Floating Islands Seen at Sea: Myth and Reality

ISSN: 1647-3949 Centro de Estudos de História do Atlânico REGIÃO AUTÓNOMA DA MADEIRA 110 Anuário do Centro de Estudos de História do Atlântico FLOATINg ISLANDS SEEN AT SEA: MyTH AND REALITy Ilhas Flutuantes Vistas no Mar: Mito e Realidade Chet Van Duzer1 AbSTRACT: This article examines mythical accounts of loating islands seen at sea in ancient and medieval texts, and then factual accounts of loating islands encountered at sea. This material provides an interesting case study of a situation in which an apparently mythical object has a corresponding reality, but the great differences between loating islands in myth and loating islands in reality clearly indicate the great transformative power of the human imagination. KEywORDS: loating islands; myth; literature; geography; cartography; mappamundi; Aeolus; Delos; St. Brendan; Grail romances. RESUMO: Este artigo analisa relatos míticos em textos antigos e medievais sobre as ilhas lutuantes vistas no mar e uma relação factual das ilhas lutuantes encontradas no mar. Este material proporciona um interessante estudo de caso de uma situação em que um objeto aparentemente mítico tem uma realidade correspondente, mas as grandes diferenças entre as ilhas lutuantes no mito e ilhas lutuantes, na realidade, indicam claramente o grande poder transformador da imaginação humana. PALAvRAS-CHAvE: ilhas lutuantes; mito, literatura, geograia, cartograia; Mappamundi; Aeolus; Delos; São Brandão; romances do Graal. 1 46 rue de Clignancourt, 75018 Paris – FRANCE; [email protected]. Main Publications: Duality and Structure in the Iliad and Odyssey (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1996); “Las sirenas homéricas en su contexto, y los inicios y desenlaces del relato,” trans. Yolanda López, in José Manuel Pedrosa, ed., El libro de las sirenas (Roquetas de Mar, Almería: Ayuntamiento, 2002), pp. 101-113; with José Manuel Pedrosa, “Las sirenas en el arte y en la literatura, bibliografía general” [“Sirens in Art and Literature, a General Bibliography,”] in José Manuel Pedrosa, ed., El libro de las sirenas (Roquetas de Mar, Almería: Ayuntamiento, 2002), pp. 233-257; Floating Islands: A Global Bibliography, With an Edition and Translation of G. C. Munz’s Exercitatio academica de insulis natantibus (1711) (Los Altos Hills: Cantor Press, 2004); “The Cartography, Geography, and Hydrography of the Southern Ring Continent, 1515-1763,” Orbis Terrarum 8 (2002), pp. 115-158; with Ilya Dines, “The Only Mappamundi in a Bestiary Context: Cambridge, MS Fitzwilliam 254,” Imago Mundi 58.1 (2006), pp. 7-22; “From Odysseus to Robinson Crusoe: A Survey of Early Western Island Literature,” Island Studies Journal 1.1 (2006), pp. 143-162; Addenda to Floating Islands: A Global Bibliography, With an Edition and Translation of G. C. Munz’s Exercitatio academica de insulis natantibus (1711) (Los Altos Hills: Cantor Press, 2006); “Floating Islands around the World,” Insula: International Journal of Island Affairs 15.2 (2006), pp. 58-62; “Cartographic Invention: The Southern Continent on Vatican MS. Urb. Lat. 274, Folios 73v-74r (c.1530),” Imago Mundi 59.2 (2007), pp. 193-222; “A Newly Discovered Fourth Exemplar of Francesco Rosselli’s Oval Planisphere of c.1508,” Imago Mundi 60.2 (2008), pp. 195-20; “The Voyage of Trezenzonio to the Great Island of the Solstice: English Translation and Commentary,” Folklore 119.3 (2008), pp. 335-345; “The History of the Azores as Insulae solis or Islands of the Sun in 16th Century Cartography,” Terrae Incognitae 40 (2008), pp. 29-46. 2009 111 Fig. 1. Detail of St. Brendan and his islands from the facsimile of the Pizzigani chart of 1367 (Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 1612) published by Jomard in Les monuments de la géographie. loating island—can such a thing exist? Can the chunks of the solid earth on which we stand drift easily about the surface of a body of water? The idea of a loating island seems impossible, something from the realm of fantasy, an invention of poets or mythographers. In this article I will survey some instances of mythical loating islands in the sea, to examine the role that they have played in human thought and literature; and then look at some of the rare accounts of real loating islands seen at sea. This material provides an interesting case study of a situation in which an apparently mythical object has a corresponding reality, but the great differences between loating islands in myth and loating islands in reality clearly indicate A 2009 112 Anuário do Centro de Estudos de História do Atlântico the great transformative power of the human imagination.2 The irst loating island that appears in western literature is that of Aeolus, the god of the winds, in Homer’s Odyssey 10.1-12:3 Next we came to the Aeolian island, where dwelt Aeolus the son of Hippotas, beloved by the immortal gods, on a loating island, the whole