[531] E. B. Tylor on “Old Scandinavian Civilization among the modern Esquimaux,” in the Journal of the Anthropological Inst. (1884), xiii. 348, shows that the Greenlanders still preserve some of the Norse customs, arising in part, as he thinks, from some of the lost Scandinavian survivors being merged in the savage tribes. Their recollection of the Northmen seems evident from the traditions collected among them by Dr. Rink in his Eskimoiske Eventyr og Sagn (Copenhagen, 1866); and their dress, and some of their utensils and games, as it existed in the days of Egede and Crantz, seem to indicate the survival of customs.
[532] Cosmos, Bohn’s ed., ii. 610; Examen Crit., ii. 148.
[533] Cf. Geographie de Edrisi, traduite de l’arabe en français d’après deux manuscrits de la bibliothèque du Roi, et accompagnée de notes, par G. Amédée Jaubert (Paris, 1836-40), vol. i. 200; ii. 26. Cf. Recueil des Voyages et Mémoires de la Société de Géographie de Paris, vols. v., vi. The world-map by Edrisi does not indicate any knowledge of this unknown world. Cf. copies of it in St. Martin’s Atlas, pl. vi; Lelewel, Atlas, pl. x-xii; Peschel’s Gesch. der Erdkunde, ed. by Ruge, 1877, p. 144; Amer. Geog. Soc. Journal, xii. 181; Allg. Geog. Ephemeriden, ix. 292; Gerard Stein’s Die Entdeckungsreisen in alter und neuer Zeit (1883).
Guignes (Mém. Acad. des Inscriptions, 1761, xxviii. 524) limits the Arab voyage to the Canaries, and in Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la bibliothèque du Roi, ii. 24, he describes a MS. which makes him believe the Arabs reached America; and he is followed by Munoz (Hist. del Nuevo Mondo, Madrid, 1793). Hugh Murray (Discoveries and Travels in No. Amer., Lond., 1829, i. p. II) and W. D. Cooley (Maritime Discovery, 1830, i. 172) limit the explorations respectively to the Azores and the Canaries. Humboldt (Examen Crit., 1837, ii. 137) thinks they may possibly have reached the Canaries; but Malte Brun (Géog. Universelle, 1841, i. 186) is more positive. Major (Select Letters of Columbus, 1847) discredits the American theory, and in his Prince Henry agrees with D’Avezac that they reached Madeira. Lelewel (Géog. du Moyen Age, ii. 78) seems likewise incredulous. S. F. Haven (Archæol. U. S.) gives the theory and enumerates some of its supporters. Peschel (Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, 1858) is very sceptical. Gaffarel (Etudes, etc., p. 209) fails to find proof of the American theory. Gay (Pop. History U. S., i. 64) limits their voyage to the Azores.
[534] Given as a.d. 1380; but Major says, 1390. Journal Royal Geog. Soc., 1873, p. 180.
[535] De Costa, Verrazano the Explorer (N. Y., 1880), pp. 47, 63, contends that Benedetto Bordone, writing his Isole del Monde in 1521, and printing it in 1528, had access to the Zeno map thirty years and more earlier than its publication. This, he thinks, is evident from the way in which he made and filled in his outline, and from his drawing of “Islanda,” even to a like way of engraving the name, which is in a style of letter used by Bordone nowhere else. Humboldt (Cosmos, Bohn’s ed., ii. 611) has also remarked it as singular that the name Frislanda, which, as he supposed, was not known on the maps before the Zeni publication in 1538, should have been applied by Columbus to an island southerly from Iceland, in his Tratado de las cinco zonas habitables. Cf. De Costa’s Columbus and the Geographers of the North (1872), p. 19. Of course, Columbus might have used the name simply descriptively,—cold land; but it is now known that in a sea chart of perhaps the fifteenth century, preserved in the Ambrosian library at Milan, the name “Fixlanda” is applied to an island in the position of Frislanda in the Zeno chart, while in a Catalan chart of the end of the fifteenth century the same island is apparently called “Frixlanda” (Studi biog. e bibliog. della soc. geog. ital., ii. nos. 400, 404). “Frixanda” is also on a chart, a.d. 1471-83, given in fac-simile to accompany Wuttke’s “Geschichte der Erdkunde” in the Jahrbuch des Vereins für Erdkunde (Dresden, 1870, tab. vi.).
[536] Irving’s Columbus takes this view.
[537] J. P. Leslie’s Man’s Origin and Destiny, p. 114, for instance.
[538] Brevoort (Hist. Mag., xiii. 45) thinks that the “Isola Verde” and “Isle de Mai” of the fifteenth-century maps, lying in lat. 46° north, was Newfoundland with its adjacent bank, which he finds in one case represented. Samuel Robertson (Lit. & Hist. Soc. Quebec, Trans. Jan. 16) goes so far as to say that certain relics found in Canada may be Basque, and that it was a Basque whaler, named Labrador, who gave the name to the coast, which the early Portuguese found attached to it! We find occasional stories indicating knowledge of distant fishing coasts at a very early date, like the following:—
“In the yeere 1153 it is written that there came to Lubec, a citie of Germanie, one canoa with certaine indians, like unto a long barge, which seemed to have come from the coast of Baccalaos, which standeth in the same latitude that Germanie doth” (Galvano, Bethune’s edition, p. 56).
[539] W. D. Whitney, Life and Growth of Language, p. 258, says: “No other dialect of the old world so much resembles in structure the American languages.” Cf. Farrar’s Families of Speech, p. 132; Nott and Gliddon’s Indigenous Races, 48; H. de Charencey’s Des affinités de la langue Basque avec les idiomes du Nouveau Monde (Paris and Caen, 1867); and Julien Vinson’s “La langue basque et les langues Américaines” in the Compte Rendu, Congrès des Américanistes (Nancy, 1875), ii. 46. On the other hand, Joly (Man before Metals, 316) says: “Whatever may be said to the contrary, Basque offers no analogy with the American dialects.”
These linguistic peculiarities enter into all the studies of this remarkable stock. Cf. J. F. Blade’s Etude sur l’origine des Basques (Paris, 1869); W. B. Dawkins in the Fortnightly Review, Sept., 1874, and his Cave Hunting, ch. 6, with Brabrook’s critique in the Journal Anthropological Institute, v. 5; and Julien Vinson on “L’Ethnographie des Basques” in Mém. de la Soc. d’Ethnographie, Session de 1872, p. 49, with a map.
