Some of the well-known mythical or dubious map islands of the North Atlantic make their entry into cartography very early indeed, apparently as the contribution or record of otherwise forgotten voyages, though we cannot say with certainty precisely when or how; others, long afterward, were the products of mirage, ocean-surface phenomena, or mariners’ fancies working under the suggestion of saintly or demoniacal legends amid the hazes and perils of little-known seas, the precise time of their origin remaining uncertain. As a rule the latter class were less persistent on the maps and are geographically rather unimportant.
In two cases, however, Estotiland and Drogio, we know the first appearance of their names before the public, which is very probably the first use of them among men. They derive a special interest from being located in America and from an asserted journey by Europeans to them more than a hundred years before the first voyage of Columbus. The map which first shows them also displays divers other Atlantic islands, either of unusual name or unusual location and area, not conforming at all to the insular tracts of the North Atlantic basin as we know them now. The fantastic exhibition as a whole had an immediate, long-continuing, and considerable—almost revolutionary—effect on the map-making of the world.
The Zeno Volume
In the year 1558 a volume was printed by Marcolino at Venice, purporting to give an account of “The Discovery of the Islands of Frislanda, Eslanda, Engroneland, Estotiland, and Icaria made by two brothers of the Zeno family, Messire Nicolò the Chevalier and Messire Antonio.”[215] Some of the islands named in the book are omitted from this title; and the word “Discovery” must have been used with willful inexactness, for Greenland (Engroneland) had been in Norse occupancy for centuries, and Shetland (Eslanda, Estland, or Estiland) was as positively, though not as familiarly, known as Great Britain. But the indication of aim and scope was sufficient.
The name of the author, or, as he calls himself, “the compiler,” was not given; but he is generally recognized to have been the Nicolò Zeno of a younger generation, a man of local prominence and a member of the dominant Council of Ten of the Venetian republic. In 1561 he edited for Ruscelli’s edition of Ptolemy, a subsequent edition of the map ([Fig. 19]) which is the volume’s most conspicuous feature. His account of the Zeno book’s origin seems to have been accepted generally and promptly among his own people, as also the general accuracy of its geography. But, as Lucas remarks, “An adverse critic of a member of the Council of Ten, in Venice, in the sixteenth century, would have been a remarkably bold, not to say foolhardy, man.”[216] However, there are shelters and places of seclusion from even the most arbitrary power; and it would seem that the eminent younger Nicolò would hardly have the effrontery to challenge the world in matters then easily susceptible of disproof concerning his still more eminent ancestor and kinsman. Surely they must have had some notable experiences in northern islands on the reports of which he could rely in a general way, however erroneous or fraudulent in some important features, though then first advancing the transatlantic claim to discovery.
Moreover, the dread of the Council could not overshadow distant geographers like Mercator and Ortelius, whose maps of 1569 and 1570[217] (cf. [Fig. 10]) almost eagerly embody the most distinctive Zeno additions, giving them the greatest currency and implying some sense of the general probability of discoveries by members of that family. Estotiland and Drogio are very distinctly shown, the former apparently as Newfoundland united to Labrador, the latter as a smaller and more southern island which may well be Cape Breton Island, pushed a bit offshore, but still not very far from the mainland.
Fig. 19—The map of the northern regions by the Zeno brothers, 1558, showing Frisland, Estotiland, Icaria, and Drogio. (After Lucas’ photographic facsimile.)
There has been much discussion as to whether the book should be regarded as wholly a forgery or not, as to the location of these regions, and as to the derivation and meaning of the names; but all agree that Estotiland and Drogio were not known before 1558.
Nicolò the compiler reports: “The sailing chart which I find, I still have among our family antiquities and, though it is rotten with age, I have succeeded with it tolerably well.” Just what this success involved is an interesting question. It has been understood by his most reasonable advocates to include conjectural restoration, such as the deficiencies of rottenness seemed to call for, and somewhat more.