PRE-COLUMBIAN EXPLORATIONS.
BY JUSTIN WINSOR, THE EDITOR.
IN the previous chapter, in attempting to trace the possible connection
of the new world with the old in the dimmest past, it was hard, if
not hopeless, to find among the entangled myths a path that we could
follow with any confidence into the field of demonstrable history.
It is still a doubt how far we exchange myths for assured records,
when we enter upon the problems of pre-Columbian explorations, which
it is the object of the present chapter to discuss. We are to deal
with supposable colonizations, from which the indigenous population
of America, as the Spaniards found it, was sprung, wholly or in part;
and we are to follow the venturesome habits of navigators, who sought
experience and commerce in a strange country, and only incidentally
left possible traces of their blood in the peoples they surprised. If
Spain, Italy, and England gained consequence by the discoveries of
Columbus and Cabot, there were other national prides to be gratified
by the priority which the Basques, the Normans, the Welsh, the Irish,
and the Scandinavians, to say nothing of Asiatic peoples, claimed as
their share in the gift of a new world to the old. The records which
these peoples present as evidences of their right to be considered the
forerunners of the Spanish and English expeditions have in every case
been questioned by those who are destitute of the sympathetic credence
of a common kinship. The claims which Columbus and Cabot fastened upon
Spain and England, to the disadvantage of Italy, who gave to those
rival countries their maritime leaders, were only too readily rejected
by Italy herself, when the opportunity was given to her of paling such
borrowed glories before the trust which she placed in the stories of
the Zeni brothers.
* * * * *
There is not a race of eastern Asia—Siberian, Tartar, Chinese,
Japanese, Malay, with the Polynesians—which has not been claimed
as discoverers, intending or accidental, of American shores, or as
progenitors, more or less perfect or remote, of American peoples; and
there is no good reason why any one of them may not have done all that
is claimed. The historical evidence, however, is not such as is based
on documentary proofs of indisputable character, and the recitals
advanced are often far from precise enough to be convincing in details,
if their general authenticity is allowed. Nevertheless, it is much
more than barely probable that the ice of Behring Straits or the line
of the Aleutian Islands was the pathway of successive immigrations,
on occasions perhaps far apart, or may be near together; and there is
hardly a stronger demonstration of such a connection between the two
continents than the physical resemblances of the peoples now living
on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean in these upper latitudes, with
the similarity of the flora which environs them on either shore.[510]
It is quite as conceivable that the great northern current, setting
east athwart the Pacific, should from time to time have carried along
disabled vessels, and stranded them on the shores of California and
farther north, leading to the infusion of Asiatic blood among whatever
there may have been antecedent or autochthonous in the coast peoples.
It is certainly in this way possible that the Chinese or Japanese may
have helped populate the western slopes of the American continent.
There is no improbability even in the Malays of southeastern Asia
extending step by step to the Polynesian islands, and among them and
beyond them, till the shores of a new world finally received the
impress of their footsteps and of their ethnic characteristics. We may
very likely recognize not proofs, but indications, along the shores of
South America, that its original people constituted such a stock, or
were increased by it.
* * * * *
As respects the possible early connections of America on the side of
Europe, there is an equally extensive array of claims, and they have
been set forth, first and last, with more persistency than effect.[511]
Leaving the old world by the northern passage, Iceland lies at the
threshold of America. It is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, and
Greenland is but one of the large islands into which the arctic
currents divide the North American continent. Thither, to Iceland, if
we identify the localities in Geoffrey of Monmouth, King Arthur sailed
as early as the beginning of the sixth century, and overcame whatever
inhabitants he may have found there. Here too an occasional wandering
pirate or adventurous Dane had glimpsed the coast.[512] Thither, among
others, came the Irish, and in the ninth century we find Irish monks
and a small colony of their countrymen in possession.[513] Thither the
Gulf Stream carries the southern driftwood, suggesting sunnier lands
to whatever race had been allured or driven to its shelter.[514] Here
Columbus, when, as he tells us,[515] he visited the island in 1477,
found no ice. So that, if we may place reliance on the appreciable
change of climate by the precession of the equinoxes, a thousand years
ago and more, when the Norwegians crossed from Scandinavia and found
these Christian Irish there,[516] the island was not the forbidding
spot that it seems with the lapse of centuries to be becoming.
[Illustration: NORSE SHIP.
This cut is copied from one in Nordenskiöld’s _Voyage of the Vega_
(London, 1881), vol. i. p. 50, where it is given as representing the
vessel found at Sandefjord in 1880. It is drawn from the restoration
given in _The Viking ship discovered at Gokstad in Norway (Langskibet
fra Gokstad ved Sandefjord) described by N. Nicholaysen_ (Christiania,
1882). The original vessel owed its preservation to being used as
a receptacle for the body of a Viking chief, when he was buried
under a mound. When exhumed, its form, with the sepulchral chamber
midships, could be made out, excepting that the prow and stern in their
extremities had to be restored. In the ship and about it were found,
beside some of the bones of a man, various appurtenances of the vessel,
and the remains of horses buried with him. They are all described in
the book above cited, from which the other cuts herewith given of the
plan of the vessel and one of its rowlocks are taken. The _Popular
Science Monthly_, May, 1881, borrowing from _La Nature_, gives a view
of the ship as when found _in situ_. There are other accounts in _The
Antiquary_, Aug., 1880; Dec., 1881; 1882, p. 87; _Scribner’s Magazine_,
Nov., 1887, by John S. White; _Potter’s American Monthly_, Mar., 1882.
Cf. the illustrated paper, “Les navires des peuples du nord,” by Otto
Jorell, in _Congrès Internat. des Sciences géographiques_ (Paris, 1875;
pub. 1878), i. 318.]
Of an earlier discovery in 1872 there is an account in _The ancient
vessel found in the parish of Tune, Norway_ (Christiania, 1872). This
is a translation by Mr. Gerhard Gadé of a Report in the Proceedings of
the Society for preserving Norwegian Antiquities. (Cf. _Mass. Hist.
Soc. Proc._, xiii. p. 10.) This vessel was also buried under a mound,
and she was 43½ feet long and four feet deep.
There is in the Nicholaysen volume a detailed account of the naval
architecture of the Viking period, and other references may be made
to Otto Jorell’s _Les navires des peuples du Nord_, in the _Congrès
internat. des sciences géog., compte rendu, 1875_ (1878, i. 318);
_Mémoires de la Soc. royal des Antiquaires du Nord_ (1887, p. 280);
Preble, in _United Service_ (May, 1883, p. 463), and in his _Amer.
Flag_, p. 159; De Costa’s _Pre-Columbian Discovery of America_, p.
xxxvii; Fox’s _Landfall of Columbus_, p. 3; _Pop. Science Monthly_,
xix. 80; _Van Nostrand’s Eclectic Engineering Mag._, xxiii. 320; _Good
Words_, xxii. 759; Higginson’s _Larger History U. S._ for cuts; and J.
J. A. Worsaae’s _Prehistory of the North_ (Eng. transl., London,1886)
for the burial in ships.
There is a paper on the daring of the Norsemen as navigators by G.
Brynjalfson (_Compte Rendu, Congrès des Américanistes_, Copenhagen, p.