[540] But see Vol. III. 45; IV. 3. Forster (Northern Voyages, book iii. ch. 3 and 4) contends for these pre-Columbian visits of the European fishermen. Cf. Winsor’s Bibliog. of Ptolemy, sub anno 1508. The same currents and easterly trade-winds which helped Columbus might easily have carried chance vessels to the American coasts, as we have evidence, apparently, in the stern-post of a European vessel which Columbus saw at Guadaloupe. Haven cites Gumilla (Hist. Orinoco, ii. 208) as stating that in 1731 a bateau from Teneriffe was thrown upon the South American coast. Cf. J. P. Casselius, De Navigationibus fortuitis in Americam, ante Columbum factis (Magdeburg, 1742); Brasseur’s Popul Vuh, introd.; Hunt’s Merchants’ Mag. xxv. 275.
[541] Francisque-Michel, Le Pays Basque, 189, who says that the Basques were acquainted with the coasts of Newfoundland a century before Columbus (ch. 9).
Humboldt (Cosmos, Eng. ed. ii. 142) is not prepared to deny such early visits of the Basques to the northern fishing grounds. Cf. Gaffarel’s Rapport, p. 212. Harrisse (Notes on Columbus, 80) goes back very far: “The Basques and Northmen, we feel confident, visited these shores as early as the seventh century.”
There are some recent studies on these early fishing experiences in Ferd. Duro’s Disquisiciones nauticas (1881), and in E. Gelcich’s “Der Fischgang des Gascogner and die Entdeckung von Neufundland,” in the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin (1883), vol. xviii. pp. 249-287.
[542] Cf. M. Hamconius’ Frisia: seu de viris erbusque Frisiæ illustribus (Franckeræ, 1620), and L. Ph. C. v. d. Bergh’s Nederlands annspraak op de ontdekking van Amerika voor Columbus (Arnheim, 1850). Cf. Müller’s Catalogue (1877), nos. 303, 1343.
[543] Watson’s bibliog. in Anderson, p. 158.
A Biscayan merchant, a subject of Navarre, is also said to have discovered the western lands in 1444. Cf. André Favyn, Hist. de Navarre, p. 564; and G. de Henao’s Averignaciones de las Antigüedades? de Cantabria, p. 25.
Galvano (Hakluyt Soc. ed., p. 72) recounts the story of a Portuguese ship in 1447 being driven westward from the Straits of Gibraltar to an island with seven cities, where they found the people speaking Portuguese; who said they had deserted their country on the death of King Roderigo. “All these reasons seem to agree,” adds Galvano, “that this should be that country which is called Nova Spagna.”
It was the year (1491) before Columbus’ voyage that the English began to send out from Bristol expeditions to discover these islands of the seven cities, and others having the same legendary existence. Cf. Ayala, the Spanish ambassador to England, in Spanish State Papers, i. 177. Cf. also Irving’s Columbus, app. xxiv., and Gaffarel’s Etude sur la rapports, etc., p. 185.
[544] See Vol. II. p. 34.
[545] See Vol. II. p. 34, where is a list of references, which may be increased as follows: Bachiller y Morales, Antigüedades Americanas (Havana, 1845). E. de Freville’s Mémoire sur le Commerce maritime de Rouen (1857), i. 328, and his La Cosmographie du moyen age, et les découvertes maritimes des Normands (Paris, 1860), taken from the Revue des Sociétés Savantes. Gabriel Gravier’s Les Normands sur la route des Indes, (Rouen, 1880). Cf. Congrès des Américanistes in Compte Rendu (1875), i. 397.
[546] “Ethnography and Philology of America,” in H. W. Bates, Central America, West Indies, and South America (Lond., 1882). This was the opinion of Prescott (Mexico, Kirk’s ed., iii. 398), and he based his judgment on the investigations of Waldeck, Voyage dans la Yucatan, and Dupaix, Antiquités Méxicaines. Stephens (Central America) holds similar views. Cf. Wilson, Prehistoric Man, i. 327; ii. 43. Dall (Third Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 146) says: “There can be no doubt that America was populated in some way by people of an extremely low grade of culture at a period even geologically remote. There is no reason for supposing, however, that immigration ceased with these original people.”
[547] Cf. references in H. H. Bancroft’s Native Races, v. 39; Amerika’s Nordwest Küste; Neueste Ergebnisse ethnologischer Reisen (Berlin, 1883), and the English version, The Northwest Coast of America. Being Results of Recent Ethnological Researches from the collections of the Royal Museums at Berlin. Published by the Directors of the Ethnological Department (New York, 1883).
[548] Cf. his Observations on some remains of antiquity (1796).
[549] Different shades of belief are abundant: F. Xavier de Orrio’s Solucion del gran problema (Mexico, 1763); Fischer’s Conjecture sur l’origine des Américaines; Adair’s Amer. Indians; G. A. Thompson’s New theory of the two hemispheres (London, 1815); Adam Hodgson’s Letters from No. Amer. (Lond., 1824); J. H. McCulloh’s Researches (Balt., 1829), ch. 10; D. B. Warden’s “Recherches sur les Antiquités de l’Amérique” in the Antiquités Méxicaines (Paris, 1834), vol. ii.; E. G. Squier’s Serpent Symbol (N. Y., 1851); Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Hist. des Nations Civilisées, i. 7; José Perez in Revue Orientale et Américaine (Paris, 1862), vol. viii.; Bancroft’s Native Races, v. 30, 31, with references; Winchell’s Preadamites, 397; a paper on Asiatic tribes in North America, in Canadian Institute Proceedings (1881), i. 171. Dabry de Thiersant, in his Origine des Indiens du nouv. monde (Paris, 1883), reopens the question, and Quatrefages even brings the story of Moncacht-Ape (see post, Vol. V. p. 77) to support a theory of frequent Asiatic communication. Tylor (Early Hist. Mankind, 209) says that the Asiatics must have taught the Mexicans to make bronze and smelt iron; and (p. 339) he finds additional testimony in the correspondence of myths, but Max Müller (Chips, ii. 168) demurs. Nadaillac, in his L’Amérique préhistorique, discussed this with the other supposable connections of the American people, and generally disbelieved in them; but Dall, in the English translation, summarily dismisses all consideration of them as unworthy a scientific mind; but points out what the early Indian traditions are (p. 526).
