﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 25 



The true history of the matter seems to have been as follows : 

 The original Brazil, west of Ireland, was found some time (probably 

 very long) before 1325 and named admiringly. Afterward, in emula- 

 tion, the same name of high praise and celebration was applied to 

 the beautiful island of Terceira, where a mountain bears it still. The 

 abundant dye-material 1 of the latter came to be known by this geo- 

 graphical name (as india rubber is, wherever obtained) ; other islands 

 which had the like were called Brazil, and at last it was hardly 

 possible to think of that name without thinking of the dye. This 

 came about early and effectually among the South-European geo- 

 graphers, who had borrowed an Irish word without knowing the 

 Irish language. We find Brazir and Brazile as their pretty fair 

 guesses at the true name of the original island, besides the more 

 aberrant forms already mentioned, which were generally applied to 

 the later and derivative Brazils nearer their own shores. Thus 

 Brazil-wood has nothing to do with the original naming ; but the 

 island name has everything to do, through another and namesake 

 island, with the naming of the widely sought and greatly coveted dye. 



From the middle of the fourteenth century, Brazil had usually a 

 crescent-shaped consort on the maps called Man, Mon, or Mam, 

 located farther to the southwest and about in the latitude of Brittany. 

 This has been sometimes identified with that similarly located and 

 most persistent Asmaida, Mayda or Mayde which Humboldt thought 

 to be of Arabic naming and diabolical significance ; and certainly hav- 

 ing names in two languages need be no more surprising in this in- 

 stance than in that of Madeira, or Teneriffe, or Flores. Indeed, Man 

 with its distinctive form, appears in one old map as Joncele ; and 

 Mayda in a later one as Vlandoren, showing that navigators of still 

 other tongues had taken their turns in reporting. It must further be 

 said for Mayda that even in a mid-eighteenth century map it retains 

 the old station of Man southwest of Brazil ; but, on the other hand, it 

 is not usually of a distinctly crescent form. 



Sometimes, too, Man has been identified with the island north of 

 Antillia, the full name of which is understood to be La Man de 

 Satanaxio ; but this is most likely a case of mere verbal coincidence, 

 helped out by their share in a common evil repute, to which the 

 Devil Rock, still appearing on some maps in this quarter, may bear 

 witness. But the existence of this rock is apparently disproven, 

 as the United States Hydrographic Office informs me. At any 

 rate, on the fifteenth century maps of Beccaria, Benincasa, and Bianco, 



1 See Note 5, p. 176. 



