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66 ISLAND OF BRAZIL 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. OMISSION OF THE NAME IN NORSE AND IRISH RECORDS 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 narra- tives 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. New- foundland and neighboring shores, was visited very early by