AMERICAN NOTES. 117 



but since they have been in the habit of getting clothes 

 and other similar things from Europe, the method of 

 preparing this has been so far forgotten that they no 

 longer know in what way it was formerly prepared. 



[T. I. p. 419.] Dr. Mitchel said that he had sown it 

 in his garden in Virginia, where it throve well. He had 

 attempted to treat it in the same way as hemp, when he 

 obtained from the fibres in the leaves a sort of fibre not 

 unlike hemp. Only a few of the wild plants grow in 



(Ptolemy, Venice, 1561), by Moletius (Ptolemy, Venice, 1562), by Gerard 

 Mercator, 1569, and by Ortelius (Theatrum Orbis, 1570). Frobisher thought he 

 had actually found the Frisland of the Zeno map when he reached Greenland 

 on his first voyage in 1576, and that he sailed along its coast four days on his 

 second voyage in 1577, and landed there on his third voyage in 1578. 



The map took a strong hold on the geographers of the day and was used 

 by cartographers for nearly two centuries after its appearance in 1558. 

 Since then many writers have endeavoured to reconcile its falsities with facts, 

 while others have held that both the map and the narrative were altogether 

 founded on fiction alone, e.g., Torfaeus (1705) and Charlevoix (1744). Of 

 the former class some have believed that Frisland did once actually exist, 

 but that it has been submerged, or lost by some natural convulsion ; amongst 

 these are Delisle (1720), the Due d'Almadover, The Abbe Zurla (1806) 

 and Amoretti ( 181 1) ; others have tried to identify it with some land still 

 existing, but known to us by another name. John Reinhold Forster (1786), 

 the translator of the American portion of Kalm's travels, somewhat inconsist- 

 ently adopted both these views, but he seems finally to have preferred the 

 latter, and identifies Frisland with Fara, Fera or Ferasland, a small island 

 off the east coast of Hoy in the Orkneys; others, e.g., Terra Rossa (1686), 

 followed by Admiral Irminger (1879), have satisfied themselves that Frisland 

 was Iceland, but the majority "in number and value" of writers on this 

 subject, though differing on other points, think that it was the Faroes ; of 

 these are Buache (1784), Eggers (1794), Maitebrun (1831), Zahrtmann (1833), 

 Bredsdorf (1845), Lelewel (1852), and Major (1873-9). 



An examination of the copy of the large map of Olaus Magnus, Venice, 

 1539, long missing, but a copy of which was discovered by Dr. Oscar 

 Brenner at Munich in 1886, since any of the above mentioned authors 

 have written on the matter, seems to make it clear that the opinion 

 was correct that the Frislanda of the Zeno map has its original in the 

 Faroes. Zahrtmann says : that the then name Faer-eyar does not appear in 

 the Zeno narrative as it was difficult to Italianize. Frisland is probably a 

 contraction of the adjectival form Faereysk-land. The identity of the 



