The next oldest instance, perhaps, is supplied by Ruysch’s map of 1508,[289] 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 Gunnbjörn’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 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 engulfment 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 southeastward 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.[290] 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 Wiars, a passenger in the _Emmanuel_, otherwise called the Busse of Bridgewater,” repeated in Miller Christy’s admirable little treatise on the subject.[291] 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 25 leagues long. There was much ice near it. He gives no suggestion of fertility, woods, or fields. [Illustration: FIG. 24--Map of Buss Island from John Seller’s “English Pilot,” probably 1673. (After Miller Christy’s photographic facsimile.)] ITS DISAPPEARANCE FROM THE MAP