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"Respecting the third expedition, namely that of Madoc in search of the Atlantic and American territories, it stands on more satisfactory evidence. Strong evidence (says Dr. Southey) has been adduced that Madoc reached America in the twelfth century; and that his posterity exist there to this day, on the southern branches of the Missouri, retaining their complexion, their language, and in some degree their arts."

Such are the testimonies cited by the author of Madoc, and on them he has constructed one of the most learned and interesting of modern poems. To this admirable work we would refer the curious and critical reader for much miscellaneous information connected with the subject, and numerous references that will considerably facilitate his investigation. Perhaps the early traces of Christianity in America are due to these Cimbrian adventurers.

But there were other races or tribes of the Gomerites, Cimbrians, or Atlantians, still more successful, in subsequent periods, in their discoveries of the Atlantic islands and Âmerica. We allude to the Northmen, as they were called, scattered along the north-western coast of Europe. These hardy, resolute, and unflinching adventurers, who relied on the traditions of their ancestors respecting the Atlantic territories, boldly put to sea in quest of the Terra incognita. Several of their most heroic chiefs would seem to have made these desperate voyages of discovery, and indubitable records exist of their successful result. Ortelius stated these facts in the year 1570; and early in the seventeenth century Myl and Hugo Grotius illustrated this theory. After showing that successive races had found their way to America from several countries of the old world, they proceeded to prove that the Northmen were entitled to especial credit for their Atlantic discoveries. The opinion of Grotius (as his biographer Burigni remarks) is that North America was peopled by persons from Norway, from whence they passed into Iceland, afterwards into Greenland, from thence to Friesland, then to Estoteland-a part of the American continent to which the fishers of Friesland had penetrated two centuries before the Spaniards discovered the New World. He pretends that the names of those countries end with the same syllables as those of the Norwegians; that the Mexicans and their neighbours assured the Spaniards that they came from the North; that there are many words in the American languages which have a relation to the German and Norwegian, and that the Americans still preserve the customs of the country from which they originally sprung.

This work of Grotius was answered by Laet of Antwerp, in a treatise under this title: Joannis de Laët Antverpiani Nota ad dissertationem Hugonis Grotii de origine gentium Americarum, et observationes aliquot ad meliorem indaginem difficillima illius questionis: 1743. Such was the title of Laet's work, and though he has shown the erroneousness of many of the arguments and facts brought forward by Grotius, the grand theory respecting the discoveries of the Northmen remains sound and unrefuted.

Grotius, in this work, asserts that many traces of Christianity were to be found in America before the discovery of the Spaniards; Laet, however, denies the fact, and endeavours to support his confutation by the aid of Spanish writers.

This theory respecting the American discoveries of the Northmen, or Norsemen, was confirmed and verified by many subsequent writers, and was pretty well established during the eighteenth century. To corroborate this assertion we need only quote a passage in the Cyclopædia Britannica, and a recent article of great merit in the Foreign Quarterly, on this subject.

"The early discovery of America by the Northmen," says the reviewer, "is not now made known for the first time, but the evidence on which it rests has never hitherto been published in a simple and satisfactory manner. As early as 1570, Ortelius claimed for them the merit of being the first discoverers of the New World. But in so doing he singularly illustrated the caprice and irregularity which so often marks the progress of opinion. Blind to the real merit of these discoverers, he advanced their claims on wrong grounds; and misled by the account of the voyages of Zeni, which we now know to be for the most part a fabrication, he supposed that America had been discovered by the Northmen whom the Venetians accompanied in the fourteenth century, and confidently asserted that no further praise was due to Columbus than that of originating a stable and useful intercourse with the transatlantic continent.

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Myl and Grotius followed on the same side, and established their leading argument, notwithstanding the cavils of Laet, published in 1643. A correct account of the early discoveries of the Scandinavians in the west was given by Torfæus, in his Historia Vinlandia Antiquæ, published in 1705, and in his Gronlandia Antiqua, which appeared in the following year. But these works soon became too scarce to forward the ends of their publication, and have been long reckoned, even in the north, among the choicest bibliographical rarities. The writings of Suhm, and Schoning, Lindeborg, and Schröder, in which similar information is to be obtained, being in the northern languages, and, in many instances,

only to be found in periodical publications, never enjoyed an extensive European circulation. John Reinhold Foster, in his History of Voyages and Discoveries in the North, and some other writers chiefly following in his steps, and familiar to the English reader, have asserted the discovery of America by the Northmen. The only mode of convincing the literary world of a fact, is to publish the documents which prove it. This task was undertaken in the present instance by M. Rafn alone, and he had advanced halfway towards the completion of his work, when the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, of which he is the secretary, resolved to take the publication of it off his hands, and the result is the handsome volume which stands at the head of this article. Its typographical execution is everyway worthy of the care and industry bestowed on it by M. Rafn and his coadjutors. We have here the original Icelandic text, accompanied by translations in Danish and Latin. In this part of his task the editor has had the invaluable assistance of the learned Icelanders, Fin Magnusen and Sweinbiorn Egilsson. He has himself added copious notes, with geographical and historical disquisitions."

