[Footnote 282: Nicolo Zeno, _Dello scoprimento dell' isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto per due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolo it Caualiere, & M. Antonio. Libro Vno, col disegno di dette Isole._ Venice, 1558. Mr. Major's book contains the entire text, with an English translation.] [Illustration: Zeno Map, cir. 1400--western half.] [Illustration: Zeno Map, cir. 1400--eastern half.] [Sidenote: Queer transformations of names.] [Sidenote: "Frislanda."] Unfortunately young Nicolo, with the laudable purpose of making it all as clear as he could, thought it necessary not simply to reproduce the old weather-beaten map, but to amend it by putting on here and there such places and names as his diligent perusal of the manuscript led him to deem wanting to its completeness.[283] Under the most favourable circumstances that is a very difficult sort of thing to do, but in this case the circumstances were far from favourable. Of course Nicolo got these names and places into absurd positions, thus perplexing the map and damaging its reputation. With regard to names, there was obscurity enough, to begin with. In the first place, they were Icelandic names falling upon the Italian ears of old Nicolo and Antonio, and spelled by them according to their own notions; in the second place, these outlandish names, blurred and defaced withal in the weather-stained manuscript, were a puzzle to the eye of young Nicolo, who could but decipher them according to _his_ notions. The havoc that can be wrought upon winged words, subjected to such processes, is sometimes marvellous.[284] Perhaps the slightest sufferer, in this case, was the name of the group of islands upon one of which the shipwrecked Nicolo was rescued by Sinclair. The name _Faeroislander_ sounded to Italian ears as _Frislanda_, and was uniformly so written.[285] Then the pronunciation of _Shetland_ was helped by prefixing a vowel sound, as is common in Italian, and so it came to be _Estland_ and _Esland_. This led young Nicolo's eye in two or three places to confound it with _Islanda_, or _Iceland_, and probably in one place with _Irlanda_, or _Ireland_. Where old Nicolo meant to say that the island upon which he was living with Earl Sinclair was somewhat larger than Shetland, young Nicolo understood him as saying that it was somewhat larger than Ireland; and so upon the amended map "Frislanda" appears as one great island surrounded by tiny islands.[286] After the publication of this map, in 1558, sundry details were copied from it by the new maps of that day, so that even far down into the seventeenth century it was common to depict a big "Frislanda" somewhere in mid-ocean. When at length it was proved that no such island exists, the reputation of the Zeno narrative was seriously damaged. The nadir of reaction against it was reached when it was declared to be a tissue of lies invented by the younger Nicolo,[287]