ESTOTILAND AND THE OTHER ISLANDS OF ZENO
Some of the well-known mythical or dubious map islands of the North
Atlantic make their entry into cartography very early indeed,
apparently as the contribution or record of otherwise forgotten
voyages, though we cannot say with certainty precisely when or how;
others, long afterward, were the products of mirage, ocean-surface
phenomena, or mariners’ fancies working under the suggestion of saintly
or demoniacal legends amid the hazes and perils of little-known seas,
the precise time of their origin remaining uncertain. As a rule the
latter class were less persistent on the maps and are geographically
rather unimportant.
In two cases, however, Estotiland and Drogio, we know the first
appearance of their names before the public, which is very probably
the first use of them among men. They derive a special interest from
being located in America and from an asserted journey by Europeans to
them more than a hundred years before the first voyage of Columbus.
The map which first shows them also displays divers other Atlantic
islands, either of unusual name or unusual location and area, not
conforming at all to the insular tracts of the North Atlantic basin as
we know them now. The fantastic exhibition as a whole had an immediate,
long-continuing, and considerable--almost revolutionary--effect on the
map-making of the world.
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 Shetland (Eslanda, Estland, or Estiland) was as
positively, though not as familiarly, known as Great Britain. But the
indication of aim and scope was sufficient.
The name of the author, or, as he calls himself, “the compiler,” was
not given; but he is generally recognized to have been the Nicolò Zeno
of a younger generation, a man of local prominence and a member of the
dominant Council of Ten of the Venetian republic. In 1561 he edited for
Ruscelli’s edition of Ptolemy, a subsequent edition of the map (Fig.
19) which is the volume’s most conspicuous feature. His account of the
Zeno book’s origin seems to have been accepted generally and promptly
among his own people, as also the general accuracy of its geography.
But, as Lucas remarks, “An adverse critic of a member of the Council of
Ten, in Venice, in the sixteenth century, would have been a remarkably
bold, not to say foolhardy, man.”[216] However, there are shelters and
places of seclusion from even the most arbitrary power; and it would
seem that the eminent younger Nicolò would hardly have the effrontery
to challenge the world in matters then easily susceptible of disproof
concerning his still more eminent ancestor and kinsman. Surely they
must have had some notable experiences in northern islands on the
reports of which he could rely in a general way, however erroneous or
fraudulent in some important features, though then first advancing the
transatlantic claim to discovery.
Moreover, the dread of the Council could not overshadow distant
geographers like Mercator and Ortelius, whose maps of 1569 and
1570[217] (cf. Fig. 10) almost eagerly embody the most distinctive
Zeno additions, giving them the greatest currency and implying some
sense of the general probability of discoveries by members of that
family. Estotiland and Drogio are very distinctly shown, the former
apparently as Newfoundland united to Labrador, the latter as a smaller
and more southern island which may well be Cape Breton Island, pushed a
bit offshore, but still not very far from the mainland.
[Illustration: FIG. 19--The map of the northern regions by the Zeno
brothers, 1558, showing Frisland, Estotiland, Icaria, and Drogio.
(After Lucas’ photographic facsimile.)]
There has been much discussion as to whether the book should be
regarded as wholly a forgery or not, as to the location of these
regions, and as to the derivation and meaning of the names; but all
agree that Estotiland and Drogio were not known before 1558.
Nicolò the compiler reports: “The sailing chart which I find, I still
have among our family antiquities and, though it is rotten with age,
I have succeeded with it tolerably well.” Just what this success
involved is an interesting question. It has been understood by his most
reasonable advocates to include conjectural restoration, such as the
deficiencies of rottenness seemed to call for, and somewhat more.
Nicolò the younger avers, further, that his ancestor Antonio wrote
a book recording his northern observations and many facts about
Greenland, but that the compiler as a boy had thoughtlessly destroyed
the book with other papers and that the Zeno narrative as he gives it
is made up from fragmentary letters of the elder Nicolò to Antonio
and of the latter to their brother, Carlo, remaining in Venice; which
letters by good fortune happened to survive.
Nobody except the younger Nicolò is asserted to have seen the map,
the letters, or any of the original documents; though his parents, it
would seem, must have been custodian of them before him, and he would
surely have been likely to display such precious evidences to some one
after awakening to their importance. But those were less critical and
exacting times than the present, and conceivably it may have been felt
that any corroboration would be superfluous. Yet the fact remains that
we are not informed of any means of testing the accuracy of restoration
or even of demonstrating that there was anything to restore.
