Chapter II: Pre-Columbian Explorations (1)

BY JUSTIN WINSOR, THE EDITOR.

IN the previous chapter, in attempting to trace the possible connection of the new world with the old in the dimmest past, it was hard, if not hopeless, to find among the entangled myths a path that we could follow with any confidence into the field of demonstrable history. It is still a doubt how far we exchange myths for assured records, when we enter upon the problems of pre-Columbian explorations, which it is the object of the present chapter to discuss. We are to deal with supposable colonizations, from which the indigenous population of America, as the Spaniards found it, was sprung, wholly or in part; and we are to follow the venturesome habits of navigators, who sought experience and commerce in a strange country, and only incidentally left possible traces of their blood in the peoples they surprised. If Spain, Italy, and England gained consequence by the discoveries of Columbus and Cabot, there were other national prides to be gratified by the priority which the Basques, the Normans, the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scandinavians, to say nothing of Asiatic peoples, claimed as their share in the gift of a new world to the old. The records which these peoples present as evidences of their right to be considered the forerunners of the Spanish and English expeditions have in every case been questioned by those who are destitute of the sympathetic credence of a common kinship. The claims which Columbus and Cabot fastened upon Spain and England, to the disadvantage of Italy, who gave to those rival countries their maritime leaders, were only too readily rejected by Italy herself, when the opportunity was given to her of paling such borrowed glories before the trust which she placed in the stories of the Zeni brothers.

* * * * *

There is not a race of eastern Asia—Siberian, Tartar, Chinese, Japanese, Malay, with the Polynesians—which has not been claimed as discoverers, intending or accidental, of American shores, or as progenitors, more or less perfect or remote, of American peoples; and there is no good reason why any one of them may not have done all that is claimed. The historical evidence, however, is not such as is based on documentary proofs of indisputable character, and the recitals advanced are often far from precise enough to be convincing in details, if their general authenticity is allowed. Nevertheless, it is much more than barely probable that the ice of Behring Straits or the line of the Aleutian Islands was the pathway of successive immigrations, on occasions perhaps far apart, or may be near together; and there is hardly a stronger demonstration of such a connection between the two continents than the physical resemblances of the peoples now living on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean in these upper latitudes, with the similarity of the flora which environs them on either shore.[510] It is quite as conceivable that the great northern current, setting east athwart the Pacific, should from time to time have carried along disabled vessels, and stranded them on the shores of California and farther north, leading to the infusion of Asiatic blood among whatever there may have been antecedent or autochthonous in the coast peoples. It is certainly in this way possible that the Chinese or Japanese may have helped populate the western slopes of the American continent. There is no improbability even in the Malays of southeastern Asia extending step by step to the Polynesian islands, and among them and beyond them, till the shores of a new world finally received the impress of their footsteps and of their ethnic characteristics. We may very likely recognize not proofs, but indications, along the shores of South America, that its original people constituted such a stock, or were increased by it.

* * * * *

As respects the possible early connections of America on the side of Europe, there is an equally extensive array of claims, and they have been set forth, first and last, with more persistency than effect.[511]

Leaving the old world by the northern passage, Iceland lies at the threshold of America. It is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, and Greenland is but one of the large islands into which the arctic currents divide the North American continent. Thither, to Iceland, if we identify the localities in Geoffrey of Monmouth, King Arthur sailed as early as the beginning of the sixth century, and overcame whatever inhabitants he may have found there. Here too an occasional wandering pirate or adventurous Dane had glimpsed the coast.[512] Thither, among others, came the Irish, and in the ninth century we find Irish monks and a small colony of their countrymen in possession.[513] Thither the Gulf Stream carries the southern driftwood, suggesting sunnier lands to whatever race had been allured or driven to its shelter.[514] Here Columbus, when, as he tells us,[515] he visited the island in 1477, found no ice. So that, if we may place reliance on the appreciable change of climate by the precession of the equinoxes, a thousand years ago and more, when the Norwegians crossed from Scandinavia and found these Christian Irish there,[516] the island was not the forbidding spot that it seems with the lapse of centuries to be becoming.

This cut is copied from one in Nordenskiöld’s _Voyage of the Vega_ (London, 1881), vol. i. p. 50, where it is given as representing the vessel found at Sandefjord in 1880. It is drawn from the restoration given in _The Viking ship discovered at Gokstad in Norway (Langskibet fra Gokstad ved Sandefjord) described by N. Nicholaysen_ (Christiania, 1882). The original vessel owed its preservation to being used as a receptacle for the body of a Viking chief, when he was buried under a mound. When exhumed, its form, with the sepulchral chamber midships, could be made out, excepting that the prow and stern in their extremities had to be restored. In the ship and about it were found, beside some of the bones of a man, various appurtenances of the vessel, and the remains of horses buried with him. They are all described in the book above cited, from which the other cuts herewith given of the plan of the vessel and one of its rowlocks are taken. The _Popular Science Monthly_, May, 1881, borrowing from _La Nature_, gives a view of the ship as when found _in situ_. There are other accounts in _The Antiquary_, Aug., 1880; Dec., 1881; 1882, p. 87; _Scribner’s Magazine_, Nov., 1887, by John S. White; _Potter’s American Monthly_, Mar., 1882. Cf. the illustrated paper, “Les navires des peuples du nord,” by Otto Jorell, in _Congrès Internat. des Sciences géographiques_ (Paris, 1875; pub. 1878), i. 318.]

Of an earlier discovery in 1872 there is an account in _The ancient vessel found in the parish of Tune, Norway_ (Christiania, 1872). This is a translation by Mr. Gerhard Gadé of a Report in the Proceedings of the Society for preserving Norwegian Antiquities. (Cf. _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, xiii. p. 10.) This vessel was also buried under a mound, and she was 43½ feet long and four feet deep.