A good deal of stress has been laid at times on certain linguistic affiliations. Barton, in his New Views, sought to strengthen the case by various comparative vocabularies. Charles Farcy went over the proofs in his Antiquités de l’Amérique: Discuter la valeur des documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’Amérique avant la conquête des Européens, et déterminer s’il existe des rapports entre les langues de l’Amérique et celles des tribus de l’Afrique et de l’Asie (Paris, 1836). H. H. Bancroft (Native Races, v. 39) enumerates the sources of the controversy. Roehrig (Smithsonian Report, 1872) finds affinities in the languages of the Dakota or Sioux Indians. Pilling (Bibliog. of Siouan languages, p. 11) gives John Campbell’s contributions to this comparative study. In the Canadian Institute Proceedings (1881), vol. i. p. 171, Campbell points out the affinities of the Tinneh with the Tungus, and of the Choctaws and Cherokees with the Koriaks. Cf. also Ibid., July, 1884. Dall and Pinart pronounce against any affinity of tongues in the Contributions to Amer. Ethnology (Washington), i. 97. Cf. Short, No. Amer. of Antiq., 494; Leland’s Fusang, ch. 10.
[550] Behring’s Straits, first opened, as Wallace says, in quaternary times, are 45 miles across, and are often frozen in winter. South of them is an island where a tribe of Eskimos live, and they keep constant communication with the main of Asia, 50 miles distant, and with America, 120 miles away. Robertson solved the difficulty by this route. Cf. Contributions to Amer. Ethnology (1877), i. 95-98; Warden’s Recherches; Maury, in Revue des deux Mondes, Ap. 15, 1858; Peschel’s Races of Men, p. 401; F. von Hellwald in Smithsonian Report, 1866; Short, p. 510; Bancroft, Native Races, v. 28, 29, 54; and Chavanne’s Lit. of the Polar Regions, 58, 194—the last page shows a list of maps. Max Müller (Chips, ii. 270) considers this theory a postulate only.
[551] Contrib. to Amer. Ethnology, i. 96; Lyell’s Principles of Geology, 8th ed., 368; A. Ragine’s Découverte de l’Amérique du Kamtchatka et des îles Aléoutiennes (St. Petersburg, 1868, 2d ed.); Pickering’s Races of Men; Peschel’s Races of Men, 397; Morgan’s Systems of Consanguinity. Dall (Tribes of the Northwest, in Powell’s Rocky Mountain Region, 1877, p. 96) does not believe in the Aleutian route.
On the drifting of canoes for long distances see Lyell’s Principles of Geology, 11th ed., ii. 472; Col. B. Kennon in Leland’s Fousang; Rev. des deux Mondes, Apr., 1858; Vining, ch. 1. Cf. Alphonse Pinart’s “Les Aléoutes et leur origine,” in Mém. de la Soc. d’Ethnographie, session de 1872, p. 155.
[552] Cf. references in H. H. Bancroft’s Nat. Races, v. 54. We have an uncorroborated story of a Tartar inscription being found. Cf. Kalm’s Reise, iii. 416; Archæologia (London, 1787), viii. 304.
[553] Gomara makes record of such floating visitors in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Horace Davis published in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc. (Apr., 1872) a record of Japanese vessels driven upon the northwest coast of America and its outlying islands in a paper “On the likelihood of an admixture of Japanese blood on our northwest coast.” Cf. A. W. Bradford’s American Antiquities (N. Y., 1841); Whymper’s Alaska, 250; Bancroft’s Nat. Races, v. 52, with references; Contributions to Amer. Ethnol., i. 97, 238; De Roquefeuil’s Journal du Voyage autour du Monde (1876-79), etc. It is shown that the great Pacific current naturally carries floating objects to the American coast. Davis, in his tract, gives a map of it. Cf. Haven, Archæol. U. S., p. 144; Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc. (1883), xv. p. 101, by Thomas Antisell; and China Review, Mar., Apr., 1888, by J. Edkins.
[554] Recherches sur les navigations des Chinois du côte de l’Amérique et sur quelques peuples situés à l’extrémité orientale de l’Asie (Paris, 1761). It is translated in Vining, ch. 1.
[555] Examen Critique, ii. 65, and Ansichten der Natur, or Views of Nature, p. 132.
[556] Much depends on the distance intended by a Chinese li. Klaproth translated the version as given by an early Chinese historian of the seventh century, Li Yan Tcheou, and Klaproth’s version is Englished in Bancroft’s Nat. Races, v. 33-36. Klaproth’s memoir is also translated in Vining, ch. 3. Some have more specifically pointed to Saghalien, an island at the north end of the Japan Sea. Brooks says there is a district of Corea called Fusang (Science, viii. 402). Brasseur says the great Chinese encyclopædia describes Fusang as lying east of Japan, and he thinks the descriptions correspond to the Cibola of Castañeda.
[557] Again with a commentary in The Continental Mag. (New York, vol. i.). Subjected to the revision of Neumann, it is reproduced in Leland’s Fusang (Lond., 1875). Cf. Vining, ch. 6, who gives also (ch. 10) the account in Shan-Hai-king as translated by C. M. Williams in Mag. Amer. Hist., April, 1883.
[558] The pamphlets are translated in Vining, ch. 4 and 5. Paravey held to the Mexican theory, and he at least convinced Domenech (Seven years’ residence in the great deserts of No. Amer., Lond., 1860). Paravey published several pamphlets on subjects allied to this. His Mémoire sur l’origine japonaise, arabe et basque de la civilisation des peuples du plateau de Bogota d’après les travaux de Humboldt et Siebold (Paris, 1835) is a treatise on the origin of the Muyscas or Chibchas. Jomard, in his Les Antiquités Américaines au point de vue des progrès de la géographie (Paris, 1817) in the Bull. de la Soc. Géog., had questioned the Asiatic affiliations, and Paravey replied in a Réfutation de l’opinion émise par Jomard que les peuples de l’Amérique n’ont jamais en aucun rapport avec ceux de l’Asie (Paris, 1849), originally in the Annales de philosophie Chrétienne (May, 1849).
[559] Also in the Rev. Archéologique (vols. x., xi.), and epitomized in Leland. Cf. also Dr. A. Godron on the Buddhist mission to America in Annales des Voyages (Paris, 1864), vol. iv., and an opposing view by Vivien de St. Martin in L’Année géographique (1865), iii. p. 253, who was in turn controverted by Brasseur in his Monuments Anciens du Méxique.
[560] This paper is reprinted in Leland.
[561] Cf. also his Variétés Orientales, 1872; and his “L’Amérique, etait-elle connue des Chinois à l’époque du déluge?” in the Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France, n. s., iii. 191.
[562] S. W. Williams, in the Journal of the American Oriental Soc. (vol. xi.), in controverting the views of Leland, was inclined to find Fusang in the Loo-choo Islands. This paper was printed separately as Notices of Fusang and other countries lying east of China in the Pacific ocean (New Haven, 1881).
