. 34° 57′ N., long. 11° 57′ W., covered by 302 fathoms; the “Dacia Bank” in lat. 31° 9′ N., long. 13° 34′ W., co

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Facts and Legends As to Submergences in Historic Times

Facts and Legends As to Submergences in Historic Times

Westropp has made an interesting and important disclosure of the legends of submerged lands with villages, churches, etc., all around the coasts of Ireland. In some instances they are believed to be magically visible again above the surface in certain conditions; in others the spires and walls of a fine city may at times, it is thought, be still seen through clear water. Nearly, if not quite, every one of them coincides with a shoal or bank of no great depth, the upjutting teeth of rocks, or a b

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Reports of Obstruction to Navigation in Early Times

Reports of Obstruction to Navigation in Early Times

We get further light on this matter of obstruction from the Periplus of Scylax of Caryanda, the greater part of which must have been written before the time of Alexander the Great. Probably we may put down the passage as approximately of Plato’s own period. He begins on the European coast at the Strait of Gibraltar, makes the circuit of the Mediterranean, and ends at Cerne, an island of the African Atlantic coast, “which island, it is stated, is twelve days’ coasting beyond the Pillars of Hercul

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The Sargasso Sea As the Ancient Atlantis

The Sargasso Sea As the Ancient Atlantis

It would be idle and wearying to follow such utterances through the rather numerous centuries that have elapsed since those early times. When the Magrurin or deluded explorers of Lisbon, at some undefined time between the early eighth century and the middle of the twelfth attempted, according to Edrisi, to cross the great westward Sea of Darkness they encountered an impassable tract of ocean and had to change their course, apparently reaching one of the Canary Islands. Later the map of the Pizig

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Summary

Summary

For the genesis of Atlantis we have then, first, the great idealist philosopher Plato minded to compose an instructive pseudo-historical romance of statesmanship and war and actually making a beginning of the task; and, secondly, the fragmentary cues and suggestive data which came to him out of tradition and mariners’ tales, perhaps in part through Solon and intervening transmitters, in part more directly to himself. Of this material we may name foremost the vague knowledge of vast impeded regio

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The Lismore Version of the Saint’s Adventures

The Lismore Version of the Saint’s Adventures

The fifteenth-century Book of Lismore, compiled from much older materials, tells us that St. Brenainn (evidently St. Brendan, the navigator) desired to leave his land and his country, his parents and his fatherland, and he urgently besought the Lord to give him a land secret, hidden, secure, delightful, separated from men. Now after he had slept on that night, he heard the voice of the angel from heaven, who said to him, “Arise, O Brenainn,” saith he, “for God hath given thee what thou soughtest

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Another Version

Another Version

Another version gives the credit of the first incitement to a purely human visitor, a friendly abbot, St. Brendan’s aim being to reach an island “just under Mount Atlas.” Here a holy predecessor, Mernoc by name, long vanished from among men, was believed to have hidden himself in “the first home of Adam and Eve.” To all readers this was a fairly precise location for the earthly paradise. The great Atlas chain forms a conspicuous feature of medieval maps, running down to sea (as it does in realit

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Attempts to Explain the Origin of the Brendan Narratives

Attempts to Explain the Origin of the Brendan Narratives

It has been intimated that the narratives of “St. Brendan’s Navigation” may have originated in misunderstood tales of his early sea wanderings around the coasts of Ireland seeking for a monastery site. He was successful in this at least, being best known (excepting as a discoverer) for the great religious establishment at Clonfert, not the first which he founded in the sixth century but the most widely known and the greatest. Another explanation casts doubts upon his real existence and supposes

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A Norman French Version

A Norman French Version

A Norman French translation was turned into Norman French verse by some trouvère of the court for the benefit of King Henry Beauclerc and his Queen Adelais early in the twelfth century and partly translated metrically into English for Blackwood’s Magazine in 1836. It avers that the saint set sail for an They sail westward fifteen days from Ireland; then in a month’s calm drift to a rock, where they find a palace with food and where Satan visits them but does no harm. They next voyage seven month

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The Probable Basis of Fact

The Probable Basis of Fact

But it is noticeable that every version gives St. Brendan the task of finding a remote island, which was always warm and lovely, and chronicles the attainment of this delight, though he finds other delectable islands near it or by the way. The metrical description before quoted is surely explicit enough, but the Book of Lismore outdoes it in a very revel of adjectives. As though praises alone failed to satisfy the celebrant, he introduces the figure of a holy ungarmented usher—a living demonstra

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The Cartographic Evidence

The Cartographic Evidence

That he found some island or islands was certainly believed, for his name is on many maps in full confidence. But as to the particular islands thereby identified we find that conjecture had a wide range, varying in different periods and even with individual bias....

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The Hereford Map of circa 1275

The Hereford Map of circa 1275

Probably its first appearance is on the Hereford map of 1275 or not much later, 49 the inscription being “Fortunate Insulae sex sunt Insulae Sct Brandani.” It is about on the site of the Canary group, and the elliptical island Junonia is just below. The showing is uncertain and conventional; also the number six misses the mark by one; still there can be no doubt that the Canaries as a whole were intended. Concerning them Edrisi 50 had observed, about 1154: “The Fortunate Islands are two in numbe

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The Dulcert Map of 1339

The Dulcert Map of 1339

The second cartographical appearance of the saint’s name seems to be in the portolan map 53 of Angelinus Dulcert, the Majorcan, dated 1339, where three islands corresponding to those now known as the Madeiras (Madeira, Porto Santo, and Las Dezertas) and on the same site are labeled “Insulle Sa Brandani siue puelan.” Since “u” was currently substituted for “v,” and “m” and “n” were interchangeable on these old maps, the last two words should probably be read “sive puellam.” However the ending of

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The Map of the Pizigani of 1367

The Map of the Pizigani of 1367

Divers maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries do not contain the name of St. Brendan (it is perhaps never spelled Brendan in cartography) and hence do not count either way. But the identification of the notable map of 1367 of the brothers Pizigani 56 ( Fig. 2 ) is the same as Dulcert’s, the inscription being also given in the alternative. Like many oceanic features of this strange production it is by no means clear, but seems to read “Ysole dctur sommare sey ysole pone+le brandany.” Perh

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First Use of “Porto Santo” as Name of One of the Madeiras

First Use of “Porto Santo” as Name of One of the Madeiras

A claim has been set up by the Portuguese that Porto Santo (Holy Port) was first applied to this island by their rediscoverers of the next century in honor of their safe arrival after peril, but this is abundantly confuted by its presence on divers fourteenth-century maps, notably the Atlante Mediceo 57 of 1351. Also the Book of the Spanish Friar, 58 dating from about the middle of that century, contains in his enumeration of islands the words “another Desierta, another Lecname, another Puerto S

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Animal and Bird Names of Islands

