Chapter II: Pre-Columbian Voyages (3)

[Footnote 252: Indeed, the parallel existence of the
Flateyar-bók version of Eric the Red's Saga, alongside of the
Hauks-bók version, is pretty good proof of the existence of a
written account older than Hauk's time. The discrepancies
between the two versions are such as to show that Jón
Thordharson did not copy from Hauk, but followed some other
version not now forthcoming. Jón mentions six voyages in
connection with Vinland: 1. Bjarni Herjulfsson; 2. Leif; 3.
Thorvald; 4. Thorstein and Gudrid; 5. Thorfinn Karlsefni; 6.
Freydis. Hauk, on the other hand, mentions only the two
principal voyages, those of Leif and Thorfinn; ignoring Bjarni,
he accredits his adventures to Leif on his return voyage from
Norway in 999, and he makes Thorvald a comrade of Thorfinn, and
mixes his adventures with the events of Thorfinn's voyage. Dr.
Storm considers Hauk's account intrinsically the more probable,
and thinks that in the Flateyar-bók we have a later
amplification of the tradition. But while I agree with Dr.
Storm as to the general superiority of the Hauk version, I am
not convinced by his arguments on this point. It seems to me
likely that the Flateyar-bók here preserves more faithfully the
details of an older tradition too summarily epitomized in the
Hauks-bók. As the point in no way affects the general
conclusions of the present chapter, it is hardly worth arguing
here. The main thing for us is that the divergencies between
the two versions, when coupled with their agreement in the most
important features, indicate that both writers were working
upon the basis of an antecedent written tradition, like the
authors of the first and third synoptic gospels. Only here, of
course, there are in the divergencies no symptoms of what the
Tübingen school would call "_tendenz_," impairing and obscuring
to an indeterminate extent the general trustworthiness of the
narratives. On the whole, it is pretty clear that Hauks-bók and
Flateyar-bók were independent of each other, and collated, each
in its own way, earlier documents that have probably since
perished.]

[Sidenote: Adam of Bremen.]

The testimony of Adam of Bremen brings us yet one generation nearer to the Vinland voyages, and is very significant. Adam was much interested in the missionary work in the north of Europe, and in 1073, the same year that Hildebrand was elected to the papacy, he published his famous "Historia Ecclesiastica" in which he gave an account of the conversion of the northern nations from the time of Leo III. to that of Hildebrand's predecessor. In prosecuting his studies, Adam made a visit to the court of Swend Estridhsen, king of Denmark, nephew of Cnut the Great, king of Denmark and England. Swend's reign began in 1047, so that Adam's visit must have occurred between that date and 1073. The voyage of Leif and Thorfinn would at that time have been within the memory of living men, and would be likely to be known in Denmark, because the intercourse between the several parts of the Scandinavian world was incessant; there was continual coming and going. Adam learned what he could of Scandinavian geography, and when he published his history, he did just what a modern writer would do under similar circumstances; he appended to his book some notes on the geography of those remote countries, then so little known to his readers in central and southern Europe. After giving some account of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, he describes the colony in Iceland, and then the further colony in Greenland, and concludes by saying that out in that ocean there is another country, or island, which has been visited by many persons, and is called Vinland because of wild grapes that grow there, out of which a very good wine can be made. Either rumour had exaggerated the virtues of fox-grape juice, or the Northmen were not such good judges of wine as of ale. Adam goes on to say that corn, likewise, grows in Vinland without cultivation; and as such a statement to European readers must needs have a smack of falsehood, he adds that it is based not upon fable and guess-work, but upon "trustworthy reports (_certa relatione_) of the Danes."

[Sidenote: Adam's misconception of the situation.]

Scanty as it is, this single item of strictly contemporary testimony is very important, because quite incidentally it gives to the later accounts such confirmation as to show that they rest upon a solid basis of continuous tradition and not upon mere unintelligent hearsay.[253] The unvarying character of the tradition, in its essential details, indicates that it must have been committed to writing at a very early period, probably not later than the time of Ari's uncle Thorkell, who was contemporary with Adam of Bremen. If, however, we read the whole passage in which Adam's mention of Vinland occurs, it is clear from the context that his own information was not derived from an inspection of Icelandic documents. He got it, as he tells us, by talking with King Swend; and all that he got, or all that he thought worth telling, was this curious fact about vines and self-sown corn growing so near to Greenland; for Adam quite misconceived the situation of Vinland, and imagined it far up in the frozen North. After his mention of Vinland, the continental character of which he evidently did not suspect, he goes on immediately to say, "After this island nothing inhabitable is to be found in that ocean, all being covered with unendurable ice and boundless darkness." That most accomplished king, Harold Hardrada, says Adam, tried not long since to ascertain how far the northern ocean extended, and plunged along through this darkness until he actually reached the end of the world, and came near tumbling off![254] Thus the worthy Adam, while telling the truth about fox-grapes and maize as well as he knew how, spoiled the effect of his story by putting Vinland in the Arctic regions. The juxtaposition of icebergs and vines was a little too close even for the mediæval mind so hospitable to strange yarns. Adam's readers generally disbelieved the "trustworthy reports of the Danes," and when they thought of Vinland at all, doubtless thought of it as somewhere near the North Pole.[255] We shall do well to bear this in mind when we come to consider the possibility of Columbus having obtained from Adam of Bremen any hint in the least likely to be of use in his own enterprise.[256]

[Footnote 253: It is further interesting as the only undoubted
reference to Vinland in a mediæval book written beyond the
limits of the Scandinavian world. There is also, however, a
passage in Ordericus Vitalis (_Historia Ecclesiastica_, iv.
29), in which _Finland_ and the Orkneys, along with Greenland
and Iceland, are loosely described as forming part of the
dominions of the kings of Norway. This Finland does not appear
to refer to the country of the Finns, east of the Baltic, and
it has been supposed that it may have been meant for Vinland.
The book of Ordericus was written about 1140.]

