library, which they at the present time do not understand. They have their own language and letters. They have all kinds of metals, especially gold. Their foreign intercourse is with Greenland, where they import furs, brimstone, and pitch. He says that toward the south there is a great and populous country, very rich in gold. They sow corn and make beer, which is a kind of drink which northern people take as we do wine. They have woods of vast extent. They construct their buildings with walls, and there are many towns and villages. They make small boats and sail them, but they have not the loadstone, nor do they know the north by the compass. For this reason these fishermen were held in great esteem, insomuch that the king sent them with twelve boats to the southward to a country which they call Drogio; but in their voyage they had such stormy weather that they were in fear for themselves. Although they escaped a miserable death they afterward met a more painful one, for they were taken into the country and the greater number of them were eaten by the savages, who are cannibals and consider human flesh very savory meat. But as this fisherman and his remaining companions were able to show them the way to catch fish with nets, their lives were spared. Every day he would go fishing in the sea and in the fresh waters, and take a great number of fish, which he gave to the chiefs, and thereby ingratiated himself so much into their favor that he was greatly liked and held in high esteem by all.

"As this man's fame spread among the different tribes, there was a neighboring chief who was very anxious to have him with him and to see how he tised his wonderful art of catching fish. With this

prac

object in view he made war on the other chief with whom the fisherman was, and being more powerful and a better warrior, he, at last, overcame him, and so the fisherman was sent to him with the rest of his companions. During the space of thirteen years that he dwelt in those parts, he says, he was sent in this manner to more than five-and-twenty chiefs, for they were continually fighting among themselves, this chief with that one, and solely for the purpose of having the fisherman to dwell with them, so that wandering up and down the country without any fixed abode, he became acquainted with almost all those regions. He says that it is a very great country, and, as it were, a new world. The people are very rude and uncultivated, for they all go naked, and suffer bitterly from the cold, nor have they the sense to clothe themselves with skins of the animals which they take in hunting. They have no kind of metal. They live by hunting, and carry lances of wood, sharpened at the point. They have bows, the strings of which are made of beasts' skins. They are very fierce, and have deadly wars with one another, and eat the flesh of their captives. They have chiefs and certain laws, but differing in different tribes. The farther you go southwestward, however, the more refinement you meet with, because the climate is more temperate, but there they have cities and temples dedicated to their idols, in which they sacrifice men and afterward eat them. In those parts they have some knowledge and use of gold and silver.

“This fisherman after dwelling so many years in those parts resolved to return home if possible to his own country, but his companions, despairing of ever seeing it again, gave him Godspeed, and remained where they were. Accordingly he bade them farewell

and made his escape through the woods in the direction of Drogio, where he was welcomed and kindly received by the chief of the place, who knew him and was a great enemy of the neighboring chief. Thus passing from one chief to another, being the same with whom he had been before, he, at last, reached, after a long time and many hardships, Drogio, where he remained three years. Here by good fortune he learned from the natives that some boats had appeared off the coast, and hopeful of being able to carry out his intention, he went to the beach, and found to his great delight that the men on board the boats had come from Estotiland. He immediately begged them to take him back with them, which they willingly consented to do. He understood the language of the country which none of them could speak, and they employed him as an interpreter. Afterward he traded in company with them to such good purpose that he became very rich, and having fitted out a vessel of his own he returned to Frisland."

When Zichmni heard the story of the returned fisherman, it is said that he prepared a fleet to go to the countries described by him. The fisherman dying about the time that the vessels were ready to sail, some of the seamen who had come from Estotiland in his ship were taken to pilot them. An island called Icaria was discovered, but no exploration of it could be made on account of the hostility of its inhabitants. The fleet afterward proceeded to the coast of Greenland, from which it sailed to Frisland.

'Dello Scoprimento dell 'Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto per due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolò il Caualiere, & M. Antonio. Libro Vno, col disegno di dette Isole.

The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno to the Northern Seas. By Richard Henry Major. London, 1873. Hakluyt Soc. pub, pp. 1-24.

The compiler of the history of the discoveries of the Zeni brothers says: "This discovery [made by the Frisland fisherman] Messere Antonio, in a letter to his brother Messere Carlo, related, * saying that we have changed some old words and the antiquated style, but have left the substance entire.

*

Of these northern places, I [the compiler] have thought it good to draw a copy of the sailing chart, which I find I have among our family heirlooms, and, although it is rotten with age, I have succeeded with it tolerably well; and to those who take pleasure in such things, it will serve to throw light on the comprehension of that which without it could not be understood so easily."

Inasmuch as it is difficult to disprove that the names Frislanda, Engronelanda, and Estotilanda were not early designations for Iceland, Greenland, and Scotland, the supposition that the unnamed Frisland fisherman passed thirteen years of his life on the continent of America solely rests upon the particulars of the story of his famous adventures as a maker of fishing

nets.

CHAPTER II.

1295-1487.

In the opulent and insular city of Venice, there arrived, a few years before the close of the thirteenth century, three strangely clad sun-embrowned men. If any notice had been taken of them when they disembarked from the Mediterranean galley in which they had come from Negropont, this attention had, it is likely, been bestowed upon their odd garb and imperfect pronunciation of the Italian words which they used while obtaining a boatman to convey them to that part of the city known as the confine of S. Giovanni Crisostomo.

The unique story respecting the return of these famous travellers to Venice will always be deemed the prologue that introduces the notable acts of the explorers of the Atlantic coast territory of America in the fifteenth century. It is therefore properly entitled to a conspicuous place on the first pages of the history of the discovery of America. Five centuries ago it charmed the Venetians with its vivid colorings, and gave to the Orient an entrancing vision that made the name of Cathay for a time a synonym for an earthly paradise. It pictured to them a far-off El Dorado, abounding with gold, gems, and spicery, a country naturally delightful and artificially magnificent. America lay in some of the navigable ways which were sought by acquisitive Europeans to go to it, and thus