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THE TRACK OF VIKINGS, COLUMBUS AND CABOT TO THE NEW WORLD.

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Oxford University Press.

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British Isles they passed further north and settled in the Faroes and Iceland. This was the beginning of the Faroic and Icelandic Commonwealths. The Icelandic Sagas or Stories preserve a picture of the daily lives as well as a record of the adventures of these early colonists. The Sagas were the product of the age following upon and attending the days of colonisation. They are an interesting part of the native literature of our race, which owes so much of its hardihood and enterprise to the admixture of northern blood. From Iceland the Northmen found their way to West Greenland, and the runic inscriptions discovered in that country and brought to Copenhagen in 1831, confirmed the truth of the Icelandic writings relating to the early voyages of the Norsemen.

(2) The Book of the Settlement of Iceland, compiled by Are the historian in Iceland (c. 1130), records how a reef was discovered north-west of Iceland known as Gunnbeorn's Reef (probably islands or rocks on the East Greenland coast), and how, later, Greenland was discovered, and afterwards its west coast settled by Eric the Red from Iceland (c. 985). This Greenland colony extended from the South Cape of Greenland along the west coast in two long groups of settlements, as far north as latitude 75°. On a western voyage, Beorn, son of a Greenland settler, was driven by a north-east gale far to the west, when he sighted, but did not land on, three New Lands lying a few days' sail from each other and from Greenland (the coast of British North America). Leif the Lucky, son of Eric the Red, followed up this by an expedition to view the New Lands (c. 1030). named Beorn's New Lands Stone-land, Bush-land, and Wine-land (Labrador, and the country north and south of the St. Lawrence estuary). He landed, built a homestead called Leif's booths, and brought back good report of the country. Several expeditions followed. Thorwald, Leif's

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brother, built a ship there, and laid up the old one on a promontory to which they gave the name of Keelness. Shortly afterwards Thorwald, whilst fighting with the Scraelings [Eskimo], received a wound from which he died. According to Viking fashion he would be buried on a headland looking seawards in the stout Norwegian ship that had carried him thither, and there they may still be lying, the Viking captain and his ship. Should Thorwald's barrow ever be discovered and the ribs of his ancient ship bared to view (as has happened with the Sea-king's ship in Norway), a story of romantic enterprise and travel will be doubly proven.

(3) For 400 years, however, there is silence, and not even tradition tells of discovery. We hear that, about 1400, the icy barriers round Greenland had increased so much that intercourse by this way to the west was completely cut off. The nations of Europe were looking elsewhere for war and adventure, and a new generation of Vikings turned their prows southwards. The 'gorgeous East' with its wealth and opulence entranced the European imagination. European mariners attempted the open waters of the Great Atlantic, not with a view of conquest or colonisation, but from a desire to reach the Indies from the West. For centuries the only means of communication between East and West had been the Caravan routes. The terminus of this trade was naturally found in Eastern Europe.

(4) Silks, muslins, ebony, ivory, oil, palm-wine, gesamum, gems such as rubies, sapphires, topazes, amethysts, together with gold and spices and all the countless products of the East, reached Constantinople overland. This was the time of Byzantine art, this the era of Byzantine magnificence. The warmth and glow of the East were being filtrated along this channel, as it were, into the veins of the sluggish nations of Europe. The Italian

republics felt this glow first of all. It was the traffic with the East which made them rich, and gave them the title of the merchants and money-changers of the world. Their geographical position favoured them. The Venetians and Genoese occupied a position, mid-way, as it were, between the two worlds, the old and the new, where they could receive and distribute every kind of ware and fabric. They had stepped into the place of the Phonicians and the Greeks of old, and the magnificent palaces by the canals of Venice show how great their wealth and magnificence once were :—

'Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear;
These days are gone-but beauty still is here.'

Little could the prosperous merchants of the Italian Republics guess how quickly the turn in their fortunes would come. Not as in the present age, when a new discovery is flashed upon the world almost instantaneously, the daring deeds of explorers and the tidings of a successful voyage came slowly to the ears of these merchant princes. They scarcely realised that they were falling before they fell.

(5) A passion for travel and adventure had long been asserting itself, and the eyes of all were bent upon the wonders and riches of the East. In 1245, a Minorite Friar, Carpini, despatched by Pope Innocent IV to the Mongols, was the first European to publish a rational account of that nation. He also brought back news of China and of the celebrated Prester John. In 1253 another Minorite Friar, Ruysbroeck by name, starting from Acre, reached Karakoram, the residence of the great Khan. He first gave a description of arrack or rice-spirit, and of the yak, and he also proved that the Caspian was an inland sea, and not connected with the Northern Ocean as had been hitherto supposed. In 1254

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