There is in the Nicholaysen volume a detailed account of the naval architecture of the Viking period, and other references may be made to Otto Jorell’s _Les navires des peuples du Nord_, in the _Congrès internat. des sciences géog., compte rendu, 1875_ (1878, i. 318); _Mémoires de la Soc. royal des Antiquaires du Nord_ (1887, p. 280); Preble, in _United Service_ (May, 1883, p. 463), and in his _Amer. Flag_, p. 159; De Costa’s _Pre-Columbian Discovery of America_, p. xxxvii; Fox’s _Landfall of Columbus_, p. 3; _Pop. Science Monthly_, xix. 80; _Van Nostrand’s Eclectic Engineering Mag._, xxiii. 320; _Good Words_, xxii. 759; Higginson’s _Larger History U. S._ for cuts; and J. J. A. Worsaae’s _Prehistory of the North_ (Eng. transl., London,1886) for the burial in ships.

There is a paper on the daring of the Norsemen as navigators by G. Brynjalfson (_Compte Rendu, Congrès des Américanistes_, Copenhagen, p. 140), entitled “Jusqu’où les anciens Scandinaves ont-ils pénétré vers le pôle arctique dans leurs expéditions à la mer glaciale?”

It was in A.D. 875 that Ingolf, a jarl[517] of Norway, came to Iceland with Norse settlers. They built their habitation at first where a pleasant headland seemed attractive, the present Ingolfshofdi, and later founded Reikjavik, where the signs had directed them; for certain carved posts, which they had thrown overboard as they approached the island, were found to have drifted to that spot. The Christian Irish preferred to leave their asylum rather than consort with the new-comers, and so the island was left to be occupied by successive immigrations of the Norse, which their king could not prevent. In the end, and within half a century, a hardy little republic—as for a while it was—of near seventy thousand inhabitants was established almost under the arctic circle. The very next year (A.D. 876) after Ingolf had come to Iceland, a sea-rover, Gunnbiorn, driven in his ship westerly, sighted a strange land, and the report that he made was not forgotten.[518] Fifty years later, more or less, for we must treat the dates of the Icelandic sagas with some reservation, we learn that a wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away, which was called Ireland the Great. Then again we read of a young Norwegian, Eric the Red, not apparently averse to a brawl, who killed his man in Norway and fled to Iceland, where he kept his dubious character; and again outraging the laws, he was sent into temporary banishment,—this time in a ship which he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of Gunnbiorn’s land, and found it. He whiled away three years on its coast, and as soon as he was allowed ventured back with the tidings, while, to propitiate intending settlers, he said he had been to Greenland, and so the land got a sunny name. The next year, which seems to have been A.D. 985, he started on his return with thirty-five ships, but only fourteen of them reached the land. Wherever there was a habitable fiord, a settlement grew up, and the stream of immigrants was for a while constant and considerable. Just at the end of the century (A.D. 999), Leif, a son of Eric, sailed back to Norway, and found the country in the early fervor of a new religion; for King Olaf Tryggvesson had embraced Christianity and was imposing it on his people. Leif accepted the new faith, and a priest was assigned to him to take back to Greenland; and thus Christianity was introduced into arctic America. So they began to build churches[519] in Greenland, the considerable ruins of one of which stand to this day.[520] The winning of Iceland to the Church was accomplished at the same time.

There were two centres of settlement on the Greenland coast, not where they were long suspected to be, on the coast opposite Iceland, nor as supposed after the explorations of Baffin’s Bay, on both the east and west side of the country; but the settlers seem to have reached and doubled Cape Farewell, and so formed what was called their eastern settlement (Eystribygd), near the cape, while farther to the north they formed their western colony (Westribygd).[521] Their relative positions are still involved in doubt.

In the next year after the second voyage of Eric the Red, one of the ships which were sailing from Iceland to the new settlement, was driven far off her course, according to the sagas, and Bjarni Herjulfson, who commanded the vessel, reported that he had come upon a land, away to the southwest, where the coast country was level; and he added that when he turned north it took him nine days to reach Greenland.[522] Fourteen years later than this voyage of Bjarni, which is said to have been in A.D. 986,—that is, in the year 1000 or thereabouts,—Leif, the same who had brought the Christian priest to Greenland, taking with him thirty-five companions, sailed from Greenland in quest of the land seen by Bjarni, which Leif first found, where a barren shore stretched back to ice-covered mountains, and because of the stones there he called the region Hellu land. Proceeding farther south, he found a sandy shore, with a level forest-country back of it, and because of the woods it was named Markland. Two days later they came upon other land, and tasting the dew upon the grass they found it sweet. Farther south and westerly they went, and going up a river came into an expanse of water, where on the shores they built huts to lodge in for the winter, and sent out exploring parties. In one of these, Tyrker, a native of a part of Europe where grapes grew, found vines hung with their fruit, which induced Leif to call the country Vinland.

From Viollet-le-Duc’s _Habitation humaine_ (Paris, 1875).]

From Worsaae’s _Danes and Norwegians in England_, etc. “With the exception of very imperfect representation carved on rocks and runic stones [see Higginson’s _Larger History_, p. 27], there are no images left in the countries of Scandinavia of ships of the olden times; but the tapestry at Bayeux, in Normandy, is a contemporary evidence of the appearance of the Normanic ships.”]

This group from Worsaae’s _Danes and Norwegians in England, etc._, p. 64, shows the transition from the raven to the cross.]