enclosed by a wall of unbreakable bronze, and a sheer cliff running up to it. Twelve children had been born to him in his palace, six daughters, and six sons now in their prime, and he gave his daughters to his sons to be their wives. And these beside their dear father and cherished mother feasted perpetually, with countless good things set before them; the house was fragrant and rang with the sounds of the feast during the day, while at night each by his modest wife slept in blankets on corded bedsteads. Aeolus, whom Zeus had made keeper of the winds (10.21), entertains Odysseus for a month, and then gives him a magical device that should insure his passage back home to Ithaca: a leather bag into which he puts all of the winds except the West Wind, which carries Odysseus’ ships on their way home. After ten days’ sail Odysseus comes within sight of Ithaca, but then he falls asleep, and his men, thinking that the bag Aeolus gave Odysseus must contain presents of gold and silver, open it, releasing the winds, which drive the ships back to Aeolus’ loating island (31-55). Odysseus asks Aeolus to help him again, but Aeolus sends him away harshly, telling him that it would not be right for him to help one who is clearly hated by the gods (72-75). In this case the island’s mobility seems to imply an advantage enjoyed by Aeolus: since he controls the winds, he can have them move his island wherever he pleases. Or perhaps the mobility is intended to relect the changeability of the winds themselves. An ancient commentator on Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica 3.41-43 records the curious belief that all islands were once loating islands,4 thus painting an engaging picture of the early history of the earth, with all of the islands moving about freely. The myth that the island of Delos once loated is well known: the island was only ixed in place after Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis there. Perhaps the most evocative account of this myth is in the Anthologia Latina:5 2 On loating islands in general see my book Floating Islands: A Global Bibliography, With an Edition and Translation of G. C. Munz’s ‘Exercitatio academica de insulis natantibus’ (1711) (Los Altos Hills: Cantor Press, 2004); and also the Addenda (Los Altos Hills: Cantor Press, 2006). 3 On the loating island of Aeolus see Angiol Maria RICCI, “De insula Aeolia,” in Dissertationes Homericae habitae in Florentino Lyceo (Florence, 1740-41), Dissertatio 52, vol. 3, pp. 90-104; R. E. RASPE, Specimen historiae naturalis globi terraquei, praecipue de novis e mari natis insulis (Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1763), chapt. 2.19, pp. 86-92; also edited and translated (with a facsimile of the 1763 edition) by Audrey Notvik IVERSEN and Albert V. CAROZZI as An Introduction to the Natural History of the Terrestrial Sphere, Principally Concerning New Islands Born from the Sea (New York, 1970), pp. 46-50; A. BREUSING, “Nautisches zu Homeros. 6. πλωτη ενι νήσω,” Jahrbücher für classische Philologie 32 (1886), p. 85-92; A. B. COOK, “Floating Islands,”in Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion (Cambridge, England, 1914-40; New York, 1964-5), Appendix P in vol. III, part II, pp. 975-1015, esp. p. 975; E. D. PHILLIPS, “The Isle of Aeolus,” Antiquity 30 (1956), pp. 203-208; Alessandra BUONAJUTO, “Πλωται και Πλαγκταί: le isole mobili nella letteratura greca,” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosoia di Perugia 1, Studi Classici 17 (1993-95), pp. 11-25, esp. pp. 15-16; and Julie NISHIMURA-JENSEN, “Unstable Geographies: The Moving Landscape in Apollonius’ Argonautica and Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 130 (2000), pp. 287-317, esp. p. 298. 4 See Carolus WENDEL, ed., 1958, Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium vetera (Berlin: Apud Weidmannos), p. 217. 5 Franz BUECHELER and Alexander RIESE, eds., Anthologia latina: sive poesis latinae supplementum (Leipzig: in aedibus B. G. Teubneri. 1894-1926), vol. 1.2, p. 173. For further discussion of Delos’s alleged mobility see Cook, pp. 2009 113 Delos, now held in place by solid earth, once loated on the purple sea and as the wind urged moved lightly here and there, tossed about by the waves. Then the god bound her with twin chains, with one to Gyrarus, and with the other ixed her to irm Myconos. No explanation of the island’s mobility is supplied, but the ixing of the island in place functions as a permanent memorial of a very important addition to the Greek pantheon. According to the Chinese philosopher Lieh-tzu, who lived in the fourth century BC, the ive Chinese mythical paradise islands, which are named Tai-yu, Yuan-chiao, Fang-hu, Ying-chu, and P’eng-lai, all originally loated.6 Here the idea of mobility is invoked to account for the dificulty of locating the islands. The most famous mythical loating island of the Middle Ages is certainly that