mind came in Washington Irving, who in his _Columbus_ (London, 1828)
dismissed the accounts as untrustworthy; though later, under the
influence of Wheaton and Rafn, he was inclined to consider them of
possible importance; and finally in his condensed edition he thinks
the facts “established to the conviction of most minds.”[622] Hugh
Murray, in his _Discoveries and Travels in North America_ (London,
1829), regards the sagas as an authority; but he doubts the assigning
of Vinland to America. In 1830, W. D. Cooley, in his _History of
Maritime and Inland Discovery_,[623] thought it impossible to shake the
authenticity of the sagas.
While Henry Wheaton was the minister of the United States at
Copenhagen, and having access to the collections of that city, he
prepared his _History of the Northmen_, which was published in London
and Philadelphia in 1831.[624] The high character of the man gave
unusual force to his opinions, and his epitome of the sagas in his
second chapter contributed much to increase the interest in the
Northmen story. He was the first who much impressed the New England
antiquaries with the view that Vinland should be looked for in New
England; and a French version by Paul Guillot, issued in Paris in 1844,
is stated to have been “revue et augmentée par l’auteur, avec cartes,
inscriptions, et alphabet runique.”[625] The opinions of Wheaton,
however, had no effect upon the leading historian of the United States,
nor have any subsequent developments caused any change in the opinion
of Bancroft, first advanced in 1834, in the opening volume of his
_United States_, where he dismissed the sagas as “mythological in
form and obscure in meaning; ancient yet not contemporary.” He adds
that “the intrepid mariners who colonized Greenland could easily have
extended their voyage to Labrador; but no clear historical evidence
establishes the natural probability that they accomplished the
passage.”[626] All this is omitted by Bancroft in his last revised
edition; but a paragraph in his original third volume (1840), to the
intent that, though “Scandinavians may have reached the shores of
Labrador, the soil of the United States has not one vestige of their
presence,” is allowed to remain,[627] and is true now as when first
written.
The chief apostle of the Norseman belief, however, is Carl Christian
Rafn, whose work was accomplished under the auspices of the Royal
Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen.[628]
Rafn was born in 1795, and died at Copenhagen in 1864.[629] At the
University, as well as later as an officer of its library, he had bent
his attention to the early Norse manuscripts and literature,[630]
so that in 1825 he was the natural founder of the Royal Society of
Northern Antiquaries; and much of the value of its long series of
publications is due to his active and unflagging interest.[631] The
summit of his American interest, however, was reached in the great
folio _Antiquitates Americanæ_,[632] in which he for the first time
put the mass of original Norse documents before the student, and with
a larger accumulation of proofs than had ever been adduced before, he
commented on the narratives and came to conclusions respecting traces
of their occupancy to which few will adhere to-day.
The effect of Rafn’s volume, however, was marked, and we see it in the
numerous presentations of the subject which followed; and every writer
since has been greatly indebted to him.
Alexander von Humboldt in his _Examen Critique_ (Paris, 1837) gave a
synopsis of the sagas, and believed the scene of the discoveries to
be between Newfoundland and New York; and in his _Cosmos_ (1844) he
reiterated his views, holding to “the undoubted first discovery by the
Northmen as far south as 41° 30’.”[633]
[Illustration: NORSE AMERICA.
Opposite is a section of Rafn’s map in the _Antiquitates Americanæ_,
giving his identification of the Norse localities. This and the other
map by Rafn is reproduced in his _Cabinet d’Antiquités Américaines_
(Copenhagen, 1858). The map in the atlas of St. Martin’s _Hist. de la
Géographie_ does not track them below Newfoundland. The map in J. T.
Smith’s _Northmen in New England_ (Boston, 1839) shows eleven voyages
to America from Scandinavia, A.D. 861-1285. Cf. map in Wilhelmi’s
_Island_, etc. (Heidelberg, 1842).]
Two books which for a while were the popular treatises on the subject
were the immediate outcome of Rafn’s book. The first of these was _The
Northmen in New England_, giving the stories in the form of a dialogue,
by Joshua Toulmin Smith (Boston, 1839), which in a second edition
(London, 1842) was called _The Discovery of America by the Northmen in
the Tenth Century_.
The other book was largely an English version of parts of Rafn’s book,
translating the chief sagas, and reproducing the maps: Nathaniel Ludlow
Beamish’s _Discovery of America by the Northmen in the Tenth Century_
(London, 1841).[634] Two German books owed almost as much to Rafn,
those of K. Wilhelmi[635] and K. H. Hermes.[636] Prescott, at this time
publishing the third volume of his _Mexico_ (1843), accords to Rafn
the credit of taking the matter out of the category of doubt, but he
hesitates to accept the Dane’s identifications of localities; but R. H.
Major, in considering the question in the introduction to his _Select
letters of Columbus_ (1847), finds little hesitation in accepting the
views of Rafn, and thinks “no room is left for disputing the main fact
of discovery.”
When Hildreth, in 1849, published his _United States_, he ranged
himself, with his distrusts, by the side of Bancroft but J. Elliot
Cabot, in making a capital summary of the evidence in the _Mass.
Quarterly Review_ (vol. ii.), accords with the believers, but places
the locality visited about Labrador and Newfoundland. Haven in his
_Archæology of the United States_ (Washington, 1856) regards the
discovery as well attested, and that the region was most likely that
of Narragansett Bay. C. W. Elliott in his _New England History_ (N.
Y., 1857) holds the story to be “in some degree mythical.” Palfrey
in his _Hist. of New England_ (Boston, 1858) goes no farther than to
consider the Norse voyage as in “nowise unlikely,” and Oscar F. Peschel
in his _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_ (Stuttgart, 1858)
is on the affirmative side. Paul K. Sinding goes over the story with
assent in his _History of Scandinavia_,—a book not much changed in his
_Scandinavian Races_ (N. Y., 1878).[637] Eugène Beauvois did little
more than translate from Rafn in his _Découvertes des Scandinaves en
Amérique,—fragments de Sagas Islandaises traduits pour la première fois
en français_ (Paris, 1859)—an extract from the _Revue Orientale et
Américaine_ (vol. ii.).[638]
Professor Daniel Wilson, of Toronto, has discussed the subject at
different times, and with these conclusions: “With all reasonable
doubts as to the accuracy of details, there is the strongest
probability in favor of the authenticity of the American Vinland....
The data are the mere vague allusions of a traveller’s tale, and it is
indeed the most unsatisfactory feature of the sagas that the later the
voyages the more confused and inconsistent their narratives become in
every point of detail.”[639]
Dr. B. F. De Costa’s first book on the subject was his _Pre-Columbian
Discovery of America by the Northmen, illustrated by Translations from
the Icelandic Sagas, edited with notes and a general introduction_
(Albany, 1868). It is a convenient gathering of the essential parts
of the sagas; but the introduction rather opposes than disproves
some of the “feeble paragraphs, pointed with a sneer,” which he
charges upon leading opponents of the faith. Professor J. L. Diman,
in the _North American Review_ (July, 1869), made De Costa’s book
the occasion of an essay setting forth the grounds of a disbelief
in the historical value of the sagas. De Costa replied in _Notes on
a Review_, etc. (Charlestown, 1869). In the same year, Dr. Kohl,
following the identifications of Rafn, rehearsed the narratives in his
_Discovery of Maine_ (Portland, 1869), and tracked Karlsefne through
the gulf of Maine. De Costa took issue with him on this latter point
in his Northmen in Maine (Albany, 1870).[640] In the introduction
to his _Sailing Directions of Henry Hudson_, De Costa argues that
these mariners’ guides are the same used by the Northmen, and in his
_Columbus and the Geographers of the North_ (Hartford, 1872,—cf. _Amer.
