IMPLICATION OF ZENO NARRATIVE 129 insomuch that the king sent them with twelve boats to the southwards to a country which they call Drogio; but in their voyage they had such con- trary weather that they were in fear for their lives. . . . They were taken into the country and the greater number of them were eaten by the savages. . . But as that fisherman and his remaining companions were able to show them the way of taking fish with nets, their lives were saved ... As this man's fame spread . . . there was a neighboring chief who was very anxious to have him with him ... he made war on the chief with whom the fisherman then was, and ... at length overcame him, and so the fisherman was sent over to him with the rest of his company. During the space of thirteen years that he dwelt in those parts, he says that he was sent in this manner to more than five-and-twenty chiefs . . . wandering up and down . . . he became acquainted with almost all those parts. He says that it is a very great country, and, as it were, a new world; the people are very rude and uncultivated, for they all go naked and suffer cruelly from the cold, nor have they the sense to clothe themselves with the skins of the animals which they take in hunting. They have no kind of metal. They live by hunting, and carry lances of wood, sharpened ajt the point. They have bows, the strings of which are made of beasts' skins. They are very fierce, and have deadly fights amongst each other, and eatone another's flesh . . . The farther you go southwestwards, however, the more refinement you meet with, because the climate is more temperate, and accordingly there they have cities and temples dedicated to their idols, in which they sacrifice men and afterwards eat them. His fellow captives having decided to remain where they were, he bade them farewell, and made his escape through the woods in the direction of Drogio, . . . where he spent three years. [One day] some boats had arrived. He went down to the seaside, and . . . found they had come from Estotiland. [They took him aboard as interpreter.] He afterwards traded in their company to such good purpose that he became very rich, and, fitting out a vessel of his own, returned to Frislanda. 4 GEOGRAPHICAL IMPLICATION OF THE NARRATIVE In spite of plain geographical indications in the above recital, Estotiland has been located by some random or oversubtle conjectures in the strangest and most widely scattered places, including even parts of the British Isles. But a region a thousand miles west of the Faroes or any other Atlantic islands can be nothing but American, and the restriction of its commerce to
- Major, pp. 1^-24.
