So far as we know, the first appearance of the island of Brazil in geography was on the map of Angellinus Dalorto,71 of Genoa, made in the year 1325. There it appears as a disc of land of considerable area, set in the Atlantic Ocean in the latitude of southern Ireland (Fig. 4). But the name itself is far older. In seeking its derivation, one is free to choose either one of two independent lines.
The word takes many forms on maps and in manuscripts: as Brasil, Bersil, Brazir, O’Brazil, O’Brassil, Breasail. As a personal name it has been common in Ireland from ancient days. The “Brazil fierce” of Campbell’s “O’Connor’s Child” may be recalled by the few who have not wholly forgotten that beautiful old-fashioned poem. Going farther back, we find Breasail mentioned as a pagan demigod in Hardiman’s “History of Galway”72 which quotes from one of the Four Masters, who collated in the sixteenth century a mass of very ancient material indeed. Also St. Brecan, who shared the Aran Islands with St. Enda about A.D. 480 or 500, had Bresal for his original name when he flourished as the son of the first Christian king of Thormond. The name, however spelled, is said to have been built up from two Gaelic syllables “breas” and “ail,” each highly commendatory in implication and carrying that note of admiration alike to man or island. Quite in consonance therewith the fifteenth-century map of Fra Mauro in 145973 not only delineated and named this Atlantic Berzil but appended the inscription “Queste isole de Hibernia son dite fortunate,” ranking it as one of the “Fortunate Islands.”
On the whole, this seems the more likely channel of derivation of the name; or, if there were two such channels, then the more important one. For there is another suggested derivation, of which much has rightly been made and which we must by no means neglect. Red dyewood bore the name “brazil” in the early Middle Ages, a word derived, Humboldt believed,74 by translation from the Arabic bakkam of like meaning, on record in the ninth century. He notes that Brazir, one form of the name, as we have seen, recalls the French braise, the Portuguese braza and braseiro, the Spanish brasero, the Italian braciere, all having to do with fire, which is normally more or less red like the dye. He does not know any tongue of medieval Asia which could supply brasilli or the like for dyewood. He suggests also the possibility of the word’s being a borrowed place name, like indigo or jalap, commemorating the region of origin, but cannot identify any such place. His treatment of the topic leaves a feeling of uncertainty, with a preference for some sort of transformation from “bakkam” which would yield “brazil” probably by a figure of speech.
The earliest distinctly recognizable mention of brazil as a commodity occurs in a commercial treaty of 1193 between the Duchy of Ferrara, Italy, and a neighboring town or small state, which presents grana de Brasill in a long list including wax, furs, incense, indigo, and other merchandise.75 The same curious phrase, “grain of Brazil,” recurs in a quite independent local charta of the same country only five years later. Muratori, who garnered such things into his famous compilation of Italian antiquities, avowed his bewilderment over this strange phrase, asking what dyewood could be so called; and Humboldt, reconsidering the whole matter, was no more clear in mind. He calls attention to the fact that cochineal very long afterward bore the same name, but evidently without considering this any sort of solution, as, indeed, it could not well be, since it bears distinct reference to the South American Brazil, which was discovered and named centuries later. But the facts remain that grain does not naturally mean dyewood of any kind or in any form, that its recurrence in public documents proves it a well-established characterization of a known article of trade in the twelfth century, and that its presentation is such as to indicate a granular packaged material.
Perhaps an explanation may be found in Marco Polo’s experience and experiments nearly a century later than these Italian documents. Of Lambri, a district in Sumatra, he writes:
They also have brazil in great quantities. This they sow, and when it is grown to the size of a small shoot they take it up and transplant it; then they let it grow for three years, after which they tear it up by the root. You must know that Messer Marco Polo aforesaid brought some seed of the brazil, such as they sow, to Venice with him and had it sown there, but never a thing came up. And I fancy it was because the climate was too cold.76
The seeds of that Sumatran shrub might well pass for grain in the sense of a small granular object, as we say a grain of sand, for example. But, since the plant was not and perhaps could not be reared in Italy, it seems unlikely that the seed should be a valued item of commerce, regularly listed, bargained for, and taxed. We do not hear of its being put to use as a dye; and, indeed, the bark or wood of the plant seems far more promising for that purpose. Like our distinguished forerunners in considering this little mystery, we must set it aside as not yet fully solved.
