The Discovery of America Part 18

[Footnote 289: So he tells us himself: "Quo c.u.m venissent, nullum hominem, neque christianum neque paganum, invenerunt, tantummodo fera pecora et oves deprehenderunt, ex quibus quantum naves ferre poterant in has deportato domum redierunt."

_Descriptio Groenlandiae_, apud Major, p. 53. The glacial men had done their work of slaughter and vanished.]

[Footnote 290: "Ma la maggior parte sono delle Islande." Mr.

Major is clearly wrong in translating it "from the Shetland Isles." The younger Nicol was puzzled by the similarity of the names Islanda and Eslanda, and sometimes confounded Iceland with the Shetland group. But in this place Iceland is evidently meant.]

[Footnote 291: This application of the hot water to purposes of gardening reminds us of the similar covered gardens or hot-beds constructed by Albertus Magnus in the Dominican monastery at Cologne in the thirteenth century. See Humboldt's _Kosmos_, ii.

130.]

[Footnote 292: Major, _op. cit._ p. 16. The narrative goes on to give a description of the skin-boats of the Eskimo fishermen.]

[Sidenote: Volcanoes of the north Atlantic ridge.]

[Sidenote: Fate of Gunnbjorn's Skerries, 1456.]

[Sidenote: Volcanic phenomena in Greenland.]

This mention of the volcano and the hot spring is very interesting. In the Miocene period the Atlantic ridge was one of the princ.i.p.al seats of volcanic activity upon the globe; the line of volcanoes extended all the way from Greenland down into central France. But for several hundred thousand years this activity has been diminishing. In France, in the western parts of Great Britain and the Hebrides, the craters have long since become extinct. In the far North, however, volcanic action has been slower in dying out. Iceland, with no less than twenty active volcanoes, is still the most considerable centre of such operations in Europe. The huge volcano on Jan Mayen island, between Greenland and Spitzbergen, is still in action. Among the submerged peaks in the northern seas explosions still now and then occur, as in 1783, when a small island was thrown up near Cape Reykianes, on the southern coast of Iceland, and sank again after a year.[293] Midway between Iceland and Greenland there appears to have stood, in the Middle Ages, a small volcanic island discovered by that Gunnbjorn who first went to Greenland. It was known as Gunnbjorn's Skerries, and was described by Ivar Bardsen.[294] This island is no longer above the surface, and its fate is recorded upon Ruysch's map of the world in the 1508 edition of Ptolemy: "Insula haec anno Domini 1456 fuit totaliter combusta,"--this island was entirely burnt (i. e. blown up in an eruption) in 1456; and in later maps Mr. Major has found the corrupted name "Gombar Scheer"

applied to the dangerous reefs and shoals left behind by this explosion.[295] Where volcanic action is declining geysers and boiling springs are apt to abound, as in Iceland; where it has become extinct at a period geologically recent, as in Auvergne and the Rhine country, its latest vestiges are left in the hundreds of thermal and mineral springs whither fashionable invalids congregate to drink or to bathe.[296] Now in Greenland, at the present day, hot springs are found, of which the most noted are those on the island of Ounartok, at the entrance to the fiord of that name. These springs seem to be the same that were described five hundred years ago by Ivar Bardsen. As to volcanoes, it has been generally a.s.sumed that those of Greenland are all extinct; but in a country as yet so imperfectly studied this only means that eruptions have not been recorded.[297] On the whole, it seems to me that the mention, in our Venetian narrative, of a boiling spring and an active volcano in Greenland is an instance of the peculiar sort--too strange to have been invented, but altogether probable in itself--that adds to the credit of the narrative.

[Footnote 293: Daubeny, _Description of Active and Extinct Volcanoes_, London, 1848, pp. 307; cf. Judd, _Volcanoes_, London, 1881, p. 234.]

[Footnote 294: "Ab Snefelsneso Islandiae, qua brevissimus in Gronlandiam trajectus est, duorum dierum et duarum noctium spatio navigandum est recto cursu versus occidentem; ibique Gunnbjoernis scopulos invenies, inter Gronlandiam et Islandiam medio situ interjacentes. Hic cursus antiquitus frequentabatur, nunc vero glacies ex recessu oceani euroaquilonari delata scopulos ante memoratos tam prope attigit, ut nemo sine vitae discrimine antiquum cursum tenere possit, quemadmodum infra dicetur." _Descriptio Groenlandiae_, apud Major, _op. cit._ p.

40.]

[Footnote 295: _Op. cit._ p. lxxvi. See below, vol. ii. p. 115, note B.]

[Footnote 296: Judd, _op. cit._ pp. 217-220.]

