The Discovery of America Part 11

PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.

There is something solemn and impressive in the spectacle of human life thus going on for countless ages in the Eastern and Western halves of our planet, each all unknown to the other and uninfluenced by it. The contact between the two worlds practically begins in 1492.

[Sidenote: The Chinese.]

[Sidenote: The Irish.]

[Sidenote: Cousin, of Dieppe.]

By this statement it is not meant to deny that occasional visitors may have come and did come before that famous date from the Old World to the New. On the contrary I am inclined to suspect that there may have been more such occasional visits than we have been wont to suppose. For the most part, however, the subject is shrouded in the mists of obscure narrative and fantastic conjecture. When it is argued that in the fifth century of the Christian era certain Buddhist missionary priests came from China by way of Kamtchatka and the Aleutian islands, and kept on till they got to a country which they called Fusang, and which was really Mexico, one cannot reply that such a thing was necessarily and absolutely impossible; but when other critics a.s.sure us that, after all, Fusang was really j.a.pan, perhaps one feels a slight sense of relief.[160] So of the dim whispers of voyages to America undertaken by the Irish, in the days when the cloisters of sweet Innisfallen were a centre of piety and culture for northwestern Europe,[161] we may say that this sort of thing has not much to do with history, or history with it. Irish anchorites certainly went to Iceland in the seventh century,[162] and in the course of this book we shall have frequent occasion to observe that first and last there has been on all seas a good deal of blowing and drifting done. It is credibly reported that j.a.panese junks have been driven ash.o.r.e on the coasts of Oregon and California;[163] and there is a story that in 1488 a certain Jean Cousin, of Dieppe, while sailing down the west coast of Africa, was caught in a storm and blown across to Brazil.[164] This was certainly quite possible, for it was not so very unlike what happened in 1500 to Pedro Alvarez de Cabral, as we shall hereafter see;[165] nevertheless, the evidence adduced in support of the story will hardly bear a critical examination.[166]

[Footnote 160: This notion of the Chinese visiting Mexico was set forth by the celebrated Deguignes in 1761, in the _Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions_, tom. xxviii. pp. 506-525. Its absurdity was shown by Klaproth, "Recherches sur le pays de Fou Sang," _Nouvelles annales des voyages_, Paris, 1831, 2e serie, tom. xxi. pp. 58-68; see also Klaproth's introduction to _Annales des empereurs du j.a.pon_, Paris, 1834, pp. iv.-ix.; Humboldt, _Examen critique de l'histoire de la geographie du nouveau continent_, Paris, 1837, tom. ii. pp. 62-84. The fancy was revived by C. G. Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), in his _Fusang_, London, 1875, and was again demolished by the missionary, S. W. Williams, in the _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, vol. xi., New Haven, 1881.]

[Footnote 161: On the n.o.ble work of the Irish church and its missionaries in the sixth and seventh centuries, see Montalembert, _Les moines d'Occident_, tom. ii. pp. 465-661; tom. iii. pp. 79-332; Burton's _History of Scotland_, vol. i.

pp. 234-277; and the instructive map in Miss Sophie Bryant's _Celtic Ireland_, London, 1889, p. 60. The notice of the subject in Milman's _Latin Christianity_, vol. ii. pp. 236-247, is entirely inadequate.]

[Footnote 162: The pa.s.sion for solitude led some of the disciples of St. Columba to make their way from Iona to the Hebrides, and thence to the Orkneys, Shetlands, Faeroes, and Iceland, where a colony of them remained until the arrival of the Northmen in 874. See Dicuil, _Liber de mensura Orbis Terrae_ (A. D. 825), Paris, 1807; Innes, _Scotland in the Middle Ages_, p. 101; Lanigan, _Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, chap.

iii.; Maurer, _Beitrage zur Rechtsgeschichte des Germanischen Nordens_, i. 35. For the legend of St. Brandan, see Gaffarel, _Les voyages de St. Brandan_, Paris, 1881.]

[Footnote 163: C. W. Brooks, of San Francisco, cited in Higginson, _Larger History of the United States_, p. 24.]

[Footnote 164: Desmarquets, _Memoires chronologiques pour servir a l'histoire de Dieppe_, Paris, 1785, tom. i. pp. 91-98; Estancelin, _Recherches sur les voyages et decouvertes des navigateurs normands_, etc., Paris, 1832, pp. 332-361.]

