The name of Brazil has had a curious history.  Etymologists refer it to the colour of braise or hot coals, and its first application was to this dye-wood from the far East.  Then it was applied to a newly-discovered tract of South America, perhaps because producing a kindred dye-wood in large quantities:  finally the original wood is robbed of its name, which is monopolised by that imported from the new country.  The Region of Brazil had been originally styled Santa Cruz, and De Barros attributes the change of name to the suggestion of the Evil One, “as if the name of a wood for colouring cloth were of more moment than that of the Wood which imbues the Sacraments with the tincture of Salvation.”

There may perhaps be a doubt if the Land of Brazil derived its name from the dye-wood.  For the Isle of Brazil, long before the discovery of America, was a name applied to an imaginary Island in the Atlantic.  This island appears in the map of Andrea Bianco and in many others, down at least to Coronelli’s splendid Venetian Atlas (1696); the Irish used to fancy that they could see it from the Isles of Arran; and the legend of this Island of Brazil still persisted among sailors in the last century.[6] The story was no doubt the same as that of the green Island, or Island of Youth, which Mr. Campbell tells us the Hebrideans see to the west of their own Islands.  (See Pop.  Tales of West Highlands, IV. 163.  For previous references, Delia Decirna,, III. 298, 361; IV. 60; I.B.  IV. 99; Cathay, p. 77; Note by Dr. H. Gleghorn; Marsh’s ed. of Wedgwood’s Etym.  Dict. I. 123; Southey, H. of Brazil, I. 22.)

NOTE 3.—­This is the Colombine ginger which appears not unfrequently in mediaeval writings.  Pegolotti tells us that “ginger is of several sorts, to wit, Belledi, Colombino, and Mecchino.  And these names are bestowed from the producing countries, at least this is the case with the Colombino and Mecchino, for the Belledi is produced in many districts of India.  The Colombino grows in the Island of Colombo of India, and has a smooth, delicate, ash-coloured rind; whilst the Mecchino comes from the districts about Mecca and is a small kind, hard to cut,” etc. (Delia Dec. III. 359.) A century later, in G. da Uzzano, we still find the Colombino and Belladi ginger (IV. 111, 210, etc.).  The Baladi is also mentioned by Rashiduddin as an export of Guzerat, and by Barbosa and others as one of Calicut in the beginning of the 16th century.  The Mecchino too is mentioned again in that era by a Venetian traveller as grown in the Island of Camran in the Red Sea.  Both Columbine (gigembre columbin) and Baladi ginger (gig. baladit) appear among the purchases for King John of France, during his captivity in England.  And we gather from his accounts that the price of the former was 13_d._ a pound, and of the latter 12_d._, sums representing