needful to go so far as this for a means of communication. Bering Strait is but little wider than the English Channel, and it is as easy to make the passage from Asia to America as from France to England; and indeed easier for half the year, when Bering Strait is frozen. Besides all this, both geology and botany indicate that the separation between the two continents did not always exist. Dr. Asa Gray, our highest botanical authority, early pointed out the extraordinary identity between the Japanese flora and that of the northern United States, as indicating a period when the two continents were one. The colonization of America from Asia was thus practicable, at any rate, and that far more easily than any approach from the European side. The simple races on each side of Bering Strait, which now communicate with each other freely, may have done the same from very early times. They needed no consent of sovereigns to do it: they were not obliged to wait humbly in the antechamber of some king, suing for permission to discover for him another world. This we must recognize at the outset; but when it is granted, we are still upon the threshold. Concede that America is but an outlying Asia, it does not follow that America was peopled from Asia; the course of population may first have gone the other way. Or it may be that the human race had upon each continent an autochthonous or indigenous place, according as we prefer a hard Greek word or a hard Latin word to express the simple fact that a race comes into existence on a certain soil instead 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 says "not more than three thousand years." The late John Fiske concluded that there had been no appreciable communication between America and Asia for at least twenty thousand years. Plainly 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 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 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 had been likened

successively to a bird, a bow and arrow, and a

man.

Other sources of evidence 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. These and similar inquiries may yet conclusively establish the fact that the aboriginal American man was contemporary with the mammoth; in the mean time it is only possible, 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?

II

WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME

HE American antiquarians of the middle of the nineteenth century 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, George Bancroft would hardly allude to the subject, and set aside the legends, using a most inappropriate phrase, as "mythological." And it so happened, as will appear by-and-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 completely 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 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