There can be no certainty; but from the evidence at hand it seems likely that the part of America indicated, i. e. Newfoundland and neighboring shores, was visited very early by Irish-speaking people, who gave it the commendatory name Brazil. Naturally one inclines to ascribe such an unremitting westward push to the powerful religious impulsion which, according to Dicuil, carried Irishmen to Iceland in the latter part of the eighth century and even bore them on, it is reported, some two hundred miles beyond it. The date, however, may have been much later. Yet it must have preceded Dalorto’s map of 1325, whereon Brazil first appears by name. Of evidence on the ground there is nothing; but what have we now to show even for the perfectly attested visits to the same region of Cabot and Cortereal? Their case rests on maps, governmental entries, and contemporary correspondence, luckily preserved. Earlier visits to Brazil have no epistles, no entries, to show but must rely on the maps and the general tradition in the British islands of such a western region across at least a part of the great sea. CHAPTER V THE ISLAND OF THE SEVEN CITIES The mythical islands of the Atlantic (_les îles fantastiques_) on the old maps have had divers origins, instructive to study. Perhaps only one of them derives its name and being directly from a real human episode of a twilight period in history. When the Moors descended on Spain in 711, routed King Roderick’s army beside the Guadalete, and rapidly overran the Iberian Peninsula, it was most natural, indeed nearly inevitable, that some Christian fugitives should continue their flight from the seaboard to accessible islands already known or rumored, or even desperately commit themselves in blindness to the remoter mysteries of the ocean. Such an event would afford a fabric for the embroidery of later fancy. A part of this has been preserved by record; and it is curious to watch the development of the story, which takes several forms, not differing widely, however, one from another. THE ISLAND OF BRAZIL When Pedro de Ayala, Spanish Ambassador to Great Britain, found occasion in 1498 to report English exploring activities to Ferdinand and Isabella, he wrote: The people of Bristol have, for the last seven years, sent out every year two, three, or four light ships (caravels) in search of the island of Brasil and the seven cities.[115] There is indeed one well-attested voyage of 1480 conducted by well-known navigators, seeking this insular Brazil, and it was not the earliest.