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THE STORY OF EXTINCT CIVILIZATIONS OF THE WEST
by
ROBERT E. ANDERSON, M.A., F.A.S.
Author of
Extinct Civilizations of the East
[Illustration: Prehistoric Structure, Uxmal (Yucatan) (p. 76).]
[Illustration]
Venient annis saecula seris
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus
Tethys que novos detegat orbes.
--SENECA.
New York _McClure, Phillips & Co._ MCMIV
Copyright, 1903, by
D. Appleton and Company
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9
I. PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA 19
II. "DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN" 36
III. THE EXTINCT CIVILIZATION OF THE AZTECS 54
IV. AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY 71
V. MEXICO BEFORE THE SPANISH INVASION 88
VI. ARRIVAL OF THE SPANIARDS 106
VII. CORTES AND MONTEZUMA 135
VIII. BALBOA AND THE ISTHMUS 164
IX. EXTINCT CIVILIZATION OF PERU 172
X. PIZARRO AND THE INCAS 186
MAPS, ETC.
PAGE
Prehistoric Structure, Uxmal (Yucatan) _Frontispiece_
Imaginary Continent, South of Africa and Asia 12
Remains of a Norse Church at Katortuk, Greenland 21
Map of Vinland 24
The Dighton Stone in the Taunton River, Massachusetts 27
The Dighton Stone. Fig. 2 28
Cipher Autograph of Columbus 46
Chulpa or Stone Tomb of the Peruvians 87
Quetzalcoatl 93
Ancient Bridge near Tezcuco 100
Teocalli, Aztec Temple for Human Sacrifices 105
Monolith Doorway. Near Lake Titicaca. Fig. 1 173
Image over the Doorway shown in Fig. 1. Near Lake
Titicaca. Fig. 2 175
The Quipu 180
Gold Ornament (? Zodiac) from a Tomb at Cuzco 182
EXTINCT CIVILIZATIONS OF THE WEST
INTRODUCTION
Throughout all the periods of European history, ancient or modern, no
age has been more remarkable for events of first-rate importance than
the latter half of the fifteenth century. The rise of the New Learning,
the "discovery of the world and of man," the displacement of many
outworn beliefs, these with other factors produced an awakening that
startled kings and nations. Then felt they like Balboa, when
with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
It was at this historical juncture that the "middle ages" came to an
end, and modern Europe had its beginning. (See Chapter II.)
Why was Europe so long in discovering the vast Continent which all the
time lay beyond the Western Ocean? Simply because every skipper and
every "Board of Admiralty" believed that this world on which we live and
move is flat and level. They did not at all realize the fact that it is
_ball_-shaped; and that when a ball is very large (say, as large as a
balloon), then any small portion of the surface must appear flat and
level to a fly or "mite" traveling in that vicinity. Homer believed that
our world is a flat and level plain, with a great river, Oceanus,
flowing round it; and for many ages that seemed a very natural and
sufficient theory. The Pythagoreans, it is true, argued that our earth
must be spherical, but why? Oh, said they, because in geometry the
sphere is the "most perfect" of all solid figures. Aristotle, being
scientific, gave better reasons for believing that the earth is
spherical or ball-shaped. He said the shadow of the earth is always
round like the shadow of a ball; and the shadow of the earth can be seen
during any eclipse of the moon; therefore, all who see that shadow on
the moon's disk know, or ought to know, that the earth is ball-shaped.
Another reason given by Aristotle is that the altitude of any star above
the horizon changes when the observer travels north or south. For
example, if at London a star appears to be 40 deg. above the northern
horizon, and at York the same star at the same instant appears 42-1/2 deg.,
it is evident that 2-1/2 deg. is the difference (increase) of altitude at
York compared with London. Such an observation shows that the road from
London to York is not over a flat, level plane, but over the curved
surface of a sphere, the arc of a circle, in fact.
