Message #160342

[Autolocus]

54 ISLAND OF BRAZIL

be reared in Italy, it seems unlikely that the seed should be a
valued item of commerce, regularly listed, bargained for, and
taxed. We do not hear of its being put to use as a dye ; and , indeed ,
the bark or wood of the plant seems far more promising for
that purpose. Like our distinguished forerunners in considering
this little mystery, we must set it aside as not yet fully solved.

"Grain of Brazil" is not repeated in any entry, so far as I know,
after the end of the twelfth century; but brazil as a commodity
figures rather frequently; for example, in the schedules of port
dues of Barcelona and other Catalan seaboard towns in the
thirteenth century, as compiled by Capmany. 7 Thus in 1221
we find "carrega de Brasill," in 1243 "caxia de bresil," and some-
what later (1252) "cargua de brazil," the spelling varying as in
the easy-going fourteenth- and fifteenth-century maps, the word
being plainly the same. But the word and the thing were not
confined to the Mediterranean, for a grant of murage rates of
1312 to the city of Dublin, Ireland, uses the words "de brasile
venali." 8 This is pretty far afield and shows that the knowledge
and use of brazil as taxable merchandise was nearly Europe-wide.
As a rule, it has been taken for granted that the word meant
either some special kind of red dyewood or dyewood in general.
Marco Polo's account conforms rather to the former version,
while Humboldt seems to lean toward the latter; but there is
singularly little in the entries which tends to identify it as wood
at all or in any way relate it thereto. Such words as carrega,
caxia, cargua, show that it was put up in some kind of inclosure,
and perhaps give the impression of comminution or at least
absence of bulkiness. Most likely many kinds of red bark, red
wood suitable for dyeing, and perhaps other vegetable products
available for that purpose were sometimes included under the
name brazil. People of that time were more concerned about

7 Antonio de Capmany: Memorias historicas sob re la marina, comercio, y artes
de la antigua ciudad de Barcelona, 4 vols., Madrid, 1779-92; reference in Vol. 2,
pp. 4, 17, and 20.

8 T. J. Westropp: Early Italian Maps of Ireland from 1300 to 1600, With Notes
on Foreign Settlers and Trade, Proc. Royal Irish Acad., Vol. 30, Section C, 1912-13,
pp. 361-428; reference on p. 393.



DISTRIBUTION OF NAME ON EARLY MAPS 55

results and means to attain them than about exactness in
classification or definition.

It may well be that both lines of derivation of the name meet
in the Brazil Island west of Ireland, that it was given a traditional
Irish name by Irish navigators and tale tellers and mapped
accordingly by Italians, who would naturally apply to it the
meaning with which they were familiar in commerce and eastern
story, so that the Island of Brazil, extolled on all hands, would
come to mean along the Mediterranean chiefly the island where
peculiarly precious dyewoods abounded. We know that Colum-
bus was pleased to collect what his followers called brazil in his
third and fourth voyages along American shores; 9 that Cabot
felicitates himself on the prospect of finding silk and brazilwood
by persistence in his westward explorations ; 10 and that the great
Brazil of South America received its final name as a tribute to its
prodigal production of such dyes.