Church Review_, xxiv. 418) he recapitulates the sagas once more with
reference to the knowledge which he supposes Columbus to have had of
them. Paul Gaffarel, in his _Etudes sur les rapports de l’Amérique
et de l’ancien Continent avant Colomb_ (Paris, 1869), entered more
particularly into the evidence of the commerce of Vinland and its
relations to Europe.
Gabriel Gravier, another French author, was rather too credulous in
his _Découverte de l’Amérique par les normands au X^e Siècle_ (Paris,
1874), when he assumed with as much confidence as Rafn ever did
everything that the most ardent advocate had sought to prove.[641]
There were two American writers soon to follow, hardly less
intemperate. These were Aaron Goodrich, in _A History of the Character
and Achievements of the so-called Christopher Columbus_ (N. Y., 1874),
who took the full complement of Rafn’s belief with no hesitancy;
and Rasmus B. Anderson in his _America not discovered by Columbus_
(Chicago, 1874; improved, 1877; again with Watson’s bibliography,
1883),[642] in which even the Skeleton in Armor is made to play a part.
Excluding such vagaries, the book is not without use as displaying the
excessive views entertained in some quarters on the subject. The author
is, we believe, a Scandinavian, and shows the tendency of his race to a
facility rather than felicity in accepting evidence on this subject.
The narratives were first detailed among our leading general histories
when the _Popular History of the United States_ of Bryant and Gay
appeared in 1876. The claims were presented decidedly, and in the main
in the directions indicated by Rafn; but the wildest pretensions of
that antiquary were considerately dismissed.
During the last score years the subject has been often made prominent
by travellers like Kneeland[643] and Hayes,[644] who have recapitulated
the evidence; by lecturers like Charles Kingsley;[645] by monographists
like Moosmüller;[646] by the minor historians like Higginson,[647] who
has none of the fervor of the inspired identifiers of localities, and
Weise,[648] who is inclined to believe the sea-rovers did not even pass
Davis’s Straits; and by contributors to the successive sessions of the
Congrès des Américanistes[649] and to other learned societies.[650]
The question was brought to a practical issue in Massachusetts by a
proposition raised—at first in Wisconsin—by the well-known musician Ole
Bull, to erect in Boston a statue to Leif Ericson.[651] The project,
though ultimately carried out, was long delayed, and was discouraged
by members of the Massachusetts Historical Society on the ground that
no satisfactory evidence existed to show that any spot in New England
had been reached by the Northmen.[652] The sense of the society was
finally expressed in the report of their committee, Henry W. Haynes
and Abner C. Goodell, Jr., in language which seems to be the result of
the best historical criticism; for it is not a question of the fact of
discovery, but to decide how far we can place reliance on the details
of the sagas. There is likely to remain a difference of opinion on
this point. The committee say: “There is the same sort of reason for
believing in the existence of Leif Ericson that there is for believing
in the existence of Agamemnon,—they are both traditions accepted by
later writers; but there is no more reason for regarding as true the
details related about his discoveries than there is for accepting as
historic truth the narratives contained in the Homeric poems. It is
antecedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the
early part of the eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed
by the same sort of historical tradition, not strong enough to be
called evidence, upon which our belief in many of the accepted facts of
history rests.”[653]
In running down the history of the literature of the subject, the
present aim has been simply to pick out such contributions as have
been in some way significant, and reference must be made to the
bibliographies for a more perfect record.[654]
Irrespective of the natural probability of the Northmen visits to
the American main, other evidence has been often adduced to support
the sagas. This proof has been linguistic, ethnological, physical,
geographical, and monumental.
Nothing could be slenderer than the alleged correspondences of
languages, and we can see in Horsford’s _Discovery of America by
Northmen_ to what a fanciful extent a confident enthusiasm can carry
it.[655]
The ethnological traces are only less shadowy. Hugo Grotius[656]
contended that the people of Central America were of Scandinavian
descent. Brasseur found remnants of Norse civilization in the same
region.[657] Viollet le Duc[658] discovers great resemblances in the
northern religious ceremonials to those described in the _Popul Vuh_. A
general resemblance did not escape the notice of Humboldt. Gravier[659]
is certain that the Aztec civilization is Norse.[660] Chas. Godfrey
Leland claims that the old Norse spirit pervades the myths and legends
of the Algonkins, and that it is impossible not to admit that there
must have been at one time “extensive intercourse between the Northmen
and the Algonkins;” and in proof he points out resemblances between
the Eddas and the Algonkin mythology.[661] It is even stated that the
Micmacs have a tradition of a people called Chenooks, who in ships
visited their coast in the tenth century.
The physical and geographical evidences are held to exist in the
correspondences of the coast line to the descriptions of the sagas,
including the phenomena of the tides[662] and the length of the summer
day.[663] Laing and others, who make no question of the main fact,
readily recognize the too great generality and contradictions of the
descriptions to be relied upon.[664]
George Bancroft, in showing his distrust, has said that the advocates
of identification can no farther agree than to place Vinland anywhere
from Greenland to Africa.[665]
[Illustration:
A MAP OF VINLAND from accounts contained in Old Northern M.S.S. by
CHARLES C. RAFN
NOTE.—The above map is a fac-simile of one of C. C. Rafn’s maps. Cf.
the maps in Smith, Beamish, Gravier, Slafter, Preble’s _Amer. Flag_,
etc. ]
The earliest to go so far as to establish to a certainty[666]
the sites of the sagas was Rafn, who placed them on the coast of
Massachusetts and Rhode Island, wherein nearly all those have followed
him who have thought it worth while to be thus particular as to
headland and bay.
[Illustration: DIGHTON ROCK.[667]]
In applying the saga names they have, however, by no means agreed,
for Krossanes is with some Point Alderton, at the entrance of Boston
Harbor, and with others the Gurnet Head; the island where honey dew
was found is Nantucket with Rafn, and with De Costa an insular region,
Nauset, now under water near the elbow of Cape Cod;[668] the Vinland
of Rafn is in Narragansett Bay, that of Dr. A. C. Hamlin is at Merry
Meeting Bay on the coast of Maine,[669] and that of Horsford is
north of Cape Cod,[670]—not to mention other disagreements of other
disputants.
We get something more tangible, if not more decisive, when we come
to the monumental evidences. DeWitt Clinton and Samuel L. Mitchell
found little difficulty at one time in making many people believe
that the earthworks of Onondaga were Scandinavian. A pretended runic
inscription on a stone said to have been found in the Grave Creek mound
was sedulously ascribed to the Northmen.[671] What some have called a
runic inscription exists on a rock near Yarmouth in Nova Scotia, which
is interpreted “Hako’s son addressed the men,” and is supposed to
commemorate the expedition of Thorfinn in A.D. 1007.[672] A rock on the
little islet of Menana, close to Monhegan, on the coast of Maine, and
usually referred to as the Monhegan Rock, bears certain weather marks,
and there have been those to call them runes.[673] A similar claim is
made for a rock in the Merrimac Valley.[674] Rafn describes such rocks
as situated in Tiverton and Portsmouth Grove, R. I., but the markings
were Indian, and when Dr. S. A. Green visited the region in 1868 some
of them had disappeared.[675]
[Illustration: INSCRIPTION ON DIGHTON ROCK.