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 to render it wholly unreliable. In its general
outlines it is by no means impossible; but neither would it have been
very difficult to compose such a yarn out of nothing but fancy and
the American information at the command of the younger Nicolò. It
comes to us through the medium of an alleged letter of his ancestor
Antonio, written home to the latter’s brother Carlo near the end of the
fifteenth century. With some slight compression, the narrative runs as
follows:
Six and twenty years ago four fishing boats put out to sea,
and, encountering a heavy storm, were driven over the sea in
utter helplessness for many days; when at length, the tempest
abating, they discovered an island called Estotiland, lying to
the westwards above one thousand miles from Frislanda. One of
the boats was wrecked, and six men that were in it were taken
by the inhabitants, and brought into a fair and populous city,
where the king of the place sent for many interpreters, but
there were none could be found that understood the language of
the fishermen, except one that spoke Latin, and who had also
been cast by chance upon the same island.... They ... remained
five years on the island, and learned the language. One of
them in particular visited different parts of the island, and
reports that it is a very rich country, abounding in all good
things. It is a little smaller than Iceland, but more fertile;
in the middle of it is a very high mountain, in which rise four
rivers which water the whole country.
The inhabitants are a very intelligent people, and possess
all the arts like ourselves; and it is to be believed that
in time past they have had intercourse with our people, for
he said that he saw Latin books in the king’s library, which
they at this present time do not understand. They have their
own language and letters. They have all kinds of metals, but
especially they abound with gold. Their foreign intercourse
is with Greenland, whence they import furs, brimstone and
pitch.... They have woods of immense extent. They make their
buildings with walls, and there are many towns and villages.
They make small boats and sail them, but they have not the
loadstone, nor do they know the north by the compass. For this
reason these fishermen were held in great estimation, insomuch
that the king sent them with twelve boats to the southwards to
a country which they call Drogio; but in their voyage they had
such contrary weather that they were in fear for their lives.
... They were taken into the country and the greater number
of them were eaten by the savages.... But as that fisherman
and his remaining companions were able to show them the way of
taking fish with nets, their lives were saved.... As this man’s
fame spread ... there was a neighboring chief who was very
anxious to have him with him ... he made war on the chief with
whom the fisherman then was, and ... at length overcame him,
and so the fisherman was sent over to him with the rest of his
company. During the space of thirteen years that he dwelt in
those parts, he says that he was sent in this manner to more
than five-and-twenty chiefs ... wandering up and down ... he
became acquainted with almost all those parts. He says that
it is a very great country, and, as it were, a new world; the
people are very rude and uncultivated, for they all go naked
and suffer cruelly from the cold, nor have they the sense to
clothe themselves with the skins of the animals which they take
in hunting. They have no kind of metal. They live by hunting,
and carry lances of wood, sharpened at the point. They have
bows, the strings of which are made of beasts’ skins. They are
very fierce, and have deadly fights amongst each other, and
eat one another’s flesh.... The farther you go southwestwards,
however, the more refinement you meet with, because the climate
is more temperate, and accordingly there they have cities and
temples dedicated to their idols, in which they sacrifice men
and afterwards eat them.
His fellow captives having decided to remain where they were,
he bade them farewell, and made his escape through the woods
in the direction of Drogio, ... where he spent three years.
[One day] some boats had arrived. He went down to the seaside,
and ... found they had come from Estotiland. [They took him
aboard as interpreter.] He afterwards traded in their company
to such good purpose that he became very rich, and, fitting out
a vessel of his own, returned to Frislanda.[218]
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, which culminates in Cape Race, south of Greenland
and thrust out toward Europe. The clear definition of it in the tale
as an island, largely explored by the narrator, approximating the size
of Iceland but more fertile, with mountainous interior, great forests
(such as gave the name Markland to Norse tradition), and rivers flowing
several ways, clearly indicates Newfoundland. The Zeno map accords with
this, and most of the later maps accept that identification--though
often with a great extension of territory. Thus a French map in the
United States National Museum,[219] having 1668 for an entry of
discovery and perhaps dating from about 1700, presents the whole
region southeast of Hudson Bay in an inscription as called Estotiland
by the Danes, Nouvelle Bretagne (New Britain) by the English, Canada
Septentrionale by the French, and Labrador by the Spanish; but here
again Labrador and Newfoundland may have been chiefly in mind.
