Transcriber’s Note: In keeping with the author’s note that “Such
misspellings as a Spanish scholar will readily recognize as the blunders
of the Spanish printer I have not thought it necessary to notice”, errors
in the Spanish parts of the text have been left as printed. Some evident
blunders of the English printer have, however, been corrected.
WORKS ISSUED BY
The Hakluyt Society.
SELECT
LETTERS OF
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS,
ETC.
M.DCCC.LXX.
INSTRUCTIONS TO BINDER.
Portrait of S. Christopher to face Title.
Herrera’s map and Bahama Islands, modern, opposite each other, between
pp. lx and lxi; the first at top, the second at bottom, both reading the
same way.
Juan de la Cosa’s map to face page lxiii.
[Illustration]
SELECT
LETTERS
OF
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS,
WITH OTHER ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS,
RELATING TO HIS
FOUR VOYAGES
TO
THE NEW WORLD.
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
R. H. MAJOR, F.S.A., ETC.,
KEEPER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MAPS AND CHARTS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM,
AND HON. SEC. OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.
Second Edition.
“Tu spiegherai, Colombo, a un novo polo
Lontane sì le fortunate antenne,
Ch’ a pena seguirà con gli occhi il volo
La Fama ch’ ha mille occhi e mille penne.
Canti ella Alcide e Bacco, e di te solo
Basti a’ posteri tuoi ch’alquanto accenne;
Chè quel poco darà lunga memoria
Di poema dignissima e d’ istoria.”
_Tasso.—Gerusalemme Liberata._ Canto xv, 32.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY.
M.DCCC.LXX.
T. RICHARDS, 37, GREAT QUEEN STREET.
COUNCIL OF THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY.
SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, BART., K.C.B., G.C.St.S., F.R.S., F.R.G.S.,
D.C.L., Mem. Imp. Acad. Sc. St. Petersburgh, Corr. Mem. Inst. Fr. etc.,
etc., PRESIDENT.
REAR-ADMIRAL C. R. DRINKWATER BETHUNE, C.B., } VICE-PRESIDENTS.
THE RIGHT HON. SIR DAVID DUNDAS, }
REV. G. P. BADGER, F.R.G.S.
J. BARROW, ESQ., F.R.S.
E. H. BUNBURY, ESQ.
LORD ALFRED CHURCHILL.
REAR-ADMIRAL R. COLLINSON, C.B.
SIR WALTER ELLIOTT, K.S.I.
GENERAL C. FOX.
W. E. FRERE, ESQ.
CAPTAIN J. G. GOODENOUGH, R.N.
CHARLES GREY, ESQ.
EGERTON VERNON HARCOURT, ESQ.
JOHN WINTER JONES, ESQ., F.S.A.
R. H. MAJOR, ESQ., F.S.A.
SIR CHARLES NICHOLSON, BART.
SIR WILLIAM STIRLING MAXWELL, BART.
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HENRY C. RAWLINSON, K.C.B.
THE LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY.
CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, ESQ., HONORARY SECRETARY.
TO
THE HONOURED AND BELOVED
MEMORY
OF HIS EXCELLENCY
THE COUNT DE LAVRADIO,
LATE
ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY AND MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY OF
HIS MOST FAITHFUL MAJESTY
AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES’S,
ETC., ETC., ETC.,
A WARM APPRECIATOR OF
THE EXALTED MERITS OF
COLUMBUS,
THE FOLLOWING PAGES
ARE REVERENTLY INSCRIBED BY
THE EDITOR.
PREFACE.
It has been thought desirable by some of the leading members of our
Council that I should avail myself of the opportunity offered by this
second Edition of the _Select Letters of Columbus_, to lay before the
Society a correspondence in which I have endeavoured to vindicate the
character of the Society’s early productions, and especially the first
edition of this work, from a most unjustifiable attack made upon them by
Mr. Froude in the _Westminster Review_ in 1852, and _repeated_ in the
second volume of that gentleman’s _Short Studies on Great Subjects_,
printed in 1867, and _reprinted_ in a popular edition in the same year.
The letters themselves will convey to the reader the whole of the facts,
minus only the bitterness and ferocity of Mr. Froude’s attack.
_The Athenæum, July 13th, 1867._
“British Museum, July 3rd, 1867.
“Will you allow me to appeal against a wrong done to the
Hakluyt Society in general, and to myself in particular, in a
work now very extensively read?
“In the second volume of Mr. Froude’s _Short Studies on
Great Subjects_, at page 102, is an article on ‘England’s
Forgotten Worthies,’ in which the author makes an attack on
the Hakluyt Society, the bitter expressions of which need not
be repeated here. It is headed by the titles of three of the
Society’s early publications, and the first he states to be
_The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knt., in his Voyage
in the South Sea in 1593_. Reprinted from the edition of 1622,
and _edited by R. H. Major, Esq., of the British Museum_;
whereas I had nothing to do with the editing of that work.