encountered by St. Brendan of Ardfert and Clonfert (484-577) during his alleged Atlantic wanderings in search of the Terra Repromissionis or Paradise. According to Chapters 10 and 11 of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, the oldest extant manuscript of which dates to the tenth or eleventh century, St. Brendan and his men come upon an island. St. Brendan urged his men to land on the island, and they did so, inding it to be rocky, with no sandy shore and just a few trees but no other plants. The monks spent the night in prayer on the island while Brendan remained in the boat; in the morning Brendan ordered his men to sing mass and they did so, and then they brought meat and ish from the boat to the island, and started a ire and put a pot to boil on it.7 But when the water in the pot was about to boil the island began to move, and the monks ran to the boat, leaving behind everything they had brought ashore, and begged Brendan for protection. Brendan took them aboard and told them that God had revealed to him that the island was in fact the largest ish in the ocean, which always wished to join its tail to its head but cannot because of its great length; the name of the ish is Jasconius (from the Irish iasc, “ish”).8 St. Brendan’s islands were believed to be real, and thus are mentioned by Honorius Augustodunensis in his De imagine mundi 1.35 (twelfth century), by Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia 2.11, and by Domenico Silvestri in his De insulis et earum proprietatibus s.v. “Perdita” 984-985 and Nishimura-Jensen (both cited in note 2 above), and VAN DUZER, Floating Islands, pp. 4-5 and 40-41 (cited in note 1 above). 6 Lieh-Tzu, The Book of Lieh-tzu, trans. Angus C. GRAHAM (London: Murray, 1960), pp. 97-98. For a more general discussion see Donald A. MACKENZIE, 1977, “The Islands of the Blest,” in Myths of China and Japan (Boston: Longwood Press), pp. 106-130. 7 There are many illustrations of this scene, apart from those in bestiaries which will be mentioned below. There are some illustrated manuscripts of Brendan’s voyage; this scene is illustrated in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 370; Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 60, f. 179v; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 173, f. 115r, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 44, f. 34r; all of the illustrated manuscripts of Brendan’s voyage are studied by Andrea VAN LEERDAM, 2004 “Een boek vol wonderen: geïllustreerde handschriften en vroege drukken van Sint Brandaans reisverhaal, 13e-16e eeuw,” Master’s thesis, Utrecht University. The scene is also illustrated in a manuscript of Gautier or Goussin de Metz, L’image du monde, British Library Add. Ms. 10015, f. 137v; on Piri Reis’s world map of 1513, which is conveniently illustrated for example in Kenneth Nebenzahl, Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1990), p. 63; and there is a particularly extravagant image in Honorius Philoponus, Nova typis transacta navigatio (Linz: s.n., 1621), p. 12, which is reproduced for example in T. Luca de Tena, “The Inluence of Literature on Cartography and the Vinland Map,” Geographical Journal 132.4 (1966), pp. 515-518, on p. 518. 8 For discussion see J. RUNEBERG, 1902, “Le conte de l’île-poisson,” Mémoires de la Société Néo-philologique à Helingfors, 3, pp. 345-395; Cornelia C. COULTER, 1926, “The ‘Great Fish’ in Ancient and Medieval Story,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 57, pp. 32-50; and also Patrick PRADO, 2004, “À la poursuite de l’île-baleine: de la métaphysique animale,” Îles funestes, îles bienheureuses (Paris: Transboréal) (= Chemins d’étoiles 12), pp. 58-69. 2009 114 Anuário do Centro de Estudos de História do Atlântico (late fourteenth or early ifteenth century).9 The islands also appeared on several maps.10 The Ebstorf mappamundi (c. 1300) places an Insula perdita found by Saint Brendan, but never thereafter seen by any other man, in the approximate location of the Canary Islands, i.e. the Fortunate Islands of the ancients.11 Similarly the Hereford mappamundi (c. 1300) has an island in the location of the Canaries which bears the legend Fortunatae insulae sex sunt Insulae Sct Brandani.12 The islands also appear on the Angelino Dulcert nautical chart of 1339, the Pizzigani chart of 1367 (ig. 1), two charts by Guillermo Soler (1380 and 1385), and on two charts by Battista Beccario (1426 and 1435), and also on a chart of the same period attributed to Beccario in the collection of Sidney R. Knafel (New York).13 There has been considerable discussion of the source of the whale-island in Brendan’s voyage. Some have suggested that it comes from a similar episode set in the Indian Ocean from the fourth century Babylonian Talmud,14 or else the First Voyage of Sinbad in the Thousand and One Nights, in which an island is revealed to be a whale when a ire is lighted on it, and it