It must not be supposed that Brazil was always thought of as relatively near Europe. Nicolay in 1560[109] (Fig. 6) and Zaltieri in 1566[110] prepared maps which show a Brazil Island in distinctly American waters, practically forming part of the archipelago into which Newfoundland was supposed to be divided, or at least lying between it and the Grand Banks. These presentations no doubt may have been suggested by American discoveries and later theories, especially as no navigator had been able to find Brazil at any point nearer Europe; but again they may be at least partly due to surviving early traditions of the great distance westward at which this island lay. The Brazil of Nicolay and Zaltieri is, to be sure, a very small affair; but their maps were made about two and a half centuries after the earliest one which shows this island--ample time for many misconceptions to creep in. Their only value is in their illustration of locality. THE CATALAN MAP OF ABOUT 1480 More important in every way is a Catalan map (Fig. 7) preserved in Milan and reproduced by Nordenskiöld in 1892,[111] but since copied partly by Nansen, by Westropp, and by others. It belongs to the fifteenth century--perhaps about 1480--and deserves clearly to rank as the only map before Columbus, thus far reported, which shows a part of North America other than Greenland. The latter had long before appeared in the well-known map of Claudius Clavus, 1427[112] (Fig. 16), no doubt on the faith of the early Norse narratives and subsequent commercial intercourse, for the Norse Greenland colony is known to have existed in 1410 and probably did not die out entirely until much later. The Catalan map of about 1480 shows Greenland also as a great northwestern land mass beyond Iceland, identifying it by name as Illa Verde (Green Island). But just south, or west of south, of this Greenland at a slight interval and southwest of Iceland is drawn and named a large Brazil of the conventional circular disc form. Its position is that of Labrador, or perhaps Newfoundland, as it would naturally have been understood and reported by the Norse explorers. It can be nothing but one or both of these regions of America with perhaps neighboring lands. [Illustration: FIG. 6--Section of the Nicolay map of 1560 showing, on the American Side of the Atlantic, Brazil, Man, and Insula Verde, the first two transferred from the European side. (After Nordenskiöld’s photographic facsimile.)]