NOTE.—The opposite plate is reduced from one in the _Antiq.
Americanæ_. They show the difficulty, even before later weathering, of
different persons in discerning the same things on the rock, and in
discriminating between fissures and incisions. Col. Garrick Mallery
(_4th Rept. Bureau of Ethnology_, p. 250) asserts that the inscription
has been “so manipulated that it is difficult now to determine the
original details.” The drawings represented are enumerated in the text.
Later ones are numerous. Rafn also gives that of Dr. Baylies and Mr.
Gooding in 1790, and that made for the Rhode Island Hist. Society in
1830. The last has perhaps been more commonly copied than the others.
Photographs of late years are common; but almost invariably the
photographer has chalked what he deems to be the design,—in this they
do not agree, of course,—in order to make his picture clearer. I think
Schoolcraft in making his daguerreotype was the first to do this. The
most careful drawing made of late years is that by Professor Seager of
the Naval Academy, under the direction of Commodore Blake; and there is
in the Cabinet of the American Antiquarian Society a MS. essay on the
rock, written at Blake’s request by Chaplain Chas. R. Hale of the U. S.
Navy. Haven disputes Blake’s statement that a change in the river’s bed
more nearly submerges the rock at high tide than was formerly the case.
Cf. _Am. Antiq. Soc._ Proc., Oct., 1864, p. 41, where a history of the
rock is given; and in Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, ii. 93.]
The most famous of all these alleged memorials[676] is the Dighton
Rock, lying in the tide on the side of Taunton River, in the town
of Berkeley, in Massachusetts.[677] Dr. De Costa thinks it possible
that the central portion may be runic. This part is what has been
interpreted to mean that Thorfinn with 151 men took possession of the
country, and it is said to be this portion of the inscription which
modern Indians discard when giving their interpretations.[678] That it
is the work of the Indian of historic times seems now to be the opinion
common to the best trained archæologists.[679]
Rafn was also the first to proclaim the stone tower now standing
at Newport, R. I., as a work of the Northmen; but the recent
antiquaries without any exception worth considering, believe that the
investigations have shown that it was erected by Governor Arnold of
Rhode Island as a windmill, sometime between 1670 and 1680; and Palfrey
in his _New England_ is thought to have put this view beyond doubt in
showing the close correspondence in design of the tower to a mill at
Chesterton, in England.[680]
Certain hearthstones which were discovered over twenty-five years
ago under a peat bed on Cape Cod were held at the time to be a
Norse relic.[681] In 1831 there was exhumed in Fall River, Mass.,
a skeleton, which had with it what seemed to be an ornamental belt
made of metal tubes, formed by rolling fragments of flat brass and an
oblong plate of the same metal,—not of bronze, as is usually said,—with
some arrow-heads, cut evidently from the same material. The other
concomitants of the burial indicated an Indian of the days since the
English contact. The skeleton attracted notice in this country by being
connected with the Norsemen in Longfellow’s ballad, _The Skeleton in
Armor_, and Dr. Webb sent such an account of it to the Royal Society of
Northern Antiquaries that it was looked upon as another and distinct
proof of the identification of Vinland. Later antiquaries have
dismissed all beliefs of that nature.[682]
There is not a single item of all the evidence thus advanced from
time to time which can be said to connect by archæological traces the
presence of the Northmen on the soil of North America south of Davis’
Straits. Arguments of this kind have been abandoned except by a few
enthusiastic advocates.
* * * * *
That the Northmen voyaging to Vinland encountered natives, and that
they were called Skraelings, may be taken as a sufficiently broad
statement in the sagas to be classed with those concomitants of the
voyages which it is reasonable to accept. Sir William Dawson (_Fossil
Men_, 49) finds it easy to believe that these natives were our red
Indians; and Gallatin saw no reason to dissociate the Eskimos with
other American tribes.[683] That they were Eskimos seems to be the more
commonly accepted view.[684]
That the climate of the Atlantic coast of the United States and the
British provinces was such as was favorable to the present Arctic
dwellers is held to be shown by such evidences as tusks of the walrus
found in phosphate beds in South Carolina. Rude implements found in
the interglacial Jersey drift have been held by C. C. Abbott to have
been associated with a people of the Eskimo stock, and some have noted
that palæolithic implements found in Pennsylvania closely resemble the
work of the modern Eskimos (_Amer. Antiquarian_, i. 10).[685] Dall
remarks upon implements of Innuit origin being found four hundred
miles south of the present range of the Eskimos of the northwest coast
(_Contributions to Amer. Ethnology_, i. p. 98). Charlevoix says that
Eskimos were occasionally seen in Newfoundland in the beginning of the
last century; and ethnologists recognize to-day the same stock in the
Eskimos of Labrador and Greenland.
[Illustration: HINRIK RINK.
After a likeness given by Nordenskjöld in his _Exped. till Grönland_,
p. 121.]
The best authority on the Eskimos is generally held to be Hinrich
Rink, and he contends that they formerly occupied the interior of
the continent, and have been pressed north and across Behring’s
Straits.[686] W. H. Dall holds similar views.[687] C. R. Markham,
who dates their first appearance in Greenland in 1349, contends, on
the other hand, that they came from the west (Siberia) along the
polar regions (Wrangell Land), and drove out the Norse settlers in
Greenland.[688] The most active of the later students of the Eskimos
is Dr. Franz Boas, now of New York, who has discussed their tribal
boundaries.[689]
=F.= THE LOST GREENLAND COLONIES.—After intercourse with the colonies
in Greenland ceased, and definite tradition in Iceland had died out,
and when the question of the re-discovery should arise, it was natural
that attention should first be turned to that coast of Greenland which
lay opposite Iceland as the likelier sites of the lost colonies, and
in this way we find all the settlements placed in the maps of the
sixteenth century. The Archbishop Erik Walkendorf, of Lund, in the
early part of that century had failed to persuade the Danish government
to send an expedition. King Frederick II was induced, however, to
send one in 1568; but it accomplished nothing; and again in 1579 he
put another in command of an Englishman, Jacob Allday, but the ice
prevented his landing. A Danish navigator was more successful in 1581;
but the coast opposite Iceland yielded as yet no traces of the Norse
settlers. Frobisher’s discovery of the west coast seems to have failed
of recognition among the Danes; but they with the rest of Europe did
not escape noting the importance of the explorations of John Davis in
1585-86, through the straits which bear his name. It now became the
belief that the west settlement must be beyond Cape Farewell. In 1605,
Christian IV of Denmark sent a new expedition under Godske Lindenow;
but there was a Scotchman in command of one of the three ships, and
Jacob Hall, who had probably served under Davis, went as the fleet
pilot. He guided the vessels through Davis’s Straits. But it was rather
the purpose of Lindenow to find a northwest passage than to discover a
lost colony; and such was mainly the object which impelled him again in
1606, and inspired Karsten Rikardsen in 1607. Now and for some years to
come we have the records of voyages made by the whalers to this region,
and we read their narratives in Purchas and in such collections of
voyages as those of Harris and Churchill.[690] They yield us, however,
little or no help in the problem we are discussing. In 1670 and 1671
Christian V sent expeditions with the express purpose of discovering
the lost colonies; but Otto Axelsen, who commanded, never returned from
his second voyage, and we have no account of his first.
