Perhaps the latter explanation is the best yet given of the mysterious island Scorafixa, or Stokafixa, in Andrea Bianco’s map of 1436.[315] It has sometimes been understood as Newfoundland, which bore long afterward the name Bacalaos, the equivalent in a different tongue of the northern “stockfish,” our codfish. But it would naturally be freely applied to any island in rather high latitudes which was conspicuous for that fishery, and Stokafixa seems near of kin to Fixlanda, which figures on divers maps as a combined suggestion of Iceland and the imaginary Frisland but with geographical features mainly borrowed from the former. The first-named identification may be tempting as establishing another pre-Columbian discovery of America, but it quite lacks corroboration; and Iceland was a great center of codfishery, distributing its name and attributes rather liberally in legend and on the maps. Humboldt incidentally mentions “l’île des Morues (île de Stockfisch, Stokafixa)” on the seventh map of the atlas of Bianco, 1436. I do not clearly make out the name on T. Fischer’s facsimile reproduction;[316] but from position and appearance the island seems meant for Iceland.
Other Map Islands in the Northwestern Atlantic
The Grand Banks and other banks of Newfoundland, with the Virgin Rocks and perhaps other piles or pinnacles rising from that bed nearly to the surface so as to be uncovered in some tides; Sable Island, a rather long way offshore; Cape Breton Island and fragments of the main shore—may be held responsible for some map islands such as Arredonda and Dobreton, Jacquet I., Monte Christo, I. de Juan, and Juan de Sampo.
There are still other islands mostly north of the latitude of Bermuda and between it and the Azores or northeastern America, but far at sea, of which one can make little, except as probably complimenting some pilot, skipper, or other individual, or commemorating some incident which has nevertheless been generally forgotten. Thus Negra’s Rock, which has hardly ceased to appear on the maps, does not really exist but may keep us in mind, by its rather sinister and mythical sound, that a certain Captain Negra once thought he saw something solid in the great liquid and reported accordingly. Of such origin, perhaps, are I. de Garcia, Y Neufre, Y d’Hyanestienne, Lasciennes, and divers others scattered over various maps and offering no promise of reward for hunting down their pedigrees or history. All these distinctly post-Columbian islands are quite too recent and casual to throw any light on the earlier historically and geographically significant “mythical islands” or on what these reveal.
CHAPTER XIII
SUMMARY
It seems neither practicable nor desirable to recapitulate minutely in this final chapter the rather numerous distinctive features of the present work; but attention may properly be directed to some of its salient conclusions. In stating them positively as below, here or elsewhere, I do not mean to be offensively dogmatic but to present concisely my own deductions from evidence which I have been at some pains to gather.
Atlantis was a creation of philosophic romance, incited and aided by miscellaneous data out of history, tradition, and known physical phenomena, especially by rumors of the weed-encumbered windless dead waters of the Sargasso Sea. There never was any such gorgeous and dominant Atlantic power as the Atlantis of Plato, able to overrun and conquer more than half of the Mediterranean and contend with Athens in a struggle of life and death.
St. Brendan did not cross the Atlantic nor discover any island in its remoter reaches, where some maps show islands bearing his name. He seems, however, to have visited divers eastern Atlantic islands, now well known; and it is quite likely that most of the portolan maps of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries are right in linking his name especially to Madeira and her neighbors.
Brazil Island is a conspicuously complex problem. Probably it represents the region around the Gulf of St. Lawrence, brought on the same parallel unduly near the Irish shore. Thus understood, it would be, presumably, but not necessarily, the cartographic record of some early Irish voyage far to the westward. It does not appear on any extant map before 1325, but maps showing the Atlantic and its remoter islands (apart from the hopeless distortions of Edrisi and certain monks) can hardly be said to have existed earlier.