, landing upon this island, had
founded there seven splendid cities. There was the island of St.
Brandan, called after the Saint who set out from Ireland in the sixth
century in search of an island which always receded before his ships;
this island was placed several hundred miles to the west of the Canaries
on maps and charts through out the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
There was the island of Brazil, to the west of Cape St. Vincent; the
islands of Royllo, San Giorgio, and Isola di Mam; but they were all
islands of dreams, seen by the eyes of many mariners in that imaginative
time, but never trodden by any foot of man. To Columbus, however, and
the mariners of his day, they were all real places, which a man might
reach by special good fortune or heroism, but which, all things
considered, it was not quite worth the while of any man to attempt to
reach. They have all disappeared from our charts, like the Atlantis of
Plato, that was once charted to the westward of the Straits of Gibraltar,
and of which the Canaries were believed to be the last peaks unsubmerged.

Sea myths and legends are strange things, and do not as a rule persist in
the minds of men unless they have had some ghostly foundation; so it is
possible that these fabled islands of the West were lands that had
actually been seen by living eyes, although their position could never be
properly laid down nor their identity assured. Of all the wandering
seamen who talked in the wayside taverns of Atlantic seaports, some must
have had strange tales to tell; tales which sometimes may have been true,
but were never believed. Vague rumours hung about those shores, like
spray and mist about a headland, of lands seen and lost again in the
unknown and uncharted ocean. Doubtless the lamp of faith, the inner
light, burned in some of these storm-tossed men; but all they had was a
glimpse here and there, seen for a moment and lost again; not the clear
sight of faith by which Columbus steered his westward course.

The actual outposts of western occupation, then, were the Azores, which
were discovered by Genoese sailors in the pay of Portugal early in the
fourteenth century; the Canaries, which had been continuously discovered
and rediscovered since the Phoenicians occupied them and Pliny chose them
for his Hesperides; and Madeira, which is believed to have been
discovered by an Englishman under the following very romantic and moving
circumstances.

In the reig