Herodotus, the father of history, was a good geographer and an
experienced traveler, yet his only conception of the world was as a
flat, wide-extending surface. In Egypt he was told how Pharaoh Necho had
sent a crew of Phenicians to explore the coast of Africa by setting out
from the Red Sea, and how they sailed south till they had _the sun on
their right hand_. "Absurd!" says Herodotus, in his naive manner, "this
story I can not believe." In Egypt, as in Greece or Europe generally,
the sun rises on the left hand, and at noon casts a shadow pointing
north; whereas in South Africa the sun at noon casts a shadow pointing
south, and sunrise is therefore on the _right hand_. The honest sailors
had told the truth; they had merely "crossed the line," without knowing
it. If Herodotus had known that the world was spherical or ball-shaped,
he could easily have understood that by traveling due south the sun must
at last appear at noon to the north instead of the south. A counterpart
to the story of the Phenician sailors occurs in Pliny: he tells how some
ambassadors came to the Roman Emperor Claudius from an island in the
south of Asia, and when in Italy were much astonished to see the sun at
noon to the south, casting shadows to the north. They also wondered, he
says, to see the Great Bear and other groups of stars which had never
been visible in their native land (Nat. Hist., vi, 22).
That there were islands or even a continent in the Western Ocean was a
tradition not infrequent in classical and medieval times, as we shall
presently see, but to place a continent in the Southern Ocean was a
greater stretch of imagination. The great outstanding problem of the
sources of the Nile probably suggested this Southern Continent to some.
Ptolemy, the great Egyptian geographer, even formed the conjecture that
the Southern Continent was joined to Africa by a broad isthmus, as
indicated in certain maps. Such a connection of the two continents
would at once dispose of the story that the Phenician sailors had
"doubled the Cape." In several maps after the time of Columbus,
Australia is extended westward in order to pass muster for the Southern
Continent.
[Illustration: Imaginary Continent, south of Africa and Asia. [The
cardinal points are shown by the four winds.] Beginning of the fifteenth
century. The word Brumae = the winter solstices.]
It is with a Western Continent, however, that we are now mainly
concerned. What lands were imagined by the ancients in the far West
under the setting sun? The mighty ocean beyond Spain was to the Greeks
and Latins a place of dread and mystery.
"Stout was his heart and girt with triple brass," says the Roman
poet, "who first hazarded his weak vessel on the pitiless ocean."
Even the western parts of the Mediterranean were shrunk from, according
to the Odyssey, without speaking of the horrors of the great ocean
beyond. "Beyond Gades," i. e., scarcely outside of the Pillars of
Hercules, the extreme limit of the ancient world, "no man," said Pindar,
"however daring, could pass; only a god might voyage those waters!"
In spite of the dread which the ancient mariners felt for the great
Western Ocean, their poets found it replete with charm and mystery. The
imagination rested upon those golden sunsets, and the tales of marvel
which, after long intervals, sea-borne sailors had told of distant lands
in the West. The poets placed there the happy home destined for the
souls of heroes. Thus (Odys. iv, 561):
No snow
Is there, nor yet great storm nor any rain,
But always ocean sendeth forth the breeze
Of the shrill West, and bloweth cool on men.
So far Homer. His contemporary, Hesiod, thus describes the Elysian
Fields as islands under the setting sun:
There on Earth's utmost limits Zeus assigned
A life, a seat, distinct from human kind,
Beside the deepening whirlpools of the Main,
In those blest Isles where Saturn holds his reign,
Apart from Heaven's immortals calm they share,
A rest unsullied by the clouds of care:
And yearly thrice with sweet luxuriance crown'd
Springs the ripe harvest from the teeming Ground.
The poet Pindar places in the same mysterious West "the castle of
Chronos" (i. e., "Old Time"), "where o'er the Isles of the Blest ocean
breezes blow, and flowers gleam with gold, some from the land on
glistening trees, while others the water feeds; and with bracelets of
these they entwine their hands, and make crowns for their heads."
_Vesper_, the star of evening, was called Hesperus by the Greeks; and
hence the Hesperides, daughters of the Western Star, had the task of
watching the golden apples planted by the goddess Hera in the garden of
the gods, on the other side of the river Oceanus. One of the labors of
Hercules was to fetch three of those mystic apples for the king of
Mycenae. The poet Euripides thus refers to the Gardens of the West, when
the Chorus wish to fly "over the Adriatic wave":
Or to the famed Hesperian plains,
Whose rich trees bloom with gold,
To join the grief-attuned strains
My winged progress hold;
Beyond whose shores no passage gave
The Ruler of the purple wave.