The mission of the priest Hans Egede gave the first real glimmer
of light.[691] He was the earliest to describe the ruins and relics
observable on the west coast, but he continued to regard the east
settlements as belonging to the east coast, and so placed them on the
map. Anderson (Hamburg, 1746) went so far as to place on his map the
cathedral of Gardar in a fixed location on the east coast, and his map
was variously copied in the following years.
In 1786 an expedition left Copenhagen to explore the east coast for
traces of the colonies, but the ice prevented the approach to the
coast, and after attempts in that year and in 1787 the effort was
abandoned. Heinrich Peter von Eggers, in his _Om Grönlands österbygds
sande Beliggenhed_ (1792), and _Ueber die wahre Lage des alten
Ostgrönlands_ (Kiel, 1794), a German translation, first advanced the
opinion that the eastern colony as well as the western must have
been on the west coast, and his views were generally accepted; but
Wormskjöld in the _Skandinavisk Litteraturselskab’s Skrifter_, vol. x.
(Copenhagen, 1814), still adhered to the earlier opinions, and Saabye
still believed it possible to reach the east coast.
[Illustration: REDUCED FAC-SIMILE.
[Harvard College Library copy.]]
Some years later (1828-31) W. A. Graah made, by order of the king
of Denmark, a thorough examination of the east coast, and in his
_Undersögelses Reise til Ostkysten af Grönland_ (Copenhagen, 1832)[692]
he was generally thought to establish the great improbability of any
traces of a colony ever existing on that coast. Of late years Graah’s
conclusions have been questioned, for there have been some sites of
buildings discovered on the east side.[693] The Reverend J. Brodbeck,
a missionary, described some in _The Moravian Quarterly_, July and
Aug., 1882. Nordenskjöld has held that when the east coast is explored
from 65° to 69°, there is a chance of discovering the site of an east
colony.[694]
R. H. Major, in a paper (_Journal Roy. Geog. Soc._, 1873, p. 184) on
the site of the lost colony, questioned Graah’s conclusions, and gave
a sketch map, in which he placed its site near Cape Farewell; and he
based his geographical data largely upon the chorography of Greenland
and the sailing directions of Ivan Bardsen, who was probably an
Icelander living in Greenland some time in the fifteenth century.[695]
=G.= MADOC AND THE WELSH.—Respecting the legends of Madoc, there are
reports, which Humboldt (_Cosmos_, Bohn, ii. 610) failed to verify, of
Welsh bards rehearsing the story before 1492,[696] and of statements
in the early Welsh annals. The original printed source is in Humfrey
Lloyd’s _History of Cambria, now called Wales, written in the British
language_ [by Caradoc] _about 200 years past_ (London, 1584).[697]
The book contained corrections and additions by David Powell, and
it was in these that the passages of importance were found, and the
supposition was that the land visited lay near the Gulf of Mexico.
Richard Hakluyt, in his _Principall Navigations_, took the story from
Powell, and connected the discovery with Mexico in his edition of 1589,
and with the West Indies in that of 1600 (iii. p. 1),—and there was not
an entire absence of the suspicion that it was worth while to establish
some sort of a British claim to antedate the Spanish one established
through Columbus.[698]
The linguistic evidences were not brought into prominence till after
one Morgan Jones had fallen among the Tuscaroras[699] in 1660, and
found, as he asserted, that they could understand his Welsh. He wrote
a statement of his experience in 1685-6, which was not printed till
1740.[700]
During the eighteenth century we find Campanius in his _Nye Swerige_
(1702) repeating the story; Torfæus (_Hist. Vinlandiæ_, 1705) not
rejecting it; Carte (_England_, 1747) thinking it probable; while
Campbell (_Admirals_, 1742), Lyttleton (_Henry the Second_, 1767), and
Robertson (_America_, 1777) thought there was no ground, at least, for
connecting the story with America.
It was reported that in 1764 a man, Griffeth, was taken by the Shawnees
to a tribe of Indians who spoke Welsh.[701] In 1768, Charles Beatty
published his _Journal of a two months’ Tour in America_ (London), in
which he repeated information of Indians speaking Welsh in Pennsylvania
and beyond the Mississippi, and of the finding of a Welsh Bible among
them.
In 1772-73, David Jones wandered among the tribes west of the Ohio,
and in 1774, at Burlington, published his _Journal of two visits_, in
which he enumerates the correspondence of words which he found in their
tongues with his native Welsh.[702]
Without noting other casual mentions, some of which will be found
in Paul Barron Watson’s bibliography (in Anderson’s _America not
discovered by Columbus_, p. 142), it is enough to say that towards
the end of the century the papers of John Williams[703] and George
Burder[704] gave more special examination to the subject than had been
applied before.
[Illustration: A BRITISH SHIP.
After a cut in _The Mirror of Literature_, etc. (London, 1823), vol. i.
p. 177, showing a vessel then recently exhumed in Kent, and supposed to
be of the time of Edward I, or the thirteenth century. The vessel was
sixty-four feet long.]
The renewed interest in the matter seems to have prompted Southey to
the writing of his poem _Madoc_, though he refrained from publishing it
for some years. If one may judge from his introductory note, Southey
held to the historical basis of the narrative. Meanwhile, reports were
published of this and the other tribes being found speaking Welsh.[705]
In 1816, Henry Kerr printed at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, his _Travels
through the Western interior of the United States, 1808-16, with some
account of a tribe whose customs are similar to those of the ancient
Welsh_. In 1824, Yates and Moulton (_State of New York_) went over the
ground rather fully, but without conviction. Hugh Murray (_Travels
in North America_, London, 1829) believes the Welsh went to Spain.
In 1834, the different sides of the case were discussed by Farcy and
Warden in Dupaix’s _Antiquités Méxicaines_. Some years later the
publication of George Catlin[706] probably gave more conviction than
had been before felt,[707] arising from his statements of positive
linguistic correspondences in the language of the so-called White[708]
Mandans[709] on the Missouri River, the similarity of their boats to
the old Welsh coracles, and other parallelisms of custom. He believed
that Madoc landed at Florida, or perhaps passed up the Mississippi
River. His conclusions were a reinforcement of those reached by
Williams.[710] The opinion reached by Major in his edition of
_Columbus’ Letters_ (London, 1847) that the Welsh discovery was quite
possible, while it was by no means probable, is with little doubt the
view most generally accepted to-day; while the most that can be made
out of the claim is presented with the latest survey in B. F. Bowen’s
_America discovered by the Welsh in 1170_ A.D. (Philad., 1876). He
gathers up, as helping his proposition, such widely scattered evidences
as the Lake Superior copper mines and the Newport tower, both of which
he appropriates; and while following the discoverers from New England
south and west, he does not hesitate to point out the resemblance of
the Ohio Valley mounds[711] to those depicted in Pennant’s _Tour of
Wales_; and he even is at no loss for proofs among the relics of the
Aztecs.[712]
=H.= THE ZENI AND THEIR MAP.—Something has been said elsewhere (Vol.
