134 THE ISLANDS OF ZENO of intervening interior. Besides, it is not explicitly stated that the fisherman saw these things; and to have gone far enough to encounter a rumor of them, though a very improbable, would not be a quite impossible, feat. As regards the characteristics of the ruder inhabitants who nearly devoured him, fought for him, and two dozen times shifted ownership of him from chief to chief, he must surely be understood to speak from personal observation; but there is a conspicuous failure of corroboration from internal evidence. We know a good deal about the Indian tribes of northeastern America of a time not very much later, and hardly a distinctive charac- teristic which he gives will fit what we know. To say that the Algonquian tribes and their neighbors had not sense to clothe themselves with the skins of the animals they killed is itself arrant nonsense; to assert that they habitually ate each other like Caribs is an imputation without foundation. The total absence of metals among them is as untrue as the great abundance of gold in Estotiland, for many of them had at least a little copper. They did not live wholly by hunting at least south of Nova Scotia but were partly agricultural, raising Indian corn and various vegetables. They did not depend, in hunting, on wooden lances with sharpened points, though some backward and feeble far-southern insular tribes are reported to have done so. They were expert fishermen with weirs and nets and inducted many of the white settlers into their secrets, so naturally would not extravagantly need nor prize the counsel of a white specialist in the same line, though he might have some things to teach them. Finally, the really distinctive features of the Indian race in these latitudes, such as bark canoes and the peculiarities of maize cultivation, are not mentioned at all. In view of these discrepancies it is not easy to believe that the fisherman ever visited America or at any rate ever journeyed far inland. The nature of the errors rather points to Nicol6 Zeno "the compiler" as their author, since they embody observa- tions made elsewhere, which the fisherman would not be aware of and which had not been made in his time, so far as now known.