Animal and Bird Names of Islands

Concerning such names as Canaria, Capraria, etc., which, by reason of other associations, appear oddly out of place in this group, the more general question is raised of the tendency to apply animal and bird names to Eastern Atlantic islands. Goat, rabbit, dog, falcon, dove, wolf, and crow were applied to various islands long before the Portuguese visited the Madeiras and Azores, finding them untenanted; these names long held their ground on the maps, and some of them are in use even now. The re

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Madeira

Madeira

Madeira, meaning island of the woods or forest island, is a direct Portuguese translation from the Italian “I. de Legname” of the Atlante Mediceo and various later maps, and of the “Lecname” of the unnamed Spanish friar who tells us he was born in 1305. It is sufficiently explained by the former condition of the island, the northern part of which is said to preserve still its abundant woodland. Perhaps the modern name of Madeira (or Madera) first appears on the map of Giraldi of 1426, 59 not ver

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The Beccario Map of 1426

The Beccario Map of 1426

The alternative names, which had been given the Madeira group by Dulcert and the Pizigani, commemorating both the general fact of repose or blessedness and the delighted visit of St. Brendan, were closely blended (in what became the accepted formula) by the 1426 map of Battista Beccario, which unluckily had never been published in reproduction. Before the war, however, the writer obtained a good photograph of a part of it from Munich and herewith presents a section recording the words “Insulle f

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The Bianco Map of 1448

The Bianco Map of 1448

At any rate, the verdict of the fifteenth century for Madeira was by no means unanimous. The 1448 map of Bianco, 65 which is very unlike his earlier one of 1436 so far as concerns the Atlantic, was prepared after all the Azores had been found again by the Portuguese except Flores and Corvo. It shows the old familiar inaccurately north-and-south string of the three groups of the Azores as they had come to him conventionally and traditionally, for evidently he did not dare or could not bring himse

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Behaim’s Globe of 1492

Behaim’s Globe of 1492

About the same period a Catalan map 66 of unknown authorship, without copying details, adopted the same expedient of duplicating the Azores by adding the new slanting series. It is quite independent in details, however, omitting mention of “St. Brandan” in particular, though Ateallo (Antillia?) is given in the second group but not in the corresponding place. This may possibly indicate some confusion of Antillia with St. Brandan’s Island, such as is more evident in the transfer of the traditional

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Later Maps

Later Maps

From this time on there is never more than one island for St. Brendan, but it indulges in wide wanderings. Especially as the attention of men was attracted to the more northern and western waters, the map-makers shifted the island thither. Thus the map of 1544, purporting to be the work of Sebastian Cabot and probably prepared more or less under his influence, 69 places the island San Brandan not far from the scene of his father’s explorations and his own. It lies well out to sea in about the la

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Conclusion

Conclusion

In general review it appears likely that St. Brendan in the sixth century wandered widely over the seas in quest of some warm island, concerning which wonderful accounts had been brought to him, and found several such isles, the Madeira group receiving his special approval, according to the prevailing opinion of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But this judgment of those centuries is the only item as to which we can speak with any positiveness and confidence. So far as we know, the first

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Probable Gaelic Origin of the Word “Brazil”

Probable Gaelic Origin of the Word “Brazil”

The word takes many forms on maps and in manuscripts: as Brasil, Bersil, Brazir, O’Brazil, O’Brassil, Breasail. As a personal name it has been common in Ireland from ancient days. The “Brazil fierce” of Campbell’s “O’Connor’s Child” may be recalled by the few who have not wholly forgotten that beautiful old-fashioned poem. Going farther back, we find Breasail mentioned as a pagan demigod in Hardiman’s “History of Galway” 72 which quotes from one of the Four Masters, who collated in the sixteenth

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Another Suggested Derivation

Another Suggested Derivation

On the whole, this seems the more likely channel of derivation of the name; or, if there were two such channels, then the more important one. For there is another suggested derivation, of which much has rightly been made and which we must by no means neglect. Red dyewood bore the name “brazil” in the early Middle Ages, a word derived, Humboldt believed, 74 by translation from the Arabic bakkam of like meaning, on record in the ninth century. He notes that Brazir, one form of the name, as we have

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Free Distribution of the Name on Early Maps

Free Distribution of the Name on Early Maps

But there is a curious phenomenon to be noticed—the free distribution of this name among sea islands, especially of the Azores archipelago, from an early date. Thus the Pizigani map of 1367 81 applies it with slight change of spelling not only to the original disc-form Brazil west of Ireland and to a mysterious crescent-form island, which must be Mayda, but to what is plainly meant for Terceira of the main middle group of the Azores ( Fig. 2 ). The Spanish Friar, naming Brazil in his island list

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Location and Shape of the Island

Location and Shape of the Island

The circular form of Brazil and its location westward of southern Ireland are affirmed by many maps, including Dalorto, 1325 ( Fig. 4 ); Dulcert, 1339; 87 Laurenziano-Gaddiano, 1351; 88 Pizigani, 1367 ( Fig. 2 ); anonymous Weimar map, probably about 1481; 89 Giraldi, 1426; 90 Beccario, 1426 91 and 1435 92 ( Fig. 20 ); Juan da Napoli, perhaps 1430; 93 Bianco, 1436 and 1448; 94 Valsequa, 1439; 95 Pareto, 1455 96 ( Fig. 21 ); Roselli, 1468; 97 Benincasa, 1482 98 ( Fig. 22 ); Juan de la Cosa, 1500;

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Significant Shape on the Catalan Map of 1375

Significant Shape on the Catalan Map of 1375

But the celebrated Catalan map of 1375 100 above mentioned introduced a significant novelty, converting the disc into an annulus of land—of course, still circular—surrounding a circular body of water dotted with islets ( Fig. 5 ). The preferred explanation thus far advanced connects these islets with the Seven Cities of Portuguese and Spanish legend. 101 But there seem to be nine islands, not seven, and it is not clear what necessary relation exists between isles and cities nor whence the idea i

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Possible Identification with the Gulf of St. Lawrence Region

Possible Identification with the Gulf of St. Lawrence Region

Now, in all the Atlantic Ocean and its shores there is one region, and one only, which thus incloses a sheet of water having islands in its expanse, and this region lies in the very direction indicated on the old maps for Brazil. I allude to the projecting elbow of northeastern North America, which most nearly approaches Europe and has Cape Race for its apex. Its front is made up of Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. The remainder of the circuit is made up of what we now call southern Labrador

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The Catalan Map of about 1480

The Catalan Map of about 1480

More important in every way is a Catalan map ( Fig. 7 ) preserved in Milan and reproduced by Nordenskiöld in 1892, 111 but since copied partly by Nansen, by Westropp, and by others. It belongs to the fifteenth century—perhaps about 1480—and deserves clearly to rank as the only map before Columbus, thus far reported, which shows a part of North America other than Greenland. The latter had long before appeared in the well-known map of Claudius Clavus, 1427 112 ( Fig. 16 ), no doubt on the faith of

