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+Project Gutenberg's The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2), by John Fiske
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2)
+       with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest
+
+Author: John Fiske
+
+Release Date: November 13, 2008 [EBook #27253]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
+other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has
+been maintained.
+
+Unusual superscripts are shown as ^{xx}, e.g.: w^{ch} for which.
+
+Description of the characters not found in the Unicode tables:
+
+  [=a] a with macron.
+  [=e] e with macron.
+  [=i] i with macron.
+  [=o] o with macron.
+  [=u] u with macron.
+  [)i] i with breve.
+  [-p] p with stroke.
+  [~m] m with tilde.
+  [~p] p with tilde.
+  [~q] q with tilde.
+  [=z] ezh.
+  [°u] u with ring.]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
+
+_WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF ANCIENT AMERICA AND THE SPANISH CONQUEST_
+
+
+BY
+
+JOHN FISKE
+
+
+_IN TWO VOLUMES_
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+  Then I unbar the doors; my paths lead out
+  The exodus of nations; I disperse
+  Men to all shores that front the hoary main.
+      I too have arts and sorceries;
+  Illusion dwells forever with the wave.
+  I make some coast alluring, some lone isle
+  To distant men, who must go there or die.
+                                    EMERSON
+
+
+[Illustration: Editor's arm.]
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+  1897
+
+
+Copyright, 1892, By JOHN FISKE.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+SIXTEENTH THOUSAND.
+
+
+  _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
+  Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
+
+
+
+
+                    TO
+
+           EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN,
+
+  A SCHOLAR WHO INHERITS THE GIFT OF MIDAS, AND
+      TURNS INTO GOLD WHATEVER SUBJECT HE
+      TOUCHES, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, WITH
+          GRATITUDE FOR ALL THAT HE
+                HAS TAUGHT ME
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present work is the outcome of two lines of study pursued, with more
+or less interruption from other studies, for about thirty years. It will
+be observed that the book has two themes, as different in character as
+the themes for voice and piano in Schubert's "Frühlingsglaube," and yet
+so closely related that the one is needful for an adequate comprehension
+of the other. In order to view in their true perspective the series of
+events comprised in the Discovery of America, one needs to form a mental
+picture of that strange world of savagery and barbarism to which
+civilized Europeans were for the first time introduced in the course of
+the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in their voyages along the
+African coast, into the Indian and Pacific oceans, and across the
+Atlantic. Nothing that Europeans discovered during that stirring period
+was so remarkable as these antique phases of human society, the mere
+existence of which had scarcely been suspected, and the real character
+of which it has been left for the present generation to begin to
+understand. Nowhere was this ancient society so full of instructive
+lessons as in aboriginal America, which had pursued its own course of
+development, cut off and isolated from the Old World, for probably more
+than fifty thousand years. The imperishable interest of those episodes
+in the Discovery of America known as the conquests of Mexico and Peru
+consists chiefly in the glimpses they afford us of this primitive world.
+It was not an uninhabited continent that the Spaniards found, and in
+order to comprehend the course of events it is necessary to know
+something about those social features that formed a large part of the
+burden of the letters of Columbus and Vespucius, and excited even more
+intense and general interest in Europe than the purely geographical
+questions suggested by the voyages of those great sailors. The
+descriptions of ancient America, therefore, which form a kind of
+background to the present work, need no apology.
+
+It was the study of prehistoric Europe and of early Aryan institutions
+that led me by a natural sequence to the study of aboriginal America. In
+1869, after sketching the plan of a book on our Aryan forefathers, I was
+turned aside for five years by writing "Cosmic Philosophy." During that
+interval I also wrote "Myths and Myth-Makers" as a side-work to the
+projected book on the Aryans, and as soon as the excursion into the
+field of general philosophy was ended, in 1874, the work on that book
+was resumed. Fortunately it was not then carried to completion, for it
+would have been sadly antiquated by this time. The revolution in theory
+concerning the Aryans has been as remarkable as the revolution in
+chemical theory which some years ago introduced the New Chemistry. It is
+becoming eminently probable that the centre of diffusion of Aryan speech
+was much nearer to Lithuania than to any part of Central Asia, and it
+has for some time been quite clear that the state of society revealed in
+Homer and the Vedas is not at all like primitive society, but very far
+from it. By 1876 I had become convinced that there was no use in going
+on without widening the field of study. The conclusions of the Aryan
+school needed to be supplemented, and often seriously modified, by the
+study of the barbaric world, and it soon became manifest that for the
+study of barbarism there is no other field that for fruitfulness can be
+compared with aboriginal America.
+
+This is because the progress of society was much slower in the western
+hemisphere than in the eastern, and in the days of Columbus and Cortes
+it had nowhere "caught up" to the points reached by the Egyptians of the
+Old Empire or by the builders of Mycenæ and Tiryns. In aboriginal
+America we therefore find states of society preserved in stages of
+development similar to those of our ancestral societies in the Old World
+long ages before Homer and the Vedas. Many of the social phenomena of
+ancient Europe are also found in aboriginal America, but always in a
+more primitive condition. The clan, phratry, and tribe among the
+Iroquois help us in many respects to get back to the original
+conceptions of the gens, curia, and tribe among the Romans. We can
+better understand the growth of kingship of the Agamemnon type when we
+have studied the less developed type in Montezuma. The house-communities
+of the southern Slavs are full of interest for the student of the early
+phases of social evolution, but the Mandan round-house and the Zuñi
+pueblo carry us much deeper into the past. Aboriginal American
+institutions thus afford one of the richest fields in the world for the
+application of the comparative method, and the red Indian, viewed in
+this light, becomes one of the most interesting of men; for in studying
+him intelligently, one gets down into the stone age of human thought. No
+time should be lost in gathering whatever can be learned of his ideas
+and institutions, before their character has been wholly lost under the
+influence of white men. Under that influence many Indians have been
+quite transformed, while others have been as yet but little affected.
+Some extremely ancient types of society, still preserved on this
+continent in something like purity, are among the most instructive
+monuments of the past that can now be found in the world. Such a type
+is that of the Moquis of northeastern Arizona. I have heard a rumour,
+which it is to be hoped is ill-founded, that there are persons who wish
+the United States government to interfere with this peaceful and
+self-respecting people, break up their pueblo life, scatter them in
+farmsteads, and otherwise compel them, against their own wishes, to
+change their habits and customs. If such a cruel and stupid thing were
+ever to be done, we might justly be said to have equalled or surpassed
+the folly of those Spaniards who used to make bonfires of Mexican
+hieroglyphics. It is hoped that the present book, in which of course it
+is impossible to do more than sketch the outlines and indicate the
+bearings of so vast a subject, will serve to awaken readers to the
+interest and importance of American archæology for the general study of
+the evolution of human society.
+
+So much for the first and subsidiary theme. As for my principal theme,
+the Discovery of America, I was first drawn to it through its close
+relations with a subject which for some time chiefly occupied my mind,
+the history of the contact between the Aryan and Semitic worlds, and
+more particularly between Christians and Mussulmans about the shores of
+the Mediterranean. It is also interesting as part of the history of
+science, and furthermore as connected with the beginnings of one of the
+most momentous events in the career of mankind, the colonization of the
+barbaric world by Europeans. Moreover, the discovery of America has its
+full share of the romantic fascination that belongs to most of the work
+of the Renaissance period. I have sought to exhibit these different
+aspects of the subject.
+
+The present book is in all its parts written from the original sources
+of information. The work of modern scholars has of course been freely
+used, but never without full acknowledgment in text or notes, and seldom
+without independent verification from the original sources.
+Acknowledgments are chiefly due to Humboldt, Morgan, Bandelier, Major,
+Varnhagen, Markham, Helps, and Harrisse. To the last-named scholar I owe
+an especial debt of gratitude, in common with all who have studied this
+subject since his arduous researches were begun. Some of the most
+valuable parts of his work have consisted in the discovery,
+reproduction, and collation of documents; and to some extent his pages
+are practically equivalent to the original sources inspected by him in
+the course of years of search through European archives, public and
+private. In the present book I must have expressed dissent from his
+conclusions at least as often as agreement with them, but whether one
+agrees with him or not, one always finds him helpful and stimulating.
+Though he has in some sort made himself a Frenchman in the course of
+his labours, it is pleasant to recall the fact that M. Harrisse is by
+birth our fellow-countryman; and there are surely few Americans of our
+time whom students of history have more reason for holding in honour.
+
+I have not seen Mr. Winsor's "Christopher Columbus" in time to make any
+use of it. Within the last few days, while my final chapter is going to
+press, I have received the sheets of it, a few days in advance of
+publication. I do not find in it any references to sources of
+information which I have not already fully considered, so that our
+differences of opinion on sundry points may serve to show what diverse
+conclusions may be drawn from the same data. The most conspicuous
+difference is that which concerns the personal character of Columbus.
+Mr. Winsor writes in a spirit of energetic (not to say violent) reaction
+against the absurdities of Roselly de Lorgues and others who have tried
+to make a saint of Columbus; and under the influence of this reaction he
+offers us a picture of the great navigator that serves to raise a
+pertinent question. No one can deny that Las Casas was a keen judge of
+men, or that his standard of right and wrong was quite as lofty as any
+one has reached in our own time. He had a much more intimate knowledge
+of Columbus than any modern historian can ever hope to acquire, and he
+always speaks of him with warm admiration and respect. But how could
+Las Casas ever have respected the feeble, mean-spirited driveller whose
+portrait Mr. Winsor asks us to accept as that of the Discoverer of
+America?
+
+If, however, instead of his biographical estimate of Columbus, we
+consider Mr. Winsor's contributions toward a correct statement of the
+difficult geographical questions connected with the subject, we
+recognize at once the work of an acknowledged master in his chosen
+field. It is work, too, of the first order of importance. It would be
+hard to mention a subject on which so many reams of direful nonsense
+have been written as on the discovery of America; and the prolific
+source of so much folly has generally been what Mr. Freeman fitly calls
+"bondage to the modern map." In order to understand what the great
+mariners of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were trying to do, and
+what people supposed them to have done, one must begin by resolutely
+banishing the modern map from one's mind. The ancient map must take its
+place, but this must not be the ridiculous "Orbis Veteribus Notus," to
+be found in the ordinary classical atlas, _which simply copies the
+outlines of countries with modern accuracy from the modern map, and then
+scatters ancient names over them!_ Such maps are worse than useless. In
+dealing with the discovery of America one must steadily keep before
+one's mind the quaint notions of ancient geographers, especially
+Ptolemy and Mela, as portrayed upon such maps as are reproduced in the
+present volume. It was just these distorted and hazy notions that swayed
+the minds and guided the movements of the great discoverers, and went on
+reproducing themselves upon newly-made maps for a century or more after
+the time of Columbus. Without constant reference to these old maps one
+cannot begin to understand the circumstances of the discovery of
+America.
+
+In no way can one get at the heart of the matter more completely than by
+threading the labyrinth of causes and effects through which the western
+hemisphere came slowly and gradually to be known by the name AMERICA.
+The reader will not fail to observe the pains which I have taken to
+elucidate this subject, not from any peculiar regard for Americus
+Vespucius, but because the quintessence of the whole geographical
+problem of the discovery of the New World is in one way or another
+involved in the discussion. I can think of no finer instance of the
+queer complications that can come to surround and mystify an increase of
+knowledge too great and rapid to be comprehended by a single generation
+of men.
+
+In the solution of the problem as to the first Vespucius voyage I follow
+the lead of Varnhagen, but always independently and with the documentary
+evidence fully in sight. For some years I vainly tried to pursue
+Humboldt's clues to some intelligible conclusion, and felt inhospitably
+inclined toward Varnhagen's views as altogether too plausible; he seemed
+to settle too many difficulties at once. But after becoming convinced of
+the spuriousness of the Bandini letter (see below, vol. ii. p. 94); and
+observing how the air at once was cleared in some directions, it seemed
+that further work in textual criticism would be well bestowed. I made a
+careful study of the diction of the letter from Vespucius to Soderini in
+its two principal texts:--1. the Latin version of 1507, the original of
+which is in the library of Harvard University, appended to
+Waldseemüller's "Cosmographiæ Introductio"; 2. the Italian text
+reproduced severally by Bandini, Canovai, and Varnhagen, from the
+excessively rare original, of which only five copies are now known to be
+in existence. It is this text that Varnhagen regards as the original
+from which the Latin version of 1507 was made, through an intermediate
+French version now lost. In this opinion Varnhagen does not stand alone,
+as Mr. Winsor seems to think ("Christopher Columbus," p. 540, line 5
+from bottom), for Harrisse and Avezac have expressed themselves plainly
+to the same effect (see below, vol. ii. p. 42). A minute study of this
+text, with all its quaint interpolations of Spanish and Portuguese
+idioms and seafaring phrases into the Italian ground-work of its
+diction, long ago convinced me that it never was a _translation_ from
+anything in heaven or earth or the waters under the earth. Nobody would
+ever have translated a document _into_ such an extremely peculiar and
+individual jargon. It is most assuredly an original text, and its author
+was either Vespucius or the Old Nick. It was by starting from this text
+as primitive that Varnhagen started correctly in his interpretation of
+the statements in the letter, and it was for that reason that he was
+able to dispose of so many difficulties at one blow. When he showed that
+the landfall of Vespucius on his first voyage was near Cape Honduras and
+had nothing whatever to do with the Pearl Coast, he began to follow the
+right trail, and so the facts which had puzzled everybody began at once
+to fall into the right places. This is all made clear in the seventh
+chapter of the present work, where the general argument of Varnhagen is
+in many points strongly reinforced. The evidence here set forth in
+connection with the Cantino map is especially significant.
+
+It is interesting on many accounts to see the first voyage of Vespucius
+thus elucidated, though it had no connection with the application of his
+name by Waldseemüller to an entirely different region from any that was
+visited upon that voyage. The real significance of the third voyage of
+Vespucius, in connection with the naming of America, is now set forth, I
+believe, for the first time in the light thrown upon the subject by the
+opinions of Ptolemy and Mela. Neither Humboldt nor Major nor Harrisse
+nor Varnhagen seems to have had a firm grasp of what was in
+Waldseemüller's mind when he wrote the passage photographed below in
+vol. ii. p. 136 of this work. It is only when we keep the Greek and
+Roman theories in the foreground and unflinchingly bar out that
+intrusive modern atlas, that we realize what the Freiburg geographer
+meant and why Ferdinand Columbus was not in the least shocked or
+surprised.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have at various times given lectures on the discovery of America and
+questions connected therewith, more especially at University College,
+London, in 1879, at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, in 1880,
+at the Lowell Institute in Boston, in 1890, and in the course of my work
+as professor in the Washington University at St. Louis; but the present
+work is in no sense whatever a reproduction of such lectures.
+
+Acknowledgments are due to Mr. Winsor for his cordial permission to make
+use of a number of reproductions of old maps and facsimiles already used
+by him in the "Narrative and Critical History of America;" they are
+mentioned in the lists of illustrations. I have also to thank Dr.
+Brinton for allowing me to reproduce a page of old Mexican music, and
+the Hakluyt Society for permission to use the Zeno and Catalan maps and
+the view of Kakortok church. Dr. Fewkes has very kindly favoured me with
+a sight of proof-sheets of some recent monographs by Bandelier. And for
+courteous assistance at various libraries I have most particularly to
+thank Mr. Kiernan of Harvard University, Mr. Appleton Griffin of the
+Boston Public Library, and Mr. Uhler of the Peabody Institute in
+Baltimore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is one thing which I feel obliged, though with extreme hesitation
+and reluctance, to say to my readers in this place, because the time has
+come when something ought to be said, and there seems to be no other
+place available for saying it. For many years letters--often in a high
+degree interesting and pleasant to receive--have been coming to me from
+persons with whom I am not acquainted, and I have always done my best to
+answer them. It is a long time since such letters came to form the
+larger part of a voluminous mass of correspondence. The physical fact
+has assumed dimensions with which it is no longer possible to cope. If I
+were to answer all the letters which arrive by every mail, I should
+never be able to do another day's work. It is becoming impossible even
+to _read_ them all; and there is scarcely time for giving due attention
+to one in ten. Kind friends and readers will thus understand that if
+their queries seem to be neglected, it is by no means from any want of
+good will, but simply from the lamentable fact that the day contains
+only four-and-twenty hours.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _October 25, 1891._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT AMERICA.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+  The American aborigines                                            1
+
+  Question as to their origin                                     2, 3
+
+  Antiquity of man in America                                        4
+
+  Shell-mounds, or middens                                        4, 5
+
+  The Glacial Period                                              6, 7
+
+  Discoveries in the Trenton gravel                                  8
+
+  Discoveries in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota                        9
+
+  Mr. Cresson's discovery at Claymont, Delaware                     10
+
+  The Calaveras skull                                               11
+
+  Pleistocene men and mammals                                   12, 13
+
+  Elevation and subsidence                                      13, 14
+
+  Waves of migration                                                15
+
+  The Cave men of Europe in the Glacial Period                      16
+
+  The Eskimos are probably a remnant of the Cave men             17-19
+
+  There was probably no connection or intercourse by
+    water between ancient America and the Old World                 20
+
+  There is one great American red race                              21
+
+  Different senses in which the word "race" is used              21-23
+
+  No necessary connection between differences in culture
+    and differences in race                                         23
+
+  Mr. Lewis Morgan's classification of grades of culture         24-32
+
+  Distinction between Savagery and Barbarism                        25
+
+  Origin of pottery                                                 25
+
+  Lower, middle, and upper status of savagery                       26
+
+  Lower status of barbarism; it ended differently in the
+    two hemispheres; in ancient America there was no
+    pastoral stage of development                                   27
+
+  Importance of Indian corn                                         28
+
+  Tillage with irrigation                                           29
+
+  Use of adobe-brick and stone in building                          29
+
+  Middle status of barbarism                                    29, 30
+
+  Stone and copper tools                                            30
+
+  Working of metals; smelting of iron                               30
+
+  Upper status of barbarism                                         31
+
+  The alphabet and the beginnings of civilization                   32
+
+  So-called "civilizations" of Mexico and Peru                  33, 34
+
+  Loose use of the words "savagery" and "civilization"              35
+
+  Value and importance of the term "barbarism"                  35, 36
+
+  The status of barbarism is most completely exemplified
+    in ancient America                                          36, 37
+
+  Survival of bygone epochs of culture; work of the
+    Bureau of Ethnology                                         37, 38
+
+  Tribal society and multiplicity of languages in aboriginal
+    America                                                     38, 39
+
+  Tribes in the upper status of savagery; Athabaskans,
+    Apaches, Shoshones, etc.                                        39
+
+  Tribes in the lower status of barbarism; the Dakota
+    group or family                                                 40
+
+  The Minnitarees and Mandans                                       41
+
+  The Pawnee and Arickaree group                                    42
+
+  The Maskoki group                                                 42
+
+  The Algonquin group                                               43
+
+  The Huron-Iroquois group                                          44
+
+  The Five Nations                                               45-47
+
+  Distinction between horticulture and field agriculture            48
+
+  Perpetual intertribal warfare, with torture and
+    cannibalism                                                  49-51
+
+  Myths and folk-lore                                               51
+
+  Ancient law                                                   52, 53
+
+  The patriarchal family not primitive                              53
+
+  "Mother-right"                                                    54
+
+  Primitive marriage                                                55
+
+  The system of reckoning kinship through females only              56
+
+  Original reason for the system                                    57
+
+  The primeval human horde                                      58, 59
+
+  Earliest family-group; the clan                                   60
+
+  "Exogamy"                                                         60
+
+  Phratry and tribe                                                 61
+
+  Effect of pastoral life upon property and upon the
+    family                                                       61-63
+
+  The exogamous clan in ancient America                             64
+
+  Intimate connection of aboriginal architecture with
+    social life                                                     65
+
+  The long houses of the Iroquois                               66, 67
+
+  Summary divorce                                                   68
+
+  Hospitality                                                       68
+
+  Structure of the clan                                         69, 70
+
+  Origin and structure of the phratry                           70, 71
+
+  Structure of the tribe                                            72
+
+  Cross-relationships between clans and tribes; the Iroquois
+    Confederacy                                                  72-74
+
+  Structure of the confederacy                                  75, 76
+
+  The "Long House"                                                  76
+
+  Symmetrical development of institutions in ancient
+    America                                                     77, 78
+
+  Circular houses of the Mandans                                 79-81
+
+  The Indians of the pueblos, in the middle status of
+    barbarism                                                   82, 83
+
+  Horticulture with irrigation, and architecture with
+    adobe                                                       83, 84
+
+  Possible origin of adobe architecture                         84, 85
+
+  Mr. Cushing's sojourn at Zuñi                                     86
+
+  Typical structure of the pueblo                                86-88
+
+  Pueblo society                                                    89
+
+  Wonderful ancient pueblos in the Chaco valley                  90-92
+
+  The Moqui pueblos                                                 93
+
+  The cliff-dwellings                                               93
+
+  Pueblo of Zuñi                                                93, 94
+
+  Pueblo of Tlascala                                             94-96
+
+  The ancient city of Mexico was a great composite
+    pueblo                                                          97
+
+  The Spanish discoverers could not be expected to understand
+    the state of society which they found there                 97, 98
+
+  Contrast between feudalism and gentilism                          98
+
+  Change from gentile society to political society in
+    Greece and Rome                                            99, 100
+
+  First suspicions as to the erroneousness of the Spanish
+    accounts                                                       101
+
+  Detection and explanation of the errors, by Lewis
+    Morgan                                                         102
+
+  Adolf Bandelier's researches                                     103
+
+  The Aztec Confederacy                                       104, 105
+
+  Aztec clans                                                      106
+
+  Clan officers                                                    107
+
+  Rights and duties of the clan                                    108
+
+  Aztec phratries                                                  108
+
+  The _tlatocan_, or tribal council                                109
+
+  The _cihuacoatl_, or "snake-woman"                               110
+
+  The _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men"                           111
+
+  Evolution of kingship in Greece and Rome                         112
+
+  Mediæval kingship                                                113
+
+  Montezuma was a "priest-commander"                               114
+
+  Mode of succession to the office                            114, 115
+
+  Manner of collecting tribute                                     116
+
+  Mexican roads                                                    117
+
+  Aztec and Iroquois confederacies contrasted                      118
+
+  Aztec priesthood; human sacrifices                          119, 120
+
+  Aztec slaves                                                121, 122
+
+  The Aztec family                                            122, 123
+
+  Aztec property                                                   124
+
+  Mr. Morgan's rules of criticism                                  125
+
+  He sometimes disregarded his own rules                           126
+
+  Amusing illustrations from his remarks on "Montezuma's
+    Dinner"                                                    126-128
+
+  The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements
+    was often carried too far by Mr. Morgan                   128, 129
+
+  Great importance of the middle period of barbarism               130
+
+  The Mexicans compared with the Mayas                         131-133
+
+  Maya hieroglyphic writing                                        132
+
+  Ruined cities of Central America                             134-138
+
+  They are probably not older than the twelfth century             136
+
+  Recent discovery of the Chronicle of Chicxulub                   138
+
+  Maya culture very closely related to Mexican                     139
+
+  The "Mound-Builders"                                         140-146
+
+  The notion that they were like the Aztecs                        142
+
+  Or, perhaps, like the Zuñis                                      143
+
+  These notions are not well sustained                             144
+
+  The mounds were probably built by different peoples
+    in the lower status of barbarism, by Cherokees,
+    Shawnees, and other tribes                                144, 145
+
+  It is not likely that there was a "race of Mound Builders"       146
+
+  Society in America at the time of the Discovery had
+    reached stages similar to stages reached by eastern
+    Mediterranean peoples fifty or sixty centuries
+    earlier                                                   146, 147
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.
+
+  Stories of voyages to America before Columbus; the
+    Chinese                                                        148
+
+  The Irish.                                                       149
+
+  Blowing and drifting; Cousin, of Dieppe                          150
+
+  These stories are of small value                                 150
+
+  But the case of the Northmen is quite different                  151
+
+  The Viking exodus from Norway                               151, 152
+
+  Founding of a colony in Iceland, A. D. 874                       153
+
+  Icelandic literature                                             154
+
+  Discovery of Greenland, A. D. 876                           155, 156
+
+  Eric the Red, and his colony in Greenland,
+    A. D. 986                                                  157-161
+
+  Voyage of Bjarni Herjulfsson                                     162
+
+  Conversion of the Northmen to Christianity                       163
+
+  Leif Ericsson's voyage, A. D. 1000; Helluland and
+    Markland                                                       164
+
+  Leif's winter in Vinland                                    165, 166
+
+  Voyages of Thorvald and Thorstein                                167
+
+  Thorfinn Karlsefni, and his unsuccessful attempt to
+    found a colony in Vinland, A. D. 1007-10                   167-169
+
+  Freydis, and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1011-12             170, 171
+
+  Voyage into Baffin's Bay, 1135                                   172
+
+  Description of a Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord,
+    in Norway                                                  173-175
+
+  To what extent the climate of Greenland may have
+    changed within the last thousand years                    176, 177
+
+  With the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery
+    of the American continent was inevitable                       178
+
+  Ear-marks of truth in the Icelandic narratives              179, 180
+
+  Northern limit of the vine                                       181
+
+  Length of the winter day                                         182
+
+  Indian corn                                                 182, 183
+
+  Winter weather in Vinland                                        184
+
+  Vinland was probably situated somewhere between Cape Breton
+    and Point Judith                                               185
+
+  Further ear-marks of truth; savages and barbarians of the
+    lower status were unknown to mediæval Europeans           185, 186
+
+  The natives of Vinland as described in the Icelandic
+    narratives                                                 187-193
+
+  Meaning of the epithet "Skrælings"                          188, 189
+
+  Personal appearance of the Skrælings                             189
+
+  The Skrælings of Vinland were Indians,--very likely
+    Algonquins                                                     190
+
+  The "balista" or "demon's head"                             191, 192
+
+  The story of the "uniped"                                        193
+
+  Character of the Icelandic records; misleading associations
+    with the word "saga"                                           194
+
+  The comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon, made by
+    a committee of the Massachusetts Historical Society, was
+    peculiarly unfortunate and inappropriate                  194, 197
+
+  The story of the Trojan War, in the shape in which we find
+    it in Greek poetry, is pure folk-lore                          195
+
+  The Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore                        196
+
+  Mythical and historical sagas                                    197
+
+  The western or Hauks-bók version of Eric the Red's Saga          198
+
+  The northern or Flateyar-bók version                             199
+
+  Presumption against sources not contemporary                     200
+
+  Hauk Erlendsson and his manuscripts                              201
+
+  The story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's
+    time by oral tradition only                                    202
+
+  Allusions to Vinland in other Icelandic documents            202-207
+
+  Eyrbyggja Saga                                                   203
+
+  The abbot Nikulas, etc.                                          204
+
+  Ari Fródhi and his works                                         204
+
+  His significant allusion to Vinland                              205
+
+  Other references                                                 206
+
+  Differences between Hauks-bók and Flateyar-bók versions          207
+
+  Adam of Bremen                                                   208
+
+  Importance of his testimony                                      209
+
+  His misconception of the situation of Vinland                    210
+
+  Summary of the argument                                      211-213
+
+  Absurd speculations of zealous antiquarians                  213-215
+
+  The Dighton inscription was made by Algonquins, and has
+    nothing to do with the Northmen                           213, 214
+
+  Governor Arnold's stone windmill                                 215
+
+  There is no reason for supposing that the Northmen founded a
+    colony in Vinland                                              216
+
+  No archæological remains of them have been found south of
+    Davis strait                                                   217
+
+  If the Northmen had founded a successful colony, they would
+    have introduced domestic cattle into the North American
+    fauna                                                          218
+
+  And such animals could not have vanished and left no trace
+    of their existence                                        219, 220
+
+  Further fortunes of the Greenland colony                         221
+
+  Bishop Eric's voyage in search of Vinland, 1121                  222
+
+  The ship from Markland, 1347                                     223
+
+  The Greenland colony attacked by Eskimos, 1349                   224
+
+  Queen Margaret's monopoly, and its baneful effects               225
+
+  Story of the Venetian brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno          226
+
+  Nicolò Zeno wrecked upon one of the Færoe islands                227
+
+  He enters the service of Henry Sinclair, Earl of the Orkneys
+    and Caithness                                                  228
+
+  Nicolò's voyage to Greenland, cir. 1394                          229
+
+  Voyage of Earl Sinclair and Antonio Zeno                    229, 230
+
+  Publication of the remains of the documents by the younger
+    Nicolò Zeno, 1558                                              231
+
+  The Zeno map                                                232, 233
+
+  Queer transformations of names                               234-236
+
+  The name _Færoislander_ became _Frislanda_                       236
+
+  The narrative nowhere makes a claim to the "discovery
+    of America"                                                    237
+
+  The "Zichmni" of the narrative means Henry Sinclair              238
+
+  Bardsen's "Description of Greenland"                             239
+
+  The monastery of St. Olaus and its hot spring                    240
+
+  Volcanoes of the north Atlantic ridge                            241
+
+  Fate of Gunnbjörn's Skerries, 1456                               242
+
+  Volcanic phenomena in Greenland                             242, 243
+
+  Estotiland                                                       244
+
+  Drogio                                                           245
+
+  Inhabitants of Drogio and the countries beyond                   246
+
+  The Fisherman's return to Frislanda                              247
+
+  Was the account of Drogio woven into the narrative
+    by the younger Nicolò?                                         248
+
+  Or does it represent actual experiences in North
+    America?                                                       249
+
+  The case of David Ingram, 1568                                   250
+
+  The case of Cabeza de Vaca, 1528-36                              251
+
+  There may have been unrecorded instances of visits to
+    North America                                                  252
+
+  The pre-Columbian voyages made no real contributions
+    to geographical knowledge                                      253
+
+  And were in no true sense a discovery of America                 254
+
+  Real contact between the eastern and western hemisphere
+    was first established by Columbus                              255
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EUROPE AND CATHAY.
+
+  Why the voyages of the Northmen were not followed up             256
+
+  Ignorance of their geographical significance                     257
+
+  Lack of instruments for ocean navigation                         257
+
+  Condition of Europe in the year 1000                        258, 259
+
+  It was not such as to favour colonial enterprise                 260
+
+  The outlook of Europe was toward Asia                            261
+
+  Routes of trade between Europe and Asia                          262
+
+  Claudius Ptolemy and his knowledge of the earth                  263
+
+  Early mention of China                                           264
+
+  The monk Cosmas Indicopleustes                                   265
+
+  Shape of the earth, according to Cosmas                     266, 267
+
+  His knowledge of Asia                                            268
+
+  The Nestorians                                                   268
+
+  Effects of the Saracen conquests                                 269
+
+  Constantinople in the twelfth century                            270
+
+  The Crusades                                                 270-274
+
+  Barbarizing character of Turkish conquest                        271
+
+  General effects of the Crusades                                  272
+
+  The Fourth Crusade                                               273
+
+  Rivalry between Venice and Genoa                                 274
+
+  Centres and routes of mediæval trade                        275, 276
+
+  Effects of the Mongol conquests                                  277
+
+  Cathay, origin of the name                                       277
+
+  Carpini and Rubruquis                                            278
+
+  First knowledge of an eastern ocean beyond Cathay                278
+
+  The data were thus prepared for Columbus; but as yet nobody
+    reasoned from these data to a practical conclusion             279
+
+  The Polo brothers                                                280
+
+  Kublai Khan's message to the Pope                                281
+
+  Marco Polo and his travels in Asia                          281, 282
+
+  First recorded voyage of Europeans around the Indo-Chinese
+    peninsula                                                      282
+
+  Return of the Polos to Venice                                    283
+
+  Marco Polo's book, written in prison at Genoa, 1299;
+    its great contributions to geographical knowledge         284, 285
+
+  Prester John                                                     285
+
+  Griffins and Arimaspians                                         286
+
+  The Catalan map, 1375                                       288, 289
+
+  Other visits to China                                        287-291
+
+  Overthrow of the Mongol dynasty, and shutting up of China        291
+
+  First rumours of the Molucca islands and Japan                   292
+
+  The accustomed routes of Oriental trade were cut off in the
+    fifteenth century by the Ottoman Turks                         293
+
+  Necessity for finding an "outside route to the Indies"           294
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.
+
+_EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE._
+
+  Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing
+    around Africa                                                  295
+
+  Views of Eratosthenes                                            296
+
+  Opposing theory of Ptolemy                                       297
+
+  Story of the Phoenician voyage in the time of Necho          298-300
+
+  Voyage of Hanno                                             300, 301
+
+  Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus                                  302
+
+  Wild exaggerations                                               303
+
+  Views of Pomponius Mela                                     304, 305
+
+  Ancient theory of the five zones                            306, 307
+
+  The Inhabited World, or Oecumene, and the Antipodes              308
+
+  Curious notions about Taprobane (Ceylon)                         309
+
+  Question as to the possibility of crossing the torrid zone       309
+
+  Notions about sailing "up and down hill"                    310, 311
+
+  Superstitious fancies                                       311, 312
+
+  Clumsiness of ships in the fifteenth century                     312
+
+  Dangers from famine and scurvy                                   313
+
+  The mariner's compass; an interesting letter from Brunetto
+    Latini to Guido Cavalcanti                                 313-315
+
+  Calculating latitudes and longitudes                             315
+
+  Prince Henry the Navigator                                   316-326
+
+  His idea of an ocean route to the Indies, and what it
+    might bring                                                    318
+
+  The Sacred Promontory                                            319
+
+  The Madeira and Canary islands                               320-322
+
+  Gil Eannes passes Cape Bojador                                   323
+
+  Beginning of the modern slave-trade, 1442                        323
+
+  Papal grant of heathen countries to the Portuguese
+    crown                                                     324, 325
+
+  Advance to Sierra Leone                                          326
+
+  Advance to the Hottentot coast                              326, 327
+
+  Note upon the extent of European acquaintance with
+    savagery and the lower forms of barbarism previous
+    to the fifteenth century                                   327-329
+
+  Effect of the Portuguese discoveries upon the theories
+    of Ptolemy and Mela                                       329, 330
+
+  News of Prester John; Covilham's journey                         331
+
+  Bartholomew Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope and enters the
+    Indian ocean                                                   332
+
+  Some effects of this discovery                                   333
+
+  Bartholomew Columbus took part in it                             333
+
+  Connection between these voyages and the work of Christopher
+    Columbus                                                       334
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.
+
+_WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE._
+
+  Sources of information concerning the life of Columbus;
+    Las Casas and Ferdinand Columbus                               335
+
+  The Biblioteca Colombina at Seville                         336, 337
+
+  Bernaldez and Peter Martyr                                       338
+
+  Letters of Columbus                                              338
+
+  Defects in Ferdinand's information                          339, 340
+
+  Researches of Henry Harrisse                                     341
+
+  Date of the birth of Columbus; archives of Savona                342
+
+  Statement of Bernaldez                                           343
+
+  Columbus's letter of September, 1501                             344
+
+  The balance of probability is in favour of 1436                  345
+
+  The family of Domenico Colombo, and its changes of
+    residence                                                 346, 347
+
+  Columbus tells us that he was born in the city of Genoa          348
+
+  His early years                                              349-351
+
+  Christopher and his brother Bartholomew at Lisbon           351, 352
+
+  Philippa Moñiz de Perestrelo                                     352
+
+  Personal appearance of Columbus                                  353
+
+  His marriage, and life upon the island of Porto Santo       353, 354
+
+  The king of Portugal asks advice of the great astronomer
+    Toscanelli                                                     355
+
+  Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus                        356-361
+
+  His second letter to Columbus                               361, 362
+
+  Who first suggested the feasibleness of a westward route
+    to the Indies? Was it Columbus?                                363
+
+  Perhaps it was Toscanelli                                   363, 364
+
+  Note on the date of Toscanelli's first letter to
+    Columbus                                                   365-367
+
+  The idea, being naturally suggested by the globular form of
+    the earth, was as old as Aristotle                        368, 369
+
+  Opinions of ancient writers                                      370
+
+  Opinions of Christian writers                                    371
+
+  The "Imago Mundi" of Petrus Alliacus                        372, 373
+
+  Ancient estimates of the size of the globe and the length of
+    the Oecumene                                                   374
+
+  Toscanelli's calculation of the size of the earth, and of
+    the position of Japan (Cipango)                           375, 376
+
+  Columbus's opinions of the size of the globe, the length of
+    the Oecumene, and the width of the Atlantic ocean from
+    Portugal to Japan                                          377-380
+
+  There was a fortunate mixture of truth and error in these
+    opinions of Columbus                                           381
+
+  The whole point and purport of Columbus's scheme lay in its
+    promise of a route to the Indies shorter than that which the
+    Portuguese were seeking by way of Guinea                       381
+
+  Columbus's speculations on climate; his voyages to Guinea
+    and into the Arctic ocean                                      382
+
+  He may have reached Jan Mayen island, and stopped
+    at Iceland                                                383, 384
+
+  The Scandinavian hypothesis that Columbus "must
+    have" heard and understood the story of the Vinland
+    voyages                                                   384, 385
+
+  It has not a particle of evidence in its favour                  385
+
+  It is not probable that Columbus knew of Adam of
+    Bremen's allusion to Vinland, or that he would have
+    understood it if he had read it                                386
+
+  It is doubtful if he would have stumbled upon the
+    story in Iceland                                               387
+
+  If he had heard it, he would probably have classed it
+    with such tales as that of St. Brandan's isle                  388
+
+  He could not possibly have obtained from such a source his
+    opinion of the width of the ocean                         388, 389
+
+  If he had known and understood the Vinland story, he had the
+    strongest motives for proclaiming it and no motive whatever
+    for concealing it                                          390-392
+
+  No trace of a thought of Vinland appears in any of his
+    voyages                                                        393
+
+  Why did not Norway or Iceland utter a protest in 1493?           393
+
+  The idea of Vinland was not associated with the idea of
+    America until the seventeenth century                          394
+
+  Recapitulation of the genesis of Columbus's scheme               395
+
+  Martin Behaim's improved astrolabe                          395, 396
+
+  Negotiations of Columbus with John II. of Portugal          396, 397
+
+  The king is persuaded into a shabby trick                        398
+
+  Columbus leaves Portugal and enters into the service
+    of Ferdinand and Isabella, 1486                            398-400
+
+  The junto at Salamanca, 1486                                     401
+
+  Birth of Ferdinand Columbus, August 15, 1488                     401
+
+  Bartholomew Columbus returns from the Cape of Good Hope,
+    December, 1487                                            402, 403
+
+  Christopher visits Bartholomew at Lisbon, cir. September,
+    1488, and sends him to England                                 404
+
+  Bartholomew, after mishaps, reaches England cir. February,
+    1490, and goes thence to France before 1492                405-407
+
+  The duke of Medina-Celi proposes to furnish the ships for
+    Columbus, but the queen withholds her consent             408, 409
+
+  Columbus makes up his mind to get his family together and go
+    to France, October, 1491                                  409, 410
+
+  A change of fortune; he stops at La Rábida, and meets the
+    prior Juan Perez, who writes to the queen                      411
+
+  Columbus is summoned back to court                               411
+
+  The junto before Granada, December, 1491                    412, 413
+
+  Surrender of Granada, January 2, 1492                            414
+
+  Columbus negotiates with the queen, who considers his terms
+    exorbitant                                                 414-416
+
+  Interposition of Luis de Santangel                               416
+
+  Agreement between Columbus and the sovereigns                    417
+
+  Cost of the voyage                                               418
+
+  Dismay at Palos                                                  419
+
+  The three famous caravels                                        420
+
+  Delay at the Canary islands                                      421
+
+  Martin Behaim and his globe                                 422, 423
+
+  Columbus starts for Japan, September 6, 1492                     424
+
+  Terrors of the voyage:--1. Deflection of the needle              425
+
+                          2. The Sargasso sea                 426, 427
+
+                          3. The trade wind                        428
+
+  Impatience of the crews                                          428
+
+  Change of course from W. to W. S. W                         429, 430
+
+  Discovery of land, October 12, 1492                              431
+
+  Guanahani: which of the Bahama islands was it?                   432
+
+  Groping for Cipango and the route to Quinsay                433, 434
+
+  Columbus reaches Cuba, and sends envoys to find a
+    certain Asiatic prince                                    434, 435
+
+  He turns eastward and Pinzon deserts him                         435
+
+  Columbus arrives at Hayti and thinks it must be Japan            436
+
+  His flag-ship is wrecked, and he decides to go back to
+    Spain                                                          437
+
+  Building of the blockhouse, La Navidad                           438
+
+  Terrible storm in mid-ocean on the return voyage                 439
+
+  Cold reception at the Azores                                     440
+
+  Columbus is driven ashore in Portugal, where the king is
+    advised to have him assassinated                               440
+
+  But to offend Spain so grossly would be imprudent                441
+
+  Arrival of Columbus and Pinzon at Palos; death of Pinzon         442
+
+  Columbus is received by the sovereigns at Barcelona         443, 444
+
+  General excitement at the news that a way to the Indies had
+    been found                                                     445
+
+  This voyage was an event without any parallel in history         446
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.
+
+  The Discovery of America was a gradual process              447, 448
+
+  The letters of Columbus to Santangel and to Sanchez              449
+
+  Versification of the story by Giuliano Dati                      450
+
+  Earliest references to the discovery                             451
+
+  The earliest reference in English                                452
+
+  The Portuguese claim to the Indies                               453
+
+  Bulls of Pope Alexander VI.                                  454-458
+
+  The treaty of Tordesillas                                        459
+
+  Juan Rodriguez Fonseca, and his relations with
+    Columbus                                                   460-462
+
+  Friar Boyle                                                      462
+
+  Notable persons who embarked on the second voyage                463
+
+  Departure from Cadiz                                             464
+
+  Cruise among the Cannibal (Caribbee) islands                     465
+
+  Fate of the colony at La Navidad                                 466
+
+  Building the town of Isabella                                    467
+
+  Exploration of Cibao                                        467, 468
+
+  Westward cruise; Cape Alpha and Omega                        468-470
+
+  Discovery of Jamaica                                             471
+
+  Coasting the south side of Cuba                                  472
+
+  The "people of Mangon"                                           473
+
+  Speculations concerning the Golden Chersonese                474-476
+
+  A solemn expression of opinion                                   477
+
+  Vicissitudes of theory                                      477, 478
+
+  Arrival of Bartholomew Columbus in Hispaniola               478, 479
+
+  Mutiny in Hispaniola; desertion of Boyle and Margarite      479, 480
+
+  The government of Columbus was not tyrannical                    481
+
+  Troubles with the Indians                                   481, 482
+
+  Mission of Juan Aguado                                           482
+
+  Discovery of gold mines, and speculations about Ophir            483
+
+  Founding of San Domingo, 1496                                    484
+
+  The return voyage to Spain                                       485
+
+  Edicts of 1495 and 1497                                     486, 487
+
+  Vexatious conduct of Fonseca; Columbus loses his temper          487
+
+  Departure from San Lucar on the third voyage                     488
+
+  The belt of calms                                            489-491
+
+  Trinidad and the Orinoco                                    491, 492
+
+  Speculations as to the earth's shape; the mountain of
+    Paradise                                                       494
+
+  Relation of the "Eden continent" to "Cochin China"               495
+
+  Discovery of the Pearl Coast                                     495
+
+  Columbus arrives at San Domingo                                  496
+
+  Roldan's rebellion and Fonseca's machinations               496, 497
+
+  Gama's voyage to Hindustan, 1497                                 498
+
+  Fonseca's creature, Bobadilla, sent to investigate the
+    troubles in Hispaniola                                         499
+
+  He imprisons Columbus                                            500
+
+  And sends him in chains to Spain                                 501
+
+  Release of Columbus; his interview with the sovereigns           502
+
+  How far were the sovereigns responsible for Bobadilla?           503
+
+  Ovando, another creature of Fonseca, appointed governor
+    of Hispaniola                                             503, 504
+
+  Purpose of Columbus's fourth voyage, to find a passage
+    from the Caribbee waters into the Indian ocean            504, 506
+
+  The voyage across the Atlantic                                   506
+
+  Columbus not allowed to stop at San Domingo                      507
+
+  His arrival at Cape Honduras                                     508
+
+  Cape Gracias a Dios, and the coast of Veragua                    509
+
+  Fruitless search for the strait of Malacca                       510
+
+  Futile attempt to make a settlement in Veragua                   511
+
+  Columbus is shipwrecked on the coast of Jamaica; shameful
+    conduct of Ovando                                              512
+
+  Columbus's last return to Spain                                  513
+
+  His death at Valladolid, May 20, 1506                            513
+
+  "Nuevo Mundo;" arms of Ferdinand Columbus                   514, 515
+
+  When Columbus died, the fact that a New World had been
+    discovered by him had not yet begun to dawn upon his mind,
+    or upon the mind of any voyager or any writer             515, 516
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+  Portrait of the author                                _Frontispiece_
+
+  View and ground-plan of Seneca-Iroquois long house
+    _reduced from Morgan's Houses and House-Life of the
+    American Aborigines_                                            66
+
+  View, cross-section, and ground-plan of Mandan round
+    house, _ditto_                                                  80
+
+  Ground-plan of Pueblo Hungo Pavie, _ditto_                        86
+
+  Restoration of Pueblo Hungo Pavie, _ditto_                        88
+
+  Restoration of Pueblo Bonito, _ditto_                             90
+
+  Ground-plan of Pueblo Peñasca Blanca, _ditto_                     92
+
+  Ground-plan of so-called "House of the Nuns" at Uxmal,
+    _ditto_                                                        133
+
+  Map of the East Bygd, or eastern settlement of the Northmen
+    in Greenland, _reduced from Rafn's Antiquitates
+    Americanæ_                                                160, 161
+
+  Ruins of the church at Kakortok, _from Major's Voyages of
+    the Zeni, published by the Hakluyt Society_                    222
+
+  Zeno Map, cir. 1400, _ditto_                                232, 233
+
+  Map of the World according to Claudius Ptolemy, cir. A. D.
+    150, _an abridged sketch after a map in Bunbury's History of
+    Ancient Geography_                                    _Facing_ 265
+
+  Two sheets of the Catalan Map, 1375, _from Yule's Cathay,
+    published by the Hakluyt Society_                         288, 289
+
+  Map of the World according to Pomponius Mela, cir. A. D. 50,
+    _from Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America_      304
+
+  Map illustrating Portuguese voyages on the coast of Africa,
+    _from a sketch by the author_                                  324
+
+  Toscanelli's Map, 1474, _redrawn and improved from a sketch
+    in Winsor's America_                                 _Facing_  357
+
+  Annotations by Columbus, _reduced from a photograph in
+    Harrisse's Notes on Columbus_                                  373
+
+  Sketch of Martin Behaim's Globe, 1492, preserved in the city
+    hall at Nuremberg, _reduced to Mercator's projection and
+    sketched by the author_                                   422, 423
+
+  Sketch of Martin Behaim's Atlantic Ocean, with outline of the
+    American continent superimposed, _from Winsor's America_       429
+
+  Map of the discoveries made by Columbus in his first and
+    second voyages, _sketched by the author_                       469
+
+  Map of the discoveries made by Columbus in his third and
+    fourth voyages, _ditto_                                        493
+
+  Arms of Ferdinand Columbus, _from the title-page of
+    Harrisse's Fernand Colomb_                                     515
+
+
+
+
+THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT AMERICA.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The American aborigines.]
+
+When the civilized people of Europe first became acquainted with the
+continents of North and South America, they found them inhabited by a
+race of men quite unlike any of the races with which they were familiar
+in the Old World. Between the various tribes of this aboriginal American
+race, except in the sub-arctic region, there is now seen to be a general
+physical likeness, such as to constitute an American type of mankind as
+clearly recognizable as those types which we call Mongolian and Malay,
+though far less pronounced than such types as the Australian or the
+negro. The most obvious characteristics possessed in common by the
+American aborigines are the copper-coloured or rather the
+cinnamon-coloured complexion, along with the high cheek-bones and small
+deep-set eyes, the straight black hair and absence or scantiness of
+beard. With regard to stature, length of limbs, massiveness of frame,
+and shape of skull, considerable divergencies may be noticed among the
+various American tribes, as indeed is also the case among the members of
+the white race in Europe, and of other races. With regard to culture the
+differences have been considerable, although, with two or three apparent
+but not real exceptions, there was nothing in pre-Columbian America that
+could properly be called civilization; the general condition of the
+people ranged all the way from savagery to barbarism of a high type.
+
+[Sidenote: Question as to their origin.]
+
+[Sidenote: Antiquity of man in America.]
+
+Soon after America was proved not to be part of Asia, a puzzling
+question arose. Whence came these "Indians," and in what manner did they
+find their way to the western hemisphere. Since the beginning of the
+present century discoveries in geology have entirely altered our mental
+attitude toward this question. It was formerly argued upon the two
+assumptions that the geographical relations of land and water had been
+always pretty much the same as we now find them, and that all the racial
+differences among men have arisen since the date of the "Noachian
+Deluge," which was generally placed somewhere between two and three
+thousand years before the Christian era. Hence inasmuch as European
+tradition knows nothing of any such race as the Indians, it was supposed
+that at some time within the historic period they must have moved
+eastward from Asia into America; and thus "there was felt to be a sort
+of speculative necessity for discovering points of resemblance between
+American languages, myths, and social observances and those of the
+Oriental world. Now the aborigines of this Continent were made out to
+be Kamtchatkans, and now Chinamen, and again they were shown, with
+quaint erudition, to be remnants of the ten tribes of Israel. Perhaps
+none of these theories have been exactly disproved, but they have all
+been superseded and laid on the shelf."[1] The tendency of modern
+discovery is indeed toward agreement with the time-honoured tradition
+which makes the Old World, and perhaps Asia, the earliest dwelling-place
+of mankind. Competition has been far more active in the fauna of the
+eastern hemisphere than in that of the western, natural selection has
+accordingly resulted in the evolution of higher forms, and it is there
+that we find both extinct and surviving species of man's nearest
+collateral relatives, those tailless half-human apes, the gorilla,
+chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon. It is altogether probable that the people
+whom the Spaniards found in America came by migration from the Old
+World. But it is by no means probable that their migration occurred
+within so short a period as five or six thousand years. A series of
+observations and discoveries kept up for the last half-century seem to
+show that North America has been continuously inhabited by human beings
+since the earliest Pleistocene times, if not earlier.
+
+         [Footnote 1: See my _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, p. 148. A
+         good succinct account of these various theories, monuments of
+         wasted ingenuity, is given in Short's _North Americans of
+         Antiquity_, chap. iii. The most elaborate statement of the
+         theory of an Israelite colonization of America is to be found
+         in the ponderous tomes of Lord Kingsborough, _Mexican
+         Antiquities_, London, 1831-48, 9 vols. elephant-folio. Such a
+         theory was entertained by the author of that curious piece of
+         literary imposture, _The Book of Mormon_. In this book we are
+         told that, when the tongues were confounded at Babel, the Lord
+         selected a certain Jared, with his family and friends, and
+         instructed them to build eight ships, in which, after a voyage
+         of 344 days, they were brought to America, where they "did
+         build many mighty cities," and "prosper exceedingly." But after
+         some centuries they perished because of their iniquities. In
+         the reign of Zedekiah, when calamity was impending over Judah,
+         two brothers, Nephi and Laman, under divine guidance led a
+         colony to America. There, says the veracious chronicler, their
+         descendants became great nations, and worked in _iron_, and had
+         stuffs of _silk_, besides keeping plenty of _oxen_ and _sheep_.
+         (_Ether_, ix. 18, 19; x. 23, 24.) Christ appeared and wrought
+         many wonderful works; people spake with tongues, and the dead
+         were raised. (3 _Nephi_, xxvi. 14, 15.) But about the close of
+         the fourth century of our era, a terrible war between Lamanites
+         and Nephites ended in the destruction of the latter. Some two
+         million warriors, with their wives and children, having been
+         slaughtered, the prophet Mormon escaped, with his son Moroni,
+         to the "hill Cumorah," hard by the "waters of Ripliancum," or
+         Lake Ontario. (_Ether_, xv. 2, 8, 11.) There they hid the
+         sacred tablets, which remained concealed until they were
+         miraculously discovered and translated by Joseph Smith in 1827.
+         There is, of course, no element of tradition in this story. It
+         is all pure fiction, and of a very clumsy sort, such as might
+         easily be devised by an ignorant man accustomed to the language
+         of the Bible; and of course it was suggested by the old notion
+         of the Israelitish origin of the red men. The references are to
+         _The Book of Mormon_, Salt Lake City: Deseret News Co., 1885.]
+
+[Sidenote: Shell-mounds.]
+
+The first group of these observations and discoveries relate to
+"middens" or shell-heaps. On the banks of the Damariscotta river in
+Maine are some of the most remarkable shell-heaps in the world. With an
+average thickness of six or seven feet, they rise in places to a height
+of twenty-five feet. They consist almost entirely of huge oyster-shells
+often ten inches in length and sometimes much longer. The shells belong
+to a salt-water species. In some places "there is an appearance of
+stratification covered by an alternation of shells and earth, as if the
+deposition of shells had been from time to time interrupted, and a
+vegetable mould had covered the surface." In these heaps have been found
+fragments of pottery and of the bones of such edible animals as the
+moose and deer. "At the very foundation of one of the highest heaps," in
+a situation which must for long ages have been undisturbed, Mr. Edward
+Morse "found the remains of an ancient fire-place, where he exhumed
+charcoal, bones, and pottery."[2] The significant circumstance is that
+"at the present time oysters are only found in very small numbers, too
+small to make it an object to gather them," and so far as memory and
+tradition can reach, such seems to have been the case. The great size of
+the heap, coupled with the notable change in the distribution of this
+mollusk since the heap was abandoned, implies a very considerable lapse
+of time since the vestiges of human occupation were first left here.
+Similar conclusions have been drawn from the banks or mounds of shells
+on the St. John's river in Florida,[3] on the Alabama river, at Grand
+Lake on the lower Mississippi, and at San Pablo in the bay of San
+Francisco. Thus at various points from Maine to California, and in
+connection with one particular kind of memorial, we find records of the
+presence of man at a period undoubtedly prehistoric, but not necessarily
+many thousands of years old.
+
+         [Footnote 2: _Second Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of
+         American Archæology_, etc., p. 18.]
+
+         [Footnote 3: Visited in 1866-74 by Professor Jeffries Wyman,
+         and described in his _Fresh-Water Shell Mounds of the St.
+         John's River_, Cambridge, 1875.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Glacial Period.]
+
+The second group of discoveries carries us back much farther, even into
+the earlier stages of that widespread glaciation which was the most
+remarkable feature of the Pleistocene period. At the periods of greatest
+cold "the continent of North America was deeply swathed in ice as far
+south as the latitude of Philadelphia, while glaciers descended into
+North Carolina."[4] The valleys of the Rocky Mountains also supported
+enormous glaciers, and a similar state of things existed at the same
+time in Europe. These periods of intense cold were alternated with long
+interglacial periods during which the climate was warmer than it is
+to-day. Concerning the antiquity of the Pleistocene age, which was
+characterized by such extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold, there
+has been, as in all questions relating to geological time, much conflict
+of opinion. Twenty years ago geologists often argued as if there were an
+unlimited fund of past time upon which to draw; but since Sir William
+Thomson and other physicists emphasized the point that in an antiquity
+very far from infinite this earth must have been a molten mass, there
+has been a reaction. In many instances further study has shown that less
+time was needed in order to effect a given change than had formerly been
+supposed; and so there has grown up a tendency to shorten the time
+assigned to geological periods. Here, as in so many other cases, the
+truth is doubtless to be sought within the extremes. If we adopt the
+magnificent argument of Dr. Croll, which seems to me still to hold its
+ground against all adverse criticism,[5] and regard the Glacial epoch as
+coincident with the last period of high eccentricity of the earth's
+orbit, we obtain a result that is moderate and probable. That
+astronomical period began about 240,000 years ago and came to an end
+about 80,000 years ago. During this period the eccentricity was seldom
+less than .04, and at one time rose to .0569. At the present time the
+eccentricity is .0168, and nearly 800,000 years will pass before it
+attains such a point as it reached during the Glacial epoch. For the
+last 50,000 years the departure of the earth's orbit from a circular
+form has been exceptionally small.
+
+         [Footnote 4: _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, p. 39.]
+
+         [Footnote 5: Croll, _Climate and Time in their Geological
+         Relations_, New York, 1875; _Discussions on Climate and
+         Cosmology_, New York, 1886; Archibald Geikie, _Text Book of
+         Geology_, pp. 23-29, 883-909, London, 1882; James Geikie, _The
+         Great Ice Age_, pp. 94-136, New York, 1874; _Prehistoric
+         Europe_, pp. 558-562, London, 1881; Wallace, _Island Life_, pp.
+         101-225, New York, 1881. Some objections to Croll's theory may
+         be found in Wright's _Ice Age in North America_, pp. 405-505,
+         585-595, New York, 1889. I have given a brief account of the
+         theory in my _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp. 57-76.]
+
+Now the traces of the existence of men in North America during the
+Glacial epoch have in recent years been discovered in abundance, as for
+example, the palæolithic quartzite implements found in the drift near
+the city of St. Paul, which date from toward the close of the Glacial
+epoch[6]; the fragment of a human jaw found in the red clay deposited in
+Minnesota during an earlier part of that epoch;[7] the noble collection
+of palæoliths found by Dr. C. C. Abbott in the Trenton gravels in New
+Jersey; and the more recent discoveries of Dr. Metz and Mr. H. T.
+Cresson.
+
+         [Footnote 6: See Miss F. E. Babbitt, "Vestiges of Glacial Man
+         in Minnesota," in _Proceedings of the American Association_,
+         vol. xxxii., 1883.]
+
+         [Footnote 7: See N. H. Winchell, _Annual Report of the State
+         Geologist of Minnesota_, 1877, p. 60.]
+
+[Sidenote: Discoveries in the Trenton gravel.]
+
+[Sidenote: Discoveries in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota;]
+
+The year 1873 marks an era in American archæology as memorable as the
+year 1841 in the investigation of the antiquity of man in Europe. With
+reference to these problems Dr. Abbott occupies a position similar to
+that of Boucher de Perthes in the Old World, and the Trenton valley is
+coming to be classic ground, like the valley of the Somme. In April,
+1873, Dr. Abbott published his description of three rude implements
+which he had found some sixteen feet below the surface of the ground "in
+the gravels of a bluff overlooking the Delaware river." The implements
+were in place in an undisturbed deposit, and could not have found their
+way thither in any recent time; Dr. Abbott assigned them to the age of
+the Glacial drift. This was the beginning of a long series of
+investigations, in which Dr. Abbott's work was assisted and supplemented
+by Messrs. Whitney, Carr, Putnam, Shaler, Lewis, Wright, Haynes,
+Dawkins, and other eminent geologists and archæologists. By 1888 Dr.
+Abbott had obtained not less than 60 implements from various recorded
+depths in the gravel, while many others were found at depths not
+recorded or in the talus of the banks.[8] Three human skulls and other
+bones, along with the tusk of a mastodon, have been discovered in the
+same gravel. Careful studies have been made of the conditions under
+which the gravel-banks were deposited and their probable age; and it is
+generally agreed that they date from the later portion of the Glacial
+period, or about the time of the final recession of the ice-sheet from
+this region. At that time, in its climate and general aspect, New York
+harbour must have been much like a Greenland fiord of the present day.
+In 1883 Professor Wright of Oberlin, after a careful study of the
+Trenton deposits and their relations to the terrace and gravel deposits
+to the westward, predicted that similar palæolithic implements would be
+found in Ohio. Two years afterward, the prediction was verified by Dr.
+Metz, who found a true palæolith of black flint at Madisonville, in the
+Little Miami valley, eight feet below the surface. Since then further
+discoveries have been made in the same neighbourhood by Dr. Metz, and in
+Jackson county, Indiana, by Mr. H. T. Cresson; and the existence of man
+in that part of America toward the close of the Glacial period may be
+regarded as definitely established. The discoveries of Miss Babbitt and
+Professor Winchell, in Minnesota, carry the conclusion still farther,
+and add to the probability of the existence of a human population all
+the way from the Atlantic coast to the upper Mississippi valley at that
+remote antiquity.
+
+         [Footnote 8: Wright's _Ice Age in North America_, p. 516.]
+
+[Sidenote: and in Delaware.]
+
+A still more remarkable discovery was made by Mr. Cresson in July, 1887,
+at Claymont, in the north of Delaware. In a deep cut of the Baltimore
+and Ohio Railroad, in a stratum of Philadelphia red gravel and brick
+clay, Mr. Cresson obtained an unquestionable palæolith, and a few months
+afterward his diligent search was rewarded with another.[9] This
+formation dates from far back in the Glacial period. If we accept Dr.
+Croll's method of reckoning, we can hardly assign to it an antiquity
+less than 150,000 years.
+
+         [Footnote 9: The chipped implements discovered by Messrs.
+         Abbott, Metz, and Cresson, and by Miss Babbitt, are all on
+         exhibition at the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, whither it is
+         necessary to go if one would get a comprehensive view of the
+         relics of interglacial man in North America. The collection of
+         implements made by Dr. Abbott includes much more than the
+         palæoliths already referred to. It is one of the most important
+         collections in the world, and is worth a long journey to see.
+         Containing more than 20,000 implements, all found within a very
+         limited area in New Jersey, "as now arranged, the collection
+         exhibits at one and the same time the sequence of peoples and
+         phases of development in the valley of the Delaware, from
+         palæolithic man, through the intermediate period, to the recent
+         Indians, and the relative numerical proportion of the many
+         forms of their implements, each in its time.... It is doubtful
+         whether any similar collection exists from which a student can
+         gather so much information at sight as in this, where the
+         natural pebbles from the gravel begin the series, and the
+         beautifully chipped points of chert, jasper, and quartz
+         terminate it in one direction, and the polished celts and
+         grooved stone axes in the other." There are three principal
+         groups,--first, the interglacial palæoliths, secondly, the
+         argillite points and flakes, and thirdly, the arrow-heads,
+         knives, mortars and pestles, axes and hoes, ornamental stones,
+         etc., of Indians of the recent period. Dr. Abbott's _Primitive
+         Industry_, published in 1881, is a useful manual for studying
+         this collection; and an account of his discoveries in the
+         glacial gravels is given in _Reports of the Peabody Museum_,
+         vol. ii. pp. 30-48, 225-258; see also vol. iii. p. 492. A
+         succinct and judicious account of the whole subject is given by
+         H. W. Haynes, "The Prehistoric Archæology of North America," in
+         Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History_, vol. i. pp.
+         329-368.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Calaveras skull.]
+
+But according to Professor Josiah Whitney there is reason for supposing
+that man existed in California at a still more remote period. He holds
+that the famous skull discovered in 1866, in the gold-bearing gravels of
+Calaveras county, belongs to the Pliocene age.[10] If this be so, it
+seems to suggest an antiquity not less than twice as great as that just
+mentioned. The question as to the antiquity of the Calaveras skull is
+still hotly disputed among the foremost palæontologists, but as one
+reads the arguments one cannot help feeling that theoretical
+difficulties have put the objectors into a somewhat inhospitable
+attitude toward the evidence so ably presented by Professor Whitney. It
+has been too hastily assumed that, from the point of view of evolution,
+the existence of Pliocene man is improbable. Upon general
+considerations, however, we have strong reason for believing that human
+beings must have inhabited some portions of the earth throughout the
+whole duration of the Pliocene period, and it need not surprise us if
+their remains are presently discovered in more places than one.[11]
+
+         [Footnote 10: J. D. Whitney, "The Auriferous Gravels of the
+         Sierra Nevada", _Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy
+         at Harvard College_, Cambridge, 1880, vol. vi.]
+
+         [Footnote 11: In an essay published in 1882 on "Europe before
+         the Arrival of Man" (_Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp.
+         1-40), I argued that if we are to find traces of the "missing
+         link," or primordial stock of primates from which man has been
+         derived, we must undoubtedly look for it in the Miocene (p.
+         36). I am pleased at finding the same opinion lately expressed
+         by one of the highest living authorities. The case is thus
+         stated by Alfred Russel Wallace: "The evidence we now possess
+         of the exact nature of the resemblance of man to the various
+         species of anthropoid apes, shows us that he has little special
+         affinity for any one rather than another species, while he
+         differs from them all in several important characters in which
+         they agree with each other. The conclusion to be drawn from
+         these facts is, that his points of affinity connect him with
+         the whole group, while his special peculiarities equally
+         separate him from the whole group, and that he must, therefore,
+         have diverged from the common ancestral form before the
+         existing types of anthropoid apes had diverged from each other.
+         Now this divergence almost certainly took place as early as the
+         Miocene period, because in the Upper Miocene deposits of
+         western Europe remains of two species of ape have been found
+         allied to the gibbons, one of them, dryopithecus, nearly as
+         large as a man, and believed by M. Lartet to have approached
+         man in its dentition more than the existing apes. We seem
+         hardly, therefore, to have reached in the Upper Miocene the
+         epoch of the common ancestor of man and the anthropoids."
+         (_Darwinism_, p. 455, London, 1889.) Mr. Wallace goes on to
+         answer the objection of Professor Boyd Dawkins, "that man did
+         not probably exist in Pliocene times, because almost all the
+         known mammalia of that epoch are distinct species from those
+         now living on the earth, and that the same changes of the
+         environment which led to the modification of other mammalian
+         species would also have led to a change in man." This argument,
+         at first sight apparently formidable, quite overlooks the fact
+         that in the evolution of man there came a point after which
+         variations in his intelligence were seized upon more and more
+         exclusively by natural selection, to the comparative neglect of
+         physical variations. After that point man changed but little in
+         physical characteristics, except in size and complexity of
+         brain. This is the theorem first propounded by Mr. Wallace in
+         the _Anthropological Review_, May, 1864; restated in his
+         _Contributions to Natural Selection_, chap. ix., in 1870; and
+         further extended and developed by me in connection with the
+         theory of man's origin first suggested in my lectures at
+         Harvard in 1871, and worked out in _Cosmic Philosophy_, part
+         ii., chapters xvi., xxi., xxii.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pleistocene men and mammals.]
+
+Whatever may be the final outcome of the Calaveras controversy, there
+can be no doubt as to the existence of man in North America far back in
+early Pleistocene times. The men of the River-drift, who long dwelt in
+western Europe during the milder intervals of the Glacial period, but
+seem to have become extinct toward the end of it, are well known to
+palæontologists through their bones and their rude tools.
+Contemporaneously with these Europeans of the River-drift there
+certainly lived some kind of men, of a similar low grade of culture, in
+the Mississippi valley and on both the Atlantic and Pacific slopes of
+North America. Along with these ancient Americans lived some terrestrial
+mammals that still survive, such as the elk, reindeer, prairie wolf,
+bison, musk-ox, and beaver; and many that have long been extinct, such
+as the mylodon, megatherium, megalonyx, mastodon, Siberian elephant,
+mammoth, at least six or seven species of ancestral horse, a huge bear
+similar to the cave bear of ancient Europe, a lion similar to the
+European cave lion, and a tiger as large as the modern tiger of Bengal.
+
+[Sidenote: Elevation and subsidence.]
+
+Now while the general relative positions of those stupendous abysses
+that hold the oceans do not appear to have undergone any considerable
+change since an extremely remote geological period, their shallow
+marginal portions have been repeatedly raised so as to add extensive
+territories to the edges of continents, and in some cases to convert
+archipelagoes into continents, and to join continents previously
+separated. Such elevation is followed in turn by an era of subsidence,
+and almost everywhere either the one process or the other is slowly
+going on. If you look at a model in relief of the continents and
+ocean-floors, such as may be seen at the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy
+in Cambridge, showing the results of a vast number of soundings in all
+parts of the world, you cannot fail to be struck with the shallowness of
+Bering Sea; it looks like a part of the continent rather than of the
+ocean, and indeed it is just that,--an area of submerged continent. So
+in the northern Atlantic there is a lofty ridge running from France to
+Greenland. The British islands, the Orkney, Shetland, and Færoe groups,
+and Iceland are the parts of this ridge high enough to remain out of
+water. The remainder of it is shallow sea. Again and again it has been
+raised, together with the floor of the German ocean, so as to become dry
+land. Both before and since the time when those stone tools were dropped
+into the red gravel from which Mr. Cresson took them the other day, the
+northwestern part of Europe has been solid continent for more than a
+hundred miles to the west of the French and Irish coasts, the Thames and
+Humber have been tributaries to the Rhine, which emptied into the Arctic
+ocean, and across the Atlantic ridge one might have walked to the New
+World dry-shod.[12] In similar wise the northwestern corner of America
+has repeatedly been joined to Siberia through the elevation of Bering
+Sea.
+
+         [Footnote 12: See, for example, the map of Europe in early
+         post-glacial times, in James Geikie's _Prehistoric Europe_.]
+
+There have therefore been abundant opportunities for men to get into
+America from the Old World without crossing salt water. Probably this
+was the case with the ancient inhabitants of the Delaware and Little
+Miami valleys; it is not at all likely that men who used their kind of
+tools knew much about going on the sea in boats.
+
+[Sidenote: Waves of migration.]
+
+Whether the Indians are descended from this ancient population or not,
+is a question with which we have as yet no satisfactory method of
+dealing. It is not unlikely that these glacial men may have perished
+from off the face of the earth, having been crushed and supplanted by
+stronger races. There may have been several successive waves of
+migration, of which the Indians were the latest.[13] There is time
+enough for a great many things to happen in a thousand centuries. It
+will doubtless be long before all the evidence can be brought in and
+ransacked, but of one thing we may feel pretty sure; the past is more
+full of changes than we are apt to realize. Our first theories are
+usually too simple, and have to be enlarged and twisted into all manner
+of shapes in order to cover the actual complication of facts.[14]
+
+         [Footnote 13: "There are three human crania in the Museum,
+         which were found in the gravel at Trenton, one several feet
+         below the surface, the others near the surface. These skulls,
+         which are of remarkable uniformity, are of small size and of
+         oval shape, differing from all other skulls in the Museum. In
+         fact they are of a distinct type, and hence of the greatest
+         importance. So far as they go they indicate that palæolithic
+         man was exterminated, or has become lost by admixture with
+         others during the many thousand years which have passed since
+         he inhabited the Delaware valley." F. W. Putnam, "The Peabody
+         Museum," _Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society_,
+         1889, New Series, vol. vi. p. 189.]
+
+         [Footnote 14: An excellent example of this is the expansion and
+         modification undergone during the past twenty years by our
+         theories of the Aryan settlement of Europe. See Benfey's
+         preface to Fick's _Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen
+         Grundsprache_, 1868; Geiger, _Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der
+         Menschheit_, 1871; Cuno, _Forschungen im Gebiete der alten
+         Voelkerkunde_, 1871; Schmidt, _Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse
+         der Indogermanischen Sprachen_, 1872; Poesche, _Die Arier_,
+         1878; Lindenschmit, _Handbuch der deutschen Alterthumskunde_,
+         1880; Penka, _Origines Ariacæ_, 1883, and _Die Herkunft der
+         Arier_, 1886; Spiegel, _Die arische Periode und ihre Zustande_,
+         1887; Rendal, _Cradle of the Aryans_, 1889; Schrader,
+         _Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte_, 1883, and second edition
+         translated into English, with the title _Prehistoric
+         Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_, 1890. Schrader's is an
+         epoch-making book. An attempt to defend the older and simpler
+         views is made by Max Müller, _Biographies of Words and the Home
+         of the Aryas_, 1888; see also Van den Gheyn, _L'origine
+         européenne des Aryas_, 1889. The whole case is well summed up
+         by Isaac Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans_, 1889.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Cave men of Europe in the Glacial Period.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Eskimos are probably a remnant of the Cave men.]
+
+In this connection the history of the Eskimos introduces us to some
+interesting problems. Mention has been made of the River-drift men who
+lived in Europe during the milder intervals of the Glacial period. At
+such times they made their way into Germany and Britain, along with
+leopards, hyænas, and African elephants. But as the cold intervals came
+on and the edge of the polar ice-sheet crept southward and mountain
+glaciers filled up the valleys, these men and beasts retreated into
+Africa; and their place was taken by a sub-arctic race of men known as
+the Cave men, along with the reindeer and arctic fox and musk-sheep.
+More than once with the secular alternations of temperature did the
+River-drift men thus advance and retreat and advance again, and as they
+advanced the Cave men retreated, both races yielding to an enemy
+stronger than either,--to wit, the hostile climate. At length all traces
+of the River-drift men vanish, but what of the Cave men? They have left
+no representatives among the present populations of Europe, but the
+musk-sheep, which always went and came with the Cave men, is to-day
+found only in sub-arctic America among the Eskimos, and the fossilized
+bones of the musk-sheep lie in a regular trail across the eastern
+hemisphere, from the Pyrenees through Germany and Russia and all the
+vast length of Siberia. The stone arrow-heads, the sewing-needles, the
+necklaces and amulets of cut teeth, and the daggers made from antler,
+used by the Eskimos, resemble so minutely the implements of the Cave
+men, that if recent Eskimo remains were to be put into the Pleistocene
+caves of France and England they would be indistinguishable in
+appearance from the remains of the Cave men which are now found
+there.[15] There is another striking point of resemblance. The Eskimos
+have a talent for artistic sketching of men and beasts, and scenes in
+which men and beasts figure, which is absolutely unrivalled among rude
+peoples. One need but look at the sketches by common Eskimo fishermen
+which illustrate Dr. Henry Rink's fascinating book on Danish Greenland,
+to realize that this rude Eskimo art has a character as pronounced and
+unmistakable in its way as the much higher art of the Japanese. Now
+among the European remains of the Cave men are many sketches of
+mammoths, cave bears, and other animals now extinct, and hunting scenes
+so artfully and vividly portrayed as to bring distinctly before us many
+details of daily life in an antiquity so vast that in comparison with it
+the interval between the pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel tower shrinks
+into a point. Such a talent is unique among savage peoples. It exists
+only among the living Eskimos and the ancient Cave men; and when
+considered in connection with so many other points of agreement, and
+with the indisputable fact that the Cave men were a sub-arctic race, it
+affords a strong presumption in favour of the opinion of that great
+palæontologist, Professor Boyd Dawkins, that the Eskimos of North
+America are to-day the sole survivors of the race that made their homes
+in the Pleistocene caves of western Europe.[16]
+
+         [Footnote 15: See Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, pp.
+         233-245.]
+
+         [Footnote 16: According to Dr. Rink the Eskimos formerly
+         inhabited the central portions of North America, and have
+         retreated or been driven northward; he would make the Eskimos
+         of Siberia an offshoot from those of America, though he freely
+         admits that there are grounds for entertaining the opposite
+         view. Dr. Abbott is inclined to attribute an Eskimo origin to
+         some of the palæoliths of the Trenton gravel. On the other
+         hand, Mr. Clements Markham derives the American Eskimos from
+         those of Siberia. It seems to me that these views may be
+         comprehended and reconciled in a wider one. I would suggest
+         that during the Glacial period the ancestral Eskimos may have
+         gradually become adapted to arctic conditions of life; that in
+         the mild interglacial intervals they migrated northward along
+         with the musk-sheep; and that upon the return of the cold they
+         migrated southward again, keeping always near the edge of the
+         ice-sheet. Such a southward migration would naturally enough
+         bring them in one continent down to the Pyrenees, in the other
+         down to the Alleghanies; and naturally enough the modern
+         inquirer has his attention first directed to the indications of
+         their final retreat, _both_ northward in America and
+         northeastward from Europe through Siberia. This is like what
+         happened with so many plants and animals. Compare Darwin's
+         remarks on "Dispersal in the Glacial Period," _Origin of
+         Species_, chap. xii.
+
+         The best books on the Eskimos are those of Dr. Rink, _Tales and
+         Traditions of the Eskimo_, Edinburgh, 1875; _Danish Greenland_,
+         London, 1877; _The Eskimo Tribes, their Distribution and
+         Characteristics, especially in regard to Language_, Copenhagen,
+         1887. See also Franz Boas, "The Central Eskimo," _Sixth Report
+         of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1888, pp. 399-669; W.
+         H. Dall. _Alaska and its Resources_, 1870; Markham, "Origin and
+         Migrations of the Greenland Esquimaux," _Journal of the Royal
+         Geographical Society_, 1865; Cranz, _Historie von Groenland_,
+         Leipsic, 1765; Petitot, _Traditions indiennes du Canada
+         nord-ouest_, Paris, 1886; Pilling's _Bibliography of the Eskimo
+         Language_, Washington, 1887; Wells and Kelly, _English-Eskimo
+         and Eskimo-English Vocabularies, with Ethnographical Memoranda
+         concerning the Arctic Eskimos in Alaska and Siberia_,
+         Washington, 1890; Carstensen's _Two Summers in Greenland_,
+         London, 1890.]
+
+If we have always been accustomed to think of races of men only as they
+are placed on modern maps, it at first seems strange to think of England
+and France as ever having been inhabited by Eskimos. Facts equally
+strange may be cited in abundance from zoölogy and botany. The camel is
+found to-day only in Arabia and Bactria; yet in all probability the
+camel originated in America,[17] and is an intruder into what we are
+accustomed to call his native deserts, just as the people of the United
+States are European intruders upon the soil of America. So the giant
+trees of Mariposa grove are now found only in California, but there was
+once a time when they were as common in Europe[18] as maple-trees to-day
+in a New England village.
+
+         [Footnote 17: Wallace, _Geographical Distribution of Animals_,
+         vol. ii. p. 155.]
+
+         [Footnote 18: Asa Gray, "Sequoia and its History," in his
+         _Darwiniana_, pp. 205-235.]
+
+[Sidenote: There was probably no connection or intercourse by water
+between ancient America and the Old World.]
+
+Familiarity with innumerable facts of this sort, concerning the
+complicated migrations and distribution of plants and animals, has
+entirely altered our way of looking at the question as to the origin of
+the American Indians. As already observed, we can hardly be said to
+possess sufficient data for determining whether they are descended from
+the Pleistocene inhabitants of America, or have come in some later wave
+of migration from the Old World. Nor can we as yet determine whether
+they were earlier or later comers than the Eskimos. But since we have
+got rid of that feeling of speculative necessity above referred to, for
+bringing the red men from Asia within the historic period, it has become
+more and more clear that they have dwelt upon American soil for a very
+long time. The aboriginal American, as we know him, with his language
+and legends, his physical and mental peculiarities, his social
+observances and customs, is most emphatically a native and not an
+imported article. He belongs to the American continent as strictly as
+its opossums and armadillos, its maize and its golden-rod, or any
+members of its aboriginal fauna and flora belong to it. In all
+probability he came from the Old World at some ancient period, whether
+pre-glacial or post-glacial, when it was possible to come by land; and
+here in all probability, until the arrival of white men from Europe, he
+remained undisturbed by later comers, unless the Eskimos may have been
+such. There is not a particle of evidence to suggest any connection or
+intercourse between aboriginal America and Asia within any such period
+as the last twenty thousand years, except in so far as there may perhaps
+now and then have been slight surges of Eskimo tribes back and forth
+across Bering strait.
+
+[Sidenote: There is one great American "red" race.]
+
+The Indians must surely be regarded as an entirely different stock from
+the Eskimos. On the other hand, the most competent American ethnologists
+are now pretty thoroughly agreed that all the aborigines south of the
+Eskimo region, all the way from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, belong to
+one and the same race. It was formerly supposed that the higher culture
+of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians must indicate that they were of
+different race from the more barbarous Algonquins and Dakotas; and a
+speculative necessity was felt for proving that, whatever may have been
+the case with the other American peoples, this higher culture at any
+rate must have been introduced within the historic period from the Old
+World.[19] This feeling was caused partly by the fact that, owing to
+crude and loosely-framed conceptions of the real points of difference
+between civilization and barbarism, this Central American culture was
+absurdly exaggerated. As the further study of the uncivilized parts of
+the world has led to more accurate and precise conceptions, this kind of
+speculative necessity has ceased to be felt. There is an increasing
+disposition among scholars to agree that the warrior of Anahuac and the
+shepherd of the Andes were just simply Indians, and that their culture
+was no less indigenous than that of the Cherokees or Mohawks.
+
+         [Footnote 19: Illustrations may be found in plenty in the
+         learned works of Brasseur de Bourbourg:--_Histoire des nations
+         civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique centrale_, 4 vols.,
+         Paris, 1857-58; _Popol Vuh_, Paris, 1861; _Quatre lettres sur
+         le Mexique_, Paris, 1868; _Le manuscrit Troano_, Paris, 1870,
+         etc.]
+
+[Sidenote: Different senses in which the word "race" is used.]
+
+To prevent any possible misconception of my meaning, a further word of
+explanation may be needed at this point. The word "race" is used in such
+widely different senses that there is apt to be more or less vagueness
+about it. The difference is mainly in what logicians call extension;
+sometimes the word covers very little ground, sometimes a great deal. We
+say that the people of England, of the United States, and of New South
+Wales belong to one and the same race; and we say that an Englishman, a
+Frenchman, and a Greek belong to three different races. There is a sense
+in which both these statements are true. But there is also a sense in
+which we may say that the Englishman, the Frenchman, and the Greek
+belong to one and the same race; and that is when we are contrasting
+them as white men with black men or yellow men. Now we may correctly say
+that a Shawnee, an Ojibwa, and a Kickapoo belong to one and the same
+Algonquin race; that a Mohawk and a Tuscarora belong to one and the same
+Iroquois race; but that an Algonquin differs from an Iroquois somewhat
+as an Englishman differs from a Frenchman. No doubt we may fairly say
+that the Mexicans encountered by Cortes differed in race from the
+Iroquois encountered by Champlain, as much as an Englishman differs from
+an Albanian or a Montenegrin. But when we are contrasting aboriginal
+Americans with white men or yellow men, it is right to say that Mexicans
+and Iroquois belong to the same great red race.
+
+In some parts of the world two strongly contrasted races have become
+mingled together, or have existed side by side for centuries without
+intermingling. In Europe the big blonde Aryan-speaking race has mixed
+with the small brunette Iberian race, producing the endless varieties in
+stature and complexion which may be seen in any drawing-room in London
+or New York. In Africa south of Sahara, on the other hand, we find,
+interspersed among negro tribes but kept perfectly distinct, that
+primitive dwarfish race with yellow skin and tufted hair to which belong
+the Hottentots and Bushmen, the Wambatti lately discovered by Mr.
+Stanley, and other tribes.[20] Now in America south of Hudson's Bay the
+case seems to have been quite otherwise, and more as it would have been
+in Europe if there had been only Aryans, or in Africa if there had been
+only blacks.[21]
+
+         [Footnote 20: See Werner, "The African Pygmies," _Popular
+         Science Monthly_, September, 1890,--a thoughtful and
+         interesting article.]
+
+         [Footnote 21: This sort of illustration requires continual
+         limitation and qualification. The case in ancient America was
+         not _quite_ as it would have been in Europe if there had been
+         only Aryans there. The semi-civilized people of the Cordilleras
+         were relatively brachycephalous as compared with the more
+         barbarous Indians north and east of New Mexico. It is correct
+         to call this a distinction of race if we mean thereby a
+         distinction developed upon American soil, a differentiation
+         within the limits of the red race, and not an intrusion from
+         without. In this sense the Caribs also may be regarded as a
+         distinct sub-race; and, in the same sense, we may call the
+         Kafirs a distinct sub-race of African blacks. See, as to the
+         latter, Tylor, _Anthropology_, p. 39.]
+
+[Sidenote: No necessary connection between differences in culture and
+differences in race.]
+
+The belief that the people of the Cordilleras must be of radically
+different race from other Indians was based upon the vague notion that
+grades of culture have some necessary connection with likenesses and
+differences of race. There is no such necessary connection.[22] Between
+the highly civilized Japanese and their barbarous Mandshu cousins the
+difference in culture is much greater than the difference between
+Mohawks and Mexicans; and the same may be said of the people of Israel
+and Judah in contrast with the Arabs of the desert, or of the imperial
+Romans in comparison with their Teutonic kinsmen as described by
+Tacitus.
+
+         [Footnote 22: As Sir John Lubbock well says, "Different races
+         in similar stages of development often present more features of
+         resemblance to one another than the same race does to itself in
+         different stages of its history." (_Origin of Civilization_, p.
+         11.) If every student of history and ethnology would begin by
+         learning this lesson, the world would be spared a vast amount
+         of unprofitable theorizing.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Grades of culture.]
+
+At this point, in order to prepare ourselves the more clearly to
+understand sundry facts with which we shall hereafter be obliged to
+deal, especially the wonderful experiences of the Spanish conquerors, it
+will be well to pause for a moment and do something toward defining the
+different grades of culture through which men have passed in attaining
+to the grade which can properly be called civilization. Unless we begin
+with clear ideas upon this head we cannot go far toward understanding
+the ancient America that was first visited and described for us by
+Spaniards. The various grades of culture need to be classified, and that
+most original and suggestive scholar, the late Lewis Morgan of
+Rochester, made a brilliant attempt in this direction, to which the
+reader's attention is now invited.
+
+[Sidenote: Distinction between Savagery and Barbarism.]
+
+[Sidenote: Origin of pottery.]
+
+Below _Civilization_ Mr. Morgan[23] distinguishes two principal grades
+or stages of culture, namely _Savagery_ and _Barbarism_. There is much
+looseness and confusion in the popular use of these terms, and this is
+liable to become a fruitful source of misapprehension in the case of any
+statement involving either of them. When popular usage discriminates
+between them it discriminates in the right direction; there is a vague
+but not uncertain feeling that savagery is a lower stage than barbarism.
+But ordinarily the discrimination is not made and the two terms are
+carelessly employed as if interchangeable. Scientific writers long since
+recognized a general difference between savagery and barbarism, but Mr.
+Morgan was the first to suggest a really useful criterion for
+distinguishing between them. His criterion is the making of pottery; and
+his reason for selecting it is that the making of pottery is something
+that presupposes village life and more or less progress in the simpler
+arts. The earlier methods of boiling food were either putting it into
+holes in the ground lined with skins and then using heated stones, or
+else putting it into baskets coated with clay to be supported over a
+fire. The clay served the double purpose of preventing liquids from
+escaping and protecting the basket against the flame. It was probably
+observed that the clay was hardened by the fire, and thus in course of
+time it was found that the clay would answer the purpose without the
+basket.[24] Whoever first made this ingenious discovery led the way from
+savagery to barbarism. Throughout the present work we shall apply the
+name "savages" only to uncivilized people who do not make pottery.
+
+         [Footnote 23: See his great work on _Ancient Society_, New
+         York, 1877.]
+
+         [Footnote 24: See the evidence in Tylor, _Researches into the
+         Early History of Mankind_, pp. 269-272; cf. Lubbock,
+         _Prehistoric Times_, p. 573; and see Cushing's masterly "Study
+         of Pueblo Pottery," etc., _Reports of Bureau of Ethnology_,
+         iv., 473-521.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lower status of savagery.]
+
+But within each of these two stages Mr. Morgan distinguishes three
+subordinate stages, or Ethnic Periods, which may be called either lower,
+middle, and upper status, or older, middle, and later periods. The lower
+status of savagery was that wholly prehistoric stage when men lived in
+their original restricted habitat and subsisted on fruit and nuts. To
+this period must be assigned the beginning of articulate speech. All
+existing races of men had passed beyond it at an unknown antiquity.
+
+[Sidenote: Middle status of savagery.]
+
+Men began to pass beyond it when they discovered how to catch fish and
+how to use fire. They could then begin (following coasts and rivers) to
+spread over the earth. The middle status of savagery, thus introduced,
+ends with the invention of that compound weapon, the bow and arrow. The
+natives of Australia, who do not know this weapon, are still in the
+middle status of savagery.[25]
+
+         [Footnote 25: Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, London, 1889, gives
+         a vivid picture of aboriginal life in Australia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Upper status of savagery.]
+
+The invention of the bow and arrow, which marks the upper status of
+savagery, was not only a great advance in military art, but it also
+vastly increased men's supply of food by increasing their power of
+killing wild game. The lowest tribes in America, such as those upon the
+Columbia river, the Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay, the Fuegians and some
+other South American tribes, are in the upper status of savagery.
+
+[Sidenote: Lower status of barbarism: it ended differently in the two
+hemispheres.]
+
+The transition from this status to the lower status of barbarism was
+marked, as before observed, by the invention of pottery. The end of the
+lower status of barbarism was marked in the Old World by the
+domestication of animals other than the dog, which was probably
+domesticated at a much earlier period as an aid to the hunter. The
+domestication of horses and asses, oxen and sheep, goats and pigs, marks
+of course an immense advance. Along with it goes considerable
+development of agriculture, thus enabling a small territory to support
+many people. It takes a wide range of country to support hunters. In the
+New World, except in Peru, the only domesticated animal was the dog.
+Horses, oxen, and the other animals mentioned did not exist in America,
+during the historic period, until they were brought over from Europe by
+the Spaniards. In ancient American society there was no such thing as a
+pastoral stage of development,[26] and the absence of domesticable
+animals from the western hemisphere may well be reckoned as very
+important among the causes which retarded the progress of mankind in
+this part of the world.
+
+         [Footnote 26: The case of Peru, which forms an apparent but not
+         real exception to this general statement, will be considered
+         below in chap. ix.]
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of Indian corn.]
+
+On the other hand the ancient Americans had a cereal plant peculiar to
+the New World, which made comparatively small demands upon the
+intelligence and industry of the cultivator. Maize or "Indian corn" has
+played a most important part in the history of the New World, as
+regards both the red men and the white men. It could be planted without
+clearing or ploughing the soil. It was only necessary to girdle the
+trees with a stone hatchet, so as to destroy their leaves and let in the
+sunshine. A few scratches and digs were made in the ground with a stone
+digger, and the seed once dropped in took care of itself. The ears could
+hang for weeks after ripening, and could be picked off without meddling
+with the stalk; there was no need of threshing and winnowing. None of
+the Old World cereals can be cultivated without much more industry and
+intelligence. At the same time, when Indian corn is sown in tilled land
+it yields with little labour more than twice as much food per acre as
+any other kind of grain. This was of incalculable advantage to the
+English settlers of New England, who would have found it much harder to
+gain a secure foothold upon the soil if they had had to begin by
+preparing it for wheat and rye without the aid of the beautiful and
+beneficent American plant.[27] The Indians of the Atlantic coast of
+North America for the most part lived in stockaded villages, and
+cultivated their corn along with beans, pumpkins, squashes, and tobacco;
+but their cultivation was of the rudest sort,[28] and population was too
+sparse for much progress toward civilization. But Indian corn, when
+sown in carefully tilled and irrigated land, had much to do with the
+denser population, the increasing organization of labour, and the higher
+development in the arts, which characterized the confederacies of Mexico
+and Central America and all the pueblo Indians of the southwest. The
+potato played a somewhat similar part in Peru. Hence it seems proper to
+take the regular employment of tillage with irrigation as marking the
+end of the lower period of barbarism in the New World. To this Mr.
+Morgan adds the use of adobe-brick and stone in architecture, which also
+distinguished the Mexicans and their neighbours from the ruder tribes of
+North and South America. All these ruder tribes, except the few already
+mentioned as in the upper period of savagery, were somewhere within the
+lower period of barbarism. Thus the Algonquins and Iroquois, the Creeks,
+the Dakotas, etc., when first seen by white men, were within this
+period; but some had made much further progress within it than others.
+For example, the Algonquin tribe of Ojibwas had little more than emerged
+from savagery, while the Creeks and Cherokees had made considerable
+advance toward the middle status of barbarism.
+
+         [Footnote 27: See Shaler, "Physiography of North America," in
+         Winsor's _Narr. and Crit. Hist._ vol. iv. p. xiii.]
+
+         [Footnote 28: "No manure was used," says Mr. Parkman, speaking
+         of the Hurons, "but at intervals of from ten to twenty years,
+         when the soil was exhausted and firewood distant, the village
+         was abandoned and a new one built." _Jesuits in North America_,
+         p. xxx.]
+
+[Sidenote: Middle status of barbarism.]
+
+Let us now observe some characteristics of this extremely interesting
+middle period. It began, we see, in the eastern hemisphere with the
+domestication of other animals than the dog, and in the western
+hemisphere with cultivation by irrigation and the use of adobe-brick and
+stone for building. It also possessed another feature which
+distinguished it from earlier periods, in the materials of which its
+tools were made. In the periods of savagery hatchets and spear-heads
+were made of rudely chipped stones. In the lower period of barbarism the
+chipping became more and more skilful until it gave place to polishing.
+In the middle period tools were greatly multiplied, improved polishing
+gave sharp and accurate points and edges, and at last metals began to be
+used as materials preferable to stone. In America the metal used was
+copper, and in some spots where it was very accessible there were
+instances of its use by tribes not in other respects above the lower
+status of barbarism,--as for example, the "mound-builders." In the Old
+World the metal used was the alloy of copper and tin familiarly known as
+bronze, and in its working it called for a higher degree of intelligence
+than copper.
+
+[Sidenote: Working of metals.]
+
+Toward the close of the middle period of barbarism the working of metals
+became the most important element of progress, and the period may be
+regarded as ending with the invention of the process of smelting iron
+ore. According to this principle of division, the inhabitants of the
+lake villages of ancient Switzerland, who kept horses and oxen, pigs and
+sheep, raised wheat and ground it into flour, and spun and wove linen
+garments, but knew nothing of iron, were in the middle status of
+barbarism. The same was true of the ancient Britons before they learned
+the use of iron from their neighbours in Gaul. In the New World the
+representatives of the middle status of barbarism were such peoples as
+the Zuñis, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Peruvians.
+
+[Sidenote: Upper status of barbarism.]
+
+[Sidenote: Beginning of civilization.]
+
+The upper status of barbarism, in so far as it implies a knowledge of
+smelting iron, was never reached in aboriginal America. In the Old World
+it is the stage which had been reached by the Greeks of the Homeric
+poems[29] and the Germans in the time of Cæsar. The end of this period
+and the beginning of true civilization is marked by the invention of a
+phonetic alphabet and the production of written records. This brings
+within the pale of civilization such people as the ancient Phoenicians,
+the Hebrews after the exodus, the ruling classes at Nineveh and Babylon,
+the Aryans of Persia and India, and the Japanese. But clearly it will
+not do to insist too narrowly upon the phonetic character of the
+alphabet. Where people acquainted with iron have enshrined in
+hieroglyphics so much matter of historic record and literary interest as
+the Chinese and the ancient Egyptians, they too must be classed as
+civilized; and this Mr. Morgan by implication admits.
+
+         [Footnote 29: In the interesting architectural remains
+         unearthed by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenæ and Tiryns, there have
+         been found at the former place a few iron keys and knives, at
+         the latter one iron lance-head; but the form and workmanship of
+         these objects mark them as not older than the beginning of the
+         fifth century B. C., or the time of the Persian wars. With
+         these exceptions the weapons and tools found in these cities,
+         as also in Troy, were of bronze and stone. Bronze was in common
+         use, but obsidian knives and arrow-heads of fine workmanship
+         abound in the ruins. According to Professor Sayce, these ruins
+         must date from 2000 to 1700 B. C. The Greeks of that time would
+         accordingly be placed in the middle status of barbarism. (See
+         Schliemann's _Mycenæ_, pp. 75, 364; _Tiryns_, p. 171.) In the
+         state of society described in the Homeric poems the smelting of
+         iron was well known, but the process seems to have been costly,
+         so that bronze weapons were still commonly used. (Tylor,
+         _Anthropology_, p. 279.) The Romans of the regal period were
+         ignorant of iron. (Lanciani, _Ancient Rome in the Light of
+         Recent Discoveries_, Boston, 1888, pp. 39-48.) The upper period
+         of barbarism was shortened for Greece and Rome through the
+         circumstance that they learned the working of iron from Egypt
+         and the use of the alphabet from Phoenicia. Such copying, of
+         course, affects the symmetry of such schemes as Mr. Morgan's,
+         and allowances have to be made for it. It is curious that both
+         Greeks and Romans seem to have preserved some tradition of the
+         Bronze Age:--
+
+            [Greek: tois d' ên chalkea men teuchea, chalkeoi de te oikoi,
+            chalkô d' eirgazonto; melas d' ouk eske sidêros.]
+                                             Hesiod, _Opp. Di._ 134.
+
+            Arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fuerunt
+            Et lapides et item silvarum fragmina rami,
+            Et flamma atque ignes, postquam sunt cognita primum.
+            Posterius ferri vis est, ærisque reperta.
+            Et prior æris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus, etc.
+                                             Lucretius, v. 1283.
+
+         Perhaps, as Munro suggests, Lucretius was thinking of Hesiod;
+         but it does not seem improbable that in both cases there may
+         have been a genuine tradition that their ancestors used bronze
+         tools and weapons before iron, since the change was
+         comparatively recent, and sundry religious observances tended
+         to perpetuate the memory of it.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Civilizations" of Mexico and Peru.]
+
+This brilliant classification of the stages of early culture will be
+found very helpful if we only keep in mind the fact that in all wide
+generalizations of this sort the case is liable to be somewhat unduly
+simplified. The story of human progress is really not quite so easy to
+decipher as such descriptions would make it appear, and when we have
+laid down rules of this sort we need not be surprised if we now and then
+come upon facts that will not exactly fit into them. In such an event
+it is best not to try to squeeze or distort the unruly facts, but to
+look and see if our rules will not bear some little qualification. The
+faculty for generalizing is a good servant but a bad master. If we
+observe this caution we shall find Mr. Morgan's work to be of great
+value. It will be observed that, with one exception, his restrictions
+leave the area of civilization as wide as that which we are accustomed
+to assign to it in our ordinary speaking and thinking. That exception is
+the case of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. We have so long been
+accustomed to gorgeous accounts of the civilization of these countries
+at the time of their discovery by the Spaniards that it may at first
+shock our preconceived notions to see them set down as in the "middle
+status of barbarism," one stage higher than Mohawks, and one stage lower
+than the warriors of the Iliad. This does indeed mark a change since Dr.
+Draper expressed the opinion that the Mexicans and Peruvians were
+morally and intellectually superior to the Europeans of the sixteenth
+century.[30] The reaction from the state of opinion in which such an
+extravagant remark was even possible has been attended with some
+controversy; but on the whole Mr. Morgan's main position has been
+steadily and rapidly gaining ground, and it is becoming more and more
+clear that if we are to use language correctly when we speak of the
+civilizations of Mexico and Peru we really mean civilizations of an
+extremely archaic type, considerably more archaic than that of Egypt in
+the time of the Pharaohs. A "civilization" like that of the Aztecs,
+without domestic animals or iron tools, with trade still in the
+primitive stage of barter, with human sacrifices, and with cannibalism,
+has certainly some of the most vivid features of barbarism. Along with
+these primitive features, however, there seem to have been--after making
+all due allowances--some features of luxury and splendour such as we are
+wont to associate with civilization. The Aztecs, moreover, though
+doubtless a full ethnical period behind the ancient Egyptians in general
+advancement, had worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had
+begun to put it to some literary use. It would seem that a people may in
+certain special points reach a level of attainment higher than the level
+which they occupy in other points. The Cave men of the Glacial period
+were ignorant of pottery, and thus had not risen above the upper status
+of savagery; but their artistic talent, upon which we have remarked, was
+not such as we are wont to associate with savagery. Other instances will
+occur to us in the proper place.
+
+         [Footnote 30: See his _Intellectual Development of Europe_, New
+         York, 1863, pp. 448, 464.]
+
+[Sidenote: Loose use of the words "savagery" and "civilization".]
+
+The difficulty which people usually find in realizing the true position
+of the ancient Mexican culture arises partly from the misconceptions
+which have until recently distorted the facts, and partly from the loose
+employment of terms above noticed. It is quite correct to speak of the
+Australian blackfellows as "savages," but nothing is more common than to
+hear the same epithet employed to characterize Shawnees and Mohawks;
+and to call those Indians "savages" is quite misleading. So on the other
+hand the term "civilization" is often so loosely used as to cover a
+large territory belonging to "barbarism." One does not look for
+scientific precision in newspapers, but they are apt to reflect popular
+habits of thought quite faithfully, and for that reason it is proper
+here to quote from one. In a newspaper account of Mr. Cushing's recent
+discoveries of buried towns, works of irrigation, etc., in Arizona, we
+are first told that these are the remains of a "splendid prehistoric
+civilization," and the next moment we are told, in entire
+unconsciousness of the contradiction, that the people who constructed
+these works had only stone tools. Now to call a people "civilized" who
+have only stone tools is utterly misleading. Nothing but confusion of
+ideas and darkening of counsel can come from such a misuse of words.
+Such a people may be in a high degree interesting and entitled to credit
+for what they have achieved, but the grade of culture which they have
+reached is not "civilization."
+
+[Sidenote: Value and importance of the term "barbarism."]
+
+With "savagery" thus encroaching upon its area of meaning on the one
+side, and "civilization" encroaching on the other, the word "barbarism,"
+as popularly apprehended, is left in a vague and unsatisfactory plight.
+If we speak of Montezuma's people as barbarians one stage further
+advanced than Mohawks, we are liable to be charged with calling them
+"savages." Yet the term "barbarism" is a very useful one; indispensable,
+indeed, in the history of human progress. There is no other word which
+can serve in its stead as a designation of the enormous interval which
+begins with the invention of pottery and ends with the invention of the
+alphabet. The popular usage of the word is likely to become more
+definite as it comes to be more generally realized how prodigious that
+interval has been. When we think what a considerable portion of man's
+past existence has been comprised within it, and what a marvellous
+transformation in human knowledge and human faculty has been gradually
+wrought between its beginning and its end, the period of barbarism
+becomes invested with most thrilling interest, and its name ceases to
+appear otherwise than respectable. It is Mr. Morgan's chief title to
+fame that he has so thoroughly explored this period and described its
+features with such masterly skill.
+
+[Sidenote: The status of barbarism is most completely exemplified in
+ancient America.]
+
+[Sidenote: Survivals of bygone epochs of culture.]
+
+It is worth while to observe that Mr. Morgan's view of the successive
+stages of culture is one which could not well have been marked out in
+all its parts except by a student of American archæology. Aboriginal
+America is the richest field in the world for the study of barbarism.
+Its people present every gradation in social life during three ethnical
+periods--the upper period of savagery and the lower and middle periods
+of barbarism--so that the process of development may be most
+systematically and instructively studied. Until we have become familiar
+with ancient American society, and so long as our view is confined to
+the phases of progress in the Old World, the demarcation between
+civilized and uncivilized life seems too abrupt and sudden; we do not
+get a correct measure of it. The oldest European tradition reaches back
+only through the upper period of barbarism.[31] The middle and lower
+periods have lapsed into utter oblivion, and it is only modern
+archæological research that is beginning to recover the traces of them.
+But among the red men of America the social life of ages more remote
+than that of the lake villages of Switzerland is in many particulars
+preserved for us to-day, and when we study it we begin to realize as
+never before the continuity of human development, its enormous duration,
+and the almost infinite accumulation of slow efforts by which progress
+has been achieved. Ancient America is further instructive in presenting
+the middle status of barbarism in a different form from that which it
+assumed in the eastern hemisphere. Its most conspicuous outward
+manifestations, instead of tents and herds, were strange and imposing
+edifices of stone, so that it was quite natural that observers
+interpreting it from a basis of European experience should mistake it
+for civilization. Certain aspects of that middle period may be studied
+to-day in New Mexico and Arizona, as phases of the older periods may
+still be found among the wilder tribes, even after all the contact they
+have had with white men. These survivals from antiquity will not
+permanently outlive that contact, and it is important that no time
+should be lost in gathering and putting on record all that can be
+learned of the speech and arts, the customs and beliefs, everything that
+goes to constitute the philology and anthropology of the red men. For
+the intelligent and vigorous work of this sort now conducted by the
+Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, under the direction
+of Major Powell, no praise can be too strong and no encouragement too
+hearty.