[563] A good deal of labor has been bestowed to prove this identity of Fusang with Mexico. It is held to be found in the myths and legends of the two people by Charency in his Mythe de Votan, étude sur les origines asiatiques de la civilisation américaine (Alençon, 1871), drawn from the Actes de la Soc. philologique (vol. ii.); and he has enforced similar views in the Revue des questions historiques (vi. 283), and in his Djemschid et Quetzalcohuatl. L’histoire légendaire de la Nouvelle-Espagne rapprochée de la source indo-européenne (Alençon, 1874). Humboldt thought it strange, considering other affinities,—as for instance in the Mexican calendars,—that he could find no Mexican use of phallic symbols; but Bancroft says they exist. Cf. Native Races, iii. 501; also see v. 40, 232; Brasseur’s Quatre Lettres, p. 202; and John Campbell’s paper on the traditions of Mexico and Peru as establishing such connections, in the Compte Rendu, Congrès des Amér. (Nancy, 1875), i. 348. Dr. Hamy saw in a monument found at Copan an inscription which he thought was the Taë-kai of the Chinese, the symbol of the essence of all things (Bull. de la Soc. de Géog., 1886, and Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xvi. 242, with a cut of the stone). Dall controverts this point (Science, viii. 402).
Others have dwelt on the linguistic resemblances. B. S. Barton in his New Views pressed this side of the question. The presence of a monosyllabic tongue like the Otomi in the midst of the polysyllabic languages of Mexico has been thought strongly to indicate a survival. Cf. Manuel Najera’s Disertacion sobre la lengua Othomi, Mexico, 1845, and in Amer. Philos. Soc. Trans., n. s., v.; Ampère’s Promenade en Amérique, ii. 301; Prescott’s Mexico, iii. 396; Warden’s Recherches (in Dupaix), p. 125; Latham’s Races of Men, 408; Bancroft’s Nat. Races, iii. 737; v. 39, with references. Others find Sanskrit roots in the Mexican. E. B. Tylor has indicated the Asiatic origin of certain Mexican games (Journal of the Anthropol. Inst., xxiv.). Ornaments of jade found in Nicaragua, while the stone is thought to be native only in Asia, is another indication, and they are more distinctively Asiatic than the jade ornaments found in Alaska (Peabody Mus. Reports, xviii. 414; xx. 548; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., Jan., 1886).
On the general question of the Asiatic origin of the Mexicans see Dupaix’s Antiquités Méxicaines, with included papers by Lenoir, Warden, and Farcy; the Report on a railroad route from the Mississippi, 1853-54 (Washington); Whipple’s and other Reports on the Indian tribes; John Russell Bartlett’s Personal Narrative (1854); Brasseur’s Popul Vuh, p. xxxix; Viollet le Duc’s belief in a “yellow race” building the Mexican and Central American monuments, in Charnay’s Ruines Américaines, and Charnay’s traces of the Buddhists in the Popular Science Monthly, July, 1879, p. 432; Le Plongeon’s belief in the connection of the Maya and Asiatic races in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., Apr. 30, 1879, p. 113; and some papers on the ancient Mexicans and their origin by the Abbé Jolibois, Col. Parmentier, and M. Emile Guimet, which, prepared for the Soc. de Géog. de Lyon, were published separately as De l’origine des Anciens Peuples du Méxique (Lyon, 1875).
A few other incidental discussions of the Fusang question are these: R. H. Major in Select Letters of Columbus (1847); J. T. Short in The Galaxy (1875) and in his No. Americans of Antiquity; Nadaillac in his L’Amérique préhistorique, 544; Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S. calls the story vague and improbable. In periodicals we find: Gentleman’s Mag., 1869, p. 333 (reprinted in Hist. Mag., Sept., 1869, xvi. 221), and 1870, reproduced in Chinese Recorder, May, 1870; Nathan Brown in Amer. Philolog. Mag., Aug., 1869; Wm. Speer in Princeton Rev., xxv. 83; Penn Monthly, vi. 603; Mag. Amer. Hist., Apr., 1883, p. 291; Notes and Queries, iii. 58, 78; iv. 19; Notes and Queries in China and Japan, Apr., May, 1869; Feb., 1870. Chas. W. Brooks maintained on the other hand (Proc. California Acad. Sciences, 1876; cf. Bancroft’s Native Races, v. 51), that the Chinese were emigrants from America. There is a map of the supposed Chinese route to America in the Congrès des Américanistes (Nancy, 1875), vol. i.; and Winchell, Pre-Adamites, gives a chart showing different lines of approach from Asia. Stephen Powers (Overland Monthly, Apr., 1872, and California Acad. Sciences, 1875) treats the California Indians as descendants of the Chinese,—a view he modifies in the Contrib. to Amer. Ethnology, vol. iii., on “Tribes of California.” It is claimed that Chinese coin of the fifteenth century have been found in mounds on Vancouver’s Island. Cf. G. P. Thurston in Mag. Amer. Hist., xiii. p. 457. The principal lists of authorities are those in Vining (app.), and Watson’s in Anderson’s America not discovered by Columbus.
[564] From Easter Island to the Galapagos is 2,000 miles, thence to South America 600 more. On such long migrations by water see Waitz, Introduction to Anthropology, Eng. transl., p. 202. On early modes of navigation see Col. A. Lane Fox in the Journal Anthropological Inst. (1875), iv. 399. Otto Caspari gives a map of post-tertiary times in his Urgeschichte der Menschheit (Leipzig, 1873), vol. i., in which land is made to stretch from the Marquesas Islands nearly to South America; while large patches of land lie between Asia and Mexico, to render migration practicable. Andrew Murray, in his Geographical Distribution of Mammals (London, 1866), is almost compelled to admit (p. 25) that as complete a circuit of land formerly crossed the southern temperate regions as now does the northern; and Daniel Wilson, Prehistoric Man, holds much the same opinion. The connection of the flora of Polynesia and South America is discussed by J. D. Hooker in the Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of the Erebus and Terror, 1839-43, and in his Flora of Tasmania. Cf. Amer. Journal of Science and Arts, Mar., May, 1854; Jan., May, 1860.
[565] Races of Men.