“Grain of Brazil” is not repeated in any entry, so far as I know, after the end of the twelfth century; but brazil as a commodity figures rather frequently; for example, in the schedules of port dues of Barcelona and other Catalan seaboard towns in the thirteenth century, as compiled by Capmany.77 Thus in 1221 we find “carrega de Brasill,” in 1243 “caxia de bresil,” and somewhat later (1252) “cargua de brazil,” the spelling varying as in the easy-going fourteenth- and fifteenth-century maps, the word being plainly the same. But the word and the thing were not confined to the Mediterranean, for a grant of murage rates of 1312 to the city of Dublin, Ireland, uses the words “de brasile venali.”78 This is pretty far afield and shows that the knowledge and use of brazil as taxable merchandise was nearly Europe-wide. As a rule, it has been taken for granted that the word meant either some special kind of red dyewood or dyewood in general. Marco Polo’s account conforms rather to the former version, while Humboldt seems to lean toward the latter; but there is singularly little in the entries which tends to identify it as wood at all or in any way relate it thereto. Such words as carrega, caxia, cargua, show that it was put up in some kind of inclosure, and perhaps give the impression of comminution or at least absence of bulkiness. Most likely many kinds of red bark, red wood suitable for dyeing, and perhaps other vegetable products available for that purpose were sometimes included under the name brazil. People of that time were more concerned about results and means to attain them than about exactness in classification or definition.
It may well be that both lines of derivation of the name meet in the Brazil Island west of Ireland, that it was given a traditional Irish name by Irish navigators and tale tellers and mapped accordingly by Italians, who would naturally apply to it the meaning with which they were familiar in commerce and eastern story, so that the Island of Brazil, extolled on all hands, would come to mean along the Mediterranean chiefly the island where peculiarly precious dyewoods abounded. We know that Columbus was pleased to collect what his followers called brazil in his third and fourth voyages along American shores;79 that Cabot felicitates himself on the prospect of finding silk and brazilwood by persistence in his westward explorations;80 and that the great Brazil of South America received its final name as a tribute to its prodigal production of such dyes.
But there is a curious phenomenon to be noticed—the free distribution of this name among sea islands, especially of the Azores archipelago, from an early date. Thus the Pizigani map of 136781 applies it with slight change of spelling not only to the original disc-form Brazil west of Ireland and to a mysterious crescent-form island, which must be Mayda, but to what is plainly meant for Terceira of the main middle group of the Azores (Fig. 2). The Spanish Friar, naming Brazil in his island list about 1350, appears also to mean Terceira, judging by the order of the names.82 His matter-of-fact tone indicates a long-settled item. This carries us well back toward the first settled date for the Irish Brazil in cartography. Further, the name still adheres to Terceira, though long restricted to a single mountainous headland. The explanation remains a matter of conjecture. Perhaps the Azores islands that bore it borrowed from the older Brazil west of Ireland. Perhaps also the word had gone about that islands were notable for dyes—archil, for example—and the special dye name brazil has been loosely affixed in consequence.
On some of the maps certain alternative names are given, which do not greatly further our investigation. Thus the very first one which shows Brazil—Dalorto, 1325—adds Montonis as a second choice (Fig. 4). This has been understood to mean the Isle of Rams, linking it with Edrisi’s Isle of Sheep, a quite ancient fancy, sometimes referred to the Faroes, but of very uncertain identification. But Freducci,83 1497, makes it Montanis; Calapoda,84 1552, Montorius; and an anonymous compass chart of 1384,85 Monte Orius. In all these the idea of mountains, not sheep, is dominant. The change from “a” to “o” is easy with a not very vigilant transcriber, and it is most likely that Freducci preserves the original form and meaning.