+
+         [Footnote 31: Now and then, perhaps, but very rarely, it just
+         touches the close of the middle period, as, e. g., in the lines
+         from Hesiod and Lucretius above quoted.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Tribal society and multiplicity of languages in aboriginal
+America.]
+
+A brief enumeration of the principal groups of Indians will be helpful
+in enabling us to comprehend the social condition of ancient America.
+The groups are in great part defined by differences of language, which
+are perhaps a better criterion of racial affinity in the New World than
+in the Old, because there seems to have been little or nothing of that
+peculiar kind of conquest with incorporation resulting in complete
+change of speech which we sometimes find in the Old World; as, for
+example, when we see the Celto-Iberian population of Spain and the
+Belgic, Celtic, and Aquitanian populations of Gaul forgetting their
+native tongues, and adopting that of a confederacy of tribes in Latium.
+Except in the case of Peru there is no indication that anything of this
+sort went on, or that there was anything even superficially analogous to
+"empire," in ancient America. What strikes one most forcibly at first is
+the vast number of American languages. Adelung, in his "Mithridates,"
+put the number at 1,264, and Ludewig, in his "Literature of the American
+Languages," put it roundly at 1,100. Squier, on the other hand, was
+content with 400.[32] The discrepancy arises from the fact that where
+one scholar sees two or three distinct languages another sees two or
+three dialects of one language and counts them as one; it is like the
+difficulty which naturalists find in agreeing as to what are species and
+what are only varieties. The great number of languages and dialects
+spoken by a sparse population is one mark of the universal prevalence of
+a rude and primitive form of tribal society.[33]
+
+         [Footnote 32: Winsor, "Bibliographical Notes on American
+         Linguistics," in his _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i. pp.
+         420-428, gives an admirable survey of the subject. See also
+         Pilling's bibliographical bulletins of Iroquoian, Siouan, and
+         Muskhogean languages, published by the Bureau of Ethnology.]
+
+         [Footnote 33: _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp. 147-174.]
+
+[Sidenote: Tribes in the upper status of savagery.]
+
+The lowest tribes in North America were those that are still to be found
+in California, in the valley of the Columbia river, and on the shores of
+Puget Sound. The Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay were on about the same
+level of savagery. They made no pottery, knew nothing of horticulture,
+depended for subsistence entirely upon bread-roots, fish, and game, and
+thus had no village life. They were mere prowlers in the upper status of
+savagery.[34] The Apaches of Arizona, preëminent even among red men for
+atrocious cruelty, are an offshoot from the Athabaskan stock. Very
+little better are the Shoshones and Bannocks that still wander among
+the lonely bare mountains and over the weird sage-brush plains of Idaho.
+The region west of the Rocky Mountains and north of New Mexico is thus
+the region of savagery.
+
+         [Footnote 34: For a good account of Indians in the upper status
+         of savagery until modified by contact with civilization, see
+         Myron Eells, "The Twana, Chemakum, and Klallam Indians of
+         Washington Territory," _Smithsonian Report_, 1887, pp.
+         605-681.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Dakota family of tribes.]
+
+Between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic coast the aborigines, at
+the time of the Discovery, might have been divided into six or seven
+groups, of which three were situated mainly to the east of the
+Mississippi river, the others mainly to the west of it. All were in the
+lower period of barbarism. Of the western groups, by far the most
+numerous were the Dakotas, comprising the Sioux, Poncas, Omahas, Iowas,
+Kaws, Otoes, and Missouris. From the headwaters of the Mississippi their
+territory extended westward on both sides of the Missouri for a thousand
+miles. One of their tribes, the Winnebagos, had crossed the Mississippi
+and pressed into the region between that river and Lake Michigan.
+
+[Sidenote: The Minnitarees and Mandans.]
+
+A second group, very small in numbers but extremely interesting to the
+student of ethnology, comprises the Minnitarees and Mandans on the upper
+Missouri.[35] The remnants of these tribes now live together in the same
+village, and in personal appearance, as well as in intelligence, they
+are described as superior to any other red men north of New Mexico.
+From their first discovery, by the brothers La Vérendrye in 1742, down
+to Mr. Catlin's visit nearly a century later, there was no change in
+their condition,[36] but shortly afterward, in 1838, the greater part of
+them were swept away by small-pox. The excellence of their horticulture,
+the framework of their houses, and their peculiar religious ceremonies
+early attracted attention. Upon Mr. Catlin they made such an impression
+that he fancied there must be an infusion of white blood in them; and
+after the fashion of those days he sought to account for it by a
+reference to the legend of Madoc, a Welsh prince who was dimly imagined
+to have sailed to America about 1170. He thought that Madoc's party
+might have sailed to the Mississippi and founded a colony which ascended
+that river and the Ohio, built the famous mounds of the Ohio valley, and
+finally migrated to the upper Missouri.[37] To this speculation was
+appended the inevitable list of words which happen to sound somewhat
+alike in Mandan and in Welsh. In the realm of free fancy everything is
+easy. That there was a Madoc who went somewhere in 1170 is quite
+possible, but as shrewd old John Smith said about it, "where this place
+was no history can show."[38] But one part of Mr. Catlin's speculation
+may have hit somewhat nearer the truth. It is possible that the
+Minnitarees or the Mandans, or both, may be a remnant of some of those
+Mound-builders in the Mississippi valley concerning whom something will
+presently be said.
+
+         [Footnote 35: An excellent description of them, profusely
+         illustrated with coloured pictures, may be found in Catlin's
+         _North American Indians_, vol. i. pp. 66-207, 7th ed., London,
+         1848; the author was an accurate and trustworthy observer. Some
+         writers have placed these tribes in the Dakota group because of
+         the large number of Dakota words in their language; but these
+         are probably borrowed words, like the numerous French words in
+         English.]
+
+         [Footnote 36: See Francis Parkman's paper, "The Discovery of
+         the Rocky Mountains," _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1888. I hope
+         the appearance of this article, two years ago, indicates that
+         we have not much longer to wait for the next of that
+         magnificent series of volumes on the history of the French in
+         North America.]
+
+         [Footnote 37: _North American Indians_, vol. ii., Appendix A.]
+
+         [Footnote 38: Smith's _Generall Historie of Virginia, New
+         England and the Summer Isles_, p. 1, London, 1626.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pawnees, etc.]
+
+The third group in this western region consists of the Pawnees and
+Arickarees,[39] of the Platte valley in Nebraska, with a few kindred
+tribes farther to the south.
+
+         [Footnote 39: For the history and ethnology of these
+         interesting tribes, see three learned papers by J. B. Dunbar,
+         in _Magazine of American History_, vol. iv. pp. 241-281; vol.
+         v. pp. 321-342; vol. viii. pp. 734-756; also Grinnell's _Pawnee
+         Hero Stories and Folk-Tales_, New York, 1889.]
+
+[Sidenote: Maskoki family.]
+
+Of the three groups eastward of the Mississippi we may first mention the
+Maskoki, or Muskhogees, consisting of the Choctaws, Chickasaws,
+Seminoles, and others, with the Creek confederacy.[40] These tribes were
+intelligent and powerful, with a culture well advanced toward the end of
+the lower period of barbarism.
+
+         [Footnote 40: These tribes of the Gulf region were formerly
+         grouped, along with others not akin to them, as "Mobilians."
+         The Cherokees were supposed to belong to the Maskoki family,
+         but they have lately been declared an intrusive offshoot from
+         the Iroquois stock. The remnants of another alien tribe, the
+         once famous Natchez, were adopted into the Creek confederacy.
+         For a full account of these tribes, see Gatschet, _A Migration
+         Legend of the Creek Indians_, vol. i., Philadelphia, 1884.]
+
+[Sidenote: Algonquin family of tribes.]
+
+The Algonquin family, bordering at its southern limits upon the Maskoki,
+had a vast range northeasterly along the Atlantic coast until it reached
+the confines of Labrador, and northwesterly through the region of the
+Great Lakes and as far as the Churchill river[41] to the west of
+Hudson's Bay. In other words, the Algonquins were bounded on the south
+by the Maskoki,[42] on the west by the Dakotas, on the northwest by the
+Athabaskans, on the northeast by Eskimos, and on the east by the ocean.
+Between Lake Superior and the Red River of the North the Crees had their
+hunting grounds, and closely related to them were the Pottawatomies,
+Ojibwas, and Ottawas. One offshoot, including the Blackfeet, Cheyennes,
+and Arrapahos, roamed as far west as the Rocky Mountains. The great
+triangle between the upper Mississippi and the Ohio was occupied by the
+Menomonees and Kickapoos, the Sacs and Foxes, the Miamis and Illinois,
+and the Shawnees. Along the coast region the principal Algonquin tribes
+were the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenape or Delawares, the Munsees or
+Minisinks of the mountains about the Susquehanna, the Mohegans on the
+Hudson, the Adirondacks between that river and the St. Lawrence, the
+Narragansetts and their congeners in New England, and finally the
+Micmacs and Wabenaki far down East, as the last name implies. There is a
+tradition, supported to some extent by linguistic evidence,[43] that the
+Mohegans, with their cousins the Pequots, were more closely related to
+the Shawnees than to the Delaware or coast group. While all the
+Algonquin tribes were in the lower period of barbarism, there was a
+noticeable gradation among them, the Crees and Ojibwas of the far North
+standing lowest in culture, and the Shawnees, at their southernmost
+limits, standing highest.
+
+         [Footnote 41: Howse, _Grammar of the Cree Language_, London,
+         1865, p. vii.]
+
+         [Footnote 42: Except in so far as the Cherokees and Tuscaroras,
+         presently to be mentioned, were interposed.]
+
+         [Footnote 43: Brinton, _The Lenape and their Legends_, p. 30.]
+
+[Sidenote: Huron-Iroquois family of tribes.]
+
+We have observed the Dakota tribes pressing eastward against their
+neighbours and sending out an offshoot, the Winnebagos, across the
+Mississippi river. It has been supposed that the Huron-Iroquois group of
+tribes was a more remote offshoot from the Dakotas. This is very
+doubtful; but in the thirteenth or fourteenth century the general trend
+of the Huron-Iroquois movement seems to have been eastward, either in
+successive swarms, or in a single swarm, which became divided and
+scattered by segmentation, as was common with all Indian tribes. They
+seem early to have proved their superiority over the Algonquins in
+bravery and intelligence. Their line of invasion seems to have run
+eastward to Niagara, and thereabouts to have bifurcated, one line
+following the valley of the St. Lawrence, and the other that of the
+Susquehanna. The Hurons established themselves in the peninsula between
+the lake that bears their name and Lake Ontario. South of them and along
+the northern shore of Lake Erie were settled their kindred, afterward
+called the "Neutral Nation."[44] On the southern shore the Eries planted
+themselves, while the Susquehannocks pushed on in a direction
+sufficiently described by their name. Farthest of all penetrated the
+Tuscaroras, even into the pine forests of North Carolina, where they
+maintained themselves in isolation from their kindred until 1715. These
+invasions resulted in some displacement of Algonquin tribes, and began
+to sap the strength of the confederacy or alliance in which the
+Delawares had held a foremost place.
+
+         [Footnote 44: Because they refused to take part in the strife
+         between the Hurons and the Five Nations. Their Indian name was
+         Attiwandarons. They were unsurpassed for ferocity. See Parkman,
+         _Jesuits in North America_, p. xliv.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Five Nations.]
+
+But by far the most famous and important of the Huron-Iroquois were
+those that followed the northern shore of Lake Ontario into the valley
+of the St. Lawrence. In that direction their progress was checked by the
+Algonquin tribe of Adirondacks, but they succeeded in retaining a
+foothold in the country for a long time; for in 1535 Jacques Cartier
+found on the site which he named Montreal an Iroquois village which had
+vanished before Champlain's arrival seventy years later. Those Iroquois
+who were thrust back in the struggle for the St. Lawrence valley, early
+in the fifteenth century, made their way across Lake Ontario and
+established themselves at the mouth of the Oswego river. They were then
+in three small tribes,--the Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas,--but as
+they grew in numbers and spread eastward to the Hudson and westward to
+the Genesee, the intermediate tribes of Oneidas and Cayugas were formed
+by segmentation.[45] About 1450 the five tribes--afterwards known as the
+Five Nations--were joined in a confederacy in pursuance of the wise
+counsel which Hayowentha, or Hiawatha,[46] according to the legend,
+whispered into the ears of the Onondaga sachem, Daganoweda. This union
+of their resources combined, with their native bravery and cunning, and
+their occupation of the most commanding military position in eastern
+North America, to render them invincible among red men. They
+exterminated their old enemies the Adirondacks, and pushed the Mohegans
+over the mountains from the Hudson river to the Connecticut. When they
+first encountered white men in 1609 their name had become a terror in
+New England, insomuch that as soon as a single Mohawk was caught sight
+of by the Indians in that country, they would raise the cry from hill to
+hill, "A Mohawk! a Mohawk!" and forthwith would flee like sheep before
+wolves, never dreaming of resistance.[47]
+
+         [Footnote 45: Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 125.]
+
+         [Footnote 46: Whether there was ever such a person as Hiawatha
+         is, to say the least, doubtful. As a traditional culture-hero
+         his attributes are those of Ioskeha, Michabo, Quetzalcoatl,
+         Viracocha, and all that class of sky-gods to which I shall
+         again have occasion to refer. See Brinton's _Myths of the New
+         World_, p. 172. When the Indian speaks of Hiawatha whispering
+         advice to Daganoweda, his meaning is probably the same as that
+         of the ancient Greek when he attributed the wisdom of some
+         mortal hero to whispered advice from Zeus or his messenger
+         Hermes. Longfellow's famous poem is based upon Schoolcraft's
+         book entitled _The Hiawatha Legends_, which is really a
+         misnomer, for the book consists chiefly of Ojibwa stories about
+         Manabozho, son of the West Wind. There was really no such
+         legend of Hiawatha as that which the poet has immortalized. See
+         Hale, _The Iroquois Book of Rites_, pp. 36, 180-183.]
+
+         [Footnote 47: Cadwallader Colden, _History of the Five
+         Nations_, New York, 1727.]
+
+After the Five Nations had been supplied with firearms by the Dutch
+their power increased with portentous rapidity.[48] At first they sought
+to persuade their neighbours of kindred blood and speech, the Eries and
+others, to join their confederacy; and failing in this they went to war
+and exterminated them.[49] Then they overthrew one Algonquin tribe after
+another until in 1690 their career was checked by the French. By that
+time they had reduced to a tributary condition most of the Algonquin
+tribes, even to the Mississippi river. Some writers have spoken of the
+empire of the Iroquois, and it has been surmised that, if they had not
+been interfered with by white men, they might have played a part
+analogous to that of the Romans in the Old World; but there is no real
+similarity between the two cases. The Romans acquired their mighty
+strength by incorporating vanquished peoples into their own body
+politic.[50] No American aborigines ever had a glimmering of the process
+of state-building after the Roman fashion. No incorporation resulted
+from the victories of the Iroquois. Where their burnings and massacres
+stopped short of extermination, they simply took tribute, which was as
+far as state-craft had got in the lower period of barbarism. General
+Walker has summed up their military career in a single sentence: "They
+were the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent."[51]
+
+         [Footnote 48: Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 12.]
+
+         [Footnote 49: All except the distant Tuscaroras, who in 1715
+         migrated from North Carolina to New York, and joining the
+         Iroquois league made it the Six Nations. All the rest of the
+         outlying Huron-Iroquois stock was wiped out of existence before
+         the end of the seventeenth century, except the remnant of
+         Hurons since known as Wyandots.]
+
+         [Footnote 50: See my _Beginnings of New England_, chap. i.]
+
+         [Footnote 51: F. A. Walker, "The Indian Question," _North
+         American Review_, April, 1873, p. 370.]
+
+[Sidenote: Horticulture must be distinguished from field agriculture.]
+
+[Sidenote: Perpetual warfare.]
+
+The six groups here enumerated--Dakota, Mandan, Pawnee, Maskoki,
+Algonquin, Iroquois--made up the great body of the aborigines of North
+America who at the time of the Discovery lived in the lower status of
+barbarism. All made pottery of various degrees of rudeness. Their tools
+and weapons were of the Neolithic type,--stone either polished or
+accurately and artistically chipped. For the most part they lived in
+stockaded villages, and cultivated maize, beans, pumpkins, squashes,
+sunflowers, and tobacco. They depended for subsistence partly upon such
+vegetable products, partly upon hunting and fishing, the women generally
+attending to the horticulture, the men to the chase. _Horticulture_ is
+an appropriate designation for this stage in which the ground is merely
+scratched with stone spades and hoes. It is incipient agriculture, but
+should be carefully distinguished from the _field agriculture_ in which
+extensive pieces of land are subdued by the plough. The assistance of
+domestic animals is needed before such work can be carried far, and it
+does not appear that there was an approach to field agriculture in any
+part of pre-Columbian America except Peru, where men were harnessed to
+the plough, and perhaps occasionally llamas were used in the same
+way.[52] Where subsistence depended upon rude horticulture eked out by
+game and fish, it required a large territory to support a sparse
+population. The great diversity of languages contributed to maintain the
+isolation of tribes and prevent extensive confederation. Intertribal
+warfare was perpetual, save now and then for truces of brief duration.
+Warfare was attended by wholesale massacre. As many prisoners as could
+be managed were taken home by their captors; in some cases they were
+adopted into the tribe of the latter as a means of increasing its
+fighting strength, otherwise they were put to death with lingering
+torments.[53] There was nothing which afforded the red men such
+exquisite delight as the spectacle of live human flesh lacerated with
+stone knives or hissing under the touch of firebrands, and for elaborate
+ingenuity in devising tortures they have never been equalled.[54]
+Cannibalism was quite commonly practised.[55] The scalps of slain
+enemies were always taken, and until they had attained such trophies the
+young men were not likely to find favour in the eyes of women. The
+Indian's notions of morality were those that belong to that state of
+society in which the tribe is the largest well-established political
+aggregate. Murder without the tribe was meritorious unless it entailed
+risk of war at an obvious disadvantage; murder within the tribe was
+either revenged by blood-feud or compounded by a present given to the
+victim's kinsmen. Such rudimentary _wergild_ was often reckoned in
+wampum, or strings of beads made of a kind of mussel shell, and put to
+divers uses, as personal ornament, mnemonic record, and finally money.
+Religious thought was in the fetishistic or animistic stage,[56] while
+many tribes had risen to a vague conception of tutelar deities embodied
+in human or animal forms. Myth-tales abounded, and the folk-lore of the
+red men is found to be extremely interesting and instructive.[57] Their
+religion consisted mainly in a devout belief in witchcraft. No
+well-defined priestly class had been evolved; the so-called "medicine
+men" were mere conjurers, though possessed of considerable influence.
+
+         [Footnote 52: See Humboldt, _Ansichten der Natur_, 3d ed.,
+         Stuttgart, 1849, vol. i. p. 203.]
+
+         [Footnote 53: "Women and children joined in these fiendish
+         atrocities, and when at length the victim yielded up his life,
+         his heart, if he were brave, was ripped from his body, cut in
+         pieces, broiled, and given to the young men, under the belief
+         that it would increase their courage; they drank his blood,
+         thinking it would make them more wary; and finally his body was
+         divided limb from limb, roasted or thrown into the seething
+         pot, and hands and feet, arms and legs, head and trunk, were
+         all stewed into a horrid mess and eaten amidst yells, songs,
+         and dances." Jeffries Wyman, in _Seventh Report of Peabody
+         Museum_, p. 37. For details of the most appalling character,
+         see Butterfield's _History of the Girtys_, pp. 176-182; Stone's
+         _Life of Joseph Brant_, vol. ii. pp. 31, 32; Dodge's _Plains of
+         the Great West_, p. 418, and _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 525-529;
+         Parkman's _Jesuits in North America_, pp. 387-391; and many
+         other places in Parkman's writings.]
+
+         [Footnote 54: One often hears it said that the cruelty of the
+         Indians was not greater than that of mediæval Europeans, as
+         exemplified in judicial torture and in the horrors of the
+         Inquisition. But in such a judgment there is lack of due
+         discrimination. In the practice of torture by civil and
+         ecclesiastical tribunals in the Middle Ages, there was a
+         definite moral purpose which, however lamentably mistaken or
+         perverted, gave it a very different character from torture
+         wantonly inflicted for amusement. The atrocities formerly
+         attendant upon the sack of towns, as e. g. Beziers, Magdeburg,
+         etc., might more properly be regarded as an illustration of the
+         survival of a spirit fit only for the lowest barbarism: and the
+         Spanish conquerors of the New World themselves often exhibited
+         cruelty such as even Indians seldom surpass. See below, vol.
+         ii. p. 444. In spite of such cases, however, it must be held
+         that for artistic skill in inflicting the greatest possible
+         intensity of excruciating pain upon every nerve in the body,
+         the Spaniard was a bungler and a novice as compared with the
+         Indian. See Dodge's _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 536-538. Colonel
+         Dodge was in familiar contact with Indians for more than thirty
+         years, and writes with fairness and discrimination.
+
+         In truth the question as to comparative cruelty is not so much
+         one of race as of occupation, except in so far as race is
+         moulded by long occupation. The "old Adam," i. e. the
+         inheritance from our brute ancestors, is very strong in the
+         human race. Callousness to the suffering of others than self is
+         part of this brute-inheritance, and under the influence of
+         certain habits and occupations this germ of callousness may be
+         developed to almost any height of devilish cruelty. In the
+         lower stages of culture the lack of political aggregation on a
+         large scale is attended with incessant warfare in the shape in
+         which it comes home to everybody's door. This state of things
+         keeps alive the passion of revenge and stimulates cruelty to
+         the highest degree. As long as such a state of things endures,
+         as it did in Europe to a limited extent throughout the Middle
+         Ages, there is sure to be a dreadful amount of cruelty. The
+         change in the conditions of modern warfare has been a very
+         important factor in the rapidly increasing mildness and
+         humanity of modern times. See my _Beginnings of New England_,
+         pp. 226-229. Something more will be said hereafter with
+         reference to the special causes concerned in the cruelty and
+         brutality of the Spaniards in America. Meanwhile it may be
+         observed in the present connection, that the Spanish
+         taskmasters who mutilated and burned their slaves were not
+         representative types of their own race to anything like the
+         same extent as the Indians who tortured Brébeuf or Crawford. If
+         the fiendish Pedrarias was a Spaniard, so too was the saintly
+         Las Casas. The latter type would be as impossible among
+         barbarians as an Aristotle or a Beethoven. Indeed, though there
+         are writers who would like to prove the contrary, it may be
+         doubted whether that type has ever attained to perfection
+         except under the influence of Christianity.]
+
+         [Footnote 55: See the evidence collected by Jeffries Wyman, in
+         _Seventh Report of Peabody Museum_, pp. 27-37; cf. Wake,
+         _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 243. Many illustrations are
+         given by Mr. Parkman. In this connection it may be observed
+         that the name "Mohawk" means "Cannibal." It is an Algonquin
+         word, applied to this Iroquois tribe by their enemies in the
+         Connecticut valley and about the lower Hudson. The name by
+         which the Mohawks called themselves was "Caniengas," or
+         "People-at-the-Flint." See Hale, _The Iroquois Book of Rites_,
+         p. 173.]
+
+         [Footnote 56: For accounts and explanations of animism see
+         Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, London, 1871, 2 vols.; Caspari,
+         _Urgeschichte der Menschheit_, Leipsic, 1877, 2 vols.;
+         Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, part i.; and my _Myths and
+         Mythmakers_, chap. vii.]
+
+         [Footnote 57: No time should be lost in gathering and recording
+         every scrap of this folk-lore that can be found. The American
+         Folk-Lore Society, founded chiefly through the exertions of my
+         friend Mr. W. W. Newell, and organized January 4, 1888, is
+         already doing excellent work and promises to become a valuable
+         aid, within its field, to the work of the Bureau of Ethnology.
+         Of the _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, published for the
+         society by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., nine numbers have
+         appeared, and the reader will find them full of valuable
+         information. One may also profitably consult Knortz's _Märchen
+         und Sagen der nordamerikanischen Indianer_, Jena, 1871;
+         Brinton's _Myths of the New World_, N. Y., 1868, and his
+         _American Hero-Myths_, Phila., 1882; Leland's _Algonquin
+         Legends of New England_, Boston, 1884; Mrs. Emerson's _Indian
+         Myths_, Boston, 1884. Some brief reflections and criticisms of
+         much value, in relation to aboriginal American folk-lore, may
+         be found in Curtin's _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, pp.
+         12-27.]
+
+But none of the characteristics of barbarous society above specified
+will carry us so far toward realizing the gulf which divides it from
+civilized society as the imperfect development of its domestic
+relations. The importance of this subject is such as to call for a few
+words of special elucidation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Ancient Law.]
+
+Thirty years ago, when Sir Henry Maine published that magnificent
+treatise on Ancient Law, which, when considered in all its potency of
+suggestiveness, has perhaps done more than any other single book of our
+century toward placing the study of history upon a scientific basis, he
+began by showing that in primitive society the individual is nothing and
+the state nothing, while the family-group is everything, and that the
+progress of civilization politically has consisted on the one hand in
+the aggregation and building up of family-groups through intermediate
+tribal organizations into states, and on the other hand in the
+disentanglement of individuals from the family thraldom. In other words,
+we began by having no political communities larger than clans, and no
+bond of political union except blood relationship, and in this state of
+things the individual, as to his rights and obligations, was submerged
+in the clan. We at length come to have great nations like the English or
+the French, in which blood-relationship as a bond of political union is
+no longer indispensable or even much thought of, and in which the
+individual citizen is the possessor of legal rights and subject to legal
+obligations. No one in our time can forget how beautifully Sir Henry
+Maine, with his profound knowledge of early Aryan law and custom, from
+Ireland to Hindustan, delineated the slow growth of individual ownership
+of property and individual responsibility for delict and crime out of an
+earlier stage in which ownership and responsibility belonged only to
+family-groups or clans.
+
+[Sidenote: The patriarchal family not primitive.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Mother-right."]
+
+[Sidenote: Primitive marriage.]
+
+[Sidenote: The system of reckoning kinship through females only.]
+
+In all these brilliant studies Sir Henry Maine started with the
+patriarchal family as we find it at the dawn of history among all
+peoples of Aryan and Semitic speech,--the patriarchal family of the
+ancient Roman and the ancient Jew, the family in which kinship is
+reckoned through males, and in which all authority centres in the eldest
+male, and descends to his eldest son. Maine treated this patriarchal
+family as primitive; but his great book had hardly appeared when other
+scholars, more familiar than he with races in savagery or in the lower
+status of barbarism, showed that his view was too restricted. We do not
+get back to primitive society by studying Greeks, Romans, and Jews,
+peoples who had nearly emerged from the later period of barbarism when
+we first know them.[58] Their patriarchal family was perfected in shape
+during the later period of barbarism, and it was preceded by a much
+ruder and less definite form of family-group in which kinship was
+reckoned only through the mother, and the headship never descended from
+father to son. As so often happens, this discovery was made almost
+simultaneously by two investigators, each working in ignorance of what
+the other was doing. In 1861, the same year in which "Ancient Law" was
+published, Professor Bachofen, of Basel, published his famous book, "Das
+Mutterrecht," of which his co-discoverer and rival, after taking
+exception to some of his statements, thus cordially writes: "It remains,
+however, after all qualifications and deductions, that Bachofen, before
+any one else, discovered the fact that a system of kinship through
+mothers only, had anciently everywhere prevailed before the tie of blood
+between father and child had found a place in systems of relationships.
+And the honour of that discovery, the importance of which, as affording
+a new starting-point for all history, cannot be overestimated, must
+without stint or qualification be assigned to him."[59] Such are the
+generous words of the late John Ferguson McLennan, who had no knowledge
+of Bachofen's work when his own treatise on "Primitive Marriage" was
+published in 1865. Since he was so modest in urging his own claims, it
+is due to the Scotch lawyer's memory to say that, while he was inferior
+in point of erudition to the Swiss professor, his book is characterized
+by greater sagacity, goes more directly to the mark, and is less
+encumbered by visionary speculations of doubtful value.[60] Mr. McLennan
+proved, from evidence collected chiefly from Australians and South Sea
+Islanders, and sundry non-Aryan tribes of Hindustan and Thibet, that
+systems of kinship in which the father is ignored exist to-day, and he
+furthermore discovered unmistakable and very significant traces of the
+former existence of such a state of things among the Mongols, the Greeks
+and Phoenicians, and the ancient Hebrews. By those who were inclined to
+regard Sir Henry Maine's views as final, it was argued that Mr.
+McLennan's facts were of a sporadic and exceptional character. But when
+the evidence from this vast archaic world of America began to be
+gathered in and interpreted by Mr. Morgan, this argument fell to the
+ground, and as to the point chiefly in contention, Mr. McLennan was
+proved to be right. Throughout aboriginal America, with one or two
+exceptions, kinship was reckoned through females only, and in the
+exceptional instances the vestiges of that system were so prominent as
+to make it clear that the change had been but recently effected. During
+the past fifteen years, evidence has accumulated from various parts of
+the world, until it is beginning to appear as if it were the patriarchal
+system that is exceptional, having been reached only by the highest
+races.[61] Sir Henry Maine's work has lost none of its value, only,
+like all human work, it is not final; it needs to be supplemented by the
+further study of savagery as best exemplified in Australia and some
+parts of Polynesia, and of barbarism as best exemplified in America. The
+subject is, moreover, one of great and complicated difficulty, and leads
+incidentally to many questions for solving which the data at our command
+are still inadequate. It is enough for us now to observe in general that
+while there are plenty of instances of change from the system of
+reckoning kinship only through females, to the system of reckoning
+through males, there do not appear to have been any instances of change
+in the reverse direction; and that in ancient America the earlier system
+was prevalent.
+
+         [Footnote 58: Until lately our acquaintance with human history
+         was derived almost exclusively from literary memorials, among
+         which the Bible, the Homeric poems, and the Vedas, carried us
+         back about as far as literature could take us. It was natural,
+         therefore, to suppose that the society of the times of Abraham
+         or Agamemnon was "primitive," and the wisest scholars reasoned
+         upon such an assumption. With vision thus restricted to
+         civilized man and his ideas and works, people felt free to
+         speculate about uncivilized races (generally grouped together
+         indiscriminately as "savages") according to any _à priori_ whim
+         that might happen to captivate their fancy. But the discoveries
+         of the last half-century have opened such stupendous vistas of
+         the past that the age of Abraham seems but as yesterday. The
+         state of society described in the book of Genesis had five
+         entire ethnical periods, and the greater part of a sixth,
+         behind it; and its institutions were, comparatively speaking,
+         modern.]
+
+         [Footnote 59: McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History,
+         comprising a reprint of Primitive Marriage_, etc. London, 1876,
+         p. 421.]
+
+         [Footnote 60: There is much that is unsound in it, however, as
+         is often inevitably the case with books that strike boldly into
+         a new field of inquiry.]
+
+         [Footnote 61: A general view of the subject may be obtained
+         from the following works: Bachofen, _Das Mutterrecht_,
+         Stuttgart, 1871, and _Die Sage von Tanaquil_, Heidelberg, 1870;
+         McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History_, London, 1876, and _The
+         Patriarchal Theory_, London, 1884; Morgan's _Systems of
+         Consanguinity_ (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol.
+         xvii.), Washington, 1871, and _Ancient Society_, New York,
+         1877; Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_,
+         Cambridge, Eng., 1885; Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_, 5th
+         ed., London, 1889; Giraud-Teulon, _La Mère chez certains
+         peuples de l'antiquité_, Paris, 1867, and _Les Origines de la
+         Famille_, Geneva, 1874; Starcke (of Copenhagen), _The Primitive
+         Family_, London, 1889. Some criticisms upon McLennan and Morgan
+         may be found in Maine's later works, _Early History of
+         Institutions_, London, 1875, and _Early Law and Custom_,
+         London, 1883. By far the ablest critical survey of the whole
+         field is that in Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i.
+         pp. 621-797.]
+
+[Sidenote: Original reason for the system.]
+
+[Sidenote: The primeval human horde.]
+
+[Sidenote: Earliest family-group: the clan.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Exogamy."]
+
+If now we ask the reason for such a system of reckoning kinship and
+inheritance, so strange according to all our modern notions, the true
+answer doubtless is that which was given by prudent ([Greek:
+Pepnymenos]) Telemachus to the goddess Athene when she asked him to tell
+her truly if he was the son of Odysseus:--"My mother says I am his son,
+for my part, I don't know; one never knows of one's self who one's
+father is."[62] Already, no doubt, in Homer's time there was a gleam of
+satire about this answer, such as it would show on a modern page; but in
+more primitive times it was a very serious affair. From what we know of
+the ideas and practices of uncivilized tribes all over the world, it is
+evident that the sacredness of the family based upon indissoluble
+marriage is a thing of comparatively modern growth. If the sexual
+relations of the Australians, as observed to-day,[63] are an improvement
+upon an antecedent state of things, that antecedent state must have been
+sheer promiscuity. There is ample warrant for supposing, with Mr.
+McLennan, that at the beginning of the lower status of savagery, long
+since everywhere extinct, the family had not made itself distinctly
+visible, but men lived in a horde very much like gregarious brutes.[64]
+I have shown that the essential difference between this primeval human
+horde and a mere herd of brutes consisted in the fact that the gradual
+but very great prolongation of infancy had produced two effects: the
+lengthening of the care of children tended to differentiate the horde
+into family-groups, and the lengthening of the period of youthful mental
+plasticity made it more possible for a new generation to improve upon
+the ideas and customs of its predecessors.[65] In these two concomitant
+processes--the development of the family and the increase of mental
+plasticity, or ability to adopt new methods and strike out into new
+paths of thought--lies the whole explanation of the moral and
+intellectual superiority of men over dumb animals. But in each case the
+change was very gradual.[66] The true savage is only a little less
+unteachable than the beasts of the field. The savage family is at first
+barely discernible amid the primitive social chaos in which it had its
+origin. Along with polyandry and polygyny in various degrees and forms,
+instances of exclusive pairing, of at least a temporary character, are
+to be found among the lowest existing savages, and there are reasons for
+supposing that such may have been the case even in primeval times. But
+it was impossible for strict monogamy to flourish in the ruder stages of
+social development; and the kind of family-group that was first clearly
+and permanently differentiated from the primeval horde was not at all
+like what civilized people would recognize as a family. It was the
+_gens_ or _clan_, as we find it exemplified in all stages from the
+middle period of savagery to the middle period of barbarism. The _gens_
+or _clan_ was simply--to define it by a third synonym--the _kin_; it was
+originally a group of males and females who were traditionally aware of
+their common descent reckoned in the female line. At this stage of
+development there was quite generally though not universally prevalent
+the custom of "exogamy," by which a man was forbidden to marry a woman
+of his own clan. Among such Australian tribes as have been studied, this
+primitive restriction upon promiscuity seems to be about the only one.
+
+         [Footnote 62: [Greek:
+            All' age moi tode eipe kai atrekeôs katalexon,
+            ei dê ex autoio tosos pais eis Odysêos.
+            ainôs gar kephalên te kai ommata kala eoikas
+            keinô, epei thama toion emisgometh' allêloisin,
+            prin ge ton es Troiên anabêmenai, entha per alloi
+            Argeiôn hoi aristoi eban koilês epi nêusin
+            ek tou d' out' Odysêa egôn idon out' eme keinos.
+
+            Tên d' au Têlemachos pepnymenos antion êuda
+            toigar egô toi, xeine, mal' atrekeôs agoreusô.
+            mêtêr men t' eme phêsi tou emmenai, autar egôge
+            ouk oid'; ou gar pô tis heon gonon autos anegnô.]
+                                             _Odyssey_, i. 206.]
+
+         [Footnote 63: Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, p. 213; Lubbock,
+         _Origin of Civilization_, p. 107; Morgan, _Ancient Society_,
+         part iii., chap. iii. "After battle it frequently happens among
+         the native tribes of Australia that the wives of the conquered,
+         of their own free-will, go over to the victors; reminding us of
+         the lioness which, quietly watching the fight between two
+         lions, goes off with the conqueror." Spencer, _Principles of
+         Sociology_, vol. i. p. 632.]
+
+         [Footnote 64: The notion of the descent of the human race from
+         a single "pair," or of different races from different "pairs,"
+         is a curious instance of transferring modern institutions into
+         times primeval. Of course the idea is absurd. When the elder
+         Agassiz so emphatically declared that "pines have originated in
+         forests, heaths in heaths, grasses in prairies, bees in hives,
+         herrings in shoals, buffaloes in herds, men in nations" (_Essay
+         on Classification_, London, 1859, p. 58), he made, indeed, a
+         mistake of the same sort, so far as concerns the origin of Man,
+         for the nation is a still more modern institution than the
+         family; but in the other items of his statement he was right,
+         and as regards the human race he was thinking in the right
+         direction when he placed _multitude_ instead of _duality_ at
+         the beginning. If instead of that extremely complex and highly
+         organized multitude called "nation" (in the plural), he had
+         started with the extremely simple and almost unorganized
+         multitude called "horde" (in the singular), the statement for
+         Man would have been correct. Such views were hardly within the
+         reach of science thirty years ago.]
+
+         [Footnote 65: _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, part ii., chaps.
+         xvi., xxi., xxii.; _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp.
+         306-319; _Darwinism, and other Essays_, pp. 40-49; _The Destiny
+         of Man_, §§ iii.-ix.]
+
+         [Footnote 66: The slowness of the development has apparently
+         been such as befits the transcendent value of the result.
+         Though the question is confessedly beyond the reach of science,
+         may we not hold that civilized man, the creature of an infinite
+         past, is the child of eternity, maturing for an inheritance of
+         immortal life?]
+
+[Sidenote: Phratry and tribe.]
+
+Throughout all the earlier stages of culture, and even into the
+civilized period, we find society organized with the clan for its
+ultimate unit, although in course of time its character becomes greatly
+altered by the substitution of kinship in the paternal, for that in the
+maternal line. By long-continued growth and repeated segmentation the
+primitive clan was developed into a more complex structure, in which a
+group of clans constituted a _phratry_ or brotherhood, and a group of
+phratries constituted a _tribe_. This threefold grouping is found so
+commonly in all parts of the world as to afford good ground for the
+belief that it has been universal. It was long ago familiar to
+historians in the case of Greece and Rome, and of our Teutonic
+forefathers,[67] but it also existed generally in ancient America, and
+many obscure points connected with the history of the Greek and Roman
+groups have been elucidated through the study of Iroquois and Algonquin
+institutions. Along with the likenesses, however, there are numerous
+unlikenesses, due to the change of kinship, among the European groups,
+from the female line to the male.
+
+         [Footnote 67: The Teutonic _hundred_ and Roman _curia_ answered
+         to the Greek _phratry_.]
+
+[Sidenote: Effect of pastoral life upon property and upon the family.]
+
+This change, as it occurred among Aryan and Semitic peoples, marked one
+of the most momentous revolutions in the history of mankind. It probably
+occurred early in the upper period of barbarism, or late in the middle
+period, after the long-continued domestication of animals had resulted
+in the acquisition of private property (_pecus, peculium, pecunia_) in
+large amounts by individuals. In primitive society there was very little
+personal property except in weapons, clothing (such as it was), and
+trinkets. Real estate was unknown. Land was simply _occupied_ by the
+tribe. There was general communism and social equality. In the Old
+World the earliest instance of extensive "adverse possession" on the
+part of individuals, as against other individuals in the clan-community,
+was the possession of flocks and herds. Distinctions in wealth and rank
+were thus inaugurated; slavery began to be profitable and personal
+retainers and adherents useful in new ways. As in earlier stages the
+community in marital relations had been part of the general community in
+possessions, so now the exclusive possession of a wife or wives was part
+of the system of private property that was coming into vogue. The man of
+many cattle, the man who could attach subordinates to him through
+motives of self-interest as well as personal deference, the man who
+could defend his property against robbers, could also have his separate
+household and maintain its sanctity. In this way, it is believed,
+indissoluble marriage, in its two forms of monogamy and polygamy,
+originated. That it had already existed sporadically is not denied, but
+it now acquired such stability and permanence that the older and looser
+forms of alliance, hitherto prevalent, fell into disfavour. A natural
+result of the growth of private wealth and the permanence of the marital
+relation was the change in reckoning kinship from the maternal to the
+paternal line. This change was probably favoured by the prevalence of
+polygamy among those who were coming to be distinguished as "upper
+classes," since a large family of children by different mothers could be
+held together only by reckoning the kinship through the father. Thus, we
+may suppose, originated the patriarchal family. Even in its rudest form
+it was an immense improvement upon what had gone before, and to the
+stronger and higher social organization thus acquired we must largely
+ascribe the rise of the Aryan and Semitic peoples to the foremost rank
+of civilization.[68]
+
+         [Footnote 68: Fenton's _Early Hebrew Life_, London, 1880, is an
+         interesting study of the upper period of barbarism; see also
+         Spencer, _Princip. of Sociol._, i. 724-737.]
+
+It is not intended to imply that there is no other way in which the
+change to the male line may have been brought about among other peoples.
+The explanation just given applies very well to the Aryan and Semitic
+peoples, but it is inapplicable to the state of things which seems to
+have existed in Mexico at the time of the Discovery.[69] The subject is
+a difficult one, and sometimes confronts us with questions much easier
+to ask than to answer. The change has been observed among tribes in a
+lower stage than that just described.[70] On the other hand, as old
+customs die hard, no doubt inheritance has in many places continued in
+the maternal line long after paternity is fully known. Symmetrical
+regularity in the development of human institutions has by no means been
+the rule, and there is often much difficulty in explaining particular
+cases, even when the direction of the general drift can be discerned.
+
+         [Footnote 69: See below, p. 122.]
+
+         [Footnote 70: As among the Hervey Islanders; Gill, _Myths and
+         Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 36. Sir John Lubbock would
+         account for the curious and widely spread custom of the
+         _Couvade_ as a feature of this change. _Origin of
+         Civilization_, pp. 14-17, 159; cf. Tylor, _Early Hist. of
+         Mankind_, pp. 288, 297.]
+
+[Sidenote: The exogamous clan in ancient America.]
+
+In aboriginal America, as already observed, kinship through females only
+was the rule, and exogamy was strictly enforced,--the wife must be taken
+from a different clan. Indissoluble marriage, whether monogamous or
+polygamous, seems to have been unknown. The marriage relation was
+terminable at the will of either party.[71] The abiding unit upon which
+the social structure was founded was not the family but the exogamous
+clan.
+
+         [Footnote 71: "There is no embarrassment growing out of
+         problems respecting the woman's future support, the division of
+         property, or the adjustment of claims for the possession of the
+         children. The independent self-support of every adult healthy
+         Indian, male or female, and the gentile relationship, which is
+         more wide-reaching and authoritative than that of marriage,
+         have already disposed of these questions, which are usually so
+         perplexing for the white man. So far as personal maintenance is
+         concerned, a woman is, as a rule, just as well off without a
+         husband as with one. What is hers, in the shape of property,
+         remains her own whether she is married or not. In fact,
+         marriage among these Indians seems to be but the natural mating
+         of the sexes, to cease at the option of either of the
+         interested parties." Clay MacCauley, "The Seminole Indians of
+         Florida", in _Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_,
+         Washington, 1887, p. 497. For a graphic account of the state of
+         things among the Cheyennes and Arrapahos, see Dodge, _Our Wild
+         Indians_, pp. 204-220.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Intimate connection of aboriginal architecture with social
+life.]
+
+I have been at some pains to elucidate this point because the house-life
+of the American aborigines found visible, and in some instances very
+durable, expression in a remarkable style of house-architecture. The
+manner in which the Indians built their houses grew directly out of the
+requirements of their life. It was an unmistakably characteristic
+architecture, and while it exhibits manifold unlikenesses in detail,
+due to differences in intelligence as well as to the presence or absence
+of sundry materials, there is one underlying principle always manifest.
+That underlying principle is adaptation to a certain mode of communal
+living such as all American aborigines that have been carefully studied
+are known to have practised. Through many gradations, from the sty of
+the California savage up to the noble sculptured ruins of Uxmal and
+Chichen-Itza, the principle is always present. Taken in connection with
+evidence from other sources, it enables us to exhibit a gradation of
+stages of culture in aboriginal North America, with the savages of the
+Sacramento and Columbia valleys at the bottom, and the Mayas of Yucatan
+at the top; and while in going from one end to the other a very long
+interval was traversed, we feel that the progress of the aborigines in
+crossing that interval was made along similar lines.[72]
+
+         [Footnote 72: See Morgan's _Houses and House-Life of the
+         American Aborigines_, Washington, 1881, an epoch-making book of
+         rare and absorbing interest.]
+
+[Illustration: Seneca-Iroquois long house.]
+
+[Illustration: Ground-plan of long house.]
+
+[Sidenote: The long houses of the Iroquois.]
+
+The principle was first studied and explained by Mr. Morgan in the case
+of the famous "long houses" of the Iroquois. "The long house ... was
+from fifty to eighty and sometimes one hundred feet long. It consisted
+of a strong frame of upright poles set in the ground, which was
+strengthened with horizontal poles attached with withes, and surmounted
+with a triangular, and in some cases with a round roof. It was covered
+over, both sides and roof, with long strips of elm bark tied to the
+frame with strings or splints. An external frame of poles for the sides
+and of rafters for the roof were then adjusted to hold the bark shingles
+between them, the two frames being tied together. The interior of the
+house was comparted[73] at intervals of six or eight feet, leaving each
+chamber entirely open like a stall upon the passageway which passed
+through the centre of the house from end to end. At each end was a
+doorway covered with suspended skins. Between each four apartments, two
+on a side, was a fire-pit in the centre of the hall, used in common by
+their occupants. Thus a house with five fires would contain twenty
+apartments and accommodate twenty families, unless some apartments were
+reserved for storage. They were warm, roomy, and tidily-kept
+habitations. Raised bunks were constructed around the walls of each
+apartment for beds. From the roof-poles were suspended their strings of
+corn in the ear, braided by the husks, also strings of dried squashes
+and pumpkins. Spaces were contrived here and there to store away their
+accumulations of provisions. Each house, as a rule, was occupied by
+related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same
+gens, while their husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to
+other gentes; consequently the gens or clan of the mother largely
+predominated in the household. Whatever was taken in the hunt or raised
+by cultivation by any member of the household ... was for the common
+benefit. Provisions were made a common stock within the household."[74]
+
+         [Footnote 73: This verb of Mr. Morgan's at first struck me as
+         odd, but though rarely used, it is supported by good authority;
+         see _Century Dictionary_, s. v.]
+
+         [Footnote 74: The Iroquois ceased to build such houses before
+         the beginning of the present century. I quote Mr. Morgan's
+         description at length, because his book is out of print and
+         hard to obtain. It ought to be republished, and in octavo, like
+         his _Ancient Society_, of which it is a continuation.]
+
+"Over every such household a matron presided, whose duty it was to
+supervise its domestic economy. After the single daily meal had been
+cooked at the different fires within the house, it was her province to
+divide the food from the kettle to the several families according to
+their respective needs. What remained was placed in the custody of
+another person until she again required it."[75]
+
+         [Footnote 75: Lucien Carr, "On the Social and Political
+         Position of Woman among the Huron-Iroquois Tribes," _Reports of
+         Peabody Museum_, vol. iii. p. 215.]
+
+[Sidenote: Summary divorce.]
+
+Not only the food was common property, but many chattels, including the
+children, belonged to the gens or clan. When a young woman got married
+she brought her husband home with her. Though thenceforth an inmate of
+this household he remained an alien to her clan. "If he proved lazy and
+failed to do his share of the providing, woe be to him. No matter how
+many children, or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at
+any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge; and after such
+orders it would not be healthful for him to disobey; the house would be
+too hot for him; and unless saved by the intercession of some aunt or
+grandmother [of his wife] he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was
+often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other....
+The female portion ruled the house."[76]
+
+         [Footnote 76: This was not incompatible with the subjection of
+         women to extreme drudgery and ill-treatment. For an instructive
+         comparison with the case among the tribes of the Far West, see
+         Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_, chap. xvi.]
+
+[Sidenote: Hospitality.]
+
+Though there was but one freshly-cooked meal, taken about the middle of
+the day, any member of the household when hungry could be helped from
+the common stock. Hospitality was universal. If a person from one of the
+other communal households, or a stranger from another tribe (in time of
+peace), were to visit the house, the women would immediately offer him
+food, and it was a breach of etiquette to decline to eat it. This custom
+was strictly observed all over the continent and in the West India
+Islands, and was often remarked upon by the early discoverers, in whose
+minds it was apt to implant idyllic notions that were afterward rudely
+disturbed. The prevalence of hospitality among uncivilized races has
+long been noted by travellers, and is probably in most cases, as it
+certainly was in ancient America, closely connected with communism in
+living.
+
+[Sidenote: Structure of the clan.]
+
+The clan, which practised this communism, had its definite organization,
+officers, rights, and duties. Its official head was the "sachem," whose
+functions were of a civil nature. The sachem was elected by the clan and
+must be a member of it, so that a son could not be chosen to succeed his
+father, but a sachem could be succeeded by his uterine brother or by his
+sister's son, and in this way customary lines of succession could and
+often did tend to become established. The clan also elected its
+"chiefs," whose functions were military; the number of chiefs was
+proportionate to that of the people composing the clan, usually one
+chief to every fifty or sixty persons. The clan could depose its sachem
+or any of its chiefs. Personal property, such as weapons, or trophies,
+or rights of user in the garden-plots, was inheritable in the female
+line, and thus stayed within the clan. The members were reciprocally
+bound to help, defend, and avenge one another. The clan had the right of
+adopting strangers to strengthen itself. It had the right of naming its
+members, and these names were always obviously significant, like Little
+Turtle, Yellow Wolf, etc.; of names like our Richard or William, with
+the meaning lost, or obvious only to scholars, no trace is to be found
+in aboriginal America. The clan itself, too, always had a name, which
+was usually that of some animal,--as Wolf, Eagle, or Salmon, and a rude
+drawing or pictograph of the creature served as a "totem" or primitive
+heraldic device. A mythological meaning was attached to this emblem. The
+clan had its own common religious rites and common burial place. There
+was a clan-council, of which women might be members; there were
+instances, indeed, of its being composed entirely of women, whose
+position was one of much more dignity and influence than has commonly
+been supposed. Instances of squaw sachems were not so very rare.[77]
+
+         [Footnote 77: Among the Wyandots there is in each clan a
+         council composed of four squaws, and this council elects the
+         male sachem who is its head. Therefore the tribal council,
+         which is the aggregate of the clan-councils, consists one fifth
+         of men and four fifths of women. See Powell, "Wyandot
+         Government: a Short Study of Tribal Society," in _First Annual
+         Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1881, pp.
+         59-69; and also Mr. Carr's interesting essay above cited.]
+
+[Sidenote: Origin and structure of the phratry.]
+
+The number of clans in a tribe naturally bore some proportion to the
+populousness of the tribe, varying from three, in the case of the
+Delawares, to twenty or more, as in the case of the Ojibwas and Creeks.
+There were usually eight or ten, and these were usually grouped into two
+or three phratries. The phratry seems to have originated in the
+segmentation of the overgrown clan, for in some cases exogamy was
+originally practised as between the phratries and afterward the custom
+died out while it was retained as between their constituent clans.[78]
+The system of naming often indicates this origin of the phratry, though
+seldom quite so forcibly as in the case of the Mohegan tribe, which was
+thus composed:[79]--
+
+I. WOLF PHRATRY.
+
+_Clans:_ 1. Wolf, 2. Bear, 3. Dog, 4. Opossum.
+
+II. TURTLE PHRATRY.
+
+_Clans:_ 5. Little Turtle, 6. Mud Turtle, 7. Great Turtle, 8. Yellow
+Eel.
+
+III. TURKEY PHRATRY.
+
+_Clans:_ 9. Turkey, 10. Crane, 11. Chicken.
+
+Here the senior clan in the phratry tends to keep the original
+clan-name, while the junior clans have been guided by a sense of kinship
+in choosing their new names. This origin of the phratry is further
+indicated by the fact that the phratry does not always occur; sometimes
+the clans are organized directly into the tribe. The phratry was not so
+much a governmental as a religious and social organization. Its most
+important function seems to have been supplementing or reinforcing the
+action of the single clan in exacting compensation for murder; and this
+point is full of interest because it helps us to understand how among
+our Teutonic forefathers the "hundred" (the equivalent of the phratry)
+became charged with the duty of prosecuting criminals. The Greek phratry
+had a precisely analogous function.[80]
+
+         [Footnote 78: H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific
+         States_, vol. i. p. 109.]
+
+         [Footnote 79: Morgan, _Houses and House-Life_, p. 16.]
+
+         [Footnote 80: See Freeman, _Comparative Politics_, p. 117;
+         Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 98-104; Grote, _History of
+         Greece_, vol. iii. pp. 74, 88. It is interesting to compare
+         Grote's description with Morgan's (_Anc. Soc._, pp. 71, 94) and
+         note both the closeness of the general parallelism and the
+         character of the specific variations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Structure of the tribe.]
+
+The Indian tribe was a group of people distinguished by the exclusive
+possession of a dialect in common. It possessed a tribal name and
+occupied a more or less clearly defined territory; there were also
+tribal religious rites. Its supreme government was vested in the council
+of its clan-chiefs and sachems; and as these were thus officers of the
+tribe as well as of the clan, the tribe exercised the right of investing
+them with office, amid appropriate solemnities, after their election by
+their respective clans. The tribal-council had also the right to depose
+chiefs and sachems. In some instances, not always, there was a head
+chief or military commander for the tribes, elected by the tribal
+council. Such, was the origin of the office which, in most societies of
+the Old World, gradually multiplied its functions and accumulated power
+until it developed into true kingship. Nowhere in ancient North America
+did it quite reach such a stage.
+
+[Sidenote: Cross-relationships between clans and tribes: the Iroquois
+Confederacy.]
+
+Among the greater part of the aborigines no higher form of social
+structure was attained than the tribe. There were, however, several
+instances of permanent confederation, of which the two most interesting
+and most highly developed were the League of the Iroquois, mentioned
+above, and the Mexican Confederacy, presently to be considered. The
+principles upon which the Iroquois league was founded have been
+thoroughly and minutely explained by Mr. Morgan.[81] It originated in a
+union of five tribes composed of clans in common, and speaking five
+dialects of a common language. These tribes had themselves arisen
+through the segmentation of a single overgrown tribe, so that portions
+of the original clans survived in them all. The Wolf, Bear, and Turtle
+clan were common to all the five tribes; three other clans were common
+to three of the five. "All the members of the same gens [clan], whether
+Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, or Senecas, were brothers and
+sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common
+[female] ancestor, and they recognized each other as such with the
+fullest cordiality. When they met, the first inquiry was the name of
+each other's gens, and next the immediate pedigree of each other's
+sachems; after which they were able to find, under their peculiar system
+of consanguinity, the relationship in which they stood to each other....
+This cross-relationship between persons of the same gens in the
+different tribes is still preserved and recognized among them in all its
+original force. It explains the tenacity with which the fragments of the
+old confederacy still cling together."[82] Acknowledged consanguinity
+is to the barbarian a sound reason, and the only one conceivable, for
+permanent political union; and the very existence of such a confederacy
+as that of the Five Nations was rendered possible only through the
+permanence of the clans or communal households which were its ultimate
+units. We have here a clue to the policy of these Indians toward the
+kindred tribes who refused to join their league. These tribes, too, so
+far as is known, would seem to have contained the same clans. After a
+separation of at least four hundred years the Wyandots have still five
+of their eight clans in common with the Iroquois. When the Eries and
+other tribes would not join the league of their kindred, the refusal
+smacked of treason to the kin, and we can quite understand the deadly
+fury with which the latter turned upon them and butchered every man,
+woman, and child except such as they saw fit to adopt into their own
+clans.
+
+         [Footnote 81: In his _League of the Iroquois_, Rochester, 1851,
+         a book now out of print and excessively rare. A brief summary
+         is given in his _Ancient Society_, chap. v., and in his _Houses
+         and House-Life_, pp. 23-41. Mr. Morgan was adopted into the
+         Seneca tribe, and his life work was begun by a profound and
+         exhaustive study of this interesting people.]
+
+         [Footnote 82: _Houses and House-Life_, p. 33. At the period of
+         its greatest power, about 1675, the people of the confederacy
+         were about 25,000 in number. In 1875, according to official
+         statistics (see table appended to Dodge's _Plains of the Great
+         West_, pp. 441-448), there were in the state of New York 198
+         Oneidas, 203 Onondagas, 165 Cayugas, 3,043 Senecas, and 448
+         Tuscaroras,--in all 4,057. Besides these there were 1,279
+         Oneidas on a reservation in Wisconsin, and 207 Senecas in the
+         Indian Territory. The Mohawks are not mentioned in the list.
+         During the Revolutionary War, and just afterward, the Mohawks
+         migrated into Upper Canada (Ontario), for an account of which
+         the reader may consult the second volume of Stone's _Life of
+         Brant_. Portions of the other tribes also went to Canada. In
+         New York the Oneidas and Tuscaroras were converted to
+         Christianity by Samuel Kirkland and withheld from alliance with
+         the British during the Revolution; the others still retain
+         their ancient religion. They are for the most part farmers and
+         are now increasing in numbers. Their treatment by the state of
+         New York has been honourably distinguished for justice and
+         humanity.]
+
+[Sidenote: Structure of the confederacy.]
+
+Each of the Five Tribes retained its local self-government. The supreme
+government of the confederacy was vested in a General Council of fifty
+sachems, "equal in rank and authority." The fifty sachemships were
+created in perpetuity in certain clans of the several tribes; whenever a
+vacancy occurred, it was filled by the clan electing one of its own
+members; a sachem once thus elected could be deposed by the clan-council
+for good cause; "but the right to invest these sachems with office was
+reserved to the General Council." These fifty sachems of the confederacy
+were likewise sachems in their respective tribes, "and with the chiefs
+of these tribes formed the council of each, which was supreme over all
+matters pertaining to the tribe exclusively." The General Council could
+not convene itself, but could be convened by any one of the five tribal
+councils. The regular meeting was once a year in the autumn, in the
+valley of Onondaga, but in stirring times extra sessions were frequent.
+The proceedings were opened by an address from one of the sachems, "in
+the course of which he thanked the Great Spirit [i. e. Ioskeha, the
+sky-god] for sparing their lives and permitting them to meet together;"
+after this they were ready for business. It was proper for any orator
+from among the people to address the Council with arguments, and the
+debates were sometimes very long and elaborate. When it came to voting,
+the fifty sachems voted by tribes, each tribe counting as a unit, and
+unanimity was as imperative as in an English jury, so that one tribe
+could block the proceedings. The confederacy had no head-sachem, or
+civil chief-magistrate; but a military commander was indispensable, and,
+curiously enough, without being taught by the experience of a Tarquin,
+the Iroquois made this a dual office, like the Roman consulship. There
+were two permanent chieftainships, one in the Wolf, the other in the
+Turtle clan, and both in the Seneca tribe, because the western border
+was the most exposed to attack.[83] The chiefs were elected by the clan,
+and inducted into office by the General Council; their tenure was during
+life or good behaviour. This office never encroached upon the others in
+its powers, but an able warrior in this position could wield great
+influence.
+
+         [Footnote 83: Somewhat on the same principle that in mediæval
+         Europe led an earl or count, commanding an exposed border
+         district or _march_ to rise in power and importance and become
+         a "margrave" [_mark_ + _graf_ = march-count] or "marquis."
+         Compare the increase of sovereignty accorded to the earls of
+         Chester and bishops of Durham as rulers of the two principal
+         march counties of England.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "Long House."]
+
+Such was the famous confederacy of the Iroquois. They called it the Long
+House, and by this name as commonly as any other it is known in history.
+The name by which they called themselves was Hodenosaunee, or "People of
+the Long House." The name was picturesquely descriptive of the long and
+narrow strip of villages with its western outlook toward the Niagara,
+and its eastern toward the Hudson, three hundred miles distant. But it
+was appropriate also for another and a deeper reason than this. We have
+seen that in its social and political structure, from top to bottom and
+from end to end, the confederacy was based upon and held together by the
+gentes, clans, communal households, or "long houses," which were its
+component units. They may be compared to the hypothetical indestructible
+atoms of modern physics, whereof all material objects are composed. The
+whole institutional fabric was the outgrowth of the group of ideas and
+habits that belong to a state of society ignorant of and incapable of
+imagining any other form of organization than the clan held together by
+the tie of a common maternal ancestry. The house architecture was as
+much a constituent part of the fabric as the council of sachems. There
+is a transparency about the system that is very different from the
+obscurity we continually find in Europe and Asia, where different strata
+of ideas and institutions have been superimposed one upon another and
+crumpled and distorted with as little apparent significance or purpose
+as the porches and gables of a so-called "Queen Anne" house.[84]
+Conquest in the Old World has resulted in the commingling and manifold
+fusion of peoples in very different stages of development. In the New
+World there has been very little of that sort of thing. Conquest in
+ancient America was pretty much all of the Iroquois type, entailing in
+its milder form the imposition of tribute, in its more desperate form
+the extermination of a tribe with the adoption of its remnants into the
+similarly-constituted tribe of the conquerors. There was therefore but
+little modification of the social structure while the people, gradually
+acquiring new arts, were passing through savagery and into a more or
+less advanced stage of barbarism. The symmetry of the structure and the
+relation of one institution to another is thus distinctly apparent.
+
+         [Footnote 84: For instance, the whole discussion in Gomme's
+         _Village Community_, London, 1890, an excellent book, abounds
+         with instances of this crumpling.]
+
+The communal household and the political structure built upon it, as
+above described in the case of the Iroquois, seem to have existed all
+over ancient North America, with agreement in fundamental
+characteristics and variation in details and degree of development.
+There are many corners as yet imperfectly explored, but hitherto, in so
+far as research has been rewarded with information, it all points in the
+same general direction. Among the tribes above enumerated as either in
+savagery or in the lower status of barbarism, so far as they have been
+studied, there seems to be a general agreement, as to the looseness of
+the marriage tie the clan with descent in the female line, the phratry,
+the tribe, the officers and councils, the social equality, the community
+in goods (with exceptions already noted), and the wigwam or house
+adapted to communal living.
+
+[Illustration: View, Cross-section, and Ground-plan of Mandan round
+house.]
+
+[Sidenote: Circular houses of the Mandans.]
+
+The extreme of variation consistent with adherence to the common
+principle was to be found in the shape and material of the houses. Those
+of the savage tribes were but sorry huts. The long house was used by the
+Powhatans and other Algonquin tribes. The other most highly developed
+type may be illustrated by the circular frame-houses of the
+Mandans.[85] These houses were from forty to sixty feet in diameter. A
+dozen or more posts, each about eight inches in diameter, were set in
+the ground, "at equal distances in the circumference of a circle, and
+rising about six feet above the level of the floor." The tops of the
+posts were connected by horizontal stringers; and outside each post a
+slanting wooden brace sunk in the ground about four feet distant served
+as a firm support to the structure. The spaces between these braces were
+filled by tall wooden slabs, set with the same slant and resting against
+the stringers. Thus the framework of the outer wall was completed. To
+support the roof four posts were set in the ground about ten feet apart
+in the form of a square, near the centre of the building. They were from
+twelve to fifteen feet in height, and were connected at the top by four
+stringers forming a square. The rafters rested upon these stringers and
+upon the top of the circular wall below. The rafters were covered with
+willow matting, and upon this was spread a layer of prairie grass. Then
+both wall and roof, from the ground up to the summit, were covered with
+earth, solid and hard, to a thickness of at least two feet. The rafters
+projected above the square framework at the summit, so as to leave a
+circular opening in the centre about four feet in diameter. This hole
+let in a little light, and let out some of the smoke from the fire which
+blazed underneath in a fire-pit lined with stone slabs set on edge.
+The only other aperture for light was the doorway, which was a kind of
+vestibule or passage some ten feet in length. Curtains of buffalo robes
+did duty instead of doors. The family compartments were triangles with
+base at the outer wall, and apex opening upon the central hearth; and
+the partitions were hanging mats or skins, which were tastefully fringed
+and ornamented with quill-work and pictographs.[86] In the lower Mandan
+village, visited by Catlin, there were about fifty such houses, each
+able to accommodate from thirty to forty persons. The village, situated
+upon a bold bluff at a bend of the Missouri river, and surrounded by a
+palisade of stout timbers more than ten feet in height, was very strong
+for defensive purposes. Indeed, it was virtually impregnable to Indian
+methods of attack, for the earth-covered houses could not be set on fire
+by blazing arrows, and just within the palisade ran a trench in which
+the defenders could securely skulk, while through the narrow chinks
+between the timbers they could shoot arrows fast enough to keep their
+assailants at a distance. This purpose was further secured by rude
+bastions, and considering the structure as a whole one cannot help
+admiring the ingenuity which it exhibits. It shows a marked superiority
+over the conceptions of military defence attained by the Iroquois or any
+other Indians north of New Mexico. Besides the communal houses the
+village contained its "medicine lodge," or council house, and an open
+area for games and ceremonies. In the spaces between the houses were
+the scaffolds for drying maize, buffalo meat, etc., ascended by
+well-made portable ladders. Outside the village, at a short distance on
+the prairie, was a group of such scaffolds upon which the dead were left
+to moulder, somewhat after the fashion of the Parsees.[87]
+
+         [Footnote 85: Morgan, _Houses and House-life_, pp. 126-129;
+         Catlin's _North Amer. Indians_, i. 81 _ff._]
+
+         [Footnote 86: Catlin, i. 83.]
+
+         [Footnote 87: Catlin, i. 90.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The Indians of the pueblos,--in the middle status of
+barbarism.]
+
+We are now prepared to understand some essential points in the life of
+the groups of Indians occupying the region of the Cordilleras, both
+north and south of the Isthmus of Darien, all the way from Zuñi to
+Quito. The principal groups are the Moquis and Zuñis of Arizona and New
+Mexico, the Nahuas or Nahuatlac tribes of Mexico, the Mayas, Quichés,
+and kindred peoples of Central America; and beyond the isthmus, the
+Chibchas of New Granada, and sundry peoples comprised within the domain
+of the Incas. With regard to the ethnic relationships of these various
+groups, opinion is still in a state of confusion; but it is not
+necessary for our present purpose that we should pause to discuss the
+numerous questions thus arising. Our business is to get a clear notion
+in outline of the character of the culture to which these peoples had
+attained at the time of the Discovery. Here we observe, on the part of
+all, a very considerable divergence from the average Indian level which
+we have thus far been describing.
+
+This divergence increases as we go from Zuñi toward Cuzco, reaching its
+extreme, on the whole, among the Peruvians, though in some respects the
+nearest approach to civilization was made by the Mayas. All these
+peoples were at least one full ethnical period nearer to true
+civilization than the Iroquois,--and a vast amount of change and
+improvement is involved in the conception of an entire ethnical period.
+According to Mr. Morgan, one more such period would have brought the
+average level of these Cordilleran peoples to as high a plane as that of
+the Greeks described in the Odyssey. Let us now observe the principal
+points involved in the change, bearing in mind that it implies a
+considerable lapse of time. While the date 1325, at which the city of
+Mexico was founded, is the earliest date in the history of that country
+which can be regarded as securely established, it was preceded by a long
+series of generations of migration and warfare, the confused and
+fragmentary record of which historians have tried--hitherto with scant
+success--to unravel. To develop such a culture as that of the Aztecs out
+of an antecedent culture similar to that of the Iroquois must of course
+have taken a long time.
+
+[Sidenote: Horticulture with irrigation, and architecture with adobe.]
+
+It will be remembered that the most conspicuous distinctive marks of the
+grade of culture attained by the Cordilleran peoples were two,--the
+cultivation of maize in large quantities by irrigation, and the use of
+adobe-brick or stone in building. Probably there was at first, to some
+extent, a causal connection between the former and the latter. The
+region of the Moqui-Zuñi culture is a region in which arid plains become
+richly fertile when water from neighbouring cliffs or peaks is
+directed down upon them. It is mainly an affair of sluices, not of pump
+or well, which seem to have been alike beyond the ken of aboriginal
+Americans of whatever grade. The change of occupation involved in
+raising large crops of corn by the aid of sluices would facilitate an
+increase in density of population, and would encourage a preference for
+agricultural over predatory life. Such changes would be likely to favour
+the development of defensive military art. The Mohawk's surest defence
+lay in the terror which his prowess created hundreds of miles away. One
+can easily see how the forefathers of our Moquis and Zuñis may have come
+to prefer the security gained by living more closely together and
+building impregnable fortresses.
+
+[Sidenote: Possible origin of adobe architecture.]
+
+The earthen wall of the Mandan, supported on a framework of posts and
+slabs, seems to me curiously and strikingly suggestive of the incipient
+pottery made by surrounding a basket with a coating of clay.[88] When it
+was discovered how to make the earthen bowl or dish without the basket,
+a new era in progress was begun. So when it was discovered that an
+earthen wall could be fashioned to answer the requirements of
+house-builders without the need of a permanent wooden framework, another
+great step was taken. Again the consequences were great enough to make
+it mark the beginning of a new ethnical period. If we suppose the
+central portion of our continent, the Mississippi and Missouri valleys,
+to have been occupied at some time by tribes familiar with the Mandan
+style of building; and if we further suppose a gradual extension or
+migration of this population, or some part of it, westward into the
+mountain region; that would be a movement into a region in which timber
+was scarce, while adobe clay was abundant. Under such circumstances the
+useful qualities of that peculiar clay could not fail to be soon
+discovered. The simple exposure to sunshine would quickly convert a
+Mandan house built with it into an adobe house; the coating of earth
+would become a coating of brick. It would not then take long to
+ascertain that with such adobe-brick could be built walls at once light
+and strong, erect and tall, such as could not be built with common clay.
+In some such way as this I think the discovery must have been made by
+the ancestors of the Zuñis, and others who have built pueblos. After the
+pueblo style of architecture, with its erect walls and terraced stories,
+had become developed, it was an easy step, when the occasion suggested
+it, to substitute for the adobe-brick coarse rubble-stones embedded in
+adobe. The final stage was reached in Mexico and Yucatan, when soft
+coralline limestone was shaped into blocks with a flint chisel and laid
+in courses with adobe-mortar.
+
+         [Footnote 88: See above, p. 25.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Cushing at Zuñi.]
+
+The pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona are among the most interesting
+structures in the world. Several are still inhabited by the descendants
+of the people who were living in them at the time of the Spanish
+Discovery, and their primitive customs and habits of thought have been
+preserved to the present day with but little change. The long sojourn
+of Mr. Cushing, of the Bureau of Ethnology, in the Zuñi pueblo, has
+already thrown a flood of light upon many points in American
+archæology.[89] As in the case of American aborigines generally, the
+social life of these people is closely connected with their
+architecture, and the pueblos which are still inhabited seem to furnish
+us with the key to the interpretation of those that we find deserted or
+in ruins, whether in Arizona or in Guatemala.
+
+         [Footnote 89: See his articles in the _Century Magazine_, Dec.,
+         1882, Feb., 1883, May, 1883; and his papers on "Zuñi Fetiches,"
+         _Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_, ii. 9-45; "A Study of
+         Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth," id. iv.
+         473-521; see also Mrs. Stevenson's paper, "Religious Life of a
+         Zuñi Child," id. v. 539-555; Sylvester Baxter, "An Aboriginal
+         Pilgrimage," _Century Magazine_, Aug., 1882.]
+
+[Illustration: Pueblo Hungo Pavie. Chaco Cañon N. M.]
+
+[Sidenote: Typical structure of the pueblo.]
+
+In the architecture of the pueblos one typical form is reproduced with
+sundry variations in detail. The typical form is that of a solid block
+of buildings making three sides of an extensive rectangular enclosure
+or courtyard. On the inside, facing upon the courtyard, the structure
+is but one story in height; on the outside, looking out upon the
+surrounding country, it rises to three, or perhaps even five or six
+stories. From inside to outside the flat roofs rise in a series of
+terraces, so that the floor of the second row is continuous with the
+roof of the first, the floor of the third row is continuous with the
+roof of the second, and so on. The fourth side of the rectangle is
+formed by a solid block of one-story apartments, usually with one or two
+narrow gateways overlooked by higher structures within the enclosure.
+Except these gateways there is no entrance from without; the only
+windows are frowning loop-holes, and access to the several apartments is
+gained through skylights reached by portable ladders. Such a structure
+is what our own forefathers would have naturally called a "burgh," or
+fortress; it is in one sense a house, yet in another sense a town;[90]
+its divisions are not so much houses as compartments; it is a
+joint-tenement affair, like the Iroquois long houses, but in a higher
+stage of development.
+
+         [Footnote 90: Cf. [Greek: oikos], "house," with Latin _vicus_,
+         "street" or "village," Sanskrit _vesa_, "dwelling-place,"
+         English _wick_, "mansion" or "village."]
+
+[Illustration: Restoration of Pueblo Hungo Pavie.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pueblo society.]
+
+So far as they have been studied, the pueblo Indians are found to be
+organized in clans, with descent in the female line, as in the case of
+the ruder Indians above described. In the event of marriage the young
+husband goes to live with his wife, and she may turn him out of doors if
+he deserves it.[91] The ideas of property seem still limited to that
+of possessory right, with the ultimate title in the clan, except that
+portable articles subject to individual ownership have become more
+numerous. In government the council of sachems reappears with a
+principal sachem, or cacique, called by the Spaniards "gobernador."
+There is an organized priesthood, with distinct orders, and a ceremonial
+more elaborate than those of the ruder Indians. In every pueblo there is
+to be found at least one "estufa," or council-house, for governmental or
+religious transactions. Usually there are two or three or more such
+estufas. In mythology, in what we may call pictography or rudimentary
+hieroglyphics, as well as in ordinary handicrafts, there is a marked
+advance beyond the Indians of the lower status of barbarism, after
+making due allowances for such things as the people of the pueblos have
+learned from white men.[92]
+
+         [Footnote 91: "With the woman rests the security of the
+         marriage ties; and it must be said, in her high honour, that
+         she rarely abuses the privilege; that is, never sends her
+         husband 'to the home of his fathers,' unless he richly deserves
+         it." But should not Mr. Cushing have said "home of his
+         mothers," or perhaps, of "his sisters and his cousins and his
+         aunts?" For a moment afterward he tells us, "To her belong all
+         the children; and descent, including inheritance, is on her
+         side." _Century Magazine_, May, 1883, p. 35.]
+
+         [Footnote 92: For example, since the arrival of the Spaniards
+         some or perhaps all of the pueblos have introduced chimneys
+         into their apartments; but when they were first visited by
+         Coronado, he found the people wearing cotton garments, and
+         Franciscan friars in 1581 remarked upon the superior quality of
+         their shoes. In spinning and weaving, as well as in the
+         grinding of meal, a notable advance had been made.]
+
+[Illustration: Restoration of Pueblo Bonito.]
+
+[Illustration: Pueblo Peñasca Blanca.]
+
+[Sidenote: Wonderful ancient pueblos in the Chaco valley.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Moqui pueblos.]
+
+[Sidenote: The cliff pueblos.]
+
+From the pueblos still existing, whether inhabited or in ruins, we may
+eventually get some sort of clue to the populations of ancient towns
+visited by the Spanish discoverers.[93] The pueblo of Zuñi seems to have
+had at one time a population of 5,000, but it has dwindled to less than
+2,000. Of the ruined pueblos, built of stone with adobe mortar, in the
+valley of the Rio Chaco, the Pueblo Hungo Pavie contained 73 apartments
+in the first story, 53 in the second, and 29 in the third, with an
+average size of 18 feet by 13; and would have accommodated about 1,000
+Indians. In the same valley Pueblo Bonito, with four stories, contained
+not less than 640 apartments, with room enough for a population of
+3,000; within a third of a mile from this huge structure stood Pueblo
+Chettro Kettle, with 506 apartments. The most common variation from the
+rectangular shape was that in which a terraced semicircle was
+substituted for the three terraced sides, as in Pueblo Bonito, or the
+whole rectangular design was converted into an ellipse, as in Pueblo
+Peñasca Blanca. There are indications that these fortresses were not in
+all cases built at one time, but that, at least in some cases, they grew
+by gradual accretions.[94] The smallness of the distances between those
+in the Chaco valley suggests that their inhabitants must have been
+united in a confederation; and one can easily see that an actual
+juxtaposition or partial coalescence of such communities would have
+made a city of very imposing appearance. The pueblos are always found
+situated near a river, and their gardens, lying outside, are easily
+accessible to sluices from neighbouring cliffs or mesas. But in some
+cases, as the Wolpi pueblo of the Moquis, the whole stronghold is built
+upon the summit of the cliff; there is a coalescence of communal
+structures, each enclosing a courtyard, in which there is a spring for
+the water-supply; and the irrigated gardens are built in terrace-form
+just below on the bluff, and protected by solid walls. From this curious
+pueblo another transition takes us to the extraordinary cliff-houses found
+in the Chelly, Mancos, and McElmo cañons, and elsewhere,--veritable
+human eyries perched in crevices or clefts of the perpendicular rock,
+accessible only by dint of a toilsome and perilous climb; places of
+refuge, perhaps for fragments of tribes overwhelmed by more barbarous
+invaders, yet showing in their dwelling-rooms and estufas marks of
+careful building and tasteful adornment.[95]
+
+         [Footnote 93: At least a better one than Mr. Prescott had when
+         he naively reckoned five persons to a household, _Conquest of
+         Mexico_, ii. 97.]
+
+         [Footnote 94: Morgan, _Houses and House-Life_, chap. vii.]
+
+         [Footnote 95: For careful descriptions of the ruined pueblos
+         and cliff-houses, see Nadaillac's _Prehistoric America_, chap.
+         v., and Short's _North Americans of Antiquity_, chap. vii. The
+         latter sees in them the melancholy vestiges of a people
+         gradually "succumbing to their unpropitious surroundings--a
+         land which is fast becoming a howling wilderness, with its
+         scourging sands and roaming savage Bedouin--the Apaches."]
+
+[Sidenote: Pueblo of Zuñi.]
+
+The pueblo of Zuñi is a more extensive and complex structure than the
+ruined pueblos on the Chaco river. It is not so much an enormous
+communal house as a small town formed of a number of such houses crowded
+together, with access from one to another along their roof-terraces.
+Some of the structures are of adobe brick, others of stone embedded in
+adobe mortar and covered with plaster. There are two open plazas or
+squares in the town, and several streets, some of which are covered ways
+passing beneath the upper stories of houses. The effect, though not
+splendid, must be very picturesque, and would doubtless astonish and
+bewilder visitors unprepared for such a sight. When Coronado's men
+discovered Zuñi in 1540, although that style of building was no longer a
+novelty to them, they compared the place to Granada.
+
+[Sidenote: Pueblo of Tlascala.]
+
+Now it is worthy of note that Cortes made the same comparison in the
+case of Tlascala, one of the famous towns at which he stopped on his
+march from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico. In his letter to the emperor
+Charles V., he compared Tlascala to Granada, "affirming that it was
+larger, stronger, and more populous than the Moorish capital at the time
+of the conquest, and quite as well built."[96] Upon this Mr. Prescott
+observes, "we shall be slow to believe that its edifices could have
+rivalled those monuments of Oriental magnificence, whose light aerial
+forms still survive after the lapse of ages, the admiration of every
+traveller of sensibility and taste. The truth is that Cortes, like
+Columbus, saw objects through the warm medium of his own fond
+imagination, giving them a higher tone of colouring and larger
+dimensions than were strictly warranted by the fact." Or, as Mr.
+Bandelier puts it, when it comes to general statements about numbers
+and dimensions, "the descriptions of the conquerors cannot be taken as
+facts, only as the expression of feelings, honestly entertained but
+uncritical." From details given in various Spanish descriptions,
+including those of Cortes himself, it is evident that there could not
+have been much difference in size between Tlascala and its neighbour
+Cholula. The population of the latter town has often been given as from
+150,000 to 200,000; but, from elaborate archæological investigations
+made on the spot in 1881, Mr. Bandelier concludes that it cannot have
+greatly exceeded 30,000, and this number really agrees with the
+estimates of two very important Spanish authorities, Las Casas and
+Torquemada, when correctly understood.[97] We may therefore suppose that
+the population of Tlascala was about 30,000. Now the population of the
+city of Granada, at the time of its conquest by Ferdinand and Isabella,
+is said by the greatest of Spanish historians[98] to have been about
+200,000. It would thus appear that Cortes sometimes let his feelings run
+away with him; and, all things considered, small blame to him if he did!
+In studying the story of the Spanish conquest of America, liberal
+allowance must often be made for inaccuracies of statement that were
+usually pardonable and sometimes inevitable.
+
+         [Footnote 96: "La qual ciudad ... es muy mayor que Granada, y
+         muy mas fuerte, y de tan buenos edificios, y de mucha mas
+         gente, que Granada tenia al tiempo que se gaño." Cortes,
+         _Relacion segunda al Emperador_, ap. Lorenzana, p. 58, cited in
+         Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 401 (7th ed.,
+         London, 1855).]
+
+         [Footnote 97: See Bandelier's _Archæological Tour in Mexico_,
+         Boston, 1885, pp. 160-164. Torquemada's words, cited by
+         Bandelier, are "Quando entraron los Españoles, dicen que tenia
+         mas de quarenta mil vecinos esta ciudad." _Monarquía Indiana_,
+         lib. iii. cap. xix. p. 281. A prolific source of error is the
+         ambiguity in the word _vecinos_, which may mean either
+         "inhabitants" or "householders." Where Torquemada meant 40,000
+         inhabitants, uncritical writers fond of the marvellous have
+         understood him to mean 40,000 houses, and multiplying this
+         figure by 5, the average number of persons _in a modern
+         family_, have obtained the figure 200,000. But 40,000 houses
+         peopled after the old Mexican fashion, with at least 200
+         persons in a house (to put it as low as possible), would make a
+         city of 8,000,000 inhabitants! Las Casas, in his _Destruycion
+         de las Indias_, vii., puts the population of Cholula at about
+         30,000. I observe that Llorente (in his _Oeuvres de Las Casas_,
+         tom. i. p. 38) translates the statement correctly. I shall
+         recur to this point below, vol. ii. p. 264.]
+
+         [Footnote 98: Mariana, _Historia de España_, Valencia, 1795,
+         tom. viii. p. 317.]
+
+But when Cortes described Tlascala as "quite as well built" as Granada,
+it is not at all likely that he was thinking about that exquisite
+Moorish architecture which in the mind of Mr. Prescott or any cultivated
+modern writer is the first thing to be suggested by the name. The
+Spaniards of those days did not admire the artistic work of "infidels;"
+they covered up beautiful arabesques with a wash of dirty plaster, and
+otherwise behaved very much like the Puritans who smashed the
+"idolatrous" statues in English cathedrals. When Cortes looked at
+Tlascala, and Coronado looked at Zuñi, and both soldiers were reminded
+of Granada, they were probably looking at those places with a
+professional eye as fortresses hard to capture; and from this point of
+view there was doubtless some justice in the comparison.
+
+[Sidenote: The ancient city of Mexico was a great composite pueblo.]
+
+In the description of Tlascala by the Spaniards who first saw it, with
+its dark and narrow streets, its houses of adobe, or "the better sort"
+of stone laid in adobe mortar, and its flat and terraced roofs, one is
+irresistibly reminded of such a pueblo as Zuñi. Tlascala was a town of
+a type probably common in Mexico. In some respects, as will hereafter
+appear, the city of Mexico showed striking variations from the common
+type. Yet there too were to be seen the huge houses, with terraced
+roofs, built around a square courtyard; in one of them 450 Spaniards,
+with more than 1,000 Tlascalan allies, were accommodated; in another,
+called "Montezuma's palace," one of the conquerors, who came several
+times intending to see the whole of it, got so tired with wandering
+through the interminable succession of rooms that at length he gave it
+up and never saw them all.[99] This might have happened in such a
+building as Pueblo Bonito; and a suspicion is raised that Montezuma's
+city was really a vast composite pueblo, and that its so-called palaces
+were communal buildings in principle like the pueblos of the Chaco
+valley.
+
+         [Footnote 99: "Et io entrai piu di quattro volte in una casa
+         del gran Signor non por altro effetto che per vederla, et ogni
+         volta vi camminauo tanto che mi stancauo, et mai la fini di
+         vedere tutta." _Relatione fatta per un gentil' huomo del Signor
+         Fernando Cortese_, apud Ramusio, _Navigationi et Viaggi_,
+         Venice, 1556, tom. iii. fol. 309.]
+
+[Sidenote: Natural mistake of the Spanish discoverers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Contrast between feudalism and gentilism.]
+
+[Sidenote: Change from gentile society to political society.]
+
+Of course the Spanish discoverers could not be expected to understand
+the meaning of what they saw. It dazed and bewildered them. They knew
+little or nothing of any other kind of society than feudal monarchy, and
+if they made such mistakes as to call the head war-chief a "king" (i. e.
+feudal king) or "emperor," and the clan-chiefs "lords" or "noblemen," if
+they supposed that these huge fortresses were like feudal castles and
+palaces in Europe, they were quite excusable. Such misconceptions were
+common enough before barbarous societies had been much studied; and many
+a dusky warrior, without a tithe of the pomp and splendour about him
+that surrounded Montezuma, has figured in the pages of history as a
+mighty potentate girt with many of the trappings of feudalism.[100]
+Initial misconceptions that were natural enough, indeed unavoidable,
+found expression in an absurdly inappropriate nomenclature; and then the
+use of wrong names and titles bore fruit in what one cannot properly
+call a theory but rather an incoherent medley of notions about barbaric
+society. Nothing could be further from _feudalism_, in which the
+relation of landlord and tenant is a fundamental element, than the
+society of the American aborigines, in which that relation was utterly
+unknown and inconceivable. This more primitive form of society is not
+improperly called _gentilism_, inasmuch as it is based upon the gens or
+clan, with communism in living, and with the conception of individual
+ownership of property undeveloped. It was gentilism that everywhere
+prevailed throughout the myriads of unrecorded centuries during which
+the foremost races of mankind struggled up through savagery and
+barbarism into civilization, while weaker and duller races lagged behind
+at various stages on the way. The change from "gentile" society to
+political society as we know it was in some respects the most important
+change that has occurred in human affairs since men became human. It
+might be roughly defined as the change from personal to territorial
+organization. It was accomplished when the stationary clan became
+converted into the township, and the stationary tribe into the small
+state;[101] when the conception of individual property in land was fully
+acquired; when the tie of physical kinship ceased to be indispensable as
+a bond for holding a society together; when the _clansman_ became a
+_citizen_. This momentous change was accomplished among the Greeks
+during a period beginning shortly before the first Olympiad (B. C.
+776), and ending with the reforms of Kleisthenes at Athens (B. C. 509);
+among the Romans it was accomplished by the series of legislative
+changes beginning with those ascribed to Servius Tullius (about B. C.
+550), and perfected by the time of the first Punic War (B. C. 264-241).
+In each case about three centuries was required to work the change.[102]
+If now the reader, familiar with European history, will reflect upon the
+period of more than a thousand years which intervened between the date
+last named and the time when feudalism became thoroughly established, if
+he will recall to mind the vast and powerful complication of causes
+which operated to transform civil society from the aspect which it wore
+in the days of Regulus and the second Ptolemy to that which it had
+assumed in the times of Henry the Fowler or Fulk of Anjou, he will begin
+to realize how much "feudalism" implies, and what a wealth of experience
+it involves, above and beyond the change from "gentile" to "civil"
+society. It does not appear that any people in ancient America ever
+approached very near to this earlier change. None had fairly begun to
+emerge from gentilism; none had advanced so far as the Greeks of the
+first Olympiad or the Romans under the rule of the Tarquins.
+
+         [Footnote 100: When Pocahontas visited London in 1616 she was
+         received at court as befitted a "king's daughter," and the old
+         Virginia historian, William Stith (born in 1689), says it was a
+         "constant tradition" in his day that James I. "became jealous,
+         and was highly offended at Mr. Rolfe for marrying a princess."
+         The notion was that "if Virginia descended to Pocahontas, as it
+         might do at Powhatan's death, at her own death the kingdom
+         would be vested in Mr. Rolfe's posterity." Esten Cooke's
+         _Virginia_, p. 100. Powhatan (i. e. Wahunsunakok, chief of the
+         Powhatan tribe) was often called "emperor" by the English
+         settlers. To their intense bewilderment he told one of them
+         that his office would descend to his [maternal] brothers, even
+         though he had sons living. It was thought that this could not
+         be true.]
+
+         [Footnote 101: The small states into which tribes were at first
+         transformed have in many cases survived to the present time as
+         portions of great states or nations. The shires or counties of
+         England, which have been reproduced in the United States,
+         originated in this way, as I have briefly explained in my
+         little book on _Civil Government in the United States_, p. 49.
+         When you look on the map of England, and see the town of
+         _Icklingham_ in the county of _Suffolk_, it means that this
+         place was once the "home" of the "Icklings" or "children of
+         Ickel," a clan which formed part of the tribe of Angles known
+         as "South folk." So the names of Gaulish tribes survived as
+         names of French provinces, e. g. _Auvergne_ from the _Arverni_,
+         _Poitou_ from the _Pictavi_, _Anjou_ from the _Andecavi_,
+         _Béarn_ from the _Bigerrones_, etc.]
+
+         [Footnote 102: "It was no easy task to accomplish such a
+         fundamental change, however simple and obvious it may now
+         seem.... Anterior to experience, a township, as the unit of a
+         political system, was abstruse enough to tax the Greeks and
+         Romans to the depths of their capacities before the conception
+         was formed and set in practical operation." Morgan, _Ancient
+         Society_, p. 218.]
+
+[Sidenote: Suspicions as to the erroneousness of the Spanish accounts.]
+
+[Sidenote: Detection and explanation of the errors, by Lewis Morgan.]
+
+The first eminent writer to express a serious doubt as to the
+correctness of the earlier views of Mexican civilization was that
+sagacious Scotchman, William Robertson.[103] The illustrious statesman
+and philologist, Albert Gallatin, founder of the American Ethnological
+Society, published in the first volume of its "Transactions" an essay
+which recognized the danger of trusting the Spanish narratives without
+very careful and critical scrutiny.[104] It is to be observed that Mr.
+Gallatin approached the subject with somewhat more knowledge of
+aboriginal life in America than had been possessed by previous writers.
+A similar scepticism was expressed by Lewis Cass, who also knew a great
+deal about Indians.[105] Next came Mr. Morgan,[106] the man of
+path-breaking ideas, whose minute and profound acquaintance with Indian
+life was joined with a power of penetrating the hidden implications of
+facts so keen and so sure as to amount to genius. Mr. Morgan saw the
+nature of the delusion under which the Spaniards laboured; he saw that
+what they mistook for feudal castles owned by great lords, and inhabited
+by dependent retainers, were really huge communal houses, owned and
+inhabited by clans, or rather by segments of overgrown clans. He saw
+this so vividly that it betrayed him now and then into a somewhat
+impatient and dogmatic manner of statement; but that was a slight fault,
+for what he saw was not the outcome of dreamy speculation but of
+scientific insight. His researches, which reduced "Montezuma's empire"
+to a confederacy of tribes dwelling in pueblos, governed by a council of
+chiefs, and collecting tribute from neighbouring pueblos, have been
+fully sustained by subsequent investigation.
+
+         [Footnote 103: Robertson's _History of America_, 9th ed. vol.
+         iii. pp. 274, 281.]
+
+         [Footnote 104: "Notes on the Semi-civilized Nations of Mexico,
+         Yucatan, and Central America," _American Ethnological Society's
+         Transactions_, vol. i., New York, 1852. There is a brief
+         account of Mr. Gallatin's pioneer work in American philology
+         and ethnology in Stevens's _Albert Gallatin_, pp. 386-396.]
+
+         [Footnote 105: Cass, "Aboriginal Structures," _North Amer.
+         Review_, Oct., 1840.]
+
+         [Footnote 106: Mr. R. A. Wilson's _New History of the Conquest
+         of Mexico_, Philadelphia, 1859, denounced the Spanish
+         conquerors as wholesale liars, but as his book was ignorant,
+         uncritical, and full of wild fancies, it produced little
+         effect. It was demolished, with neatness and despatch, in two
+         articles in the _Atlantic Monthly_, April and May, 1859, by the
+         eminent historian John Foster Kirk, whose _History of Charles
+         the Bold_ is in many respects a worthy companion to the works
+         of Prescott and Motley. Mr. Kirk had been Mr. Prescott's
+         secretary.]
+
+[Sidenote: Adolf Bandelier's researches.]
+
+The state of society which Cortes saw has, indeed, passed away, and its
+monuments and hieroglyphic records have been in great part destroyed.
+Nevertheless some monuments and some hieroglyphic records remain, and
+the people are still there. Tlascalans and Aztecs, descendants in the
+eleventh or twelfth generation from the men whose bitter feuds gave such
+a golden opportunity to Cortes, still dwell upon the soil of Mexico, and
+speak the language in which Montezuma made his last harangue to the
+furious people. There is, moreover, a great mass of literature in
+Spanish, besides more or less in Nahuatl, written during the century
+following the conquest, and the devoted missionaries and painstaking
+administrators, who wrote books about the country in which they were
+working, were not engaged in a wholesale conspiracy for deceiving
+mankind. From a really critical study of this literature, combined with
+archæological investigation, much may be expected; and a noble beginning
+has already been made. A more extensive acquaintance with Mexican
+literature would at times have materially modified Mr. Morgan's
+conclusions, though without altering their general drift. At this point
+the work has been taken up by Mr. Adolf Bandelier, of Highland,
+Illinois, to whose rare sagacity and untiring industry as a field
+archæologist is joined such a thorough knowledge of Mexican literature
+as few men before him have possessed. Armed with such resources, Mr.
+Bandelier is doing for the ancient history of America work as
+significant as that which Mommsen has done for Rome, or Baur for the
+beginnings of Christianity. When a sufficient mass of facts and
+incidents have once been put upon record, it is hard for ignorant
+misconception to bury the truth in a pit so deep but that the delving
+genius of critical scholarship will sooner or later drag it forth into
+the light of day.[107]
+
+         [Footnote 107: A summary of Mr. Bandelier's principal results,
+         with copious citation and discussion of original Spanish and
+         Nahuatl sources, is contained in his three papers, "On the art
+         of war and mode of warfare of the ancient Mexicans,"--"On the
+         distribution and tenure of land, and the customs with respect
+         to inheritance, among the ancient Mexicans,"--"On the social
+         organization and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans,"
+         _Peabody Museum Reports_, vol. ii., 1876-79, pp. 95-161,
+         385-448, 557-699.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Aztec confederacy.]
+
+At this point in our exposition a very concise summary of Mr.
+Bandelier's results will suffice to enable the reader to understand
+their import. What has been called the "empire of Montezuma" was in
+reality a confederacy of three tribes, the Aztecs, Tezcucans, and
+Tlacopans,[108] dwelling in three large composite pueblos situated very
+near together in one of the strongest defensive positions ever occupied
+by Indians. This Aztec confederacy extended its "sway" over a
+considerable portion of the Mexican peninsula, but that "sway" could not
+correctly be described as "empire," for it was in no sense a military
+occupation of the country. The confederacy did not have garrisons in
+subject pueblos or civil officials to administer their affairs for them.
+It simply sent some of its chiefs about from one pueblo to another to
+collect tribute. This tax consisted in great part of maize and other
+food, and each tributary pueblo reserved a certain portion of its tribal
+territory to be cultivated for the benefit of the domineering
+confederacy. If a pueblo proved delinquent or recalcitrant, Aztec
+warriors swooped down upon it in stealthy midnight assault, butchered
+its inhabitants and emptied its granaries, and when the paroxysm of rage
+had spent itself, went exulting homeward, carrying away women for
+concubines, men to be sacrificed, and such miscellaneous booty as could
+be conveyed without wagons or beasts to draw them.[109] If the sudden
+assault, with scaling ladders, happened to fail, the assailants were
+likely to be baffled, for there was no artillery, and so little food
+could be carried that a siege meant starvation for the besiegers.
+
+         [Footnote 108: In the Iroquois confederacy the Mohawks enjoyed
+         a certain precedence or seniority, the Onondagas had the
+         central council-fire, and the Senecas, who had the two head
+         war-chiefs, were much the most numerous. In the Mexican
+         confederacy the various points of superiority seem to have been
+         more concentrated in the Aztecs; but spoils and tribute were
+         divided into five portions, of which Mexico and Tezcuco each
+         took two, and Tlacopan one.]
+
+         [Footnote 109: The wretched prisoners were ordinarily compelled
+         to carry the booty.]
+
+The tributary pueblos were also liable to be summoned to furnish a
+contingent of warriors to the war-parties of the confederacy, under the
+same penalties for delinquency as in the case of refusal of tribute. In
+such cases it was quite common for the confederacy to issue a peremptory
+summons, followed by a declaration of war. When a pueblo was captured,
+the only way in which the vanquished people could stop the massacre was
+by holding out signals of submission; a parley then sometimes adjusted
+the affair, and the payment of a year's tribute in advance induced the
+conquerors to depart, but captives once taken could seldom if ever be
+ransomed. If the parties could not agree upon terms, the slaughter was
+renewed, and sometimes went on until the departing victors left nought
+behind them but ruined houses belching from loop-hole and doorway lurid
+clouds of smoke and flame upon narrow silent streets heaped up with
+mangled corpses.
+
+The sway of the Aztec confederacy over the Mexican peninsula was thus
+essentially similar to the sway of the Iroquois confederacy over a great
+part of the tribes between the Connecticut river and the Mississippi.
+It was simply the levying of tribute,--a system of plunder enforced by
+terror. The so-called empire was "only a partnership formed for the
+purpose of carrying on the business of warfare, and that intended, not
+for the extension of territorial ownership, but only for an increase of
+the means of subsistence."[110] There was none of that coalescence and
+incorporation of peoples which occurs after the change from gentilism to
+civil society has been effected. Among the Mexicans, as elsewhere
+throughout North America, the tribe remained intact as the highest
+completed political integer.
+
+         [Footnote 110: Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 563.]
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec clans.]
+
+The Aztec tribe was organized in clans and phratries, and the number of
+clans would indicate that the tribe was a very large one.[111] There
+were twenty clans, called in the Nahuatl language "calpullis." We may
+fairly suppose that the average size of a clan was larger than the
+average tribe of Algonquins or Iroquois; but owing to the compact "city"
+life, this increase of numbers did not result in segmentation and
+scattering, as among Indians in the lower status. Each Aztec clan seems
+to have occupied a number of adjacent communal houses, forming a kind of
+precinct, with its special house or houses for official purposes,
+corresponding to the _estufas_ in the New Mexican pueblos. The houses
+were the common property of the clan, and so was the land which its
+members cultivated; and such houses and land could not be sold or
+bartered away by the clan, or in anywise alienated. The idea of "real
+estate" had not been developed; the clan simply exercised a right of
+occupancy, and--as among some ruder Indians--its individual members
+exercised certain limited rights of user in particular garden-plots.
+
+         [Footnote 111: The notion of an immense population groaning
+         under the lash of taskmasters, and building huge palaces for
+         idle despots must be dismissed. The statements which refer to
+         such a vast population are apt to be accompanied by
+         incompatible statements. Mr. Morgan is right in throwing the
+         burden of proof upon those who maintain that a people without
+         domestic animals or field agriculture could have been so
+         numerous (_Anc. Soc._, p. 195). On the other hand, I believe
+         Mr. Morgan makes a grave mistake in the opposite direction, in
+         underestimating the numbers that could be supported upon Indian
+         corn even under a system of horticulture without the use of the
+         plough. Some pertinent remarks on the extraordinary
+         reproductive power of maize in Mexico may be found in Humboldt,
+         _Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne_, Paris, 1811, tom.
+         iii. pp. 51-60; the great naturalist is of course speaking of
+         the yield of maize in ploughed lands, but, after making due
+         allowances, the yield under the ancient system must have been
+         well-nigh unexampled in barbaric agriculture.]
+
+[Sidenote: Clan officers.]
+
+The clan was governed by a clan council, consisting of chiefs
+(_tecuhtli_) elected by the clan, and inducted into office after a cruel
+religious ordeal, in which the candidate was bruised, tortured, and half
+starved. An executive department was more clearly differentiated from
+the council than among the Indians of the lower status. The clan
+(_calpulli_) had an official head, or sachem, called the _calpullec_;
+and also a military commander called the _ahcacautin_, or "elder
+brother." The _ahcacautin_ was also a kind of peace officer, or
+constable, for the precinct occupied by the clan, and carried about with
+him a staff of office; a tuft of white feathers attached to this staff
+betokened that his errand was one of death. The clan elected its
+_calpullec_ and _ahcacautin_, and could depose them for cause.[112]
+
+         [Footnote 112: Compare this description with that of the
+         institutions of Indians in the lower status, above, p. 69.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rights and duties of the clan.]
+
+The members of the clan were reciprocally bound to aid, defend, and
+avenge one another; but wergild was no longer accepted, and the penalty
+for murder was death. The clan exercised the right of naming its
+members. Such names were invariably significant (as _Nezahualcoyotl_,
+"Hungry Coyote," _Axayacatl_, "Face-in-the-Water," etc.), and more or
+less "medicine," or superstitious association, was attached to the name.
+The clans also had their significant names and totems. Each clan had its
+peculiar religious rites, its priests or medicine-men who were members
+of the clan council, and its temple or medicine-house. Instead of
+burying their dead the Mexican tribes practised cremation; there was,
+therefore, no common cemetery, but the funeral ceremonies were conducted
+by the clan.
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec phratries.]
+
+The clans of the Aztecs, like those of many other Mexican tribes, were
+organized into four phratries; and this divided the city of Mexico, as
+the Spaniards at once remarked, into four quarters. The phratry had
+acquired more functions than it possessed in the lower status. Besides
+certain religious and social duties, and besides its connection with the
+punishment of criminals, the Mexican phratry was an organization for
+military purposes.[113] The four phratries were four divisions of the
+tribal host, each with its captain. In each of the quarters was an
+arsenal, or "dart-house," where weapons were stored, and from which they
+were handed out to war-parties about to start on an expedition.
+
+         [Footnote 113: In this respect it seems to have had some
+         resemblance to the Roman _centuria_ and Teutonic _hundred_. So
+         in prehistoric Greece we may perhaps infer from Nestor's advice
+         to Agamemnon that a similar organization existed:--
+
+            [Greek: krin' andras kata phyla, kata phrêtras, Agamemnon,
+            hôs phrêtrê phrêtrêphin arêgê, phyla de phylois.]
+                                             _Iliad_, ii. 362.
+
+         But the phratry seems never to have reached so high a
+         development among the Greeks as among the Romans and the early
+         English.]
+
+[Sidenote: The tribal council.]
+
+The supreme government of the Aztecs was vested in the tribal council
+composed of twenty members, one for each clan. The member, representing
+a clan, was not its _calpullec_, or "sachem;" he was one of the
+_tecuhtli_, or clan-chiefs, and was significantly called the "speaker"
+(_tlatoani_). The tribal council, thus composed of twenty speakers, was
+called the _tlatocan_, or "place of speech."[114] At least as often as
+once in ten days the council assembled at the _tecpan_, or official
+house of the tribe, but it could be convened whenever occasion required,
+and in cases of emergency was continually in session. Its powers and
+duties were similar to those of an ancient English shiremote, in so far
+as they were partly directive and partly judicial. A large part of its
+business was settling disputes between the clans. It superintended the
+ceremonies of investiture with which the chiefs and other officers of
+the clans were sworn into office. At intervals of eighty days there was
+an "extra session" of the _tlatocan_, attended also by the twenty "elder
+brothers," the four phratry-captains, the two executive chiefs of the
+tribe, and the leading priests, and at such times a reconsideration of
+an unpopular decision might be urged; but the authority of the
+_tlatocan_ was supreme, and from its final decision there could be no
+appeal.[115]
+
+         [Footnote 114: Compare _parliament_ from _parler_. These twenty
+         were the "grandees," "counsellors," and "captains" mentioned by
+         Bernal Diaz as always in Montezuma's company; "y siempre á la
+         contina estaban en su compañía veinte grandes señores y
+         consejeros y capitanes," etc. _Historia verdadera_, ii. 95. See
+         Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 646.]