[Footnote 297: My friend, Professor Shaler, tells me that "a volcano during eruption might shed its ice mantle and afterward don it again in such a manner as to hide its true character even on a near view;" and, on the other hand, "a voyager not familiar with volcanoes might easily mistake the cloud-bonnet of a peak for the smoke of a volcano." This, however, will not account for Zeno's "hill that vomited fire," for he goes on to describe the use which the monks made of the pumice and calcareous tufa for building purposes.]

Thus far, in dealing with the places actually visited by Nicol or Antonio, or by both brothers, we have found the story consistent and intelligible. But in what relates to countries beyond Greenland, countries which were not visited by either of the brothers, but about which Antonio heard reports, it is quite a different thing. We are introduced to a jumble very unlike the clear, business-like account of Vinland voyages in the Hauks-bok. Yet in this medley there are some statements curiously suggestive of things in North America. It will be remembered that Antonio's voyage with Sinclair (somewhere about 1400) was undertaken in order to verify certain reports of the existence of land more than a thousand miles west of the Faeroe islands.

[Sidenote: Estotiland.]

About six and twenty years ago, said Antonio in a letter to Carlo, four small fishing craft, venturing very far out upon the Atlantic, had been blown upon a strange coast, where their crews were well received by the people. The land proved to be an island rather smaller than Iceland (or Shetland?), with a high mountain whence flowed four rivers. The inhabitants were intelligent people, possessed of all the arts, but did not understand the language of these Norse fishermen.[298] There happened, however, to be one European among them, who had himself been cast ash.o.r.e in that country and had learned its language; he could speak Latin, and found some one among the shipwrecked men who could understand him. There was a populous city with walls, and the king had Latin books in his library which n.o.body could read.[299] All kinds of metals abounded, and especially gold.[300] The woods were of immense extent.

The people traded with Greenland, importing thence pitch(?), brimstone, and furs. They sowed grain and made "beer." They made small boats, but were ignorant of the loadstone and the compa.s.s. For this reason, they held the newcomers in high estimation.[301] The name of the country was Estotiland.

[Footnote 298: They were, therefore, not Northmen.]

[Footnote 299: Pruning this sentence of its magniloquence, might it perhaps mean that there was a large palisaded village, and that the chief had some books in Roman characters, a relic of some castaway, which he kept as a fetish?]

[Footnote 300: With all possible lat.i.tude of interpretation, this could not be made to apply to any part of America north of Mexico.]

[Footnote 301: The magnetic needle had been used by the mariners of western and northern Europe since the end of the thirteenth century.]

There is nothing so far in this vague description to show that Estotiland was an American country, except its western direction and perhaps its trading with Greenland. The points of unlikeness are at least as numerous as the points of likeness. But in what follows there is a much stronger suggestion of North America.

[Sidenote: Drogio.]

For some reason not specified an expedition was undertaken by people from Estotiland to a country to the southward named Drogio, and these Norse mariners, or some of them, because they understood the compa.s.s, were put in charge of it.[302] But the people of Drogio were cannibals, and the people from Estotiland on their arrival were taken prisoners and devoured,--all save the few Northmen, who were saved because of their marvellous skill in catching fish with nets. The barbarians seemed to have set much store by these white men, and perhaps to have regarded them as objects of "medicine." One of the fishermen in particular became so famous that a neighbouring tribe made war upon the tribe which kept him, and winning the victory took him over into its own custody. This sort of thing happened several times. Various tribes fought to secure the person and services of this Fisherman, so that he was pa.s.sed about among more than twenty chiefs, and "wandering up and down the country without any fixed abode, ... he became acquainted with all those parts."

[Footnote 302: "Fanno nauigli e nauigano, ma non hanno la calamta ne intendeno col bossolo la tramontana. Per ilche questi pescatori furono in gran pregio, si che il re li sped con dodici nauigli uerso ostro nel paese che essi chiamano Drogio." Major, _op. cit._ p. 21.]

[Sidenote: Inhabitants of Drogio and the countries beyond.]

And now comes quite an interesting pa.s.sage. The Fisherman "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 cruelly from the cold, nor have they the sense to clothe themselves with the skins of the animals which they take in hunting [a gross exaggeration].

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 fights amongst each other, and eat one another's flesh. They have chieftains and certain laws among themselves, but differing in the different tribes. The farther you go southwestwards, however, the more refinement you meet with, because the climate is more temperate, and accordingly there they have cities and temples dedicated to their idols, in which they sacrifice men and afterwards eat them. In those parts they have some knowledge and use of gold and silver. Now this Fisherman, having dwelt so many years in these parts, made up his mind, if possible, to return home to his own country; but his companions, despairing of ever seeing it again, gave him G.o.d's speed, and remained themselves 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 very kindly received by the chief of the place, who knew him, and was a great enemy of the neighbouring chieftain; and so pa.s.sing from one chief to another, being the same with whom he had been before, after a long time and with much toil, he at length reached Drogio, where he spent three years. Here, by good luck, he heard from the natives that some boats had arrived off the coast; and full of hope of being able to carry out his intention, he went down to the seaside, and to his great delight found that they had come from Estotiland. He forthwith requested that they would take him with them, which they did very willingly, and as he knew the language of the country, which none of them could speak, they employed him as their interpreter."[303]

[Footnote 303: Major, _op. cit._ pp. 20-22.]

