Legendary Islands of the Atlantic: A Study of Medieval Geography

by William Henry Babcock

The maps made after the world had become more or less familiarized with the details of modern discoveries, in this case as in most others of its kind, indicate little except the dying out of old traditions, whatever they may have been, and haphazard or conventional substitution of locations and forms or the influence of the new geographic facts and theories. Thus Desceliers’ map of 1546[163] ([Fig. 9]), a museum of strangely-named sea islands, makes the latitude of “Maidas” 47° and the longitude that of St. Michaels, but not long afterward Nicolay (1560;[164] [Fig. 6]) and Zaltieri (1566)[165] transferred the island to Newfoundland waters. Nicolay calls it “I man orbolunda,” and places it just south of the Strait of Belle Isle. It is accompanied by Green Island and by Brazil, a little farther out on the Grand Banks where the Virgin Rocks may still be found at low tide. Taken together these three islands look like parts of a disintegrated Newfoundland. Zaltieri of 1566 gives Maida by that name more nearly the same outward location, though it is still distinctly American. Nicolay’s name “orbolunda” is one of the many puzzling things connected with this island. His “Man” may be either a reversion to the fifteenth-century name, or, more likely, a modification of, or error in copying from Gastaldi’s map-illustration[166] of Ramusio about ten years previously, which allots the same inclement site to an “isola de demoni” and depicts the little capering devils in wait there for their prey. It is likely, though, that Gastaldi had no thought of identifying it with Mayda. But the neighborhood of the island of Brazil and Green Island seem nearly conclusive evidence that Nicolay intended I Man for Mayda and had ascribed to it, by reason of evil association, the supposed attributes of Gastaldi’s island. However, Ramusio himself in 1566,[167] the same year as Zaltieri, set his “Man” south of Brazil off the coast of Ireland. The only really important contributions of these maps are their testimony to the continued diabolical reports of Mayda, or Man, and the apparent conviction of Nicolay and Zaltieri that the island was after all American; a suggestion that could have had no meaning and no support in the times when America was unrecognized. Evidently these map-makers did not regard the inadequate western longitude of Mayda, or Man, in the older maps as a formidable objection. Presumably they were well aware how many of the insular oceanic distances as shown by these forerunners needed stretching in the light of later discovery. But their views with regard to an American Mayda seem to have ended with them, so far as map representation is concerned.

Fig. 12—Section of the Prunes map of 1553 showing Mayda (in latitude 48°), Brazil, and Estotiland (“Esthlanda”). (After Kretschmer’s hand-copied reproduction.)

Possible Identity of Vlaenderen Island with Mayda

There is another curious and rather mystifying episodical divergence in the cartography of that period, this time on the part of the great geographers Ortelius and Mercator in their respective series of maps during the latter part of the sixteenth century, for example Ortelius of 1570[168] and Mercator of 1587.[169] Ortelius presents as Vlaenderen an oceanic island which certainly seems intended for Mayda ([Fig. 10]), while Mercator shows Vlaenderen as lying about half-way between Brazil and the usual site of Maida. The word has a Dutch or Flemish look. Of course there must be some explanation of it, but this is unknown to the writer. The natural inference would be that some skipper of the Low Countries thought he had happened upon it and reported accordingly. This was what occurred in the case of Negra’s Rock, now held to be wholly fictitious though shown in many maps; and also in the case of the sunken land of Buss, now generally recognized as real and as a part of Greenland but recorded and delineated in the wrong place by an error of observation. It may be that Ortelius believed in a rediscovery of Mayda and that for some reason it should have the name latest given. But, in spite of the prestige of these great names, Vlaenderen did not continue on the maps, while Mayda did, though in a rather capricious way.

Persistence of Mayda on Maps Down to the Modern Period

There would be little profit in listing the maps of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries which persisted by inertia and convention in the nearly stereotyped delineation of Mayda but, of course, with slight variations in location and name. Thus Nicolaas Vischer in a map of Europe of 1670 (?)[170] shows “L’as Maidas” in the longitude of Madeira and the latitude of Brittany; a world map in Robert’s “Atlas Universel” (1757)[171] gives “I. Maida” about the longitude of Madeira and the latitude of Gascony; and on a chart of the Atlantic Ocean published in New York in 1814[172] “Mayda” appears in longitude 20° W. and latitude 46° N. But these representations have no significance except as to human continuity.

The evil reputation which was early established and seems to have hung about the island in later stages, assimilating the icy clashings and noises and terrors of the north as it had previously incorporated the monstrous fears of a warmer part of the ocean, is surely a curious phenomenon. I have fancied it may be responsible for the probably quite imaginary Devil Rock, which appears in some relatively recent maps, perhaps as a kind of substitute for Mayda, much in the fashion that Brazil Rock took the place of Brazil Island when belief in the latter became difficult. The present view of the U. S. Hydrographic Office, as expressed on its charts, is that Negra’s Rock, Devil Rock, Green Island, or Rock, and all that tribe are unreal “dangers,” probably reported as the result of peculiar appearances of the water surface. Whether the possibility has been wholly eliminated of a lance of rock jutting up to the surface from great depths and not yet officially recognized, I will not presume to say; but it seems highly improbable that there is anything of the sort in the North Atlantic Ocean except the lonely and nearly submerged peak of Rockall, some 400 miles west of Britain, and the well-known oceanic groups and archipelagoes.

Probable Basis of Fact Underlying This Legendary Island

What was this island, then, which held its place in the maps during half a millennium and more, under two chief names and occasional substitutes, designations apparently received from so many different peoples? One cannot easily set it aside as a “peculiar appearance of the surface” or as a mere figment of fancy. But there is nothing westward or southwestward of the Azores except the Bermudas and the capes and coast islands of America. The identification with some outlying island of the Azores, as Corvo, for example, is an old hypothesis; and the grotesquery of that rocky islet seems to have deeply impressed the minds of early navigators, lending some countenance to the idea. But the Laurenziano map of 1351[173] and the Book of the Spanish Friar[174] show that all the islands of the Azores group were known before the middle of the fourteenth century, and Corvo in particular had been given the name which it still holds. Man, afterward Mayda, appears on many maps of the fifteenth century, which show also the Azores in full. Perhaps this is not conclusive, for there are strange blunders and duplications on old maps; but it is at least highly significant. If Man, or Mayda, were really Corvo or another island of the Azores group, surely someone would have found it out in the course of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, just as it came to be perceived after a time that the Azores had been located too near to Europe and just as Bianco’s duplication of the Azores in 1448 had finally to be rejected. Mayda, if real, must have been something more remote and difficult to determine than Corvo.