CHAPTER II. 1492. FOR an unknown length of time the country and people that have been described had been hidden behind the ocean from the knowledge of civilized man. It is doubtful whether they were ever seen by European eyes till nearly five years had passed after Columbus found his way to the West India Islands. But Oct. 12. the existence in the North of Europe of a traditional account of visits to the northeasterly parts of North America by Scandinavian voyagers, in the eleventh century and in the three centuries next following, has long been known to geographers; and original documents relating to this interesting problem have recently been placed in the possession of the reading world. It is no wise unlikely that eight or nine hundred years ago the Norwegian navigators extended Alleged their voyages as far as the American continent. Possessing the best nautical skill of their age, 1 "La mérite," says Humboldt (Examen Critique, II. 120), “d'avoir reconnu la première découverte de l'Amérique continentale par les Normands, appartient indubitablement au géographe Ortélius, qui annonça cette opinion dès l'année 1570"; and then he quotes words of Ortelius which, however, are not found in the edition either of 1575 or of 1584. Indeed, it is clear from his language (Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, edit. 1584, p. 5) that as late as the latter date he had heard nothing of an ante-Columbian discovery. In the edition of 1592 (p. 6) he refers to reports of such a discovery as "quædam haud vulgo no voyages of Northmen to America. ta," and uses the words quoted by Humboldt; but he explains himself as having in view the fisherman's adventures reported by Antonio Zeno in the fifteenth century. (See below, p. 60.) - Belknap (American Biography, I. 52) credited his information of the discovery by the Northmen to Pontoppidan (History of Norway), Crantz (History of Greenland), and John Reinhold Forster (History of the Voyages and Discoveries made in the North), all writers of the last century. - Malte-Brun (Précis de la Géographie, I. 395) referred to the spurious chapters (see below, p. 52, note) in the Heimskringla. they put to sea in substantial ships, having decks and wellcontrived rigging. Iceland they had undoubtedly reached and colonized; and from Iceland, Greenland. From Cape Farewell, the southern extremity of Greenland, to the nearest point on the American continent in Labrador, the distance is no greater than the distance to Iceland from the point of departure in Norway. It is altogether credible, that the rovers who explored every sea from the Baltic to the Ægean should, by stress of bad weather or by favor of good, have been conveyed a distance of only three or four days' sail from land to land. When they had often prosperously made the passage from their homes to Iceland, they might well have had confidence for another like adventure, which would have brought them from Greenland to Labrador. And from Labrador, the exploration of as much more of the coast of North America as they might be disposed to visit would require only a coasting voyage. The historical evidence upon this subject, which has been published from the manuscripts by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen,' is found 1 Antiquitates Americanæ, sive Scriptores Septentrionales Rerum AnteColumbianarum in America.-Samling af de i Nordens Oldskrifter indeholdte Efterretninger om de gamle Nordboers Opdagelsesreiser til America, fra det 10de til det 14de Aarhundrede. -Edidit Societas Regia Antiquariorum Septentrionalium. Hafniæ. 1837. 4to. In 1697, Peringskiold published the "Heimskringla, or Chronicle of the Kings of Norway," in the original Icelandic of Snorro Sturleson, who was born in 1178 and died in 1241. In 1705, Torfæus (Historia Vinlandiæ Antiquæ, Præf.) pointed out that Peringskiold from some foreign source had interpolated eight chapters which were not to be found in any genuine manuscript of Snorro's work. These chapters appear in full in a manuscript called, from the place of its preservation, the Codex Flateyensis, and have been ascertained on good evidence to be a work composed within the last fifteen years of the fourteenth century. A translation of them is published by Laing in the Appendix to his version, of the Heimskringla. Of the discovery of America, Sturleson had himself said no more than that "he [Leif] also found Vinland the good." (Laing's Heimskringla, I. 465.) The Codex Flateyensis furnishes the first of the narratives lately published by the Danish antiquaries, the same which was interpolated into Sturleson's text by Peringskiold, and from which the sketch in the text is abridged. The second narrative in the Danish collec in extracts from compositions of some eighteen writers, most of them Icelandic. Their antiquity and genuineness appear to be well established, nor is there anything to bring their credibility into question, beyond the general doubt which always attaches to the relation of what is new and strange. If they are trustworthy, the following facts are to be adopted into history. Voyage of 986. About a hundred years before the Norman conquest of England, one Biorne, or Biarne, sailed from Iceland for Greenland, in search of his father, who Biorne. had gone thither. Overtaken by fogs, he lost his reckoning. When the weather became clear, he found himself sailing in a northeasterly direction, with low and wooded land on the larboard side. He kept on the same course nine days, and at the end of them arrived in Greenland, reaching it in a direction opposite to that with which the voyage had been begun. 