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The Sylvanus Map of 1511

The Sylvanus Map of 1511

The fact is, this matter does not rest in supposition only, for the thing has undoubtedly happened. The map of Sylvanus, 113 1511, brings the Gulf of St. Lawrence and surroundings as an insular body almost as near Ireland as are many of the presentations of Brazil Island on older maps. He shows in front a single large island; a square gulf behind it; a bent shore line forming the border on the north, west, and south; and two gaps well representing the Straits of Belle Isle and Cabot. The names g

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Omission of the Name in Norse and Irish Records

Omission of the Name in Norse and Irish Records

It may seem strange that the Norse sagas do not mention Brazil by that name, though its relation to the Scandinavian colony of Greenland is made so conspicuous on the Catalan fifteenth-century map above referred to; also that there is no distinct Irish record of any voyage to Brazil as such, though the western ports of Ireland were natural points of departure and return for western voyages and though voyages to a far western Great Ireland are reported by the Norse from Irish sources. Perhaps the

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The Island of Brazil

The Island of Brazil

When Pedro de Ayala, Spanish Ambassador to Great Britain, found occasion in 1498 to report English exploring activities to Ferdinand and Isabella, he wrote: The people of Bristol have, for the last seven years, sent out every year two, three, or four light ships (caravels) in search of the island of Brasil and the seven cities. 115 There is indeed one well-attested voyage of 1480 conducted by well-known navigators, seeking this insular Brazil, and it was not the earliest. The first appearance of

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Antillia

Antillia

Antillia (variously spelled) was a home for the elusive cities more favored than Brazil by cartography and tradition. In 1474 Toscanelli, a cosmographer of Florence, being consulted by Christopher Columbus as to the prospects of a westward voyage, sent him a copy of a letter which he had written to a friend in the service of the King of Portugal. Its authenticity has been questioned, but it is still believed in by the majority of inquirers and may be accepted provisionally. In it occurs this pas

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The Legendary Home of Portuguese Refugees

The Legendary Home of Portuguese Refugees

However, there can be no doubt of Toscanelli’s meaning at an earlier date in the passage quoted. The same is true of Behaim’s globe (1492), though he discards the accepted form of Antillia. He appends a long inscription, translated by Ravenstein as follows: In the year 734 of Christ, when the whole of Spain had been won by the heathen (Moors) of Africa, the above island Antilia, called Septe citade (Seven cities), was inhabited by an archbishop from the Porto in Portugal, with six other bishops,

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Another Account

Another Account

The Portuguese historian Faria y Sousa has yet another version. According to Stevens’ translation: After Roderick’s defeat the Moors spread themselves over all the province, committing inhuman barbarities. * * * The chief resistance was at Merida. The defendants, many of whom were Portuguese, that being the Supreme Tribunal of Lusitania, were commanded by Sacaru, a noble Goth. Many brave actions passed at the siege, but at length there being no hopes of relief and provisions failing, the town wa

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Mythical Location of the Seven Cities on the Mainland

Mythical Location of the Seven Cities on the Mainland

The citations thus far given identify the Island of the Seven Cities with some legendary, but generally believed-in patch of land afar out in the ocean—sometimes with the Island of Brazil, more often with Antillia. But the earliest of them dates six or seven centuries after the supposed fact, and it may well be that a distinction was made at first, which became lost afterward by blending. In a still later stage of development the name of the Seven Cities becomes separate and strangely migratory,

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Later Reappearance As an Island

Later Reappearance As an Island

But the Island of the Seven Cities appeared as such on other maps and by this name only. Perhaps its most salient showing is on Desceliers’ fine map of 1546 132 ( Fig. 9 ), that entertaining repository of isles which are more than dubious and names which are fantastic. He presents it off the American coast about a third as far as the Bermudas and midway from Cape Breton to the Bay of Fundy. The size is considerable, the outline being deeply embayed on several sides and hence very irregular, almo

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Occurrence of the Name in the Azores

Occurrence of the Name in the Azores

The exception noted is well worth considering. Just as Terceira retains her medieval name of Brazil to designate one headland, St. Michaels has still its valley of the Seven Cities. Brown’s guidebook presents the fact very casually: “St. Michaels. Ponta Delgada. Brown’s Hotel. About ten people. Among the chief sights are the lava beds coming from Sete Cidades.... At Sete Cidades, which is worth a visit, there is a great crater with two lakes at the bottom, one of which appears to be green, the o

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Possible Arabic Origin of Name

Possible Arabic Origin of Name

If Mayda may, therefore, be said to belong in a sense to the twentieth century, it is none the less very old, and the name has sometimes been ascribed to an Arabic origin. Not very long after their conquest of Spain the Moors certainly sailed the eastern Atlantic quite freely and may well have extended their voyages into its middle waters and indefinitely beyond. They named some islands of the Azores, as would appear from Edrisi’s treatise and other productions; but these names did not adhere un

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Mayda and the Isle of Man

Mayda and the Isle of Man

We have, then, in this fourteenth-century island a direct recorded association with the Arabs, followed long after by what have been thought to be Arabic names. We have also a pictorial and cartographical connection with Brittany and also an indication of relations with Ireland. This last is fortified by its next and, except Mayda, its most lasting name. The great Catalan map of 1375 144 ( Fig. 5 ) calls it Mam, which should doubtless be read as Man, for it was common to treat “m” and “n” as int

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Resumption of Name “Mayda”

Resumption of Name “Mayda”

On sixteenth-century maps this island is still generally presented, though lacking on those of Ruysch, 1508; 158 Coppo, 1528 159 ( Fig. 13 ); and Ribero, 1529; 160 but suddenly and almost completely the name Mayda in its various forms takes the place of Man, a substitution quite unaccounted for. There are hardly enough instances of survival of the older name to be worth mentioning. Was there some resuscitation of old records or charts, now lost again, which thus overcame the Celtic claim and sup

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Transference of Mayda To American Waters

Transference of Mayda To American Waters

The maps made after the world had become more or less familiarized with the details of modern discoveries, in this case as in most others of its kind, indicate little except the dying out of old traditions, whatever they may have been, and haphazard or conventional substitution of locations and forms or the influence of the new geographic facts and theories. Thus Desceliers’ map of 1546 163 ( Fig. 9 ), a museum of strangely-named sea islands, makes the latitude of “Maidas” 47° and the longitude

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Possible Identity of Vlaenderen Island with Mayda