[Footnote 254: The passage from Adam of Bremen deserves to be
quoted in full: "Præterea unam adhuc insulam [regionam]
recitavit [i. e. Svendus rex] a multis in eo repertam oceano,
quæ dicitur Vinland, eo quod ibi vites sponte nascantur, vinum
bonum gerentes [ferentes]; nam et fruges ibi non seminatas
abundare, non fabulosa opinione, sed certa comperimus relatione
Danorum. Post quam insulam terra nulla invenitur habitabilis in
illo oceano, sed omnia quæ ultra sunt glacie intolerabili ac
caligine immensa plena sunt; cujus rei Marcianus ita meminit:
ultra Thyle, inquiens, navigare unius diei mare concretum est.
Tentavit hoc nuper experientissimus Nordmannorum princeps
Haroldus, qui latitudinem septentrionalis oceani perscrutatus
navibus, tandem caligantibus ante ora deficientis mundi
finibus, immane abyssi baratrum, retroactis vestigiis, vix
salvus evasit." _Descriptio insularum aquilonis_, cap. 38, apud
_Hist. Ecclesiastica_, iv. ed. Lindenbrog, Leyden, 1595. No
such voyage is known to have been undertaken by Harold of
Norway, nor is it likely. Adam was probably thinking of an
Arctic voyage undertaken by one Thorir under the auspices of
King Harold; one of the company brought back a polar bear and
gave it to King Swend, who was much pleased with it. See Rafn,
339. "Regionam" and "ferentes" in the above extract are variant
readings found in some editions.]

[Footnote 255: "Det har imidlertid ikke forhindret de senere
forfattere, der benyttede Adam, fra at blive mistænksomme, og
saalænge Adams beretning stod alene, har man i regelen vægret
sig for at tro den. Endog den norske forfatter, der skrev
'Historia Norvegiæ' og som foruden Adam vel ogsaa bar kjendt de
hjemlige sagn om Vinland, maa have anseet beretningen for
fabelagtig og derfor forbigaaet den; han kjendte altfor godt
Grønland som et nordligt isfyldt Polarland til at ville tro
paa, at i nærheden fandtes et Vinland." Storm, in _Aarbøger for
Nordisk Oldkyndighed_, etc., Copenhagen, 1887, p. 300.]

[Footnote 256: See below, p. 386.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Summary of the argument.]

To sum up the argument:--we have in Eric the Red's Saga, as copied by Hauk Erlendsson, a document for the existence of which we are required to account. That document contains unmistakable knowledge of some things which mediæval Europeans could by no human possibility have learned, except through a visit to some part of the coast of North America further south than Labrador or Newfoundland. It tells an eminently probable story in a simple, straightforward way, agreeing in its details with what we know of the North American coast between Point Judith and Cape Breton. Its general accuracy in the statement and grouping of so many remote details is proof that its statements were controlled by an exceedingly strong and steady tradition,--altogether too strong and steady, in my opinion, to have been maintained simply by word of mouth. These Icelanders were people so much given to writing that their historic records during the Middle Ages were, as the late Sir Richard Burton truly observed, more complete than those of any other country in Europe.[257] It is probable that the facts mentioned in Hauk's document rested upon some kind of a written basis as early as the eleventh century; and it seems quite clear that the constant tradition, by which all the allusions to Vinland and the Skrælings are controlled, had become established by that time. The data are more scanty than we could wish, but they all point in the same direction as surely as straws blown by a steady wind, and their cumulative force is so great as to fall but little short of demonstration. For these reasons it seems to me that the Saga of Eric the Red should be accepted as history; and there is another reason which might not have counted for much at the beginning of this discussion, but at the end seems quite solid and worthy of respect. The narrative begins with the colonization of Greenland and goes on with the visits to Vinland. It is unquestionably sound history for the first part; why should it be anything else for the second part? What shall be said of a style of criticism which, in dealing with one and the same document, arbitrarily cuts it in two in the middle and calls the first half history and the last half legend? which accepts its statements as serious so long as they keep to the north of the sixtieth parallel, and dismisses them as idle as soon as they pass to the south of it? Quite contrary to common sense, I should say.

[Footnote 257: Burton, _Ultima Thule_, London, 1875, i. 237.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Absurd speculations of zealous antiquarians.]

[Sidenote: There is no reason for supposing that the Northmen founded a colony in Vinland.]

[Sidenote: No archæological remains of the Northmen have been found south of Davis strait.]

