Of course, it is not there; nothing ever was there except an ample expanse of sea. Where Zeno got the idea of Icaria is not known—except as an appended and unimportant myth from the Aegean; it certainly was not supplied by the facts of the North Atlantic. Probably the initial “I” stands for island as usual, and “Caria” is a not impossible transformation of either “Kerry” (preferred by Major) or “Kilda”—the latter more likely, for southern Ireland was continually visited by Italian traders, whereas St. Kilda lay off the trade routes rather far away in the mists and myths of the ocean and might be a fairer field for exaggeration and shifting of place. But, with every allowance, it is hard to see how this small ultra-Hebridean rock pile could become a large island territory just short of America. Perhaps it is as well to treat Icaria as merely the unprovoked creation of the romantic brain of the younger Zeno.
Influence of Imaginary Cartography
It may be true that the elder Zeno brothers served for a time under some northern island ruler, whose name the later Nicolò Zeno read and copied as the impossible Zichmni; that they then visited various countries and islands, possibly including the surviving but dwindling Greenland settlement; that one of them heard in general outline the adventures of a fisherman or minor mariner cast away at two points of the American coast; and that a futile attempt was thereupon made by their patron to explore the same regions. Every one of these admissions lacks adequate confirmation and is very dubious; yet they are all possible. But it is not possible that a map made about 1400 could bear at almost all points the plain marks of copying with slight changes from maps of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and, since the narrative so well fits the map, the two as we have them must stand or fall together.
Either Nicolò Zeno of 1558 invented the whole matter, building up his imposture by the aid of maps and information already existent and accessible, or he actually had some sort of old sketch map and fragments of letters and has recast them with more modern aids quite at his convenience, leaving no certain trace of the original outlines or statements. It comes to much the same thing in either case.
Also in either case his unscrupulous and misleading achievements in imaginary cartography remain as historic facts. For a century or more he supplied the maps of the world with several new great islands; he shifted others widely into new positions; he adorned other regions with new names that were loath to depart; and he presented a story of pre-Columbian discovery of America which was long accepted as true and is not wholly discarded even yet.
CHAPTER X
ANTILLIA AND THE ANTILLES
There are two names still in common use for American regions, which long antedate Columbus and most likely commemorate achievements of earlier explorers. They are Brazil and the Antilles. The former is earlier on the maps and records; but the case for Antillia, as an American pre-Columbian map item, is in some respects less complex and more obvious.
Antillia
A good many decades before the New World became known as such, Antillia was recognized as a legitimate geographical feature. A comparatively late and generally familiar instance of such mention occurs in Toscanelli’s letter of 1474 to Columbus,[237] recommending this island as a convenient resting point on the sea route to Cathay. Its authenticity has been questioned, notably by the venerable and learned Henry Vignaud,[238] but at least some one wrote it and in it reflected the viewpoint of the time.