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.