The only discredit which has been thrown upon the story of the Vinland voyages, in the eyes either of scholars or of the general public, has arisen from the eager credulity with which ingenious antiquarians have now and then tried to prove more than facts will warrant. It is peculiarly a case in which the judicious historian has had frequent occasion to exclaim, Save me from my friends! The only fit criticism upon the wonderful argument from the Dighton inscription is a reference to the equally wonderful discovery made by Mr. Pickwick at Cobham;[258] and when it was attempted, some sixty years ago, to prove that Governor Arnold's old stone windmill at Newport[259] was a tower built by the Northmen, no wonder if the exposure of this rather laughable notion should have led many people to suppose that the story of Leif and Thorfinn had thereby been deprived of some part of its support. But the story never rested upon any such evidence, and does not call for evidence of such sort. There is nothing in the story to indicate that the Northmen ever founded a colony in Vinland, or built durable buildings there. The distinction implicitly drawn by Adam of Bremen, who narrates the colonization of Iceland and Greenland, and then goes on to speak of Vinland, not as colonized, but simply as discovered, is a distinction amply borne out by our chronicles. Nowhere is there the slightest hint of a colony or settlement established in Vinland. On the contrary, our plain, business-like narrative tells us that Thorfinn Karlsefni tried to found a colony and failed; and it tells us why he failed. The Indians were too many for him. The Northmen of the eleventh century, without firearms, were in much less favourable condition for withstanding the Indians than the Englishmen of the seventeenth; and at the former period there existed no cause for emigration from Norway and Iceland at all comparable to the economic, political, and religious circumstances which, in a later age, sent thousands of Englishmen to Virginia and New England. The founding of colonies in America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was no pastime; it was a tale of drudgery, starvation, and bloodshed, that curdles one's blood to read; more attempts failed than succeeded. Assuredly Thorfinn gave proof of the good sense ascribed to him when he turned his back upon Vinland. But if he or any other Northman had ever succeeded in establishing a colony there, can anybody explain why it should not have stamped the fact of its existence either upon the soil, or upon history, or both, as unmistakably as the colony of Greenland? Archæological remains of the Northmen abound in Greenland, all the way from Immartinek to near Cape Farewell; the existence of one such relic on the North American continent has never yet been proved. Not a single vestige of the Northmen's presence here, at all worthy of credence, has ever been found. The writers who have, from time to time, mistaken other things for such vestiges, have been led astray because they have failed to distinguish between the different conditions of proof in Greenland and in Vinland. As Mr. Laing forcibly put the case, nearly half a century ago, "Greenland was a colony with communications, trade, civil and ecclesiastical establishments, and a considerable population," for more than four centuries. "Vinland was only visited by flying parties of woodcutters, remaining at the utmost two or three winters, but never settling there permanently.... To expect here, as in Greenland, material proofs to corroborate the documentary proofs, is weakening the latter by linking them to a sort of evidence which, from the very nature of the case,--the temporary visits of a ship's crew,--cannot exist in Vinland, and, as in the case of Greenland, come in to support them."[260]

[Footnote 258: See _Pickwick Papers_, chap. xi. I am indebted
to Mr. Tillinghast, of Harvard University Library, for calling
my attention to a letter from Rev. John Lathrop, of Boston, to
Hon. John Davis, August 10, 1809, containing George
Washington's opinion of the Dighton inscription. When President
Washington visited Cambridge in the fall of 1789, he was shown
about the college buildings by the president and fellows of the
university. While in the museum he was observed to "fix his
eye" upon a full-size copy of the Dighton inscription made by
the librarian, James Winthrop. Dr. Lathrop, who happened to be
standing near Washington, "ventured to give the opinion which
several learned men had entertained with respect to the origin
of the inscription." Inasmuch as some of the characters were
thought to resemble "oriental" characters, and inasmuch as the
ancient Phoenicians had sailed outside of the Pillars of
Hercules, it was "conjectured" that some Phoenician vessels had
sailed into Narragansett bay and up the Taunton river. "While
detained by winds, or other causes now unknown, the people, it
has been conjectured, made the inscription, now to be seen on
the face of the rock, and which we may suppose to be a record
of their fortunes or of their fate."

"After I had given the above account, the President smiled and
said he believed the learned gentlemen whom I had mentioned
were mistaken; and added that in the younger part of his life
his business called him to be very much in the wilderness of
Virginia, which gave him an opportunity to become acquainted
with many of the customs and practices of the Indians. The
Indians, he said, had a way of writing and recording their
transactions, either in war or hunting. When they wished to
make any such record, or leave an account of their exploits to
any who might come after them, they scraped off the outer bark
of a tree, and with a vegetable ink, or a little paint which
they carried with them, on the smooth surface they wrote in a
way that was generally understood by the people of their
respective tribes. As he had so often examined the rude way of
writing practised by the Indians of Virginia, and observed many
of the characters on the inscription then before him so nearly
resembled the characters used by the Indians, he had no doubt
the inscription was made long ago by some natives of America."
_Proceedings of Massachusetts Historical Society_, vol. x. p.
115. This pleasant anecdote shows in a new light Washington's
accuracy of observation and unfailing common-sense. Such
inscriptions have been found by the thousand, scattered over
all parts of the United States; for a learned study of them see
Garrick Mallery, "Pictographs of the North American Indians,"
_Reports of Bureau of Ethnology_, iv. 13-256. "The voluminous
discussion upon the Dighton rock inscription," says Colonel
Mallery, "renders it impossible wholly to neglect it.... It is
merely a type of Algonquin rock-carving, not so interesting as
many others.... It is of purely Indian origin, and is executed
in the peculiar symbolic character of the Kekeewin," p. 20. The
characters observed by Washington in the Virginia forests would
very probably have been of the same type. Judge Davis, to whom
Dr. Lathrop's letter was addressed, published in 1809 a paper
maintaining the Indian origin of the Dighton inscription.

A popular error, once started on its career, is as hard to kill
as a cat. Otherwise it would be surprising to find, in so
meritorious a book as Oscar Peschel's _Geschichte des
Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, Stuttgart, 1877, p. 82, an
unsuspecting reliance upon Rafn's ridiculous interpretation of
this Algonquin pictograph. In an American writer as well
equipped as Peschel, this particular kind of blunder would of
course be impossible; and one is reminded of Humboldt's remark,
"Il est des recherches qui ne peuvent s'exécuter que près des
sources mêmes." _Examen critique_, etc., tom. ii. p. 102.

In old times, I may add, such vagaries were usually saddled
upon the Phoenicians, until since Rafn's time the Northmen have
taken their place as the pack-horses for all sorts of
antiquarian "conjecture."]

[Footnote 259: See Palfrey's _History of New England_, vol. i.
pp. 57-59; Mason's _Reminiscences of Newport_, pp. 392-407.
Laing (_Heimskringla_, pp. 182-185) thinks the Yankees must
have intended to fool Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of
Antiquaries at Copenhagen; "Those sly rogues of Americans,"
says he, "dearly love a quiet hoax;" and he can almost hear
them chuckling over their joke in their club-room at Newport. I
am afraid these Yankees were less rogues and more fools than
Mr. Laing makes out.]