+
+         [Footnote 115: Mr. Bandelier's note on this point gives an
+         especially apt illustration of the confusion of ideas and
+         inconsistencies of statement amid which the early Spanish
+         writers struggled to understand and describe this strange
+         society: _op. cit._ p. 651.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "snake-woman."]
+
+The executive chiefs of the tribe were two in number, as was commonly
+the case in ancient America. The tribal sachem, or civil executive, bore
+the grotesque title of _cihuacoatl_, or "snake-woman."[116] His relation
+to the tribe was in general like that of the _calpullec_ to the clan. He
+executed the decrees of the tribal council, of which he was _ex officio_
+a member, and was responsible for the housing of tribute and its proper
+distribution among the clans. He was also chief judge, and he was
+lieutenant to the head war-chief in command of the tribal host.[117]
+He was elected for life by the tribal council, which could depose him
+for misconduct.
+
+         [Footnote 116: In Aztec mythology Cihuacoatl was wife of the
+         supreme night deity, Tezcatlipoca. Squier, _Serpent Symbol in
+         America_, pp. 159-166, 174-183. On the connection between
+         serpent worship and human sacrifices, see Fergusson's _Tree and
+         Serpent Worship_, pp. 3-5, 38-41. Much evidence as to American
+         serpent worship is collected in J. G. Müller's _Geschichte der
+         amerikanischen Urreligionen_, Basel, 1855. The hieroglyphic
+         emblem of the Aztec tribal sachem was a female head surmounted
+         by a snake.]
+
+         [Footnote 117: Other tribes besides the Aztec had the
+         "snake-woman." In the city of Mexico the Spaniards mistook him
+         for a "second-king," or "royal lieutenant." In other towns they
+         regarded him, somewhat more correctly, as "governor," and
+         called him _gobernador_,--a title still applied to the tribal
+         sachem of the pueblo Indians, as e. g. in Zuñi heretofore
+         mentioned; see above p. 89.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "chief-of men."]
+
+[Sidenote: Evolution of kingship in Greece and Rome.]
+
+The office of head war-chief was an instance of primitive royalty in a
+very interesting stage of development. The title of this officer was
+_tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men."[118] He was primarily head war-chief
+of the Aztec tribe, but about 1430 became supreme military commander of
+the three confederate tribes, so that his office was one of peculiar
+dignity and importance. When the Spaniards arrived upon the scene
+Montezuma was _tlacatecuhtli_, and they naturally called him "king." To
+understand precisely how far such an epithet could correctly be applied
+to him, and how far it was misleading, we must recall the manner in
+which early kingship arose in Europe. The Roman _rex_ was an officer
+elected for life; the typical Greek _basileus_ was a somewhat more fully
+developed king, inasmuch as his office was becoming practically
+hereditary; otherwise _rex_ was about equivalent to _basileus_. Alike in
+Rome and in Greece the king had at least three great functions, and
+possibly four.[119] He was, primarily, chief commander, secondly, chief
+priest, thirdly, chief judge; whether he had reached the fourth stage
+and added the functions of chief civil executive, is matter of dispute.
+Kingship in Rome and in most Greek cities was overthrown at so early a
+date that some questions of this sort are difficult to settle. But in
+all probability the office grew up through the successive acquisition of
+ritual, judicial, and civil functions by the military commander. The
+paramount necessity of consulting the tutelar deities before fighting
+resulted in making the general a priest competent to perform sacrifices
+and interpret omens;[120] he thus naturally became the most important
+among priests; an increased sanctity invested his person and office; and
+by and by he acquired control over the dispensation of justice, and
+finally over the whole civil administration. One step more was needed to
+develop the _basileus_ into a despot, like the king of Persia, and that
+was to let him get into his hands the law-making power, involving
+complete control over taxation. When the Greeks and Romans became
+dissatisfied with the increasing powers of their kings, they destroyed
+the office. The Romans did not materially diminish its functions, but
+put them into commission, by entrusting them to two consuls of equal
+authority elected annually. The Greeks, on the other hand, divided the
+royal functions among different officers, as e. g. at Athens among the
+nine archons.[121]
+
+         [Footnote 118: This title seems precisely equivalent to [Greek:
+         anax andrôn], commonly applied to Agamemnon, and sometimes to
+         other chieftains, in the Iliad.]
+
+         [Footnote 119: Ramsay's _Roman Antiquities_, p. 64; Hermann's
+         _Political Antiquities of Greece_, p. 105; Morgan, _Anc. Soc._,
+         p. 248.]
+
+         [Footnote 120: Such would naturally result from the
+         desirableness of securing unity of command. If Demosthenes had
+         been in sole command of the Athenian armament in the harbour of
+         Syracuse, and had been a _basileus_, with priestly authority,
+         who can doubt that some such theory of the eclipse as that
+         suggested by Philochorus would have been adopted, and thus one
+         of the world's great tragedies averted? See Grote, _Hist.
+         Greece_, vol. vii. chap. lx. M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his
+         admirable book _La Cité antique_, pp. 205-210, makes the
+         priestly function of the king primitive, and the military
+         function secondary; which is entirely inconsistent with what we
+         know of barbarous races.]
+
+         [Footnote 121: It is worthy of note that the archon who
+         retained the priestly function was called _basileus_, showing
+         perhaps that at that time this had come to be most prominent
+         among the royal functions, or more likely that it was the one
+         with which reformers had some religious scruples about
+         interfering. The Romans, too, retained part of the king's
+         priestly function in an officer called _rex sacrorum_, whose
+         duty was at times to offer a sacrifice in the forum, and then
+         run away as fast as legs could carry him,--[Greek: hên thysas
+         ho basileus, kata tachos apeisi pheugôn ex agoras] (!)
+         Plutarch, _Quæst. Rom._ 63.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mediæval kingship.]
+
+The typical kingship in mediæval Europe, after the full development of
+the feudal system, was very different indeed from the kingship in early
+Greece and Rome. In the Middle Ages all priestly functions had passed
+into the hands of the Church.[122] A king like Charles VII. of France,
+or Edward III. of England, was military commander, civil magistrate,
+chief judge, and _supreme landlord_; the people were his tenants. That
+was the kind of king with which the Spanish discoverers of Mexico were
+familiar.
+
+         [Footnote 122: Something of the priestly quality of "sanctity,"
+         however, surrounded the king's person; and the ceremony of
+         anointing the king at his coronation was a survival of the
+         ancient rite which invested the head war-chief with priestly
+         attributes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Montezuma was a "priest-commander."]
+
+Now the Mexican _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men," was much more like
+Agamemnon in point of kingship than like Edward III. He was not supreme
+landlord, for landlordship did not exist in Mexico. He was not chief
+judge or civil magistrate; those functions belonged to the
+"snake-woman." Mr. Bandelier regards the "chief-of-men" as simply a
+military commander; but for reasons which I shall state hereafter,[123]
+it seems quite clear that he exercised certain very important priestly
+functions, although beside him there was a kind of high-priest or
+medicine-chief. If I am right in holding that Montezuma was a
+"priest-commander," then incipient royalty in Mexico had advanced at
+least one stage beyond the head war-chief of the Iroquois, and remained
+one stage behind the _basileus_ of the Homeric Greeks.
+
+         [Footnote 123: They can be most conveniently stated in
+         connection with the story of the conquest of Mexico; see below,
+         vol. ii. p. 278. When Mr. Bandelier completes his long-promised
+         paper on the ancient Mexican religion, perhaps it will appear
+         that he has taken these facts into the account.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mode of succession to the office.]
+
+The _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men," was elected by an assembly
+consisting of the tribal council, the "elder brothers" of the several
+clans, and certain leading priests. Though the office was thus elective,
+the choice seems to have been practically limited to a particular clan,
+and in the eleven chiefs who were chosen from 1375 to 1520 a certain
+principle or custom of succession seems to be plainly indicated.[124]
+There was a further limit to the order of succession. Allusion has been
+made to the four phratry-captains commanding the quarters of the city.
+Their cheerful titles were "man of the house of darts," "cutter of men,"
+"bloodshedder," and "chief of the eagle and cactus." These captains were
+military chiefs of the phratries, and also magistrates charged with the
+duty of maintaining order and enforcing the decrees of the council in
+their respective quarters. The "chief of the eagle and cactus" was chief
+executioner,--Jack Ketch. He was not eligible for the office of
+"chief-of-men;" the three other phratry-captains were eligible. Then
+there was a member of the priesthood entitled "man of the dark house."
+This person, with the three eligible captains, made a quartette, and one
+of this privileged four _must_ succeed to the office of "chief-of-men."
+
+         [Footnote 124: I cannot follow Mr. Bandelier in discrediting
+         Clavigero's statement that the office of _tlacatecuhtli_
+         "should always remain in the house of Acamapitzin," inasmuch as
+         the eleven who were actually elected were all closely akin to
+         one another. In point of fact it _did_ remain "in the house of
+         Acamapitzin."]
+
+The eligibility of the "man of the dark house" may be cited here as
+positive proof that sometimes the "chief-of-men" could be a
+"priest-commander." That in all cases he acquired priestly functions
+after election, even when he did not possess them before, is indicated
+by the fact that at the ceremony of his induction into office he
+ascended to the summit of the pyramid sacred to the war-god
+Huitzilopochtli, where he was anointed by the high-priest with a black
+ointment, and sprinkled with sanctified water; having thus become
+consecrated he took a censer of live coals and a bag of copal, and as
+his first official act offered incense to the war-god.[125]
+
+         [Footnote 125: H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific
+         States_, vol. ii. p. 145. Hence the accounts of the reverent
+         demeanour of the people toward Montezuma, though perhaps
+         overcoloured, are not so absurd as Mr. Morgan deemed them. Mr.
+         Morgan was sometimes too anxious to reduce Montezuma to the
+         level of an Iroquois war-chief.]
+
+[Sidenote: Manner of collecting tribute.]
+
+As the "chief-of-men" was elected, so too he could be deposed for
+misbehaviour. He was _ex officio_ a member of the tribal council, and he
+had his official residence in the _tecpan_, or tribal house, where the
+meetings of the council were held, and where the hospitalities of the
+tribe were extended to strangers. As an administrative officer, the
+"chief-of-men" had little to do within the limits of the tribe; that, as
+already observed, was the business of the "snake-woman." But outside of
+the confederacy the "chief-of-men" exercised administrative functions.
+He superintended the collection of tribute. Each of the three
+confederate tribes appointed, through its tribal council, agents to
+visit the subjected pueblos and gather in the tribute. These agents were
+expressively termed _calpixqui_, "crop-gatherers." As these men were
+obliged to spend considerable time in the vanquished pueblos in the
+double character of tax-collectors and spies, we can imagine how hateful
+their position was. Their security from injury depended upon the
+reputation of their tribes for ruthless ferocity.[126] The tiger-like
+confederacy was only too ready to take offence; in the lack of a decent
+pretext it often went to war without one, simply in order to get human
+victims for sacrifice.
+
+         [Footnote 126: As I have elsewhere observed in a similar
+         case:--"Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the
+         dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and
+         down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons
+         and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict issued from the
+         savage council at Onondaga." _Beginnings of New England_, p.
+         121.]
+
+Once appointed, the tax-gatherers were directed by the "chief-of-men."
+The tribute was chiefly maize, but might be anything the conquerors
+chose to demand,--weapons, fine pottery or featherwork, gold ornaments,
+or female slaves. Sometimes the tributary pueblo, instead of sacrificing
+all its prisoners of war upon its own altars, sent some of them up to
+Mexico as part of its tribute. The ravening maw of the horrible deities
+was thus appeased, not by the pueblo that paid the blackmail, but by the
+power that extorted it, and thus the latter obtained a larger share of
+divine favour. Generally the unhappy prisoners were forced to carry the
+corn and other articles. They were convoyed by couriers who saw that
+everything was properly delivered at the _tecpan_, and also brought
+information by word of mouth and by picture-writing from the _calpixqui_
+to the "chief-of-men." When the newly-arrived Spaniards saw these
+couriers coming and going they fancied that they were "ambassadors."
+This system of tribute-taking made it necessary to build roads, and this
+in turn facilitated, not only military operations, but trade, which had
+already made some progress albeit of a simple sort. These "roads" might
+perhaps more properly be called Indian trails,[127] but they served
+their purpose.
+
+         [Footnote 127: See Salmeron's letter of August 13, 1531, to the
+         Council of the Indies, cited in Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 696.
+         The letter recommends that to increase the security of the
+         Spanish hold upon the country the roads should be made
+         practicable for beasts and wagons. They were narrow paths
+         running straight ahead up hill and down dale, sometimes
+         crossing narrow ravines upon heavy stone culverts.]
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec and Iroquois confederacies contrasted.]
+
+The general similarity of the Aztec confederacy to that of the
+Iroquois, in point of social structure, is thus clearly manifest. Along
+with this general similarity we have observed some points of higher
+development, such as one might expect to find in traversing the entire
+length of an ethnical period. Instead of stockaded villages, with houses
+of bark or of clay supported upon a wooden framework, we have pueblos of
+adobe-brick or stone, in various stages of evolution, the most advanced
+of which present the appearance of castellated cities. Along with the
+systematic irrigation and increased dependence upon horticulture, we
+find evidences of greater density of population; and we see in the
+victorious confederacy a more highly developed organization for adding
+to its stock of food and other desirable possessions by the systematic
+plunder of neighbouring weaker communities. Naturally such increase in
+numbers and organization entails some increase in the number of officers
+and some differentiation of their functions, as illustrated in the
+representation of the clans (_calpulli_) in the tribal council
+(_tlatocan_), by speakers (_tlatoani_) chosen for the purpose, and not
+by the official heads (_calpullec_) of the clan. Likewise in the
+military commander-in-chief (_tlacatecuhtli_) we observe a marked
+increase in dignity, and--as I have already suggested and hope to
+maintain--we find that his office has been clothed with sacerdotal
+powers, and has thus taken a decided step toward kingship of the ancient
+type, as depicted in the Homeric poems.
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec priesthood: human sacrifices.]
+
+No feature of the advance is more noteworthy than the development of
+the medicine-men into an organized priesthood.[128] The presence of this
+priesthood and its ritual was proclaimed to the eyes of the traveller in
+ancient Mexico by the numerous tall truncated pyramids (_teocallis_), on
+the flat summits of which men, women, and children were sacrificed to
+the gods. This custom of human sacrifice seems to have been a
+characteristic of the middle period of barbarism, and to have survived,
+with diminishing frequency, into the upper period. There are abundant
+traces of its existence throughout the early Aryan world, from Britain
+to Hindustan, as well as among the ancient Hebrews and their
+kindred.[129] But among all these peoples, at the earliest times at
+which we can study them with trustworthy records, we find the custom of
+human sacrifice in an advanced stage of decline, and generally no longer
+accompanied by the custom of cannibalism in which it probably
+originated.[130] Among the Mexicans, however, when they were first
+visited by the Spaniards, cannibalism flourished as nowhere else in the
+world except perhaps in Fiji, and human sacrifices were conducted on
+such a scale as could not have been witnessed in Europe without going
+back more than forty centuries.
+
+         [Footnote 128: The priesthood was not hereditary, nor did it
+         form a caste. There was no hereditary nobility in ancient
+         Mexico, nor were there any hereditary vocations, as "artisans,"
+         "merchants," etc. See Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 599.]
+
+         [Footnote 129: See the copious references in Tylor's _Primitive
+         Culture_, ii. 340-371; Mackay, _Religious Development of the
+         Greeks and Hebrews_, ii. 406-434; Oort and Hooykaas, _The Bible
+         for Young People_, i. 30, 189-193; ii. 102, 220; iii. 21, 170,
+         316, 393, 395; iv. 85, 226. Ghillany, _Die Menschenopfer der
+         alten Hebräer_, Nuremberg, 1842, treats the subject with much
+         learning.]
+
+         [Footnote 130: Spencer, _Princip. Sociol._, i. 287; Tylor, _op.
+         cit._ ii. 345.]
+
+The custom of sacrificing captives to the gods was a marked advance upon
+the practice in the lower period of barbarism, when the prisoner, unless
+saved by adoption into the tribe of his captors, was put to death with
+lingering torments. There were occasions on which the Aztecs tortured
+their prisoners before sending them to the altar,[131] but in general
+the prisoner was well-treated and highly fed,--fatted, in short, for the
+final banquet in which the worshippers participated with their savage
+deity.[132] In a more advanced stage of development than that which the
+Aztecs had reached, in the stage when agriculture became extensive
+enough to create a steady demand for servile labour, the practice of
+enslaving prisoners became general; and as slaves became more and more
+valuable, men gradually succeeded in compounding with their deities for
+easier terms,--a ram, or a kid, or a bullock, instead of the human
+victim.[133]
+
+         [Footnote 131: Mr. Prescott, to avoid shocking the reader with
+         details, refers him to the twenty-first canto of Dante's
+         Inferno, _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 64.]
+
+         [Footnote 132: See below, vol. ii. p. 283.]
+
+         [Footnote 133: The victim, by the offer of which the wrath of
+         the god was appeased or his favour solicited, must always be
+         some valued possession of the sacrificer. Hence, e. g., among
+         the Hebrews "wild animals, as not being property, were
+         generally considered unfit for sacrifice." (Mackay, _op. cit._
+         ii. 398.) Among the Aztecs (Prescott, _loc. cit._) on certain
+         occasions of peculiar solemnity the clan offered some of its
+         own members, usually children. In the lack of prisoners such
+         offerings would more often be necessary, hence one powerful
+         incentive to war. The use of prisoners to buy the god's favour
+         was to some extent a substitute for the use of the clan's own
+         members, and at a later stage the use of domestic animals was a
+         further substitution. The legend of Abraham and Isaac
+         (_Genesis_, xxii. 1-14) preserves the tradition of this latter
+         substitution among the ancient Hebrews. Compare the Boeotian
+         legend of the temple of Dionysos Aigobolos:--[Greek: thyontes
+         gar tô theô proêchthêsan pote hypo methês es hybrin, hôste kai
+         tou Dionysou ton hierea apokteinousin; apokteinantas de autika
+         epelabe nosos loimôdês; kai sphisin aphiketo hama ek Delphôn,
+         tô Dionysô thyein paida hôraion; etesi de ou pollois hysteron
+         ton theon phasin aiga hiereion hypallaxai sphisin anti tou
+         paidos.]
+
+Pausanias, ix. 8. A further stage of progress was the substitution of a
+mere inanimate symbol for a living victim, whether human or brute, as
+shown in the old Roman custom of appeasing "Father Tiber" once a year by
+the ceremony of drowning a lot of dolls in that river. Of this
+significant rite Mommsen aptly observes, "Die Ideen göttlicher Gnade und
+Versöhnbarkeit sind hier ununterscheidbar gemischt mit der frommen
+Schlauigkeit, welche es versucht den gefährlichen Herrn durch
+scheinhafte Befriedigung zu berücken und abzufinden." _Römische
+Geschichte_, 4e Aufl., 1865, Bd. i. p. 176. After reading such a remark
+it may seem odd to find the writer, in a footnote, refusing to accept
+the true explanation of the custom; but that was a quarter of a century
+ago, when much less was known about ancient society than now.]
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec slaves.]
+
+The ancient Mexicans had not arrived at this stage, which in the Old
+World characterized the upper period of barbarism. Slavery had, however,
+made a beginning among the Aztecs. The nucleus of the small
+slave-population of Mexico consisted of _outcasts_, persons expelled
+from the clan for some misdemeanour. The simplest case was that in which
+a member of a clan failed for two years to cultivate his
+garden-plot.[134] The delinquent member was deprived, not only of his
+right of user, but of all his rights as a clansman, and the only way to
+escape starvation was to work upon some other lot, either in his own or
+in some other clan, and be paid in such pittance from its produce as the
+occupant might choose to give him. This was slavery in embryo. The
+occupant did not own this outcast labourer, any more than he owned his
+lot; he only possessed a limited right of user in both labourer and lot.
+To a certain extent it was "adverse" or exclusive possession. If the
+slave ran away or was obstinately lazy, he could be made to wear a
+wooden collar and sold without his consent; if it proved too troublesome
+to keep him, the collared slave could be handed over to the priests for
+sacrifice.[135] In this class of outcasts and their masters we have an
+interesting illustration of a rudimentary phase of slavery and of
+private property.
+
+         [Footnote 134: Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 611.]
+
+         [Footnote 135: There was, however, in this extreme case, a
+         right of sanctuary. If the doomed slave could flee and hide
+         himself in the _tecpan_ before the master or one of his sons
+         could catch him, he became free and recovered his clan-rights;
+         and no third person was allowed to interfere in aid of the
+         pursuer. Torquemada, _Monarquía indiana_, ii. 564-566.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Aztec family.]
+
+At this point it is worthy of note that in the development of the family
+the Aztecs had advanced considerably beyond the point attained by
+Shawnees and Mohawks, and a little way toward the point attained in the
+patriarchal family of the ancient Romans and Hebrews. In the Aztec clan
+(which was exogamous[136]) the change to descent in the male line seems
+to have been accomplished before the time of the Discovery. Apparently
+it had been recently accomplished. Names for designating family
+relationships remained in that primitive stage in which no distinction
+is made between father and uncle, grandchildren and cousins. The family
+was still too feebly established to count for much in the structure of
+society, which still rested firmly upon the clan.[137] Nevertheless the
+marriage bonds were drawn much tighter than among Indians of the lower
+status, and penalties for incontinence were more severe. The wife became
+her husband's property and was entitled to the protection of his clan.
+All matrimonial arrangements were controlled by the clan, and no member
+of it, male or female, was allowed to remain unmarried, except for
+certain religious reasons. The penalty for contumacy was expulsion from
+the clan, and the same penalty was inflicted for such sexual
+irregularities as public opinion, still in what we should call quite a
+primitive stage, condemned. Men and women thus expelled went to swell
+the numbers of that small class of outcasts already noted. With men the
+result, as we have seen, was a kind of slavery; with women it was
+prostitution; and it is curious to see that the same penalty, entailing
+such a result, was visited alike upon unseemly frailty and upon refusal
+to marry. In either case the sin consisted in rebellion against the
+clan's standards of proper or permissible behaviour.
+
+         [Footnote 136: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_,
+         vol. ii. p. 251.]
+
+         [Footnote 137: Bandelier, _op. cit._ pp. 429, 570, 620.]
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec property.]
+
+The inheritance in the male line, the beginnings of individual property
+in slaves, the tightening of the marriage bond, accompanied by the
+condemnation of sundry irregularities heretofore tolerated, are
+phenomena which we might expect to find associated together. They are
+germs of the upper status of barbarism, as well as of the earliest
+status of civilization more remotely to follow. The common cause, of
+which they are the manifestations, is an increasing sense of the value
+and importance of personal property. In the Old World this sense grew up
+during a pastoral stage of society such as the New World never knew, and
+by the ages of Abraham and Agamemnon[138] it had produced results such
+as had not been reached in Mexico at the time of the Discovery. Still
+the tendency in the latter country was in a similar direction. Though
+there was no notion of real estate, and the house was still
+clan-property, yet the number and value of articles of personal
+ownership had no doubt greatly increased during the long interval which
+must have elapsed since the ancestral Mexicans entered upon the middle
+status. The mere existence of large and busy market-places with regular
+and frequent fairs, even though trade had scarcely begun to emerge from
+the stage of barter, is sufficient proof of this. Such fairs and markets
+do not belong to the Mohawk chapter in human progress. They imply a
+considerable number and diversity of artificial products, valued as
+articles of personal property. A legitimate inference from them is the
+existence of a certain degree of luxury, though doubtless luxury of a
+barbaric type.
+
+         [Footnote 138: I here use these world-famous names without any
+         implication as to their historical character, or their precise
+         date, which are in themselves interesting subjects for
+         discussion. I use them as best symbolizing the state of society
+         which existed about the northern and eastern shores of the
+         eastern Mediterranean, several centuries before the
+         Olympiads.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Morgan's rules.]
+
+It is at this point, I think, that a judicious critic will begin to part
+company with Mr. Morgan. As regards the outward aspect of the society
+which the Spaniards found in Mexico, that eminent scholar more than once
+used arguments that were inconsistent with principles of criticism laid
+down by himself. At the beginning of his chapter on the Aztec
+confederacy Mr. Morgan proposed the following rules:--
+
+"The histories of Spanish America may be trusted in whatever relates to
+the acts of the Spaniards, and to the acts and personal characteristics
+of the Indians; in whatever relates to their weapons, implements and
+utensils, fabrics, food and raiment, and things of a similar character.
+
+"But in whatever relates to Indian society and government, their social
+relations and plan of life, they are nearly worthless, because they
+learned nothing and knew nothing of either. We are at full liberty to
+reject them in these respects and commence anew; using any facts they
+may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society."[139]
+
+         [Footnote 139: Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 186, note.]
+
+Perhaps it would have been better if the second of these rules had been
+somewhat differently worded; for even with regard to the strange society
+and government, the Spanish writers have recorded an immense number of
+valuable facts, without which Mr. Bandelier's work would have been
+impossible. It is not so much the _facts_ as the _interpretations_ of
+the Spanish historians that are "nearly worthless," and even their
+misinterpretations are interesting and instructive when once we rightly
+understand them. Sometimes they really help us toward the truth.
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Morgan sometimes disregarded his own rules: "Montezuma's
+Dinner."]
+
+The broad distinction, however, as stated in Mr. Morgan's pair of rules,
+is well taken. In regard to such a strange form of society the Spanish
+discoverers of Mexico could not help making mistakes, but in regard to
+utensils and dress their senses were not likely to deceive them, and
+their statements, according to Mr. Morgan, may be trusted. Very good.
+But as soon as Mr. Morgan had occasion to write about the social life of
+the Aztecs, he forgot his own rules and paid as little respect to the
+senses of eye-witnesses as to their judgment. This was amusingly
+illustrated in his famous essay on "Montezuma's Dinner."[140] When
+Bernal Diaz describes Montezuma as sitting on a low chair at a table
+covered with a white cloth, Mr. Morgan declares that it could not have
+been so,--there were no chairs or tables! On second thought he will
+admit that there may have been a wooden block hollowed out for a stool,
+but in the matter of a table he is relentless. So when Cortes, in his
+despatch to the emperor, speaks of the "wine-cellar" and of the presence
+of "secretaries" at dinner, Mr. Morgan observes, "Since cursive writing
+was unknown among the Aztecs, the presence of these secretaries is an
+amusing feature in the account. The wine-cellar also is remarkable for
+two reasons: firstly, because the level of the streets and courts was
+but four feet above the level of the water, which made cellars
+impossible; and, secondly, because the Aztecs had no knowledge of wine.
+An acid beer (_pulque_), made by fermenting the juice of the maguey, was
+a common beverage of the Aztecs; but it is hardly supposable that even
+this was used at dinner."[141]
+
+         [Footnote 140: _North Amer. Review_, April, 1876. The substance
+         of it was reproduced in his _Houses and House-Life_, chap. x.]
+
+         [Footnote 141: _Houses and House-Life_, p. 241.]
+
+To this I would reply that the fibre of that same useful plant from
+which the Aztecs made their "beer" supplied them also with paper, upon
+which they were in the habit of writing, not indeed in cursive
+characters, but in hieroglyphics. This kind of writing, as well as any
+other, accounts for the presence of secretaries, which seems to me, by
+the way, a very probable and characteristic feature in the narrative.
+From the moment the mysterious strangers landed, every movement of
+theirs had been recorded in hieroglyphics, and there is no reason why
+notes of what they said and did should not have been taken at dinner. As
+for the place where the _pulque_ was kept, it was a venial slip of the
+pen to call it a "wine-cellar," even if it was not below the ground. The
+language of Cortes does not imply that he visited the "cellar;" he saw a
+crowd of Indians drinking the beverage, and supposing the great house he
+was in to be Montezuma's, he expressed his sense of that person's
+hospitality by saying that "his wine-cellar was open to all." And
+really, is it not rather a captious criticism which in one breath chides
+Cortes for calling the beverage "wine," and in the next breath goes on
+to call it "beer"? The _pulque_ was neither the one nor the other; for
+want of any other name a German might have called it beer, a Spaniard
+would be more likely to call it wine. And why is it "hardly supposable"
+that _pulque_ was used at dinner? Why should Mr. Morgan, who never dined
+with Montezuma, know so much more about _such things_ than Cortes and
+Bernal Diaz, who did?[142]
+
+         [Footnote 142: Mr. Andrew Lang asks some similar questions in
+         his _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p. 349, but in a
+         tone of impatient contempt which, as applied to a man of Mr.
+         Morgan's calibre, is hardly becoming.]
+
+[Sidenote: The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements.]
+
+The Spanish statements of facts are, of course, not to be accepted
+uncritically. When we are told of cut slabs of porphyry inlaid in the
+walls of a room, we have a right to inquire how so hard a stone could be
+cut with flint or copper chisels,[143] and are ready to entertain the
+suggestion that some other stone might easily have been mistaken for
+porphyry. Such a critical inquiry is eminently profitable, and none the
+less so when it brings us to the conclusion that the Aztecs did succeed
+in cutting porphyry. Again, when we read about Indian armies of 200,000
+men, pertinent questions arise as to the commissariat, and we are led to
+reflect that there is nothing about which old soldiers spin such
+unconscionable yarns as about the size of the armies they have
+thrashed. In a fairy tale, of course, such suggestions are impertinent;
+things can go on anyhow. In real life it is different. The trouble with
+most historians of the conquest of Mexico has been that they have made
+it like a fairy tale, and the trouble with Mr. Morgan was that, in a
+wholesome and much-needed spirit of reaction, he was too much inclined
+to dismiss the whole story as such. He forgot the first of his pair of
+rules, and applied the second to everything alike. He felt "at full
+liberty to reject" the testimony of the discoverers as to what they saw
+and tasted, and to "commence anew," reasoning from "what is known of
+Indian society." And here Mr. Morgan's mind was so full of the kind of
+Indian society which he knew more minutely and profoundly than any other
+man, that he was apt to forget that there could be any other kind. He
+overlooked his own distinction between the lower and middle periods of
+barbarism in his attempt to ignore or minimize the points of difference
+between Aztecs and Iroquois.[144] In this way he did injustice to his
+own brilliant and useful classification of stages of culture, and in
+particular to the middle period of barbarism, the significance of which
+he was the first to detect, but failed to realize fully because his
+attention had been so intensely concentrated upon the lower period.
+
+         [Footnote 143: For an excellent account of ancient Mexican
+         knives and chisels, see Dr. Valentini's paper on "Semi-Lunar
+         and Crescent-Shaped Tools," in _Proceedings of Amer. Antiq.
+         Soc._, New Series, vol. iii. pp. 449-474. Compare the very
+         interesting Spanish observations on copper hatchets and flint
+         chisels in Clavigero, _Historia antigua_, tom. i. p. 242;
+         Mendieta, _Historia ecclesiastica indiana_, tom. iv. cap. xii.]
+
+         [Footnote 144: It often happens that the followers of a great
+         man are more likely to run to extremes than their master, as,
+         for example, when we see the queen of pueblos rashly described
+         as "a collection of mud huts, such as Cortes found and
+         dignified with the name of a city." _Smithsonian Report_, 1887,
+         part i. p. 691. This is quite inadmissible.]
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of the middle period of barbarism.]
+
+In truth, the middle period of barbarism was one of the most important
+periods in the career of the human race, and full of fascination to the
+student, as the unfading interest in ancient Mexico and the huge mass of
+literature devoted to it show. It spanned the interval between such
+society as that of Hiawatha and such as that of the Odyssey. One more
+such interval (and, I suspect, a briefer one, because the use of iron
+and the development of inheritable wealth would accelerate progress) led
+to the age that could _write_ the Odyssey, one of the most beautiful
+productions of the human mind. If Mr. Morgan had always borne in mind
+that, on his own classification, Montezuma must have been at least as
+near to Agamemnon as to Powhatan, his attitude toward the Spanish
+historians would have been less hostile. A Moqui pueblo stands near the
+lower end of the middle period of barbarism; ancient Troy stood next the
+upper end. Mr. Morgan found apt illustrations in the former; perhaps if
+he had lived long enough to profit by the work of Schliemann and
+Bandelier, he might have found equally apt ones in the latter. Mr.
+Bandelier's researches certainly show that the ancient city of Mexico,
+in point of social development, stood somewhere between the two.
+
+How that city looked may best be described when we come to tell what its
+first Spanish visitors saw. Let it suffice here to say that, upon a
+reasonable estimate of their testimony, pleasure-gardens, menageries and
+aviaries, fountains and baths, tessellated marble floors, finely wrought
+pottery, exquisite featherwork, brilliant mats and tapestries, silver
+goblets, dainty spices burning in golden censers, varieties of highly
+seasoned dishes, dramatic performances, jugglers and acrobats, ballad
+singers and dancing girls,--such things were to be seen in this city of
+snake-worshipping cannibals. It simulated civilization as a tree-fern
+simulates a tree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: Ground-plan of so-called "House of the Nuns" at Uxmal.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mexicans and Mayas.]
+
+In its general outlines the account here given of Aztec society and
+government at the time of the Discovery will probably hold true of all
+the semi-civilized communities of the Mexican peninsula and Central
+America. The pueblos of Mexico were doubtless of various grades of size,
+strength, and comfort, ranging from such structures as Zuñi up to the
+city of Mexico. The cities of Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala, whose
+ruins, in those tropical forests, are so impressive, probably belong to
+the same class. The Maya-Quiché tribes, who dwelt and still dwell in
+this region, were different in stock-language from their neighbours of
+Mexico; but there are strong reasons for believing that the two great
+groups, Mexicans and Mayas, arose from the expansion and segmentation of
+one common stock, and there is no doubt as to the very close similarity
+between the two in government, religion, and social advancement. In some
+points the Mayas were superior. They possessed a considerable
+literature, written in highly developed hieroglyphic characters upon
+maguey paper and upon deerskin parchment, so that from this point of
+view they stood upon the threshold of civilization as strictly
+defined.[145] But, like the Mexicans, they were ignorant of iron, their
+society was organized upon the principle of gentilism, they were
+cannibals and sacrificed men and women to idols, some of which were
+identical with those of Mexico. The Mayas had no conception of property
+in land; their buildings were great communal houses, like pueblos; in
+some cases these so-called palaces, at first supposed to be scanty
+remnants of vast cities, were themselves the entire "cities;" in other
+cases there were doubtless large composite pueblos fit to be called
+cities.
+
+         [Footnote 145: This writing was at once recognized by learned
+         Spaniards, like Las Casas, as entirely different from anything
+         found elsewhere in America. He found in Yucatan "letreros de
+         ciertos caracteres que en otra ninguna parte," Las Casas,
+         _Historia apologética_, cap. cxxiii. For an account of the
+         hieroglyphics, see the learned essays of Dr. Cyrus Thomas, _A
+         Study of the Manuscript Troano_, Washington, 1882; "Notes on
+         certain Maya and Mexican MSS.," _Third Report of the Bureau of
+         Ethnology_, pp. 7-153; "Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices,"
+         _Sixth Report_, pp. 259-371. (The paper last mentioned ends
+         with the weighty words, "The more I study these characters the
+         stronger becomes the conviction that they have grown out of a
+         pictographic system similar to that common among the Indians of
+         North America." Exactly so; and this is typical of every aspect
+         and every detail of ancient American culture. It is becoming
+         daily more evident that the old notion of an influence from
+         Asia has not a leg to stand on.) See also a suggestive paper by
+         the astronomer, E. S. Holden, "Studies in Central American
+         Picture-Writing," _First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_,
+         pp. 205-245; Brinton, _Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan_,
+         New York, 1870; _Essays of an Americanist_, Philadelphia, 1890,
+         pp. 193-304; Léon de Rosny, _Les écritures figuratives_, Paris,
+         1870; _L'interprétation des anciens textes Mayas_, Paris, 1875;
+         _Essai sur le déchiffrement de l'écriture hiératique de
+         l'Amérique Centrale_, Paris, 1876; Förstemann, _Erläuterungen
+         der Maya Handschrift_, Dresden, 1886. The decipherment is as
+         yet but partially accomplished. The Mexican system of writing
+         is clearly developed from the ordinary Indian pictographs; it
+         could not have arisen from the Maya system, but the latter
+         might well have been a further development of the Mexican
+         system; the Maya system had probably developed some characters
+         with a phonetic value, i. e. was groping toward the
+         alphabetical stage; but how far this groping had gone must
+         remain very doubtful until the decipherment has proceeded
+         further. Dr. Isaac Taylor is too hasty in saying that "the
+         Mayas employed twenty-seven characters which must be admitted
+         to be alphabetic" (Taylor, _The Alphabet_, vol. i. p. 24); this
+         statement is followed by the conclusion that the Maya system of
+         writing was "superior in simplicity and convenience to that
+         employed ... by the great Assyrian nation at the epoch of its
+         greatest power and glory." Dr. Taylor has been misled by Diego
+         de Landa, whose work (_Relation des choses de l'Yucatan_, ed.
+         Brasseur, Paris, 1864) has in it some pitfalls for the unwary.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ruined cities of Central America.]
+
+These noble ruins have excited great and increasing interest since the
+publication of Mr. Stephens's charming book just fifty years ago.[146]
+An air of profound mystery surrounded them, and many wild theories were
+propounded to account for their existence. They were at first accredited
+with a fabulous antiquity, and in at least one instance this notion was
+responsible for what must be called misrepresentation, if not
+humbug.[147] Having been placed by popular fancy at such a remote age,
+they were naturally supposed to have been built, not by the Mayas,--who
+still inhabit Yucatan and do not absolutely dazzle us with their exalted
+civilization,--but by some wonderful people long since vanished. Now as
+to this point the sculptured slabs of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza tell their
+own story. They are covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and these
+hieroglyphs are the same as those in which the Dresden Codex and other
+Maya manuscripts still preserved are written; though their decipherment
+is not yet complete, there is no sort of doubt as to their being written
+in the Maya characters. Careful inspection, moreover, shows that the
+buildings in which these inscriptions occur are not so very ancient. Mr.
+Stephens, who was one of their earliest as well as sanest explorers,
+believed them to be the work of the Mayas at a comparatively recent
+period.[148] The notion of their antiquity was perhaps suggested by the
+belief that certain colossal mahogany trees growing between and over
+the ruins at Palenque must be nearly 2,000 years old. But when M. de
+Charnay visited Palenque in 1859 he had the eastern side of the "palace"
+cleared of its dense vegetation in order to get a good photograph; and
+when he revisited the spot in 1881 he found a sturdy growth of young
+mahogany the age of which he knew did not exceed twenty-two years.
+Instead of making a ring once a year, as in our sluggish and temperate
+zone, these trees had made rings at the rate of about one in a month;
+their trunks were already more than two feet in diameter; judging from
+this rate of growth the biggest giant on the place need not have been
+more than 200 years old, if as much.[149]
+
+         [Footnote 146: Stephens, _Incidents of Travel in Central
+         America, Chiapas, and Yucatan_, 2 vols., New York, 1841.]
+
+         [Footnote 147: It occurred in the drawings of the artist
+         Fréderic de Waldeck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but
+         whose researches were published later. "His drawings," says Mr.
+         Winsor, "are exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to
+         improve and restore, where the conditions gave a hint, and so
+         as we have them in the final publication they have not been
+         accepted as wholly trustworthy." _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i.
+         194. M. de Charnay puts it more strongly. Upon his drawing of a
+         certain panel at Palenque, M. de Waldeck "has seen fit to place
+         three or four elephants. What end did he propose to himself in
+         giving this fictitious representation? Presumably to give a
+         prehistoric origin to these ruins, since it is an ascertained
+         fact that elephants in a fossil state only have been found on
+         the American continent. It is needless to add that neither
+         Catherwood, who drew these inscriptions most minutely, nor
+         myself who brought impressions of them away, nor living man,
+         ever saw these elephants and their fine trunks. But such is the
+         mischief engendered by preconceived opinions. With some writers
+         it would seem that to give a recent date to these monuments
+         would deprive them of all interest. It would have been
+         fortunate had explorers been imbued with fewer prejudices and
+         gifted with a little more common sense, for then we should have
+         known the truth with regard to these ruins long since."
+         Charnay, _The Ancient Cities of the New World_, London, 1887,
+         p. 248. The gallant explorer's indignation is certainly quite
+         pardonable.]
+
+         [Footnote 148: Some of his remarks are worth quoting in detail,
+         especially in view of the time when they were written: "I
+         repeat my opinion that we are not warranted in going back to
+         any ancient nation of the Old World for the builders of these
+         cities; that they are not the work of people who have passed
+         away and whose history is lost, but that there are strong
+         reasons to believe them the creations of the same races who
+         inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or
+         some not very distant progenitors. And I would remark that we
+         began our exploration without any theory to support.... Some
+         are beyond doubt older than others; some are known to have been
+         inhabited at the time of the Spanish conquest, and others,
+         perhaps, were really in ruins before; ... but in regard to
+         Uxmal, at least, we believe that it was an existing and
+         inhabited city at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards."
+         Stephens, _Central America_, etc., vol. ii. p. 455.]
+
+         [Footnote 149: Charnay, _The Ancient Cities of the New World_,
+         p. 260.]
+
+[Sidenote: They are probably not older than the twelfth century.]
+
+These edifices are not so durably constructed as those which in Europe
+have stood for more than a thousand years. They do not indicate a high
+civilization on the part of their builders. They do not, as Mr. Andrew
+Lang says, "throw Mycenæ into the shade, and rival the remains of
+Cambodia."[150] In pictures they may seem to do so, but M. de Charnay,
+after close and repeated examination of these buildings, assures us that
+as structures they "cannot be compared with those at Cambodia, which
+belong to nearly the same period, the twelfth century, and which,
+notwithstanding their greater and more resisting proportions, are found
+in the same dilapidated condition."[151] It seems to me that if Mr.
+Lang had spoken of the Yucatan ruins as rivalling the remains of Mycenæ,
+instead of "throwing them into the shade," he would have come nearer the
+mark. The builders of Uxmal, like those of Mycenæ, did not understand
+the principle of the arch, but were feeling their way toward it.[152]
+And here again we are brought back, as seems to happen whatever road we
+follow, to the middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan architecture
+shows the marks of its origin in the adobe and rubble-stone work of the
+New Mexico pueblos. The inside of the wall "is a rude mixture of friable
+mortar and small irregular stones," and under the pelting tropical rains
+the dislocation of the outer facing is presently effected. The large
+blocks, cut with flint chisels, are of a soft stone that is soon damaged
+by weather; and the cornices and lintels are beams of a very hard wood,
+yet not so hard but that insects bore into it. From such considerations
+it is justly inferred that the highest probable antiquity for most of
+the ruins in Yucatan or Central America is the twelfth or thirteenth
+century of our era.[153] Some, perhaps, may be no older than the ancient
+city of Mexico, built A. D. 1325.
+
+         [Footnote 150: Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p.
+         348.]
+
+         [Footnote 151: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 209. "I may remark that
+         [the] virgin forests [here] have no very old trees, being
+         destroyed by insects, moisture, lianas, etc.; and old monteros
+         tell me that mahogany and cedar trees, which are most durable,
+         do not live above 200 years," id. p. 447.]
+
+         [Footnote 152: The reader will find it suggestive to compare
+         portions of Schliemann's _Mycenæ_ and M. de Charnay's book,
+         just cited, with Morgan's _Houses and House-Life_, chap. xi.]
+
+         [Footnote 153: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 411. Copan and Palenque
+         may be two or three centuries older, and had probably fallen
+         into ruins before the arrival of the Spaniards.]
+
+[Sidenote: Chronicle of Chicxulub.]
+
+But we are no longer restricted to purely archæological evidence. One of
+the most impressive of all these ruined cities is Chichen-Itza, which is
+regarded as older than Uxmal, but not so old as Izamal. Now in recent
+times sundry old Maya documents have been discovered in Yucatan, and
+among them is a brief history of the Spanish conquest of that country,
+written in the Roman character by a native chief, Nakuk Pech, about
+1562. It has been edited, with an English translation, by that zealous
+and indefatigable scholar, to whom American philology owes such a debt
+of gratitude,--Dr. Daniel Brinton. This chronicle tells us several
+things that we did not know before, and, among others, it refers most
+explicitly to Chichen-Itza and Izamal as inhabited towns during the time
+that the Spaniards were coming, from 1519 to 1542. If there could have
+been any lingering doubt as to the correctness of the views of Stephens,
+Morgan, and Charnay, this contemporaneous documentary testimony dispels
+it once for all.[154]
+
+         [Footnote 154: Brinton, _The Maya Chronicles_, Philadelphia,
+         1882, "Chronicle of Chicxulub," pp. 187-259. This book is of
+         great importance, and for the ancient history of Guatemala
+         Brinton's _Annals of the Cakchiquels_, Philadelphia, 1885, is
+         of like value and interest.
+
+         Half a century ago Mr. Stephens wrote in truly prophetic vein,
+         "the convents are rich in manuscripts and documents written by
+         the early fathers, caciques, and Indians, who very soon
+         acquired the knowledge of Spanish and the art of writing. These
+         have never been examined with the slightest reference to this
+         subject; _and I cannot help thinking that some precious
+         memorial is now mouldering in the library of a neighbouring
+         convent, which would determine the history of some one of these
+         ruined cities_." Vol. ii. p. 456. The italicizing, of course,
+         is mine.]
+
+[Sidenote: Maya culture very closely related to Mexican.]
+
+The Mexicans and Mayas believed themselves to be akin to each other,
+they had several deities and a large stock of traditional lore in
+common, and there was an essential similarity in their modes of life; so
+that, since we are now assured that such cities as Izamal and
+Chichen-Itza were contemporary with the city of Mexico, we shall
+probably not go very far astray if we assume that the elaborately carved
+and bedizened ruins of the former may give us some hint as to how things
+might have looked in the latter. Indeed this complicated and grotesque
+carving on walls, door-posts, and lintels was one of the first things to
+attract the attention of the Spaniards in Mexico. They regarded it with
+mingled indignation and awe, for serpents, coiled or uncoiled, with
+gaping mouths, were most conspicuous among the objects represented. The
+visitors soon learned that all this had a symbolic and religious
+meaning, and with some show of reason they concluded that this strange
+people worshipped the Devil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have now passed in review the various peoples of North America, from
+the Arctic circle to the neighbourhood of the isthmus of Darien, and can
+form some sort of a mental picture of the continent at the time of its
+discovery by Europeans in the fifteenth century. Much more might have
+been said without going beyond the requirements of an outline sketch,
+but quite as much has been said as is consistent with the general plan
+of this book. I have not undertaken at present to go beyond the isthmus
+of Darien, because this preliminary chapter is already disproportionately
+long, and after this protracted discussion the reader's attention may be
+somewhat relieved by an entire change of scene. Enough has been set
+forth to explain the narrative that follows, and to justify us
+henceforth in taking certain things for granted. The outline description
+of Mexico will be completed when we come to the story of its conquest by
+Spaniards, and then we shall be ready to describe some principal
+features of Peruvian society and to understand how the Spaniards
+conquered that country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The "Mound-Builders."]
+
+[Sidenote: The notion that they were like the Aztecs;]
+
+[Sidenote: or like the Zuñis.]
+
+There is, however, one conspicuous feature of North American antiquity
+which has not yet received our attention, and which calls for a few
+words before we close this chapter. I refer to the mounds that are
+scattered over so large a part of the soil of the United States, and
+more particularly to those between the Mississippi river and the
+Alleghany mountains, which have been the subject of so much theorizing,
+and in late years of so much careful study.[155] Vague and wild were
+the speculations once rife about the "Mound-Builders" and their
+wonderful civilization. They were supposed to have been a race quite
+different from the red men, with a culture perhaps superior to our own,
+and more or less eloquence was wasted over the vanished "empire" of the
+mound-builders. There is no reason, however, for supposing that there
+ever was an empire of any sort in ancient North America, and no relic of
+the past has ever been seen at any spot on our planet which indicates
+the former existence of a vanished civilization even remotely
+approaching our own. The sooner the student of history gets his head
+cleared of all such rubbish, the better. As for the mounds, which are
+scattered in such profusion over the country west of the Alleghanies,
+there are some which have been built by Indians since the arrival of
+white men in America, and which contain knives and trinkets of European
+manufacture. There are many others which are much older, and in which
+the genuine remains sometimes indicate a culture like that of Shawnees
+or Senecas, and sometimes suggest something perhaps a little higher.
+With the progress of research the vast and vague notion of a distinct
+race of "Mound-Builders" became narrowed and defined. It began to seem
+probable that the builders of the more remarkable mounds were tribes of
+Indians who had advanced beyond the average level in horticulture, and
+consequently in density of population, and perhaps in political and
+priestly organization. Such a conclusion seemed to be supported by the
+size of some of the "ancient garden-beds," often covering more than a
+hundred acres, filled with the low parallel ridges in which corn was
+planted. The mound people were thus supposed to be semi-civilized red
+men, like the Aztecs, and some of their elevated earthworks were
+explained as places for human sacrifice, like the pyramids of Mexico and
+Central America. It was thought that the "civilization" of the
+Cordilleran peoples might formerly have extended northward and eastward
+into the Mississippi valley, and might after a while have been pushed
+back by powerful hordes of more barbarous invaders. A further
+modification and reduction of this theory likened the mound-builders to
+the pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Such was the opinion of Mr. Morgan,
+who offered a very ingenious explanation of the extensive earthworks at
+High Bank, in Ross county, Ohio, as the fortified site of a pueblo.[156]
+Although there is no reason for supposing that the mound-builders
+practised irrigation (which would not be required in the Mississippi
+valley) or used adobe-brick, yet Mr. Morgan was inclined to admit them
+into his middle status of barbarism because of the copper hatchets and
+chisels found in some of the mounds, and because of the apparent
+superiority in horticulture and the increased reliance upon it. He
+suggested that a people somewhat like the Zuñis might have migrated
+eastward and modified their building habits to suit the altered
+conditions of the Mississippi valley, where they dwelt for several
+centuries, until at last, for some unknown reason, they retired to the
+Rocky Mountain region. It seems to me that an opinion just the reverse
+of Mr. Morgan's would be more easily defensible,--namely, that the
+ancestors of the pueblo Indians were a people of building habits
+somewhat similar to the Mandans, and that their habits became modified
+in adaptation to a country which demanded careful irrigation and
+supplied adobe-clay in abundance. If ever they built any of the mounds
+in the Mississippi valley, I should be disposed to place their
+mound-building period before their pueblo period.
+
+         [Footnote 155: For original researches in the mounds one cannot
+         do better than consult the following papers in the _Reports of
+         the Bureau of Ethnology_:--1. by W. H. Holmes, "Art in Shell of
+         the Ancient Americans," ii. 181-305; "The Ancient Pottery of
+         the Mississippi Valley," iv. 365-436; "Prehistoric Textile
+         Fabrics of the United States," iii. 397-431; followed by an
+         illustrated catalogue of objects collected chiefly from mounds,
+         iii. 433-515;--2. H. W. Henshaw, "Animal Carvings from the
+         Mounds of the Mississippi Valley," ii. 121-166;--3. Cyrus
+         Thomas, "Burial Mounds of the Northern Section of the United
+         States," v. 7-119; also three of the Bureau's "Bulletins" by
+         Dr. Thomas, "The Problem of the Ohio Mounds," "The Circular,
+         Square, and Octagonal Earthworks of Ohio," and "Work in Mound
+         Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology;" also two articles by
+         Dr. Thomas in the _Magazine of American History_:--"The Houses
+         of the Mound-Builders," xi. 110-115; "Indian Tribes in
+         Prehistoric Times," xx. 193-201. See also Horatio Hale, "Indian
+         Migrations," in _American Antiquarian_, v. 18-28, 108-124; M.
+         F. Force, _To What Race did the Mound-Builders belong?_
+         Cincinnati, 1875; Lucien Carr, _Mounds of the Mississippi
+         Valley historically considered_, 1883; Nadaillac's _Prehistoric
+         America_, ed. W. H. Dall, chaps. iii., iv. The earliest work of
+         fundamental importance on the subject was Squier's _Ancient
+         Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, Philadelphia, 1848, being
+         the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to
+         Knowledge.--For statements of the theory which presumes either
+         a race connection or a similarity in culture between the
+         mound-builders and the pueblo Indians, see Dawson, _Fossil
+         Men_, p. 55; Foster, _Prehistoric Races of the United States_,
+         Chicago, 1873, chaps. iii., v.-x.; Sir Daniel Wilson,
+         _Prehistoric Man_, chap. x. The annual _Smithsonian Reports_
+         for thirty years past illustrate the growth of knowledge and
+         progressive changes of opinion on the subject. The
+         bibliographical account in Winsor's _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i.
+         397-412, is full of minute information.]
+
+         [Footnote 156: _Houses and House-Life_, chap. ix.]
+
+[Sidenote: The mounds were probably built by different peoples in the
+lower status of barbarism;]
+
+[Sidenote: by Cherokees;]
+
+[Sidenote: and by Shawnees, and other tribes.]
+
+Recent researches, however, make it more and more improbable that the
+mound-builders were nearly akin to such people as the Zuñis or similar
+to them in grade of culture. Of late years the exploration of the
+mounds has been carried on with increasing diligence. More than 2,000
+mounds have been opened, and at least 38,000 ancient relics have been
+gathered from them: such as quartzite arrow-heads and spades, greenstone
+axes and hammers, mortars and pestles, tools for spinning and weaving,
+and cloth, made of spun thread and woven with warp and woof, somewhat
+like a coarse sail-cloth. The water-jugs, kettles, pipes, and sepulchral
+urns have been elaborately studied. The net results of all this
+investigation, up to the present time, have been concisely summed up by
+Dr. Cyrus Thomas.[157] The mounds were not all built by one people, but
+by different tribes as clearly distinguishable from one another as
+Algonquins are distinguishable from Iroquois. These mound-building
+tribes were not superior in culture to the Iroquois and many of the
+Algonquins as first seen by white men. They are not to be classified
+with Zuñis, still less with Mexicans or Mayas, in point of culture, but
+with Shawnees and Cherokees. Nay more,--some of them _were_ Shawnees and
+Cherokees. The missionary Johann Heckewelder long ago published the
+Lenape tradition of the Tallegwi or Allighewi people, who have left
+their name upon the Alleghany river and mountains.[158] The Tallegwi
+have been identified with the Cherokees, who are now reckoned among the
+most intelligent and progressive of Indian peoples.[159] The Cherokees
+were formerly classed in the Muskoki group, along with the Creeks and
+Choctaws, but a closer study of their language seems to show that they
+were a somewhat remote offshoot of the Huron-Iroquois stock. For a long
+time they occupied the country between the Ohio river and the Great
+Lakes, and probably built the mounds that are still to be seen there.
+Somewhere about the thirteenth or fourteenth century they were gradually
+pushed southward into the Muskoki region by repeated attacks from the
+Lenape and Hurons. The Cherokees were probably also the builders of the
+mounds of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. They retained
+their mound-building habits some time after the white men came upon the
+scene. On the other hand the mounds and box-shaped stone graves of
+Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Georgia were probably the work of
+Shawnees, and the stone graves in the Delaware valley are to be ascribed
+to the Lenape. There are many reasons for believing that the mounds of
+northern Mississippi were constructed by Chickasaws, and the burial
+tumuli and "effigy mounds" of Wisconsin by Winnebagos. The Minnitarees
+and Mandans were also very likely at one time a mound-building people.
+
+         [Footnote 157: _Work in Mound Exploration of the Bureau of
+         Ethnology_, Washington, 1887. For a sight of the thousands of
+         objects gathered from the mounds, one should visit the Peabody
+         Museum at Cambridge and the Smithsonian Institution at
+         Washington.]
+
+         [Footnote 158: Heckewelder, _History of the Indian Nations of
+         Pennsylvania_, etc., Philadelphia, 1818; cf. Squier,
+         _Historical and Mythological Traditions of the Algonquins_, a
+         paper read before the New York Historical Society in June,
+         1848; also Brinton, _The Lenape and their Legends_,
+         Philadelphia, 1885.]
+
+         [Footnote 159: For a detailed account of their later history,
+         see C. C. Royce, "The Cherokee Nation," _Reports of Bureau of
+         Ethnology_, v. 121-378.]
+
+If this view, which is steadily gaining ground, be correct, our
+imaginary race of "Mound-Builders" is broken up and vanishes, and
+henceforth we may content ourselves with speaking of the authors of the
+ancient earthworks as "Indians." There were times in the career of
+sundry Indian tribes when circumstances induced them to erect mounds as
+sites for communal houses or council houses, medicine-lodges or
+burial-places; somewhat as there was a period in the history of our own
+forefathers in England when circumstances led them to build moated
+castles, with drawbridge and portcullis; and there is no more occasion
+for assuming a mysterious race of "Mound-Builders" in America than for
+assuming a mysterious race of "Castle-Builders" in England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Society in America at the time of the Discovery had reached
+stages similar to stages reached by eastern Mediterranean peoples fifty
+or sixty centuries earlier.]
+
+Thus, at whatever point we touch the subject of ancient America, we
+find scientific opinion tending more and more steadily toward the
+conclusion that its people and their culture were indigenous. One of the
+most important lessons impressed upon us by a long study of comparative
+mythology is that human minds in different parts of the world, but under
+the influence of similar circumstances, develop similar ideas and clothe
+them in similar forms of expression. It is just the same with political
+institutions, with the development of the arts, with social customs,
+with culture generally. To repeat the remark already quoted from Sir
+John Lubbock,--and it is well worth repeating,--"Different races in
+similar stages of development often present more features of resemblance
+to one another than the same race does to itself in different stages of
+its history." When the zealous Abbé Brasseur found things in the history
+of Mexico that reminded him of ancient Egypt, he hastened to the
+conclusion that Mexican culture was somehow "derived" from that of
+Egypt. It was natural enough for him to do so, but such methods of
+explanation are now completely antiquated. Mexican culture was no more
+Egyptian culture than a prickly-pear is a lotus. It was an outgrowth of
+peculiar American conditions acting upon the aboriginal American mind,
+and such of its features as remind us of ancient Egypt or prehistoric
+Greece show simply that it was approaching, though it had not reached,
+the standard attained in those Old World countries. From this point of
+view the resemblances become invested with surpassing interest. Ancient
+America, as we have seen, was a much more archaic world than the world
+of Europe and Asia, and presented in the time of Columbus forms of
+society that on the shores of the Mediterranean had been outgrown before
+the city of Rome was built. Hence the intense and peculiar fascination
+of American archæology, and its profound importance to the student of
+general history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+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 assure us that, after all,
+Fusang was really Japan, 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
+Japanese junks have been driven ashore 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 _Mémoires
+         de l'Académie 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 série,
+         tom. xxi. pp. 58-68; see also Klaproth's introduction to
+         _Annales des empereurs du Japon_, Paris, 1834, pp. iv.-ix.;
+         Humboldt, _Examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie 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 noble 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 passion 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, Færoes, and
+         Iceland, where a colony of them remained until the arrival of
+         the Northmen in 874. See Dicuil, _Liber de mensura Orbis Terræ_
+         (A. D. 825), Paris, 1807; Innes, _Scotland in the Middle Ages_,
+         p. 101; Lanigan, _Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, chap.
+         iii.; Maurer, _Beiträge 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, _Mémoires chronologiques pour
+         servir à l'histoire de Dieppe_, Paris, 1785, tom. i. pp. 91-98;
+         Estancelin, _Recherches sur les voyages et découvertes 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 João Ramalho en 1490, et de João Vaz
+         Cortereal en 1464 ou 1474, le lecteur nous pardonnera de les
+         passer 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 vassals. 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, god 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
+Færoes, and especially noble 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
+Massachusetts 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, butter, 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 "Landnáma-bók," 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 classical
+         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 nêse saleuomenê
+            Enthade gar basilêos hyperbion hybrin alyxas
+              Dêmos Hyperboreôn, kosmou ep' eschatiê,
+            Autarkê bioton theiôn t' erethismata Mousôn
+              Kai thesmous hagnês 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 Gunnbjörn was driven by foul weather to some point on the
+coast of Greenland, where he and his crew contrived to pass 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 Öxney
+(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 Gunnbjörn 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 grassy plain may still be seen the ruins of seventeen houses
+built of rough blocks of sandstone, their chinks 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 Godthaab. The older settlement,
+which began at Igaliko fiord, was known as the East Bygd;[180] the
+younger settlement, near Godthaab, was called the West Bygd.
+
+         [Footnote 177: A full collection of these chronicles is given
+         in Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanæ_, 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 Jónsson, in his
+         _Crymogoea_, Hamburg, 1610, and more explicitly in his
+         _Specimen Islandiæ historicum_, 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 Torfæus,
+         in his two books _Historia Vinlandiæ antiquæ_, and _Historia
+         Gronlandiæ antiquæ_, Copenhagen, 1705 and 1706. Later writers
+         have until very recently added but little that is important to
+         the work of Torfæus. 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 _Aarbøger 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 _Mémoires de la société 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-bók_, the MS. AM. 557,
+         and the _Flateyar-bók_, 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 illustrious 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'état thermométrique 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
+         Americanæ_, 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 Nicolò 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 shore of the fiord and the
+         small lake indicated on the map.]
+
+[Illustration: The East Bygd, or Eastern Settlement of the Northmen in
+Greenland.]
+
+This colonization of Greenland by the Northmen in the tenth century is
+as well established as any event that occurred in the Middle Ages. For
+four hundred years the fortunes of the Greenland colony formed a part,
+albeit a very humble part, of European history. Geographically speaking,
+Greenland is reckoned as a part of America, of the western
+hemisphere, and not of the eastern. The Northmen who settled in
+Greenland had, therefore, in this sense found their way to America.
+Nevertheless one rightly feels that in the history of geographical
+discovery an arrival of Europeans in Greenland is equivalent merely to
+reaching the vestibule or ante-chamber of the western hemisphere. It is
+an affair begun and ended outside of the great world of the red men.
+
+But the story does not end here. Into the world of the red men the
+voyagers from Iceland did assuredly come, as indeed, after once getting
+a foothold upon Greenland, they could hardly fail to do. Let us pursue
+the remainder of the story as we find it in our Icelandic sources of
+information, and afterwards it will be proper to inquire into the
+credibility of these sources.
+
+[Sidenote: Voyage of Bjarni Herjulfson, 986.]
+
+One of the men who accompanied Eric to Greenland was named Herjulf,
+whose son Bjarni, after roving the seas for some years, came home to
+Iceland in 986 to drink the Yuletide ale with his father. Finding him
+gone, he weighed anchor and started after him to Greenland, but
+encountered foggy weather, and sailed on for many days by guess-work
+without seeing sun or stars. When at length he sighted land it was a
+shore without mountains, showing only small heights covered with dense
+woods. It was evidently not the land of fiords and glaciers for which
+Bjarni was looking. So without stopping to make explorations he turned
+his prow to the north and kept on. The sky was now fair, and after
+scudding nine or ten days with a brisk breeze astern, Bjarni saw the
+icy crags of Greenland looming up before him, and after some further
+searching found his way to his father's new home.[181] On the route he
+more than once sighted land on the larboard.
+
+         [Footnote 181: In Herjulfsfiord, at the entrance to which the
+         modern Friedrichsthal is situated. Across the fiord from
+         Friedrichsthal a ruined church stands upon the cape formerly
+         known as Herjulfsness. See map.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conversion of the Northmen to Christianity.]
+
+This adventure of Bjarni's seems not to have excited general curiosity
+or to have awakened speculation. Indeed, in the dense geographical
+ignorance of those times there is no reason why it should have done so.
+About 994 Bjarni was in Norway, and one or two people expressed some
+surprise that he did not take more pains to learn something about the
+country he had seen; but nothing came of such talk till it reached the
+ears of Leif, the famous son of Eric the Red. This wise and stately
+man[182] spent a year or two in Norway about 998. Roman missionary
+priests were then preaching up and down the land, and had converted the
+king, Olaf Tryggvesson, great-grandson of Harold Fairhair. Leif became a
+Christian and was baptised, and when he returned to Greenland he took
+priests with him who converted many people, though old Eric, it is said,
+preferred to go in the way of his fathers, and deemed boisterous
+Valhalla, with its cups of wassail, a place of better cheer than the New
+Jerusalem, with its streets of gold.
+
+         [Footnote 182: "Leifr var mikill madhr ok sterkr, manna
+         sköruligastr at sjá, vitr madhr ok gódhr hófsmadhr um alla
+         hluti," i. e. "Leif was a large man and strong, of noble
+         aspect, prudent and moderate in all things." Rafn, p. 33.]
+
+[Sidenote: Leif Ericsson's voyage, 1000.]
+
+[Sidenote: Helluland.]
+
+[Sidenote: Markland.]
+
+[Sidenote: Vinland.]
+
+Leif's zeal for the conversion of his friends in Greenland did not so
+far occupy his mind as to prevent him from undertaking a voyage of
+discovery. His curiosity had been stimulated by what he had heard about
+Bjarni's experiences, and he made up his mind to go and see what the
+coasts to the south of Greenland were like. He sailed from
+Brattahlid--probably in the summer or early autumn of the year
+1000[183]--with a crew of five and thirty men. Some distance to the
+southward they came upon a barren country covered with big flat stones,
+so that they called it Helluland, or "slate-land." There is little room
+for doubt that this was the coast opposite Greenland, either west or
+east of the strait of Belle Isle; in other words, it was either Labrador
+or the northern coast of Newfoundland. Thence, keeping generally to the
+southward, our explorers came after some days to a thickly wooded coast,
+where they landed and inspected the country. What chiefly impressed them
+was the extent of the forest, so that they called the place Markland, or
+"wood-land." Some critics have supposed that this spot was somewhere
+upon the eastern or southern coast of Newfoundland, but the more general
+opinion places it somewhere upon the coast of Cape Breton island or
+Nova Scotia. From this Markland our voyagers stood out to sea, and
+running briskly before a stiff northeaster it was more than two days
+before they came in sight of land. Then, after following the coast for a
+while, they went ashore at a place where a river, issuing from a lake,
+fell into the sea. They brought their ship up into the lake and cast
+anchor. The water abounded in excellent fish, and the country seemed so
+pleasant that Leif decided to pass the winter there, and accordingly his
+men put up some comfortable wooden huts or booths. One day one of the
+party, a "south country" man, whose name was Tyrker,[184] came in from a
+ramble in the neighbourhood making grimaces and talking to himself in
+his own language (probably German), which his comrades did not
+understand. On being interrogated as to the cause of his excitement,
+he replied that he had discovered vines loaded with grapes, and was much
+pleased at the sight inasmuch as he had been brought up in a vine
+country. Wild grapes, indeed, abounded in this autumn season, and Leif
+accordingly called the country Vinland. The winter seems to have passed
+off very comfortably. Even the weather seemed mild to these visitors
+from high latitudes, and they did not fail to comment on the unusual
+length of the winter day. Their language on this point has been so
+construed as to make the length of the shortest winter day exactly nine
+hours, which would place their Vinland in about the latitude of Boston.
+But their expressions do not admit of any such precise construction; and
+when we remember that they had no accurate instruments for measuring
+time, and that a difference of about fourteen minutes between sunrise
+and sunset on the shortest winter day would make all the difference
+between Boston and Halifax, we see how idle it is to look for the
+requisite precision in narratives of this sort, and to treat them as one
+would treat the reports of a modern scientific exploring expedition.
+
+         [Footnote 183: The year seems to have been that in which
+         Christianity was definitely established by law in Iceland,
+         viz., A. D. 1000. The chronicle _Thattr Eireks Raudha_ is
+         careful about verifying its dates by checking one against
+         another. See Rafn, p. 15. The most masterly work on the
+         conversion of the Scandinavian people is Maurer's _Die
+         Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume_, Munich,
+         1855; for an account of the missionary work in Iceland and
+         Greenland, see vol. i. pp. 191-242, 443-452.]
+
+         [Footnote 184: The name means "Turk," and has served as a
+         touchstone for the dullness of commentators. To the Northmen a
+         "Southman" would naturally be a German, and why should a German
+         be called a Turk? or how should these Northmen happen to have
+         had a Turk in their company? Mr. Laing suggests that he may
+         have been a Magyar. Yes; or he may have visited the Eastern
+         Empire and taken part in a fight _against_ Turks, and so have
+         got a soubriquet, just as Thorhall Gamlason, after returning
+         from Vinland to Iceland, was ever afterward known as "the
+         Vinlander." That did not mean that he was an American redskin.
+         See below, p. 203. From Tyrker's grimaces one commentator
+         sagely infers that he had been eating grapes and got drunk; and
+         another (even Mr. Laing!) thinks it necessary to remind us that
+         all the grape-juice in Vinland would not fuddle a man unless it
+         had been fermented,--and then goes on to ascribe the absurdity
+         to our innocent chronicle, instead of the stupid annotator. See
+         _Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 168.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyages of Thorvald and Thorstein, 1002-05.]
+
+In the spring of 1001 Leif returned to Greenland with a cargo of
+timber.[185] The voyage made much talk. Leif's brother Thorvald caught
+the inspiration,[186] and, borrowing Leif's ship, sailed in 1002, and
+succeeded in finding Vinland and Leif's huts, where his men spent two
+winters. In the intervening summer they went on an exploring expedition
+along the coast, fell in with some savages in canoes, and got into a
+fight in which Thorvald was killed by an arrow. In the spring of 1004
+the ship returned to Brattahlid. Next year the third brother, Thorstein
+Ericsson, set out in the same ship, with his wife Gudrid and a crew of
+thirty-five men; but they were sore bestead with foul weather, got
+nowhere, and accomplished nothing. Thorstein died on the voyage, and his
+widow returned to Greenland.
+
+         [Footnote 185: On the homeward voyage he rescued some
+         shipwrecked sailors near the coast of Greenland, and was
+         thenceforward called Leif the Lucky (et postea cognominatus est
+         Leivus Fortunatus). The pleasant reports from the newly found
+         country gave it the name of "Vinland the Good." In the course
+         of the winter following Leif's return his father died.]
+
+         [Footnote 186: "Jam crebri de Leivi in Vinlandiam profectione
+         sermones serebantur, Thorvaldus vero, frater ejus, nimis pauca
+         terræ loca explorata fuisse judicavit." Rafn, p. 39.]
+
+[Sidenote: Thorfinn Karlsefni, and his unsuccessful attempt to found a
+colony in Vinland, 1007-10.]
+
+In the course of the next summer, 1006, there came to Brattahlid from
+Iceland a notable personage, a man of craft and resource, wealthy withal
+and well born, with the blood of many kinglets or jarls flowing in his
+veins. This man, Thorfinn Karlsefni, straightway fell in love with the
+young and beautiful widow Gudrid, and in the course of the winter there
+was a merry wedding at Brattahlid. Persuaded by his adventurous bride,
+whose spirit had been roused by the reports from Vinland and by her
+former unsuccessful attempt to find it, Thorfinn now undertook to visit
+that country in force sufficient for founding a colony there.
+Accordingly in the spring of 1007 he started with three or four
+ships,[187] carrying one hundred and sixty men, several women, and quite
+a cargo of cattle. In the course of that year his son Snorro was born in
+Vinland,[188] and our chronicle tells us that this child was three years
+old before the disappointed company turned their backs upon that land of
+promise and were fain to make their way homeward to the fiords of
+Greenland. It was the hostility of the natives that compelled Thorfinn
+to abandon his enterprise. At first they traded with him, bartering
+valuable furs for little strips of scarlet cloth which they sought most
+eagerly; and they were as terribly frightened by his cattle as the
+Aztecs were in later days by the Spanish horses.[189] The chance
+bellowing of a bull sent them squalling to the woods, and they did not
+show themselves again for three weeks. After a while quarrels arose, the
+natives attacked in great numbers, many Northmen were killed, and in
+1010 the survivors returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber and
+peltries. On the way thither the ships seem to have separated, and one
+of them, commanded by Bjarni Grimolfsson, found itself bored by worms
+(the _teredo_) and sank, with its commander and half the crew.[190]
+
+         [Footnote 187: Three is the number usually given, but at least
+         four of their ships would be needed for so large a company; and
+         besides Thorfinn himself, three other captains are
+         mentioned,--Snorro Thorbrandsson, Bjarni Grimolfsson, and
+         Thorhall Gamlason. The narrative gives a picturesque account of
+         this Thorhall, who was a pagan and fond of deriding his
+         comrades for their belief in the new-fangled Christian notions.
+         He seems to have left his comrades and returned to Europe
+         before they had abandoned their enterprise. A further reference
+         to him will be made below, p. 203.]
+
+         [Footnote 188: To this boy Snorro many eminent men have traced
+         their ancestry,--bishops, university professors, governors of
+         Iceland, and ministers of state in Norway and Denmark. The
+         learned antiquarian Finn Magnusson and the celebrated sculptor
+         Thorwaldsen regarded themselves as thus descended from Thorfinn
+         Karlsefni.]
+
+         [Footnote 189: Compare the alarm of the Wampanoag Indians in
+         1603 at the sight of Martin Pring's mastiff. Winsor, _Narr. and
+         Crit. Hist._, iii. 174.]
+
+         [Footnote 190: The fate of Bjarni was pathetic and noble. It
+         was decided that as many as possible should save themselves in
+         the stern boat. "Then Bjarni ordered that the men should go in
+         the boat by lot, and not according to rank. As it would not
+         hold all, they accepted the saying, and when the lots were
+         drawn, the men went out of the ship into the boat. The lot was
+         that Bjarni should go down from the ship to the boat with one
+         half of the men. Then those to whom the lot fell went down from
+         the ship to the boat. When they had come into the boat, a young
+         Icelander, who was the companion of Bjarni, said: 'Now thus do
+         you intend to leave me, Bjarni?' Bjarni replied, 'That now
+         seems necessary.' He replied with these words: 'Thou art not
+         true to the promise made when I left my father's house in
+         Iceland.' Bjarni replied: 'In this thing I do not see any other
+         way'; continuing, 'What course can you suggest?' He said: 'I
+         see this, that we change places and thou come up here and I go
+         down there.' Bjarni replied: 'Let it be so, since I see that
+         you are so anxious to live, and are frightened by the prospect
+         of death.' Then they changed places, and he descended into the
+         boat with the men, and Bjarni went up into the ship. It is
+         related that Bjarni and the sailors with him in the ship
+         perished in the worm sea. Those who went in the boat went on
+         their course until they came to land, where they told all these
+         things." De Costa's version from _Saga Thorfinns Karlsefnis_,
+         Rafn, pp. 184-186.]
+
+[Sidenote: Freydis, and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1011-12.]
+
+Among Karlsefni's companions on this memorable expedition was one
+Thorvard, with his wife Freydis, a natural daughter of Eric the Red.
+About the time of their return to Greenland in the summer of 1010, a
+ship arrived from Norway, commanded by two brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi.
+During the winter a new expedition was planned, and in the summer of
+1011 two ships set sail for Vinland, one with Freydis, Thorvard, and a
+crew of 30 men, the other with Helgi and Finnbogi, and a crew of 35 men.
+There were also a number of women. The purpose was not to found a colony
+but to cut timber. The brothers arrived first at Leif's huts and had
+begun carrying in their provisions and tools, when Freydis, arriving
+soon afterward, ordered them off the premises. They had no right, she
+said, to occupy her brother's houses. So they went out and built other
+huts for their party a little farther from the shore. Before their
+business was accomplished "winter set in, and the brothers proposed to
+have some games for amusement to pass the time. So it was done for a
+time, till discord came among them, and the games were given up, and
+none went from one house to the other; and things went on so during a
+great part of the winter." At length came the catastrophe. Freydis one
+night complained to her husband that the brothers had given her evil
+words and struck her, and insisted that he should forthwith avenge the
+affront. Presently Thorvard, unable to bear her taunts, was aroused to a
+deed of blood. With his followers he made a night attack upon the huts
+of Helgi and Finnbogi, seized and bound all the occupants, and killed
+the men one after another in cold blood. Five women were left whom
+Thorvard would have spared; as none of his men would raise a hand
+against them, Freydis herself took an axe and brained them one and all.
+In the spring of 1012 the party sailed for Brattahlid in the ship of
+the murdered brothers, which was the larger and better of the two.
+Freydis pretended that they had exchanged ships and left the other party
+in Vinland. With gifts to her men, and dire threats for any who should
+dare tell what had been done, she hoped to keep them silent. Words were
+let drop, however, which came to Leif's ears, and led him to arrest
+three of the men and put them to the torture until they told the whole
+story. "'I have not the heart,' said Leif, 'to treat my wicked sister as
+she deserves; but this I will foretell them [Freydis and Thorvard] that
+their posterity will never thrive.' So it went that nobody thought
+anything of them save evil from that time."
+
+[Sidenote: The whole story is eminently probable.]
+
+With this grewsome tale ends all account of Norse attempts at exploring
+or colonizing Vinland, though references to Vinland by no means end
+here.[191] Taking the narrative as a whole, it seems to me a sober,
+straightforward, and eminently probable story. We may not be able to say
+with confidence exactly where such places as Markland and Vinland were,
+but it is clear that the coasts visited on these southerly and
+southwesterly voyages from Brattahlid must have been parts of the coast
+of North America, unless the whole story is to be dismissed as a figment
+of somebody's imagination. But for a figment of the imagination, and of
+European imagination withal, it has far too many points of
+verisimilitude, as I shall presently show.
+
+         [Footnote 191: The stories of Gudleif Gudlaugsson and Ari
+         Marsson, with the fanciful speculations about "Hvitramannaland"
+         and "Irland it Mikla," do not seem worthy of notice in this
+         connection. They may be found in De Costa, _op. cit._ pp.
+         159-177; and see Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_,
+         chap. v.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyage into Baffin's Bay, 1135.]
+
+In the first place, it is an extremely probable story from the time that
+Eric once gets settled in Brattahlid. The founding of the Greenland
+colony is the only strange or improbable part of the narrative, but that
+is corroborated in so many other ways that we know it to be true; as
+already observed, no fact in mediæval history is better established.
+When I speak of the settlement of Greenland as strange, I do not mean
+that there is anything strange in the Northmen's accomplishing the
+voyage thither from Iceland. That island is nearer to Greenland than to
+Norway, and we know, moreover, that Norse sailors achieved more
+difficult things than penetrating the fiords of southern Greenland. Upon
+the island of Kingitorsook in Baffin's Bay (72° 55' N., 56° 5' W.) near
+Upernavik, in a region supposed to have been unvisited by man before the
+modern age of Arctic exploration, there were found in 1824 some small
+artificial mounds with an inscription upon stone:--"Erling Sighvatson
+and Bjarni Thordharson and Eindrid Oddson raised these marks and cleared
+ground on Saturday before Ascension Week, 1135." That is to say, they
+took symbolic possession of the land.[192]
+
+         [Footnote 192: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 152.]
+
+[Sidenote: A Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord, in Norway.]
+
+In order to appreciate how such daring voyages were practicable, we must
+bear in mind that the Viking "ships" were probably stronger and more
+seaworthy, and certainly much swifter, than the Spanish vessels of the
+time of Columbus. One was unearthed a few years ago at Sandefiord in
+Norway, and may be seen at the museum in Christiania. Its pagan owner
+had been buried in it, and his bones were found amidships, along with
+the bones of a dog and a peacock, a few iron fish-hooks and other
+articles. Bones of horses and dogs, probably sacrificed at the funeral
+according to the ancient Norse custom, lay scattered about. This craft
+has been so well described by Colonel Higginson,[193] that I may as well
+quote the passage in full:--
+
+         [Footnote 193: See his _Larger History of the United States_,
+         pp. 32-34.]
+
+[Sidenote: Description of the ship.]
+
+She "was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the greatest length, and
+sixteen feet eleven inches at the greatest width, and from the top of
+the keel to the gunwale amidships she was five feet nine inches deep.
+She had twenty ribs, and would draw less than four feet of water. She
+was clinker-built; that is, had plates slightly overlapped, like the
+shingles on the side of a house. The planks and timbers of the frame
+were fastened together with withes made of roots, but the oaken boards
+of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. The bow and
+stern were similar in shape, and must have risen high out of water, but
+were so broken that it was impossible to tell how they originally ended.
+The keel was deep and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace of
+any metallic sheathing; but an iron anchor was found almost rusted to
+pieces. There was no deck and the seats for rowers had been taken out.
+The oars were twenty feet long, and the oar-holes, sixteen on each side,
+had slits sloping towards the stern to allow the blades of the oars to
+be put through from inside. The most peculiar thing about the ship was
+the rudder, which was on the starboard or right side, this side being
+originally called 'steerboard' from this circumstance. The rudder was
+like a large oar, with long blade and short handle, and was attached,
+not to the side of the boat, but to the end of a conical piece of wood
+which projected almost a foot from the side of the vessel, and almost
+two feet from the stern. This piece of wood was bored down its length,
+and no doubt a rope passing through it secured the rudder to the ship's
+side. It was steered by a tiller attached to the handle, and perhaps
+also by a rope fastened to the blade. As a whole, this disinterred
+vessel proved to be anything but the rude and primitive craft which
+might have been expected; it was neatly built and well preserved,
+constructed on what a sailor would call beautiful lines, and eminently
+fitted for sea service. Many such vessels may be found depicted on the
+celebrated Bayeux tapestry; and the peculiar position of the rudder
+explains the treaty mentioned in the Heimskringla, giving to Norway all
+lands lying west of Scotland between which and the mainland a vessel
+could pass with her rudder shipped.... This was not one of the very
+largest ships, for some of them had thirty oars on each side, and
+vessels carrying from twenty to twenty-five were not uncommon. The
+largest of these were called Dragons, and other sizes were known as
+Serpents or Cranes. The ship itself was often so built as to represent
+the name it bore: the dragon, for instance, was a long low vessel, with
+the gilded head of a dragon at the bow, and the gilded tail at the
+stern; the moving oars at the side might represent the legs of the
+imaginary creature, the row of shining red and white shields that were
+hung over the gunwale looked like the monster's scales, and the sails
+striped with red and blue might suggest his wings. The ship preserved at
+Christiania is described as having had but a single mast, set into a
+block of wood so large that it is said no such block could now be cut in
+Norway. Probably the sail was much like those still carried by large
+open boats in that country,--a single square on a mast forty feet
+long.[194] These masts have no standing rigging, and are taken down when
+not in use; and this was probably the practice of the Vikings."
+
+         [Footnote 194: Perhaps it may have been a square-headed lug,
+         like those of the Deal galley-punts; see Leslie's _Old Sea
+         Wings, Ways, and Words, in the Days of Oak and Hemp_, London,
+         1890, p. 21.]
+
+[Sidenote: The climate of Greenland.]
+
+In such vessels, well stocked with food and weapons, the Northmen were
+accustomed to spend many weeks together on the sea, now and then
+touching land. In such vessels they made their way to Algiers and
+Constantinople, to the White Sea, to Baffin's Bay. It is not, therefore,
+their voyage to Greenland that seems strange, but it is their success in
+founding a colony which could last for more than four centuries in that
+inhospitable climate. The question is sometimes asked whether the
+climate of Greenland may not have undergone some change within the last
+thousand years.[195] If there has been any change, it must have been
+very slight; such as, perhaps, a small variation in the flow of ocean
+currents might occasion. I am inclined to believe that there may have
+been such a change, from the testimony of Ivar Bardsen, steward of the
+Gardar bishopric in the latter half of the fourteenth century, or about
+halfway between the time of Eric the Red and our own time. According to
+Bardsen there had long been a downward drifting of ice from the north
+and a consequent accumulation of bergs and floes upon the eastern coast
+of Greenland, insomuch that the customary route formerly followed by
+ships coming from Iceland was no longer safe, and a more southerly route
+had been generally adopted.[196] This slow southward extension of the
+polar ice-sheet upon the east of Greenland seems still to be going on at
+the present day.[197] It is therefore not at all improbable, but on the
+contrary quite probable, that a thousand years ago the mean annual
+temperature of the tip end of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, was a few
+degrees higher than now.[198] But a slight difference of this sort
+might have an important bearing upon the fortunes of a colony planted
+there. For example, it would directly affect the extent of the hay crop.
+Grass grows very well now in the neighbourhood of Julianeshaab. In
+summer it is still a "green land," with good pasturage for cattle, but
+there is difficulty in getting hay enough to last through the nine
+months of winter. In 1855 "there were in Greenland 30 to 40 head of
+horned cattle, about 100 goats, and 20 sheep;" but in the ancient
+colony, with a population not exceeding 6,000 persons, "herds of cattle
+were kept which even yielded produce for exportation to Europe."[199] So
+strong a contrast seems to indicate a much more plentiful grass crop
+than to-day, although some hay might perhaps have been imported from
+Iceland in exchange for Greenland exports, which were chiefly whale oil,
+eider-down, and skins of seals, foxes, and white bears.
+
+         [Footnote 195: Some people must have queer notions about the
+         lapse of past time. I have more than once had this question put
+         to me in such a way as to show that what the querist really had
+         in mind was some vague impression of the time when oaks and
+         chestnuts, vines and magnolias, grew luxuriantly over a great
+         part of Greenland! But that was in the Miocene period, probably
+         not less than a million years ago, and has no obvious bearing
+         upon the deeds of Eric the Red.]
+
+         [Footnote 196: Bardsen, _Descriptio Groenlandiæ_, appended to
+         Major's _Voyages of the Venetian Brothers_, etc., pp. 40, 41;
+         and see below, p. 242.]
+
+         [Footnote 197: Zahrtmann, _Journal of Royal Geographical
+         Society_, London, 1836, vol. v. p. 102. On this general subject
+         see J. D. Whitney, "The Climate Changes of Later Geological
+         Times," in _Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at
+         Harvard College_, Cambridge, 1882, vol. vii. According to
+         Professor Whitney there has also been a deterioration in the
+         climate of Iceland.]
+
+         [Footnote 198: One must not too hastily infer that the mean
+         temperature of points on the American coast south of Davis
+         strait would be affected in the same way. The relation between
+         the phenomena is not quite so simple. For example, a warm early
+         spring on the coast of Greenland increases the discharge of
+         icebergs from its fiords to wander down the Atlantic ocean; and
+         this increase of floating ice tends to chill and dampen the
+         summers at least as far South as Long Island, if not farther.]
+
+         [Footnote 199: Rink's _Danish Greenland_, pp. 27, 96, 97.]
+
+[Sidenote: With the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery of the
+American continent was almost inevitable.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyages for timber.]
+
+When once the Northmen had found their way to Cape Farewell, it would
+have been marvellous if such active sailors could long have avoided
+stumbling upon the continent of North America. Without compass or
+astrolabe these daring men were accustomed to traverse long stretches of
+open sea, trusting to the stars; and it needed only a stiff
+northeasterly breeze, with persistent clouds and fog, to land a westward
+bound "dragon" anywhere from Cape Race to Cape Cod. This is what appears
+to have happened to Bjarni Herjulfsson in 986, and something quite like
+it happened to Henry Hudson in 1609.[200] Curiosity is a motive quite
+sufficient to explain Leif's making the easy summer voyage to find out
+what sort of country Bjarni had seen. He found it thickly wooded, and as
+there was a dearth of good timber both in Greenland and in Iceland, it
+would naturally occur to Leif's friends that voyages for timber, to be
+used at home and also to be exported to Iceland, might turn out to be
+profitable.[201] As Laing says, "to go in quest of the wooded countries
+to the southwest, from whence driftwood came to their shores, was a
+reasonable, intelligible motive for making a voyage in search of the
+lands from whence it came, and where this valuable material could be got
+for nothing."[202]
+
+         [Footnote 200: See Read's _Historical Inquiry concerning Henry
+         Hudson_, Albany, 1866, p. 160.]
+
+         [Footnote 201: "Nú tekst umrædha at nýju um Vínlandsferdh,
+         thviat sú ferdh thikir bædhi gódh til fjár ok virdhíngar," i.
+         e. "Now they began to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for
+         the voyage thither was both gainful and honourable." Rafn, p.
+         65.]
+
+         [Footnote 202: _Heimskringla_, i, 168.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ear-marks of truth in the narrative.]
+
+If now we look at the details of the story we shall find many ear-marks
+of truth in it. We must not look for absolute accuracy in a narrative
+which--as we have it--is not the work of Leif or Thorfinn or any of
+their comrades, but of compilers or copyists, honest and careful as it
+seems to me, but liable to misplace details and to call by wrong names
+things which they had never seen. Starting with these modest
+expectations we shall find the points of verisimilitude numerous. To
+begin with the least significant, somewhere on our northeastern coast
+the voyagers found many foxes.[203] These animals, to be sure, are found
+in a great many countries, but the point for us is that in a southerly
+and southwesterly course from Cape Farewell these sailors are said to
+have found them. If our narrators had been drawing upon their
+imaginations or dealing with semi-mythical materials, they would as
+likely as not have lugged into the story elephants from Africa or
+hippogriffs from Dreamland; mediæval writers were blissfully ignorant of
+all canons of probability in such matters.[204] But our narrators simply
+mention an animal which has for ages abounded on our northeastern
+coasts. One such instance is enough to suggest that they were following
+reports or documents which emanated ultimately from eye-witnesses and
+told the plain truth. A dozen such instances, if not neutralized by
+counter-instances, are enough to make this view extremely probable; and
+then one or two instances which could not have originated in the
+imagination of a European writer will suffice to prove it.
+
+         [Footnote 203: "Fjöldi var thar melrakka," i. e. "ibi vulpium
+         magnus numerus erat," Rafn, p. 138.]
+
+         [Footnote 204: It is extremely difficult for an impostor to
+         concoct a narrative without making blunders that can easily be
+         detected by a critical scholar. For example, the Book of
+         Mormon, in the passage cited (see above, p. 3), in supremely
+         blissful ignorance introduces oxen, sheep, and silk-worms, as
+         well as the knowledge of smelting iron, into pre-Columbian
+         America.]
+
+Let us observe, then, that on coming to Markland they "slew a
+bear;"[205] the river and lake (or bay) in Vinland abounded with salmon
+bigger than Leif's people had ever seen;[206] on the coast they caught
+halibut;[207] they came to an island where there were so many eider
+ducks breeding that they could hardly avoid treading on their eggs;[208]
+and, as already observed, it was because of the abundance of wild grapes
+that Leif named the southernmost country he visited Vinland.
+
+         [Footnote 205: "Thar í drápu their einn björn," i. e. "in qua
+         ursum interfecerunt," id. p. 138.]
+
+         [Footnote 206: "Hvorki skorti thar lax í ánni nè í vatninu, ok
+         stærra lax enn their hefdhi fyrr sèdh," i. e. "ibi neque in
+         fluvio neque in lacu deerat salmonum copia, et quidem majoris
+         corporis quam antea vidissent," id. p. 32.]
+
+         [Footnote 207: "Helgir fiskar," i. e. "sacri pisces," id. p.
+         148. The Danish phrase is "helleflyndre," i. e. "holy
+         flounder." The English _halibut_ is _hali_ = _holy_ + _but_ =
+         _flounder_. This word _but_ is classed as Middle English, but
+         may still be heard in the north of England. The fish may have
+         been so called "from being eaten particularly on holy days"
+         (_Century Dict._ s.v.); or possibly from a pagan superstition
+         that water abounding in flat fishes is especially safe for
+         mariners (Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ ix. 70); or possibly from some
+         lost folk-tale about St. Peter (Maurer, _Isländische Volkssagen
+         der Gegenwart_, Leipsic, 1860, p. 195).]
+
+         [Footnote 208: "Svâ var mörg ædhr í eynni, at varla mátti gánga
+         fyri eggjum," i. e. "tantus in insula anatum mollissimarum
+         numerus erat, ut præ ovis transiri fere non posset," id. p.
+         141. Eider ducks breed on our northeastern coasts as far south
+         as Portland, and are sometimes in winter seen as far south as
+         Delaware. They also abound in Greenland and Iceland, and, as
+         Wilson observes, "their nests are crowded so close together
+         that a person can scarcely walk without treading on them....
+         The Icelanders have for ages known the value of eider down, and
+         have done an extensive business in it." See Wilson's _American
+         Ornithology_, vol. iii. p. 50.]
+
+[Sidenote: Northern limit of the vine.]
+
+From the profusion of grapes--such that the ship's stern boat is said on
+one occasion to have been filled with them[209]--we get a clue, though
+less decisive than could be wished, to the location of Vinland. The
+extreme northern limit of the vine in Canada is 47°, the parallel which
+cuts across the tops of Prince Edward and Cape Breton islands on the
+map.[210] Near this northern limit, however, wild grapes are by no means
+plenty; so that the coast upon which Leif wintered must apparently have
+been south of Cape Breton. Dr. Storm, who holds that Vinland was on the
+southern coast of Nova Scotia, has collected some interesting testimony
+as to the growth of wild grapes in that region, but on the whole the
+abundance of this fruit seems rather to point to the shores of
+Massachusetts Bay.[211]
+
+         [Footnote 209:
+            {"Svâ    er sagt  at  eptirbátr theirra var  fylldr
+                                                       af vinberjurn."}
+            {  So it-is-said that afterboat their   was  filled
+                                                       of vine-berries.}
+                                             Rafn, p. 36.]
+
+         [Footnote 210: Storm, "Studies on the Vinland Voyages,"
+         _Mémoires de la société royale des antiquaires du Nord_,
+         Copenhagen, 1888, p. 351. The limit of the vine at this
+         latitude is some distance inland; near the shore the limit is a
+         little farther south, and in Newfoundland it does not grow at
+         all. Id. p. 308.]
+
+         [Footnote 211: The attempt of Dr. Kohl (_Maine Hist. Soc._, New
+         Series, vol. i.) to connect the voyage of Thorfinn with the
+         coast of Maine seems to be successfully refuted by De Costa,
+         _Northmen in Maine_, etc., Albany, 1870.]
+
+[Sidenote: Length of the winter day.]
+
+We may now observe that, while it is idle to attempt to determine
+accurately the length of the winter day, as given in our chronicles,
+nevertheless since that length attracted the attention of the voyagers,
+as something remarkable, it may fairly be supposed to indicate a
+latitude lower than they were accustomed to reach in their trading
+voyages in Europe. Such a latitude as that of Dublin, which lies
+opposite Labrador, would have presented no novelty to them, for voyages
+of Icelanders to their kinsmen in Dublin, and in Rouen as well, were
+common enough. Halifax lies about opposite Bordeaux, and Boston a little
+south of opposite Cape Finisterre, in Spain, so that either of these
+latitudes would satisfy the conditions of the case; either would show a
+longer winter day than Rouen, which was about the southern limit of
+ordinary trading voyages from Iceland. At all events, the length of day
+indicates for Vinland a latitude south of Cape Breton.
+
+[Sidenote: Indian corn.]
+
+The next point to be observed is the mention of "self-sown
+wheat-fields."[212] This is not only an important ear-mark of truth in
+the narrative, but it helps us somewhat further in determining the
+position of Vinland. The "self-sown" cereal, which these Icelanders
+called "wheat," was in all probability what the English settlers six
+hundred years afterward called "corn," in each case applying to a new
+and nameless thing the most serviceable name at hand. In England "corn"
+means either wheat, barley, rye, and oats collectively, or more
+specifically wheat; in Scotland it generally means oats; in America it
+means maize, the "Indian corn," the cereal peculiar to the western
+hemisphere. The beautiful waving plant, with its exquisitely tasselled
+ears, which was one of the first things to attract Champlain's
+attention, could not have escaped the notice of such keen observers as
+we are beginning to find Leif and Thorfinn to have been. A cereal like
+this, requiring so little cultivation that without much latitude of
+speech it might be described as growing wild, would be interesting to
+Europeans visiting the American coast; but it would hardly occur to
+European fancy to invent such a thing. The mention of it is therefore a
+very significant ear-mark of the truth of the narrative. As regards the
+position of Vinland, the presence of maize seems to indicate a somewhat
+lower latitude than Nova Scotia. Maize requires intensely hot summers,
+and even under the most careful European cultivation does not flourish
+north of the Alps. In the sixteenth century its northern-most limit on
+the American coast seems to have been at the mouth of the Kennebec
+(44°), though farther inland it was found by Cartier at Hochelaga, on
+the site of Montreal (45° 30'). A presumption is thus raised in favour
+of the opinion that Vinland was not farther north than Massachusetts
+Bay.[213]
+
+         [Footnote 212:
+            {"Sjálfsána hveitiakra"   }
+            {                         } Rafn, p. 147.
+            { Self-sown wheat-acres   }]
+
+         [Footnote 213: Dr. Storm makes perhaps too much of this
+         presumption. He treats it as decisive against his own opinion
+         that Vinland was the southern coast of Nova Scotia, and
+         accordingly he tries to prove that the self-sown corn was not
+         maize, but "wild rice" (_Zizania aquatica_). _Mémoires_, etc.,
+         p. 356. But his argument is weakened by excess of ingenuity.]
+
+[Sidenote: Winter weather in Vinland.]
+
+This presumption is supported by what is said about the climate of
+Vinland, though it must be borne in mind that general statements about
+climate are apt to be very loose and misleading. We are told that it
+seemed to Leif's people that cattle would be able to pass the winter out
+of doors there, for there was no frost and the grass was not much
+withered.[214] On the other hand, Thorfinn's people found the winter
+severe, and suffered from cold and hunger.[215] Taken in connection with
+each other, these two statements would apply very well to-day to our
+variable winters on the coast southward from Cape Ann. The winter of
+1889-90 in Cambridge, for example, might very naturally have been
+described by visitors from higher latitudes as a winter without frost
+and with grass scarcely withered. Indeed, we might have described it so
+ourselves. On Narragansett and Buzzard's bays such soft winter weather
+is still more common; north of Cape Ann it is much less common. The
+severe winter (_magna hiems_) is of course familiar enough anywhere
+along the northeastern coast of America.
+
+         [Footnote 214: "Thar var svâ gódhr landskostr at thví er theim
+         sýndist, at thar mundi eingi fènadhr fódhr thurfa á vetrum;
+         thar kvomu eingi frost á vetrum, ok lítt rènudhu thar grös," i.
+         e. "tanta autem erat terræ bonitas, ut inde intelligere esset,
+         pecora hieme pabulo non indigere posse, nullis incidentibus
+         algoribus hiemalibus, et graminibus parum flaccescentibus."
+         Rafn, p. 32.]
+
+         [Footnote 215: "Thar voru their um vetrinn; ok gjördhist vetr
+         mikill, en ekki fyri unnit ok gjördhist íllt til matarins, ok
+         tókust af veidhirnar," i. e. "hic hiemarunt; cum vero magna
+         incideret hiems, nullumque provisum esset alimentum, cibus
+         coepit deficere capturaque cessabat," Id. p. 174.]
+
+[Sidenote: Probable situation of Vinland.]
+
+On the whole, we may say with some confidence that the place described
+by our chroniclers as Vinland was situated somewhere between Point
+Judith and Cape Breton; possibly we may narrow our limits and say that
+it was somewhere between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. But the latter
+conclusion is much less secure than the former. In such a case as this,
+the more we narrow our limits the greater our liability to error.[216]
+While by such narrowing, moreover, the question may acquire more
+interest as a bone of contention among local antiquarians, its value for
+the general historian is not increased.
+
+         [Footnote 216: A favourite method of determining the exact
+         spots visited by the Northmen has been to compare their
+         statements regarding the shape and trend of the coasts, their
+         bays, headlands, etc., with various well-known points on the
+         New England coast. It is a tempting method, but unfortunately
+         treacherous, because the same general description will often
+         apply well enough to several different places. It is like
+         summer boarders in the country struggling to tell one another
+         where they have been to drive,--past a school-house, down a
+         steep hill, through some woods, and by a saw-mill, etc.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Savages" unknown to mediæval Europeans.]
+
+[Sidenote: The natives of Vinland.]
+
+But we have not yet done with the points of verisimilitude in our story.
+We have now to cite two or three details that are far more striking than
+any as yet mentioned,--details that could never have been conjured up by
+the fancy of any mediæval European. We must bear in mind that "savages,"
+whether true savages or people in the lower status of barbarism, were
+practically unknown to Europeans before the fifteenth century. There
+were no such people in Europe or in any part of Asia or Africa visited
+by Europeans before the great voyages of the Portuguese. Mediæval
+Europeans knew nothing whatever about people who would show surprise at
+the sight of an iron tool[217] or frantic terror at the voice of a
+bull, or who would eagerly trade off valuable property for worthless
+trinkets. Their imagination might be up to inventing hobgoblins and
+people with heads under their shoulders,[218] but it was not up to
+inventing such simple touches of nature as these. Bearing this in mind,
+let us observe that Thorfinn found the natives of Vinland eager to give
+valuable furs[219] in exchange for little strips of scarlet cloth to
+bind about their heads. When the Northmen found the cloth growing scarce
+they cut it into extremely narrow strips, but the desire of the natives
+was so great that they would still give a whole skin for the smallest
+strip. They wanted also to buy weapons, but Thorfinn forbade his men to
+sell them. One of the natives picked up an iron hatchet and cut wood
+with it; one after another tried and admired it; at length one tried it
+on a stone and broke its edge, and then they scornfully threw it
+down.[220] One day while they were trading, Thorfinn's bull ran out
+before them and bellowed, whereupon the whole company was instantly
+scattered in headlong flight. After this, when threatened with an attack
+by the natives, Thorfinn drew up his men for a fight and put the bull in
+front, very much as Pyrrhus used elephants--at first with success--to
+frighten the Romans and their horses.[221]
+
+         [Footnote 217: It is not meant that stone implements did not
+         continue to be used in some parts of Europe far into the Middle
+         Ages. But this was not because iron was not perfectly well
+         known, but because in many backward regions it was difficult to
+         obtain or to work, so that stone continued in use. As my
+         friend, Mr. T. S. Perry, reminds me, Helbig says that
+         stone-pointed spears were used by some of the English at the
+         battle of Hastings, and stone battle-axes by some of the Scots
+         under William Wallace at the end of the thirteenth century.
+         _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, Leipsic, 1879, p. 42. Helbig's
+         statement as to Hastings is confirmed by Freeman, _Norman
+         Conquest of England_, vol. iii. p. 473.]
+
+         [Footnote 218: My use of the word "inventing" is, in this
+         connection, a slip of the pen. Of course the tales of "men
+         whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," the Sciopedæ,
+         etc., as told by Sir John Mandeville, were not invented by the
+         mediæval imagination, but copied from ancient authors. They may
+         be found in Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, lib. vii., and were mentioned
+         before his time by Ktesias, as well as by Hecatæus, according
+         to Stephanus of Byzantium. Cf. Aristophanes, _Aves_, 1553;
+         Julius Solinus, _Polyhistor_, ed. Salmasius, cap. 240. Just as
+         these sheets are going to press there comes to me Mr. Perry's
+         acute and learned _History of Greek Literature_, New York,
+         1890, in which this subject is mentioned in connection with the
+         mendacious and medical Ktesias:--These stories have probably
+         acquired a literary currency "by exercise of the habit, not
+         unknown even to students of science, of indiscriminate copying
+         from one's predecessors, so that in reading Mandeville we have
+         the ghosts of the lies of Ktesias, almost sanctified by the
+         authority of Pliny, who quoted them and thereby made them a
+         part of mediæval folk-lore--and from folk-lore, probably, they
+         took their remote start" (p. 522).]