quickly sinks beneath the water, carrying many to their deaths. Buzurg b. Sahriyar ar-Ramhurmuzi in his Livre des merveilles de l’Inde, which survives in a thirteenth century manuscript and was probably written in the tenth century, and which is thought to have been one of the sources of the Sinbad stories, contains a very similar episode involving a giant turtle which sinks underwater when it feels ire on its back.15 The episode of the whale-island also appears in al-Jahiz’s Kitab 9 Domenico SILVESTRI, 1954, De insulis et earum proprietatibus, ed. C. Pecoraro = Atti della Accademia di scienze, lettere e arti di Palermo 14.2, pp. 1-319; now edited and translated by José MANUEL MONTESDEOCA, 2000, in “Los islarios de la época del humanismo: el De Insulis de Domenico Silvestri, edición y traducción,” PhD Thesis, Universidad de La Laguna, published by the Universidad de La Laguna on CD-ROM. 10 For discussion see W. H. BABCOCK, “St. Brendan’s Explorations and Islands,” Geographical Review 8.1 (1919), pp. 37-46; and Babcock’s Legendary Islands of the Atlantic: A Study in Medieval Geography (New York: American Geographical Society, 1922), pp. 34-49. 11 The best study of the Ebstorf mappamundi is Hartmut Kugler, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007). For discussion of the insula perdita see Marcos MARTÍNEZ HERNÁNDEZ, 1998, “El mito de la Isla Perdita y su tradición en la historia, cartografía, literatura y arte,” Revista de Filología de la Universidade de La Laguna, 16, pp. 143-184. 12 For a full study of the Hereford mappamundi see Scott D. WESTREM, 2001, The Hereford Map: A Transcription and Translation of the Legends with Commentary (Turnhout: Brepols), and on the islands of St. Brendan on the map see Westrem’s pp. 388-389 and Robert D. BENEDICT, 1892, “The Hereford Map and the Legend of St. Brandan,” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York, 24, pp. 321-365. 13 Dulcert’s nautical chart of 1339 is París, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Rés. Ge B 696, and is reproduced in Gabriel MARCEL, 1896, Choix de cartes et de mappemondes des XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris: E. Leroux); and in Ramon J. PUJADES I BATALLER, 2007, Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d’una mar solcada (Barcelona: Institut Cartogràic de Catalunya), DVD C8. The Pizzigani map of 1367 is Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 1612, and is reproduced in M. JOMARD, 1862, Les monuments de la géographie, ou, Recueil d’anciennes cartes européennes et orientales (Paris: Duprat), pp. 44-49; Guglielmo CAVALLO, ed., 1992, Due mondi a confronto 1492-1728: Cristoforo Colombo e l’apertura degli spazi (Roma: Istituto Poligraico e Zecca dello Stato), v. 1, pp. 432-433; and Pujades i Bataller, DVD C13. The charts by Soler are Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Rés. Ge B 1131, which is reproduced in Marcel, and also in Pujades i Batller, DVD C14; and Florence, Archivio di Stato, Carte nautiche 3, also reproduced in Pujades i Bataller, DVD C17. The charts by Becari are Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cod. Icon. 30, reproduced in Pujades i Bataller, DVD C36; and Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS 1613, reproduced in Pujades i Battaler, DVD C39. On the Beccario chart in Sidney Knafel’s collection see Thomas SUÁREZ, 1992, Shedding the Veil: Mapping the European Discovery of America and the World (Singapore and River Edge, NJ: World Scientiic), pp. 3036 and plates 4-6. 14 See Lazarus GOLDSCHMIDT, ed., 1899-1935, Der Babylonische Talmud (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz) vi, 1133, f. 73b. 15 See Buzurg b. Sahriyar AR-RAMHURMUZI, 1883-1886, Livre des merveilles de l’Inde, trans. Marcel Devic (Leiden: E. J. Brill), pp. 36-37, and also pp. 60-61 and 101-102. Also see A. A. ALEEM, 1989, “Wonders of the Sea of India: An Arabian Book of Sea Tales from the Xth Century and Saint Brendan Legend,” in John de Courcy Ireland and D. Sheehy, eds., Atlantic Visions (Daun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland: Boole Press), pp. 60-66. 2009 115 al-Hayawan (Book of Animals) 7.35, written in the ninth century;16 and al-Qazwini’s Aya’ib almajluqat wa-gara’ib al-mawyudat (Book of the Wonders of Creation), which was written in the thirteenth century, contains an account of a giant sea-turtle mistaken for an island very similar to that in Buzurg b. Sahriyar ar-Ramhurmuzi. However, it seems more likely that the source of Brendan’s whale-island was the Physiologus, an anonymous book of animals (but which also describes some stones and trees) written in Greek probably in Alexandria in the third century A.D.17 Francis J. Carmody, in his attempt to reconstruct the Greek original of the Physiologus by collating the oldest extant manuscripts of the work in various languages, renders the relevant passage from the chapter on the whale thus:18 The Physiologus says of the whale that it lives in the sea, and is called the aspido-celeon.... the whale has the appearance of an island; and sailors, not knowing this, think that it is an island; they drop anchor and ix stakes and tie the ships, and descend upon it, and light ires on it to cook food; and when the whale grows warm and feels the burning of the ire, it plunges into the depths of the sea, and carries with it ships and all.