[Footnote 260: Laing, _Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 181.]

[Sidenote: If the Northmen had founded a successful colony, they would have introduced domestic cattle into the North American fauna;]

[Sidenote: and such animals could not have vanished and left no trace of their existence.]

The most convincing proof that the Northmen never founded a colony in America, south of Davis strait, is furnished by the total absence of horses, cattle, and other domestic animals from the soil of North America until they were brought hither by the Spanish, French, and English settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If the Northmen had ever settled in Vinland, they would have brought cattle with them, and if their colony had been successful, it would have introduced such cattle permanently into the fauna of the country. Indeed, our narrative tells us that Karlsefni's people "had with them all kinds of cattle, having the intention to settle in the land if they could."[261] Naturally the two things are coupled in the narrator's mind. So the Portuguese carried livestock in their earliest expeditions to the Atlantic islands;[262] Columbus brought horses and cows, with vines and all kinds of grain, on his second voyage to the West Indies;[263] when the French, under Baron Léry, made a disastrous attempt to found a colony on or about Cape Breton in 1518, they left behind them, upon Sable island, a goodly stock of cows and pigs, which throve and multiplied long after their owners had gone;[264] the Pilgrims at Plymouth had cattle, goats, and swine as early as 1623.[265] In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a community of Europeans subsisting anywhere for any length of time without domestic animals. We have seen that the Northmen took pains to raise cattle in Greenland, and were quick to comment upon the climate of Vinland as favourable for pasturage. To suppose that these men ever founded a colony in North America, but did not bring domestic animals thither, would be absurd. But it would be scarcely less absurd to suppose that such animals, having been once fairly introduced into the fauna of North America, would afterward have vanished without leaving a vestige of their presence. As for the few cattle for which Thorfinn could find room in his three or four dragon-ships, we may easily believe that his people ate them up before leaving the country, especially since we are told they were threatened with famine. But that domestic cattle, after being supported on American soil during the length of time involved in the establishment of a successful colony (say, for fifty or a hundred years), should have disappeared without leaving abundant traces of themselves, is simply incredible. Horses and kine are not dependent upon man for their existence; when left to themselves, in almost any part of the world, they run wild and flourish in what naturalists call a "feral" state. Thus we find feral horned cattle in the Falkland and in the Ladrone islands, as well as in the ancient Chillingham Park, in Northumberland; we find feral pigs in Jamaica; feral European dogs in La Plata; feral horses in Turkestan, and also in Mexico, descended from Spanish horses.[266] If the Northmen had ever founded a colony in Vinland, how did it happen that the English and French in the seventeenth century, and from that day to this, have never set eyes upon a wild horse, or wild cattle, pigs, or hounds, or any such indication whatever of the former presence of civilized Europeans? I do not recollect ever seeing this argument used before, but it seems to me conclusive. It raises against the hypothesis of a Norse colonization in Vinland a presumption extremely difficult if not impossible to overcome.[267]

[Footnote 261: "Their höfdhu medh sèr allskonar fènadh, thvíat
their ætlödhu at byggja landit, ef their mætti that," i. e.,
"illi omne pecudum genus secum habuerunt, nam terram, si
liceret, coloniis frequentare cogitarunt." Rafn, p. 57.]

[Footnote 262: Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, p. 241.]

[Footnote 263: Irving's _Life of Columbus_, New York, 1828,
vol. i. p. 293.]

[Footnote 264: _Histoire chronologique de la Nouvelle France_,
pp. 40, 58; this work, written in 1689 by the Recollet friar
Sixte le Tac, has at length been published (Paris, 1888) with
notes and other original documents by Eugène Réveillaud. See,
also, Læt, _Novus Orbis_, 39.]

[Footnote 265: John Smith, _Generall Historie_, 247.]

[Footnote 266: Darwin, _Animals and Plants under
Domestication_, London, 1868, vol. i pp. 27, 77, 84.]

[Footnote 267: The views of Professor Horsford as to the
geographical situation of Vinland and its supposed colonization
by Northmen are set forth in his four monographs, _Discovery of
America by Northmen--address at the unveiling of the statue of
Leif Eriksen_, etc., Boston, 1888; _The Problem of the
Northmen_, Cambridge, 1889; _The Discovery of the Ancient City
of Norumbega_, Boston, 1890; _The Defences of Norumbega_,
Boston, 1891. Among Professor Horsford's conclusions the two
principal are: 1. that the "river flowing through a lake into
the sea" (Rafn, p. 147) is Charles river, and that Leif's
booths were erected near the site of the present Cambridge
hospital; 2. that "Norumbega"--a word loosely applied by some
early explorers to some region or regions somewhere between the
New Jersey coast and the Bay of Fundy--was the Indian utterance
of "Norbega" or "Norway;" and that certain stone walls and dams
at and near Watertown are vestiges of an ancient "city of
Norumbega," which was founded and peopled by Northmen and
carried on a more or less extensive trade with Europe for more
than three centuries.

With regard to the first of these conclusions, it is perhaps as
likely that Leif's booths were within the present limits of
Cambridge as in any of the numerous places which different
writers have confidently assigned for them, all the way from
Point Judith to Cape Breton. A judicious scholar will object
not so much to the conclusion as to the character of the
arguments by which it is reached. Too much weight is attached
to hypothetical etymologies.

With regard to the Norse colony alleged to have flourished for
three centuries, it is pertinent to ask, what became of its
cattle and horses? Why do we find no vestiges of the
burial-places of these Europeans? or of iron tools and weapons
of mediæval workmanship? Why is there no documentary mention,
in Scandinavia or elsewhere in Europe, of this transatlantic
trade? etc., etc. Until such points as these are disposed of,
any further consideration of the hypothesis may properly be
postponed.]