+
+         [Footnote 219: "En that var grávara ok safvali ok allskonar
+         skinnavara" (Rafn, p. 59),--i. e. gray fur and sable and all
+         sorts of skinwares; in another account, "skinnavöru ok algrá
+         skinn," which in the Danish version is "skindvarer og ægte
+         graaskind" (id. p. 150),--i. e. skinwares and genuine gray
+         furs. Cartier in Canada and the Puritans in Massachusetts were
+         not long in finding that the natives had good furs to sell.]
+
+         [Footnote 220: Rafn, p. 156.]
+
+         [Footnote 221: Much curious information respecting the use of
+         elephants in war may be found in the learned work of the
+         Chevalier Armandi, _Histoire militaire des éléphants_, Paris,
+         1843. As regards Thorfinn's bull, Mr. Laing makes the kind of
+         blunder that our British cousins are sometimes known to make
+         when they get the Rocky Mountains within sight of Bunker Hill
+         monument. "A continental people in that part of America," says
+         Mr. Laing, "could not be strangers to the much more formidable
+         bison." _Heimskringla_, p. 169. Bisons on the Atlantic coast,
+         Mr. Laing?! And then his comparison quite misses the point; a
+         bison, if the natives had been familiar with him, would not
+         have been at all formidable as compared to the bull which they
+         had never before seen. A horse is much less formidable than a
+         cougar, but Aztec warriors who did not mind a cougar were
+         paralyzed with terror at the sight of men on horseback. It is
+         the unknown that frightens in such cases. Thorfinn's natives
+         were probably familiar with such large animals as moose and
+         deer, but a deer isn't a bull.]
+
+[Sidenote: Meaning of the epithet "Skrælings."]
+
+These incidents are of surpassing interest, for they were attendant upon
+the first meeting (in all probability) that ever took place between
+civilized Europeans and any people below the upper status of
+barbarism.[222] Who were these natives encountered by Thorfinn? The
+Northmen called them "Skrælings," a name which one is at first sight
+strongly tempted to derive from the Icelandic verb _skrækja_, identical
+with the English _screech_. A crowd of excited Indians might most
+appropriately be termed Screechers.[223] This derivation, however, is
+not correct. The word _skræling_ survives in modern Norwegian, and means
+a feeble or puny or _insignificant_ person. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in
+all probability correct, that the name "Skrælings," as applied to the
+natives of America, had no ethnological significance, but simply meant
+"inferior people;" it gave concise expression to the white man's opinion
+that they were "a bad lot." In Icelandic literature the name is usually
+applied to the Eskimos, and hence it has been rashly inferred that
+Thorfinn found Eskimos in Vinland. Such was Rafn's opinion, and since
+his time the commentators have gone off upon a wrong trail and much
+ingenuity has been wasted.[224] It would be well to remember, however,
+that the Europeans of the eleventh century were not ethnologists; in
+meeting these inferior peoples for the first time they were more likely
+to be impressed with the broad fact of their inferiority than to be nice
+in making distinctions. When we call both Australians and Fuegians
+"savages," we do not assert identity or relationship between them; and
+so when the Northmen called Eskimos and Indians by the same disparaging
+epithet, they doubtless simply meant to call them savages.
+
+         [Footnote 222: The Phoenicians, however (who in this connection
+         may be classed with Europeans), must have met with some such
+         people in the course of their voyages upon the coasts of
+         Africa. I shall treat of this more fully below, p. 327.]
+
+         [Footnote 223: As for Indians, says Cieza de Leon, they are all
+         noisy (alharaquientos). _Segunda Parte de la Crónica del Peru_,
+         cap. xxiii.]
+
+         [Footnote 224: For example, Dr. De Costa refers to Dr. Abbott's
+         discoveries as indicating "that the Indian was preceded by a
+         people like the Eskimos, whose stone implements are found in
+         the Trenton gravel." _Pre-Columbian Discovery_, p. 132. Quite
+         so; but that was in the Glacial Period (!!), and when the edge
+         of the ice-sheet slowly retreated northward, the Eskimo, who is
+         emphatically an Arctic creature, doubtless retreated with it,
+         just as he retreated from Europe. See above, p. 18. There is
+         not the slightest reason for supposing that there were any
+         Eskimos south of Labrador so lately as nine hundred years ago.]
+
+[Sidenote: Personal appearance of the Skrælings.]
+
+Our chronicle describes the Skrælings of Vinland as swarthy in hue,
+ferocious in aspect, with ugly hair, big eyes, and broad cheeks.[225]
+This will do very well for Indians, except as to the eyes. We are
+accustomed to think of Indian eyes as small; but in this connection it
+is worthy of note that a very keen observer, Marc Lescarbot, in his
+minute and elaborate description of the physical appearance of the
+Micmacs of Acadia, speaks with some emphasis of their large eyes.[226]
+Dr. Storm quite reasonably suggests that the Norse expression may refer
+to the size not of the eye-ball, but of the eye-socket, which in the
+Indian face is apt to be large; and very likely this is what the
+Frenchman also had in mind.
+
+         [Footnote 225: "Their voru svartir menn ok illiligir, ok havdhu
+         íllt hár á höfdhi. Their voru mjök eygdhir ok breidhir í
+         kinnum," i. e. "Hi homines erant nigri, truculenti specie,
+         foedam in capite comam habentes, oculis magnis et genis latis."
+         Rafn, p. 149. The Icelandic _svartr_ is more precisely rendered
+         by the identical English _swarthy_ than by the Latin _niger_.]
+
+         [Footnote 226: "Mais quãt à noz Sauvages, pour ce qui regarde
+         les ïeux ilz ne les ont ni bleuz, ni verds, mais noirs pour la
+         pluspart, ainsi que les cheveux; & neantmoins ne sont petits,
+         cõme ceux des anciens Scythes, mais d'une grandeur bien
+         agréable." Lescarbot, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, Paris,
+         1612, tom. ii. p. 714.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Skrælings of Vinland were Indians,--very likely
+Algonquins.]
+
+These Skrælings were clad in skins, and their weapons were bows and
+arrows, slings, and stone hatchets. In the latter we may now, I think,
+be allowed to recognize the familiar tomahawk; and when we read that, in
+a sharp fight with the natives, Thorbrand, son of the commander Snorro,
+was slain, and the woman Freydis afterward found his corpse in the
+woods, with a flat stone sticking in the head, and his naked sword lying
+on the ground beside him, we seem to see how it all happened.[227] We
+seem to see the stealthy Indian suddenly dealing the death-blow, and
+then obliged for his own safety to dart away among the trees without
+recovering his tomahawk or seizing the sword. The Skrælings came up the
+river or lake in a swarm of canoes, all yelling at the top of their
+voices (_et illi omnes valde acutum ululabant_), and, leaping ashore,
+began a formidable attack with slings and arrows. The narrative calls
+these canoes "skin-boats" (_hudhkeipar_), whence it has been inferred
+that the writer had in mind the _kayaks_ and _umiaks_ of the
+Eskimos.[228] I suspect that the writer did have such boats in mind, and
+accordingly used a word not strictly accurate. Very likely his
+authorities failed to specify a distinction between bark-boats and
+skin-boats, and simply used the handiest word for designating canoes as
+contrasted with their own keeled boats.[229]
+
+         [Footnote 227: "Hún fann fyrir sèr mann daudhan, thar var
+         Thorbrandr Snorrason, ok stódh hellusteinn í höfdhi honum;
+         sverdhit lá bert í hjá honum," i. e. "Illa incidit in mortuum
+         hominem, Thorbrandum Snorrii filium, cujus capiti lapis planus
+         impactus stetit; nudus juxta eum gladius jacuit." Rafn, p.
+         154.]
+
+         [Footnote 228: These Eskimo skin-boats are described in Rink's
+         _Danish Greenland_, pp. 113, 179.]
+
+         [Footnote 229: Cf. Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 366, 367.]
+
+One other point which must be noticed here in connection with the
+Skrælings is a singular manoeuvre which they are said to have practised
+in the course of the fight. They raised upon the end of a pole a big
+ball, not unlike a sheep's paunch, and of a bluish colour; this ball
+they swung from the pole over the heads of the white men, and it fell to
+the ground with a horrid noise.[230] Now, according to Mr. Schoolcraft,
+this was a mode of fighting formerly common among the Algonquins, in New
+England and elsewhere. This big ball was what Mr. Schoolcraft calls the
+"balista," or what the Indians themselves call the "demon's head." It
+was a large round boulder, sewed up in a new skin and attached to a
+pole. As the skin dried it enwrapped the stone tightly; and then it was
+daubed with grotesque devices in various colours. "It was borne by
+several warriors who acted as balisteers. Plunged upon a boat or canoe,
+it was capable of sinking it. Brought down upon a group of men on a
+sudden, it produced consternation and death."[231] This is a most
+remarkable feature in the narrative, for it shows us the Icelandic
+writer (here manifestly controlled by some authoritative source of
+information) describing a very strange mode of fighting, which we know
+to have been characteristic of the Algonquins. Karlsefni's men do not
+seem to have relished this outlandish style of fighting; they retreated
+along the river bank until they came to a favourable situation among
+some rocks, where they made a stand and beat off their swarming
+assailants. The latter, as soon as they found themselves losing many
+warriors without gaining their point, suddenly turned and fled to their
+canoes, and paddled away with astonishing celerity. Throughout the
+account it seems to me perfectly clear that we are dealing with Indians.
+
+         [Footnote 230: "That sá their Karlsefni at Skrælíngar færdhu
+         upp á stöng knött stundar mykinn thví nær til at jafna sem
+         saudharvömb, ok helzt blán at lit, ok fleygdhu af stönginni upp
+         á landit yfir lidh theirra Karlsefnis, ok lèt illilega vidhr,
+         thar sem nidhr kom. Vidh thetta sló ótta myklum á Karlsefni ok
+         allt lidh hans, svâ at thá fýsti engis annars enn flýja, ok
+         halda undan upp medh ánni, thvíat theim thótti lidh Skrælínga
+         drífa at sèr allum megin, ok lètta eigi, fyrr enn their koma
+         til hamra nokkurra, ok veittu thar vidhrtöku hardha," i. e.
+         "Viderunt Karlsefniani quod Skrælingi longurio sustulerunt
+         globum ingentem, ventri ovillo haud absimilem, colore fere
+         cæruleo; hune ex longurio in terram super manum Karlsefnianorum
+         contorserunt, qui ut decidit, dirum sonuit. Hac re terrore
+         perculsus est Karlsefnius suique omnes, ut nihil aliud cuperent
+         quam fugere et gradum referre sursum secundum fluvium:
+         credebant enim se ab Skrælingis undique circumveniri. Hinc non
+         gradum stitere, priusquam ad rupes quasdam pervenissent, ubi
+         acriter resistebant." Rafn, p. 153.]
+
+         [Footnote 231: Schoolcraft, _Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge_,
+         Philadelphia, 1860, 6 vols. 4to, vol. i. p. 89; a figure of
+         this weapon is given in the same volume, plate xv. fig. 2, from
+         a careful description by Chingwauk, an Algonquin chief.]
+
+[Sidenote: The uniped.]
+
+The coexistence of so many unmistakable marks of truth in our narratives
+may fairly be said to amount to a demonstration that they must be
+derived, through some eminently trustworthy channel, from the statements
+of intelligent eye-witnesses who took part in the events related. Here
+and there, no doubt, we come upon some improbable incident or a touch of
+superstition, such as we need not go back to the eleventh century to
+find very common among seamen's narratives; but the remarkable thing in
+the present case is that there are so few such features. One fabulous
+creature is mentioned. Thorfinn and his men saw from their vessel a
+glittering speck upon the shore at an opening in the woods. They hailed
+it, whereupon the creature proceeded to perform the quite human act of
+shooting an arrow, which killed the man at the helm. The narrator calls
+it a "uniped," or some sort of one-footed goblin,[232] but that is
+hardly reasonable, for after the shooting it went on to perform the
+further quite human and eminently Indian-like act of running away.[233]
+Evidently this discreet "uniped" was impressed with the desirableness of
+living to fight another day. In a narrative otherwise characterized by
+sobriety, such an instance of fancy, even supposing it to have come down
+from the original sources, counts for as much or as little as Henry
+Hudson's description of a mermaid.[234]
+
+         [Footnote 232: Rafn, p. 160; De Costa, p. 134; Storm, p. 330.]
+
+         [Footnote 233: Here the narrator seems determined to give us a
+         genuine smack of the marvellous, for when the fleeing uniped
+         comes to a place where his retreat seems cut off by an arm of
+         the sea, he runs (glides, or hops?) across the water without
+         sinking. In Vigfusson's version, however, the marvellous is
+         eliminated, and the creature simply runs over the stubble and
+         disappears. The incident is evidently an instance where the
+         narrative has been "embellished" by introducing a feature from
+         ancient classical writers. The "Monocoli," or one-legged
+         people, are mentioned by Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 2: "Item
+         hominum genus qui Monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, miræ
+         pernicitatis ad saltum." Cf. Aulus Gellius, _Noctes Atticæ_,
+         viii. 4.]
+
+         [Footnote 234: Between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, June 15,
+         1608. For the description, with its droll details, see _Purchas
+         his Pilgrimes_, iii. 575.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Misleading associations with the word "saga."]
+
+[Sidenote: Unfortunate comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon.]
+
+[Sidenote: The story of the Trojan War, as we have it, is pure
+folk-lore.]
+
+It is now time for a few words upon the character of the records upon
+which our story is based. And first, let us remark upon a possible
+source of misapprehension due to the associations with which a certain
+Norse word has been clothed. The old Norse narrative-writings are called
+"sagas," a word which we are in the habit of using in English as
+equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives. To cite a "saga" as
+authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as
+inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale; and I cannot help suspecting that
+to some such misleading association of ideas is due the particular form
+of the opinion expressed some time ago by a committee of the
+Massachusetts Historical Society,--"that there is the same sort of
+reason for believing in the existence of Leif Ericsson that there is for
+believing in the existence of Agamemnon. They are both traditions
+accepted by later writers, and there is no more reason for regarding as
+true the details related about the discoveries of the former than there
+is for accepting as historic truth the narrative contained in the
+Homeric poems." The report goes on to observe that "it is antecedently
+probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part of the
+eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort of
+historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon
+which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests."[235]
+The second of these statements is characterized by critical moderation,
+and expresses the inevitable and wholesome reaction against the rash
+enthusiasm of Professor Rafn half a century ago, and the vagaries of
+many an uninstructed or uncritical writer since his time. But the first
+statement is singularly unfortunate. It would be difficult to find a
+comparison more inappropriate than that between Agamemnon and Leif,
+between the Iliad and the Saga of Eric the Red. The story of the Trojan
+War and its heroes, as we have it in Homer and the Athenian dramatists,
+is pure folk-lore as regards form, and chiefly folk-lore as regards
+contents. It is in a high degree probable that this mass of folk-lore
+surrounds a kernel of plain fact, that in times long before the first
+Olympiad an actual "king of men" at Mycenæ conducted an expedition
+against the great city by the Simois, that the Agamemnon of the poet
+stands in some such relation toward this chieftain as that in which the
+Charlemagne of mediæval romance stands toward the mighty Emperor of the
+West.[236] Nevertheless the story, as we have it, is simply folk-lore.
+If the Iliad and Odyssey contain faint reminiscences of actual events,
+these events are so inextricably wrapped up with mythical phraseology
+that by no cunning of the scholar can they be construed into history.
+The motives and capabilities of the actors and the conditions under
+which they accomplish their destinies are such as exist only in
+fairy-tales. Their world is as remote from that in which we live as the
+world of Sindbad and Camaralzaman; and this is not essentially altered
+by the fact that Homer introduces us to definite localities and familiar
+customs as often as the Irish legends of Finn M'Cumhail.[237]
+
+         [Footnote 235: _Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc._, December, 1887.]
+
+         [Footnote 236: I used this argument twenty years ago in
+         qualification of the over-zealous solarizing views of Sir G. W.
+         Cox and others. See my _Myths and Mythmakers_, pp. 191-202; and
+         cf. Freeman on "The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early
+         English History," in his _Historical Essays_, i. 1-39.]
+
+         [Footnote 237: Curtin, _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, pp.
+         12, 204, 303; Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts_,
+         pp. 203-311.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore.]
+
+It would be hard to find anything more unlike such writings than the
+class of Icelandic sagas to which that of Eric the Red belongs. Here we
+have quiet and sober narrative, not in the least like a fairy-tale, but
+often much like a ship's log. Whatever such narrative may be, it is not
+folk-lore. In act and motive, in its conditions and laws, its world is
+the every-day world in which we live. If now and then a "uniped" happens
+to stray into it, the incongruity is as conspicuous as in the case of
+Hudson's mermaid, or a ghost in a modern country inn; whereas in the
+Homeric fabric the supernatural is warp and woof. To assert a likeness
+between two kinds of literature so utterly different is to go very far
+astray.
+
+[Sidenote: Mythical and historical sagas.]
+
+As already observed, I suspect that misleading associations with the
+word "saga" may have exerted an unconscious influence in producing this
+particular kind of blunder,--for it is nothing less than a blunder.
+Resemblance is tacitly assumed between the Iliad and an Icelandic saga.
+Well, between the Iliad and _some_ Icelandic sagas there is a real and
+strong resemblance. In truth these sagas are divisible into two well
+marked and sharply contrasted classes. In the one class belong the Eddic
+Lays, and the _mythical sagas_, such as the Volsunga, the stories of
+Ragnar, Frithiof, and others; and along with these, though totally
+different in source, we may for our present purpose group the _romantic
+sagas_, such as Parceval, Remund, Karlamagnus, and others brought from
+southern Europe. These are alike in being composed of legendary and
+mythical materials; they belong essentially to the literature of
+folk-lore. In the other class come the _historical sagas_, such as those
+of Njal and Egil, the Sturlunga, and many others, with the numerous
+biographies and annals.[238] These writings give us history, and often
+very good history indeed. "Saga" meant simply any kind of literature in
+narrative form; the good people of Iceland did not happen to have such a
+handy word as "history," which they could keep entire when they meant it
+in sober earnest and chop down into "story" when they meant it
+otherwise. It is very much as if we were to apply the same word to the
+Arthur legends and to William of Malmesbury's judicious and accurate
+chronicles, and call them alike "stories."
+
+         [Footnote 238: Nowhere can you find a more masterly critical
+         account of Icelandic literature than in Vigfusson's
+         "Prolegomena" to his edition of _Sturlunga Saga_, Oxford, 1878,
+         vol. i. pp. ix.-ccxiv. There is a good but very brief account
+         in Horn's _History of the Literature of the Scandinavian
+         North_, transl. by R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1884, pp. 50-70.]
+
+[Sidenote: The western or Hauks-bók version of Eric the Red's Saga.]
+
+The narrative upon which our account of the Vinland voyages is chiefly
+based belongs to the class of historical sagas. It is the Saga of Eric
+the Red, and it exists in two different versions, of which one seems to
+have been made in the north, the other in the west, of Iceland. The
+western version is the earlier and in some respects the better. It is
+found in two vellums, that of the great collection known as _Hauks-bók_
+(AM. 544), and that which is simply known as AM. 557 from its catalogue
+number in Arni Magnusson's collection. Of these the former, which is the
+best preserved, was written in a beautiful hand by Hauk Erlendsson,
+between 1305 and 1334, the year of his death. This western version is
+the one which has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of
+Thorfinn Karlsefni." It is the one to which I have most frequently
+referred in the present chapter.[239]
+
+         [Footnote 239: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 84-187, and in
+         _Grönlands historiske Mindesmærker_, i. 352-443. The most
+         essential part of it may now be found, under its own name, in
+         Vigfusson's _Icelandic Prose Reader_, pp. 123-140.]
+
+[Sidenote: The northern or Flateyar-bók version.]
+
+The northern version is that which was made about the year 1387 by the
+priest Jón Thórdharson, and contained in the famous compilation known as
+the _Flateyar-bók_, or "Flat Island Book."[240] This priest was editing
+the saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson, which is contained in that
+compilation, and inasmuch as Leif Ericsson's presence at King Olaf's
+court was connected both with the introduction of Christianity into
+Greenland and with the discovery of Vinland, Jón paused, after the
+manner of mediæval chroniclers, and inserted then and there what he knew
+about Eric and Leif and Thorfinn. In doing this, he used parts of the
+original saga of Eric the Red (as we find it reproduced in the western
+version), and added thereunto a considerable amount of material
+concerning the Vinland voyages derived from other sources. Jón's version
+thus made has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of Eric the
+Red."[241]
+
+         [Footnote 240: It belonged to a man who lived on Flat Island,
+         in one of the Iceland fiords.]
+
+         [Footnote 241: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 1-76, under the title
+         "Thættir af Eireki Rauda ok Grænlendíngum." For a critical
+         account of these versions, see Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 319-325; I
+         do not, in all respects, follow him in his depreciation of the
+         Flateyar-bók version.]
+
+[Sidenote: Presumption against sources not contemporary.]
+
+Now the older version, written at the beginning of the fourteenth
+century, gives an account of things which happened three centuries
+before it was written. A cautious scholar will, as a rule, be slow to
+consider any historical narrative as quite satisfactory authority, even
+when it contains no improbable statements, unless it is nearly
+contemporary with the events which it records. Such was the rule laid
+down by the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and it is a very good rule;
+the proper application of it has disencumbered history of much rubbish.
+At the same time, like all rules, it should be used with judicious
+caution and not allowed to run away with us. As applied by Lewis to
+Roman history it would have swept away in one great cataclysm not only
+kings and decemvirs, but Brennus and his Gauls to boot, and left us with
+nothing to swear by until the invasion of Pyrrhus.[242] Subsequent
+research has shown that this was going altogether too far. The mere fact
+of distance in time between a document and the events which it records
+is only negative testimony against its value, for it may be a faithful
+transcript of some earlier document or documents since lost. It is so
+difficult to prove a negative that the mere lapse of time simply raises
+a presumption the weight of which should be estimated by a careful
+survey of all the probabilities in the case. Among the many Icelandic
+vellums that are known to have perished[243] there may well have been
+earlier copies of Eric the Red's Saga.
+
+         [Footnote 242: Lewis's _Inquiry into the Credibility of the
+         Early Roman History_, 2 vols., London, 1855.]
+
+         [Footnote 243: And notably in that terrible fire of October,
+         1728, which consumed the University Library at Copenhagen, and
+         broke the heart of the noble collector of manuscripts, Arni
+         Magnusson. The great eruption of Hecla in 1390 overwhelmed two
+         famous homesteads in the immediate neighbourhood. From the
+         local history of these homesteads and their inmates, Vigfusson
+         thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be there
+         "awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann."
+         _Sturlunga Saga_, p. cliv.]
+
+[Sidenote: Hauk Erlendsson and his manuscripts.]
+
+Hauk Erlendsson reckoned himself a direct descendant, in the eighth
+generation, from Snorro, son of Thorfinn and Gudrid, born in Vinland. He
+was an important personage in Iceland, a man of erudition, author of a
+brief book of contemporary annals and a treatise on arithmetic in which
+he introduced the Arabic numerals into Iceland. In those days the lover
+of books, if he would add them to his library, might now and then obtain
+an original manuscript, but usually he had to copy them or have them
+copied by hand. The Hauks-bók, with its 200 skins, one of the most
+extensive Icelandic vellums now in existence, is really Hauk's private
+library, or what there is left of it, and it shows that he was a man who
+knew how to make a good choice of books. He did a good deal of his
+copying himself, and also employed two clerks in the same kind of
+work.[244]
+
+         [Footnote 244: An excellent facsimile of Hauk's handwriting is
+         given in Rafn, tab. iii., lower part; tab. iv. and the upper
+         part of tab. iii. are in the hands of his two amanuenses. See
+         Vigfusson, _op. cit._ p. clxi.]
+
+[Sidenote: The story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's time
+by oral tradition only.]
+
+Now I do not suppose it will occur to any rational being to suggest that
+Hauk may have written down his version of Eric the Red's Saga from an
+oral tradition nearly three centuries old. The narrative could not have
+been so long preserved in its integrity, with so little extravagance of
+statement and so many marks of truthfulness in details foreign to
+ordinary Icelandic experience, if it had been entrusted to oral
+tradition alone. One might as well try to imagine Drake's "World
+Encompassed" handed down by oral tradition from the days of Queen
+Elizabeth to the days of Queen Victoria. Such transmission is possible
+enough with heroic poems and folk-tales, which deal with a few dramatic
+situations and a stock of mythical conceptions familiar at every
+fireside; but in a simple matter-of-fact record of sailors' observations
+and experiences on a strange coast, oral tradition would not be long in
+distorting and jumbling the details into a result quite undecipherable.
+The story of the Zeno brothers, presently to be cited, shows what
+strange perversions occur, even in written tradition, when the copyist,
+instead of faithfully copying records of unfamiliar events, tries to
+edit and amend them. One cannot reasonably doubt that Hauk's vellum of
+Eric the Red's Saga, with its many ear-marks of truth above mentioned,
+was copied by him--and quite carefully and faithfully withal--from some
+older vellum not now forthcoming.
+
+[Sidenote: Allusions to Vinland in other documents.]
+
+As we have no clue, however, beyond the internal evidence, to the age or
+character of the sources from which Hauk copied, there is nothing left
+for us to do but to look into other Icelandic documents, to see if
+anywhere they betray a knowledge of Vinland and the voyages thither.
+Incidental references to Vinland, in narratives concerned with other
+matters, are of great significance in this connection; for they imply on
+the part of the narrator a presumption that his readers understand such
+references, and that it is not necessary to interrupt his story in order
+to explain them. Such incidental references imply the existence, during
+the interval between the Vinland voyages and Hauk's manuscript, of many
+intermediate links of sound testimony that have since dropped out of
+sight; and therefore they go far toward removing whatever presumption
+may be alleged against Hauk's manuscript because of its distance from
+the events.
+
+[Sidenote: Eyrbyggja Saga.]
+
+Now the Eyrbyggja Saga, written between 1230 and 1260, is largely
+devoted to the settlement of Iceland, and is full of valuable notices of
+the heathen institutions and customs of the tenth century. The
+Eyrbyggja, having occasion to speak of Thorbrand Snorrason, observes
+incidentally that he went from Greenland to Vinland with Karlsefni and
+was killed in a battle with the Skrælings.[245] We have already
+mentioned the death of this Thorbrand, and how Freydis found his body in
+the woods.
+
+         [Footnote 245: Vigfusson, _Eyrbyggja Saga_, pp. 91, 92. Another
+         of Karlsefni's comrades, Thorhall Gamlason, is mentioned in
+         _Grettis Saga_, Copenhagen, 1859, pp. 22, 70; he went back to
+         Iceland, settled on a farm there, and was known for the rest of
+         his life as "the Vinlander." See above, pp. 165, 168.]
+
+[Sidenote: The abbot Nikulas, etc.]
+
+Three Icelandic tracts on geography, between the twelfth and fourteenth
+centuries, mention Helluland and Vinland, and in two of these accounts
+Markland is interposed between Helluland and Vinland.[246] One of these
+tracts mentions the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn. It forms part of an
+essay called "Guide to the Holy Land," by Nikulas Sæmundsson, abbot of
+Thvera, in the north of Iceland, who died 1159. This Nikulas was curious
+in matters of geography, and had travelled extensively.
+
+         [Footnote 246: Werlauf, _Symbolæ ad Geogr. Medii Ævi_,
+         Copenhagen, 1820.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ari Fródhi.]
+
+With the celebrated Ari Thorgilsson, usually known as Fródhi, "the
+learned," we come to testimony nearly contemporaneous in time and
+extremely valuable in character. This erudite priest, born in 1067, was
+the founder of historical writing in Iceland. He was the principal
+author of the "Landnáma-bók," already mentioned as a work of thorough
+and painstaking research unequalled in mediæval literature. His other
+principal works were the "Konunga-bók," or chronicle of the kings of
+Norway, and the "Islendinga-bók," or description of Iceland.[247] Ari's
+books, written not in monkish Latin, but in a good vigorous vernacular,
+were a mine of information from which all subsequent Icelandic
+historians were accustomed to draw such treasures as they needed. To his
+diligence and acumen they were all, from Snorro Sturlason down, very
+much indebted. He may be said to have given the tone to history-writing
+in Iceland, and it was a high tone.
+
+         [Footnote 247: For a critical estimate of Ari's literary
+         activity and the extent of his work, the reader is referred to
+         Möbius, _Are's Isländerbuch_, Leipsic, 1869; Maurer, "Über Ari
+         Thorgilsson und sein Isländerbuch," in _Germania_, xv.; Olsen,
+         _Ari Thorgilsson hinn Fródhi_, Reykjavik, 1889, pp. 214-240.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ari's significant allusion to Vinland.]
+
+Unfortunately Ari's Islendinga-bók has perished. One cannot help
+suspecting that it may have contained the contemporary materials from
+which Eric the Red's Saga in the Hauks-bók was ultimately drawn. For
+Ari made an abridgment or epitome of his great book, and this epitome,
+commonly known as "Libellus Islandorum," still survives. In it Ari makes
+brief mention of Greenland, and refers to his paternal uncle, Thorkell
+Gellison, as authority for his statements. This Thorkell Gellison, of
+Helgafell, a man of high consideration who flourished about the middle
+of the eleventh century, had visited Greenland and talked with one of
+the men who accompanied Eric when he went to settle in Brattahlid in
+986. From this source Ari gives us the interesting information that
+Eric's party found in Greenland "traces of human habitations, fragments
+of boats, and stone implements; so from this one might conclude that
+people of the kind who inhabited Vinland and were known by the (Norse)
+Greenlanders as Skrælings must have roamed about there."[248] Observe
+the force of this allusion. The settlers in Greenland did not at first
+(nor for a long time) meet with barbarous or savage natives there, but
+only with the vestiges of their former presence. But when Ari wrote the
+above passage, the memory of Vinland and its fierce Skrælings was still
+fresh, and Ari very properly inferred from the archæological remains in
+Greenland that a people similar (in point of barbarism) to the
+Skrælings must have been there. Unless Ari and his readers had a
+distinct recollection of the accounts of Vinland, such a reference would
+have been only an attempt to explain the less obscure by the more
+obscure. It is to be regretted that we have in this book no more
+allusions to Vinland; but if Ari could only leave us one such allusion,
+he surely could not have made that one more pointed.
+
+         [Footnote 248: Their "fundo thar manna vister bæthi austr ok
+         vestr á landi ok kæiplabrot ok steinsmíthi, that es af thví má
+         scilja, at thar hafdhi thessconar thjóth farith es Vínland
+         hefer bygt, ok Grænlendínger calla Skrelínga," i. e.
+         "invenerunt ibi, tam in orientali quam occidentali terræ parte,
+         humanæ habitationis vestigia, navicularum fragmenta et opera
+         fabrilia ex lapide, ex quo intelligi potest, ibi versatum esse
+         nationem quæ Vinlandiam incoluit quamque Grænlandi Skrælingos
+         appellant." Rafn, p. 207.]
+
+[Sidenote: Other references.]
+
+But this is not quite the only reference that Ari makes to Vinland.
+There are three others that must in all probability be assigned to him.
+Two occur in the Landnáma-bók, the first in a passage where mention is
+made of Ari Marsson's voyage to a place in the western ocean near
+Vinland;[249] the only point in this allusion which need here concern us
+is that Vinland is tacitly assumed to be a known geographical situation
+to which others may be referred. The second reference occurs in one of
+those elaborate and minutely specific genealogies in the Landnáma-bók:
+"Their son was Thordhr Hest-höfdhi, father of Karlsefni, who found
+Vinland the Good, Snorri's father," etc.[250] The third reference occurs
+in the Kristni Saga, a kind of supplement to the Landnáma-bók, giving an
+account of the introduction of Christianity into Iceland; here it is
+related how Leif Ericsson came to be called "Leif the Lucky," 1. from
+having rescued a shipwrecked crew off the coast of Greenland, 2. from
+having discovered "Vinland the Good."[251] From these brief allusions,
+and from the general relation in which Ari Fródhi stood to later
+writers, I suspect that if the greater Islendinga-bók had survived to
+our time we should have found in it more about Vinland and its
+discoverers. At any rate, as to the existence of a definite and
+continuous tradition all the way from Ari down to Hauk Erlendsson, there
+can be no question whatever.[252]
+
+         [Footnote 249: _Landnáma-bók_, part ii. chap. xxii.]
+
+         [Footnote 250: Id. part iii. chap. x.]
+
+         [Footnote 251: _Kristni Saga_, apud _Biskupa Sögur_,
+         Copenhagen, 1858, vol. i. p. 20.]
+
+         [Footnote 252: Indeed, the parallel existence of the
+         Flateyar-bók version of Eric the Red's Saga, alongside of the
+         Hauks-bók version, is pretty good proof of the existence of a
+         written account older than Hauk's time. The discrepancies
+         between the two versions are such as to show that Jón
+         Thordharson did not copy from Hauk, but followed some other
+         version not now forthcoming. Jón mentions six voyages in
+         connection with Vinland: 1. Bjarni Herjulfsson; 2. Leif; 3.
+         Thorvald; 4. Thorstein and Gudrid; 5. Thorfinn Karlsefni; 6.
+         Freydis. Hauk, on the other hand, mentions only the two
+         principal voyages, those of Leif and Thorfinn; ignoring Bjarni,
+         he accredits his adventures to Leif on his return voyage from
+         Norway in 999, and he makes Thorvald a comrade of Thorfinn, and
+         mixes his adventures with the events of Thorfinn's voyage. Dr.
+         Storm considers Hauk's account intrinsically the more probable,
+         and thinks that in the Flateyar-bók we have a later
+         amplification of the tradition. But while I agree with Dr.
+         Storm as to the general superiority of the Hauk version, I am
+         not convinced by his arguments on this point. It seems to me
+         likely that the Flateyar-bók here preserves more faithfully the
+         details of an older tradition too summarily epitomized in the
+         Hauks-bók. As the point in no way affects the general
+         conclusions of the present chapter, it is hardly worth arguing
+         here. The main thing for us is that the divergencies between
+         the two versions, when coupled with their agreement in the most
+         important features, indicate that both writers were working
+         upon the basis of an antecedent written tradition, like the
+         authors of the first and third synoptic gospels. Only here, of
+         course, there are in the divergencies no symptoms of what the
+         Tübingen school would call "_tendenz_," impairing and obscuring
+         to an indeterminate extent the general trustworthiness of the
+         narratives. On the whole, it is pretty clear that Hauks-bók and
+         Flateyar-bók were independent of each other, and collated, each
+         in its own way, earlier documents that have probably since
+         perished.]
+
+[Sidenote: Adam of Bremen.]
+
+The testimony of Adam of Bremen brings us yet one generation nearer to
+the Vinland voyages, and is very significant. Adam was much interested
+in the missionary work in the north of Europe, and in 1073, the same
+year that Hildebrand was elected to the papacy, he published his famous
+"Historia Ecclesiastica" in which he gave an account of the conversion
+of the northern nations from the time of Leo III. to that of
+Hildebrand's predecessor. In prosecuting his studies, Adam made a visit
+to the court of Swend Estridhsen, king of Denmark, nephew of Cnut the
+Great, king of Denmark and England. Swend's reign began in 1047, so that
+Adam's visit must have occurred between that date and 1073. The voyage
+of Leif and Thorfinn would at that time have been within the memory of
+living men, and would be likely to be known in Denmark, because the
+intercourse between the several parts of the Scandinavian world was
+incessant; there was continual coming and going. Adam learned what he
+could of Scandinavian geography, and when he published his history, he
+did just what a modern writer would do under similar circumstances; he
+appended to his book some notes on the geography of those remote
+countries, then so little known to his readers in central and southern
+Europe. After giving some account of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, he
+describes the colony in Iceland, and then the further colony in
+Greenland, and concludes by saying that out in that ocean there is
+another country, or island, which has been visited by many persons, and
+is called Vinland because of wild grapes that grow there, out of which a
+very good wine can be made. Either rumour had exaggerated the virtues of
+fox-grape juice, or the Northmen were not such good judges of wine as of
+ale. Adam goes on to say that corn, likewise, grows in Vinland without
+cultivation; and as such a statement to European readers must needs have
+a smack of falsehood, he adds that it is based not upon fable and
+guess-work, but upon "trustworthy reports (_certa relatione_) of the
+Danes."
+
+[Sidenote: Adam's misconception of the situation.]
+
+Scanty as it is, this single item of strictly contemporary testimony is
+very important, because quite incidentally it gives to the later
+accounts such confirmation as to show that they rest upon a solid basis
+of continuous tradition and not upon mere unintelligent hearsay.[253]
+The unvarying character of the tradition, in its essential details,
+indicates that it must have been committed to writing at a very early
+period, probably not later than the time of Ari's uncle Thorkell, who
+was contemporary with Adam of Bremen. If, however, we read the whole
+passage in which Adam's mention of Vinland occurs, it is clear from the
+context that his own information was not derived from an inspection of
+Icelandic documents. He got it, as he tells us, by talking with King
+Swend; and all that he got, or all that he thought worth telling, was
+this curious fact about vines and self-sown corn growing so near to
+Greenland; for Adam quite misconceived the situation of Vinland, and
+imagined it far up in the frozen North. After his mention of Vinland,
+the continental character of which he evidently did not suspect, he goes
+on immediately to say, "After this island nothing inhabitable is to be
+found in that ocean, all being covered with unendurable ice and
+boundless darkness." That most accomplished king, Harold Hardrada, says
+Adam, tried not long since to ascertain how far the northern ocean
+extended, and plunged along through this darkness until he actually
+reached the end of the world, and came near tumbling off![254] Thus the
+worthy Adam, while telling the truth about fox-grapes and maize as well
+as he knew how, spoiled the effect of his story by putting Vinland in
+the Arctic regions. The juxtaposition of icebergs and vines was a little
+too close even for the mediæval mind so hospitable to strange yarns.
+Adam's readers generally disbelieved the "trustworthy reports of the
+Danes," and when they thought of Vinland at all, doubtless thought of it
+as somewhere near the North Pole.[255] We shall do well to bear this in
+mind when we come to consider the possibility of Columbus having
+obtained from Adam of Bremen any hint in the least likely to be of use
+in his own enterprise.[256]
+
+         [Footnote 253: It is further interesting as the only undoubted
+         reference to Vinland in a mediæval book written beyond the
+         limits of the Scandinavian world. There is also, however, a
+         passage in Ordericus Vitalis (_Historia Ecclesiastica_, iv.
+         29), in which _Finland_ and the Orkneys, along with Greenland
+         and Iceland, are loosely described as forming part of the
+         dominions of the kings of Norway. This Finland does not appear
+         to refer to the country of the Finns, east of the Baltic, and
+         it has been supposed that it may have been meant for Vinland.
+         The book of Ordericus was written about 1140.]
+
+         [Footnote 254: The passage from Adam of Bremen deserves to be
+         quoted in full: "Præterea unam adhuc insulam [regionam]
+         recitavit [i. e. Svendus rex] a multis in eo repertam oceano,
+         quæ dicitur Vinland, eo quod ibi vites sponte nascantur, vinum
+         bonum gerentes [ferentes]; nam et fruges ibi non seminatas
+         abundare, non fabulosa opinione, sed certa comperimus relatione
+         Danorum. Post quam insulam terra nulla invenitur habitabilis in
+         illo oceano, sed omnia quæ ultra sunt glacie intolerabili ac
+         caligine immensa plena sunt; cujus rei Marcianus ita meminit:
+         ultra Thyle, inquiens, navigare unius diei mare concretum est.
+         Tentavit hoc nuper experientissimus Nordmannorum princeps
+         Haroldus, qui latitudinem septentrionalis oceani perscrutatus
+         navibus, tandem caligantibus ante ora deficientis mundi
+         finibus, immane abyssi baratrum, retroactis vestigiis, vix
+         salvus evasit." _Descriptio insularum aquilonis_, cap. 38, apud
+         _Hist. Ecclesiastica_, iv. ed. Lindenbrog, Leyden, 1595. No
+         such voyage is known to have been undertaken by Harold of
+         Norway, nor is it likely. Adam was probably thinking of an
+         Arctic voyage undertaken by one Thorir under the auspices of
+         King Harold; one of the company brought back a polar bear and
+         gave it to King Swend, who was much pleased with it. See Rafn,
+         339. "Regionam" and "ferentes" in the above extract are variant
+         readings found in some editions.]
+
+         [Footnote 255: "Det har imidlertid ikke forhindret de senere
+         forfattere, der benyttede Adam, fra at blive mistænksomme, og
+         saalænge Adams beretning stod alene, har man i regelen vægret
+         sig for at tro den. Endog den norske forfatter, der skrev
+         'Historia Norvegiæ' og som foruden Adam vel ogsaa bar kjendt de
+         hjemlige sagn om Vinland, maa have anseet beretningen for
+         fabelagtig og derfor forbigaaet den; han kjendte altfor godt
+         Grønland som et nordligt isfyldt Polarland til at ville tro
+         paa, at i nærheden fandtes et Vinland." Storm, in _Aarbøger for
+         Nordisk Oldkyndighed_, etc., Copenhagen, 1887, p. 300.]
+
+         [Footnote 256: See below, p. 386.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Summary of the argument.]
+
+To sum up the argument:--we have in Eric the Red's Saga, as copied by
+Hauk Erlendsson, a document for the existence of which we are required
+to account. That document contains unmistakable knowledge of some
+things which mediæval Europeans could by no human possibility have
+learned, except through a visit to some part of the coast of North
+America further south than Labrador or Newfoundland. It tells an
+eminently probable story in a simple, straightforward way, agreeing in
+its details with what we know of the North American coast between Point
+Judith and Cape Breton. Its general accuracy in the statement and
+grouping of so many remote details is proof that its statements were
+controlled by an exceedingly strong and steady tradition,--altogether
+too strong and steady, in my opinion, to have been maintained simply by
+word of mouth. These Icelanders were people so much given to writing
+that their historic records during the Middle Ages were, as the late Sir
+Richard Burton truly observed, more complete than those of any other
+country in Europe.[257] It is probable that the facts mentioned in
+Hauk's document rested upon some kind of a written basis as early as the
+eleventh century; and it seems quite clear that the constant tradition,
+by which all the allusions to Vinland and the Skrælings are controlled,
+had become established by that time. The data are more scanty than we
+could wish, but they all point in the same direction as surely as straws
+blown by a steady wind, and their cumulative force is so great as to
+fall but little short of demonstration. For these reasons it seems to me
+that the Saga of Eric the Red should be accepted as history; and there
+is another reason which might not have counted for much at the
+beginning of this discussion, but at the end seems quite solid and
+worthy of respect. The narrative begins with the colonization of
+Greenland and goes on with the visits to Vinland. It is unquestionably
+sound history for the first part; why should it be anything else for the
+second part? What shall be said of a style of criticism which, in
+dealing with one and the same document, arbitrarily cuts it in two in
+the middle and calls the first half history and the last half legend?
+which accepts its statements as serious so long as they keep to the
+north of the sixtieth parallel, and dismisses them as idle as soon as
+they pass to the south of it? Quite contrary to common sense, I should
+say.
+
+         [Footnote 257: Burton, _Ultima Thule_, London, 1875, i. 237.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Absurd speculations of zealous antiquarians.]
+
+[Sidenote: There is no reason for supposing that the Northmen founded a
+colony in Vinland.]
+
+[Sidenote: No archæological remains of the Northmen have been found
+south of Davis strait.]
+
+The only discredit which has been thrown upon the story of the Vinland
+voyages, in the eyes either of scholars or of the general public, has
+arisen from the eager credulity with which ingenious antiquarians have
+now and then tried to prove more than facts will warrant. It is
+peculiarly a case in which the judicious historian has had frequent
+occasion to exclaim, Save me from my friends! The only fit criticism
+upon the wonderful argument from the Dighton inscription is a reference
+to the equally wonderful discovery made by Mr. Pickwick at Cobham;[258]
+and when it was attempted, some sixty years ago, to prove that Governor
+Arnold's old stone windmill at Newport[259] was a tower built by the
+Northmen, no wonder if the exposure of this rather laughable notion
+should have led many people to suppose that the story of Leif and
+Thorfinn had thereby been deprived of some part of its support. But the
+story never rested upon any such evidence, and does not call for
+evidence of such sort. There is nothing in the story to indicate that
+the Northmen ever founded a colony in Vinland, or built durable
+buildings there. The distinction implicitly drawn by Adam of Bremen, who
+narrates the colonization of Iceland and Greenland, and then goes on to
+speak of Vinland, not as colonized, but simply as discovered, is a
+distinction amply borne out by our chronicles. Nowhere is there the
+slightest hint of a colony or settlement established in Vinland. On the
+contrary, our plain, business-like narrative tells us that Thorfinn
+Karlsefni tried to found a colony and failed; and it tells us why he
+failed. The Indians were too many for him. The Northmen of the eleventh
+century, without firearms, were in much less favourable condition for
+withstanding the Indians than the Englishmen of the seventeenth; and at
+the former period there existed no cause for emigration from Norway and
+Iceland at all comparable to the economic, political, and religious
+circumstances which, in a later age, sent thousands of Englishmen to
+Virginia and New England. The founding of colonies in America in the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was no pastime; it was a tale of
+drudgery, starvation, and bloodshed, that curdles one's blood to read;
+more attempts failed than succeeded. Assuredly Thorfinn gave proof of
+the good sense ascribed to him when he turned his back upon Vinland. But
+if he or any other Northman had ever succeeded in establishing a colony
+there, can anybody explain why it should not have stamped the fact of
+its existence either upon the soil, or upon history, or both, as
+unmistakably as the colony of Greenland? Archæological remains of the
+Northmen abound in Greenland, all the way from Immartinek to near Cape
+Farewell; the existence of one such relic on the North American
+continent has never yet been proved. Not a single vestige of the
+Northmen's presence here, at all worthy of credence, has ever been
+found. The writers who have, from time to time, mistaken other things
+for such vestiges, have been led astray because they have failed to
+distinguish between the different conditions of proof in Greenland and
+in Vinland. As Mr. Laing forcibly put the case, nearly half a century
+ago, "Greenland was a colony with communications, trade, civil and
+ecclesiastical establishments, and a considerable population," for more
+than four centuries. "Vinland was only visited by flying parties of
+woodcutters, remaining at the utmost two or three winters, but never
+settling there permanently.... To expect here, as in Greenland, material
+proofs to corroborate the documentary proofs, is weakening the latter by
+linking them to a sort of evidence which, from the very nature of the
+case,--the temporary visits of a ship's crew,--cannot exist in Vinland,
+and, as in the case of Greenland, come in to support them."[260]
+
+         [Footnote 258: See _Pickwick Papers_, chap. xi. I am indebted
+         to Mr. Tillinghast, of Harvard University Library, for calling
+         my attention to a letter from Rev. John Lathrop, of Boston, to
+         Hon. John Davis, August 10, 1809, containing George
+         Washington's opinion of the Dighton inscription. When President
+         Washington visited Cambridge in the fall of 1789, he was shown
+         about the college buildings by the president and fellows of the
+         university. While in the museum he was observed to "fix his
+         eye" upon a full-size copy of the Dighton inscription made by
+         the librarian, James Winthrop. Dr. Lathrop, who happened to be
+         standing near Washington, "ventured to give the opinion which
+         several learned men had entertained with respect to the origin
+         of the inscription." Inasmuch as some of the characters were
+         thought to resemble "oriental" characters, and inasmuch as the
+         ancient Phoenicians had sailed outside of the Pillars of
+         Hercules, it was "conjectured" that some Phoenician vessels had
+         sailed into Narragansett bay and up the Taunton river. "While
+         detained by winds, or other causes now unknown, the people, it
+         has been conjectured, made the inscription, now to be seen on
+         the face of the rock, and which we may suppose to be a record
+         of their fortunes or of their fate."
+
+         "After I had given the above account, the President smiled and
+         said he believed the learned gentlemen whom I had mentioned
+         were mistaken; and added that in the younger part of his life
+         his business called him to be very much in the wilderness of
+         Virginia, which gave him an opportunity to become acquainted
+         with many of the customs and practices of the Indians. The
+         Indians, he said, had a way of writing and recording their
+         transactions, either in war or hunting. When they wished to
+         make any such record, or leave an account of their exploits to
+         any who might come after them, they scraped off the outer bark
+         of a tree, and with a vegetable ink, or a little paint which
+         they carried with them, on the smooth surface they wrote in a
+         way that was generally understood by the people of their
+         respective tribes. As he had so often examined the rude way of
+         writing practised by the Indians of Virginia, and observed many
+         of the characters on the inscription then before him so nearly
+         resembled the characters used by the Indians, he had no doubt
+         the inscription was made long ago by some natives of America."
+         _Proceedings of Massachusetts Historical Society_, vol. x. p.
+         115. This pleasant anecdote shows in a new light Washington's
+         accuracy of observation and unfailing common-sense. Such
+         inscriptions have been found by the thousand, scattered over
+         all parts of the United States; for a learned study of them see
+         Garrick Mallery, "Pictographs of the North American Indians,"
+         _Reports of Bureau of Ethnology_, iv. 13-256. "The voluminous
+         discussion upon the Dighton rock inscription," says Colonel
+         Mallery, "renders it impossible wholly to neglect it.... It is
+         merely a type of Algonquin rock-carving, not so interesting as
+         many others.... It is of purely Indian origin, and is executed
+         in the peculiar symbolic character of the Kekeewin," p. 20. The
+         characters observed by Washington in the Virginia forests would
+         very probably have been of the same type. Judge Davis, to whom
+         Dr. Lathrop's letter was addressed, published in 1809 a paper
+         maintaining the Indian origin of the Dighton inscription.
+
+         A popular error, once started on its career, is as hard to kill
+         as a cat. Otherwise it would be surprising to find, in so
+         meritorious a book as Oscar Peschel's _Geschichte des
+         Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, Stuttgart, 1877, p. 82, an
+         unsuspecting reliance upon Rafn's ridiculous interpretation of
+         this Algonquin pictograph. In an American writer as well
+         equipped as Peschel, this particular kind of blunder would of
+         course be impossible; and one is reminded of Humboldt's remark,
+         "Il est des recherches qui ne peuvent s'exécuter que près des
+         sources mêmes." _Examen critique_, etc., tom. ii. p. 102.
+
+         In old times, I may add, such vagaries were usually saddled
+         upon the Phoenicians, until since Rafn's time the Northmen have
+         taken their place as the pack-horses for all sorts of
+         antiquarian "conjecture."]
+
+         [Footnote 259: See Palfrey's _History of New England_, vol. i.
+         pp. 57-59; Mason's _Reminiscences of Newport_, pp. 392-407.
+         Laing (_Heimskringla_, pp. 182-185) thinks the Yankees must
+         have intended to fool Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of
+         Antiquaries at Copenhagen; "Those sly rogues of Americans,"
+         says he, "dearly love a quiet hoax;" and he can almost hear
+         them chuckling over their joke in their club-room at Newport. I
+         am afraid these Yankees were less rogues and more fools than
+         Mr. Laing makes out.]
+
+         [Footnote 260: Laing, _Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 181.]
+
+[Sidenote: If the Northmen had founded a successful colony, they would
+have introduced domestic cattle into the North American fauna;]
+
+[Sidenote: and such animals could not have vanished and left no trace of
+their existence.]
+
+The most convincing proof that the Northmen never founded a colony in
+America, south of Davis strait, is furnished by the total absence of
+horses, cattle, and other domestic animals from the soil of North
+America until they were brought hither by the Spanish, French, and
+English settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If the
+Northmen had ever settled in Vinland, they would have brought cattle
+with them, and if their colony had been successful, it would have
+introduced such cattle permanently into the fauna of the country.
+Indeed, our narrative tells us that Karlsefni's people "had with them
+all kinds of cattle, having the intention to settle in the land if they
+could."[261] Naturally the two things are coupled in the narrator's
+mind. So the Portuguese carried livestock in their earliest expeditions
+to the Atlantic islands;[262] Columbus brought horses and cows, with
+vines and all kinds of grain, on his second voyage to the West
+Indies;[263] when the French, under Baron Léry, made a disastrous
+attempt to found a colony on or about Cape Breton in 1518, they left
+behind them, upon Sable island, a goodly stock of cows and pigs, which
+throve and multiplied long after their owners had gone;[264] the
+Pilgrims at Plymouth had cattle, goats, and swine as early as 1623.[265]
+In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a community of Europeans
+subsisting anywhere for any length of time without domestic animals. We
+have seen that the Northmen took pains to raise cattle in Greenland, and
+were quick to comment upon the climate of Vinland as favourable for
+pasturage. To suppose that these men ever founded a colony in North
+America, but did not bring domestic animals thither, would be absurd.
+But it would be scarcely less absurd to suppose that such animals,
+having been once fairly introduced into the fauna of North America,
+would afterward have vanished without leaving a vestige of their
+presence. As for the few cattle for which Thorfinn could find room in
+his three or four dragon-ships, we may easily believe that his people
+ate them up before leaving the country, especially since we are told
+they were threatened with famine. But that domestic cattle, after being
+supported on American soil during the length of time involved in the
+establishment of a successful colony (say, for fifty or a hundred
+years), should have disappeared without leaving abundant traces of
+themselves, is simply incredible. Horses and kine are not dependent upon
+man for their existence; when left to themselves, in almost any part of
+the world, they run wild and flourish in what naturalists call a "feral"
+state. Thus we find feral horned cattle in the Falkland and in the
+Ladrone islands, as well as in the ancient Chillingham Park, in
+Northumberland; we find feral pigs in Jamaica; feral European dogs in La
+Plata; feral horses in Turkestan, and also in Mexico, descended from
+Spanish horses.[266] If the Northmen had ever founded a colony in
+Vinland, how did it happen that the English and French in the
+seventeenth century, and from that day to this, have never set eyes upon
+a wild horse, or wild cattle, pigs, or hounds, or any such indication
+whatever of the former presence of civilized Europeans? I do not
+recollect ever seeing this argument used before, but it seems to me
+conclusive. It raises against the hypothesis of a Norse colonization in
+Vinland a presumption extremely difficult if not impossible to
+overcome.[267]
+
+         [Footnote 261: "Their höfdhu medh sèr allskonar fènadh, thvíat
+         their ætlödhu at byggja landit, ef their mætti that," i. e.,
+         "illi omne pecudum genus secum habuerunt, nam terram, si
+         liceret, coloniis frequentare cogitarunt." Rafn, p. 57.]
+
+         [Footnote 262: Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, p. 241.]
+
+         [Footnote 263: Irving's _Life of Columbus_, New York, 1828,
+         vol. i. p. 293.]
+
+         [Footnote 264: _Histoire chronologique de la Nouvelle France_,
+         pp. 40, 58; this work, written in 1689 by the Recollet friar
+         Sixte le Tac, has at length been published (Paris, 1888) with
+         notes and other original documents by Eugène Réveillaud. See,
+         also, Læt, _Novus Orbis_, 39.]
+
+         [Footnote 265: John Smith, _Generall Historie_, 247.]
+
+         [Footnote 266: Darwin, _Animals and Plants under
+         Domestication_, London, 1868, vol. i pp. 27, 77, 84.]
+
+         [Footnote 267: The views of Professor Horsford as to the
+         geographical situation of Vinland and its supposed colonization
+         by Northmen are set forth in his four monographs, _Discovery of
+         America by Northmen--address at the unveiling of the statue of
+         Leif Eriksen_, etc., Boston, 1888; _The Problem of the
+         Northmen_, Cambridge, 1889; _The Discovery of the Ancient City
+         of Norumbega_, Boston, 1890; _The Defences of Norumbega_,
+         Boston, 1891. Among Professor Horsford's conclusions the two
+         principal are: 1. that the "river flowing through a lake into
+         the sea" (Rafn, p. 147) is Charles river, and that Leif's
+         booths were erected near the site of the present Cambridge
+         hospital; 2. that "Norumbega"--a word loosely applied by some
+         early explorers to some region or regions somewhere between the
+         New Jersey coast and the Bay of Fundy--was the Indian utterance
+         of "Norbega" or "Norway;" and that certain stone walls and dams
+         at and near Watertown are vestiges of an ancient "city of
+         Norumbega," which was founded and peopled by Northmen and
+         carried on a more or less extensive trade with Europe for more
+         than three centuries.
+
+         With regard to the first of these conclusions, it is perhaps as
+         likely that Leif's booths were within the present limits of
+         Cambridge as in any of the numerous places which different
+         writers have confidently assigned for them, all the way from
+         Point Judith to Cape Breton. A judicious scholar will object
+         not so much to the conclusion as to the character of the
+         arguments by which it is reached. Too much weight is attached
+         to hypothetical etymologies.
+
+         With regard to the Norse colony alleged to have flourished for
+         three centuries, it is pertinent to ask, what became of its
+         cattle and horses? Why do we find no vestiges of the
+         burial-places of these Europeans? or of iron tools and weapons
+         of mediæval workmanship? Why is there no documentary mention,
+         in Scandinavia or elsewhere in Europe, of this transatlantic
+         trade? etc., etc. Until such points as these are disposed of,
+         any further consideration of the hypothesis may properly be
+         postponed.]
+
+[Illustration: Ruins of the church at Kakortok.]
+
+[Sidenote: Further fortunes of the Greenland colony.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bishop Eric's voyage in search of Vinland, 1121.]
+
+[Sidenote: The ship from Markland, 1347.]
+
+As for the colony in Greenland, while its population seems never to have
+exceeded 5,000 or 6,000 souls, it maintained its existence and its
+intercourse with Europe uninterruptedly from its settlement in 986, by
+Eric the Red, for more than four hundred years. Early in the fourteenth
+century the West Bygd, or western settlement, near Godthaab, seems to
+have contained ninety farmsteads and four churches; while the East Bygd,
+or eastern settlement, near Julianeshaab, contained one hundred and
+ninety farmsteads, with one cathedral and eleven smaller churches, two
+villages, and three or four monasteries.[268] Between Tunnudliorbik and
+Igaliko fiords, and about thirty miles from the ruined stone houses of
+Brattahlid, there now stands, imposing in its decay, the simple but
+massive structure of Kakortok church, once the "cathedral" church of the
+Gardar bishopric, where the Credo was intoned and censers swung, while
+not less than ten generations lived and died. About the beginning of the
+twelfth century there was a movement at Rome for establishing new
+dioceses in "the islands of the ocean;" in 1106 a bishop's see was
+erected in the north of Iceland, and one at about the same time in the
+Færoes. In 1112, Eric Gnupsson,[269] having been appointed by Pope
+Paschal II. "bishop of Greenland and Vinland _in partibus infidelium_,"
+went from Iceland to organize his new diocese in Greenland. It is
+mentioned in at least six different vellums that in 1121 Bishop Eric
+"went in search of Vinland."[270] It is nowhere mentioned that he found
+it, and Dr. Storm thinks it probable that he perished in the enterprise,
+for, within the next year or next but one, the Greenlanders asked for a
+new bishop, and Eric's successor, Bishop Arnold, was consecrated in
+1124.[271] After Eric there was a regular succession of bishops
+appointed by the papal court, down at least to 1409, and seventeen of
+these bishops are mentioned by name. We do not learn that any of them
+ever repeated Eric's experiment of searching for Vinland. So far as
+existing Icelandic vellums know, there was no voyage to Vinland after
+1121. Very likely, however, there may have been occasional voyages for
+timber from Greenland to the coast of the American continent, which did
+not attract attention or call for comment in Iceland. This is rendered
+somewhat probable from an entry in the "Elder Skálholt Annals," a vellum
+written about 1362. This informs us that in 1347 "there came a ship from
+Greenland, less in size than small Icelandic trading-vessels. It was
+without an anchor. There were seventeen men on board, and they had
+sailed to Markland, but had afterwards been driven hither by storms at
+sea."[272] This is the latest mention of any voyage to or from the
+countries beyond Greenland.
+
+         [Footnote 268: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 141. A description of
+         the ruins may be found in two papers in _Meddelelser om
+         Gronland_, Copenhagen, 1883 and 1889.]
+
+         [Footnote 269: Sometimes called Eric Uppsi; he is mentioned in
+         the Landnáma-bók as a native of Iceland.]
+
+         [Footnote 270: Storm, _Islandske Annaler_, Christiania, 1888;
+         Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_, London, 1890, pp.
+         79-81.]
+
+         [Footnote 271: Storm, in _Aarbøger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed_,
+         1887, p. 319.]
+
+         [Footnote 272: Reeves, _op. cit._ p. 83. In another vellum it
+         is mentioned that in 1347 "a ship came from Greenland, which
+         had sailed to Markland, and there were eighteen men on board."
+         As Mr. Reeves well observes: "The nature of the information
+         indicates that the knowledge of the discovery had not
+         altogether faded from the memories of the Icelanders settled in
+         Greenland. It seems further to lend a measure of plausibility
+         to a theory that people from the Greenland colony may from time
+         to time have visited the coast to the southwest of their home
+         for supplies of wood, or for some kindred purpose. The visitors
+         in this case had evidently intended to return directly from
+         Markland to Greenland, and had they not been driven out of
+         their course to Iceland, the probability is that this voyage
+         would never have found mention in Icelandic chronicles, and all
+         knowledge of it must have vanished as completely as did the
+         colony to which the Markland visitors belonged."]
+
+[Sidenote: The Greenland colony attacked by Eskimos.]
+
+If the reader is inclined to wonder why a colony could be maintained in
+southern Greenland more easily than on the coasts of Nova Scotia or
+Massachusetts, or even why the Northmen did not at once abandon their
+fiords at Brattahlid and come in a flock to these pleasanter places, he
+must call to mind two important circumstances. First, the settlers in
+southern Greenland did not meet with barbarous natives, but only with
+vestiges of their former presence. It was not until the twelfth century
+that, in roaming the icy deserts of the far north in quest of seals and
+bearskins, the Norse hunters encountered tribes of Eskimo using stone
+knives and whalebone arrow-heads;[273] and it was not until the
+fourteenth century that we hear of their getting into a war with these
+people. In 1349 the West Bygd was attacked and destroyed by Eskimos; in
+1379 they invaded the East Bygd and wrought sad havoc; and it is
+generally believed that some time after 1409 they completed the
+destruction of the colony.
+
+         [Footnote 273: Storm, _Monumenta historica Norvegiæ_, p. 77.]
+
+[Sidenote: Queen Margaret's monopoly, and its baneful effects.]
+
+Secondly, the relative proximity of Greenland to the mother country,
+Iceland, made it much easier to sustain a colony there than in the more
+distant Vinland. In colonizing, as in campaigning, distance from one's
+base is sometimes the supreme circumstance. This is illustrated by the
+fact that the very existence of the Greenland colony itself depended
+upon perpetual and untrammelled exchange of commodities with Iceland;
+and when once the source of supply was cut off, the colony soon
+languished. In 1380 and 1387 the crowns of Norway and Denmark descended
+upon Queen Margaret, and soon she made her precious contribution to the
+innumerable swarm of instances that show with how little wisdom the
+world is ruled. She made the trade to Greenland, Iceland, and the Færoe
+isles "a royal monopoly which could only be carried on in ships
+belonging to, or licensed by, the sovereign.... Under the monopoly of
+trade the Icelanders could have no vessels, and no object for sailing to
+Greenland; and the vessels fitted out by government, or its lessees,
+would only be ready to leave Denmark or Bergen for Iceland at the season
+they ought to have been ready to leave Iceland to go to Greenland. The
+colony gradually fell into oblivion."[274] When this prohibitory
+management was abandoned after 1534 by Christian III., it was altogether
+too late. Starved by the miserable policy of governmental interference
+with freedom of trade, the little Greenland colony soon became too weak
+to sustain itself against the natives whose hostility had, for half a
+century, been growing more and more dangerous. Precisely when or how it
+perished we do not know. The latest notice we have of the colony is of a
+marriage ceremony performed (probably in the Kakortok church), in 1409,
+by Endrede Andreasson, the last bishop.[275] When, after three
+centuries, the great missionary, Hans Egede, visited Greenland, in 1721,
+he found the ruins of farmsteads and villages, the population of which
+had vanished.
+
+         [Footnote 274: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 147. It has been
+         supposed that the Black Death, by which all Europe was ravaged
+         in the middle part of the fourteenth century, may have crossed
+         to Greenland, and fatally weakened the colony there; but
+         Vigfusson says that the Black Death never touched Iceland
+         (_Sturlunga Saga_, vol. i. p. cxxix.), so that it is not so
+         likely to have reached Greenland.]
+
+         [Footnote 275: Laing, _op. cit._ i. 142.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The story of the Venetian brothers.]
+
+Our account of pre-Columbian voyages to America would be very incomplete
+without some mention of the latest voyage said to have been made by
+European vessels to the ancient settlement of the East Bygd. I refer to
+the famous narrative of the Zeno brothers, which has furnished so many
+subjects of contention for geographers that a hundred years ago John
+Pinkerton called it "one of the most puzzling in the whole circle of
+literature."[276] Nevertheless a great deal has been done, chiefly
+through the acute researches of Mr. Richard Henry Major and Baron
+Nordenskjöld, toward clearing up this mystery, so that certain points in
+the Zeno narrative may now be regarded as established;[277] and from
+these essential points we may form an opinion as to the character of
+sundry questionable details.
+
+         [Footnote 276: Yet this learned historian was quite correct in
+         his own interpretation of Zeno's story, for in the same place
+         he says, "If real, his Frisland is the Ferro islands, and his
+         Zichmni is Sinclair." Pinkerton's _History of Scotland_,
+         London, 1797, vol. i. p. 261.]
+
+         [Footnote 277: Major, _The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers,
+         Nicolò and Antonio Zeno, to the Northern Seas in the XIVth
+         Century_, London, 1873 (Hakluyt Society); cf. Nordenskjöld, _Om
+         bröderna Zenos resor och de äldsta kartor öfner Norden_,
+         Stockholm, 1883.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Zeno family.]
+
+[Sidenote: Nicolò Zeno wrecked upon one of the Færoe islands, 1390.]
+
+[Sidenote: Nicolò's voyage to Greenland, cir. 1394.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyage of Earl Sinclair and Antonio Zeno.]
+
+The Zeno family was one of the oldest and most distinguished in Venice.
+Among its members in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we find a
+doge, several senators and members of the Council of Ten, and military
+commanders of high repute. Of these, Pietro Dracone Zeno, about 1350,
+was captain-general of the Christian league for withstanding the Turks;
+and his son Carlo achieved such success in the war against Genoa that he
+was called the Lion of St. Mark, and his services to Venice were
+compared with those of Camillus to Rome. Now this Carlo had two
+brothers,--Nicolò, known as "the Chevalier," and Antonio. After the
+close of the Genoese war the Chevalier Nicolò was seized with a desire
+to see the world,[278] and more particularly England and Flanders. So
+about 1390 he fitted up a ship at his own expense, and, passing out from
+the strait of Gibraltar, sailed northward upon the Atlantic. After some
+days of fair weather, he was caught in a storm and blown along for many
+days more, until at length the ship was cast ashore on one of the Færoe
+islands and wrecked, though most of the crew and goods were rescued.
+According to the barbarous custom of the Middle Ages, some of the
+natives of the island (Scandinavians) came swarming about the
+unfortunate strangers to kill and rob them, but a great chieftain, with
+a force of knights and men-at-arms, arrived upon the spot in time to
+prevent such an outrage. This chief was Henry Sinclair of Roslyn, who in
+1379 had been invested by King Hacon VI., of Norway, with the earldom of
+the Orkneys and Caithness. On learning Zeno's rank and importance,
+Sinclair treated him with much courtesy, and presently a friendship
+sprang up between the two. Sinclair was then engaged with a fleet of
+thirteen vessels in conquering and annexing to his earldom the Færoe
+islands, and on several occasions profited by the military and nautical
+skill of the Venetian captain. Nicolò seems to have enjoyed this
+stirring life, for he presently sent to his brother Antonio in Venice an
+account of it, which induced the latter to come and join him in the
+Færoe islands. Antonio arrived in the course of 1391, and remained in
+the service of Sinclair fourteen years, returning to Venice in time to
+die there in 1406. After Antonio's arrival, his brother Nicolò was
+appointed to the chief command of Sinclair's little fleet, and assisted
+him in taking possession of the Shetland islands, which were properly
+comprised within his earldom. In the course of these adventures, Nicolò
+seems to have had his interest aroused in reports about Greenland. It
+was not more than four or five years since Queen Margaret had undertaken
+to make a royal monopoly of the Greenland trade in furs and whale oil,
+and this would be a natural topic of conversation in the Færoes. In
+July, 1393, or 1394, Nicolò Zeno sailed to Greenland with three ships,
+and visited the East Bygd. After spending some time there, not being
+accustomed to such a climate, he caught cold, and died soon after his
+return to the Færoes, probably in 1395. His brother Antonio succeeded to
+his office and such emoluments as pertained to it; and after a while, at
+Earl Sinclair's instigation, he undertook a voyage of discovery in the
+Atlantic ocean, in order to verify some fishermen's reports of the
+existence of land a thousand miles or more to the west. One of these
+fishermen was to serve as guide to the expedition, but unfortunately he
+died three days before the ships were ready to sail. Nevertheless, the
+expedition started, with Sinclair himself on board, and encountered
+vicissitudes of weather and fortune. In fog and storm they lost all
+reckoning of position, and found themselves at length on the western
+coast of a country which, in the Italian narrative, is called "Icaria,"
+but which has been supposed, with some probability, to have been Kerry,
+in Ireland. Here, as they went ashore for fresh water, they were
+attacked by the natives and several of their number were slain. From
+this point they sailed out into the broad Atlantic again, and reached a
+place supposed to be Greenland, but which is so vaguely described that
+the identification is very difficult.[279] Our narrative here ends
+somewhat confusedly. We are told that Sinclair remained in this place,
+"and explored the whole of the country with great diligence, as well as
+the coasts on both sides of Greenland." Antonio Zeno, on the other hand,
+returned with part of the fleet to the Færoe islands, where he arrived
+after sailing eastward for about a month, during five and twenty days of
+which he saw no land. After relating these things and paying a word of
+affectionate tribute to the virtues of Earl Sinclair, "a prince as
+worthy of immortal memory as any that ever lived for his great bravery
+and remarkable goodness," Antonio closes his letter abruptly: "But of
+this I will say no more in this letter, and hope to be with you very
+shortly, and to satisfy your curiosity on other subjects by word of
+mouth."[280]
+
+         [Footnote 278: "Or M. Nicolò il Caualiere ... entrò in
+         grandissimo desiderio di ueder il mondo, e peregrinare, e farsi
+         capace di varij costumi e di lingue de gli huomini, acciò che
+         con le occasioni poi potesse meglio far seruigio alla sua
+         patria ed à se acquistar fama e onore." The narrative gives
+         1380 as the date of the voyage, but Mr. Major has shown that it
+         must have been a mistake for 1390 (_op. cit._ xlii.-xlviii.).]
+
+         [Footnote 279: It appears on the Zeno map as "Trin
+         p[-p]montor," about the site of Cape Farewell; but how could
+         six days' sail W. from Kerry, followed by four days' sail N.
+         E., reach any such point? and how does this short outward sail
+         consist with the return voyage, twenty days E. and eight days
+         S. E., to the Færoes? The place is also said to have had "a
+         fertile soil" and "good rivers," a description in nowise
+         answering to Greenland.]
+
+         [Footnote 280: "Però non ni dirò altro in questa lettera,
+         sperando tosto di essere con uoi, e di sodisfarui di molte
+         altre cose con la uiua uoce." Major, p. 34.]
+
+[Sidenote: Publication of the remains of the documents by the younger
+Nicolò Zeno.]
+
+The person thus addressed by Antonio was his brother, the illustrious
+Carlo Zeno. Soon after reaching home, after this long and eventful
+absence, Antonio died. Besides his letters he had written a more
+detailed account of the affairs in the northern seas. These papers
+remained for more than a century in the palace of the family at Venice,
+until one of the children, in his mischievous play, got hold of them and
+tore them up. This child was Antonio's great-great-great-grandson,
+Nicolò, born in 1515. When this young Nicolò had come to middle age, and
+was a member of the Council of Ten, he happened to come across some
+remnants of these documents, and then all at once he remembered with
+grief how he had, in his boyhood, pulled them to pieces.[281] In the
+light of the rapid progress in geographical discovery since 1492, this
+story of distant voyages had now for Nicolò an interest such as it could
+not have had for his immediate ancestors. Searching the palace he found
+a few grimy old letters and a map or sailing chart, rotten with age,
+which had been made or at any rate brought home by his ancestor Antonio.
+Nicolò drew a fresh copy of this map, and pieced together the letters as
+best he could, with more or less explanatory text of his own, and the
+result was the little book which he published in 1558.[282]
+
+         [Footnote 281: "All these letters were written by Messire
+         Antonio to Messire Carlo, his brother; and I am grieved that
+         the book and many other writings on these subjects have, I
+         don't know how, come sadly to ruin; for, being but a child when
+         they fell into my hands, I, not knowing what they were, tore
+         them in pieces, as children will do, and sent them all to ruin:
+         a circumstance which I cannot now recall without the greatest
+         sorrow. Nevertheless, in order that such an important memorial
+         should not be lost, I have put the whole in order, as well as I
+         could, in the above narrative." Major, p. 35.]
+
+         [Footnote 282: Nicolò Zeno, _Dello scoprimento dell' isole
+         Frislanda, Eslanda, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto
+         per due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolò it Caualiere, & M. Antonio.
+         Libro Vno, col disegno di dette Isole._ Venice, 1558. Mr.
+         Major's book contains the entire text, with an English
+         translation.]
+
+[Illustration: Zeno Map, cir. 1400--western half.]
+
+[Illustration: Zeno Map, cir. 1400--eastern half.]
+
+[Sidenote: Queer transformations of names.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Frislanda."]
+
+Unfortunately young Nicolò, with the laudable purpose of making it all
+as clear as he could, thought it necessary not simply to reproduce
+the old weather-beaten map, but to amend it by putting on here and there
+such places and names as his diligent perusal of the manuscript led him
+to deem wanting to its completeness.[283] Under the most favourable
+circumstances that is a very difficult sort of thing to do, but in this
+case the circumstances were far from favourable. Of course Nicolò got
+these names and places into absurd positions, thus perplexing the map
+and damaging its reputation. With regard to names, there was obscurity
+enough, to begin with. In the first place, they were Icelandic names
+falling upon the Italian ears of old Nicolò and Antonio, and spelled by
+them according to their own notions; in the second place, these
+outlandish names, blurred and defaced withal in the weather-stained
+manuscript, were a puzzle to the eye of young Nicolò, who could but
+decipher them according to _his_ notions. The havoc that can be wrought
+upon winged words, subjected to such processes, is sometimes
+marvellous.[284] Perhaps the slightest sufferer, in this case, was the
+name of the group of islands upon one of which the shipwrecked Nicolò
+was rescued by Sinclair. The name _Færoislander_ sounded to Italian
+ears as _Frislanda_, and was uniformly so written.[285] Then the
+pronunciation of _Shetland_ was helped by prefixing a vowel sound, as is
+common in Italian, and so it came to be _Estland_ and _Esland_. This led
+young Nicolò's eye in two or three places to confound it with _Islanda_,
+or _Iceland_, and probably in one place with _Irlanda_, or _Ireland_.
+Where old Nicolò meant to say that the island upon which he was living
+with Earl Sinclair was somewhat larger than Shetland, young Nicolò
+understood him as saying that it was somewhat larger than Ireland; and
+so upon the amended map "Frislanda" appears as one great island
+surrounded by tiny islands.[286] After the publication of this map, in
+1558, sundry details were copied from it by the new maps of that day, so
+that even far down into the seventeenth century it was common to depict
+a big "Frislanda" somewhere in mid-ocean. When at length it was proved
+that no such island exists, the reputation of the Zeno narrative was
+seriously damaged. The nadir of reaction against it was reached when it
+was declared to be a tissue of lies invented by the younger Nicolò,[287]
+apparently for the purpose of setting up a Venetian claim to the
+discovery of America.
+
+         [Footnote 283: The map is taken from Winsor's _Narr. and Crit.
+         Hist._, i. 127, where it is reduced from Nordenskjöld's
+         _Studien ok Forskningar_. A better because larger copy may be
+         found in Major's _Voyages of the Venetian Brothers_. The
+         original map measures 12 x 15-1/2 inches. In the legend at the
+         top the date is given as M CCC LXXX. but evidently one X has
+         been omitted, for it should be 1390, and is correctly so given
+         by Marco Barbaro, in his _Genealogie dei nobili Veneti_; of
+         Antonio Zeno he says, "Scrisse con il fratello Nicolò Kav. li
+         viaggi dell' Isole sotto il polo artico, e di quei scoprimente
+         del 1390, e che per ordine di Zieno, re di Frislanda, si portò
+         nel continente d'Estotilanda nell' America settentrionale e che
+         si fermò 14 anni in Frislanda, cioè 4 con suo fratello Nicolò e
+         10 solo." (This valuable work has never been published. The
+         original MS., in Barbaro's own handwriting, is preserved in the
+         Biblioteca di San Marco at Venice. There is a seventeenth
+         century copy of it among the Egerton MSS. in the British
+         Museum.)--Nicolò did not leave Italy until after December 14,
+         1388 (Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, tom. xxii. p.
+         779). The map can hardly have been made before Antonio's
+         voyage, about 1400. The places on the map are wildly out of
+         position, as was common enough in old maps. Greenland is
+         attached to Norway according to the general belief in the
+         Middle Ages. In his confusion between the names "Estland" and
+         "Islanda," young Nicolò has tried to reproduce the Shetland
+         group, or something like it, and attach it to Iceland.
+         "Icaria," probably Kerry, in Ireland, has been made into an
+         island and carried far out into the Atlantic. The queerest of
+         young Nicolò's mistakes was in placing the monastery of St.
+         Olaus ("St. Thomas"). He should have placed it on the southwest
+         coast of Greenland, near his "Af [-p]montor;" but he has got it
+         on the extreme northeast, just about where Greenland is joined
+         to Europe.]
+
+         [Footnote 284: "Combien de coquilles typographiques ou de
+         lectures défectueuses ont créé de noms boiteux, qu'il est
+         ensuite bien difficile, quelquefois impossible de redresser!
+         L'histoire et la géographie en sont pleines." Avezac, _Martin
+         Waltzemüller_, p. 9.
+
+         It is interesting to see how thoroughly words can be disguised
+         by an unfamiliar phonetic spelling. I have seen people
+         hopelessly puzzled by the following bill, supposed to have been
+         made out by an illiterate stable-keeper somewhere in England:--
+
+            Osafada        7s  6d
+            Takinonimome       4d
+                           ------
+                           7s 10d
+
+         Some years ago Professor Huxley told me of a letter from France
+         which came to the London post-office thus addressed:--
+
+            Sromfrédévi,
+               Piqué du lait,
+                     Londres,
+                         Angleterre.
+
+         This letter, after exciting at first helpless bewilderment and
+         then busy speculation, was at length delivered to the right
+         person, _Sir Humphry Davy_, in his rooms at the Royal
+         Institution on Albemarle street, just off from _Piccadilly_!]
+
+         [Footnote 285: Columbus, on his journey to Iceland in 1477,
+         also heard the name _Færoislander_ as _Frislanda_, and so wrote
+         it in the letter preserved for us in his biography by his son
+         Ferdinand, hereafter to be especially noticed. See Major's
+         remarks on this, _op. cit._ p. xix.]
+
+         [Footnote 286: Perhaps in the old worn-out map the archipelago
+         may have been blurred so as to be mistaken for one island. This
+         would aid in misleading young Nicolò.]
+
+         [Footnote 287: See the elaborate paper by Admiral Zahrtmann, in
+         _Nordisk Tidsskrift for Oldkyndighed_, Copenhagen, 1834, vol.
+         i., and the English translation of it in _Journal of Royal
+         Geographical Society_, London, 1836, vol. v. All that human
+         ingenuity is ever likely to devise against the honesty of
+         Zeno's narrative is presented in this erudite essay, which has
+         been so completely demolished under Mr. Major's heavy strokes
+         that there is not enough of it left to pick up. As to this part
+         of the question, we may now safely cry, "finis, laus Deo!"]
+
+[Sidenote: The narrative nowhere makes a claim to the "discovery of
+America."]
+
+The narrative, however, not only sets up no such claim, but nowhere
+betrays a consciousness that its incidents entitle it to make such a
+claim. It had evidently not occurred to young Nicolò to institute any
+comparison between his ancestors' voyages to Greenland and the voyages
+of Columbus to the western hemisphere, of which _we now know_ Greenland
+to be a part. The knowledge of the North American coast, and of the
+bearing of one fact upon another fact in relation to it, was still, in
+1558, in an extremely vague and rudimentary condition. In the mind of
+the Zeno brothers, as the map shows, Greenland was a European peninsula;
+such was the idea common among mediæval Northmen, as is nowhere better
+illustrated than in this map. Neither in his references to Greenland,
+nor to Estotiland and Drogio, presently to be considered, does young
+Nicolò appear in the light of a man urging or suggesting a "claim." He
+appears simply as a modest and conscientious editor, interested in the
+deeds of his ancestors and impressed with the fact that he has got hold
+of important documents, but intent only upon giving his material as
+correctly as possible, and refraining from all sort of comment except
+such as now and then seems needful to explain the text as he himself
+understands it.
+
+[Sidenote: Earl Sinclair.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bardsen's "Description of Greenland."]
+
+The identification of "Frislanda" with the Færoe islands was put beyond
+doubt by the discovery that the "Zichmni" of the narrative means Henry
+Sinclair; and, in order to make this discovery, it was only necessary to
+know something about the history of the Orkneys; hence old Pinkerton, as
+above remarked, got it right. The name "Zichmni" is, no doubt, a fearful
+and wonderful bejugglement; but Henry Sinclair is a personage well known
+to history in that corner of the world, and the deeds of "Zichmni," as
+recounted in the narrative, are neither more nor less than the deeds of
+Sinclair. Doubtless Antonio spelled the name in some queer way of his
+own, and then young Nicolò, unable to read his ancestor's pot-hooks
+where--as in the case of proper names--there was no clue to guide him,
+contrived to make it still queerer. Here we have strong proof of the
+genuineness of the narrative. If Nicolò had been concocting a story in
+which Earl Sinclair was made to figure, he would have obtained his
+knowledge from literary sources, and thus would have got his names
+right; the earl might have appeared as Enrico de Santo Claro, but not as
+"Zichmni." It is not at all likely, however, that any literary knowledge
+of Sinclair and his doings was obtainable in Italy in the sixteenth
+century. The Zeno narrative, moreover, in its references to Greenland in
+connection with the Chevalier Nicolò's visit to the East Bygd, shows a
+topographical knowledge that was otherwise quite inaccessible to the
+younger Nicolò. Late in the fourteenth century Ivar Bardsen, steward to
+the Gardar bishopric, wrote a description of Greenland, with sailing
+directions for reaching it, which modern research has proved to have
+been accurate in every particular. Bardsen's details and those of the
+Zeno narrative mutually corroborate each other. But Bardsen's book did
+not make its way down into Europe until the very end of the sixteenth
+century,[288] and then amid the dense ignorance prevalent concerning
+Greenland its details were not understood until actual exploration
+within the last seventy years has at length revealed their meaning. The
+genuineness of the Zeno narrative is thus conclusively proved by its
+knowledge of Arctic geography, such as could have been obtained only by
+a visit to the far North at a time before the Greenland colony had
+finally lost touch with its mother country.
+
+         [Footnote 288: It was translated into Dutch by the famous
+         Arctic explorer, William Barentz, whose voyages are so
+         graphically described in Motley's _United Netherlands_, vol.
+         iii. pp. 552-576. An English translation was made for Henry
+         Hudson. A very old Danish version may be found in Rafn's
+         _Antiquitates Americanæ_, pp. 300-318; Danish, Latin, and
+         English versions in Major's _Voyages of the Venetian Brothers_,
+         etc., pp. 39-54; and an English version in De Costa's _Sailing
+         Directions of Henry Hudson_, Albany, 1869, pp. 61-96.]
+
+[Sidenote: The monastery of St. Olaus and its hot spring.]
+
+The visit of the Chevalier Nicolò, therefore, about 1394, has a peculiar
+interest as the last distinct glimpse afforded us of the colony founded
+by Eric the Red before its melancholy disappearance from history.
+Already the West Bygd had ceased to exist. Five and forty years before
+that time it had been laid waste and its people massacred by Eskimos,
+and trusty Ivar Bardsen, tardily sent with a small force to the rescue,
+found nothing left alive but a few cattle and sheep running wild.[289]
+Nicolò Zeno, arriving in the East Bygd, found there a monastery
+dedicated to St. Olaus, a name which in the narrative has become St.
+Thomas. To this monastery came friars from Norway and other countries,
+but for the most part from Iceland.[290] It stood "hard by a hill which
+vomited fire like Vesuvius and Etna." There was also in the
+neighbourhood a spring of hot water which the ingenious friars conducted
+in pipes into their monastery and church, thereby keeping themselves
+comfortable in the coldest weather. This water, as it came into the
+kitchen, was hot enough to boil meats and vegetables. The monks even
+made use of it in warming covered gardens or hot-beds in which they
+raised sundry fruits and herbs that in milder climates grow out of
+doors.[291] "Hither in summertime come many vessels from ... the Cape
+above Norway, and from Trondheim, and bring the friars all sorts of
+comforts, taking in exchange fish ... and skins of different kinds of
+animals.... There are continually in the harbour a number of vessels
+detained by the sea being frozen, and waiting for the next season to
+melt the ice."[292]
+
+         [Footnote 289: So he tells us himself: "Quo cum 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 Groenlandiæ_, 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 Nicolò 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 Gunnbjörn'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 principal 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 Gunnbjörn who first went to
+Greenland. It was known as Gunnbjörn'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 hæc 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 assumed 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 Islandiæ, quâ 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 antiquitûs frequentabatur,
+         nunc vero glacies ex recessu oceani euroaquilonari delata
+         scopulos ante memoratos tam prope attigit, ut nemo sine vitæ
+         discrimine antiquum cursum tenere possit, quemadmodum infra
+         dicetur." _Descriptio Groenlandiæ_, 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 Nicolò 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-bók. 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 Færoe 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 ashore 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 nobody 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 compass. 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 latitude 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 compass,
+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 passed 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
+         calamìta ne intendeno col bossolo la tramontana. Per ilche
+         questi pescatori furono in gran pregio, si che il re li spedì
+         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 passage. 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 God'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 passing 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 Færoes 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 Nicolò?]
+
+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
+Nicolò 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 Nicolò 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 Nicolò, 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 Nicolò must have reproduced the ancestral
+documents 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 Færoe 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 ashore 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,
+         _Principal 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} Dñi, 1582," is in the British Museum, Sloane
+         MS. No. 1447, fol. 1-18; it was copied and privately printed in
+         Plowden Weston's _Documents 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 analogy 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 Nicolò 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. xxxvii.; Wytfliet,
+         _Descriptionis Ptolemaicæ Augmentum_, Douay, 1603, p. 102;
+         Pontanus, _Rerum Danicarum Historia_, Amsterdam, 1631, p. 763.
+         The wise Humboldt mentions the report without expressing an
+         opinion, _Examen critique_, tom. ii. p. 153.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The pre-Columbian voyages made no real contributions to
+geographical knowledge;]
+
+[Sidenote: and were in no true sense a Discovery of America.]
+
+Nothing can be clearer, however, from a survey of the whole subject,
+than that these pre-Columbian voyages were quite barren of results of
+historic importance. In point of colonization they produced the two
+ill-fated settlements on the Greenland coast, and nothing more.
+Otherwise they made no real addition to the stock of geographical
+knowledge, they wrought no effect whatever upon the European mind
+outside of Scandinavia, and even in Iceland itself the mention of
+coasts beyond Greenland awakened no definite ideas, and, except for a
+brief season, excited no interest. The Zeno narrative indicates that the
+Vinland voyages had practically lapsed from memory before the end of the
+fourteenth century.[308] Scholars familiar with saga literature of
+course knew the story; it was just at this time that Jón Thórdharson
+wrote out the version of it which is preserved in the Flateyar-bók. But
+by the general public it must have been forgotten, or else the
+Fisherman's tale of Estotiland and Drogio would surely have awakened
+reminiscences of Markland and Vinland, and some traces of this would
+have appeared in Antonio's narrative or upon his map. The principal
+naval officer of the Færoes, and personal friend of the sovereign, after
+dwelling several years among these Northmen, whose intercourse with
+their brethren in Iceland was frequent, apparently knew nothing of Leif
+or Thorfinn, or the mere names of the coasts which they had visited.
+Nothing had been accomplished by those voyages which could properly be
+called a contribution to geographical knowledge. To speak of them as
+constituting, in any legitimate sense of the phrase, a Discovery of
+America is simply absurd. Except for Greenland, which was supposed to be
+a part of the European world, America remained as much undiscovered
+after the eleventh century as before. In the midsummer of 1492 it
+needed to be discovered as much as if Leif Ericsson or the whole race of
+Northmen had never existed.
+
+         [Footnote 308: Practically, but not entirely, for we have seen
+         Markland mentioned in the "Elder Skálholt Annals," about 1362.
+         See above, p. 223.]
+
+As these pre-Columbian voyages produced no effect in the eastern
+hemisphere, except to leave in Icelandic literature a scanty but
+interesting record, so in the western hemisphere they seem to have
+produced no effect beyond cutting down a few trees and killing a few
+Indians. In the outlying world of Greenland it is not improbable that
+the blood of the Eskimos may have received some slight Scandinavian
+infusion. But upon the aboriginal world of the red men, from Davis
+strait to Cape Horn, it is not likely that any impression of any sort
+was ever made. It is in the highest degree probable that Leif Ericsson
+and his friends made a few voyages to _what we now know to have been_
+the coast of America; but it is an abuse of language to say that they
+"discovered" America. In no sense was any real contact established
+between the eastern and the western halves of our planet until the great
+voyage of Columbus in 1492.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EUROPE AND CATHAY.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Why the voyages of the Northmen were not followed up.]
+
+The question has sometimes been asked, Why did the knowledge of the
+voyages to Vinland so long remain confined to the Scandinavian people or
+a portion of them, and then lapse into oblivion, insomuch that it did
+not become a matter of notoriety in Europe until after the publication
+of the celebrated book of Thormodus Torfæus in 1705? Why did not the
+news of the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn spread rapidly over Europe,
+like the news of the voyage of Columbus? and why was it not presently
+followed, like the latter, by a rush of conquerors and colonizers across
+the Atlantic?
+
+Such questions arise from a failure to see historical events in their
+true perspective, and to make the proper allowances for the manifold
+differences in knowledge and in social and economic conditions which
+characterize different periods of history. In the present case, the
+answer is to be found, first, in the geographical ignorance which
+prevented the Northmen from realizing in the smallest degree what such
+voyages really signified or were going to signify to posterity; and,
+secondly, in the political and commercial condition of Europe at the
+close of the tenth century.
+
+[Sidenote: Ignorance of geography.]
+
+In the first place the route which the Norse voyagers pursued, from
+Iceland to Greenland and thence to Vinland, was not such as to give
+them, in their ignorance of the shape of the earth, and with their
+imperfect knowledge of latitude and longitude, any adequate gauge
+wherewith to measure their achievement. The modern reader, who has in
+his mind a general picture of the shape of the northern Atlantic ocean
+with its coasts, must carefully expel that picture before he can begin
+to realize how things must have seemed to the Northmen. None of the
+Icelandic references to Markland and Vinland betray a consciousness that
+these countries belong to a geographical world outside of Europe. There
+was not enough organized geographical knowledge for that. They were
+simply conceived as remote places beyond Greenland, inhabited by
+inferior but dangerous people. The accidental finding of such places
+served neither to solve any great commercial problem nor to gratify and
+provoke scientific curiosity. It was, therefore, not at all strange that
+it bore no fruit.
+
+[Sidenote: Lack of instruments for ocean navigation.]
+
+Secondly, even if it had been realized, and could have been duly
+proclaimed throughout Europe, that across the broad Atlantic a new world
+lay open for colonization, Europe could not have taken advantage of the
+fact. Now and then a ship might make its way, or be blown, across the
+waste of waters without compass or astrolabe; but until these
+instruments were at hand anything like systematic ocean navigation was
+out of the question; and from a colonization which could only begin by
+creeping up into the Arctic seas and taking Greenland on the way, not
+much was to be expected, after all.
+
+[Sidenote: Europe in the year 1000.]
+
+But even if the compass and other facilities for oceanic navigation had
+been at hand, the state of Europe in the days of Eric the Red was not
+such as to afford surplus energy for distant enterprise of this sort.
+Let us for a moment recall what was going on in Europe in the year of
+grace 1000, just enough to get a suggestive picture of the time. In
+England the Danish invader, fork-bearded Swend, father of the great
+Cnut, was wresting the kingship from the feeble grasp of Ethelred the
+Redeless. In Gaul the little duchy of France, between the Somme and the
+Loire, had lately become the kingdom of France, and its sovereign, Hugh
+Capet, had succeeded to feudal rights of lordship over the great dukes
+and counts whose territories surrounded him on every side; and now
+Hugh's son, Robert the Debonair, better hymn-writer than warrior, was
+waging a doubtful struggle with these unruly vassals. It was not yet in
+any wise apparent what the kingdoms of England and France were going to
+be. In Germany the youthful Otto III., the "wonder of the world," had
+just made his weird visit to the tomb of his mighty predecessor at
+Aachen, before starting on that last journey to Rome which was so soon
+to cost him his life. Otto's teacher, Gerbert, most erudite of
+popes,--too learned not to have had dealings with the Devil,--was
+beginning to raise the papacy out of the abyss of infamy into which the
+preceding age had seen it sink, and so to prepare the way for the
+far-reaching reforms of Hildebrand. The boundaries of Christendom were
+as yet narrow and insecure. With the overthrow of Olaf Tryggvesson in
+this year 1000, and the temporary partition of Norway between Swedes and
+Danes, the work of Christianizing the North seemed, for the moment, to
+languish. Upon the eastern frontier the wild Hungarians had scarcely
+ceased to be a terror to Europe, and in this year Stephen, their first
+Christian king, began to reign. At the same time the power of heretical
+Bulgaria, which had threatened to overwhelm the Eastern Empire, was
+broken down by the sturdy blows of the Macedonian emperor Basil. In this
+year the Christians of Spain met woful defeat at the hands of Almansor,
+and there seemed no reason why the Mussulman rule over the greater part
+of that peninsula should not endure forever.
+
+Thus, from end to end, Europe was a scene of direst confusion, and
+though, as we now look back upon it, the time seems by no means devoid
+of promise, there was no such cheering outlook then. Nowhere were the
+outlines of kingdoms or the ownership of crowns definitely settled.
+Private war was both incessant and universal; the Truce of God had not
+yet been proclaimed.[309] As for the common people, their hardships
+were well-nigh incredible. Amid all this anarchy and misery, at the
+close of the thousandth year from the birth of Christ, the belief was
+quite common throughout Europe that the Day of Judgment was at hand for
+a world grown old in wickedness and ripe for its doom.
+
+         [Footnote 309: The "Truce of God" (_Treuga Dei_) was introduced
+         by the clergy in Guienne about 1032; it was adopted in Spain
+         before 1050, and in England by 1080. See Datt, _De pace imperii
+         publica_, lib. i. cap. ii. A cessation of all violent quarrels
+         was enjoined, under ecclesiastical penalties, during church
+         festivals, and from every Wednesday evening until the following
+         Monday morning. This left only about eighty days in the year
+         available for shooting and stabbing one's neighbours. The truce
+         seems to have accomplished much good, though it was very
+         imperfectly observed.]
+
+[Sidenote: The condition of things was not such as to favour colonial
+enterprise.]
+
+It hardly need be argued that a period like this, in which all the vital
+energy in Europe was consumed in the adjustment of affairs at home, was
+not fitted for colonial enterprises. Before a people can send forth
+colonies it must have solved the problem of political life so far as to
+ensure stability of trade. It is the mercantile spirit that has
+supported modern colonization, aided by the spirit of intellectual
+curiosity and the thirst for romantic adventure. In the eleventh century
+there was no intellectual curiosity outside the monastery walls, nor had
+such a feeling become enlisted in the service of commerce. Of trade
+there was indeed, even in western Europe, a considerable amount, but the
+commercial marine was in its infancy, and on land the trader suffered
+sorely at the hands of the robber baron. In those days the fashionable
+method of compounding with your creditors was, not to offer them fifty
+cents on the dollar, but to inveigle them into your castle and broil
+them over a slow fire.
+
+[Sidenote: The outlook of Europe was toward Asia.]
+
+In so far as the attention of people in Europe was called to any
+quarter of the globe outside of the seething turbulence in which they
+dwelt, it was directed toward Asia. Until after 1492, Europe stood with
+her back toward the Atlantic. What there might be out beyond that "Sea
+of Darkness" (_Mare Tenebrosum_), as it used commonly to be called, was
+a question of little interest and seems to have excited no speculation.
+In the view of mediæval Europe the inhabited world was cut off on the
+west by this mysterious ocean, and on the south by the burning sands of
+Sahara; but eastward it stretched out no one knew how far, and in that
+direction dwelt tribes and nations which Europe, from time immemorial,
+had reason to fear. As early as the time of Herodotus, the secular
+antagonism between Europe and Asia had become a topic of reflection
+among the Greeks, and was wrought with dramatic effect by that great
+writer into the structure of his history, culminating in the grand and
+stirring scenes of the Persian war. A century and a half later the
+conquests of Alexander the Great added a still more impressive climax to
+the story. The struggle was afterward long maintained between Roman and
+Parthian, but from the fifth century after Christ onward through the
+Middle Ages, it seemed as if the Oriental world would never rest until
+it had inflicted the extremities of retaliation upon Europe. Whether it
+was the heathen of the steppes who were in question, from Attila in the
+fifth century to Batu Khan in the thirteenth, or the followers of the
+Prophet, who tore away from Christendom the southern shores of the
+Mediterranean, and held Spain in their iron grasp, while from age to age
+they exhausted their strength in vain against the Eastern Empire, the
+threatening danger was always coming with the morning sun; whatever
+might be the shock that took the attention of Europe away from herself,
+it directed it upon Asia. This is a fact of cardinal importance for us,
+inasmuch as it was directly through the interest, more and more
+absorbing, which Europe felt in Asia that the discovery of the western
+hemisphere was at last effected.
+
+[Sidenote: Routes of trade between Europe and Asia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Claudius Ptolemy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Early mention of China.]
+
+It was not only in war, but in commerce, that the fortunes of Europe
+were dependent upon her relations with Asia. Since prehistoric times
+there has always been some commercial intercourse between the eastern
+shores of the Mediterranean and the peninsula of Hindustan. Tyre and
+Sidon carried on such trade by way of the Red Sea.[310] After Alexander
+had led his army to Samarcand and to the river Hyphasis, the
+acquaintance of the Greeks with Asia was very considerably increased,
+and important routes of trade were established. One was practically the
+old Phoenician route, with its western terminus moved from Tyre to
+Alexandria. Another was by way of the Caspian sea, up the river Oxus,
+and thence with camels to the banks of the Indus.[311] An intermediate
+route was through Syria and by way of the Euphrates and the Persian
+gulf; the route which at one time made the greatness of Palmyra. After
+the extension of Roman sway to the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Euxine,
+these same routes continued to be used. The European commodities carried
+to India were light woollen cloths, linens, coral, black lead, various
+kinds of glass vessels, and wine. In exchange for these the traders
+brought back to Europe divers aromatic spices, black pepper, ivory,
+cotton fabrics, diamonds, sapphires, and pearls, silk thread and silk
+stuffs.[312] Detailed accounts of these commercial transactions, and of
+the wealth of personal experiences that must have been connected with
+them, are excessively scant. Of the Europeans who, during all the
+centuries between Alexander and Justinian, made their way to Hindustan
+or beyond, we know very few by name. The amount of geographical
+information that was gathered during the first half of this period is
+shown in the map representing Claudius Ptolemy's knowledge of the earth,
+about the middle of the second century after Christ. Except for the
+Scandinavian world, and some very important additions made to the
+knowledge of Asia by Marco Polo, this map fairly represents the maximum
+of acquaintance with the earth's surface possessed by Europeans previous
+to the great voyages of the fifteenth century. It shows a dim knowledge
+of the mouths of the Ganges, of the island of Ceylon, and of what we
+sometimes call Farther India. A very dim knowledge, indeed; for the huge
+peninsula of Hindustan is shrunk into insignificance, while Taprobane,
+or Ceylon, unduly magnified, usurps the place belonging to the Deccan.
+At the same time we see that some hearsay knowledge of China had made
+its way into the Roman world before the days of Ptolemy. The two names
+by which China was first known to Europeans were "Seres" or "Serica,"
+and "Sinæ" or "Thin." These two differing names are the records of two
+different methods of approach to different parts of a vast country, very
+much as the Northmen called their part of eastern North America
+"Vinland," while the Spaniards called their part "Florida." The name
+"Seres" was given to northwestern China by traders who approached it
+through the highlands of central Asia from Samarcand, while "Sinæ" was
+the name given to southeastern China by traders who approached it by way
+of the Indian ocean, and heard of it in India, but never reached it.
+Apparently no European ships ever reached China before the Portuguese,
+in 1517.[313] The name "Sinæ" or "Thin" seems to mean the country of the
+"Tchin" dynasty, which ruled over the whole of China in the second
+century before Christ, and over a portion of it for a much longer time.
+The name "Seres," on the other hand, was always associated with the
+trade in silks, and was known to the Romans in the time of the Emperor
+Claudius,[314] and somewhat earlier. The Romans in Virgil's time set a
+high value upon silk, and every scrap of it they had came from China.
+They knew nothing about the silk-worm, and supposed that the fibres or
+threads of this beautiful stuff grew upon trees. Of actual intercourse
+between the Roman and Chinese empires there was no more than is implied
+in this current of trade, passing through many hands. But that each
+knew, in a vague way, of the existence of the other, there is no
+doubt.[315]
+
+         [Footnote 310: Diodorus Siculus, i. 70.]
+
+         [Footnote 311: Strabo, xi. 7, § 3.]
+
+         [Footnote 312: Robertson, _Historical Disquisition concerning
+         the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India_, Dublin, 1791,
+         p. 55. I never have occasion to consult Dr. Robertson without
+         being impressed anew with his scientific habit of thought and
+         the solidity of his scholarship; and in none of his works are
+         these qualities better illustrated than in this noble essay.]
+
+         [Footnote 313: The Polos sailed back from China to the Persian
+         gulf in 1292-94; see below, p. 282.]
+
+         [Footnote 314: The name "Seres" appears on the map of Pomponius
+         Mela (cir. A. D. 50), while "Sinæ" does not. See below, p. 304.
+
+            Jam Tartessiaco quos solverat æquore Titan
+            In noctem diffusus equos, jungebat Eoïs
+            Littoribus, primique novo Phaethonte retecti
+            Seres lanigeris repetebant vellera lucis.
+                                   Silius Italicus, lib. vi. _ad init._]
+
+         [Footnote 315: For this whole subject see Colonel Sir Henry
+         Yule's _Cathay and the Way Thither_, London, 1866, 2 vols.,--a
+         work of profound learning and more delightful than a novel.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cosmas Indicopleustes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Shape of the earth, according to Cosmas.]