140), entitled “Jusqu’où les anciens Scandinaves ont-ils pénétré vers
le pôle arctique dans leurs expéditions à la mer glaciale?”
It was in A.D. 875 that Ingolf, a jarl[517] of Norway, came to
Iceland with Norse settlers. They built their habitation at first where
a pleasant headland seemed attractive, the present Ingolfshofdi, and
later founded Reikjavik, where the signs had directed them; for certain
carved posts, which they had thrown overboard as they approached
the island, were found to have drifted to that spot. The Christian
Irish preferred to leave their asylum rather than consort with the
new-comers, and so the island was left to be occupied by successive
immigrations of the Norse, which their king could not prevent. In
the end, and within half a century, a hardy little republic—as for
a while it was—of near seventy thousand inhabitants was established
almost under the arctic circle. The very next year (A.D. 876) after
Ingolf had come to Iceland, a sea-rover, Gunnbiorn, driven in his ship
westerly, sighted a strange land, and the report that he made was not
forgotten.[518] Fifty years later, more or less, for we must treat the
dates of the Icelandic sagas with some reservation, we learn that a
wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away, which was called
Ireland the Great. Then again we read of a young Norwegian, Eric the
Red, not apparently averse to a brawl, who killed his man in Norway
and fled to Iceland, where he kept his dubious character; and again
outraging the laws, he was sent into temporary banishment,—this time
in a ship which he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away
in the direction of Gunnbiorn’s land, and found it. He whiled away
three years on its coast, and as soon as he was allowed ventured back
with the tidings, while, to propitiate intending settlers, he said
he had been to Greenland, and so the land got a sunny name. The next
year, which seems to have been A.D. 985, he started on his return with
thirty-five ships, but only fourteen of them reached the land. Wherever
there was a habitable fiord, a settlement grew up, and the stream of
immigrants was for a while constant and considerable. Just at the end
of the century (A.D. 999), Leif, a son of Eric, sailed back to Norway,
and found the country in the early fervor of a new religion; for King
Olaf Tryggvesson had embraced Christianity and was imposing it on his
people. Leif accepted the new faith, and a priest was assigned to him
to take back to Greenland; and thus Christianity was introduced into
arctic America. So they began to build churches[519] in Greenland, the
considerable ruins of one of which stand to this day.[520] The winning
of Iceland to the Church was accomplished at the same time.
[Illustration: PLAN OF VIKING SHIP.]
There were two centres of settlement on the Greenland coast, not where
they were long suspected to be, on the coast opposite Iceland, nor as
supposed after the explorations of Baffin’s Bay, on both the east and
west side of the country; but the settlers seem to have reached and
doubled Cape Farewell, and so formed what was called their eastern
settlement (Eystribygd), near the cape, while farther to the north they
formed their western colony (Westribygd).[521] Their relative positions
are still involved in doubt.
[Illustration: ROWLOCK OF THE VIKING SHIP.]
In the next year after the second voyage of Eric the Red, one of the
ships which were sailing from Iceland to the new settlement, was driven
far off her course, according to the sagas, and Bjarni Herjulfson, who
commanded the vessel, reported that he had come upon a land, away to
the southwest, where the coast country was level; and he added that
when he turned north it took him nine days to reach Greenland.[522]
Fourteen years later than this voyage of Bjarni, which is said to have
been in A.D. 986,—that is, in the year 1000 or thereabouts,—Leif, the
same who had brought the Christian priest to Greenland, taking with him
thirty-five companions, sailed from Greenland in quest of the land seen
by Bjarni, which Leif first found, where a barren shore stretched back
to ice-covered mountains, and because of the stones there he called the
region Hellu land. Proceeding farther south, he found a sandy shore,
with a level forest-country back of it, and because of the woods it was
named Markland. Two days later they came upon other land, and tasting
the dew upon the grass they found it sweet. Farther south and westerly
they went, and going up a river came into an expanse of water, where
on the shores they built huts to lodge in for the winter, and sent
out exploring parties. In one of these, Tyrker, a native of a part of
Europe where grapes grew, found vines hung with their fruit, which
induced Leif to call the country Vinland.
[Illustration: NORSE BOAT USED AS A HABITATION.
From Viollet-le-Duc’s _Habitation humaine_ (Paris, 1875).]
[Illustration: NORMAN SHIP FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY.
From Worsaae’s _Danes and Norwegians in England_, etc. “With the
exception of very imperfect representation carved on rocks and runic
stones [see Higginson’s _Larger History_, p. 27], there are no images
left in the countries of Scandinavia of ships of the olden times; but
the tapestry at Bayeux, in Normandy, is a contemporary evidence of the
appearance of the Normanic ships.”]
[Illustration: SCANDINAVIAN FLAGS.
This group from Worsaae’s _Danes and Norwegians in England, etc._, p.
64, shows the transition from the raven to the cross.]
Attempts have been made to identify these various regions by the
inexact accounts of the direction of their sailing, by the very general
descriptions of the country, by the number of days occupied in going
from one point to another, with the uncertainty if the ship sailed
at night, and by the length of the shortest day in Vinland,—the last
a statement that might help us, if it could be interpreted with a
reasonable concurrence of opinion, and if it were not confused with
other inexplicable statements. The next year Leif’s brother, Thorvald,
went to Vinland with a single ship, and passed three winters there,
making explorations meanwhile, south and north. Thorfinn Karlsefne,
arriving in Greenland in A.D. 1006, married a courageous widow named
Gudrid, who induced him to sail with his ships to Vinland and make
there a permanent settlement, taking with him livestock and other
necessaries for colonization. Their first winter in the place was a
severe one; but Gudrid gave birth to a son, Snorre, from whom it is
claimed Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor, was descended. The next
season they removed to the spot where Leif had wintered, and called the
bay Hóp. Having spent a third winter in the country, Karlsefne, with a
part of the colony, returned to Greenland.
[Illustration: FROM OLAUS MAGNUS.
Fac-simile of Norse weapons from the _Historia_ of Olaus Magnus (b.
1490; d. 1568), Rome, 1555, p. 222.]
The saga then goes on to say that trading voyages to the settlement
which had been formed by Karlsefne now became frequent, and that the
chief lading of the return voyages was timber, which was much needed in
Greenland. A bishop of Greenland, Eric Upsi, is also said to have gone
to Vinland in A.D. 1121. In 1347 the last ship of which we have any
record in these sagas went to Vinland after timber. After this all is
oblivion.
There are in all these narratives many details beyond this outline,
and those who have sought to identify localities have made the most
they could of the mention of a rock here or a bluff there, of an
island where they killed a bear, of others where they found eggs, of
a headland where they buried a leader who had been killed, of a cape
shaped like a keel, of broadfaced natives who offered furs for red
cloths, of beaches where they hauled up their ships, and of tides that
were strong; but the more these details are scanned in the different
sagas the more they confuse the investigator, and the more successive
relators try to enlighten us the more our doubts are strengthened, till
we end with the conviction that all attempts at consistent unravelment
leave nothing but a vague sense of something somewhere done.
[Illustration: FULL-SIZE FAC-SIMILE OF THE TABLET, _engraved by Prof.
