Nicolò the younger avers, further, that his ancestor Antonio wrote a book recording his northern observations and many facts about Greenland, but that the compiler as a boy had thoughtlessly destroyed the book with other papers and that the Zeno narrative as he gives it is made up from fragmentary letters of the elder Nicolò to Antonio and of the latter to their brother, Carlo, remaining in Venice; which letters by good fortune happened to survive.
Nobody except the younger Nicolò is asserted to have seen the map, the letters, or any of the original documents; though his parents, it would seem, must have been custodian of them before him, and he would surely have been likely to display such precious evidences to some one after awakening to their importance. But those were less critical and exacting times than the present, and conceivably it may have been felt that any corroboration would be superfluous. Yet the fact remains that we are not informed of any means of testing the accuracy of restoration or even of demonstrating that there was anything to restore.
First Use of the Names “Estotiland” and “Drogio”
The two names “Estotiland” and “Drogio” are supplied by a story within a story, an alleged yarn of a fisherman, reporting to his island ruler, whom the elder Zeno served. Obviously, the chances of lapse from truth are multiplied. Either the later Nicolò or his ancestor of more than a century and a half before may have wholly invented or more or less transformed it; or the first narrator may have created his tale out of no real happenings or have so distorted it by mistake or willful imposture as to render it wholly unreliable. In its general outlines it is by no means impossible; but neither would it have been very difficult to compose such a yarn out of nothing but fancy and the American information at the command of the younger Nicolò. It comes to us through the medium of an alleged letter of his ancestor Antonio, written home to the latter’s brother Carlo near the end of the fifteenth century. With some slight compression, the narrative runs as follows:
Six and twenty years ago four fishing boats put out to sea, and, encountering a heavy storm, were driven over the sea in utter helplessness for many days; when at length, the tempest abating, they discovered an island called Estotiland, lying to the westwards above one thousand miles from Frislanda. One of the boats was wrecked, and six men that were in it were taken by the inhabitants, and brought into a fair and populous city, where the king of the place sent for many interpreters, but there were none could be found that understood the language of the fishermen, except one that spoke Latin, and who had also been cast by chance upon the same island.... They ... remained five years on the island, and learned the language. One of them in particular visited different parts of the island, and reports that it is a very rich country, abounding in all good things. It is a little smaller than Iceland, but more fertile; in the middle of it is a very high mountain, in which rise four rivers which water the whole country.
The inhabitants are a very intelligent people, and possess all the arts like ourselves; and it is to be believed that in time past they have had intercourse with our people, for he said that he saw Latin books in the king’s library, which they at this present time do not understand. They have their own language and letters. They have all kinds of metals, but especially they abound with gold. Their foreign intercourse is with Greenland, whence they import furs, brimstone and pitch.... They have woods of immense extent. They make their buildings with walls, and there are many towns and villages. They make small boats and sail them, but they have not the loadstone, nor do they know the north by the compass. For this reason these fishermen were held in great estimation, insomuch that the king sent them with twelve boats to the southwards to a country which they call Drogio; but in their voyage they had such contrary weather that they were in fear for their lives.
... They were taken into the country and the greater number of them were eaten by the savages.... But as that fisherman and his remaining companions were able to show them the way of taking fish with nets, their lives were saved.... As this man’s fame spread ... there was a neighboring chief who was very anxious to have him with him ... he made war on the chief with whom the fisherman then was, and ... at length overcame him, and so the fisherman was sent over to him with the rest of his company. During the space of thirteen years that he dwelt in those parts, he says that he was sent in this manner to more than five-and-twenty chiefs ... wandering up and down ... he became acquainted with almost all those parts. He says that it is a very great country, and, as it were, a new world; the people are very rude and uncultivated, for they all go naked and suffer cruelly from the cold, nor have they the sense to clothe themselves with the skins of the animals which they take in hunting. They have no kind of metal. They live by hunting, and carry lances of wood, sharpened at the point. They have bows, the strings of which are made of beasts’ skins. They are very fierce, and have deadly fights amongst each other, and eat one another’s flesh.... The farther you go southwestwards, however, the more refinement you meet with, because the climate is more temperate, and accordingly there they have cities and temples dedicated to their idols, in which they sacrifice men and afterwards eat them.
His fellow captives having decided to remain where they were, he bade them farewell, and made his escape through the woods in the direction of Drogio, ... where he spent three years. [One day] some boats had arrived. He went down to the seaside, and ... found they had come from Estotiland. [They took him aboard as interpreter.] He afterwards traded in their company to such good purpose that he became very rich, and, fitting out a vessel of his own, returned to Frislanda.[218]
Geographical Implication of the Narrative
In spite of plain geographical indications in the above recital, Estotiland has been located by some random or oversubtle conjectures in the strangest and most widely scattered places, including even parts of the British Isles. But a region a thousand miles west of the Faroes or any other Atlantic islands can be nothing but American, and the restriction of its commerce to Greenland, apparently as a next neighbor, points very clearly (as Estotiland) to that outjutting elbow of North America, which culminates in Cape Race, south of Greenland and thrust out toward Europe. The clear definition of it in the tale as an island, largely explored by the narrator, approximating the size of Iceland but more fertile, with mountainous interior, great forests (such as gave the name Markland to Norse tradition), and rivers flowing several ways, clearly indicates Newfoundland. The Zeno map accords with this, and most of the later maps accept that identification—though often with a great extension of territory. Thus a French map in the United States National Museum,[219] having 1668 for an entry of discovery and perhaps dating from about 1700, presents the whole region southeast of Hudson Bay in an inscription as called Estotiland by the Danes, Nouvelle Bretagne (New Britain) by the English, Canada Septentrionale by the French, and Labrador by the Spanish; but here again Labrador and Newfoundland may have been chiefly in mind.