Strictly speaking, the term mythical islands ought to include, if not Frisland and Drogeo, at least the land of Bus, the island of Bimini with its fountain of life, an echo of one of the oldest of folk-tales, the island of Saxenburg, and the other non-existent islands, shoals, and rocks, with which the imagination of sailors and cartographers have connected the Atlantic even into the present century. In fact, the name is by common consent restricted to certain islands which occur constantly on old charts: the Island of St. Brandan, Antillia or Isle of the Seven Cities, Satanaxio, Danmar, Brazil, Mayda, and Isla Verte. It is interesting to note that the Arab geographers had their fabulous islands, too, though so little is known of them that it is at present impossible to say what relation they bear to those mentioned. They say that Ptolemy assigned 25,000 islands to the Atlantic, but they name and describe seventeen only, among which we may mention the Eternal Islands (Canaries? Azores?),[462] El-Ghanam (Madeira?), Island of the Two Sorcerers (Lancerote?), etc.[463]
There has been some difference of opinion as to which of the Atlantic islands answer to the ancient conception of the Fortunate Islands. It is probable that the idea is at the bottom of several of these, but it may be doubted whether the island of St. Brandan is not entirely due to the christianizing of this ancient fable.
We proceed now to examine the accounts of some of these islands.
St. Brandan.—St. Brandan, or Brendan, who died May 16, 577, was Abbot of Cluainfert, in Ireland, according to the legend, where he was visited by a friend, Barontus, who told him that far in the ocean lay an island which was the land promised to the saints. St. Brandan set sail for this island in company with 75 monks, and spent seven years upon the ocean, in two voyages (according to the Irish text in the MS. book of Lismore, which is probably the most archaic form of the legend), discovering this island and many others equally marvellous, including one which turned out to be the back of a huge fish, upon which they celebrated Easter. This story cannot be traced beyond the eleventh century, its oldest form being a Latin prose version in a MS. of that century. It is known also in French, English, and German translations, both prose and verse, and was evidently a great favorite in the Middle Ages. Intimately connected with the St. Brandan legend is that of St. Malo, or Maclovius, Bishop of Aleth, in Armorica, a disciple of St. Brandan, who accompanied his superior, and whose eulogists, jealous of the fame of the Irish saint, provided for the younger a voyage on his own account, with marvels transcending those found by Brandan. His church-day is November 17th. The story of St. Brandan is given by Humboldt and D’Avezac,[464] and by Gaffarel.[465] Further accounts will be found in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists,[466] and in the introductions and notes to the numerous editions of the voyages, among which reference only need be made to the original Latin edited by M. Jubinal,[467] and to the English version edited by Thomas Wright for the Percy Society.[468] A Latin text of the fourteenth century is now to be found in the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae ex codice Salmanticensi nunc premium integre edita opera C. de Smedt et J. de Backer (Edinb. etc., 1888), 4to, pp. 111-154. As is well known, Philoponus gives an account of the voyages of St. Brandan with a curious map, in which he places the island N. W. of Spain and N. E. of the Canaries, or Insulae Fortunatae.[469] The island of St. Brandan was at first apparently imagined in the north, but it afterward took a more southerly location. Honoré d’Autun identifies it with a certain island called Perdita, once discovered and then lost in the Atlantic; we have here, perhaps, some reminiscence of the name “Aprositos,” which Ptolemy bestows on one of the Fortunatae Insulae.[470] In some of the earlier maps there is an inlet on the west coast of Ireland called Lacus Fortunatus, which is packed with islands which are called Insulae Fortunatae or Beatae, and sometimes given as 300 or 368 in number.[471] But the Pizigani map of 1367 puts the Isole dicte Fortunate S. Brandany in the place of Madeira; and Behaim’s globe, in 1492, sets it down in the latitude of Cape de Verde,—a legend against it assigning the discovery to St. Brandan in 565.
It is this island which was long supposed to be seen as a mountainous land southeast of the Canaries. After the discovery of the Azores expeditions were fitted out to search for it, and were continued until 1721, which are described by Viera, and have been since retold by all writers on the subject.[472] The island was again reported as seen in 1759.
Antillia, or Isle of Seven Cities.—The largest of these islands, the one most persistent in its form and location, is Antillia, which is depicted as a large rectangular island, extending from north to south, lying in the mid-Atlantic about lat. 35° N. This island first appears on the map of 1424, preserved at Weimar, and is found on the principal maps of the rest of the century, notably in the Bianco of 1436.[473] On some maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appears a smaller island under the name of Sette Citade, or Sete Ciudades, which is properly another name for Antillia, as Toscanelli says in his famous letter, wherein he recommended Antillia as likely to be useful as a way-station on the India voyage. We owe to Behaim the preservation on his globe of 1492 of the legend of this island. It was discovered and settled, according to him, by refugees from Spain in 714, after the defeat of King Roderick by the Moors. The settlers were accompanied by an archbishop and six bishops, each of whom built him a town. There is a story that the island was rediscovered by a Portuguese sailor in 1447.[474]
In apparent connection with Antillia are the smaller islands Danmar or Tanmar, Reillo or Royllo, and Satanaxio. The latter alone is of special interest. Formaleoni found near Antillia, on the map of Bianco of 1436, an island with a name which he read as “Y.d laman Satanaxio,”—a name which much perplexed him, until he found, in an old Italian romance, a legend that in a certain part of India a great hand arose every day from the sea and carried off the inhabitants into the ocean. Adapting this tale to the west, he translated the name “Island of the hand of Satan,”[475] in which interpretation Humboldt acquiesced. D’Avezac, however, was inclined to think that there were two islands, one called Delamar, a name which elsewhere appears as Danmar or Tanmar, and Satanaxio, or, as it appears on a map by Beccario at Parma, Satanagio,[476] and suggests that the word is a corrupt form for S. Atanaxio or S. Atanagio, i. e. St. Athanasius, with which Gaffarel is inclined to agree.[477]
Formaleoni saw in Antillia a foreknowledge of the Antilles, and Hassel believed that North and South America were respectively represented by Satanaxio and Antillia, with a strait between, just as the American continent was indeed represented after the discovery. It is certainly curious that Beccario designates the group of Antillia, Satanagio, and Danmar, as Isle de novo reperte, the name afterwards applied to the discoveries of Columbus; but it is not now believed that the fifteenth-century islands were aught but geographical fancies. To transfer their names to the real discoveries was of course easy and natural.[478]
Brazil.—Among the islands which prefigured the Azores on fourteenth-century maps appears I. de Brazi on the Medicean portulano of 1351, and it is apparently Terceira or San Miguel.[479] On the Pizigani map of 1367 appear three islands with this name, Insula de Bracir or Bracie, two not far from the Azores, and one off the south or southeast end of Ireland. On the Catalan map of 1375 is an Insula de Brazil in the southern part of the so-called Azores group, and an Insula de Brazil (?) applied to a group of small islands enclosed in a heavy black ring west of Ireland. The same reduplication occurs in the Solerio of 1385, in a map of 1426 preserved at Regensburg, in Bianco’s map of 1436, and in that of 1448: here de Braxil is the easternmost of the Azores group (i. e. y de Colombi, de Zorzi, etc.), while the large round island—more like a large ink-blot than anything else—west of Ireland is y de Brazil d. binar.[480] In a map in St. Mark’s Library, Venice, dated about 1450, Brazil appears in four places. Fra Mauro puts it west of Ireland,[481] and it so appears in Ptolemy of 1519, and Ramusio in 1556; but Mercator and Ortelius inscribe it northwest of the Azores.