Magnus Petersen, with the Runes as he sees them_.
(TRANSLITERATION OF THE LEADEN TABLET.),
+ (AT) Þ(E)R KUEN(E) SINE PRINSINED (B)AD (M)OTO
LANANA KRISTI DONAVISTI GARDIAR IARDIAR
IBODIAR KRISTUS UINKIT KRISTUS REGNAT
KRISTUS IMPERAT KRISTUS AB OMNI
MALO ME ASAM LIPERET KRUX KRISTI
SIT SUPER ME ASAM HIK ET UBIQUE
+ KHORDA + IN KHORDA + KHORDAE
(t) (M)AGLA + SANGUIS KRISTI SIGNET ME
RUNES, A.D. 1000.
This cut is of some of the oldest runes known, giving two lines in
Danish and the rest in Latin, as the transliteration shows. It is
copied from _The oldest yet found Document in Danish, by Prof Dr.
George Stephens_ (Copenhagen, 1888,—from the _Mémoires des Antiquaires
du Nord_, 1887). The author says that the leaden tablet on which the
runes were cut was found in Odense, Fyn, Denmark, in 1883, and he
places the date of it about the year A.D. 1000.
George Stephens’s _Handbook of the old Northern Runic Monuments of
Scandinavia and England_ is a condensation, preserving all the cuts,
and making some additions to his larger folio work in 3 vols., _The
old-northern Runic monuments of Scandinavia and England, now first
collected and deciphered_ (London, etc., 1866-68). It does not contain
either Icelandic or Greenland runes. He says that by the time of the
colonization of Iceland “the old northern runes as a system had died
out on the Scandinavian main, and were followed by the later runic
alphabet. But even this modern Icelandic of the tenth century has not
come down to us. If it had, it would be very different from what is
now vulgarly so called, which is the greatly altered Icelandic of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.... The oldest written Icelandic
known to us is said to date from about the year 1200.... The whole
modern doctrine of one uniform Icelandic language all over the immense
north in the first one thousand winters after Christ is an impossible
absurdity.... It is very seldom that any of the Scandinavian runic
stones bear a date.... No Christian runic gravestone is older than the
fourteenth century.”
On runes in general, see Mallet, Bohn’s ed., pp. 227, 248, following
the cut of the Kingektorsoak stone, in Rafn’s _Antiq. Americanæ_;
Wilson’s _Prehist. Man_, ii. 88; Wollheim’s _Nat. Lit. der
Scandinavier_ (Berlin, 1875), vol. i. pp. 2-15; Legis-Glueckselig’s
_Die Runen and ihre Denkmäler_ (Leipzig, 1829); De Costa’s _Pre-Columb.
Disc._, pp. xxx; _Revue polit. et lit._, Jan. 10, 1880.
It is held that runes are an outgrowth of the Latin alphabet. (L. F. A.
Wimmer’s _Runeskriftens Oprindelse og Udvikling i norden_, Copenhagen,
1874.)]
Everywhere else where the Northmen went they left proofs of their
occupation on the soil, but nowhere in America, except on an island
on the east shore of Baffin’s Bay,[523] has any authentic runic
inscription been found outside of Greenland. Not a single indisputable
grave has been discovered to attest their alleged centuries of fitful
occupation. The consistent and natural proof of any occupation of
America south of Davis Straits is therefore lacking; and there is
not sufficient particularity in the descriptions[524] to remove the
suspicion that the story-telling of the fireside has overlaid the
reports of the explorer. Our historic sense is accordingly left to
consider, as respects the most general interpretation, what weight
of confidence should be yielded to the sagas, pre-Columbian as they
doubtless are. But beyond this is perhaps, what is after all the
most satisfactory way of solving the problem, a dependence on the
geographical and ethnical probabilities of the case. The Norsemen
have passed into credible history as the most hardy and venturesome
of races. That they colonized Iceland and Greenland is indisputable.
That their eager and daring nature should have deserted them at this
point is hardly conceivable. Skirting the Greenland shores and inuring
themselves to the hardships and excitements of northern voyaging,
there was not a long stretch of open sea before they could strike the
Labrador coast. It was a voyage for which their ships, with courageous
crews, were not unfitted. Nothing is more likely than that some ship
of theirs may have been blown westerly and unwillingly in the first
instance, just as Greenland was in like manner first made known to the
Icelanders. The coast once found, to follow it to the south would have
been their most consistent action.
[Illustration: FROM OLAUS MAGNUS.
Fac-simile of a cut to the chapter “De Alphabeto Gothorum” in the
_Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus_ (Romæ, M.D.LV.).]
We may consider, then, that the weight of probability[525] is in favor
of a Northman descent upon the coast of the American mainland at some
point, or at several, somewhere to the south of Greenland; but the
evidence is hardly that which attaches to well-established historical
records.
The archæological traces, which are lacking farther south, are
abundant in Greenland, and confirm in the most positive way the Norse
occupation. The ruins of churches and baptisteries give a color of
truth to the ecclesiastical annals which have come down to us, and
which indicate that after having been for more than a century under the
Bishop of Iceland, a succession of bishops of its own was established
there early in the twelfth century. The names of seventeen prelates
are given by Torfæus, though it is not quite certain that the bishops
invariably visited their see. The last known to have filled the office
went thither in the early years of the fifteenth century. The last
trace of him is in the celebration of a marriage at Gardar in 1409.
The Greenland colonists were equipped with all the necessities of a
permanent life. They had horses, sheep, and oxen, and beef is said to
have been a regular article of export to Norway. They had buildings
of stone, of which the remains still exist. They doubtless brought
timber from the south, and we have in runic records evidence of
their explorations far to the north. They maintained as late as the
thirteenth century a regular commercial intercourse with the mother
country,[526] but this trade fell into disuse when a royal mandate
constituted such ventures a monopoly of the throne; and probably
nothing so much conduced to the decadence and final extinction of
the colonies as this usurped and exclusive trade, which cut off all
personal or conjoined intercourse.
The direct cause of the final extinction of the Greenland colonies is
involved in obscurity, though a variety of causes, easily presumable,
would have been sufficient, when we take into consideration the
moribund condition into which they naturally fell after commercial
restriction had put a stop to free intercourse with the home government.
The Eskimos are said to have appeared in Greenland about the middle
of the fourteenth century, and to have manifested hostility to such a
degree that about 1342 the imperilled western colony was abandoned. The
eastern colony survived perhaps seventy years longer, or possibly to a
still later period. We know they had a new bishop in 1387, but before
the end of that century the voyages to their relief were conducted only
after long intervals.
Before communication was wholly cut off, the attacks of the Skrælings,
and possibly famine and the black death, had carried the struggling
colonists to the verge of destruction. Bergen, in Norway, upon which
they depended for succor, had at one time been almost depopulated by
the same virulent disease, and again had been ravaged by a Hanseatic
fleet. Thus such intercourse as the royal monopoly permitted had
become precarious, and the marauding of freebooters, then prevalent in
northern waters, still further served to impede the communications,
till at last they wholly ceased, during the early years of the
fifteenth century.
