Page:Legendaryislands00babcuoft.djvu/103

 TRANSFERENCE TO AMERICAN WATERS 87 innovations in departing from the crescent form and shifting the island a degree or two southward ; and these changes surely seem to hint at some fresh information. That there was no supposed change of identity is shown by the fact that succeeding car- tographers down to and beyond the middle of that century revert generally to the established crescent form and to nearly the same place in the ocean previously occupied by Man, while applying the new name Mayda. Thus an anonymous Portuguese map of 1519 or I52O, 23 reproduced by Kretschmer, and the graduated and numbered map of Prunes, I553 24 (Fig. 12), concur in placing Mayda or Mayd at about latitude 48 N., the latitude of Quimper, Brittany, and almost exactly the same as that given by the Pizigani to the crescent island on its first appear- ance on the maps as a clearly recognizable entity. TRANSFERENCE OF MAYDA TO AMERICAN WATERS The maps made after the world had become more or less familiarized with the details of modern discoveries, in this case as in most others of its kind, indicate little except the dying out of old traditions, whatever they may have been, and hap- hazard or conventional substitution of locations and forms or the influence of the new geographic facts and theories. Thus Desceliers' map of 1546" (Fig. 9), a museum of strangely-named sea islands, makes the latitude of "Maidas" 47 and the longitude that of St. Michaels, but not long afterward Nicolay (i56o; 26 Fig. 6) and Zaltieri (i566) 27 transferred the island to New- foundland waters. Nicolay calls it "I man orbolunda," and places it just south of the Strait of Belle Isle. It is accompanied by Green Island and by Brazil, a little farther out on the Grand Banks where the Virgin Rocks may still be found at low tide. Taken together these three islands look like parts of a disin- tegrated Newfoundland. Zaltieri of 1566 gives Maida by that Ibid., PI. 12, map 2. A. E. Nordenskiold, Periplus, PI. 27. 27 Kretschmer, atlas, PI. 19, map 3.
 * Ibid., PL 4, map 5.
 * Ibid., PI. 17; also A. E. Nordenskiold, Periplus, PI. 51.