[Sidenote: Further fortunes of the Greenland colony.]

[Sidenote: Bishop Eric's voyage in search of Vinland, 1121.]

[Sidenote: The ship from Markland, 1347.]

As for the colony in Greenland, while its population seems never to have exceeded 5,000 or 6,000 souls, it maintained its existence and its intercourse with Europe uninterruptedly from its settlement in 986, by Eric the Red, for more than four hundred years. Early in the fourteenth century the West Bygd, or western settlement, near Godthaab, seems to have contained ninety farmsteads and four churches; while the East Bygd, or eastern settlement, near Julianeshaab, contained one hundred and ninety farmsteads, with one cathedral and eleven smaller churches, two villages, and three or four monasteries.[268] Between Tunnudliorbik and Igaliko fiords, and about thirty miles from the ruined stone houses of Brattahlid, there now stands, imposing in its decay, the simple but massive structure of Kakortok church, once the "cathedral" church of the Gardar bishopric, where the Credo was intoned and censers swung, while not less than ten generations lived and died. About the beginning of the twelfth century there was a movement at Rome for establishing new dioceses in "the islands of the ocean;" in 1106 a bishop's see was erected in the north of Iceland, and one at about the same time in the Færoes. In 1112, Eric Gnupsson,[269] having been appointed by Pope Paschal II. "bishop of Greenland and Vinland _in partibus infidelium_," went from Iceland to organize his new diocese in Greenland. It is mentioned in at least six different vellums that in 1121 Bishop Eric "went in search of Vinland."[270] It is nowhere mentioned that he found it, and Dr. Storm thinks it probable that he perished in the enterprise, for, within the next year or next but one, the Greenlanders asked for a new bishop, and Eric's successor, Bishop Arnold, was consecrated in 1124.[271] After Eric there was a regular succession of bishops appointed by the papal court, down at least to 1409, and seventeen of these bishops are mentioned by name. We do not learn that any of them ever repeated Eric's experiment of searching for Vinland. So far as existing Icelandic vellums know, there was no voyage to Vinland after 1121. Very likely, however, there may have been occasional voyages for timber from Greenland to the coast of the American continent, which did not attract attention or call for comment in Iceland. This is rendered somewhat probable from an entry in the "Elder Skálholt Annals," a vellum written about 1362. This informs us that in 1347 "there came a ship from Greenland, less in size than small Icelandic trading-vessels. It was without an anchor. There were seventeen men on board, and they had sailed to Markland, but had afterwards been driven hither by storms at sea."[272] This is the latest mention of any voyage to or from the countries beyond Greenland.

[Footnote 268: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 141. A description of
the ruins may be found in two papers in _Meddelelser om
Gronland_, Copenhagen, 1883 and 1889.]

[Footnote 269: Sometimes called Eric Uppsi; he is mentioned in
the Landnáma-bók as a native of Iceland.]

[Footnote 270: Storm, _Islandske Annaler_, Christiania, 1888;
Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_, London, 1890, pp.
79-81.]

[Footnote 271: Storm, in _Aarbøger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed_,
1887, p. 319.]

[Footnote 272: Reeves, _op. cit._ p. 83. In another vellum it
is mentioned that in 1347 "a ship came from Greenland, which
had sailed to Markland, and there were eighteen men on board."
As Mr. Reeves well observes: "The nature of the information
indicates that the knowledge of the discovery had not
altogether faded from the memories of the Icelanders settled in
Greenland. It seems further to lend a measure of plausibility
to a theory that people from the Greenland colony may from time
to time have visited the coast to the southwest of their home
for supplies of wood, or for some kindred purpose. The visitors
in this case had evidently intended to return directly from
Markland to Greenland, and had they not been driven out of
their course to Iceland, the probability is that this voyage
would never have found mention in Icelandic chronicles, and all
knowledge of it must have vanished as completely as did the
colony to which the Markland visitors belonged."]

[Sidenote: The Greenland colony attacked by Eskimos.]

If the reader is inclined to wonder why a colony could be maintained in southern Greenland more easily than on the coasts of Nova Scotia or Massachusetts, or even why the Northmen did not at once abandon their fiords at Brattahlid and come in a flock to these pleasanter places, he must call to mind two important circumstances. First, the settlers in southern Greenland did not meet with barbarous natives, but only with vestiges of their former presence. It was not until the twelfth century that, in roaming the icy deserts of the far north in quest of seals and bearskins, the Norse hunters encountered tribes of Eskimo using stone knives and whalebone arrow-heads;[273] and it was not until the fourteenth century that we hear of their getting into a war with these people. In 1349 the West Bygd was attacked and destroyed by Eskimos; in 1379 they invaded the East Bygd and wrought sad havoc; and it is generally believed that some time after 1409 they completed the destruction of the colony.

[Footnote 273: Storm, _Monumenta historica Norvegiæ_, p. 77.]

[Sidenote: Queen Margaret's monopoly, and its baneful effects.]

