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Legendary islands of the Atlantic; a study in medieval geography

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Autolocus
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« Reply #90 on: July 19, 2009, 03:37:30 am »

IDENTITY WITH VLAENDEREN ISLAND 89

name more nearly the same outward location, though it is still
distinctly American. Nicolay's name "orbolunda" is one of the
many puzzling things connected with this island. His "Man"
may be either a reversion to the fifteenth-century name, or,
more likely, a modification of, or error in copying from Gas-
taldi's map-illustration 28 of Ramusio about ten years previously,
which allots the same inclement site to an "isola de demoni"
and depicts the little capering devils in wait there for their
prey. It is likely, though, that Gastaldi had no thought of
dentifying it with May da. But the neighborhood of the island
of Brazil and Green Island seem nearly conclusive evidence that
Nicolay intended I Man for Mayda and had ascribed to it,
by reason of evil association, the supposed attributes of Gas-
taldi's island. However, Ramusio himself in I566, 29 the same
year as Zaltieri, set his "Man" south of Brazil off the coast of
Ireland. The only really important contributions of these maps
are their testimony to the continued diabolical reports of Mayda,
or Man, and the apparent conviction of Nicolay and Zaltieri
that the island was after all American; a suggestion that could
have had no meaning and no support in the times when America
was unrecognized. Evidently these map-makers did not regard
the inadequate western longitude of Mayda, or Man, in the
older maps as a formidable objection. Presumably they were
well aware how many of the insular oceanic distances as shown
by these forerunners needed stretching in the light of later
discovery. But their views with regard to an American Mayda
seem to have ended with them, so far as map representation is
concerned.

POSSIBLE IDENTITY OF VLAENDEREN ISLAND WITH MAYDA

There is another curious and rather mystifying episodical
divergence in the cartography of that period, this time on the

28 Justin Winsor: Cartier to Frontenac: Geographical Discovery in the Interior
of North America in Its Historical Relations, 1534-1700, with Full Cartographical
Illustrations from Contemporary Sources, Boston and New York, 1894, P- 60.

2 A. E. Nordenskiold, Periplus, Fig. 76, p. 163.



90 MAYDA

part of the great geographers Ortelius and Mercator in their
respective series of maps during the latter part of the sixteenth
century, for example Ortelius of I57O 30 and Mercator of I587. 31
Ortelius presents as Vlaendereri an oceanic island which certainly
seems intended for Mayda (Fig. 10), while Mercator shows
Vlaenderen as lying about half-way between Brazil and the
usual site of Maida. The word has a Dutch or Flemish look.
Of course there must be some explanation of it, but this is
unknown to the writer. The natural inference would be that
some skipper of the Low Countries thought he had happened
upon it and reported accordingly. This was what occurred in
the case of Negra's Rock, now held to be wholly fictitious
though shown in many maps; and also in the case of the sunken
land of Buss, now generally recognized as real and as a part of
Greenland but recorded and delineated in the wrong place by
an error of observation. It may be that Ortelius believed in a
rediscovery of Mayda and that for some reason it should have
the name latest given. But, in spite of the prestige of these
great names, Vlaenderen did not continue on the maps, while
Mayda did, though in a rather capricious way.

PERSISTENCE OF MAYDA ON MAPS DOWN TO THE MODERN
PERIOD

There would be little profit in listing the maps of the seven-
teenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries which persisted
by inertia and convention in the nearly stereotyped delineation
of Mayda but, of course, with slight variations in location and
name. Thus Nicolaas Vischer in a map of Europe of 1670 (P) 32
shows "L'as Maidas" in the longitude of Madeira and the latitude
of Brittany; a world map in Robert's "Atlas Universel" (I757) 33
gives "I. Maida" about the longitude of Madeira and the latitude
of Gascony; and on a chart of the Atlantic Ocean published in

*> A. E. Nordenskiold: Facsimile-Atlas, PL 46.
Ibid., PL 47.

K Copy in map collection of American Geographical Society
Atlas universel, par M. Robert, Geographe ordinaire du Roy, et par M. Ro-
bert de Vaugondy, son fils, . . . Paris, 1757, PL 13-



PROBABLE BASIS OF FACT 91

New York in I8I4 34 "Mayda" appears in longitude 20 W. and
latitude 46 N. But these representations have no significance
except as to human continuity.

The evil reputation which was early established and seems to
have hung about the island in later stages, assimilating the icy
clashings and noises and terrors of the north as it had previously
incorporated the monstrous fears of a warmer part of the ocean,
is surely a curious phenomenon. I have fancied it may be
responsible for the probably quite imaginary Devil Rock,
which appears in some relatively recent maps, perhaps as a
kind of substitute for Mayda, much in the fashion that Brazil
Rock took the place of Brazil Island when belief in the latter
became difficult. The present view of the U. S. Hydrographic
Office, as expressed on its charts, is that Negra's Rock, Devil
Rock, Green Island, or Rock, and all that tribe are unreal
"dangers," probably reported as the result of peculiar appear-
ances of the water surface. Whether the possibility has been
wholly eliminated of a lance of rock jutting up to the surface
from great depths and not yet officially recognized, I will not
presume to say; but it seems highly improbable that there is
anything of the sort in the North Atlantic Ocean except the
lonely and nearly submerged peak of Rockall, some 400 miles
west of Britain, and the well-known oceanic groups and archi-
pelagoes.
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