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 PROBABLE BASIS OF FACT 37 comes like a marsh; but they reach an island where are fish made poisonous by feeding on metallic ores. A white bird warns them. They keep Pentecost on a great sea monster, remaining seven weeks. Then they journey to where the sea sleeps and cold runs through their veins. A sea serpent pursues them, breathing fire. Answering the saint's prayer, another monster fights and kills the first one. Similarly a dragon delivers them from a griffin. They see a great and bright jeweled crystal temple (probably an iceberg). They land on shores of smoke, flame, blast, and evil stench. A demon flourishes before them, flies overhead, and plunges into the sea. They find an island of flame and smoke, a mountain covered with clouds, and the entrance to hell. Beyond this they find Judas tormented. Next they find an island with a white-haired hermit, who directs them to the promised island, where another and altogether wonderful holy man awaits them, of whom more anon. In this version, as in others, there are passages such as the mention of extreme cold and the account of a great floating struc- ture of crystal which imply a northward course for their voyage in some one of its stages. So greatly was Humboldt impressed by this and by the insistence on the Isle of Sheep, which he identified with the Faroes, that he restricted in theory the saint's naviga- tion to high latitudes. 5 THE PROBABLE BASIS OF FACT But itjs noticeable that_eyery version giyes St. Brendan the task of finding a remote island, which was always warm and lovely, and chronicles the~attainment of this delight, though he finds other delectable islands near it or by the way. The metrical description before quoted is surely explicit enough, but the Book of Lismore outdoes it in a very revel of adjectives. As though praises alone failed to satisfy the celebrant, he introduces the figure of a holy ungarmented usher a living demonstration of Alexander von Humboldt: Examen critique de 1'histoire de la geographic du nouveau continent et des progres de 1'astronomie nautique aux quinzieme et seizieme siecles, 5 vols., Paris, 1836-39; reference in Vol. 2, p. 166.