found in the Columbus library or catalogue. If it ever existed, it has perished, leaving only these traces.
If the narrative of Nicolo Zeno—which professes to relate the voyages and travels of two of his ancestors about the end of the fourteenth century—be true or substantially founded on fact, it becomes probable that the half-Norse, half-Scotch inhabitants of the Orkneys and Shetlands had rediscovered Greenland, and that they had some vague knowledge of the American mainland. It is usually assumed that the "Zichmni" of the Zeno narrative was the same as Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness, and the grounds for that identification will be discussed later on. The authorities who accept the substantial truth of the narrtive are sufficiently numerous and impartial to compel a careful investigation of the facts.[1]
The travels of the Zeni were first published in 1558 at Venice by Nicolo Zeno.[2] His story is that when a boy he tore up or mutilated some ancient decuments in the Zeni PMce at Venice, inorant of their value. Some, however, of the papers escaped; and in later years, on examination, he found they were an account, by an ancestor of his named Antonio Zeno, of certain voyages which had been made by this same Antonio and an older brother Nicolo, about the close of the fourteenth century. The account had been based by Antonio upon letters of his own to a third brother, Carlo, and letters of Nicolo to him. Nicolo the younger found this account damaged by the act of his childhood, and proceeded, as far as he could, to put it in order and copy it out. With it was an old chart in a dilapidated condition, which also he copied, and which is said to display a very accurate knowledge of Greenland and northern geography.
The story of the voyage is as follows: Nicolo Zeno was a
- ↑ The most eminent authorities favourable are: Torfæus, T., 'Historia Vinlandiæ.' (1705), preface; Forster, J. R., 'History of Discovery and Voyages in the North' (1786), pp. 178–209; Zurla, Cardinal Placido, 'Dissertazione intorno ai Viaggi e Scoperte settentrionali di N. ed A. Zeni,' 1808; Malte-Brun, 'Annales des Voyages' (Paris, 1810), x. 72–87; Barrow, Sir J., 'Voyages into the Arctic Regions' (1818), pp. 13–26; Humboldt, A. von, 'Examen Critique de l'Histoire la Gographie du Nouveau Continent' (Paris, 1837), ii. 120–24: Major, R. H., 'Voyages of the Zeni.' with facsimile of the Zeno map, Hakluyt Society (1873), Introduction; Nordenskjöld, 'Studier och Forskningar' (Stockholm, 1883–4). Views are summed up, 'Compte Rendu, Congrès des Américanistes' (Copenhagen, l884), pp. 120–23.
- ↑ Major, R. H., op. cit. gives the Italian and a translation. From his text the narrative is abridged
