142 THE ISLANDS OF ZENO Greenland, Scotland, Estotiland, and Drogio are all not very far from where they should be. The Orkneys and Fair Island, if too far west in fact, are only far enough to suit the tale, for when Antonio sails eastward he comes to them and knows he has passed east of Iceland, a reflection more likely to occur if the interval were rather small than if it were very great. ICARIA Again, when Earl Zichmni and Antonio Zeno with their little flotilla, fired by the fisherman's American experiences, strike westward from Frisland for Estotiland they, indeed, do not reach that goal but do attain by accident the mysterious Icaria and find themselves where Greenland can be and is reached without much difficulty. Now, on the map (Fig. 19), Icaria, about the size of Shetland, is the most westerly of all the islands not dis- tinctly American. Draw a straight line from Iceland to Estotiland and another from the center of Frisland to Cape Hwarf near the lower end of Greenland, and Icaria lies at the intersection. Granting the rest of the story, it is shown where they might very well have stumbled upon it in trying to go farther west. Of course, it is not there; nothing ever was there except an ample expanse of sea. Where Zeno got the idea of Icaria is not known except as an appended and unimportant myth from the Aegean; it certainly was not supplied by the facts of the North Atlantic. Probably the initial "I" stands for island as usual, and "Caria" is a not impossible transformation of either "Kerry" (preferred by Major) or "Kilda" the latter more likely, for southern Ireland was continually visited by Italian traders, whereas St. Kilda lay off the trade routes rather far away in the mists and myths of the ocean and might be a fairer field for exaggeration and shifting of place. But, with every allowance, it is hard to see how this small ultra-Hebridean rock pile could become a large island territory just short of America. Perhaps it is as well to treat Icaria as merely the unprovoked creation of the romantic brain of the younger Zeno.