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 of the first three syllables of the motto “esto fidelis usque
ad mortem” making up “Estofi,” with the appendant “land.” But there
seems no historic link of positive connection, and the letter “f” would
not readily change into “t.” Perhaps “Escotiland” or “Escociland”
(Scotland) is a more likely conjecture (first made by Beauvois[220]),
since “c” often resembles “t” in older forms of handwriting and might
readily be misunderstood. The name may have been applied in the same
spirit which has long affixed “Scotia” (Nova Scotia) to a lower part of
the same Atlantic coast. That the name was ever really thus applied by
the Norsemen seems very unlikely; but Nicolò Zeno may have used it to
help out his fisherman’s yarn as readily as he certainly adapted “King
Daedalus of Scotland” to help out his more mythical account of Icaria.
Or “Estotiland” may be a modification of Estilanda or Esthlanda, a
form sometimes taken by Shetland, for example on the map of Prunes,
1553[221] (Fig. 12). In casting about for a name, it would be an
economy of effort on the part of Zeno or the fisherman to utilize one
that was familiar. But I do not know that this derivation from Estiland
has ever before been suggested.
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 civilization, trading regularly with Greenland though archaic
enough to lack the mariner’s compass, and in most respects fairly on
a par with the Icelanders, Faroese, Shetlanders, or Orkneymen of the
fourteenth to the sixteenth century. We know that such Estotilanders
did not exist; that the ground was occupied by Beothuk Indians,
possibly slightly influenced by Greenlanders’ timber-gathering visits,
with Eskimos for neighbors on one side and Micmac Algonquins on the
other; and that none of these could be thought even so far advanced in
culture as some natives farther down the coast. But it is interesting
to get the point of view of the narrator or reporter.
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 crossed by the neighboring chief, who made war on the
first captors and thus acquired the fishermen. This accords curiously
with the facts as to Cape Breton Island, which is barely cut off by
the Gut of Canso, being easily reached by any incursion from the
mainland. It also lies southward from Newfoundland (Estotiland), but
sailing vessels would ordinarily be required to get to it across the
broad Cabot Strait, where the conditions of storm and shipwreck might
well be supplied. It is, indeed, surprising, since the description of
inhabitants and conditions is so far from the truth, that the geography
of Estotiland and Drogio should be given so much more accurately than
in some carefully prepared and useful maps of the same period, for
example Nicolay’s of 1560[223] (Fig. 6) and Zaltieri’s of 1566,[224]
both of which represent Newfoundland as broken up into an archipelago;
and the same may be said of Gastaldi’s map illustrating Ramusio.[225]
It has been generally surmised that the name Drogio represents some
native word, but there is a lack of evidence and a difficulty in
identification. Lucas thinks it may be a corruption of Boca del
Drago,[226] a strait between Trinidad and the mainland South America;
but this seems a far-fetched and unsupported conjecture: All the
other island names used by Zeno are of European origin, and Drogio by
its sound and orthography suggests Italy. Perhaps the best guess we
can make would point to the Italian words “deroga” or “dirogare” as
supplying in disparagement a form afterward contracted to Drogio; for
the latter island, lower in latitude and elevation, was also, according
to the narrative, inferior in the status of its population and might
well be spoken of derogatively. We have seen that a fairly high culture
is imputed to Estotiland; whereas the natives of Drogio were sunk
in mere cannibal savagery. Notwithstanding the plain implication of
the story as to the comparative nearness of the two regions and the
concurrent testimony of the Zeno map, Drogio has been located by some
theorizers at divers different points of our coast line from Canada to
Florida and even as far afield as Ireland--which is perhaps a shade
more extravagant than Lucas’s South American derivation of the name.
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 Nicolò Zeno the younger as incredible, if he had any
conception of the distances and difficulties involved. But probably
he believed the area of temple building to extend farther northward
than it actually did and had little notion of the great waste of
intervening interior. Besides, it is not explicitly stated that the
fisherman saw these things; and to have gone far enough to encounter
a rumor of them, though a very improbable, would not be a quite
impossible, feat.