Of all the lands imagined to lie in the Western Ocean by the Greeks, the
most important was "Atlantis." Some have thought it may possibly have
been a prehistoric discovery of America. In any case it has exercised
the ingenuity of a good many modern scientists. The tale of Atlantis we
owe to Plato himself, who perhaps learned it in Egypt, just as Herodotus
picked up there the account of the circumnavigation of Africa by the
Phenician mariners.
"When Solon was in Egypt," says Plato, "he had talk with an aged priest
of Sais who said, 'You Greeks are all children: you know but of one
deluge, whereas there have been many destructions of mankind both by
flood and fire.'... In the distant Western Ocean lay a continent larger
than Libya and Asia together."...
In this Atlantis there had grown up a mighty state whose kings were
descended from Poseidon and had extended their sway over many
islands and over a portion of the great continent; even Libya up to
the gates of Egypt, and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia, submitted to
their sway.... Afterward came a day and night of great floods and
earthquakes; Atlantis disappeared, swallowed by the waves.
Geologists and geographers have seriously tried to find evidence of
Atlantis having existed in the Atlantic, whether as a portion of the
American continent, or as a huge island in the ocean which could have
served as a stepping-stone between the Western World and the Eastern.
From a series of deep-sea soundings ordered by the British, American,
and German Governments, it is now very well known that in the middle of
the Atlantic basin there is a ridge, running north and south, whose
depth is less than 1,000 fathoms, while the valleys east and west of it
average 3,000 fathoms. At the Azores the North Atlantic ridge becomes
broader. The theory is that a part of the ridge-plateau was the Atlantis
of Plato that "disappeared swallowed by the waves." (Nature, xv, 158,
553, xxvii, 25; Science, June 29, 1883.)
Buffon, the naturalist, with reference to fauna and flora, dated the
separation of the new and old world "from the catastrophe of Atlantis"
(Epoques, ix, 570); and Sir Charles Lyell confessed a temptation to
"accept the theory of an Atlantis island in the northern Atlantic."
(Geology, p. 141.)
The following account "from an historian of the fourth century B. C." is
another possible reference to a portion of America--from a translation
"delivered in English," 1576.
Selenus told Midas that without this worlde there is a continent or
percell of dry lande which in greatnesse (as hee reported) was
unmeasureable; that it nourished and maintained, by the benifite of
the greene meadowes and pasture plots, sundrye bigge and mighty
beastes; that the men which inhabite the same climate exceede the
stature of us twise, and yet the length of there life is not equale
to ours.
The historian Plutarch, in his Morals, gives an account of Ogygia, with
an illusion to a continent, possibly America:
An island, Ogygia, lies in the arms of the Ocean, about five days'
sail west from Britain.... The adjacent sea is termed the
Saturnian, and the continent by which the great sea is circularly
environed is distant from Ogygia about 5,000 stadia, but from the
other islands not so far.... One of the men paid a visit to the
great island, as they called Europe. From him the narrator learned
many things about the state of men after death--the conclusion
being that the souls of men arrive at the Moon, wherein lie the
Elysian Fields of Homer.
The Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, has a similar account with
curious details of an "island" which might very well have been part of a
continent. Columbus believed to the last that Cuba was a continent.
In the ocean, at the distance of several days' sailing to the west,
there lies an island watered by several navigable rivers. Its soil
is fertile, hilly, and of great beauty.... There are country
houses handsomely constructed, with summer-houses and flower-beds.
The hilly district is covered with dense woods and fruit-trees of
every kind. The inhabitants spend much time in hunting and thus
procure excellent food. They have naturally a good supply of fish,
their shores being washed by the ocean.... In a word this island
seems a happy home for gods rather than for men (v. 19).
Another Greek writer, Lucian, in one of his witty dialogues, refers to
an island in the Atlantic, that lies eighty days' sail westward of the
Pillars of Hercules--the extreme limit of the ancient world, as has
already been seen. Readers of Henry Fielding and admirers of Squire
Westers will remember how in the London of the eighteenth century the
limits of Piccadilly westward was a tavern at Hyde Park corner called
the _Hercules' Pillars_, on the site of the future Apsley House.[1]
Although neither Greek nor Roman navigators were likely to attempt a
voyage into the ocean beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, yet a trading
vessel from Carthage or Phenicia might easily have been driven by an
easterly gale into, or even across, the Atlantic. Some involuntary
discoveries were no doubt due to this chance, and the reports brought to
Europe were probably the germs of such tales as the poets invented about
the fair regions of the West. In Celtic literature, moreover, "Avalon"
was placed far under the setting sun beyond the ocean--Avalon or
"Glas-Inis" being to the bards the Land of the Dead, marvelous and
mysterious.