[566] Compte Rendu, 1877, p. 79; 1883, p. 246; the latter being called “Polynesian Antiquities, a link between the ancient civilizations of Asia and America.” Further discussions of the Polynesian migrations will be found as follows: A. W. Bradford’s Amer. Antiquities (N. Y., 1841); Gallatin (Am. Eth. Soc. Trans., i. 176) disputed any common linguistic traces, while Bradford thought he found such; Lesson and Martinet’s Les Polynésiens, leur origine, leurs migrations, leur langage; Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, ii. 344; Jules Garnier’s “Les migrations polynésiennes” in Bull. de la Soc. de Géog. de Paris, Jan., June, 1870; G. d’Eichthal’s “Etudes sur l’histoire primitive des races océaniennes et Américaines” in Mem. de la Soc. Ethnologique (vol. ii.); Marcoy’s Travels in South America; C. Staniland Wake’s Chapters on Man, p. 200; a “Rapport de la Polynésie et l’Amérique” in the Mémoires de la Soc. Ethnologique, ii. 223; A. de Quatrefages de Bréau’s Les Polynésiens et leurs migrations (Paris, 1866), from the Revue des deux Mondes, Feb., 1864; O. F. Peschel in Ausland, 1864, p. 348; W. H. Dall in Bureau of Ethnology Rept., 1881-82, p. 147. Allen’s paper, already referred to, gives references.
[567] Bancroft, Nat. Races, v. 44, with references, p. 48, epitomizes the story. Cf. Short, 151. There was a tradition of giants landing on the shore (Markham’s Cieza de Leon, p. 190). Cf. Forster’s Voyages, 43.
[568] A belief in the Asiatic connection has taken some curious forms. Montesinos in his Memorias Peruanas held Peru to be the Ophir of Solomon. Cf. Gotfriedus Wegner’s De Navigationis Solomonæis (Frankfort, 1689). Horn held Hayti to be Ophir, and he indulges in some fantastic evidences to show that the Iroquois, i. e. Yrcas, were Turks! Cf. Onffroy de Thoron in Le Globe, 1869. C. Wiener in his L’Empire des Incas (ch. 2, 4) finds traces of Buddhism, and so does Hyde Clarke in his Khita-Peruvian Epoch (1877). Lopez has written on Les Races Aryennes de Pérou (1871). Cf. Robert Ellis, Peruvia Scythica. The Quicha Language of Peru, its derivation from Central Asia with the American languages in general (London, 1875). Grotius held that the Peruvians were of Chinese stock. Charles Pickering’s ethnological map gives a Malay origin to the islands of the Gulf of Mexico and a part of the Pacific coast, the rest being Mongolian.
[569] The story is given in English by De Costa (Pre-Columbian Disc. of America, p. 85) from the Landnámabók, no. 107. Cf. Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefne, ch. 13, and that of Erik the Red. Leif is said in the sagas to have met shipwrecked white people on the coasts visited by him (Hist. Mag., xiii. 46).
[570] Antiquitates Americanæ, 162, 183, 205, 210, 211, 212, 214, 319, 446-51.
[571] Brinton in Hist. Mag., ix. 364; Rivero and Tschudi’s Peru.
[572] Schöning’s Heimskringla. Grönlands Historiske Mindesmærker, i. 150.
[573] Eyrbyggja Saga, ch. 64, and given in English in De Costa’s Pre-Columbian Discovery, p. 89. Cf. Sir Walter Scott’s version of this saga and the appendix of Mallet’s Northern Antiquities
[574] Traces of Celtic have been discovered by some of the philologists, when put to the task, in the American languages. Cf. Humboldt, Relation Historique, iii. 159. Lord Monboddo held such a theory.
[575] Brinton’s Myths of the New World, 176. One of the earliest accounts which we have of the Cherokees is that by Henry Timberlake (London, 1765), and he remarks on their lighter complexion as indicating a possible descent from these traditionary white men.
[576] Richard Broughton’s Monasticon Britannicum (London, 1655), pp. 131, 187.
[577] A Memoir on the European Colonization of America in antehistoric times was contributed to the Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society in 1851, to which E. G. Squier added some notes, the original paper being by Dr. C. A. A. Zestermann of Leipzig. The aim was to prove, by the similarity of remains, the connection of the peoples who built the mounds of the Ohio Valley with the early peoples of northwestern Europe, a Caucasian race, which he would identify with the settlers of Irland it Mikla, and with the coming of the white-bearded men spoken of in Mexican traditions, who established a civilization which an inundating population from Asia subsequently buried from sight. This European immigration he places at least 1,200 years before Christ. Squier’s comments are that the monumental resemblances referred to indicate similar conditions of life rather than ethnic connections.
The other advocate was Eugène Beauvois in a paper published in the Compte Rendu du Congrès des Américanistes (Nancy, 1875, p. 4) as La découverte du nouveau monde par les irlandais et les premières traces du christianisme en Amérique avant l’an 1000, accompanied by a map, in which he makes Irland it Mikla correspond to the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Again, in the session at Luxembourg in 1877, he endeavored to connect the Irish colony with the narrative of the seaman in the Zeno accounts, in a paper which he called Les Colonies Européennes du Markland et de l’Escociland au xiv. Siècle, et les vestiges qui en subsistèrent jusqu’aux xvie et xviie Siècles, and in which he identifies the Estotiland of the Frislanda mariner. M. Beauvois again, at the Copenhagen meeting of the same body, read a paper on Les Relations précolumbiennes des Gaels avec le Méxique (Copenhagen, 1883, p. 74), in which he elicited objections from M. Lucien Adam. Beauvois belongs to that class of enthusiasts somewhat numerous in these studies of pre-Columbian discoveries, who have haunted these Congresses of Americanists, and who see overmuch. Other references to these Irish claims are to be found in Laing’s Heimskringla, i. 186; Beamish’s Discovery of America (London, 1841); Gravier’s Découverte de l’Amérique, p. 123, 137, and his Les Normands sur la route, etc., ch. 1; Gaffarel’s Etudes sur les rapports de l’Amérique, pp. 201, 214; Brasseur’s introd. to his Popul Vuh; De Costa’s Pre-Columbian Discovery, pp. xviii, xlix, lii; Humboldt’s Cosmos (Bohn), ii. 607; Rask in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xviii. 21; Journal London Geog. Soc., viii. 125; Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S., i. 53; and K. Wilhelmi’s Island, Hvitramannaland, Grönland und Vinland, oder Der Norrmänner Leben auf Island und Grönland und deren Fahrten nach Amerika schon über 500 Jahre vor Columbus (Heidelberg, 1842).
[578] The account in the Landnámabók is briefly rehearsed in ch. 8 of C. W. Paijkull’s Summer in Iceland (London, 1868).
[579] There are various editions, of which the best is called that of Copenhagen, 1843. The Islendingabók, a sort of epitome of a lost historical narrative, is considered an introduction to the Landnámabók. Much of the early story will be found in Latin in the Islenzkir Annáler, sive Annales Islandici ab anno Christi 803 ad anno 1430 (Copenhagen, 1847); in the Scripta historica Islandorum de rebus veterum Borealium, published by the Royal Soc. of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, 1828-46; and in Jacobus Langebek’s Scriptores Rerum Danicarum medii ævi (Copenhagen, 1772-1878,—the ninth volume being a recently added index).
