of migrating thither. Migrations, too, in plenty may in this case have come afterwards, and modified the type, giving to it that Asiatic or Mongoloid cast which is now acknowledged by almost all ethnologists.

How long may this process of migration and mingling have gone on upon the American continent? Who can tell? Sir John Lubbock, a high authority, says "not more than three thousand years;" but it is not so easy to fix a limit. To be sure, some evidences of antiquity that are well established in Europe are as yet wanting in America, or at least imperfectly proved. In the French bone-caves there have been found unquestionable representations of the mammoth scratched on pieces of its own ivory, and exhibiting the shaggy hair and curved tusks that distinguish it from all other elephants. There is as yet no such direct and unequivocal evidence in America of the existence of man during the interglacial period.

The alleged evidence, as given in the books up to the present time, fails to satisfy the more cautious archæologists. The so-called "elephants' trunks" used in ornamentation on the Central American buildings offer only a vague and remote resemblance to the supposed originals. The "elephant pipe" dug up in Iowa, and now preserved by the Davenport Academy of Sciences, does not quite command confidence as to its genuineness. The "Elephant Mound," described and figured in the Smithsonian Report for 1872, has a merely suggestive resemblance, like most of the mounds, to the objects whose name it bears. Lapham long since pointed out that the names of "Lizard Mound," "Serpent Mound," and the like, are usually based on very remote similarities; and Squier tells us of one mound which has been likened successively to a bird, a bow and arrow, and a man.

Other sources of evidences are scarcely more satisfactory. There is no doubt that mammoth bones have been found mingled with arrow-heads in some places, and with matting or pottery in others; but unhappily some doubt rests as yet on all these discoveries. It is in no case quite sure that the deposits had remained undisturbed as found, or that they had not been washed together by floods of water. Up to the present time the strongest argument in favor of the very early existence of man upon this continent is not to be found in such comparatively simple lines of evidence, but in the investigations of Dr. Abbott among primeval implements in New Jersey, or those of Professor J. D. Whitney among human remains in California. Their inquiries may yet conclusively establish the fact that the aboriginal American man was contemporary with the mammoth; in the mean time it is only probable, not quite proved.

Must we not admit that in our efforts to explain the origin of the first American man, it is necessary to end, after all, with an interrogation mark?

THE

II.

THE VISIT OF THE VIKINGS.

HE American antiquarians of the last generation had a great dislike to anything vague or legendary, and they used to rejoice that there was nothing of that sort about the discovery of America. The history of other parts of the world, they said, might begin in myth and tradition, but here at least was firm ground, a definite starting-point, plain outlines, and no vague and shadowy romance. Yet they were destined to be disappointed, and it may be that nothing has been lost, after all. Our low American shores would look tame and uninteresting but for the cloud and mist which are perpetually trailing in varied beauty above them, giving a constant play of purple light and pale shadow, and making them deserve the name given to such shores by the old Norse legends, "Wonderstrands." It is the same, perhaps, with our early history. It may be fitting that the legends of the Northmen should

come in, despite all the resistance of antiquarians, to supply just that indistinct and vague element which is needed for picturesqueness. At any rate, whether we like it or not, the legends are here.

I can well remember, as a boy, the excitement produced among Harvard College professors when the ponderous volume called "Antiquitates Americanæ," containing the Norse legends of "Vinland," with the translations of Professor Rafn, made its appearance on the library table. For the first time the claim was openly made that there had been European visitors to this continent before Columbus. The historians shrank from the innovation: it spoiled their comfort. Indeed, Mr. George Bancroft to this day will hardly allude to the subject, and sets aside the legends, using a most inappropriate phrase, as "mythological." And it so happened, as will appear byand-by, that when the claim was first made it was encumbered with some very poor arguments. Nevertheless, the main story was not permanently hurt by these weak points. Its truth has never been successfully impeached; at any rate, we cannot deal with American history unless we give some place to the Norse legends. Picturesque and romantic in themselves, they concern men in whom we have every reason to be interested. These Northmen, or Vikings, were not merely a far-away people with whom we have nothing in common, but they really belonged to the self-same race of men with most of ourselves. They were, perhaps, the actual ancestors of some living Americans, and kinsfolk to the majority. Men of the same race conquered England, and were known as Saxons; then conquered France, and were known as Normans; and finally crossed over from France and conquered England again. These Norse Vikings were, like most of us, Scandinavians, and so were really closer to us in blood and in language than was the great Columbus.

What were the ways and manners of these Vikings? We

must remember at the outset that their name implies nothing of royalty. They were simply the dwellers on a vik, or bay. They were, in other words, the sea-side population of the Scandinavian peninsula, the only part of Europe which then sent forth a race of sea-rovers. They resembled in some respects the Algerine corsairs of a later period, but, unlike the Algerines, they were conquerors as well as pirates, and were ready to found settlements wherever they went. Nor were the Vikings yet Christians, for their life became more peaceful from the time when Christianity came among them. In the prime of their heathenism they were the terror of Europe. They carried their forays along the whole continent. They entered every port in England, and touched at every island on the Scottish coast. They sailed up French rivers, and Charlemagne, the ruler of Western Europe, wept at seeing their dark ships. They reached the Mediterranean, and formed out of their own number the famous Varangian guard of the later Greek emperors, the guard which is described by Walter Scott in "Count Robert of Paris." They reached Africa, which they called "Saracens' Land," and there took eighty castles. All their booty they sent back to Norway, and this wealth included not only what they took from enemies, but what they had from the very courts they served; for it was the practice at Constantinople, when an emperor died, for the Norse guard to go through the palaces and take whatever they could hold in their hands. To this day Greek and Arabic gold coins and chains are found in the houses of the Norwegian peasants, and may be seen in the museums of Christiania and Copenhagen.

Such were the Vikings, and it is needless to say that with such practices they were in perpetual turmoil at home, and needed a strong hand to keep the peace among them. Sometimes a king would make a foray among his own people, as recorded in this extract from the "Heimskringla," or "Kings