875]

ICELAND AND THE NORTHMEN.

15

Nevertheless, many who are unwilling to disturb the former accepted accounts, profess to disbelieve the relations of the Northmen, however reasonably-reliable the presented facts may appear. On the other hand it will be denied by none, that the effective discovery of the land-that which occurred in such a manner and at such a time as to bring about positive valuable knowledge of the new continent, followed by a flow of people towards it and its permanent occupation-was the re-discovery by Columbus.

Respecting the Northmen, their occupation of Iceland, and the means by which their knowledge of a great country west of that island was brought about, the following brief account may find a proper place in this introductory chapter. It is chiefly from the Icelandic Sagas that the very imperfect narrative which we now possess of those occurrences is gathered. The Sagas are poems or tales, first recited by the native bards or Saga-men, and afterward collected in more permanent form by the historians Ari Frode, Sturleson, and others.

The island of ICELAND, with an area of thirty thousand square miles-about equal in size to the state of Maine—is situated in the Atlantic Ocean, two hundred miles eastward from Greenland, and nearly three times that distance west of Norway. Although usually accounted as appertaining to the European continent, it properly belongs by position to America. It was occupied A.D. 874, by a colony of Norwegians under the leadership of Ingolf, who sailed away from their native land to escape the imperious sway of the Viking, Harold Harfager-the Fair-Haired. The companions of Ingolf, and the jarls or noblemen who shortly followed his example, were men of high descent, of considerable intelligence, and possessed of means, but appear to have been gifted with roving or piratical propensities which were not agreeable to the wishes of the Norwegian viking. Of these jarls were Rolf, who sailed to France and founded the Norman power there; and

Ejnar, who colonized the Orkneys; and similarly, those who settled the other adjacent island groups-the Shetlands, the Faröes, and the Hebrides.

The CELTS, however, seem to have dwelt in Iceland awhile, previous to 874, for we are told by the historian Frode: "There were here Christian people, whom the Northmen called papas, but they afterwards went away, because they would not be here among heathens; and left behind them Irish books, and bells and croziers, from which it could be seen that they were Irishmen."

More than a hundred years after the settlement of the island, in A.D. 985, Eric, surnamed the Red, having been declared an outlaw in consequence of the fatal result of a dispute in which he became engaged, left his country in a ship, with a few adherents, and, sailing westward, came to the coast of GREENLAND: calling it by that title, because, as he observed, "people will be attracted thither if the land has a good name." Upon the news of this discovery reaching Iceland, Biarni, a man of a bold and adventurous spirit, set sail for the same region, but being driven out of his course, towards the south, discovered yet other lands, which were doubtless parts of Nova Scotia and New England.

About the year 1000, Eric's son Leif-called Leif, the Lucky -with thirty-five men, sailed south from Greenland, and landed on a coast, which, from the description of it given in the Saga, is believed to have been the south-eastern section of Massachusetts. Here were found great abundance of grapevines, and so the land was named Vinland, the good. Το Nova Scotia was given the name of Markland; to Newfoundland, that of Helluland.

Within the succeeding twenty years, this first expedition. was followed by others to the same shores, under the direction of Thorvald and Thorstein, other sons of Eric, and by that of Freydis, his daughter. Thorvald having imprudently provoked the natives or "skrellings," as the Northmen styled

1005]

ICELAND AND THE northmEN.

17

them, suffered death at their hands. The voyage of Thorfinn Karlsefne (ancestor of the sculptor Thorwaldsen), who appears to have sailed several degrees farther south, was the most notable.

After nearly four centuries of independent existence, under the rule of its own chiefs, Iceland became subject to Norway. The withering blight of party-feeling which had long prevailed in the land rendered its conquest no difficult matter. "Thus did all the noble sentiments generated by equal laws, an independent position, high descent, and intellectual endowment, sink beneath the angry and narrow-minded conflict of private interest and personal animosity."

Very little mention is to be found of the newly-discovered country subsequent to the accounts given by the sons of Eric, although allusion is made to the re-discovery of Helluland, about 1285, and there is also the account of a voyage in 1347 to Markland, whither the Northmen came for timber. Of Greenland, we are told that a bishop, also named Eric, was sent thither in the 12th century to attend to the erection of chapels; and that, in 1448, a brief was issued by Pope Nicholas V. concerning the nearly exterminated church in that land. But the country was scarcely heard of thereafter until the year 1721, when the pious and persevering Hans Egede established a mission-station on the west coast. present, a few similar stations of the United Brethren are the only settlements on that inhospitable shore, where only an occasional whaling-ship, or Arctic explorers in quest of an open polar sea, seek its ports of refuge in stress of weather, or when baffled in a bootless search.

At

Far less credible than the accounts of the American voyages of the Northmen, is the tradition of the discovery of the continent by MADOC, the son of a Welsh prince. He is said to have left his native land (1170) because of the prevalence of a family feud, and, having sailed a great distance to the west

ward, discovered a country where dwelt a people whose history, habitations and customs were utterly strange to him. After living there many years, he went back to Wales and equipped a second fleet, with which he again set sail, but never returned. In the latter part of last century, travellers in remote regions of the West, upon the upper waters of the Red River and the Missouri, were said to have met with some Indians whose hair was of a reddish hue and their complexions of a lighter shade of color than was the case with other natives. Parchment manuscripts, which they exhibited, were believed to have been written in Welsh characters. More recently the story has been revived by the reputed discovery of light-complexioned natives among the Zunis of New Mexico. By some observers, the Mandans are thought to be the descendants of Madoc and his companions.

Of a like doubtful character is the relation attributed to the brothers NICOLO and ANTONIO ZENO, of Venice. According to the narrative, claimed to have been set forth in certain of their letters published in the 16th century, Nicolo first visited (1380) the island-groups northward of Scotland; then, being joined by Antonio, they successively voyaged to Iceland, Greenland and the countries adjacent. But the map accompanying the relation is of such a perplexing character, whilst there are so many discrepancies apparent in the text itself, that it is generally discredited as the veritable production of an eye-witness of the lands it professes to delineate and describe. For the present, at least, the "Voyages of the Zeni" must be deemed to be apocryphal.

CHAPTER II.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

1492-1512.

THE WAY PREPARED.

THE darkness of superstition, the clouds of error and ignorance, with the consequent lack of a pure religion and of right-ordered living, which prevailed over Europe during the period from the 5th to the 14th centuries, have earned for that era the title of The Dark Ages. But this sad condition of mental and spiritual gloom witnessed a wonderful awakening to the light, when the Art of Printing was given to man, and when, shortly afterward, the beams of the Reformation burst upon a world, struggling for escape from the domination of error and of priestly intolerance.

It was in the midst of this improving change in the world's civilization that the continent of America was discovered. What the Northmen knew of it was gathered at a time when that knowledge, scant and hazy withal, lacked the means of ready dissemination-the press of the printer. But now, in the fifteenth century, there had arisen a spirit of inquiry and of enterprise, which was fanned into a flame of emulation when the existence of a new world was, in the ordering of the Almighty, made known through the agency of the navigator, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.

Yet, it was not emulation alone-the thirst for discoverywhich was excited by the revelation. There was a thirst for