+
+In the course of the reign of Justinian, we get references at first hand
+to India, and coupled withal to a general theory of cosmography. This
+curious information we have in the book of the monk Cosmas
+Indicopleustes, written somewhere between A. D. 530 and 550. A pleasant
+book it is, after its kind. In his younger days Cosmas had been a
+merchant, and in divers voyages had become familiar with the coasts of
+Ethiopia and the Persian gulf, and had visited India and Ceylon. After
+becoming a monk at Alexandria, Cosmas wrote his book of Christian
+geography,[316] maintaining, in opposition to Ptolemy, that the earth
+is not a sphere, but a rectangular plane forming the floor of the
+universe; the heavens rise on all four sides about this rectangle, like
+the four walls of a room, and, at an indefinite height above the floor,
+these blue walls support a vaulted roof or firmament, in which God
+dwells with the angels. In the centre of the floor are the inhabited
+lands of the earth, surrounded on all sides by a great ocean, beyond
+which, somewhere out in a corner, is the Paradise from which Adam and
+Eve were expelled. In its general shape, therefore, the universe
+somewhat resembles the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, or a modern
+"Saratoga trunk." On the northern part of the floor, under the
+firmament, is a lofty conical mountain, around which the sun, moon, and
+planets perform their daily revolutions. In the summer the sun takes a
+turn around the apex of the cone, and is, therefore, hidden only for a
+short night; but in the winter he travels around the base, which takes
+longer, and, accordingly, the nights are long. Such is the doctrine
+drawn from Holy Scripture, says Cosmas, and as for the vain blasphemers
+who pretend that the earth is a round ball, the Lord hath stultified
+them for their sins until they impudently prate of Antipodes, where
+trees grow downward and rain falls upward. As for such nonsense, the
+worthy Cosmas cannot abide it.
+
+         [Footnote 316: Its title is [Greek: Christianôn biblos,
+         hermêneia eis tên Oktateuchon], i. e. against Ptolemy's
+         Geography in eight books. The name Cosmas Indicopleustes seems
+         merely to mean "the cosmographer who has sailed to India." He
+         begins his book in a tone of extreme and somewhat unsavory
+         humility: [Greek: Anoigô ta mogilala kai bradyglôssa cheilê ho
+         hamartôlos kai talas egô]--"I, the sinner and wretch, open my
+         stammering, stuttering lips," etc.--The book has been the
+         occasion of some injudicious excitement within the last half
+         century. Cosmas gave a description of some comparatively recent
+         inscriptions on the peninsula of Sinai, and because he could
+         not find anybody able to read them, he inferred that they must
+         be records of the Israelites on their passage through the
+         desert. (Compare the Dighton rock, above, p. 214.) Whether in
+         the sixth century of grace or in the nineteenth, your
+         unregenerate and unchastened antiquary snaps at conclusions as
+         a drowsy dog does at flies. Some years ago an English
+         clergyman, Charles Forster, started up the nonsense again, and
+         argued that these inscriptions might afford a clue to man's
+         primeval speech! Cf. Bunsen, _Christianity and Mankind_, vol.
+         iii. p. 231; Müller and Donaldson, _History of Greek
+         Literature_, vol. iii. p. 353; Bury, _History of the Later
+         Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene_, vol. ii. p. 177.]
+
+I cite these views of Cosmas because there can be no doubt that they
+represent beliefs current among the general public until after the time
+of Columbus,[317] in spite of the deference paid to Ptolemy's views by
+the learned. Along with these cosmographical speculations, Cosmas shows
+a wider geographical knowledge of Asia than any earlier writer. He gives
+a good deal of interesting information about India and Ceylon, and has a
+fairly correct idea of the position of China, which he calls Tzinista or
+Chinistan. This land of silk is the remotest of all the Indies, and
+beyond it "there is neither navigation nor inhabited country.... And the
+Indian philosophers, called Brachmans, tell you that if you were to
+stretch a straight cord from Tzinista through Persia to the Roman
+territory, you would just divide the world in halves. And mayhap they
+are right."[318]
+
+         [Footnote 317: Such views have their advocates even now. There
+         still lives, I believe, in England, a certain John Hampden, who
+         with dauntless breast maintains that the earth is a circular
+         plane with centre at the north pole and a circumference of
+         nearly 30,000 miles where poor misguided astronomers suppose
+         the south pole to be. The sun moves across the sky at a
+         distance of about 800 miles. From the boundless abyss beyond
+         the southern circumference, with its barrier of icy mountains,
+         came the waters which drowned the antediluvian world; for, as
+         this author quite reasonably observes, "on a globular earth
+         such a deluge would have been physically Impossible." Hampden's
+         title is somewhat like that of Cosmas,--_The New Manual of
+         Biblical Cosmography_, London, 1877; and he began in 1876 to
+         publish a periodical called _The Truth-Seeker's Oracle and
+         Scriptural Science Review_. Similar views have been set forth
+         by one Samuel Rowbotham, under the pseudonym of "Parallax,"
+         _Zetetic Astronomy. Earth not a Globe. An experimental inquiry
+         into the true figure of the earth, proving it a plane without
+         orbital or axial motion_, etc., London, 1873; and by a William
+         Carpenter, _One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is not a Globe_,
+         Baltimore, 1885. There is a very considerable quantity of such
+         literature afloat, the product of a kind of mental aberration
+         that thrives upon paradox. When I was superintendent of the
+         catalogue of Harvard University library, I made the class
+         "Eccentric Literature" under which to group such books,--the
+         lucubrations of circle-squarers, angle-trisectors, inventors of
+         perpetual motion, devisers of recipes for living forever
+         without dying, crazy interpreters of Daniel and the Apocalypse,
+         upsetters of the undulatory theory of light, the
+         Bacon-Shakespeare lunatics, etc.; a dismal procession of
+         long-eared bipeds, with very raucous bray. The late Professor
+         De Morgan devoted a bulky and instructive volume to an account
+         of such people and their crotchets. See his _Budget of
+         Paradoxes_, London, 1872.]
+
+         [Footnote 318: Cosmas, ii. 138. Further mention of China was
+         made early in the seventh century by Theophylactus Samocatta,
+         vii. 7. See Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. pp. xlix., clxviii.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Nestorians.]
+
+In the fourth and following centuries, Nestorian missionaries were very
+active in Asia, and not only made multitudes of converts and established
+metropolitan sees in such places as Kashgar and Herat, but even found
+their way into China. Their work forms an interesting though melancholy
+chapter in history, but it does not seem to have done much toward making
+Asia better known to Europe. As declared heretics, the Nestorians were
+themselves almost entirely cut off from intercourse with European
+Christians.
+
+[Sidenote: Effects of the Saracen conquests.]
+
+[Sidenote: Constantinople in the twelfth century.]
+
+The immediate effect of the sudden rise of the vast Saracen empire, in
+the seventh and eighth centuries, was to interpose a barrier to the
+extension of intercourse between Europe and the Far East. Trade between
+the eastern and western extremities of Asia went on more briskly than
+ever, but it was for a long time exclusively in Mussulman hands. The
+mediæval Arabs were bold sailors, and not only visited Sumatra and Java,
+but made their way to Canton. Upon the southern and middle routes the
+Arab cities of Cairo and Bagdad became thriving centres of trade; but as
+Spain and the whole of northern Africa were now Arab countries, most of
+the trade between east and west was conducted within Mussulman
+boundaries. Saracen cruisers prowled in the Mediterranean and sorely
+harassed the Christian coasts. During the eighth, ninth, and tenth
+centuries, Europe was more shut in upon herself than ever before or
+since. In many respects these were especially the dark ages of
+Europe,--the period of least comfort and least enlightenment since the
+days of pre-Roman barbarism. But from this general statement
+Constantinople should be in great measure excepted. The current of
+mediæval trade through the noble highway of the Dardanelles and the
+Bosphorus was subject to fluctuations, but it was always great. The
+city of the Byzantine emperors was before all things a commercial city,
+like Venice in later days. Until the time of the Crusades Constantinople
+was the centre of the Levant trade. The great northern route from Asia
+remained available for commercial intercourse in this direction. Persian
+and Armenian merchants sent their goods to Batoum, whence they were
+shipped to Constantinople; and silk was brought from northwestern China
+by caravan to the Oxus, and forwarded thence by the Caspian sea, the
+rivers Cyrus and Phasis, and the Euxine sea.[319] When it was visited by
+Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century, Constantinople was
+undoubtedly the richest and most magnificent city, and the seat of the
+highest civilization, to be found anywhere upon the globe.
+
+         [Footnote 319: Robertson, _Historical Disquisition_, p. 93;
+         Pears, _The Fall of Constantinople_, p. 177,--a book of great
+         merit.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Crusades.]
+
+[Sidenote: Barbarizing character of Turkish conquest.]
+
+[Sidenote: General effects of the Crusades.]
+
+In the days of its strength the Eastern Empire was the staunch bulwark
+of Christendom against the dangerous assaults of Persian, Saracen, and
+Turk; alike in prosperity and in calamity, it proved to be the teacher
+and civilizer of the western world. The events which, at the close of
+the eleventh century, brought thousands upon thousands of adventurous,
+keen-witted people from western Europe into this home of wealth and
+refinement, were the occasion of the most remarkable intellectual
+awakening that the world had ever witnessed up to that time. The
+Crusades, in their beginning, were a symptom of the growing energy of
+western Europe under the ecclesiastical reformation effected by the
+mighty Hildebrand. They were the military response of Europe to the most
+threatening, and, as time has proved, the most deadly of all the blows
+that have ever been aimed at her from Asia. Down to this time the
+Mahometanism with which Christendom had so long been in conflict was a
+Mahometanism of civilized peoples. The Arabs and Moors were industrious
+merchants, agriculturists, and craftsmen; in their society one might
+meet with learned scholars, refined poets, and profound philosophers.
+But at the end of the tenth century, Islam happened to make converts of
+the Turks, a nomad race in the upper status of barbarism, with flocks
+and herds and patriarchal families. Inspired with the sudden zeal for
+conquest which has always characterized new converts to Islam, the Turks
+began to pour down from the plains of central Asia like a deluge upon
+the Eastern Empire. In 1016 they overwhelmed Armenia, and presently
+advanced into Asia Minor. Their mode of conquest was peculiarly baleful,
+for at first they deliberately annihilated the works of civilization in
+order to prepare the country for their nomadic life; they pulled down
+cities to put up tents. Though they long ago ceased to be nomads, they
+have to this day never learned to comprehend civilized life, and they
+have been simply a blight upon every part of the earth's surface which
+they have touched. At the beginning of the eleventh century, Asia Minor
+was one of the most prosperous and highly civilized parts of the
+world;[320] and the tale of its devastation by the terrible Alp Arslan
+and the robber chiefs that came after him is one of the most mournful
+chapters in history. At the end of that century, when the Turks were
+holding Nicæa and actually had their outposts on the Marmora, it was
+high time for Christendom to rise _en masse_ in self-defence. The idea
+was worthy of the greatest of popes. Imperfectly and spasmodically as it
+was carried out, it undoubtedly did more than anything that had ever
+gone before toward strengthening the wholesome sentiment of a common
+Christendom among the peoples of western Europe. The Crusades increased
+the power of the Church, which was equivalent to putting a curb upon the
+propensities of the robber baron and making labour and traffic more
+secure. In another way they aided this good work by carrying off the
+robber baron in large numbers to Egypt and Syria, and killing him there.
+In this way they did much toward ridding European society of its most
+turbulent elements; while at the same time they gave fresh development
+to the spirit of romantic adventure, and connected it with something
+better than vagrant freebooting.[321] By renewing the long-suspended
+intercourse between the minds of western Europe and the Greek culture
+of Constantinople, they served as a mighty stimulus to intellectual
+curiosity, and had a large share in bringing about that great thirteenth
+century renaissance which is forever associated with the names of Giotto
+and Dante and Roger Bacon.
+
+         [Footnote 320: "It is difficult for the modern traveller who
+         ventures into the heart of Asia Minor, and finds nothing but
+         rude Kurds and Turkish peasants living among mountains and wild
+         pastures, not connected even by ordinary roads, to imagine the
+         splendour and rich cultivation of this vast country, with its
+         brilliant cities and its teeming population." Mahaffy, _The
+         Greek World under Roman Sway_, London, 1890, p. 229.]
+
+         [Footnote 321: The general effects of the Crusades are
+         discussed, with much learning and sagacity, by
+         Choiseul-Daillecourt, _De l'Influence des Croisades sur l'état
+         des peuples de l'Europe_, Paris, 1809.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Fourth Crusade.]
+
+There can be no doubt that in these ways the Crusades were for our
+forefathers in Europe the most bracing and stimulating events that
+occurred in the whole millennium between the complicated disorders of
+the fifth century and the outburst of maritime discovery in the
+fifteenth. How far they justified themselves from the military point of
+view, it is not so easy to say. On the one hand, they had much to do
+with retarding the progress of the enemy for two hundred years; they
+overwhelmed the Seljukian Turks so effectually that their successors,
+the Ottomans, did not become formidable until about 1300, after the last
+crusading wave had spent its force. On the other hand, the Fourth
+Crusade, with better opportunities than any of the others for striking a
+crushing blow at the Moslem, played false to Christendom, and in 1204
+captured and despoiled Constantinople in order to gratify Venice's
+hatred of her commercial rival and superior. It was a sorry piece of
+business, and one cannot look with unmixed pleasure at the four superb
+horses that now adorn the front of the church of St. Mark as a trophy of
+this unhallowed exploit.[322] One cannot help feeling that but for this
+colossal treachery, the great city of Constantine, to which our own
+civilization owes more than can ever be adequately told, might, perhaps,
+have retained enough strength to withstand the barbarian in 1453, and
+thus have averted one of the most lamentable catastrophes in the history
+of mankind.
+
+         [Footnote 322: They were taken from Chios in the fourth century
+         by the emperor Theodosius, and placed in the hippodrome at
+         Constantinople, whence they were taken by the Venetians in
+         1204. The opinion that "the results of the Fourth Crusade upon
+         European civilization were altogether disastrous" is ably set
+         forth by Mr. Pears, _The Fall of Constantinople_, London, 1885,
+         and would be difficult to refute. Voltaire might well say in
+         this case, "Ainsi le seul fruit des chrétiens dans leurs
+         barbares croisades fut d'exterminer d'autres chrétiens. Ces
+         croisés, qui ruinaient l'empire auraient pu, bien plus aisément
+         que tous leurs prédécesseurs, chasser les Turcs de l'Asie."
+         _Essai sur les Moeurs_, tom. ii. p. 158. Voltaire's general
+         view of the Crusades is, however, very superficial.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rivalry between Venice and Genoa.]
+
+The general effect of the Crusades upon Oriental commerce was to
+increase the amount of traffic through Egypt and Syria. Of this
+lucrative trade Venice got the lion's share, and while she helped
+support the short-lived Latin dynasty upon the throne at Constantinople,
+she monopolized a great part of the business of the Black Sea also. But
+in 1261 Venice's rival, Genoa, allied herself with the Greek emperor,
+Michael Palæologus, at Nicæa, placed him upon the Byzantine throne, and
+again cut off Venice from the trade that came through the Bosphorus.
+From this time forth the mutual hatred between Venice and Genoa "waxed
+fiercer than ever; no merchant fleet of either state could go to sea
+without convoy, and wherever their ships met they fought. It was
+something like the state of things between Spain and England in the
+days of Drake."[323] In the one case as in the other, it was a strife
+for the mastery of the sea and its commerce. Genoa obtained full control
+of the Euxine, took possession of the Crimea, and thus acquired a
+monopoly of the trade from central Asia along the northern route. With
+the fall of Acre in 1291, and the consequent expulsion of Christians
+from Syria, Venice lost her hold upon the middle route. But with the
+pope's leave[324] she succeeded in making a series of advantageous
+commercial treaties with the new Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt, and the
+dealings between the Red Sea and the Adriatic soon came to be
+prodigious. The Venetians gained control of part of the Peloponnesus,
+with many islands of the Ægean and eastern Mediterranean. During the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries their city was the most splendid and
+luxurious in all Christendom.
+
+         [Footnote 323: Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p. lxxi.]
+
+         [Footnote 324: A papal dispensation was necessary before a
+         commercial treaty could be made with Mahometans. See Leibnitz,
+         _Codex Jur. Gent. Diplomat._, i. 489.]
+
+[Sidenote: Centres and routes of mediæval trade.]
+
+Such a development of wealth in Venice and Genoa implies a large
+producing and consuming area behind them, able to take and pay for the
+costly products of India and China. Before the end of the thirteenth
+century the volume of European trade had swelled to great proportions.
+How full of historic and literary interest are the very names of the
+centres and leading routes of this trade as it was established in those
+days, with its outlook upon the Mediterranean and the distant East! Far
+up in the North we see Wisby, on the little isle of Gothland in the
+Baltic, giving its name to new rules of international law; and the
+merchants of the famous Hansa towns extending their operations as far as
+Novgorod in one direction, and in another to the Steelyard in London,
+where the pound of these honest "Easterlings" was adopted as the
+"sterling" unit of sound money. Fats and tallows, furs and wax from
+Russia, iron and copper from Sweden, strong hides and unrivalled wools
+from England, salt cod and herring (much needed on meagre church
+fast-days) from the North and Baltic seas, appropriately followed by
+generous casks of beer from Hamburg, were sent southward in exchange for
+fine cloths and tapestries, the products of the loom in Ghent and
+Bruges, in Ulm and Augsburg, with delicious vintages of the Rhine,
+supple chain armour from Milan, Austrian yew-wood for English long-bows,
+ivory and spices, pearls and silks from Italy and the Orient. Along the
+routes from Venice and Florence to Antwerp and Rotterdam we see the
+progress in wealth and refinement, in artistic and literary
+productiveness. We see the early schools of music and painting in Italy
+meet with prompt response in Flanders; in the many-gabled streets of
+Nuremberg we hear the voice of the Meistersinger, and under the low
+oaken roof of a Canterbury inn we listen to joyous if sometimes naughty
+tales erst told in pleasant groves outside of fever-stricken Florence.
+
+[Sidenote: Effects of the Mongol conquests.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cathay.]
+
+[Sidenote: Carpini and Rubruquis.]
+
+[Sidenote: First knowledge of an eastern ocean beyond Cathay.]
+
+With this increase of wealth and culture in central Europe there came a
+considerable extension of knowledge and a powerful stimulus to
+curiosity concerning the remote parts of Asia. The conquering career of
+Jenghis Khan (1206-1227) had shaken the world to its foundations. In the
+middle of that century, to adopt Colonel Yule's lively expression,
+"throughout Asia and eastern Europe, scarcely a dog might bark without
+Mongol leave, from the borders of Poland and the coast of Cilicia to the
+Amur and the Yellow Sea." About these portentous Mongols, who had thus
+in a twinkling overwhelmed China and Russia, and destroyed the Caliphate
+of Bagdad, there was a refreshing touch of open-minded heathenism. They
+were barbarians willing to learn. From end to end of Asia the barriers
+were thrown down. It was a time when Alan chiefs from the Volga served
+as police in Tunking, and Chinese physicians could be consulted at
+Tabriz. For about a hundred years China was more accessible than at any
+period before or since,--more even than to-day; and that country now for
+the first time became really known to a few Europeans. In the northern
+provinces of China, shortly before the Mongol deluge, there had reigned
+a dynasty known as the _Khitai_, and hence China was (and still is)
+commonly spoken of in central Asia as the country of the Khitai. When
+this name reached European ears it became _Cathay_, the name by which
+China was best known in Europe during the next four centuries.[325] In
+1245, Friar John of Plano Carpini, a friend and disciple of St. Francis,
+was sent by Pope Innocent IV. on a missionary errand to the Great Khan,
+and visited him in his camp at Karakorum in the very depths of Mongolia.
+In 1253 the king of France, St. Louis, sent another Franciscan monk,
+Willem de Rubruquis, to Karakorum, on a mission of which the purpose is
+now not clearly understood. Both these Franciscans were men of shrewd
+and cultivated minds, especially Rubruquis, whose narrative, "in its
+rich detail, its vivid pictures, its acuteness of observation and strong
+good sense ... has few superiors in the whole library of travel."[326]
+Neither Rubruquis nor Friar John visited China, but they fell in with
+Chinese folk at Karakorum, and obtained information concerning the
+geography of eastern Asia far more definite than had ever before been
+possessed by Europeans. They both describe Cathay as bordering upon an
+eastern ocean, and this piece of information constituted the first
+important leap of geographical knowledge to the eastward since the days
+of Ptolemy, who supposed that beyond the "Seres and Sinæ" lay an unknown
+land of vast extent, "full of reedy and impenetrable swamps."[327] The
+information gathered by Rubruquis and Friar John indicated that there
+was an end to the continent of Asia; that, not as a matter of vague
+speculation, but of positive knowledge, Asia was bounded on the east,
+just as Europe was bounded on the west, by an ocean.
+
+         [Footnote 325: Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. p. cxvi.; _Marco Polo_,
+         vol. i. p. xlii.]
+
+         [Footnote 326: Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p. cxxx.; cf.
+         Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. i. p. 71. The complete
+         original texts of the reports of both monks, with learned
+         notes, may be found in the _Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires,
+         publié par la Société de Géographie_, Paris, 1839, tom. iv.,
+         viz.: _Johannis de Plano Carpini Historia Mongolorum quos nos
+         Tartaros appellamus_, ed. M. d'Avezac; _Itinerarium Willelmi de
+         Rubruk_, ed. F. Michel et T. Wright.]
+
+         [Footnote 327: Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. p. xxxix.; Ptolemy, i.
+         17. Cf. Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, London, 1883,
+         vol. ii. p. 606.]
+
+[Sidenote: The data were thus prepared for Columbus;]
+
+[Sidenote: but as yet nobody reasoned from these data to a practical
+conclusion.]
+
+Here we arrive at a notable landmark in the history of the Discovery of
+America. Here from the camp of bustling heathen at Karakorum there is
+brought to Europe the first announcement of a geographical fact from
+which the poetic mind of Christopher Columbus will hereafter reap a
+wonderful harvest. This is one among many instances of the way in which,
+throughout all departments of human thought and action, the glorious
+thirteenth century was beginning to give shape to the problems of which
+the happy solution has since made the modern world so different from the
+ancient.[328] Since there is an ocean east of Cathay and an ocean west
+of Spain, how natural the inference--and albeit quite wrong, how
+amazingly fruitful--that these oceans are one and the same, so that by
+sailing westward from Spain one might go straight to Cathay! The data
+for such an inference were now all at hand, but it does not appear that
+any one as yet reasoned from the data to the conclusion, although we
+find Roger Bacon, in 1267, citing the opinions of Aristotle and other
+ancient writers to the effect that the distance by sea from the western
+shores of Spain to the eastern shores of Asia cannot be so very
+great.[329] In those days it took a long time for such ideas to get from
+the heads of philosophers into the heads of men of action; and in the
+thirteenth century, when Cathay was more accessible by land than at any
+time before or since, there was no practical necessity felt for a water
+route thither. Europe still turned her back upon the Atlantic and gazed
+more intently than ever upon Asia. Stronger and more general grew the
+interest in Cathay.
+
+         [Footnote 328: See my _Beginnings of New England_, chap. i. How
+         richly suggestive to an American is the contemporaneity of
+         Rubruquis and Earl Simon of Leicester!]
+
+         [Footnote 329: Roger Bacon, _Opus Majus_, ed. Jebb, London,
+         1733, p. 183.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Polo brothers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Kublai Khan's message to the Pope.]
+
+In the middle of the thirteenth century, some members of the Polo
+family, one of the aristocratic families of Venice, had a commercial
+house at Constantinople. Thence, in 1260, the brothers Nicolò and Maffeo
+Polo started on a trading journey to the Crimea, whence one opportunity
+after another for making money and gratifying their curiosity with new
+sights led them northward and eastward to the Volga, thence into
+Bokhara, and so on until they reached the court of the Great Khan, in
+one of the northwestern provinces of Cathay. The reigning sovereign was
+the famous Kublai Khan, grandson of the all-conquering Jenghis. Kublai
+was an able and benevolent despot, earnest in the wish to improve the
+condition of his Mongol kinsmen. He had never before met European
+gentlemen, and was charmed with the cultivated and polished Venetians.
+He seemed quite ready to enlist the Roman Church in aid of his
+civilizing schemes, and entrusted the Polos with a message to the Pope,
+asking him for a hundred missionary teachers. The brothers reached
+Venice in 1269, and found that Pope Clement IV. was dead and there was
+an interregnum. After two years Gregory X. was elected and received the
+Khan's message, but could furnish only a couple of Dominican friars, and
+these men were seized with the dread not uncommonly felt for
+"Tartareans," and at the last moment refused to go. Nicolò and his
+brother then set out in the autumn of 1271 to return to China, taking
+with them Nicolò's son Marco, a lad of seventeen years. From Acre they
+went by way of Bagdad to Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian gulf,
+apparently with the intention of proceeding thence by sea, but for some
+reason changed their course, and travelled through Kerman, Khorassan,
+and Balkh, to Kashgar, and thence by way of Yarkand and Khotan, and
+across the desert of Gobi into northwestern China, where they arrived in
+the summer of 1275, and found the Khan at Kaipingfu, not far from the
+northern end of the Great Wall.
+
+[Sidenote: Marco Polo and his travels in Asia.]
+
+[Sidenote: First recorded voyage of Europeans around the Indo-Chinese
+peninsula, 1292-94.]
+
+[Sidenote: Return of the Polos to Venice.]
+
+It has been said that the failure of Kublai's mission to the Pope led
+him to apply to the Grand Lama, at Thibet, who responded more
+efficiently and successfully than Gregory X., so that Buddhism seized
+the chance which Catholicism failed to grasp. The Venetians, however,
+lost nothing in the good Khan's esteem. Young Marco began to make
+himself proficient in speaking and writing several Asiatic languages,
+and was presently taken into the Khan's service. His name is mentioned
+in the Chinese Annals of 1277 as a newly-appointed commissioner of the
+privy council.[330] He remained in Kublai's service until 1292, while
+his father and uncle were gathering wealth in various ways. Marco made
+many official journeys up and down the Khan's vast dominions, not only
+in civilized China, but in regions of the heart of Asia seldom visited
+by Europeans to this day,--"a vast ethnological garden," says Colonel
+Yule, "of tribes of various race and in every stage of uncivilization."
+In 1292 a royal bride for the Khan of Persia was to be sent all the way
+from Peking to Tabriz, and as war that year made some parts of the
+overland route very unsafe, it was decided to send her by sea. The three
+Polos had for some time been looking for an opportunity to return to
+Venice, but Kublai was unwilling to have them go. Now, however, as every
+Venetian of that day was deemed to be from his very cradle a seasoned
+seadog, and as the kindly old Mongol sovereign had an inveterate
+land-lubber's misgivings about ocean voyages, he consented to part with
+his dear friends, so that he might entrust the precious princess to
+their care. They sailed from the port of Zaiton (Chinchow) early in
+1292, and after long delays on the coasts of Sumatra and Hindustan, in
+order to avoid unfavourable monsoons, they reached the Persian gulf in
+1294. They found that the royal bridegroom, somewhat advanced in years,
+had died before they started from China; so the young princess became
+the bride of his son. After tarrying awhile in Tabriz, the Polos
+returned, by way of Trebizond and the Bosphorus, to Venice, arriving in
+1295. When they got there, says Ramusio, after their absence of four and
+twenty years, "the same fate befel them as befel Ulysses, who, when he
+returned to his native Ithaca, was recognized by nobody." Their kinsfolk
+had long since given them up for dead; and when the three wayworn
+travellers arrived at the door of their own palace, the middle-aged men
+now wrinkled graybeards, the stripling now a portly man, all three
+attired in rather shabby clothes of Tartar cut, and "with a certain
+indescribable smack of the Tartar about them, both in air and accent,"
+some words of explanation were needed to prove their identity. After a
+few days they invited a party of old friends to dinner, and bringing
+forth three shabby coats, ripped open the seams and welts, and began
+pulling out and tumbling upon the table such treasures of diamonds and
+emeralds, rubies and sapphires, as could never have been imagined,
+"which had all been stitched up in those dresses in so artful a fashion
+that nobody could have suspected the fact." In such wise had they
+brought home from Cathay their ample earnings; and when it became known
+about Venice that the three long-lost citizens had come back,
+"straightway the whole city, gentle and simple, flocked to the house to
+embrace them, and to make much of them, with every conceivable
+demonstration of affection and respect."[331]
+
+         [Footnote 330: Pauthier's _Marco Polo_, p. 361; Yule's _Marco
+         Polo_, p. li.]
+
+         [Footnote 331: Ramusio, _apud_ Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p.
+         xxxvii.]
+
+[Sidenote: Marco Polo's book written in prison at Genoa, 1299.]
+
+Three years afterward, in 1298, Marco commanded a galley in the great
+naval battle with the Genoese near Curzola. The Venetians were totally
+defeated, and Marco was one of the 7,000 prisoners taken to Genoa, where
+he was kept in durance for about a year. One of his companions in
+captivity was a certain Rusticiano, of Pisa, who was glad to listen to
+his descriptions of Asia, and to act as his amanuensis. French was then,
+at the close of the Crusades, a language as generally understood
+throughout Europe as later, in the age of Louis XIV.; and Marco's
+narrative was duly taken down by the worthy Rusticiano in rather lame
+and shaky French. In the summer of 1299 Marco was set free and returned
+to Venice, where he seems to have led a quiet life until his death in
+1324.
+
+[Sidenote: Its great contributions to geographical knowledge.]
+
+"The Book of Ser Marco Polo concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the
+East" is one of the most famous and important books of the Middle Ages.
+It contributed more new facts toward a knowledge of the earth's surface
+than any book that had ever been written before. Its author was "the
+first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia;"
+the first to describe China in its vastness, with its immense cities,
+its manufactures and wealth, and to tell, whether from personal
+experience or direct hearsay, of Thibet and Burmah, of Siam and Cochin
+China, of the Indian archipelago, with its islands of spices, of Java
+and Sumatra, and of the savages of Andaman. He knew of Japan and the
+woful defeat of the Mongols there, when they tried to invade the island
+kingdom in 1281. He gave a description of Hindustan far more complete
+and characteristic than had ever before been published. From Arab
+sailors, accustomed to the Indian ocean, he learned something about
+Zanzibar and Madagascar and the semi-Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. To
+the northward from Persia he described the country of the Golden Horde,
+whose khans were then holding Russia in subjection; and he had gathered
+some accurate information concerning Siberia as far as the country of
+the Samoyeds, with their dog-sledges and polar bears.[332]
+
+         [Footnote 332: Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p. cxxxi.]
+
+[Sidenote: Prester John.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "Arimaspians."]
+
+Here was altogether too much geographical knowledge for European
+ignorance in those days to digest. While Marco's book attracted much
+attention, its influence upon the progress of geography was slighter
+than it would have been if addressed to a more enlightened public. Many
+of its sober statements of fact were received with incredulity. Many of
+the places described were indistinguishable, in European imagination,
+from the general multitude of fictitious countries mentioned in
+fairy-tales or in romances of chivalry. Perhaps no part of Marco's story
+was so likely to interest his readers as his references to Prester John.
+In the course of the twelfth century the notion had somehow gained
+possession of the European mind that somewhere out in the dim vastness
+of the Orient there dwelt a mighty Christian potentate, known as John
+the Presbyter or "Prester."[333] At different times he was identified
+with various known Asiatic sovereigns. Marco Polo identified him with
+one Togrul Wang, who was overcome and slain by the mighty Jenghis; but
+he would not stay dead, any more than the grewsome warlock in Russian
+nursery lore. The notion of Prester John and his wealthy kingdom could
+no more be expelled from the European mind in the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries than the kindred notion of El Dorado in the
+sixteenth. The position of this kingdom was shifted about here and
+there, as far as from Chinese Tartary to Abyssinia and back again, but
+somewhere or other in people's vague mental picture of the East it was
+sure to occur. Other remote regions in Asia were peopled with elves and
+griffins and "one-eyed Arimaspians,"[334] and we may be sure that to
+Marco's readers these beings were quite as real as the polished
+citizens of Cambaluc (Peking) or the cannibals of the Andaman islands.
+From such a chaos of ideas sound geographical knowledge must needs be a
+slow evolution, and Marco Polo's acquisitions were altogether too far in
+advance of his age to be readily assimilated.
+
+         [Footnote 333:
+            "But for to speake of riches and of stones,
+            And men and horse, I trow the large wones
+            Of Prestir John, ne all his tresorie,
+            Might not unneth have boght the tenth partie."
+                              Chaucer, _The Flower and the Leaf_, 200.
+
+         The fabulous kingdom of Prester John is ably treated in Yule's
+         _Cathay_, vol. i. pp. 174-182; _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p.
+         204-216. Colonel Yule suspects that its prototype may have been
+         the semi-Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. This is very likely.
+         As for its range, shifted hither and thither as it was, all the
+         way from the upper Nile to the Thian-Shan mountains, we can
+         easily understand this if we remember how an ignorant mind
+         conceives all points distant from its own position as near to
+         one another; i. e. if you are about to start from New York for
+         Arizona, your housemaid will perhaps ask you to deliver a
+         message to her brother in Manitoba. Nowhere more than in the
+         history of geography do we need to keep before us, at every
+         step, the limitations of the untutored mind and its feebleness
+         in grasping the space-relations of remote regions.]
+
+         [Footnote 334: These Arimaspians afford an interesting example
+         of the uncritical statements of travellers at an early time, as
+         well as of their tenacious vitality. The first mention of these
+         mythical people seems to have been made by Greek travellers in
+         Scythia as early as the seventh century before Christ; and they
+         furnished Aristeas of Proconnesus, somewhat later, with the
+         theme of his poem "Arimaspeia," which has perished, all except
+         six verses quoted by Longinus. See Mure's _Literature of
+         Antient Greece_, vol. iv. p. 68. Thence the notion of the
+         Arimaspians seems to have passed to Herodotus (iii. 116; iv.
+         27) and to Æschylus:--
+
+            [Greek: oxystomous gar Zênos akrageis kynas
+            grypas phylaxai, ton te mounôpa straton
+            Arimaspon hippobamon', hoi chrysorrhyton
+            oikousin amphi nama Ploutônos porou;
+            toutois sy mê pelaze.]
+                              _Prometheus_, 802.
+
+         Thence it passed on to Pausanias, i. 24; Pomponius Mela, ii. 1;
+         Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 2; Lucan, _Pharsalia_, iii. 280; and
+         so on to Milton:--
+
+            "As when a gryphon through the wilderness,
+            With winged course o'er hill or moory dale,
+            Pursues the Arimaspian who by stealth
+            Had from his wakeful custody purloined
+            The guarded gold."
+                              _Paradise Lost_, ii. 944.]
+
+[Illustration: Two sheets of the Catalan Map, 1375.]
+
+[Sidenote: Other visits to China.]
+
+[Sidenote: Overthrow of the Mongol dynasty, and shutting up of China.]
+
+Nevertheless, in the Catalan map, made in 1375, and now to be seen in
+the National Library at Paris, there is a thorough-going and not
+unsuccessful attempt to embody the results of Polo's travels. In the
+interval of three quarters of a century since the publication of Marco's
+narrative, several adventurous travellers had found their way to Cathay.
+There was Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, who, during the years 1316-30
+visited Hindustan, Sumatra, Java, Cochin China, the Chinese Empire, and
+Thibet.[335] It was from this worthy monk that the arrant old impostor,
+"Sir John Mandeville," stole his descriptions of India and Cathay,
+seasoning them with yarns from Pliny and Ktesias, and grotesque conceits
+of his own.[336] Several other missionary friars visited China between
+1302 and 1330, and about ten years after the latter date the Florentine
+merchant, Francesco Pegolotti, wrote a very useful handbook for
+commercial travellers on the overland route to that country.[337]
+Between 1338 and 1353 Giovanni Marignolli spent some years at Peking, as
+papal legate from Benedict XI. to the Great Khan, and also travelled in
+Ceylon and Hindustan.[338] That seems to have been the last of these
+journeys to the Far East. In 1368, the people of China rose against the
+Mongol dynasty and overthrew it. The first emperor of the native Ming
+dynasty was placed upon the throne, and the Chinese retorted upon their
+late conquerors by overrunning vast Mongolia and making it Chinese
+Tartary. The barriers thrown down by the liberal policy of the Mongol
+sovereigns were now put up again, and no more foreigners were allowed to
+set foot upon the sacred soil of the Flowery Kingdom.
+
+         [Footnote 335: Odoric mentions Juggernaut processions and the
+         burning of widows; in Sumatra he observed cannibalism and
+         community of wives; he found the kingdom of Prester John in
+         Chinese Tartary; "but as regards him," says wise Odoric, "not
+         one hundredth part is true of what is told of him as if it were
+         undeniable." Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. pp. 79, 85, 146.]
+
+         [Footnote 336: Colonel Yule gives a list of fourteen important
+         passages taken bodily from Odoric by Mandeville. _Op. cit._ i.
+         28. It is very doubtful if that famous book, "Sir John
+         Mandeville's Travels," was written by a Mandeville, or by a
+         knight, or even by an Englishman. It seems to have been
+         originally written in French by Jean de Bourgogne, a physician
+         who lived for some years at Liège, and died there somewhere
+         about 1370. He may possibly have been an Englishman named John
+         Burgoyne, who was obliged some years before that date to flee
+         his country for homicide or for some political offence. He had
+         travelled as far as Egypt and Palestine, but no farther. His
+         book is almost entirely cribbed from others, among which may be
+         mentioned the works of Jacques de Vitry, Plano Carpini, Hayton
+         the Armenian, Boldensele's Itinerary, Albert of Aix's chronicle
+         of the first crusade, Brunetto Latini's _Trésor_, Petrus
+         Comestor's _Historia scholastica_, the _Speculum_ of Vincent de
+         Beauvais, etc., etc. It is one of the most wholesale and
+         successful instances of plagiarism and imposture on record. See
+         _The Buke of John Mandevill, from the unique copy (Egerton MS.
+         1982) in the British Museum. Edited by G. F. Warner._
+         Westminster, 1889. (Roxburghe Club.)]
+
+         [Footnote 337: One piece of Pegolotti's advice is still useful
+         for travellers in the nineteenth century who visit benighted
+         heathen countries afflicted with robber tariffs: "And don't
+         forget that if you treat the custom-house officers with
+         respect, and make them something of a present in goods or
+         money, they will behave with great civility and always be ready
+         to appraise your wares below their real value." _Op. cit._ ii.
+         307.]
+
+         [Footnote 338: The works of all the writers mentioned in this
+         paragraph, or copious extracts from them, may be found in
+         Yule's _Cathay_, which comprises also the book of the
+         celebrated Ibn Batuta, of Tangier, whose travels, between 1325
+         and 1355, covered pretty much the whole of Asia except Siberia,
+         besides a journey across Sahara to the river Niger. His book
+         does not seem to have attracted attention in Europe until early
+         in the present century.]
+
+[Sidenote: First rumours of the Molucca islands and Japan.]
+
+Thus, for just a century,--from Carpini and Rubruquis to
+Marignolli,--while China was open to strangers as never before or since,
+a few Europeans had availed themselves of the opportunity in such wise
+as to mark the beginning of a new era in the history of geographical
+knowledge. Though the discoveries of Marco Polo were as yet but
+imperfectly appreciated, one point, and that the most significant of
+all, was thoroughly established. It was shown that the continent of Asia
+did not extend indefinitely eastward, nor was it bounded and barricaded
+on that side, as Ptolemy had imagined, by vast impenetrable swamps. On
+the contrary, its eastern shores were perfectly accessible through an
+open sea, and half a dozen Europeans in Chinese ships had now actually
+made the voyage between the coast of China and the Persian gulf.
+Moreover, some hearsay knowledge--enough to provoke curiosity and
+greed--had been gained of the existence of numerous islands in that
+far-off eastern ocean, rich in the spices which from time immemorial had
+formed such an important element in Mediterranean commerce. News, also,
+had been brought to Europe of the wonderful island kingdom of Japan
+(Cipango or Zipangu) lying out in that ocean some hundreds of miles
+beyond the coast of Cathay. These were rich countries, abounding in
+objects of lucrative traffic. Under the liberal Mongol rule the Oriental
+trade had increased enough for Europe to feel in many ways its
+beneficial effects. Now this trade began to be suddenly and severely
+checked, and while access to the interior of Asia was cut off, European
+merchants might begin to reflect upon the value of what they were
+losing, and to consider if there were any feasible method of recovering
+it.
+
+[Sidenote: The accustomed routes of Oriental trade cut off by the
+Ottoman Turks.]
+
+[Sidenote: Necessity for finding an "outside route to the Indies."]
+
+It was not merely the shutting up of China by the first Ming emperor,
+in 1368, that checked the intercourse between Europe and Asia. A still
+more baleful obstacle to all such intercourse had lately come upon the
+scene. In Asia Minor the beastly Turk, whose career had been for two
+centuries arrested by the Crusades, now reared his head again. The
+Seljukian had been only scotched, not killed; and now he sprang to life
+as the Ottoman, with sharper fangs than before. In 1365 the Turks
+established themselves in the Balkan peninsula, with Adrianople as their
+capital, and began tightening their coils about the doomed city of
+Constantine. Each point that they gained meant the strangling of just so
+much Oriental trade; for, as we have seen, the alliance of
+Constantinople with Genoa since 1261 had secured to the latter city, and
+to western Europe, the advantages of the overland routes from Asia,
+whether through the Volga country or across Armenia. When at length, in
+1453, the Turks took Constantinople, the splendid commercial career of
+Genoa was cut with the shears of Atropos. At the same time, as their
+power was rapidly extending over Syria and down toward Egypt,
+threatening the overthrow of the liberal Mameluke dynasty there, the
+commercial prosperity of Venice also was seriously imperilled. Moreover,
+as Turkish corsairs began to swarm in the eastern waters of the
+Mediterranean, the voyage became more and more unsafe for Christian
+vessels. It was thus, while the volume of trade with Asia was, in the
+natural course of things, swelling year by year, that its accustomed
+routes were being ruthlessly cut off. It was fast becoming necessary to
+consider whether there might not be other practicable routes to "the
+Indies" than those which had from time immemorial been followed. Could
+there be such a thing as an "outside route" to that land of promise? A
+more startling question has seldom been propounded; for it involved a
+radical departure from the grooves in which the human mind had been
+running ever since the days of Solomon. Two generations of men lived and
+died while this question was taking shape, and all that time Cathay and
+India and the islands of Spices were objects of increasing desire,
+clothed by eager fancy with all manner of charms and riches. The more
+effectually the eastern Mediterranean was closed, the stronger grew the
+impulse to venture upon unknown paths in order to realize the vague but
+glorious hopes that began to cluster about these remote countries. Such
+an era of romantic enterprise as was thus ushered in, the world has
+never seen before or since. It was equally remarkable as an era of
+discipline in scientific thinking. In the maritime ventures of
+unparalleled boldness now to be described, the human mind was groping
+toward the era of enormous extensions of knowledge in space and time
+represented by the names of Newton and Darwin. It was learning the right
+way of putting its trust in the Unseen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.
+
+_EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing
+around Africa.]
+
+As it dawned upon men's minds that to find some oceanic route from
+Europe to the remote shores of Asia was eminently desirable, the first
+attempt would naturally be to see what could be done by sailing down the
+western coast of Africa, and ascertaining whether that continent could
+be circumnavigated. It was also quite in the natural order of things
+that this first attempt should be made by the Portuguese.
+
+In the general history of the Middle Ages the Spanish peninsula had been
+to some extent cut off from the main currents of thought and feeling
+which actuated the rest of Europe. Its people had never joined the other
+Christian nations in the Crusades, for the good reason that they always
+had quite enough to occupy them in their own domestic struggle with the
+Moors. From the throes of this prolonged warfare Portugal emerged
+somewhat sooner than the Spanish kingdoms, and thus had somewhat earlier
+a surplus of energy released for work of another sort. It was not
+strange that the Portuguese should be the first people since the old
+Northmen to engage in distant maritime adventure upon a grand scale.
+Nor was it strange that Portuguese seamanship should at first have
+thriven upon naval warfare with Mussulmans. It was in attempting to
+suppress the intolerable nuisance of Moorish piracy that Portuguese
+ships became accustomed to sail a little way down the west coast of
+Africa; and such voyages, begun for military purposes, were kept up in
+the interests of commerce, and presently served as a mighty stimulus to
+geographical curiosity. We have now to consider at some length how grave
+was the problem that came up for immediate solution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Views of Eratosthenes, B. C. 276-196.]
+
+[Sidenote: Opposing theory of Ptolemy, cir. A. D. 150.]
+
+With regard to the circumnavigability of Africa two opposite opinions
+were maintained by the ancient Greek and Latin writers whose authority
+the men of the Middle Ages were wont to quote as decisive of every vexed
+question. The old Homeric notion of an ocean encompassing the
+terrestrial world, although mentioned with doubt by Herodotus,[339]
+continued to survive after the globular form of the earth had come to be
+generally maintained by ancient geographers. The greatest of these
+geographers, Eratosthenes, correctly assumed that the Indian ocean was
+continuous with the Atlantic,[340] and that Africa could be
+circumnavigated, just as he incorrectly assumed that the Caspian sea
+was a huge gulf communicating with a northern ocean, by which it would
+be possible to sail around the continent of Asia as he imagined it.[341]
+A similar opinion as to Africa was held by Posidonius and by
+Strabo.[342] It was called in question, however, by Polybius,[343] and
+was flatly denied by the great astronomer Hipparchus, who thought that
+certain observations on the tides, reported by Seleucus of Babylon,
+proved that there could be no connection between the Atlantic and Indian
+oceans.[344] Claudius Ptolemy, writing in the second century after
+Christ, followed the opinion of Hipparchus, and carried to an extreme
+the reaction against Eratosthenes. By Ptolemy's time the Caspian had
+been proved to be an inland sea, and it was evident that Asia extended
+much farther to the north and east than had once been supposed. This
+seems to have discredited in his mind the whole conception of outside
+oceans, and he not only gave an indefinite northward and eastward
+extension to Asia and an indefinite southern extension to Africa, but
+brought these two continents together far to the southeast, thus making
+the Indian ocean a land-locked sea.[345]
+
+         [Footnote 339: [Greek: Ton de Ôkeanon logô men legousi ap'
+         hêliou anatoleôn arxamenon gên peri pasan rheein, ergô de ouk
+         apodeiknysi.] Herodotus, iv. 8.]
+
+         [Footnote 340: [Greek: Kai gar kat' auton Eratosthenê tên ektos
+         thalattan hapasan syrroun einai, hôste kai tên Hesperion kai
+         tên Erythran thalattan mian einai.] Strabo, i. 3, § 13.]
+
+         [Footnote 341: Bunbury, _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i.
+         p. 644.]
+
+         [Footnote 342: Strabo, ii. 3, § 4; xvii. 3, § 1.]
+
+         [Footnote 343: [Greek: Kathaper de kai tês Asias kai tês
+         Libyes, katho synaptousin allêlais peri tên Aithiopian, oudeis
+         echei legein atrekôs heôs tôn kath' hêmas kairôn, poteron
+         êpeiros esti kata to syneches ta pros tên mesêmbrian, ê
+         thalattê periechetai.] Polybius, iii. 38.]
+
+         [Footnote 344: Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 15.]
+
+         [Footnote 345: See the map of Ptolemy's world, above, p. 264.]
+
+[Sidenote: Story of the Phoenician voyage, in the time of Necho.]
+
+These views of Hipparchus and Ptolemy took no heed of the story told to
+Herodotus of the circumnavigation of Africa by a Phoenician squadron at
+some time during the reign of Necho in Egypt (610-595 B. C.).[346] The
+Phoenician ships were said to have sailed from the Red Sea and to have
+returned through the Mediterranean in the third year after starting. In
+each of the two autumn seasons they stopped and sowed grain and waited
+for it to ripen, which in southern Africa would require ten or twelve
+weeks.[347] On their return to Egypt they declared ("I for my part do
+not believe them," says Herodotus, "but perhaps others may") that in
+thus sailing from east to west around Africa they had the sun upon their
+right hand. About this alleged voyage there has been a good deal of
+controversy.[348] No other expedition in any wise comparable to it for
+length and difficulty can be cited from ancient history, and a critical
+scholar is inclined to look with suspicion upon all such accounts of
+unique and isolated events. As we have not the details of the story, it
+is impossible to give it a satisfactory critical examination. The
+circumstance most likely to convince us of its truth is precisely that
+which dear old Herodotus deemed incredible. The position of the sun, to
+the north of the mariners, is something that could hardly have been
+imagined by people familiar only with the northern hemisphere. It is
+therefore almost certain that Necho's expedition sailed beyond the
+equator.[349] But that is as far as inference can properly carry us; for
+our experience of the uncritical temper of ancient narrators is enough
+to suggest that such an achievement might easily be magnified by rumour
+into the story told, more than a century after the event, to Herodotus.
+The data are too slight to justify us in any dogmatic opinion. One
+thing, however, is clear. Even if the circumnavigation was
+effected,--which, on the whole, seems improbable,--it remained quite
+barren of results. It produced no abiding impression upon men's
+minds[350] and added nothing to geographical knowledge. The veil of
+mystery was not lifted from southern Africa. The story was doubted by
+Strabo and Posidonius, and passed unheeded, as we have seen, by
+Hipparchus and Ptolemy.
+
+         [Footnote 346: Ptolemy expressly declares that the equatorial
+         regions had never been visited by people from the northern
+         hemisphere: [Greek: Tines de eisin hai oikêseis ouk an echoimen
+         pepeismenôs eipein. Atriptoi gar eisi mechri tou deuro tois apo
+         tês kath' hêmas oikoumenês, kai eikasian mallon an tis ê
+         historian hêgêsaito ta legomena peri autôn.] _Syntaxis_, ii.
+         6.]
+
+         [Footnote 347: Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, vol. iii. p. 29, note
+         8.]
+
+         [Footnote 348: The story is discredited by Mannert, _Geographie
+         der Griechen und Römer_, bd. i. pp. 19-26; Gossellin,
+         _Recherches sur la géographie des Anciens_, tom. i. p. 149;
+         Lewis, _Astronomy of the Ancients_, pp. 508-515; Vincent,
+         _Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean_,
+         vol. i. pp. 303-311, vol. ii. pp. 13-15; Leake, _Disputed
+         Questions of Ancient Geography_, pp. 1-8. It is defended by
+         Heeren, _Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr_, etc., 3e aufl.,
+         Göttingen, 1815, bd. i. abth. ii. pp. 87-93; Rennell,
+         _Geography of Herodotus_, pp. 672-714; Grote, _History of
+         Greece_, vol. iii. pp. 377-385. The case is ably presented in
+         Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i. pp. 289-296,
+         where it is concluded that the story "cannot be disproved or
+         pronounced to be absolutely impossible; but the difficulties
+         and improbabilities attending it are so great that they cannot
+         reasonably be set aside without better evidence than the mere
+         statement of Herodotus, upon the authority of unknown
+         informants." Mr. Bunbury (vol. i. p. 317) says that he has
+         reasons for believing that Mr. Grote afterwards changed his
+         opinion and came to agree with Sir George Lewis.]
+
+         [Footnote 349: In reading the learned works of Sir George
+         Cornewall Lewis, one is often reminded of what Sainte-Beuve
+         somewhere says of the great scholar Letronne, when he had spent
+         the hour of his lecture in demolishing some pretty or popular
+         belief: "Il se frotta les mains et s'en alla bien content."
+         When it came to ancient history, Sir George was undeniably fond
+         of "the everlasting No." In the present case his skepticism
+         seems on the whole well-judged, but some of his arguments
+         savour of undue haste toward a negative conclusion. He thus
+         strangely forgets that what we call autumn is springtime in the
+         southern hemisphere (_Astronomy of the Ancients_, p. 511). His
+         argument that the time alleged was insufficient for the voyage
+         is fully met by Major Rennell, who has shown that the time was
+         amply sufficient, and that the direction of winds and ocean
+         currents would make the voyage around southern Africa from east
+         to west much easier than from west to east.]
+
+         [Footnote 350: "No trace of it could be found in the
+         Alexandrian library, either by Eratosthenes in the third, or by
+         Marinus of Tyre in the second, century before Christ, although
+         both of them were diligent examiners of ancient records."
+         Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, p. 90.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyage of Hanno.]
+
+Of Phoenician and other voyages along the Atlantic coast of Africa we
+have much more detailed and trustworthy information. As early as the
+twelfth century before Christ traders from Tyre had founded Cadiz
+(Gades),[351] and at a later date the same hardy people seem to have
+made the beginnings of Lisbon (Olisipo). From such advanced stations
+Tyrian and Carthaginian ships sometimes found their way northward as far
+as Cornwall, and in the opposite direction fishing voyages were made
+along the African coast. The most remarkable undertaking in this quarter
+was the famous voyage of the Carthaginian commander Hanno, whose own
+brief but interesting account of it has been preserved.[352] This
+expedition consisted of sixty penteconters (fifty-oared ships), and its
+chief purpose was colonization. Upon the Mauritanian coast seven small
+trading stations were founded, one of which--Kerne, at the mouth of the
+Rio d' Ouro[353]--existed for a long time. From this point Hanno made
+two voyages of exploration, the second of which carried him as far as
+Sierra Leone and the neighbouring Sherboro island, where he found "wild
+men and women covered with hair," called by the interpreters
+"gorillas."[354] At that point the ships turned back, apparently for
+want of provisions.
+
+         [Footnote 351: Rawlinson's _History of Phoenicia_, pp. 105,
+         418; Pseudo-Aristotle, _Mirab. Auscult._, 146; Velleius
+         Paterculus, i. 2, § 6.]
+
+         [Footnote 352: Hanno, _Periplus_, in Müller, _Geographi Græci
+         Minores_, tom. i. pp. 1-14. Of two or three commanders named
+         Hanno it is uncertain which was the one who led this
+         expedition, and thus its date has been variously assigned from
+         570 to 470 B. C.]
+
+         [Footnote 353: For the determination of these localities see
+         Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. i. pp. 318-335. There is an
+         interesting Spanish description of Hanno's expedition in
+         Mariana, _Historia de España_, Madrid, 1783, tom. i. pp.
+         89-93.]
+
+         [Footnote 354: The sailors pursued them, but did not capture
+         any of the males, who scrambled up the cliffs out of their
+         reach. They captured three females, who bit and scratched so
+         fiercely that it was useless to try to take them away. So they
+         killed them and took their skins home to Carthage. _Periplus_,
+         xviii. According to Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, vi. 36) these skins
+         were hung up as a votive offering in the temple of Juno (i. e.
+         Astarte or Ashtoreth: see Apuleius, _Metamorph._, xi. 257;
+         Gesenius, _Monumenta Phoenic._, p. 168), where they might have
+         been seen at any time before the Romans destroyed the city.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus.]
+
+No other expedition in ancient times is known to have proceeded so far
+south as Sierra Leone. Two other voyages upon this Atlantic coast are
+mentioned, but without definite details. The one was that of Sataspes
+(about 470 B. C.), narrated by Herodotus, who merely tells us that a
+coast was reached where undersized men, clad in palm-leaf garments, fled
+to the hills at sight of the strange visitors.[355] The other was that
+of Eudoxus (about 85 B. C.), related by Posidonius, the friend and
+teacher of Cicero. The story is that this Eudoxus, in a voyage upon the
+east coast of Africa, having a philological turn of mind, wrote down the
+words of some of the natives whom he met here and there along the shore.
+He also picked up a ship's prow in the form of a horse's head, and upon
+his return to Alexandria some merchants professed to recognize it as
+belonging to a ship of Cadiz. Eudoxus thereupon concluded that Africa
+was circumnavigable, and presently sailed through the Mediterranean and
+out upon the Atlantic. Somewhere upon the coast of Mauritania he found
+natives who used some words of similar sound to those which he had
+written down when visiting the eastern coast, whence he concluded that
+they were people of the same race. At this point he turned back, and the
+sequel of the story was unknown to Posidonius.[356]
+
+         [Footnote 355: Herodotus, iv. 43.]
+
+         [Footnote 356: The story is preserved by Strabo, ii. 3, §§ 4,
+         5, who rejects it with a vehemence for which no adequate reason
+         is assigned.]
+
+[Sidenote: Wild exaggerations.]
+
+It is worthy of note that both Pliny and Pomponius Mela, quoting
+Cornelius Nepos as their authority, speak of Eudoxus as having
+circumnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to Cadiz; and Pliny, moreover,
+tells us that Hanno sailed around that continent as far as
+Arabia,[357]--a statement which is clearly false. These examples show
+how stories grow when carelessly and uncritically repeated, and they
+strongly tend to confirm the doubt with which one is inclined to regard
+the tale of Necho's sailors above mentioned. In truth, the island of
+Gorillas, discovered by Hanno, was doubtless the most southerly point on
+that coast reached by navigators in ancient times. Of the islands in the
+western ocean the Carthaginians certainly knew the Canaries (where they
+have left undoubted inscriptions), probably also the Madeiras, and
+possibly the Cape Verde group.[358]
+
+         [Footnote 357: Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, ii. 67; Mela, _De Situ
+         Orbis_, iii. 9.]
+
+         [Footnote 358: After the civil war of Sertorius (B. C. 80-72),
+         the Romans became acquainted with the Canaries, which, because
+         of their luxuriant vegetation and soft climate, were identified
+         with the Elysium described by Homer, and were commonly known as
+         the Fortunate islands. "Contra Fortunatæ Insulæ abundant sua
+         sponte genitis, et subinde aliis super aliis innascentibus
+         nihil sollicitos alunt, beatius quam aliæ urbes excultæ." Mela,
+         iii. 10.
+
+            [Greek: Alla s' es Êlysion pedion kai peirata gaiês
+            athanatoi pempsousin, hothi xanthos Rhadamanthys,
+            têper rhêïstê biotê pelei anthrôpoisin;
+            ou niphetos, out' ar cheimôn polys oute pot' ombros,
+            all' aiei Zephyroio ligy pneiontas aêtas
+            Ôkeanos aniêsin anapsychein anthrôpous.]
+                                        _Odyssey_, iv. 563.
+
+         Since Horace's time (_Epod._ vi. 41-66) the Canary islands have
+         been a favourite theme for poets. It was here that Tasso placed
+         the loves of Rinaldo and Armida, in the delicious garden where
+
+            Vezzosi augelli infra le verde fronde
+            Temprano a prova lascivette note.
+            Mormora l' aura, e fa le foglie e l' onde
+            Garrir, che variamente ella percote.
+                                        _Gerusalemme Liberata_, xvi. 12.]
+
+[Illustration: Pomponius Mela's World, cir. A. D. 50.]
+
+[Sidenote: Views of Pomponius Mela, cir. A. D. 50.]
+
+The extent of the knowledge which the ancients thus had of western
+Africa is well illustrated in the map representing the geographical
+theories of Pomponius Mela, whose book was written about A. D. 50. Of
+the eastern coast and the interior Mela knew less than Ptolemy a
+century later, but of the Atlantic coast he knew more than Ptolemy. The
+fact that the former geographer was a native of Spain and the latter a
+native of Egypt no doubt had something to do with this. Mela had
+profited by the Carthaginian discoveries. His general conception of the
+earth was substantially that of Eratosthenes. It was what has been
+styled the "oceanic" theory, in contrast with the "continental" theory
+of Ptolemy. In the unvisited regions on all sides of the known world
+Eratosthenes imagined vast oceans, Ptolemy imagined vast deserts or
+impenetrable swamps. The former doctrine was of course much more
+favourable to maritime enterprise than the latter. The works of Ptolemy
+exercised over the mediæval mind an almost despotic sway, which, in
+spite of their many merits, was in some respects a hindrance to
+progress; so that, inasmuch as the splendid work of Strabo, the most
+eminent follower of Eratosthenes, was unknown to mediæval Europe until
+about 1450, it was fortunate that the Latin treatise of Mela was
+generally read and highly esteemed. People in those days were such
+uncritical readers that very likely the antagonism between Ptolemy and
+Mela may have failed to excite comment,[359] especially in view of the
+lack of suitable maps such as emphasize that antagonism to our modern
+minds. But in the fifteenth century, when men were getting their first
+inklings of critical scholarship, and when the practical question of an
+ocean voyage to Asia was pressing for solution, such a point could no
+longer fail to attract attention; and it happened fortunately that the
+wet theory, no less than the dry theory, had a popular advocate among
+those classical authors to whose authority so much deference was paid.
+
+         [Footnote 359: Just as our grandfathers used to read the Bible
+         without noticing such points as the divergences between the
+         books of Kings and Chronicles, the contradictions between the
+         genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, the radically
+         different theories of Christ's personality and career in the
+         Fourth Gospel as compared with the three Synoptics, etc.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ancient theory of the five zones.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Inhabited World and the Antipodes.]
+
+If the Portuguese mariners of the generation before Columbus had
+acquiesced in Ptolemy's views as final, they surely would not have
+devoted their energies to the task of circumnavigating Africa. But there
+were yet other theoretical or fanciful obstacles in the way. When you
+look at a modern map of the world, the "five zones" may seem like a mere
+graphic device for marking conveniently the relations of different
+regions to the solar source of heat; but before the great Portuguese
+voyages and the epoch-making third voyage of Vespucius, to be described
+hereafter, a discouraging doctrine was entertained with regard to these
+zones. Ancient travellers in Scythia and voyagers to "Thule"--which in
+Ptolemy's scheme perhaps meant the Shetland isles[360]--had learned
+something of Arctic phenomena. The long winter nights,[361] the snow and
+ice, and the bitter winds, made a deep impression upon visitors from the
+Mediterranean;[362] and when such facts were contrasted with the
+scorching blasts that came from Sahara, the resulting theory was
+undeniably plausible. In the extreme north the ocean must be frozen and
+the country uninhabitable by reason of the cold; contrariwise, in the
+far south the ocean must be boiling hot and the country inhabitable only
+by gnomes and salamanders. Applying these ideas to the conception of the
+earth as a sphere, Pomponius Mela tells us that the surface of the
+sphere is divided into five zones, of which only two are fit to support
+human life. About each pole stretches a dead and frozen zone; the
+southern and northern hemispheres have each a temperate zone, with the
+same changes of seasons, but not occurring at the same (but opposite)
+times; the north temperate zone is the seat of the Oecumene ([Greek:
+oikoumenê]), or Inhabited World; the south temperate zone is also
+inhabited by the Antichthones or Antipodes, but about these people we
+know nothing, because between us and them there intervenes the burning
+zone, which it is impossible to cross.[363]
+
+         [Footnote 360: Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. ii. pp. 492, 527. The
+         name is used in different geographical senses by various
+         ancient writers, as is well shown in Lewis's _Astronomy of the
+         Ancients_, pp. 467-481.]
+
+         [Footnote 361: The Romans, at least by the first century A. D.,
+         knew also of the shortness of northern nights in summer.
+
+                                Arma quidem ultra
+            Littora Invernæ promovimus, et modo captas
+            Orcadas, ac minima contentos nocte Britannos.
+                                        Juvenal, ii. 159.
+
+         See also Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, iv. 30; Martianus Capella, vi.
+         595; Achilles Tatius, XXXV.]
+
+         [Footnote 362: The reader will remember Virgil's magnificent
+         description of a Scythian winter (_Georg._, iii. 352):--
+
+            Illic clausa tenent stabulis armenta; neque ullæ
+            Aut herbæ campo apparent, aut arbore frondes:
+            Sed jacet aggeribus niveis informis, et alto
+            Terra gelu late, septemque assurgit in ulnas;
+            Semper hiems, semper spirantes frigora Cauri.
+            Tum Sol pallentes haud unquam discutit umbras;
+            Nec cum invectus equis altum petit æthera, nec cum
+            Præcipitem Oceani rubro lavit æquore currum.
+            Concrescunt subitæ currenti in flumine crustæ;
+            Undaque jam tergo ferratos sustinet orbes,
+            Puppibus illa prius patulis, nunc hospita plaustris,
+            Æraque dissiliunt vulgo, vestesque rigescunt
+            Indutæ, cæduntque securibus humida vina
+            Et totæ solidam in glaciem vertêre lacunæ,
+            Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis.
+            Interea toto non secius aëre ningit;
+            Intereunt pecudes; stant circumfusa pruinis
+            Corpora magna boum; confertoque agmine cervi
+            Torpent mole nova, et summis vix cornibus exstant.
+            .................................................
+            Ipsi in defossis specubus, secura sub alta
+            Otia agunt terra, congestaque robora, totasque
+            Advolvere focis ulmos, ignique dedere.
+            Hic noctem ludo ducunt, et pocula læti
+            Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis.
+            Talis Hyperboreo Septem subjecta trioni
+            Gens effræna virûm Rhipæo tunditur Euro,
+            Et pecudum fulvis velantur corpora sætis.
+
+         The Roman conception of the situation of these "Hyperboreans"
+         and of the Rhipæan mountains may be seen in the map of Mela's
+         world.]
+
+         [Footnote 363: "Huic medio terra sublimis cingitur undique
+         mari: eodemque in duo latera, quæ hemisphæria nominantur, ab
+         oriente divisa ad occasum, zonis quinque distinguitur. Mediam
+         æstus infestat, frigus ultimas: reliquæ habitabiles paria agunt
+         anni tempora, verum non pariter. Antichthones alteram, nos
+         alteram incolimus. Illius situ ab ardorem intercedentis plagæ
+         incognito, hujus dicendus est," etc. _De Situ Orbis_, i. 1. A
+         similar theory is set forth by Ovid (_Metamorph._, i. 45), and
+         by Virgil (_Georg._, i. 233):--
+
+            Quinque tenent coelum zonæ; quarum una corusco
+            Semper Sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni;
+            Quam circum extremæ dextra lævaque trahuntur,
+            Cærulea glacie concretæ atque imbribus atris.
+            Has inter mediamque, duæ mortalibus ægris
+            Munere concessæ Divûm; et via secta per ambas,
+            Obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo.]
+
+[Sidenote: Curious notions about Ceylon.]
+
+This notion of an antipodal world in the southern hemisphere will have
+especial interest for us when we come to deal with the voyages of
+Vespucius. The idea seems to have originated in a guess of Hipparchus
+that Taprobane--the island of Ceylon, about which the most absurd
+reports were brought to Europe--might be the beginning of another world.
+This is very probable, says Mela, with delightful _naïveté_, because
+Taprobane is inhabited, and still we do not know of anybody who has ever
+made the tour of it.[364] Mela's contemporary, the elder Pliny,
+declares that Taprobane "has long been regarded" as part of another
+world, the name of which is Antichthon, or Opposite-Earth;[365] at the
+same time Pliny vouchsafes three closely-printed pages of information
+about this mysterious country. Throughout the Middle Ages the conception
+of some sort of an antipodal inhabited world was vaguely entertained by
+writers here and there, but many of the clergy condemned it as implying
+the existence of people cut off from the knowledge of the gospel and not
+included in the plan of salvation.
+
+         [Footnote 364: "Taprobane aut grandis admodum insula aut prima
+         pars orbis alterius Hipparcho dicitur; sed quia habitata, nec
+         quisquam circummeasse traditur, prope verum est." _De Situ
+         Orbis_, iii. 7.]
+
+         [Footnote 365: "Taprobanen alterum orbem terrarum esse, diu
+         existimatum est, Antichthonum appellatione." _Hist. Nat._, vi.
+         24.]
+
+[Sidenote: The fiery zone.]
+
+As to the possibility of crossing the torrid zone, opinion was not
+unanimous. Greek explorers from Alexandria (cir. B. C. 100) seem to have
+gone far up the Nile toward the equator, and the astronomer Geminus
+quotes their testimony in proof of his opinion that the torrid zone is
+inhabitable.[366] Panætius, the friend of the younger Scipio Africanus,
+had already expressed a similar opinion. But the flaming theory
+prevailed. Macrobius, writing about six hundred years later, maintained
+that the southernmost limit of the habitable earth was 850 miles south
+of Syene, which lies just under the tropic of Cancer.[367] Beyond this
+point no man could go without danger from the fiery atmosphere. Beyond
+some such latitude on the ocean no ship could venture without risk of
+being engulfed in some steaming whirlpool.[368] Such was the common
+belief before the great voyages of the Portuguese.
+
+         [Footnote 366: Geminus, _Isagoge_, cap. 13.]
+
+         [Footnote 367: Macrobius, _Somnium Scipionis_, ii. 8. Strabo
+         (ii. 5, §§ 7, 8) sets the southern boundary of the Inhabited
+         World 800 miles south of Syene, and the northern boundary at
+         the north of Ireland.]
+
+         [Footnote 368: Another notion, less easily explicable and less
+         commonly entertained, but interesting for its literary
+         associations, was the notion of a mountain of loadstone in the
+         Indian ocean, which prevented access to the torrid zone by
+         drawing the nails from ships and thus wrecking them. This
+         imaginary mountain, with some variations in the description, is
+         made to carry a serious geographical argument by the astrologer
+         Pietro d' Abano, in his book _Conciliator Differentiarum_,
+         written about 1312. (See Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_,
+         p. 100.) It plays an important part in one of the finest tales
+         in the _Arabian Nights_,--the story of the "Third Royal
+         Mendicant."]
+
+[Sidenote: Going downhill.]
+
+Besides this dread of the burning zone, another fanciful obstacle beset
+the mariner who proposed to undertake a long voyage upon the outer
+ocean. It had been observed that a ship which disappears in the offing
+seems to be going downhill; and many people feared that if they should
+happen thus to descend too far away from the land they could never get
+back again. Men accustomed to inland sea travel did not feel this dread
+within the regions of which they had experience, but it assailed them
+whenever they thought of braving the mighty waters outside.[369] Thus
+the master mariner, in the Middle Ages, might contemplate the possible
+chance of being drawn by force of gravity into the fiery gulf, should he
+rashly approach too near; and in such misgivings he would be confirmed
+by Virgil, who was as much read then as he is to-day and esteemed an
+authority, withal, on scientific questions; for according to Virgil the
+Inhabited World descends toward the equator and has its apex in the
+extreme north.[370]
+
+         [Footnote 369: Ferdinand Columbus tells us that this objection
+         was urged against the Portuguese captains and afterwards
+         against his father: "E altri di ciò quasi così disputavano,
+         come già i Portoghesi intorno al navigare in Guinea; dicendo
+         che, se si allargasse alcuno a far cammino diritto al
+         occidente, come l' Ammiraglio diceva, non potrebbe poi tornare
+         in Ispagna per la rotondità della sfera; tenendo per
+         certissime, che qualunque uscisse del emisperio conosciuto da
+         Tolomeo, anderebbe in giù, e poi gli sarebbe impossibile dar la
+         volta; e affermando che ciò sarebbe quasi uno ascendere all'
+         insù di un monte. Il che non potrebbono fare i navigli con
+         grandissimo vento." _Vita deli' Ammiraglio_, Venice, 1571, cap.
+         xii. The same thing is told, in almost the same words, by Las
+         Casas, since both writers followed the same original documents:
+         "Añidian mas, que quien navegase por vía derecha la vuelta del
+         poniente, como el Cristóbal Colon proferia, no podria despues
+         volver, suponiendo que el mundo era redondo y yendo hácia el
+         occidente iban cuesta abajo, y saliendo del hemisferio que
+         Ptolomeo escribiò, á la vuelta érales necesario subir cuesta
+         arriba, lo que los navíos era imposible hacer." The gentle but
+         keen sarcasm that follows is very characteristic of Las Casas:
+         "Esta era gentil y profunda razon, y señal de haber bien el
+         negocio entendido!" _Historia de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 230.]
+
+         [Footnote 370:
+            Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipæasque arduus arces
+            Consurgit, premitur Libyæ devexus in austros.
+            Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum
+            Sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi.
+                                        _Georg._, i. 240.
+
+         For an account of the deference paid to Virgil in the Middle
+         Ages, as well as the grotesque fancies about him, see Tunison's
+         _Master Virgil_, 2d ed., Cincinnati, 1890.]
+
+[Sidenote: Superstitious fancies.]
+
+To such notions as these, which were supposed to have some sort of
+scientific basis, we must add the wild superstitious fancies that
+clustered about all remote and unvisited corners of the world. In maps
+made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in such places as we
+should label "Unexplored Region," there were commonly depicted uncouth
+shapes of "Gorgons and Hydras and Chimæras dire," furnishing eloquent
+testimony to the feelings with which the unknown was regarded. The
+barren wastes of the Sea of Darkness awakened a shuddering dread like
+that with which children shrink from the gloom of a cellar. When we
+remember all these things, and consider how the intelligent purpose
+which urged the commanders onward was scarcely within the comprehension
+of their ignorant and refractory crews, we can begin to form some idea
+of the difficulties that confronted the brave mariners who first sought
+an ocean route to the far-off shores of Cathay.
+
+[Sidenote: Clumsiness of the caravels.]
+
+[Sidenote: Famine and scurvy.]
+
+Less formidable than these obstacles based on fallacious reasoning or
+superstitious whim were those that were furnished by the clumsiness of
+the ships and the crudeness of the appliances for navigation. As already
+observed, the Spanish and Portuguese caravels of the fifteenth century
+were less swift and manageable craft than the Norwegian "dragons" of the
+tenth. Mere yachts in size we should call them, but far from yachtlike
+in shape or nimbleness. With their length seldom more than thrice their
+width of beam, with narrow tower-like poops, with broad-shouldered bows
+and bowsprit weighed down with spritsail yards, and with no canvas
+higher than a topsail, these clumsy caravels could make but little
+progress against head-winds, and the amount of tacking and beating to
+and fro was sometimes enough to quadruple the length of the voyage. For
+want of metallic sheathing below the waterline the ship was liable to be
+sunk by the terrible worm which, in Hakluyt's phrase, "many times
+pearceth and eateth through the strongest oake." For want of vegetable
+food in the larder, or anything save the driest of bread and beef
+stiffened with brine, the sailors were sure to be attacked by scurvy,
+and in a very long voyage the crew was deemed fortunate that did not
+lose half its number from that foul disease. Often in traversing unknown
+seas the sturdy men who survived all other perils were brought face to
+face with starvation when they had ventured too far without turning
+back.[371] We need not wonder that the first steps in oceanic discovery
+were slow and painful.
+
+         [Footnote 371: Or simply because a wrong course happened to be
+         taken, through ignorance of atmospheric conditions, as in the
+         second homeward and third outward voyages of Columbus. See
+         below, pp. 485, 490.]
+
+[Sidenote: The mariner's compass.]
+
+First among the instruments without which systematic ocean navigation
+would have been impossible, the magnetic compass had been introduced
+into southern Europe and was used by Biscayan and Catalan sailors before
+the end of the twelfth century.[372] Parties of Crusaders had learned
+the virtues of the suspended needle from the Arabs, who are said to have
+got their knowledge indirectly from China in the course of their eastern
+voyages.[373] It seems to have been at Amalfi that the needle was first
+enclosed in a box and connected with a graduated compass-card.
+Apparently it had not come into general use in the middle of the
+thirteenth century, for in 1258 the famous Brunetto Latini, afterwards
+tutor of Dante, made a visit to Roger Bacon, of which he gives a
+description in a letter to his friend the poet Guido Cavalcanti: "The
+Parliament being summoned to assemble at Oxford, I did not fail to see
+Friar Bacon as soon as I arrived, and (among other things) he showed me
+a black ugly stone called a magnet, which has the surprising property of
+drawing iron to it; and upon which, if a needle be rubbed, and
+afterwards fastened to a straw so that it shall swim upon water, the
+needle will instantly turn toward the Pole-star: therefore, be the night
+ever so dark, so that neither moon nor star be visible, yet shall the
+mariner be able, by the help of this needle, to steer his vessel aright.
+This discovery, which appears useful in so great a degree to all who
+travel by sea, must remain concealed until other times; because no
+master mariner dares to use it lest he should fall under the imputation
+of being a magician; nor would the sailors venture themselves out to sea
+under his command, if he took with him an instrument which carries so
+great an appearance of being constructed under the influence of some
+infernal spirit.[374] A time may arrive when these prejudices, which
+are of such great hindrance to researches into the secrets of nature,
+will be overcome; and it will be then that mankind shall reap the
+benefit of the labours of such learned men as Friar Bacon, and do
+justice to that industry and intelligence for which he and they now meet
+with no other return than obloquy and reproach."[375]
+
+         [Footnote 372: Navarrete, _Discurso historico sobre los
+         progresos del arte de navegar en España_, p. 28; see also
+         Raymond Lully's treatise, _Libro felix, ó Maravillas del mundo_
+         (A. D. 1286).]
+
+         [Footnote 373: See Humboldt's _Kosmos_, bd. i. p. 294;
+         Klaproth, _Lettre à M. de Humboldt sur l'invention de la
+         boussole_, pp. 41, 45, 50, 66, 79, 90. But some of Klaproth's
+         conclusions have been doubted: "Pour la boussole, rien ne
+         prouve que les Chinois l'aient employée pour la navigation,
+         tandis que nous la trouvons dès le xi^{e} siècle chez les
+         Arabes qui s'en servent non seulement dans leurs traversées
+         maritimes, mais dans les voyages de caravanes au milieu des
+         déserts," etc. Sédillot, _Histoire des Arabes_, tom. ii. p.
+         130.]
+
+         [Footnote 374: Is it not a curious instance of human perversity
+         that while customary usage from time immemorial has
+         characterized as "acts of God" such horrible events as famines,
+         pestilences, and earthquakes, on the other hand when some
+         purely beneficent invention has appeared, such as the mariner's
+         compass or the printing press, it has commonly been accredited
+         to the Devil? The case of Dr. Faustus is the most familiar
+         example.]
+
+         [Footnote 375: This version is cited from Major's _Prince Henry
+         the Navigator_, p. 58.]
+
+[Sidenote: Latitude and longitude.]
+
+That time was after all not so long in arriving, for by the end of the
+thirteenth century the compass had come to be quite generally used,[376]
+and the direction of a ship's course could be watched continuously in
+foul and fair weather alike. For taking the sun's altitude rude
+astrolabes and jack-staffs were in use, very crazy affairs as compared
+with the modern quadrant, but sufficiently accurate to enable a
+well-trained observer, in calculating his latitude, to get somewhere
+within two or three degrees of the truth. In calculating longitude the
+error was apt to be much greater, for in the absence of chronometers
+there were no accurate means for marking differences in time. It was
+necessary to depend upon the dead-reckoning, and the custom was first to
+sail due north or south to the parallel of the place of destination and
+then to turn at right angles and sail due east or west. Errors of eight
+or even ten degrees were not uncommon. Thus at the end of a long outward
+voyage the ship might find itself a hundred miles or more to the north
+or south, and six or seven hundred miles to the east or west, of the
+point at which it had been aimed. Under all these difficulties, the
+approximations made to correct sailing by the most skilful mariners were
+sometimes wonderful. Doubtless this very poverty of resources served to
+sharpen their watchful sagacity.[377] To sail the seas was in those days
+a task requiring high mental equipment; it was no work for your
+commonplace skipper. Human faculty was taxed to its utmost, and human
+courage has never been more grandly displayed than by the glorious
+sailors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+
+         [Footnote 376: Hüllmann, _Städtewesen des Mittelalters_, bd. i.
+         pp. 125-137.]
+
+         [Footnote 377: Compare the remarks of Mr. Clark Russell on the
+         mariners of the seventeenth century, in his _William Dampier_,
+         p. 12.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Prince Henry the Navigator, 1394-1463.]
+
+[Sidenote: His idea of an ocean route to the Indies, and what it might
+bring.]
+
+We are now prepared to appreciate the character of the work that was
+done in the course of the first attempts to find an oceanic route from
+Europe to Asia. Then, as in other great epochs of history, men of genius
+arose to meet the occasion. In 1394 was born Prince Henry of Portugal,
+since known as Henry the Navigator.[378] He was fourth son of King John
+I., the valiant and prudent king under whom began the golden age of
+Portugal, which lasted until the conquest of that country in 1580 by
+Philip II. of Spain. Henry's mother was Philippa, daughter of John of
+Gaunt. He was therefore cousin to our own Henry V. of England, whom he
+quite equalled in genius, while the laurels that he won were more
+glorious than those of Agincourt. In 1415, being then in his
+twenty-first year, Prince Henry played a distinguished part in the
+expedition which captured Ceuta from the Moors. While in Morocco he
+gathered such information as he could concerning the interior of the
+continent; he learned something about the oases of Sahara, the distant
+river Gambia, and the caravan trade between Tunis and Timbuctoo, whereby
+gold was carried from the Guinea coast to Mussulman ports on the
+Mediterranean. If this coast could be reached by sea, its gold might be
+brought to Lisbon as well. To divert such treasure from the infidel and
+secure it for a Christian nation was an enterprise fitted to kindle a
+prince's enthusiasm. While Henry felt the full force of these
+considerations, his thoughts took a wider range. The views of Pomponius
+Mela had always been held in high esteem by scholars of the Spanish
+peninsula,[379] and down past that Gold Coast Prince Henry saw the
+ocean route to the Indies, the road whereby a vast empire might be won
+for Portugal and millions of wandering heathen souls might be gathered
+into the fold of Christ. To doubt the sincerity of the latter motive, or
+to belittle its influence, would be to do injustice to Prince
+Henry,--such cynical injustice as our hard-headed age is only too apt to
+mete out to that romantic time and the fresh enthusiasm which inspired
+its heroic performances. Prince Henry was earnest, conscientious,
+large-minded, and in the best sense devout; and there can be no question
+that in his mind, as in that of Columbus, and (with somewhat more alloy)
+in the minds of Cortes and others, the desire of converting the heathen
+and strengthening the Church served as a most powerful incentive to the
+actions which in the course of little more than a century quite changed
+the face of the world.
+
+         [Footnote 378: My chief authorities for the achievements of
+         Prince Henry and his successors are the Portuguese historians,
+         Barros and Azurara. The best edition of the former is a modern
+         one, Barros y Couto, _Decadas da Asia, nova edicão con Indice
+         geral_, Lisbon, 1778-88, 24 vols. 12mo. I also refer sometimes
+         to the Lisbon, 1752, edition of the _Decada primeira_, in
+         folio. The priceless contemporary work of Azurara, written in
+         1453 under Prince Henry's direction, was not printed until the
+         present century; Azurara, _Chronica do Descobrimento e
+         Conquista de Guiné_, Paris, 1841, a superb edition in royal
+         quarto, edited by the Viscount da Carreira, with introduction
+         and notes by the Viscount de Santarem.]
+
+         [Footnote 379: Partly, perhaps, because Mela was himself a
+         Spaniard, and partly because his opinions had been shared and
+         supported by St. Isidore, of Seville (A. D. 570-636), whose
+         learned works exercised immense authority throughout the Middle
+         Ages. It is in one of St. Isidore's books (_Etymologiarum_,
+         xiii. 16, apud Migne, _Patrologia_, tom. lxxxii. col. 484) that
+         we first find the word "Mediterranean" used as a proper name
+         for that great land-locked sea.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Sacred Promontory.]
+
+Filled with such lofty and generous thoughts, Prince Henry, on his
+return from Morocco, in 1418, chose for himself a secluded place of
+abode where he could devote himself to his purposes undisturbed by the
+court life at Lisbon or by political solicitations of whatever sort. In
+the Morocco campaign he had won such military renown that he was now
+invited by Pope Martin V. to take chief command of the papal army; and
+presently he received similar flattering offers from his own cousin,
+Henry V. of England, from John II. of Castile, and from the Emperor
+Sigismund, who, for shamefully violating his imperial word and
+permitting the burning of John Huss, was now sorely pressed by the
+enraged and rebellious Bohemians. Such invitations had no charm for
+Henry. Refusing them one and all, he retired to the promontory of
+Sagres, in the southernmost province of Portugal, the ancient kingdom of
+Algarve, of which his father now appointed him governor. That lonely and
+barren rock, protruding into the ocean, had long ago impressed the
+imagination of Greek and Roman writers; they called it the Sacred
+Promontory, and supposed it to be the westernmost limit of the habitable
+earth.[380] There the young prince proceeded to build an astronomical
+observatory, the first that his country had ever seen, and to gather
+about him a school of men competent to teach and men eager to learn the
+mysteries of map-making and the art of navigation. There he spent the
+greater part of his life; thence he sent forth his captains to plough
+the southern seas; and as year after year the weather-beaten ships
+returned from their venturesome pilgrimage, the first glimpse of home
+that greeted them was likely to be the beacon-light in the tower where
+the master sat poring over problems of Archimedes or watching the stars.
+For Henry, whose motto was "Talent de bien faire," or (in the old French
+usage) "Desire[381] to do well," was wont to throw himself
+whole-hearted into whatever he undertook, and the study of astronomy and
+mathematics he pursued so zealously as to reach a foremost place among
+the experts of his time. With such tastes and such ambition, he was
+singularly fortunate in wielding ample pecuniary resources; if such a
+combination could be more often realized, the welfare of mankind would
+be notably enhanced. Prince Henry was Grand Master of the Order of
+Christ, an organization half military, half religious, and out of its
+abundant revenues he made the appropriations needful for the worthy
+purpose of advancing the interests of science, converting the heathen,
+and winning a commercial empire for Portugal. At first he had to
+encounter the usual opposition to lavish expenditure for a distant
+object without hope of immediate returns; but after a while his dogged
+perseverance began to be rewarded with such successes as to silence all
+adverse comment.
+
+         [Footnote 380: [Greek: Homoiôs de kai peri tês exô stêlôn
+         legetai; dysmikôtaton men gar sêmeion tês oikoumenês, to tôn
+         Ibêrôn akrôtêrion, ho kalousin Ieron.] Strabo, ii. 5, § 14; cf.
+         Dionysius Periegetes, v. 161. In reality it lies not quite so
+         far west as the country around Lisbon.]
+
+         [Footnote 381: See Littré, _Dictionnaire_, s. v. "Talent;" Du
+         Cange, _Glossarium_, "talentum, animi decretum, voluntas,
+         desiderium, cupiditas," etc.; cf. Raynouard, _Glossaire
+         Provençale_, tom. v. p. 296. French was then fashionable at
+         court, in Lisbon as well as in London.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Madeira and Canary islands.]
+
+The first work in hand was the rediscovery of coasts and islands that
+had ceased to be visited even before the breaking up of the Roman
+Empire. For more than a thousand years the Madeiras and Canaries had
+been well-nigh forgotten, and upon the coast of the African continent no
+ship ventured beyond Cape Non, the headland so named because it said
+"No!" to the wistful mariner.[382] There had been some re-awakening of
+maritime activity in the course of the fourteenth century, chiefly due,
+no doubt, to the use of the compass. Between 1317 and 1351 certain
+Portuguese ships, with Genoese pilots, had visited not only the Madeiras
+and Canaries, but even the Azores, a thousand miles out in the Atlantic;
+and these groups of islands are duly laid down upon the so-called Medici
+map of 1351, preserved in the Laurentian library at Florence.[383] The
+voyage to the Azores was probably the greatest feat of ocean navigation
+that had been performed down to that time, but it was not followed by
+colonization. Again, somewhere about 1377 Madeira seems to have been
+visited by Robert Machin, an Englishman, whose adventures make a most
+romantic story; and in 1402 the Norman knight, Jean de Béthencourt, had
+begun to found a colony in the Canaries, for which, in return for aid
+and supplies, he did homage to the King of Castile.[384] As for the
+African coast, Cape Non had also been passed at some time during the
+fourteenth century, for Cape Bojador is laid down on the Catalan map of
+1375; but beyond that point no one had dared take the risks of the
+unknown sea.
+
+         [Footnote 382: The Portuguese proverb was "Quem passar o Cabo
+         de Não ou voltará ou _não_," i. e. "Whoever passes Cape _Non_
+         will return or _not_." See Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_,
+         tom. i. p. 173; Mariana, _Hist. de España_, tom. i. p. 91;
+         Barros, tom. i. p. 36.]
+
+         [Footnote 383: An engraved copy of this map may be found in
+         Major's _Prince Henry the Navigator_, London, 1868, facing p.
+         107. I need hardly say that in all that relates to the
+         Portuguese voyages I am under great obligation to Mr. Major's
+         profoundly learned and critical researches. He has fairly
+         conquered this subject and made it his own, and whoever touches
+         it after him, however lightly, must always owe him a tribute of
+         acknowledgment.]
+
+         [Footnote 384: See Bontier and Le Verrier, _The Canarian, or,
+         Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canaries_,
+         translated and edited by R. H. Major, London, 1872 (Hakluyt
+         Soc). In 1414, Béthencourt's nephew, left in charge of these
+         islands, sold them to Prince Henry, but Castile persisted in
+         claiming them, and at length in 1479 her claim was recognized
+         by treaty with Portugal. Of all the African islands, therefore,
+         the Canaries alone came to belong, and still belong, to Spain.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gil Eannes passes Cape Bojador.]
+
+The first achievement under Prince Henry's guidance was the final
+rediscovery and colonization of Porto Santo and Madeira in 1418-25 by
+Gonsalvez Zarco, Tristam Vaz, and Bartholomew Perestrelo.[385] This work
+occupied the prince's attention for some years, and then came up the
+problem of Cape Bojador. The difficulty was twofold; the waves about
+that headland were apt to be boisterous, and wild sailor's fancies were
+apt to enkindle a mutinous spirit in the crews. It was not until 1433-35
+that Gil Eannes, a commander of unusually clear head and steady nerves,
+made three attempts and fairly passed the dreaded spot. In the first
+attempt he failed, as his predecessors had done, to double the cape; in
+the second attempt he doubled it; in the third he sailed nearly two
+hundred miles beyond.
+
+         [Footnote 385: Perestrelo had with him a female rabbit which
+         littered on the voyage, and being landed, with her young, at
+         Porto Santo, forthwith illustrated the fearful rate of
+         multiplication of which organisms are capable in the absence of
+         enemies or other adverse circumstances to check it. (Darwin,
+         _Origin of Species_, chap. iii.) These rabbits swarmed all over
+         the island and devoured every green and succulent thing,
+         insomuch that they came near converting it into a desert.
+         Prince Henry's enemies, who were vexed at the expenditure of
+         money in such colonizing enterprises, were thus furnished with
+         a wonderful argument. They maintained that God had evidently
+         created those islands for beasts alone, not for men! "En este
+         tiempo habia en todo Portugal grandísimas murmuraciones del
+         Infante, viéndolo tan cudicioso y poner tanta diligencia en el
+         descubrir de la tierra y costa de África, diciendo que destruia
+         el reino en los gastos que hacia, y consumia los vecinos dél en
+         poner en tanto peligro y daño la gente portoguesa, donde muchos
+         morian, enviándolos en demanda de tierras que nunca los reyes
+         de España pasados se atrevieron á emprender, donde habia de
+         hacer muchas viudas y huérfanos con esta su porfia. Tomaban por
+         argumento, que Dios no habia criado aquellas tierras sino para
+         bestias, pues en tan poco tiempo en aquella isla tantos conejos
+         habia multiplicado, que no dejaban cosa que para sustentacion
+         de los hombres fuese menester." Las Casas, _Hist. de las
+         Indias_, tom. i. p. 180. See also Azurara, _Chronica do
+         descobrimento e conquista de Guiné_, cap. lxxxiii.]
+
+[Illustration: Portuguese voyages on the coast of Africa.]
+
+[Sidenote: Beginning of the modern slave-trade, 1442.]
+
+[Sidenote: Papal grant of heathen countries to the Portuguese crown.]
+
+[Sidenote: Advance to Sierra Leone.]
+
+This achievement of Gil Eannes (_anglicè_, plain Giles Jones) marks an
+era. It was the beginning of great things. When we think of the
+hesitation with which this step was taken, and the vociferous applause
+that greeted the successful captain, it is strange to reflect that babes
+were already born in 1435 who were to live to hear of the prodigious
+voyages of Columbus and Gama, Vespucius and Magellan. After seven years
+a further step was taken in advance; in 1442 Antonio Gonçalves brought
+gold and negro slaves from the Rio d' Ouro, or Rio del Oro, four hundred
+miles beyond Cape Bojador. Of this beginning of the modern slave-trade I
+shall treat in a future chapter.[386] Let it suffice here to observe
+that Prince Henry did not discourage but sanctioned it. The first aspect
+which this baleful traffic assumed in his mind was that of a means for
+converting the heathen, by bringing black men and women to Portugal to
+be taught the true faith and the ways of civilized people, that they
+might in due season be sent back to their native land to instruct their
+heathen brethren. The kings of Portugal should have a Christian empire
+in Africa, and in course of time the good work might be extended to the
+Indies. Accordingly a special message was sent to Pope Eugenius IV.,
+informing him of the discovery of the country of these barbarous people
+beyond the limits of the Mussulman world, and asking for a grant in
+perpetuity to Portugal of all heathen lands that might be discovered in
+further voyages beyond Cape Bojador, even so far as to include the
+Indies.[387] The request found favour in the eyes of Eugenius, and the
+grant was solemnly confirmed by succeeding popes. To these proceedings
+we shall again have occasion to refer. We have here to observe that the
+discovery of gold and the profits of the slave-trade--though it was as
+yet conducted upon a very small scale--served to increase the interest
+of the Portuguese people in Prince Henry's work and to diminish the
+obstacles in his way. A succession of gallant captains, whose names make
+a glorious roll of honour, carried on the work of exploration, reaching
+the farthest point that had been attained by the ancients. In 1445 Dinis
+Fernandez passed Cape Verde, and two years later Lançarote found the
+mouth of the Gambia. In 1456 Luigi Cadamosto--a Venetian captain in the
+service of Portugal--went as far as the Rio Grande; in 1460 Diego Gomez
+discovered the Cape Verde islands; and in 1462 Piedro de Cintra reached
+Sierra Leone.[388] At the same time, in various expeditions between 1431
+and 1466, the Azores (i. e. "Hawk" islands) were rediscovered and
+colonized, and voyages out into the Sea of Darkness began to lose
+something of their manifold terrors.
+
+         [Footnote 386: See below, vol. ii. pp. 429-431.]
+
+         [Footnote 387: "En el año de 1442, viendo el Infante que se
+         habia pasado el cabo del Boxador y que la tierra iba muy
+         adelante, y que todos los navíos que inviaba traian muchos
+         esclavos moros, con que pagaba los gastos que hacia y que cada
+         dia crecia más el provecho y se prosperaba su amada
+         negociacion, determinó de inviar á suplicar al Papa Martino V.,
+         ... que hiciese gracia á la Corona real de Portogal de los
+         reinos y señoríos que habia y hobiese desde el cabo del Boxador
+         adelante, hácia el Oriente y la India inclusive; y ansí se las
+         concedió, ... con todas las tierras, puertos, islas, tratos,
+         rescates, pesquerías y cosas á esto pertenecientes, poniendo
+         censuras y penas á todos los reyes cristianos, príncipes, y
+         señores y comunidades que á esto le perturbasen; despues,
+         dicen, que los sumos pontífices, sucesores de Martino, como
+         Eugenio IV. y Nicolas V. y Calixto IV. lo confirmaron." Las
+         Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 185. The name of
+         Martin V. is a slip of the memory on the part of Las Casas.
+         That pope had died of apoplexy eleven years before. It was
+         Eugenius IV. who made this memorable grant to the crown of
+         Portugal. The error is repeated in Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i.
+         p. 339.]
+
+         [Footnote 388: The first published account of the voyages of
+         Cadamosto and Cintra was in the _Paesi nouamente retrouati_,
+         Vicenza, 1507, a small quarto which can now sometimes be bought
+         for from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars. See also Grynæus,
+         _Novus Orbis_, Basel, 1532.]
+
+[Sidenote: Advance to the Hottentot coast.]
+
+Prince Henry did not live to see Africa circumnavigated. At the time of
+his death, in 1468, his ships had not gone farther than the spot where
+Hanno found his gorillas two thousand years before. But the work of this
+excellent prince did not end with his death. His adventurous spirit
+lived on in the school of accomplished navigators he had trained. Many
+voyages were made after 1462, of which we need mention only those that
+marked new stages of discovery. In 1471 two knights of the royal
+household, João de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar, sailed down the Gold
+Coast and crossed the equator; three years later the line was again
+crossed by Fernando Po, discoverer of the island that bears his name. In
+1484 Diego Cam went on as far as the mouth of the Congo, and entered
+into very friendly relations with the negroes there. In a second voyage
+in 1485 this enterprising captain pushed on a thousand miles farther,
+and set up a cross in 22° south latitude on the coast of the Hottentot
+country. Brisk trading went on along the Gold Coast, and missionaries
+were sent to the Congo.[389]
+
+         [Footnote 389: It was in the course of these voyages upon the
+         African coast that civilized Europeans first became familiar
+         with people below the upper status of barbarism. Savagery and
+         barbarism of the lower types were practically unknown in the
+         Middle Ages, and almost, though probably not quite unknown, to
+         the civilized peoples of the Mediterranean in ancient times.
+         The history of the two words is interesting. The Greek word
+         [Greek: barbaros], whence Eng. _barbarian_ (=Sanskrit
+         _barbara_, Latin _balbus_), means "a stammerer," or one who
+         talks gibberish, i. e. in a language we do not understand.
+         Aristophanes (_Aves_, 199) very prettily applies the epithet to
+         the inarticulate singing of birds. The names _Welsh_,
+         _Walloon_, _Wallachian_, and _Belooch_, given to these peoples
+         by their neighbours, have precisely the same meaning (Kuhn's
+         _Zeitschrift_, ii. 252); and in like manner the Russians call
+         the Germans _Nyemetch_, or people who cannot talk (Schafarik,
+         _Slawische Alterthumer_, i. 443; Pott, _Etym. Forsch._, ii.
+         521). The Greeks called all men but themselves barbarians,
+         including such civilized people as the Persians. The Romans
+         applied the name to all tribes and nations outside the limits
+         of the Empire, and the Italians of the later Middle Ages
+         bestowed it upon all nations outside of Italy. Upon its lax use
+         in recent times I have already commented (above, pp. 25-35).
+         The tendency to apply the epithet to savages is modern. The
+         word _savage_, on the other hand, which came to us as the Old
+         French _sauvage_ or _salvage_ (Ital. _selvaggio_, _salvatico_),
+         is the Latin _silvaticus_, _sylvaticus_, _salvaticus_, that
+         which pertains to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its
+         earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather
+         than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized
+         by the epithet _sylvaticus_ in Varro, _De re rustica_, i. 40;
+         and either this adjective, or its equivalent _silvestris_, was
+         used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as
+         wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or
+         wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22.
+         (Occasionally it is used of men, as in Pliny, viii. 79.) The
+         meaning was the same in mediæval Latin (Du Cange, _Glossarium_,
+         Niort, 1886, tom. vii. p. 686) and in Old French, as "La douce
+         voiz du loussignol sauvage" (Michel, _Chansons de chatelain de
+         Coucy_, xix.). In the romance of _Robert le Diable_, in the
+         verses
+
+            Sire, se vos fustes Sauvages
+            Viers moi, je n'i pris mie garde, etc.,
+
+         the reference is plainly to degenerate civilized men
+         frequenting the forests, such as bandits or outlaws, not to
+         what we call savages.
+
+         Mediæval writers certainly had some idea of savages, but it was
+         not based upon any actual acquaintance with such people, but
+         upon imperfectly apprehended statements of ancient writers. At
+         the famous ball at the Hotel de Saint Pol in Paris, in 1393,
+         King Charles VI. and five noblemen were dressed in
+         close-fitting suits of linen, thickly covered from head to foot
+         with tow or flax, the colour of hair, so as to look like
+         "savages." In this attire nobody recognized them, and the Duke
+         of Orleans, in his eagerness to make out who they were, brought
+         a torch too near, so that the flax took fire, and four of the
+         noblemen were burned to death. See Froissart's _Chronicles_,
+         tr. Johnes, London, 1806, vol. xi. pp. 69-76. The point of the
+         story is that savages were supposed to be men covered with
+         hair, like beasts, and Froissart, in relating it, evidently
+         knew no better. Whence came this notion of hairy men? Probably
+         from Hanno's gorillas (see above, p. 301), through Pliny, whose
+         huge farrago of facts and fancies was a sort of household Peter
+         Parley in mediæval monasteries. Pliny speaks repeatedly of men
+         covered with hair from head to foot, and scatters them about
+         according to his fancy, in Carmania and other distant places
+         (_Hist. Nat._, vi. 28, 36, vii. 2).
+
+         Greek and Roman writers seem to have had some slight knowledge
+         of savagery and the lower status of barbarism as prevailing in
+         remote places ("Ptolomée dit que es extremités de la terre
+         habitable sont gens sauvages," Oresme, _Les Éthiques
+         d'Aristote_, Paris, 1488), but their remarks are usually vague.
+         Seldom do we get such a clean-cut statement as that of Tacitus
+         about the Finns, that they have neither horses nor houses,
+         sleep on the ground, are clothed in skins, live by the chase,
+         and for want of iron use bone-tipped arrows (_Germania_, cap.
+         46). More often we have unconscionable yarns about men without
+         noses, or with only one eye, tailed men, solid-hoofed men,
+         Amazons, and parthenogenesis. The Troglodytes, or
+         Cave-dwellers, on the Nubian coast of the Red Sea seem to have
+         been in the middle status of barbarism (Diodorus, iii. 32;
+         Agatharchides, 61-63), and the Ichthyophagi, or Fish-eaters,
+         whom Nearchus found on the shores of Gedrosia (Arrian,
+         _Indica_, cap. 29), were probably in a lower stage, perhaps
+         true savages. It is exceedingly curious that Mela puts a race
+         of pygmies at the headwaters of the Nile (see map above, p.
+         304). Is this only an echo from _Iliad_, iii. 6, or can any
+         ancient traveller have penetrated far enough inland toward the
+         equator to have heard reports of the dwarfish race lately
+         visited by Stanley (_In Darkest Africa_, vol. ii. pp. 100-104,
+         164)? Strabo had no real knowledge of savagery in Africa (cf.
+         Bunbury, _Hist. Ancient Geog._, ii. 331). Sataspes may have
+         seen barbarians of low type, possibly on one of the Canary
+         isles (see description of Canarians in Major's _Prince Henry_,
+         p. 212). Ptolemy had heard of an island of cannibals in the
+         Indian ocean, perhaps one of the Andaman group, visited A. D.
+         1293 by Marco Polo. The people of these islands rank among the
+         lowest savages on the earth, and Marco was disgusted and
+         horrified; their beastly faces, with huge prognathous jaws and
+         projecting canine teeth, he tried to describe by calling them a
+         dog-headed people. Sir Henry Yule suggests that the mention of
+         Cynocephali, or Dog-heads, in ancient writers may have had an
+         analogous origin (_Marco Polo_, vol. ii. p. 252). This visit of
+         the Venetian traveller to Andaman was one of very few real
+         glimpses of savagery vouchsafed to Europeans before the
+         fifteenth century; and a general review of the subject brings
+         out in a strong light the truthfulness and authenticity of the
+         description of American Indians in Eric the Red's Saga, as
+         shown above, pp. 185-192.]
+
+[Sidenote: Effect of these discoveries upon the theories of Ptolemy and
+Mela.]
+
+These voyages into the southern hemisphere dealt a damaging blow to the
+theory of an impassable fiery zone; but as to the circumnavigability of
+the African continent, the long stretch of coast beyond the equator
+seemed more in harmony with Ptolemy's views than with those of Mela. The
+eastward trend of the Guinea coast was at first in favour of the latter
+geographer, but when Santarem and Escobar found it turning southward to
+the equator the facts began to refute him. According to Mela they
+should have found it possible at once to sail eastward to the gulf of
+Aden. What if it should turn out after all that there was no connection
+between the Atlantic and Indian oceans? Every added league of voyaging
+toward the tropic of Capricorn must have been fraught with added
+discouragement, for it went to prove that, even if Ptolemy's theory was
+wrong, at any rate the ocean route to Asia was indefinitely longer than
+had been supposed. But was it possible to imagine any other route that
+should be more direct? To a trained mariner of original and imaginative
+mind, sojourning in Portugal and keenly watching the progress of African
+discovery, the years just following the voyage of Santarem and Escobar
+would be a period eminently fit for suggesting such a question. Let us
+not forget this date of 1471 while we follow Prince Henry's work to its
+first grand climax.