[Sidenote: The Fisherman's return to "Frislanda."]

Whither the Fisherman was first carried in these boats or vessels, Antonio's letter does not inform us. We are only told that he engaged in some prosperous voyages, and at length returned to the Faeroes after these six and twenty years of strange adventures. It was apparently the Fisherman's description of Estotiland as a very rich country (_paese ricchissimo_) that led Sinclair to fit out an expedition to visit it, with Antonio as his chief captain. As we have already seen, the Fisherman died just before the ships were ready to start, and to whatever land they succeeded in reaching after they sailed without him, the narrative leaves us with the impression that it was not the mysterious Estotiland.

To attempt to identify that country from the description of it, which reads like a parcel of ill-digested sailors' yarns, would be idle. The most common conjecture has identified it with Newfoundland, from its relations to other points mentioned in the Zeno narrative, as indicated, with fair probability, on the Zeno map. To identify it with Newfoundland is to brand the description as a "fish story," but from such a conclusion there seems anyway to be no escape.

[Sidenote: Was the account of Drogio woven into the narrative by the younger Nicol?]

With Drogio, however, it is otherwise. The description of Drogio and the vast country stretching beyond it, which was like a "new world," is the merest sketch, but it seems to contain enough characteristic details to stamp it as a description of North America, and of no other country accessible by an Atlantic voyage. It is a sketch which apparently must have had its ultimate source in somebody's personal experience of aboriginal North America. Here we are reminded that when the younger Nicol published this narrative, in 1558, some dim knowledge of the North American tribes was beginning to make its way into the minds of people in Europe. The work of Soto and Cartier, to say nothing of other explorers, had already been done. May we suppose that Nicol had thus obtained some idea of North America, and wove it into his reproduction of his ancestors' letters, for the sake of completeness and point, in somewhat the same uncritical mood as that in which the most worthy ancient historians did not scruple to invent speeches to put into the mouths of their heroes? It may have been so, and in such case the description of Drogio loses its point for us as a feature in the pre-Columbian voyages to America. In such case we may dismiss it at once, and pretty much all the latter part of the Zeno narrative, relating to what Antonio heard and did, becomes valueless; though the earlier part, relating to the elder Nicol, still remains valid and trustworthy.

[Sidenote: Or does it represent actual experiences in North America?]

But suppose we take the other alternative. As in the earlier part of the story we feel sure that young Nicol must have reproduced the ancestral doc.u.ments faithfully, because it shows knowledge that he could not have got in any other way; let us now suppose that in the latter part also he added nothing of himself, but was simply a faithful editor. It will then follow that the Fisherman's account of Drogio, reduced to writing by Antonio Zeno about 1400, must probably represent personal experiences in North America; for no such happy combination of details characteristic only of North America is likely at that date to have been invented by any European. Our simplest course will be to suppose that the Fisherman really had the experiences which are narrated, that he was bandied about from tribe to tribe in North America, all the way, perhaps, from Nova Scotia to Mexico, and yet returned to the Faeroe islands to tell the tale! Could such a thing be possible? Was anything of the sort ever done before or since?

[Sidenote: The case of David Ingram, 1568.]

Yes: something of the sort appears to have been done about ten years after the Zeno narrative was published. In October, 1568, that great sailor, Sir John Hawkins, by reason of scarcity of food, was compelled to set about a hundred men ash.o.r.e near the Rio de Minas, on the Mexican coast, and leave them to their fate. The continent was a network of rude paths or trails, as it had doubtless been for ages, and as central Africa is to-day. Most of these Englishmen probably perished in the wilderness. Some who took southwestern trails found their way to the city of Mexico, where, as "vile Lutheran dogges," they were treated with anything but kindness. Others took northeasterly trails, and one of these men, David Ingram, made his way from Texas to Maine, and beyond to the St. John's river, where he was picked up by a friendly French ship and carried to France, and so got home to England. The journey across North America took him about eleven months, but one of his comrades, Job Hortop, had no end of adventures, and was more than twenty years in getting back to England. Ingram told such blessed yarns about houses of crystal and silver, and other wonderful things, that many disbelieved his whole story, but he was subjected to a searching examination before Sir Francis Walsingham, and as to the main fact of his journey through the wilderness there seems to be no doubt.[304]

