lO
 

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF MANHATTAN ISLAND
 

□24 who understands fully the mediaeval Icelandic sea or star terms
has not yet interpreted this statement. Those who have worked at
the problem get results varying from 49° to 58° north latitude, i.e.,
north of Newfoundland. The other evidence is more satisfactory;
it relates to the words which are chiefly responrible for the assurance
with which some writers have located the settlement in southern
New England. The wincberry (vinber), with which the voyagers
loaded their boats, meant grapes, and could mean nothing else, to
the historical students who have written about this episode.
To a botanist, who looked into old books, as Professor M. L. Fer¬
nald demonstrated in 1910, it cannot possibly mean anything
except currants, or the mountain cranberry. He showed also that
the sub-Artie 'mountain cranberry' could have been gathered in
quantity in springtime, and would have made a valued cargo that
would stand the voyage, but that it can hardly have been pro¬
cured, in quantity, south of northern Newfoundland. The botanical
evidence is equally conclusive in identifying the 'self-sown wheat'
with Elymus arenarius, strand wheat, one of whose 'almost in¬
numerable folk-names' is wheat in Norway and Iceland, where 'the
flour it yields is considered to be finer in quality and more nutritive
than any which is imported.' This occurs in great abundance north
of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and only locally southward as far as
Penobscot Bay. Furthermore, the word translated 'wood' or
'maple' is found by Professor Femald to have an early and precise
meaning as the knob or protuberance which occasionally occurs
in birch trees. This was higlily valued by the Norse because from
it were carved cups and other small vessels, Tliis points to the
American canoe birch, which does not occur as a seacoast tree south
of. Essex County, Massachusetts, but may be found anywhere on
the Labrador coast."

His letter ends with the admonition, "Do anything you like with
my suggestions—hut don't hedge on the landfall—Fernald has a
barrel of notes he has never used & everything focuses on Labrador."

;93         A much later story, and one which is based on claims which de-

or   serve serious attention, relates the voyages of the Brothers Zeni, at

(94 the end of the fourteenth century. According to this story, Nicolo
Zeno, a Venetian In the service of Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney
and the Faroes, sailed in July, 1393 or 1394, to Engroneland
(Greenland) with three ships. He visited the East Bygd and found
there a monastery dedicated to St, Glaus, On his return to the
Faroe Islands be died, and bis brother, Antonio, succeeded to his
office. Antonio accompanied Sinclair on an expedition to the west¬
ward. Sailors had reported that, 26 years before, four fishing boats
had been driven to a very rich island called Estotiland, about 1,000
miles west ot Frlsland (Faroe Islands); after many adventures the
castaways had come to a country called Drogeo, to the south, and
after that to many other lands. It was to discover and, if possible,
to conquer these lands that Sinclair and Zeno set out. They did not
reach the countries described by the fishermen, but found Icaria
and Trin (probably Cape Farewell) in the Western Sea. In the
latter, Sinclair settled and built a town, Zeno returned to the
Faroe Islands, where he arrived after sailing eastward for about a
month, during 25 days of which be saw no land.

Antonio wrote an account of his voyage, of Nicolo's trip, and
of the sailors' narratives, to his brother. Carlo, in Venice. He also
sent a map or sailing chart which he had brought back from his
expedition with Sinclair. These documents remained tor more than
a century in the palace of the family at Venice, until one of the
children got hold of them and tore them up. This child
was Antonio's great-great-great-grandson, Nicolo, born in 1515,
When this Nicolo had come to middle age, he chanced upon some
remnants ot these documents. In the light ot the rapid progress in
geographical discovery since 1492, his ancestors' voyages took on an
added interest to him, Nicolo collected all the documents he
could find, redrew the map, which was In a very dilapidated con¬
dition, and published both, with annotations, in 1558, under the
title Delia scoprimento delF isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engronelanda,
Estotilanda, & Icaria, falto per duefratelli Zeni, M. Nicolo il Caua-
liere, & M. Antonio.

Unfortunately, young Nicolo considered it necessary to inake
corrections and additions to the old map. As he had no personal
knowledge of the places represented, he succeeded only in confusing
the chart, thus greatly reducing its value. On the map, Greenland
is attached to Norway, and names are grossly misspelled and mis¬
placed. The Zeno map is poorly reproduced in Winsor,War.SfCrjr.
Hist, of Am., I: 127, and, full size, in F. W. Lucas' Annals of the
Zeno Voyages (1898).
 