Secondly, the relative proximity of Greenland to the mother country, Iceland, made it much easier to sustain a colony there than in the more distant Vinland. In colonizing, as in campaigning, distance from one's base is sometimes the supreme circumstance. This is illustrated by the fact that the very existence of the Greenland colony itself depended upon perpetual and untrammelled exchange of commodities with Iceland; and when once the source of supply was cut off, the colony soon languished. In 1380 and 1387 the crowns of Norway and Denmark descended upon Queen Margaret, and soon she made her precious contribution to the innumerable swarm of instances that show with how little wisdom the world is ruled. She made the trade to Greenland, Iceland, and the Færoe isles "a royal monopoly which could only be carried on in ships belonging to, or licensed by, the sovereign.... Under the monopoly of trade the Icelanders could have no vessels, and no object for sailing to Greenland; and the vessels fitted out by government, or its lessees, would only be ready to leave Denmark or Bergen for Iceland at the season they ought to have been ready to leave Iceland to go to Greenland. The colony gradually fell into oblivion."[274] When this prohibitory management was abandoned after 1534 by Christian III., it was altogether too late. Starved by the miserable policy of governmental interference with freedom of trade, the little Greenland colony soon became too weak to sustain itself against the natives whose hostility had, for half a century, been growing more and more dangerous. Precisely when or how it perished we do not know. The latest notice we have of the colony is of a marriage ceremony performed (probably in the Kakortok church), in 1409, by Endrede Andreasson, the last bishop.[275] When, after three centuries, the great missionary, Hans Egede, visited Greenland, in 1721, he found the ruins of farmsteads and villages, the population of which had vanished.

[Footnote 274: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 147. It has been
supposed that the Black Death, by which all Europe was ravaged
in the middle part of the fourteenth century, may have crossed
to Greenland, and fatally weakened the colony there; but
Vigfusson says that the Black Death never touched Iceland
(_Sturlunga Saga_, vol. i. p. cxxix.), so that it is not so
likely to have reached Greenland.]

[Footnote 275: Laing, _op. cit._ i. 142.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The story of the Venetian brothers.]

Our account of pre-Columbian voyages to America would be very incomplete without some mention of the latest voyage said to have been made by European vessels to the ancient settlement of the East Bygd. I refer to the famous narrative of the Zeno brothers, which has furnished so many subjects of contention for geographers that a hundred years ago John Pinkerton called it "one of the most puzzling in the whole circle of literature."[276] Nevertheless a great deal has been done, chiefly through the acute researches of Mr. Richard Henry Major and Baron Nordenskjöld, toward clearing up this mystery, so that certain points in the Zeno narrative may now be regarded as established;[277] and from these essential points we may form an opinion as to the character of sundry questionable details.

[Footnote 276: Yet this learned historian was quite correct in
his own interpretation of Zeno's story, for in the same place
he says, "If real, his Frisland is the Ferro islands, and his
Zichmni is Sinclair." Pinkerton's _History of Scotland_,
London, 1797, vol. i. p. 261.]

[Footnote 277: Major, _The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers,
Nicolò and Antonio Zeno, to the Northern Seas in the XIVth
Century_, London, 1873 (Hakluyt Society); cf. Nordenskjöld, _Om
bröderna Zenos resor och de äldsta kartor öfner Norden_,
Stockholm, 1883.]

[Sidenote: The Zeno family.]

[Sidenote: Nicolò Zeno wrecked upon one of the Færoe islands, 1390.]

[Sidenote: Nicolò's voyage to Greenland, cir. 1394.]

[Sidenote: Voyage of Earl Sinclair and Antonio Zeno.]

The Zeno family was one of the oldest and most distinguished in Venice. Among its members in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we find a doge, several senators and members of the Council of Ten, and military commanders of high repute. Of these, Pietro Dracone Zeno, about 1350, was captain-general of the Christian league for withstanding the Turks; and his son Carlo achieved such success in the war against Genoa that he was called the Lion of St. Mark, and his services to Venice were compared with those of Camillus to Rome. Now this Carlo had two brothers,--Nicolò, known as "the Chevalier," and Antonio. After the close of the Genoese war the Chevalier Nicolò was seized with a desire to see the world,[278] and more particularly England and Flanders. So about 1390 he fitted up a ship at his own expense, and, passing out from the strait of Gibraltar, sailed northward upon the Atlantic. After some days of fair weather, he was caught in a storm and blown along for many days more, until at length the ship was cast ashore on one of the Færoe islands and wrecked, though most of the crew and goods were rescued. According to the barbarous custom of the Middle Ages, some of the natives of the island (Scandinavians) came swarming about the unfortunate strangers to kill and rob them, but a great chieftain, with a force of knights and men-at-arms, arrived upon the spot in time to prevent such an outrage. This chief was Henry Sinclair of Roslyn, who in 1379 had been invested by King Hacon VI., of Norway, with the earldom of the Orkneys and Caithness. On learning Zeno's rank and importance, Sinclair treated him with much courtesy, and presently a friendship sprang up between the two. Sinclair was then engaged with a fleet of thirteen vessels in conquering and annexing to his earldom the Færoe islands, and on several occasions profited by the military and nautical skill of the Venetian captain. Nicolò seems to have enjoyed this stirring life, for he presently sent to his brother Antonio in Venice an account of it, which induced the latter to come and join him in the Færoe islands. Antonio arrived in the course of 1391, and remained in the service of Sinclair fourteen years, returning to Venice in time to die there in 1406. After Antonio's arrival, his brother Nicolò was appointed to the chief command of Sinclair's little fleet, and assisted him in taking possession of the Shetland islands, which were properly comprised within his earldom. In the course of these adventures, Nicolò seems to have had his interest aroused in reports about Greenland. It was not more than four or five years since Queen Margaret had undertaken to make a royal monopoly of the Greenland trade in furs and whale oil, and this would be a natural topic of conversation in the Færoes. In July, 1393, or 1394, Nicolò Zeno sailed to Greenland with three ships, and visited the East Bygd. After spending some time there, not being accustomed to such a climate, he caught cold, and died soon after his return to the Færoes, probably in 1395. His brother Antonio succeeded to his office and such emoluments as pertained to it; and after a while, at Earl Sinclair's instigation, he undertook a voyage of discovery in the Atlantic ocean, in order to verify some fishermen's reports of the existence of land a thousand miles or more to the west. One of these fishermen was to serve as guide to the expedition, but unfortunately he died three days before the ships were ready to sail. Nevertheless, the expedition started, with Sinclair himself on board, and encountered vicissitudes of weather and fortune. In fog and storm they lost all reckoning of position, and found themselves at length on the western coast of a country which, in the Italian narrative, is called "Icaria," but which has been supposed, with some probability, to have been Kerry, in Ireland. Here, as they went ashore for fresh water, they were attacked by the natives and several of their number were slain. From this point they sailed out into the broad Atlantic again, and reached a place supposed to be Greenland, but which is so vaguely described that the identification is very difficult.[279] Our narrative here ends somewhat confusedly. We are told that Sinclair remained in this place, "and explored the whole of the country with great diligence, as well as the coasts on both sides of Greenland." Antonio Zeno, on the other hand, returned with part of the fleet to the Færoe islands, where he arrived after sailing eastward for about a month, during five and twenty days of which he saw no land. After relating these things and paying a word of affectionate tribute to the virtues of Earl Sinclair, "a prince as worthy of immortal memory as any that ever lived for his great bravery and remarkable goodness," Antonio closes his letter abruptly: "But of this I will say no more in this letter, and hope to be with you very shortly, and to satisfy your curiosity on other subjects by word of mouth."[280]