Attempts have been made to identify these various regions by the inexact accounts of the direction of their sailing, by the very general descriptions of the country, by the number of days occupied in going from one point to another, with the uncertainty if the ship sailed at night, and by the length of the shortest day in Vinland,—the last a statement that might help us, if it could be interpreted with a reasonable concurrence of opinion, and if it were not confused with other inexplicable statements. The next year Leif’s brother, Thorvald, went to Vinland with a single ship, and passed three winters there, making explorations meanwhile, south and north. Thorfinn Karlsefne, arriving in Greenland in A.D. 1006, married a courageous widow named Gudrid, who induced him to sail with his ships to Vinland and make there a permanent settlement, taking with him livestock and other necessaries for colonization. Their first winter in the place was a severe one; but Gudrid gave birth to a son, Snorre, from whom it is claimed Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor, was descended. The next season they removed to the spot where Leif had wintered, and called the bay Hóp. Having spent a third winter in the country, Karlsefne, with a part of the colony, returned to Greenland.

Fac-simile of Norse weapons from the _Historia_ of Olaus Magnus (b. 1490; d. 1568), Rome, 1555, p. 222.]

The saga then goes on to say that trading voyages to the settlement which had been formed by Karlsefne now became frequent, and that the chief lading of the return voyages was timber, which was much needed in Greenland. A bishop of Greenland, Eric Upsi, is also said to have gone to Vinland in A.D. 1121. In 1347 the last ship of which we have any record in these sagas went to Vinland after timber. After this all is oblivion.

There are in all these narratives many details beyond this outline, and those who have sought to identify localities have made the most they could of the mention of a rock here or a bluff there, of an island where they killed a bear, of others where they found eggs, of a headland where they buried a leader who had been killed, of a cape shaped like a keel, of broadfaced natives who offered furs for red cloths, of beaches where they hauled up their ships, and of tides that were strong; but the more these details are scanned in the different sagas the more they confuse the investigator, and the more successive relators try to enlighten us the more our doubts are strengthened, till we end with the conviction that all attempts at consistent unravelment leave nothing but a vague sense of something somewhere done.

(TRANSLITERATION OF THE LEADEN TABLET.),

+ (AT) Þ(E)R KUEN(E) SINE PRINSINED (B)AD (M)OTO
LANANA KRISTI DONAVISTI GARDIAR IARDIAR
IBODIAR KRISTUS UINKIT KRISTUS REGNAT
KRISTUS IMPERAT KRISTUS AB OMNI
MALO ME ASAM LIPERET KRUX KRISTI
SIT SUPER ME ASAM HIK ET UBIQUE
+ KHORDA + IN KHORDA + KHORDAE
(t) (M)AGLA + SANGUIS KRISTI SIGNET ME

RUNES, A.D. 1000.

This cut is of some of the oldest runes known, giving two lines in Danish and the rest in Latin, as the transliteration shows. It is copied from _The oldest yet found Document in Danish, by Prof Dr. George Stephens_ (Copenhagen, 1888,—from the _Mémoires des Antiquaires du Nord_, 1887). The author says that the leaden tablet on which the runes were cut was found in Odense, Fyn, Denmark, in 1883, and he places the date of it about the year A.D. 1000.

George Stephens’s _Handbook of the old Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England_ is a condensation, preserving all the cuts, and making some additions to his larger folio work in 3 vols., _The old-northern Runic monuments of Scandinavia and England, now first collected and deciphered_ (London, etc., 1866-68). It does not contain either Icelandic or Greenland runes. He says that by the time of the colonization of Iceland “the old northern runes as a system had died out on the Scandinavian main, and were followed by the later runic alphabet. But even this modern Icelandic of the tenth century has not come down to us. If it had, it would be very different from what is now vulgarly so called, which is the greatly altered Icelandic of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.... The oldest written Icelandic known to us is said to date from about the year 1200.... The whole modern doctrine of one uniform Icelandic language all over the immense north in the first one thousand winters after Christ is an impossible absurdity.... It is very seldom that any of the Scandinavian runic stones bear a date.... No Christian runic gravestone is older than the fourteenth century.”

On runes in general, see Mallet, Bohn’s ed., pp. 227, 248, following the cut of the Kingektorsoak stone, in Rafn’s _Antiq. Americanæ_; Wilson’s _Prehist. Man_, ii. 88; Wollheim’s _Nat. Lit. der Scandinavier_ (Berlin, 1875), vol. i. pp. 2-15; Legis-Glueckselig’s _Die Runen and ihre Denkmäler_ (Leipzig, 1829); De Costa’s _Pre-Columb. Disc._, pp. xxx; _Revue polit. et lit._, Jan. 10, 1880.

It is held that runes are an outgrowth of the Latin alphabet. (L. F. A. Wimmer’s _Runeskriftens Oprindelse og Udvikling i norden_, Copenhagen, 1874.)]

Everywhere else where the Northmen went they left proofs of their occupation on the soil, but nowhere in America, except on an island on the east shore of Baffin’s Bay,[523] has any authentic runic inscription been found outside of Greenland. Not a single indisputable grave has been discovered to attest their alleged centuries of fitful occupation. The consistent and natural proof of any occupation of America south of Davis Straits is therefore lacking; and there is not sufficient particularity in the descriptions[524] to remove the suspicion that the story-telling of the fireside has overlaid the reports of the explorer. Our historic sense is accordingly left to consider, as respects the most general interpretation, what weight of confidence should be yielded to the sagas, pre-Columbian as they doubtless are. But beyond this is perhaps, what is after all the most satisfactory way of solving the problem, a dependence on the geographical and ethnical probabilities of the case. The Norsemen have passed into credible history as the most hardy and venturesome of races. That they colonized Iceland and Greenland is indisputable. That their eager and daring nature should have deserted them at this point is hardly conceivable. Skirting the Greenland shores and inuring themselves to the hardships and excitements of northern voyaging, there was not a long stretch of open sea before they could strike the Labrador coast. It was a voyage for which their ships, with courageous crews, were not unfitted. Nothing is more likely than that some ship of theirs may have been blown westerly and unwillingly in the first instance, just as Greenland was in like manner first made known to the Icelanders. The coast once found, to follow it to the south would have been their most consistent action.

Fac-simile of a cut to the chapter “De Alphabeto Gothorum” in the _Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus_ (Romæ, M.D.LV.).]

