Far at sea from Portugal, straggling in a long northwestward line toward America, lies the archipelago sometimes called the Islands of the Sun or the Western Islands but now generally known as the Azores. That line breaks into three divisions separated by wide gaps of sea: the most easterly pair, St. Michael and St. Mary; the main cluster of five islands, Pico being the loftiest and Terceira the most important; and the northwesterly pair, Flores and Corvo. These last make a little far-severed world of their own, sharing in none of the tremors and upheavals which from time to time more or less transform parts of the other two divisions. The remote origin of the pair was volcanic, and Corvo is little more now than an old crater lifted about 300 feet above the surface; but the fires have long been dead, and in historic times the lower strata have never shifted suddenly to produce any great earthquake. There have been changes, but they must be attributed for the most part to gradual subsidence.
These two islands, though almost as near to Newfoundland as to any point in Portugal, cannot be classed as American; yet Corvo in particular seems to have impressed the imagination of ancient and medieval explorers with a sense of some special relation to regions beyond, though possibly only to the entangling Sargasso Sea of weeds, which would lie next in order southwestward (Fig. 1), and the menacing mysteries of the remoter wastes of the Atlantic. It may have been felt as the last stepping stone for the leap into the great unknown.
Flores, the island of flowers, thus prettily renamed by the Portuguese, is referred to as the rabbit island, Li Conigi, in the fourteenth-century maps and records; but Corvo has always borne, in substance, the same name, one of the oldest on the Atlantic. Probably the very first instance of its use is in the Book of the Spanish Friar,267 written about 1350 (the author says he was born in 1305), rather recently published in Spanish and since translated for the Hakluyt Society publications by Sir Clements Markham. After relating alleged visits to more accessible islands of the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes, from Lanzarote and Tenerife of the Canaries to São Jorge (St. George) of the Azores, he continues: “another, Conejos [doubtless Li Conigi], another, Cuervo Marines [Corvo—the sea crow island], so that altogether there are 25 islands.”
This account may not actually be later than the Atlante Mediceo map,268 attributed to 1351—may even have been suggested by it, as some things seem to indicate. The Friar’s voyages are perhaps merely imaginary, their variety and total extent being hardly believable. This very important map has been best reproduced in the collection by Theobald Fischer; on it the same name (Corvi Marinis) seems to be applied to both islands collectively, the plural form “insule” being used to introduce it. Both names appear on the Catalan map of 1375.269 It is more than probable that they date at least from the earlier half of the fourteenth century.
Possibly the name Corvo had been carried over by a somewhat free translation from the older Moorish seamen and cartographers, who dominated this part of the outer ocean from the eighth century to the twelfth. Edrisi,270 greatest of Arab geographers, writing for King Roger of Sicily about the middle of the twelfth century, tells us, among other items, of the eastern Atlantic:
Near this isle is that of Râca, which is “the isle of the birds” (Djazîrato ’t-Toyour). It is reported that a species of birds resembling eagles is found there, red and armed with fangs; they hunt marine animals upon which they feed and never leave these parts.
This statement recalls the cormorants, which are supposed to be meant by the sea crows, “corvi marinis” of the later maps. They would naturally flock about the submerged ledges and the wild shore of Corvo and may be held to suggest either the crow or the eagle, though not closely resembling either. Everywhere they are the scavengers of the deep seas. Edrisi mentions a legendary expedition sent by the “King of France” after these birds. It ended in disaster. The pictorial record on the Pizigani map of 1367271 (Fig. 2), of Breton ships in great trouble with a dragon of the air and a kraken, or decapod, on the extreme western border of navigation, may conceivably refer to this experience.
But Corvo has even more ancient traditions and associations, Diodorus Siculus,272 in the first century before the Christian era, wrote of a great Atlantic island, probably Madeira, which the Etrurians coveted during their period of sea power; but the Carthaginians, its first discoverers, prohibited them, wishing to keep it for their own uses. If the Etrurians were thus well informed concerning one island of these eastern Atlantic archipelagoes, it is a fair conjecture that they had visited the others.
