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 miscellaneous data out of history, tradition, and known physical
phenomena, especially by rumors of the weed-encumbered windless dead
waters of the Sargasso Sea. There never was any such gorgeous and
dominant Atlantic power as the Atlantis of Plato, able to overrun and
conquer more than half of the Mediterranean and contend with Athens in
a struggle of life and death.
St. Brendan did not cross the Atlantic nor discover any island in its
remoter reaches, where some maps show islands bearing his name. He
seems, however, to have visited divers eastern Atlantic islands, now
well known; and it is quite likely that most of the portolan maps of
the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries are right in linking his
name especially to Madeira and her neighbors.
Brazil Island is a conspicuously complex problem. Probably it
represents the region around the Gulf of St. Lawrence, brought on the
same parallel unduly near the Irish shore. Thus understood, it would
be, presumably, but not necessarily, the cartographic record of some
early Irish voyage far to the westward. It does not appear on any
extant map before 1325, but maps showing the Atlantic and its remoter
islands (apart from the hopeless distortions of Edrisi and certain
monks) can hardly be said to have existed earlier.
Man, or Mayda, is frequently a more southern and western companion of
Brazil Island on the old maps and may stand for Bermuda or for some
jutting point, like Cape Cod, on the American coast. Some indications
connect it with the Bretons, some with the Arabs. It has borne divers
names. We cannot tell who first found and reported it.
The Island of the Seven Cities derived its name from a very credible
Spanish and Portuguese tradition of escape from the Moors by sea early
in the eighth century. It may first have been localized as St. Michaels
of the Azores, where a valley still bears the name. Afterward it was
confused for a long time with Antillia and still later was distributed
rather widely over sea and land, the Seven Cities not always insisting
on being insular but appearing now just back of the American Atlantic
coast line, now in the far and arid Southwest.
Of the Norse discoveries in America at the opening of the eleventh
century, Helluland represents the northern treeless waste of upper
Labrador and beyond; Markland represents the forested zone next below,
notably Newfoundland, with probably southern Labrador supplying only
timber and game; and Vinland, or Wineland, represents all that immense
region where the climate was milder and wine grapes grew. Straumey was
Grand Manan Island; Straumfiord, Passamaquoddy Bay with Grand Manan
Channel; Hop, Mount Hope Bay, R. I., or some bay of the eastern front
of southern New England; the Wonderstrands, some part of the prevalent
American coastal front of unending strand and dune. It is needless to
particularize further.
Antillia is Cuba; Reylla, Jamaica; Salvagio, or Satanaxio, Florida; I
in Mar, one or more of the Bahamas. Early in the fifteenth century some
Iberian navigator, probably Portuguese, visited these islands and made
the report that resulted in the addition of these islands to divers
maps. They, in turn, were among the inciting causes of the undertaking
of Columbus.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, in 15 Books, to
which are added the fragments of Diodorus, and those published by H.
Valesius, I. Rhodomannus, and F. Ursinus, transl. by G. Booth, Esq., 2
vols., London, 1814; reference in Vol. 1, Bk. 3, Ch. 4, p. 195, and Bk.
4, Ch. 1, pp. 235 and 243.
[2] A. E. Nordenskiöld: Facsimile-Atlas to the Early History of
Cartography, transl. by J. A. Ekelöf and C. R. Markham, Stockholm,
1889, p. 131.
[3] I Kings, 10: 22.
[4] Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries Entitled Chu-fan-chï, transl. and annotated by
Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, St. Petersburg, 1911, p. 142.
[5] W. H. Holmes: Handbook of Aboriginal American Antiquities, _Bur. of
Amer. Ethnology, Bull. 60, Part I_, Smithsonian Instn., Washington, D.
C., 1919, p. 27.
[6] Historical Library, Vol. 1, Bk. 5, Ch. 2, p. 309.
[7] _Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections_, Vol. 59, No. 19,
Washington, D. C., 1913. See also: Recent History and Present Status of
the Vinland Problem, _Geogr. Rev._, Vol. 11, 1921, pp. 265–282.
[8] Edrisi’s “Geography,” in two versions, the first based on two,
the second on four manuscripts, viz.: (1) P. A. Jaubert (translator):
Géographie d’Edrisi, traduite de l’Arabe en Français, 2 vols. (Recueil
de Voyages et de Mémoires publié par la Société de Géographie, Vols.
5 and 6), Paris, 1836 and 1840; reference in Vol. 2, p. 27; (2) R.
Dozy and M. J. De Goeje (translators): Description de l’Afrique et de
l’Espagne par Edrisi: Texte arabe publié pour la première fois d’après
les man. de Paris et d’Oxford, Leiden, 1866.
[9] M. d’Avezac: Notice des découvertes faites au Moyen Age dans
l’Océan Atlantique antérieurement aux grandes explorations portugaises
du quinzième siècle, Paris, 1845, p. 23.
[10] [E. F.] Jomard: Les monuments de la géographie, ou recueil
d’anciennes cartes européennes et orientales ..., Paris, [1842–62], Pl.
X, 1.
[11] Henry Vignaud: The Columbian Tradition on the Discovery of America
and of the Part Played Therein by the Astronomer Toscanelli, Oxford,
1920.
[12] Benjamin Jowett: The Dialogues of Plato, Translated into English
with Analyses and Introductions, 3rd edit., 5 vols., London and New
York, 1892; reference in Vol. 3, p. 534.
[13] Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edit., Vol. 21, p. 823.
[14] Atlantis, the “Lost” Continent: A Review of Termier’s Evidence,
_Geogr. Rev._, Vol. 3, 1917, pp. 61–66; reference on p. 62.
[15] Pierre Termier: Atlantis (transl. from _Bull. l’Inst. Océanogr.
No. 256_, Monaco), _Ann. Rept. Smithsonian Instn. for 1915_,
Washington, D. C., pp. 219–234; reference on p. 222.
[16] _Ibid._, pp. 220–221.
[17] The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian in 15 Books, to
which are added the fragments of Diodorus, and those published by H.
Valesius, I. Rhodomannus, and F. Ursinus, transl. by G. Booth, Esq., 2
vols., London, 1814; reference in Vol. 1, Bk. 4, Ch. 1, p. 234.
[18] _Ibid._, Vol. 1, Bk. 3, Ch. 4, p. 195.
[19] Jowett, _op. cit._, Vol. 3, pp. 536–539.
[20] Termier, pp. 228–229.
[21] _Ibid._, pp. 230, 231.
[22] _Geogr. Rev._, Vol. 3, 1917, p. 65.
[23] Termier, pp. 231 and 232.
[24] R. F. Scharff: Some Remarks on the Atlantis Problem, _Proc. Royal
Irish Acad._, Vol. 24. Section B, 1903, pp. 268–302; reference on p.
297.
[25] _Idem_: European Animals: Their Geological History and
Geographical Distribution, London and New York, 1907, pp. 102 and 104.
[26] L. F. Navarro: Nuevas consideraciones sobre el problema de la
Atlantis, Madrid, 1917, pp. 6 and 15 (extract from _Rev. Real Acad. de
Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales de Madrid_, Vol. 15, 1917, pp.
537–552).
[27] Termier, pp. 226 and 227.
[28] _Geogr. Rev._, Vol. 3, 1917, p. 66.
[29] Sir John Murray: The Ocean: A General Account of the Science of
the Sea (Home University Library of Modern Knowledge, No. 76), New
York, 1913, p. 33.
[30] T. J. Westropp: Brasil and the Legendary Islands of the North
Atlantic: Their History and Fable, _Proc. Royal Irish Acad._, Vol. 30,