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 DISCREPANCIES IN FISHERMAN'S STORY 133 It has been generally surmised that the name Drogio represents some native word, but there is a lack of evidence and a difficulty in identification. Lucas thinks it may be a corruption of Boca del Drago, 13 a strait between Trinidad and the mainland South America; but this seems a far-fetched and unsupported conjec- ture; All the other island names used by Zeno are of European origin, and Drogio by its sound and orthography suggests Italy. Perhaps the best guess we can make would point to the Italian words "deroga" or "dirogare" as supplying in disparagement a form afterward contracted to Drogio; for the latter island, lower in latitude and elevation, was also, according to the narrative, inferior in the status of its population and might well be spoken of derogatively. We have seen that a fairly high culture is imputed to Estotiland; whereas the natives of Drogio were sunk in mere cannibal savagery. Notwithstanding the plain implication of the story as to the comparative nearness of the two regions and the concurrent testimony of the Zeno map, Drogio has been located by some theorizers at divers different points of our coast line from Canada to Florida and even as far afield as Ireland which is perhaps a shade more extravagant than Lucas's South American derivation of the name. DISCREPANCIES IN THE NARRATIVE OF THE FISHERMAN There is this to be said for the last-mentioned speculation and some others, that the statements concerning the mainland natives are plainly prompted by Spanish accounts of certain naked and cannibalistic denizens of the tropics, when not due to the experience of Cortes and his companions among the teocallis and ceremonial sacrifices of the Aztecs. That any one starting from Nova Scotia or thereabout could have reached southern or at least central Mexico and returned alone must have struck even Nicolo Zeno the younger as incredible, if he had any conception of the distances and difficulties involved. But probably he believed the area of temple building to extend farther north- ward than it actually did and had little notion of the great waste 12 Lucas, p. 124.