Possible Identity of Vlaenderen Island with Mayda

There is another curious and rather mystifying episodical divergence in the cartography of that period, this time on the part of the great geographers Ortelius and Mercator in their respective series of maps during the latter part of the sixteenth century, for example Ortelius of 1570 168 and Mercator of 1587. 169 Ortelius presents as Vlaenderen an oceanic island which certainly seems intended for Mayda ( Fig. 10 ), while Mercator shows Vlaenderen as lying about half-way between Brazil and the u

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Persistence of Mayda on Maps Down to the Modern Period

Persistence of Mayda on Maps Down to the Modern Period

There would be little profit in listing the maps of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries which persisted by inertia and convention in the nearly stereotyped delineation of Mayda but, of course, with slight variations in location and name. Thus Nicolaas Vischer in a map of Europe of 1670 (?) 170 shows “L’as Maidas” in the longitude of Madeira and the latitude of Brittany; a world map in Robert’s “Atlas Universel” (1757) 171 gives “I. Maida” about the longitude of Madeira and the

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Probable Basis of Fact Underlying This Legendary Island

Probable Basis of Fact Underlying This Legendary Island

What was this island, then, which held its place in the maps during half a millennium and more, under two chief names and occasional substitutes, designations apparently received from so many different peoples? One cannot easily set it aside as a “peculiar appearance of the surface” or as a mere figment of fancy. But there is nothing westward or southwestward of the Azores except the Bermudas and the capes and coast islands of America. The identification with some outlying island of the Azores,

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Adam of Bremen’s Account of Greenland

Adam of Bremen’s Account of Greenland

He interviewed in 1069 the enterprising king Sweyn of Denmark, and acquired from him divers Scandinavian and other northern items which Adam embodied about 1076 in his work “Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis,” the Description of the Northern Islands. Nansen quotes, with other matter, the following passages: 175 ... On the north this ocean flows past the Orchades, thence endlessly around the circle of the earth, having on the left Hybernia, the home of the Scots, which is now called Ireland, and on

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Its Insular Character

Its Insular Character

Adam’s idea of oceanic insulation was accepted in many quarters, as the maps disclose. Of course, they may not have derived it from him in all instances, directly or indirectly, but at least they shared it. Usually the name, slightly changed, becomes the equivalent “Green Island” in one or another of several languages. Thus, to take a very late instance, the map of Coppo, 1528 176 ( Fig. 13 ), discloses near the true site of Greenland a mass of land elongated from east to west, but clearly all a

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As “Illa Verde” on the Catalan Map of 1480

As “Illa Verde” on the Catalan Map of 1480

In another well-known map 177 ( Fig. 7 ), an unnamed cartographer, said to be Catalan, probably about 1480, delineates an elongated Illa Verde (using the Portuguese name for island), locating it southwest of Iceland, which bears the name Fixlanda, but is easily identifiable by its outline and geographical features. His Illa Verde runs nearly north and south, approximating more closely than Coppo’s island the true trend of Greenland. It also by its greater bulk seems founded on more adequate info

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Green Island on Sixteenth-Century Maps

Green Island on Sixteenth-Century Maps

To the same origin, in a remoter sense, we may ascribe the rather large Insula Viridis of Schöner, 1520, 179 which is brought down to a latitude between that of southern Ireland and that of northern Spain and something east of mid-ocean. It must seem that the map-maker had quite lost sight of any relation between this Latinized Green Island and the true Greenland of the northwest. This is even more obviously true of Nicolay’s map of 1560 180 ( Fig. 6 ), which carries Verde into the Newfoundland

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Various “Green Islands:” Shrinkage of the Name

Various “Green Islands:” Shrinkage of the Name

There is, indeed, one instance of a Green Island with which Greenland can have had nothing whatever to do. Peter Martyr d’Anghiera’s sketch map of 1511 182 shows a small tropical Isla Verde near Trinidad; it is apparently Tobago. Doubtless its luxuriance of vegetation prompted the name. This may have happened in other instances of warm climates or even in temperate zones where grass and foliage grow freely; so that we in many cases cannot distinguish on the maps the Green Islands, real or fancif

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Origin of the Name “Greenland” and Its Justification

Origin of the Name “Greenland” and Its Justification

There can be no doubt that the Down East sea captain, who was so quick to perceive green vegetation on his fancied Green Island, came nearer the true explanation of Greenland’s name than the good prebendary of Bremen with his bluish-green Norsemen colored by the sea. It is pretty well understood that about 985 or 986 Eric Rauda (Eric the Red, or Ruddy), the first explorer and colonizer of this new region, applied the name at least partly as an advertisement of fertility and promising conditions

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Icelandic Settlement

Icelandic Settlement

It was on this strip of land that the Icelanders settled at the end of the tenth century. Though barren on the outer shores and islands and on the hills, it is covered at the inner part of the fiords on the low level by a rich growth of grass together with stunted birch trees and various bushes, particularly willows. On the north side of the valleys crowberries ( Empetrum nigrum ) may be found.... Eric settled in Ericsfiord, the present Tunugdliarfik, at a place which he called Brattahlid, now K

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Greenland as a Peninsula

Greenland as a Peninsula

We must remember, though, that during the earlier part of this period there were not many maps extant which included the Atlantic, and of these the greater number were more concerned with theological conceptions and figures of wonder than with the sober facts of geography, especially in remote places. About 1300 a remarkable series of navigators’ portolan maps, revolutionizing this attitude, began to add to the delineation of the Mediterranean, which they had already developed with considerable

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Life of the Icelandic Colony

Life of the Icelandic Colony

To hark back to Adam of Bremen, the charges of special cruelty and predatory attacks on seafarers in the middle of the eleventh century awaken some surprise. The life of the people seems simple and innocent enough, as disclosed by their relics and remnants, which have been unearthed with great care. As seal bones predominate in their refuse piles, this offshore supply must have been their greatest reliance for animal food; but they had also sheep, goats, and a small breed of cattle. They spun wo

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Explorations of Early Greenlanders

Explorations of Early Greenlanders

But in seamanship and exploration their achievements, considering their numbers and resources, were really wonderful. All experts agree that Eric’s first exploration was daring, skillful, persistent, and exhaustive, according to the best modern standards, and that his selection of settlement sites was exceedingly judicious; in fact, could not have been improved upon. Then followed in less than twenty years the discovery of the American mainland by Eric’s son Leif (or, as some say, by one Biarni,

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The Eskimos

The Eskimos

The Eskimos (Skraelings) are referred to in this account as if already known to the settlers, though uncertain as to their home quarters and mysterious in their coming and going. Probably there had been some contact, not wholly friendly, between outranging members of the two races. The Historia Norvegiae, 197 a manuscript of the same century discovered in Scotland, says: Beyond the Greenlanders toward the north their hunters came across a kind of small people called Skraelings. When they are wou

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First Norse Account, In Hauk’s Book