It has sometimes been maintained that the closing in of ice-packs was
the final stroke which extinguished the last hopes of the expiring
colonists.[527] This view, however, meets with little favor among the
more enlightened students of climatic changes, like Humboldt.[528]
There has been published what purports to be a bull of Pope Nicholas
V,[529] directing the Bishop of Iceland to learn what he could of the
condition of the Greenland colonies, and in this document it is stated
that part of the colonists had been destroyed by barbarians thirty
years before,—the bull bearing date in 1448. There is no record that
any expedition followed upon this urging, and there is some question
as to the authenticity of the document.[530] In the _Relation_ of La
Peyrère there is a story of some sailors visiting Greenland so late as
1484; but it is open to question.
* * * * *
Early in the sixteenth century fitful efforts to learn the fate of
the colonies began, and these were continued, without result, well
into the seventeenth century; but nothing explicable was ascertained
till, in 1721, Hans Egede, a Norwegian priest, prevailed upon the
Danish government to send him on a mission to the Eskimos. He went,
accompanied by wife and children; and the colony of Godthaab, and
the later history of the missions, and the revival of trade with
Europe, attest the constancy of his purpose and the fruits of his
earnestness. In a year he began to report upon certain remains which
indicated the former occupation of the country by people who built
such buildings as was the habit in Europe. He and his son Paul Egede,
and their successors in the missions, gathered for us, first among
modern searchers, the threads of the history of this former people;
and, as time went on, the researches of Graah, Nordenskjöld, and
other explorers, and the studious habits of Major, Rink, and the rest
among the investigators, have enabled us to read the old sagas of the
colonization of Greenland with renewed interest and with the light of
corroborating evidence.[531]
[Illustration:
DEI COMMENTARII DEL
Viaggio in Persia di M. Caterino Zeno il K. & delle guerre fatte nell’
Imperio Persiano, dal tempo di Vssuncassano in quà.
LIBRI DVE.
ET DELLO SCOPRIMENTO dell’ Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engrouelanda,
Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto sotto il Polo Artico, da due fratelli
zeni, M. Nicolòil, K. e M. Antonio.
LIBRO VNO.
CON VN DISEGNO PARTICOLARE DI tutte le dette parte di Tramontana da lor
scoperte.
CON GRATIA, ET PRIVILEGIO.
VERITAS.
IN VENETIA
Per Francesco Marcolini. M D LVIII. ]
* * * * *
We are told that it was one result of these Northman voyages that the
fame of them spread to other countries, and became known among the
Welsh, at a time when, upon the death of Owen Gwynedd, who ruled in
the northern parts of that country, the people were embroiled in civil
strife. That chieftain’s son, Prince Madoc, a man bred to the sea, was
discontented with the unstable state of society, and resolved to lead a
colony to these western lands, where they could live more in peace.
[Illustration:
DELLO SCOPRÍMENTO DEL l’Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engṙoueland
Estosilanda, & Icaria, fatto per due fratelli Zeni M. Nicolò il
Cavaliere, & M. Antonio Libro Vno, col disegno di dètte Isole.
Ne’mille, & dugento anni del la nostra salute se molto famoso in
Venetia M. Marin zeno chi mato per la sua gran virtù, et de strezza
d’inge gno podestà in alcune Republi. d’Italia, ne’governi dellequali
si portò Sempre cosi bène, che era amato, & grandemènte riverito il suo
nome da quelli anzo, che non l’havevano mai per presenza conosciuto;
etra l’altre sue belle opere particolarmente si narra.
NOTE.—The cuts above are facsimiles of the title and of the first
page of the section on Frisland, etc., from the Harvard College copy.
The book is rare. The Beckford copy brought £50; the Hamilton, £38;
the Tross catalogue (1882) price one at 150 francs; the Tweitmeyer,
Leipzig, 1888, at 250 marks; Quaritch (1885), at £25. Cf. Court
Catalogue, no. 378; Leclerc, no. 3002; Dufossé, no. 4965; Carter-Brown,
i. 226; Murphy, nos. 2798-99. The map is often in fac-simile, as in the
Harvard College copy.]
Accordingly, in A.D. 1170, going seaward on a preliminary exploration
by the south of Ireland, he steered west, and established a pioneer
colony in a fertile land. Leaving here 120 persons, he returned to
Wales, and fitted out a larger expedition of ten ships, with which he
again sailed, and passed out of view forever. The evidence in support
of this story is that it is mentioned in early annals, and that
sundry persons have discovered traces of the Welsh tongue among the
lighter-colored American Indians, to say nothing of manifold legends
among the Indians of an original people, white in color, coming from
afar towards the northeast,—proofs not sufficient to attract the
confidence of those who look for historical tests, though, as Humboldt
contends,[532] there may be no impossibility in the story.
* * * * *
There seems to be a general agreement that a crew of Arabs, somewhere
about the eleventh or twelfth century, explored the Atlantic westward,
with the adventurous purpose of finding its further limits, and that
they reached land, which may have been the Canaries, or possibly the
Azores, though the theory that they succeeded in reaching America is
not without advocates. The main source of the belief is the historical
treatise of the Arab geographer Edrisi, whose work was composed about
the middle of the twelfth century.[533]
[Illustration: SHIP OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
From the _Isolario_ (Venice, 1547).]
In the latter part of the fourteenth century,[534] as the story goes,
two brothers of Venice, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, being on a voyage
in the North Atlantic were wrecked there, and lived for some years
at Frislanda, and visited Engroneland. During this northern sojourn
they encountered a sailor, who, after twenty-six years of absence, had
returned, and reported that the ship in which he was had been driven
west in a gale to an island, where he found civilized people, who
possessed books in Latin and 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, and that here he had
encountered cannibals. Still farther south was a great country with
towns and temples. This information, picked up by these exiled Zeni,
was finally conveyed to another brother in Venice, accompanied by a map
of these distant regions. These documents long remained in the family
palace in Venice, and were finally neglected and became obscured, until
at last a descendant of the family compiled from them, as best he
could, a book, which was printed in Venice in 1558 as _Dei Commentarii
del Viaggio_, which was accompanied by a map drawn with difficulty from
the half obliterated original which had been sent from Frislanda.[535]
The original documents were never produced, and the publication took
place opportunely to satisfy current curiosity, continually incited
by the Spanish discoveries. It was also calculated to appeal to the
national pride of Italy, which had seen Spain gain the glory of her own
sons, Columbus and Vespucius, if it could be established that these
distant regions, of which the Zeni brothers so early reported tidings,
were really the great new world.[536] The cartography of the sixteenth
century shows that the narrative and its accompanying map made an
impression on the public mind, but from that day to this it has been
apparent that there can be no concurrence of opinion as to what island
the Frislanda of the Zeni was, if it existed at all except in some
disordered or audacious mind; and, as a matter of course, the distant
regions of Estotiland and Drogeo have been equally the subject of
belief and derision. No one can be said wholly to have taken the story
out of the category of the uncertain.
[Illustration: THE SEA OF DARKNESS. (From Olaus Magnus.)]
