NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 41 



The informant averred that he had been driven thither by storms 

 with the crew of a small fishing vessel ; and was afterward sent 

 with them southward by the chief of the country to a region called 

 Drogeo or Drogio, on one map Droceo. Being captured by savages, 

 he was transferred from tribe to tribe far sonthwestward, reaching 

 a country of temples and sacrifices, until by good fortune he escaped 

 and succeeded in making his way back to Estotiland (Escociland) ; 

 thence crossing to Greenland and reaching home at last. 



Drogio has also caused much speculation, the preferred theory 

 being that it is native American more or less changed. But perhaps 

 this name also had a European origin, Italian in source or trans 

 mission. On Mercator s map of 1595, we find the words Drogio 

 dit Cornu Gallia (compare Cornouailles of Brittany) applied to Cape 

 Breton island ; which is too far removed from the mainland, but 

 unmistakable in its distinctive form. There is no mistaking, either, 

 his reference to the Breton horn protruding from northwestern 

 France into the Atlantic, which gave its name, early in the sixteenth 

 century, through its seafaring sons, to this other long, elevated 

 northern cape or ness discovered in the new world. This was always 

 the next land below Newfoundland ; it was also lower in elevation, 

 perhaps in part very much so, as fully half the island certainly is now. 

 Possibly deroga, derogare, or dirogare, if carelessly treated, might 

 evolve a Drogio fitting both meanings, if the Italian word may 

 dispense with the moral implication of &quot; derogatory.&quot; Mercator s 

 identification, being but seven years later than the publication of the 

 Zeno story, and, therefore, that of a geographer who could have con 

 sulted the publisher and author on any doubtful and important point, 

 must be taken as more nearly authoritative than anything else which 

 we have. Ortelius, about the same time, showed Drogio even farther 

 from the mainland and with less fidelity to outline, but the intent is 

 the same. 



This seems a revulsion from the more frequent mapping of Cape 

 Breton Island as integral with Nova Scotia, which was less literally 

 true, yet nearer the actual fact ; for the Gut of Canso has never been 

 more than a water-thread, and there was nothing to prevent the 

 continuous southwestern travel indicated by the story, with hardly 

 appreciable addition of canoe-ferriage. 



Dr. Fiske is at pains to present parallels to the tale of this castaway 

 in the narratives of the romancing Ingram, and the more historic as 

 well as more widely ranging Cabeza de Vaca. We might add Selim 

 of Barbary, who appeared in colonial times on the wilderness border 

 of Virginia, having been carried from New Orleans to the Shawnees 