We may consider, then, that the weight of probability[525] is in favor of a Northman descent upon the coast of the American mainland at some point, or at several, somewhere to the south of Greenland; but the evidence is hardly that which attaches to well-established historical records.

The archæological traces, which are lacking farther south, are abundant in Greenland, and confirm in the most positive way the Norse occupation. The ruins of churches and baptisteries give a color of truth to the ecclesiastical annals which have come down to us, and which indicate that after having been for more than a century under the Bishop of Iceland, a succession of bishops of its own was established there early in the twelfth century. The names of seventeen prelates are given by Torfæus, though it is not quite certain that the bishops invariably visited their see. The last known to have filled the office went thither in the early years of the fifteenth century. The last trace of him is in the celebration of a marriage at Gardar in 1409.

The Greenland colonists were equipped with all the necessities of a permanent life. They had horses, sheep, and oxen, and beef is said to have been a regular article of export to Norway. They had buildings of stone, of which the remains still exist. They doubtless brought timber from the south, and we have in runic records evidence of their explorations far to the north. They maintained as late as the thirteenth century a regular commercial intercourse with the mother country,[526] but this trade fell into disuse when a royal mandate constituted such ventures a monopoly of the throne; and probably nothing so much conduced to the decadence and final extinction of the colonies as this usurped and exclusive trade, which cut off all personal or conjoined intercourse.

The direct cause of the final extinction of the Greenland colonies is involved in obscurity, though a variety of causes, easily presumable, would have been sufficient, when we take into consideration the moribund condition into which they naturally fell after commercial restriction had put a stop to free intercourse with the home government.

The Eskimos are said to have appeared in Greenland about the middle of the fourteenth century, and to have manifested hostility to such a degree that about 1342 the imperilled western colony was abandoned. The eastern colony survived perhaps seventy years longer, or possibly to a still later period. We know they had a new bishop in 1387, but before the end of that century the voyages to their relief were conducted only after long intervals.

Before communication was wholly cut off, the attacks of the Skrælings, and possibly famine and the black death, had carried the struggling colonists to the verge of destruction. Bergen, in Norway, upon which they depended for succor, had at one time been almost depopulated by the same virulent disease, and again had been ravaged by a Hanseatic fleet. Thus such intercourse as the royal monopoly permitted had become precarious, and the marauding of freebooters, then prevalent in northern waters, still further served to impede the communications, till at last they wholly ceased, during the early years of the fifteenth century.

It has sometimes been maintained that the closing in of ice-packs was the final stroke which extinguished the last hopes of the expiring colonists.[527] This view, however, meets with little favor among the more enlightened students of climatic changes, like Humboldt.[528]

There has been published what purports to be a bull of Pope Nicholas V,[529] directing the Bishop of Iceland to learn what he could of the condition of the Greenland colonies, and in this document it is stated that part of the colonists had been destroyed by barbarians thirty years before,—the bull bearing date in 1448. There is no record that any expedition followed upon this urging, and there is some question as to the authenticity of the document.[530] In the _Relation_ of La Peyrère there is a story of some sailors visiting Greenland so late as 1484; but it is open to question.

* * * * *

Early in the sixteenth century fitful efforts to learn the fate of the colonies began, and these were continued, without result, well into the seventeenth century; but nothing explicable was ascertained till, in 1721, Hans Egede, a Norwegian priest, prevailed upon the Danish government to send him on a mission to the Eskimos. He went, accompanied by wife and children; and the colony of Godthaab, and the later history of the missions, and the revival of trade with Europe, attest the constancy of his purpose and the fruits of his earnestness. In a year he began to report upon certain remains which indicated the former occupation of the country by people who built such buildings as was the habit in Europe. He and his son Paul Egede, and their successors in the missions, gathered for us, first among modern searchers, the threads of the history of this former people; and, as time went on, the researches of Graah, Nordenskjöld, and other explorers, and the studious habits of Major, Rink, and the rest among the investigators, have enabled us to read the old sagas of the colonization of Greenland with renewed interest and with the light of corroborating evidence.[531]

DEI COMMENTARII DEL

Viaggio in Persia di M. Caterino Zeno il K. & delle guerre fatte nell’ Imperio Persiano, dal tempo di Vssuncassano in quà.

LIBRI DVE.

ET DELLO SCOPRIMENTO dell’ Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engrouelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto sotto il Polo Artico, da due fratelli zeni, M. Nicolòil, K. e M. Antonio.

LIBRO VNO.

CON VN DISEGNO PARTICOLARE DI tutte le dette parte di Tramontana da lor scoperte.

CON GRATIA, ET PRIVILEGIO.

VERITAS.

IN VENETIA

Per Francesco Marcolini. M D LVIII. ]

* * * * *

We are told that it was one result of these Northman voyages that the fame of them spread to other countries, and became known among the Welsh, at a time when, upon the death of Owen Gwynedd, who ruled in the northern parts of that country, the people were embroiled in civil strife. That chieftain’s son, Prince Madoc, a man bred to the sea, was discontented with the unstable state of society, and resolved to lead a colony to these western lands, where they could live more in peace.

DELLO SCOPRÍMENTO DEL l’Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engṙoueland Estosilanda, & Icaria, fatto per due fratelli Zeni M. Nicolò il Cavaliere, & M. Antonio Libro Vno, col disegno di dètte Isole.

Ne’mille, & dugento anni del la nostra salute se molto famoso in Venetia M. Marin zeno chi mato per la sua gran virtù, et de strezza d’inge gno podestà in alcune Republi. d’Italia, ne’governi dellequali si portò Sempre cosi bène, che era amato, & grandemènte riverito il suo nome da quelli anzo, che non l’havevano mai per presenza conosciuto; etra l’altre sue belle opere particolarmente si narra.

