[Note 12.] Page 449.
Thulé, or Tile. What country really was the Thulé of the ancients has never been clearly made known to us. In Camden's Britannia may be read all the various accounts in a chapter headed "The Thulé of the Ancients," v. 2.
"Beyond the Orcades and above Britain," the old scholiast upon Horace places the Fortunate Isles, which none but pious and just men are said to inhabit, a place celebrated by the Greek poets for its pleasantness and fertility, and called by them the "Elysian Fields." But take another account of these isles from Isacius Tzetzes, a fabulous Greek, in his notes upon Lycophron:—
"In the ocean is a British island, between the west of Britain and Thulé, towards the east. Thither, they say, the souls of the dead are transported; for on the shore of that sea, within which Britain lieth, there dwell certain fishermen, who are subject to the French, but accountable for no tribute, because (as they say) they ferry over the souls of the deceased. These fishermen return home and sleep in the evening, but a little after, hear a rapping at their doors, and a voice calling them to their work. Upon that they presently rise, and go to the shore without any other business, and find boats ready for them (but none of their own), and nobody in them; yet, when they come on board and fall to their oars, they find the boats as heavy as if they were laden with men, though they see none. After one pull, they presently arrive at that British island, which at other times, in ships of their own, they hardly reach in a day and night. When they come to land on the island, they see nobody, but hear the voice of those who receive their passengers counting them by the stock of father and mother, and calling them singly, according to the title of their dignity, employment, and name. After they have unloaded, they return back at one stroke. From hence, many take these to be the Islands of the Blessed."—Page 1482.
After giving all the various accounts by various authors, he says:—"Thus much may suffice concerning Thulé, which is hid from us as well as it was from the ancients, by snow and winter. As a certain author expresses it, neither was any of them able to say which of the Northern Isles they meant when they talked of Thulé."
[Note 13.] Page 455.
"Friseland." Cervantes has taken his idea entirely from the accounts given by the Venetian brothers, Nicholas and Antonio Zeni, not Temo, probably a misprint. Their voyage is told in an Italian collection of voyages, "Delle Navigatione and Viaggi Raccolse da M. Gio. Battista Ramusio." Venice, 3 vols. fol. 1613. Nicholas and Antonio Zeni; Discovery of Friseland, Iceland, and the North Pole: "Nicholas Zeno having been shipwrecked, in 1380, on the island of Friseland, in consequence of their having been overtaken by a tempest, and likewise having been saved by Prince Zichmni from the rude attacks of the inhabitants, put himself, with all his men, under the protection of this prince, who was lord of certain small islands which lay to the south of Frieseland."—Voyages and Discoveries in the North: Forster.
"And this is as much as is known of Greenland from the relation of Nicolo Zeno, who gives likewise a particular description of a river that he discovered, as is to be seen in the chart that I (viz. Antonio Zeno) have drawn. Nicolo not being able to bear the severe cold of these northern climates, fell sick, and a little after, returned to Friesland, where he died."—Forster, p. 188. Translated from the Italian of Francesco Marcolini, in Ramusio's Collections.
Forster imagines this Friesland to be the Feroe Islands.