The two names “Estotiland” and “Drogio” are supplied by a story within
a story, an alleged yarn of a fisherman, reporting to his island
ruler, whom the elder Zeno served. Obviously, the chances of lapse
from truth are multiplied. Either the later Nicolò or his ancestor of
more than a century and a half before may have wholly invented or more
or less transformed it; or the first narrator may have created his
tale out of no real happenings or have so distorted it by mistake or
willful imposture as to render it wholly unreliable. In its general
outlines it is by no means impossible; but neither would it have been
very difficult to compose such a yarn out of nothing but fancy and
the American information at the command of the younger Nicolò. It
comes to us through the medium of an alleged letter of his ancestor
Antonio, written home to the latter’s brother Carlo near the end of the
fifteenth century. With some slight compression, the narrative runs as
follows:
Six and twenty years ago four fishing boats put out to sea,
and, encountering a heavy storm, were driven over the sea in
utter helplessness for many days; when at length, the tempest
abating, they discovered an island called Estotiland, lying to
the westwards above one thousand miles from Frislanda. One of
the boats was wrecked, and six men that were in it were taken
by the inhabitants, and brought into a fair and populous city,
where the king of the place sent for many interpreters, but
there were none could be found that understood the language of
the fishermen, except one that spoke Latin, and who had also
been cast by chance upon the same island.... They ... remained
five years on the island, and learned the language. One of
them in particular visited different parts of the island, and
reports that it is a very rich country, abounding in all good
things. It is a little smaller than Iceland, but more fertile;
in the middle of it is a very high mountain, in which rise four
rivers which water the whole country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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