NOTE.—The cuts above are facsimiles of the title and of the first page of the section on Frisland, etc., from the Harvard College copy. The book is rare. The Beckford copy brought £50; the Hamilton, £38; the Tross catalogue (1882) price one at 150 francs; the Tweitmeyer, Leipzig, 1888, at 250 marks; Quaritch (1885), at £25. Cf. Court Catalogue, no. 378; Leclerc, no. 3002; Dufossé, no. 4965; Carter-Brown, i. 226; Murphy, nos. 2798-99. The map is often in fac-simile, as in the Harvard College copy.]

Accordingly, in A.D. 1170, going seaward on a preliminary exploration by the south of Ireland, he steered west, and established a pioneer colony in a fertile land. Leaving here 120 persons, he returned to Wales, and fitted out a larger expedition of ten ships, with which he again sailed, and passed out of view forever. The evidence in support of this story is that it is mentioned in early annals, and that sundry persons have discovered traces of the Welsh tongue among the lighter-colored American Indians, to say nothing of manifold legends among the Indians of an original people, white in color, coming from afar towards the northeast,—proofs not sufficient to attract the confidence of those who look for historical tests, though, as Humboldt contends,[532] there may be no impossibility in the story.

* * * * *

There seems to be a general agreement that a crew of Arabs, somewhere about the eleventh or twelfth century, explored the Atlantic westward, with the adventurous purpose of finding its further limits, and that they reached land, which may have been the Canaries, or possibly the Azores, though the theory that they succeeded in reaching America is not without advocates. The main source of the belief is the historical treatise of the Arab geographer Edrisi, whose work was composed about the middle of the twelfth century.[533]

From the _Isolario_ (Venice, 1547).]

In the latter part of the fourteenth century,[534] as the story goes, two brothers of Venice, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, being on a voyage in the North Atlantic were wrecked there, and lived for some years at Frislanda, and visited Engroneland. During this northern sojourn they encountered a sailor, who, after twenty-six years of absence, had returned, and reported that the ship in which he was had been driven west in a gale to an island, where he found civilized people, who possessed books in Latin and could not speak Norse, and whose country was called Estotiland; while a region on the mainland, farther south, to which he had also gone, was called Drogeo, and that here he had encountered cannibals. Still farther south was a great country with towns and temples. This information, picked up by these exiled Zeni, was finally conveyed to another brother in Venice, accompanied by a map of these distant regions. These documents long remained in the family palace in Venice, and were finally neglected and became obscured, until at last a descendant of the family compiled from them, as best he could, a book, which was printed in Venice in 1558 as _Dei Commentarii del Viaggio_, which was accompanied by a map drawn with difficulty from the half obliterated original which had been sent from Frislanda.[535] The original documents were never produced, and the publication took place opportunely to satisfy current curiosity, continually incited by the Spanish discoveries. It was also calculated to appeal to the national pride of Italy, which had seen Spain gain the glory of her own sons, Columbus and Vespucius, if it could be established that these distant regions, of which the Zeni brothers so early reported tidings, were really the great new world.[536] The cartography of the sixteenth century shows that the narrative and its accompanying map made an impression on the public mind, but from that day to this it has been apparent that there can be no concurrence of opinion as to what island the Frislanda of the Zeni was, if it existed at all except in some disordered or audacious mind; and, as a matter of course, the distant regions of Estotiland and Drogeo have been equally the subject of belief and derision. No one can be said wholly to have taken the story out of the category of the uncertain.

The presence of the Basques on the coasts of North America long before the voyage of Columbus is often asserted,[537] and there is no improbability in a daring race of seamen, in search of whales, finding a way to the American waters. There are some indications in the early cartography which can perhaps be easily explained on this hypothesis;[538] there are said to be unusual linguistic correspondences in the American tongues with those of this strange people.[539] There are the reports of the earliest navigators, who have left indisputable records that earlier visitors from Europe had been before them, and Cabot may have found some reminders of such;[540] and it is even asserted that it was a Basque mariner, who had been on the Newfoundland banks, and gave to Columbus some premonitions of the New World.[541]

Certain claims of the Dutch have also been advanced;[542] and one for an early discovery of Newfoundland, in 1463-64, by John Vas Costa Cortereal was set forth by Barrow in his _Chronological Hist. of Voyages into the Arctic Regions_ (London, 1818); but he stands almost alone in his belief.[543] Biddle in his _Cabot_ has shown its great improbability.

In the years while Columbus was nourishing his purpose of a western voyage, there were two adventurous navigators, as alleged, who were breasting the dangers of the Sea of Darkness both to the north and to the south. It cannot be said that either the Pole Skolno, in his skirting the Labrador coasts in 1476,[544] or the Norman Cousin, who is thought to have traversed a part of the South American coast in 1488-89,[545] have passed with their exploits into the accepted truths of history; but there was nothing improbable in what was said of them, and they flourish as counter-rumors always survive when attendant upon some great revelation like that of Columbus.

CRITICAL NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

=A.= EARLY CONNECTION OF ASIATIC PEOPLES WITH THE WESTERN COAST OF AMERICA.— The question of the origin of the Americans, whether an autochthonous one or associated with the continents beyond either ocean, is more properly discussed in another place of the present volume. We can only indicate here in brief such of the phases of the question as suppose an Asiatic connection, and the particular lines of communication.