—So you, if you are incredulous, and put your faith in the devil, shall be carried by him to the depths of hell. It is clear that the author of the Brendan narrative has turned this material to a very different purpose, for here the whale is a symbol of the devil, and kills many men, while Jasconius is benevolent and does not sink beneath the water when he feels the ire. The Physiologus was very popular; by the fourth century had been translated into Latin, and by the ninth and tenth centuries it was widely distributed in Western Europe. Further, it formed the basis of the bestiary, a genre that came into being in twelfth century England and France, and continued to be produced into the ifteenth century. Bestiaries from throughout the history of the genre contain a chapter about the whale which is very similar to the whale chapter in the Physiologus, and many bestiaries illustrate this chapter with an image of a boat and a whale with a ire being lit on its back.19 In the Brendan and Physiologus narratives ire is what causes the whale-island to move; curiously there are two other medieval narratives in which ire causes a wayward island to stand still. In the opening of the thirteenth-century Guta Saga we learn that the island of Gotland was originally so bewitched that it sank by day and rose to the surface of the sea only at night, but after Tjelvar brought ire to the island, and it never sank again.20 And in Giraldus Cambrensis’s Topographia hibernica Book 2, chapter 12, doubts are raised about whether a particular island, presumably to the north of Ireland, is a whale or other monster, or really land, as it had disappeared beneath the waves when approached. A young man shot a red-hot arrow into the island and this magically ixed it in place, so that it never again disappeared. These episodes recall the ixing in place of the isle of Delos. A very interesting loating island appears in some of the Grail romances, speciically Lestoire 16 See Miguel ASIN PALACIOS, 1930, “El ‘Libro de Los Animales’ de Jahiz,” Isis 14.1, pp. 20-54, s.v. “ballena.” 17 See Dora FARACI, 1991, “Navigatio Sancti Brendani and its Relationship with Physiologus,” Romanobarbarica 11, pp. 149-173; and Fremiot HERNÁNDEZ GONZÁLEZ, 1993, “El episodio de la ballena en la Navitatio Sancti Brendani y su precedente en el Physiologus,” Fortunatae: Rivista Canaria di Filología, Cultura y Humanidades Clásicas, 5, pp. 283-307. 18 See 1953, Physiologus: The Very Ancient Book of Beasts, Plants, and Stones, trans. Francis J. Carmody (San Francisco: Book Club of California), chapter 21. 19 For the text and translation of a typical bestiary passage on the “great ish” see Willene B. CLARK, 2006, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell), pp. 205206. On bestiary illustrations of the text, see FARACI, “Navigatio Sancti Brendani” (see note 14). There is a particularly attractive illustration of the scene in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 14969, f 42v, a thirteenth-century manuscript of Guillaume le Clerc’s Bestiaire divin; and another appealing image in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1951, f. 30r, a thirteenth – or fourteenth-century manuscript of Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amours; both images may be seen in the BnF’s Mandragore database. 20 See 1999, Guta Saga: The History of the Gotlanders, ed. and trans. Christine PEEL (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, University College, London). 2009 116 Anuário do Centro de Estudos de História do Atlântico Fig. 2. The loating islands near Solhan in the province of Bingöl, Turkey, April, 2001 (photograph by Cafer Orhan). del Saint Graal, Le Livre d’Artus, and Joseph d’Arimathie.21 This is “L’île Tournoiant” or “L’île Tournoyante,” a mythical island formed of an amalgamation of the four elements following creation, which loated about until it came to a steady position in the western ocean, where it turns in place in sympathy with the rotation of the heavens. Nascien was once miraculously transported to this island; there he sees a ship built by Solomon, and in that ship a sword that had belonged to King David. When Nascien draws the sword it shatters as he is not worthy to hold it; later the sword was repaired, and eventually Nascien came to Britain and became a hermit in the service of the Grail. Among Native Americans and Canadians a loating island plays a role in Iroquois22 and Cherokee23 creation myths, in an Oakinacken story of origins,24 and also in a Hareskin lood myth.25 According to the Oakinacken myth, in the beginning the people lived on an island in 21 For the episode in the Lestoire del Saint Graal see Oskar SOMMER, ed., 1908-16, The Vulgate Version of The Arthurian Romances (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington), vol. 1, pp. 114-119; for Le Livre d’Artus, see Oskar SOMMER, ed., The Vulgate Version of The Arthurian Romances, vol. 7, pp. 299-304; and for Joseph d’Arimathie see the edition by Gérard GROS in Le livre du Graal, ed. Daniel POIRION (Paris: Gallimard, 2001-), vol. 1, pp. 230-233. 