Origin of the Name
Flores, the island of flowers, thus prettily renamed by the Portuguese, is referred to as the rabbit island, Li Conigi, in the fourteenth-century maps and records; but Corvo has always borne, in substance, the same name, one of the oldest on the Atlantic. Probably the very first instance of its use is in the Book of the Spanish Friar,[267] written about 1350 (the author says he was born in 1305), rather recently published in Spanish and since translated for the Hakluyt Society publications by Sir Clements Markham. After relating alleged visits to more accessible islands of the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes, from Lanzarote and Tenerife of the Canaries to São Jorge (St. George) of the Azores, he continues: “another, Conejos [doubtless Li Conigi], another, Cuervo Marines [Corvo—the sea crow island], so that altogether there are 25 islands.”
This account may not actually be later than the Atlante Mediceo map,[268] attributed to 1351—may even have been suggested by it, as some things seem to indicate. The Friar’s voyages are perhaps merely imaginary, their variety and total extent being hardly believable. This very important map has been best reproduced in the collection by Theobald Fischer; on it the same name (Corvi Marinis) seems to be applied to both islands collectively, the plural form “insule” being used to introduce it. Both names appear on the Catalan map of 1375.[269] It is more than probable that they date at least from the earlier half of the fourteenth century.
Possibly the name Corvo had been carried over by a somewhat free translation from the older Moorish seamen and cartographers, who dominated this part of the outer ocean from the eighth century to the twelfth. Edrisi,[270] greatest of Arab geographers, writing for King Roger of Sicily about the middle of the twelfth century, tells us, among other items, of the eastern Atlantic:
Near this isle is that of Râca, which is “the isle of the birds” (Djazîrato ’t-Toyour). It is reported that a species of birds resembling eagles is found there, red and armed with fangs; they hunt marine animals upon which they feed and never leave these parts.
This statement recalls the cormorants, which are supposed to be meant by the sea crows, “corvi marinis” of the later maps. They would naturally flock about the submerged ledges and the wild shore of Corvo and may be held to suggest either the crow or the eagle, though not closely resembling either. Everywhere they are the scavengers of the deep seas. Edrisi mentions a legendary expedition sent by the “King of France” after these birds. It ended in disaster. The pictorial record on the Pizigani map of 1367[271] ([Fig. 2]), of Breton ships in great trouble with a dragon of the air and a kraken, or decapod, on the extreme western border of navigation, may conceivably refer to this experience.