However this may be, it seems that the Carthaginians left memorials on Corvo. At least this is the most reasonable explanation of the extraordinary story repeated by Humboldt273 in the “Examen Critique,” apparently with full faith in its main feature at least, notwithstanding the fascinating atmosphere of romance and wonder which hangs about the details. In the month of November, 1749, it appears, a violent storm shattered an edifice (presumably submerged) off the coast of Corvo, and the surf washed out of a vault pertaining to the building a broken vase still containing golden and copper coins. These were taken to a convent or monastery (probably on some neighboring island). Some of them were given away as curiosities, but nine were preserved and sent to a Father Flores at Madrid, who gave them to M. Podolyn. Some of them bore for design the full figure of a horse; others bore horses’ heads. Reproductions of the designs were published in the Memoirs of the Gothenburg Royal Society274 and compared with those on coins in the collection of the Prince Royal of Denmark. It seems to be agreed that they were certainly Phoenician coins of North Africa, partly Carthaginian.
It has been suggested275 that they may have been left by Norman or Arab seafarers, who certainly journeyed among the Azores in the Middle Ages. But, as Humboldt points out, that these should have left a hoard of exclusively Phoenician coins, so much more ancient than their own, without even a single specimen of any other mintage, appears very unlikely. On the other hand, it is true that Phoenician vessels sailing northward in the tin or amber traffic would hardly be likely to be storm-driven so far northwestward as Corvo; St. Michael would have been a more natural involuntary landfall. This objection does not apply, however, if we suppose the deposit to be the work not of accident, but of full intention and deliberation, as the alleged edifice and vault would certainly tend to show. If these coins were deposited by Phoenicians who erected permanent buildings, the remoteness of the island would be only an added reason for commemoration. The coins might have been immured in the vault for safe keeping or might have been enclosed in the corner stone, in accordance with the general custom of placing coins and records in the corner stones of notable structures.
Of course these details cannot be confidently accepted. As Humboldt suggests, it is to be regretted that we are without information as to the period or character of the edifice in question. But at least it seems most probable that Phoenicians occupied or at any rate visited this island and deposited coins of Carthage.
Furthermore, Corvo is one of several Atlantic islands reputed to have been marked by monuments generally of one type. Edrisi276 knows of them in Al-Khalidat, the Fortunate Isles—bronze westward-facing statues on tall columnar pedestals. There are said to have been six such in all, the nearest being at Cadiz. Tradition places an equestrian statue also on the island of Terceira, as repeated in a much more modern work.277 The Pizigani map of 1367, it will be remembered, shows (Fig. 2) near where Corvo should be the colossal figure of a saint warning mariners backward, with a confused inscription declaring westward navigation impracticable beyond this point by reason of obstructions and announcing that the statue is erected on the shore of Atilie. But perhaps the best and most apposite account is that of Manuel de Faria y Sousa in the “Historia del Reyno de Portugal:”
In the Azores, on the summit of a mountain which is called the mountain of the Crow, they found the statue of a man mounted on a horse without saddle, his head uncovered, the left hand resting on the horse, the right extended toward the west. The whole was mounted on a pedestal which was of the same kind of stone as the statue. Underneath some unknown characters were carved in the rock.278
Apparently the reference is to the first ascent of Corvo after its rediscovery between 1449 and 1460. The mention of “characters” recalls those found in a cave of St. Michael, also by rediscoverers, during the same period, as related by Thevet279 long afterward, most likely from tradition. A man of Moorish-Jewish descent, who was one of the party, thought he recognized the inscription as Hebrew, but could not or did not read it. Some have supposed the characters to be Phoenician. There is naturally much uncertainty about these stories of very early observations by untrained men, recorded at last, as the result of a long chain of transmissions: but they tend more or less to corroborate the other evidences of Phoenician presence.
It may be possible that the persistent and widely distributed story of westward-pointing equestrian statues marking important islands may have grown out of the ancient mention of the pillars of Saturn, afterward Hercules, and Strabo’s discussion280 as to whether they were natural or artificial in origin; but this puts a severe strain on fancy. We know that the Carthaginians did set up commemorative columns; and that the horse figured conspicuously in their coinage. Nothing in the enterprising character of the Phoenician people is opposed to the idea of incitement to exploration westward. It seems easier to believe that they set up these statuary monuments on one island after another than that the whole tradition has grown out of a misunderstanding. Such statues might well vanish subsequently as completely as the great silver “tabula” map of Edrisi and many other valuable things of olden time.
