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 PORTUGUESE DISCOVERY 9 les lies fantastiques, appearing for the first time thereon. Their presence on the American shore in the years shortly following Cabot's discovery is commemorated by Cape Breton Island. THE ZENO STORY It has been alleged that two Venetian brothers, Antonio and Nicold Zeno, in the service of an earl of the northern islands, took part with him about 1400 A. D. in certain explorations west- ward, he being incited thereto by the report of a fisherman, who claimed to have spent many years as a castaway and captive in regions southwest of Greenland. The Zeno narrative, dealt with later (Ch. IX), was accompanied by a map (Fig. 19), which exercised a great influence during a long period on all maps that succeeded it, adding several islands never before heard of. Both map and narrative are recognized as spurious or at best so cor- rupted by misunderstandings and transformed by rough treat- ment and a post-Columbian attempt at reconstruction as to be wholly unreliable. It is, indeed, possible that a fisherman of the Faroes made an involuntary sojourn in Newfoundland and else- where in America from about 1375 or 1380 onward and that his story induced the ruler of certain northern islands to sail west- ward and investigate. But both features are very dubious, and at any rate nothing was accomplished except the confusion of geography. PORTUGUESE DISCOVERY This brings us down to the rise of Portuguese nautical en- deavor, which seems to have begun earlier than has generally been supposed but became most conspicuous under the direction of Prince Henry the Navigator. Its achievements included the rediscovery of Madeira and the Azores, which in many quarters had been forgotten, the exploration of the African coast, the accidental discovery or rediscovery of South American Brazil by Cabral, and the voyage of Vasco da Gama to India around the Cape of Good Hope. Perhaps we might insert in the list the discovery of Antillia. At any rate, it got on the map with a