First Norse Account, In Hauk’s Book

The earliest manuscript of the first distinct account of the Norse Markland is included in the compilation known as Hauk’s Book, 200 from Hauk Erlendsson, for whom and partly by whom it was prepared, necessarily before his death in 1334, but probably after he was given a certain title in 1305. Perhaps 1330 may mark the time of its completion. Along with divers other documents, it copies from some unknown original the saga of Eric the Red, sometimes called the saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni, an ances

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Another Account, In the Arna-Magnaean Manuscript

Another Account, In the Arna-Magnaean Manuscript

Beside Hauk’s Book, there is a corroborative, independent, but almost identical manuscript copy of the saga—No. 557 of the Arna-Magnaean collection at Copenhagen. This saga 201 tells us: Thence they sailed away beyond the Bear Islands with northerly winds. They were out two daegr (days); then they discovered land and rowed thither in boats and explored the country and found there many flat stones ( hellur ) so large that two men could well spurn soles upon them [lie at full length upon them, sol

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Later Derivative Records

Later Derivative Records

There is great verisimilitude in the Karlsefni narrative and these later derivative records. Their geography agrees convincingly with the facts of the actual coast line from north to south—namely, first a desolate region, cold, bare, and stony, the appropriate home of Arctic foxes; secondly, a game-haunted and very wild forest land, untempting to settlement, unhopeful for agriculture, but a hunter’s paradise; thirdly, the warmer country to the south, well suited to cultivation and even producing

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Labrador as Markland

Labrador as Markland

Some have urged that the southern part of Labrador may have been Markland; but its trees of any considerable size are to be found only by following up inlets far into the interior where the Arctic current has less power to chill; there is nothing to indicate that conditions were very different then in this regard; and to judge by the narrative itself we must not conceive of the Norse visitors as pausing to explore deeply without allurement, but rather as hastening down the shore in quest of warm

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Nova Scotia as Markland

Nova Scotia as Markland

Certainly this might involve the inclusion of Nova Scotia in the second of the three regions; and there have been many to champion this peninsula as distinctively Markland. But other features of Nova Scotia attracted the attention of Karlsefni’s party and gave parts of that land an individuality distinguished from that of the forest country. The great cape Kjalarness, which seems to have been the northern horn of Cape Breton Island, and the exceedingly long strands, which may now be represented

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Intercourse between Greenland and Markland

Intercourse between Greenland and Markland

No doubt it is surprising, in view of the deep impression which Markland obviously made on the Norsemen from near-by treeless Greenland and Iceland, to find so few subsequent references to the name or indications of a knowledge of the region. There is a well-known and often cited instance recorded in Icelandic annals—in one instance nearly contemporary—of a small Greenland vessel storm-driven to Iceland in 1347, after having visited Markland, the latter name being presented in a matter-of-course

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Brazil Island in the Place of Markland

Brazil Island in the Place of Markland

The name Brazil given to this island on the map and its disk-like form link it to the long series, already discussed, of “Brazil islands,” approximately in the latitude of Newfoundland, on the medieval maps, beginning with that of Dalorto of 1325 209 ( Fig. 4 ). Usually, as in this last instance, they have the circular form—sometimes, however, being annular, with an island-studded lake or gulf inside, and sometimes being divided into two parts by a curved channel. Usually, too, the station of th

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The Zeno Narrative

The Zeno Narrative

There is perhaps no other news of Markland before it became Newfoundland, unless we may put some glimmer of faith in the much-discussed Zeno narrative 213 (Ch. IX), which embodies the tale of an Orkney islander wrecked on the shore of Estotiland (perhaps the name was first written Escociland—Scotland) a little before the opening of the fifteenth century. He professed to have found there a people having some of the rudiments of civilization and carrying on trade with Greenland, but ignorant of th

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The Zeno Volume

The Zeno Volume

In the year 1558 a volume was printed by Marcolino at Venice, purporting to give an account of “The Discovery of the Islands of Frislanda, Eslanda, Engroneland, Estotiland, and Icaria made by two brothers of the Zeno family, Messire Nicolò the Chevalier and Messire Antonio.” 215 Some of the islands named in the book are omitted from this title; and the word “Discovery” must have been used with willful inexactness, for Greenland (Engroneland) had been in Norse occupancy for centuries, and Shetlan

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First Use of the Names “Estotiland” and “Drogio”

First Use of the Names “Estotiland” and “Drogio”

The two names “Estotiland” and “Drogio” are supplied by a story within a story, an alleged yarn of a fisherman, reporting to his island ruler, whom the elder Zeno served. Obviously, the chances of lapse from truth are multiplied. Either the later Nicolò or his ancestor of more than a century and a half before may have wholly invented or more or less transformed it; or the first narrator may have created his tale out of no real happenings or have so distorted it by mistake or willful imposture as

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Geographical Implication of the Narrative

Geographical Implication of the Narrative

In spite of plain geographical indications in the above recital, Estotiland has been located by some random or oversubtle conjectures in the strangest and most widely scattered places, including even parts of the British Isles. But a region a thousand miles west of the Faroes or any other Atlantic islands can be nothing but American, and the restriction of its commerce to Greenland, apparently as a next neighbor, points very clearly (as Estotiland) to that outjutting elbow of North America, whic

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Conjectures as to the Derivation of “Estotiland”

Conjectures as to the Derivation of “Estotiland”

Evidently this map-maker attributed the name Estotiland to the Norsemen of Greenland on the faith of the fisherman’s story, for no other Scandinavians can be supposed to have fastened a name on the region in question. But, barring the last syllable, which is a common affix, the name has an Italian sound rather than Scandinavian. “East-out-land” has been suggested as a derivation, but why in this instance should either Norse or Italian borrow an English name? Another suggestion requires the use o

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The Estotilanders

The Estotilanders

Ortelius, in crediting the discovery of the New World to the Norsemen, seems to identify Estotiland with Vinland. 222 He was so far right that the fisherman’s account of the people of Estotiland was evidently composed by some one acquainted with the mistaken ideal of Vinland, or Wineland, which pictured it a permanent Norse offshoot from Greenland, perhaps slowly deteriorating but still possessed of a city and library, letters and the ordinary useful arts of at least a primitive northern white c

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Drogio

Drogio

The tale is of a prolonged residence among these alleged relatively advanced Estotiland people, followed by a much longer wandering sojourn, mostly as a captive, in a great “new world” southwest of it and a final escape. Drogio (also spelled “Drogeo” and “Droceo” on some maps) was the region through which this continental territory was entered. It is plainly an island, to judge by the maps; but, according to the narrative, it should be close inshore, since no mention is made of water being cross

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Discrepancies in the Narrative of the Fisherman

Discrepancies in the Narrative of the Fisherman

There is this to be said for the last-mentioned speculation and some others, that the statements concerning the mainland natives are plainly prompted by Spanish accounts of certain naked and cannibalistic denizens of the tropics, when not due to the experience of Cortés and his companions among the teocallis and ceremonial sacrifices of the Aztecs. That any one starting from Nova Scotia or thereabout could have reached southern or at least central Mexico and returned alone must have struck even

