Page:Legendaryislands00babcuoft.djvu/161

 INFLUENCE OF IMAGINARY CARTOGRAPHY 143 INFLUENCE OF IMAGINARY CARTOGRAPHY It may be true that the elder Zeno brothers served for a time under some northern island ruler, whose name the later Nicold Zeno read and copied as the impossible Zichmni; that they then visited various countries and islands, possibly including the surviving but dwindling Greenland settlement; that one of them heard in general outline the adventures of a fisherman or minor mariner cast away at two points of the American coast; and that a futile attempt was thereupon made by their patron to explore the same regions. Every one of these admissions lacks adequate confirmation and is very dubious; yet they are all. possible. But it is not possible that a map made about 1400 could bear at almost all points the plain marks of copying with slight changes from maps of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and, since the narrative so well fits the map, the two as we have them must stand or fall together. Either Nicol6 Zeno of 1558 invented the whole matter, building up his imposture by the aid of maps and information already existent and accessible, or he actually had some sort of old sketch map and fragments of letters and has recast them with more modern aids quite at his convenience, leaving no certain trace of the original outlines or statements. It comes to much the same thing in either case. Also in either case his unscrupulous and misleading achieve- ments in imaginary cartography remain as historic facts. For a century or more he supplied the maps of the world with several new great islands; he shifted others widely into new positions; he adorned other regions with new names that were loath to depart; and he presented a story of pre-Columbian discovery of America which was long accepted as true and is not wholly discarded even yet.