III. p. 100) of the influence of the Zeni narrative and its map, in
confusing Frobisher in his voyages. The map was reproduced in the
Ptolemy of 1561, with an account of the adventures of the brothers, but
it was so far altered as to dissever Greenland from Norway, of which
the Zeni map had made it but an extension.[713]
The story got further currency in Ramusio (1574, vol. ii.), Ortelius
(1575), Hakluyt (1600, vol. iii.), Megiser’s _Septentrio Novantiquus_
(1613), Purchas (1625), Pontanus’ _Rerum Danicarum_ (1631), Luke
Fox’s _North-West Fox_ (1633), and in De Laet’s Notæ (1644), who,
as well as Hornius, _De Originibus Americanis_ (1644), thinks the
story suspicious. It was repeated by Montanus in 1671, and by Capel,
_Vorstellungen des Norden_, in 1676. Some of the features of the map
had likewise become pretty constant in the attendant cartographical
records. But from the close of the seventeenth century for about a
hundred years, the story was for the most part ignored, and it was not
till 1784 that the interest in it was revived by the publications of
Forster[714] and Buache,[715] who each expressed their belief in the
story.
A more important inquiry in behalf of the narrative took place at
Venice in 1808, when Cardinal Zurla republished the map in an essay,
and marked out the track of the Zeni on a modern chart.[716]
In 1810, Malte-Brun accorded his belief in the verity of the narrative,
and was inclined to believe that the Latin books found in Estotiland
were carried there by colonists from Greenland.[717] A reactionary view
was taken by Biddle in his _Sebastian Cabot_, in 1831, who believed
the publication of 1558 a fraud; but the most effective denial of its
authenticity came a few years later in sundry essays by Zahrtmann.[718]
[Illustration: RICHARD H. MAJOR.
[After a photograph kindly furnished by himself at the editor’s
request.—ED.]]
The story got a strong advocate, after nearly forty years of
comparative rest, when R. H. Major, of the map department of the
British Museum, gave it an English dress and annexed a commentary, all
of which was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1873. In this critic’s
view, the good parts of the map are of the fourteenth century, gathered
on the spot, while the false parts arose from the misapprehensions of
the young Zeno, who put together the book of 1558.[719] The method of
this later Zeno was in the same year (1873) held by Professor Konrad
Maurer to be hardly removed from a fraudulent compilation of other
existing material. There has been a marked display of learning, of late
years, in some of the discussions.
[Illustration: BARON NORDENSKJÖLD.
[From a recent photograph. There is another engraved likeness in the
second volume of his _Vega_.]]
Cornelio Desimoni, the archivist of Genoa, has printed two elaborate
papers.[720] The Danish archivist Frederik Krarup published (1878) a
sceptical paper in the _Geografisk Tidsskrift_ (ii. 145).[721] The most
exhaustive examination, however, has come from a practical navigator,
the Baron A. E. Nordenskjöld, who in working up the results of his own
Arctic explorations was easily led into the intricacies of the Zeno
controversy. The results which he reaches are that the Zeni narratives
are substantially true; that there was no published material in 1558
which could have furnished so nearly an accurate account of the actual
condition of those northern waters; that the map which Zahrtmann saw in
the University library at Copenhagen, and which he represented to be an
original from which the young Zeno of 1558 made his pretended original,
was in reality nothing but the Donis map in the Ptolemy of 1482, while
the Zeno map is much more like the map of the north made by Claudius
Clavis in 1427, which was discovered by Nordenskjöld in a codex of
Ptolemy at Nancy.[722]
* * * * *
Since Nordenskjöld advanced his views there have been two
other examinations: the one by Professor Japetus Steenstrup of
Copenhagen,[723] and the other by the secretary of the Danish
Geographical Society, Professor Ed. Erslef, who offered some new
illustrations in his _Nye Oplysninger om Broedrene Zenis Rejser_
(Copenhagen, 1885).[724]
Among those who accept the narratives there is no general agreement
in identifying the principal geographical points of the Zeno map. The
main dispute is upon Frislanda, the island where the Zeni were wrecked.
That it was Iceland has been maintained by Admiral Irminger,[725] and
Steenstrup (who finds, however, the text not to agree with the map),
while the map accompanying the _Studi biografici e bibliografici sulla
storia della geografia in Italia_ (Rome, 1882) traces the route of the
Zeni from Iceland to Greenland, under 70° of latitude.
On the other hand, Major has contended for the Faröe islands, arguing
that while the engraved Zeno map shows a single large island, it
might have been an archipelago in the original, with outlines run
together by the obscurities of its dilapidation, and that the Faröes by
their preserved names and by their position correspond best with the
Frislanda of the Zeni.[726] Major’s views have been adopted by most
later writers, perhaps, and a similar identification had earlier been
made by Lelewel,[727] Kohl,[728] and others.
The identification of Estotiland involves the question if the returned
fisherman of the narrative ever reached America. It is not uncommon
for even believers in the story to deny that Estotiland and Drogeo
were America. That they were parts of the New World was, however, the
apparent belief of Mercator and of many of the cartographers following
the publication of 1558, and of such speculators as Hugo Grotius, but
there was little common consent in their exact position.[729]
=I.= ALLEGED JEWISH MIGRATION.—The identification of the native
Americans with the stock of the lost tribes of Israel very soon
became a favorite theory with the early Spanish priests settled in
America. Las Casas and Duran adopted it, while Torquemada and Acosta
rejected it. André Thevet, of mendacious memory, did not help the
theory by espousing it. It was approved in J. F. Lumnius’s _De extremo
Dei Judicio et Indorum vocatione, libri iii._ (Venice and Antwerp,
1569);[730] and a century later the belief attracted new attention
in the _Origen de los Americanos de Manasseh Ben Israel_, published
at Amsterdam in 1650.[731] It was in the same year (1650) that the
question received the first public discussion in English in Thomas
Thorowgood’s _Jewes in America, or, Probabilities that the Americans
are of that Race. With the removall of some contrary reasonings, and
earnest desires for effectuall endeavours to make them Christian_
(London, 1650).[732] Thorowgood was answered by Sir Hamon L’Estrange
in _Americans no Iewes, or Improbabilities that the Americans are of
that race_ (London, 1652). The views of Thorowgood found sympathy
with the Apostle Eliot of Massachusetts; and when Thorowgood replied
to L’Estrange he joined with it an essay by Eliot, and the joint work
was entitled _Iewes in America, or probabilities that those Indians
are Judaical, made more probable by some additionals to the former
conjectures: an accurate discourse is premised of Mr. John Eliot (who
preached the gospel to the natives in their own language) touching
their origination, and his Vindication of the planters_ (London,
1660). What seems to have been a sort of supplement, covering,
however, in part, the same ground, appeared as _Vindiciæ Judæcorum,
or a true account of the Jews, being more accurately illustrated than
heretofore_, which includes what is called “The learned conjectures of
Rev. Mr. John Eliot” (32 pp.). Some of the leading New England divines,
like Mayhew and Mather,[733] espoused the cause with similar faith.
