To this we may add:--It is possible Azurara may have read the original _Navigatio Sti. Brendani_. The legendary voyage of Brandan is usually dated in 565, but this is probably a mere figure of speech. He was supposed to have sailed west from Ireland (his home was at Clonfert on the Middle Shannon) in search of Paradise, and to have made discoveries of various islands in the Ocean, all associated with fantastic incidents: as the Isle of St. Patrick and St. Ailbhé, inhabited by Irish Cœnobites; the isle of the Hermit Paul, at or near which Brandan met with Judas Iscariot floating on an iceberg; the Isle of the Whale's Back, and the Paradise of Birds; to say nothing of the Isle of the Cyclops, the Mouth of Hell, and the Land of the Saints--the last encircled in a zone of mist and darkness which veiled it from profane search. It is more than probable that the Brandan tradition, as we have it, is mainly compiled from the highly-coloured narratives of some Arab voyagers, such as Sinbad the Sailor in the Indian Ocean, and the Wanderers (Maghrurins) of Lisbon in the Atlantic (as recorded in _Edrisi_, Jaubert, ii, 26-29), with some help from classical travel-myth; that it is only in very small part referable to any historical fact; that this fact is to be found in the contemporary voyages of Irish hermits to the Hebrides, Orkneys, Shetlands, Faroes, and Iceland; that a certain special appropriateness may be found in the far western Scottish island of St. Kildas (Holy Culdees) or the islet of Rockall; and that some of the matter in the Brandan story is derived from the travels of early Christian pilgrims to Palestine, _e.g._, Bernard the Wise, _c._ 867. It is important to remember that the tradition, though professing to record facts of the sixth century, is not traceable in any MS. record before the eleventh century; but, like so many other matters of mediæval tradition, its popularity was just in inverse proportion to its certainty, and "St. Brandan's isle" was a deeply-rooted prejudice of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and even fifteenth centuries. Down to the middle of the sixteenth century it usually found a place on maps of the Western Ocean, usually due west of Ireland (see _Dawn of Modern Geography_, pp. 230-240, and references in same to other works, p. 239, _n._ 2, especially to De Goeje's _La légende de Saint Brandan_, 1890; Avezac's _Iles fantastique de l'Océan Occidental_, 1845; Schirmer, _Zur Brendanus Legende_, 1888; and the study of _Schröder_, 1871). We may note that Azurara is (for his time) somewhat exceptional in his hesitating reference to the Brandan story; but of course his object led him, however unconsciously, to minimise foreign claims of precedence against the Portuguese on the Western Ocean. As far as Brandan goes, no one would now contradict the Prince's apologist; but more formidable rivals to a literal acceptance of the absolute Portuguese priority along the north-west coasts of Africa are