+
+[Sidenote: News of Prester John.]
+
+About the time that Diego Cam was visiting the tribes on the Congo, the
+negro king of Benin, a country by the mouth of the Niger, sent an
+embassy to John II. of Portugal (Prince Henry's nephew), with a request
+that missionary priests might be sent to Benin. It has been thought that
+the woolly-haired chieftain was really courting an alliance with the
+Portuguese, or perhaps he thought their "medicine men" might have the
+knack of confounding his foes. The negro envoy told King John that a
+thousand miles or so east of Benin there was an august sovereign who
+ruled over many subject peoples, and at whose court there was an order
+of chivalry whose badge or emblem was a brazen cross. Such, at least,
+was the king's interpretation of the negro's words, and forthwith he
+jumped to the conclusion that this African potentate must be Prester
+John, whose name was redolent of all the marvels of the mysterious East.
+To find Prester John would be a long step toward golden Cathay and the
+isles of spice. So the king of Portugal rose to the occasion, and
+attacked the problem on both flanks at once. He sent Pedro de Covilham
+by way of Egypt to Aden, and he sent Bartholomew Dias, with three
+fifty-ton caravels, to make one more attempt to find an end to the
+Atlantic coast of Africa.
+
+[Sidenote: Covilham's journey.]
+
+Covilham's journey was full of interesting experiences. He sailed from
+Aden to Hindustan, and on his return visited Abyssinia, where the
+semi-Christian king took such a liking to him that he would never let
+him go. So Covilham spent the rest of his life, more than thirty years,
+in Abyssinia, whence he was able now and then to send to Portugal items
+of information concerning eastern Africa that were afterwards quite
+serviceable in voyages upon the Indian ocean.[390]
+
+         [Footnote 390: See Major's _India in the Fifteenth Century_,
+         pp. lxxxv.-xc.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bartholomew Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope and enters the
+Indian ocean.]
+
+The daring captain, Bartholomew Dias, started in August, 1486, and after
+passing nearly four hundred miles beyond the tropic of Capricorn, was
+driven due south before heavy winds for thirteen days without seeing
+land. At the end of this stress of weather he turned his prows eastward,
+expecting soon to reach the coast. But as he had passed the southernmost
+point of Africa and no land appeared before him, after a while he
+steered northward and landed near the mouth of Gauritz river, more than
+two hundred miles east of the Cape of Good Hope. Thence he pushed on
+about four hundred miles farther eastward as far as the Great Fish river
+(about 33° 30' S., 27° 10' E.), where the coast begins to have a steady
+trend to the northeast. Dias was now fairly in the Indian ocean, and
+could look out with wistful triumph upon that waste of waters, but his
+worn-out crews refused to go any farther and he was compelled
+reluctantly to turn back. On the way homeward the ships passed in full
+sight of the famous headland which Dias called the Stormy Cape; but
+after arriving at Lisbon, in December, 1487, when the report of this
+noble voyage was laid before King John II., his majesty said, Nay, let
+it rather be called the Cape of Good Hope, since there was now much
+reason to believe that they had found the long-sought ocean route to the
+Indies.[391] Though this opinion turned out to be correct, it is well
+for us to remember that the proof was not yet complete. No one could
+yet say with certainty that the African coast, if followed a few miles
+east of Great Fish river, would not again trend southward and run all
+the way to the pole. The completed proof was not obtained until Vasco da
+Gama crossed the Indian ocean ten years later.
+
+         [Footnote 391: The greatest of Portuguese poets represents the
+         Genius of the Cape as appearing to the storm-tossed mariners in
+         cloud-like shape, like the Jinni that the fisherman of the
+         Arabian tale released from a casket. He expresses indignation
+         at their audacity in discovering his secret, hitherto hidden
+         from mankind:--
+
+            Eu sou aquelle occulto e grande Cabo,
+            A quem chamais vós outros Tormentorio,
+            Que nunca á Ptolomeo, Pomponio, Estrabo,
+            Plinio, e quantos passaram, fui notorio:
+            Aqui toda a Africana costa acabo
+            Neste meu nunca vista promontorio,
+            Que para o polo Antarctico se estende,
+            A quem vossa ousadia tanto offende.
+                                        Camoens, _Os Lusiadas_, v. 50.]
+
+[Sidenote: Some effects of the discovery.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus.]
+
+This voyage of Bartholomew Dias was longer and in many respects more
+remarkable than any that is known to have been made before that time.
+From Lisbon back to Lisbon, reckoning the sinuosities of the coast, but
+making no allowance for tacking, the distance run by those tiny craft
+was not less than thirteen thousand miles. This voyage completed the
+overthrow of the fiery-zone doctrine, so far as Africa was concerned; it
+penetrated far into the southern temperate zone where Mela had placed
+his antipodal world; it dealt a staggering blow to the continental
+theory of Ptolemy; and its success made men's minds readier for yet more
+daring enterprises. Among the shipmates of Dias on this ever memorable
+voyage was a well-trained and enthusiastic Italian mariner, none other
+than Bartholomew, the younger brother of Christopher Columbus. There was
+true dramatic propriety in the presence of that man at just this time;
+for not only did all these later African voyages stand in a direct
+causal relation to the discovery of America, but as an immediate
+consequence of the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope we shall presently
+find Bartholomew Columbus in the very next year on his way to England,
+to enlist the aid of King Henry VII. in behalf of a scheme of
+unprecedented boldness for which his elder brother had for some years
+been seeking to obtain the needful funds. Not long after that
+disappointing voyage of Santarem and Escobar in 1471, this original and
+imaginative sailor, Christopher Columbus, had conceived (or adopted and
+made his own) a new method of solving the problem of an ocean route to
+Cathay. We have now to sketch the early career of this epoch-making man,
+and to see how he came to be brought into close relations with the work
+of the Portuguese explorers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.
+
+_WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Sources of information concerning the life of Columbus: Las
+Casas and Ferdinand Columbus.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Biblioteca Colombina at Seville.]
+
+Our information concerning the life of Columbus before 1492 is far from
+being as satisfactory as one could wish. Unquestionably he is to be
+deemed fortunate in having had for his biographers two such men as his
+friend Las Casas, one of the noblest characters and most faithful
+historians of that or any age, and his own son Ferdinand Columbus, a
+most accomplished scholar and bibliographer. The later years of
+Ferdinand's life were devoted, with loving care, to the preparation of a
+biography of his father; and his book--which unfortunately survives only
+in the Italian translation of Alfonso Ulloa,[392] published in Venice in
+1571--is of priceless value. As Washington Irving long ago wrote, it is
+"an invaluable document, entitled to great faith, and is the cornerstone
+of the history of the American continent."[393] After Ferdinand's
+death, in 1539, his papers seem to have passed into the hands of Las
+Casas, who, from 1552 to 1561, in the seclusion of the college of San
+Gregorio at Valladolid, was engaged in writing his great "History of the
+Indies."[394] Ferdinand's superb library, one of the finest in Europe,
+was bequeathed to the cathedral at Seville.[395] It contained some
+twenty thousand volumes in print and manuscript, four fifths of which,
+through shameful neglect or vandalism, have perished or been scattered.
+Four thousand volumes, however, are still preserved, and this library
+(known as the "Biblioteca Colombina") is full of interest for the
+historian. Book-buying was to Ferdinand Columbus one of the most
+important occupations in life. His books were not only carefully
+numbered, but on the last leaf of each one he wrote a memorandum of the
+time and place of its purchase and the sum of money paid for it.[396]
+This habit of Ferdinand's has furnished us with clues to the solution
+of some interesting questions. Besides this, he was much given to making
+marginal notes and comments, which are sometimes of immense value, and,
+more than all, there are still to be seen in this library a few books
+that belonged to Christopher Columbus himself, with very important notes
+in his own handwriting and in that of his brother Bartholomew. Las Casas
+was familiar with this grand collection in the days of its completeness,
+he was well acquainted with all the members of the Columbus family, and
+he had evidently read the manuscript sources of Ferdinand's book; for a
+comparison with Ulloa's version shows that considerable portions of the
+original Spanish text--or of the documents upon which it rested--are
+preserved in the work of Las Casas.[397] The citation and adoption of
+Ferdinand's statements by the latter writer, who was able independently
+to verify them, is therefore in most cases equivalent to corroboration,
+and the two writers together form an authority of the weightiest kind,
+and not lightly to be questioned or set aside.
+
+         [Footnote 392: _Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; Nelle
+         quali s' ha particolare, & vera relatione della vita, & de'
+         fatti dell' Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo, suo padre: Et
+         dello scoprimento, ch' egli fece dell' Indie Occidentali, dette
+         Monde-Nuovo, hora possedute dal Sereniss. Re Catolico:
+         Nuouamente di lingua Spagnuola tradotte nell' Italiana dal S.
+         Alfonso Vlloa. Con. privilegio._ IN VENETIA, M D LXXI.
+         _Appresso Francesco de' Franceschi Sanese._ The principal
+         reprints are those of Milan, 1614; Venice, 1676 and 1678;
+         London, 1867. I always cite it as _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_.]
+
+         [Footnote 393: Irving's _Life of Columbus_, New York, 1868,
+         vol. iii. p. 375. My references, unless otherwise specified,
+         are to this, the "Geoffrey Crayon," edition.]
+
+         [Footnote 394: Las Casas, _Historia de las Indias, ahora por
+         primera vez dada á luz por el Marqués de la Fuensanta del Valle
+         y D. José Sancho Rayon_, Madrid, 1875, 5 vols. 8vo.]
+
+         [Footnote 395: "Fu questo D. Ernando di non minor valore del
+         padre, ma di molte più lettere et scienze dotato che quelle non
+         fu; et il quale lasciò alla Chiesa maggiore di Siviglia, dove
+         hoggi si vede honorevolmente sepolto, una, non sola
+         numerosissima, ma richissima libraria, et piena di molti libri
+         in ogni facoltà et scienza rarissimi: laquale da coloro che l'
+         han veduta, vien stimata delle più rare cose di tutta Europa."
+         Moleto's prefatory letter to _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, April 25,
+         1571.]
+
+         [Footnote 396: For example, "_Manuel de la Sancta Fe católica_,
+         Sevilla, 1495, in-4. Costó en Toledo 34 maravedis, año 1511, 9
+         de Octubre, No. 3004." "_Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea_,
+         Sevilla, 1502, in-4. Muchas figuras. Costó en Roma 25
+         cuatrines, por Junio de 1515. No. 2417," etc. See Harrisse,
+         _Fernand Colomb_, Paris, 1872, p. 13.]
+
+         [Footnote 397: "L' autorita di Las Casas è d' una suprema e
+         vitale importanza tanto nella storia di Cristoforo Colombo,
+         come nell' esame delle _Historie_ di Fernando suo figlio.... E
+         dal confronto tra questi due scrittori emergerà una omogeneità
+         si perfetta, che si potrebbe coi termini del frate domenicano
+         ritrovare o rifare per due terzi il testo originale spagnuolo
+         delle _Historie_ di Fernando Colombo." Peragallo, _L'
+         autenticità delle Historie di Fernando Colombo_, Genoa, 1884,
+         p. 23.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bernaldez and Peter Martyr.]
+
+[Sidenote: Letters of Columbus.]
+
+Besides these books of most fundamental importance, we have valuable
+accounts of some parts of the life of Columbus by his friend Andres
+Bernaldez, the curate of Los Palacios near Seville.[398] Peter Martyr,
+of Anghiera, by Lago Maggiore, was an intimate friend of Columbus, and
+gives a good account of his voyages, besides mentioning him in sundry
+epistles.[399] Columbus himself, moreover, was such a voluminous writer
+that his contemporaries laughed about it. "God grant," says Zuñiga in a
+letter to the Marquis de Pescara, "God grant that Gutierrez may never
+come short for paper, for he writes more than Ptolemy, more than
+Columbus, the man who discovered the Indies."[400] These writings are in
+great part lost, though doubtless a good many things will yet be brought
+to light in Spain by persistent rummaging. We have, however, from sixty
+to seventy letters and reports by Columbus, of which twenty-three at
+least are in his own handwriting; and all these have been
+published.[401]
+
+         [Footnote 398: _Historia de los Reyes Católicos D. Fernando y
+         D^a Isabel. Crónica inédita del siglo XV, escrita por el
+         Bachiller Andrés Bernaldez, cura que fué de Los Palacios_,
+         Granada, 1856, 2 vols. small 4to. It is a book of very high
+         authority.]
+
+         [Footnote 399: _De orbe novo Decades_, Alcalá, 1516; _Opus
+         epistolarum_, Compluti (Alcalá), 1530; Harrisse, _Bibliotheca
+         Americana Vetustissima_, Nos. 88, 160.]
+
+         [Footnote 400: "A Gutierrez vuestro solicitador, ruego à Dios
+         que nunca le falte papel, porque escribe mas que Tolomeo y que
+         Colon, el que halló las Indias." Rivadeneyra, _Curiosidades
+         bibliográficas_, p. 59, apud Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_,
+         tom. i. p. 1.]
+
+         [Footnote 401: Harrisse, _loc. cit._, in 1884, gives the number
+         at sixty-four.]
+
+[Sidenote: Defects in Ferdinand's information.]
+
+Nevertheless, while these contemporary materials give us abundant
+information concerning the great discoverer, from the year 1492 until
+his death, it is quite otherwise with his earlier years, especially
+before his arrival in Spain in 1484. His own allusions to these earlier
+years are sometimes hard to interpret;[402] and as for his son
+Ferdinand, that writer confesses, with characteristic and winning
+frankness, that his information is imperfect, inasmuch as filial respect
+had deterred him from closely interrogating his father on such points,
+or, to tell the plain truth, being still very young when his father
+died, he had not then come to recognize their importance.[403] This does
+not seem strange when we reflect that Ferdinand must have seen very
+little of his father until in 1502, at the age of fourteen, he
+accompanied him on that last difficult and disastrous voyage, in which
+the sick and harassed old man could have had but little time or strength
+for aught but the work in hand. It is not strange that when, a quarter
+of a century later, the son set about his literary task, he should now
+and then have got a date wrong, or have narrated some incidents in a
+confused manner, or have admitted some gossiping stories, the falsehood
+of which can now plainly be detected. Such blemishes, which occur
+chiefly in the earlier part of Ferdinand's book, do not essentially
+detract from its high authority.[404] The limits which bounded the son's
+accurate knowledge seem also to have bounded that of such friends as
+Bernaldez, who did not become acquainted with Columbus until after his
+arrival in Spain.
+
+         [Footnote 402: Sometimes from a slip of memory or carelessness
+         of phrasing, on Columbus's part, sometimes from our lacking the
+         clue, sometimes from an error in numerals, common enough at all
+         times.]
+
+         [Footnote 403: "Ora, l' Ammiraglio avendo cognizione delle
+         dette scienze, cominciò ad attendere al mare, e a fare alcuni
+         viaggi in levante e in ponente; de' quali, e di molte altre
+         cose di quei primi dì io non ho piena notizia; perciocchè egli
+         venne a morte a tempo che io non aveva tanto ardire, o pratica,
+         per la riverenza filiale, che io ardissi di richiederlo di
+         cotali cose; o, per parlare più veramente, allora mi ritrovava
+         io, come giovane, molto lontano da cotal pensiero." _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.]
+
+         [Footnote 404: Twenty years ago M. Harrisse published in
+         Spanish and French a critical essay maintaining that the _Vita
+         dell' Ammiraglio_ was not written by Ferdinand Columbus, but
+         probably by the famous scholar Perez de Oliva, professor in the
+         university of Salamanca, who died in 1530 (_D. Fernando Colon,
+         historiador de su padre_, Seville, 1871; _Fernand Colomb: sa
+         vie, ses oeuvres_, Paris, 1872). The Spanish manuscript of the
+         book had quite a career. As already observed, it is clear that
+         Las Casas used it, probably between 1552 and 1561. From
+         Ferdinand's nephew, Luis Columbus, it seems to have passed in
+         1568 into the hands of Baliano di Fornari, a prominent citizen
+         of Genoa, who sent it to Venice with the intention of having it
+         edited and published with Latin and Italian versions. All that
+         ever appeared, however, was the Italian version made by Ulloa
+         and published in 1571. Harrisse supposes that the Spanish
+         manuscript, written by Oliva, was taken to Genoa by some
+         adventurer and palmed off upon Baliano di Fornari as the work
+         of Ferdinand Columbus. But inasmuch as Harrisse also supposes
+         that Oliva probably wrote the book (about 1525) at Seville,
+         under Ferdinand's eyes and with documents furnished by him, it
+         becomes a question, in such case, how far was Oliva anything
+         more than an amanuensis to Ferdinand? and there seems really to
+         be precious little wool after so much loud crying. If the
+         manuscript was actually written "sous les yeux de Fernand et
+         avec documents fournis par lui," most of the arguments alleged
+         to prove that it could not have emanated from the son of
+         Columbus fall to the ground. It becomes simply a question
+         whether Ulloa may have here and there tampered with the text,
+         or made additions of his own. To some extent he seems to have
+         done so, but wherever the Italian version is corroborated by
+         the Spanish extracts in Las Casas, we are on solid ground, for
+         Las Casas died five years before the Italian version was
+         published. M. Harrisse does not seem as yet to have convinced
+         many scholars. His arguments have been justly, if somewhat
+         severely, characterized by my old friend, the lamented Henry
+         Stevens (_Historical Collections_, London, 1881, vol. i. No.
+         1379), and have been elaborately refuted by M. d'Avezac, _Le
+         livre de Ferdinand Colomb: revue critique des allegations
+         proposées contre son authenticité_, Paris, 1873; and by
+         Prospero Peragallo, _L' autenticità delle Historie di Fernando
+         Colombo_, Genoa, 1884. See also Fabié, _Vida de Fray Bartolomé
+         de Las Casas_, Madrid, 1869, tom. i. pp. 360-372.]
+
+[Sidenote: Researches of Henry Harrisse.]
+
+In recent years elaborate researches have been made, by Henry Harrisse
+and others, in the archives of Genoa, Savona, Seville, and other places
+with which Columbus was connected, in the hope of supplementing this
+imperfect information concerning his earlier years.[405] A number of
+data have thus been obtained, which, while clearing up the subject most
+remarkably in some directions, have been made to mystify and embroil it
+in others. There is scarcely a date or a fact relating to Columbus
+before 1492 but has been made the subject of hot dispute; and some
+pretty wholesale reconstructions of his biography have been
+attempted.[406] The general impression, however, which the discussions
+of the past twenty years have left upon my mind, is that the more
+violent hypotheses are not likely to be sustained, and that the
+newly-ascertained facts do not call for any very radical interference
+with the traditional lines upon which the life of Columbus has
+heretofore been written.[407] At any rate there seems to be no
+likelihood of such interference as to modify our views of the causal
+sequence of events that led to the westward search for the Indies; and
+it is this relation of cause and effect that chiefly concerns us in a
+history of the Discovery of America.
+
+         [Footnote 405: See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884,
+         2 vols., a work of immense research, absolutely indispensable
+         to every student of the subject, though here and there somewhat
+         over-ingenious and hypercritical, and in general unduly biased
+         by the author's private crotchet about the work of Ferdinand.]
+
+         [Footnote 406: One of the most radical of these reconstructions
+         may be found in the essay by M. d'Avezac, "Canevas
+         chronologique de la vie de Christophe Colomb," in _Bulletin de
+         la Société de Géographie_, Paris, 1872, 6e série, tom. iv. pp.
+         5-59.]
+
+         [Footnote 407: Washington Irving's _Life of Columbus_, says
+         Harrisse, "is a history written with judgment and impartiality,
+         which leaves far behind it all descriptions of the discovery of
+         the New World published before or since." _Christophe Colomb_,
+         tom. i. p. 136. Irving was the first to make use of the superb
+         work of Navarrete, _Coleccion de los viages y descubrimientos
+         que hicieron por mar los Españoles desde fines del siglo XV._,
+         Madrid, 1825-37, 5 vols. 4to. Next followed Alexander von
+         Humboldt, with his _Examen critique de l'histoire de la
+         géographie de Nouveau Continent_, Paris, 1836-39, 5 vols. 8vo.
+         This monument of gigantic erudition (which, unfortunately, was
+         never completed) will always remain indispensable to the
+         historian.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Date of the birth of Columbus: archives of Savona.]
+
+[Sidenote: Statement of Bernaldez.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus's letter of September, 1501.]
+
+[Sidenote: The balance of probability is in favour of 1436.]
+
+The date of the birth of Columbus is easy to determine approximately,
+but hard to determine with precision. In the voluminous discussion upon
+this subject the extreme limits assigned have been 1430 and 1456, but
+neither of these extremes is admissible, and our choice really lies
+somewhere between 1436 and 1446. Among the town archives of Savona is a
+deed of sale executed August 7, 1473, by the father of Christopher
+Columbus, and ratified by Christopher and his next brother
+Giovanni.[408] Both brothers must then have attained their majority,
+which in the republic of Genoa was fixed at the age of twenty-five.
+Christopher, therefore, can hardly have been less than seven and twenty,
+so that the latest probable date for his birth is 1446, and this is the
+date accepted by Muñoz, Major, Harrisse, and Avezac. There is no
+documentary proof, however, to prevent our taking an earlier date; and
+the curate of Los Palacios--strong authority on such a point--says
+expressly that at the time of his death, in 1506, Columbus was "in a
+good old age, seventy years a little more or less."[409] Upon this
+statement Navarrete and Humboldt have accepted 1436 as the probable date
+of birth.[410] The most plausible objection to this is a statement made
+by Columbus himself in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, written in
+1501. In this letter, as first given in the biography by his son,
+Columbus says that he was of "very tender age" when he began to sail the
+seas, an occupation which he has kept up until the present moment; and
+in the next sentence but one he adds that "now for forty years I have
+been in this business and have gone to every place where there is any
+navigation up to the present time."[411] The expression "very tender
+age" agrees with Ferdinand's statement that his father was fourteen
+years old when he first took to the sea.[412] Since 1446 + 14-40 = 1500,
+it is argued that Columbus was probably born about 1446; some sticklers
+for extreme precision say 1447. But now there were eight years spent by
+Columbus in Spain, from 1484 to 1492, without any voyages at all; they
+were years, as he forcibly says, "dragged out in disputations."[413] Did
+he mean to include those eight years in his forty spent upon the sea?
+Navarrete thinks he did not. When he wrote under excitement, as in this
+letter, his language was apt to be loose, and it is fair to construe it
+according to the general probabilities of the case. This addition of
+eight years brings his statement substantially into harmony with that of
+Bernaldez, which it really will not do to set aside lightly. Moreover,
+in the original text of the letter, since published by Navarrete,
+Columbus appears to say, "now for _more than_ forty years," so that the
+agreement with Bernaldez becomes practically complete.[414] The good
+curate spoke from direct personal acquaintance, and his phrases
+"seventy years" and "a good old age" are borne out by the royal decree
+of February 23, 1505, permitting Columbus to ride on a mule, instead of
+a horse, by reason of his old age (_ancianidad_) and infirmities.[415]
+Such a phrase applies much better to a man of sixty-nine than to a man
+of fifty-nine. On the whole, I think that Washington Irving showed good
+sense in accepting the statement of the curate of Los Palacios as
+decisive, dating as it does the birth of Columbus at 1436, "a little
+more or less."
+
+         [Footnote 408: Harrisse, _op. cit._ tom. i. p. 196.]
+
+         [Footnote 409: "In _senectute bona_, de edad de setenta años
+         poco mas o menos." Bernaldez, _Reyes Católicos_, tom. i. p.
+         334.]
+
+         [Footnote 410: M. d'Avezac (_Canevas chronologique_, etc.)
+         objects to this date that we have positive documentary evidence
+         of the birth of Christopher's youngest brother Giacomo
+         (afterwards spanished into Diego) in 1468, which makes an
+         interval of 32 years; so that if the mother were (say) 18 in
+         1436 she must have borne a child at the age of 50. That would
+         be unusual, but not unprecedented. But M. Harrisse (tom. ii. p.
+         214), from a more thorough sifting of this documentary
+         evidence, seems to have proved that while Giacomo cannot have
+         been born later than 1468 he may have been born as early as
+         1460; so that whatever is left of M. d'Avezac's objection falls
+         to the ground.]
+
+         [Footnote 411: "Serenissimi principi, di età molto tenera io
+         entrai in mare navigando, et vi ho continovato fin' hoggi: ...
+         et hoggimai passano quaranta anni che io uso per tutte quelle
+         parti che fin hoggi si navigano." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap.
+         iv.]
+
+         [Footnote 412: _Op. cit._ cap. iv. _ad fin_.]
+
+         [Footnote 413: "Traido en disputas," Navarrete, _Coleccion_,
+         tom. ii. p. 254.]
+
+         [Footnote 414: "Muy altos Reyes, de muy pequeña edad entré en
+         la mar navegando, é lo he continuado fasta hoy.... Yá pasan de
+         cuarenta años que yo voy en este uso: todo lo que hoy se
+         navega, todo lo he andado." Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p.
+         262. Observe the lame phrase "pasan de cuarenta;" what business
+         has that "de" in such a place without "mas" before it? "Pasan
+         mas de cuarenta," i. e. "more than forty;" writing in haste and
+         excitement, Columbus left out a little word; or shall we blame
+         the proof-reader? Avezac himself translates it "il y a plus de
+         quarante ans," and so does Eugène Müller, in his French version
+         of Ferdinand's book, _Histoire de la vie de Christophe Colomb_,
+         Paris, 1879, p. 15.]
+
+         [Footnote 415: That was the golden age of sumptuary laws.
+         Because Alfonso XI. of Castile (1312-1350), when he tried to
+         impress horses for the army, found it hard to get as many as he
+         wanted, he took it into his head that his subjects were raising
+         too many mules and not enough horses. So he tried to remedy the
+         evil by a wholesale decree prohibiting all Castilians from
+         riding upon mules! In practice this precious decree, like other
+         villainous prohibitory laws that try to prevent honest people
+         from doing what they have a perfect right to do, proved so
+         vexatious and ineffective withal that it had to be perpetually
+         fussed with and tinkered. One year you could ride a mule and
+         the next year you couldn't. In 1492, as we shall see, Columbus
+         immortalized one of these patient beasts by riding it a few
+         miles from Granada. But in 1494 Ferdinand and Isabella decreed
+         that nobody except women, children, and clergymen could ride on
+         mules,--"dont la marche est beaucoup plus douce que celle des
+         chevaux" (Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. iii. p. 338). This
+         edict remained in force in 1505, so that the Discoverer of the
+         New World, the inaugurator of the greatest historic event since
+         the birth of Christ, could not choose an easygoing animal for
+         the comfort of his weary old weather-shaken bones without the
+         bother of getting a special edict to fit his case. _Eheu, quam
+         parva sapientia regitur mundus!_]
+
+[Sidenote: The family of Domenico Colombo, and its changes of
+residence.]
+
+With regard to the place where the great discoverer was born there ought
+to be no dispute, since we have his own most explicit and unmistakable
+word for it, as I shall presently show. Nevertheless there has been no
+end of dispute. He has been claimed by as many places as Homer,[416] but
+the only real question is whether he was born in the city of Genoa or in
+some neighbouring village within the boundaries of the Genoese republic.
+It is easy to understand how doubt has arisen on this point, if we trace
+the changes of residence of his family. The grandfather of Columbus
+seems to have been Giovanni Colombo, of Terrarossa, an inland hamlet
+some twenty miles east by north from Genoa. Giovanni's son, Domenico
+Colombo, was probably born at Terrarossa, and moved thence with his
+father, somewhere between 1430 and 1445, to Quinto al Mare, four miles
+east of Genoa on the coast. All the family seem to have been weavers.
+Before 1445, but how many years before is not known, Domenico married
+Susanna Fontanarossa, who belonged to a family of weavers, probably of
+Quezzi, four miles northeast of Genoa. Between 1448 and 1451 Domenico,
+with his wife and three children, moved into the city of Genoa, where he
+became the owner of a house and was duly qualified as a citizen. In 1471
+Domenico moved to Savona, thirty miles west on the Corniche road, where
+he set up a weaving establishment and also kept a tavern. He had then
+five children, Cristoforo, Giovanni, Bartolommeo, Giacomo, and a
+daughter. Domenico lived in Savona till 1484. At that time his wife and
+his son Giovanni were dead, Giacomo was an apprentice, learning the
+weaver's trade, Christopher and Bartholomew had long been domiciled in
+Portugal, the daughter had married a cheese merchant in Genoa, and to
+that city Domenico returned in the autumn of 1484, and lived there until
+his death, at a great age, in 1499 or 1500. He was always in pecuniary
+difficulties, and died poor and in debt, though his sons seem to have
+sent him from Portugal and Spain such money as they could spare.[417]
+
+         [Footnote 416: "Nous avons démontré l'inanité des théories qui
+         le font naître à Pradello, à Cuccaro, à Cogoleto, à Savona, à
+         Nervi, à Albissola, à Bogliasco, à Cosseria, à Finale, à
+         Oneglia, voire même en Angleterre ou dans l'isle de Corse."
+         Harrisse, tom. i. p. 217. In Cogoleto, about sixteen miles west
+         of Genoa on the Corniche road, the visitor is shown a house
+         where Columbus is said first to have seen the light. Upon its
+         front is a quaint inscription in which the discoverer is
+         compared to the dove (_Colomba_) which, when sent by Noah from
+         the ark, discovered dry land amid the waters:--
+
+            Con generoso ardir dall' Arca all' onde
+            Ubbidiente il vol Colomba prende,
+            Corre, s' aggira, terren scopre, e fronde
+            D' olivo in segno, al gran Noè ne rende.
+            L' imita in ciò Colombo, ne' s' asconde,
+            E da sua patria il mar solcando fende;
+            Terreno al fin scoprendo diede fondo,
+            Offerendo all' Ispano un Nuovo Mondo.
+
+         This house is or has been mentioned in Baedeker's _Northern
+         Italy_ as the probable birthplace, along with Peschel's absurd
+         date 1456. It is pretty certain that Columbus was _not_ born in
+         that house or in Cogoleto. See Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 148-155.]
+
+         [Footnote 417: Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 166-216.]
+
+[Sidenote: Christopher tells us that he was born in the city of Genoa.]
+
+The reader will observe that Christopher and his two next brothers were
+born before the family went to live in the city of Genoa. It has hence
+been plausibly inferred that they were born either in Quinto or in
+Terrarossa; more likely the latter, since both Christopher and
+Bartholomew, as well as their father, were called, and sometimes signed
+themselves, Columbus of Terrarossa.[418] In this opinion the most
+indefatigable modern investigator, Harrisse, agrees with Las Casas.[419]
+Nevertheless, in a solemn legal instrument executed February 22, 1498,
+establishing a _mayorazgo_, or right of succession to his estates and
+emoluments in the Indies, Columbus expressly declares that he was born
+in the city of Genoa: "I enjoin it upon my son, the said Don Diego, or
+whoever may inherit the said _mayorazgo_, always to keep and maintain in
+the City of Genoa one person of our lineage, because from thence I came
+and in it I was born."[420] I do not see how such a definite and
+positive statement, occurring in such a document, can be doubted or
+explained away. It seems clear that the son was born while the parents
+were dwelling either at Terrarossa or at Quinto, but what is to hinder
+our supposing that the event might have happened when the mother was in
+the city on some errand or visit? The fact that Christopher and his
+brother were often styled "of Terrarossa" does not prove that they were
+born in that hamlet. A family moving thence to Quinto and to Genoa would
+stand in much need of some such distinctive epithet, because the name
+Colombo was extremely common in that part of Italy; insomuch that the
+modern historian, who prowls among the archives of those towns, must
+have a care lest he get hold of the wrong person, and thus open a fresh
+and prolific source of confusion. This has happened more than once.
+
+         [Footnote 418: Harrisse, tom. i. p. 188; _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. xi.]
+
+         [Footnote 419: "Fué este varon escogido de nacion genovés, de
+         algun lugar de la provincia de Génova; cual fuese, donde nació
+         ó qué nombre tuvo el tal lugar, no consta la verdad dello más
+         de que se solia llamar ántes que llegase al estado que llegó,
+         Cristobal Colombo de Terra-rubia y lo mismo su hermano
+         Bartolomé Colon." Las Casas, _Historia de las Indias_, tom. i.
+         p. 42; cf. Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 217-222.]
+
+         [Footnote 420: "Mando al dicho D. Diego, mi hijo, ó á la
+         persona que heredare el dicho mayorazgo, que tenga y sostenga
+         siempre en la _Ciudad de Génova_ una persona de nuestro linage
+         ... pues que della salí _y en ella naci_" [italics mine].
+         Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p. 232.]
+
+[Sidenote: Christopher's early years.]
+
+[Sidenote: Christopher and Bartholomew at Lisbon.]
+
+On the whole, then, it seems most probable that the Discoverer of
+America was born in the city of Genoa in 1436, or not much later. Of his
+childhood we know next to nothing. Las Casas tells us that he studied at
+the University of Pavia and acquired a good knowledge of Latin.[421]
+This has been doubted, as incompatible with the statement of Columbus
+that he began a seafaring life at the age of fourteen. It is clear,
+however, that the earlier years of Columbus, before his departure for
+Portugal, were not all spent in seafaring. Somewhere, if not at Pavia,
+he not only learned Latin, but found time to study geography, with a
+little astronomy and mathematics, and to become an expert draughtsman.
+He seems to have gone to and fro upon the Mediterranean in merchant
+voyages, now and then taking a hand in sharp scrimmages with Mussulman
+pirates.[422] In the intervals of this adventurous life he was probably
+to be found in Genoa, earning his bread by making maps and charts, for
+which there was a great and growing demand. About 1470, having become
+noted for his skill in such work, he followed his younger brother
+Bartholomew to Lisbon,[423] whither Prince Henry's undertakings had
+attracted able navigators and learned geographers until that city had
+come to be the chief centre of nautical science in Europe. Las Casas
+assures us that Bartholomew was quite equal to Christopher as a sailor,
+and surpassed him in the art of making maps and globes, as well as in
+the beauty of his handwriting.[424] In Portugal, as before in Italy, the
+work of the brothers Columbus was an alternation of map-making on land
+and adventure on the sea. We have Christopher's own word for it that he
+sailed with more than one of those Portuguese expeditions down the
+African coast;[425] and I think it not altogether unlikely that he may
+have been with Santarem and Escobar in their famous voyage of 1471.
+
+         [Footnote 421: Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 46.]
+
+         [Footnote 422: The reader must beware, however, of some of the
+         stories of adventure attaching to this part of his life, even
+         where they are confirmed by Las Casas. They evidently rest upon
+         hearsay, and the incidents are so confused that it is almost
+         impossible to extract the kernel of truth.]
+
+         [Footnote 423: The date 1470 rests upon a letter of Columbus to
+         King Ferdinand of Aragon in May, 1505. He says that God must
+         have directed him into the service of Spain by a kind of
+         miracle, since he had already been in Portugal, whose king was
+         more interested than any other sovereign in making discoveries,
+         and yet God closed his eyes, his ears, and all his senses to
+         such a degree that _in fourteen years_ Columbus could not
+         prevail upon him to lend aid to his scheme. "Dije
+         milagrosamente porque fui á aportar á Portugal, adonde el Rey
+         de allí entendia en el descubrir mas que otro: él le atajó la
+         vista, oido y todos los sentidos, que en catorce años no le
+         pude hacer entender lo que yo dije." Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom.
+         iii. p. 187; Navarrete, tom. iii. p. 528. Now it is known that
+         Columbus finally left Portugal late in 1484, or very early in
+         1485, so that fourteen years would carry us back to before 1471
+         for the first arrival of Columbus in that country. M. Harrisse
+         (_op. cit._ tom. i. p. 263) is unnecessarily troubled by the
+         fact that the same person was not king of Portugal during the
+         whole of that period. Alfonso V. (brother of Henry the
+         Navigator) died in 1481, and was succeeded by his son John II.;
+         but during a considerable part of the time between 1475 and
+         1481 the royal authority was exercised by the latter. Both
+         kings were more interested in making discoveries than any other
+         European sovereigns. Which king did Columbus mean? Obviously
+         his words were used loosely; he was too much preoccupied to be
+         careful about trifles; he probably had John in his mind, and
+         did not bother himself about Alfonso; King Ferdinand, to whom
+         he was writing, did not need to have such points minutely
+         specified, and could understand an elliptical statement; and
+         the fact stated by Columbus was simply that during a residence
+         of fourteen years in Portugal he had not been able to enlist
+         even that enterprising government in behalf of his novel
+         scheme.
+
+         In the town archives of Savona we find Christopher Columbus
+         witnessing a document March 20, 1472, endorsing a kind of
+         promissory note for his father August 26, 1472, and joining
+         with his mother and his next brother Giovanni, August 7, 1473,
+         in relinquishing all claims to the house in Genoa sold by his
+         father Domenico by deed of that date. It will be remembered
+         that Domenico had moved from Genoa to Savona in 1471. From
+         these documents (which are all printed in his _Christophe
+         Colomb_, tom. ii. pp. 419, 420, 424-426) M. Harrisse concludes
+         that Christopher cannot have gone to Portugal until after
+         August 7, 1473. Probably not, so far as to be domiciled there;
+         but inasmuch as he had long been a sailor, why should he not
+         have been in Portugal, or upon the African coast in a
+         Portuguese ship, in 1470 and 1471, and nevertheless have been
+         with his parents in Savona in 1472 and part of 1473? His own
+         statement "fourteen years" is not to be set aside on such
+         slight grounds as this. Furthermore, from the fact that
+         Bartholomew's name is not signed to the deed of August 7, 1473,
+         M. Harrisse infers that he was then a minor; i. e. under five
+         and twenty. But it seems to me more likely that Bartholomew was
+         already domiciled at Lisbon, since we are expressly told by two
+         good contemporary authorities--both of them Genoese writers
+         withal--that he moved to Lisbon and began making maps there at
+         an earlier date than Christopher. See Antonio Gallo, _De
+         navigatione Columbi per inaccessum antea Oceanum
+         Commentariolus_, apud Muratori, tom. xxiii. col. 301-304;
+         Giustiniani, _Psalterium_, Milan, 1516 (annotation to Psalm
+         xix.); Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, No. 88.
+         To these statements M. Harrisse objects that he finds (in
+         Belloro, _Notizie_, p. 8) mention of a document dated Savona,
+         June 16, 1480, in which Domenico Colombo gives a power of
+         attorney to his son Bartholomew to act for him in some matter.
+         The document itself, however, is not forthcoming, and the
+         notice cited by M. Harrisse really affords no ground for the
+         assumption that Bartholomew was in 1480 domiciled at Savona or
+         at Genoa.]
+
+         [Footnote 424: Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom. i. p. 224; tom. ii.
+         p. 80. He possessed many maps and documents by both the
+         brothers.]
+
+         [Footnote 425: "Spesse volte navigando da Lisbona a Guinea,"
+         etc. _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv. The original authority
+         is Columbus's marginal note in his copy of the _Imago Mundi_ of
+         Alliacus, now preserved in the Colombina at Seville: "Nota quod
+         sepius navigando ex Ulixbona ad austrum in Guineam, notavi cum
+         diligentia viam, etc." Compare the allusions to Guinea in his
+         letters, Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. i. pp. 55, 71, 101.]
+
+[Sidenote: Philippa Moñiz de Perestrelo.]
+
+[Sidenote: Personal appearance of Columbus.]
+
+He had not been long in Portugal before he found a wife. We have already
+met the able Italian navigator, Bartholomew Perestrelo, who was sent by
+Prince Henry to the island of Porto Santo with Zarco and Vaz, about
+1425. In recognition of eminent services Prince Henry afterwards, in
+1446, appointed him governor of Porto Santo. Perestrelo died in 1457,
+leaving a widow (his second wife, Isabella Moñiz) and a charming
+daughter Philippa,[426] whom Columbus is said to have first met at a
+religious service in the chapel of the convent of All Saints at Lisbon.
+From the accounts of his personal appearance, given by Las Casas and
+others who knew him, we can well understand how Columbus should have won
+the heart of this lady, so far above him at that time in social
+position. He was a man of noble and commanding presence, tall and
+powerfully built, with fair ruddy complexion and keen blue-gray eyes
+that easily kindled; while his waving white hair must have been quite
+picturesque. His manner was at once courteous and cordial and his
+conversation charming, so that strangers were quickly won, and in
+friends who knew him well he inspired strong affection and respect.[427]
+There was an indefinable air of authority about him, as befitted a man
+of great heart and lofty thoughts.[428] Out of those kindling eyes
+looked a grand and poetic soul, touched with that divine spark of
+religious enthusiasm which makes true genius.
+
+         [Footnote 426: There are some vexed questions concerning this
+         lady and the connections between the Moñiz and Perestrelo
+         families, for which see Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 267-292.]
+
+         [Footnote 427: Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 43. He
+         describes Bartholomew as not unlike his brother, but not so
+         tall, less affable in manner, and more stern in disposition,
+         _id._ tom. ii. p. 80.]
+
+         [Footnote 428: "Christoval Colon ... persona de gran corazon y
+         altos pensamientos." Mariana, _Historia de España_, tom. viii.
+         p. 341.]
+
+[Sidenote: His marriage, and life upon the island of Porto Santo.]
+
+The acquaintance between Columbus and Philippa Moñiz de Perestrelo was
+not long in ripening into affection, for they were married in 1473. As
+there was a small estate at Porto Santo, Columbus went home thither with
+his bride to live for a while in quiet and seclusion. Such repose we may
+believe to have been favourable to meditation, and on that little
+island, three hundred miles out on the mysterious ocean, we are told
+that the great scheme of sailing westward to the Indies first took shape
+in the mind of Columbus.[429] His father-in-law Perestrelo had left a
+quantity of sailing charts and nautical notes, and these Columbus
+diligently studied, while ships on their way to and from Guinea every
+now and then stopped at the island, and one can easily imagine the eager
+discussions that must have been held over the great commercial problem
+of the age,--how far south that African coast extended and whether there
+was any likelihood of ever finding an end to it.
+
+         [Footnote 429: Upon that island his eldest son Diego was born.
+         This whole story of the life upon Porto Santo and its relation
+         to the genesis of Columbus's scheme is told very explicitly by
+         Las Casas, who says that it was told to him by Diego Columbus
+         at Barcelona in 1519, when they were waiting upon Charles V.,
+         just elected Emperor and about to start for Aachen to be
+         crowned. And yet there are modern critics who are disposed to
+         deny the whole story. (See Harrisse, tom. i. p. 298.) The
+         grounds for doubt are, however, extremely trivial when
+         confronted with Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 54.]
+
+[Sidenote: Alfonso V. asks advice of the great astronomer Toscanelli.]
+
+How long Columbus lived upon Porto Santo is not known, but he seems to
+have gone from time to time back to Lisbon, and at length to have made
+his home--or in the case of such a rover we might better say his
+headquarters--in that city. We come now to a document of supreme
+importance for our narrative. Paolo del Pozzo dei Toscanelli, born at
+Florence in 1397, was one of the most famous astronomers and
+cosmographers of his time, a man to whom it was natural that questions
+involving the size and shape of the earth should be referred. To him
+Alfonso V. of Portugal made application, through a gentleman of the
+royal household, Fernando Martinez, who happened to be an old friend of
+Toscanelli. What Alfonso wanted to know was whether there could be a
+shorter oceanic route to the Indies than that which his captains were
+seeking by following the African coast; if so, he begged that Toscanelli
+would explain the nature and direction of such a route. The Florentine
+astronomer replied with the letter presently to be quoted in full, dated
+June 25, 1474; and along with the letter he sent to the king a sailing
+chart, exhibiting his conception of the Atlantic ocean, with Europe on
+the east and Cathay on the west. The date of this letter is eloquent. It
+was early in 1472 that Santarem and Escobar brought back to Lisbon the
+news that beyond the Gold Coast the African shore turned southwards and
+stretched away in that direction beyond the equator. As I have already
+observed, this was the moment when the question as to the possibility of
+a shorter route was likely to arise;[430] and this is precisely the
+question we find the king of Portugal putting to Toscanelli some time
+before the middle of 1474. Now about this same time, or not long
+afterwards, we find Columbus himself appealing to Toscanelli. An aged
+Florentine merchant, Lorenzo Giraldi, then settled in Lisbon, was going
+back to his native city for a visit, and to him Columbus entrusted a
+letter for the eminent astronomer. He received the following answer:
+
+[Sidenote: Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus.]
+
+"Paul, the physicist, to Christopher Columbus greeting.[431] I perceive
+your great and noble desire to go to the place where the spices grow;
+wherefore in reply to a letter of yours, I send you a copy of another
+letter, which I wrote a few days ago [or some time ago] to a friend of
+mine, a gentleman of the household of the most gracious king of Portugal
+before the wars of Castile,[432] in reply to another, which by command
+of His Highness he wrote me concerning that matter: and I send you
+another sailing chart, similar to the one I sent him, by which your
+demands will be satisfied. The copy of that letter of mine is as
+follows:--
+
+[Sidenote: Toscanelli's copy of his former letter to Martinez--enclosed
+in his first letter to Columbus.]
+
+"'Paul, the physicist, to Fernando Martinez, canon, at Lisbon,
+greeting.[433] I was glad to hear of your intimacy and favour with your
+most noble and illustrious king. I have formerly spoken with you about a
+shorter route to the places of Spices by ocean navigation than that
+which you are pursuing by Guinea. The most gracious king now desires
+from me some statement, or rather an exhibition to the eye, so that even
+slightly educated persons can grasp and comprehend that route. Although
+I am well aware that this can be proved from the spherical shape of the
+earth, nevertheless, in order to make the point clearer and to
+facilitate the enterprise, I have decided to exhibit that route by means
+of a sailing chart. I therefore send to his majesty a chart made by my
+own hands,[434] upon which are laid down your coasts, and the islands
+from which you must begin to shape your course steadily westward, and
+the places at which you are bound to arrive, and how far from the pole
+or from the equator you ought to keep away, and through how much space
+or through how many miles you are to arrive at places most fertile in
+all sorts of spices and gems; and do not wonder at my calling _west_ the
+parts where the spices are, whereas they are commonly called _east_,
+because to persons sailing persistently westward those parts will be
+found by courses on the under side of the earth. For if [you go] by land
+and by routes on this upper side, they will always be found in the east.
+The straight lines drawn lengthwise upon the map indicate distance from
+east to west, while the transverse lines show distances from south to
+north. I have drawn upon the map various places upon which you may come,
+for the better information of the navigators in case of their arriving,
+whether through accident of wind or what not, at some different place
+from what they had expected; but partly in order that they may show the
+inhabitants that they have some knowledge of their country, which is
+sure to be a pleasant thing. It is said that none but merchants dwell in
+the islands.[435] For so great there is the number of navigators with
+their merchandise that in all the rest of the world there are not so
+many as in one very splendid port called Zaiton.[436] For they say that
+a hundred great ships of pepper unload in that port every year, besides
+other ships bringing other spices. That country is very populous and
+very rich, with a multitude of provinces and kingdoms and cities without
+number, under one sovereign who is called the Great Khan, which name
+signifies King of Kings, whose residence is for the most part in the
+province of Cathay. His predecessors two hundred years ago desired an
+alliance with Christendom; they sent to the pope and asked for a number
+of persons learned in the faith, that they might be enlightened; but
+those who were sent, having encountered obstacles on the way,
+returned.[437] Even in the time of Eugenius[438] there came one to
+Eugenius and made a declaration concerning their great goodwill toward
+Christians, and I had a long talk with him about many things, about the
+great size of their royal palaces and the remarkable length and breadth
+of their rivers, and the multitude of cities on the banks of the rivers,
+such that on one river there are about two hundred cities, with marble
+bridges very long and wide and everywhere adorned with columns. This
+country is worth seeking by the Latins, not only because great treasures
+may be obtained from it,--gold, silver, and all sorts of jewels and
+spices,--but on account of its learned men, philosophers, and skilled
+astrologers, and [in order that we may see] with what arts and devices
+so powerful and splendid a province is governed, and also [how] they
+conduct their wars. This for some sort of answer to his request, so far
+as haste and my occupations have allowed, ready in future to make
+further response to his royal majesty as much as he may wish. Given at
+Florence 25th June, 1474.'
+
+         [Footnote 430: See above, p. 330.]
+
+         [Footnote 431: I translate this prologue from the Italian text
+         of the _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. viii. The original Latin
+         has nowhere been found. A Spanish version of the whole may be
+         found in Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. pp. 92-96. Las Casas,
+         by a mere slip of the pen, calls "Paul, the physicist," _Marco
+         Paulo_, and fifty years later Mariana calls him _Marco Polo,
+         physician_: "por aviso que le dió un cierto Marco Polo médico
+         Florentin," etc. _Historia de España_, tom. viii. p. 343. Thus
+         step by step doth error grow.]
+
+         [Footnote 432: He means that his friend Martinez has been a
+         member of King Alfonso's household ever since the time before
+         the civil wars that began with the attempted deposition of
+         Henry IV. in 1465 and can hardly be said to have come to an end
+         before the death of that prince in December, 1474. See
+         Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. i. p. 225.]
+
+         [Footnote 433: I translate this enclosed letter from the
+         original Latin text, as found, a few years ago, in the
+         handwriting of Columbus upon the fly-leaves of his copy of the
+         _Historia rerum ubique gestarum_ of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini
+         (Pope Pius II.), published at Venice in 1477, in folio, and now
+         preserved in the Colombina at Seville. This Latin text is given
+         by Harrisse, in his _Fernand Colomb_, pp. 178-180, and also
+         (with more strict regard to the abbreviations of the original)
+         in his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima--Additions_, Paris,
+         1872, pp. xvi.-xviii. Very likely Columbus had occasion to let
+         the original MS. go out of his hands, and so preserved a copy
+         of it upon the fly-leaves of one of his books. These same
+         fly-leaves contain extracts from Josephus and Saint Augustine.
+         The reader will rightly infer from my translation that the
+         astronomer's Latin was somewhat rugged and lacking in literary
+         grace. Apparently he was anxious to jot down quickly what he
+         had to say, and get back to his work.]
+
+         [Footnote 434: A sketch of this most memorable of maps is given
+         opposite. Columbus carried it with him upon his first voyage,
+         and shaped his course in accordance with it. Las Casas
+         afterwards had it in his possession (_Hist. de las Indias_,
+         tom. i. pp. 96, 279). It has since been lost, that is to say,
+         it may still be in existence, but nobody knows where. But it
+         has been so well described that the work of restoring its
+         general outlines is not difficult and has several times been
+         done. The sketch here given is taken from Winsor (_Narr. and
+         Crit. Hist._, ii. 103), who takes it from _Das Ausland_, 1867,
+         p. 5. Another restoration may be found in St. Martin's _Atlas_,
+         pl. ix. This map was the source of the western part of Martin
+         Behaim's globe, as given below, p. 422.]
+
+         [Footnote 435: All the description that follows is taken by
+         Toscanelli from the book of Marco Polo.]
+
+         [Footnote 436: On modern maps usually called Chang-chow, about
+         100 miles S. W. from Fou-chow.]
+
+         [Footnote 437: I have given an account of this mission, above,
+         p. 281.]
+
+         [Footnote 438: Eugenius IV., pope from 1431 to 1447.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conclusion of Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus.]
+
+"From[439] the city of Lisbon due west there are 26 spaces marked on the
+map, each of which contains 250 miles, as far as the very great and
+splendid city of Quinsay.[440] For it is a hundred miles in
+circumference and has ten bridges, and its name means City of Heaven,
+and many wonderful things are told about it and about the multitude of
+its arts and revenues. This space is almost a third part of the whole
+sphere. That city is in the province of Mangi, or near the province of
+Cathay in which land is the royal residence. But from the island of
+Antilia, which you know, to the very splendid island of Cipango[441]
+there are ten spaces. For that island abounds in gold, pearls, and
+precious stones, and they cover the temples and palaces with solid gold.
+So through the unknown parts of the route the stretches of sea to be
+traversed are not great. Many things might perhaps have been stated more
+clearly, but one who duly considers what I have said will be able to
+work out the rest for himself. Farewell, most esteemed one."
+
+         [Footnote 439: This paragraph is evidently the conclusion of
+         the letter to Columbus, and not a part of the letter to
+         Martinez, which has just ended with the date. In _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_ the two letters are mixed together.]
+
+         [Footnote 440: On modern maps Hang-chow. After 1127 that city
+         was for some time the capital of China, and Marco Polo's name
+         _Quinsay_ represents the Chinese word _King-sse_ or "capital,"
+         now generally applied to Peking. Marco Polo calls it the finest
+         and noblest city in the world. It appears that he does not
+         overstate the circumference of its walls at 100 Chinese miles
+         or _li_, equivalent to about 30 English miles. It has greatly
+         diminished since Polo's time, while other cities have grown.
+         Toscanelli was perhaps afraid to repeat Polo's figure as to the
+         number of stone bridges; Polo says there were 12,000 of them,
+         high enough for ships to pass under! We thus see how his
+         Venetian fellow-citizens came to nickname him "Messer Marco
+         Milione." As Colonel Yule says, "I believe we must not bring
+         Marco to book for the literal accuracy of his statements as to
+         the bridges; but all travellers have noticed the number and
+         elegance of the bridges of cut stone in this part of China."
+         _Marco Polo_, vol. ii, p. 144.]
+
+         [Footnote 441: For Cipango, or Japan, see Yule's _Marco Polo_,
+         vol. ii. pp. 195-207. The venerable astronomer's style of
+         composition is amusing. He sets out to demonstrate to Columbus
+         that the part of the voyage to be accomplished through new and
+         unfamiliar stretches of the Atlantic is not great; but he is so
+         full of the glories of Cathay and Cipango that he keeps
+         reverting to that subject, to the manifest detriment of his
+         exposition. His argument, however, is perfectly clear.]
+
+Some time after the receipt of this letter Columbus wrote again to
+Toscanelli, apparently sending him either some charts of his own, or
+some notes, or something bearing upon the subject in hand. No such
+letter is preserved, but Toscanelli replied as follows:--
+
+[Sidenote: Toscanelli's second letter to Columbus.]
+
+"Paul, the physicist, to Christopher Columbus greeting.[442] I have
+received your letters, with the things which you sent me, for which I
+thank you very much. I regard as noble and grand your project of sailing
+from east to west according to the indications furnished by the map
+which I sent you, and which would appear still more plainly upon a
+sphere. I am much pleased to see that I have been well understood, and
+that the voyage has become not only possible but certain,[443] fraught
+with honour as it must be, and inestimable gain, and most lofty fame
+among all Christian people. You cannot take in all that it means except
+by actual experience, or without such copious and accurate information
+as I have had from eminent and learned men who have come from those
+places to the Roman court, and from merchants who have traded a long
+time in those parts, persons whose word is to be believed (_persone di
+grande autorità_). When that voyage shall be accomplished, it will be a
+voyage to powerful kingdoms, and to cities and provinces most wealthy
+and noble, abounding in all sorts of things most desired by us; I mean,
+with all kinds of spices and jewels in great abundance. It will also be
+advantageous for those kings and princes who are eager to have dealings
+and make alliances with the Christians of our countries, and to learn
+from the erudite men of these parts,[444] as well in religion as in all
+other branches of knowledge. For these reasons, and many others that
+might be mentioned, I do not wonder that you, who are of great courage,
+and the whole Portuguese nation, which has always had men distinguished
+in all such enterprises, are now inflamed with desire[445] to execute
+the said voyage."
+
+         [Footnote 442: The original of this letter is not forthcoming.
+         I translate from _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. viii.]
+
+         [Footnote 443: Yet poor old Toscanelli did not live to see it
+         accomplished; he died in 1482, before Columbus left Portugal.]
+
+         [Footnote 444: That is, of Europe, and especially of Italy.
+         Toscanelli again refers to Kublai Khan's message to the pope
+         which--more or less mixed up with the vague notions about
+         Prester John--had evidently left a deep impression upon the
+         European mind. In translating the above sentence I have
+         somewhat retrenched its excessive verbiage without affecting
+         the meaning.]
+
+         [Footnote 445: In including the "whole Portuguese nation" as
+         feeling this desire, the good astronomer's enthusiasm again
+         runs away with him.]
+
+[Sidenote: Who first suggested the feasibleness of a westward route? Was
+it Columbus?]
+
+These letters are intensely interesting, especially the one to Martinez,
+which reveals the fact that as early as 1474 the notion that a westward
+route to the Indies would be shorter than the southward route had
+somehow been suggested to Alfonso V.; and had, moreover, sufficiently
+arrested his attention to lead him to make inquiries of the most eminent
+astronomer within reach. Who could have suggested this notion to the
+king of Portugal? Was it Columbus, the trained mariner and map-maker,
+who might lately have been pondering the theories of Ptolemy and Mela as
+affected by the voyage of Santarem and Escobar, and whose connection
+with the Moñiz and Perestrelo families would now doubtless facilitate
+his access to the court? On some accounts this may seem probable,
+especially if we bear in mind Columbus's own statement implying that his
+appeals to the crown dated almost from the beginning of his fourteen
+years in Portugal.
+
+[Sidenote: Perhaps it was Toscanelli.]
+
+All the circumstances, however, seem to be equally consistent with the
+hypothesis that the first suggestion of the westward route may have come
+from Toscanelli himself, through the medium of the canon Martinez, who
+had for so many years been a member of King Alfonso's household. The
+words at the beginning of the letter lend some probability to this view:
+"I have formerly spoken with you about a shorter route to the places of
+Spices by ocean navigation than that which you are pursuing by Guinea."
+It was accordingly earlier than 1474--how much earlier does not
+appear--that such discussions between Toscanelli and Martinez must
+probably have come to the ears of King Alfonso; and now, very likely
+owing to the voyage of Santarem and Escobar, that monarch began to think
+it worth while to seek for further information, "an exhibition to the
+eye," so that mariners not learned in astronomy like Toscanelli might
+"grasp and comprehend" the shorter route suggested. It is altogether
+probable that the Florentine astronomer, who was seventy-seven years old
+when he wrote this letter, had already for a long time entertained the
+idea of a westward route; and a man in whom the subject aroused so much
+enthusiasm could hardly have been reticent about it. It is not likely
+that Martinez was the only person to whom he descanted[446] upon the
+glory and riches to be found by sailing "straight to Cathay," and there
+were many channels through which Columbus might have got some inkling of
+his views, even before going to Portugal.
+
+         [Footnote 446: Luigi Pulci, in his famous romantic poem
+         published in 1481, has a couple of striking stanzas in which
+         Astarotte says to Rinaldo that the time is at hand when
+         Hercules shall blush to see how far beyond his Pillars the
+         ships shall soon go forth to find another hemisphere, for
+         although the earth is as round as a wheel, yet the water at any
+         given point is a plane, and inasmuch as all things tend to a
+         common centre so that by a divine mystery the earth is
+         suspended in equilibrium among the stars, just so there is an
+         antipodal world with cities and castles unknown to men of olden
+         time, and the sun in hastening westwards descends to shine upon
+         those peoples who are awaiting him below the horizon:--
+
+            Sappi che questa opinione è vana
+            Perchè più oltre navicar si puote,
+            Però che l' acqua in ogni parte è piana,
+            Benchè la terra abbi forma di ruote;
+            Era più grossa allor la gente umana,
+            Tal che potrebbe arrossirne le gote
+            Ercule ancor, d' aver posti que' segni,
+            Perchè più oltre passeranno i legni.
+            E puossi andar giù nell' altro emisperio,
+            Però che al centro ogni cosa reprime:
+            Sicchè la terra per divin misterio
+            Sospesa sta fra le stelle sublime,
+            E laggiù son città, castella, e imperio;
+            Ma nol cognobbon quelle gente prime.
+            Vedi che il sol di camminar s' affretta,
+            Dove io dico che laggiù s' aspetta.
+                              Pulci, _Morgante Maggiore_, xxv. 229, 230.
+
+         This prophecy of western discovery combines with the
+         astronomical knowledge here shown, to remind us that the
+         Florentine Pulci was a fellow-townsman and most likely an
+         acquaintance of Toscanelli.]
+
+[Sidenote: The idea was suggested by the globular form of the earth;]
+
+[Sidenote: and was as old as Aristotle.]
+
+[Sidenote: Opinions of ancient writers.]
+
+However this may have been, the letter clearly proves that at that most
+interesting period, in or about 1474, Columbus was already meditating
+upon the westward route.[447] Whether he owed the idea to Toscanelli,
+or not, is a question of no great importance so far as concerns his own
+originality; for the idea was already in the air. The originality of
+Columbus did not consist in his conceiving the possibility of reaching
+the shores of Cathay by sailing west, but in his conceiving it in such
+distinct and practical shape as to be ready to make the adventure in
+his own person. As a matter of theory the possibility of such a voyage
+could not fail to be suggested by the globular form of the earth; and
+ever since the days of Aristotle that had been generally admitted by men
+learned in physical science. Aristotle proved, from the different
+altitudes of the pole-star in different places, that the earth must
+necessarily be a globe. Moreover, says Aristotle, "some stars are seen
+in Egypt or at Cyprus, but are not seen in the countries to the north of
+these; and the stars that in the north are visible while they make a
+complete circuit, there undergo a setting. So that from this it is
+manifest, not only that the form of the earth is round, but also that it
+is part of not a very large sphere; for otherwise the difference would
+not be so obvious to persons making so small a change of place.
+Wherefore we may judge that _those persons who connect the region in the
+neighbourhood of the Pillars of Hercules with that towards India, and
+who assert that in this way the sea is_ ONE, do not assert things very
+improbable."[448] It thus appears that more than eighteen centuries
+before Columbus took counsel of Toscanelli, "those persons" to whom
+Aristotle alludes were discussing, as a matter of theory, this same
+subject. Eratosthenes held that it would be easy enough to sail from
+Spain to India on the same parallel were it not for the vast extent of
+the Atlantic ocean.[449] On the other hand, Seneca maintained that the
+distance was probably not so very great, and that with favouring winds a
+ship might make the voyage in a few days.[450] In one of his tragedies
+Seneca has a striking passage[451] which has been repeatedly quoted as
+referring to the discovery of America, and is certainly one of the most
+notable instances of prophecy on record. There will come a time, he
+says, in the later years, when Ocean shall loosen the bonds by which we
+have been confined, when an immense land shall lie revealed, and Tethys
+shall disclose new worlds, and Thule will no longer be the most remote
+of countries. In Strabo there is a passage, less commonly noticed, which
+hits the truth--as we know it to-day--even more closely. Having argued
+that the total length of the Inhabited World is only about a third part
+of the circumference of the earth in the temperate zone, he suggests it
+as possible, or even probable, that within this space there may be
+another Inhabited World, or even more than one; but such places would be
+inhabited by different races of men, with whom the geographer, whose
+task it is to describe the _known_ world, has no concern.[452] Nothing
+could better illustrate the philosophical character of Strabo's mind. In
+such speculations, so far as his means of verification went, he was
+situated somewhat as we are to-day with regard to the probable
+inhabitants of Venus or Mars.
+
+         [Footnote 447: It was formerly assumed, without hesitation,
+         that the letter from Toscanelli to Columbus was written and
+         sent in 1474. The reader will observe, however, that while the
+         enclosed letter to Martinez is dated June 25, 1474, the letter
+         to Columbus, in which it was enclosed, has no date. But
+         according to the text as given in _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap.
+         viii., this would make no difference, for the letter to
+         Columbus was sent only a few days later than the original
+         letter to Martinez: "I send you a copy of another letter, which
+         I wrote a few days ago (_alquanti giorni fa_) to a friend of
+         mine, a gentleman of the household of the king of Portugal
+         before the wars of Castile, in reply to another," etc. This
+         friend, Martinez, had evidently been a gentleman of the
+         household of Alfonso V. since before the civil wars of Castile,
+         which in 1474 had been going on intermittently for nine years
+         under the feeble Henry IV., who did not die until December 12,
+         1474. Toscanelli apparently means to say "a friend of mine who
+         has for ten years or more been a gentleman of the royal
+         household," etc.; only instead of mentioning the number of
+         years, he alludes less precisely (as most people, and perhaps
+         especially old people, are apt to do) to the most notable,
+         mentionable, and glaring fact in the history of the Peninsula
+         for that decade,--namely, the civil wars of Castile. As if an
+         American writer in 1864 had said, "a friend of mine, who has
+         been secretary to A. B. since before the war," instead of
+         saying "for four years or more." This is the only reasonable
+         interpretation of the phrase as it stands above, and it was
+         long ago suggested by Humboldt (_Examen critique_, tom. i. p.
+         225). Italian and Spanish writers of that day, however, were
+         lavish with their commas and sprinkled them in pretty much at
+         haphazard. In this case Ferdinand's translator, Ulloa,
+         sprinkled in one comma too many, and it fell just in front of
+         the clause "before the wars of Castile;" so that Toscanelli's
+         sentence was made to read as follows: "I send you a copy of
+         another letter, which I wrote a few days ago to a friend of
+         mine, a gentleman of the household of the king of Portugal,
+         before the wars of Castile, in reply to another," etc. Now this
+         unhappy comma, coming after the word "Portugal," has caused
+         ream after ream of good paper to be inked up in discussion, for
+         it has led some critics to understand the sentence as follows:
+         "I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days
+         ago, before the wars of Castile, to a friend of mine," etc.
+         This reading brought things to a pretty pass. Evidently a
+         letter dated June 25, 1474, could not have been written before
+         the civil wars of Castile, which began in 1465. It was
+         therefore assumed that the phrase must refer to the "War of
+         Succession" between Castile and Portugal (in some ways an
+         outgrowth from the civil wars of Castile) which began in May,
+         1475, and ended in September, 1479. M. d'Avezac thinks that the
+         letter to Columbus must have been written after the latter
+         date, or more than five years later than the enclosed letter.
+         M. Harrisse is somewhat less exacting, and is willing to admit
+         that it may have been written at any time after this war had
+         fairly begun,--say in the summer of 1475, not more than a year
+         or so later than the enclosed letter. Still he is disposed on
+         some accounts to put the date as late as 1482. The phrase
+         _alquanti giorni fa_ will not allow either of these
+         interpretations. It means "a few days ago," and cannot possibly
+         mean a year ago, still less five years ago. The Spanish
+         retranslator from Ulloa renders it exactly _algunos dias há_
+         (Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p. 7), and Humboldt (_loc.
+         cit._) has it _il y a quelques jours_. If we could be sure that
+         the expression is a correct rendering of the lost Latin
+         original, we might feel sure that the letter to Columbus must
+         have been written as early as the beginning of August, 1474.
+         But now the great work of Las Casas, after lying in manuscript
+         for 314 years, has at length been published in 1875. Las Casas
+         gives a Spanish version of the Toscanelli letters (_Historia de
+         las Indias_, tom. i. pp. 92-97), which is unquestionably older
+         than Ulloa's Italian version, though perhaps not necessarily
+         more accurate. The phrase in Las Casas is not _algunos dias
+         há_, but _há dias_, i. e. not "a few days ago," but "some time
+         ago." Just which expression Toscanelli used cannot be
+         determined unless somebody is fortunate enough to discover the
+         lost Latin original. The phrase in Las Casas admits much more
+         latitude of meaning than the other. I should suppose that _há
+         dias_ might refer to an event a year or two old, which would
+         admit of the interpretation considered admissible by M.
+         Harrisse. I should hardly suppose that it could refer to an
+         event five or six years old; if Toscanelli had been referring
+         in 1479 or 1480 to a letter written in 1474, his phrase would
+         probably have appeared in Spanish as _algunos años há_, i. e.
+         "a few years ago," not as _há dias_. M. d'Avezac's hypothesis
+         seems to me not only inconsistent with the phrase _há dias_,
+         but otherwise improbable. The frightful anarchy in Castile,
+         which began in 1465 with the attempt to depose Henry IV. and
+         alter the succession, was in great measure a series of ravaging
+         campaigns and raids, now more general, now more local, and can
+         hardly be said to have come to an end before Henry's death in
+         1474. The war which began with the invasion of Castile by
+         Alfonso V. of Portugal, in May, 1475, was simply a later phase
+         of the same series of conflicts, growing out of disputed claims
+         to the crown and rivalries among great barons, in many respects
+         similar to the contemporary anarchy in England called the Wars
+         of the Roses. It is not likely that Toscanelli, writing at any
+         time between 1475 and 1480, and speaking of the "wars of
+         Castile" in the plural, could have had 1474 in his mind as a
+         date previous to those wars; to his mind it would have rightly
+         appeared as a date in the midst of them. In any case,
+         therefore, his reference must be to a time before 1465, and
+         Humboldt's interpretation is in all probability correct. The
+         letter from Toscanelli to Columbus was probably written within
+         a year or two after June 25, 1474.
+
+         On account of the vast importance of the Toscanelli letters,
+         and because the early texts are found in books which the reader
+         is not likely to have at hand, I have given them entire in the
+         Appendix at the end of this work.]
+
+         [Footnote 448: [Greek: Hôste ta hyper tês kephalês astra
+         megalên echein tên metabolên, kai mê tauta phainesthai pros
+         arkton te kai mesêmbrian metabainousin; enioi gar en Aigyptô
+         men asteres horôntai, kai peri Kypron; en tois pros arkton de
+         chôrious ouch horôntai kai ta dia pantos en tois pros arkton
+         phainomena tôn astrôn, en ekeinois tois topois poieitai dysin.
+         Hôst' ou monon ek toutôn dêlon peripheres on to schêma tês gês,
+         alla kai sphairas ou megalês. Ou gar an houtô tachy epidêlon
+         epoiei methistemenois houtô brachy. Dio tous hypolambanontas
+         synaptein ton peri tas Hêrakleious stêlas topon tô peri tên
+         Indikên, kai touton ton tropon einai tên Thalattan mian, mê
+         lian hypolambanein apista dokein.] Aristotle, _De Coelo_, ii.
+         14. He goes on to say that "those persons" allege the existence
+         of elephants alike in Mauretania and in India in proof of their
+         theory.]
+
+         [Footnote 449: [Greek: Hôst' ei mê to megethos tou Atlantikou
+         pelagous ekôlye, kan plein hêmas ek tês Ibêrias eis tên Indikên
+         dia tou autou parallêlou.] Strabo, i. 4, § 6.]
+
+         [Footnote 450: "Quantum enim est, quod ab ultimis litoribus
+         Hispaniæ usque ad Indos jacet? Paucissimorum dierum spatium, si
+         navem suus ventus implevit." Seneca, _Nat. Quæst._, i. præf. §
+         11.]
+
+         [Footnote 451:
+
+            Venient annis sæcula seris,
+            Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
+            Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
+            Tethysque novos detegat orbes,
+            Nec sit terris ultima Thule.
+                              Seneca, _Medea_, 376.
+
+         In the copy of Seneca's tragedies, published at Venice in
+         1510, bought at Valladolid by Ferdinand Columbus in March,
+         1518, for 4 reals (plus 2 reals for binding), and now to be
+         seen at the Biblioteca Colombina, there is a marginal note
+         attached to these verses: "hæc prophetia expleta [=e] per
+         patr[=e] meuz[=z] cristofor[=u] col[=o] almir[=a]t[=e] anno
+         1492."]
+
+         [Footnote 452: [Greek: Kaloumen gar oikoumenên hên oikoumen kai
+         gnôrizomen; endeketai de kai en tê autê eukratô zônê kai dyo
+         oikoumenas einai ê kai pleious.] Strabo, i. 4, § 6; [Greek: kai
+         gar ei houtôs echei, ouch hypo toutôn ge oikeitai tôn par'
+         hêmin; all' ekeinên allên oikoumenên theteon. hoper esti
+         pithanon. Hêmin de ta en autê tauta lekteon.] Id. ii. 5, § 13.
+         This has always seemed to me one of the most remarkable
+         anticipations of modern truth in all ancient literature. Mr.
+         Bunbury thinks it may have suggested the famous verses of
+         Seneca just quoted. _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. ii. p.
+         224.]
+
+[Sidenote: Opinions of Christian writers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Roger Bacon.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "Imago Mundi" of Petrus Alliacus.]
+
+Early in the Christian era we are told by an eminent Greek astronomer
+that the doctrine of the earth's sphericity was accepted by all
+competent persons except the Epicureans.[453] Among the Fathers of the
+Church there was some difference of opinion; while in general they
+denied the existence of human beings beyond the limits of their
+Oecumene, or Inhabited World, this denial did not necessarily involve
+disbelief in the globular figure of the earth.[454] The views of the
+great mass of people, and of the more ignorant of the clergy, down to
+the time of Columbus, were probably well represented in the book of
+Cosmas Indicopleustes already cited.[455] Nevertheless among the more
+enlightened clergy the views of the ancient astronomers were never quite
+forgotten, and in the great revival of intellectual life in the
+thirteenth century the doctrine of the earth's sphericity was again
+brought prominently into the foreground. We find Dante basing upon it
+the cosmical theory elaborated in his immortal poem.[456] In 1267 Roger
+Bacon--stimulated, no doubt, by the reports of the ocean east of
+Cathay--collected passages from ancient writers to prove that the
+distance from Spain to the eastern shores of Asia could not be very
+great. Bacon's argument and citations were copied in an extremely
+curious book, the "Imago Mundi," published in 1410 by the Cardinal
+Pierre d'Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai, better known by the Latinized form of
+his name as Petrus Alliacus. This treatise, which throughout the
+fifteenth century enjoyed a great reputation, was a favourite book with
+Columbus, and his copy of it, covered with marginal annotations in his
+own handwriting, is still preserved among the priceless treasures of the
+Biblioteca Colombina.[457] He found in it strong confirmation of his
+views, and it is not impossible that the reading of it may have first
+put such ideas into his head. Such a point, however, can hardly be
+determined. As I have already observed, these ideas were in the air.
+What Columbus did was not to originate them, but to incarnate them in
+facts and breathe into them the breath of life. It was one thing to
+suggest, as a theoretical possibility, that Cathay might be reached by
+sailing westward; and it was quite another thing to prove that the
+enterprise was feasible with the ships and instruments then at command.
+
+         [Footnote 453: [Greek: Hoi de hêmeteroi] [i. e. the Stoics]
+         [Greek: kai apo mathêmatôn pantes, kai hoi pleious tôn apo tou
+         Sôkratikou didaskaleiou sphairikon einai to schêma tês gês
+         diebebaiôsanto.] Cleomedes, i. 8; cf. Lucretius, _De Rerum
+         Nat._, i. 1052-1082; Stobæus, _Eclog._ i. 19; Plutarch, _De
+         facie in Orbe Luna_, cap. vii.]
+
+         [Footnote 454: See Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, xvi. 9;
+         Lactantius, _Inst. Div._, iii. 23; Jerome, _Comm. in Ezechiel_,
+         i. 6; Whewell's _History of the Inductive Sciences_, vol i. p.
+         196.]
+
+         [Footnote 455: See above, p. 266.]
+
+         [Footnote 456: For an account of the cosmography of the Divine
+         Comedy, illustrated with interesting diagrams, see Artaud de
+         Montor, _Histoire de Dante Alighieri_, Paris, 1841.]
+
+         [Footnote 457: It was first printed without indication of place
+         or date, but probably the place was Paris and the date
+         somewhere from 1483 to 1490. Manuscript copies were very
+         common, and Columbus probably knew the book long before that
+         time. There is a good account of it in Humboldt's _Examen
+         critique_, tom. i. pp. 61-76, 96-108. Humboldt thinks that such
+         knowledge as Columbus had of the opinions of ancient writers
+         was chiefly if not wholly obtained from Alliacus. It is
+         doubtful if Columbus had any direct acquaintance with the works
+         of Roger Bacon, but he knew the _Liber Cosmographicus_ of
+         Albertus Magnus and the _Speculum Naturale_ of Vincent de
+         Beauvais (both about 1250), and drew encouragement from them.
+         He also knew the book of Mandeville, first printed in French at
+         Lyons in 1480, and a Latin translation of Marco Polo, published
+         in 1485, a copy of which, with marginal MS. notes, is now in
+         the Colombina.]
+
+[Illustration: Annotations by Columbus.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ancient estimates of the size of the globe and the length of
+the Oecumene.]
+
+The principal consideration, of course, was the distance to be
+traversed; and here Columbus was helped by an error which he shared with
+many geographers of his day. He somewhat underestimated the size of the
+earth, and at the same time greatly overestimated the length of Asia.
+The first astronomer to calculate, by scientific methods, the
+circumference of our planet at the equator was Eratosthenes (B. C.
+276-196), and he came--all things considered--fairly near the truth; he
+made it 25,200 geographical miles (of ten stadia), or about one seventh
+too great. The true figure is 21,600 geographical miles, equivalent to
+24,899 English statute miles.[458] Curiously enough, Posidonius, in
+revising this calculation a century later, reduced the figure to 18,000
+miles, or about one seventh too small. The circumference in the latitude
+of Gibraltar he estimated at 14,000 miles; the length of the Oecumene,
+or Inhabited World, he called 7,000; the distance across the Atlantic
+from the Spanish strand to the eastern shores of Asia was the other
+7,000. The error of Posidonius was partially rectified by Ptolemy, who
+made the equatorial circumference 20,400 geographical miles, and the
+length of a degree 56.6 miles.[459] This estimate, in which the error
+was less than one sixteenth, prevailed until modern times. Ptolemy also
+supposed the Inhabited World to extend over about half the circumference
+of the temperate zone, but the other half he imagined as consisting
+largely of bad lands, quagmires, and land-locked seas, instead of a vast
+and open ocean.[460]
+
+         [Footnote 458: See Herschel's _Outlines of Astronomy_, p. 140.
+         For an account of the method employed by Eratosthenes, see
+         Delambre, _Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne_, tom. i. pp.
+         86-91; Lewis, _Astronomy of the Ancients_, p. 198.]
+
+         [Footnote 459: See Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_,
+         vol. ii. pp. 95-97, 546-579; Müller and Donaldson, _History of
+         Greek Literature_, vol. iii. p. 268.]
+
+         [Footnote 460: Strabo, in arguing against this theory of bad
+         lands, etc., as obstacles to ocean navigation--a theory which
+         seems to be at least as old as Hipparchus--has a passage which
+         finely expresses the loneliness of the sea:--[Greek: Hoite gar
+         periplein epicheirêsantes, eita anastrepsantes, ouch hypo
+         êpeirou tinos antipiptousês kai kôlyousês, ton epekeina ploun
+         anakrousthênai phasin, alla hypo aporias kai erêmias, ouden
+         hêtton tês thalattês echousês ton poron] (lib. i. cap. i. § 8).
+         When one thinks of this [Greek: aporia] and [Greek: erêmia],
+         one fancies oneself far out on the Atlantic, alone in an open
+         boat on a cloudy night, bewildered and hopeless.]
+
+[Sidenote: Toscanelli's calculation of the size of the earth,]
+
+[Sidenote: and of the position of Cipango.]
+
+Ptolemy's opinion as to the length of the Inhabited World was
+considerably modified in the minds of those writers who toward the end
+of the Middle Ages had been strongly impressed by the book of Marco
+Polo. Among these persons was Toscanelli. This excellent astronomer
+calculated the earth's equatorial circumference at almost exactly the
+true figure; his error was less than 124 English miles in excess. The
+circumference in the latitude of Lisbon he made 26 × 250 × 3 = 19,500
+miles.[461] Two thirds of this figure, or 13,000 miles, he allowed for
+the length of the Oecumene, from Lisbon eastward to Quinsay (i. e.
+Hang-chow), leaving 6,500 for the westward voyage from Lisbon to
+Quinsay. Thus Toscanelli elongated Asia by nearly the whole width of the
+Pacific ocean. His Quinsay would come about 130° W., a few hundred miles
+west of the mouth of the Columbia river. Zaiton (i. e. Chang-chow), the
+easternmost city in Toscanelli's China, would come not far from the tip
+end of Lower California. Thus the eastern coast of Cipango, about a
+thousand miles east from Zaiton, would fall in the Gulf of Mexico
+somewhere near the ninety-third meridian, and that island, being over a
+thousand miles in length north and south, would fill up the space
+between the parallel of New Orleans and that of the city of Guatemala.
+The westward voyage from the Canaries to Cipango, according to
+Toscanelli, would be rather more than 3,250 miles, but at a third of the
+distance out he placed the imaginary island of "Antilia," with which he
+seems to have supposed Portuguese sailors to be familiar.[462] "So
+through the unknown parts of the route," said the venerable astronomer,
+"the stretches of sea to be traversed are not great,"--not much more
+than 2,000 English miles, not so long as the voyage from Lisbon to the
+Guinea coast.
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus's opinion of the size of the globe, the length of
+the Oecumene, and the width of the Atlantic ocean.]
+
+[Sidenote: The fourth book of Esdras.]
+
+While Columbus attached great importance to these calculations and
+carried Toscanelli's map with him upon his first voyage, he improved
+somewhat upon the estimates of distance, and thus made his case still
+more hopeful. Columbus was not enough of an astronomer to adopt
+Toscanelli's improved measurement of the size of the earth. He accepted
+Ptolemy's figure of 20,400 geographical miles for the equatorial
+girth,[463] which would make the circumference in the latitude of the
+Canaries about 18,000; and Columbus, on the strength of sundry passages
+from ancient authors which he found in Alliacus (cribbed from Roger
+Bacon), concluded that six sevenths of this circumference must be
+occupied by the Oecumene, including Cipango, so that in order to reach
+that wonderful island he would only have to sail over one seventh, or
+not much more than 2,500 miles from the Canaries.[464] An authority upon
+which he placed great reliance in this connection was the fourth book
+of Esdras, which although not a canonical part of the Bible was approved
+by holy men, and which expressly asserted that six parts of the earth
+(i. e. of the length of the Oecumene, or north temperate zone) are
+inhabited and only the seventh part covered with water. From the general
+habit of Columbus's mind it may be inferred that it was chiefly upon
+this scriptural authority that he based his confident expectation of
+finding land soon after accomplishing seven hundred leagues from the
+Canaries. Was it not as good as written in the Bible that land was to be
+found there?
+
+         [Footnote 461: See above, p. 360. Toscanelli's mile was nearly
+         equivalent to the English statute mile. See the very important
+         note in Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 51.]
+
+         [Footnote 462: The reader will also notice upon Toscanelli's
+         map the islands of Brazil and St. Brandan. For an account of
+         all these fabulous islands see Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._,
+         vol. i. pp. 46-51. The name of "Antilia" survives in the name
+         "Antilles," applied since about 1502 to the West India islands.
+         All the islands west of Toscanelli's ninetieth meridian belong
+         in the Pacific. He drew them from his understanding of the
+         descriptions of Marco Polo, Friar Odoric, and other travellers.
+         These were the islands supposed, rightly, though vaguely, to
+         abound in spices.]
+
+         [Footnote 463: Columbus was confirmed in this opinion by the
+         book of the Arabian astronomer Alfragan, written about A. D.
+         950, a Latin translation of which appeared in 1447. There is a
+         concise summary of it in Delambre, _Histoire de l'astronomie du
+         Moyen Âge_, pp. 63-73. Columbus proceeded throughout on the
+         assumption that the length of a degree at the equator is 56.6
+         geographical miles, instead of the correct figure 60. This
+         would oblige him to reduce all Toscanelli's figures by about
+         six per cent., to begin with. Upon this point we have the
+         highest authority, that of Columbus himself, in an autograph
+         marginal note in his copy of the _Imago Mundi_, where he
+         expresses himself most explicitly: "Nota quod sepius navigando
+         ex Ulixbona ad Austrum in Guineam, notavi cum diligentia viam,
+         ut solitum naucleris et malineriis, et preteria accepi
+         altitudinem solis cum quadrante et aliis instrumentis plures
+         vices, et inveni concordare cum Alfragano, videlicet respondere
+         quemlibet gradum milliariis 56-2/3. Quare ad hanc mensuram
+         fidem adhibendam. Tunc igitur possumus dicere quod circuitus
+         Terræ sub aræ equinoctiali est 20,400 milliariorum. Similiter
+         que id invenit magister Josephus phisicus et astrologus et alii
+         plures missi specialiter ad hoc per serenissimum regem
+         Portugaliæ," etc.; _anglicè_, "Observe that in sailing often
+         from Lisbon southward to Guinea, I carefully marked the course,
+         according to the custom of skippers and mariners, and moreover
+         I took the sun's altitude several times with a quadrant and
+         other instruments, and in agreement with Alfragan I found that
+         each degree [i. e. of longitude, measured on a great circle]
+         answers to 56-2/3 miles. So that one may rely upon this
+         measure. We may therefore say that the equatorial circumference
+         of the earth is 20,400 miles. A similar result was obtained by
+         Master Joseph, the physicist [or, perhaps, physician] and
+         astronomer, and several others sent for this special purpose by
+         the most gracious king of Portugal."--Master Joseph was
+         physician to John II. of Portugal, and was associated with
+         Martin Behaim in the invention of an improved astrolabe which
+         greatly facilitated ocean navigation.--The exact agreement with
+         Ptolemy's figures shows that by a mile Columbus meant a
+         geographical mile, equivalent to ten Greek stadia.]
+
+         [Footnote 464: One seventh of 18,000 is 2,571 geographical
+         miles, equivalent to 2,963 English miles. The actual length of
+         Columbus's first voyage, from last sight of land in the
+         Canaries to first sight of land in the Bahamas, was according
+         to his own dead reckoning about 3,230 geographical miles. See
+         his journal in Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. i. pp. 6-20.
+
+         I give here in parallel columns the passage from Bacon and the
+         one from Alliacus upon which Columbus placed so much reliance.
+         In the Middle Ages there was a generous tolerance of much that
+         we have since learned to stigmatize as plagiarism.
+
+   From Roger Bacon, _Opus                From Petrus Alliacus, _De
+   Majus_ (A. D. 1267), London,           imagine Mundi_ (A. D. 1410),
+   1733, ed. Jebb, p. 183:--"Sed          Paris, cir. 1490, cap. viii. fol.
+   Aristoteles vult in fine secundi       13 b:--"Summus Aristoteles
+   Coeli et Mundi quod plus [terræ]       dicit quod mare parvum est inter
+   habitetur quam quarta pars. Et         finem Hispaniæ a parte occidentis
+   Averroes hoc confirmat. Dicit          et inter principium Indiæ
+   Aristoteles quod mare parvum           a parte orientis, et vult quod
+   est inter finem Hispaniæ a parte       plus habitetur quam quarta
+   occidentis et inter principium         pars, et Averroes hoc confirmat.
+   Indiæ a parte orientis. Et Seneca,     Insuper Seneca libro
+   libro quinto Naturalium,               quinto Naturalium, dicit quod
+   dicit quod mare hoc est navigabile     mare est navigabile in paucis
+   in paucissimis diebus si               diebus si ventus sit conveniens.
+   ventus sit conveniens. Et Plinius      Et Plinius docet in Naturalibus,
+   docet in Naturalibus quod              libro secundo, quod navigatum
+   navigatum est a sinu Arabico           est a sinu Arabico usque ad
+   usque ad Gades: unde refert            Gades Herculis non multum
+   quendam fugisse a rego suo             magno tempore,
+   præ timore et intravit sinum
+   Maris Rubri ... qui circiter
+   spatium navigationis annualis
+   distat a Mari Indico: ... ex
+   quo patet principium Indiæ in
+   oriente multum a nobis distare
+   et ab Hispania, postquam tantum
+   distat a principio Arabiæ
+   versus Indiam. A fine Hispaniæ                      unde concludunt
+   sub terra tam parvum mare est          aliqui, quod mare non est
+   quod non potest cooperire tres         tantum quod possit cooperire
+   quartas terræ. Et hoc per              tres quartas terræ. Accedit ad
+   auctoritatem alterius considerationis  hoc auctoritas Esdræ libro suo
+   probatur. Nam Esdras                   quarto, dicentis quod sex partes
+   dicit quarto libro, quod sex
+   partes terræ sunt habitatæ et          terrae sunt habitatæ et septima
+   septima est cooperta aquis. Et         est cooperta aquis,
+   ne aliquis impediat hanc auctoritatem,
+   dicens quod liber ille
+   est apocryphus et ignotæ auctoritatis,
+   dicendum est quod                      cujus libri auctoritatem sancti
+   sancti habuerunt illum librum          habuerunt in reverentia."
+   in usu et confirmant veritates
+   sacras per illum librum."
+
+         Columbus must either have carried the book of Alliacus with him
+         on his voyages, or else have read his favourite passages until
+         he knew them by heart, as may be seen from the following
+         passage of a letter, written from Hispaniola in 1498 to
+         Ferdinand and Isabella (Navarrete, tom i. p. 261):--"El
+         Aristotel dice que este mundo es pequeño y es el agua muy poca,
+         y que facilmente se puede pasar de España à las Indias, y esto
+         confirma el Avenryz [Averroes], y le alega el cardenal Pedro de
+         Aliaco, autorizando este decir y aquel de Seneca, el qual
+         conforma con estos.... À esto trac una autoridad de Esdras del
+         tercero libro suyo, adonde dice que de siete partes del mundo
+         las seis son descubiertas y la una es cubierta de agua, la cual
+         autoridad es aprobada por Santos, los cuales dan autoridad al
+         3^o é 4^o libro de Esdras, ansí come es S. Agustin é S.
+         Ambrosio en su _exámeron_," etc.--"Singular period," exclaims
+         Humboldt, "when a mixture of testimonies from Aristotle and
+         Averroes, Esdras and Seneca, on the small extent of the ocean
+         compared with the magnitude of continental land, afforded to
+         monarchs guarantees for the safety and expediency of costly
+         enterprises!" _Cosmos_, tr. Sabine, vol. ii. p. 250. The
+         passages cited in this note may be found in Humboldt, _Examen
+         critique_, tom. i. pp. 65-69. Another interesting passage from
+         _Imago Mundi_, cap. xv., is quoted on p. 78 of the same work.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fortunate mixture of truth and error.]
+
+[Sidenote: The whole point and purport of Columbus's scheme.]
+
+Thus did Columbus arrive at his decisive conclusion, estimating the
+distance across the Sea of Darkness to Japan at something less than the
+figure which actually expresses the distance to the West Indies. Many a
+hopeful enterprise has been ruined by errors in figuring, but this wrong
+calculation was certainly a great help to Columbus. When we consider
+how difficult he found it to obtain men and ships for a voyage supposed
+to be not more than 2,500 miles in this new and untried direction, we
+must admit that his chances would have been poor indeed if he had
+proposed to sail westward on the Sea of Darkness for nearly 12,000
+miles, the real distance from the Canaries to Japan. It was a case where
+the littleness of the knowledge was not a dangerous but a helpful thing.
+If instead of the somewhat faulty astronomy of Ptolemy and the very hazy
+notions prevalent about "the Indies," the correct astronomy of
+Toscanelli had prevailed and had been joined to an accurate knowledge of
+eastern Asia, Columbus would surely never have conceived his great
+scheme, and the discovery of America would probably have waited to be
+made by accident.[465] The whole point of his scheme lay in its promise
+of a shorter route to the Indies than that which the Portuguese were
+seeking by way of Guinea. Unless it was probable that it could furnish
+such a shorter route, there was no reason for such an extraordinary
+enterprise.
+
+         [Footnote 465: See below, vol. ii. p. 96.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus's speculations on climate.]
+
+[Sidenote: His voyage to Guinea.]
+
+[Sidenote: His voyage into the Arctic ocean, 1477.]
+
+The years between 1474 and 1480 were not favourable for new maritime
+ventures on the part of the Portuguese government. The war with Castile
+absorbed the energies of Alfonso V. as well as his money, and he was
+badly beaten into the bargain. About this time Columbus was writing a
+treatise on "the five habitable zones," intended to refute the old
+notions about regions so fiery or so frozen as to be inaccessible to
+man. As this book is lost we know little or nothing of its views and
+speculations, but it appears that in writing it Columbus utilized sundry
+observations made by himself in long voyages into the torrid and arctic
+zones. He spent some time at the fortress of San Jorge de la Mina, on
+the Gold Coast, and made a study of that equinoctial climate.[466] This
+could not have been earlier than 1482, the year in which the fortress
+was built. Five years before this he seems to have gone far in the
+opposite direction. In a fragment of a letter or diary, preserved by his
+son and by Las Casas, he says:--"In the month of February, 1477, I
+sailed a hundred leagues beyond the island of Thule, [to?] an island of
+which the south part is in latitude 73°, not 63°, as some say; and it
+[i. e. Thule] does not lie within Ptolemy's western boundary, but much
+farther west. And to this island, which is as big as England, the
+English go with their wares, especially from Bristol. When I was there
+the sea was not frozen. In some places the tide rose and fell twenty-six
+fathoms. It is true that the Thule mentioned by Ptolemy lies where he
+says it does, and this by the moderns is called Frislanda."[467]
+
+         [Footnote 466: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.; Las Casas,
+         _Historia_, tom. i. p. 49.]
+
+         [Footnote 467: "Io navigai l' anno M CCCC LXXVII nel mese di
+         Febraio oltra Tile isola cento leghe, la cui parte Australe è
+         lontana dall' Equinottiale settantatrè gradi, e non
+         sessantatrè, come alcuni vogliono; nè giace dentro della linea,
+         che include l' Occidente di Tolomeo, ma è molto più
+         Occidentale. Et a questa isola, che è tanto grande, come
+         l'Inghilterra, vanno gl' Inglesi con le loro mercatantie,
+         specialmente quelli di Bristol. Et al tempo che io vi andai,
+         non era congelato il mare, quantunque vi fossero si grosse
+         maree, che in alcuni luoghi ascendeva ventisei braccia, e
+         discendeva altretanti in altezza. È bene il vero, che Tile,
+         quella, di cui Tolomeo fa mentione, giace dove egli dice; &
+         questa da' moderni è chiamata Frislanda." _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. iv. In the original edition of 1571, there
+         are no quotation-marks; and in some modern editions, where
+         these are supplied, the quotation is wrongly made to end just
+         before the last sentence, so as to make it appear like a gloss
+         of Ferdinand's. This is, however, impossible. Ferdinand died in
+         1539, and the Zeno narrative of Frislanda was not published
+         till 1558, so that the only source from which that name could
+         have come into his book was his father's document. The
+         genuineness of the passage is proved by its recurrence, almost
+         word for word, in Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 48.]
+
+[Sidenote: He may have reached Jan Mayen island,]
+
+[Sidenote: and stopped at Iceland.]
+
+Taken as it stands this passage is so bewildering that we can hardly
+suppose it to have come in just this shape from the pen of Columbus. It
+looks as if it had been abridged from some diary of his by some person
+unfamiliar with the Arctic seas; and I have ventured to insert in
+brackets a little preposition which may perhaps help to straighten out
+the meaning. By Thule Columbus doubtless means Iceland, which lies
+between latitudes 64° and 67°, and it looks as if he meant to say that
+he ran beyond it as far as the little island, just a hundred leagues
+from Iceland and in latitude 71°, since discovered by Jan Mayen in 1611.
+The rest of the paragraph is more intelligible. It is true that Iceland
+lies thirty degrees farther west than Ptolemy placed Thule; and that for
+a century before the discovery of the Newfoundland fisheries the English
+did much fishing in the waters about Iceland, and carried wares
+thither, especially from Bristol.[468] There can be no doubt that by
+Frislanda Columbus means the Færoe islands,[469] which do lie in the
+latitude though not in the longitude mentioned by Ptolemy. As for the
+voyage into the Jan Mayen waters in February, it would be dangerous but
+by no means impossible.[470] In another letter Columbus mentions
+visiting England, apparently in connection with this voyage,[471] and it
+is highly probable that he went in an English ship from Bristol.
+
+         [Footnote 468: See Thorold Rogers, _The Economic Interpretation
+         of History_, London, 1888, pp. 103, 319.]
+
+         [Footnote 469: See above, p. 236.]
+
+         [Footnote 470: See the graphic description of a voyage in these
+         waters in March, 1882, in Nansen's _The First Crossing of
+         Greenland_, London, 1890, vol. i. pp. 149-152.]
+
+         [Footnote 471: "E vidi tutto il Levante, e tutto il Ponente,
+         che si dice per andare verso il Settentrione, cioè
+         l'Inghilterra, e ho camminato per la Guinea." _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.]
+
+[Sidenote: The hypothesis that Columbus "must have" heard and understood
+the story of the Vinland voyages.]
+
+The object of Columbus in making these long voyages to the equator and
+into the polar circle was, as he tells us, to gather observations upon
+climate. From the circumstance of his having made a stop at some point
+in Iceland, it was conjectured by Finn Magnusson that Columbus might
+have learned something about Vinland which served to guide him to his
+own enterprise or to encourage him in it. Starting from this suggestion,
+it has been argued[472] that Columbus must have read the geographical
+appendix to Adam of Bremen's "Ecclesiastical History;" that he must
+have understood, as we now do, the reference therein made to Vinland;
+that he made his voyage to Iceland in order to obtain further
+information; that he there not only heard about Vinland and other
+localities mentioned in the sagas, but also mentally placed them about
+where they were placed in 1837 by Professor Rafn; that, among other
+things, he thus obtained a correct knowledge of the width of the
+Atlantic ocean in latitude 28° N.; and that during fifteen subsequent
+years of weary endeavour to obtain ships and men for his westward
+voyage, he sedulously refrained from using the most convincing argument
+at his command,--namely that land of continental dimensions had actually
+been found (though by a very different route) in the direction which he
+indicated.
+
+         [Footnote 472: See Anderson's _America not discovered by
+         Columbus_, Chicago, 1874; 3d ed. enlarged, Chicago, 1883.]
+
+[Sidenote: That hypothesis has no evidence in its favour.]
+
+I have already given an explanation of the process by which Columbus
+arrived at the firm belief that by sailing not more than about 2,500
+geographical miles due west from the Canaries he should reach the coast
+of Japan. Every step of that explanation is sustained by documentary
+evidence, and as his belief is thus completely accounted for, the
+hypothesis that he may have based it upon information obtained in
+Iceland is, to say the least, superfluous. We do not need it in order to
+explain his actions, and accordingly his actions do not afford a
+presumption in favour of it. There is otherwise no reason, of course,
+for refusing to admit that he might have obtained information in
+Iceland, were there any evidence that he did. But not a scrap of such
+evidence has ever been produced. Every step in the Scandinavian
+hypothesis is a pure assumption.
+
+[Sidenote: It is not probable that Columbus knew of Adam of Bremen's
+allusion to Vinland,]
+
+[Sidenote: or that he would have understood it if he had read it.]
+
+First it is assumed that Columbus _must_ have read the appendix to Adam
+of Bremen's history. But really, while it is not impossible that he
+should have read that document, it is, on the whole, improbable. The
+appendix was first printed in Lindenbrog's edition, published at Leyden,
+in 1595. The eminent Norwegian historian, Gustav Storm, finds that in
+the sixteenth century just six MSS. of Adam's works can now be traced.
+Of these, two were preserved in Denmark, two in Hamburg, one had
+_perhaps_ already wandered southward to Leyden, and one as far as
+Vienna. Dr. Storm, therefore, feels sure that Columbus never saw Adam's
+mention of Vinland, and pithily adds that "had Columbus known it, it
+would not have been able to show him the way to the West Indies, but
+perhaps to the North Pole."[473] From the account of this mention and
+its context, which I have already given,[474] it is in the highest
+degree improbable that if Columbus had read the passage he could have
+understood it as bearing upon his own problem. There is, therefore, no
+ground for the assumption that Columbus went to Iceland in order to
+make inquiries about Vinland.
+
+         [Footnote 473: "Det er derfor sikkert, at Columbus ikke, som
+         nogle har formodet, kan have kjendt Adam af Bremens Beretning
+         on Vinland; vi kan gjerne tilføie, at havde Columbus kjendt
+         den, vilde den ikke have kunnet vise ham Vei til Vesten
+         (Indien), men kanske til Nordpolen." _Aarbøger for Nordisk
+         Oldkyndighed_, 1887, ii. 2, p. 301.]
+
+         [Footnote 474: See above, p. 210.]
+
+[Sidenote: It is doubtful if Columbus would have stumbled upon the story
+in Iceland.]
+
+It may be argued that even if he did not go for such a purpose,
+nevertheless when once there he could hardly have failed incidentally to
+get the information. This, however, is not at all clear. Observe that
+our sole authority for the journey to Iceland is the passage above
+quoted at second-hand from Columbus himself; and there is nothing in it
+to show whether he staid a few hours or several weeks ashore, or met
+with any one likely to be possessed of the knowledge in question. The
+absence of any reference to Vinland in the Zeno narrative is an
+indication that the memory of it had faded away before 1400, and it was
+not distinctly and generally revived until the time of Torfæus in
+1705.[475]
+
+         [Footnote 475: In 1689 the Swedish writer, Ole Rudbeck, could
+         not understand Adam of Bremen's allusion to Vinland. The
+         passage is instructive. Rudbeck declares that in speaking of a
+         wine-growing country near to the Arctic ocean, Adam must have
+         been misled by some poetical or figurative phrase; he was
+         deceived either by his trust in the Danes, or by his own
+         credulity, for he manifestly refers to _Finland_, for which the
+         form _Vinland_ does not once occur in Sturleson, etc.:--"Ne
+         tamen poetis solis hoc loquendi genus in suis regionum
+         laudationibus familiare fuisse quis existimet, sacras adeat
+         literas quæ Palæstinæ fæcunditatem appellatione _fluentorum
+         lactis & mellis_ designant. Tale aliquid, sine omne dubio,
+         Adamo Bremensi quondam persuaserat insulam esse in ultimo
+         septentrione sitam, mari glaciali vicinam, vini feracem, & ea
+         propter fide tamen Danorum, _Vinlandiam_ dictam prout ipse ...
+         fateri non dubitat. Sed deceptum eum hae sive Danorum fide,
+         sive credulitate sua planum facit affine isti vocabulum
+         _Finlandiæ_ provinciæ ad Regnum nostrum pertinentis, pro quo
+         apud Snorronem & in Hist. Regum non semel occurrit _Vinlandiæ_
+         nomen, cujus promontorium ad ultimum septentrionem & usque ad
+         mare glaciale sese extendit." Rudbeck, _Atland eller Manheim_,
+         Upsala, cir. 1689, p. 291.]
+
+[Sidenote: If he had heard it, he would probably have classed it with
+such tales as that of St. Brandan's isle.]
+
+But to hear about Vinland was one thing, to be guided by it to Japan was
+quite another affair. It was not the mention of timber and peltries and
+Skrælings that would fire the imagination of Columbus; his dreams were
+of stately cities with busy wharves where ships were laden with silks
+and jewels, and of Oriental magnates decked out with "barbaric pearl and
+gold," dwelling in pavilions of marble and jasper amid flowery gardens
+in "a summer fanned with spice." The mention of Vinland was no more
+likely to excite Columbus's attention than that of St. Brandan's isle or
+other places supposed to lie in the western ocean. He was after higher
+game.
+
+[Sidenote: He could not have obtained from such a source his opinion of
+the width of the ocean.]
+
+To suppose that Columbus, even had he got hold of the Saga of Eric the
+Red and conned it from beginning to end, with a learned interpreter at
+his elbow, could have gained from it a knowledge of the width of the
+Atlantic ocean, is simply preposterous. It would be impossible to
+extract any such knowledge from that document to-day without the aid of
+our modern maps. The most diligent critical study of all the Icelandic
+sources of information, with all the resources of modern scholarship,
+enables us with some confidence to place Vinland somewhere between Cape
+Breton and Point Judith, that is to say, somewhere between two points
+distant from each other more than four degrees in latitude and more than
+eleven degrees in longitude! When we have got thus far, knowing as we do
+that the coast in question belongs to the same continental system as
+the West Indies, we can look at our map and pick up our pair of
+compasses and measure the width of the ocean at the twenty-eighth
+parallel. But it is not the mediæval document, but our modern map that
+guides us to this knowledge. And yet it is innocently assumed that
+Columbus, without any knowledge or suspicion of the existence of
+America, and from such vague data concerning voyages made five hundred
+years before his time, by men who had no means of reckoning latitude and
+longitude, could have obtained his figure of 2,500 miles for the voyage
+from the Canaries to Japan![476] The fallacy here is that which
+underlies the whole Scandinavian hypothesis and many other fanciful
+geographical speculations. It is the fallacy of projecting our present
+knowledge into the past.