Roger Williams also was of the same opinion. William Penn is said to
have held like views. The belief may be said to have been general,
and had not died out in New England when Samuel Sewall, in 1697,
published his _Phænomena quædam Apocalyptica ad aspectum Novi Orbis
Configurata_.[734]
After the middle of the last century we begin to find new signs of
the belief. Charles Beatty, in his _Journal of a two months’ tour
with a view of promoting religion among the frontier inhabitants of
Pennsylvania_ (Lond., 1768), finds traces of the lost tribes among the
Delawares, and repeats a story of the Indians long ago selling the
same sacred book to the whites with which the missionaries in the end
aimed to make them acquainted. Gerard de Brahm and Richard Peters,
both familiar with the Southern Indians, found grounds for accepting
the belief. The most elaborate statement drawn from this region is
that of James Adair, who for forty years had been a trader among the
Southern Indians.[735] Jonathan Edwards in 1788 pointed out in the
Hebrew some analogies to the native speech.[736] Charles Crawford in
1799 undertook the proof.[737] In 1816 Elias Boudinot, a man eminent
in his day, contributed further arguments.[738] Ethan Smith based his
advocacy largely on the linguistic elements.[739] A few years later
an Englishman, Israel Worsley, worked over the material gathered by
Boudinot and Smith, and added something.[740] A prominent American
Jew, M. M. Noah, published in 1837 an address on the subject which
hardly added to the weight of testimony.[741] J. B. Finlay, a mulatto
missionary among the Wyandots, was satisfied with the Hebrew traces
which he observed in that tribe.[742] Geo. Catlin, working also among
the Western Indians, while he could not go to the length of believing
in the lost tribes, was struck with the many analogies which he
saw.[743] The most elaborate of all expositions of the belief was made
by Lord Kingsborough in his _Mexican Antiquities_ (1830-48).[744] Since
this book there has been no pressing of the question with any claims to
consideration.[745]
=J.= POSSIBLE EARLY AFRICAN MIGRATIONS.—These may have been by
adventure or by helpless drifting, with or without the Canaries as a
halting-place. The primitive people of the Canaries, the Guanches, are
studied in Sabin Berthelot’s _Antiquités Canariennes_ (Paris, 1879)
and A. F. de Fontpertuis’ _L’archipel des Canaries, et ses populations
primitives_, also in the _Revue de Géographie_, June, 1882, not to
mention earlier histories of the Canary Islands (see Vol. II. p. 36).
Retzius of Stockholm traces resemblances in the skulls of the Guanches
and the Caribs (_Smithsonian Rept._, 1859, p. 266). Le Plongeon finds
the sandals of the statue Chac-mool, discovered by him in Yucatan, to
resemble those of the Guanches (Salisbury’s _Le Plongeon in Yucatan_,
57).
The African and even Egyptian origin of the Caribs has had some
special advocates.[746] Peter Martyr, and Grotius following him,
contended for the people of Yucatan being Ethiopian Christians. Stories
of blackamoors being found by the early Spaniards are not without
corroboration.[747] The correspondence of the African and South
American flora has been brought into requisition as confirmatory.[748]
* * * * *
THE CARTOGRAPHY OF GREENLAND.
The oldest map yet discovered to show any part of Greenland, and
consequently of America,[749] is one found by Baron Nordenskjöld
attached to a Ptolemy Codex in the Stadtbibliothek at Nancy. He
presented a colored fac-simile of it in 1883 at the Copenhagen Congrès
des Américanistes, in his little brochure _Trois Cartes_. It was also
used in illustration of his paper on the Zeni Voyages, published
both in Swedish and German. It will be seen by the fac-simile given
herewith, and marked with the author’s name, Claudius Clavus, that
“Gronlandia Provincia” is an extension of a great arctic region, so
as to lie over against the Scandinavian peninsula of Europe, with
“Islandia,” or Iceland, midway between the two lands. Up to the time
of this discovery by Nordenskjöld, the map generally recognized as the
oldest to show Greenland is a Genovese portolano, preserved in the
Pitti Palace at Florence, about which there is some doubt as to its
date, which is said to be 1417 by Santarem (_Hist. de la Cartog._,
iii., p. xix), but Lelewel (_Epilogue_, p. 167) is held to be trustier
in giving it as 1447.[750] It shows how little influence the Norse
stories of their Greenland colonization exerted at this time on the
cartography of the north, that few of the map-makers deemed it worth
while to break the usual terminal circle of the world by including
anything west or beyond Iceland. It was, further, not easy to convince
them that Greenland, when they gave it, lay in the direction which
the Sagas indicated. The map of Fra Mauro, for instance, in 1459 cuts
off a part of Iceland by its incorrigible terminal circle, as will
be seen in a bit of it given herewith, the reader remembering as he
looks at it that the bottom of the segment is to the north.[751] We
again owe to Nordenskjöld the discovery of another map of the north,
_Tabula Regionum Septentrionalium_, which he found in a Codex of
Ptolemy in Warsaw a few years since, and which he places about 1467.
The accompanying partial sketch is reproduced from a fac-simile
kindly furnished by the discoverer. The peninsula of “Gronlandia,”
with its indicated glaciers, is placed with tolerable accuracy as the
western extremity of an arctic region, which to the north of Europe
is separated from the Scandinavian peninsula by a channel from the
“Mare Gotticum” (Baltic Sea), which sweeps above Norway into the
“Mare Congelatum.” The confused notions arising from an attempt by
the compiler of the map to harmonize different drafts is shown by
his drawing a second Greenland (“Engronelant”) to his “Norbegia,” or
Norway, and placing just under it the “Thile”[752] of the ancients,
which he makes a different island from “Islandia,” placed in proper
relations to his larger Greenland.
[Illustration: CLAUDIUS CLAVUS, 1427.]
A few years later, or perhaps about the same time, and before 1471,
the earliest engraved map which shows Greenland is that of Nicolas
Donis, in the Ulm edition of Ptolemy in 1482. It will be seen from the
little sketch which is annexed that the same doubling of Greenland is
adhered to.[753] With the usual perversion put upon the Norse stories,
Iceland is made to lie due west of Greenland, though not shown in the
present sketch.
At a date not much later, say 1486, it is supposed the Laon globe,
dated in 1493, was actually made, or at least it is shown that in some
parts the knowledge was rather of the earlier date, and here we have
“Grolandia,” a small island off the Norway coast.[754]
[Illustration: CLAUDIUS CLAVUS, 1427.]
We have in 1489-90 a type of configuration, which later became
prevalent. It is taken from an _Insularium illustratum Henrici Martelli
Germani_, a manuscript preserved in the British Museum, and shows, as
seen by the annexed extract, a long narrow peninsula, running southwest
from the northern verge of Europe. A sketch of the whole map is given
elsewhere.[755]
This seems to have been the prevailing notion of what and where
Greenland was at the time of Columbus’ voyage, and it could have
carried no significance to his mind that the explorations of the Norse
had found the Asiatic main, which he started to discover. How far this
notion was departed from by Behaim in his globe of 1492 depends upon
the interpretation to be given to a group of islands, northwest of
Iceland and northeast of Asia, upon the larger of which he writes among
its mountains, “Hi man weise Volker.”[756]
As this sketch of the cartographical development goes on, it will be
seen how slow the map-makers were to perceive the real significance
of the Norse discoveries, and how reluctant they were to connect them
with the discoveries that followed in the train of Columbus, though
occasionally there is one who is possessed with a sort of prevision.
