Footnote 276: Yet this learned historian was quite correct in his own interpretation of Zeno's story, for in the same place he says, "If real, his Frisland is the Ferro islands, and his Zichmni is Sinclair." Pinkerton's History of Scotland, London, 1797, vol. i. p. 261.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 277: Major, The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno, to the Northern Seas in the XIVth Century, London, 1873 (Hakluyt Society); cf. Nordenskjöld, Om bröderna Zenos resor och de äldsta kartor öfner Norden, Stockholm, 1883.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 278: "Or M. Nicolò il Caualiere ... entrò in grandissimo desiderio di ueder il mondo, e peregrinare, e farsi capace di varij costumi e di lingue de gli huomini, acciò che con le occasioni poi potesse meglio far seruigio alla sua patria ed à se acquistar fama e onore." The narrative gives 1380 as the date of the voyage, but Mr. Major has shown that it must have been a mistake for 1390 (op. cit. xlii.-xlviii.).[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 279: It appears on the Zeno map as "Trin [p-]montor," about the site of Cape Farewell; but how could six days' sail W. from Kerry, followed by four days' sail N. E., reach any such point? and how does this short outward sail consist with the return voyage, twenty days E. and eight days S. E., to the Færoes? The place is also said to have had "a fertile soil" and "good rivers," a description in nowise answering to Greenland.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 280: "Però non ni dirò altro in questa lettera, sperando tosto di essere con uoi, e di sodisfarui di molte altre cose con la uiua uoce." Major, p. 34.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 281: "All these letters were written by Messire Antonio to Messire Carlo, his brother; and I am grieved that the book and many other writings on these subjects have, I don't know how, come sadly to ruin; for, being but a child when they fell into my hands, I, not knowing what they were, tore them in pieces, as children will do, and sent them all to ruin: a circumstance which I cannot now recall without the greatest sorrow. Nevertheless, in order that such an important memorial should not be lost, I have put the whole in order, as well as I could, in the above narrative." Major, p. 35.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 282: Nicolò Zeno, Dello scoprimento dell' isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto per due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolò it Caualiere, & M. Antonio. Libro Vno, col disegno di dette Isole. Venice, 1558. Mr. Major's book contains the entire text, with an English translation.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 283: The map is taken from Winsor's Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 127, where it is reduced from Nordenskjöld's Studien ok Forskningar. A better because larger copy may be found in Major's Voyages of the Venetian Brothers. The original map measures 12 x 15-1/2 inches. In the legend at the top the date is given as M CCC LXXX. but evidently one X has been omitted, for it should be 1390, and is correctly so given by Marco Barbaro, in his Genealogie dei nobili Veneti; of Antonio Zeno he says, "Scrisse con il fratello Nicolò Kav. li viaggi dell' Isole sotto il polo artico, e di quei scoprimente del 1390, e che per ordine di Zieno, re di Frislanda, si portò nel continente d'Estotilanda nell' America settentrionale e che si fermò 14 anni in Frislanda, cioè 4 con suo fratello Nicolò e 10 solo." (This valuable work has never been published. The original MS., in Barbaro's own handwriting, is preserved in the Biblioteca di San Marco at Venice. There is a seventeenth century copy of it among the Egerton MSS. in the British Museum.)—Nicolò did not leave Italy until after December 14, 1388 (Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, tom. xxii. p. 779). The map can hardly have been made before Antonio's voyage, about 1400. The places on the map are wildly out of position, as was common enough in old maps. Greenland is attached to Norway according to the general belief in the Middle Ages. In his confusion between the names "Estland" and "Islanda," young Nicolò has tried to reproduce the Shetland group, or something like it, and attach it to Iceland. "Icaria," probably Kerry, in Ireland, has been made into an island and carried far out into the Atlantic. The queerest of young Nicolò's mistakes was in placing the monastery of St. Olaus ("St. Thomas"). He should have placed it on the southwest coast of Greenland, near his "Af [p-]montor;" but he has got it on the extreme northeast, just about where Greenland is joined to Europe.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 284: "Combien de coquilles typographiques ou de lectures défectueuses ont créé de noms boiteux, qu'il est ensuite bien difficile, quelquefois impossible de redresser! L'histoire et la géographie en sont pleines." Avezac, Martin Waltzemüller, p. 9.
It is interesting to see how thoroughly words can be disguised by an unfamiliar phonetic spelling. I have seen people hopelessly puzzled by the following bill, supposed to have been made out by an illiterate stable-keeper somewhere in England:—