The presence of the Basques on the coasts of North America long
before the voyage of Columbus is often asserted,[537] and there is
no improbability in a daring race of seamen, in search of whales,
finding a way to the American waters. There are some indications
in the early cartography which can perhaps be easily explained
on this hypothesis;[538] there are said to be unusual linguistic
correspondences in the American tongues with those of this strange
people.[539] There are the reports of the earliest navigators, who have
left indisputable records that earlier visitors from Europe had been
before them, and Cabot may have found some reminders of such;[540] and
it is even asserted that it was a Basque mariner, who had been on the
Newfoundland banks, and gave to Columbus some premonitions of the New
World.[541]
Certain claims of the Dutch have also been advanced;[542] and one for
an early discovery of Newfoundland, in 1463-64, by John Vas Costa
Cortereal was set forth by Barrow in his _Chronological Hist. of
Voyages into the Arctic Regions_ (London, 1818); but he stands almost
alone in his belief.[543] Biddle in his _Cabot_ has shown its great
improbability.
In the years while Columbus was nourishing his purpose of a western
voyage, there were two adventurous navigators, as alleged, who were
breasting the dangers of the Sea of Darkness both to the north and
to the south. It cannot be said that either the Pole Skolno, in his
skirting the Labrador coasts in 1476,[544] or the Norman Cousin, who
is thought to have traversed a part of the South American coast in
1488-89,[545] have passed with their exploits into the accepted truths
of history; but there was nothing improbable in what was said of them,
and they flourish as counter-rumors always survive when attendant upon
some great revelation like that of Columbus.
CRITICAL NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
=A.= EARLY CONNECTION OF ASIATIC PEOPLES WITH THE WESTERN COAST OF
AMERICA.— The question of the origin of the Americans, whether an
autochthonous one or associated with the continents beyond either
ocean, is more properly discussed in another place of the present
volume. We can only indicate here in brief such of the phases of the
question as suppose an Asiatic connection, and the particular lines of
communication.
The ethnic unity of the American races, as urged by Morton and others,
hardly meets the requirements of the problem in the opinion of most
later students, like Sir Daniel Wilson, for instance; and yet, if A.
H. Keane represents, as he claims, the latest ethnological beliefs,
the connection with Asia, of the kind that forms ethnic traces, must
have been before the history of the present Asiatic races, since the
correspondence of customs, etc. is not sufficient for more recent
affiliation.[546] It should be remembered also, that if this is true,
and if there is the strong physical resemblance between Asiatics and
the indigenous tribes of the northwest coast which early travellers and
physiologists have dwelt on, we have in such a correspondence strong
evidence of the persistency of types.[547]
The Asiatic theory was long a favorite one. So popular a book as
Lafitau’s _Mœurs des Sauvages_ (Paris, 1724) advocated it. J. B.
Scherer’s _Recherches historiques et géographiques sur le nouveau
monde_ (Paris, 1777) was on the same side. One of the earliest in this
country, Benj. Smith Barton, to give expression to American scholarship
in this field held like opinions in his _New Views of the Origin of
the Tribes of America_ (Philad., 1797).[548] Twenty years later (1816)
one of the most active of the American men of letters advocated the
same views,—Samuel L. Mitchell in the _Archæologia Americana_ (i. 325,
338, 346). The weightiest authority of his time, Alex. von Humboldt,
formulated his belief in several of his books: _Vues des Cordillères;
Ansichten der Natur; Cosmos_.[549]
[Illustration: BEHRING SEA AND ADJACENT WATERS
NOTE.—Sketch map from the _U. S. Geodetic Survey_, 1880, App. xvi; also
in _Journal Amer. Geog. Soc._, xv. p. 114. Cf. Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_,
i. 35.]
Of the northern routes, that by Behring’s Straits is the most
apparent, and Lyell says that when half-way over Dover Straits, which
have not far from the same dimensions, he saw both the English and
French shores at the same time, he was easily convinced that the
passage by Behring’s Straits solved many of the difficulties of the
American problem.[550]
The problem as to the passage by the Aleutian Islands is converted into
the question whether primitive people could have successfully crossed
an interval from Asia of 130 miles to reach the island Miedna, 126
more to Behring’s Island, and then 235 to Attu, the westernmost of the
Aleutian Islands, or nearly 500 miles in all, and to have crossed in
such numbers as to affect the peopling of the new continent. There are
some, like Winchell, who see no difficulty in the case.[551] There are
no authenticated relics, it is believed, to prove the Tartar occupancy
of the northwest of America.[552] That there have been occasional
estrays upon the coasts of British Columbia, Oregon, and California, by
the drifting thither of Chinese and Japanese junks, is certainly to be
believed; but the argument against their crews peopling the country is
usually based upon the probable absence of women in them,—an argument
that certainly does not invalidate the belief in an infusion of Asiatic
blood in a previous race.[553]
The easterly passage which has elicited most interest is one alleged
to have been made by some Buddhist priests to a country called Fusang,
and in proof of it there is cited the narrative of one Hœi-Shin, who
is reported to have returned to China in A.D. 499. Beside much in the
story that is ridiculous and impossible, there are certain features
which have led some commentators to believe that the coast of Mexico
was intended, and that the Mexican maguey plant was the tree fusang,
after which the country is said to have been called. The story was
first brought to the attention of Europeans in 1761, when De Guignes
published his paper on the subject in the 28th volume (pp. 505-26) of
the Academy of Inscriptions.[554] It seems to have attracted little
attention till J. H. von Klaproth, in 1831, discredited the American
theory in his “Recherches sur le pays de Fousang,” published in the
_Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (2d ser., vol. xxi.), accompanied by a
chart. In 1834 there appeared at Paris a French translation, _Annales
des Empereurs du Japon_ (_Nipon o dai itsi rau_), to which (vol. iv.)
Klaproth appended an “Aperçu de l’histoire mythologique du Japon,” in
which he returned to the subject, and convinced Humboldt at least,[555]
that the country visited was Japan, and not Mexico, though he could but
see striking analogies, as he thought, in the Mexican myths and customs
to those of the Chinese.[556]
In 1841, Karl Friedrich Neumann, in the _Zeitschrift für allgemeine
Erdkunde_ (new series, vol. xvi.), published a paper on “Ost Asien und
West Amerika nach Chinesischen Quellen aus dem fünften, sechsten und
siebenten Jahrhundert,” in which he gave a version of the Hœi-shin
(Hœi-schin, Hui-shën) narrative, which Chas. G. Leland, considering
it a more perfect form of the original than that given by De Guignes,
translated into English in _The Knickerbocker Mag._ (1850), xxxvi. 301,
as “California and Mexico in the fifth century.”[557]
[Illustration: CARTE DES TERRES NOUVELLEMENT CONNUES AU NORD DE LA MER
DU SUD
NOTE.—The map of Buache, 1752, showing De Guignes’ route of the
Chinese emigration to Fusang. Reduced from the copy in the _Congrès
internationale des Américanistes, Compte Rendu, Nancy, 1875_.]
The next to discuss the question, and in an affirmative spirit,
was Charles Hippolyte de Paravey, in the _Annales de Philosophie
Chrétienne_ (Feb., 1844), whose paper was published separately as
_L’Amérique sous le nom de pays de Fou-Sang, est elle citée dès le
5^e siècle de notre ère, dans les grandes annales de la Chine_, etc.