[Footnote 1: Tom Jones, xvi. chap. 2, 3, etc.]
In English literature of the middle ages there is a remarkable passage
relating to our present subject, which was written long before that rise
of the New Learning mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. It is a
statement made by Roger Bacon, the greatest of Oxonian scholars of the
thirteenth century, who, long before the Renascence, did much to restore
the study of science, especially in geography, chronology, and optics.
In his Opus Majus, the elder Bacon wrote:
More than the fourth part of the earth which we inhabit is still
unknown to us.... It is evident therefore that between the extreme
West and the confines of India, there must be a surface which
comprises more than half the earth.
Though Roger Bacon, to use his own words, died "unheard, forgotten,
buried," our recent historians place his name first in the great roll of
modern science.
There now remains only one quotation to make from the ancients. We have
been reserving it for two reasons--first, because it is a singularly
happy anticipation of the discovery of the New World, so happy that it
became a favorite stanza with the discoverer himself. This we learn from
the life of the "Great Admiral," written by his son Ferdinand.
Secondly, because it adorns our title-page and has been characterized as
"a lucky prophecy"--written in the first century A. D. The author,
Seneca, was a dramatist as well as a philosopher, the lines occurring at
the end of one of his choruses--Medea, 376. We may thus translate the
prophetic stanza:
For at a distant date this ancient world
Will westward stretch its bounds, and then disclose
Beyond the Main a vast new Continent,
With realms of wealth and might.
CHAPTER I
PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA
1 _Norse Discovery._--By glancing at a map of the north Atlantic, the
reader will at once see that the natural approach from Europe to the
Western Continent was by Iceland and Greenland--especially in those
early days when ocean navigation was unknown. Iceland is nearer to
Greenland than to Norway; and Greenland is part of America. But in
Iceland there were Celtic settlers in the early centuries; and even King
Arthur, according to the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, sailed north
to that "Ultima Thule." During the ninth century a Christian community
had been established there under certain Irish monks. This early
civilization, however, was destined to become presently extinct.
It was in A. D. 875, i. e., during the reign of Alfred the Great in
England, that the Norse earl, Ingolf, led a colony to Iceland. More
strenuous and savage than the Christian Celts whom they found there, the
latter with their preaching monks soon sailed to the south, and left the
Northmen masters of the island. The Norse colony under Ingolf was
strongly reenforced by Norwegians who took refuge there to avoid the
tyranny of their king, Harold, the Fair-haired. Ingolf built the town
Ingolfshof, named after him, and also Reikiavik, afterward the capital,
named from the "reek" or steam of its hot springs. So important did this
colony become that in the second generation the population amounted to
60,000.
Ingolf was admired by the poet James Montgomery (not to be confounded
with Robert, whom Macaulay criticized so severely), who in 1819 thus
wrote of him and his island:
There on a homeless soil his foot he placed,
Framed his hut-palace, colonized the waste,
And ruled his horde with patriarchal sway
--Where Justice reigns, 'tis Freedom to obey....
And Iceland shone for generous lore renowned,
A northern light when all was gloom around.
The next year after Ingolf had come to Iceland, Gunnbiorn, a hardy
Norseman, driven in his ship westerly, sighted a strange land....
About half a century later, judging by the Icelandic sagas, we
learn that a wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away
which was called "Mickle Ireland" (_Irland it Mikla_)--[Winsor's
Hist. America, i, 61].
Gunnbiorn's discovery was utilized by Erik the Red, another sea-rover,
in A. D. 980, who sailed to it and, after three years' stay, returned
with a favorable account--giving it the fair name _Greenland_. The Norse
established two centers of population on Greenland. It is now believed
that after doubling Cape Farewell, they built their first town near that
head and the second farther north. The former, _Eystribygd_ (i. e.,
"Easter Bigging"), developed into a large colony, having in the
fourteenth century 190 settlements, with a cathedral and eleven
churches, and containing two cities and three or four monasteries. The
second town, _Westribygd_ (i. e., "Wester Bigging") had grown to ninety
settlements and four churches in the same time.