+
+         [Footnote 476: The source of such a confusion of ideas is
+         probably the ridiculous map in Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanæ_,
+         upon which North America is represented in all the accuracy of
+         outline attainable by modern maps, and then the Icelandic names
+         are put on where Rafn thought they ought to go, i. e. Markland
+         upon Nova Scotia, Vinland upon New England, etc. Any person
+         using such a map is liable to forget that it cannot possibly
+         represent the crude notions of locality to which the reports of
+         the Norse voyages must have given rise in an ignorant age. (The
+         reader will find the map reproduced in Winsor, _Narr. and Crit.
+         Hist._, i. 95.) Rafn's fault was, however, no greater than that
+         committed by the modern makers of so-called "ancient
+         atlases"--still current and in use in schools--when, for
+         example, they take a correct modern map of Europe, with parts
+         of Africa and Asia, and upon countries so dimly known to the
+         ancients as Scandinavia and Hindustan, but now drawn with
+         perfect accuracy, they simply print the ancient names!! Nothing
+         but confusion can come from using such wretched maps. The only
+         safe way to study the history of geography is to reproduce the
+         ancient maps themselves, as I have done in the present work.
+         Many of the maps given below in the second volume will
+         illustrate the slow and painful growth of the knowledge of the
+         North American coast during the two centuries after Columbus.]
+
+[Sidenote: If he had known and understood the Vinland story, he had the
+strongest motives for proclaiming it and no motive for concealing it.]
+
+We have next to inquire, if Columbus had heard of Vinland and
+comprehended its relation to his own theory about land at the west, why
+in the world should he have concealed this valuable knowledge? The
+notion seems to be that he must have kept it secret through an unworthy
+desire to claim a priority in discovery to which he knew that he was not
+entitled.[477] This is projecting our present knowledge into the past
+with a vengeance. Columbus never professed to have discovered America;
+he died in the belief that what he had done was to reach the eastern
+shores of Asia by a shorter route than the Portuguese. If he had reason
+to suppose that the Northmen had once come down from the Arctic seas to
+some unknown part of the Asiatic coast, he had no motive for concealing
+such a fact, but the strongest of motives for proclaiming it, inasmuch
+as it would have given him the kind of inductive argument which he
+sorely needed. The chief obstacle for Columbus was that for want of
+tangible evidence he was obliged to appeal to men's reason with
+scientific arguments. When you show things to young children they are
+not content with looking; they crave a more intimate acquaintance than
+the eyes alone can give, and so they reach out and handle the things.
+So when ideas are presented to grown-up men, they are apt to be
+unwilling to trust to the eye of reason until it has been supplemented
+by the eye of sense; and indeed in most affairs of life such caution is
+wholesome. The difference between Columbus and many of the "practical"
+men whom he sought to convince was that he could see with his mind's eye
+solid land beyond the Sea of Darkness while they could not. To them the
+ocean, like the sky, had nothing beyond, unless it might be the
+supernatural world.[478] For while the argument from the earth's
+rotundity was intelligible enough, there were few to whom, as to
+Toscanelli, it was a living truth. Even of those who admitted, in
+theory, that Cathay lay to the west of Europe, most deemed the distance
+untraversable. Inductive proof of the existence of accessible land to
+the west was thus what Columbus chiefly needed, and what he sought every
+opportunity to find and produce; but it was not easy to find anything
+more substantial than sailors' vague mention of driftwood of foreign
+aspect or other outlandish jetsam washed up on the Portuguese
+strand.[479] What a godsend it would have been for Columbus if he could
+have had the Vinland business to hurl at the heads of his adversaries!
+If he could have said, "Five hundred years ago some Icelanders coasted
+westward in the polar regions, and then coasted southward until they
+reached a country beyond the ocean and about opposite to France or
+Portugal; therefore that country must be Asia, and I can reach it by
+striking boldly across the ocean, which will obviously be shorter than
+going down by Guinea,"--if he could have said this, he would have had
+precisely the unanswerable argument for lack of which his case was
+waiting and suffering. In persuading men to furnish hard cash, for his
+commercial enterprise, as Colonel Higginson so neatly says, "an ounce of
+Vinland would have been worth a pound of cosmography."[480] We may be
+sure that the silence of Columbus about the Norse voyages proves that he
+knew nothing about them or quite failed to see their bearings upon his
+own undertaking. It seems to me absolutely decisive.
+
+         [Footnote 477: "The fault that we find with Columbus is, that
+         he was not honest and frank enough to tell where and how he had
+         obtained his previous information about the lands which he
+         pretended to discover." Anderson, _America not discovered by
+         Columbus_, p. 90.]
+
+         [Footnote 478: See below, p. 398, note.]
+
+         [Footnote 479: For example, the pilot Martin Vicenti told
+         Columbus that 1,200 miles west of Cape St. Vincent he had
+         picked up from the sea a piece of carved wood evidently not
+         carved with iron tools. Pedro Correa, who had married
+         Columbus's wife's sister, had seen upon Porto Santo a similar
+         piece of carving that had drifted from the west. Huge reeds
+         sometimes floated ashore upon those islands, and had not
+         Ptolemy mentioned enormous reeds as growing in eastern Asia?
+         Pine-trees of strange species were driven by west winds upon
+         the coast of Fayal, and two corpses of men of an unknown race
+         had been washed ashore upon the neighbouring island of Flores.
+         Certain sailors, on a voyage from the Azores to Ireland, had
+         caught glimpses of land on the west, and believed it to be the
+         coast of "Tartary;" etc., etc. See _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_,
+         cap. ix. Since he cited these sailors, why did he not cite the
+         Northmen also, if he knew what they had done?]
+
+         [Footnote 480: _Larger History of the United States_, p. 54.]
+
+[Sidenote: No trace of a thought of Vinland appears in the voyages of
+Columbus.]
+
+Furthermore, this silence is in harmony with the fact that in none of
+his four voyages across the Atlantic did Columbus betray any
+consciousness that there was anything for him to gain by steering toward
+the northwest. If he could correctly have conceived the position of
+Vinland he surely would not have conceived it as south of the fortieth
+parallel. On his first voyage he steered due west in latitude 28°
+because Toscanelli placed Japan opposite the Canaries. When at length
+some doubts began to arise and he altered his course, as we shall
+hereafter see, the change was toward the southwest. His first two
+voyages did not reveal to him the golden cities for which he was
+looking, and when on his third and fourth voyages he tried a different
+course it was farther toward the equator, not farther away from it, that
+he turned his prows. Not the slightest trace of a thought of Vinland
+appears in anything that he did.
+
+[Sidenote: Why did not Norway or Iceland utter a protest in 1493?]
+
+Finally it may be asked, if the memory of Vinland was such a living
+thing in Iceland in 1477 that a visitor would be likely to be told about
+it, why was it not sufficiently alive in 1493 to call forth a protest
+from the North? When the pope, as we shall presently see, was
+proclaiming to the world that the Spanish crown was entitled to all
+heathen lands and islands already discovered or to be discovered in the
+ocean west of the Azores, why did not some zealous Scandinavian at once
+jump up and cry out, "Look here, old Columbus, _we_ discovered that
+western route, you know! Stop thief!" Why was it necessary to wait more
+than a hundred years longer before the affair of Vinland was mentioned
+in this connection?
+
+[Sidenote: The idea of Vinland was not associated with the idea of
+America until the seventeenth century.]
+
+Simply because it was not until the seventeenth century that the
+knowledge of North American geography had reached such a stage of
+completeness as to suggest to anybody the true significance of the old
+voyages from Greenland. That significance could not have been understood
+by Leif and Thorfinn themselves, or by the compilers of Hauks-bók and
+Flateyar-bók, or by any human being, until about the time of Henry
+Hudson. Not earlier than that time should we expect to find it
+mentioned, and it is just then, in 1610, that we do find it mentioned by
+Arngrim Jonsson, who calls Vinland "an island of _America_, in the
+region of Greenland, perhaps the modern Estotilandia."[481] This is the
+earliest glimmering of an association of the idea of Vinland with that
+of America.
+
+         [Footnote 481: "Terram veró Landa Rolfoni quæsitam existimarem
+         esse Vinlandiam olim Islandis sic dictam; de qua alibi insulam
+         nempe Americæ e regione Gronlandiæ, quæ fortè hodie
+         Estotilandia," etc. _Crymogoea_, Hamburg, 1610, p. 120.
+
+         Abraham Ortelius in 1606 speaks of the Northmen coming to
+         America, but bases his opinion upon the Zeno narrative
+         (published in 1558) and upon the sound of the name _Norumbega_,
+         and apparently knows nothing of Vinland:--"Iosephus Acosta in
+         his book _De Natura noui orbis_ indeuors by many reasons to
+         proue, that this part of _America_ was originally inhabited by
+         certaine Indians, forced thither by tempestuous weather ouer
+         the South sea which now they call Mare del Zur. But to me it
+         seemes more probable, out of the historie of the two Zeni,
+         gentlemen of Venice, ... that this New World many ages past was
+         entred upon by some islanders of _Europe_, as namely of
+         _Groenland_, Island, and Frisland; being much neerer thereunto
+         than the Indians, nor disioyned thence ... by an Ocean so huge,
+         and to the Indians so vnnauigable. Also, what else may we
+         coniecture to be signified by this _Norumbega_ [the name of a
+         North region of _America_] but that from _Norway_, signifying a
+         North land, some Colonie in times past hath hither beene
+         transplanted?" _Theatre of the Whole World_, London, 1606, p.
+         5. These passages are quoted and discussed by Reeves, _The
+         Finding of Wineland the Good_, pp. 95, 96. The supposed
+         connection of _Norumbega_ with _Norway_ is very doubtful.
+         Possibly Stephanius, in his map of 1570 (Torfæus, _Gronlandia
+         antiqua_, 1706), may have had reference to Labrador or the
+         north of Newfoundland.]
+
+[Sidenote: Résumé of the genesis of Columbus's scheme.]
+
+[Sidenote: Martin Behaim's improved astrolabe.]
+
+[Sidenote: Negotiations of Columbus with John II. of Portugal.]
+
+[Sidenote: A shabby trick.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus leaves Portugal,]
+
+[Sidenote: and enters the service of the Spanish sovereigns, 1486.]
+
+[Sidenote: The junto at Salamanca.]
+
+The genesis of the grand scheme of Columbus has now been set forth, I
+believe, with sufficient fulness. The cardinal facts are 1, that the
+need for some such scheme was suggested in 1471, by the discovery that
+the Guinea coast extended south of the equator; 2, that by 1474 advice
+had been sought from Toscanelli by the king of Portugal, and not very
+long after 1474 by Columbus; 3, that upon Toscanelli's letters and map,
+amended by the Ptolemaic estimate of the earth's size and by the
+authority of passages quoted in the book of Alliacus (one of which was a
+verse from the Apocrypha), Columbus based his firm conviction of the
+feasibleness of the western route. How or by whom the suggestion of that
+route was first made--whether by Columbus himself or by Toscanelli or by
+Fernando Martinez or, as Antonio Gallo declares, by Bartholomew
+Columbus,[482] or by some person in Portugal whose name we know not--it
+would be difficult to decide. Neither can we fix the date when Columbus
+first sought aid for his scheme from the Portuguese government. There
+seems to be no good reason why he should not have been talking about it
+before 1474; but the affair did not come to any kind of a climax until
+after his return from Guinea, some time after 1482 and certainly not
+later than 1484. It was on some accounts a favourable time. The war with
+Castile was out of the way, and Martin Behaim had just invented an
+improved astrolabe which made it ever so much easier to find and keep
+one's latitude at sea. It was in 1484 that Portuguese discoveries took a
+fresh start after a ten years' lull, and Diego Cam, with the learned
+Behaim and his bran-new astrolabe on board, was about to sail a thousand
+miles farther south than white men had ever gone before. About this time
+the scheme of Columbus was formally referred by King John II. to the
+junto of learned cosmographers from whom the crown had been wont to seek
+advice. The project was condemned as "visionary,"[483] as indeed it
+was,--the outcome of vision that saw farther than those men could see.
+But the king, who had some of his uncle Prince Henry's love for bold
+enterprises, was more hospitably inclined toward the ideas of Columbus,
+and he summoned a council of the most learned men in the kingdom to
+discuss the question.[484] In this council the new scheme found some
+defenders, while others correctly urged that Columbus must be wrong in
+supposing Asia to extend so far to the east, and it must be a much
+longer voyage than he supposed to Cipango and Cathay,[485] Others
+argued that the late war had impoverished the country, and that the
+enterprises on the African coast were all that the treasury could
+afford. Here the demands of Columbus were of themselves an obstacle to
+his success. He never at any time held himself cheap,[486] and the
+rewards and honours for which he insisted on stipulating were greater
+than the king of Portugal felt inclined to bestow upon a plain Genoese
+mariner. It was felt that if the enterprise should prove a failure, as
+very likely it would, the less heartily the government should have
+committed itself to it beforehand, the less it would expose itself to
+ridicule. King John was not in general disposed toward unfair and
+dishonest dealings, but on this occasion, after much parley, he was
+persuaded to sanction a proceeding quite unworthy of him. Having
+obtained Columbus's sailing plans, he sent out a ship secretly, to carry
+some goods to the Cape Verde islands, and then to try the experiment of
+the westward voyage. If there should turn out to be anything profitable
+in the scheme, this would be safer and more frugal than to meet the
+exorbitant demands of this ambitious foreigner. So it was done; but the
+pilots, having no grand idea to urge them forward, lost heart before the
+stupendous expanse of waters that confronted them, and beat an
+ignominious retreat to Lisbon; whereupon Columbus, having been informed
+of the trick,[487] departed in high dudgeon, to lay his proposals before
+the crown of Castile. He seems to have gone rather suddenly, leaving
+his wife, who died shortly after, and one or two children who must also
+have died, for he tells us that he never saw them again. But his son
+Diego, aged perhaps four or five years, he took with him as far as the
+town of Huelva, near the little port of Palos in Andalusia, where he
+left him with one of his wife's sisters, who had married a man of that
+town named Muliar.[488] This arrival in Spain was probably late in the
+autumn of 1484, and Columbus seems to have entered into the service of
+Ferdinand and Isabella January 20, 1486. What he was doing in the
+interval of rather more than a year is not known. There is a very
+doubtful tradition that he tried to interest the republic of Genoa in
+his enterprise,[489] and a still more doubtful rumour that he afterwards
+made proposals to the Venetian senate.[490] If these things ever
+happened, there was time enough for them in this year, and they can
+hardly be assigned to any later period. In 1486 we find Columbus at
+Cordova, where the sovereigns were holding court. He was unable to
+effect anything until he had gained the ear of Isabella's finance
+minister Alonso de Quintanilla, who had a mind hospitable to large
+ideas. The two sovereigns had scarcely time to attend to such things,
+for there was a third king in Spain, the Moor at Granada, whom there now
+seemed a fair prospect of driving to Africa, and thus ending the
+struggle that had lasted with few intermissions for nearly eight
+centuries. The final war with Granada had been going on since the end of
+1481, and considering how it weighed upon the minds of Ferdinand and
+Isabella it is rather remarkable that cosmography got any hearing at
+all. The affair was referred to the queen's confessor Fernando de
+Talavera, whose first impression was that if what Columbus said was
+true, it was very strange that other geographers should have failed to
+know all about it long ago. Ideas of evolution had not yet begun to
+exist in those days, and it was thought that what the ancients did not
+know was not worth knowing. Toward the end of 1486 the Spanish
+sovereigns were at Salamanca, and Talavera referred the question to a
+junto of learned men, including professors of the famous
+university.[491] There was no lack of taunt and ridicule, and a whole
+arsenal of texts from Scripture and the Fathers were discharged at
+Columbus, but it is noticeable that quite a number were inclined to
+think that his scheme might be worth trying, and that some of his most
+firmly convinced supporters were priests. No decision had been reached
+when the sovereigns started on the Malaga campaign in the spring of
+1487.
+
+         [Footnote 482: Gallo, _De navigatione Columbi_, apud Muratori,
+         _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, tom. xxiii. col. 302.]
+
+         [Footnote 483: Lafuente, _Historia de España_, tom. ix, p.
+         428.]
+
+         [Footnote 484: Vasconcellos, _Vida del rey Don Juan II._, lib.
+         iv.; La Clède, _Histoire de Portugal_, lib. xiii.]
+
+         [Footnote 485: The Portuguese have never been able to forgive
+         Columbus for discovering a new world for Spain, and their
+         chagrin sometimes vents itself in amusing ways. After all, says
+         Cordeiro, Columbus was no such great man as some people think,
+         for he did not discover what he promised to discover; and,
+         moreover, the Portuguese geographers were right in condemning
+         his scheme, because it really is not so far by sea from Lisbon
+         around Africa to Hindustan as from Lisbon by any practicable
+         route westward to Japan! See Luciano Cordeiro, _De la part
+         prise par les Portugais dans la découverte d'Amérique_, Lisbon,
+         1876, pp. 23, 24, 29, 30. Well, I don't know that there is any
+         answer to be made to this argument. Logic is logic, says the
+         wise Autocrat:--
+
+            "End of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
+            Logic is logic, that's all I say."
+
+         Cordeiro's book is elaborately criticised in the learned work
+         of Prospero Peragallo, _Cristoforo Colombo in Portogallo: studi
+         critici_, Genoa, 1882.]
+
+         [Footnote 486: "Perciocchè essendo l' Ammiraglio di generosi ed
+         alti pensieri, volle capitolare con suo grande onore e
+         vantaggio, per lasciar la memoria sua, e la grandezza della sua
+         casa, conforme alla grandezza delle sue opere e de' suoi
+         meriti." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi. The jealous
+         Portuguese historian speaks in a somewhat different tone from
+         the affectionate son:--"Veó requerer á el rey Dom João que le
+         desse algums navios pera ir á descobrir a ilha de Gypango
+         [_sic_] per esta mar occidental.... El rey, porque via ser este
+         Christovão Colom homem falador e glorioso em mostrar suas
+         habilidades, e mas fantastico et de imaginacão com sua ilha de
+         Cypango, que certo no que dezia: davalhe pouco credito."
+         Barros, _Decada primeira da Asia_, Lisbon, 1752, liv. iii. cap.
+         xi. fol. 56.]
+
+         [Footnote 487: It has been urged in the king's defence that
+         "such a proceeding was not an instance of bad faith or perfidy
+         (!) but rather of the policy customary at that time, which
+         consisted in distrusting everything that was foreign, and in
+         promoting by whatever means the national glory." Yes, indeed,
+         whether the means were fair or foul. Of course it was a common
+         enough policy, but it was lying and cheating all the same. "Não
+         foi sem duvida por mà fè ou perfidia que tacitamente se mandon
+         armar hum navio à cujo capitão se confiou o plano que Colombo
+         havia proposto, e cuja execuçao se lhe encarregou; mas sim por
+         seguir a politica naquelle tempo usada, que toda consistia em
+         olhar com desconfiança para tudo o que era estrangeiro, e en
+         promover por todos os modos a gloria nacional. O capitão
+         nomeado para a empreza, como não tivesse nem o espirito, nem a
+         convicção de Colombo, depois de huma curta viagem nos mares do
+         Oeste, fez-se na volta da terra: e arribou à Lisboa descontente
+         e desanimado." Campe, _Historia do descobrimento da America_,
+         Paris, 1836, tom. i. p. 13. The frightened sailors protested
+         that YOU MIGHT AS WELL EXPECT TO FIND LAND IN THE SKY AS IN
+         THAT WASTE OF WATERS! See Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_,
+         tom. i. p. 221. Las Casas calls the king's conduct by its right
+         name, _dobladura_, "trickery."]
+
+         [Footnote 488: It has generally been supposed, on the authority
+         of _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi., that his wife had lately
+         died; but an autograph letter of Columbus, in the possession of
+         his lineal descendant and representative the present Duke of
+         Veraguas, proves that this is a mistake. In this letter
+         Columbus says expressly that when he left Portugal he left wife
+         and children, and never saw them again. (Navarrete,
+         _Coleccion_, tom. ii. doc. cxxxvii. p. 255.) As Las Casas, who
+         knew Diego so well, also supposed his mother to have died
+         before his father left Portugal, it is most likely that she
+         died soon afterwards. Ferdinand Columbus says that Diego was
+         left in charge of some friars at the convent of La Rábida near
+         Palos (_loc. cit._); Las Casas is not quite so sure; he thinks
+         Diego was left with some friend of his father at Palos, or
+         perhaps (_por ventura_) at La Rábida. (_Historia_, tom. i. p.
+         227.) These mistakes were easy to make, for both La Rábida and
+         Huelva were close by Palos, and we know that Diego's aunt
+         Muliar was living at Huelva. (Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom. i. p.
+         241; Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 279, 356, 391; tom. ii. p. 229.) It
+         is pretty clear that Columbus never visited La Rábida before
+         the autumn of 1491 (see below, p. 412). My own notion is that
+         Columbus may have left his wife with an infant and perhaps one
+         older child, relieving her of the care of Diego by taking him
+         to his aunt, and intending as soon as practicable to reunite
+         the family. He clearly did not know at the outset whether he
+         should stay in Spain or not.]
+
+         [Footnote 489: It rests upon an improbable statement of
+         Ramusio, who places the event as early as 1470. The first
+         Genoese writer to allude to it is Casoni, _Annali della
+         Republica di Genova_, Genoa, 1708, pp. 26-31. Such testimony is
+         of small value.]
+
+         [Footnote 490: First mentioned in 1800 by Marin, _Storia del
+         commercio de Veneziani_, Venice, 1798-1808, tom. vii. p. 236.]
+
+         [Footnote 491: The description usually given of this conference
+         rests upon the authority of Remesal, _Historia de la prouincia
+         de Chyapa_, Madrid, 1619, lib. ii. cap. vii. p. 52. Las Casas
+         merely says that the question was referred to certain persons
+         at the court, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 228. It is
+         probably not true that the project of Columbus was officially
+         condemned by the university of Salamanca as a corporate body.
+         See Camara, _Religion y Ciencia_, Valladolid, 1880, p. 261.]
+
+[Sidenote: Birth of Ferdinand Columbus, Aug. 15, 1488.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus returns from the Cape of Good Hope, Dec,
+1487.]
+
+[Sidenote: Christopher visits Bartholomew at Lisbon, cir. Sept., 1488;]
+
+[Sidenote: and sends him to England.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bartholomew, after mishaps, reaches England cir. Feb., 1490;]
+
+[Sidenote: and goes thence to France before 1492.]
+
+After the surrender of Malaga in August, 1487, Columbus visited the
+court in that city. For a year or more after that time silken chains
+seem to have bound him to Cordova. He had formed a connection with a
+lady of noble family, Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, who gave birth to his
+son Ferdinand on the 15th of August, 1488.[492] Shortly after this
+event, Columbus made a visit to Lisbon, in all probability for the
+purpose of meeting his brother Bartholomew, who had returned in the last
+week of December, 1487, in the Dias expedition, with the proud news of
+the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope,[493] which was rightly
+believed to be the extremity of Africa; and we can well understand how
+Christopher, on seeing the success of Prince Henry's method of reaching
+the Indies so nearly vindicated, must have become more impatient than
+ever to prove the superiority of his own method. It was probably not
+long after Bartholomew's return that Christopher determined to go and
+see him, for he applied to King John II. for a kind of safe-conduct,
+which was duly granted March 20, 1488. This document[494] guarantees
+Christopher against arrest or arraignment or detention on any charge
+civil or criminal whatever, during his stay in Portugal, and commands
+all magistrates in that kingdom to respect it. From this it would seem
+probable that in the eagerness of his geographical speculations he had
+neglected his business affairs and left debts behind him in Portugal for
+which he was liable to be arrested. The king's readiness to grant the
+desired privilege seems to indicate that he may have cherished a hope of
+regaining the services of this accomplished chart-maker and mariner.
+Christopher did not avail himself of the privilege until late in the
+summer,[495] and it is only fair to suppose that he waited for the birth
+of his child and some assurance of its mother's safety. On meeting
+Bartholomew he evidently set him to work forthwith in making overtures
+to the courts of England and France. It was natural enough that
+Bartholomew should first set out for Bristol, where old shipmates and
+acquaintances were sure to be found. It appears that on the way he was
+captured by pirates, and thus some delay was occasioned before he
+arrived in London and showed the king a map, probably similar to
+Toscanelli's and embellished with quaint Latin verses. An entry on this
+map informs us that it was made by Bartholomew Columbus in London,
+February 10, 1488, which I think should be read 1489 or even 1490, so we
+may suppose it to have been about that time or perhaps later that he
+approached the throne.[496] Henry VII. was intelligent enough to see
+the bearings of Bartholomew's arguments, and at the same time, as a good
+man of business, he was likely to be cautious about investing money in
+remote or doubtful enterprises. What arguments were used we do not know,
+but the spring of 1492 had arrived before any decisive answer had been
+given. Meanwhile Bartholomew had made his way to France, and found a
+powerful protector in a certain Madame de Bourbon,[497] while he made
+maps for people at the court and waited to see if there were any
+chances of getting help from Charles VIII.
+
+         [Footnote 492: Some historians, unwilling to admit any
+         blemishes in the character of Columbus, have supposed that this
+         union was sanctioned by marriage, but this is not probable. He
+         seems to have been tenderly attached to Beatriz, who survived
+         him many years. See Harrisse, tom. ii. pp. 353-357.]
+
+         [Footnote 493: The authority for Bartholomew Columbus having
+         sailed to the Cape of Good Hope with Dias is a manuscript note
+         of his own in Christopher's copy of the _Imago Mundi_: "Nota
+         quod hoc anno de 88 [it should be 87] in mense decembri appulit
+         in Ulixbona Bartholomeus Didacus capitaneus trium carabelarum
+         quem miserat serenissimus rex Portugalie in Guineam ad
+         tentandum terrain. Et renunciavit ipse serenissimo regi prout
+         navigaverat ultra jam navigata leuchas 600, videlicet 450 ad
+         austrum et 150 ad aquilonem usque montem per ipsum nominatum
+         _Cabo de boa esperança_ quem in Agesimba estimamus. Qui quidem
+         in eo loco invenit se distare per astrolabium ultra lineam
+         equinoctialem gradus 35. Quem viagium pictavit et scripsit de
+         leucha in leucham in una carta navigationis ut oculi visum
+         ostenderet ipso serenissimo regi. In quibus omnibus interfui."
+         M. Varnhagen has examined this note and thinks it is in the
+         handwriting of Christopher Columbus (_Bulletin de Géographie_,
+         janvier, 1858, tom. xv. p. 71); and M. d'Avezac (_Canevas
+         chronologique_, p. 58), accepting this opinion, thinks that the
+         words _in quibus omnibus interfui_, "in all of which I took
+         part," only mean that Christopher was present in Lisbon when
+         the expedition returned, and heard the whole story! With all
+         possible respect for such great scholars as MM. d'Avezac and
+         Varnhagen, I submit that the opinion of Las Casas, who first
+         called attention to this note, must be much better than theirs
+         on such a point as the handwriting of the two brothers. When
+         Las Casas found the note he wondered whether it was meant for
+         Bartholomew or Christopher, i. e. wondered which of the two was
+         meant to be described as having "taken part;" but at all
+         events, says Las Casas, the handwriting is
+         Bartholomew's:--"Estas son palabras escritas de la mano de
+         Bartolomé Colon, no sé si las escribió de sí ó de su letra por
+         su hermano Cristóbal Colon." Under these circumstances it seems
+         idle to suppose that Las Casas could have been mistaken about
+         the handwriting; he evidently put his mind on that point, and
+         in the next breath he goes on to say, "la letra yo conozco ser
+         de Bartolomé Colon, porque tuve muchas suyas," i. e. "I know it
+         is Bartholomew's writing, for I have had many letters of his;"
+         and again "estas palabras ... de la misma letra y mano de
+         Bartolomé Colon, la cual muy bien conocí y agora tengo hartas
+         cartas y letras suyas, tratando deste viaje," i. e. "these
+         words ... from the very writing and hand of Bartholomew
+         Columbus, which I knew very well, and I have to-day many charts
+         and letters of his, treating of this voyage." (_Hist. de las
+         Indias_, tom. i. pp. 213, 214.) This last sentence makes Las
+         Casas an independent witness to Bartholomew's presence in the
+         expedition, a matter about which he was not likely to be
+         mistaken. What puzzled him was the question, not whether
+         Bartholomew went, but whether Christopher could have gone also,
+         "pudo ser tambien que se hallase Cristóbal Colon." Now
+         Christopher certainly did not go on that voyage. The expedition
+         started in August, 1486, and returned to Lisbon in December,
+         1487, after an absence of sixteen months and seventeen days,
+         "anendo dezaseis meses et dezasete dias que erão partidos
+         delle." (Barros, _Decada primeira da Asia_, Lisbon, 1752, tom.
+         i. fol. 42, 44.) The account-book of the treasury of Castile
+         shows that sums of money were paid to Christopher at Seville,
+         May 5, July 3, August 27, and October 15, 1487; so that he
+         could not have gone with Dias (see Harrisse, tom. ii. p. 191).
+         Neither could Christopher have been in Lisbon in December,
+         1487, when the little fleet returned, for his safe-conduct from
+         King John is dated March 20, 1488. It was not until the autumn
+         of 1488 that Columbus made this visit to Portugal, and M.
+         d'Avezac has got the return of the fleet a year too late.
+         Bartholomew's note followed a custom which made 1488 begin at
+         Christmas, 1487.
+
+         In reading a later chapter of Las Casas for another purpose
+         (tom. i. p. 227), I come again upon this point. He rightly
+         concludes that Christopher could not have gone with Dias, and
+         again declares most positively that the handwriting of the note
+         was Bartholomew's and not Christopher's.
+
+         This footnote affords a good illustration of the kind of
+         difficulties that surround such a subject as the life of
+         Columbus, and the ease with which an excess of ingenuity may
+         discover mare's nests.]
+
+         [Footnote 494: It may be found in Navarrete, _Coleccion de
+         viages_, tom. ii. pp. 5, 6.]
+
+         [Footnote 495: The account-book of the treasury shows that on
+         June 16 he was still in Spain. See Harrisse, tom. i. p. 355.]
+
+         [Footnote 496: The entry, as given by Las Casas, is "Pro
+         authore, seu pictore, || Gennua cui patria est, nomen cui
+         Bartolomeus || Columbus de terra rubea, opus edidit istud ||
+         Londonije: anno domini millesimo quatercentessimo octiesque uno
+         || Atque insuper anno octavo: decimaque die mensis Februarii.
+         || Laudes Christo cantentur abunde." _Historia_, tom. i. p.
+         225. Now since Bartholomew Columbus was a fairly educated man,
+         writing this note in England on a map made for the eyes of the
+         king of England, I suppose he used the old English style which
+         made the year begin at the vernal equinox instead of Christmas,
+         so that his February, 1488, means the next month but one after
+         December, 1488, i. e. what in our new style becomes February,
+         1489. Bartholomew returned to Lisbon from Africa in the last
+         week of December, 1487, and it is not likely that his plans
+         could have been matured and himself settled down in London in
+         less than seven weeks. The logical relation of the events, too,
+         shows plainly that Christopher's visit to Lisbon was for the
+         purpose of consulting his brother and getting first-hand
+         information about the greatest voyage the world had ever seen.
+         In the early weeks of 1488 Christopher sends his request for a
+         safe-conduct, gets it March 20, waits till his child is born,
+         August 15, and then presently goes. Bartholomew may have sailed
+         by the first of October for England, where (according to this
+         reading of his date) we actually find him four months later.
+         What happened to him in this interval? Here we come to the
+         story of the pirates. M. Harrisse, who never loses an
+         opportunity for throwing discredit upon the _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, has failed to make the correction of date which I
+         have here suggested. He puts Bartholomew in London in February,
+         1488, and is thus unable to assign any reason for Christopher's
+         visit to Lisbon. He also finds that in the forty-six days
+         between Christmas, 1487, and February, 10, 1488, there is
+         hardly room enough for any delay due to so grave a cause as
+         capture by pirates. (_Christophe Colomb_, vol. ii. p. 192.) He
+         therefore concludes that the statement in the _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. xi., is unworthy of credit, and it is upon an
+         accumulation of small difficulties like this that he bases his
+         opinion that Ferdinand Columbus cannot have written that book.
+         But Las Casas also gives the story of the pirates, and adds the
+         information that they were "Easterlings," though he cannot say
+         of what nation, i. e. whether Dutch, German, or perhaps Danes.
+         He says that Bartholomew was stripped of his money and fell
+         sick, and after his recovery was obliged to earn money by
+         map-making before he could get to England. (_Historia_, tom. i.
+         p. 225.) Could all this have happened within the four months
+         which I have allowed between October, 1488, and February, 1489?
+         Voyages before the invention of steamboats were of very
+         uncertain duration. John Adams in 1784 was fifty-four days in
+         getting from London to Amsterdam (see my _Critical Period of
+         American History_, p. 156). But with favourable weather a
+         Portuguese caravel in 1488 ought to have run from Lisbon to
+         Bristol in fourteen days or less, so that in four months there
+         would be time enough for quite a chapter of accidents. Las
+         Casas, however, says it was _a long time_ before Bartholomew
+         was able to reach England:--"Esto fué causa que enfermase y
+         viniese á mucha pobreza, y estuviese mucho tempo sin poder
+         llegar á Inglaterra, hasta tanto que quiso Dies sanarle; y
+         reformado algo, por su industria y trabajos de sus manos,
+         haciendo cartas de marear, llegó á Inglaterra, y, pasados un
+         dia y otros, hobo de alcanzar que le oyese Enrique VII." It is
+         impossible, I think, to read this passage without feeling that
+         at least a year must have been consumed; and I do not think we
+         are entitled to disregard the words of Las Casas in such a
+         matter. But how shall we get the time?
+
+         Is it possible that Las Casas made a slight mistake in
+         deciphering the date on Bartholomew's map? Either that mariner
+         did not give the map to Henry VII., or the king gave it back,
+         or more likely it was made in duplicate. At any rate Las Casas
+         had it, along with his many other Columbus documents, and for
+         aught we know it may still be tumbling about somewhere in the
+         Spanish archives. It was so badly written (_de muy mala é
+         corrupta letra_), apparently in abbreviations (_sin
+         ortografía_), that Las Casas says he found extreme difficulty
+         in making it out. Now let us observe that date, which is given
+         in fantastic style, apparently because the inscription is in a
+         rude doggerel, and the writer seems to have wished to keep his
+         "verses" tolerably even. (They don't scan much better than Walt
+         Whitman's.) As it stands, the date reads _anno domini millesimo
+         quatercentessimo octiesque uno atque insuper anno octavo_, i.
+         e. "in the year of our Lord the thousandth, four hundredth, AND
+         EIGHT-TIMES-ONE, and thereafter the eighth year." What business
+         has this cardinal number _octiesque uno_ in a row of ordinals?
+         If it were translatable, which it is not, it would give us
+         1,000 + 400 + 8 + 8 = 1416, an absurd date. The most obvious
+         way to make the passage readable is to insert the ordinal
+         _octogesimo primo_ instead of the incongruous _octiesque uno_;
+         then it will read "in the year of our Lord the
+         one-thousand-four-hundred-and-eighty-first, and thereafter the
+         eighth year," that is to say 1489. Now translate old style into
+         new style, and February, 1489, becomes February, 1490, which I
+         believe to be the correct date. This allows sixteen months for
+         Bartholomew's mishaps; it justifies the statement in which Las
+         Casas confirms Ferdinand Columbus; and it harmonizes with the
+         statement of Lord Bacon: "For Christopherus Columbus, refused
+         by the king of Portugal (who would not embrace at once both
+         east and west), employed his brother Bartholomew Columbus unto
+         King Henry to negotiate for his discovery. And it so fortuned
+         that he was taken by pirates at sea; by which accidental
+         impediment he was long ere he came to the king; so long that
+         before he had obtained a capitulation with the king for his
+         brother the enterprise was achieved, and so the West Indies by
+         Providence were then reserved for the crown of Castilia."
+         _Historie of the Raygne of K. Henry the Seventh_, Bacon's
+         _Works_, Boston, 1860, vol. xi. p. 296. Lord Bacon may have
+         taken the statement from Ferdinand's biography; but it probably
+         agreed with English traditions, and ought not to be slighted in
+         this connection.]
+
+         [Footnote 497: One of the sisters of Charles VIII. See
+         Harrisse, tom. ii. p. 194.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Duke of Medina-Celi proposes to furnish the ships for
+Columbus,]
+
+[Sidenote: but Isabella withholds her consent.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus makes up his mind to get his family together and go
+to France, Oct., 1491.]
+
+As for Christopher Columbus, we find him back in Spain again, in May,
+1489, attending court at Cordova. In the following autumn there was much
+suffering in Spain from floods and famine,[498] and the sovereigns were
+too busy with the Moorish war to give ear to Columbus. It was no time
+for new undertakings, and the weary suitor began to think seriously of
+going in person to the French court. First, however, he thought it worth
+while to make an attempt to get private capital enlisted in his
+enterprise, and in the Spain of that day such private capital meant a
+largess from some wealthy grandee. Accordingly about Christmas of 1489,
+after the Beza campaign in which Columbus is said to have fought with
+distinguished valour,[499] he seems to have applied to the most powerful
+nobleman in Spain, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, but without success. But
+at the hands of Luis de la Cerda, Duke of Medina-Celi, he met with more
+encouragement than he had as yet found in any quarter. That nobleman
+entertained Columbus most hospitably at his castle at Puerto de Santa
+Maria for nearly two years, until the autumn of 1491. He became
+convinced that the scheme of Columbus was feasible, and decided to fit
+up two or three caravels at his own expense, if necessary, but first he
+thought it proper to ask the queen's consent, and to offer her another
+chance to take part in the enterprise.[500] Isabella was probably
+unwilling to have the duke come in for a large share of the profits in
+case the venture should prove successful. She refused the royal license,
+saying that she had not quite made up her mind whether to take up the
+affair or not, but if she should decide to do so she would be glad to
+have the duke take part in it.[501] Meanwhile she referred the question
+to Alonso de Quintanilla, comptroller of the treasury of Castile. This
+was in the spring of 1491, when the whole country was in a buzz of
+excitement with the preparations for the siege of Granada. The baffled
+Columbus visited the sovereigns in camp, but could not get them to
+attend to him, and early in the autumn, thoroughly disgusted and sick at
+heart, he made up his mind to shake the dust of Castile from his feet
+and see what could be done in France. In October or November he went to
+Huelva, apparently to get his son Diego, who had been left there, in
+charge of his aunt. It was probably his intention to take all the family
+he had--Beatriz and her infant son Ferdinand, of whom he was extremely
+fond, as well as Diego--and find a new home in either France or England,
+besides ascertaining what had become of his brother Bartholomew, from
+whom he had not heard a word since the latter left Portugal for
+England.[502]
+
+         [Footnote 498: Bernaldez, _Reyes Católicos_, cap. xci.]
+
+         [Footnote 499: Zuñiga, _Anales de Sevilla_, lib. xii. p. 404.]
+
+         [Footnote 500: See the letter of March 19, 1493, from the Duke
+         of Medina-Celi to the Grand Cardinal of Spain (from the
+         archives of Simancas) in Navarrete _Coleccion de viages_, tom.
+         ii. p. 20.]
+
+         [Footnote 501: This promise was never fulfilled. When Columbus
+         returned in triumph, arriving March 6, 1493, at Lisbon, and
+         March 15 at Palos, the Duke of Medina-Celi wrote the letter
+         just cited, recalling the queen's promise and asking to be
+         allowed to send to the Indies once each year an expedition on
+         his own account; for, he says, if he had not kept Columbus with
+         him in 1490 and 1491 he would have gone to France, and Castile
+         would have lost the prize. There was some force in this, but
+         Isabella does not appear to have heeded the request.]
+
+         [Footnote 502: This theory of the situation is fully sustained
+         by Las Casas, tom. i. p. 241.]
+
+[Sidenote: He stops at La Rábida, and meets the prior Juan Perez.]
+
+[Sidenote: Perez writes to the queen,]
+
+[Sidenote: and Columbus is summoned back to court.]
+
+But now at length events took a favourable turn. Fate had grown tired of
+fighting against such indomitable perseverance. For some years now the
+stately figure of Columbus had been a familiar sight in the streets of
+Seville and Cordova, and as he passed along, with his white hair
+streaming in the breeze, and countenance aglow with intensity of purpose
+or haggard with disappointment at some fresh rebuff, the ragged urchins
+of the pavement tapped their foreheads and smiled with mingled wonder
+and amusement at this madman. Seventeen years had elapsed since the
+letter from Toscanelli to Martinez, and all that was mortal of the
+Florentine astronomer had long since been laid in the grave. For
+Columbus himself old age was not far away, yet he seemed no nearer the
+fulfilment of his grand purpose than when he had first set it forth to
+the king of Portugal. We can well imagine that when he started from
+Huelva, with his little son Diego, now some eleven or twelve years old,
+again to begin renewing his suit in a strange country, his thoughts must
+have been sombre enough. For some reason or other--tradition says to ask
+for some bread and water for his boy--he stopped at the Franciscan
+monastery of La Rábida, about half a league from Palos. The prior, Juan
+Perez, who had never seen Columbus before, became greatly interested in
+him and listened with earnest attention to his story. This worthy monk,
+who before 1478 had been Isabella's father-confessor, had a mind
+hospitable to new ideas. He sent for Garcia Fernandez, a physician of
+Palos, who was somewhat versed in cosmography, and for Martin Alonso
+Pinzon, a well-to-do ship-owner and trained mariner of that town, and in
+the quiet of the monastery a conference was held in which Columbus
+carried conviction to the minds of these new friends. Pinzon declared
+himself ready to embark in the enterprise in person. The venerable prior
+forthwith sent a letter to the queen, and received a very prompt reply
+summoning him to attend her in the camp before Granada. The result of
+the interview was that within a few days Perez returned to the convent
+with a purse of 20,000 maravedis (equivalent to about 1,180 dollars of
+the present day), out of which Columbus bought a new suit of clothes and
+a mule; and about the first of December he set out for the camp in
+company with Juan Perez, leaving the boy Diego in charge of the priest
+Martin Sanchez and a certain Rodriguez Cabejudo, upon whose sworn
+testimony, together with that of the physician Garcia Fernandez, some
+years afterward, several of these facts are related.[503]
+
+         [Footnote 503: My account of these proceedings at La Rábida
+         differs in some particulars from any heretofore given, and I
+         think gets the events into an order of sequence that is at once
+         more logical and more in harmony with the sources of
+         information than any other. The error of Ferdinand Columbus--a
+         very easy one to commit, and not in the least damaging to his
+         general character as biographer--lay in confusing his father's
+         two real visits (in 1484 and 1491) to Huelva with two visits
+         (one imaginary in 1484 and one real in 1491) to La Rábida,
+         which was close by, between Huelva and Palos. The visits were
+         all the more likely to get mixed up in recollection because in
+         each case their object was little Diego and in each case he was
+         left in charge of somebody in that neighbourhood. The confusion
+         has been helped by another for which Ferdinand is not
+         responsible, viz.: the friar Juan Perez has been confounded
+         with another friar Antonio de Marchena, who Columbus says was
+         the only person who from the time of his first arrival in Spain
+         had always befriended him and never mocked at him. These worthy
+         friars twain have been made into one (e. g. "the prior of the
+         convent, Juan Perez de Marchena," Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i.
+         p. 128), and it has often been supposed that Marchena's
+         acquaintance began with Columbus at La Rábida in 1484, and that
+         Diego was left at the convent at that time. But some modern
+         sources of information have served at first to bemuddle, and
+         then when more carefully sifted, to clear up the story. In 1508
+         Diego Columbus brought suit against the Spanish crown to
+         vindicate his claim to certain territories discovered by his
+         father, and there was a long investigation in which many
+         witnesses were summoned and past events were busily raked over
+         the coals. Among these witnesses were Rodriguez Cabejudo and
+         the physician Garcia Fernandez, who gave from personal
+         recollection a very lucid account of the affairs at La Rábida.
+         These proceedings are printed in Navarrete, _Coleccion de
+         viages_, tom. iii. pp. 238-591. More recently the publication
+         of the great book of Las Casas has furnished some very
+         significant clues, and the elaborate researches of M. Harrisse
+         have furnished others. (See Las Casas, lib. i. cap. xxix.,
+         xxxi.; Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 341-372; tom. ii. pp. 237-231; cf.
+         Peragallo, _L' autenticità_, etc., pp. 117-134.)--It now seems
+         clear that Marchena, whom Columbus knew from his first arrival
+         in Spain, was not associated with La Rábida. At that time
+         Columbus left Diego, a mere infant, with his wife's sister at
+         Huelva. Seven years later, intending to leave Spain forever, he
+         went to Huelva and took Diego, then a small boy. On his way
+         from Huelva to the Seville road, and thence to Cordova (where
+         he would have been joined by Beatriz and Ferdinand), he
+         happened to pass by La Rábida, where up to that time he was
+         evidently unknown, and to attract the attention of the prior
+         Juan Perez, and the wheel of fortune suddenly and unexpectedly
+         turned. As Columbus's next start was not for France, but for
+         Granada, his boy was left in charge of two trustworthy persons.
+         On May 8, 1492, the little Diego was appointed page to Don
+         John, heir-apparent to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, with
+         a stipend of 9,400 maravedis. On February 19, 1498, after the
+         death of that young prince, Diego became page to Queen
+         Isabella.]
+
+[Sidenote: The junto before Granada, Dec, 1491.]
+
+At once upon the arrival of Columbus in the camp before Granada, his
+case was argued then and there before an assembly of learned men and
+was received more hospitably than formerly, at Salamanca. Several
+eminent prelates had come to think favourably of his project or to deem
+it at least worth a trial. Among these were the royal confessors, Deza
+and Talavera, the latter having changed his mind, and especially
+Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo, who now threw his vast influence
+decisively in favour of Columbus.[504] The treasurers of the two
+kingdoms, moreover, Quintanilla for Castile and Luis de Santangel for
+Aragon, were among his most enthusiastic supporters; and the result of
+the conference was the queen's promise to take up the matter in earnest
+as soon as the Moor should have surrendered Granada.
+
+         [Footnote 504: In popular allusions to Columbus it is quite
+         common to assume or imply that he encountered nothing but
+         opposition from the clergy. For example the account in Draper's
+         _Conflict between Science and Religion_, p. 161, can hardly be
+         otherwise understood by the reader. But observe that Marchena
+         who never mocked at Columbus, Juan Perez who gave the
+         favourable turn to his affairs, the great prelates Deza and
+         Mendoza, and the two treasurers Santangel and Quintanilla, were
+         every one of them priests! Without cordial support from the
+         clergy no such enterprise as that of Columbus could have been
+         undertaken, in Spain at least. It is quite right that we should
+         be free-thinkers; and it is also desirable that we should have
+         some respect for facts.]
+
+[Sidenote: Surrender of Granada, Jan. 2, 1492.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus negotiates with the queen.]
+
+[Sidenote: His terms are considered exorbitant.]
+
+Columbus had not long to wait for that great event, which came on the 2d
+of January, 1492, and was hailed with rejoicings throughout Europe as in
+some sort a compensation for the loss of Constantinople. It must have
+been with a manifold sense of triumph that Columbus saw the banner of
+Spain unfurled to the breeze from the highest tower of the Alhambra. But
+at this critical moment in his fortunes the same obstacle was
+encountered that long before had broken off his negotiations with the
+king of Portugal. With pride and self-confidence not an inch abated by
+all these years of trial, he demanded such honours and substantial
+rewards as seemed extravagant to the queen, and Talavera advised her not
+to grant them. Columbus insisted upon being appointed admiral of the
+ocean and viceroy of such heathen countries as he might discover,
+besides having for his own use and behoof one eighth part of such
+revenues and profits as might accrue from the expedition. In principle
+this sort of remuneration did not differ from that which the crown of
+Portugal had been wont to award to its eminent discoverers;[505] but in
+amount it was liable to prove indefinitely great, enough perhaps to
+raise to princely power and rank this foreign adventurer. Could he not
+be satisfied with something less? But Columbus was as inexorable as the
+Sibyl with her books, and would hear of no abatement in his price. For
+this "great constancy and loftiness of soul,"[506] Las Casas warmly
+commends his friend Columbus. A querulous critic might call it
+unreasonable obstinacy. But in truth the good man seems to have
+entertained another grand scheme of his own, to which he wished to make
+his maritime venture contribute. It was natural that his feelings toward
+Turks should have been no more amiable than those of Hannibal toward the
+Romans. It was the Turks who had ruined the commerce of his native
+Genoa, in his youth he had more than once crossed swords with their
+corsairs, and now he looked forward to the time when he might play the
+part of a second Godfrey de Bouillon and deliver Jerusalem from the
+miscreant followers of Mahound.[507] Vast resources would be needed for
+such work, and from Cipango with its gold-roofed temples, and the
+nameless and numberless isles of spices that crowded the Cathayan seas,
+he hoped to obtain them. Long brooding over his cherished projects, in
+which chimeras were thus mixed with anticipations of scientific truth,
+had imparted to his character a tinge of religious fanaticism. He had
+come to regard himself as a man with a mission to fulfil, as God's
+chosen instrument for enlarging the bounds of Christendom and achieving
+triumphs of untold magnificence for its banners. In this mood he was apt
+to address kings with an air of equality that ill comported with his
+humble origin and slender means; and on the present occasion, if
+Talavera felt his old doubts and suspicions reviving, and was more than
+half inclined to set Columbus down as a mere vendor of crotchets, one
+can hardly wonder.
+
+         [Footnote 505: Our Scandinavian friends are fond of pointing to
+         this demand of Columbus as an indication that he secretly
+         expected to "discover America," and not merely to find the way
+         to Asia. But how about Ferdinand and Isabella, who finally
+         granted what was demanded, and their ministers who drew up the
+         agreement, to say nothing of the clerks who engrossed it? What
+         did they all understand by "discovering islands and continents
+         in the ocean"? Were they all in this precious Vinland secret?
+         If so, it was pretty well kept. But in truth there was nothing
+         singular in these stipulations. Portugal paid for discovery in
+         just this way by granting governorships over islands like the
+         Azores, or long stretches of continent like Guinea, along with
+         a share of the revenues yielded by such places. See for example
+         the cases of Gonzalo Cabral, Fernando Gomez, and others in
+         Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, pp. 238, 321, and
+         elsewhere. In their search for the Indies the Portuguese were
+         continually finding new lands, and it was likely to be the same
+         with the western route, which was supposed (see Catalan,
+         Toscanelli, and Behaim maps) to lead among spice islands
+         innumerable, and to Asiatic kingdoms whose heathen people had
+         no rights of sovereignty that Christian monarchs felt bound to
+         respect.]
+
+         [Footnote 506: Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom i. p. 243.]
+
+         [Footnote 507: See his letter of February, 1502, to Pope
+         Alexander VI. in Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 280; and cf. Helps,
+         _Spanish Conquest in America_, vol. i. p. 96; Roselly de
+         Lorgues, _Christophe Colomb_, p. 394.]
+
+[Sidenote: Interposition of Luis de Santangel.]
+
+The negotiations were broken off, and the indomitable enthusiast once
+more prepared to go to France. He had actually started on his mule one
+fine winter day, when Luis de Santangel rushed into the queen's room and
+spoke to her with all the passionate and somewhat reproachful energy of
+one who felt that a golden opportunity was slipping away forever. His
+arguments were warmly seconded by Quintanilla, who had followed him into
+the room, as well as by the queen's bosom friend Beatriz de Bobadilla,
+Marchioness of Moya, who happened to be sitting on the sofa and was a
+devoted admirer of Columbus. An impulse seized Isabella. A courier was
+sent on a fleet horse, and overtook Columbus as he was jogging quietly
+over the bridge of Pinos, about six miles out from Granada. The matter
+was reconsidered and an arrangement was soon made. It was agreed:--
+
+[Sidenote: Agreement between Columbus and the sovereigns.]
+
+"1. That Columbus should have, for himself, during his life, and for his
+heirs and successors forever, the office of admiral in all the islands
+and continents which he might discover or acquire in the ocean, with
+similar honours and prerogatives to those enjoyed by the high admiral of
+Castile in his district.
+
+"2. That he should be viceroy and governor-general over all the said
+lands and continents; with the privilege of nominating three candidates
+for the government of each island or province, one of whom should be
+selected by the sovereigns.
+
+"3. That he should be entitled to reserve for himself one tenth of all
+pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and all other articles
+and merchandises, in whatever manner found, bought, bartered, or gained
+within his admiralty, the costs being first deducted.
+
+"4. That he, or his lieutenant, should be the sole judge in all causes
+and disputes arising out of traffic between those countries and Spain,
+provided the high admiral of Castile had similar jurisdiction in his
+district.
+
+"5. That he might then, and at all after times, contribute an eighth
+part of the expense in fitting out vessels to sail on this enterprise,
+and receive an eighth part of the profits."[508]
+
+         [Footnote 508: I cite this version from Irving's _Columbus_,
+         vol. i. p. 142, making a slight amendment in the rendering; the
+         original text is in Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 7. A few days later
+         the title of "Don" was granted to Columbus and made hereditary
+         in his family along with the offices of viceroy and
+         governor-general.]
+
+Columbus was not long in finding friends to advance or promise on his
+account an eighth part of the sum immediately required. A considerable
+amount was assessed upon the town of Palos in punishment for certain
+misdeeds or delinquencies on the part of its people or some of them.
+Castile assumed the rest of the burden, though Santangel may have
+advanced a million maravedis out of the treasury of Aragon, or out of
+the funds of the _Hermandad_,[509] or perhaps more likely on his own
+account.[510] In any case it was a loan to the treasury of Castile
+simply. It was always distinctly understood that Ferdinand as king of
+Aragon had no share in the enterprise, and that the Spanish Indies were
+an appurtenance to the crown of Castile. The agreement was signed April
+17, 1492, and with tears of joy Columbus vowed to devote every maravedi
+that should come to him to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre.
+
+         [Footnote 509: A police organization formed in 1476 for
+         suppressing highway robbery.]
+
+         [Footnote 510: It is not easy to give an accurate account of
+         the cost of this most epoch-making voyage in all history.
+         Conflicting statements by different authorities combine with
+         the fluctuating values of different kinds of money to puzzle
+         and mislead us. According to M. Harrisse 1,000,000 maravedis
+         would be equivalent to 295,175 francs, or about 59,000 gold
+         dollars of United States money at present values. Las Casas
+         (tom. i. p. 256) says that the eighth part, raised by Columbus,
+         was 500,000 maravedis (29,500 dollars). Account-books preserved
+         in the archives of Simancas show that the sums paid from the
+         treasury of Castile amounted to 1,140,000 maravedis (67,500
+         dollars). Assuming the statement of Las Casas to be correct,
+         the amounts contributed would perhaps have been as follows:--
+
+            Queen Isabella, from Castile treasury        $67,500
+                 "          loan from Santangel           59,000
+            Columbus                                      29,500
+            Other sources, including contribution levied
+            upon the town of Palos                        80,000
+                                                         --------
+            Total                                       $236,000
+
+         This total seems to me altogether too large for probability,
+         and so does the last item, which is simply put at the figure
+         necessary to make the total eight times 29,500. I am inclined
+         to suspect that Las Casas (with whom arithmetic was not always
+         a strong point) may have got his figures wrong. The amount of
+         Santangel's loan also depends upon the statement of Las Casas,
+         and we do not know whether he took it from a document or from
+         hearsay. Nor do we know whether it should be added to, or
+         included in, the first item. More likely, I think, the latter.
+         The only item that we know with documentary certainty is the
+         first, so that our statement becomes modified as follows:--
+
+            Queen Isabella, from Castile treasury       $67,500
+                   "        loan from Santangel            ?
+            Columbus                                       ?
+                                                  { rent of two fully
+            Town of Palos                         { equipped caravels
+                                                  { for two months, etc.
+                                                  ----------------------
+            Total                                          ?
+
+         (Cf. Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 391-404.) Unsatisfactory, but
+         certain as far as it goes. Alas, how often historical
+         statements are thus reduced to meagreness, after the
+         hypothetical or ill-supported part has been sifted out! The
+         story that the Pinzon brothers advanced to Columbus his portion
+         is told by Las Casas, but he very shrewdly doubts it. The
+         famous story that Isabella pledged her crown jewels (_Vita
+         dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xiv.) has also been doubted, but
+         perhaps on insufficient grounds, by M. Harrisse. It is
+         confirmed by Las Casas (tom. i. p. 249). According to one
+         account she pledged them to Santangel in security for his
+         loan,--which seems not altogether improbable. See Pizarro y
+         Orellana, _Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo_, Madrid, 1639, p.
+         16.]
+
+[Sidenote: Dismay at Palos.]
+
+[Sidenote: The three famous caravels; the Santa Maria.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Pinta.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Niña.]
+
+When he reached Palos in May, with royal orders for ships and men, there
+had like to have been a riot. Terrible dismay was felt at the prospect
+of launching out for such a voyage upon the Sea of Darkness. Groans and
+curses greeted the announcement of the forced contribution. But Martin
+Pinzon and his brothers were active in supporting the crown officials,
+and the work went on. To induce men to enlist, debts were forgiven and
+civil actions suspended. Criminals were released from jail on condition
+of serving. Three caravels were impressed into the service of the crown
+for a time unlimited; and the rent and maintenance of two of these
+vessels for two months was to be paid by the town. The largest caravel,
+called the Santa Maria or Capitana, belonged to Juan de La Cosa, a
+Biscayan mariner whose name was soon to become famous.[511] He now
+commanded her, with another consummate sailor, Sancho Ruiz, for his
+pilot. This single-decked craft, about ninety feet in length by twenty
+feet breadth of beam, was the Admiral's flag-ship. The second caravel,
+called the Pinta, a much swifter vessel, was commanded by Martin Pinzon.
+She belonged to two citizens of Palos, Gomez Rascon and Cristobal
+Quintero, who were now in her crew, sulky and ready for mischief. The
+third and smallest caravel, the Niña ("Baby"), had for her commander
+Vicente Yañez Pinzon, the youngest of the brothers, now about thirty
+years of age. Neither the Pinta nor the Niña were decked amidships. On
+board the three caravels were just ninety persons.[512] And so they set
+sail from Palos on Friday, August 3, 1492, half an hour before sunrise,
+and by sunset had run due south five and forty geographical miles, when
+they shifted their course a couple of points to starboard and stood for
+the Canaries.
+
+         [Footnote 511: Navarrete, _Biblioteca maritima_, tom. ii. pp.
+         208, 209.]
+
+         [Footnote 512: The accounts of the armament are well summed up
+         and discussed in Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 405-408. Eighty-seven
+         names, out of the ninety, have been recovered, and the list is
+         given below, Appendix C.]
+
+[Sidenote: They go to the Canaries and are delayed there.]
+
+No thought of Vinland is betrayed in these proceedings. Columbus was
+aiming at the northern end of Cipango (Japan). Upon Toscanelli's map,
+which he carried with him, the great island of Cipango extends from 5°
+to about 28° north latitude. He evidently aimed at the northern end of
+Cipango as being directly on the route to Zaiton (Chang-chow) and other
+Chinese cities mentioned by Marco Polo. Accordingly he began by running
+down to the Canaries, in order that he might sail thence due west on the
+28th parallel without shifting his course by a single point until he
+should see the coast of Japan looming up before him.[513] On this
+preliminary run signs of mischief began already to show themselves. The
+Pinta's rudder was broken and unshipped, and Columbus suspected her two
+angry and chafing owners of having done it on purpose, in order that
+they and their vessel might be left behind. The Canaries at this
+juncture merited the name of Fortunate Islands; fortunately they, alone
+among African islands, were Spanish, so that Columbus could stop there
+and make repairs. While this was going on the sailors were scared out
+of their wits by an eruption of Teneriffe, which they deemed an omen of
+evil, and it was also reported that some Portuguese caravels were
+hovering in those waters, with intent to capture Columbus and carry him
+off to Lisbon.
+
+         [Footnote 513: "Para de allí tomar mi derrota, y navegar tanto
+         que yo llegase á las Indias," he says in his journal,
+         Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. i.p. 3.]
+
+[Illustration: Martin Behaim's Globe, 1492,]
+
+[Illustration: reduced to Mercator's projection.][514]
+
+         [Footnote 514: Martin Behaim was born at Nuremberg in 1436, and
+         is said to have been a pupil of the celebrated astronomer,
+         Regiomontanus, author of the first almanac published in Europe,
+         and of Ephemerides, of priceless value to navigators. He
+         visited Portugal about 1480, invented a new kind of astrolabe,
+         and sailed with it in 1484 as cosmographer in Diego Cam's
+         voyage to the Congo. On his return to Lisbon he was knighted,
+         and presently went to live on the island of Fayal, of which his
+         wife's father was governor. He was a friend of Columbus. Toward
+         1492 he visited Nuremberg, to look after some family affairs,
+         and while there "he gratified some of his townspeople by
+         embodying in a globe the geographical views which prevailed in
+         the maritime countries; and the globe was finished before
+         Columbus had yet accomplished his voyage. The next year (1493)
+         Behaim returned to Portugal; and after having been sent to the
+         Low Countries on a diplomatic mission, he was captured by
+         English cruisers and carried to England. Escaping finally, and
+         reaching the Continent, he passes from our view in 1494, and is
+         scarcely heard of again." (Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, ii.
+         104.) He died in May, 1506. A ridiculous story that he
+         anticipated Columbus in the discovery of America originated in
+         the misunderstanding of an interpolated passage in the Latin
+         text of Schedel's _Registrum_, Nuremberg, 1498, p. 290 (the
+         so-called _Nuremberg Chronicle_). See Winsor, _op. cit._ ii.
+         34; Major's _Prince Henry_, p. 326; Humboldt, _Examen
+         critique_, tom. i.p. 256; Murr, _Diplomatische Geschichte des
+         Ritters Behaim_, Nuremberg, 1778; Cladera, _Investigaciones
+         históricas_, Madrid, 1794; Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana
+         Vetustissima_, pp. 37-43.--The globe made by Behaim may now be
+         seen in the city hall at Nuremberg. It "is made of
+         _papier-maché_, covered with gypsum, and over this a parchment
+         surface received the drawing; it is twenty inches in diameter."
+         (Winsor, _op. cit._ ii. 105.) The portion west of the 330th
+         meridian is evidently copied from Toscanelli's map. I give
+         below (p. 429) a sketch (from Winsor, after Ruge's _Geschichte
+         des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 230) of Behaim's ocean,
+         with the outline of the American continent superimposed in the
+         proper place.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus starts for Japan, Sept. 6, 1492.]
+
+At length, on the 6th of September, they set sail from Gomera, but were
+becalmed and had made only thirty miles by the night of the 8th. The
+breeze then freshened, and when next day the shores of Ferro, the last
+of the Canaries, sank from sight on the eastern horizon, many of the
+sailors loudly lamented their unseemly fate, and cried and sobbed like
+children. Columbus well understood the difficulty of dealing with these
+men. He provided against one chief source of discontent by keeping two
+different reckonings, a true one for himself and a false one for his
+officers and crews. He was shrewd enough not to overdo it and awaken
+distrust. Thus after a twenty-four hours' run of 180 miles on September
+10, he reported it as 144 miles; next day the run was 120 miles and he
+announced it as 108, and so on. But for this prudent if somewhat
+questionable device, it is not unlikely that the first week of October
+would have witnessed a mutiny in which Columbus would have been either
+thrown overboard or forced to turn back.
+
+[Sidenote: Deflection of the needle.]
+
+The weather was delicious, and but for the bug-a-boos that worried those
+poor sailors it would have been a most pleasant voyage. Chief among the
+imaginary terrors were three which deserve especial mention. At
+nightfall on September 13 the ships had crossed the magnetic line of no
+variation, and Columbus was astonished to see that the compass-needle,
+instead of pointing a little to the right of the pole-star, began to
+sway toward the left, and next day this deviation increased. It was
+impossible to hide such a fact from the sharp eyes of the pilots, and
+all were seized with alarm at the suspicion that this witch instrument
+was beginning to play them some foul trick in punishment of their
+temerity; but Columbus was ready with an ingenious astronomical
+explanation, and their faith in the profundity of his knowledge
+prevailed over their terrors.
+
+[Sidenote: The Sargasso Sea.]
+
+The second alarm came on September 16, when they struck into vast
+meadows of floating seaweeds and grasses, abounding in tunny fish and
+crabs. They had now come more than 800 miles from Ferro and were
+entering the wonderful Sargasso Sea, that region of the Atlantic six
+times as large as France, where vast tangles of vegetation grow upon the
+surface of water that is more than 2,000 fathoms deep, and furnish
+sustenance for an untold wealth of fishy life.[515] To the eye of the
+mariner the Sargasso Sea presents somewhat the appearance of an endless
+green prairie, but modern ships plough through it with ease and so did
+the caravels of Columbus at first. After two or three days, however, the
+wind being light, their progress was somewhat impeded. It was not
+strange that the crews were frightened at such a sight. It seemed
+uncanny and weird, and revived ancient fancies about mysterious
+impassable seas and overbold mariners whose ships had been stuck fast in
+them. The more practical spirits were afraid of running aground upon
+submerged shoals, but all were somewhat reassured on this point when it
+was found that their longest plummet-lines failed to find bottom.
+
+         [Footnote 515: The situation of this Sargasso region in
+         mid-ocean seems to be determined by its character as a quiet
+         neutral ground between the great ocean-currents that flow past
+         it on every side. Sargasso plants are found elsewhere upon the
+         surface of the waves, but nowhere else do they congregate as
+         here. There are reasons for supposing that in ancient times
+         this region extended nearer to the African coast. Skylax
+         (_Periplus_, cap. 109) says that beyond Kerne, at the mouth of
+         Rio d' Ouro the sea cannot be navigated on account of the mud
+         and seaweed. Sataspes, on his return to Persia, B. C. 470, told
+         King Xerxes that his voyage failed because his ship stopped or
+         was stuck fast. (Herodotus, iv. 43.) Festus Avienus mentions
+         vast quantities of seaweed in the ocean west of the Pillars of
+         Hercules:--
+
+            Exsuperat autem gurgitem fucus frequens
+            Atque impeditur æstus ex uligine....
+            Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,
+            Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.
+            Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
+            Exstare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice
+            Retinere puppim, etc.
+                              Avienus, _Ora Maritima_, 108, 117.
+
+         See also Aristotle, _Meteorol._, ii. 1, 14; Pseudo-Aristotle,
+         _De Mirab. Auscult._, p. 106; Theophrastus, _Historia
+         plantarum_, iv. 7 Jornandes, _De rebus Geticis_, apud Muratori,
+         tom. i.p. 191; according to Strabo (iii. 2, § 7) tunny fish
+         were caught in abundance in the ocean west of Spain, and were
+         highly valued for the table on account of their fatness which
+         was due to submarine vegetables on which they fed. Possibly the
+         reports of these Sargasso meadows may have had some share in
+         suggesting to Plato his notion of a huge submerged island
+         Atlantis (_Timæus_, 25; _Kritias_, 108; cf. the notion of a
+         viscous sea in Plutarch, _De facie in Orbe Luna_, 26), Plato's
+         fancy has furnished a theme for much wild speculation. See, for
+         example, Bailly, _Lettres sur l'Atlantide de Platon_, Paris,
+         1779. The belief that there can ever have been such an island
+         in that part of the Atlantic is disposed of by the fact that
+         the ocean there is nowhere less than two miles in depth. See
+         the beautiful map of the Atlantic sea-bottom in Alexander
+         Agassiz's _Three Cruises of the Blake_, Boston, 1888, vol. i.p.
+         108, and compare chap. vi. of that noble work, on "The
+         Permanence of Continents and of Oceanic Basins;" see also
+         Wallace's _Island Life_, chap. vi. It was formerly supposed
+         that the Sargasso plants grow on the sea-bottom, and becoming
+         detached rise to the surface (Peter Martyr, _De rebus
+         oceanicis_, dec. iii. lib. v. p. 53; Humboldt, _Personal
+         Narrative_, book i. chap, i.); but it is now known that they
+         are simply rooted in the surface water itself. "L'accumulation
+         de ces plantes marines est l'exemple le plus frappant de
+         plantes congénères réunies sur le même point. Ni les forêts
+         colossales de l'Himalaya, ni les graminées qui s'étendent à
+         perte de vue dans les savanes américaines ou les steppes
+         sibériens ne rivalisent avec ces prairies océaniques. Jamais
+         sur un espace aussi étendu, ne se rencontrent de telles masses
+         de plantes semblables. Quand on a vu la mer des Sargasses, on
+         n'oublie point un pareil spectacle." Paul Gaffarel, "La Mer des
+         Sargasses," _Bulletin de Géographie_, Paris, 1872, 6e série,
+         tom. iv. p. 622.]
+
+[Sidenote: The trade wind.]
+
+On September 22 the journal reports "no more grass." They were in clear
+water again, and more than 1,400 geographical miles from the Canaries.
+A third source of alarm had already begun to disturb the sailors. They
+were discovering much more than they had bargained for. They were in the
+belt of the trade winds, and as the gentle but unfailing breeze wafted
+them steadily westward, doubts began to arise as to whether it would
+ever be possible to return. Fortunately soon after this question began
+to be discussed, the wind, jealous of its character for capriciousness
+even there, veered into the southwest.
+
+[Sidenote: Impatience of the crews.]
+
+By September 25 the Admiral's chief difficulty had come to be the
+impatience of his crews at not finding land. On that day there was a
+mirage, or some such illusion, which Columbus and all hands supposed to
+be a coast in front of them, and hymns of praise were sung, but at dawn
+next day they were cruelly undeceived. Flights of strange birds and
+other signs of land kept raising hopes which were presently dashed
+again, and the men passed through alternately hot and cold fits of
+exultation and dejection. Such mockery seemed to show that they were
+entering a realm of enchantment. Somebody, perhaps one of the released
+jail-birds, hinted that if a stealthy thrust should happen some night to
+push the Admiral overboard, it could be plausibly said that he had
+slipped and fallen while star-gazing. His situation grew daily more
+perilous, and the fact that he was an Italian commanding Spaniards did
+not help him. Perhaps what saved him was their vague belief in his
+superior knowledge; they may have felt that they should need him in
+going back.
+
+[Illustration: Martin Behaim's Atlantic Ocean (with outline of American
+continent superimposed).]
+
+[Sidenote: Change of course from W. to W. S. W.]
+
+[Sidenote: Land ahead! Oct. 12 (N. S. 21), 1492.]
+
+By October 4 there were ominous symptoms of mutiny, and the anxiety of
+Columbus was evinced in the extent of his bold understatement of that
+day's run,--138 miles instead of the true figure 189. For some days his
+pilots had been begging him to change his course; perhaps they had
+passed between islands. Anything for a change! On the 7th at sunrise,
+they had come 2,724 geographical miles from the Canaries, which was
+farther than the Admiral's estimate of the distance to Cipango; but
+according to his false statement of the runs, it appeared that they had
+come scarcely 2,200 miles. This leads one to suspect that in stating the
+length of the voyage, as he had so often done, at 700 leagues, he may
+have purposely made it out somewhat shorter than he really believed it
+to be. But now after coming more than 2,500 miles he began to fear that
+he might be sailing past Cipango on the north, and so he shifted his
+course two points to larboard, or west-southwest. If a secret knowledge
+of Vinland had been his guiding-star he surely would not have turned his
+helm that way; but a glance at the Toscanelli map shows what was in his
+mind. Numerous flights of small birds confirmed his belief that land at
+the southwest was not far off. The change of direction was probably
+fortunate. If he had persisted in keeping on the parallel, 720 miles
+would have brought him to the coast of Florida, a little south of Cape
+Malabar. After the change he had but 505 miles of water before him, and
+the temper of the sailors was growing more dangerous with every
+mile,[516]--until October 11, when the signs of land became
+unmistakable, and the wildest excitement prevailed. A reward of 10,000
+maravedis had been promised to the person who should first discover
+land, and ninety pair of eyes were strained that night with looking.
+About ten o'clock the Admiral, standing on the tower-like poop of his
+vessel, saw a distant light moving as if somebody were running along
+the shore with a torch. This interpretation was doubted, but a few
+hours later a sailor on the Pinta saw land distinctly, and soon it was
+visible to all, a long low coast about five miles distant. This was at
+two in the morning of Friday, October 12,[517]--just ten weeks since
+they had sailed from Palos, just thirty-three days since they had lost
+sight of the coast of Ferro. The sails were now taken in, and the ships
+lay to, awaiting the dawn.
+
+         [Footnote 516: The often-repeated story that a day or two
+         before the end of the voyage Columbus capitulated with his
+         crew, promising to turn back if land were not seen within three
+         days, rests upon the single and relatively inferior authority
+         of Oviedo. It is not mentioned by Las Casas or Bernaldez or
+         Peter Martyr or Ferdinand Columbus, and it is discredited by
+         the tone of the Admiral's journal, which shows as unconquerable
+         determination on the last day of the voyage as on any previous
+         day. Cf. Irving, vol. i. p. 187.]
+
+         [Footnote 517: Applying the Gregorian Calendar, or "new style,"
+         it becomes the 21st. The four hundredth anniversary will
+         properly fall on October 21, 1892.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The crews go ashore.]
+
+At daybreak the boats were lowered and Columbus, with a large part of
+his company, went ashore. Upon every side were trees of unknown kinds,
+and the landscape seemed exceedingly beautiful. Confident that they must
+have attained the object for which they had set sail, the crews were
+wild with exultation. Their heads were dazed with fancies of princely
+fortunes close at hand. The officers embraced Columbus or kissed his
+hands, while the sailors threw themselves at his feet, craving pardon
+and favour.
+
+[Sidenote: The astonished natives.]
+
+[Sidenote: Guanahani: where was it?]
+
+These proceedings were watched with unutterable amazement and awe by a
+multitude of men, women, and children of cinnamon hue, different from
+any kind of people the Spaniards had ever seen. All were stark naked and
+most of them were more or less greased and painted. They thought that
+the ships were sea-monsters and the white men supernatural creatures
+descended from the sky.[518] At first they fled in terror as these
+formidable beings came ashore, but presently, as they found themselves
+unmolested, curiosity began to overcome fear, and they slowly approached
+the Spaniards, stopping at every few paces to prostrate themselves in
+adoration. After a time, as the Spaniards received them with encouraging
+nods and smiles, they waxed bold enough to come close to the visitors
+and pass their hands over them, doubtless to make sure that all this
+marvel was a reality and not a mere vision. Experiences in Africa had
+revealed the eagerness of barbarians to trade off their possessions for
+trinkets, and now the Spaniards began exchanging glass beads and hawks'
+bells for cotton yarn, tame parrots, and small gold ornaments. Some sort
+of conversation in dumb show went on, and Columbus naturally interpreted
+everything in such wise as to fit his theories. Whether the natives
+understood him or not when he asked them where they got their gold, at
+any rate they pointed to the south, and thus confirmed Columbus in his
+suspicion that he had come to some island a little to the north of the
+opulent Cipango. He soon found that it was a small island, and he
+understood the name of it to be Guanahani. He took formal possession of
+it for Castile, just as the discoverers of the Cape Verde islands and
+the Guinea coasts had taken possession of those places for Portugal;
+and he gave it a Christian name, San Salvador. That name has since the
+seventeenth century been given to Cat island, but perhaps in pursuance
+of a false theory of map-makers; it is not proved that Cat island is the
+Guanahani of Columbus. All that can positively be asserted of Guanahani
+is that it was one of the Bahamas: there has been endless discussion as
+to which one, and the question is not easy to settle. Perhaps the theory
+of Captain Gustavus Fox, of the United States navy, is on the whole best
+supported. Captain Fox maintains that the true Guanahani was the little
+island now known as Samana or Atwood's Cay.[519] The problem well
+illustrates the difficulty in identifying any route from even a good
+description of landmarks, without the help of persistent proper names,
+especially after the lapse of time has somewhat altered the landmarks.
+From this point of view it is a very interesting problem and has its
+lessons for us; otherwise it is of no importance.
+
+         [Footnote 518: This is a common notion among barbarians. "The
+         Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and
+         encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners _papalangi_, or
+         'heaven-bursters,' as having broken in from another world
+         outside." Max Müller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. ii.
+         p. 268.]
+
+         [Footnote 519: "An Attempt to solve the Problem of the First
+         Landing Place of Columbus in the New World," in _United States
+         Coast and Geodetic Survey--Report for 1880--Appendix 18_,
+         Washington, 1882.]
+
+[Sidenote: Groping for Cipango and the route to Quinsay.]
+
+A cruise of ten days among the Bahamas, with visits to four of the
+islands, satisfied Columbus that he was in the ocean just east of
+Cathay, for Marco Polo had described it as studded with thousands of
+spice-bearing islands, and the Catalan map shows that some of these were
+supposed to be inhabited by naked savages. To be sure, he could not find
+any spices or valuable drugs, but the air was full of fragrance and the
+trees and herbs were strange in aspect and might mean anything; so for a
+while he was ready to take the spices on trust. Upon inquiries about
+gold the natives always pointed to the south, apparently meaning
+Cipango; and in that direction Columbus steered on the 25th of October,
+intending to stay in that wealthy island long enough to obtain all
+needful information concerning its arts and commerce. Thence a sail of
+less than ten days would bring him to the Chinese coast, along which he
+might comfortably cruise northwesterly as far as Quinsay and deliver to
+the Great Khan a friendly letter with which Ferdinand and Isabella had
+provided him. Alas, poor Columbus--unconscious prince of
+discoverers--groping here in Cuban waters for the way to a city on the
+other side of the globe and to a sovereign whose race had more than a
+century since been driven from the throne and expelled from the very
+soil of Cathay! Could anything be more pathetic, or better illustrate
+the profound irony with which our universe seems to be governed?
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus reaches Cuba, and sends envoys to find a certain
+Asiatic prince.]
+
+On reaching Cuba the Admiral was charmed with the marvellous beauty of
+the landscape,--a point in which he seems to have been unusually
+sensitive. He found pearl oysters along the shore, and although no
+splendid cities as yet appeared, he did not doubt that he had reached
+Cipango. But his attempts at talking with the amazed natives only served
+to darken counsel. He understood them to say that Cuba was part of the
+Asiatic continent, and that there was a king in the neighbourhood who
+was at war with the Great Khan! So he sent two messengers to seek this
+refractory potentate,--one of them a converted Jew acquainted with
+Arabic, a language sometimes heard far eastward in Asia, as Columbus
+must have known. These envoys found pleasant villages, with large
+houses, surrounded with fields of such unknown vegetables as maize,
+potatoes, and tobacco; they saw men and women smoking cigars,[520] and
+little dreamed that in that fragrant and soothing herb there was a
+richer source of revenue than the spices of the East. They passed acres
+of growing cotton and saw in the houses piles of yarn waiting to be
+woven into rude cloth or twisted into nets for hammocks. But they found
+neither cities nor kings, neither gold nor spices, and after a tedious
+quest returned, somewhat disappointed, to the coast.
+
+         [Footnote 520: The first recorded mention of tobacco is in
+         Columbus's diary for November 20, 1492:--"Hallaron los dos
+         cristianos por el camino mucha gente que atravesaba á sus
+         pueblos, mugeres y hombres con un tizon en la mano, yerbas para
+         tomar sus sahumerios que acostumbraban," i. e. "the two
+         Christians met on the road a great many people going to their
+         villages, men and women with brands in their hands, made of
+         herbs for taking their customary smoke." Navarrete, tom. i. p.
+         51.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus turns eastward; Pinzon deserts him.]
+
+Columbus seems now to have become perplexed, and to have vacillated
+somewhat in his purposes. If this was the continent of Asia it was
+nearer than he had supposed, and how far mistaken he had been in his
+calculations no one could tell. But where was Cipango? He gathered from
+the natives that there was a great island to the southeast, abounding
+in gold, and so he turned his prows in that direction. On the 20th of
+November he was deserted by Martin Pinzon, whose ship could always
+outsail the others. It seems to have been Pinzon's design to get home in
+advance with such a story as would enable him to claim for himself an
+undue share of credit for the discovery of the Indies. This was the
+earliest instance of a kind of treachery such as too often marred the
+story of Spanish exploration and conquest in the New World.
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus arrives at Hayti and thinks it must be Japan.]
+
+[Sidenote: Wreck of the Santa Maria, Dec. 25, 1492.]
+
+For a fortnight after Pinzon's desertion Columbus crept slowly eastward
+along the coast of Cuba, now and then landing to examine the country and
+its products; and it seemed to him that besides pearls and mastic and
+aloes he found in the rivers indications of gold. When he reached the
+cape at the end of the island he named it Alpha and Omega, as being the
+extremity of Asia,--Omega from the Portuguese point of view, Alpha from
+his own. On the 6th of December he landed upon the northwestern coast of
+the island of Hayti, which he called Española, Hispaniola, or "Spanish
+land."[521] Here, as the natives seemed to tell him of a region to the
+southward and quite inland which abounded in gold, and which they called
+Cibao, the Admiral at once caught upon the apparent similarity of sounds
+and fancied that Cibao must be Cipango, and that at length he had
+arrived upon that island of marvels. It was much nearer the Asiatic
+mainland (i. e. Cuba) than he had supposed, but then, it was beginning
+to appear that in any case somebody's geography must be wrong. Columbus
+was enchanted with the scenery. "The land is elevated," he says, "with
+many mountains and peaks ... most beautiful, of a thousand varied forms,
+accessible, and full of trees of endless varieties, so tall that they
+seem to touch the sky; and I have been told that they never lose their
+foliage. The nightingale [i. e. some kind of thrush] and other small
+birds of a thousand kinds were singing in the month of November
+[December] when I was there."[522] Before he had done much toward
+exploring this paradise, a sudden and grave mishap quite altered his
+plans. On Christmas morning, between midnight and dawn, owing to
+careless disobedience of orders on the part of the helmsman, the
+flag-ship struck upon a sand-bank near the present site of Port au Paix.
+All attempts to get her afloat were unavailing, and the waves soon beat
+her to pieces.
+
+         [Footnote 521: Not "Little Spain," as the form of the word, so
+         much like a diminutive, might seem to indicate. It is simply
+         the feminine of _Español_, "Spanish," sc. _tierra_ or _isla_.
+         Columbus believed that the island was larger than Spain. See
+         his letter to Gabriel Sanchez, in Harrisse, tom. i. p. 428.]
+
+         [Footnote 522: Columbus to Santangel, February 15, 1493
+         (Navarrete, tom. i. p. 168).]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus decides to go back to Spain.]
+
+This catastrophe brought home, with startling force, to the mind of
+Columbus, the fact that the news of his discovery of land was not yet
+known in Europe. As for the Pinta and her insubordinate commander, none
+could say whether they would ever be seen again or whether their speedy
+arrival in Spain might not portend more harm than good to Columbus. His
+armament was now reduced to the little undecked Niña alone, such a craft
+as we should deem about fit for a summer excursion on Long Island Sound.
+What if his party should all perish, or be stranded helpless on these
+strange coasts, before any news of their success should reach the ears
+of friends in Europe! Then the name of Columbus would serve as a by-word
+for foolhardiness, and his mysterious fate would simply deter other
+expeditions from following in the same course. Obviously the first
+necessity of the situation was to return to Spain immediately and report
+what had already been done. Then it would be easy enough to get ships
+and men for a second voyage.
+
+[Sidenote: Building of the blockhouse, La Navidad.]
+
+[Sidenote: Meeting with Pinzon.]
+
+This decision led to the founding of an embryo colony upon Hispaniola.
+There was not room enough for all the party to go in the Nina, and quite
+a number begged to be left behind, because they found life upon the
+island lazy and the natives, especially the women, seemed well-disposed
+toward them. So a blockhouse was built out of the wrecked ship's timbers
+and armed with her guns, and in commemoration of that eventful Christmas
+it was called Fort Nativity (_La Navidad_). Here forty men were left
+behind, with provisions enough for a whole year, and on January 4, 1493,
+the rest of the party went on board the Niña and set sail for Spain. Two
+days later in following the northern coast of Hispaniola they
+encountered the Pinta, whose commander had been delayed by trading with
+the natives and by finding some gold. Pinzon tried to explain his sudden
+disappearance by alleging that stress of weather had parted him from
+his comrades, but his excuses were felt to be lame and improbable.
+However it may have been with his excuses, there was no doubt as to the
+lameness of his foremast; it had been too badly sprung to carry much
+sail, so that the Pinta could not again run away from her consort.
+
+[Sidenote: Terrible storm in mid-ocean, Feb., 1493.]
+
+On this return voyage the Admiral, finding the trade winds dead against
+him, took a northeasterly course until he had passed the thirty-seventh
+parallel and then headed straight toward Spain. On the 12th of February
+a storm was brewing, and during the next four days it raged with such
+terrific violence that it is a wonder how those two frail caravels ever
+came out of it. They were separated this time not to meet again upon the
+sea. Expecting in all likelihood to be engulfed in the waves with his
+tiny craft, Columbus sealed and directed to Ferdinand and Isabella two
+brief reports of his discovery, written upon parchment. Each of these he
+wrapped in a cloth and inclosed in the middle of a large cake of wax,
+which was then securely shut up in a barrel. One of the barrels was
+flung into the sea, the other remained standing on the little
+quarter-deck to await the fate of the caravel. The anxiety was not
+lessened by the sight of land on the 15th, for it was impossible to
+approach it so as to go ashore, and there was much danger of being
+dashed to pieces.
+
+[Sidenote: Cold reception at the Azores.]
+
+At length on the 18th, the storm having abated, the ship's boat went
+ashore and found that it was the island of St. Mary, one of the Azores.
+It is worthy of note that such skilful sailors as the Nina's captain,
+Vicente Yañez Pinzon, and the pilot Ruiz were so confused in their
+reckoning as to suppose themselves near the Madeiras, whereas Columbus
+had correctly maintained that they were approaching the Azores,--a good
+instance of his consummate judgment in nautical questions.[523] From the
+Portuguese governor of the island this Spanish company met with a very
+ungracious reception. A party of sailors whom Columbus sent ashore to a
+small chapel of the Virgin, to give thanks for their deliverance from
+shipwreck, were seized and held as prisoners for five days. It
+afterwards appeared that this was done in pursuance of general
+instructions from the king of Portugal to the governors of his various
+islands. If Columbus had gone ashore he would probably have been
+arrested himself. As it was, he took such a high tone and threatened to
+such good purpose that the governor of St. Mary was fain to give up his
+prisoners for fear of bringing on another war between Portugal and
+Castile.
+
+         [Footnote 523: Las Casas, tom. i. pp. 443, 449.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus is driven ashore in Portugal, where the king is
+advised to have him assassinated;]
+
+[Sidenote: but to offend Spain so grossly would be dangerous.]
+
+Having at length got away from this unfriendly island, as the Niña was
+making her way toward Cape St. Vincent and within 400 miles of it, she
+was seized by another fierce tempest and driven upon the coast of
+Portugal, where Columbus and his crew were glad of a chance to run into
+the river Tagus for shelter. The news of his voyage and his discoveries
+aroused intense excitement in Lisbon. Astonishment was mingled with
+chagrin at the thought that the opportunity for all this glory and
+profit had first been offered to Portugal and foolishly lost. The king
+even now tried to persuade himself that Columbus had somehow or other
+been trespassing upon the vast and vague undiscovered dominions granted
+to the Crown of Portugal by Pope Eugenius IV. Some of the king's
+counsellors are said to have urged him to have Columbus assassinated; it
+would be easy enough to provoke such a high-spirited man into a quarrel
+and then run him through the body.[524] To clearer heads, however, the
+imprudence of such a course was manifest. It was already impossible to
+keep the news of the discovery from reaching Spain, and Portugal could
+not afford to go to war with her stronger neighbour. In fact even had
+John II. been base enough to resort to assassination, which seems quite
+incompatible with the general character of Lope de Vega's "perfect
+prince," Columbus was now too important a personage to be safely
+interfered with. So he was invited to court and made much of. On the
+13th of March he set sail again and arrived in the harbour of Palos at
+noon of the 15th. His little caravel was promptly recognized by the
+people, and as her story flew from mouth to mouth all the business of
+the town was at an end for that day.[525]
+
+         [Footnote 524: This story rests upon the explicit statement of
+         a contemporary Portuguese historian of high authority, Garcia
+         de Resende, _Chronica del Rey Dom João II._, Lisbon, 1622, cap.
+         clxiv. (written about 1516); see also Vasconcellos, _Vida del
+         Rey Don Juan II._, Madrid, 1639, lib. vi.]
+
+         [Footnote 525: "When they learnt that she returned in triumph
+         from the discovery of a world, the whole community broke forth
+         into transports of joy." Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i. p. 318.
+         This is projecting our present knowledge into the past. We now
+         know that Columbus had discovered a new world. He did not so
+         much as suspect that he had done anything of the sort; neither
+         did the people of Palos.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus and Pinzon at Palos; death of Pinzon.]
+
+Towards evening, while the bells were ringing and the streets brilliant
+with torches, another vessel entered the harbour and dropped anchor. She
+was none other than the Pinta! The storm had driven her to Bayonne,
+whence Martin Pinzon instantly despatched a message to Ferdinand and
+Isabella, making great claims for himself and asking permission to wait
+upon them with a full account of the discovery. As soon as practicable
+he made his way to Palos, but when on arriving he saw the Niña already
+anchored in the harbour his guilty heart failed him. He took advantage
+of the general hub-bub to slink ashore as quickly and quietly as
+possible, and did not dare to show himself until after the Admiral had
+left for Seville. The news from Columbus reached the sovereigns before
+they had time to reply to the message of Pinzon; so when their answer
+came to him it was cold and stern and forbade him to appear in their
+presence. Pinzon was worn out with the hardships of the homeward voyage,
+and this crushing reproof was more than he could bear. His sudden death,
+a few days afterward, was generally attributed to chagrin.[526]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus is received by the sovereigns at Barcelona, April,
+1493.]
+
+[Sidenote: General excitement at the news that a way to the Indies had
+been found.]
+
+From Seville the Admiral was summoned to attend court at Barcelona,
+where he was received with triumphal honours. He was directed to seat
+himself in the presence of the sovereigns, a courtesy usually reserved
+for royal personages.[527] Intense interest was felt in his specimens of
+stuffed birds and small mammals, his live parrots, his collection of
+herbs which he supposed to have medicinal virtues, his few pearls and
+trinkets of gold, and especially his six painted and bedizened
+barbarians, the survivors of ten with whom he had started from
+Hispaniola. Since in the vague terminology of that time the remote and
+scarcely known parts of Asia were called the Indies, and since the
+islands and coasts just discovered were Indies, of course these red men
+must be Indians. So Columbus had already named them in his first letter
+written from the Niña, off the Azores, sent by special messenger from
+Palos, and now in April, 1493, printed at Barcelona, containing the
+particulars of his discovery,--a letter appropriately addressed to the
+worthy Santangel but for whose timely intervention he might have ridden
+many a weary league on that mule of his to no good purpose.[528] It was
+generally assumed without question that the Admiral's theory of his
+discovery must be correct, that the coast of Cuba must be the eastern
+extremity of China, that the coast of Hispaniola must be the northern
+extremity of Cipango, and that a direct route--much shorter than that
+which Portugal had so long been seeking--had now been found to those
+lands of illimitable wealth described by Marco Polo.[529] To be sure
+Columbus had not as yet seen the evidences of this Oriental splendour,
+and had been puzzled at not finding them, but he felt confident that he
+had come very near them and would come full upon them in a second
+voyage. There was nobody who knew enough to refute these opinions,[530]
+and really why should not this great geographer, who had accomplished so
+much already which people had scouted as impossible,--why should he not
+know what he was about? It was easy enough now to get men and money for
+the second voyage. When the Admiral sailed from Cadiz on September 25,
+1493, it was with seventeen ships carrying 1,500 men. Their dreams were
+of the marble palaces of Quinsay, of isles of spices, and the treasures
+of Prester John. The sovereigns wept for joy as they thought that such
+untold riches were vouchsafed them by the special decree of Heaven, as a
+reward for having overcome the Moor at Granada and banished the Jews
+from Spain.[531] Columbus shared these views and regarded himself as a
+special instrument for executing the divine decrees. He renewed his vow
+to rescue the Holy Sepulchre, promising within the next seven years to
+equip at his own expense a crusading army of 50,000 foot and 4,000
+horse; within five years thereafter he would follow this with a second
+army of like dimensions.
+
+         [Footnote 526: Charlevoix, _Histoire de l'isle Espagnole, ou de
+         St. Domingue_, Paris, 1730, liv. ii.; Muñoz, _Historia de las
+         Indias ó Nuevo Mundo_, Madrid, 1793, lib. iv. § 14.]
+
+         [Footnote 527: He was also allowed to quarter the royal arms
+         with his own, "which consisted of a group of golden islands
+         amid azure billows. To these were afterwards added five
+         anchors, with the celebrated motto, well known as being carved
+         on his sepulchre." Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_, pt. i.
+         chap. vii. This statement about the motto is erroneous. See
+         below, p. 514. Considering the splendour of the reception given
+         to Columbus, and the great interest felt in his achievement,
+         Mr. Prescott is surprised at finding no mention of this
+         occasion in the local annals of Barcelona, or in the royal
+         archives of Aragon. He conjectures, with some probability, that
+         the cause of the omission may have been what an American would
+         call "sectional" jealousy. This Cathay and Cipango business was
+         an affair of Castile's, and, as such, quite beneath the notice
+         of patriotic Aragonese archivists! That is the way history has
+         too often been treated. With most people it is only a kind of
+         ancestor worship.]
+
+         [Footnote 528: The unique copy of this first edition of this
+         Spanish letter is a small folio of two leaves, or four pages.
+         It was announced for sale in Quaritch's Catalogue, April 16,
+         1891, No. 111, p. 47, for £1,750. Evidently most book-lovers
+         will have to content themselves with the facsimile published in
+         London, 1891, price two guineas. A unique copy of a Spanish
+         reprint in small quarto, made in 1493, is preserved in the
+         Ambrosian library at Milan. In 1889 Messrs. Ellis & Elvey, of
+         London, published a facsimile _alleged_ to have been made from
+         an edition of about the same date as the Ambrosian quarto; but
+         there are good reasons for believing that these highly
+         respectable publishers have been imposed upon. It is a time
+         just now when fictitious literary discoveries of this sort may
+         command a high price, and the dealer in early Americana must
+         keep his eyes open. See Quaritch's note, _op. cit._ p. 49; and
+         Justin Winsor's letter in _The Nation_, April 9, 1891, vol.
+         lii. p. 298.]
+
+         [Footnote 529: "The lands, therefore, which Columbus had
+         visited were called the West Indies; and as he seemed to have
+         entered upon a vast region of unexplored countries, existing in
+         a state of nature, the whole received the comprehensive
+         appellation of the New World." Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i. p.
+         333. These are very grave errors, again involving the
+         projection of our modern knowledge into the past. The lands
+         which Columbus had visited were called simply the Indies; it
+         was not until long after his death, and after the crossing of
+         the Pacific ocean, that they were distinguished from the East
+         Indies. The _New World_ was not at first a "comprehensive
+         appellation" for the countries discovered by Columbus; it was
+         at first applied to one particular region never visited by him,
+         viz. to that portion of the southeastern coast of South America
+         first explored by Vespucius. See vol. ii. pp. 129, 130.]
+
+         [Footnote 530: Peter Martyr, however, seems to have entertained
+         some vague doubts, inasmuch as this assumed nearness of the
+         China coast on the west implied a greater eastward extension of
+         the Asiatic continent than seemed to him probable:--"Insulas
+         reperit plures; has esse, de quibus fit apud cosmographos
+         mentio extra oceanum orientalem, adjacentes Indiæ arbitrantur.
+         Nec inficior ego penitus, _quamvis sphæræ magnitudo aliter
+         sentire videatur_; neque enim desunt qui parvo tractu a finibus
+         Hispaniæ distare littus Indicum putent." _Opus Epist._, No.
+         135. The italicizing is mine.]
+
+         [Footnote 531: This abominable piece of wickedness, driving
+         200,000 of Spain's best citizens from their homes and their
+         native land, was accomplished in pursuance of an edict signed
+         March 30, 1492. There is a brief account of it in Prescott's
+         _Ferdinand and Isabella_, pt. i. chap. vi.]
+
+[Sidenote: This voyage was an event without any parallel in history.]
+
+Thus nobody had the faintest suspicion of what had been done. In the
+famous letter to Santangel there is of course not a word about a New
+World. The grandeur of the achievement was quite beyond the ken of the
+generation that witnessed it. For we have since come to learn that in
+1492 the contact between the eastern and the western halves of our
+planet was first really begun, and the two streams of human life which
+had flowed on for countless ages apart were thenceforth to mingle
+together. The first voyage of Columbus is thus a unique event in the
+history of mankind. Nothing like it was ever done before, and nothing
+like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for a future Columbus
+to conquer. The era of which this great Italian mariner was the most
+illustrious representative has closed forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Discovery of America was a gradual process.]
+
+But that era did not close with Columbus, nor did he live long enough to
+complete the Discovery of America. Our practice of affixing specific
+dates to great events is on many accounts indispensable, but it is
+sometimes misleading. Such an event as the discovery of a pair of vast
+continents does not take place within a single year. When we speak of
+America as discovered in 1492, we do not mean that the moment Columbus
+landed on two or three islands of the West Indies, a full outline map of
+the western hemisphere from Labrador and Alaska to Cape Horn suddenly
+sprang into existence--like Pallas from the forehead of Zeus--in the
+minds of European men. Yet people are perpetually using arguments which
+have neither force nor meaning save upon the tacit assumption that
+somehow or other some such sort of thing must have happened. This
+grotesque fallacy lies at the bottom of the tradition which has caused
+so many foolish things to be said about that gallant mariner, Americus
+Vespucius. In geographical discussions the tendency to overlook the fact
+that Columbus and his immediate successors did not sail with the latest
+edition of Black's General Atlas in their cabins is almost inveterate;
+it keeps revealing itself in all sorts of queer statements, and probably
+there is no cure for it except in familiarity with the long series of
+perplexed and struggling maps made in the sixteenth century. Properly
+regarded, the Discovery of America was not a single event, but a very
+gradual process. It was not like a case of special creation, for it was
+a case of evolution, and the voyage of 1492 was simply the most decisive
+and epoch-marking incident in that evolution. Columbus himself, after
+all his four eventful voyages across the Sea of Darkness, died in the
+belief that he had simply discovered the best and straightest route to
+the eastern shores of Asia. Yet from his first experiences in Cuba down
+to his latest voyage upon the coasts of Honduras and Veragua, he was
+more or less puzzled at finding things so different from what he had
+anticipated. If he had really known anything with accuracy about the
+eastern coast of Asia, he would doubtless soon have detected his
+fundamental error, but no European in his day had any such knowledge. In
+his four voyages Columbus was finding what he supposed to be parts of
+Asia, what we now know to have been parts of America, but what were
+really to him and his contemporaries neither more nor less than Strange
+Coasts. We have now to consider briefly his further experiences upon
+these strange coasts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The second voyage of Columbus was begun in a very different mood and
+under very different auspices from either his former or his two
+subsequent voyages. On his first departure from Palos, in 1492, all
+save a few devoted friends regarded him as a madman rushing upon his
+doom; and outside the Spanish peninsula the expedition seems to have
+attracted no notice. But on the second start, in 1493, all hands
+supposed that they were going straight to golden Cathay and to boundless
+riches. It was not now with groans but with pæans that they flocked on
+board the ships; and the occasion was observed, with more or less
+interest, by some people in other countries of Europe,--as in Italy, and
+for the moment in France and England.
+
+[Sidenote: The letter to Sanchez.]
+
+At the same time with his letter to Santangel, the Admiral had
+despatched another account, substantially the same,[532] to Gabriel
+Sanchez,[533] another officer of the royal treasury. Several copies of a
+Latin translation of this letter were published at Rome, at Paris, and
+elsewhere, in the course of the year 1493.[534] The story which it
+contained was at once paraphrased in Italian verse by Giuliano Dati, one
+of the most popular poets of the age, and perhaps in the autumn of 1493
+the amazing news that the Indies had been found by sailing west[535] was
+sung by street urchins in Florence. We are also informed, in an
+ill-vouched but not improbable clause in Ramusio, that not far from that
+same time the news was heard with admiration in London, where it was
+pronounced "a thing more divine than human to sail by the West unto the
+East, where spices grow, by a way that was never known before;"[536] and
+it seems altogether likely that it was this news that prompted the
+expedition of John Cabot hereafter to be mentioned.[537]
+
+         [Footnote 532: "Un duplicata de cette relation," Harrisse,
+         _Christophe Colomb_, tom i. p. 419.]
+
+         [Footnote 533: Often called Raphael Sanchez.]
+
+         [Footnote 534: The following epigram was added to the first
+         Latin edition of the latter by Corbaria, Bishop of
+         Monte-Peloso:--
+
+            _Ad Invictissimum Regem Hispaniarum_:
+
+            Iam nulla Hispanis tellus addenda triumphis,
+              Atque parum tantis viribus orbis erat.
+            Nunc longe eois regio deprensa sub undis,
+              Auctura est titulos Betice magne tuos.
+            Unde repertori inerita referenda Columbo
+              Gratia, sed summo est maior habenda deo,
+            Qui vincenda parat noua regna tibique sibique
+              Teque simul fortem prestat et esse pium.
+
+         These lines are thus paraphrased by M. Harrisse:--
+
+            _To the Invincible King of the Spains_:
+
+            Less wide the world than the renown of Spain,
+            To swell her triumphs no new lands remain.
+            Rejoice, Iberia! see thy fame increased!
+            Another world Columbus from the East
+            And the mid-ocean summons to thy sway!
+            Give thanks to him--but loftier homage pay
+            To God Supreme, who gives its realms to thee!
+            Greatest of monarchs, first of servants be!
+                         _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, p. 13.
+
+         The following is a literal version:--"Already there is no land
+         to be added to the triumphs of Spain, and the earth was too
+         small for such great deeds. Now a far country under the eastern
+         waves has been discovered, and will be an addition to thy
+         titles, O great Bætica! wherefore thanks are due to the
+         illustrious discover Columbus; but greater thanks to the
+         supreme God, who is making ready new realms to be conquered for
+         thee and for Himself, and vouchsafes to thee to be at once
+         strong and pious." It will be observed that nothing is said
+         about "another world."
+
+         An elaborate account of these earliest and excessively rare
+         editions is given by M. Harrisse, _loc. cit._]
+
+         [Footnote 535: Or, as Mr. Major carelessly puts it, "the
+         astounding news of the discovery of a new world." (_Select
+         Letters of Columbus_, p. vi.) Mr. Major knows very well that no
+         such "news" was possible for many a year after 1493; his remark
+         is, of course, a mere slip of the pen, but if we are ever going
+         to straighten out the tangle of misconceptions with which this
+         subject is commonly surrounded, we must be careful in our
+         choice of words.--As a fair specimen, of the chap-book style of
+         Dati's stanzas, we may cite the fourteenth:--
+
+            Hor vo tornar almio primo tractato
+            dellisole trovate incognite a te
+            in [~q]sto anno presente [~q]sto e stato
+            nel millequatrocento nov[=a]tatre,
+            uno che x[~p]ofan col[=o]bo chiamato,
+            che e stato in corte der prefecto Re
+            ha molte volte questa stimolato,
+            el Re ch'cerchi acrescere il suo stato.