The Cantino map of 1502[757] does not settle the question, for a point
lying northeast of the Portuguese discoveries in the Newfoundland
region only seems to be the southern extremity of Greenland. What was
apparently a working Portuguese chart of 1503 grasps pretty clearly the
relations of Greenland to Labrador.[758]
[Illustration: FRA MAURO, 1459.]
Lelewel (pl. 43), in a map made to show the Portuguese views at
this time,[759] which he represents by combining and reconciling the
Ptolemy maps of 1511 and 1513, still places the “Gronland” peninsula
in the northwest of Europe, and if his deductions are correct, the
Portuguese had as yet reached no clear conception that the Labrador
coasts upon which they fished bore any close propinquity to those
which the Norse had colonized. Ruysch, in 1508, made a bold stroke by
putting “Gruenlant” down as a peninsula of Northeastern Asia, thus
trying to reconcile the discoveries of Columbus with the northern
sagas.[760] This view was far from acceptable. Sylvanus, in the Ptolemy
of 1511, made “Engroneland” a small protuberance on the north shore
of Scandinavia, and east of Iceland, evidently choosing between the
two theories instead of accepting both, as was common, in ignorance of
their complemental relations.[761] Waldseemüller, in the Ptolemy of
1513, in his “Orbis typus universalis,” reverted to and adopted the
delineation of Henricus Martellus in 1490.[762]
[Illustration: TABULA REGIONUM SEPTENTRIONALIUM, 1467.]
[Illustration: DONIS, 1482.]
In 1520, Apian, in the map in Camer’s _Solinus_, took the view of
Sylvanus, while still another representation was given by Laurentius
Frisius in 1522, in an edition of Ptolemy,[763] in which “Gronland”
becomes a large island on the Norway coast, in one map called “Orbis
typus Universalis,” while in another map, “Tabula nova Norbegiæ et
Gottiæ,” the “Engronelant” peninsula is a broad region, stretching
from Northwestern Europe.[764]
[Illustration: HENRICUS MARTELLUS, 1489-90.]
This Ptolemy was again issued in 1525, repeating these two methods of
showing Greenland already given, and adding a third,[765] that of the
long narrow European peninsula, already familiar in earlier maps—the
variety of choice indicating the prevalent cartographical indecision on
the point.
[Illustration: OLAUS MAGNUS, 1539.
NOTE.—This fac-simile accompanies a paper appearing in the
_Videnskabsselskabs Forhandinger_ (1886, no. 15) _and separately as
Die ächte karte des Olaus Magnus vom jahre 1539, nach dem exemplar der
Münchener Staatsbibliothek_ (Christiania, 1886). In this Dr. Brenner
traces the history of the great map of Archbishop Olaus Magnus,
pointing out how Nordenskjöld is in error in supposing the map of
1567, which that scholar gives, was but a reproduction of the original
edition of 1539, which was not known to modern students till Brenner
found it in the library at Munich, in March, 1886, and which proves to
be twelve times larger than that of 1567. Brenner adds the long Latin
address, “Olaus Gothus benigno lectori salutem,” with annotations. The
map is entitled “Carta Marina et descriptio septentrionalium errarum ac
mirabilium rerum in eis contentarum diligentissime elaborata, Anno Dni,
1539.” Brenner institutes a close comparison between it and the Zeno
chart.]
Kohl, in his collection of maps,[766] copies from what he calls the
Atlas of Frisius, 1525, still another map which apparently shows the
southern extremity of Greenland, with “Terra Laboratoris,” an island
just west of it, and southwest of that a bit of coast marked “Terra
Nova Conterati,” which may pass for Newfoundland and the discoveries of
Cortereal.
[Illustration: OLAUS MAGNUS, 1555.
This map, here reproduced on a somewhat smaller scale, is called:
_Regnorum Aquilonarum descriptio, hujus Operis subiectum_.]
Thorne, the Englishman, in the map which he sent from Seville in
1527,[767] seems to conform to the view which made Greenland a European
peninsula, which may also have been the opinion of Orontius Finæus in
1531.[768] A novel feature attaches to an Atlas, of about this date,
preserved at Turin, in which an elongated Greenland is made to stretch
northerly.[769] In 1532 we have the map in Ziegler’s _Schondia_, which
more nearly resembles the earliest map of all, that of Claudius Clavus,
than any other.[770] The 1538 cordiform map of Mercator makes it a
peninsula of an arctic region connected with Scandinavia.[771] This
map is known to me only through a fac-simile of the copy given in the
_Geografia_ of Lafreri, published at Rome about 1560, with which I am
favored by Nordenskjöld in advance of its publication in his _Atlas_.
[Illustration: FROM OLAUS MAGNUS’ HISTORIA, 1567.]
The great _Historia_ of Olaus Magnus, as for a long time the leading
authority on the northern geography, as well as on the Scandinavian
chronicles, gives us some distinct rendering of this northern
geographical problem. It was only recently that his earliest map of
1539 has been brought to light, and a section of it is here reproduced
from a much reduced fac-simile kindly sent to the editor by Dr. Oscar
Brenner of the university at Munich.[A] Nordenskjöld, in giving a full
fac-simile of the Olaus Magnus map of 1567,[772] of which a fragment
is herewith also given in fac-simile, says that it embodies the views
of the northern geographers in separating Greenland from Europe,
which was in opposition to those of the geographers of the south of
Europe, who united Greenland to Scandinavia. Sebastian Münster in his
1540 edition of Ptolemy introduced a new confusion. He preserved the
European elongated peninsula, but called it “Islandia,” while to what
stands for Iceland is given the old classical name of Thyle.[773] This
confusion is repeated in his map of 1545,[774] where he makes the coast
of “Islandia” continuous with Baccalaos. This continuity of coast line
seemed now to become a common heritage of some of the map-makers,[775]
though in the Ulpius globe of 1542 “Groestlandia,” so far as it is
shown, stands separate from either continent,[776] but is connected
with Europe according to the early theory in the _Isolario_ of Bordone
in 1547.
[Illustration: BORDONE’S SCANDINAVIA, 1547.
Reproduced from the fac-simile given in Nordenskjöld’s _Studien_
(Leipzig, 1885).]
We have run down the main feature of the northern cartography, up
to the time of the publication of the Zeno map in 1558. The chief
argument for its authenticity is that there had been nothing drawn and
published up to that time which could have conduced, without other aid,
to so accurate an outline of Greenland as it gives. In an age when
drafts of maps freely circulated over Europe, from cartographer to
cartographer, in manuscript, it does not seem necessary that the search
for prototypes or prototypic features should be confined to those which
had been engraved.
[Illustration: ZENO MAP. (_Reduced_.)
The original measures 12 × 15½ inches. Fac-similes of the original size
or reduced, or other reproductions, will be found in Nordenskjöld’s
_Trois Cartes_, and in his _Studien_; Malte Brun’s _Annales des
Voyages_; Lelewel’s _Moyen Age_ (ii. 169); _Carter-Brown Catalogue_
(i. 211); Kohl’s _Discovery of Maine_, 97; Ruge’s _Geschichte des
Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 27; Bancroft’s _Central America_,
i. 81; Gay’s _Pop. Hist. U. S_., i. 84; Howley’s _Ecclesiast. Hist.
Newfoundland_, p. 45; Erizzo’s _Le Scoperte Artiche_ (Venice,
1855),—not to name others.]