[Footnote 278: "Or M. Nicolò il Caualiere ... entrò in
grandissimo desiderio di ueder il mondo, e peregrinare, e farsi
capace di varij costumi e di lingue de gli huomini, acciò che
con le occasioni poi potesse meglio far seruigio alla sua
patria ed à se acquistar fama e onore." The narrative gives
1380 as the date of the voyage, but Mr. Major has shown that it
must have been a mistake for 1390 (_op. cit._ xlii.-xlviii.).]

[Footnote 279: It appears on the Zeno map as "Trin
p[-p]montor," about the site of Cape Farewell; but how could
six days' sail W. from Kerry, followed by four days' sail N.
E., reach any such point? and how does this short outward sail
consist with the return voyage, twenty days E. and eight days
S. E., to the Færoes? The place is also said to have had "a
fertile soil" and "good rivers," a description in nowise
answering to Greenland.]

[Footnote 280: "Però non ni dirò altro in questa lettera,
sperando tosto di essere con uoi, e di sodisfarui di molte
altre cose con la uiua uoce." Major, p. 34.]

[Sidenote: Publication of the remains of the documents by the younger Nicolò Zeno.]

The person thus addressed by Antonio was his brother, the illustrious Carlo Zeno. Soon after reaching home, after this long and eventful absence, Antonio died. Besides his letters he had written a more detailed account of the affairs in the northern seas. These papers remained for more than a century in the palace of the family at Venice, until one of the children, in his mischievous play, got hold of them and tore them up. This child was Antonio's great-great-great-grandson, Nicolò, born in 1515. When this young Nicolò had come to middle age, and was a member of the Council of Ten, he happened to come across some remnants of these documents, and then all at once he remembered with grief how he had, in his boyhood, pulled them to pieces.[281] In the light of the rapid progress in geographical discovery since 1492, this story of distant voyages had now for Nicolò an interest such as it could not have had for his immediate ancestors. Searching the palace he found a few grimy old letters and a map or sailing chart, rotten with age, which had been made or at any rate brought home by his ancestor Antonio. Nicolò drew a fresh copy of this map, and pieced together the letters as best he could, with more or less explanatory text of his own, and the result was the little book which he published in 1558.[282]

[Footnote 281: "All these letters were written by Messire
Antonio to Messire Carlo, his brother; and I am grieved that
the book and many other writings on these subjects have, I
don't know how, come sadly to ruin; for, being but a child when
they fell into my hands, I, not knowing what they were, tore
them in pieces, as children will do, and sent them all to ruin:
a circumstance which I cannot now recall without the greatest
sorrow. Nevertheless, in order that such an important memorial
should not be lost, I have put the whole in order, as well as I
could, in the above narrative." Major, p. 35.]

[Footnote 282: Nicolò Zeno, _Dello scoprimento dell' isole
Frislanda, Eslanda, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto
per due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolò it Caualiere, & M. Antonio.
Libro Vno, col disegno di dette Isole._ Venice, 1558. Mr.
Major's book contains the entire text, with an English
translation.]

[Sidenote: Queer transformations of names.]

[Sidenote: "Frislanda."]

Unfortunately young Nicolò, with the laudable purpose of making it all as clear as he could, thought it necessary not simply to reproduce the old weather-beaten map, but to amend it by putting on here and there such places and names as his diligent perusal of the manuscript led him to deem wanting to its completeness.[283] Under the most favourable circumstances that is a very difficult sort of thing to do, but in this case the circumstances were far from favourable. Of course Nicolò got these names and places into absurd positions, thus perplexing the map and damaging its reputation. With regard to names, there was obscurity enough, to begin with. In the first place, they were Icelandic names falling upon the Italian ears of old Nicolò and Antonio, and spelled by them according to their own notions; in the second place, these outlandish names, blurred and defaced withal in the weather-stained manuscript, were a puzzle to the eye of young Nicolò, who could but decipher them according to _his_ notions. The havoc that can be wrought upon winged words, subjected to such processes, is sometimes marvellous.[284] Perhaps the slightest sufferer, in this case, was the name of the group of islands upon one of which the shipwrecked Nicolò was rescued by Sinclair. The name _Færoislander_ sounded to Italian ears as _Frislanda_, and was uniformly so written.[285] Then the pronunciation of _Shetland_ was helped by prefixing a vowel sound, as is common in Italian, and so it came to be _Estland_ and _Esland_. This led young Nicolò's eye in two or three places to confound it with _Islanda_, or _Iceland_, and probably in one place with _Irlanda_, or _Ireland_. Where old Nicolò meant to say that the island upon which he was living with Earl Sinclair was somewhat larger than Shetland, young Nicolò understood him as saying that it was somewhat larger than Ireland; and so upon the amended map "Frislanda" appears as one great island surrounded by tiny islands.[286] After the publication of this map, in 1558, sundry details were copied from it by the new maps of that day, so that even far down into the seventeenth century it was common to depict a big "Frislanda" somewhere in mid-ocean. When at length it was proved that no such island exists, the reputation of the Zeno narrative was seriously damaged. The nadir of reaction against it was reached when it was declared to be a tissue of lies invented by the younger Nicolò,[287] apparently for the purpose of setting up a Venetian claim to the discovery of America.

