Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

older elsewhere he may, by parity of reasoning, be older here. We are permitted to go behind the Indians in looking for the earliest inhabitants of North America, wherever they may have come from or whenever they may have lived. In such an inquiry, relieved of some of the limitations which have hitherto obstructed it, we may find in the relics of an early and rude culture much to dispel the obscurity and mystery which till within four centuries have shrouded the New World in darkness.

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

EARLY VOYAGES.-DISCOVERY OF ICELAND. - GREENLAND COLONIZED BY ERIC THE RED. BJARNI HERJULFSON DISCOVERS AMERICA. SONS OF ERIC THE RED. LEIF'S VOYAGE TO VINLAND THE GOOD.-EXPEDITION OF THORVALD.-HIS DEATH. - COLONY OF THORFINN KARLSEFNE. FIGHT WITH SKRÆLLINGS. SUPPOSED IRISH SETTLEMENTS IN AMERICA. COLONY OF FREYDIS. - THE MASSACRE. GLOOMY WINTER AT VINLAND. ROUND TOWER AT NEWPORT. DIGHTON ROCK. -THE ICELANDIC SAGAS.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

WERE these great Western continents, stretching almost from pole to pole, unknown till 1492 to the nations who had made the world's history? The pride of human knowledge has for nearly four centuries resented such an imputation. If facts were wanting, ingenious suppositions of more or less probability were made to take the place of facts. Even before Flavio Gioia introduced the use of the magnetic needle into maritime Europe some unlucky vessel may have Pre-Columbeen driven across the Atlantic and stranded upon strange bian Naviga shores; or some Phoenician navigator who understood "nightsailing" may have boldly turned his ship's head to the West, after passing the Pillars of Hercules, in search of new fields of adventure and of traffic; or some of the fearless navigators who steered into the Sea of Darkness in search of Antilia, or the Island of the Seven Bishops, may have landed for a night upon coasts which some supernatural power was supposed to guard from the intrusion of man. Or

tion.

it may be that the lost Tribes of Israel wandered through Asia to the Northwest coast and were the progenitors of the North American Indians and the ancient Mexicans; that the Malays crossed the Polynesian Archipelago and invaded the Western Hemisphere on the South; that a vast army of Mongols came with their elephants, whose bones are left as a witness of their invasion from Brazil to Rhode Island; that the Apostle St. Thomas preached Christianity in Peru ; or that St. Patrick sent Irish missionaries to the Isles of America. All these theories have had their advocates.

men.

But there was one ancient people whose warriors were the dread The North of all Europe, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and whose long experience as pirates made them fearless and successful sailors, who, there seems no good reason for doubting, did cross the Atlantic from coast to coast, almost five hundred years before Columbus stept upon and knelt down to kiss the sands of the beach of San Salvador. The Northmen had a genius for discovering new countries by accident, and having approached and settled within a few hundred miles of the coast of the Western Continent, it would have been strange rather than otherwise if such bold rovers had not found their way thither. They made, indeed, no permanent settlement, and if it may be held as an argument against the probability of their having made the discovery at all that it is hard to find a continent, it may, with quite as much force, be urged that it is still harder to lose one, when found. But here again the Northmen are not without a parallel in their own experience, for it is certain that they discovered and held Greenland for more than four hundred years, and lost it again for more than two centuries.

They discov

It was by accident the Northmen discovered Iceland; Naddod, an illustrious sea-rover, having been driven, about the year 860, er Iceland. upon its coasts by a storm. He called it Snæland - Snowland. Four years later, one Gardar Svafarson was also carried thither by tempest, and finding it by circumnavigation an island, gave it the name of Gardar-hólm -Gardar's Isle. His account of it was so pleasant that soon after Floki, or Flokko, another famous viking, went out to plant a colony. Not trusting to the chances which had befallen and befriended his predecessors, he took with him three ravens, which he was careful before starting to have consecrated to the gods, and to

[ocr errors]

1 There is some little discrepancy as to those first discoverers. The editor of Mallet's Northern Antiquities, Bohn's edition, puts Naddod first and Gardar second; De CostaPre-Columbian Discovery in America—gives the precedence to Gardar; while CrantzHistory of Greenland · who cites as his authority "the learned Icelander, Arngrim Jonas," says Naddok (Naddod) was first driven on the coast by a storm, and that he was followed "by a certain pyrate whose name was Flokko," and omits any mention whatever of Gar

dar.

