[Illustration: SHIP OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. From the _Isolario_ (Venice, 1547).] In the latter part of the fourteenth century,[534] as the story goes, two brothers of Venice, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, being on a voyage in the North Atlantic were wrecked there, and lived for some years at Frislanda, and visited Engroneland. During this northern sojourn they encountered a sailor, who, after twenty-six years of absence, had returned, and reported that the ship in which he was had been driven west in a gale to an island, where he found civilized people, who possessed books in Latin and could not speak Norse, and whose country was called Estotiland; while a region on the mainland, farther south, to which he had also gone, was called Drogeo, and that here he had encountered cannibals. Still farther south was a great country with towns and temples. This information, picked up by these exiled Zeni, was finally conveyed to another brother in Venice, accompanied by a map of these distant regions. These documents long remained in the family palace in Venice, and were finally neglected and became obscured, until at last a descendant of the family compiled from them, as best he could, a book, which was printed in Venice in 1558 as _Dei Commentarii del Viaggio_, which was accompanied by a map drawn with difficulty from the half obliterated original which had been sent from Frislanda.[535] The original documents were never produced, and the publication took place opportunely to satisfy current curiosity, continually incited by the Spanish discoveries. It was also calculated to appeal to the national pride of Italy, which had seen Spain gain the glory of her own sons, Columbus and Vespucius, if it could be established that these distant regions, of which the Zeni brothers so early reported tidings, were really the great new world.[536] The cartography of the sixteenth century shows that the narrative and its accompanying map made an impression on the public mind, but from that day to this it has been apparent that there can be no concurrence of opinion as to what island the Frislanda of the Zeni was, if it existed at all except in some disordered or audacious mind; and, as a matter of course, the distant regions of Estotiland and Drogeo have been equally the subject of belief and derision. No one can be said wholly to have taken the story out of the category of the uncertain. [Illustration: THE SEA OF DARKNESS. (From Olaus Magnus.)]