The ethnic unity of the American races, as urged by Morton and others, hardly meets the requirements of the problem in the opinion of most later students, like Sir Daniel Wilson, for instance; and yet, if A. H. Keane represents, as he claims, the latest ethnological beliefs, the connection with Asia, of the kind that forms ethnic traces, must have been before the history of the present Asiatic races, since the correspondence of customs, etc. is not sufficient for more recent affiliation.[546] It should be remembered also, that if this is true, and if there is the strong physical resemblance between Asiatics and the indigenous tribes of the northwest coast which early travellers and physiologists have dwelt on, we have in such a correspondence strong evidence of the persistency of types.[547]

The Asiatic theory was long a favorite one. So popular a book as Lafitau’s _Mœurs des Sauvages_ (Paris, 1724) advocated it. J. B. Scherer’s _Recherches historiques et géographiques sur le nouveau monde_ (Paris, 1777) was on the same side. One of the earliest in this country, Benj. Smith Barton, to give expression to American scholarship in this field held like opinions in his _New Views of the Origin of the Tribes of America_ (Philad., 1797).[548] Twenty years later (1816) one of the most active of the American men of letters advocated the same views,—Samuel L. Mitchell in the _Archæologia Americana_ (i. 325, 338, 346). The weightiest authority of his time, Alex. von Humboldt, formulated his belief in several of his books: _Vues des Cordillères; Ansichten der Natur; Cosmos_.[549]

NOTE.—Sketch map from the _U. S. Geodetic Survey_, 1880, App. xvi; also in _Journal Amer. Geog. Soc._, xv. p. 114. Cf. Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, i. 35.]

Of the northern routes, that by Behring’s Straits is the most apparent, and Lyell says that when half-way over Dover Straits, which have not far from the same dimensions, he saw both the English and French shores at the same time, he was easily convinced that the passage by Behring’s Straits solved many of the difficulties of the American problem.[550]

The problem as to the passage by the Aleutian Islands is converted into the question whether primitive people could have successfully crossed an interval from Asia of 130 miles to reach the island Miedna, 126 more to Behring’s Island, and then 235 to Attu, the westernmost of the Aleutian Islands, or nearly 500 miles in all, and to have crossed in such numbers as to affect the peopling of the new continent. There are some, like Winchell, who see no difficulty in the case.[551] There are no authenticated relics, it is believed, to prove the Tartar occupancy of the northwest of America.[552] That there have been occasional estrays upon the coasts of British Columbia, Oregon, and California, by the drifting thither of Chinese and Japanese junks, is certainly to be believed; but the argument against their crews peopling the country is usually based upon the probable absence of women in them,—an argument that certainly does not invalidate the belief in an infusion of Asiatic blood in a previous race.[553]

The easterly passage which has elicited most interest is one alleged to have been made by some Buddhist priests to a country called Fusang, and in proof of it there is cited the narrative of one Hœi-Shin, who is reported to have returned to China in A.D. 499. Beside much in the story that is ridiculous and impossible, there are certain features which have led some commentators to believe that the coast of Mexico was intended, and that the Mexican maguey plant was the tree fusang, after which the country is said to have been called. The story was first brought to the attention of Europeans in 1761, when De Guignes published his paper on the subject in the 28th volume (pp. 505-26) of the Academy of Inscriptions.[554] It seems to have attracted little attention till J. H. von Klaproth, in 1831, discredited the American theory in his “Recherches sur le pays de Fousang,” published in the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (2d ser., vol. xxi.), accompanied by a chart. In 1834 there appeared at Paris a French translation, _Annales des Empereurs du Japon_ (_Nipon o dai itsi rau_), to which (vol. iv.) Klaproth appended an “Aperçu de l’histoire mythologique du Japon,” in which he returned to the subject, and convinced Humboldt at least,[555] that the country visited was Japan, and not Mexico, though he could but see striking analogies, as he thought, in the Mexican myths and customs to those of the Chinese.[556]

In 1841, Karl Friedrich Neumann, in the _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_ (new series, vol. xvi.), published a paper on “Ost Asien und West Amerika nach Chinesischen Quellen aus dem fünften, sechsten und siebenten Jahrhundert,” in which he gave a version of the Hœi-shin (Hœi-schin, Hui-shën) narrative, which Chas. G. Leland, considering it a more perfect form of the original than that given by De Guignes, translated into English in _The Knickerbocker Mag._ (1850), xxxvi. 301, as “California and Mexico in the fifth century.”[557]

NOTE.—The map of Buache, 1752, showing De Guignes’ route of the Chinese emigration to Fusang. Reduced from the copy in the _Congrès internationale des Américanistes, Compte Rendu, Nancy, 1875_.]

The next to discuss the question, and in an affirmative spirit, was Charles Hippolyte de Paravey, in the _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_ (Feb., 1844), whose paper was published separately as _L’Amérique sous le nom de pays de Fou-Sang, est elle citée dès le 5^e siècle de notre ère, dans les grandes annales de la Chine_, etc. _Discussion ou dissertation abrégée, où l’affirmative est prouvée_ (Paris, 1844); and in 1847 he published _Nouvelles preuves que le pays du Fousang est l’Amérique_.[558]

The controversy as between De Guignes and Klaproth was shared, in 1862, by Gustave d’Eichthal, taking the Frenchman’s side, in the _Revue Archéologique_ (vol. ii.), and finally in his _Etudes sur les origines Bouddhiques de la civilisation Américaine_ (Paris, 1865).[559]

In 1870, E. Bretschneider, in his “Fusang, or who discovered America?” in the _Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal_ (Foochow, Oct., 1870), contended that the whole story was the fabrication of a lying priest.[560]

In 1875 there was new activity in discussing the question. Two French writers of considerable repute in such studies attracted attention: the one, Lucien Adam, in the Congrès des Américanistes at Nancy (_Compte Rendu_, i. 145); and the other, Léon de Rosny, entered the discussions at the same session (_Ibid._ i. p. 131).[561]

The most conspicuous study for the English reader was Charles Godfrey Leland’s _Fusang, or The discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist priests in the fifth century_ (London, 1875).[562]