_Discussion ou dissertation abrégée, où l’affirmative est prouvée_
(Paris, 1844); and in 1847 he published _Nouvelles preuves que le pays
du Fousang est l’Amérique_.[558]
The controversy as between De Guignes and Klaproth was shared, in 1862,
by Gustave d’Eichthal, taking the Frenchman’s side, in the _Revue
Archéologique_ (vol. ii.), and finally in his _Etudes sur les origines
Bouddhiques de la civilisation Américaine_ (Paris, 1865).[559]
In 1870, E. Bretschneider, in his “Fusang, or who discovered America?”
in the _Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal_ (Foochow, Oct.,
1870), contended that the whole story was the fabrication of a lying
priest.[560]
In 1875 there was new activity in discussing the question. Two French
writers of considerable repute in such studies attracted attention: the
one, Lucien Adam, in the Congrès des Américanistes at Nancy (_Compte
Rendu_, i. 145); and the other, Léon de Rosny, entered the discussions
at the same session (_Ibid._ i. p. 131).[561]
The most conspicuous study for the English reader was Charles Godfrey
Leland’s _Fusang, or The discovery of America by Chinese Buddhist
priests in the fifth century_ (London, 1875).[562]
The Marquis d’Hervey de Saint Denis published in the _Actes de la Soc.
d’Ethnographie_ (1869), vol. vi., and later in the _Comptes Rendus_
of the French Academy of Inscriptions, a _Mémoire sur le pays connu
des anciens Chinois sous le nom de Fousang, et sur quelques documents
inédits pour servir à l’identifier_, which was afterwards published
separately in Paris, 1876, in which he assented to the American
theory. The student of the subject need hardly go, however, beyond E.
P. Vining’s _An inglorious Columbus: or, Evidence that Hwui Shăn and
a party of Buddhist monks from Afghanistan discovered America in the
fifth century_ A.D. (New York, 1885), since the compiler has made it a
repository of all the essential contributions to the question from De
Guignes down. He gives the geographical reasons for believing Fusang to
be Mexico (ch. 20), comparing the original description of Fusang with
the early accounts of aboriginal Mexico, and rehearsing the traditions,
as is claimed, of the Buddhists still found by the Spaniards pervading
the memories of the natives, and at last (ch. 37) summarizing all the
grounds of his belief.[563]
* * * * *
The consideration of the Polynesian route as a possible avenue
for peopling America involves the relations of the Malays to the
inhabitants of the Oceanic Islands and the capacity of early man to
traverse long distances by water.[564]
E. B. Tylor has pointed out the Asiatic relations of the Polynesians
in the _Journal of the Anthropological Inst._, xi. 401. Pickering,
in the ethnological chart accompanying the reports of the Wilkes
Expedition, makes the original people of Chili and Peru to be Malay,
and he connects the Californians with the Polynesians.[565]
The earliest elaboration of this theory was in John Dunmore Lang’s
_View of the origin and migrations of the Polynesian nations,
demonstrating their ancient discovery and progressive settlement of the
continent of America_ (London, 1834; 2d ed., Sydney, 1877). /Francis
A. Allen has advanced similar views at the meetings of the Congrès des
Américanistes at Luxembourg and at Copenhagen.[566]
The Mongol theory of the occupation of Peru, which John Ranking so
enthusiastically pressed in his _Historical researches on the conquest
of Peru, Mexico, Bogota, Natchez, and Talomeco, in the thirteenth
century, by the Mongols, accompanied with elephants; and the local
agreement of history and tradition, with the remains of elephants and
mastodontes found in the new world_ [etc.] (London, 1827), implies
that in the thirteenth century the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan sent a
fleet against Japan, which, being scattered in a storm, finally in part
reached the coasts of Peru, where the son of Kublai Khan became the
first Inca.[567] The book hardly takes rank as a sensible contribution
to ethnology, and Prescott says of it that it embodies “many curious
details of Oriental history and manners in support of a whimsical
theory.”[568]
=B.= IRELAND THE GREAT, OR WHITE MAN’S LAND.—The claims of the Irish
to have preceded the Norse in Iceland, and to have discovered America,
rest on an Icelandic saga, which represents that in the tenth century
Are Marson, driven off his course by a gale, found a land which became
known as Huitramannaland, or white man’s land, or otherwise as Irland
it Mikla.[569] This region was supposed by the colonists of Vinland
to lie farther south, which Rafn[570] interprets as being along the
Carolina coast,[571] and others have put it elsewhere, as Beauvois in
Canada above the Great Lakes; and still others see no more in it than
the pressing of some storm-driven vessel to the Azores[572] or some
other Atlantic island. The story is also coupled, from another source,
with the romance of Bjarni Asbrandson, who sailed away from Iceland
and from a woman he loved, because the husband and relatives of the
woman made it desirable that he should. Thirty years later, the crew of
another ship, wrecked on a distant coast,[573] found that the people
who took them prisoners spoke Irish,[574] and that their chieftain
was this same renegade, who let them go apparently for the purpose of
conveying some token by which he would be remembered to the Thurid
of his dreams. Of course all theorists who have to deal with these
supposed early discoveries by Europeans connect, each with his own pet
scheme, the prevailing legendary belief among the American Indians that
white men at an early period made their appearance on the coasts all
the way from Central America to Labrador.[575] Whether these strange
comers be St. Patrick,[576] St. Brandan even, or some other Hibernian
hero, with his followers, is easily to be adduced, if the disposing
mind is inclined.
There have been of late years two considerable attempts to establish
the historical verity of some of these alleged Irish visits.[577]
=C.= THE NORSE IN ICELAND.—The chief original source for the Norse
settlement of Iceland is the famous _Landnamabók_,[578] which is a
record by various writers, at different times, of the partitioning and
ownership of lands during the earliest years of occupation.[579] This
and other contemporary manuscripts, including the _Heimskringla_ of
Snorre Sturleson and the great body of Icelandic sagas, either at first
hand or as filtered through the leading writers on Icelandic history,
constitute the material out of which is made up the history of Iceland,
in the days when it was sending its adventurous spirits to Greenland
and probably to the American main.[580]
Respecting the body of the sagas, Laing (_Heimskringla_, i. 23) says:
“It does not appear that any saga manuscript now existing has been
written before the fourteenth century, however old the saga itself may
be. It is known that in the twelfth century, Are Frode, Sæmund and
others began to take the sagas out of the traditionary state and fix
them in writing; but none of the original skins appear to have come
down to our time, but only some of the numerous copies of them.” Laing
(p. 24) also instances numerous sagas known to have existed, but they
are not now recognized;[581] and he gives us (p. 30) the substance of
what is known respecting the writers and transcribers of this early
saga literature. It is held that by the beginning of the thirteenth
century the sagas of the discoveries and settlements had all been put
in writing, and thus the history, as it exists, of mediæval Iceland is,
as Burton says (_Ultima Thule_, i. 237), more complete than that of any
European country.[582]
Among the secondary writers, using either at first or second hand the
early MS. sources, the following may be mentioned:—
One of the earliest brought to the attention of the English public
was _A Compendious Hist. of the Goths, Swedes and Vandals, and other
northern powers_ (London, 1650 and 1658), translated in an abridged
form from the Latin of Olaus Magnus, which had been for more than a
hundred years the leading comprehensive authority on the northern
nations. The _Svearikes Historia_ (Stockholm, 1746-62) of Olof von
Dalin and the similar work of Sven Lagerbring (1769-1788), covering
the early history of the north, are of interest for the comparative
study of the north, rather than as elucidating the history of Iceland
in particular.[583] More direct aid will be got from Mallet’s _Northern
Antiquities_ (London edition, 1847) and from Wheaton’s _Northmen_. More
special is the _Histoire de l’Island_ of Xavier Marmier; and the German
historian F. C. Dahlman also touches Iceland with particular attention
in his _Geschichte von Dänemark bis zur Reformation, mit Inbegriff von
Norwegen und Island_ (Hamburg, 1840-43).