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The Zeno Narrative Itself

The Zeno Narrative Itself

For the story above considered enters the Zeno narrative only as the incentive to a voyage of exploration which failed of its aim; and it is nowhere alleged, unless in the title, that either of the Zeno brothers discovered anything American. Each of them, it says, visited Greenland, but that needed no discovery. Briefly summarized, the Zeno story is that the elder Nicolò, being an adventurous wanderer like many of his countrymen, was shipwrecked about 1380 on the island of Frisland and taken int

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R. H. Major’s Study of the Zeno Narrative

R. H. Major’s Study of the Zeno Narrative

Major endeavored to end the long-standing discussion as to the authenticity of the map and the narrative of voyages by an elaborate and ingenious study, on the hypothesis of an honestly intended reproduction, the various additions, interpolations, and changes being due partly to misunderstandings by the original Zeno brothers, partly to injuries accidentally inflicted by the compiler and inaccurately repaired, and partly to extraneous matter of illustration and ornament, which the later Nicolò Z

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The Work of F. W. Lucas

The Work of F. W. Lucas

Lucas, writing some years afterward, with the benefit of recently discovered maps and information, has chosen this destructive alternative for nearly the whole Zeno narration: denying that Nicolò Zeno had any map of a former generation to restore; styling his own keenly critical and exhaustive production “an indictment,” and branding the book under consideration as a forgery throughout—with, necessarily, some true things in it. He has gone far toward making good his case. Some things not fully a

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A Monastery in the Arctic

A Monastery in the Arctic

The Zeno account of the monastery of St. Thomas is very extended and particular, going into details of daily life, artificial agriculture, and traffic. It is the sublimation of cultivation in hothouse conditions (of volcanic origin), located far up within the Arctic Circle at a particularly repellent point, where no man has ever lived or perhaps will live hereafter. Lucas tries to explain the account—which is interesting in its own way with a certain wild and preposterous plausibility—by reminis

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The Zeno Map

The Zeno Map

A glance at the Zeno map ( Fig. 19 ) discloses a good approximation to the general outline, trend, and taper of Greenland, with certain features which imply information. For a long time it was thought that no earlier source existed from which this could have been drawn by Zeno the compiler. But of later years other fifteenth-century maps showing Greenland have been discovered in various libraries, notably four by Nordenskiöld, 228 out of which or out of others like them Zeno could certainly have

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Frisland

Frisland

It was, and is, so common to use “land” as a final syllable for island names (witness Iceland, Shetland, and the rest) that “Ferisland” would easily be derived from the form of the name last given and would be as readily contracted into “Frisland.” We find the latter (Frislanda), indeed, on the map of Cantino (1502) 233 and in the life of Columbus ascribed to his son Ferdinand. 234 There seems no doubt of its very early use for a northern island or islands; apparently primarily for the Faroe gro

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Icaria

Icaria

Again, when Earl Zichmni and Antonio Zeno with their little flotilla, fired by the fisherman’s American experiences, strike westward from Frisland for Estotiland they, indeed, do not reach that goal but do attain by accident the mysterious Icaria and find themselves where Greenland can be and is reached without much difficulty. Now, on the map ( Fig. 19 ), Icaria, about the size of Shetland, is the most westerly of all the islands not distinctly American. Draw a straight line from Iceland to Est

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Influence of Imaginary Cartography

Influence of Imaginary Cartography

It may be true that the elder Zeno brothers served for a time under some northern island ruler, whose name the later Nicolò Zeno read and copied as the impossible Zichmni; that they then visited various countries and islands, possibly including the surviving but dwindling Greenland settlement; that one of them heard in general outline the adventures of a fisherman or minor mariner cast away at two points of the American coast; and that a futile attempt was thereupon made by their patron to explo

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Antillia

Antillia

A good many decades before the New World became known as such, Antillia was recognized as a legitimate geographical feature. A comparatively late and generally familiar instance of such mention occurs in Toscanelli’s letter of 1474 to Columbus, 237 recommending this island as a convenient resting point on the sea route to Cathay. Its authenticity has been questioned, notably by the venerable and learned Henry Vignaud, 238 but at least some one wrote it and in it reflected the viewpoint of the ti

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Peter Martyr’s Identification of Antillia

Peter Martyr’s Identification of Antillia

Both of these representations show Antillia far in the ocean dissociated from any other land, but in the work of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, contemporary and historian of Columbus, writing before 1511, we have an explicit identification as part of a well-known group or archipelago. He has been narrating the discovery of Cuba and Hispaniola and proceeds: Turning, therefore, the stems of his ships toward the east, he assumed that he had found Ophir, whither Solomon’s ships sailed for gold, but, the d

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Other Identifications

Other Identifications

Peter Martyr was not alone in his identification of the “islands of Antillia.” Canerio’s map, 243 attributed to 1502, names the large West India group “Antilhas del Rey de Castella,” though giving the name Isabella to the chief island; and another map of about the same date (anonymous) 244 gives them the collective title of Antilie, though calling the Queen of the Antilles Cuba, as now. A later map, 245 probably about 1518, varies the first form slightly to “Atilhas [i. e. Antilhas] de Castela”

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An Antillia of the Mainland

An Antillia of the Mainland

Again, at a much later time, when the exploration of the South American coast line had proceeded far enough to demonstrate the existence of a continent, some one speculated, it would seem, concerning an Antillia of the mainland. One of the maps 248 in the portolan atlas in the British Museum known as Egerton MS. 2803 bears the word “Antiglia” running from north to south at a considerable distance west of the mouth of the Amazon, apparently about where would now be the southeastern part of Venezu

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The Origin of the Name

The Origin of the Name

Naturally the origin of the word has been found a fascinating problem. Ever since Formaleoni, 250 near the close of the eighteenth century, called attention to the delineation of Antillia in Bianco’s map of 1436, discussed below, as indicating some knowledge of America, there have been those to urge the claims of the suppositional lost Atlantis instead. The two island names certainly begin with “A” and utilize “t,” “l,” and “i” about equally; but “Atlantis” comes so easily out of “Atlas,” and th

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Humboldt’s Hypothesis

Humboldt’s Hypothesis

Humboldt, in rejecting this hypothesis, advanced another, which is picturesque and ingenious but hardly better supported. 252 His choice is “Al-tin,” Arabic for “the dragon.” Undoubtedly Arabs navigated to some extent some parts of the great Sea of Darkness, and these monsters were among its generally credited terrors. The hardly decipherable inscriptions in the neighborhood of an island on the map of the Pizigani of 1367 253 ( Fig. 2 ), as we have seen (Ch. VI), seem to cite Arabic experience i