22 See “Creation: The Floating Island,” in the William M. Beauchamp Papers, New York State Library, Albany, NY, Series III, Box 28, Folder 9 (8 pp.; an Iroquois legend recorded by A. C. Parker). 23 See James MOONEY, 1900, Myths of the Cherokee (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off.) = Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1897-98, Part 1, pp. 239-240. 24 Alexander ROSS, 1849, Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River (London: Smith, Elder and Co.), pp. 287-288. 25 See Émile PETITOT, 1886, Traditions indiennes du Canada nord-ouest (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 2009 117 the middle of the ocean, and their ruler, a woman named Scomalt, enraged by her people’s quarreling, drove them to one end of the island and then broke off the piece on which they stood, and pushed it adrift. Only one couple survived on this loating island, and from them descended all of the Oakinacken people. Here the loating island functions as a method to separate primordial good people from bad. The buoyancy of the islands in mythical accounts of loating islands always adds an element of wonder, and sometimes, as in the case of the île tournoiant, and also perhaps in the case of St. Brendan’s island, that seems to be the only function of the island—that is, it adds an element of the marvelous to the story. But the examples that we have examined show that these islands can have a wide variety of other functions within their narratives. The island’s earlier mobility, contrasted with its current stability, can serve to separate a mythical age of wonders in which islands could move from the historical age, in which islands have ixed locations, as in the cases of Delos and the islands described in the Guta Saga and by Giraldus Cambrensis. Or the island’s mobility can relect its chief inhabitant’s changeability, as in the case of the island of Aeolus in Homer’s Odyssey; or the island’s inaccessibility, as in the case of the Chinese paradise islands, and also St. Brendan’s island to some extent; or a dramatic separation of one people from another, as in the case of the Oakinacken story of origins. Floating islands do indeed exist on six of the seven continents; they may have trees growing upon them, be hundreds of meters across, and support the weight of humans living upon them and even of cattle grazing upon them. Floating islands are kept buoyant by the light spongy tissues of certain aquatic plants, by gases released into their soil by decomposing vegetation, or by both of these forces. In very rare cases they have also been seen at sea, so that the loating islands in the stories just examined could theoretically have had a basis in fact, but when we examine accounts of sightings of these islands, as we shall do shortly, the difference between the islands in the mythical and factual accounts is striking, so striking that we are left with the impression that real loating islands seen at sea have no relationship whatsoever with the mythical accounts of such islands. Floating islands are most often found in lakes and wetlands (ig. 2), but they also form during loods of the great tropical rivers of the world when large masses of aquatic vegetation or chunks of their banks are torn away and carried downriver. The Congo in Africa is one such river (ig. 3), and loating islands that came down the Congo were reported 240 km out to sea from the river’s mouth.26 Floating islands are also common in the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea following the monsoon rains. The islands are called “lik lik aislans” in Pidgin English, and can be up to 100 meters across with still-living trees on them. The Río Paraná and Río de la Plata in South America also generate loating islands—when they lood they are illed with loating islands called camalotes, which are matted masses of water hyacinth. A famous episode at Convento de San Francisco in Santa Fe, Argentina, which is located on the Río Paraná, involved the killing of two friars at the Convento by a jaguar that arrived on a camalote during a lood of the Paraná on April 18, 1825.27 In the lood of 1905, the Río de la Plata at Buenos Aires was covered with camalotes as far as the eye could see, some half a mile long and 100 feet wide, others just a few feet in diameter. As they came down the river these islands hit moored ships and tore the ships from their moorings. And the islands brought passengers with them: many species of tropical snakes, deer, a puma, parrots, and monkeys. An Indian baby was found on a loating island that came ashore [1967]; irst published Paris), pp. 146-149. 