The Marquis d’Hervey de Saint Denis published in the _Actes de la Soc. d’Ethnographie_ (1869), vol. vi., and later in the _Comptes Rendus_ of the French Academy of Inscriptions, a _Mémoire sur le pays connu des anciens Chinois sous le nom de Fousang, et sur quelques documents inédits pour servir à l’identifier_, which was afterwards published separately in Paris, 1876, in which he assented to the American theory. The student of the subject need hardly go, however, beyond E. P. Vining’s _An inglorious Columbus: or, Evidence that Hwui Shăn and a party of Buddhist monks from Afghanistan discovered America in the fifth century_ A.D. (New York, 1885), since the compiler has made it a repository of all the essential contributions to the question from De Guignes down. He gives the geographical reasons for believing Fusang to be Mexico (ch. 20), comparing the original description of Fusang with the early accounts of aboriginal Mexico, and rehearsing the traditions, as is claimed, of the Buddhists still found by the Spaniards pervading the memories of the natives, and at last (ch. 37) summarizing all the grounds of his belief.[563]

* * * * *

The consideration of the Polynesian route as a possible avenue for peopling America involves the relations of the Malays to the inhabitants of the Oceanic Islands and the capacity of early man to traverse long distances by water.[564]

E. B. Tylor has pointed out the Asiatic relations of the Polynesians in the _Journal of the Anthropological Inst._, xi. 401. Pickering, in the ethnological chart accompanying the reports of the Wilkes Expedition, makes the original people of Chili and Peru to be Malay, and he connects the Californians with the Polynesians.[565]

The earliest elaboration of this theory was in John Dunmore Lang’s _View of the origin and migrations of the Polynesian nations, demonstrating their ancient discovery and progressive settlement of the continent of America_ (London, 1834; 2d ed., Sydney, 1877). /Francis A. Allen has advanced similar views at the meetings of the Congrès des Américanistes at Luxembourg and at Copenhagen.[566]

The Mongol theory of the occupation of Peru, which John Ranking so enthusiastically pressed in his _Historical researches on the conquest of Peru, Mexico, Bogota, Natchez, and Talomeco, in the thirteenth century, by the Mongols, accompanied with elephants; and the local agreement of history and tradition, with the remains of elephants and mastodontes found in the new world_ [etc.] (London, 1827), implies that in the thirteenth century the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan sent a fleet against Japan, which, being scattered in a storm, finally in part reached the coasts of Peru, where the son of Kublai Khan became the first Inca.[567] The book hardly takes rank as a sensible contribution to ethnology, and Prescott says of it that it embodies “many curious details of Oriental history and manners in support of a whimsical theory.”[568]

=B.= IRELAND THE GREAT, OR WHITE MAN’S LAND.—The claims of the Irish to have preceded the Norse in Iceland, and to have discovered America, rest on an Icelandic saga, which represents that in the tenth century Are Marson, driven off his course by a gale, found a land which became known as Huitramannaland, or white man’s land, or otherwise as Irland it Mikla.[569] This region was supposed by the colonists of Vinland to lie farther south, which Rafn[570] interprets as being along the Carolina coast,[571] and others have put it elsewhere, as Beauvois in Canada above the Great Lakes; and still others see no more in it than the pressing of some storm-driven vessel to the Azores[572] or some other Atlantic island. The story is also coupled, from another source, with the romance of Bjarni Asbrandson, who sailed away from Iceland and from a woman he loved, because the husband and relatives of the woman made it desirable that he should. Thirty years later, the crew of another ship, wrecked on a distant coast,[573] found that the people who took them prisoners spoke Irish,[574] and that their chieftain was this same renegade, who let them go apparently for the purpose of conveying some token by which he would be remembered to the Thurid of his dreams. Of course all theorists who have to deal with these supposed early discoveries by Europeans connect, each with his own pet scheme, the prevailing legendary belief among the American Indians that white men at an early period made their appearance on the coasts all the way from Central America to Labrador.[575] Whether these strange comers be St. Patrick,[576] St. Brandan even, or some other Hibernian hero, with his followers, is easily to be adduced, if the disposing mind is inclined.

There have been of late years two considerable attempts to establish the historical verity of some of these alleged Irish visits.[577]

=C.= THE NORSE IN ICELAND.—The chief original source for the Norse settlement of Iceland is the famous _Landnamabók_,[578] which is a record by various writers, at different times, of the partitioning and ownership of lands during the earliest years of occupation.[579] This and other contemporary manuscripts, including the _Heimskringla_ of Snorre Sturleson and the great body of Icelandic sagas, either at first hand or as filtered through the leading writers on Icelandic history, constitute the material out of which is made up the history of Iceland, in the days when it was sending its adventurous spirits to Greenland and probably to the American main.[580]

Respecting the body of the sagas, Laing (_Heimskringla_, i. 23) says: “It does not appear that any saga manuscript now existing has been written before the fourteenth century, however old the saga itself may be. It is known that in the twelfth century, Are Frode, Sæmund and others began to take the sagas out of the traditionary state and fix them in writing; but none of the original skins appear to have come down to our time, but only some of the numerous copies of them.” Laing (p. 24) also instances numerous sagas known to have existed, but they are not now recognized;[581] and he gives us (p. 30) the substance of what is known respecting the writers and transcribers of this early saga literature. It is held that by the beginning of the thirteenth century the sagas of the discoveries and settlements had all been put in writing, and thus the history, as it exists, of mediæval Iceland is, as Burton says (_Ultima Thule_, i. 237), more complete than that of any European country.[582]

Among the secondary writers, using either at first or second hand the early MS. sources, the following may be mentioned:—

One of the earliest brought to the attention of the English public was _A Compendious Hist. of the Goths, Swedes and Vandals, and other northern powers_ (London, 1650 and 1658), translated in an abridged form from the Latin of Olaus Magnus, which had been for more than a hundred years the leading comprehensive authority on the northern nations. The _Svearikes Historia_ (Stockholm, 1746-62) of Olof von Dalin and the similar work of Sven Lagerbring (1769-1788), covering the early history of the north, are of interest for the comparative study of the north, rather than as elucidating the history of Iceland in particular.[583] More direct aid will be got from Mallet’s _Northern Antiquities_ (London edition, 1847) and from Wheaton’s _Northmen_. More special is the _Histoire de l’Island_ of Xavier Marmier; and the German historian F. C. Dahlman also touches Iceland with particular attention in his _Geschichte von Dänemark bis zur Reformation, mit Inbegriff von Norwegen und Island_ (Hamburg, 1840-43).

