The Work of F. W. Lucas
Lucas, writing some years afterward, with the benefit of recently discovered maps and information, has chosen this destructive alternative for nearly the whole Zeno narration: denying that Nicolò Zeno had any map of a former generation to restore; styling his own keenly critical and exhaustive production “an indictment,” and branding the book under consideration as a forgery throughout—with, necessarily, some true things in it. He has gone far toward making good his case. Some things not fully accounted for suggest that there may have been a basis of genuine material, a nucleus of truth; but it must have been very slight.
Major and his preservative school relied chiefly on three points of coincidence: a fairly good description of that most unusual boat, the kayak of the Eskimos; the hot water of the monastery already mentioned; and the general geography of Greenland, which is shown more accurately than on many maps of the sixteenth century and later. But Lucas points out that the history of Olaus Magnus, or other northern sources, might have supplied the kayak to Zeno the younger. This may seem rather far-fetched in view of the wide interval between Italy and Scandinavia; but intercourse was regular in 1558, and Zeno was a man of ample information and intelligence, using material from many sources and having his attention especially directed to the north.