H 



NA TURE 



{May 3. 188- 



have been given to the handle, discharges sparks freely. 

 If the two main conductors are respectively joined to the 

 inner and outer coatings of a large Leyden jar, the dis- 

 charges take place with short, loud sparks of great bril- 

 liancy. If from any cause the machine does not at once 

 charge itself, a gentle rub with a silk handkerchief on 

 either of the ebonite pillars will suffice to provide the 

 requisite stimulus. The Wimshurst machine appears to 

 be less liable than any other influence-machine to have 

 the polarity of its charge reversed. It serves admirably 

 for the production of the electric shadows discovered by 

 Holtz and Righi. Mr. Wimshurst is much to be con- 

 gratulated on the service he has rendered to experimental 

 science in devising so useful and efficient an instrument. 



THE ZENI NARRATIVE'- 



'"THERE is no greater puzzle in geographical literature 

 - 1 than the so-called "Zeni narrative," which was 

 published at Venice in 1558 by Francesco Marcolini, and 

 claimed to be an authentic compilation by Nicolo Zeno 

 of letters, in the possession of his family, which had been 

 written at the close of the fourteenth century by two of 

 his ancestors, the brothers Antonio and Nicolo Zeno, 

 describing their adventures in the far north. 



The story told by Nicolo Zeno was that when a boy he 

 had found these letters in his father's palace, together 

 with a map illustrating the travels of the Zeni brothers, 

 and not knowing their value had torn many of them up. 

 When he grew older he had however learnt to appreciate 

 their true character, for like the rest of his family, one of 

 the most illustrious in Venice, he was an accomplished 

 scholar, and well acquainted with the results of geo- 

 graphical research. And collecting together all the letters 

 that had escaped destruction, he compiled his narrative, 

 and made a copy of the map, supplying from his own 

 knowledge, and his interpretation of the travels of his 

 ancestors, such names and other details as had become 

 illegible from the then half-rotten condition of the 

 original chart. 



Ruscelli in 1 561, and Moletius, one of the editors of 

 Ramusio, in 1562, followed by the Venetian geographers 

 generally, believed in the authenticity of the Zeni travels, 

 as told by Nicolo the younger, who, as a Member of the 

 Council of Ten, occupied one of the highest nosts in the 

 Republic, and was esteemed as a liberal patron of learning. 

 But in other countries doubts were entertained in regard 

 to the truth of the narrative, while in some quarters there 

 arose an utterly untenable notion, that the book had been 

 compiled with the object of securing to Venice the honour 

 of having discovered the New World before Columbus 

 set foot on it. In 1595 the Flemish geographer, G. 

 Mercator, appeared as the first among many northern 

 writers worthy of respect who refused to see in the story 

 told by Nicolo Zeno anything more than a clever forgery. 

 One of the latest, and probably the most formidable, of 

 these detractors, was Admiral Zahrtmann, late Hydro- 

 grapher to the Danish Admiralty. As an experienced 

 seaman, an accomplished geographer, and a Dane well 

 versed in the maritime history of the Danish Colonies 

 with which he had long been intimately acquainted, he 

 was eminently qualified to judge of the accuracy of a 

 narrative, which professed to describe a voyage among 

 islands and to regions, which the friends and foes of Zeno 

 are alike agreed in believing we must recognise as the 

 Faroe Isles, Iceland, and the eastern shores of Green- 

 land. The substance of his careful analysis of the Zeni 

 narrative, and of the map which accompanied it, was com- 

 municated in 1836 to the London Geographical Society, 

 in the fifth volume of whose Journal it was subsequently 

 published. And there is no doubt that notwithstanding 



1 " Studier och Forskningar, FBranledda af Mina Resor i Hoga Norden ; 

 Ett Poputart Veten>kapligt Bihang til Vegas fard kring Asjen og Europa." 

 A. E. Nordenskjold. Haft i. (Stockholm, 1883.) 



the evidence that had been advanced in favour of the 

 Zeni voyages by Hakluyt in 1600, and still more em- 

 phatically a century ago by Capt. Cook's companion, 

 George Forster, English geographers allowed themselves 

 to be powerfully influenced by the opinions of Zahrtmann. 

 In our day, however, the tide of public favour has 

 changed both abroad and in England. And in addition to 

 the uncompromising testimony to the bond fide character 

 and the general accuracy of the Zeno story, borne by Mr. 

 R. H. Major in his edition for the Hakluyt Society, in 

 1873, of the "Voyages of the Zeni," and by M. G. 

 Gravier in his " De'couverte de l'Amerique par les Nor- 

 mands au ioeme Siecle," 1874, there is now the all- 

 powerful evidence of Baron von Nordenskjdld to be 

 adduced as corroborative, and seemingly conclusive, 

 proof of the genuineness of this mysterious, and long- 

 questioned story of early Venetian adventure in the 

 northern seas. 



While engaged in drawing up a history of north-eastern 

 exploration for his "Voyage of the Vega" Nordenskjdld's 

 attention was directed to the story of the Zeni voyages, 

 of which he gives a Swedish translation in the number 

 before us of the Sludier och Forskningar, together with 

 the result of his analysis of the narrative, and his com- 

 parison of the Zeno map with all the printed and manu- 

 script maps known at the time of Marcolini's publication 

 in 1558 Among the numerous interesting conclusions at 

 which he has arrived, special attention is due to the fol- 

 lowing :— (1) That the general accuracy of the descrip- 

 tions, for which there was no other known source, 

 proves that the Zeni brothers must have been per- 

 sonally acquainted with the Faroe group and the other 

 islands described in the narrative, as well as with the 

 eastern shores of Greenland ; and (2) that, considering 

 the nature of the details given of the mode of life followed 

 by the savages in regions lying in the north-west of the 

 Atlantic, which are now known to us as Newfoundland, 

 Canada, and the United States, but of which Europeans 

 had no correct information until the colonisation of those 

 lands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there 

 is every reason to believe that the Venetian travellers 

 conversed, as they assert, with persons who had visited 

 these districts of the New World. Further, Baron von 

 Nordenskjdld is of opinion that in the descriptions given 

 by the Zeni's informants of the civilised communities, 

 which they met with during their prolonged wanderings 

 in these unknown western lands, we have evidence of the 

 influence and persistence up to the close of the fourteenth 

 century, when the Zeni are assumed to have been in the 

 north, of the earlier Scandinavian colonies, which un- 

 doubtedly existed in the New World in the tenth and 

 eleventh centuries. 



The author shows that in the middle of the sixteenth 

 century there were three maps in use, of the north and of 

 the north-west, which, in addition to the Zeno map, had 

 all been derived from northern sources, preceding the 

 date of the discovery of America by Columbus. Of these 

 the most important is a manuscript map, with descriptions 

 of Northern Europe and of neighbouring lands, bearing 

 the date of 1427, on which the Scandinavian countries 

 are for the first time set down with anything like accuracy, 

 and a considerable part of America is delineated. Our 

 knowledge of this important pre-Columbian chart is 

 entirely due to Baron von Nordenskjdld, who discovered it 

 in a manuscript copy of Ptolemy's " Cosmographia," 

 pre erved in the Town Library of Nancy, of which he 

 was permitted to make a facsimile, and to give a photo- 

 graphic copy in his Studier och Forskningar. 



The value of this curious record of the geographical 

 knowledge possessed in the early part of the fifteenth 

 century of Scandinavia, and the adjoining seas, is in- 

 creased by the fact that the map was laid down by a 

 native of the Danish Island of Fyen, known as Claudius 

 Clavus, or Cimbricus, who undertook the task for and 