A history of more importance than any other yet published, and of the widest scope, was that of Sweden by E. J. Geijer (continued by F. F. Carlson), which for the early period (down to 1654) is accessible in English in a translation by J. H. Turner (London, 1845).[584]

Prominent among the later school of northern historians, all touching the Icelandic annals more or less, have been Peter Andreas Munch in his _Det Norske Folks Historie_ (Christiania, 1852-63);[585] N. M. Petersen in his _Danmarks Historie i Hedenold_ (Copenhagen, 1854-55); K. Keyser in his _Norges Historie_ (Christiania, 1866-67); J. E. Sars in his _Udsigt over den Norske Historie_ (Christiania, 1873-77); but all are surpassed by Konrad Maurer’s _Island von seiner ersten Entdeckung bis zum Untergange des Freistaates_,—A.D. 800-1262 (Munich, 1874), published as commemorating the thousandth anniversary of the settlement of Iceland, and it has the repute of being the best book on early Icelandic history.[586]

The change from Paganism to Christianity necessarily enters into all the histories covering the tenth and eleventh centuries; but it has special treatment in C. Merivale’s _Conversion of the Northern Nations_ (Boyle lectures,—London, 1866).[587]

There is a considerable body of the later literature upon Iceland, retrospective in character, and affording the results of study more or less patient as to the life in the early Norse days in Iceland.[588]

G.W. Dasent’s introduction to his _Story of Burnt Njal_ (Edinburgh, 1861)[589] and his _Norsemen in Iceland_ (Oxford Essays, 1858) give what Max Müller (_Chips from a German Workshop_, ii. 191) calls “a vigorous and lively sketch of primitive northern life;” and are well supplemented by Sabine Baring-Gould’s _Iceland, its scenes and sagas_ (London, 1863 and later), and Richard F. Burton’s _Ultima Thule, with an historical introduction_ (London, 1875).[590]

=D.= GREENLAND AND ITS RUINS.—The sagas still serve us for the colonization of Greenland, and of particular use is that of Eric the Red.[591] The earliest to use these sources in the historic spirit was Torfæus in his _Historia Gronlandiæ Antiquæ_ (1715).[592] The natural successor of Torfæus and the book upon which later writers mostly depend is David Crantz’s _Historie von Grönland, enthaltend die Beschreibung des Landes und der Einwohner, insbesonders die Geschichten der dortigen Mission. Nebst Fortsetzung_ (Barby, 1765-70, 3 vols.). An English translation appeared in London in 1767, and again, though in an abridged form with some changes, in 1820.[593]

After a cut in Nordenskjöld’s _Den Andra Dicksonska Expeditionen till Grönland_, p. 369, following one in _Efter Meddelelser om Grönland_.]

Crantz says of his own historic aims, referring to Torfæus and to the accounts given by the Eskimos of the east coast, that he has tried to investigate “where the savage inhabitants came from, and how the ancient Norwegian inhabitants came to be so totally extirpated,” while at the same time he looks upon the history of the Moravian missions as his chiefest theme.

* * * * *

The principal source for the identification of the ruins of Greenland is the work compiled by Rafn and Finn Magnusen, _Grönlands Historiske Mindesmærker_,[594] with original texts and Danish versions. Useful summaries and observations will be found in the paper by K. Steenstrup on “Old Scandinavian ruins in South Greenland” in the _Compte Rendu, Congrès des Américanistes_ (Copenhagen, 1883, p. 108), and in one on “Les Voyages des Danois au Greenland” in the same (p. 196). Steenstrup’s paper is accompanied by photographs and cuts, and a map marking the site of the ruins. The latest account of them is by Lieut. Holm in the _Meddelelser om Grönland_ (Copenhagen, 1883), vol. vi. Other views and plans showing the arrangement of their dwellings and the curious circular ruins,[595] which seems to have usually been near their churches, are shown in the Baron Nordenskjöld’s _Den andra dicksonska expeditionen till Grönland, dess inre isöken och dess ostkust, utförd år 1883_ (Stockholm, 1885), the result of the ripest study and closest contact.

We need also to scan the narratives of Hans Egede and Graah. Parry found in 1824, on an island on the Baltic coast, a runic stone, commemorating the occupancy of the spot in 1135 (_Antiquitates Americanæ_; Mallet’s _Northern Antiquities_, 248); and in 1830 and 1831 other runes were found on old gravestones (Rink’s _Danish Greenland_, app. v.; Laing’s _Heimskringla_, i. 151). These last are in the Museum at Copenhagen. Most of these imperishable relics have been found in the district of Julianeshaab.[596]

=E.= THE VINLAND VOYAGES.—What Leif and Karlsefne knew they experienced, and what the sagas tell us they underwent, must have just the difference between a crisp narrative of personal adventure and the oft-repeated and embellished story of a fireside narrator, since the traditions of the Norse voyages were not put in the shape of records till about two centuries had elapsed, and we have no earlier manuscript of such a record than one made nearly two hundred years later still. It is indeed claimed that the transmission by tradition in those days was a different matter in respect to constancy and exactness from what it has been known to be in later times; but the assumption lacks proof and militates against well-known and inevitable processes of the human mind.

This is a portion of one of the plates in the _Antiquitates Americanæ_, given by Rafn to Charles Sumner, with a key in manuscript by Rafn himself. His signature is from a copy of his _Mémoire_ given by him to Edward Everett, and now in Harvard College library.]