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Legendary islands of the Atlantic; a study in medieval geography

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Autolocus
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« Reply #75 on: July 19, 2009, 03:32:47 am »

SYLVANUS MAP OF 1511 65

far the minimization of distance might be carried by some
map-makers.

THE SYLVANUS MAP OF 1511

The fact is, this matter does not rest in supposition only, for the
thing has undoubtedly happened. The map of Sylvanus, 43 1511,
brings the Gulf of St. Lawrence and surroundings as an insular
body almost as near Ireland as are many of the presentations of
Brazil Island on older maps. He shows in front a single large
island; a square gulf behind it; a bent shore line forming the
border on the north, west, and south; and two gaps well repre-
senting the Straits of Belle Isle and Cabot. The names given
are Terra Laboratorum and Regalis Domus. Nobody doubts
that it illustrates the St. Lawrence Gulf region, though there
has been much speculation as to what unknown explorer has had
his discoveries commemorated here, thjrje.n years before the
first voyage of Carrier. Why should not a like episode of dis-
covery and imperfect record have happened at a still earlier
date?

It is not to be supposed that Brazil Island was generally con-
ceived of by intelligent persons as no farther at sea than it
appears on the map of Dalorto, 1325, and divers later ones.
Peasantry and fisher folk might, indeed, confuse it with the
mythical Isle of the Undying accessible only to a few chosen
ones but vanishing from ordinary mortal gaze and thus account
for Brazil's elusiveness, though so near at hand ; but the sturdy
explorers of Bristol 44 who kept sailing westward in search of the
island, before and after Columbus, sometimes at least being
away on this quest for many months together, must often have
passed over the very site given by Dalorto and far beyond.
They were looking for solid earth and rock and must have been
convinced that the real Brazil was to be found in remoter seas.
Also, during a great part of the period in which Brazil appeared

Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, p. n.

44 See Ayala's letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, copied in many Cabot narratives;
e. g. in the work cited above in footnote 10, p. 430, and at the beginning of the next
chapter.



66 ISLAND OF BRAZIL

on the maps off the Blaskets and Limerick and unduly close
to Ireland, Italian traders were habitually following the Irish
western coast and trafficking in that port and others and must
often have been blown out, or sailed out by choice, far enough for
a landing on the island if it had actually been where Dalorto
and others pictured it. The total lack of any such happening
must have been convincing to all except devotees of the occult
and those given over blindly to seashore tradition. No doubt the
far westward showing of the fifteenth-century Catalan and the
much later Nicolay and Zaltieri maps accorded with the general
expectation of thoughtful and well-informed navigators.
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