78 ISLAND OF THE SEVEN CITIES OCCURRENCE OF THE NAME IN THE AZORES The exception noted is well worth considering. Just as Ter- ceira retains her medieval name of Brazil to designate one head- land, St. Michaels has still its valley of the Seven Cities. Brown's guidebook presents the fact very casually: "St. Michaels. Ponta Delgada. Brown's Hotel. About ten people. Among the chief sights are the lava beds coming from Sete Cidades. ... At Sete Cidades, which is worth a visit, there is a great crater with two lakes at the bottom, one of which appears to be green, the other blue." 21 This naive incuriousness in the presence of something so significant of course has not been shared by a different order of observers. Buache 23 found here as he thought the genuine and only Seven Cities of the legend. Humboldt 23 opposed this view with a reminder of the Seven Cities of Cibola. But it is fair to remember that New Mexico was quite impossible for the Portuguese of 711 or thereabout, whereas St. Michaels Island offered an accessible and tempting place of refuge. The name could not have been derived from settlement in the former; but it might really be derived from settlement in the latter. Granting that the fugitives might not be able to main- tain themselves there in safety for many years after the Arabs had begun their tentative and always uneasy incursions into the western Sea of Darkness, it still may be that the town or towns of this hidden island valley might endure long enough and seem imposing enough and be visited often enough by Christians from the mainland to supply the nucleus of the most picturesque and adventurous of legends; and this tale might follow any later migration into the unknown, or survive and find new abiding places for the name and fancy long after the M A. S. Brown: Guide to Madeira and the Canary Islands (with notes on the Azores), 5th edit., London, 1898, p. 148. 22 N. Buache: Recherches sur 1'ile Antillia et sur 1'epoque de d6couverte d'Am$- rique, Mlmoires de Vlnstitut des Sciences, Lettres, et Arts, Vol. 6, 1806, pp. 1-29, following p. 84 of Section entitled "Histoire" and appended list. See p. 13. a Alexander von Humboldt: Examen critique de 1'histoire de la geographic du nouveau continent et des progres de 1'astronomie nautique aux quinzieme et seizime siecles, 5 vols., Paris. 1836-39; reference in Vol. 2, p. 281.