A history of more importance than any other yet published, and of the
widest scope, was that of Sweden by E. J. Geijer (continued by F. F.
Carlson), which for the early period (down to 1654) is accessible in
English in a translation by J. H. Turner (London, 1845).[584]
Prominent among the later school of northern historians, all touching
the Icelandic annals more or less, have been Peter Andreas Munch in his
_Det Norske Folks Historie_ (Christiania, 1852-63);[585] N. M. Petersen
in his _Danmarks Historie i Hedenold_ (Copenhagen, 1854-55); K. Keyser
in his _Norges Historie_ (Christiania, 1866-67); J. E. Sars in his
_Udsigt over den Norske Historie_ (Christiania, 1873-77); but all are
surpassed by Konrad Maurer’s _Island von seiner ersten Entdeckung
bis zum Untergange des Freistaates_,—A.D. 800-1262 (Munich, 1874),
published as commemorating the thousandth anniversary of the settlement
of Iceland, and it has the repute of being the best book on early
Icelandic history.[586]
The change from Paganism to Christianity necessarily enters into all
the histories covering the tenth and eleventh centuries; but it has
special treatment in C. Merivale’s _Conversion of the Northern Nations_
(Boyle lectures,—London, 1866).[587]
There is a considerable body of the later literature upon Iceland,
retrospective in character, and affording the results of study more or
less patient as to the life in the early Norse days in Iceland.[588]
G.W. Dasent’s introduction to his _Story of Burnt Njal_ (Edinburgh,
1861)[589] and his _Norsemen in Iceland_ (Oxford Essays, 1858) give
what Max Müller (_Chips from a German Workshop_, ii. 191) calls “a
vigorous and lively sketch of primitive northern life;” and are well
supplemented by Sabine Baring-Gould’s _Iceland, its scenes and sagas_
(London, 1863 and later), and Richard F. Burton’s _Ultima Thule, with
an historical introduction_ (London, 1875).[590]
=D.= GREENLAND AND ITS RUINS.—The sagas still serve us for the
colonization of Greenland, and of particular use is that of Eric the
Red.[591] The earliest to use these sources in the historic spirit
was Torfæus in his _Historia Gronlandiæ Antiquæ_ (1715).[592] The
natural successor of Torfæus and the book upon which later writers
mostly depend is David Crantz’s _Historie von Grönland, enthaltend die
Beschreibung des Landes und der Einwohner, insbesonders die Geschichten
der dortigen Mission. Nebst Fortsetzung_ (Barby, 1765-70, 3 vols.). An
English translation appeared in London in 1767, and again, though in an
abridged form with some changes, in 1820.[593]
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE CHURCH AT KATORTOK.
After a cut in Nordenskjöld’s _Den Andra Dicksonska Expeditionen till
Grönland_, p. 369, following one in _Efter Meddelelser om Grönland_.]
Crantz says of his own historic aims, referring to Torfæus and to the
accounts given by the Eskimos of the east coast, that he has tried
to investigate “where the savage inhabitants came from, and how the
ancient Norwegian inhabitants came to be so totally extirpated,” while
at the same time he looks upon the history of the Moravian missions as
his chiefest theme.
* * * * *
The principal source for the identification of the ruins of Greenland
is the work compiled by Rafn and Finn Magnusen, _Grönlands Historiske
Mindesmærker_,[594] with original texts and Danish versions. Useful
summaries and observations will be found in the paper by K. Steenstrup
on “Old Scandinavian ruins in South Greenland” in the _Compte Rendu,
Congrès des Américanistes_ (Copenhagen, 1883, p. 108), and in one
on “Les Voyages des Danois au Greenland” in the same (p. 196).
Steenstrup’s paper is accompanied by photographs and cuts, and a map
marking the site of the ruins. The latest account of them is by Lieut.
Holm in the _Meddelelser om Grönland_ (Copenhagen, 1883), vol. vi.
Other views and plans showing the arrangement of their dwellings and
the curious circular ruins,[595] which seems to have usually been
near their churches, are shown in the Baron Nordenskjöld’s _Den andra
dicksonska expeditionen till Grönland, dess inre isöken och dess
ostkust, utförd år 1883_ (Stockholm, 1885), the result of the ripest
study and closest contact.
We need also to scan the narratives of Hans Egede and Graah. Parry
found in 1824, on an island on the Baltic coast, a runic stone,
commemorating the occupancy of the spot in 1135 (_Antiquitates
Americanæ_; Mallet’s _Northern Antiquities_, 248); and in 1830 and 1831
other runes were found on old gravestones (Rink’s _Danish Greenland_,
app. v.; Laing’s _Heimskringla_, i. 151). These last are in the Museum
at Copenhagen. Most of these imperishable relics have been found in the
district of Julianeshaab.[596]
=E.= THE VINLAND VOYAGES.—What Leif and Karlsefne knew they
experienced, and what the sagas tell us they underwent, must have just
the difference between a crisp narrative of personal adventure and the
oft-repeated and embellished story of a fireside narrator, since the
traditions of the Norse voyages were not put in the shape of records
till about two centuries had elapsed, and we have no earlier manuscript
of such a record than one made nearly two hundred years later still. It
is indeed claimed that the transmission by tradition in those days was
a different matter in respect to constancy and exactness from what it
has been known to be in later times; but the assumption lacks proof and
militates against well-known and inevitable processes of the human mind.
[Illustration: SAGA MANUSCRIPT.
This is a portion of one of the plates in the _Antiquitates Americanæ_,
given by Rafn to Charles Sumner, with a key in manuscript by Rafn
himself. His signature is from a copy of his _Mémoire_ given by him to
Edward Everett, and now in Harvard College library.]
In regard to the credibility of the sagas, the northern writers
recognize the change which came over the oral traditionary chronicles
when the romancing spirit was introduced from the more southern
countries, at a time while the copies of the sagas which we now have
were making, after having been for so long a time orally handed
down; but they are not so successful in making plain what influence
this imported spirit had on particular sagas, which we are asked to
receive as historical records. They seem sometimes to forget that it
is not necessary to have culture, heroes, and impossible occurrences
to constitute a myth. A blending of history and myth prompts Horn
to say “that some of the sagas were doubtless originally based on
facts, but the telling and re-telling have changed them into pure
myths.” The unsympathetic stranger sees this in stories that the
patriotic Scandinavians are over-anxious to make appear as genuine
chronicles.[597] It is certainly unfortunate that the period of
recording the older sagas coincides mainly with the age of this
southern romancing influence.[598] It is a somewhat anomalous condition
when long-transmitted oral stories are assigned to history, and certain
other written ones of the age of the recorded sagas are relegated to
myth. If we would believe some of the northern writers, what appears
to be difference in kind of embellishment was in reality the sign that
separated history from fable.[599] Of the interpreters of this olden
lore, Torfæus has been long looked upon as a characteristic exemplar,
and Horn[600] says of his works that they are “perceptibly lacking
in criticism. Torfæus was upon the whole incapable of distinguishing
between myth and history.”[601]
[Illustration: RUIN AT KATORTOK.
