ABSTRACT
The duties of an Editor of one of our Hakluyt volumes are almost always limited to the elucidation of a text, which though antiquarian and therefore demanding a peculiar kind of editorial care, is at least undisputed as to its authenticity. Such is not the case in the present instance. By far the hardest portion of the task of preparing this introduction has been the investigation of the perplexities which hang about the Zeno narrative and the map which accompanies it. It was truly said by the learned John Pinkerton in his History of Scotland (vol. i, page 261, Note) “Zeno’s book is one of the most puzzling in the whole circle of literature.” Unfortunately this perplexity, which up to the present time has baffled every commentator, has produced the mischievous but not unnatural effect of throwing discredit on the authenticity of a genuine and valuable narrative. It may even be said that this unlucky document has met with almost as injurious treatment from its advocates as from its enemies; since, from failing to detect the real solution of that which perplexed them, even friendly critics have been compelled to resort to random speculations, which have only “made confusion worse confounded.” The puzzle consisted in this, ivthat it presented geographical information very far in advance not only of what was known by geographers in the fourteenth century, when the narrative was first written, but greatly in advance also of the geography of the sixteenth century, when it was published. At the same time the narrative, and the map which accompanied it, contained names of places which in the form of their spelling and the positions assigned to them, were so irreconcileable with all that geographers have been able to learn from other sources, that they have given rise to the wildest conjectures, have puzzled the patient out of their wits, and driven the impatient to condemn the whole thing as an imposture. The story in brief is as follows:—