1000. The subject had been pondered several years, when Leif, with a single vessel and a crew of thirty- Voyage five men, sailed from Greenland in quest of the of Leif. land reported to have been seen by Biorne. He found it, went on shore, and gave it the name of Helluland, from a word signifying slate in the Icelandic tongue. Embarking again, and proceeding southwardly along the coast, he came to a country well wooded and level, except as it was broken along the sea by a succession of bluffs of white sand. This he called Markland, in allusion to its wood. Sailing two days more with a northeasterly wind, out of sight of land, he reached an island, and passed westward along its northern side. He disembarked, built huts, and wintered on the mainland, which he named Vinland, or Wineland, in consequence of a re tion, the History of Thorfinn Karlsefne, goes over much of the same ground, but with some differences of detail. These two principal pieces are followed by extracts from different writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, of more or less interest as corroborating the main story. port from one of his men, a German, that, wandering in the woods, he had seen abundance of grapes such as wine was made from in his native country. Voyage of 1003. On his return to Greenland, Leif gave over his vessel to his brother Thorwald, who set sail on an Thorwald. expedition to explore the new country further towards the south. He passed a winter in Vinland, and in the following summer found several uninhab-. ited islands. After another winter, he sailed to 1005. the eastward and then to the north. Doubling a cape, which he called Kialarnes (keel-cape), and coasting along the shore of the bay within, he received a mortal wound from some natives by a woody promontory, which he called Krossanes, from the cross which he ordered to be set up at the head of his grave. His companions passed a third winter in Vinland, and then returned to Greenland. The next expedition was planned on a larger scale. Voyage of Thorfinn. 1007. Thorfinn, surnamed the Hopeful, a person of rank and wealth, with a hundred and sixty men in three vessels, sailed from Greenland for Vinland for the purpose of establishing a colony. They touched at Helluland and Markland, saw Cape Kialarnes as they steered south, and, passing by a long beach of sand, came to a bay extending up into the country, with an island at its entrance. To the island, which was covered with the eggs of eider-ducks, they gave the name of Straumoey (stream-island), and to the bay, the name of Straumfiördr (stream-firth). Southwesterly from this island, they entered the mouth of a river, and passed up into a lake, upon whose banks wheat and vines grew wild. The natives, who came about them in canoes, were of a sallow complexion, with large, ill-formed faces and shaggy hair. There was no snow, and the live stock which had been landed wintered in the fields. After some conflicts with the savages, Thorfinn relinquished his project of colonization, and returned with his company to Greenland. Accounts of two more voyages to Vinland within the next three or four years make the last of these circumstantial narratives; but the communication between the countries is represented as having been not entirely discontinued before the middle of the fourteenth century. When other objects were abandoned, visits may have continued to be made to the American shore on account of its excellent materials for ship-building. The name Helluland may have been given to what we call Labrador, or to Newfoundland; Markland may answer to Nova Scotia; and it has been supposed that Vinland denotes Rhode Island and the southeastern part of Massachusetts, that the island passed by Leif before reaching Vinland was Nantucket, and that Kialarnes, Krossanes, Straumfördr, and Straumoey are respectively Cape Cod, Point Allerton in Boston harbor, Buzzard's Bay, and Martha's Vineyard. But the materials for an argument to identify these spots are insufficient; some of the particular statements are self-contradictory or inconsistent; and the descriptions of the climate and of the native inhabitants are hardly to be reconciled with what is now known of the climate and the aborigines of New England.1 There is an important statement respecting the length of the day in Vinland at the winter solstice, which has been so interpreted as to identify its latitude with that of Rhode Island. But the meaning of the passage is very doubtful.2 1 As to the natives, however, it must be owned that the Esquimaux, whom the description sufficiently well suits, may, eight hundred years ago, have dwelt as far south as Rhode Island, and have been driven into a higher latitude by invaders between the visit of the Northmen and that of Verazzano. 2 The sentence contains two words of uncertain meaning, eykterstad and dagmalastad. If dagmalastad signifies, as was thought by Pontoppidan, the Icelandic breakfast-hour of nine o'clock, then the sentence imports that on the shortest day the sun rose in Vinland at that hour, determining its latitude to be fifty-eight degrees and a half, or the latitude, not of Rhode Island, but of the part of Labrador near Hudson's Strait, a region to which the description of the climate and productions of Vinland is still more inapplicable. The translation of Peringskiold, an expert in the Icelandic language, extracts from the words the sense that the shortest winter day in Vinland was of the length |