The germ and root of that civilization (afterward extinct, as we shall
see) was due to Leif the son of Red Erik, who visited Norway, the
mother-country, at the very close of the tenth century.
[Illustration: Remains of a Norse Church at Katortuk, Greenland.]
He found that the king and people there had enthusiastically embraced
the new religion, _Christianity_. Leif presently shared their fervor,
and decided to reject Woden, Thor, and the other gods of old
Scandinavia. A priest was told off to accompany Leif back to Greenland,
and preach the new faith. It was thus that a Christian civilization
first found footing in arctic America.
The ruins of those early Christian churches (see illustration above)
form most interesting objects in modern Greenland; near the chief ruin
is a curious circular group of large stones.
The poet of "Greenland," to whom we have already referred, quotes from a
Danish chronicle to the effect that, in the golden age of the colony,
there were a hundred parishes to form the bishopric; and that the see
was ruled by seventeen bishops from A. D. 1120 to 1408. Bishop Andrew is
the last mentioned, ordained in 1408 by the Archbishop of Drontheim.
From the same authority we learn that according to some of the annals
"the best wheat grew to perfection in the valleys; the forests were
extensive; flocks and herds were numerous and very large and fat." The
Cloister of St. Thomas was heated by pipes from a warm spring, and
attached to the cloister was a richly cultivated garden.
After Leif, son of Erik, had introduced Christianity into Greenland, his
next step was to extend the Norse civilization still farther within the
American continent. News had reached him of a new land, with a level
coast, lying nine days' sailing southwest of Greenland. Picking
thirty-five men, Leif started for further exploration. One part of the
new country was barren and rocky, therefore Leif named it _Helluland_
(i. e., "Stone Land"), which appears to have been Newfoundland. Farther
south they found a sandy shore, backed by a level forest country, which
Leif named _Markland_ (i. e., "Wood Land"), identified with Nova Scotia.
After two days' sail, according to the saga account, having landed and
explored the new continent along the banks of a river, they resolved to
winter there. In one of these explorations a German called Tyrker found
some grapes on a wild vine, and brought a specimen for the admiration of
Leif and his party. This country was therefore named _Vinland_ (i. e.,
"Wine Land"), and is identified with New England, part of Rhode Island,
and Massachusetts.[2]
[Footnote 2: Prof. R. B. Anderson says, "The basin of the Charles River
should be selected as the most probable scene of the visits of Leif
Erikson, etc." [_v._ map.]]
Our Greenland poet thus refers to Leif's landing:
Wineland the glad discoverers called that shore,
And back the tidings of its riches bore;
But soon return'd with colonizing bands.
The Norsemen founded a regular settlement in Vinland, establishing there
a Christian community related to that of Greenland. Leif's brother,
Korvald, explored the interior in all directions. With the natives, who
are called "Skraelings" in the sagas, they traded in furs; these people,
who seemed dwarfish to the Norsemen, used leathern boats and were no
doubt Eskimos:
A stunted, stern, uncouth, amphibious stock.
The principal settler in Vinland was Thorfinn, an Icelander, who had
married a daughter-in-law of Erik the Red. She persuaded Thorfinn to
sail to the new country in order to make a permanent settlement there.
In the year 1007 A. D. he sailed with 160 men, having live stock and
other colonial equipments. After three years he returned to Greenland,
his wife having given birth to a son during their first year in Vinland.
From this son, Snorre, it is claimed by some Norwegian historians, that
Thorwaldsen, the eminent Danish sculptor is descended. After the time
of Thorfinn, the settlement in Vinland continued to flourish, having a
good export trade in timber with Greenland. In 1121 A. D. according to
the Icelandic saga, the bishop, Erik Upsi, visited Vinland, that country
being, like Iceland and Greenland, included in his bishopric. The last
voyage to Vinland for timber, according to the sagas, was in 1347.
[Illustration: Map]
Professor Horsford, of Cambridge, Mass., finds the site of Norumbega,
mentioned in various old maps, on the River Charles, near Waltham,
Mass., and maintains that town to be identical with Vinland of the
Norsemen. To prove his belief in this theory, the professor built a
tower commemorating the Norse discoveries. He argued that Norumbega was
a corruption by the Indians of the word _Norvegr_ a Norse form of
"Norway."