Corvo has no statue now; but it is reputed to hold a statue’s representative. Captain Boid (1834) relates:
Corvo is the smallest, and most northerly of the Azores, being only six miles in length, and three in breadth, with a population of nine hundred souls. It is rocky and mountainous; and on being first descried, exhibits a sombre dark-blue appearance, which circumstance gave rise to its present name, whereby it was distinguished by the early Portuguese navigators.... It is not known at what period this island was first visited, though from a combination of circumstances, it is supposed, about the year 1460. The inhabitants are ignorant, superstitious, and bigoted, in the highest degree, and relate innumerable ridiculous traditions respecting their country. Amongst other absurdities they state, with the utmost gravity, that to Corvo is owed the discovery of the western world—which, they say, originated through the circumstance of a large projecting promontory on the N. W. side of the island, possessing somewhat of the form of a human being, with an outstretched arm toward the west; and this, they have been led to believe, was intended by Providence, to intimate the existence of the new world. Columbus, they say, first interpreted it thus; and was here inspired with the desire to commence his great researches.281
Captain Boid was wrong in his derivation of the name Corvo, as we have seen; wrong also, in another way, in despising the “superstitions” as “absurd” and refusing them record, for they might embody some valuable suggestion. Humboldt thought, however, that the story of the pointing horseman might have grown out of this natural rock formed in human semblance. No doubt this is possible; but it would not account for like stories of the other islands nor the general similitude of their figures. Perhaps an equally valid explanation might be found in the former presence of such artificial figures, leaving a certain repute behind them and causing popular fancy to point out resemblances which would not have been noticed otherwise.
A more recent mention of this pointing rock occurs in “A Trip to the Azores” by Borges de F. Henriques, a native of Flores. He says:
Another natural curiosity which has been defaced by the weather and the bad taste of visitors is a rock resembling a horseman with the right arm extended to the westward as if pointing the way to the new world. Some insular writers deny the existence of this rock.282
There seems still a good deal of vagueness about the matter, and Corvo might well be given a thorough overhauling for vestiges of ancient times. This naturally should be extended to the submerged area close to the shore, for the outlying reefs and ridges may mark the site of lower lands where human work once went on and where its traces and relics may remain. In expanse the island probably was not always what we find it now, six miles in length by at most three in breadth (seven square miles in all, as most accounts compute it) with fringes of rock running off from the shore, “lifting themselves high above the water in one place, blackening the surface in another, and again sinking to such a depth that the waves only eddy and bubble over them.” Mr. Henriques says elsewhere: “In many of the islands, but especially in Flores, there are vestiges clearly indicating that formerly as well as lately parts of the island have sunk or rather disappeared in the sea.” He cites for instance a notable loss of land in the summer of 1847.
There is reason to believe that Corvo has dwindled in this way much more, proportionately, than Flores. One striking indication is found in the comparison of the present map with those of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For convenience sketches of these are appended (Fig. 23). The relative position of the islands is about the same in all. The form of Corvo varies from the pear shape of the Laurenziano map (1351),283 and another shape284 not much later slightly resembling an indented segment of a circle, to the three-lobed or clover-leaf form which was accepted as the final convention or standard and first clearly appears in the great Catalan atlas285 of 1375, repeated by Beccario 1435286, Benincasa 1482287, and others; but all agree in making Corvo the main island and Li Conigi (Flores) a minor pendant. Corvo seems in every way to have commanded chief attention, and in size the difference was conspicuous and decisive. The difference certainly is great enough now, but conditions and proportions are reversed. Corvo has but one-eighth the area of Flores and less than one-tenth the population. In all ways it lacks advantages and conveniences, taking rather the place of a poor dependent.
There is no good reason for discrediting so many of the old maps. Their makers sometimes went wrong; but they tried to be accurate and would hardly, through a century or two, persist in making the northern island the greater one unless it was at first really so. Of course the most natural solution of the difficulty is that Corvo’s border has sunk or the sea has risen over it, completely drowning the territory which made the lobes or curved outline of the island form in the medieval maps and leaving only above water its rocky backbone, with the crater for a nucleus. Apparently those lobes and their contents are just what might be most profitably dredged for and dived after.
Perhaps the island has not greatly changed since Mr. Henriques wrote his little sketch of it in the sixth decade of the last century:
The first part of the ride to it [the crater] is through steep and narrow lanes walled in with stones. Over those walls you can sometimes see the country right and left, which is divided into small and well-cultivated compartments by low stone walls. These small fields form narrow terraces, one above another, looking from the sea like steps in the hills. An hour’s ride brings you to an open mountain covered with heath where browse flocks of sheep and hogs, and about an hour and a half more to the crater on the summit, now a quiet green valley, with a dark, still pond in the center....
The Corvoites, particularly the women, are a happy and industrious people and have strong and healthy constitutions. The men in trade evince a remarkable shrewdness, proverbial among the other Azorians, but in private life their manners are simple and unassuming.... They are like a large family of little less than a thousand members, all living in the only village on the island.288