The Island of Brazil
When Pedro de Ayala, Spanish Ambassador to Great Britain, found occasion in 1498 to report English exploring activities to Ferdinand and Isabella, he wrote:
The people of Bristol have, for the last seven years, sent out every year two, three, or four light ships (caravels) in search of the island of Brasil and the seven cities.[115]
There is indeed one well-attested voyage of 1480 conducted by well-known navigators, seeking this insular Brazil, and it was not the earliest.
The first appearance of that island thus far reported, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, is on the map of Dalorto[116] (dated 1325; [Fig. 4]) as a disc of land well at sea, westward from Hibernian Munster; but the Catalan map of 1375[117] ([Fig. 5]) and at least one other[118] turn the disc into a ring surrounding a body of water which is studded with small islands—apparently nine in the Catalan map photographically reproduced by Nordenskiöld, though Dr. Kretschmer draws seven on the other. These miniature islands have sometimes been thought[119] to represent the seven cities of the old legend; but islets are not cities, and there seems no reason why each city should require an islet. However, the coincidence of number, exact or approximate, is suggestive.