This done, at page 108, Mr. Froude says: ‘_The Editor of the
Letters of Columbus_ (which I did edit in 1847) _apologizes
for the rudeness of the old seaman’s phraseology. Columbus, he
tells us, was not so great a master of the pen as of the art of
navigation. We are to make excuses for him. We are put on our
guard, and, warned not to be offended, before we are introduced
to the sublime record of sufferings under which a man of the
highest order was staggering towards the end of his earthly
calamities; although the inarticulate fragments in which his
thought breaks out from him, are strokes of natural art, by
the side of which literary pathos is poor and meaningless._’
I warmly deny that I apologized for Columbus’s language. So
far from it, I repeatedly expressed my sympathy with and
admiration of his manly and touching record of his sufferings.
What I did apologize for was any mischievous result which might
possibly have accrued, though I do not think it did accrue, to
my own diction from that occasional want of connectedness in
the original which I had to contend with in translating. The
two things are manifestly different, and it is not pleasant
to find the reader’s highest sympathies appealed to in order
to bring down greater condemnation on me for a fault that I
had never committed. But I should not trouble you with such
a personal matter, were it not that, having fabricated this
handle for censure on me, Mr. Froude makes it a hook for the
following criticism on the Hakluyt Society: ‘_And even in
the subjects which they select, they are pursued by the same
curious fatality_,’ the selection blamed being that of _Drake’s
Last Voyage in 1595_, edited from the original MSS. Then, after
magisterially condemning this elsewhere unblamed selection as a
‘_fatal_’ sin, Mr. Froude proceeds to say, at the foot of page
109, ‘_But every bad has a worse below it, and more offensive
than all these is the Editor of “Hawkins’s Voyage to the South
Sea,”_’—and if the reader refers to the head of the article for
the name of _this most offensive editor_, he will, as I have
already said, find my name, who never had anything to do with
it. It is true that on page 110 the name of the real editor,
Admiral Bethune, occurs; but as Mr. Froude’s article is a
reprint from the _Westminster Review_ of 1852 (not 1853, as Mr.
Froude again blunders in saying), there has been time enough
for that gentleman to correct the injurious errors into which
he had fallen. Although naturally annoyed at this treatment of
my name, I left the offence unnoticed at the time; but now
that, after a lapse of fifteen years, it is reprinted, with all
faults in a widely-circulated publication, I call on Mr. Froude
to correct his mis-statements.
“I am, happily, able to state, from the experience of twenty
years, that the estimate of the Hakluyt Society’s publications
by the literary world is far from supporting Mr. Froude in
his supercilious treatment of that Society. Whatever opinion,
however, those publications may deserve, it is the duty of a
critic to be correct, and the greater the severity, the greater
the need of correctness; but when a critic lashes not only
one’s self, but one’s friends, by means of misrepresentations
and blunders of his own making, what does that critic deserve?
R. H. MAJOR.”
_The Athenæum, July 20th, 1867._
“5, Onslow Gardens, July 15, 1867.
“I am sorry to have given Mr. Major cause to complain of me.
Should my _Essays_ be reprinted, the mistake which he points
out shall be corrected; and I can only regret the injustice
which meanwhile is done to his name. At the same time the only
error which I can acknowledge is confined to the title of a
work which stands at the head of the article. In the article
itself the volumes criticised are assigned to their proper
editors.
J. A. FROUDE.”
_The Athenæum, July 27th, 1867._
“British Museum, July 23, 1867.
“I beg to thank Mr. Froude for his courteous expression of
regret for what, I am quite sure, was done inadvertently, and
I would thankfully accept his promise of reparation if it
were extended to all the mischief that is being done to me.
Unfortunately for me, _two editions_ of Mr. Froude’s _Essays_
have been issued this year, _the second this very month_, in
a _cheap and popular form_; thus diffusing and prolonging, in
the most effectual manner, an injustice to my name which has
existed for fifteen years, and postponing indefinitely the
chance of reparation in a future edition.
“Under such circumstances, I read with regret that, while
acknowledging one error, Mr. Froude does not also acknowledge
what everyone else sees clearly and condemns, the injustice
of his censure on me with respect to Columbus, and which he
makes a ground for censure on the Hakluyt Society. That Society
stands too high to need any defence from its former Honorary
Secretary, but I may be excused for specially asking that this
censure may be expunged; for I have a letter from Mr. Bancroft,
who was Ambassador here at the time, in which he eulogizes,
in terms so warm that I may not repeat them, the spirit in
which I had written both of the sufferings of Columbus, and
of the touching language in which he had recorded them. This
is exactly the contrary of what Mr. Froude’s two editions are
telling everybody that I have done.
R. H. MAJOR.”
Now that, in revising my translation for this second edition, I have
again gone through the texts of Columbus’s letters, I uncompromisingly
repeat the expression which in 1847 I used _solely_ in exculpation of any
mischievous result to my own diction from the disconnectedness of the
original, viz., that “Columbus was not so great a master of the pen as
of the art of navigation.” Whether my judgment on this point be of more
or less weight than Mr. Froude’s is of no moment whatever; but it is of
moment that the mischievous effect of a savage criticism, built up on
the critic’s own blunders, should be neutralized as far as possible. The
reader has the realities of the whole case before him, and may judge for
himself.
R. H. M.
INTRODUCTION.
