Читать книгу Legendary Islands of the Atlantic: A Study of Medieval Geography онлайн

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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 136710 (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 following Cabot’s discovery is commemorated by Cape Breton Island.

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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 that succeeded it, adding several islands never before heard of. Both map and narrative are recognized as spurious or at best so corrupted by misunderstandings and transformed by rough treatment and a post-Columbian attempt at reconstruction as to be wholly unreliable. It is, indeed, possible that a fisherman of the Faroes made an involuntary sojourn in Newfoundland and elsewhere in America from about 1375 or 1380 onward and that his story induced the ruler of certain northern islands to sail westward and investigate. But both features are very dubious, and at any rate nothing was accomplished except the confusion of geography.