The abandonment of Vinland by the Norse settlers may be compared with
that of Gosnold's expedition to the same region near the end of Queen
Elizabeth's reign. Gosnold was sent to plant an English colony in
America, after the failure of Sir Walter Raleigh's settlement at Roanoke
(North Carolina); and the coast explored corresponded exactly to that
which the Norse settlers had named Vinland, lying between the sites of
Boston and New York. He gave the name Cape Cod to that promontory, and
also named the islands Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and the Elizabeth
group. Selecting one of these for settling a colony, he built on it a
storehouse and fort. The scheme, however, failed, owing to the threats
of the natives and the scarcity of supplies, and all the colonists
sailed from Massachusetts, just as the Norse settlers had done many
generations previously.
The expedition of Gosnold to Vinland, however, bore good fruit, from the
favorable report of the new country which he made at home. The merchants
of Bristol fitted out two ships under Martin Pring, and in the first
voyage a great part of Maine (lying north of Massachusetts) was
explored, and the coast south to Martha's Vineyard, where Gosnold had
been. This led to profitable traffic with the natives, and three years
later Pring made a more complete survey of Maine.
Vinland was also the scene of the famous landing of the Mayflower,
bringing its Puritans from England. It was in Cape Cod Bay that she was
first moored. After exploring the new country, just as Leif Erikson had
done so many generations previously, they chose a place on the west side
of the bay and named the little settlement "Plymouth," after the last
English port from which they had sailed. Farther north, still in
Vinland, they soon founded two other towns, "Salem" and "Boston." Those
three settlements have ever since been important centers of energy and
intelligence in Massachusetts, as well as memorials of the Norse
occupation of Vinland.
On the occasion of a public statue being erected in Boston, Mass., to
the memory of Leif Erikson, a committee of the Massachusetts Historical
Society formally decided thus: "It is antecedently probable that the
Northmen discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century."
Prof. Daniel Wilson, in his learned work Prehistoric Man (ii, 83, 85),
thus gives his opinion as to the Norse colony:
With all reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of details, there is
the strongest probability in favor of the authenticity of the
American Vinland.
[Illustration: The Dighton Stone in the Taunton River, Massachusetts.]
Of the Norse colonies in Greenland there are some undoubted remains, one
being a stone inscription in _runes_, proving that it was made before
the Reformation, when that mode of writing was forbidden by law. The
stone is four miles beyond Upernavik. The inscription, according to
Professor Rask, runs thus:
Erling the son of Sigvat, and Enride Oddsoen,
Had cleared the place and raised a mound
On the Friday after Rogation-day;
--date either 1135 or 1170.
Rafn, the celebrated Danish archeologist, states as the result of many
years' research, that America was repeatedly visited by the Icelanders
in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries; that the estuary of
the St. Lawrence was their chief station; that they had coasted
southward to Carolina, everywhere introducing some Christian
civilization among the natives.
[Illustration: The Dighton Stone. Fig. 2.]
A supposed rock memorial of the Norsemen is the Dighton Stone in the
Taunton River, Massachusetts; one of its sentences, according to
Professor Rafn, being:
"Thorfinn with 151 Norse seafaring men took possession of this land."
The figures and letters (whether runic or merely Indian) inscribed on
the Dighton Rock have been copied by antiquaries at the following dates:
1680, 1712, 1730, 1768, 1788, 1807, 1812. The above illustration (Fig.
2) shows the last mentioned.
There have been many probable traces of ancient Norsemen found in
America, besides those already given. At Cape Cod, in the last
generation, a number of hearth-stones were found under a layer of peat.
A more famous relic was the skeleton dug up in Fall River, Mass., with
an ornamental belt of metal tubes made from fragments of flat brass;
there were also some arrow-heads of the same material. Longfellow, the
New England poet, naturally had his attention directed to this discovery
(made, 1831), and founded on it his ballad The Skeleton in Armor,
connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport. The latter, according to
Professor Rafn, "was erected decidedly not later than the twelfth
century."
I was a Viking old,
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told
No Saga taught thee!...