Nearly three thousand years have passed since the wisest of men declared
that there was nothing new under the sun. The saying has held good to
the present day, for men are perpetually finding out that their recent
discoveries had been already made, but under circumstances which did
not reveal the full value of that which had been discovered. No greater
examples of this truth can be adduced than in the history of the
Atlantic, of America, and of Australia. Until the days of Prince Henry
the Navigator, the Atlantic was so unknown that it justly bore the name
of the “Sea of Darkness;” and yet, during the previous two thousand years
occasional glimpses of light had in fact been thrown upon the face of
that mysterious ocean. “Nil novi sub sole” was still an indisputable
proverb. In the researches into the Atlantic originated by Prince Henry,
Columbus took part, and hence, as we shall presently more fully see,
derived the idea of the great importance of explorations to the West.
Within one hundred years of the triumphant rounding by Prince Henry’s
navigators (in 1434) of Cape Bojador, which till then had been the limit
of Atlantic exploration, the Portuguese had discovered both the eastern
and western shores of the continental island of Australia. And yet till
recently men knew not that they owed the knowledge either of America or
of Australia[1] to the initiatory efforts of a Prince with whose name, in
fact, they were almost entirely unacquainted.
Such facts show the great injustice done to the originators of great
explorations who, working with the smallest means, really deserve the
highest meed of honour.
Yet in the estimate of merit it must be conceded that priority, immense
as are its claims, is not all-absorbent. Columbus, as we shall presently
see, was anticipated in the discovery of America, and yet such were
the special virtues brought to bear upon the execution of his great
achievement, that, as Humboldt has eloquently said, “the majesty of grand
recollections seems concentred” on his illustrious name. The peculiar
value of the following letters, descriptive of the four important voyages
of Columbus, is that the events described are from the pens of those to
whom the events occurred. In them we have laid before us, as it were from
Columbus’s own mouth, a clear statement of his opinions and conjectures
on what were to him great cosmical riddles—riddles which have since been
solved mainly through the light which his illustrious deeds have shed
upon the field of our observation. In these letters also we trace the
magnanimity with which Columbus could support an accumulated burthen
of undeserved affliction. It is impossible to read without the deepest
sympathy the occasional murmurings and half suppressed complaints which
are uttered in the course of his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella,
describing his fourth voyage. These murmurings and complaints were
wrung from his manly spirit by sickness and sorrow, and though reduced
almost to the brink of despair by the injustice of the king, yet do we
find nothing harsh or disrespectful in his language to the sovereign. A
curious contrast is presented to us. The gift of a world could not move
the monarch to gratitude; the infliction of chains, as a recompense for
that gift, could not provoke the subject to disloyalty. The same great
heart which through more than twenty wearisome years of disappointment
and chagrin gave him strength to beg and to buffet his way to glory,
still taught him to bear with majestic meekness the conversion of that
glory into unmerited shame.
The translated documents are seven in number. Five of them are letters
from the hand of Columbus himself, describing respectively his first,
third, and fourth voyages. Another, describing the second voyage, is
by Dr. Chanca, the physician to the fleet during that expedition, and
the seventh document is an extract from the will of Diego Mendez, one
of Columbus’s officers during the fourth voyage, who gives a detailed
account of many most interesting adventures undertaken by himself, but
left undescribed by Columbus.
I shall not pause here to enter into the important bibliography of
these documents, which has no charm for many readers, and is therefore
placed at the end of this introduction. A series of original documents
of such importance might appear to need but few words of introduction or
recommendation, since the entire history of civilisation presents us with
no event, with the exception perhaps of the art of printing, so momentous
as the discovery of the western world; and, independently of the lustre
which the grandeur of that event confers upon the discoverer, there is no
individual who has rendered himself, on the score of personal character
and conduct, more illustrious than Christopher Columbus. There have,
nevertheless, not been wanting those, who, from various motives, and on
grounds of various trustworthiness, have endeavoured to lessen his glory,
by impeaching his claim to the priority of discovery, or by arguing that
the discovery itself has proved a misfortune rather than advantage to
the world at large. By way, therefore, of vindicating the value of the
original documents here translated, a brief account of such pretensions
to prior discovery as have been at different times put forth, may not be
thought superfluous.
The oldest story which seems possibly to bear reference to what we call
the “new world” is related by Theopompus.
Theopompus lived in the fourth century before the Christian era; in
a fragment of his works preserved by Ælian is a conversation between
Silenus and Midas, King of Phrygia, in which the former says that
Europe, Asia, and Africa were surrounded by the sea, but that beyond this
known world was an island of immense extent, containing huge animals
and men of twice our stature, and long-lived in proportion. There were
in it many great cities whose inhabitants had laws and customs entirely
different from ours. Fabulous as the story is as a whole, we cannot
escape from the thought that it suggests, though vaguely, a notion of the
real existence of a great western country. This idea is strengthened by
the remarkable story related to Solon by a priest of Sais from the sacred
inscriptions in the temples, and presented to us by Plato in his Timæus
and Critias, wherein he speaks of an island called Atlantis, opposite the
Pillars of Hercules, larger than Africa and Asia united, but which in one
day and night was swallowed up by an earthquake and disappeared beneath
the waters. The result was that no one had since been able to navigate
or explore that sea on account of the slime which the submerged island
had produced. Many as have been the doubts and conjectures to which this
narrative has been subjected by the learned in ancient and modern times,
it is a remarkable fact that Crantor, in a commentary on Plato quoted by
Proclus, declares that he found this same account retained by the priests
of Sais three hundred years after the period of Solon, and that he was
shown the inscriptions in which it was embodied. It is also deserving of
notice that precisely in that part of the ocean described in the legend
we find the island groups of the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and a
host of other rocks and sand-banks, while the great bank of varec, or
floating seaweed, occupying the middle portion of the basin of the North
Atlantic, and covering, according to Humboldt, an area about six times
as large as Germany, has been reasonably regarded as explanatory of the
obstacle to navigation to which the tradition refers.