26 See Montgomery D. PARKER, “Sketches in South Africa – Number Four,” The Knickerbocker; or New York Monthly Magazine 38.6 (December, 1851), pp. 571-577, esp. p. 573 on loating islands generated by the Congo River, which the author saw at sea up to 150 miles from the river’s mouth. 27 See Bernhard H. DAWSON, “It Happened in Argentina,” Science 79.2057 (June 1, 1934), p. 505; and “Historia de una tragedia,” on the back cover of Templo de Nuestro Padre San Francisco: Guía para visitar sin guía ([Santa Fe, Argentina]: Imprenta Macagno S.R.L., December, 1999). 2009 118 Anuário do Centro de Estudos de História do Atlântico near Rosario, and although he was weak from hunger and exposure (the lood occurred in July, which is winter in the southern hemisphere), he was brought back to health. This lood and the loating islands are described in contemporary newspaper articles28 and also in Guillermo García Moyano’s Pueblo de los Pocitos.29 Of course loating islands that come down rivers end up at sea; many are quickly destroyed by the waves, while others survive for quite some time, but accounts of loating islands seen at sea are rare. On July 28, 1892 a loating island measuring about 1000 square meters, with trees about 10 m high, was sighted in the Atlantic at about 39°30’N and 65°W; on August 26 it was seen at 41°49’N, 57°39’W, and on September 19 it was seen at 45°29’N, 42°39’W, having traveled about 1075 nautical miles during this period, and evidently having survived a powerful storm. Unfortunately no image of the island was ever created, and there is no record of the type of trees on it.30 An article in the November 8, 1908 edition of the Washington Post reports that a United States cruiser in the Caribbean north of Honduras encountered an island which they soon discovered was loating (this is certainly one of the largest loating islands ever seen at sea):31 “It proved to be a little island about three quarters of a mile around and a quarter wide. In shape it was long and narrow, with a thick growth of vines and bushes reaching down to the water’s very edge. Three tall cocoanut palms grew in the middle of it. No life of any kind was on the island, nor was there any water, though instead of being sandy or rocky as such islands usually are, the soil was rich, dark and very moist. After gathering the cocoanuts the sailors returned to the cruiser, which, oddly enough, seemed much further off, and considerably more to the southwest than when they left her. Then it just dawned on them that they had been visiting one of the loating islands so often heard about but seldom seen in the South Atlantic. Further observation conirmed the suspicion, as the cruiser remained near it long enough to see the island change its position.” A story published in several newspapers in June and July of 1902, gives a remarkable account of two loating islands spotted at sea in the Caribbean. The Norwegian ship Donald, steaming from Banes, Cuba, on its way to Philadelphia, encountered a loating island about 30 miles (48 km) from the island of San Salvador:32 “On passing Watlins island, which lay off about 30 miles,” said Skipper Warnecke, “we steamed close to a loating island. Upon it were what appeared to be a large number of stately palm trees. I had never encountered anything like this in all my seafaring life. The loating island was moving, and that, too, at a slow rate. Curious for a thorough investigation, I steamed still closer to the object, and was amazed to ind what I took to be palm trees were full-grown cocoanut trees, and laden with fruit of the largest kind. Then I ordered a boat lowered and, together with the irst mate, made a landing on the still moving island. “Then another surprise awaited us. High up in the trees was a small colony of mischievous monkeys, and as we got nearer they shied a number of cocoanuts at us. After a lot of trouble we secured two of the attacking simians and at least a dozen cocoanuts. Then we took to our boats, boarded the steamer, ordered full steam ahead, and soon the strange loating island was lost in 28 See “Floating Islands – Homeless Wanderers on Great South American Rivers,” New York Tribune, August 27, 1905, sect. 2, pp. 5 and 8. 29 See Guillermo GARCÍA MOYANO, Pueblo de los Pocitos ([Montevideo]: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, [1969]), pp. 58-64 on the “invasion” of camalotes at Montevideo in 1906 – or so the author recalls the date, but it would seem to have been 1905. 