Far in the Northern Land
By the wild Baltic's strand
I with my childish hand
Tamed the ger-falcon.
Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked I the grisly bear,
While from my path the hare
Fled like a shadow.
* * * * *
Scarce had I put to sea
Bearing the maid with me--
Fairest of all was she
Among the Norsemen!
Three weeks we westward bore,
And when the storm was o'er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore
Stretching to leeward;
There for my lady's bower,
Built I this lofty tower
Which to this very hour
Stands looking seaward!
Sir Clements Markham, of the Royal Geographical Society, believes that
the Norse settlers in Greenland were driven from their settlements there
by Eskimos coming, not from the interior of America, but from West
Siberia along the polar regions, by Wrangell Land [_v._ Journal, R, G.
S., 1865, and Arctic Geography, 1875].
There was much curiosity from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century as
to the site of the lost colonies of Greenland which had so long
flourished. In 1568 and 1579 the King of Denmark sent two expeditions,
the latter in charge of an Englishman, but no traces were found. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century some light was thrown upon the
problem by a missionary called Egede, who first described the ruins and
relics observable on the west coast. By the success of his preaching
among the Greenlanders for fifteen years, assisted by other gospel
missionaries, the Moravians were induced to found their settlements in
the country, principally in the southwest.
It seems probable that in early times the climate of Iceland was milder
than it now is. Columbus, some fifteen years before his great voyage
across the Atlantic, sailed to this northern "Thule," and reports that
there was no ice. If so, it is surely possible that Greenland also may
have been greener and more attractive than during the recent centuries.
Why should it not at one time have been fully deserving of the name by
which we still know it? Some would explain the change in climatic
conditions by the closing in of icepacks. At present Greenland is buried
deep under a vast, solid ice-cap from which only a few of the highest
peaks protrude to show the position of the submerged mountains, but at
former periods, according to geologists, there were gardens and farms
flourishing under a genial climate. Others suppose that, were the ice
removed, we should see an archipelago of elevated islands.
2. _Celtic Discovery of America._--We have already glanced at the fact
that when the Norsemen first seized Iceland they found that island
inhabited by Irish Celts. These Christianized Celts made way before the
savage invaders, who did not accept the Catholic religion till about the
close of the tenth century. Sailing south, those dispossessed Irish
probably joined their brother Celts who had already long held a district
on the eastern coast of North America, which some Norse skippers called
"White Man's Land," and also _Irland-it-Mikla_ (i. e., "Mickle
Ireland"). Professor Rafn places this district on the coast of Carolina.
A learned memoir, published 1851, attempts to prove that the mysterious
"mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley were of the same race as the
settlers on Mickle Ireland, and related to the "white-bearded men" who
established an extinct civilization in Mexico. A French antiquary, 1875,
identified Mickle Ireland with Ontario and Quebec. Beauvois, in his
Elysee trans-atlantique, derives the name Labrador from the _Innis
Labrada_, an island mentioned in an ancient Irish romance.[3] Another
Irish discoverer was St. Brandan,[4] Abbot of Cluainfert, Ireland (died
May 16, 577), who was told that far in the ocean lay an island which was
the land promised to the saints. St. Brandan set sail in company with
seventy-five monks, and spent seven years upon the ocean in two voyages,
discovering this island and many others equally marvelous, including one
which turned out to be the back of a huge fish, upon which they
celebrated Easter.[5]
[Footnote 3: As to the Irish claim for the pre-Columbian discovery of
America, see also Humboldt (Cosmos, ii, 607), and Laing (Heimsk., i,
186).]
[Footnote 4: MS. Book of Lismore.]
[Footnote 5: The story is given by Humboldt and D'Avezac.]
Among the Celtic claimants for discovery we must also include the Welsh,
who lay stress upon certain resemblances between their language and the
dialects of the native Americans. A better argument is the historical
account taken from their annals about the expedition of Prince Madoc,
son of a Welsh chieftain, who sailed due west in the year 1170, after
the rumor of the Norse discoveries had reached Britain. He landed on a
vast and fertile continent where he settled 120 colonists. On his return
to Wales he fitted out a second fleet of ten ships, but the annals give
no report of the result. Several writers state that the place of landing
was near the Gulf of Mexico: Hakluyt connecting the discovery with
Mexico (1589) and again with the West Indies (edition of 1600). In the
seventeenth century some authors wished to substantiate the story of
Prince Madoc, in order that the British claim to America should antedate
the Spanish claim through Columbus. Prince Madoc is, to most readers,
only known by Southey's poem.[6]
[Footnote 6: Some quotations from Southey's poem are given in Chapters
V, VI.]