[Footnote 165: See below, vol. ii. p. 96.]

[Footnote 166: As Harrisse says, concerning the alleged voyages of Cousin and others, "Quant aux voyages du Dieppois Jean Cousin en 1488, de Joo Ramalho en 1490, et de Joo Vaz Cortereal en 1464 ou 1474, le lecteur nous pardonnera de les pa.s.ser sous silence." _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884, tom. i.

p. 307.]

[Sidenote: Those stories are of little value;]

It is not my purpose to weary the reader with a general discussion of these and some other legends or rumours of pre-Columbian visitors to America. We may admit, at once, that "there is no good reason why any one of them may not have done" what is claimed, but at the same time the proof that any one of them _did_ do it is very far from satisfactory.[167] Moreover the questions raised are often of small importance, and belong not so much to the serious workshop of history as to its limbo prepared for learned trifles, whither we will hereby relegate them.[168]

[Footnote 167: Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i. 59.]

[Footnote 168: Sufficiently full references may be found in Watson's _Bibliography of the Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America_, appended to Anderson's _America not discovered by Columbus_, 3d ed., Chicago, 1883, pp. 121-164; and see the learned chapters by W. H. Tillinghast on "The Geographical Knowledge of the Ancients considered in relation to the Discovery of America," and by Justin Winsor on "Pre-Columbian Explorations," in _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i.]

[Sidenote: but the case of the Northmen is entirely different.]

[Sidenote: The Viking exodus from Norway.]

[Sidenote: Founding of Iceland, A. D. 874.]

But when we come to the voyages of the Northmen in the tenth and eleventh centuries, it is quite a different affair. Not only is this a subject of much historic interest, but in dealing with it we stand for a great part of the time upon firm historic ground. The narratives which tell us of Vinland and of Leif Ericsson are closely intertwined with the authentic history of Norway and Iceland. In the ninth century of our era there was a process of political consolidation going on in Norway, somewhat as in England under Egbert and his successors. After a war of twelve years, King Harold Fairhair overthrew the combined forces of the Jarls, or small independent princes, in the decisive naval battle of Hafursfiord in the year 872. This resulted in making Harold the feudal landlord of Norway. Allodial tenures were abolished, and the Jarls were required to become his va.s.sals. This consolidation of the kingdom was probably beneficial in its main consequences, but to many a proud spirit and crafty brain it made life in Norway unendurable. These bold Jarls and their Viking[169] followers, to whom, as to the ancient Greeks, the sea was not a barrier, but a highway,[170] had no mind to stay at home and submit to unwonted thraldom. So they manned their dragon-prowed keels, invoked the blessing of Wodan, G.o.d of storms, upon their enterprise, and sailed away. Some went to reinforce their kinsmen who were making it so hot for Alfred in England[171] and for Charles the Bald in Gaul; some had already visited Ireland and were establishing themselves at Dublin and Limerick; others now followed and found homes for themselves in the Hebrides and all over Scotland north of glorious Loch Linnhe and the Murray frith; some made their way through the blue Mediterranean to "Micklegard," the Great City of the Byzantine Emperor, and in his service wielded their stout axes against Magyar and Saracen;[172] some found their amphibious natures better satisfied upon the islands of the Atlantic ridge,--the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Faeroes, and especially n.o.ble Iceland. There an aristocratic republic soon grew up, owning slight and indefinite allegiance to the kings of Norway.[173] The settlement of Iceland was such a wholesale colonization of communities of picked men as had not been seen since ancient Greek times, and was not to be seen again until Winthrop sailed into Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. It was not long before the population of Iceland exceeded 50,000 souls. Their sheep and cattle flourished, hay crops were heavy, a lively trade--with fish, oil, b.u.t.ter, skins, and wool, in exchange for meal and malt--was kept up with Norway, Denmark, and the British islands, political freedom was unimpaired,[174] justice was (for the Middle Ages) fairly well administered, naval superiority kept all foes at a distance; and under such conditions the growth of the new community in wealth[175] and culture was surprisingly rapid. In the twelfth century, before literature had begun to blossom in the modern speech of France or Spain or Italy, there was a flourishing literature in prose and verse in Iceland. Especial attention was paid to history, and the "Landnama-bok," or statistical and genealogical account of the early settlers, was the most complete and careful work of the kind which had ever been undertaken by any people down to quite recent times. Few persons in our day adequately realize the extent of the early Icelandic literature or its richness. The poems, legends, and histories earlier than the date when Dante walked and mused in the streets of Florence survive for us now in some hundreds of works, for the most part of rare and absorbing interest. The "Heimskringla," or chronicle of Snorro Sturleson, written about 1215, is one of the greatest history books in the world.[176]