Various have been the speculations respecting the original colonisation
of the western hemisphere. Athanasius Kircher, in his _Prodromus Coptus
and Œdipus Ægyptiacus_, gives the Egyptians the credit of colonising
America, as well as India, China, and Japan, grounding his argument
upon the religious worship of the sun, moon, stars, and animals. Edward
Brerewood, at pages 96 and 97 of his _Enquiries touching the Diversity
of Languages_, contends, and he is far from being alone in his opinion,
that the Americans are the progeny of the Tartars. Marc Lescarbot, in his
_Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, maintains that the Canaanites, when
routed by Joshua, were driven into America by storms, and that Noah was
born in America, and after the flood showed his descendants the way into
their paternal country, and assigned to some of them their places of
abode there; while Hornius, in his treatise _De originibus Americanis_,
after touching upon the various conjectures here quoted, animadverts on
the presumption and folly of Paracelsus, when he states that a second
Adam and Eve were created for the peopling of the western world.
The first specific statement, however, of a supposed migration from the
shores of the old world to those of the new, is that which the elder De
Guignes presumes to be demonstrable from the relation given by a Chinese
historian, Li-Yen, who lived at the commencement of the seventh century.
(See _Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres_, vol.
28, p. 504.) The said historian speaks of a country, named Fou-sang,
more than forty thousand _li_[2] to the East of China. He says that they
who went thither started from the province of Leaton, situated to the
north of Peking; that after having made twelve thousand li, they came
to Japan; that travelling seven thousand li northward from that place,
they arrived at the country of Venchin, and at five thousand li eastward
of the latter, they found the country of Tahan, whence they journeyed
to Fou-sang, which was twenty thousand li distant from Tahan. From this
account De Guignes endeavours, by a long chain of argument, to prove that
the Chinese had pushed their investigations into Jeso, Kamtschatka, and
into that part of America which is situated opposite the most eastern
coast of Asia.
This surmise of De Guignes has been answered by Klaproth, in a paper
which appeared in the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (tom. 51, 2ᵉ serie,
p. 53). His arguments go to show that the country named Fou-sang is
Japan; and that the country of Tahan, situated to the west of Asiatic
Vinland, can only be the island of Saghalian. Humboldt observes upon
this subject, that the number of horses, the practice of writing, and the
manufacture of paper from the Fou-sang tree, mentioned in the account
given by the Chinese historian, ought to have shown De Guignes that the
country of which he spoke was not America.
The presumed discovery of America which comes next in chronological
rotation, is that by the Scandinavians, the earliest _printed allusion_
to which occurs in Adam of Bremen’s _Historia Ecclesiastica Ecclesiarum
Hamburgensis et Bremensis_, published at Copenhagen, 1579, 4to. The
Baron Von Humboldt has asserted that the merit of first recognising the
discovery of America by the Northmen, _belongs indisputably_ to Ortelius,
who, in his _Theatrum Orbis Terrarum_, with unjust severity says, that
Christopher Columbus had done nothing more than to place the new world
in a permanently useful and commercial relationship with Europe. The
ground upon which the priority is claimed for Ortelius, is that the
first edition of his work came out in 1570, although the reference which
Humboldt himself gives is to an edition of 1601 which was after the
death of Ortelius, and the earlier editions do not contain the chapter
on the Pacific Ocean in which the passage occurs. It is true that in
the _Bibliotheca Hulthemiana_ the edition of 1601 is said to have been
revised and augmented by Ortelius before his death in 1598, but, even if
the assertion was made by Ortelius, and not by the editor of his work
after his death, it still leaves perfectly unimpeached the claim to
priority of the Copenhagen edition of Adam of Bremen in 1579. Adam of
Bremen’s work was written soon after the middle of the eleventh century,
and was followed in the next half century by the _Historia Ecclesiastica_
of Ordericus Vitalis, who also speaks of the country visited by the
Scandinavians. Abraham Mylius, in his _Treatise de Antiquitate Linguæ
Belgicæ_, Leyden, 1611, makes all Americans to be sprung from Celts;
stating that many Celtic words were to be found in use there; and with
more reasonable showing affirms that the coast of Labrador was visited
by wanderers from Iceland. Hugo Grotius, in his _Dissertatio de Origine
Gentium Americanarum_, (Paris, 1642, 8vo.), follows Mylius, and states
that America was colonised by a Norwegian race, who came thither from
Iceland, through Greenland, and passed through North America down to the
Isthmus.
The earliest _printed detail_ of these discoveries is given by the
Norwegian historian, Thormodus Torfæus, in a work entitled _Historia
Vinlandiæ Antiquæ, ex Antiquitatibus Islandicis in lucem producta_,
(Hauniæ, 1705, 12mo.) But in the invaluable work by Professor Rafn,
published in 1837 by the Danish Royal Society of Antiquaries, under the
title of _Antiquitates Americanæ_, the manuscripts which record these
discoveries are given at length in the original, accompanied by a Latin
translation, and careful and learned geographical illustrations. The
following is a summary of the principal events recorded in this highly
interesting volume, and the geographical inferences are those supplied
by the professor himself.
