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Rh are omitted from this title; and the word "Discovery" must have been used with willful inexactness, for Greenland (Engroneland) had been in Norse occupancy for centuries, and Shetland (Eslanda, Estland, or Estiland) was as positively, though not as familiarly, known as Great Britain. But the indication of aim and scope was sufficient.

The name of the author, or, as he calls himself, "the compiler," was not given; but he is generally recognized to have been the Nicolò Zeno of a younger generation, a man of local prominence and a member of the dominant Council of Ten of the Venetian republic. In 1561 he edited for Ruscelli's edition of Ptolemy, a subsequent edition of the map (Fig. 19) which is the volume's most conspicuous feature. His account of the Zeno book's origin seems to have been accepted generally and promptly among his own people, as also the general accuracy of its geography. But, as Lucas remarks, "An adverse critic of a member of the Council of Ten, in Venice, in the sixteenth century, would have been a remarkably bold, not to say foolhardy, man." However, there are shelters and places of seclusion from even the most arbitrary power; and it would seem that the eminent younger Nicoló would hardly have the effrontery to challenge the world in matters then easily susceptible of disproof concerning his still more eminent ancestor and kinsman. Surely they must have had some notable experiences in northern islands on the reports of which he could rely in a general way, however erroneous or fraudulent in some important features, though then first advancing the transatlantic claim to discovery.

Moreover, the dread of the Council could not overshadow distant geographers like Mercator and Ortelius, whose maps of 1569 and 157O (cf. Fig. 10) almost eagerly embody the most