The Pizigani map of 1367 is confused and enigmatic on this point, as in all its inscriptions. It seems to read (Fig. 2) “Ysola de nocorus sur de brazar,” but it may best be set aside as too uncertain.
Equally unenlightening is the “de Brazil de Binar” of Bianco’s 1448 map.86 If the “n” be read “m,” the inscription may mean “Brazil of the two seas;” but the allusion is mystifying.
Fra Mauro’s inscription before quoted merely bears testimony to Brazil’s benign and almost Elysian repute and its connection with the Green Isle in fancy.
The circular form of Brazil and its location westward of southern Ireland are affirmed by many maps, including Dalorto, 1325 (Fig. 4); Dulcert, 1339;87 Laurenziano-Gaddiano, 1351;88 Pizigani, 1367 (Fig. 2); anonymous Weimar map, probably about 1481;89 Giraldi, 1426;90 Beccario, 142691 and 143592 (Fig. 20); Juan da Napoli, perhaps 1430;93 Bianco, 1436 and 1448;94 Valsequa, 1439;95 Pareto, 145596 (Fig. 21); Roselli, 1468;97 Benincasa, 148298 (Fig. 22); Juan de la Cosa, 1500;99 and numerous later maps. Probably the persistent roundness is ascribable to a certain preference for geometrical regularity, which sowed these early maps with circles, crescents, trilobed clover leaves, and other more unusual but not less artificial island forms. The direction must stand for the tradition of some old voyage or voyages.
But the celebrated Catalan map of 1375100 above mentioned introduced a significant novelty, converting the disc into an annulus of land—of course, still circular—surrounding a circular body of water dotted with islets (Fig. 5). The preferred explanation thus far advanced connects these islets with the Seven Cities of Portuguese and Spanish legend.101 But there seem to be nine islands, not seven, and it is not clear what necessary relation exists between isles and cities nor whence the idea is derived of the central lake or sea as a background. Moreover, the Island of the Seven Cities was most often identified with Antillia far to the south, and there seems no warrant for identification with Brazil. All considered, this explanation seems arbitrary, inadequate, and unconvincing.
The same ring form with inclosed water and islets is repeated by a map of the next century copied by Kretschmer.102 It varies only by showing just seven islets, if we may rely for this detail on his handmade copy.
Now, in all the Atlantic Ocean and its shores there is one region, and one only, which thus incloses a sheet of water having islands in its expanse, and this region lies in the very direction indicated on the old maps for Brazil. I allude to the projecting elbow of northeastern North America, which most nearly approaches Europe and has Cape Race for its apex. Its front is made up of Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. The remainder of the circuit is made up of what we now call southern Labrador, a portion of eastern Quebec province, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. This irregular ring of territory incloses the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, which has within it the Magdalens, Brion’s Island, and some smaller islets, not to include the relatively large Anticosti and Prince Edward. It has two rather narrow channels of communication with the ocean, which might readily fail to impress greatly an observer whose chief mental picture would be the great land-surrounded, island-dotted expanse of water. The surrounding land would itself almost certainly be regarded as insular, for there was a strong tendency to picture everything west of Europe in that way, even long after the time when most of these maps were made. Even when Cartier103 in 1535 ascended the St. Lawrence River it was in the hope of coming out again on the open sea—a hope that implies the very conception of an insular mass inclosing the gulf, not differing essentially from the showing of the Catalan map of 1375. The number of the islands is immaterial. We may picture the Catalan map-maker dotting them in from vague report as impartially as the far better known Lake Corrib is besprinkled with islands in most of the old maps—far more plentifully than the facts give warrant.