[Footnote 169: The proper division of this Old Norse word is not into _v[=i]-king_, but into _v[)i]k-ing_. The first syllable means a "bay" or "fiord," the second is a patronymic termination, so that "vikings" are "sons of the fiord,"--an eminently appropriate and descriptive name.]

[Footnote 170: Curtius (_Griechische Etymologie_, p. 237) connects [Greek: pontos] with [Greek: patos]; compare the Homeric expressions [Greek: hygra keleutha, ichthyoenta keleutha], etc.]

[Footnote 171: The descendants of these Northmen formed a very large proportion of the population of the East Anglian counties, and consequently of the men who founded New England.

The East Anglian counties have been conspicuous for resistance to tyranny and for freedom of thought. See my _Beginnings of New England_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 172: They were the Varangian guard at Constantinople, described by Sir Walter Scott in _Count Robert of Paris_. About this same time their kinsmen, the Russ, moving eastward from Sweden, were subjecting Slavic tribes as far as Novgorod and Kief, and laying the foundations of the power that has since, through many and strange vicissitudes, developed into Russia.

See Thomsen, _The Relations between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia_, Oxford, 1877.]

[Footnote 173: Fealty to Norway was not formally declared until 1262.]

[Footnote 174: The settlement of Iceland is celebrated by Robert Lowe in verses which show that, whatever his opinion may have been in later years as to the use of a cla.s.sical education, his own early studies must always have been a source of comfort to him:--

[Greek: Chaire kai en nephelaisi kai en niphadessi bareiais Kai pyri kai seismois nese saleuomene Enthade gar basileos hyperbion hybrin alyxas Demos Hyperboreon, kosmou ep' eschatie, Autarke bioton theion t' erethismata Mouson Kai thesmous hagnes heuren eleutherias.]

These verses are thus rendered by Sir Edmund Head (_Viga Glums Saga_, p. v.):--

"Hail, Isle! with mist and snowstorms girt around, Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,-- Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath: Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free, And held unscathed their laws and liberty."

Laing (_Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 57) couples Iceland and New England as the two modern colonies most distinctly "founded on principle and peopled at first from higher motives than want or gain."]

[Footnote 175: Just what was then considered wealth, for an individual, may best be understood by a concrete instance. The historian Snorro Sturleson, born in 1178, was called a rich man. "In one year, in which fodder was scarce, he lost 120 head of oxen without being seriously affected by it." The fortune which he got with his first wife Herdisa, in 1199, was equivalent nominally to $4,000, or, according to the standard of to-day, about $80,000. Laing, _Heimskringla_, vol. i. pp.

191, 193.]

[Footnote 176: Laing's excellent English translation of it was published in London in 1844. The preliminary dissertation, in five chapters, is of great value. A new edition, revised by Prof. Rasmus Anderson, was published in London in 1889. Another charming book is Sir George Dasent's _Story of Burnt Njal_, Edinburgh, 1861, 2 vols., translated from the _Njals Saga_.

Both the saga itself and the translator's learned introduction give an admirable description of life in Iceland at the end of the tenth century, the time when the voyages to America were made. It is a very instructive chapter in history.

The Icelanders of the present day retain the Old Norse language, while on the Continent it has been modified into Swedish and Norwegian-Danish. They are a well-educated people, and, in proportion to their numbers, publish many books.]

[Sidenote: Discovery of Greenland, 876.]

[Sidenote: Eric's Colony in Greenland, 986.]