30 See Carl OCHSENIUS, “Eine schwimmende Insel im atlantischen Ozean,” Petermanns geographische Mitteilungen 39 (1893), p. 44; summarized in “The Floating Island in the Atlantic,” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York 25.1 (1893), pp. 141-142; and H. GARREAU, “Une île lottante dans l’Atlantique,” Revue Maritime et Coloniale 117 (June, 1893), p. 639. Also see “A Floating Island,” Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), December 10, 1892, p. 3. 31 See “A Floating Island,” Washington Post, November 8, 1908, p. M3. 32 See “Birds and Animals Adrift,” The Daily Chief (Perry, Iowa), July 15, 1902, p. 3. 2009 119 Fig. 3. Floating islands in the Congo River, from the print by A. Goering, “Schwimmende Inseln und die Hochlande des Congo,” 1883 (author’s collection). the haze astern. “But another surprise was in store for us on the following day, when we passed within glass sight of another singular loating object just off the port bow. The lookout sung out ‘Land ahead.’ This amazed me, for I knew according to the chart land was not miles near. Still, curious from the previous day’s experience, I determined to solve this further mystery of the sea, so I gave orders for the ship to steam close to what I now made out to be another loating island. Again I had a boat lowered, and with the same crew we landed on the island. “We found it to be an exact duplicate of the day before, with this exception—instead of monkeys we found a big covey of parrots of most brilliant plumage. Among them was one who was evidently the patriarch of the tribe, and I do not exaggerate when I say that the aged fellow could cuss in two languages. He was evidently a lost pet. We took him and a couple of his fellows aboard the steamer, and soon left the loating island in the distance.” In 1924 similar loating islands were reported in the Palawan Passage north of Borneo/ Kalimantan. In an article titled “A Floating Island Followed His Ship” in the New York Times, Captain Jonas Pendelbury of the steamship President Adams described an encounter with a total of about ten loating islands, the largest about seven acres (2.8 hectares) with tall palm trees, monkeys, birds, and snakes:33 “Captain Pendelbury encountered the biggest of the loating islands irst. He said its palm trees were higher than the wireless masts of his ship and in their tips were chattering monkeys and singing birds. Through marine glasses the skipper said he saw great masses of lowering vegetation and a large number of cobras, deadly reptiles.” These accounts of loating islands seen at sea are remarkable, as they give irst-hand 33 See “A Floating Island Followed His Ship; Skipper of the President Adams Brings Strange Tales from Round-theWorld Cruise,” New York Times, May 23, 1924, p. 16. 2009 120 Anuário do Centro de Estudos de História do Atlântico descriptions of a very rare, surprising, and seemingly impossible natural phenomenon, namely an island that moves freely about the surface of the sea. Such records are of particular interest to evolutionary biologists, as they lend support to the theory that loating islands have played a role in the dispersal of plant and animal species across the oceans, and thus contributed to the process of evolution.34 But perhaps surprisingly, they are of little value to the historian of myths or literature who might be interested in studying stories about loating islands. Those stories, which are also illed with wonder, were perhaps vaguely and distantly inspired by reports of real loating islands, but once the storytellers had seized on the idea of the loating island, they re-elaborated and reshaped it until it became something entirely new, and very distant from its origin in reality. The idea of a loating island, an apparent impossibility, satisied the teller’s interest in marvels, but in incorporating this idea into a tale, the storyteller transformed it into a whale’s back, or the birthplace of gods, or the means of separating primordial peoples, or the material left over after the creation. The idea is transformed, in other words, “by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination.” 35 34 See for example S. Blair HEDGES, “Historical Biogeography of West Indian Vertebrates,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 27 (1996), pp. 163-196; Ellen J. CENSKY, Karim HODGE, and Judy DUDLEY, “Over-Water Dispersal of Lizards Due to Hurricanes,” Nature 395 (October 8, 1998), p. 556; C. J. RAXWORTHY, M. J. R. NUSSBAUM, and R. A. FORSTNER, “Chameleon Radiation by Oceanic Dispersal,” Nature 415.6873 (February 14, 2002), pp. 784-787; and M. VENCES, D. R. VIEITES, F. GLAW, H. BRINKMANN, J. KOSUCH, M. VEITH, and A. MEYER,2003, “Multiple overseas dispersal in amphibians,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 270, pp. 2435-2442. 35 Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, 1849, Biographia Literaria, chapter 14, in The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Prose and Verse: Complete in One Volume (Philadelphia: Crissy & Markley), p. 300. 2009