Irish Christians were the first Europeans, which we know from well
established history, to have migrated into and inhabited Iceland. Close
upon the end of the eighth century this island was visited by Irish
hermits; but the first discovery of it by the Northmen was made by a
Dane named Gardar, of Swedish origin, in the year 863. The regular
colonisation of the country was commenced in 874 by Ingolf, a Norwegian,
and was carried on continuously for the space of sixty years by some
of the most influential and civilised families of Scandinavia. In 877
the mountainous coast of Greenland was for the first time seen by a man
named Gunnbiorn, but it was in 983 that this country was first visited
by Eric Rauda, or Eric the Red, son of Thorwald, a Norwegian noble, who
had been condemned to a banishment of three years for killing Eyolf
his neighbour. After three years absence, he returned to Iceland, and
in order to hold out an inducement to colonisation, named the newly
discovered country Greenland, intending by that name to express the
richness of the woods and meadows with which it abounded. Amongst those
who had accompanied Eric was a man named Heriulf Bardson, who established
himself at Heriulfsnes. Biarne, the son of the latter, finding, on his
return home from a trading voyage to Norway, that his father had quitted
Iceland, resolved upon following him, though he, as well as those who
had accompanied him, were quite unacquainted with the Greenland sea.
Soon after leaving Iceland they met with northerly winds and fogs, and
were carried they knew not whither: the weather clearing, they found
themselves near a flat woody country, which, not corresponding with
the descriptions of Greenland, they left to larboard. After five days’
sailing with a south-west wind, they came to a mountainous country,
covered with glaciers, which they found to be an island; but as its
appearance was not inviting, they bore away from the island, and standing
out to sea with the same wind, after four days’ sailing with fresh gales,
they reached Heriulfsnes in Greenland.
Some time after this, in the year 1000, Lief, son of Eric the Red,
equipped a ship with thirty-five men to make a voyage of discovery,
with the view of examining the new found lands more narrowly. They came
to a land were no grass was to be seen, but everywhere there were vast
glaciers, while the space intervening between these ice mountains and the
shore appeared as one uninterrupted plain of slate. This country they
named Helluland, _i. e._ Slate-land (Newfoundland). Thence they stood out
to sea again, and reached a level wooded country, with cliffs of white
sand. They called this country Markland, _i. e._ Woodland (Nova Scotia).
Again they put to sea, and after two days’ sail reached an island, to
the eastward of the mainland, and passed through the strait between this
island and the mainland. They sailed westward, and landed at a place
where a river, issuing from a lake, fell into the sea. Here they wintered
and built houses, which were afterwards called Leifsbuder (Leifsbooths.)
During their stay, one of their number, named Tyrker, a German, happened
to wander some distance from the settlement, and on his return reported
that he had found vines and grapes. These proving to be plentiful,
Lief named the country Vinland or Vineland (New England), and in the
ensuing spring returned to Greenland. In the year 1002, Thorwald, Lief’s
brother, being of opinion that the country had been too little explored,
borrowed his brother’s ship, and with the assistance of his advice and
instructions, set out on a new voyage. They arrived at Liefsbooths, in
Vinland, remained there for the winter, and, in the spring of 1003,
Thorwald sent a party in the ship’s long boat on a voyage of discovery
southwards. They found a beautiful and well-wooded country, with
extensive ranges of white sand, but no traces of men, except a wooden
shed which they found on an island lying to the westward. They returned
to Liefsbooths in the autumn. In the summer of 1004, Thorwald sailed
eastward and then northward, past a remarkable headland enclosing a bay,
and which was opposite to another headland. They called it Kialarnes
(Keel-Cape). Continuing along the east coast, they reached a beautiful
promontory, where they landed. Thorwald was so pleased with the place
that he exclaimed, “Here is a beautiful spot, and here I should like well
to fix my dwelling.” He had scarcely spoken before they encountered some
Skrellings (Esquimaux) with whom they fell to blows, and a sharp conflict
ensuing, Thorwald received a mortal wound in his arm from an arrow.
He died, and was buried by his own instructions on the spot which had
excited his admiring remark, the language of which appeared prophetic of
a longer stay there than he had at first contemplated.
The most distinguished, however, of all the first American discoverers is
Thorfinn Karlsefne, an Icelander, whose genealogy is carried back in the
old northern annals to Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Scottish, and Irish
ancestors, some of them of royal blood. In 1006 this chieftain visited
Greenland, and there married Gudrida, the widow of Thurstein (son of Eric
the Red), who had died the year before in an unsuccessful expedition to
Vinland. Accompanied by Snorre Thorbrandson, also a man of illustrious
lineage, Biarne Grimolfson of Breidefiord, and Thorhall Gamlason of
Austfiord, he set sail in the spring of 1007 with three ships for Vinland.