[Footnote 283: The map is taken from Winsor's _Narr. and Crit.
Hist._, i. 127, where it is reduced from Nordenskjöld's
_Studien ok Forskningar_. A better because larger copy may be
found in Major's _Voyages of the Venetian Brothers_. The
original map measures 12 x 15-1/2 inches. In the legend at the
top the date is given as M CCC LXXX. but evidently one X has
been omitted, for it should be 1390, and is correctly so given
by Marco Barbaro, in his _Genealogie dei nobili Veneti_; of
Antonio Zeno he says, "Scrisse con il fratello Nicolò Kav. li
viaggi dell' Isole sotto il polo artico, e di quei scoprimente
del 1390, e che per ordine di Zieno, re di Frislanda, si portò
nel continente d'Estotilanda nell' America settentrionale e che
si fermò 14 anni in Frislanda, cioè 4 con suo fratello Nicolò e
10 solo." (This valuable work has never been published. The
original MS., in Barbaro's own handwriting, is preserved in the
Biblioteca di San Marco at Venice. There is a seventeenth
century copy of it among the Egerton MSS. in the British
Museum.)--Nicolò did not leave Italy until after December 14,
1388 (Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, tom. xxii. p.
779). The map can hardly have been made before Antonio's
voyage, about 1400. The places on the map are wildly out of
position, as was common enough in old maps. Greenland is
attached to Norway according to the general belief in the
Middle Ages. In his confusion between the names "Estland" and
"Islanda," young Nicolò has tried to reproduce the Shetland
group, or something like it, and attach it to Iceland.
"Icaria," probably Kerry, in Ireland, has been made into an
island and carried far out into the Atlantic. The queerest of
young Nicolò's mistakes was in placing the monastery of St.
Olaus ("St. Thomas"). He should have placed it on the southwest
coast of Greenland, near his "Af [-p]montor;" but he has got it
on the extreme northeast, just about where Greenland is joined
to Europe.]

[Footnote 284: "Combien de coquilles typographiques ou de
lectures défectueuses ont créé de noms boiteux, qu'il est
ensuite bien difficile, quelquefois impossible de redresser!
L'histoire et la géographie en sont pleines." Avezac, _Martin
Waltzemüller_, p. 9.

It is interesting to see how thoroughly words can be disguised
by an unfamiliar phonetic spelling. I have seen people
hopelessly puzzled by the following bill, supposed to have been
made out by an illiterate stable-keeper somewhere in England:--

Osafada 7s 6d
Takinonimome 4d
------
7s 10d

Some years ago Professor Huxley told me of a letter from France
which came to the London post-office thus addressed:--

Sromfrédévi,
Piqué du lait,
Londres,
Angleterre.

This letter, after exciting at first helpless bewilderment and
then busy speculation, was at length delivered to the right
person, _Sir Humphry Davy_, in his rooms at the Royal
Institution on Albemarle street, just off from _Piccadilly_!]

[Footnote 285: Columbus, on his journey to Iceland in 1477,
also heard the name _Færoislander_ as _Frislanda_, and so wrote
it in the letter preserved for us in his biography by his son
Ferdinand, hereafter to be especially noticed. See Major's
remarks on this, _op. cit._ p. xix.]

[Footnote 286: Perhaps in the old worn-out map the archipelago
may have been blurred so as to be mistaken for one island. This
would aid in misleading young Nicolò.]

[Footnote 287: See the elaborate paper by Admiral Zahrtmann, in
_Nordisk Tidsskrift for Oldkyndighed_, Copenhagen, 1834, vol.
i., and the English translation of it in _Journal of Royal
Geographical Society_, London, 1836, vol. v. All that human
ingenuity is ever likely to devise against the honesty of
Zeno's narrative is presented in this erudite essay, which has
been so completely demolished under Mr. Major's heavy strokes
that there is not enough of it left to pick up. As to this part
of the question, we may now safely cry, "finis, laus Deo!"]

[Sidenote: The narrative nowhere makes a claim to the "discovery of America."]

The narrative, however, not only sets up no such claim, but nowhere betrays a consciousness that its incidents entitle it to make such a claim. It had evidently not occurred to young Nicolò to institute any comparison between his ancestors' voyages to Greenland and the voyages of Columbus to the western hemisphere, of which _we now know_ Greenland to be a part. The knowledge of the North American coast, and of the bearing of one fact upon another fact in relation to it, was still, in 1558, in an extremely vague and rudimentary condition. In the mind of the Zeno brothers, as the map shows, Greenland was a European peninsula; such was the idea common among mediæval Northmen, as is nowhere better illustrated than in this map. Neither in his references to Greenland, nor to Estotiland and Drogio, presently to be considered, does young Nicolò appear in the light of a man urging or suggesting a "claim." He appears simply as a modest and conscientious editor, interested in the deeds of his ancestors and impressed with the fact that he has got hold of important documents, but intent only upon giving his material as correctly as possible, and refraining from all sort of comment except such as now and then seems needful to explain the text as he himself understands it.

[Sidenote: Earl Sinclair.]

[Sidenote: Bardsen's "Description of Greenland."]