[580] A convenient survey of this early literature is in chapter 1 of the History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North, from the most ancient times to the present, by Frederick Winkel Horn, revised by the author, and translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (Chicago, 1884). The text is accompanied by useful bibliographical details. Cf. B. F. De Costa in Journal Amer. Geog. Soc. (1880), xii. 159.
[581] Saxo Grammaticus acknowledges his dependence on the Icelandic sagas, and is thought to have used some which had not been yet put into writing.
[582] Baring-Gould in his Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas (London, 1863) gives in his App. D a list of thirty-five published sagas, sixty-six local histories, twelve ecclesiastical annals, and sixty-nine Norse annals. Cf. the eclectic list in Laing’s Heimskringla, i. 17.
Konrad Maurer has given an elaborate essay on this early literature in his Ueber die Ausdrücke: altnordische, altnorwegische und isländische Sprache (Munich, 1867), which originally appeared in the Abhandlungen of the Bavarian Academy.
G. P. Marsh translated P. E. Müller’s “Origin, progress, and decline of Icelandic historical literature” in The American Eclectic (N. Y., 1841,—vols. i., ii.). In 1781, Lindblom printed at Paris a French translation of Bishop Troil’s Lettres sur l’Islande, which contained a catalogue of books on Iceland and an enumeration of the Icelandic sagas. (Cf. Pinkerton’s Voyages, vol. i.) Chavanne’s Bibliography of the Polar Regions, p. 95, has a section on Iceland.
Solberg’s list of illustrative works, appended to Anderson’s version of Horn’s Lit. of the Scandinavian North, is useful so far as the English language goes. Periodical contributions also appear in Poole’s Index (p. 622) and Supplement, p. 214.
Burton (Ultima Thule, i. 239) enumerates the principal writers on Iceland from Arngrimur Jónsson down, including the travellers of this century.
[583] The more general histories of Scandinavia, like Sinding’s English narrative,—not a good book, but accessible,—yield the comparisons more readily.
[584] There are also German (Gotha, 1844-75) and French versions (Paris). The best German version, Geschichte Schwedens (Hamburg and Gotha, 1832-1887), is in six volumes, a part of the Geschichte der europäischen Staaten. Vol. 1-3, by E. G. Geijer, is translated by O. P. Leffler; vol. 4, by F. F. Carlson, is translated by J. G. Petersen; vol. 5, 6, by F. F. Carlson.
[585] Published in German at Lübeck in 1854 as Das heroische Zeitalter der Nordisch-Germanischen Völker und die Wikinger-Züge.
[586] Maurer had long been a student of Icelandic lore, and his Isländische Volkssagen der Gegenwart gesammelt und verdeutscht (Leipzig, 1860) is greatly illustrative of the early north. Conybeare (Place of Iceland in the History of European Institutions, preface) says: “To any one writing on Iceland the elaborate works of the learned Maurer afford at once a help and difficulty: a help in so far as they shed the fullest light upon the subjects; a difficulty in that their painstaking completeness has brought together well-nigh everything that can be said.”
[587] What is known as the Kristni Saga gives an account of this change. Cf. Eugène Beauvois, Origines et fondation du plus ancien évêché du nouveau monde. Le diocèse de Gardhs en Grœnland, 986-1126 (Paris, 1878), an extract from the Mémoires de la Soc. d’Histoire, etc., de Beaune; C. A. V. Conybeare’s Place of Iceland in the history of European institutions (1877); Maurer’s Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte des germanischen Nordens; Wheaton’s Northmen; Worsaae’s Danes and Norwegians in England, p. 332; Jacob Rudolph Keyser’s Private Life of the Old Northmen, as translated by M. R. Barnard (London, 1868), and his Religion of the Northmen, as translated by B. Pennock (N. Y., 1854); Quarterly Review, January, 1862; and references in McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia, under Iceland.
[588] Such are the Swedish work of A. M. Strinhold, known in the German of E. F. Frisch as Wikingzüge, Staatsverfassung und Sitten der alten Scandinaver (Hamburg, 1839-41).
A summarized statement of life in Iceland in the early days is held to be well made out in Hans O. H. Hildebrand’s Lifvet þå Island under Sagotiden (Stockholm, 1867), and in A. E. Holmberg’s Nordbon under Hednatiden (Stockholm). J. A. Worsaae published his Vorgeschichte des Nordens at Hamburg in 1878. It was improved in a Danish edition in 1880, and from this H. F. Morland Simpson made the Prehistory of the North, based on contemporary materials (London, 1886), with a memoir of Worsaae (d. 1885), the foremost scholar in this northern lore.
[589] This book is recognized as one of the best commentaries and most informing books on Icelandic history, and this writer’s introduction to Gudbrand Vigfússon’s Icelandic-English Dictionary (3 vols., Cambridge, Eng., 1869, 1870, 1874) is of scholarly importance.
[590] The millennial celebration of the settlement of Iceland in 1874 gave occasion to a variety of books and papers, more or less suggestive of the early days, like Samuel Kneeland’s American in Iceland (Boston. 1876); but the enumeration of this essentially descriptive literature need not be undertaken here.
[591] Antiquitates Americanæ, pp. 1-76, with an account of the Greenland MSS. (p. 255). Müller’s Sagenbibliothek. Arngrimur Jónsson’s Grönlandia (Iceland, 1688). A fac-simile of the title is in the Carter-Brown Catalogue, ii., no. 1356. A translation by Rev. J. Sephton is in the Proc. Lit. and Philos. Soc. of Liverpool, vol. xxxiv. 183, and separately, Liverpool, 1880. There is a paper in the Jahresbericht der geographischen Gesellschaft in München für 1885 (Munich, 1886), p. 71, by Oskar Brenner, on “Grönland im Mittelalter nach einer altnorwegischen Quelle.”
Some of the earliest references are: Christopherson Claus’ Den Grölandske Chronica (Copenhagen, 1608), noticed in the Carter-Brown Catalogue, ii., no. 64. Gerald de Veer’s True and perfect description of three voyages speaks in its title (Carter-Brown, ii. 38) of “the countrie lying under 80 degrees, which is thought to be Greenland, where never man had been before.” Antoine de la Sale wrote between 1438 and 1447 a curious book, printed in 1527 as La Salade, in which he refers to Iceland and Greenland (Gronnellont), where white bears abound (Harrisse, Bib. Am. Vet., no. 140).
