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

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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 Pizigani brothers of 136736 (Fig.2) contains in words and a saintly figure of warning a solemn protest against attempting to sail the unnavigable ocean tract beyond the Azores. As will be seen by a modern map (Fig.1), this area includes the vast realm of the Sargasso—a waste of weed, shifting its borders with the seasons but constant in its characteristics in some parts and always to be found by little seeking—one of the permanent conspicuous features of earth’s surface.37 It is described by a writer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as nearly equal to Europe in area, a statement hardly warranted unless by including all outlying tatters and fringes of Gulf weed floating free.38