[Footnote 304: Ingram's narrative was first published in Hakluyt's folio of 1589, pp. 557-562, but in his larger work, _Princ.i.p.al Navigations_, etc., London, 1600, it is omitted. As Purchas quaintly says, "As for David Ingram's perambulation to the north parts, Master Hakluyt in his first edition published the same; but it seemeth some incredibilities of his reports caused him to leaue him out in the next impression, the reward of lying being not to be beleeued in truths." _Purchas his Pilgrimes_, London, 1625, vol. iv. p. 1179. The examination before Walsingham had reference to the projected voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, which was made in 1583. Ingram's relation, "w^{ch} he reported vnto S^{r} Frauncys Walsingh[~m], Knight, and diuers others of good judgment and creditt, in August and Septembar, A^{o} Dni, 1582," is in the British Museum, Sloane MS. No. 1447, fol. 1-18; it was copied and privately printed in Plowden Weston's _Doc.u.ments connected with the History of South Carolina_, London, 1856. There is a MS. copy in the Sparks collection in the Harvard University library. See the late Mr.

Charles Deane's note in his edition of Hakluyt's _Discourse concerning Westerne Planting_, Cambridge, 1877, p. 229 (_Collections of Maine Hist. Soc._, 2d series, vol. ii.); see, also, Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, iii. 186.]

[Sidenote: The case of Cabeza de Vaca, 1528-36.]

Far more important, historically, and in many ways more instructive than the wanderings of David Ingram, was the journey of Cabeza de Vaca and his ingenious comrades, in 1528-36, from the Mississippi river to their friends in Mexico. This remarkable journey will receive further consideration in another place.[305] In the course of it Cabeza de Vaca was for eight years held captive by sundry Indian tribes, and at last his escape involved ten months of arduous travel. On one occasion he and his friends treated some sick Indians, among other things breathing upon them and making the sign of the cross. As the Indians happened to get well, these Spaniards at once became objects of reverence, and different tribes vied with one another for access to them, in order to benefit by their supernatural gifts. In those early days, before the red men had become used to seeing Europeans, a white captive was not so likely to be put to death as to be cherished as a helper of vast and undetermined value.[306] The Indians set so much store by Cabeza de Vaca that he found it hard to tear himself away; but at length he used his influence over them in such wise as to facilitate his moving in a direction by which he ultimately succeeded in escaping to his friends. There seems to be a real a.n.a.logy between his strange experiences and those of the Fisherman in Drogio, who became an object of reverence because he could do things that the natives could not do, yet the value of which they were able to appreciate.

[Footnote 305: See below, vol. ii. p. 501.]

[Footnote 306: In the first reception of the Spaniards in Peru, we shall see a similar idea at work, vol. ii. pp. 398, 407.]

Now if the younger Nicol had been in the mood for adorning his ancestors' narrative by inserting a few picturesque incidents out of his own hearsay knowledge of North America, it does not seem likely that he would have known enough to hit so deftly upon one of the peculiarities of the barbaric mind. Here, again, we seem to have come upon one of those incidents, inherently probable, but too strange to have been invented, that tend to confirm the story. Without hazarding anything like a positive opinion, it seems to me likely enough that this voyage of Scandinavian fishermen to the coast of North America in the fourteenth century may have happened.

[Sidenote: There may have been unrecorded instances of visits to North America.]

It was this and other unrecorded but possible instances that I had in mind at the beginning of this chapter, in saying that occasional visits of Europeans to America in pre-Columbian times may have occurred oftener than we are wont to suppose. Observe that our scanty records--naturally somewhat perplexed and dim, as treating of remote and unknown places--refer us to that northern Atlantic region where the ocean is comparatively narrow, and to that northern people who, from the time of their first appearance in history, have been as much at home upon sea as upon land. For a thousand years past these hyperborean waters have been furrowed in many directions by stout Scandinavian keels, and if, in aiming at Greenland, the gallant mariners may now and then have hit upon Labrador or Newfoundland, and have made flying visits to coasts still farther southward, there is nothing in it all which need surprise us.[307]

[Footnote 307: The latest pre-Columbian voyage mentioned as having occurred in the northern seas was that of the Polish pilot John Szkolny, who, in the service of King Christian I. of Denmark, is said to have sailed to Greenland in 1476, and to have touched upon the coast of Labrador. See Gomara, _Historia de las Indias_, Saragossa, 1553, cap. x.x.xvii.; Wytfliet, _Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum_, Douay, 1603, p. 102; Ponta.n.u.s, _Rerum Danicarum Historia_, Amsterdam, 1631, p. 763.

The wise Humboldt mentions the report without expressing an opinion, _Examen critique_, tom. ii. p. 153.]