But it would seem that other observers were more impressed by the separation of Newfoundland, due to the Straits of Belle Isle and Cabot and the waterway (of the gulf) connecting them behind the great island. As a rule the maps presenting Brazil in this divided way adhere to the accepted latitude, which does not differ appreciably from that of the St. Lawrence Gulf region. The dividing passage, mainly from north to south but slightly curved at the ends which join the ocean, corresponds fairly well with the facts. The maps of Prunes, 1553104 (Fig. 12), and Olives, 1568,105 may be cited as instances of this divided form of Brazil. No explanation seems yet to have been offered except Nansen’s,106 that the dividing channel represents “the river of death (Styx),” and Westropp’s,107 that it may be owing to mistaken copying of a name space or label on some older map. But the former lacks any better basis than conjectured fancy and the latter is refuted by the position of the channel on most maps and by the general aspect of the delineation. As a matter of fact, the showing of most of the maps differs in little more than proportions from that of Gastaldi illustrating Ramusio in 1550,108 when the Gulf of St. Lawrence was fairly well known to many, but appears as a rather narrow channel behind a broken-up Newfoundland, extending from the Strait of Belle Isle to the Strait of Cabot. As in the much older map referred to, the delineation of Gastaldi is perhaps to be explained by concentration of attention on the waterway and the ignoring of the wider parts of the expanse. Absolute demonstration of the causes of the divided Brazil of some maps and the ring of land inclosing an island-dotted body of water in others is, of course, impossible; but we can show that in the designated direction there is a region presenting both of these unusual features, so that one of the visitors might well be especially taken up with one set of characteristics, another with the other set, and might depict the region accordingly. This is the more probable because the region was peculiarly exposed to accidental or intentional discovery from the west of the British islands and is known, in fact, to have been the first to be reached therefrom of all North America in times of historic record.
It must not be supposed that Brazil was always thought of as relatively near Europe. Nicolay in 1560109 (Fig. 6) and Zaltieri in 1566110 prepared maps which show a Brazil Island in distinctly American waters, practically forming part of the archipelago into which Newfoundland was supposed to be divided, or at least lying between it and the Grand Banks. These presentations no doubt may have been suggested by American discoveries and later theories, especially as no navigator had been able to find Brazil at any point nearer Europe; but again they may be at least partly due to surviving early traditions of the great distance westward at which this island lay. The Brazil of Nicolay and Zaltieri is, to be sure, a very small affair; but their maps were made about two and a half centuries after the earliest one which shows this island—ample time for many misconceptions to creep in. Their only value is in their illustration of locality.
More important in every way is a Catalan map (Fig. 7) preserved in Milan and reproduced by Nordenskiöld in 1892,111 but since copied partly by Nansen, by Westropp, and by others. It belongs to the fifteenth century—perhaps about 1480—and deserves clearly to rank as the only map before Columbus, thus far reported, which shows a part of North America other than Greenland. The latter had long before appeared in the well-known map of Claudius Clavus, 1427112 (Fig. 16), no doubt on the faith of the early Norse narratives and subsequent commercial intercourse, for the Norse Greenland colony is known to have existed in 1410 and probably did not die out entirely until much later. The Catalan map of about 1480 shows Greenland also as a great northwestern land mass beyond Iceland, identifying it by name as Illa Verde (Green Island). But just south, or west of south, of this Greenland at a slight interval and southwest of Iceland is drawn and named a large Brazil of the conventional circular disc form. Its position is that of Labrador, or perhaps Newfoundland, as it would naturally have been understood and reported by the Norse explorers. It can be nothing but one or both of these regions of America with perhaps neighboring lands.
It is true that this map shows also another Brazil of the divided kind (in this instance with a channel crossing it from east to west) located in mid-Atlantic about where Prunes and others show their bisected Brazil. But this seems only an instance of conservation and deference for authority, such as has often been manifested in cartography. Of such deference for authority perhaps there is no more striking instance than Bianco’s map of 1448, which places the rediscovered Azores where they should be but also preserves them, on the faith of older maps, where they should not be—making a double series. The lesser bisected mid-Atlantic Brazil of the Catalan map may well be set aside as a survival without significance.
But the duplication by Bianco in 1448 raises a question of distance, which must be considered, for his Azores retained from the maps antedating the Portuguese rediscoveries are far nearer the coast of Europe than the truth at all warrants; and, so far as we can judge, the same cautious underestimating was applied to all oceanic islands as reported. Corvo, for example, is actually nearly half-way across the Atlantic, yet on all the maps for a long time is brought eastward to a position much nearer Portugal. We must suppose that the region about the Gulf of St. Lawrence, if visited, would be similarly treated, and we cannot tell how far the minimization of distance might be carried by some map-makers.
