Weistkopp — Brasil and the Legendary Islands of the N. Atlantic. 245 



Orcades, Hetland (Hialtlant, Shetland), Feroe, "Frisland," and "Island." 

 The last two are never confused in these maps.' I cannot believe that so 

 mythical a sketch-map can give any real clue to the position of Vinland, dis- 

 covered over five and a half centuries earlier. Abraham Ortelius'^ in his 

 " Theatrum, Orbis Terrarum," in the same year, gives Brasil, west from 

 Connacht, and St. Brandon, west from the last, also Friesland and Island. 

 Mercator, in 1587 (Fac. xlvii), gives Maida, S. Brandaui, and Bresil to the 

 west of Kerry, while Petrus Martyr, at Paris (Fac, p. 131), has Frisland and 

 St. Brandan's Isle, the latter in mid-ocean. Cornelius Wyfliet, " Descriptionis 

 Ptolemaicae Augmentum," Louvain, 1597 (Fac. li), while giving a small map 

 of Estotiland (Labrador) and Greenland, omits all the mythic isles. The 

 "invention" of such had not ceased, for, in 1598 and 1599, Hakluyt gives 

 Iceland, with Frisland, half way between it and Estotiland. Not content 

 with this, he collects a circumstantial report of the finding of Buss, the latest 

 mythic island of the North Atlantic, and which (with Brasil, the earliest to 

 find place on the maps) held its own down to very recent times. 



Seventeenth Century.— The most interesting section of the map-history 

 of Brasil and its sister isles ends with the sixteenth century. A few instances 

 may be given to show the continuity of the belief. In 1608 Mathias Quadus 

 of Cologne pubUshed a Map of the World (Fac. xlix), a fine work, but showing 

 St. Brandon's Isle as large as Ulster, half-way between Hibernia and Baccalaos 

 (in North America), also Drogio and Frischlant.' About 1655 a Dutch map 

 shows a large island at Rock all, perhaps Buss, and Brasil in about the 

 position of the Porcupine Bank. Jacob Aertz Colom, 1668, only gives 

 Frisland, while the 1661 map of John Jannsson of Amsterdam gives only the 

 west side of Buss and an islet near it. There is also a large map of Buss, 

 without date, by John SeUer, Hidrographer to the King; it is easily 

 recognized by the figures of two walruses to the north-east of the island. In 

 1680 the English Atlas of Moses Pitt gives Brasil and Maida ; the former, to 

 the south-west of Ireland and due west from the Land's End, is once more 

 large, while Freesland is nearly as large as England, and lies between it and 

 Greenland. Buss and its islet also appear. 



'For them see also Nieuhoff's "Voyages" (1703), vol. ii, p. 44.5; and map of 1644, by 

 La Pagrere, shows Frisland far to south-west of Iceland, oflf Greenland. Also Hakluyt'a 

 "Voyages," 1699, vol. ii, p. 33 ; Voyage of Martin Frobisher, 1577. Frisland was surrounded by 

 ice, and bad high mountains and no habitations. In 157S it was " very hie and craggy, and almost 

 covered with snow, great yles of ice being on the sea liUe mountains, and very foggy," p. 40. It 

 was probably part of Greenland, not Iceland, as some suppose. 



' Ortels, born in Antwerp, 1527, where he died 1598. He was Geographus Regius to Philip II 

 of Spain. 



' The latter maps are chiefly from the series in Trinity College Library, Dublin, especially in the 

 Fagel Library. 