They had in all one hundred and sixty men, and as they went with the
intention of colonising, they took with them a great variety and quantity
of live stock. They sailed, first, to the Tresterbyd, and afterwards
to Biarney (Disco); then to Helluland, where they found an abundance
of foxes; and thence to Markland, which was overgrown with wood, and
plentifully stocked with a variety of animals. Proceeding still in a
south-westerly direction, with the land on the right, they came to a
place where a frith penetrated far into the country; off the mouth of it
was an island, on which they found an immense number of eyder ducks, so
that it was scarcely possible to walk without treading on their eggs.
They called the island Straumey (Stream Isle) from the strong current
which ran past it, and the frith they called Straumfiordr (Stream Frith).
Here Thorhall and eight others left the party in quest of Vinland, but
were driven by westerly gales to the coast of Iceland, where some say
that they were beaten, and put into servitude. Karlsefne, however, with
the remaining one hundred and fifty men, sailed southwards, and reached
a place were a river falls into the sea from a lake; large islands were
situated opposite the mouth of the river; passing these, they steered
into the lake, and called the place Hop. The low grounds were covered
with wheat growing wild; and the rising grounds with vines. Here they
stayed till the beginning of the year 1008, when finding their lives in
constant jeopardy from the hostile attacks of the natives, they quitted
the place, and returned to Eric’s fiorde. In 1011 a ship arrived in
Greenland, from Norway, commanded by two Icelandic brothers named Helge
and Finnboge: to these men, Freydisa, a natural daughter of Eric the Red,
proposed a voyage to Vinland, stipulating that they should share equally
with her the profits of the voyage. To this they assented, and it was
agreed that each party should have thirty able-bodied men on board the
ship, besides women; but Freydisa secretly took with her five men in
addition to that number. They reached Liefsbooths in 1012, and wintered
there; when a discussion arising, Freydisa had the subtlety to prevail
on her husband to massacre the brothers and their followers; after the
perpetration of which base deed they returned to Greenland in the spring
of 1013.
In his expedition to Vinland in 1007, Thorfinn Karlsefne had been
accompanied by his wife, Gudrida, who bore him a son, Snorre, who became
the founder of an illustrious family in Iceland, which gave that island
several of its first bishops. Among these may be mentioned the learned
Bishop Thorlak Runolfson, to whom we are principally indebted for the
oldest ecclesiastical code of Iceland, written in the year 1123. It is
also probable that the accounts of the voyages were originally compiled
by him.
The notices given in these old Icelandic accounts, of the climate,
soil, and productions of the new country are very characteristic. It is
curious that Adam of Bremen, in the eleventh century, though himself not
a northman, states, on the authority of Svein Estridson, the King of
Denmark, a nephew of Canute the Great, that the country of Vinland got
its name from the vine growing wild there, and for the same reason the
English re-discoverers gave the name of Martha’s Vineyard to the large
island close off the coast.
It is fortunate that in these ancient accounts they have preserved the
statement of the course steered and the distance sailed in a day. From
various ancient Icelandic geographical works it may be gathered that the
distance of a day’s sailing was estimated at from twenty-seven to thirty
geographical miles—German or Danish—of which fifteen are equal to a
degree, and are consequently equivalent to four English miles. From the
island of Helluland, afterwards called little Helluland, Biarne sailed to
Herjulfsnes (Ikigeit), in Greenland, with strong south-westerly winds, in
four days. The distance between that cape and Newfoundland is about one
hundred and fifty miles, which, if we allow for the strong south-westerly
gales, will correspond with Biarne’s voyage; while the well-known
barrenness of the flats of Newfoundland corresponds with the Hellue, or
slates, which suggested the name the Northmen gave to the island.
Markland being described as three days’ sail south-west of Helluland,
appears to be Nova Scotia; and the low and level character of the
country, covered with woods, tallies precisely with the descriptions of
later writers.
Vinland was stated to be two days’ sail to the south-west of Markland,
which would be from fifty-four to sixty miles. The distance from Cape
Sable to Cape Cod is reckoned at about two hundred and ten English miles,
which answers to about fifty-two Danish miles; and in the account given
by Biarne of their finding many shallows off the island to the eastward,
we recognize an accurate description of Nantucket, and Kialarnes must
consequently be Cape Cod. The Straumfiordr of the Northmen is supposed to
be Buzzard’s Bay, and Straumey, Martha’s Vineyard, though the account of
the many eggs found there, would seem to correspond more correctly with
Egg Island, which lies off the entrance of Vineyard Sound.
Krossanes is probably Gurnet Point. The Hóp answers to Mount Hope’s
Bay, through which the Taunton river flows, and it was here that the
Leifsbooths were situated.
The ancient documents likewise make mention of a country called
Huitramannaland (Whiteman’s Land), otherwise Irland it Mikla (Great
Ireland) supposed to be that part of the coast of North America,
including North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. There is a
tradition among the Shawanese Indians, who emigrated some years ago
from Florida and settled in Ohio, that Florida was once inhabited by
white people, who possessed iron instruments. The powerful chieftain,
Are Marson of Reykianes, in Iceland,—according to the account given
by his contemporary Rafn, surnamed the Limerick trader,—was driven to
Huitramannaland by storms in 983, and was baptised there. Are Frode
likewise (the first compiler of the Landnama, and a descendant in the
fourth degree from Are Marson) states that his uncle, Thorkell Gellerson,
had been informed by Icelanders that Are Marson had been recognised in
Huitramannaland, and was held in high respect there. This statement
therefore shows that there was an occasional intercourse in those days
between the Orkneys and Iceland, and this part of America.
