Paris, 1777, by M. Fleurieu, this position is assigned to i t ; and in the same chait
we find another shoal put down considerably to the eastward, namely, in lat.
59° 30' N., long. 16° 50' W., that is to say, about fifty or sixty miles from the
north-western portion of the Eockall Shoal. Captain Sir J. Eoss* alludes to
both these shoals in the narrative of his voyage in 1818. He writes, “ We came,
“ on the 8th of May, to a spot where a bank is laid down in Steel’s chart as dis-
“ covered by Olof Kramer” (lat. 59° 28', long. 17° 22'); “ but we could find no
“ soundings in 130 fathoms, anywhere on or near the place.” And again, “ At
“ noon we found ourselves exactly in the latitude of the sunken land of Buss, as
“ it is laid down in some charts, namely, 57° 28' N .; and being desirous of deter-
“ mining whether such a bank really existed in long. 29° 45', we altered our
“ course for the purpose of ascertaining the fact.” “ At sunset, being near the
“ spot, shortened sail and hove to, in order to sound; but no bottom was found
“ in 180 fathoms. Our sounding was repeated every four miles, with no better
“ success.”
In Captain Graah’s narrative of a voyage to Greetdand in 1828f, he says,
“ On the 25th we passed what is laid down in the charts under the name of the
“ Sunken-land-vau-Buss—a danger made mention of even in the latest English
“ Sailing Directions, but which mariners may be now assured is altogether an
“ imaginary one. I t is, by the way, remarkable enough, that precisely where the
“ Sunken-land-van-Buss is thus laid down, the ancient charts place Erisland, that
“ mysterious land which geographers have been so puzzled where to look for,
“ and which but very lately has been ascertained to be no other than the
“ Faroe Islands. This very erroneous location of Erisland serves, in my opinion,
“ to prove that Zeno (the Venetian navigator of the 14th century) was far from
“ having that intimate and accurate knowledge of our Northern Seas which
“ many give him credit for.”
In the appendix to the same work, reference is made to “ Ivar Bardsen’s ”
Sailing Directions for navigating between Iceland and Greenland, which describe
some rocks under the name of “ Gunbiom Skerries” as situated to the south-
* Voyage of Discovery made in H.M.S. ‘ Isabella and Alexander/ for the purpose of exploring
Baffin’s Bay, &c, by Sir John Ross, Capt. R.N. London, 1819, pp. 11 and 14.
t Narrative of an Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland, by Captain Graah, Eoyal Danish
Navy. Translated from the Danish. London, 1837, p. 20.
westward, exactly midway between Iceland and Greenland, and recommend that
a particular course should be steered in order to avoid the ice that had drifted
down and “ set itself fast ” to these skerries. From what is above quoted, it will
however be evident that Captain Graah di,scredited the existence of these skerries.
Mention is also made of land in this locality in Crantz’s ‘ History of Greenland*.’
In speaking of Sebastian Cabot as having been the first to penetrate
into Davis Straits in 1497, Crantz adds, “ A century before this, in 1380, we
“ read that Nicolas and Antonins Zeni, two noble Venetians, were carried off by
“ a storm from the coast of Iceland into the Deucaledonian Sea; and that in
“ lat. 58°, between Iceland and Greenland, they discovered a large island
“ inhabited by Christians, and covered with a hundred towns and villages, which
“ was called West Friesland. Since that time, however, we have not a syllable
“ of intelligence which can give an air of truth to this story. Frobisher in his
“ third voyage touched at a country in that latitude, and found the inhabitants
“ similar in all respects to the Greenlanders, whence he justly concluded that it
“ was a part of Greenland. Some persons, however, espouse the opinion that
“ this island has been swallowed up by an earthquake, and is the same with the
“ sunken land of Buss, marked on the charts, and which is dreaded by seamen
“ from the shallowness of the incumbent water and the furious dashing of the
“ waves.”
Without further multiplying the statements of the older writers on this
subject, I think, notwithstanding the utter distrust with which they have been
regarded, that there is quite sufficient evidence in the distinct declarations of the
Venetian and Nonvegian navigators, coupled with those of later voyagers who
speak of a shoal or sunk land, and the remarkable confirmation afforded by the
recent soundings, to establish the probability that a tract of land or island did
once exist between the 27th and 29th degrees of N. latitude and the 59th and
60th degrees of W. longitude, and that it was either submerged suddenly by
some tremendous volcanic action, or subsided slowly, leaving behind only the
shoal which is now completely hidden below the surface.
According to present information, the isolated fact is established, that about
midway between the 27th and 32nd degrees of W. longitude, where on the one
side the depth is 1160 fathoms, and on the other 1260 fathoms, the water shoals
• ‘ History of Greenland,’ from the German, by David Crantr. London ; 1820, p. 250.