ic islands fair enough or wonderful
enough to tempt the shore dwellers of Ireland far away and hold them
spell-bound for years. It is easy to ascribe these pictures to sunset
on the ocean, or the wonders of mirage; but all the time, within long
sailing distance, there actually were islands of delightful climate
and exceeding beauty. These had been occasionally reached from the
Mediterranean ever since early Carthaginian times, as classical
authors seem to tell us; why not also from Ireland, perhaps not quite
so distant? It is undoubted that the Canary Islands were never really
altogether forgotten, and the same is probably true of the Madeiras
and all three groups of Azores, though the knowledge that lingered in
Ireland was a distorted glimmering tradition of old voyages,
occasionally inciting to new ventures in the same field.

Some have supposed, though without sufficient evidence, that Saint
Brendan even made his way to America, and parts of that shore line in
several different latitudes have been selected as the scene of the
exploit. His first entry into serious geography is in the fine maps
of Dulcert, 1339, and the Pizigani, 1367, both of which plainly label
Madeira, Porto Santo, and Las Desertas--"The Fortunate Islands of St.
Brandan." That there may be no possibility of misunderstanding, the
Pizigani brothers present a full-length portrait of the holy
navigator himself bending over these islands with hands of
benediction. The inscription, though not the picture, was common,
thus applied, on the maps of the next century or two, and no other
interpretation of his voyage found any place until a later time.

Of course the fourteenth century was a long way from the sixth, when
the voyage was supposed to have been made, and we cannot take so late
a verdict as convincing proof of any fact. But it at least exhibits
the current interpretation of the written narrative among geographers
and mariners, the people best able to judge; and here the interval
was much less. The story itself seems to corroborate them in a
general way, if read naturally. One would say that it tells of a
voyage to the Canaries, of which one is unmistakably "the island
under Mount Atlas", and that this was undertaken by way of the Azores
and Madeira, with inevitable experience of great beauty in some
islands and volcanic terrors in others. Madeira may well have been
pitched upon by the interpreters as the suitable scene of a
particularly long tarry