take him with them, which they did very willingly, and as he
knew the language of the country, which none of them could speak, they
employed him as their interpreter."[303]

[Footnote 303: Major, _op. cit._ pp. 20-22.]

[Sidenote: The Fisherman's return to "Frislanda."]

Whither the Fisherman was first carried in these boats or vessels,
Antonio's letter does not inform us. We are only told that he engaged in
some prosperous voyages, and at length returned to the Faeroes after
these six and twenty years of strange adventures. It was apparently the
Fisherman's description of Estotiland as a very rich country (_paese
ricchissimo_) that led Sinclair to fit out an expedition to visit it,
with Antonio as his chief captain. As we have already seen, the
Fisherman died just before the ships were ready to start, and to
whatever land they succeeded in reaching after they sailed without him,
the narrative leaves us with the impression that it was not the
mysterious Estotiland.

To attempt to identify that country from the description of it, which
reads like a parcel of ill-digested sailors' yarns, would be idle. The
most common conjecture has identified it with Newfoundland, from its
relations to other points mentioned in the Zeno narrative, as indicated,
with fair probability, on the Zeno map. To identify it with Newfoundland
is to brand the description as a "fish story," but from such a
conclusion there seems anyway to be no escape.

[Sidenote: Was the account of Drogio woven into the narrative by the
younger Nicolo?]

With Drogio, however, it is otherwise. The description of Drogio and the
vast country stretching beyond it, which was like a "new world," is the
merest sketch, but it seems to contain enough characteristic details to
stamp it as a description of North America, and of no other country
accessible by an Atlantic voyage. It is a sketch which apparently must
have had its ultimate source in somebody's personal experience of
aboriginal North America. Here we are reminded that when the younger
Nicolo published this narrative, in 1558, some dim knowledge of the
North American tribes was beginning to make its way into the minds of
people in Europe. The work of Soto and Cartier, to say nothing of other
explorers, had already been done. May we suppose that Nicolo had thus
obtained some idea of North America, and wove it into his reproduction
of his ancestors' letters, for the sake of completeness and point, in