As regards the characteristics of the ruder inhabitants who nearly
devoured him, fought for him, and two dozen times shifted ownership
of him from chief to chief, he must surely be understood to speak
from personal observation; but there is a conspicuous failure of
corroboration from internal evidence. We know a good deal about the
Indian tribes of northeastern America of a time not very much later,
and hardly a distinctive characteristic which he gives will fit what
we know. To say that the Algonquian tribes and their neighbors had not
sense to clothe themselves with the skins of the animals they killed is
itself arrant nonsense; to assert that they habitually ate each other
like Caribs is an imputation without foundation. The total absence
of metals among them is as untrue as the great abundance of gold in
Estotiland, for many of them had at least a little copper. They did not
live wholly by hunting--at least south of Nova Scotia--but were partly
agricultural, raising Indian corn and various vegetables. They did not
depend, in hunting, on wooden lances with sharpened points, though some
backward and feeble far-southern insular tribes are reported to have
done so. They were expert fishermen with weirs and nets and inducted
many of the white settlers into their secrets, so naturally would not
extravagantly need nor prize the counsel of a white specialist in the
same line, though he might have some things to teach them. Finally,
the really distinctive features of the Indian race in these latitudes,
such as bark canoes and the peculiarities of maize cultivation, are not
mentioned at all.
In view of these discrepancies it is not easy to believe that the
fisherman ever visited America or at any rate ever journeyed far
inland. The nature of the errors rather points to Nicolò Zeno “the
compiler” as their author, since they embody observations made
elsewhere, which the fisherman would not be aware of and which had not
been made in his time, so far as now known. The landing by shipwreck
on Estotiland in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, though a
startling feature, cannot be called impossible or perhaps even wildly
improbable; and, once on this side of the Atlantic at that point,
some accident might take him across to Cape Breton Island, whence he
well might travel or be carried a little farther. This sequence of
events may be said to hang well together, and the geographic accuracy
as to Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island may be taken diffidently
as establishing a faint presumption that something like it really
occurred. But farther than this we cannot go, for all other indications
are adverse; and, even if we credit the incongruities to one of the
Zeni and suppose them to take the place of forgotten or disregarded
observations of the original adventurer, we are without these last,
and it is only substituting a vacuum for incorrectness. Perhaps the
only thing that remains to be said in favor of the story is that if it
were wholly the invention of Nicolò Zeno it would have been natural and
quite easy for him to make his ancestor the discoverer, instead of an
unnamed and insignificant fisherman.
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 into the service of Zichmni, lord of the Orkneys,
then prosecuting the conquest of the former region. Zeno took part in
the warfare of this chieftain, chiefly against the King of Norway his
feudal lord, also in his various navigations, including a visit to
Greenland, of which this elder Nicolò writes quite fully to his brother
Antonio in Venice, urging the latter to join him in Zichmni’s service.
Antonio did so, after many adventures and hardships and incidental
delay, and served with him four years, when Nicolò died, and Antonio
succeeded to his honors and emoluments for thirteen years longer. About
1400 the fisherman returned with his story of transatlantic experience,
and Earl Zichmni resolved to attempt to reach Estotiland in person.
Instead, he was storm-driven to Icaria, whatever that may be, and again
visited Greenland, exploring parts of its coast. Antonio Zeno went with
him and sailed home separately, under orders, slightly missing his
course and first reaching Porlanda (Pomona) of the Orkneys and Neome
(Fair Island) midway between the Orkneys and Shetland. He knew then
that he was “beyond Iceland” (i. e. to the eastward) and readily found
his way to Frisland. He was never allowed to return to Venice but wrote
his brother Carlo what he had seen and heard, including the fisherman’s
story.
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 Zeno had not the self-control to withhold. This
method of exposition leads to some curious experiences of prodigious
exaggeration backed by a veritable genius for transforming words.
