﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 37 



date usually alleged for his voyage. This is fortified by an ancient 

 quotation or so and by a reminder that Giraldus Cambrensis, who 

 missed very little which seemed noteworthy, was in that neighbor- 

 hood within 18 years afterward and tells us nothing about Madoc's 

 voyage — a consideration which one may appreciate without any 

 Welsh scholarship. Moreover, this same observant Gerald explic- 

 itly blames the Welsh for their lack of interest in shipping. They 

 seem to have had little to do with the ocean since Arthur's time, 

 as compared with the Irish and Bretons. However, the growth of 

 a legend of American colonization from the assassination of a Welsh 

 prince is not conclusively made out nor easily thinkable. 



It seems more likely that he sailed, at first on a westward course 

 as stated, which, if continued far enough, might land him in Nova 

 Scotia or on the shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. But Madoc of 

 Wales would have no compass, though the Arabs had it, and the 

 Spaniards through them ; 1 and though the troubabour Guiot de 

 Provins was to mention it only four years later; and Madoc had 

 no particular aim that we know of, so that, either by accident or 

 design, his helm may have shifted widely. Armorica, Madeira, and 

 other possible landfalls have been suggested ; but there is no evidence 

 for any of them. 



If the story of Madoc is baffling through its meagerness approach- 

 ing a vacuum, the Zeno Brothers ' 2 narrative is likewise baffling by 

 its exuberance and confusion. Nicolo Zeno published the story at 

 Venice in 1588, as his best restoration of a map and letters, which 

 he had found when a boy among family documents and torn or other- 

 wise damaged unthinkingly. His work seems mainly done in good 

 faith and to celebrate the prowess of the earlier Zeni, with no 

 thought of pitting them against Columbus ; but he used divers maps 

 and books to help him out and conjectured at random, and even 

 wilfully decorated a little, as though to make amends for very 

 despiteful usage. 3 Thus " Icaria " in the original — possibly Kerry 

 or St. Kilda — suggests the myth of Daedalus, which forthwith comes 

 headlong into the story. Again he must needs help out a fisherman's 

 yarn of travel among Indians in America by a little recently acquired 

 knowledge of Aztec temples and human sacrifices. There was also a 

 great shifting of harbors and towns. His most conspicuous invention 



1 Th. Stephens: Madoc, p. 195. 



2 R. H. Major: The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers Zeno. 

 3 F. W. Lucas: The Annals of the Voyages of the Brothers Zeno (1895). 

 pp. 8. 83, 99. 