Now from various Icelandic chronicles[177] we learn that in 876, only two years after the island commonwealth was founded, one of the settlers named Gunnbjorn was driven by foul weather to some point on the coast of Greenland, where he and his crew contrived to pa.s.s the winter, their ship being locked in ice; when the spring set them free, they returned to Iceland. In the year 983 Eric the Red, a settler upon oxney (Ox-island) near the mouth of Breidafiord, was outlawed for killing a man in a brawl. Eric then determined to search for the western land which Gunnbjorn had discovered. He set out with a few followers, and in the next three years these bold sailors explored the coasts of Greenland pretty thoroughly for a considerable distance on each side of Cape Farewell. At length they found a suitable place for a home, at the head of Igaliko fiord, not far from the site of the modern Julianeshaab.[178]

It was fit work for Vikings to penetrate so deep a fiord and find out such a spot, hidden as it is by miles upon miles of craggy and ice-covered headlands. They proved their sagacity by pitching upon one of the pleasantest spots on the gaunt Greenland coast; and there upon a smooth gra.s.sy plain may still be seen the ruins of seventeen houses built of rough blocks of sandstone, their c.h.i.n.ks caulked up with clay and gravel. In contrast with most of its bleak surroundings the place might well be called Greenland, and so Eric named it, for, said he, it is well to have a pleasant name if we would induce people to come hither. The name thus given by Eric to this chosen spot has been extended in modern usage to the whole of the vast continental region north of Davis strait, for the greater part of which it is a flagrant misnomer.[179] In 986 Eric ventured back to Iceland, and was so successful in enlisting settlers for Greenland that on his return voyage he started with five and twenty ships. The loss from foul weather and icebergs was cruel. Eleven vessels were lost; the remaining fourteen, carrying probably from four to five hundred souls, arrived safely at the head of Igaliko fiord, and began building their houses at the place called Brattahlid. Their settlement presently extended over the head of Tunnudliorbik fiord, the next deep inlet to the northwest; they called it Ericsfiord. After a while it extended westward as far as Immartinek, and eastward as far as the site of Friedrichsthal; and another distinct settlement of less extent was also made about four hundred miles to the northwest, near the present site of G.o.dthaab. The older settlement, which began at Igaliko fiord, was known as the East Bygd;[180] the younger settlement, near G.o.dthaab, was called the West Bygd.

[Footnote 177: A full collection of these chronicles is given in Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanae_, Copenhagen, 1837, in the original Icelandic, with Danish and Latin translations. This book is of great value for its full and careful reproduction of original texts; although the rash speculations and the want of critical discernment shown in the editor's efforts to determine the precise situation of Vinland have done much to discredit the whole subject in the eyes of many scholars. That is, however, very apt to be the case with first attempts, like Rafn's, and the obvious defects of his work should not be allowed to blind us to its merits. In the footnotes to the present chapter I shall cite it simply as "Rafn;" as the exact phraseology is often important, I shall usually cite the original Icelandic, and (for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with that language) shall also give the Latin version, which has been well made, and quite happily reflects the fresh and pithy vigour of the original. An English translation of all the essential parts may be found in De Costa, _Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen_, 2d ed., Albany, 1890; see also Slafter, _Voyages of the Northmen to America_, Boston, 1877 (Prince Society). An Icelandic version, interpolated in Peringskiold's edition of the _Heimskringla_, 1697, is translated in Laing, vol. iii. pp. 344-361.

The first modern writer to call attention to the Icelandic voyages to Greenland and Vinland was Arngrim Jonsson, in his _Crymogoea_, Hamburg, 1610, and more explicitly in his _Specimen Islandiae historic.u.m_, Amsterdam, 1643. The voyages are also mentioned by Campanius, in his _Kort beskrifning om provincien Nya Swerige uti America_, Stockholm, 1702. The first, however, to bring the subject prominently before European readers was that judicious scholar Thormodus Torfaeus, in his two books _Historia Vinlandiae antiquae_, and _Historia Gronlandiae antiquae_, Copenhagen, 1705 and 1706. Later writers have until very recently added but little that is important to the work of Torfaeus. In the voluminous literature of the subject the discussions chiefly worthy of mention are Forster's _Geschichte der Entdeckungen und Schiffahrten im Norden_, Frankfort, 1784, pp. 44-88; and Humboldt, _Examen critique_, etc., Paris, 1837, tom. i. pp. 84-104; see, also, Major, _Select Letters of Columbus_, London, 1847 (Hakluyt Soc.) pp.

xii.-xxi. The fifth chapter of Samuel Laing's preliminary dissertation to the _Heimskringla_, which is devoted to this subject, is full of good sense; for the most part the shrewd Orkneyman gets at the core of the thing, though now and then a little closer knowledge of America would have been useful to him. The latest critical discussion of the sources, marking a very decided advance since Rafn's time, is the paper by Gustav Storm, professor of history in the University of Christiania, "Studier over Vinlandsreiserne," in _Aarbger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie_, Copenhagen, 1887, pp. 293-372.

