“Of the voyage and returne of this Madoc there are many fables fained, as the common people doe vse in distance of place and length of time rather to augment then to diminish: but sure it is there he was. And after he had returned home, and declared the pleasant and fruitfull countreys that he had seene without inhabitants, and vpon the contrary part, for what barren & wild ground his brethren and nephewes did murther one another, he prepared a number of ships, and got with him such men and women as were desirous to liue in quietnesse: and taking leaue of his friends, tooke his journey thitherward againe.... This Madoc arriving in that Western country, vnto his people there, and returning back for more of his owne nation, acquaintance, & friends to inhabit that faire & large countrey, went thither again with ten sailes, as I find noted by Gutyn Owen.”—Hakluyt. vol. iii. p. 1. [68] Hakluyt. vol. iii. p. 1. [69] Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung. Alexander von Humboldt. 1845-1858. Trans. by E. C. Otté. Bohn’s ed. vol. ii. pp. 608, 609. [70] The history of the voyages of the Zeni brothers was first published with another work entitled: Dei Commentarij del Viaggio in Persia. Venezia, 1558. [71] The name is evidently a designation for Iceland. _Frislanda_, the cold or frozen land; Anglo-Saxon, _frysan_; Icelandic, _friosa_; Swedish, _frysa_; Danish, _fryse_; and _land_, land. [72] Estotiland seems to be an anomalous form of the name Scotland, from Anglo-Saxon, _scot_; Spanish and Portuguese, _escote_; Italian, _scotto_. [73] Dello Scoprimento dell’ Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto per due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolò il Caualiere, & M. Antonio. Libro Vno, col disegno di dette Isole. The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno to the Northern Seas. By Richard Henry Major. London, 1873. Hakluyt Soc. pub. pp. 1-24. [74] In 1260, the two brothers, Nicolò and Maffeo Polo, departed from Constantinople, on a trading expedition to the Euxine Sea; thence they travelled through the western dominions of the Grand Khan of the Tartars. In 1269 they returned home with letters from this sovereign to Pope Clement IV. On their arrival in Venice, Nicolò found that his wife had died in giving birth to his son, Marco, then a lad of fifteen years. In 1271 the brothers (Maffeo being a bachelor) again left home for the Orient, taking Marco with them. In 1295 the three returned to Venice after an absence of twenty-four years. [75] Giovanni Battista Ramusio was born at Tevisa in 1485. For a decade of years he was secretary to the Venetian Council of Ten. His valuable collection of voyages and travels, entitled “Raccolta di Navigationi e Viaggi,” comprises three volumes. Volume I. was published in 1554, volume II. in 1559, and volume III. in 1556. Ramusio died in 1557.