DISCOVERY OF BUSS 175 islet, or these islets, would not be far away. The assertion is not in itself incredible, but there seems no corroboration. THE DISCOVERY OF Buss The "Sunken Island of Buss" presents a suggestion of engulf- ment on a more extensive scale. The whole episode is of rather recent date, Buss being the latest born of mythical or illusory islands, unless we except Negra's Rock and other alleged and unproven apparitions of land on a very small scale, which may not have wholly ceased even yet. Buss is, at any rate, the one moderately large phantom map island the time and occasion of whose origin are securely recorded. For, as narrated by Best and published in Hakluyt's compilation, on Frobisher's third voyage (1578), one of his vessels, a buss, or small strong fishing craft, of Bridgewater, named Emmanuel, made the discovery. In his words: The Buss of Bridgewater, as she came homeward, to the southeast- ward of Frisland, discovered a great island in the latitude of 57 degrees and a half, which was never yet found before, and sailed three days along the coast, the land seeming to be fruitful, full of woods, and a champaign country. 2 Best must have had his information at second or third hand, with liberal play of fancy in the final touches on the part of his informant or himself. His was the first account published, but not long afterward appeared that of an eyewitness, "Thomas Wi- ars, a passenger in the Emmanuel, otherwise called the Busse of Bridgewater," repeated in Miller Christy's admirable little trea- tise on the subject. 3 Wiars says they fell with Frisland (probably a part of Greenland) on September 8 and on September 12 reached this new island, coasted it for parts of two days, and considered it 2$ leagues long. There was much ice near it. He gives no suggestion of fertility, woods, or fields.
- E. J. Payne, edit.: Voyages of the Elizabethan Seamen to America: Select
Narratives from the Principal Navigations of Hakluyt, Ser. i, Hawkins, Frobisher, Drake, 2cl edit.. Oxford, 1893. P- 183. Cf. ako E. VV. Dahlgren's note in Proc. and Trans. Nova Scoiian Inst. of Set., Vol. IT, 1002-06, p. 551. 1 Miller Christy: On "Busse Island," in C. C. A. Gosch: Danish Arctic Expe- ditions 1605 to 1620, Bk. I: Expeditions to Greenland, Hakluyt Soc. Publs.. ist Series, Vol. 96, London, 1897, Appendix B, pp. 164-202; reference on p. 167.
