It may seem strange that the Norse sagas do not mention Brazil by that name, though its relation to the Scandinavian colony of Greenland is made so conspicuous on the Catalan fifteenth-century map above referred to; also that there is no distinct Irish record of any voyage to Brazil as such, though the western ports of Ireland were natural points of departure and return for western voyages and though voyages to a far western Great Ireland are reported by the Norse from Irish sources. Perhaps there is no quite satisfactory answer to this. All narratives of the kind are fragmentary and more or less mythical, and the name Brazil may often have been used in the reports of Irish explorers, as it certainly was later the especial goal of the English, without having left any other trace than the name on the map and such hints as we have mentioned. The Norse seem to have adhered to their own names Markland and Vinland, only mentioning Great Ireland incidentally in the same neighborhood and Brazil not at all unless the delineation of the Catalan map be of their suggestion; but no really strong adverse argument can be founded on these matters of nomenclature and omission where all references and records are so meager.
There can be no certainty; but from the evidence at hand it seems likely that the part of America indicated, i. e. Newfoundland and neighboring shores, was visited very early by Irish-speaking people, who gave it the commendatory name Brazil. Naturally one inclines to ascribe such an unremitting westward push to the powerful religious impulsion which, according to Dicuil, carried Irishmen to Iceland in the latter part of the eighth century and even bore them on, it is reported, some two hundred miles beyond it. The date, however, may have been much later. Yet it must have preceded Dalorto’s map of 1325, whereon Brazil first appears by name.
Of evidence on the ground there is nothing; but what have we now to show even for the perfectly attested visits to the same region of Cabot and Cortereal? Their case rests on maps, governmental entries, and contemporary correspondence, luckily preserved. Earlier visits to Brazil have no epistles, no entries, to show but must rely on the maps and the general tradition in the British islands of such a western region across at least a part of the great sea.
CHAPTER V
THE ISLAND OF THE SEVEN CITIES
The mythical islands of the Atlantic (les îles fantastiques) on the old maps have had divers origins, instructive to study. Perhaps only one of them derives its name and being directly from a real human episode of a twilight period in history.
When the Moors descended on Spain in 711, routed King Roderick’s army beside the Guadalete, and rapidly overran the Iberian Peninsula, it was most natural, indeed nearly inevitable, that some Christian fugitives should continue their flight from the seaboard to accessible islands already known or rumored, or even desperately commit themselves in blindness to the remoter mysteries of the ocean. Such an event would afford a fabric for the embroidery of later fancy. A part of this has been preserved by record; and it is curious to watch the development of the story, which takes several forms, not differing widely, however, one from another.
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]