Mercator’s fabled arctic continent (late 16th century)Translated notes (top right island, cont
Mercator’s fabled arctic continent (late 16th century)Translated notes (top right island, continuing clockwise):In the northern parts of Bargu there are islands—says Marco Polo the Venetian, book 1, chapter 61¹—which are so far north that the Arctic pole appears to be southwards there.This narrow strait has five mouths. Due to the its narrowness and swift current, the strait never freezes.Here live pygmies no more than four feet tall, like those in Greenland who are called Skraelings².This strait has three mouths spanning 37 leagues and every year for three months they are frozen.This island is the best and healthiest of the entire North.At the mouth of the ocean, the islands make four straits, through which the North is carried into indefinitely, and there in the bowels of the world are absorbed. The rock that is under the pole has a circumference of about 33 leagues.¹ Actually book 1, chapter 56 of The Travels of Marco Polo. Marco Polo relates that the Plain of Bargu is "so far to the north that you leave the North Star somewhat behind you towards the south!“ He also says: "Now I have told you all about the provinces northward as far as the Ocean Sea, beyond which there is no more land at all.” Bargu is the area around Lake Baikal. ² Can also be translated as ‘wretches’. The term was used by Norse explorers for North American and Greenlandic native peoples, particularly the proto-Inuit. -- source link
#history#cartography