Thus when we read that Zichmni, ruling in Porlanda and conqueror
of Frisland, made successful war on his feudal superior, the King
of Norway, it means, according to Major, that Henry St. Clair (or
Sinclair), who was given the Earldom of the Orkneys in 1379, had a
skirmish with a forgotten claimant to a part of his territory. A
little later in the narrative a warm spring (108° maximum) on an
island of a fiord in the inhabited part of Greenland, beside which
some ruins are found, evolves a monastery and monk-ruled village of
dome-topped houses on the slope of a volcanic mountain far up the
impossible ice-bound eastern coast, with house-warming, cooking, and
hothouse gardening by subterranean heat and a continual commerce
maintained with northern Europe--though all this had never been heard
of before. It is true that Major was handicapped by a belief, formerly
prevalent, that the eastern coast of Greenland was the site of the
Eastern Settlement of the Norsemen, though in modern times that coast
is subjected to conditions which make life hardly practicable; whereas
it is now conclusively established that both of the Norse settlements
were on the relatively pleasant southwestern coast, one settlement
being more easterly and the other more westerly. But at the best
such interpretations run the gauntlet of the reader’s involuntary
skepticism. It is often easier to discard the statements altogether.
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 accounted for suggest that there may
have been a basis of genuine material, a nucleus of truth; but it must
have been very slight.
Major and his preservative school relied chiefly on three points of
coincidence: a fairly good description of that most unusual boat, the
kayak of the Eskimos; the hot water of the monastery already mentioned;
and the general geography of Greenland, which is shown more accurately
than on many maps of the sixteenth century and later. But Lucas points
out that the history of Olaus Magnus, or other northern sources, might
have supplied the kayak to Zeno the younger. This may seem rather
far-fetched in view of the wide interval between Italy and Scandinavia;
but intercourse was regular in 1558, and Zeno was a man of ample
information and intelligence, using material from many sources and
having his attention especially directed to the north.
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 reminiscences of a favored Scandinavian
fortress, the gardens of which were hardly ever frozen, enjoying “all
the advantages which any fortunate abode of mortals could demand and
obtain from the powers above.”[227] But this is manifestly vague, a
general picture of balminess and delightfulness, far removed from a
specific account of roasting food by subterranean heat, warming garden
beds to the forcing point by pipes naturally supplied, and carrying
on an extensive commerce from the polar regions by the aid of a tame
volcano. Certainly the warm spring of southwestern Greenland is not
much more to the point; but neither fortress gardens nor flowing water
should be needed to stimulate a lively fancy in creating rather obvious
marvels. Nicolò knew of volcanoes in Iceland (as well as Italy), may
well have surmised their activity in Greenland, and would be only one
of many who have amused themselves with speculations as to what might
be accomplished by tapping the great reservoir of heat and energy below
us. It is not necessary to find a precise earlier parallel, to be sure
that there is no corroboration for his tale of ancestral voyages in
such fancies.
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 gleaned all that he needed for judicious
copying. In particular the maps of Donnus Nicolaus Germanus (1466 to
1474, or a little later; e. g. Fig. 17), elaborated from the map of
Claudius Clavus (1427; Fig. 16), seem to supply the chief features of
the Zeno exhibition.[229] Sharing an error common to Clavus and all
successors of his school, Zeno connected Greenland to Europe. He also
represented its eastern coast as habitable at the extreme upper end. It
is true that a visitor to the real surviving Greenland settlement about
Ericsfiord probably would not learn the facts about these matters, so
that his misinformation is no disproof of the visits of the older Zeni
to that country. On the other hand, it would be difficult to point
to any convincing evidence that either of them was ever there. Kohl
suggests[230] that the fisherman’s story may be a mere reflection of
the general American knowledge of Greenlanders, and this might call
for the presence of one of the Zeni in Greenland to hear the story.
But, if the Norse of Greenland knew anything about Newfoundland or
Labrador, they could hardly have credited and passed along these word
pictures of cities, libraries, and kings. The only thing like internal
corroboration is in the geography of Estotiland and Drogio.
As Nicolò Zeno followed the disciples of Claudius Clavus in outlining
Greenland, so he took for his guide Mattheus Prunes’ map of 1553[231]
in dealing with the more eastern islands. Podanda or Porlanda (Pomona,
the main island of the Orkneys) and Neome (Fair Island) are in both
(Figs. 19 and 12). Prunes displaces these islands to a position west,
instead of south, of southern Shetland (Estiland or Esthlanda), and
Zeno simply carries them both still farther west, while moving them
southward; but his Neome is still in the latitude of the lower end of
Shetland. Long before the time of either of them, the Faroe Islands
had been shown as one territory--see the Ysferi (Faroe Islands) of
the eleventh-century map of the Cottonian MS. in the British Museum,
reproduced by Santarem.[232] The main islands are in fact barely
severed from each other by a thread of water.
