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 this Brazil is pretty near southern Ireland, off the Blaskets, but sometimes it is carried out into mid-Atlantic, and in the sixteenth-century maps of Nicolay[210] (1560; [Fig. 6]) and Zaltieri[211] (1566) it is taken clear across to the Banks of Newfoundland or a little nearer inshore. From various mutually corroborative indications, I have been impressed with the belief that it is probably a record of some early crossing of the Atlantic from Ireland; but whatever the explanation, Brazil Island remains one of the most interesting of map phenomena. Its name was somehow passed along to Terceira of the Azores, where there is still a Mt. Brazil, and long thereafter to the largest of South American countries.
Its appearance near Greenland and as a substitute for Markland is not easily accounted for. The matter is indeed complicated on this fifteenth-century map by the appearance of a second Brazil (of the channeled type) in the middle of the Atlantic. It may be that the cartographer was familiar with this form and kind of presentation in older maps and did not feel warranted in giving up that “Brazil;” but had received convincing information of lands southwest or south of Greenland, with some suggestion of Brazil as a name traditionally associated with such discoveries, and so drew and named it. Undoubtedly the map is the work of a man well acquainted with the first disk form of Brazil and the later channeled or divided form, beside having some knowledge of later discoveries in Greenland and beyond.
There is a parallel to the two Brazils of his map in the two series of Azores on that of Bianco (1448).[212] The latter cartographer retained the original Italian-discovered series, inaccurately aligned north and south, but showed also farther afield the islands of Portuguese rediscovery, properly slanted northwestward, omitting only Flores and Corvo, which the rediscoverers had not yet found or at least had not yet brought to his notice. Another map of about the same period makes the same double showing—certainly a curious compromise between conservatism and progressiveness.