The fact is, this matter does not rest in supposition only, for the thing has undoubtedly happened. The map of Sylvanus,113 1511, brings the Gulf of St. Lawrence and surroundings as an insular body almost as near Ireland as are many of the presentations of Brazil Island on older maps. He shows in front a single large island; a square gulf behind it; a bent shore line forming the border on the north, west, and south; and two gaps well representing the Straits of Belle Isle and Cabot. The names given are Terra Laboratorum and Regalis Domus. Nobody doubts that it illustrates the St. Lawrence Gulf region, though there has been much speculation as to what unknown explorer has had his discoveries commemorated here, thirteen years before the first voyage of Cartier. Why should not a like episode of discovery and imperfect record have happened at a still earlier date?
It is not to be supposed that Brazil Island was generally conceived of by intelligent persons as no farther at sea than it appears on the map of Dalorto, 1325, and divers later ones. Peasantry and fisher folk might, indeed, confuse it with the mythical Isle of the Undying—accessible only to a few chosen ones but vanishing from ordinary mortal gaze—and thus account for Brazil’s elusiveness, though so near at hand; but the sturdy explorers of Bristol114 who kept sailing westward in search of the island, before and after Columbus, sometimes at least being away on this quest for many months together, must often have passed over the very site given by Dalorto and far beyond. They were looking for solid earth and rock and must have been convinced that the real Brazil was to be found in remoter seas. Also, during a great part of the period in which Brazil appeared on the maps off the Blaskets and Limerick and unduly close to Ireland, Italian traders were habitually following the Irish western coast and trafficking in that port and others and must often have been blown out, or sailed out by choice, far enough for a landing on the island if it had actually been where Dalorto and others pictured it. The total lack of any such happening must have been convincing to all except devotees of the occult and those given over blindly to seashore tradition. No doubt the far westward showing of the fifteenth-century Catalan and the much later Nicolay and Zaltieri maps accorded with the general expectation of thoughtful and well-informed navigators.
It may seem strange that the Norse sagas do not mention Brazil by that name, though its relation to the Scandinavian colony of Greenland is made so conspicuous on the Catalan fifteenth-century map above referred to; also that there is no distinct Irish record of any voyage to Brazil as such, though the western ports of Ireland were natural points of departure and return for western voyages and though voyages to a far western Great Ireland are reported by the Norse from Irish sources. Perhaps there is no quite satisfactory answer to this. All narratives of the kind are fragmentary and more or less mythical, and the name Brazil may often have been used in the reports of Irish explorers, as it certainly was later the especial goal of the English, without having left any other trace than the name on the map and such hints as we have mentioned. The Norse seem to have adhered to their own names Markland and Vinland, only mentioning Great Ireland incidentally in the same neighborhood and Brazil not at all unless the delineation of the Catalan map be of their suggestion; but no really strong adverse argument can be founded on these matters of nomenclature and omission where all references and records are so meager.
There can be no certainty; but from the evidence at hand it seems likely that the part of America indicated, i. e. Newfoundland and neighboring shores, was visited very early by Irish-speaking people, who gave it the commendatory name Brazil. Naturally one inclines to ascribe such an unremitting westward push to the powerful religious impulsion which, according to Dicuil, carried Irishmen to Iceland in the latter part of the eighth century and even bore them on, it is reported, some two hundred miles beyond it. The date, however, may have been much later. Yet it must have preceded Dalorto’s map of 1325, whereon Brazil first appears by name.
Of evidence on the ground there is nothing; but what have we now to show even for the perfectly attested visits to the same region of Cabot and Cortereal? Their case rests on maps, governmental entries, and contemporary correspondence, luckily preserved. Earlier visits to Brazil have no epistles, no entries, to show but must rely on the maps and the general tradition in the British islands of such a western region across at least a part of the great sea.