THE ZENO NARRATIVE ITSELF 135 The landing by shipwreck on Estotiland in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, though a startling feature, cannot be called impossible or perhaps even wildly improbable; and, once on this side of the Atlantic at that point, some accident might take him across to Cape Breton Island, whence he well might travel or be carried a little farther. This sequence of events may be said to hang well together, and the geographic accuracy as to Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island may be taken diffi- dently as establishing a faint presumption that something like it really occurred. But farther than this we cannot go, for all other indications are adverse; and, even if we credit the incongruities to one of the Zeni and suppose them to take the place of forgotten or disregarded observations of the original adventurer, we are without these last, and it is only substituting a vacuum for incor- rectness. Perhaps the only thing that remains to be said in favor of the story is that if it were wholly the invention of Nicolo Zeno it would have been natural and quite easy for him to make his ancestor the discoverer, instead of an unnamed and insignificant fisherman. THE ZENO NARRATIVE ITSELF For the story above considered enters the Zeno narrative only as the incentive to a voyage of exploration which failed of its aim; and it is nowhere alleged, unless in the title, that either of the Zeno 'brothers discovered anything American. Each of them, it says, visited Greenland, but that needed no discovery. Briefly summarized, the Zeno 'story is that the elder Nicol6, being an adventurous wanderer like many of his countrymen, was ship- wrecked about 1380 on the island of Frisland and taken into the service of Zichmni, lord of the Orkneys, then prosecuting the conquest of the former region. Zeno took part in the warfare of this chieftain, chiefly against the King of Norway his feudal lord, also in his various navigations, including a visit to Green- land, of which this elder Nicolo writes quite fully to his brother Antonio in Venice, urging the latter to join him in Zichmni's service. Antonio did so, after many adventures and hardships