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The Weimar Map

The Weimar Map

Nordenskiöld, practically applying his test of the presence of Antillia and arranging his materials in chronological order, heads his list of “The Oldest Maps of the New Hemisphere” 254 with the anonymous map preserved in the Grand Ducal library in Weimar and credited to 1424. 255 But it seems that this map does not deserve that position, for it is not entitled to the date; Humboldt, inspecting the original, made out certain fragments of words and the Roman characters for that year on a band run

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The Beccario Map of 1426

The Beccario Map of 1426

The second map on Nordenskiöld’s New World list is “Becharius 1426,” a Latinization of the surname of Battista Beccario and at least not so weird a transformation as Humboldt’s “Beclario or Bedrazio.” Apparently the year of this map has not been doubted, but there is a lack of first-hand evidence that the original contains Antillia. No reproduction of this map had been published prior to the writer’s paper on St. Brendan’s Islands in the July, 1919, Geographical Review , nor, so far as is known,

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The Beccario Map of 1435

The Beccario Map of 1435

The addition to fifteenth-century geography of a great group of large western islands roughly corresponding to a part of the West Indies and Florida rests mainly on the testimony of the following maps now to be discussed: Beccario 1435, Bianco 1436, Pareto 1455, Roselli 1468, Benincasa 1482, and the anonymous Weimar map probably by Freducci and dating somewhere after 1481. Of these the most complete as well as the earliest is Beccario’s 256 ( Fig. 20 ). He gives the islands the collective title

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The Four Islands of the Antilles on the Beccario Map

The Four Islands of the Antilles on the Beccario Map

This group, or more properly series—for three of them are strung out in a line—comprises the four islands Antillia, Reylla, Salvagio, and I in Mar. All these names have meaning, easy to render....

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Antillia

Antillia

The largest and most southerly, Antillia, the “opposite island,” which I take to be no other than Cuba, is shown as an elongated, very much conventionalized parallelogram, extending from the latitude of Morocco a little south of the Strait of Gibraltar to that of northern Portugal. As Humboldt says, it is about a third as wide as it is long; and in this respect it is singularly even throughout its length. In its eastern front there are four bays, and three in its western. The intervals on each s

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Reylla

Reylla

Behind the lower part of Antillia, much as Jamaica is behind the eastern or lower part of Cuba, and about in similar proportions of relative area, Beccario shows a smaller but, nevertheless, considerable island, pentagonal in outline, mainly square in body, with a low westward-pointing broad-based triangular extension. He gives it the impressive name of Reylla, King Island, not ill suited to the royal beauty of that mountainous gem of the seas....

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Salvagio

Salvagio

North of Antillia and nearly in line with it, but at a rather wide interval, he shows Saluagio or Salvagio (“u” and “v” being equivalent), which has the same name then long given to a wild and rocky cluster of islets between Madeira and the Canaries, that still bears it in the form Salvages. Wherever applied the name is bound to denote some form of savageness; perhaps “Savage Island” is an adequate rendering, the second word being understood. This Salvagio imitates the general form of Antillia o

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I in Mar

I in Mar

The inclined northern end of Salvagio is divided by a narrow sea belt from I in Mar, which has approximately a crescent form and a bulk not very different from that commonly ascribed at that time to Madeira. “I,” of course, stands for Insula or one of its derivatives, such as Illa, a word or initial applied or omitted at will. “Island in the Sea” is probably the true rendering, though formerly the initial and the two words were sometimes blended, as Tanmar or Danmar, to the confusion of geograph

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The Roselli Map of 1468

The Roselli Map of 1468

The Roselli map of 1468, 257 the property of the Hispanic Society of America, New York City, is nearly as complete as the Beccario map of 1435. It lacks only the western part of Reylla (a name here corrupted into “roella”), by the reason of the limitations of the material. These maps were generally drawn on parchment made of lambskin with the narrow neck of the skin presented toward the west, perhaps as the quarter in which unavoidable omissions were thought to do the least harm. Because of the

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The Bianco Map of 1436

The Bianco Map of 1436

The Bianco map of 1436 258 ( Fig. 25 ) was the first of the Antillia maps to attract attention in quite modern times but has suffered far worse than Roselli’s in the matter of limitation. The border of the material cuts off all but Antillia and the lower end of Salvagio, to which Bianco has given the strange name of La Man (or Mao) Satanaxio, generally translated “The Hand of Satan” but believed by Nordenskiöld to be rather a corruption of a saint’s name, perhaps that of St. Anastasio. It remain

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The Pareto Map of 1455

The Pareto Map of 1455

Pareto, 1455, has a very interesting and elaborate map 259 ( Fig. 21 ) showing Antillia, Reylla, and I in Mar (the latter without name) in the orthodox size, shape, and position, but with a great gap between Antillia and I in Mar where Salvagio should be. Very likely it was there once. Perhaps this is another case of fading away. One doubts whether the loss might not still be retrieved by more powerful magnifying glasses and close study of the significant interval. Pareto is unmistakably disclos

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The Benincasa Map of 1482

The Benincasa Map of 1482

Benincasa’s map of 1482 260 ( Fig. 22 ) presents Salvagio as Saluaga, and I in Mar without name, but omits Reylla, both name and figure. The islands shown are in their accepted form and arrangement, except that Saluaga has but two bays on the western side, and his map adds a novelty in a series of names applied to the several bays, or the regions adjoining them, of the two larger islands. These names ( Fig. 22 ) are twelve in number and seem like the fanciful work of some Portuguese who was haun

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The Weimar Map (after 1481)

The Weimar Map (after 1481)

The Weimar map, 261 though long carefully housed, has suffered blurring and fading with some other damage in its earlier history. It is evidently a late representative of the tradition and begins to wander slightly from the accepted standard. It has been curtailed also from the beginning, like Bianco’s map of 1436, by the limitations of the border, which in this instance cuts off the lower part of Antillia, though the name is nearly intact; but enough remains to indicate a reduced relative size

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The Laon Globe of 1493

The Laon Globe of 1493

The Laon globe, 262 1493, though mainly older, certainly had room enough, but it appears to have formed part of some mechanism and to have had only a secondary or incidental, and in part rather careless, application to geography. It shows two elongated islands, Antela and Salirosa, undoubtedly meant for Antillia and Salvagio. Perhaps the globe maker had at command only a somewhat defaced specimen of a map like Bianco’s or that of Weimar, showing perforce only two islands, and merely copied them,

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Other Maps

Other Maps

It may seem strange that certain other notable maps, for example Giraldi 1426, 263 Valsequa 1439, 264 and Fra Mauro 1459, 265 show nothing of Antillia and its neighbors. Perhaps the makers were not interested in these far western parts of the ocean, or the narratives on which Beccario and the rest based their maps had not reached them; more likely they were skeptical and unwilling to commit themselves. It is also true that the Antillia of Beccario and others is made to extend nearly north and so