[592] This book is now rare. Dufossé prices it at 50 francs; F. S. Ellis,—London. 1884, at £5.5.0. Before Torfæus, probably the best known book was Isaac de la Peyrère’s Relation du Groenland (Paris, 1647). It is one of the earliest books to give an account of the Eskimos. It was again printed in 1674 in Recueil de Voyages du Nord. A Dutch edition at Amsterdam in 1678 (Nauwkenrige Beschrijvingh van Groenland) was considerably enlarged with other matter, and this edition was the basis of the German version published at Nuremberg, 1679. Peyrère’s description will be found in English in a volume published by the Hakluyt Society in 1855, where it is accompanied by two maps of the early part of the seventeenth century. Cf. Carter-Brown, ii., no. 1192, note; Sabin, x. p. 70.
[593] Pilling (Eskimo Bibliog., p. 20) gives the most careful account of editions. Cf. Sabin, v. 66. A Dutch translation at Haarlem in 1767 was provided with better and larger maps than the original issue; and this version was again brought out with a changed title in 1786. There was a Swedish ed. at Stockholm in 1769, and a reprint of the original German at Leipzig in 1770, and it is included in the Bibliothek der neuesten Reisebeschreibungen (Frankfort, 1779-1797), vol. xx. Cf. Carter-Brown, ii., nos. 1443, 1576, 1577, 1671, 1728.
[594] This constitutes in 3 vols. a sort of supplement to the Antiquitates Americanæ, Cf. Dublin Review, xxvii. 35; Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog. de Paris, 3d ser., vol. vi., and a synopsis of the Mindesmæker in The Sacristy, Feb. 1, 1871 (London).
[595] The principal ruin is that of a church, and it will be found represented in the Antiquitates Americanæ, and again by Nordenskjöld, Steenstrup, J. T. Smith (Discovery of America, etc.), Horsford; and, not to name more, in Hayes’s Land of Desolation (and in the French version in Tour du Monde, xxvi.).
[596] Rafn in his Americas arctiske landes Gamle Geographie efter de Nordiske Oldskrifter (Copenhagen, 1845) gives the seals of some of the Greenland bishops, various plans of the different ruins, a view of the Katortok church with its surroundings, engraving of the different runic inscriptions, and a map of the Julianehaab district.
[597] This tendency of the Scandinavian writers is recognized among themselves. Horn (Anderson’s translation, 324) ascribes it to “an unbridled fancy and want of critical method rather than to any wilful perversion of historical truth. This tendency owed its origin to an intense patriotism, a leading trait in the Swedish character, which on this very account was well-nigh incorrigible.”
[598] Dasent translates from the preface to Egils Saga (Reikjavik, 1856): “The sagas show no wilful purpose to tell untruths, but simply are proofs of the beliefs and turns of thought of men in the age when the sagas were reduced to writing” (Burnt Njal, i. p. xiii).
[599] Rink (Danish Greenland, p. 3) says of the sagas that “they exist only in a fragmentary condition, and bear the general character of popular traditions to such a degree that they stand much in need of being corroborated by collateral proofs, if we are wholly to rely upon them in such a question as an ancient colonization of America.” So he proceeds to enumerate the kind of evidence, which is sufficient in Greenland, but is wholly wanting in other parts of America, and to point out that the trustworthiness of the sagas of the Vinland voyages exists only in regard to their general scope.
Dasent, in the introduction of Vigfússon’s Icelandic Dictionary, says of the sagas: “Written at various periods by scribes more or less fitted for the task, they are evidently of very varying authority.” The Scandinavian authorities class the sagas as mythical histories, as those relating to Icelandic history (subdivided into general, family, personal, ecclesiastical), and as the lives of rulers.
[600] Anderson’s translation, Lit. of the Scand. North, p. 81.
[601] Laing (Heimskringla, i. 23) says: “Arne Magnussen was the greatest antiquary who never wrote; his judgments and opinions are known from notes, selections, and correspondence, and are of great authority at this day in the saga literature. Torfæus consulted him in his researches.”
[602] Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xviii. 20.
[603] Oswald Moosmüller’s Europäer in Amerika vor Columbus (Regensburg, 1879, p. 4) enumerates the manuscripts in the royal library in Copenhagen.
[604] A. E. Wollheim’s Die Nat. lit. der Scandinavier (Berlin, 1875-77), p. 47. Turner’s Anglo Saxons, book iv. ch. 1. Mallet’s No. Antiq. (1847), 393
[605] Cf. G. H. Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ historica, 1846, vol. vii. cap. 247. Of the different manuscripts, some call Vinland a “regio” and others an “insula.”
[606] Discovered in the seventeenth century in a monastery on an island close by the Icelandic coast, and now in the royal library in Copenhagen. Cf. Laing’s introduction to his edition of the Heimskringla, vol. i. p. 157. Horn says of this codex: “The book was written towards the end of the fourteenth century by two Icelandic priests, and contains in strange confusion and wholly without criticism a large number of sagas, poems, and stories. No other manuscript confuses things on so vast a scale.” Anderson’s translation of Horn’s Lit. of the Scandin. North, p. 60. Cf. Flateyjarbok. En Samling af Norske Konge-Sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om Begivenheder i og Udenfor Norge samt Annaler (Christiania, 1860); and Vigfússon’s and Unger’s edition of 1868, also at Christiania. The best English account of the Codex Flatoyensis is by Gudbrand Vigfússon in the preface to his Icelandic Sagas, published under direction of the Master of the Rolls, London, 1887, vol. i. p. xxv.
[607] For texts, see C. C. Rafn’s edition of Kong Olaf Tryggvesons Saga (Copenhagen, 1826), and Munch’s edition of Kong Olaf Tryggvesön’s Saga (Christiania, 1853). Cf. also P. A. Munch’s Norges Konge-Sagaer of Snorri Sturleson, Sturla Thordsson, etc. (Christiania, 1859).
[608] The Codex Flatoyensis says that it was sixteen winters after the settlement of Greenland before Leif went to Norway, and that in the next year he sailed to Vinland.
[609] Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xviii. 21.
[610] These sagas are given in Icelandic, Danish, and Latin in Rafn’s Antiquitates Americanæ (Copenhagen, 1837). Versions or abstracts, more or less full, of all or of some of them are given by Beamish, in his Discovery of America by the Northmen (London, 1841), whose text is reprinted by Slafter, in his Voyages of the Northmen (Boston, 1877). J. Elliot Cabot, in the Mass. Quart. Review, March, 1849, copied in part in Higginson’s Amer. Explorers. Blackwell, in his supplementary chapters to Mallet’s Northern Antiquities (London, Bohn’s library). B. F. De Costa, in his Pre-Columbian Discovery of America (Albany, 1868). Eben Norton Horsford, in his Discovery of America by Norsemen (Boston, 1888). Beauvois, in his Découvertes des Scandinaves en Amérique (Paris, 1859). P. E. Müller, in his Sagabibliothek (Copenhagen, 1816-20), and a German version of part of it by Lachmann, Sagenbibliothek des Scandinavischen Alterthums in Aussügen (Berlin, 1816).
