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CHAPTER XII THE SUNKEN LAND OF BUSS AND OTHER PHANTOM ISLANDS Beside those legendary Atlantic islands that may cast some light on visits of white men to America before Columbus or have been at some time linked therewith by speculation or tradition notably Antillia and its consorts, Brazil, Man or Mayda, Green Island, Estotiland and Drogio, the Island or Islands of St. Brendan, and the Island of the Seven Cities there are numerous others, quite a swarm indeed, excusing Ptolemy's and Edrisi's extravagant estimate of 27,000. Sometimes, but not always, they are of more recent origin and are explainable in various ways. Several are linked to the idea of volcanic destruction or seismic engulfment. Of course the colossal and classical instance of Atlantis comes first into mind, it being the earliest as well as in every way the most imposing. Most likely the well-known story, repeated, if not originated, by Plato, developed naturally, as we have seen, from the insistent need to account for the obstructive weedy wastes of the Sargasso Sea beyond the Azores and recur- rent facts of minor cataclysms among them. The next oldest instance, perhaps, is supplied by Ruysch's map of I5O8, 1 an inscription on which avers that an island in the sea about midway between Iceland and Greenland had been totally destroyed by combustion in the year 1456. We do not know his authority for this startling announcement. The spot is where one would naturally look for Gunnbjorn's skerries of the older Icelandic writings; and no one can find them now, unless they were, after all, but projecting points of the eastern Greenland coast. Also Iceland is at times tremendously eruptive; and this 1 A. E. Nordenskiold: Facsimile-Atlas to the Early History of Cartography, transl. by J. A. Ekelof and C. R. Markham, Stockholm, 1889, PI. 32.