After a cut in Nordenskjöld’s _Exped. till Grönland_, p. 371, following
the _Meddel. om Grönland_, vi. 98.]
Erasmus Rask, in writing to Wheaton in
1831,[602] enumerates eight of the early manuscripts which mention
Vinland and the voyages; but Rafn, in 1837, counted eighteen such
manuscripts.[603] We know little or nothing about the recorders or date
of any of these copies, excepting the _Heimskringla_,[604] nor how long
they had existed orally. Some of them were doubtless put into writing
soon after the time when such recording was introduced, and this date
is sometimes put as early as A.D. 1120, and sometimes as late as the
middle or even end of that century. Meanwhile, Adam of Bremen, in the
latter part of the eleventh century (A.D. 1073), prepared his _Historia
Ecclesiastica_, an account of the spread of Christianity in the north,
in which he says he was told by the Danish king that his subjects
had found a country to the west, called Winland.[605] A reference is
also supposed to be made in the _Historia Ecclesiastica_ of Ordericus
Vitalis, written about the middle (say A.D. 1140) of the twelfth
century. But it was not until somewhere between A.D. 1385 and 1400 that
the oldest Icelandic manuscript which exists, touching the voyages,
was compiled,—the so-called _Codex Flatoyensis_,[606] though how much
earlier copies of it were made is not known. It is in this manuscript
that we find the saga of Olaf Tryggvesson,[607] wherein the voyages
of Leif Ericson are described, and it is only by a comparison of
circumstances detailed here and in other sagas that the year A.D. 1000
has been approximately determined as the date.[608] In this same codex
we find the saga of Eric the Red, one of the chief narratives depended
upon by the advocates of the Norse discovery, and in Rask’s judgment
it “appears to be somewhat fabulous, written long after the event, and
taken from tradition.”[609]
[Illustration:
_Environs of_ Julianehaab THE ÖSTER BYGD _or_ Eastern Settlement
Reference: _Norse ruins or traces of them_
NOTE.—The above is a reproduction of a corner map in the map of _Danish
Greenland_ given in Rink’s book of that name. The sea in the southwest
corner of the cut is not shaded; but shading is given to the interior
ice field on the northern and northeastern part of the map. Rink gives
a similar map of the Westerbygd.]
The other principal saga is that of Thorfinn Karlsefne, which with
some differences and with the same lack of authenticity, goes over the
ground covered by that of Eric the Red.[610]
[Illustration: RAFN.]
Of all the early manuscripts, the well-known _Heimskringla_ of Snorro
Sturleson (b. 1178; d. 1241), purporting to be a history of the Norse
kings down to A.D. 1177, is the most entitled to be received as an
historical record, and all that it says is in these words: “Leif also
found Vinland the Good.”[611]
Saxo Grammaticus (d. about 1208) in his _Historia Danica_ begins with
myths, and evidently follows the sagas, but does not refer to them
except in his preface.[612]
[Illustration:
HISTORIA VINLANDIÆ ANTIQVÆ. seu Partis Americæ Septentrionalis, ubi
Nominis ratio recensetur, situs terræ ex dierumbrumalium spatio
expenditur, soli fertilitas & incolarum barbaries, peregrinorum
temporarius incolatus & gesta, vicinarum terrarum nomina & facies ex
Antiqvitibus Islandicis in lucem producta exponuntur per THORMODUM
TORFÆUM Rerum Norvegicarum Historiographum Regium.
HAVNIÆ, Ex Typographéo Regiæ Majest, & Universit, 1705. Impensis
Authoris. ]
For about five hundred years after this the stories attracted little or
no attention.[613] We have seen that Peringskiöld produced these sagas
in 1697. Montanus in his _Nieuwe en onbekende Weereld_ (Amsterdam,
1671), and Campanius, in 1702, in his _Kort Beskrifning om Provincien
Nya Swerige uti America_ (Stockholm),[614] gave some details. The
account which did most, however, to revive an interest in the subject
was that of Torfæus in his _Historia Vinlandiæ Antiquæ_ (Copenhagen,
1705), but he was quite content to place the scene of his narrative
in America, without attempting to identify localities.[615] The
voyages were, a few years later, the subject of a dissertation at
the University of Upsala in Sweden.[616] J. P. Cassell, of Bremen,
discusses the Adam of Bremen story in another Latin essay, still
later.[617]
About 1750, Pieter Kalm, a Swede, brought the matter to the attention
of Dr. Franklin, as the latter remembered twenty-five years later, when
he wrote to Samuel Mather that “the circumstances gave the account a
great appearance of authenticity.”[618] In 1755, Paul Henri Mallet
(1730-1807), in his _Histoire de Dannemarc_, determines the localities
to be Labrador and Newfoundland.[619]
In 1769, Gerhard Schöning, in his _Norges Riges Historie_, established
the scene in America. Robertson, in 1777, briefly mentions the
voyages in his _Hist. of America_ (note xvii.), and, referring to
the accounts given by Peringskiöld, calls them rude and confused,
and says that it is impossible to identify the landfalls, though he
thinks Newfoundland may have been the scene of Vinland. This is also
the belief of J. R. Forster in his _Geschichte der Entdeckungen im
Norden_ (Frankfurt, 1784).[620] M. C. Sprengel, in his _Geschichte
der Europäer in Nordamerika_ (Leipzig, 1782), thinks they went as
far south as Carolina. Pontoppidan’s _History of Norway_ was mainly
followed by Dr. Jeremy Belknap in his _American Biography_ (Boston,
1794), who recognizes “circumstances to confirm and none to disprove
the relations.” In 1793, Muñoz, in his _Historia del Nuevo Mundo_, put
Vinland in Greenland. In 1796 there was a brief account in Fritsch’s
_Disputatio historico-geographica in qua quæritur utrum veteres
Americam noverint necne_. H. Stenström published at Lund, in 1801, a
short dissertation, _De America Norvegis ante tempora Columbi adita_.
Boucher de la Richarderie, in his _Bibliothèque Universelle des
Voyages_ (Paris, 1808), gives a short account, and cites some of the
authorities. Some of the earlier American histories of this century,
like Williamson’s _North Carolina_, took advantage of the recitals
of Torfæus and Mallet. Ebenezer Henderson’s _Residence in Iceland_
(1814-15)[621] presented the evidence anew. Barrow, in his _Voyages
to the Arctic Regions_ (London, 1818), places Vinland in Labrador or
Newfoundland; but J. W. Moulton, in his _History of the State of New
York_ (N. Y., 1824), brings that State within the region supposed to
have been visited.