[611] When, however, Peringskiöld edited the Heimskringla, in 1697, he interpolated eight chapters of a more particular account of the Vinland voyages, which drew forth some animadversions from Torfæus in 1705, when he published his Historia Vinlandiæ. It was later found that Peringskiöld had drawn these eight chapters from the Codex Flatoyensis, which particular MS. was unknown to Torfæus. When Laing printed his edition of the Heimskringla, The Sea Kings of Norway (London, 1844), he translated these eight chapters in his appendix (vol. iii. 344). Laing (Heimskringla, i. 27) says: “Snorro Sturleson has done for the history of the Northmen what Livy did for the history of the Romans,”—a rather questionable tribute to the verity of the saga history, in the light of the most approved comments on Livy. Cf. Horn, in Anderson’s translation, Lit. of the Scandinavian North (Chicago, 1884), p. 56, with references, p. 59.
[612] J. Fulford Vicary’s Saga Time (Lond., 1887). Some time in the fifteenth century, a monk, Thomas Gheysmer, made an abridgment of Saxo, alleging that he “had said much rather for the sake of adornment than in behalf of truth.” The Canon Christiern Pederson printed the first edition of Saxo at Paris in 1514 (Anderson’s Horn’s Lit. Scandin. North, p. 102). This writer adds: “The entire work rests exclusively on oral tradition, which had been gathered by Saxo, and which he repeated precisely as he had heard it, for in the whole chronicle there is no trace of criticism proper.... Saxo must also undoubtedly have had Icelandic sagamen as authorities for the legendary part of his work; but there is not the slightest evidence to show that he ever had a written Icelandic saga before him.... In this part of the work he betrays no effort to separate fact from fiction, ... and he has in many instances consciously or unconsciously adorned the original material.” Horn adds that the last and best edition is that of P. E. Müller and J. Velchow, Saxonis Grammatici Historia Danica (Copenhagen, 1839).
[613] Humboldt (Crit. Exam., ii. 120) represented that Ortelius referred to these voyages in 1570; but Palfrey (Hist. New England, i. 51) shows that the language cited by Humboldt was not used by Ortelius till in his edition of 1592, and that then he referred to the Zeno narrative.
[614] See post, Vol. IV. p. 492.
[615] His account is followed by Malte Brun in his Précis de la Géographie (i. 395). Cf. also Annales des Voyages (Paris, 1810), x. 50, and his Géographie Universelle (Paris, 1841). Pinkerton, in his Voyages (London, 1814), vol. xvii., also followed Torfæus.
[616] J. J. Wahlstedt’s Iter in Americam (Upsala, 1725). Cf. Brinley Catal., i. 59.
[617] Observatio historica ad Frisonum navigatione fortuita in Americam sec. xi. facta (Magdeburg, 1741).
[618] Franklin’s Works, Philad., 1809, vol. vi.; Sparks’s ed., viii. 69.
[619] This is the book which furnished the text in an English dress (London, 1770) known as Northern Antiquities, and a part of his account is given in the American Museum (Philad., 1789). In the Edinburgh edition of 1809 it is called: Northern antiquities: or a description of the manners, customs, religion and laws, of the ancient Danes, including those of our Saxon ancestors. With a translation of the Edda and other pieces, from the ancient Icelandic tongue. Translated from “L’introduction à l’histoire de Dannemarc, &c.,” par Mons. Mallet. With additional notes by the English translator [Bishop Percy], and Goranson’s Latin version of the Edda. In 2 vols. The chapters defining the locations are omitted, and others substituted, in the reprint of the Northern Antiquities in Bohn’s library.
[620] There are French and English versions.
[621] Edinburgh, 1818; Boston, 1831.
[622] Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1865, p. 184.
[623] Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopædia.
[624] Allibone, iii. 2667.
[625] Irving, in reviewing the book in the No. Am. Rev., Oct., 1832, avoided the question of the Norse discovery. (Cf. his Spanish Papers, vol. ii., and Rice’s Essays from the No. Am. Rev.) C. Robinson, in his Discoveries in the West (ch. 1), borrows from Wheaton.
[626] Octavo ed., i. pp. 5, 6.
[627] Orig. ed., iii. 313; last revision, ii. 132.
[628] This society, Kongelige Nordiske Oldskrift-Selskab, since 1825, has been issuing works and periodicals illustrating all departments of Scandinavian archæology (cf. Webb, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., viii. 177), and has gathered cabinets and museums, sections of which are devoted to American subjects. C. C. Rafn’s Cabinet d’antiquités Américaines à Copenhague (Copenhagen, 1858); Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xiv. 316; Slafter’s introd. to his Voyages of the Northmen.
[629] Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., viii. 81; Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April, 1865; N. E. Hist. Geneal. Reg., 1865, p. 273; To-day, ii. 176.
[630] Professor Willard Fiske has paid particular attention to the early forms of the Danish in the Icelandic literature. In 1885 the British Museum issued a Catalogue of the books printed in Iceland from a.d. 1578 to 1880 in the library of the British Museum. In 1886 Mr. Fiske privately printed at Florence Bibliographical Notices, i.: Books printed in Iceland, 1578-1844, a supplement to the British Museum Catalogue, which enumerates 139 titles with full bibliographical detail and an index. He refers also to the principal bibliographical authorities. Laing’s introduction to the Heimskringla gives a survey.
[631] Cf. list of their several issues in Scudder’s Catal. of Scient. Serials, nos. 640, 654, and the Rafn bibliography in Sabin, xvi. nos. 67,466-67,486. In addition to its Danish publications, the chief of which interesting to the American archæologist being the Antiquarisk Tidsskrift (1845-1864), sometimes known as the Revue Archéologique et Bulletin, the society, under its more familiar name of Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord, has issued its Mémoires, the first series running from 1836 to 1860, in 4 vols., and the second beginning in 1866. These contain numerous papers involving the discussion of the Northmen voyages, including a condensed narrative by Rafn, “Mémoire sur la découverte de l’Amérique au 10e siècle,” which was enlarged and frequently issued separately in French and other languages (1838-1843), and is sometimes found in English as a Supplement to the Antiquitates Americanæ, and was issued in New York (1838) as America discovered in the tenth century. In this form (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., viii. 187) it was widely used here and in Europe to call attention to Rafn’s folio, Antiquitates Americanæ.