BRAZIL ISLAND AS MARKLAND 121 general impression of land in mass south or southwest of Green- land and reasonably accessible therefrom. BRAZIL ISLAND IN THE PLACE OF MARKLAND The name Brazil given to this island on the map and its disk- like form link it to the long series, already discussed, of "Brazil islands," approximately in the latitude of Newfoundland, on the medieval maps, beginning with that of Dalorto of I325 12 (Fig. 4). Usually, as in this last instance, they have the circular form sometimes, however, being annular, with an island-studded lake or gulf inside, and sometimes being divided into two parts by a curved channel. Usually, too, the station of this Brazil is pretty near southern Ireland, off the Blaskets, but sometimes it is carried out into mid-Atlantic, and in the sixteenth-century maps of Nicolay 13 (1560; Fig. 6) and Zaltieri 14 (1566) it is taken clear across to the Banks of Newfoundland or a little nearer inshore. From various mutually corroborative indications, I have been im- pressed with the belief that it is probably a record of some early crossing of the Atlantic from Ireland ; but whatever the explana- tion, Brazil Island remains one of the most interesting of map phenomena. Its name was somehow passed along to Terceira of the Azores, where there is still a Mt. Brazil, and long thereafter to the largest of South American countries. Its appearance near Greenland and as a substitute for Mark- land is not easily accounted for. The matter is indeed complicated on this fifteenth-century map by the appearance of a second Brazil (of the channeled type) in the middle of the Atlantic. It may be that the cartographer was familiar with this form and 12 Alberto Maghaghi: La carta nautica costruita nel 1325 da Angelino Dalorto, with facsimile, Florence, 1898 (published on the occasion of the Third Italian Geo- graphical Congress). Cf. also: idem: II mappamondo del genovese Angellinus de Dalorto (1325): Contributo alia storia della cartografia mediovale, Atti del Terzo Congr. Geogr. Italiano, tenuto in Firenze dal 12 al 17 Aprile, 1898, Florence, 1899, Vol. 2, pp. 506-543; and idem: Angellinus de Dalorco (sic), cartografo italiano della prima meta del secolo XIV, Riv. Geogr. Italiana, Vol. 4, 1897, pp. 282-294 and 361-369. "A. E. Nordenskiold: Periplus, PI. 27. 14 Kretschmer, atlas, PI. 19, map 3.