Since this chapter was written I have seen an English translation of the valuable paper just mentioned, "Studies on the Vineland Voyages," in _Memoires de la societe royale des antiquaires du Nord_, Copenhagen, 1888, pp. 307-370. I have therefore in most cases altered my footnote references below, making the page-numbers refer to the English version (in which, by the way, some parts of the Norwegian original are, for no very obvious reason, omitted). By an odd coincidence there comes to me at the same time a book fresh from the press, whose rare beauty of mechanical workmanship is fully equalled by its intrinsic merit, _The Finding of Wineland the Good--the History of the Icelandic Discovery of America_, edited and translated from the earliest records by Arthur Middleton Reeves, London, 1890. This beautiful quarto contains phototype plates of the original Icelandic vellums in the _Hauks-bok_, the MS. AM. 557, and the _Flateyar-bok_, together with the texts carefully edited, an admirable English translation, and several chapters of critical discussion decidedly better than anything that has gone before it. On reading it carefully through, it seems to me the best book we have on the subject in English, or perhaps in any language.

Since the above was written, the news has come of the sudden and dreadful death of Mr. Reeves, in the railroad disaster at Hagerstown, Indiana, February 25, 1891. Mr. Reeves was an American scholar of most brilliant promise, only in his thirty-fifth year.]

[Footnote 178: Rink, _Danish Greenland_, p. 6.]

[Footnote 179: We thus see the treacherousness of one of the arguments cited by the ill.u.s.trious Arago to prove that the Greenland coast must be colder now than in the tenth century.

The Icelanders, he thinks, called it "a green land" because of its verdure, and therefore it must have been warmer than at present. But the land which Eric called green was evidently nothing more than the region about Julianeshaab, which still has plenty of verdure; and so the argument falls to the ground.

See Arago, _Sur l'etat thermometrique du globe terrestre_, in his _Oeuvres_, tom. v. p. 243. There are reasons, however, for believing that Greenland was warmer in the tenth century than at present. See below, p. 176.]

[Footnote 180: The map is reduced from Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanae_, tab. xv. The ruins dotted here and there upon it have been known ever since the last rediscovery of Greenland in 1721, but until after 1831 they were generally supposed to be the ruins of the West Bygd. After the fifteenth century, when the old colony had perished, and its existence had become a mere literary tradition, there grew up a notion that the names East Bygd and West Bygd indicated that the two settlements must have been respectively eastward and westward of Cape Farewell; and after 1721 much time was wasted in looking for vestiges of human habitations on the barren and ice-bound eastern coast. At length, in 1828-31, the exploring expedition sent out by the Danish government, under the very able and intelligent Captain Graah, demonstrated that both settlements were west of Cape Farewell, and that the ruins here indicated upon the map are the ruins of the East Bygd. It now became apparent that a certain description of Greenland by Ivar Bardsen--written in Greenland in the fourteenth century, and generally accessible to European scholars since the end of the sixteenth, but not held in much esteem before Captain Graah's expedition--was quite accurate and extremely valuable. From Bardsen's description, about which we shall have more to say hereafter, we can point out upon the map the ancient sites with much confidence. Of those mentioned in the present work, the bishop's church, or "cathedral" (a view of which is given below, p. 222), was at Kakortok. The village of Gardar, which gave its name to the bishopric, was at Kaksiarsuk, at the northeastern extremity of Igaliko fiord. Opposite Kaksiarsuk, on the western fork of the fiord, the reader will observe a ruined church; that marks the site of Brattahlid. The fiord of Igaliko was called by the Northmen Einarsfiord; and that of Tunnudliorbik was their Ericsfiord. The monastery of St. Olaus, visited by Nicol Zeno (see below, p. 240), is supposed by Mr.

Major to have been situated near the Iisblink at the bottom of Tessermiut fiord, between the east sh.o.r.e of the fiord and the small lake indicated on the map.]