Later Reappearance As an Island
But the Island of the Seven Cities appeared as such on other maps and by this name only. Perhaps its most salient showing is on Desceliers’ fine map of 1546[132] ([Fig. 9]), that entertaining repository of isles which are more than dubious and names which are fantastic. He presents it off the American coast about a third as far as the Bermudas and midway from Cape Breton to the Bay of Fundy. The size is considerable, the outline being deeply embayed on several sides and hence very irregular, almost as much so as Celebes. Two islets lie near two of its projecting peninsulas. It bears a brief inscription giving the name Sete Cidades and indicating that it belongs to Portugal.
This choice of location would have been more venturesome a century later. In 1546 there had been some exploring and much fishing in these waters but no determined settlement near them, and they were hardly yet familiar. However, the Ortelius map of 1570[133] ([Fig. 10]), and the Mercator map of 1587[134] find it more prudent to move this island farther south and farther out to sea, reducing its area, but retaining its traditional name. Not long after this, except for a local name on St. Michaels of the Azores, the Seven Cities disappear from geography.
Fig. 9—Section of the Desceliers map of 1546 showing the Island of Seven Cities and various other legendary islands. (After Kretschmer’s hand-copied reproduction.) The names are mostly upside down because on the original south is at the top.
Fig. 10—Section of Ortelius’ world map of 1570 showing, of the legendary islands and regions discussed in the present work, the Island of Seven Cities (“Sept cites”), St. Brendan’s Islands, Brazil, Vlaenderen, Green Island (Y. Verdo), Estotiland, Drogio, Frisland, Islands of Demons, La Emperadada, and Grocland. (After Nordenskiöld’s photographic facsimile.)
Occurrence of the Name in the Azores
The exception noted is well worth considering. Just as Terceira retains her medieval name of Brazil to designate one headland, St. Michaels has still its valley of the Seven Cities. Brown’s guidebook presents the fact very casually: “St. Michaels. Ponta Delgada. Brown’s Hotel. About ten people. Among the chief sights are the lava beds coming from Sete Cidades.... At Sete Cidades, which is worth a visit, there is a great crater with two lakes at the bottom, one of which appears to be green, the other blue.”[135]
This naïve incuriousness in the presence of something so significant of course has not been shared by a different order of observers. Buache[136] found here as he thought the genuine and only Seven Cities of the legend. Humboldt[137] opposed this view with a reminder of the Seven Cities of Cibola. But it is fair to remember that New Mexico was quite impossible for the Portuguese of 711 or thereabout, whereas St. Michaels Island offered an accessible and tempting place of refuge. The name could not have been derived from settlement in the former; but it might really be derived from settlement in the latter. Granting that the fugitives might not be able to maintain themselves there in safety for many years after the Arabs had begun their tentative and always uneasy incursions into the western Sea of Darkness, it still may be that the town or towns of this hidden island valley might endure long enough and seem imposing enough and be visited often enough by Christians from the mainland to supply the nucleus of the most picturesque and adventurous of legends; and this tale might follow any later migration into the unknown, or survive and find new abiding places for the name and fancy long after the original colony—archbishop and bishops and congregations, military commanders, and mailed soldiery—had all been somehow destroyed or had melted apart and drifted away. All that remains certain is the continued presence of the name of the Seven Cities on that spot.