Hy Brasil

Hy Brasil (also known as Brasil, Brazil, Hi Brasil, Hy-Breasail, Hy Brazil, and Isle of Brazil) is another far-off island, this one circular, placed by knowing geographers in various parts of the Atlantic—sometimes attached to the Azores group in the North Atlantic, west of Portugal, where it was known as the Isle de Brazi (shown as such in the Venetian map of Andrea Bianco in 1436), at other times located hundreds of miles due west of Ireland. The word Brasil or Brazil is from the Portuguese braza, brassa, meaning heat, coals (the source of brazier, a pan for charcoal); this in turn refers to the red dye obtained from brazilwood (earlier Medieval Latin, brasilium), the wood brought from the East for making red dye. Hy Brasil was the brainchild of Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23–79), Roman naturalist, encyclopedist, and writer. It was said to be a paradise, and explorers searched assiduously for it; so convinced were early geographers of its existence that the island was included in maps and charts for nearly two thousand years. J. Purdy’s chart of 1830 confidently advises the mariner that “Brazil Rock” can be found at 51°10' N and 15°50' W, and it appears on A. G. Findlay’s maritime chart of currents of 1853; in 1865, however, Findlay had rejected the notion of Brazil Island as well as some other legendary islands.

When the Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral (about 1467–1520) discovered a large “island” in the southwest Atlantic on April 22 in the year 1500, he named it Tierra da Vera Cruz but this was later changed to Brasil, no doubt because cartographers thought that he had discovered the elusive island of that name (and, in any event, “Brazil” had long become familiar as a geographical place-name).

In 1674 a Scottish sea captain named Nisbet claimed that he had landed on Hy Brasil; it was, he said, inhabited by gigantic black rabbits and a magician in a castle; unfortunately for both science and maritime history, he was unable to produce any evidence of what he had seen.