90 MAYDA part of the great geographers Ortelius and Mercator in their respective series of maps during the latter part of the sixteenth century, for example Ortelius of I57O 30 and Mercator of I587. 31 Ortelius presents as Vlaendereri an oceanic island which certainly seems intended for Mayda (Fig. 10), while Mercator shows Vlaenderen as lying about half-way between Brazil and the usual site of Maida. The word has a Dutch or Flemish look. Of course there must be some explanation of it, but this is unknown to the writer. The natural inference would be that some skipper of the Low Countries thought he had happened upon it and reported accordingly. This was what occurred in the case of Negra's Rock, now held to be wholly fictitious though shown in many maps; and also in the case of the sunken land of Buss, now generally recognized as real and as a part of Greenland but recorded and delineated in the wrong place by an error of observation. It may be that Ortelius believed in a rediscovery of Mayda and that for some reason it should have the name latest given. But, in spite of the prestige of these great names, Vlaenderen did not continue on the maps, while Mayda did, though in a rather capricious way. PERSISTENCE OF MAYDA ON MAPS DOWN TO THE MODERN PERIOD There would be little profit in listing the maps of the seven- teenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries which persisted by inertia and convention in the nearly stereotyped delineation of Mayda but, of course, with slight variations in location and name. Thus Nicolaas Vischer in a map of Europe of 1670 (P) 32 shows "L'as Maidas" in the longitude of Madeira and the latitude of Brittany; a world map in Robert's "Atlas Universel" (I757) 33 gives "I. Maida" about the longitude of Madeira and the latitude of Gascony; and on a chart of the Atlantic Ocean published in
- > A. E. Nordenskiold: Facsimile-Atlas, PL 46.
Ibid., PL 47. K Copy in map collection of American Geographical Society Atlas universel, par M. Robert, Geographe ordinaire du Roy, et par M. Ro- bert de Vaugondy, son fils, . . . Paris, 1757, PL 13-