It is further recorded in the ancient MSS. that the Greenland bishop Eric
went over to Vinland in the year 1121; but nothing more than the fact
is stated, and it simply corroborates the supposition of intercourse
between the countries. Again, in the year 1266, a voyage of discovery
to the Arctic regions of America is said to have been performed, under
the auspices of some clergymen of the bishopric of Gardar in Greenland;
and from the recorded observations made by the explorers, would seem to
have been carried to regions whose geographical position has been more
accurately determined by our own navigators, Parry and the two Rosses.
The next recorded discovery was made by Adalbrand and Thorwald Helgason,
two Icelandic clergymen, in the year 1285. Contemporaneous accounts state
that they discovered a new land to the westward of Iceland, supposed
to have been Newfoundland. The last record preserved in the ancient
Icelandic MSS. relates a voyage from Greenland to Markland, performed
by a crew of seventeen men, in the year 1347. The account written by
a contemporary nine years after the event, induces the belief that
intercourse between Greenland and America had been maintained as late as
the period here mentioned, for he speaks of Markland as a country still
known and visited in those days.
The obscurity of many portions of these narratives leaves much to
be cleared up with reference to this interesting subject; but their
general truthfulness being corroborated by the traces of the residence
and settlement of the ancient northmen exhibited in the inscriptions
discovered in Kinkigtorsoak, Greenland, and Massachusetts, no room is
left for disputing the main fact of the discovery.
Between this period and the date of the first voyage of Columbus, the
coast of America is reported to have been visited by the Arabians of the
Spanish Peninsula, the Welsh, the Venetians, the Portuguese, and also by
a Pole in the service of Denmark.
The Arabian expedition is described both by Edrisi and by Ibn-al-Wardi.
It appears to have been undertaken by eight persons of the same family,
called the Almagrurins or the Wandering Brothers, who having provided
themselves with everything requisite for a long voyage, swore they would
not return till they had penetrated to the extreme limits of the Sea of
Darkness. They sailed from the port of Aschbona or Lisbon, and steered
towards the south-west, and at the end of thirty-five days arrived at
the island of Gana or Sheep Island. The flesh of the sheep of this
island being too bitter for them to eat, they put to sea again, and
after sailing twelve days in a southerly direction, reached an island
inhabited by people of a red skin, lofty stature, and with hair of thin
growth but long and flowing over their shoulders. The inhabitants of this
island told them that persons had sailed twenty days to the west without
discovering land, and the Arabian brothers, diverted from the pursuit
of their hardy enterprise by this discouraging account, retraced their
course, and returned safely to Lisbon. From this description the elder de
Guignes inferred that the Arabs had either reached the eastern coast of
America, or at least one of the American islands; an opinion, however,
which appears to have as little to sanction it, as his above mentioned
conjecture that the Chinese had discovered the west coast of America
in the fifth century. The Baron von Humboldt concurs with the opinion
expressed by the learned orientalist Tychsen in his _Neue oriental und
exegetische Bibliothek_, and repeated by Malte Brun, that the island
reached by the Arab wanderers was one of the African islands. This
conclusion is drawn from the circumstance that the Guanches, the original
people of the Canary group, were a pastoral race, and also possessed the
same external characteristics as the islanders here described. Moreover,
the fact that the king of the island had an interpreter who spoke Arabic,
together with the circumstance that the red men had sailed westward for
a month without seeing land, strongly corroborates the opinion advanced.
The precise date of this voyage is unknown, but Humboldt presumes that it
must have been considerably anterior to the expulsion of the Arabs from
Lisbon in 1147; because Edrisi, whose work was finished in 1153, speaks
of the occurrence as if it were by no means recent.
It is but upon a slight foundation, that the Welsh have pretended to
raise a claim to the discovery; but slight as it is, there is certainly
enough to render a decidedly negative assertion on the subject to the
full as presumptuous as one decidedly affirmative would be. But as we
have no concern with mere conjectures, we must in candour narrate, as
succinctly as possible, the grounds upon which these pretensions have
been founded.
The first account of this discovery is found in Humphrey Llwyd’s
translation of the _History of Wales_, by Caradoc of Llancarvan,
published by Dr. Powell in 1584. According to him the occurrence took
place as follows:—On the death of Owen Gwynedd, prince of North Wales,
in 1169, a contention arose amongst his numerous sons respecting the
succession to the crown, when Madawe, or Madoc, one of their number,
seeing his native country was likely to be embroiled in a civil war,
deemed it more prudent to try his fortune abroad. In pursuance of this
object he sailed with a small fleet of ships to the westward, and
leaving Iceland on the north, came at length to an unknown country,
where everything appeared new and uncommon and the manner of the natives
different from all that he had ever seen. The country appearing to him,
from its fertility and beauty, to be very desirable for a settlement, he
left most of his own men behind him, (amounting, according to Sir Thomas
Herbert, to a hundred and twenty), and returning to Wales, persuaded
a considerable number of the Welsh to go out with him to the newly
discovered country, and so with ten ships he again departed, and bade a
final adieu to his native soil. This account of the historian Caradoc
of Llancarvan is the only affirmative written document the story has
upon which to ground its claim to authenticity, with the exception of
an ode, written by a Welsh bard, Meredyth ab Rhys, who died in 1477,
fifteen years before Columbus’s first expedition, in which an allusion
is made to the event.[3] A circumstance which would appear to confirm
the truth of Madoc’s voyages, is a peculiar resemblance that has been
found between some of the American dialects and the Welsh language; but,
as Dr. Robertson reasonably remarks, the affinity has been observed in
so few instances, and in some of these is so obscure or so fanciful,
that no conclusion can be drawn from the casual resemblance of a small
number of words. Dr. Williams adduces in confirmation of his favourite
idea the authorities of Lopez de Gomara, Hornius, and Peter Martyr,
pretending that they assert that traces of Christianity were found among
the Americans by the Spaniards, as well as that there was a tradition
among the Mexicans, that many years before a strange nation came amongst
them, and taught them a knowledge of God. His references however appear
entirely incorrect.
