Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, 1654
Name: | Blaeu, Joan, 1596-1673 |
Title: | Descriptio Insvlarvm Circa Scotiam |
Pagination: | 154 |
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Translation of text:
It is also known as Cronium to the ancients from Saturn, because in some British island here, according to Plutarch (32), they relate that Saturn is held sleeping in a deep cave of golden rock; for the most severe sleep was put on him by Jupiter instead of bonds; birds bring ambrosia, with whose smell the whole place is fragrant; many demons have been supplied to him as servants, by whom he is watched, by whom care and service is given him. This story, unless I am mistaken, means that veins of metal, over which Saturn presides, lie hidden in these islands, which however have been condemned by lack of wood for working furnaces.
Below Thule to the south, the German Sea spreads out, in which Pliny asserts that seven Acmodae (Mela calls them Haemodes) are scattered; but as it is accepted that these are the islands of Denmark in the Codan strait: Lelant, Fuynen, Laglant, Muen, Falstor, Leyland and Femerem (33), there is no reason why I should spend time on them, nor on Glessaria or Electrida, so called because of the electrum (amber) thrown up from the sea there, which Sotacus believed flowed from trees in Britain. Now since the ancient Germans called electrum ‘glesse’, I am happy to believe with the erudite Erasmus Michael Laetus that the island of Læsø, near the Skagen promontory of Denmark, was once called Glessaria.
Now in the German sea, where it washes Britain, islands appear very rarely, except those in the Edinburgh gulf, scil. May, Bass, Keith, and Inchcolm, that is Columba’a Island.
THE END (final page of Scottish section of Atlas)