DISCOVERY OF ICELAND.

37

these he trusted to guide him to the land he sought. The first he let loose returned toward the islands of Faroe, which Flokko concluded, therefore, must still be the nearest land; the second, sent out some days later, returned to the vessel, which was accepted as a proof that there was no land within a raven's flight; but the third, when let loose, circling into the air, turned its course at length steadily westward, and him Flokko followed, till he reached the island. For one winter he and his colony lived there; but his cattle all perished with cold. In the spring, when he would have sown seed, thick ice still

[graphic][merged small]

covered the coasts and rivers; so when the summer came he sailed back to Norway, declaring that the land, which he called Island, — Iceland - - was unfit for the habitation of either man or beast. Ten years later, however, another colony was taken out from Norway by the Earl Ingolf, who sought in Iceland a refuge from the tyranny of King Harold Haarfager, who no doubt was a despot, but whose offence in this case seems to have been some intolerant notions he held about a manslaughter that Ingolf had committed. The attempt at colonization was this time successful, and a state was founded which for several centuries was the most remarkable community of that age for the simplicity and freedom of its political institutions, for the license, not to say the licentiousness, of its social life, and for the intelligence and cultivation of its people.

Greenland was discovered by another, almost inevitable accident, for, from mid-channel between it and Iceland, both are at the same time visible.1 Gunnbiorn, or Gunbioern, one of the early settlers of

1 Crantz's Greenland, book iv. p. 245.

Iceland, was driven westward by a storm, when he saw land which was held in remembrance for the next century as Gunnbiorn's Rocks. Eric the Red, a man disposed to acts of violence which he was too weak to sustain when resented, was compelled to find safety in exile. Gunnbiorn's Rocks seemed to him a good place to go to, and thither he went.

Eric the Red

Greenland.

In three years he was back in Iceland, full of glowing descriptions of this country, which he called Greenland, "because, quoth settles he, people will be attracted hither if the land has a good name." He returned to Greenland with large additions to his colony. It was the sons of this Eric the Red who were the first Europeans, so far as is positively known, to set foot upon this conti

nent.

Bjarni sails for Green

But this came about by still another accident. Among those who followed Eric to Greenland was Herjulf, who had a son, "a promising young man," of the name of Bjarni, or Biarne. land. They were both in the habit of making trading voyages to Norway in the summer, and passing the winter together at home in Iceland. On returning from Norway in the year 985, Bjarni, who was a dutiful son as well as a promising youth, found that his father had followed Eric. He instantly proposed, without unloading his ship, to go after him, though, as he said to his crew, "Our voyage will be thought foolish, as none of us have been on the Greenland sea before." But this did not daunt them; they set sail, and in three days lost sight of land.

Then thick fogs beset them, and "for many days" they were driven by a north wind they knew not whither. When the weather cleared, they made all sail for another day and night, and then welcomed the sight of land again. It was, they said, a country covered with woods, without mountains, and with small hills inland. This they were sure could not be Greenland; so they turned seaward once more, and — for these Northmen knew how to sail on a wind- "left the land on their larboard side, and let the stern turn from the land." After sailing two days and two nights they again approached the coast, which, they saw as they neared it, was low and wooded. Bjarni refused to go on shore, at which his crew grumbled; for this, he said, can no more be Greenland than the land we saw before, "because in Greenland are said to be very high ice-hills."

Then for three nights and days they went on their way as before, with a southwest wind, when for the third time they made land ahead, and it was "high and mountainous, with snowy mountains." Once more said Bjarni, "In my opinion this land is not what we want ; and again he refused to leave his ship, but sailed along the coast and found it was an island. Standing out to sea again, still with the

« AnteriorContinuar »