Another pretension to an early discovery of America has been founded upon
an account given in a work published in Venice by Francesco Marcolini
in 1558, entitled “_Dello scoprimento dell’ Isole Frislanda, Eslanda,
Engrovelanda, Estotilanda, ed Icaria, fatto sotto il Polo Artico da
due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolò il K. e M. Antonio_.” The substance of
the account is, that in 1380, Nicolò Zeno, a Venetian noble, fitted
out a vessel at his own cost, and made a voyage to the north, with the
intention of visiting England and Flanders, but was driven by a storm to
Friseland, now proved to be the Færoe Archipelago. Being rescued from the
attacks of the natives by Zichmni, a neighbouring prince, Zeno entered
into the service of the latter, and assisted him in conquering Friseland
and other northern islands. He shortly after dispatched a letter to his
brother Antonio, requesting him to find means to join him; whereupon the
latter purchased a vessel, and succeeded in reaching Friseland, where
he remained fourteen years. During his residence there he wrote to his
brother Carlo in Venice, and gave an account of a report brought by a
certain fisherman, about a land to the westward. This account stated
that about twenty-six years before, the fisherman, when out at sea with
four fishing boats, was overtaken by a tempest, which drove them about
for many days, and at length cast them on an island called Estotiland,
about a thousand miles from Friseland. The inhabitants conveyed them
to a fair and populous city, where the king sent for many interpreters
to converse with them, but none that they could understand, until a
man was found, who had likewise been cast away upon the coast, and who
spoke Latin. They remained several days upon the island, which was rich
and fruitful, abounding with all kinds of metals, and especially gold.
Though much given to navigation, they were ignorant of the use of the
compass, and finding the Friselanders acquainted with it, the king of
the place sent them with twelve barques to visit a country to the south,
called Drogeo. They had nearly perished in a storm, but were cast away
upon the coast of Drogeo. The fisherman described this Drogeo as a
country of vast extent, and that the inhabitants were naked and eaters
of human flesh. He remained many years in the country, and became rich
with trafficking between Estotiland and the main land, and subsequently
fitted out a vessel of his own, and made his way back to Friseland. His
narrative induced Zichmni to undertake a voyage thither, in which he was
accompanied by Antonio Zeno. It was unsuccessful: landing on an island
called Icaria, they were roughly treated by the inhabitants, and a storm
afterwards drove them on the coast of Greenland.
This account was placed in the hands of Marcolini by Nicolò Zeno, a
descendant of the family of the explorers, but it had to be made from
fragments, he himself having, when a boy, from ignorance torn up a
considerable quantity of the original documents, which were letters
written by Antonio Zeno to Carlo his brother. In spite of a considerable
amount of fable and exaggeration, defects which enter into the majority
of early accounts of travel, it is scarcely to be believed that Nicolò
Zeno the younger invented this voyage. He was a man of the highest
reputation, as may be seen by the encomium passed on him by Francesco
Patrizio; see _Della Historia dieci Dialoghi di M. Francesco Patrizio_,
Venetia, 1560, 4to., p. 30 verso. It is well known that the Venetians had
made yearly voyages to the north of Europe for at least two centuries
before the period in question, and the most important part of Zeno’s
publication, viz., the map, the original of which is stated to have hung
up in his palace since the date of the discovery, bears evidence of a
knowledge, however imperfect, of Scandinavian geography. The graduation
of this map was inserted by Nicolò Zeno the younger himself, and although
inaccurate enough to cause much perplexity to geographers, there is no
doubt that Greenland was laid down on it with more correctness than
on any map preceding the date of its publication. No map before that
time shews the Island of Frisland with names thereon tallying with the
names of the Færoe islands. No map before 1558 shews the discoveries
of the Northmen in America, nor were any of the Sagas known to the
Venetians before that time; nor do any books previous to that period set
forth the geography of those parts from which Nicolò Zeno could have
stolen information. Moreover the correspondence of the Zeno map with
surveys much later, as in Davis’s Straits, is highly corroborative of
its genuineness. Mr. Kohl, in his most valuable _Documentary History
of Discovery of the East Coast of North America_, printed by the Maine
Historical Society, 1869, 8vo., suggests that Icaria is Helluland or
Newfoundland; Estotiland, Markland or Nova Scotia; and Drogeo, Vinland or
New England: and he further justly remarks that, assuming that the map is
genuine, “it is the first and oldest known to us on which some sections
of the continent of America have been laid down.”