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Identity of Antillia with the Antilles

Identity of Antillia with the Antilles

A more difficult question is raised by the absence of Haiti and Porto Rico from these maps, with all the more eastward Antilles. But it is possible that they may not have been visited or even seen. We can imagine an expedition that would touch Great Abaco, coast along Florida and Cuba, and visit Jamaica, returning out of sight, or with little notice, of the Haitian coast and barely passing an islet or two of the Bahamas, which, if not sufficiently commemorated in a general way by Insula in Mar,

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Origin of the Name

Origin of the Name

Flores, the island of flowers, thus prettily renamed by the Portuguese, is referred to as the rabbit island, Li Conigi, in the fourteenth-century maps and records; but Corvo has always borne, in substance, the same name, one of the oldest on the Atlantic. Probably the very first instance of its use is in the Book of the Spanish Friar, 267 written about 1350 (the author says he was born in 1305), rather recently published in Spanish and since translated for the Hakluyt Society publications by Sir

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Ancient Memorials

Ancient Memorials

But Corvo has even more ancient traditions and associations, Diodorus Siculus, 272 in the first century before the Christian era, wrote of a great Atlantic island, probably Madeira, which the Etrurians coveted during their period of sea power; but the Carthaginians, its first discoverers, prohibited them, wishing to keep it for their own uses. If the Etrurians were thus well informed concerning one island of these eastern Atlantic archipelagoes, it is a fair conjecture that they had visited the

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Equestrian Statues

Equestrian Statues

Furthermore, Corvo is one of several Atlantic islands reputed to have been marked by monuments generally of one type. Edrisi 276 knows of them in Al-Khalidat, the Fortunate Isles—bronze westward-facing statues on tall columnar pedestals. There are said to have been six such in all, the nearest being at Cadiz. Tradition places an equestrian statue also on the island of Terceira, as repeated in a much more modern work. 277 The Pizigani map of 1367, it will be remembered, shows ( Fig. 2 ) near wher

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Need of Exploration

Need of Exploration

There seems still a good deal of vagueness about the matter, and Corvo might well be given a thorough overhauling for vestiges of ancient times. This naturally should be extended to the submerged area close to the shore, for the outlying reefs and ridges may mark the site of lower lands where human work once went on and where its traces and relics may remain. In expanse the island probably was not always what we find it now, six miles in length by at most three in breadth (seven square miles in

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The Discovery of Buss

The Discovery of Buss

The “Sunken Island of Buss” presents a suggestion of engulfment on a more extensive scale. The whole episode is of rather recent date, Buss being the latest born of mythical or illusory islands, unless we except Negra’s Rock and other alleged and unproven apparitions of land on a very small scale, which may not have wholly ceased even yet. Buss is, at any rate, the one moderately large phantom map island the time and occasion of whose origin are securely recorded. For, as narrated by Best and pu

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Its Disappearance from the Map

Its Disappearance from the Map

The only other witnesses to the visual existence of the island, so far as recorded, were James Hall (probably by honest mistake) in 1606 and Thomas Shepherd (gravely distrusted) in 1671. 292 Nevertheless an impressive insular figure grew up in the maps, bearing the name “Buss” to commemorate the vessel that first found it. In some instances it was made a very large island indeed. Shepherd’s map, reproduced herewith ( Fig. 24 ), was accompanied by a brief descriptive narrative which may be attrib

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Islands of Demons

Islands of Demons

Somewhat allied by nature to these reported isles of destruction and disappearance are the islands of imported diabolism, appearing on maps now and then through the centuries. Bianco’s “The Hand of Satan” (1436 295 ; Fig. 25 ), if correctly translated (see Ch. X, p. 156 ), is probably the first to present this quality. He locates the sinister island well to the southward; but the most pictorial appearance is Gastaldi’s (for Ramusio) “Island of Demons,” 296 with its eager and capering imps at the

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Saintly Islands

Saintly Islands

Much farther south, on the lines followed by Columbus and his Latin successors and in the tracks of vessels plying between the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes and the West Indies, what may be considered as a contrary impulse—that of exultant religious enthusiasm—came into play in island naming. The Island of the Seven Cities (Ch. V) will be recalled but needs no further consideration here. St. Anne, La Catholique, St. X, and Incorporado (in the sense of Christ’s Incarnation) are among the more co

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Daculi and Bra

Daculi and Bra

On the other side of the Atlantic the much earlier map island Daculi must be reckoned as of kin to them, since its map legends deal with beneficent wonder working or magical medical aid, and its name may be identical with or have originated the saintly one which still denotes an outlying Hebridean island. Though less renowned than the island of Brazil and less significant, Daculi shares with it the record for first appearance of mythical islands on portolan maps. Dalorto’s map of 1325 303 ( Fig.

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Grocland, Helluland, etc.

Grocland, Helluland, etc.

On the western side of the Atlantic there are divers instances of island names given of old—sometimes with considerable changes of location, area, or outline, or of all three—to regions which we know quite otherwise. Some of these have been dealt with extensively already. Greenland has a lesser neighbor, Grocland, on its western side in divers sixteenth-century maps; which I take to be a magnified presentation of Disko or possibly a reflection of Baffin Land brought near. It appears conspicuousl

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Stokafixa

Stokafixa

Perhaps the latter explanation is the best yet given of the mysterious island Scorafixa, or Stokafixa, in Andrea Bianco’s map of 1436. 315 It has sometimes been understood as Newfoundland, which bore long afterward the name Bacalaos, the equivalent in a different tongue of the northern “stockfish,” our codfish. But it would naturally be freely applied to any island in rather high latitudes which was conspicuous for that fishery, and Stokafixa seems near of kin to Fixlanda, which figures on diver

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Other Map Islands in the Northwestern Atlantic

Other Map Islands in the Northwestern Atlantic

The Grand Banks and other banks of Newfoundland, with the Virgin Rocks and perhaps other piles or pinnacles rising from that bed nearly to the surface so as to be uncovered in some tides; Sable Island, a rather long way offshore; Cape Breton Island and fragments of the main shore—may be held responsible for some map islands such as Arredonda and Dobreton, Jacquet I., Monte Christo, I. de Juan, and Juan de Sampo. There are still other islands mostly north of the latitude of Bermuda and between it

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CHAPTER XIII SUMMARY

CHAPTER XIII SUMMARY

It seems neither practicable nor desirable to recapitulate minutely in this final chapter the rather numerous distinctive features of the present work; but attention may properly be directed to some of its salient conclusions. In stating them positively as below, here or elsewhere, I do not mean to be offensively dogmatic but to present concisely my own deductions from evidence which I have been at some pains to gather. Atlantis was a creation of philosophic romance, incited and aided by miscell

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