The Engroneland to which Chevalier Nicolo made his voyage was    1393
doubtless Greenland. If the story ot his trip to East Bygd be true,    or
his visit has a peculiar interest as the last distinct glimpse afforded    1394
us ot the colony founded by Eric the Red.   From the description
of Estotiland, it has proved impossible to identify the island with
any assurance.    The most common conjecture has identified it
with  Newfoundland,    Concerning  Drogeo,   there  is  more  cer¬
tainty.   Its description, and that of the vast stretch of country
beyond it, peopled by naked savages who lived by hunting and who
were ruled by chieftains, is doubtless a description of America.

The authenticity ot the Zeno narratives has long been a sub¬
ject of contention among geographers. By some, the story
has been looked upon as a Venetian claim to the discovery ot
America, but Nicolo sets up no such claim. He gives the story
simply as an interesting narrative of his ancestors' voyages,
Fiske, in The Discovery of America, thinks it reasonable to conclude
that Nicolo reproduced the ancestral documents faithfully, because
his book shows knowledge that he could not have got in any other
way, Beazley, in Dawn of Modern Geography, III: 456-60, and
elsewhere, and Lucas, in Annals of the Zeno Voyages (1898), regard
the nairatives as sixteenth century forgeries, whereas Miller
Christy, in his appendix to The Silver Map of the World (1900),
at least partially accepts them.

The exploration and settlement of the Canaries by the French
seigneur, Jean de BSthencourt, from 1402, and of Madeira by
Zarco and Vai, in the service of Prince Henry, from 1410, gave
European enterprise a new and more advanced base for western
expeditions. Last among the toreshadowings of the great Atlantic
discoveries of I492 and subsequent years, come the septematic
colonization of the Azores, from about the year 1436, and the
Portuguese expeditions, from the Azores'as a starting point, into
the ocean beyond, in the hope of further discoveries. Before the
death of Prince Henry (1460), exploration had pushed some way
into the Atlantic, south-west as well as due west from Europe,
in the direction of Brazil and the West Indies, and therefore towards
the distant shores of North America,
 

Jean Cousin, of Dieppe, is claimed by Desmarquets and other
writers to have discovered South America in this year.—See Vol,
n: 34.

1492

On Aug. 3, Columbus sailed from Palos with three ships, the
"Santa Maria" (the flagship), the "Pinta," and the "Nina," and,
on Oct. 12, landed at Guanahani (doubtless San Salvador or Wat-
lings Island), one of the Bahama group, and took formal possession
in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, On the 2Sth,
he landed on the island of Cuba, and shortly afterward discovered
Haiti and built a fort on the shore named "La Navidad," Here
he left a garrison, and sailed for home on Jan. 4, 1493,

Columbus's account ot his first voyage, in a Spanish letter to
Luis de Santangel, was first printed in April, 1493. See Church
Catalogue, p. 8. His joumal and maps are lost, but extracts from
the former are preserved in Historia de las Indias, by Las Casas,
See also Rudoff Cronau, The Discovery of America and ike Landfall
of Columbus (N. Y,, 1911),

On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI, issued a "Bull" fixing the
"Line of Demarcation" between Spain and Portugal on a meridian
passing through a point 100 leagues west ot the Azores, The con¬
vention at Tordisillas, on June 7, 1494, moved the line to a point
370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.

On Sept. 25, 1493, Columbus sailed from Cadiz, with 17 ships
and 1,200 souls, largely colonists. On reaching La Navidad, he
found it a waste, but at once started to build a city, which he
named Isabella, a short distance to the east. He did not retum
to Spain until 1496.

On May 30, 1498 (q.v.), he sailed from San Lucas on his third
voyage, and, on Aug, 5, set foot for the first time on the continent,
on the north coast ot South America.—Harrisse, Disc. ofN. Am.;
Wmsor, Nar. ©■ Cril. Hist, of Am., Vol. II,

1497

In this year, presumably shortly after May 2, John  Cabot

sailed from Bristol on his first American voyage, probably in the

"Matthew," returning about Aug. 10, the date of the king's privy

purse reward "to him that found the new isle."  Pasquallgo, writing