His fellow captives having decided to remain where they were,
he bade them farewell, and made his escape through the woods
in the direction of Drogio, ... where he spent three years.
[One day] some boats had arrived. He went down to the seaside,
and ... found they had come from Estotiland. [They took him
aboard as interpreter.] He afterwards traded in their company
to such good purpose that he became very rich, and, fitting out
a vessel of his own, returned to Frislanda.[218]
GEOGRAPHICAL IMPLICATION OF THE NARRATIVE
In spite of plain geographical indications in the above recital,
Estotiland has been located by some random or oversubtle conjectures
in the strangest and most widely scattered places, including even
parts of the British Isles. But a region a thousand miles west of the
Faroes or any other Atlantic islands can be nothing but American, and
the restriction of its commerce to Greenland, apparently as a next
neighbor, points very clearly (as Estotiland) to that outjutting elbow
of North America, which culminates in Cape Race, south of Greenland
and thrust out toward Europe. The clear definition of it in the tale
as an island, largely explored by the narrator, approximating the size
of Iceland but more fertile, with mountainous interior, great forests
(such as gave the name Markland to Norse tradition), and rivers flowing
several ways, clearly indicates Newfoundland. The Zeno map accords with
this, and most of the later maps accept that identification--though
often with a great extension of territory. Thus a French map in the
United States National Museum,[219] having 1668 for an entry of
discovery and perhaps dating from about 1700, presents the whole
region southeast of Hudson Bay in an inscription as called Estotiland
by the Danes, Nouvelle Bretagne (New Britain) by the English, Canada
Septentrionale by the French, and Labrador by the Spanish; but here
again Labrador and Newfoundland may have been chiefly in mind.
CONJECTURES AS TO THE DERIVATION OF “ESTOTILAND”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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