We have no leisure to follow Mr. Rafn, or his reviewer, through the details of this voyage of discovery, or to trace the successive visits which the Northmen paid to Vinland, whether it be Greenland, or Newfoundland, New England, &c. We shall, however, avail ourselves of the concluding remarks of the critic in the Foreign Quarterly.

"The discovery of Vinland," says he, "was not made in an obscure age. It may have been preceded by many remarkable voyages in the west; and we do not venture to deny positively that the stories of the Limerick merchants, respecting the Northmen carried to Great Iceland and the Whiteman's Land, may have had their foundation in some very early transatlantic discoveries. But, confining our attention to what is strictly matter of history, we may remark that the discovery of Vinland was made contemporaneously with the first colonization of Greenland, and the establishment of Christianity in that country and Iceland, and consequently belonged to one of the most interesting periods in the annals of the north. "The discovery of Vinland was immediately made known in Norway; and in the latter half of the eleventh century, Adam of Bremen heard it from Swein, king of Denmark. This discovery,' he emphatically observes, is not a fable, but we know it from the certain information of the Danes.'

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"There are some curious fragments of ancient Icelandic geographers inserted in the collection. They agree in informing us that Markland and Vinland were to the south of Greenland; and what is very remarkable, that Vinland, the most remote country known to them in that quarter, was supposed to join Africa. When the Ice

landic geographers tell us that Vinland was supposed to join Africa, they in reality make us acquainted with two facts: first, that it was situated a long way south of Greenland; and that, secondly, nothing was known of the extent of its shores."

"Columbus," says this talented reviewer in his concluding passage, "visited Iceland in 1567; and, from his general appetence of knowledge, it cannot be doubted that he heard of the early voyages of the Northmen, and their discovery of Vinland. What could be more to his purpose, or better adapted to his views, than the fact that the Northmen, the boldest of navigators, had knowledge of a land in the west, which they supposed to extend far southwards till it met Africa? Or could not the intelligent Genoese find some suggestion in the following more accurate statement of an Icelandic geographer? 'On the west of the great sea of Spain, which some call Ginnugagap, and leaning somewhat towards the north, the first land which occurs is the good Vinland.' It would add little to the merit of Columbus to maintain that he was incapable of benefitting by so good a hint."

We hope we have now made out our point, namely, the high probability of those successive discoveries of America reported in the pages of history. We have not attempted to evince this point by any original arguments which might appear as dreams of imagination, but by the concentration, accumulation and orderly arrangement of the whole existing evidence bearing on the topic. The strength of the reasoning is essentially cumulative; it results from the incorporation of the "disjecta membra veritatis." Many ancient testimonies, which, taken separately, might want weight and impressiveness, thus joined together in a consistent mass, become almost invincible. The whole result of probability redounds to the confirmation of each particular count of the plea, and moral conviction is enhanced by a law of increments similar to that of geometrical progressions. We leave it to the reader who has followed us through this long succession of facts and deductions, all harmonizing together, notwithstanding the remoteness of their derivation, whether our case is not established.

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Now the main part of this evidence, so consistent, yet so diversified, was extant in the age of Columbus, a most keen and scrutinizing inquirer into geographical questions. deed, we have reason to believe that some evidences of American discoveries existed in that day among his fellowcountrymen, which are now lost. What would be the natural result on such a mind but a fixed conviction, not merely derived à priori from the physical principles of our planet,

but likewise à posteriori from the consent of historical evidences, of the existence of America?

If then we have established our case relative to the anteColumbusian discoverers of America, we come to regard Columbus himself in a new light. We may not admire him so much as an original discoverer, but as one who repeated and established the accredited discoveries of his predecessors in a most heroic and glorious style of experiment. Thus was the ancient Syrian and Pythagorean system of astronomy revived, restored and developed by Copernicus and Newton. Their immense merit consisted in the examination, accumulation and demonstration of antique theories, that had been well-nigh consigned to oblivion.

And this, in our estimation, requires a loftier and wider range of intellectual science than original discovery itself. Original discovery, as it is called, is often the result of chance, accident, the spirit of contradiction, and even the rashness of desperation. Original discoveries are often struck out in an instant, to the astonishment of their inventors, who had no anticipation of them. Not so with the profound truth-searcher, who, knowing that what is true is not new, and that what is new is not true, searches back through the recondite annals of our planets for the golden links of the sole philosophy. For this man, what perseverance is required, what subtlety, what fine perception of analogies, what a critical analysis of all the elements which constitute probability!

Such men, if not original discoverers, are discoverers of a still higher order. They lay hold of the neglected germ which original discovery had flung on the harsh rocks of incredulity, and develope it into an august and glorious system of demonstrated verity. They seize the little spark of Promethean fire which was just about to perish in the fogs of forgetfulness, and by it they rekindle the universe into a blaze of exulting hope.

If therefore we admire Columbus less as the hardy adventurer (who, with a dogged and desperate resolution, hoping against hope, launched forth on the Atlantic to discover he knew not what), we reverence him more than ever as the keen-sighted and philosophic truth-searcher, who, from the accumulated testimony of ages, in the haughty independence of conscious genius, moulded a most refined yet demonstrable theory of geographical facts. His mind, when he set sail from Europe, was impressed with the same weight of histori

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