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 group, often blended as one island.
But there seems to have been some confusion in men’s minds between
Iceland and Frisland as northern fishing centers and neighbors of like
conditions. Thus the portolan atlas known as Egerton MS. 2803, contains
two maps[235] (one shown in Fig. 8) naming Iceland “Fislanda,” and
the notable Catalan map of about 1480[236] (Fig. 7), first copied by
Nordenskiöld, which shows Greenland as an elongated rectangular “Illa
Verde” and Brazil in the place later given to Estotiland, also depicts
a large insular “Fixlanda,” which is surely Iceland, if any faith may
be put in general outline and the arrangement of islets offshore.
Prunes (1553; Fig. 12) substantially reproduces it, with the same name
and apparently the same meaning. Zeno (Fig. 19) follows him closely in
area and aspect but draws also an elongated Iceland to the northward,
the latter island trending southwestward in imitation of Greenland and
seeming to derive its geography therefrom. This version of Iceland was
probably suggested by one of the Nicolaus Germanus maps above referred
to.
Thus Zeno has two great islands, Frisland and Iceland, the former being
several times larger than Shetland and many times larger than Orkney.
His Frisland gets its name from the Faroes, its area and outline from
Iceland; it is located south of Iceland, where there never was anything
but waste water. No such large island, distinct from Iceland, ever
existed at the north. Certainly, as shown, it is a mythical island
indeed.
Major stoutly argued that any derelictions of the map are to be
explained as the defects of age and rottenness, unskillfully cobbled
by a later hand. This sounds reasonable to one who has seen how the
changes of time deface these old memorials and how easily outlines
and much more may be misread. But in point of fact the map as we have
it answers to the narrative singularly well. Any blurs or lacunae
which needed restoration must have occurred in very fortunate places.
Iceland, Shetland, Greenland, Scotland, Estotiland, and Drogio are all
not very far from where they should be. The Orkneys and Fair Island, if
too far west in fact, are only far enough to suit the tale, for when
Antonio sails eastward he comes to them and knows he has passed east of
Iceland, a reflection more likely to occur if the interval were rather
small than if it were very great.
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 Estotiland and another from the center of Frisland to
Cape Hwarf near the lower end of Greenland, and Icaria lies at the
intersection. Granting the rest of the story, it is shown where they
might very well have stumbled upon it in trying to go farther west.
Of course, it is not there; nothing ever was there except an ample
expanse of sea. Where Zeno got the idea of Icaria is not known--except
as an appended and unimportant myth from the Aegean; it certainly was
not supplied by the facts of the North Atlantic. Probably the initial
“I” stands for island as usual, and “Caria” is a not impossible
transformation of either “Kerry” (preferred by Major) or “Kilda”--the
latter more likely, for southern Ireland was continually visited by
Italian traders, whereas St. Kilda lay off the trade routes rather far
away in the mists and myths of the ocean and might be a fairer field
for exaggeration and shifting of place. But, with every allowance, it
is hard to see how this small ultra-Hebridean rock pile could become a
large island territory just short of America. Perhaps it is as well to
treat Icaria as merely the unprovoked creation of the romantic brain of
the younger Zeno.
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 explore the same regions. Every one of these admissions
lacks adequate confirmation and is very dubious; yet they are all
possible. But it is not possible that a map made about 1400 could bear
at almost all points the plain marks of copying with slight changes
from maps of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and, since the
narrative so well fits the map, the two as we have them must stand or
fall together.
Either Nicolò Zeno of 1558 invented the whole matter, building up
his imposture by the aid of maps and information already existent
and accessible, or he actually had some sort of old sketch map and
fragments of letters and has recast them with more modern aids quite at
his convenience, leaving no certain trace of the original outlines or
statements. It comes to much the same thing in either case.
Also in either case his unscrupulous and misleading achievements in
imaginary cartography remain as historic facts. For a century or more
he supplied the maps of the world with several new great islands; he
shifted others widely into new positions; he adorned other regions
with new names that were loath to depart; and he presented a story of
pre-Columbian discovery of America which was long accepted as true and
is not wholly discarded even yet.