Some Fictitious Islands

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 412, 21 July 1928, Page 24

Some Fictitious Islands

Ancient Map-Makers' Pranks

INCE adventuring and exploration began the world has been curiously ; exploited by countless ! \ ) travellers with vivid imaginations. Things are different in this day of aviation. It would be difficult for any j explorer seriously to impose on the , educated public; for if we are ignorant of what exists in certain parts of the earth w r e at least know within comparatively narrow limits what to expect. It was not so 100 years ago, when the too inventive explorer was a com- t monplace. What must it have been 400 years ago when the Portuguese i were creeping towards India round unknown Africa and Columbus was j dreaming of a short cut to India across ; the Atlantic? In those days adventurous souls, sitting in the comfort of their own i homes, went exploring, on paper, for years on end into strange portions of j the earth, or went sailing over strange seas searching for and finding 1 new lands, peoples, and animals, Gol- ! condas and El Dorados and . . . .... antres vast and deserts idle. Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven, . . . . cannibals that each other eat, j The Anthropophagi, and men whose i heads .... do grow beneath their shoulders. Now of the Phantom Lands four — j St. Brandon’s Isle, Frobisher, Isle of Buss, Antilia, and Brazil—were placed in mid-Atlantic, and appeared in all | maps until quite recent days. The j fifth, and greatest, of these lands, was | the vast Southern Continent which | Captain Cook finally charted down to its true size, as an Antarctic waste around the South Pole. Before then it was mapped as stretching around the world below Africa, Australia, and America. The other lands all obviously were inventions of early map makers, who devised them to relieve the monotony of a landless ocean, but the map makers had some justification. For a century and more before Columbus’s voyage reports of the discovery of land in the West Atlantic were frequent. Even before that the Welsh Prince Madoc, in 1170, was reported to have discovered Mexico; to have made a second voyage there with families of Welsh migrants and to have established a royal Mexican family. •

The story of St. Brandons back to the fifth century. The •-*■ tired of staying in Ireland, reso to conquer for Christ the lsla rumoured to exist in the western After a false start, he set out 1 ox-skin boat with 17 monks, landed on a small round island * turned out to be a whale. Some . ,-L later they discovered another covered with birds. On landing, ever, the birds perched on the »*• arms, and, discovering -i-; angels, he celebrated Mass and the place the Paradise of BirosThe legend does not even tell « a big oblong island set in B . lantic. due west of the Cape f Isles, came to be called St. BjJ j t Isle, while less comprehensible that the isle persisted on mapa half century back. Antilia similarly was P la c north of this isle, and due * e> .w; Canary Islands. Its story it was discovered by Roderick, the i Gothic King of Spain, who took reWthere after his defeat bv the- .. Another tale has it that bishops and five bishops escape -j after the death of Roderick there seven great cities. The. g , are described also in legends Brandon. -.iimis Such are the chief fictitious and their stories. .»»■■<► Hundreds have perished. In * , 0 ( ing to rediscover them, hundred ships have been cast a * M ’ d** to-dav there are authorities jir the lands still exist, or appeared following modern convulsions.