3. _Basque Discovery of America._--Who are the Basque people? A curious
race of Spanish mountaineers, who have been as great a puzzle to
ethnologists and historians as their language has been to philologists
and scholars. We know, however, that in former times they were nearly
all seamen, making long voyages to the north for whale and Newfoundland
cod fishing. They have produced excellent navigators; and possibly
preceded Columbus in discovering America. Sebastian, the lieutenant of
Magellan, was one of the Basque race. Magellan did not live to complete
his famous voyage, therefore Sebastian was the first actual
circumnavigator of our globe.
Francois Michel, in his work Le Pays Basque, says that the Basque
sailors knew the coasts of Newfoundland a century before the time of
Columbus; and that it was from one of these ocean mariners that he first
learned the existence of a continent beyond the Atlantic. Other
arguments are derived from comparing the peculiarities of the Basque
tongue with those of the American dialects. Whitney, an American
scholar, concludes that "No other dialect of the Old World so much
resembles the American languages in structure as the Basque."
4. _Jewish Discovery of America._--There is one claim for the discovery
of America, which, though quite improbable, if not impossible, has been
upheld and sanctioned by many scholarly works in several languages. It
is argued that the red Indians represent the ten "Lost Tribes" of the
Hebrew people who had been deported to Assyria and Media (_v._ Extinct
Civilizations of the East, p. 109). The theory was first started by some
Spanish priest-missionaries, and has since been defended by many learned
divines both in England and America, one leading argument being certain
similarities in the languages. Catlin (_v._ Smithsonian Report, 1885)
enumerates many analogies which he found among the Western Indians. The
most authoritative statement is that of Lord Kingsborough in the
well-known Mexican Antiquities (1830-'48), chiefly in Vol. VII. Some
writers actually quote a statement made in the Mormon Bible! Leading New
England divines, like Mayhew and Cotton Mather, espoused the cause with
similar faith, as well as Roger Williams and William Penn.
5. _The Italian Discovery of America._--Not through Columbus the
Genoese, or Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine, although they were
certainly Italians, but by two Venetians, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno. In A.
D. 1380 or 1390 these brothers Zeni were shipwrecked in the North
Atlantic, and, when staying in Frislanda, made the acquaintance of a
sailor who, after twenty-six years' absence, had returned, giving them
the following report:
"Being driven west in a gale, he found an island with civilized
inhabitants, who had Latin books, but could not speak Norse, and whose
country was called Estotiland, while a region on the mainland, farther
south, to which he had also gone, was called Drogeo. Here he had met
with cannibals. Still farther south was a great country with towns and
temples."
The two brothers Zeni finally conveyed this account to another brother
in Venice, together with a map of those distant regions, but these
documents remained neglected till 1558, when a descendant compiled a
book to embody the information, accompanied by a map, now famous as
"the Zeno map."
Humboldt, with reference to this map, remarks that it is singular that
the name Frislanda should have been applied by Columbus to an island
south of Iceland. Washington Irving (in his Life of Columbus) explains
the book by a desire to appeal to the national pride of Italy, since, if
true, the discovery of the brothers would antedate that of Columbus by a
century.
Malte-Brun, the distinguished geographer, distinctly accepted the Zeni
narrative as true, and believed that it was by colonists from Greenland
that the Latin books had reached Estotiland. Another strong advocate
afterward appeared in Mr. Major, an official in the map department of
the British Museum, who believed that much of the map in question
represented genuine information of the fourteenth century, mixed with
some spurious parts inserted by the younger Zeno. Mr. Major's paper on
The Site of the Lost Colony of Greenland Determined, and the
pre-Columbian Discoveries of America Confirmed, appeared in R. Geog.
Soc. Journal, 1873; _v_. also Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1874. Nordenskjold
also accepted the chief results of this Italian discovery, and as an
arctic explorer of experience, his opinion carries weight. Mercator and
Hugo Grotius were also believers in the Zeni account.