With these allowances the map does not seem to be very exceptional
in any feature. It is connected with northwestern Europe in just the
manner appertaining to several of the earlier maps. Its shape is no
great improvement on the map of 1467, found at Warsaw. There was
then no such constancy in the placing of mid-sea islands in maps, to
interdict the random location of other islands at the cartographer’s
will, without disturbing what at that day would have been deemed
geographical probabilities, and there was all the necessary warranty
in existing maps for the most wilfully depicted archipelago. The early
Portuguese charts, not to name others, gave sufficient warrant for land
where Estotiland and Drogeo appear.
[Illustration: THE PTOLEMY ALTERATION (1561, etc.) OF THE ZENO MAP.]
Mention has already been made of the changes in this map, which the
editors of the Ptolemy of 1561 made in severing Greenland from Europe,
when they reëngraved it.[777] The same edition contained a map of
“Schonlandia,” in which it seems to be doubtful if the land which
stands for Greenland does, or does not, connect with the Scandinavian
main.[778] That Greenland was an island seems now to have become the
prevalent opinion, and it was enforced by the maps of Mercator (1569
and 1587), Ortelius (1570, 1575), and Gallæus (1585), which placed
it lying mainly east and west between the Scandinavian north and the
Labrador coast, which it was now the fashion to call Estotiland. In its
shape it closely resembled the Zeni outline. Another feature of these
maps was the placing of another but smaller island west of “Groenlant,”
which was called “Grocland,” and which seems to be simply a
reduplication of the larger island by some geographical confusion,[779]
which once started was easily seized upon to help fill out the arctic
spaces.[780]
[Illustration: SEPTENTRIONALES REGIONES.
From _Theatri orbis Terrarum Enchiridion, per Phillipum Gallæum, et per
Hugonem Favolium_ (Antwerp, 1585).]
It was just at this time (1570) that the oldest maps which display the
geographical notions of the saga men were drawn, though not brought to
light for many years. We note two such of this time, and one of a date
near forty years later. One marked “Jonas, Gudmundi filius, delineavit,
1570,” is given as are the two others by Torfæus in his _Gronlandia
Antiqua_. They all seem to recognize a passage to the Arctic seas
between Norway and Greenland, the northern parts of which last are
called “Risaland,” or “Riseland,” and Jonas places “Oster Bygd” and
“Wester Bygd” on the opposite sides of a squarish peninsula. Beyond
what must be Davis’ Straits is “America,” and further south “Terra
Florida” and “Albania.”
If this description is compared with the key of Stephanius’ map,
next to be mentioned, while we remember that both represent the views
prevailing in the north in 1570, it is hard to resist the conclusion
that Vinland was north even of Davis’ Straits, or at least held to be
so at that time.
The second map, that of Stephanius, is reproduced herewith, dating back
to the same period (1570); but the third, by Gudbrandus Torlacius, was
made in 1606, and is sketched in Kohl’s _Discovery of Maine_ (p. 109).
It gives better shape to “Gronlandia” than in either of the others.
[Illustration: SIGURD STEPHANIUS, 1570.
Reproduced from the _Saga Time_ of J. Fulford Vicary (London, 1887),
after the map as given in the publication of the geographical society
at Copenhagen, 1885-86, and it is supposed to have been drafted upon
the narrative of the sagas. Key:
“_A._ This is where the English have come and has a name for
barrenness, either from sun or cold.
_B._ This is near where Vineland lies, which from its abundance of
useful things, or from the land’s fruitfulness, is called Good. Our
countrymen (Icelanders) have thought that to the south it ends with the
wild sea and that a sound or fjord separates it from America.
_C._ This land is called Rüseland or land of the giants, as they have
horns and are called Skrickfinna (Fins that frighten).
_D._ This is more to the east, and the people are called Klofinna (Fins
with claws) on account of their large nails.
_E._ This is Jotunheimer, or the home of the misshapen giants.
_F._ Here is thought to be a fjord, or sound, leading to Russia.
_G._ A rocky land often referred to in histories.
_H._ What island that is I do not know, unless it be the island that a
Venetian found, and the Germans call Friesland.”
It will be observed under the _B_ of the Key, the Norse of 1570 did not
identify the Vinland of 1000 with the America of later discoveries.
This map is much the same, but differs somewhat in detail, from the one
called of Stephanius, as produced in Kohl’s _Discovery of Maine_, p.
107, professedly after a copy given in Torfæus’ _Gronlandia Antiqua_
(1706). Torfæus quotes Theodorus Torlacius, the Icelandic historian,
as saying that Stephanius appears to have drawn his map from ancient
Icelandic records. The other maps given by Torfæus are: by Bishop
Gudbrand Thorlakssen (1606); by Jonas Gudmund (1640); by Theodor
Thorlakssen (1666), and by Torfæus himself. Cf. other copies of the map
of Stephanius in Malte-Brun’s _Annales des Voyages, Weise’s Discoveries
of America_, p. 22; _Geog. Tidskrift_, viii. 123, and in Horsford’s
_Disc. of America by Northmen_, p. 37.]
It is not necessary to follow the course of the Greenland cartography
farther with any minuteness. As the sixteenth century ended we have
leading maps by Hakluyt in 1587 and 1599 (see Vol. III. 42), and De
Bry in 1596 (Vol. IV. 99), and Wytfliet in 1597, all of which give
Davis’s Straits with more or less precision. Barentz’s map of 1598
became the exemplar of the circumpolar chart in Pontanus’ _Rerum et
Urbis Amstelodamensium Historia_ of 1611.[781] The chart of Luke Fox,
in 1635, marked progress[782] better than that of La Peyrère (1647),
though his map was better known.[783] Even as late as 1727, Hermann
Moll could not identify his “Greenland” with “Groenland.” In 1741,
we have the map of Hans Egede in his “Grönland,” repeated in late
editions, and the old delineation of the east coast after Torfæus was
still retained in the 1788 map of Paul Egede.
[Illustration: KORT _over_ GRÖNLAND _Den östre Süde efter Torfæus
Den vestre Süde aflagt og forbedret i Sammenligning med de senere
Efterretninger af Paul Egede_
NOTE.—The annexed map is a reduced fac-simile of the map in the
_Efterretninger om Grönland uddragne af en Journal holden fra 1771
til 1788_, by Paul Egede (Copenhagen, 1789). Paul Egede, son of Hans,
was born in 1708, and remained in Greenland till 1740. He was made
Bishop of Greenland in 1770, and died in 1789. The above book gives
a portrait. There is another fac-simile of the map in Nordenskjöld’s
_Exped. till Grönland_, p. 234.]
In the map of 1653, made by De la Martinière, who was of the Danish
expedition to the north, Greenland was made to connect with Northern
Asia by way of the North pole.[784] Nordenskjöld calls him the
Münchhausen of the northeast voyagers; and by his own passage in the
“Vega,” along the northern verge of Europe, from one ocean to the
other, the Swedish navigator has of recent years proved for the first
time that Greenland has no such connection. It yet remains to be proved
that there is no connection to the north with at least the group of
islands that are the arctic outlyers of the American continent.
[Illustration: GREENLAND.
Extracted from the “Carte de Grœnland” in Isaac de la Peyrère’s
_Relation du Groenland_ (Paris, 1647). Cf. Winsor’s _Kohl Maps_, no.
122.]