+
+         M. Harrisse gives the following version:--
+
+            Back to my theme, O Listener, turn with me
+            And hear of islands all unknown to thee!
+            Islands whereof the grand discovery
+            Chanced in this year of fourteen ninety-three.
+            One Christopher Colombo, whose resort
+            Was ever in the King Fernando's court,
+            Bent himself still to rouse and stimulate
+            The King to swell the borders of his State.
+                         _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, p. 29.
+
+         The entire poem of sixty-eight stanzas is given in Major, _op.
+         cit._ pp. lxxiii.-xc. It was published at Florence, Oct. 26,
+         1493, and was called "the story of the discovery [not of a new
+         world, but] of the new Indian islands of Canary!" (_Storia
+         della inventione delle nuove isole dicanaria indiane._)]
+
+         [Footnote 536: _Raccolta di Navigazioni_, etc., Venice, 1550,
+         tom. i. fol. 414.]
+
+         [Footnote 537: See below, vol. ii. pp. 2-15.]
+
+[Sidenote: Earliest references to the discovery.]
+
+[Sidenote: Earliest reference in English.]
+
+The references to the discovery are very scanty, however, until after
+the year 1500, and extremely vague withal. For example, Bernardino de
+Carvajal, the Spanish ambassador at the papal court, delivered an
+oration in Rome on June 19, 1493, in which he said: "And Christ placed
+under their [Ferdinand and Isabella's] rule the Fortunate [Canary]
+islands, the fertility of which has been ascertained to be wonderful.
+And he has lately disclosed some other unknown ones towards the Indies
+which may be considered among the most precious things on earth; and it
+is believed that they will be gained over to Christ by the emissaries
+of the king."[538] Outside of the Romance countries we find one German
+version of the first letter of Columbus, published at Strasburg, in
+1497,[539] and a brief allusion to the discovery in Sebastian Brandt's
+famous allegorical poem, "Das Narrenschiff," the first edition of which
+appeared in 1494.[540] The earliest distinct reference to Columbus in
+the English language is to be found in a translation of this poem, "The
+Shyppe of Fooles," by Henry Watson, published in London by Wynkyn de
+Worde in 1509. The purpose of Brandt's allegory was to satirize the
+follies committed by all sorts and conditions of men. In the chapter,
+"Of hym that wyll wryte and enquere of all regyons," it is said: "There
+was one that knewe that in y^{e} ysles of Spayne was enhabitantes.
+Wherefore he asked men of Kynge Ferdynandus & wente & founde them, the
+whiche lyved as beestes."[541] Until after the middle of the sixteenth
+century no English chronicler mentions either Columbus or the Cabots,
+nor is there anywhere an indication that the significance of the
+discoveries in the western ocean was at all understood.[542]
+
+         [Footnote 538: Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_,
+         p. 35.]
+
+         [Footnote 539: Id. p. 50.]
+
+         [Footnote 540:
+            Auch hat man sydt in Portigall
+            Und in Hyspanyen uberall
+            Golt-inseln funden, und nacket l[°u]t
+            Von den man vor wust sagen n[°u]t.
+                    Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._; _Additions_, p. 4.
+
+         Or, in more modern German:--
+
+            Wie man auch jüngst von Portugal
+            Und Hispanien aus schier überall
+            Goldinseln fand und nakte Leute,
+            Von denen man erst weiss seit heute.
+                    _Das Narrenschiff_, ed. Simrock, Berlin, 1872, p. 161.
+
+         In the Latin version of 1497, now in the National Library at
+         Paris, it goes somewhat differently:--
+
+            Antea que fuerat priscis incognita tellus:
+              Exposita est oculis & manifesta patet.
+            Hesperie occidue rex Ferdinandus: in alto
+            Aequore nunc gentes repperit innumeras.
+                    Harrisse, _op. cit._; _Additions_, p. 7.
+
+         It will be observed that these foreign references are so
+         ungallant, and so incorrect, as to give all the credit to
+         Ferdinand, while poor Isabella is not mentioned!]
+
+         [Footnote 541: Harrisse, _op. cit._; _Additions_, p. 45.]
+
+         [Footnote 542: Harrisse, _Jean et Sebastien Cabot_, Paris,
+         1882, p. 15.]
+
+[Sidenote: Portuguese claim to the Indies.]
+
+North of the Alps and Pyrenees the interest in what was going on at the
+Spanish court in 1493 was probably confined to very few people. As for
+Venice and Genoa we have no adequate means of knowing how they felt
+about the matter,--a fact which in itself is significant. The interest
+was centred in Spain and Portugal. There it was intense and awakened
+fierce heart-burnings. Though John II. had not given his consent to the
+proposal for murdering Columbus, he appears to have seriously
+entertained the thought of sending a small fleet across the Atlantic as
+soon as possible, to take possession of some point in Cathay or Cipango
+and then dispute the claims of the Spaniards.[543] Such a summary
+proceeding might perhaps be defended on the ground that the grant from
+Pope Eugenius V. to the crown of Portugal expressly included "the
+Indies." In the treaty of 1479, moreover, Spain had promised not to
+interfere with the discoveries and possessions of the Portuguese.
+
+         [Footnote 543: Vasconcellos, _Vida del Rey Don Juan II._,
+         Madrid, 1639, lib. vi.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bulls of Pope Alexander VI.]
+
+But whatever King John may have intended, Ferdinand and Isabella were
+too quick for him. No sooner had Columbus arrived at Barcelona than an
+embassy was despatched to Rome, asking for a grant of the Indies just
+discovered by that navigator in the service of Castile. The notorious
+Rodrigo Borgia, who had lately been placed in the apostolic chair as
+Alexander VI., was a native of Valencia in the kingdom of Aragon, and
+would not be likely to refuse such a request through any excess of
+regard for Portugal. As between the two rival powers the pontiff's
+arrangement was made in a spirit of even-handed justice. On the 3d of
+May, 1493, he issued a bull conferring upon the Spanish sovereigns all
+lands already discovered or thereafter to be discovered in the western
+ocean, with jurisdiction and privileges in all respects similar to those
+formerly bestowed upon the crown of Portugal. This grant was made by the
+pope "out of our pure liberality, certain knowledge, and plenitude of
+apostolic power," and by virtue of "the authority of omnipotent God
+granted to us in St. Peter, and of the Vicarship of Jesus Christ which
+we administer upon the earth."[544] It was a substantial reward for the
+monarchs who had completed the overthrow of Mahometan rule in Spain, and
+it afforded them opportunities for further good work in converting the
+heathen inhabitants of the islands and mainland of Asia.[545]
+
+         [Footnote 544: "De nostra mera liberalitate, et ex certa
+         scientia, ac de apostolicæ potestatis plenitudine." ...
+         "auctoritate omnipotentis Dei nobis in beato Petro concessa, ac
+         vicariatus Jesu Christi qua fungimur in terris." The same
+         language is used in the second bull. Mr. Prescott (_Ferdinand
+         and Isabella_, part i. chap, vii.) translates _certa scientia_
+         "infallible knowledge," but in order to avoid any complications
+         with modern theories concerning papal infallibility, I prefer
+         to use a less technical word.]
+
+         [Footnote 545: A year or two later the sovereigns were further
+         rewarded with the decorative title of "Most Catholic." See
+         Zurita, _Historia del Rey Hernando_, Saragossa, 1580, lib. ii.
+         cap. xl.; Peter Martyr, _Epist._ clvii.]
+
+[Sidenote: Treaty of Tordesillas.]
+
+On the following day Alexander issued a second bull in order to prevent
+any occasion for quarrel between Spain and Portugal.[546] He decreed
+that all lands discovered or to be discovered to the west of a meridian
+one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde islands should
+belong to the Spaniards. Inasmuch as between the westernmost of the
+Azores and the easternmost of the Cape Verde group the difference in
+longitude is not far from ten degrees, this description must be allowed
+to be somewhat vague, especially in a document emanating from "certain
+knowledge;"[547] and it left open a source of future disputes which one
+would suppose the "plenitude of apostolic power" might have been
+worthily employed in closing. The meridian 25° W., however, would have
+satisfied the conditions, and the equitable intent of the arrangement is
+manifest. The Portuguese were left free to pursue their course of
+discovery and conquest along the routes which they had always preferred.
+King John, however, was not satisfied. He entertained vague hopes of
+finding spice islands, or something worth having, in the western waters;
+and he wished to have the Line of Demarcation carried farther to the
+west. After a year of diplomatic wrangling a treaty was signed at
+Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, in which Spain consented to the moving of the
+line to a distance of 370 leagues west from the Cape Verde islands.[548]
+It would thus on a modern map fall somewhere between the 41st and 44th
+meridians west of Greenwich. This amendment had important and curious
+consequences. It presently gave the Brazilian coast to the Portuguese,
+and thereupon played a leading part in the singular and complicated
+series of events that ended in giving the name of Americus Vespucius to
+that region, whence it was afterwards gradually extended to the whole
+western hemisphere.[549]
+
+         [Footnote 546: The complete text of this bull, with Richard
+         Eden's translation, is given at the end of this work; see
+         below, Appendix B. The official text is in _Magnum Bullarium
+         Romanum_, ed. Cherubini, Lyons, 1655, tom. i. p. 466. The
+         original document received by Ferdinand and Isabella is
+         preserved in the Archives of the Indies at Seville; it is
+         printed entire in Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. ii.
+         No. 18. Another copy, less complete, may be found in Raynaldus,
+         _Annales ecclesiastici_, Lucca, 1754, tom. xi. p. 214, No.
+         19-22; and another in Leibnitz, _Codex Diplomaticus_, tom. i.
+         pt. i. p. 471. It is often called the Bull "Inter Cetera," from
+         its opening words.
+
+         The origin of the pope's claim to apostolic authority for
+         giving away kingdoms is closely connected with the fictitious
+         "Donation of Constantine," an edict probably fabricated in Rome
+         about the middle of the eighth century. The title of the old
+         Latin text is _Edictum domini Constantini Imp._, apud
+         Pseudo-Isidorus, _Decretalia_. Constantine's transfer of the
+         seat of empire from the Tiber to the Bosphorus tended greatly
+         to increase the dignity and power of the papacy, and I presume
+         that the fabrication of this edict, four centuries afterward,
+         was the expression of a sincere belief that the first Christian
+         emperor _meant_ to leave the temporal supremacy over Italy in
+         the hands of the Roman see. The edict purported to be such a
+         donation from Constantine to Pope Sylvester I., but the extent
+         and character of the donation was stated with such vagueness as
+         to allow a wide latitude of interpretation. Its genuineness was
+         repeatedly called in question, but belief in it seems to have
+         grown in strength until after the thirteenth century. Leo IX.,
+         who was a strong believer in its genuineness, granted in 1054
+         to the Normans their conquests in Sicily and Calabria, to be
+         held as a fief of the Roman see. (Muratori, _Annali d' Italia_,
+         tom. vi. pt. ii. p. 245.) It was next used to sustain the papal
+         claim to suzerainty over the island of Corsica. A century later
+         John of Salisbury maintained the right of the pope to dispose
+         "of all _islands_ on which Christ, the Sun of righteousness,
+         hath shined," and in conformity with this opinion Pope Adrian
+         IV. (Nicholas Breakspeare, an Englishman) authorized in 1164
+         King Henry II. of England to invade and conquer Ireland. (See
+         Adrian IV., _Epist._ 76, apud Migne, _Patrologia_, tom.
+         clxxxviii.) Dr. Lanigan, in treating of this matter, is more an
+         Irishman than a papist, and derides "this nonsense of the
+         pope's being the head-owner of all Christian islands."
+         (_Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, vol. iv. p.
+         159.)--Gregory VII., in working up to the doctrine that all
+         Christian kingdoms should be held as fiefs under St. Peter
+         (Baronius, _Annales_, tom. xvii. p. 430; cf. Villemain,
+         _Histoire de Grégoire VII._, Paris, 1873, tom. ii. pp. 59-61),
+         does not seem to have appealed to the Donation. Perhaps he was
+         shrewd enough to foresee the kind of objection afterwards
+         raised by the Albigensians, who pithily declared that if the
+         suzerainty of the popes was derived from the Donation, then
+         they were successors of Constantine and not of St. Peter.
+         (Moneta Cremonensis, _Adversus Catharos et Waldenses_, ed.
+         Ricchini, Rome, 1743, v. 2.) But Innocent IV. summarily
+         disposed of this argument at the Council of Lyons in 1245, when
+         he deposed the Emperor Frederick II. and King Sancho II. of
+         Portugal,--saying that Christ himself had bestowed temporal as
+         well as spiritual headship upon St. Peter and his successors,
+         so that Constantine only gave up to the Church what belonged to
+         it already. The opposite or Ghibelline theory was eloquently
+         set forth by Dante, in his treatise _De Monarchia_; he held
+         that inasmuch as the Empire existed before the Church, it could
+         not be derived from it. Dante elsewhere expressed his
+         abhorrence of the Donation:--
+
+            Ahi Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,
+              Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
+              Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!
+                                   _Inferno_, xix. 115.
+
+         Similar sentiments were expressed by many of the most popular
+         poets from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. Walther von
+         der Vogelweide was sure that if the first Christian emperor
+         could have foreseen the evils destined to flow from his
+         Donation, he would have withheld it:--
+
+            Solte ich den pfaffen raten an den triuwen min,
+            So spræche ir haut den armen zuo: se, daz ist din,
+            Ir zunge sünge, unde lieze mengem man daz sin,
+            Gedæhten daz ouch si dur Got wæren almuosenære.
+            Do gab ir erste teil der Kuenik Konstantin,
+            Het er gewest, daz da von uebel kuenftik wære,
+            So het er wol underkomen des riches swære,
+            Wan daz si do waren kiusche, und uebermuete lære.
+                         Hagen, _Minnesinger-Sammlung_, Leipsic, 1838,
+                         bd. i. p. 270.
+
+         Ariosto, in a passage rollicking with satire, makes his
+         itinerant paladin find the "stinking" Donation in the course of
+         his journey upon the moon:--
+
+            Di varii fiori ad un gran monte passa,
+            Ch' ebber già buono odore, or puzzan forte,
+            Questo era il dono, se però dir lece,
+            Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece.
+                         _Orlando Furioso_, xxxiv. 80.
+
+         The Donation was finally proved to be a forgery by Laurentius
+         Valla in 1440, in his _De falso credita et ementita Constantini
+         donatione declamatio_ (afterward spread far and wide by Ulrich
+         von Hutten), and independently by the noble Reginald Pecock,
+         bishop of Chichester, in his _Repressor_, written about
+         1447.--During the preceding century the theory of Gregory VII.
+         and Innocent IV. had been carried to its uttermost extreme by
+         the Franciscan monk Alvaro Pelayo, in his _De Planctu
+         Ecclesiæ_, written at Avignon during the "Babylonish
+         Captivity," about 1350 (printed at Venice in 1560), and by
+         Agostino Trionfi, in his _Summa de potestate ecclesiastica_,
+         Augsburg, 1473, an excessively rare book, of which there is a
+         copy in the British Museum. These writers maintained that the
+         popes were suzerains of the whole earth and had absolute power
+         to dispose not only of all Christian kingdoms, but also of all
+         heathen lands and powers. It was upon this theory that Eugenius
+         IV. seems to have acted with reference to Portugal and
+         Alexander VI. with reference to Spain. Of course there was
+         never a time when such claims for the papacy were not denied by
+         a large party within the Church. The Spanish sovereigns in
+         appealing to Alexander VI. took care to hint that some of their
+         advisers regarded them as already entitled to enjoy the fruits
+         of their discoveries, even before obtaining the papal
+         permission, but they did not choose to act upon that opinion
+         (Herrera, decad. i. lib. ii. cap. 4). The kings of Portugal
+         were less reserved in their submission. In _Valasci Ferdinandi
+         ad Innocentium octauum de obedientia oratio_, a small quarto
+         printed at Rome about 1488, John II. did homage to the pope for
+         the countries just discovered by Bartholomew Dias. His
+         successor Emanuel did the same after the voyages of Gama and
+         Vespucius. In a small quarto, _Obedientia potentissimi
+         Emanuelis Lusitaniæ regis &c. per clarissimum juris consultum
+         Dieghum Pacett[=u] oratorem ad Iuli[=u] Pont. Max._, Rome,
+         1505, all the newly found lands are laid at the feet of Julius
+         II. in a passage that ends with words worth noting: "Accipe
+         tandem orbem ipsum terrarum, Deus enim noster es," i. e.
+         "Accept in fine the earth itself, for thou art our God."
+         Similar homage was rendered to Leo X. in 1513, on account of
+         Albuquerque's conquests in Asia.--We may suspect that if the
+         papacy had retained, at the end of the fifteenth century,
+         anything like the overshadowing power which it possessed at the
+         end of the twelfth, the kings of Portugal would not have been
+         quite so unstinted in their homage. As it came to be less of a
+         reality and more of a flourish of words, it cost less to offer
+         it. Among some modern Catholics I have observed a disposition
+         to imagine that in the famous bull of partition Alexander VI.
+         acted not as supreme pontiff but merely as an arbiter, in the
+         modern sense, between the crowns of Spain and Portugal; but
+         such an interpretation is hardly compatible with Alexander's
+         own words. An arbiter, as such, does not make awards by virtue
+         of "the authority of Omnipotent God granted to us in St. Peter,
+         and of the Vicarship of Jesus Christ which we administer upon
+         the earth."
+
+         Since writing this note my attention has been called to Dr.
+         Ignaz von Döllinger's _Fables respecting the Popes of the
+         Middle Ages_, London, 1871; and I find in it a chapter on the
+         Donation of Constantine, in which the subject is treated with a
+         wealth of learning. Some of my brief references are there
+         discussed at considerable length. To the references to Dante
+         there is added a still more striking passage, where Constantine
+         is admitted into Heaven _in spite of_ his Donation (_Paradiso_,
+         xx. 55).]
+
+         [Footnote 547: The language of the bull is even more vague than
+         my version in the text. His Holiness describes the lands to be
+         given to the Spaniards as lying "to the west and south" (versus
+         occidentem et meridiem) of his dividing meridian. Land to the
+         south of a meridian would be in a queer position! Probably it
+         was meant to say that the Spaniards, once west of the papal
+         meridian, might go south as well as north. For the king of
+         Portugal had suggested that they ought to confine themselves to
+         northern waters.]
+
+         [Footnote 548: For the original Spanish text of the treaty of
+         Tordesillas, see Navarrete, tom. ii. pp. 116-130.]
+
+         [Footnote 549: See below, vol. ii. pp. 98-154.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca.]
+
+Already in April, 1493, without waiting for the papal sanction,
+Ferdinand and Isabella bent all their energies to the work of fitting
+out an expedition for taking possession of "the Indies." First, a
+department of Indian affairs was created, and at its head was placed
+Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, archdeacon of Seville: in Spain a man in high
+office was apt to be a clergyman. This Fonseca was all-powerful in
+Indian affairs for the next thirty years. He won and retained the
+confidence of the sovereigns by virtue of his executive ability. He was
+a man of coarse fibre, ambitious and domineering, cold-hearted and
+perfidious, with a cynical contempt--such as low-minded people are apt
+to call "smart"--for the higher human feelings. He was one of those ugly
+customers who crush, without a twinge of compunction, whatever comes in
+their way. The slightest opposition made him furious, and his
+vindictiveness was insatiable. This dexterous and pushing Fonseca held
+one after another the bishoprics of Badajoz, Cordova, Palencia, and
+Conde, the archbishopric of Rosano in Italy, together with the bishopric
+of Burgos, and he was also principal chaplain to Isabella and afterwards
+to Ferdinand. As Sir Arthur Helps observes, "the student of early
+American history will have a bad opinion of many Spanish bishops, if he
+does not discover that it is Bishop Fonseca who reappears under
+various designations."[550] Sir Arthur fitly calls him "the ungodly
+bishop."
+
+         [Footnote 550: _History of the Spanish Conquest_, vol. i. p.
+         487.]
+
+[Sidenote: Friar Boyle.]
+
+The headquarters of Fonseca and of the Indian department were
+established at Seville, and a special Indian custom-house was set up at
+Cadiz. There was to be another custom-house upon the island of
+Hispaniola (supposed to be Japan), and a minute registry was to be kept
+of all ships and their crews and cargoes, going out or coming in. Nobody
+was to be allowed to go to the Indies for any purpose whatever without a
+license formally obtained. Careful regulations were made for hampering
+trade and making everything as vexatious as possible for traders,
+according to the ordinary wisdom of governments in such matters. All
+expenses were to be borne and all profits received by the crown of
+Castile, saving the rights formerly guaranteed to Columbus. The cost of
+the present expedition was partly defrayed with stolen money, the
+plunder wrung from the worthy and industrious Jews who had been driven
+from their homes by the infernal edict of the year before. Extensive
+"requisitions" were also made; in other words, when the sovereigns
+wanted a ship or a barrel of gunpowder they seized it, and impressed it
+into the good work of converting the heathen. To superintend this
+missionary work, a Franciscan monk[551] was selected who had lately
+distinguished himself as a diplomatist in the dispute with France over
+the border province of Rousillon. This person was a native of Catalonia,
+and his name was Bernardo Boyle, which strongly suggests an Irish
+origin. Alexander VI. appointed him his apostolic vicar for the
+Indies,[552] and he seems to have been the first clergyman to perform
+mass on the western shores of the Atlantic. To assist the vicar, the six
+Indians brought over by Columbus were baptized at Barcelona, with the
+king and queen for their godfather and godmother. It was hoped that they
+would prove useful as missionaries, and when one of them presently died
+he was said to be the first Indian ever admitted to heaven.[553]
+
+         [Footnote 551: Irving calls him a Benedictine, but he is
+         addressed as "fratri ordinis Minorum" in the bull clothing him
+         with apostolic authority in the Indies, June 25, 1493. See
+         Raynaldus, _Annales ecclesiastici_, tom. xi. p. 216. I cannot
+         imagine what M. Harrisse means by calling him "religieux de
+         Saint-Vincent de Paule" (_Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. p. 55).
+         Vincent de Paul was not born till 1576.]
+
+         [Footnote 552: Not for "the New World," as Irving carelessly
+         has it in his _Columbus_, vol. i. p. 346. No such phrase had
+         been thought of in 1493, or until long afterward.]
+
+         [Footnote 553: Herrera, _Hist. de las Indias_, decad. i. lib.
+         ii. cap. 5.]
+
+The three summer months were occupied in fitting out the little fleet.
+There were fourteen caravels, and three larger store-ships known as
+carracks. Horses, mules, and other cattle were put on board,[554] as
+well as vines and sugar-canes, and the seeds of several European
+cereals, for it was intended to establish a permanent colony upon
+Hispaniola. In the course of this work some slight matters of
+disagreement came up between Columbus and Fonseca, and the question
+having been referred to the sovereigns, Fonseca was mildly snubbed and
+told that he must in all respects be guided by the Admiral's wishes.
+From that time forth this ungodly prelate nourished a deadly hatred
+toward Columbus, and never lost an opportunity for whispering evil
+things about him. The worst of the grievous afflictions that afterward
+beset the great discoverer must be ascribed to the secret machinations
+of this wretch.
+
+         [Footnote 554: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xliv.]
+
+[Sidenote: Notable persons who embarked on the second voyage.]
+
+At last the armament was ready. People were so eager to embark that it
+was felt necessary to restrain them. It was not intended to have more
+than 1,200, but about 1,500 in all contrived to go, so that some of the
+caravels must have been overcrowded. The character of the company was
+very different from that of the year before. Those who went in the first
+voyage were chiefly common sailors. Now there were many aristocratic
+young men, hot-blooded and feather-headed hidalgos whom the surrender of
+Granada had left without an occupation. Most distinguished among these
+was Alonso de Ojeda, a dare-devil of unrivalled muscular strength, full
+of energy and fanfaronade, and not without generous qualities, but with
+very little soundness of judgment or character. Other notable personages
+in this expedition were Columbus's youngest brother Giacomo (henceforth
+called Diego), who had come from Genoa at the first news of the
+Admiral's triumphant return; the monk Antonio de Marchena,[555] whom
+historians have so long confounded with the prior Juan Perez; an
+Aragonese gentleman named Pedro Margarite, a favourite of the king and
+destined to work sad mischief; Juan Ponce de Leon, who afterwards gave
+its name to Florida; Francisco de Las Casas, father of the great apostle
+and historian of the Indies; and, last but not least, the pilot Juan de
+La Cosa, now charged with the work of chart-making, in which he was an
+acknowledged master.[556]
+
+         [Footnote 555: He went as astronomer, from which we may perhaps
+         suppose that scientific considerations had made him one of the
+         earliest and most steadfast upholders of Columbus's views.]
+
+         [Footnote 556: See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. pp.
+         55, 56; Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 498;
+         Fabié, _Vida de Las Casas_, Madrid, 1879, tom. i. p. 11;
+         Oviedo, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 467; Navarrete,
+         _Coleccion de viages_, tom. ii. pp. 143-149.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cruise among the cannibal islands.]
+
+The pomp and bustle of the departure from Cadiz, September 25, 1493, at
+which the Admiral's two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, were present, must
+have been one of the earliest recollections of the younger boy, then
+just five years of age.[557] Again Columbus stopped at the Canary
+islands, this time to take on board goats and sheep, pigs and fowls, for
+he had been struck by the absence of all such animals on the coasts
+which he had visited.[558] Seeds of melons, oranges, and lemons were
+also taken. On the 7th of October the ships weighed anchor, heading a
+trifle to the south of west, and after a pleasant and uneventful voyage
+they sighted land on the 3d of November.[559] It turned out to be a
+small mountainous island, and as it was discovered on Sunday they called
+it Dominica. In a fortnight's cruise in these Caribbean waters they
+discovered and named several islands, such as Marigalante, Guadaloupe,
+Antigua, and others, and at length reached Porto Rico. The inhabitants
+of these islands were ferocious cannibals, very different from the
+natives encountered on the former voyage. There were skirmishes in which
+a few Spaniards were killed with poisoned arrows. On Guadaloupe the
+natives lived in square houses made of saplings intertwined with reeds,
+and on the rude porticoes attached to these houses some of the wooden
+pieces were carved so as to look like serpents. In some of these houses
+human limbs were hanging from the roof, cured with smoke, like ham; and
+fresh pieces of human flesh were found stewing in earthen kettles, along
+with the flesh of parrots. Now at length, said Peter Martyr, was proved
+the truth of the stories of Polyphemus and the Læstrygonians, and the
+reader must look out lest his hair stand on end.[560] These western
+Læstrygonians were known as Caribbees, Caribales, or Canibales, and have
+thus furnished an epithet which we have since learned to apply to
+man-eaters the world over.
+
+         [Footnote 557: "E con questo preparamento il mercoledé ai 25
+         del mese di settembre dell' anno 1493 un' ora avanti il levar
+         del sole, essendovi io e mio fratel presenti, l' Ammiraglio
+         levò le ancore," etc. _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xliv.]
+
+         [Footnote 558: Eight sows were bought for 70 maravedis apiece,
+         and "destas ocho puercas se han multiplicado todos los puercos
+         que, hasta hoy, ha habido y hay en todas estas Indias," etc.
+         Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. ii. p. 3.]
+
+         [Footnote 559: The relation of this second voyage by Dr. Chanca
+         may be found in Navarrete, tom. i. pp. 198-241; an interesting
+         relation in Italian by Simone Verde, a Florentine merchant then
+         living in Valladolid, is published in Harrisse, _Christophe
+         Colomb_, tom. ii. pp. 68-78. The narrative of the curate of Los
+         Palacios is of especial value for this voyage.]
+
+         [Footnote 560: Martyr, _Epist._ cxlvii. _ad Pomponium Lætum_;
+         cf. _Odyssey_, x. 119; Thucyd. vi. 2.--Irving (vol. i. p. 385)
+         finds it hard to believe these stories, but the prevalence of
+         cannibalism, not only in these islands, but throughout a very
+         large part of aboriginal America, has been superabundantly
+         proved.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fate of the colony at La Navidad.]
+
+It was late at night on the 27th of November that Columbus arrived in
+the harbour of La Navidad and fired a salute to arouse the attention of
+the party that had been left there the year before. There was no reply
+and the silence seemed fraught with evil omen. On going ashore next
+morning and exploring the neighbourhood, the Spaniards came upon sights
+of dismal significance. The fortress was pulled to pieces and partly
+burnt, the chests of provisions were broken open and emptied, tools and
+fragments of European clothing were found in the houses of the natives,
+and finally eleven corpses, identifiable as those of white men, were
+found buried near the fort. Not one of the forty men who had been left
+behind in that place ever turned up to tell the tale. The little colony
+of La Navidad had been wiped out of existence. From the Indians,
+however, Columbus gathered bits of information that made a sufficiently
+probable story. It was a typical instance of the beginnings of
+colonization in wild countries. In such instances human nature has shown
+considerable uniformity. Insubordination and deadly feuds among
+themselves had combined with reckless outrages upon the natives to
+imperil the existence of this little party of rough sailors. The cause
+to which Horace ascribes so many direful wars, both before and since the
+days of fairest Helen, seems to have been the principal cause on this
+occasion. At length a fierce chieftain named Caonabo, from the region of
+Xaragua, had attacked the Spaniards in overwhelming force, knocked their
+blockhouse about their heads, and butchered all that were left of them.
+
+[Sidenote: Building of Isabella.]
+
+[Sidenote: Exploration of Cibao.]
+
+This was a gloomy welcome to the land of promise. There was nothing to
+be done but to build new fortifications and found a town. The site
+chosen for this new settlement, which was named Isabella, was at a good
+harbour about thirty miles east of Monte Christi. It was chosen because
+Columbus understood from the natives that it was not far from there to
+the gold-bearing mountains of Cibao, a name which still seemed to
+signify Cipango. Quite a neat little town was presently built, with
+church, marketplace, public granary, and dwelling-houses, the whole
+encompassed with a stone wall. An exploring party led by Ojeda into the
+mountains of Cibao found gold dust and pieces of gold ore in the beds of
+the brooks, and returned elated with this discovery. Twelve of the ships
+were now sent back to Spain for further supplies and reinforcements, and
+specimens of the gold were sent as an earnest of what was likely to be
+found. At length, in March, 1494, Columbus set forth, with 400 armed
+men, to explore the Cibao country. The march was full of interest. It is
+upon this occasion that we first find mention of the frantic terror
+manifested by Indians at the sight of horses. At first they supposed the
+horse and his rider to be a kind of centaur, and when the rider
+dismounted this separation of one creature into two overwhelmed them
+with supernatural terror. Even when they had begun to get over this
+notion they were in dread of being eaten by the horses.[561] These
+natives lived in houses grouped into villages, and had carved wooden
+idols and rude estufas for their tutelar divinities. It was ascertained
+that different tribes tried to steal each other's idols and even fought
+for the possession of valuable objects of "medicine."[562] Columbus
+observed and reported the customs of these people with some minuteness.
+There was nothing that agreed with Marco Polo's descriptions of Cipango,
+but so far as concerned the discovery of gold mines, the indications
+were such as to leave little doubt of the success of this
+reconnaissance. The Admiral now arranged his forces so as to hold the
+inland regions just visited and gave the general command to Margarite,
+who was to continue the work of exploration. He left his brother, Diego
+Columbus, in charge of the colony, and taking three caravels set sail
+from Isabella on the 24th of April, on a cruise of discovery in these
+Asiatic waters.
+
+         [Footnote 561: For an instance of 400 hostile Indians fleeing
+         before a single armed horseman, see _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_,
+         cap. lii.; Las Casas, _Hist._ tom. ii. p. 46.]
+
+         [Footnote 562: Compare the Fisherman's story of Drogio, above,
+         pp. 246, 252.]
+
+[Illustration: Discoveries made by Columbus in his first and second
+voyages.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cape Alpha and Omega.]
+
+A brief westward sail brought the little squadron into the Windward
+Passage and in sight of Cape Mayzi, which Columbus on his first voyage
+had named Cape Alpha and Omega as being the easternmost point on the
+Chinese coast. He believed that if he were to sail to the right of this
+cape he should have the continent on his port side for a thousand miles
+and more, as far as Quinsay and Cambaluc (Peking). If he had sailed
+in this direction and had succeeded in keeping to the east of Florida,
+he would have kept a continent on his port side, and a thousand miles
+would have taken him a long way toward that Vinland which our
+Scandinavian friends would fondly have us believe was his secret
+guiding-star, and the geographical position of which they suppose him to
+have known with such astounding accuracy. But on this as on other
+occasions, if the Admiral had ever received any information about
+Vinland, it must be owned that he treated it very cavalierly, for he
+chose the course to the left of Cape Mayzi. His decision is intelligible
+if we bear in mind that he had not yet circumnavigated Hayti and was not
+yet cured of his belief that its northern shore was the shore of the
+great Cipango. At the same time he had seen enough on his first voyage
+to convince him that the relative positions of Cipango and the mainland
+of Cathay were not correctly laid down upon the Toscanelli map. He had
+already inspected two or three hundred miles of the coast to the right
+of Cape Mayzi without finding traces of civilization; and whenever
+inquiries were made about gold or powerful kingdoms the natives
+invariably pointed to the south or southwest. Columbus, therefore,
+decided to try his luck in this direction. He passed to the left of Cape
+Mayzi and followed the southern coast of Cuba.
+
+[Sidenote: Discovery of Jamaica.]
+
+By the 3d of May the natives were pointing so persistently to the south
+and off to sea that he changed his course in that direction and soon
+came upon the northern coast of the island which we still know by its
+native name Jamaica. Here he found Indians more intelligent and more
+warlike than any he had as yet seen. He was especially struck with the
+elegance of their canoes, some of them nearly a hundred feet in length,
+carved and hollowed from the trunks of tall trees. We may already
+observe that different tribes of Indians comported themselves very
+differently at the first sight of white men. While the natives of some
+of the islands prostrated themselves in adoration of these
+sky-creatures, or behaved with a timorous politeness which the Spaniards
+mistook for gentleness of disposition, in other places the red men
+showed fight at once, acting upon the brute impulse to drive away
+strangers. In both cases, of course, dread of the unknown was the
+prompting impulse, though so differently manifested. As the Spaniards
+went ashore upon Jamaica, the Indians greeted them with a shower of
+javelins and for a few moments stood up against the deadly fire of the
+cross-bows, but when they turned to flee, a single bloodhound, let loose
+upon them, scattered them in wildest panic.[563]
+
+         [Footnote 563: Bernaldez, _Reyes Católicos_, cap. cxxv.
+         Domesticated dogs were found generally in aboriginal America,
+         but they were very paltry curs compared to these fierce hounds,
+         one of which could handle an unarmed man as easily as a terrier
+         handles a rat.]
+
+[Sidenote: Coasting the south side of Cuba.]
+
+Finding no evidences of civilization upon this beautiful island,
+Columbus turned northward and struck the Cuban coast again at the point
+which still bears the name he gave it, Cape Cruz. Between the general
+contour of this end of Cuba and that of the eastern extremity of Cathay
+upon the Toscanelli map there is a curious resemblance, save that the
+direction is in the one case more east and west and in the other more
+north and south. Columbus passed no cities like Zaiton, nor cities of
+any sort, but when he struck into the smiling archipelago which he
+called the Queen's Gardens, now known as Cayos de las Doce Leguas, he
+felt sure that he was among Marco Polo's seven thousand spice islands.
+On the 3d of June, at some point on the Cuban coast, probably near
+Trinidad, the crops of several doves were opened and spices found in
+them. None of the natives here had ever heard of an end to Cuba, and
+they believed it was endless.[564] The next country to the west of
+themselves was named Mangon, and it was inhabited by people with tails
+which they carefully hid by wearing loose robes of cloth. This
+information seemed decisive to Columbus. Evidently this Mangon was
+Mangi, the province in which was the city of Zaiton, the province just
+south of Cathay. And as for the tailed men, the book of Mandeville had a
+story of some naked savages in eastern Asia who spoke of their more
+civilized neighbours as wearing clothes in order to cover up some bodily
+peculiarity or defect. Could there be any doubt that the Spanish
+caravels had come at length to the coast of opulent Mangi?[565]
+
+         [Footnote 564: As a Greek would have said, [Greek: êpeiros], a
+         continent.]
+
+         [Footnote 565: Bernaldez, _Reyes Católicos_, cap. cxxvii, Mr.
+         Irving, in citing these same incidents from Bernaldez, could
+         not quite rid himself of the feeling that there was something
+         strange or peculiar in the Admiral's method of interpreting
+         such information: "Animated by one of the pleasing illusions of
+         his ardent imagination, Columbus pursued his voyage, with a
+         prosperous breeze, along the supposed continent of Asia."
+         (_Life of Columbus_, vol. i. p. 493.) This lends a false colour
+         to the picture, which the general reader is pretty sure to make
+         still falser. To suppose the southern coast of Cuba to be the
+         southern coast of Toscanelli's Mangi required no illusion of an
+         "ardent imagination." It was simply a plain common-sense
+         conclusion reached by sober reasoning from such data as were
+         then accessible (i. e. the Toscanelli map, amended by
+         information such as was understood to be given by the natives);
+         it was more probable than any other theory of the situation
+         likely to be devised from those data; and it seems fanciful to
+         us to-day only because knowledge acquired since the time of
+         Columbus has shown us how far from correct it was. Modern
+         historians abound in unconscious turns of expression--as in
+         this quotation from Irving--which project modern knowledge back
+         into the past, and thus destroy the historical perspective. I
+         shall mention several other instances from Irving, and the
+         reader must not suppose that this is any indication of
+         captiousness on my part toward a writer for whom my only
+         feeling is that of sincerest love and veneration.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "people of Mangon."]
+
+[Sidenote: The Golden Chersonese.]
+
+Under the influence of this belief, when a few days later they landed in
+search of fresh water, and a certain archer, on the lookout for game,
+caught distant glimpses of a flock of tall white cranes feeding in an
+everglade, he fled to his comrades with the story that he had seen a
+party of men clad in long white tunics, and all agreed that these must
+be the people of Mangon.[566] Columbus sent a small company ashore to
+find them. It is needless to add that the search was fruitless, but
+footprints of alligators, interpreted as footprints of griffins guarding
+hoarded gold,[567] frightened the men back to their ships. From the
+natives, with whom the Spaniards could converse only by signs, they
+seemed to learn that they were going toward the realm of Prester
+John;[568] and in such wise did they creep along the coast to the point,
+some fifty miles west of Broa Bay, where it begins to trend decidedly to
+the southwest. Before they had reached Point Mangles, a hundred miles
+farther on, inasmuch as they found this southwesterly trend persistent,
+the proof that they were upon the coast of the Asiatic continent began
+to seem complete. Columbus thought that they had passed the point (lat.
+23°, long. 145° on Toscanelli's map) where the coast of Asia began to
+trend steadily toward the southwest.[569] By pursuing this coast he felt
+sure that he would eventually reach the peninsula (Malacca) which
+Ptolemy, who knew of it only by vague hearsay, called the Golden
+Chersonese.[570] An immense idea now flitted through the mind of
+Columbus. If he could reach and double that peninsula he could then find
+his way to the mouth of the Ganges river; thence he might cross the
+Indian ocean, pass the Cape of Good Hope (for Dias had surely shown that
+the way was open), and return that way to Spain after circumnavigating
+the globe! But fate had reserved this achievement for another man of
+great heart and lofty thoughts, a quarter of a century later, who should
+indeed accomplish what Columbus dreamed, but only after crossing another
+Sea of Darkness, the most stupendous body of water on our globe, the
+mere existence of which until after Columbus had died no European ever
+suspected.[571] If Columbus had now sailed about a hundred miles
+farther, he would have found the end of Cuba, and might perhaps have
+skirted the northern shore of Yucatan and come upon the barbaric
+splendours of Uxmal and Campeche. The excitement which such news would
+have caused in Spain might perhaps have changed all the rest of his life
+and saved him from the worst of his troubles. But the crews were now
+unwilling to go farther, and the Admiral realized that it would be
+impossible to undertake such a voyage as he had in mind with no more
+than their present outfit. So it was decided to return to Hispaniola.
+
+         [Footnote 566: These tropical birds are called _soldados_, or
+         "soldiers," because their stately attitudes remind one of
+         sentinels on duty. The whole town of Angostura, in Venezuela,
+         was one day frightened out of its wits by the sudden appearance
+         of a flock of these cranes on the summit of a neighbouring
+         hill. They were mistaken for a war-party of Indians. Humboldt,
+         _Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent_, tom.
+         ii. p. 314.]
+
+         [Footnote 567: See above, p. 287, note.]
+
+         [Footnote 568: For these events, see Bernaldez, _Reyes
+         Católicos_, cap. cxxiii.; F. Columbus, _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_,
+         cap. lvi.; Muñoz, _Historia del Nuevo Mundo_, lib. v. § 16;
+         Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. iv. pp. 237-263; Irving's
+         _Columbus_, vol. i. pp. 491-504.]
+
+         [Footnote 569: That is to say, he thought he had passed the
+         coast of Mangi (southern China) and reached the beginning of
+         the coast of Champa (Cochin China; see Yule's _Marco Polo_,
+         vol. ii. p. 213). The name Champa, coming to European writers
+         through an Italian source, was written Ciampa and Ciamba. See
+         its position on the Behaim and Toscanelli maps, and also on
+         Ruysch's map, 1508, below, vol. ii. p. 114. Peter Martyr says
+         that Columbus was sure that he had reached the coast of
+         Gangetic (i. e. what we call Farther) India: "Indiæ Gangetidis
+         continentem eam (Cubæ) plagam esse contendit Colonus." _Epist._
+         xciii. _ad Bernardinum_. Of course Columbus understood that
+         this region, while agreeing well enough with Toscanelli's
+         latitude, was far from agreeing with his longitude. But from
+         the moment when he turned eastward on his first voyage he seems
+         to have made up his mind that Toscanelli's longitudes needed
+         serious amendment. Indeed he had always used different
+         measurements from Toscanelli.]
+
+         [Footnote 570: For an account of Ptolemy's almost purely
+         hypothetical and curiously distorted notions about southeastern
+         Asia, see Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. ii.
+         pp. 604-608.]
+
+         [Footnote 571: See below, vol. ii. pp. 200-210.]
+
+Upon consultation with La Cosa and others, it was unanimously agreed
+that they were upon the coast of the continent of Asia. The evidence
+seemed conclusive. From Cape Mayzi (Alpha and Omega) they had observed,
+upon their own reckoning, 335 leagues, or about 1,000 geographical
+miles, of continuous coast running steadily in nearly the same
+direction.[572] Clearly it was too long for the coast of an island; and
+then there was the name Mangon = Mangi. The only puzzling circumstance
+was that they did not find any of Marco Polo's cities. They kept getting
+scraps of information which seemed to refer to gorgeous kingdoms, but
+these were always in the dim distance. Still there was no doubt that
+they had discovered the coast of a continent, and of course such a
+continent could be nothing else but Asia!
+
+         [Footnote 572: The length of Cuba from Cape Mayzi to Cape San
+         Antonio is about 700 English miles. But in following the
+         sinuosities of the coast, and including tacks, the estimate of
+         these pilots was probably not far from correct.]
+
+[Sidenote: A solemn expression of opinion.]
+
+Such unanimity of opinion might seem to leave nothing to be desired. But
+Columbus had already met with cavillers. Before he started on this
+cruise from Isabella, some impatient hidalgos, disgusted at finding much
+to do and little to get, had begun to hint that the Admiral was a
+humbug, and that his "Indies" were no such great affair after all. In
+order to silence these ill-natured critics, he sent his notary,
+accompanied by four witnesses, to every person in those three caravels,
+to get a sworn statement. If anybody had a grain of doubt about this
+coast being the coast of Asia, so that you could go ashore there and
+walk on dry land all the way to Spain if so disposed, let him declare
+his doubts once for all, so that they might now be duly considered. No
+one expressed any doubts. All declared, under oath, their firm belief.
+It was then agreed that if any of the number should thereafter deny or
+contradict this sworn statement, he should have his tongue slit;[573]
+and if an officer, he should be further punished with a fine of 10,000
+maravedis, or if a sailor, with a hundred lashes. These proceedings were
+embodied in a formal document, dated June 12, 1494, which is still to be
+seen in the Archives of the Indies at Seville.[574]
+
+         [Footnote 573: "É cortada la lengua;" "y le cortarian la
+         lengua." Irving understands it to mean cutting off the tongue.
+         But in those days of symbolism slitting the tip of that unruly
+         member was a recognized punishment for serious lying.]
+
+         [Footnote 574: It is printed in full in Navarrete, torn. ii.
+         pp. 143-149.]
+
+Having disposed of this solemn matter, the three caravels turned
+eastward, touching at the Isle of Pines and coasting back along the
+south side of Cuba. The headland where the Admiral first became
+convinced of the significance of the curvature of the coast, he named
+Cape of Good Hope,[575] believing it to be much nearer the goal which
+all were seeking than the other cape of that name, discovered by Dias
+seven years before.
+
+         [Footnote 575: It is given upon La Cosa's map; see below, vol.
+         ii., frontispiece.]
+
+[Sidenote: Vicissitudes of theory.]
+
+It will be remembered that the Admiral, upon his first voyage, had
+carried home with him two theories,--first, that in the Cuban coast he
+had already discovered that of the continent of Asia, secondly that
+Hispaniola was Cipango. The first theory seemed to be confirmed by
+further experience; the second was now to receive a serious shock.
+Leaving Cape Cruz the caravels stood over to Jamaica, leisurely explored
+the southern side of that island, and as soon as adverse winds would let
+them, kept on eastward till land appeared on the port bow. Nobody
+recognized it until an Indian chief who had learned some Spanish hailed
+them from the shore and told them it was Hispaniola. They then followed
+that southern coast its whole length, discovering the tiny islands,
+Beata, Saona, and Mona. Here Columbus, overcome by long-sustained
+fatigue and excitement, suddenly fell into a death-like lethargy, and in
+this sad condition was carried all the way to Isabella, and to his own
+house, where he was put to bed. Hispaniola had thus been
+circumnavigated, and either it was not Cipango or else that wonderland
+must be a much smaller affair than Toscanelli and Martin Behaim had
+depicted it.[576] There was something truly mysterious about these
+Strange Coasts!
+
+         [Footnote 576: Hispaniola continued, however, for many years to
+         be commonly identified with Cipango. See note D on Ruysch's
+         map, 1508, below, vol. ii. p. 114.]
+
+[Sidenote: Arrival of Bartholomew Columbus.]
+
+When Columbus, after many days, recovered consciousness, he found his
+brother Bartholomew standing by his bedside. It was six years since they
+had last parted company at Lisbon, whence the younger brother started
+for England, while the elder returned to Spain. The news of
+Christopher's return from his first voyage found Bartholomew in Paris,
+whence he started as soon as he could for Seville, but did not arrive
+there until just after the second expedition had started. Presently the
+sovereigns sent him with three ships to Hispaniola, to carry supplies to
+the colony; and there he arrived while the Admiral was exploring the
+coast of Cuba. The meeting of the two brothers was a great relief to
+both. The affection between them was very strong, and each was a support
+for the other. The Admiral at once proceeded to appoint Bartholomew to
+the office of Adelantado, which in this instance was equivalent to
+making him governor of Hispaniola under himself, the Viceroy of the
+Indies. In making this appointment Columbus seems to have exceeded the
+authority granted him by the second article of his agreement of April,
+1492, with the sovereigns;[577] but they mended the matter in 1497 by
+themselves investing Bartholomew with the office and dignity of
+Adelantado.[578]
+
+         [Footnote 577: See above, p. 417.]
+
+         [Footnote 578: Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. ii. p.
+         80.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mutiny in Hispaniola; desertion of Boyle and Margarite.]
+
+Columbus was in need of all the aid he could summon, for, during his
+absence, the island had become a pandemonium. His brother Diego, a man
+of refined and studious habits, who afterwards became a priest, was too
+mild in disposition to govern the hot-heads who had come to Hispaniola
+to get rich without labour. They would not submit to the rule of this
+foreigner. Instead of doing honest work they roamed about the island,
+abusing the Indians and slaying one another in silly quarrels. Chief
+among the offenders was King Ferdinand's favourite, the commander
+Margarite; and he was aided and abetted by Friar Boyle. Some time after
+Bartholomew's arrival, these two men of Aragon gathered about them a
+party of malcontents and, seizing the ships which had brought that
+mariner, sailed away to Spain. Making their way to court, they sought
+pardon for thus deserting the colony, saying that duty to their
+sovereigns demanded that they should bring home a report of what was
+going on in the Indies. They decried the value of Columbus's
+discoveries, and reminded the king that Hispaniola was taking money out
+of the treasury much faster than it was putting it in; an argument well
+calculated to influence Ferdinand that summer, for he was getting ready
+to go to war with France over the Naples affair. Then the two recreants
+poured forth a stream of accusations against the brothers Columbus, the
+general purport of which was that they were gross tyrants not fit to be
+trusted with the command of Spaniards.
+
+[Sidenote: The government of Columbus was not tyrannical.]
+
+No marked effect seems to have been produced by these first complaints,
+but when Margarite and Boyle were once within reach of Fonseca, we need
+not wonder that mischief was soon brewing. It was unfortunate for
+Columbus that his work of exploration was hampered by the necessity of
+founding a colony and governing a parcel of unruly men let loose in the
+wilderness, far away from the powerful restraints of civilized society.
+Such work required undivided attention and extraordinary talent for
+command. It does not appear that Columbus was lacking in such talent. On
+the contrary both he and his brother Bartholomew seem to have possessed
+it in a high degree. But the situation was desperately bad when the
+spirit of mutiny was fomented by deadly enemies at court. I do not find
+adequate justification for the charges of tyranny brought against
+Columbus. The veracity and fairness of the history of Las Casas are
+beyond question; in his divinely beautiful spirit one sees now and then
+a trace of tenderness even for Fonseca, whose conduct toward him was
+always as mean and malignant as toward Columbus. One gets from Las Casas
+the impression that the Admiral's high temper was usually kept under
+firm control, and that he showed far less severity than most men would
+have done under similar provocation. Bartholomew was made of sterner
+stuff, but his whole career presents no instance of wanton cruelty;
+toward both white men and Indians his conduct was distinguished by
+clemency and moderation. Under the government of these brothers a few
+scoundrels were hanged in Hispaniola. Many more ought to have been.
+
+[Sidenote: Troubles with the Indians.]
+
+Of the attempt of Columbus to collect tribute from the native
+population, and its consequences in developing the system of
+_repartimientos_ out of which grew Indian slavery, I shall treat in a
+future chapter.[579] That attempt, which was ill-advised and
+ill-managed, was part of a plan for checking wanton depredations and
+regulating the relations between the Spaniards and the Indians. The
+colonists behaved so badly toward the red men that the chieftain
+Caonabo, who had destroyed La Navidad the year before, now formed a
+scheme[580] for a general alliance among the native tribes, hoping with
+sufficient numbers to overwhelm and exterminate the strangers, in spite
+of their solid-hoofed monsters and death-dealing thunderbolts. This
+scheme was revealed to Columbus, soon after his return from the coast of
+Cuba, by the chieftain Guacanagari, who was an enemy to Caonabo and
+courted the friendship of the Spaniards. Alonso de Ojeda, by a daring
+stratagem, captured Caonabo and brought him to Columbus, who treated him
+kindly but kept him a prisoner until it should be convenient to send him
+to Spain. But this chieftain's scheme was nevertheless put in operation
+through the influence of his principal wife Anacaona. An Indian war
+broke out; roaming bands of Spaniards were ambushed and massacred; and
+there was fighting in the field, where the natives--assailed by firearms
+and cross-bows, horses and bloodhounds--were wofully defeated.
+
+         [Footnote 579: See below, vol. ii. pp. 433, 434.]
+
+         [Footnote 580: The first of a series of such schemes in
+         American history, including those of Sassacus, Philip, Pontiac,
+         and to some extent Tecumseh.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mission of Aguado.]
+
+[Sidenote: Discovery of gold mines.]
+
+[Sidenote: Speculations about Ophir.]
+
+Thus in the difficult task of controlling mutinous white men and
+defending the colony against infuriated red men Columbus spent the first
+twelvemonth after his return from Cuba. In October, 1495, there arrived
+in the harbour of Isabella four caravels laden with welcome supplies. In
+one of these ships came Juan Aguado, sent by the sovereigns to gather
+information respecting the troubles of the colony. This appointment
+was doubtless made in a friendly spirit, for Columbus had formerly
+recommended Aguado to favour. But the arrival of such a person created a
+hope, which quickly grew into a belief, that the sovereigns were
+preparing to deprive Columbus of the government of the island; and, as
+Irving neatly says, "it was a time of jubilee for offenders; every
+culprit started up into an accuser." All the ills of the colony, many of
+them inevitable in such an enterprise, many of them due to the
+shiftlessness and folly, the cruelty and lust of idle swash-bucklers,
+were now laid at the door of Columbus. Aguado was presently won over by
+the malcontents, so that by the time he was ready to return to Spain,
+early in 1496, Columbus felt it desirable to go along with him and make
+his own explanations to the sovereigns. Fortunately for his purposes,
+just before he started, some rich gold mines were discovered on the
+south side of the island, in the neighbourhood of the Hayna and Ozema
+rivers. Moreover there were sundry pits in these mines, which looked
+like excavations and seemed to indicate that in former times there had
+been digging done.[581] This discovery confirmed the Admiral in a new
+theory, which he was beginning to form. If it should turn out that
+Hispaniola was not Cipango, as the last voyage seemed to suggest,
+perhaps it might prove to be Ophir![582] Probably these ancient
+excavations were made by King Solomon's men when they came here to get
+gold for the temple at Jerusalem! If so, one might expect to find
+silver, ivory, red sandal-wood, apes, and peacocks at no great distance.
+Just where Ophir was situated no one could exactly tell,[583] but the
+things that were carried thence to Jerusalem certainly came from "the
+Indies." Columbus conceived it as probably lying northeastward of the
+Golden Chersonese (Malacca) and as identical with the island of
+Hispaniola.
+
+         [Footnote 581: The Indians then living upon the island did not
+         dig, but scraped up the small pieces of gold that were more or
+         less abundant in the beds of shallow streams.]
+
+         [Footnote 582: Peter Martyr, _De Rebus Oceanicis_, dec. i. lib.
+         iv.]
+
+         [Footnote 583: The original Ophir may be inferred, from
+         _Genesis_ x. 29, to have been situated where, as Milton says,
+
+                    "northeast winds blow
+            Sabæan odours from the spicy shore
+            Of Araby the Blest,"
+
+         but the name seems to have become applied indiscriminately to
+         the remote countries reached by ships that sailed past that
+         coast; chiefly no doubt, to Hindustan. See Lassen, _Indische
+         Alterthumskunde_, bd. i. p. 538.]
+
+[Sidenote: Founding of San Domingo, 1496.]
+
+[Sidenote: The return voyage.]
+
+The discovery of these mines led to the transfer of the headquarters of
+the colony to the mouth of the Ozema river, where, in the summer of
+1496, Bartholomew Columbus made a settlement which became the city of
+San Domingo.[584] Meanwhile Aguado and the Admiral sailed for Spain
+early in March, in two caravels overloaded with more than two hundred
+homesick passengers. In choosing his course Columbus did not show so
+much sagacity as on his first return voyage. Instead of working
+northward till clear of the belt of trade-winds, he kept straight to the
+east, and so spent a month in beating and tacking before getting out of
+the Caribbean Sea. Scarcity of food was imminent, and it became
+necessary to stop at Guadaloupe and make a quantity of cassava
+bread.[585] It was well that this was done, for as the ships worked
+slowly across the Atlantic, struggling against perpetual head-winds, the
+provisions were at length exhausted, and by the first week in June the
+famine was such that Columbus had some difficulty in preventing the
+crews from eating their Indian captives, of whom there were thirty or
+more on board.[586]
+
+         [Footnote 584: Bartholomew's town was built on the left side of
+         the river, and was called New Isabella. In 1504 it was
+         destroyed by a hurricane, and rebuilt on the right bank in its
+         present situation. It was then named San Domingo after the
+         patron saint of Domenico, the father of Columbus.]
+
+         [Footnote 585: While the Spaniards were on this island they
+         encountered a party of tall and powerful women armed with bows
+         and arrows; so that Columbus supposed it must be the Asiatic
+         island of Amazons mentioned by Marco Polo. See Yule's _Marco
+         Polo_, vol. ii. pp. 338-340.]
+
+         [Footnote 586: Among them was Caonabo, who died on the voyage.]
+
+[Sidenote: Edicts of 1495 and 1497.]
+
+At length, on the 11th of June, the haggard and starving company arrived
+at Cadiz, and Columbus, while awaiting orders from the sovereigns,
+stayed at the house of his good friend Bernaldez, the curate of Los
+Palacios.[587] After a month he attended court at Burgos, and was kindly
+received. No allusion was made to the complaints against him, and the
+sovereigns promised to furnish ships for a third voyage of discovery.
+For the moment, however, other things interfered with this enterprise.
+One was the marriage of the son and daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella
+to the daughter and son of the Emperor Maximilian. The war with France
+was at the same time fast draining the treasury. Indeed, for more than
+twenty years, Castile had been at war nearly all the time, first with
+Portugal, next with Granada, then with France; and the crown never found
+it easy to provide money for maritime enterprises. Accordingly, at the
+earnest solicitation of Vicente Yañez Pinzon and other enterprising
+mariners, the sovereigns had issued a proclamation, April 10, 1495,
+granting to all native Spaniards the privilege of making, at their own
+risk and expense, voyages of discovery or traffic to the newly found
+coasts. As the crown was to take a pretty heavy tariff out of the
+profits of these expeditions, while all losses were to be borne by the
+adventurers, a fairly certain source of revenue, be it great or small,
+seemed likely to be opened.[588] Columbus protested against this edict,
+inasmuch as he deemed himself entitled to a patent or monopoly in the
+work of conducting expeditions to Cathay. The sovereigns evaded the
+difficulty by an edict of June 2, 1497, declaring that it was never
+their intention "in any way to affect the rights of the said Don
+Christopher Columbus." This declaration was, doubtless, intended simply
+to pacify the Admiral. It did not prevent the authorization of voyages
+conducted by other persons a couple of years later; and, as I shall show
+in the next chapter, there are strong reasons for believing that on May
+10, 1497, three weeks before this edict, an expedition sailed from Cadiz
+under the especial auspices of King Ferdinand, with Vicente Yañez Pinzon
+for its chief commander and Americus Vespucius for one of its pilots.
+
+         [Footnote 587: The curate thus heard the story of the second
+         voyage from Columbus himself while it was fresh in his mind.
+         Columbus also left with him written memoranda, so that for the
+         events of this expedition the _Historia de los Reyes Católicos_
+         is of the highest authority.]
+
+         [Footnote 588: "All vessels were to sail exclusively from the
+         port of Cadiz, and under the inspection of officers appointed
+         by the crown. Those who embarked for Hispaniola without pay,
+         and at their own expense, were to have lands assigned to them,
+         and to be provisioned for one year, with a right to retain such
+         lands and all houses they might erect upon them. Of all gold
+         which they might collect, they were to retain one third for
+         themselves, and pay two thirds to the crown. Of all other
+         articles of merchandise, the produce of the island, they were
+         to pay merely one tenth to the crown. Their purchases were to
+         be made in the presence of officers appointed by the
+         sovereigns, and the royal duties paid into the hands of the
+         king's receiver. Each ship sailing on private enterprise was to
+         take one or two persons named by the royal officers at Cadiz.
+         One tenth of the tonnage of the ship was to be at the service
+         of the crown, free of charge. One tenth of whatever such ships
+         should procure in the newly-discovered countries was to be paid
+         to the crown on their return. These regulations included
+         private ships trading to Hispaniola with provisions. For every
+         vessel thus fitted out on private adventure, Columbus, in
+         consideration of his privilege of an eighth of tonnage, was to
+         have the right to freight one on his own account." Irving's
+         _Columbus_, vol. ii. p. 76.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus loses his temper.]
+
+It was not until late in the spring of 1498 that the ships were ready
+for Columbus. Everything that Fonseca could do to vex and delay him was
+done. One of the bishop's minions, a converted Moor or Jew named Ximeno
+Breviesca, behaved with such outrageous insolence that on the day of
+sailing the Admiral's indignation, so long restrained, at last broke
+out, and he drove away the fellow with kicks and cuffs.[589] This
+imprudent act gave Fonseca the opportunity to maintain that what the
+Admiral's accusers said about his tyrannical disposition must be true.
+
+         [Footnote 589: "Parece que uno debiera de, en estos reveses, y,
+         por ventura, en palábras contra él y contra la negociacion
+         destas Indias, mas que otro señalarse, y segun entendí, no
+         debiera ser cristiano viejo, y creo que se llamaba Ximeno,
+         contra el cual debió el Almirante gravemente sentirse y
+         enojarse, y aguardó el dia que se hizo á la vela, y, ó en la
+         nao que entró, por ventura, el dicho oficial, ó en tierra
+         quando queria desembarcarse, arrebatólo el Almirante, y dále
+         muchas coces ó remesones, por manera que lo trató mal; y á mi
+         parecer, por esta causa principalmente, sobre otras quejas que
+         fueron de acá, y cosas que murmuraron dél y contra él los que
+         bien con él no estaban y le acumularon; los Reyes indignados
+         proveyeron de quitarle la gobernacion." Las Casas, _Historia de
+         las Indias_, tom. ii. p. 199.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The third voyage.]
+
+The expedition started on May 30, 1498, from the little port of San
+Lucar de Barrameda. There were six ships, carrying about 200 men besides
+the sailors. On June 21, at the Isle of Ferro, the Admiral divided his
+fleet, sending three ships directly to Hispaniola, while with the other
+three he kept on to the Cape Verde islands, whence he steered southwest
+on the 4th of July. A week later, after a run of about 900 miles, his
+astrolabe seemed to show that he was within five degrees of the
+equator.[590] There were three reasons for going so far to the
+south:--1, the natives of the islands already visited always pointed
+in that direction when gold was mentioned; 2, a learned jeweller, who
+had travelled in the East, had assured Columbus that gold and gems, as
+well as spices and rare drugs, were to be found for the most part among
+black people near the equator; 3, if he should not find any rich islands
+on the way, a sufficiently long voyage would bring him to the coast of
+Champa (Cochin China) at a lower point than he had reached on the
+preceding voyage, and nearer to the Golden Chersonese (Malacca), by
+doubling which he could enter the Indian ocean. It will be remembered
+that he supposed the southwesterly curve in the Cuban coast, the
+farthest point reached in his second voyage, to be the beginning of the
+coast of Cochin China according to Marco Polo.
+
+         [Footnote 590: The figure given by Columbus is equivalent only
+         to 360 geographical miles (Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. i. p.
+         246), but as Las Casas (_Hist._ tom. ii. p. 226) already
+         noticed, there must be some mistake here, for on a S. W. course
+         from the Cape Verde islands it would require a distance of 900
+         geographical miles to cut the fifth parallel. From the weather
+         that followed, it is clear that Columbus stated his latitude
+         pretty correctly; he had come into the belt of calms. Therefore
+         his error must be in the distance run.]
+
+[Sidenote: The belt of calms.]
+
+Once more through ignorance of the atmospheric conditions of the regions
+within the tropics Columbus encountered needless perils and hardships.
+If he had steered from Ferro straight across the ocean a trifle south of
+west-southwest, he might have made a quick and comfortable voyage, with
+the trade-wind filling his sails, to the spot where he actually struck
+land.[591] As it was, however, he naturally followed the custom then so
+common, of first running to the parallel upon which he intended to sail.
+This long southerly run brought him into the belt of calms or neutral
+zone between the northern and southern trade-winds, a little north of
+the equator.[592] No words can describe what followed so well as those
+of Irving: "The wind suddenly fell, and a dead sultry calm commenced,
+which lasted for eight days. The air was like a furnace; the tar melted,
+the seams of the ship yawned; the salt meat became putrid; the wheat was
+parched as if with fire; the hoops shrank from the wine and water casks,
+some of which leaked and others burst, while the heat in the holds of
+the vessels was so suffocating that no one could remain below a
+sufficient time to prevent the damage that was taking place. The
+mariners lost all strength and spirits, and sank under the oppressive
+heat. It seemed as if the old fable of the torrid zone was about to be
+realized; and that they were approaching a fiery region where it would
+be impossible to exist."[593]
+
+         [Footnote 591: Humboldt in 1799 did just this thing, starting
+         from Teneriffe and reaching Trinidad in nineteen days. See
+         Bruhn's _Life of Humboldt_, vol. i. p. 263.]
+
+         [Footnote 592: "The strength of the trade-winds depends
+         entirely upon the difference in temperature between the equator
+         and the pole; the greater the difference, the stronger the
+         wind. Now, at the present time, the south pole is much colder
+         than the north pole, and the southern trades are consequently
+         much stronger than the northern, so that the neutral zone in
+         which they meet lies some five degrees north of the equator."
+         _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, p. 64.]
+
+         [Footnote 593: Irving's _Columbus_, vol. ii. p. 137. One is
+         reminded of a scene in the _Rime of the Ancient Mariner_:--
+
+            "All in a hot and copper sky
+            The bloody sun, at noon,
+            Right up above the mast did stand,
+            No bigger than the moon.
+
+            "Day after day, day after day,
+            We stuck,--nor breath nor motion;
+            As idle as a painted ship
+            Upon a painted ocean."]
+
+Fortunately, they were in a region where the ocean is comparatively
+narrow. The longitude reached by Columbus on July 13, when the wind died
+away, must have been about 36° or 37° W., and a run of only 800 miles
+west from that point would have brought him to Cayenne. His course
+between the 13th and 21st of July must have intersected the thermal
+equator, or line of greatest mean annual heat on the globe,--an
+irregular curve which is here deflected as much as five degrees north of
+the equinoctial line. But although there was not a breath of wind, the
+powerful equatorial current was quietly driving the ships, much faster
+than the Admiral could have suspected, to the northwest and toward land.
+By the end of that stifling week they were in latitude 7° N., and caught
+the trade-wind on the starboard quarter. Thence after a brisk run of ten
+days, in sorry plight, with ugly leaks and scarcely a cask of fresh
+water left, they arrived within sight of land. Three mountain peaks
+loomed up in the offing before them, and as they drew nearer it appeared
+that those peaks belonged to one great mountain; wherefore the pious
+Admiral named the island Trinidad.
+
+[Sidenote: Trinidad and the Orinoco.]
+
+Here some surprises were in store for Columbus. Instead of finding black
+and woolly-haired natives, he found men of cinnamon hue, like those in
+Hispaniola, only--strange to say--lighter in colour. Then in coasting
+Trinidad he caught a glimpse of land at the delta of the Orinoco, and
+called it Isla Santa, or Holy Island.[594] But, on passing into the
+gulf of Paria, through the strait which he named Serpent's Mouth, his
+ships were in sore danger of being swamped by the raging surge that
+poured from three or four of the lesser mouths of that stupendous river.
+Presently, finding that the water in the gulf was fresh to the taste, he
+gradually reasoned his way to the correct conclusion, that the billows
+which had so nearly overwhelmed him must have come out from a river
+greater than any he had ever known or dreamed of, and that so vast a
+stream of running water could be produced only upon land of continental
+dimensions.[595] This coast to the south of him was, therefore, the
+coast of a continent, with indefinite extension toward the south, a land
+not laid down upon Toscanelli's or any other map, and of which no one
+had until that time known anything.[596]
+
+         [Footnote 594: He "gave it the name of Isla Santa," says Irving
+         (vol. ii. p. 140), "little imagining that he now, for the first
+         time, beheld that continent, that Terra Firma, which had been
+         the object of his earnest search." The reader of this passage
+         should bear in mind that the continent of South America, which
+         nobody had ever heard of, was _not_ the object of Columbus's
+         search. The Terra Firma which was the object of his search was
+         the mainland of Asia, and that he never beheld, though he felt
+         positively sure that he had already set foot upon it in 1492
+         and 1494.]
+
+         [Footnote 595: A modern traveller thus describes this river:
+         "Right and left of us lay, at some distance off, the low banks
+         of the Apuré, at this point quite a broad stream. But before us
+         the waters spread out like a wide dark flood, limited on the
+         horizon only by a low black streak, and here and there showing
+         a few distant hills. This was the Orinoco, rolling with
+         irrepressible power and majesty sea-wards, and often upheaving
+         its billows like the ocean when lashed to fury by the wind....
+         The Orinoco sends a current of fresh water far into the ocean,
+         its waters--generally green, but in the shallows
+         milk-white--contrasting sharply with the indigo blue of the
+         surrounding sea." Bates, _Central America, the West Indies, and
+         South America_, 2d ed., London, 1882, pp. 234, 235. The island
+         of Trinidad forms an obstacle to the escape of this huge volume
+         of fresh water, and hence the furious commotion at the two
+         outlets, the Serpent's Mouth and Dragon's Mouth, especially in
+         July and August, when the Orinoco is swollen with tropical
+         rains.]
+
+         [Footnote 596: In Columbus's own words, in his letter to the
+         sovereigns describing this third voyage, "Y digo que ... viene
+         este rio y procede de tierra infinita, pues al austro, de la
+         cual fasta agora no se ha habido noticia." Navarrete,
+         _Coleccion_, tom. i. p. 262.]
+
+[Illustration: Discoveries made by Columbus in his third and fourth
+voyages.]
+
+[Sidenote: Speculations as to the earth's shape.]
+
+[Sidenote: The mountain of Paradise.]
+
+In spite of the correctness of this surmise, Columbus was still as far
+from a true interpretation of the whole situation as when he supposed
+Hispaniola to be Ophir. He entered upon a series of speculations which
+forcibly remind us how empirical was the notion of the earth's rotundity
+before the inauguration of physical astronomy by Galileo, Kepler, and
+Newton. We now know that our planet has the only shape possible for such
+a rotating mass that once was fluid or nebulous, the shape of a spheroid
+slightly protuberant at the equator and flattened at the poles; but this
+knowledge is the outcome of mechanical principles utterly unknown and
+unsuspected in the days of Columbus. He understood that the earth is a
+round body, but saw no necessity for its being strictly spherical or
+spheroidal. He now suggested that it was probably shaped like a pear,
+rather a blunt and corpulent pear, nearly spherical in its lower part,
+but with a short, stubby apex in the equatorial region somewhere beyond
+the point which he had just reached. He fancied he had been sailing up a
+gentle slope from the burning glassy sea where his ships had been
+becalmed to this strange and beautiful coast where he found the climate
+enchanting. If he were to follow up the mighty river just now revealed,
+it might lead him to the summit of this apex of the world, the place
+where the terrestrial paradise, the Garden which the Lord planted
+eastward in Eden, was in all probability situated![597]
+
+         [Footnote 597: Thus would be explained the astounding force
+         with which the water was poured down. It was common in the
+         Middle Ages to imagine the terrestrial paradise at the top of a
+         mountain. See Dante, _Purgatorio_, canto xxviii. Columbus
+         quotes many authorities in favour of his opinion. The whole
+         letter is worth reading. See Navarrete, tom. i. pp. 242-264.]
+
+[Sidenote: Relation of the "Eden continent" to "Cochin China."]
+
+As Columbus still held to the opinion that by keeping to the west from
+that point he should soon reach the coast of Cochin China, his
+conception of the position of Eden is thus pretty clearly indicated. He
+imagined it as situated about on the equator, upon a continental mass
+till then unknown, but evidently closely connected with the continent of
+Asia if not a part of it. If he had lived long enough to hear of Quito
+and its immense elevation, I should suppose that might very well have
+suited his idea of the position of Eden. The coast of this continent,
+upon which he had now arrived, was either continuous with the coast of
+Cochin China (Cuba) and Malacca, or would be found to be divided from it
+by a strait through which one might pass directly into the Indian ocean.
+
+[Sidenote: The Pearl Coast.]
+
+[Sidenote: Arrival at San Domingo.]
+
+It took some little time for this theory to come to maturity in the mind
+of Columbus. Not expecting to find any mainland in that quarter, he
+began by calling different points of the coast different islands. Coming
+out through the passage which he named Dragon's Mouth, he caught distant
+glimpses of Tobago and Grenada to starboard, and turning westward
+followed the Pearl Coast as far as the islands of Margarita and Cubagua.
+The fine pearls which he found there in abundance confirmed him in the
+good opinion he had formed of that country. By this time, the 15th of
+August, he had so far put facts together as to become convinced of the
+continental character of that coast, and would have been glad to pursue
+it westward. But now his strength gave out. During most of the voyage he
+had suffered acute torments with gout, his temperature had been very
+feverish, and his eyes were at length so exhausted with perpetual
+watching that he could no longer make observations. So he left the coast
+a little beyond Cubagua, and steered straight for Hispaniola, aiming at
+San Domingo, but hitting the island of Beata because he did not make
+allowance for the westerly flow of the currents. He arrived at San
+Domingo on the 30th of August, and found his brother Bartholomew, whom
+he intended to send at once on a further cruise along the Pearl Coast,
+while he himself should be resting and recovering strength.
+
+[Sidenote: Roldan's rebellion.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fonseca's machinations.]
+
+But alas! there was to be no cruising now for the younger brother nor
+rest for the elder. It was a sad story that Bartholomew had to tell. War
+with the Indians had broken out afresh, and while the Adelantado was
+engaged in this business a scoundrel named Roldan had taken advantage of
+his absence to stir up civil strife. Roldan's rebellion was a result of
+the ill-advised mission of Aguado. The malcontents in the colony
+interpreted the Admiral's long stay in Spain as an indication that he
+had lost favour with the sovereigns and was not coming back to the
+island. Gathering together a strong body of rebels, Roldan retired to
+Xaragua and formed an alliance with the brother of the late chieftain
+Caonabo. By the time the Admiral arrived the combination of mutiny with
+barbaric warfare had brought about a frightful state of things. A party
+of soldiers, sent by him to suppress Roldan, straightway deserted and
+joined that rebel. It thus became necessary to come to terms with
+Roldan, and this revelation of the weakness of the government only made
+matters worse. Two wretched years were passed in attempts to restore
+order in Hispaniola, while the work of discovery and exploration was
+postponed. Meanwhile the items of information that found their way to
+Spain were skilfully employed by Fonseca in poisoning the minds of the
+sovereigns, until at last they decided to send out a judge to the
+island, armed with plenary authority to make investigations and settle
+disputes. The glory which Columbus had won by the first news of the
+discovery of the Indies had now to some extent faded away. The
+enterprise yielded as yet no revenue and entailed great expense; and
+whenever some reprobate found his way back to Spain, the malicious
+Fonseca prompted him to go to the treasury with a claim for pay alleged
+to have been wrongfully withheld by the Admiral. Ferdinand Columbus
+tells how some fifty such scamps were gathered one day in the courtyard
+of the Alhambra, cursing his father and catching hold of the king's
+robe, crying, "Pay us! pay us!" and as he and his brother Diego, who
+were pages in the queen's service, happened to pass by, they were
+greeted with hoots:--"There go the sons of the Admiral of Mosquito-land,
+the man who has discovered a land of vanity and deceit, the grave of
+Spanish gentlemen!"[598]
+
+         [Footnote 598: "Ecco i figliuoli dell' Ammiraglio de'
+         Mosciolini, di colui che ha trovate terre di vanitá e d'
+         inganno, per sepoltura e miseria de' gentiluomini castigliani."
+         _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxiv.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gama's voyage to Hindustan, 1497.]
+
+An added sting was given to such taunts by a great event that happened
+about this time. In the summer of 1497, Vasco da Gama started from
+Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope, and in the summer of 1499 he returned,
+after having doubled the cape and crossed the Indian ocean to Calicut on
+the Malabar coast of Hindustan. His voyage was the next Portuguese step
+sequent upon that of Bartholomew Dias. There was nothing questionable or
+dubious about Gama's triumph. He had seen splendid cities, talked with a
+powerful Rajah, and met with Arab vessels, their crews madly jealous at
+the unprecedented sight of Christian ships in those waters; and he
+brought back with him to Lisbon nutmegs and cloves, pepper and ginger,
+rubies and emeralds, damask robes with satin linings, bronze chairs with
+cushions, trumpets of carved ivory, a sunshade of crimson satin, a sword
+in a silver scabbard, and no end of such gear.[599] An old civilization
+had been found and a route of commerce discovered, and a factory was to
+be set up at once on that Indian coast. What a contrast to the miserable
+performance of Columbus, who had started with the flower of Spain's
+chivalry for rich Cipango, and had only led them to a land where they
+must either starve or do work fit for peasants, while he spent his time
+in cruising among wild islands! The king of Portugal could now snap his
+fingers at Ferdinand and Isabella, and if a doubt should have sometimes
+crossed the minds of those chagrined sovereigns, as to whether this
+plausible Genoese mariner might not, after all, be a humbug or a crazy
+enthusiast, we can hardly wonder at it.
+
+         [Footnote 599: Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, pp.
+         398-401.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fonseca's creature, Bobadilla.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus in chains.]
+
+The person sent to investigate the affairs of Hispaniola was Francisco
+de Bobadilla, a knight commander of the order of Calatrava. He carried
+several documents, one of them directing him to make inquiries and
+punish offenders, another containing his appointment as governor, a
+third commanding Columbus and his brothers to surrender to him all
+fortresses and other public property.[600] The two latter papers were to
+be used only in case of such grave misconduct proved against Columbus as
+to justify his removal from the government. These papers were made out
+in the spring of 1499, but Bobadilla was not sent out until July, 1500.
+When he arrived at San Domingo on the 23d of August, the insurrection
+had been suppressed; the Admiral and Bartholomew were bringing things
+into order in distant parts of the island, while Diego was left in
+command at San Domingo. Seven ringleaders had just been hanged, and five
+more were in prison under sentence of death. If Bobadilla had not come
+upon the scene this wholesome lesson might have worked some improvement
+in affairs.[601] He destroyed its moral in a twinkling. The first day
+after landing, he read aloud, at the church door, the paper directing
+him to make inquiries and punish offenders; and forthwith demanded of
+Diego Columbus that the condemned prisoners should be delivered up to
+him. Diego declined to take so important a step until he could get
+orders from the Admiral. Next day Bobadilla read his second and third
+papers, proclaimed himself governor, called on Diego to surrender the
+fortress and public buildings, and renewed his demand for the prisoners.
+As Diego still hesitated to act before news of these proceedings could
+be sent to his brother, Bobadilla broke into the fortress, took the
+prisoners out, and presently set them free. All the rebellious spirits
+in the colony were thus drawn to the side of Bobadilla, whose royal
+commission, under such circumstances, gave him irresistible power. He
+threw Diego into prison and loaded him with fetters. He seized the
+Admiral's house, and confiscated all his personal property, even
+including his business papers and private letters. When the Admiral
+arrived in San Domingo, Bobadilla, without even waiting to see him, sent
+an officer to put him in irons and take him to prison. When Bartholomew
+arrived, he received the same treatment. The three brothers were
+confined in different places, nobody was allowed to visit them, and
+they were not informed of the offences with which they were charged.
+While they lay in prison, Bobadilla busied himself with inventing an
+excuse for this violent behaviour. Finally he hit upon one at which
+Satan from the depths of his bottomless pit must have grimly smiled. He
+said that he had arrested and imprisoned the brothers only because he
+had reason to believe they were inciting the Indians to aid them in
+resisting the commands of Ferdinand and Isabella!! In short, from the
+day of his landing Bobadilla made common cause with the insurgent
+rabble, and when they had furnished him with a ream or so of charges
+against the Admiral and his brothers, it seemed safe to send these
+gentlemen to Spain. They were put on board ship, with their fetters upon
+them, and the officer in charge was instructed by Bobadilla to deliver
+them into the hands of Bishop Fonseca, who was thus to have the
+privilege of glutting to the full his revengeful spite.
+
+         [Footnote 600: The documents are given in Navarrete, _Coleccion
+         de viages_, tom. ii. pp. 235-240; and, with accompanying
+         narrative, in Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. ii. pp.
+         472-487.]
+
+         [Footnote 601: No better justification for the government of
+         the brothers Columbus can be found than to contrast it with the
+         infinitely worse state of affairs that ensued under the
+         administrations of Bobadilla and Ovando. See below, vol. ii.
+         pp. 442-446.]
+
+[Sidenote: Return to Spain.]
+
+[Sidenote: Release of Columbus.]
+
+The master of the ship, shocked at the sight of fetters upon such a man
+as the Admiral, would have taken them off, but Columbus would not let it
+be done. No, indeed! they should never come off except by order of the
+sovereigns, and then he would keep them for the rest of his life, to
+show how his labours had been rewarded.[602] The event--which always
+justifies true manliness--proved the sagacity of this proud demeanour.
+Fonseca was baulked of his gratification. The clumsy Bobadilla had
+overdone the business. The sight of the Admiral's stately and venerable
+figure in chains, as he passed through the streets of Cadiz, on a
+December day of that year 1500, awakened a popular outburst of sympathy
+for him and indignation at his persecutors. While on the ship he had
+written or dictated a beautiful and touching letter[603] to a lady of
+whom the queen was fond, the former nurse of the Infante, whose untimely
+death, three years since, his mother was still mourning. This letter
+reached the court at Granada, and was read to the queen before she had
+heard of Bobadilla's performances from any other quarter. A courier was
+sent in all haste to Cadiz, with orders that the brothers should at once
+be released, and with a letter to the Admiral, inviting him to court and
+enclosing an order for money to cover his expenses. The scene in the
+Alhambra, when Columbus arrived, is one of the most touching in history.
+Isabella received him with tears in her eyes, and then this
+much-enduring old man, whose proud and masterful spirit had so long been
+proof against all wrongs and insults, broke down. He threw himself at
+the feet of the sovereigns in an agony of tears and sobs.[604]
+
+         [Footnote 602: Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. ii. p.
+         501; F. Columbus, _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxv.
+         Ferdinand adds that he had often seen these fetters hanging in
+         his father's room.]
+
+         [Footnote 603: It is given in full in Las Casas, _op. cit._
+         tom. ii. pp. 502-510.]
+
+         [Footnote 604: Herrera, _Historia_, dec. i. lib. iv. cap. 10.]
+
+[Sidenote: How far were the sovereigns responsible for Bobadilla?]
+
+How far the sovereigns should be held responsible for the behaviour of
+their agent is not altogether easy to determine. The appointment of such
+a creature as Bobadilla was a sad blunder, but one such as is liable to
+be made under any government. Fonseca was very powerful at court, and
+Bobadilla never would have dared to proceed as he did if he had not
+known that the bishop would support him. Indeed, from the indecent haste
+with which he went about his work, without even the pretence of a
+judicial inquiry, it is probable that he started with private
+instructions from that quarter. But, while Fonseca had some of the
+wisdom along with the venom of the serpent, Bobadilla was simply a
+jackass, and behaved so that in common decency the sovereigns were
+obliged to disown him. They took no formal or public notice of his
+written charges against the Admiral, and they assured the latter that he
+should be reimbursed for his losses and restored to his viceroyalty and
+other dignities.
+
+[Sidenote: Ovando, another creature of Fonseca, appointed governor of
+Hispaniola.]
+
+This last promise, however, was not fulfilled; partly, perhaps, because
+Fonseca's influence was still strong enough to prevent it, partly
+because the sovereigns may have come to the sound and reasonable
+conclusion that for the present there was no use in committing the
+government of that disorderly rabble in Hispaniola to a foreigner. What
+was wanted was a Spanish priest, and a military priest withal, of the
+sort that Spain then had in plenty. Obedience to priests came natural to
+Spaniards. The man now selected was Nicolas de Ovando, a knight
+commander of the order of Alcántara, of whom we shall have more to say
+hereafter.[605] Suffice it now to observe that he proved himself a
+famous disciplinarian, and that he was a great favourite with Fonseca,
+to whom he seems to have owed his appointment. He went out in February,
+1502, with a fleet of thirty ships carrying 2,500 persons, for the
+pendulum of public opinion had taken another swing, and faith in the
+Indies was renewed. Some great discoveries, to be related in the next
+chapter, had been made since 1498; and, moreover, the gold mines of
+Hispaniola were beginning to yield rich treasures.
+
+         [Footnote 605: See below, vol. ii. pp. 435-446.]
+
+[Sidenote: Purpose of Columbus's fourth voyage.]
+
+But, while the sovereigns were not disposed to restore Columbus to his
+viceroyalty, they were quite ready to send him on another voyage of
+discovery which was directly suggested by the recent Portuguese voyage
+of Gama. Since nothing was yet known about the discovery of a New World,
+the achievement of Gama seemed to have eclipsed that of Columbus. Spain
+must make a response to Portugal. As already observed, the Admiral
+supposed the coast of his "Eden continent" (South America) either to be
+continuous with the coast of Cochin China (Cuba) and Malacca, or else to
+be divided from that coast by a strait. The latter opinion was the more
+probable, since Marco Polo and a few other Europeans had sailed from
+China into the Indian ocean without encountering any great continent
+that had to be circumnavigated. The recent expedition of Vespucius and
+Ojeda (1499-1500) had followed the northern coast of South America for a
+long distance to the west of Cubagua, as far as the gulf of Maracaibo.
+Columbus now decided to return to the coast of Cochin China (Cuba) and
+follow the coast southwestward until he should find the passage between
+his Eden continent and the Golden Chersonese (Malacca) into the Indian
+ocean. He would thus be able to reach by this western route the same
+shores of Hindustan which Gama had lately reached by sailing eastward.
+So confident did he feel of the success of this enterprise, that he
+wrote a letter to Pope Alexander VI., renewing his vow to furnish troops
+for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre.[606] It was no doubt the symptom
+of a reaction against his misfortunes that he grew more and more
+mystical in these days, consoling himself with the belief that he was a
+chosen instrument in the hands of Providence for enlarging the bounds of
+Christendom. In this mood he made some studies on the prophecies, after
+the fantastic fashion of his time,[607] and a habit grew upon him of
+attributing his discoveries to miraculous inspiration rather than to the
+good use to which his poetical and scientific mind had put the data
+furnished by Marco Polo and the ancient geographers.
+
+         [Footnote 606: Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. pp. 280-282.]
+
+         [Footnote 607: The MS. volume of notes on the prophecies is in
+         the Colombina. There is a description of it in Navarrete, tom.
+         ii. pp. 260-273.]
+
+[Sidenote: Crossing the Atlantic.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus not allowed to stop at San Domingo.]
+
+The armament for the Admiral's fourth and last voyage consisted of four
+small caravels, of from fifty to seventy tons burthen, with crews
+numbering, all told, 150 men. His brother Bartholomew, and his younger
+son Ferdinand, then a boy of fourteen, accompanied him. They sailed from
+Cadiz on the 11th of May, 1502, and finally left the Canaries behind on
+the 26th of the same month. The course chosen was the same as on the
+second voyage, and the unfailing trade-winds brought the ships on the
+15th of June to an island called Mantinino, probably Martinique, not
+more than ten leagues distant from Dominica. The Admiral had been
+instructed not to touch at Hispaniola upon his way out, probably for
+fear of further commotions there until Ovando should have succeeded in
+bringing order out of the confusion ten times worse confounded into
+which Bobadilla's misgovernment had thrown that island. Columbus might
+stop there on his return, but not on his outward voyage. His intention
+had, therefore, been, on reaching the cannibal islands, to steer for
+Jamaica, thence make the short run to "Cochin China," and then turn
+southwards. But as one of his caravels threatened soon to become
+unmanageable, he thought himself justified in touching at San Domingo
+long enough to hire a sound vessel in place of her. Ovando had assumed
+the government there in April, and a squadron of 26 or 28 ships,
+containing Roldan and Bobadilla, with huge quantities of gold wrung from
+the enslaved Indians, was ready to start for Spain about the end of
+June. In one of these ships were 4,000 pieces of gold destined for
+Columbus, probably a part of the reimbursement that had been promised
+him. On the 29th of June the Admiral arrived in the harbour and stated
+the nature of his errand. At the same time, as his practised eye had
+detected the symptoms of an approaching hurricane, he requested
+permission to stay in the harbour until it should be over, and he
+furthermore sent to the commander of the fleet a friendly warning not to
+venture out to sea at present. His requests and his warnings were alike
+treated with contumely. He was ordered to leave the harbour, and did so
+in great indignation. As his first care was for the approaching tempest,
+he did not go far but found safe anchorage in a sheltered and secluded
+cove, where his vessels rode the storm with difficulty but without
+serious damage. Meanwhile the governor's great fleet had rashly put out
+to sea, and was struck with fatal fury by wind and wave. Twenty or more
+ships went to the bottom, with Bobadilla, Roldan, and most of the
+Admiral's principal enemies, besides all the ill-gotten treasure; five
+or six shattered caravels, unable to proceed, found their way back to
+San Domingo; of all the fleet, only one ship arrived safe and sound in
+Spain, and that, says Ferdinand, was the one that had on board his
+father's gold. Truly it was such an instance of poetical justice as one
+does not often witness in this world. "We will not inquire now," says
+Las Casas, who witnessed the affair, "into this remarkable divine
+judgment, for at the last day of the world it will be made quite clear
+to us."[608] If such judgments were more often visited upon the right
+persons, perhaps the ways of Providence would not have so generally come
+to be regarded as inscrutable.
+
+         [Footnote 608: "Aqueste tan gran juicio de Dios no curemos de
+         escudriñallo, pues en el dia final deste mundo nos será bien
+         claro." _Hist. do las Indias_, tom. iii. p. 32; cf. _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxvii. As Las Casas was then in San
+         Domingo, having come out in Ovando's fleet, and as Ferdinand
+         Columbus was with his father, the testimony is very direct.]
+
+[Sidenote: Arrival at Cape Honduras.]
+
+The hurricane was followed by a dead calm, during which the Admiral's
+ships were carried by the currents into the group of tiny islands called
+the Queen's Gardens, on the south side of Cuba. With the first
+favourable breeze he took a southwesterly course, in order to strike
+that Cochin-Chinese coast farther down toward the Malay peninsula. This
+brought him directly to the island of Guanaja and to Cape Honduras,
+which he thus reached without approaching the Yucatan channel.[609]
+
+         [Footnote 609: In the next chapter I shall give some reasons
+         for supposing that the Admiral had learned the existence of the
+         Yucatan channel from the pilot Ledesma, coupled with
+         information which made it unlikely that a passage into the
+         Indian ocean would be found that way. See below, vol. ii. p.
+         92.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cape Gracias a Dios.]
+
+Upon the Honduras coast the Admiral found evidences of semi-civilization
+with which he was much elated,--such as copper knives and hatchets,
+pottery of skilled and artistic workmanship, and cotton garments finely
+woven and beautifully dyed. Here the Spaniards first tasted the
+_chicha_, or maize beer, and marvelled at the heavy clubs, armed with
+sharp blades of obsidian, with which the soldiers of Cortes were by and
+by to become unpleasantly acquainted. The people here wore cotton
+clothes, and, according to Ferdinand, the women covered themselves as
+carefully as the Moorish women of Granada.[610] On inquiring as to the
+sources of gold and other wealth, the Admiral was now referred to the
+west, evidently to Yucatan and Guatemala, or, as he supposed, to the
+neighbourhood of the Ganges. Evidently the way to reach these countries
+was to keep the land on the starboard and search for the passage
+between the Eden continent and the Malay peninsula.[611] This course at
+first led Columbus eastward for a greater number of leagues than he
+could have relished. Wind and current were dead against him, too; and
+when, after forty days of wretched weather, he succeeded in doubling the
+cape which marks on that coast the end of Honduras and the beginning of
+Nicaragua, and found it turning square to the south, it was doubtless
+joy at this auspicious change of direction, as well as the sudden relief
+from head-winds, that prompted him to name that bold prominence Cape
+Gracias a Dios, or Thanks to God.
+
+         [Footnote 610: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxviii.]
+
+         [Footnote 611: Irving (vol. ii. pp. 386, 387) seems to think it
+         strange that Columbus did not at once turn westward and
+         circumnavigate Yucatan. But if--as Irving supposed--Columbus
+         had not seen the Yucatan channel, and regarded the Honduras
+         coast as continuous with that of Cuba, he could only expect by
+         turning westward to be carried back to Cape Alpha and Omega,
+         where he had already been twice before! In the next chapter,
+         however, I shall show that Columbus may have shaped his course
+         in accordance with the advice of the pilot Ledesma.]
+
+[Sidenote: The coast of Veragua.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fruitless search for the Strait of Malacca.]
+
+[Sidenote: Futile attempt to make a settlement.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus shipwrecked.]
+
+As the ships proceeded southward in the direction of Veragua, evidences
+of the kind of semi-civilization which we recognize as characteristic of
+that part of aboriginal America grew more and more numerous. Great
+houses were seen, built of "stone and lime," or perhaps of rubble stone
+with adobe mortar. Walls were adorned with carvings and pictographs.
+Mummies were found in a good state of preservation. There were signs of
+abundant gold; the natives wore plates of it hung by cotton cords about
+their necks, and were ready to exchange pieces worth a hundred ducats
+for tawdry European trinkets. From these people Columbus heard what we
+should call the first "news of the Pacific Ocean," though it had no such
+meaning to his mind. From what he heard he understood that he was on the
+east side of a peninsula, and that there was another sea on the other
+side, by gaining which he might in ten days reach the mouth of the
+Ganges.[612] By proceeding on his present course he would soon come to a
+"narrow place" between the two seas. There was a curious equivocation
+here. No doubt the Indians were honest and correct in what they tried to
+tell Columbus. But by the "narrow place" they meant narrow land, not
+narrow water; not a strait which connected but an isthmus which divided
+the two seas, not the Strait of Malacca, but the Isthmus of Darien![613]
+Columbus, of course, understood them to mean the strait for which he was
+looking, and in his excitement at approaching the long-expected goal he
+pressed on without waiting to verify the reports of gold mines in the
+neighbourhood, a thing that could be done at any time.[614] By the 5th
+of December, however, having reached a point on the isthmus, a few
+leagues east of Puerto Bello, without finding the strait, he yielded to
+the remonstrances of the crews, and retraced his course to Veragua. If
+the strait could not be found, the next best tidings to carry home to
+Spain would be the certain information of the discovery of gold mines,
+and it was decided to make a settlement here which might serve as a base
+for future operations. Three months of misery followed. Many of the
+party were massacred by the Indians, the stock of food was nearly
+exhausted, and the ships were pierced by worms until it was feared there
+would be no means left for going home. Accordingly, it was decided to
+abandon the enterprise and return to Hispaniola.[615] In order to allow
+for the strong westerly currents in the Caribbean sea, the Admiral first
+sailed eastward almost to the gulf of Darien, and then turned to the
+north. The allowance was not enough, however. The ships were again
+carried into the Queen's Gardens, where they were caught in a storm and
+nearly beaten to pieces. At length, on St. John's eve, June 23, 1503,
+the crazy wrecks--now full of water and unable to sail another
+league--were beached on the coast of Jamaica and converted into a sort
+of rude fortress; and while two trusty men were sent over to San Domingo
+in a canoe, to obtain relief, Columbus and his party remained
+shipwrecked in Jamaica. They waited there a whole year before it proved
+possible to get any relief from Ovando. He was a slippery knave, who
+knew how to deal out promises without taking the first step toward
+fulfilment.
+
+         [Footnote 612: Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. i. p.
+         299.]
+
+         [Footnote 613: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxix.; Humboldt,
+         _Examen Critique_, tom. i. p. 350.]
+
+         [Footnote 614: "Nothing could evince more clearly his generous
+         ambition than hurrying in this brief manner along a coast where
+         wealth was to be gathered at every step, for the purpose of
+         seeking a strait which, however it might produce vast benefit
+         to mankind, could yield little else to himself than the glory
+         of the discovery." Irving's _Columbus_, vol. ii. p. 406. In
+         this voyage, however, the express purpose from the start was to
+         find the strait of Malacca as a passage to the very same
+         regions which had been visited by Gama, and Columbus expected
+         thus to get wealth enough to equip an army of Crusaders.
+         Irving's statement does not correctly describe the Admiral's
+         purpose, and as savouring of misplaced eulogy, is sure to
+         provoke a reaction on the part of captious critics.]
+
+         [Footnote 615: A graphic account of these scenes, in which he
+         took part, is given by Ferdinand Columbus, _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. xciii.-cvi.]
+
+[Sidenote: A year of misery.]
+
+[Sidenote: Last return to Spain.]
+
+It was a terrible year that Columbus spent upon the wild coast of
+Jamaica. To all the horrors inseparable from such a situation there was
+added the horror of mutiny. The year did not end until there had been a
+pitched battle, in which the doughty Bartholomew was, as usual,
+victorious. The ringleader was captured, and of the other mutineers such
+as were not slain in the fight were humbled and pardoned. At length
+Ovando's conduct began to arouse indignation in San Domingo, and was
+openly condemned from the pulpit; so that, late in June, 1504, he sent
+over to Jamaica a couple of ships which brought away the Admiral and his
+starving party. Ovando greeted the brothers Columbus with his customary
+hypocritical courtesy, which they well understood. During the past year
+the island of Hispaniola had been the scene of atrocities such as have
+scarcely been surpassed in history. I shall give a brief account of them
+in a future chapter. Columbus was not cheered by what he saw and heard,
+and lost no time in starting for Spain. On the 7th of November, 1504,
+after a tempestuous voyage and narrow escape from shipwreck, he landed
+at San Lucar de Barrameda and made his way to Seville. Queen Isabella
+was then on her death-bed, and breathed her last just nineteen days
+later.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Columbus.]
+
+The death of the queen deprived Columbus of the only protector who could
+stand between him and Fonseca. The reimbursement for the wrongs which he
+had suffered at that man's hands was never made. The last eighteen
+months of the Admiral's life were spent in sickness and poverty.
+Accumulated hardship and disappointment had broken him down, and he died
+on Ascension day, May 20, 1506, at Valladolid. So little heed was taken
+of his passing away that the local annals of that city, "which give
+almost every insignificant event from 1333 to 1539, day by day, do not
+mention it."[616] His remains were buried in the Franciscan monastery at
+Valladolid, whence they were removed in 1513 to the monastery of Las
+Cuevas, at Seville, where the body of his son Diego, second Admiral and
+Viceroy of the Indies, was buried in 1526. Ten years after this date,
+the bones of father and son were removed to Hispaniola, to the cathedral
+of San Domingo; whence they have since been transferred to Havana. The
+result of so many removals has been to raise doubts as to whether the
+ashes now reposing at Havana are really those of Columbus and his son;
+and over this question there has been much critical discussion, of a
+sort that we may cheerfully leave to those who like to spend their time
+over such trivialities.
+
+         [Footnote 616: Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, New York, 1866,
+         p. 73.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Nuevo Mundo."]
+
+There is a tradition that Ferdinand and Isabella, at some date
+unspecified, had granted to Columbus, as a legend for his coat-of-arms,
+the noble motto:--
+
+  Á Castilla y á Leon
+  Nuevo mundo dió Colon,
+
+_i. e._ "To Castile-and-Leon Columbus gave a New World;" and we are
+further told that, when the Admiral's bones were removed to Seville,
+this motto was, by order of King Ferdinand, inscribed upon his
+tomb.[617] This tradition crumbles under the touch of historical
+criticism. The Admiral's coat-of-arms, as finally emblazoned under his
+own inspection at Seville in 1502, quarters the royal Castle-and-Lion of
+the kingdom of Castile with his own devices of five anchors, and a group
+of golden islands with a bit of Terra Firma, upon a blue sea. But there
+is no legend of any sort, nor is anything of the kind mentioned by Las
+Casas or Bernaldez or Peter Martyr. The first allusion to such a motto
+is by Oviedo, in 1535, who gives it a somewhat different turn:--
+
+  Por Castilla y por Leon
+  Nuevo mundo halló Colon,
+
+_i. e._ "For Castile-and-Leon Columbus found a New World." But the other
+form is no doubt the better, for Ferdinand Columbus, at some time not
+later than 1537, had adopted it, and it may be read to-day upon his tomb
+in the cathedral at Seville. The time-honoured tradition has evidently
+transferred to the father the legend adopted, if not originally
+devised, by his son.
+
+         [Footnote 617: _Vita del Ammiraglio_, cap. cvii. This is
+         unquestionably a gloss of the translator Ulloa. Cf. Harrisse,
+         _Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. pp. 177-179.]
+
+[Illustration: Arms.]
+
+But why is this mere question of heraldry a matter of importance for the
+historian? Simply because it furnishes one of the most striking among
+many illustrations of the fact that at no time during the life of
+Columbus, nor for some years after his death, did anybody use the phrase
+"New World" with conscious reference to _his_ discoveries. At the time
+of his death their true significance had not yet begun to dawn upon the
+mind of any voyager or any writer. It was supposed that he had found a
+new route to the Indies by sailing west, and that in the course of this
+achievement he had discovered some new islands and a bit or bits of
+Terra Firma of more or less doubtful commercial value. To group these
+items of discovery into an organic whole, and to ascertain that they
+belonged to a whole quite distinct from the Old World, required the work
+of many other discoverers, companions and successors to Columbus. In the
+following chapter I shall endeavour to show how the conception of the
+New World was thus originated and at length became developed into the
+form with which we are now familiar.
+
+[Illustration: Sketch of Toscanelli's map, sent to Portugal in 1474, and
+used by Columbus in his first voyage across the Atlantic.]
+
+[Illustration: Claudius Ptolemy's world, cir. A. D. 150.]
+
+[Illustration: John Fiske.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2), by 
+John Fiske
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html lang="en">
+
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg e-Book of The Discovery Of America; Author: John Fiske.</title>
+
+
+<style type="text/css">
+<!--
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2), by John Fiske
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2)
+       with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest
+
+Author: John Fiske
+
+Release Date: November 13, 2008 [EBook #27253]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tn">
+<p>Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
+other inconsistencies and errors are as in the original. The author's
+spelling has been maintained.</p>
+
+<p>Description of the characters not found in the Unicode tables:<br>
+[p-] p with stroke below.</p>
+</div>
+
+<a id="img024" name="img024"></a>
+<div class="p4 figcenter">
+<img src="images/img024.jpg" width="400" height="651" alt="John Fiske." title="">
+</div>
+
+<h1>THE<br>
+DISCOVERY OF AMERICA</h1>
+
+<p class="p2 center"><i>WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF ANCIENT AMERICA<br>
+AND THE SPANISH CONQUEST</i></p>
+
+<h2><span class="smaller">BY</span><br>
+JOHN FISKE</h2>
+
+<p class="p2 center"><i>IN TWO VOLUMES</i></p>
+<p class="p2 center">VOL. I.</p>
+
+<p class="p2 poem20">
+Then I unbar the doors; my paths lead out<br>
+The exodus of nations; I disperse<br>
+Men to all shores that front the hoary main.<br>
+<span class="add1em">I too have arts and sorceries;</span><br>
+Illusion dwells forever with the wave.<br>
+I make some coast alluring, some lone isle<br>
+To distant men, who must go there or die.<br>
+<span class="left50 smcap">Emerson</span></p>
+
+<a id="img001" name="img001"></a>
+<div class="p4 figcenter">
+<img src="images/img001.jpg" width="150" height="195" alt="Editor's arm." title="">
+</div>
+
+<p class="p4 center small">
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br>
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br>
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br>
+1897</p>
+
+<p class="p4 center smaller">Copyright, 1892, <span class="smcap">By</span> JOHN FISKE.<br>
+<i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center smaller">SIXTEENTH THOUSAND.</p>
+
+<p class="p4 center small">
+<i>The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.</i><br>
+Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton &amp; Company.</p>
+
+<p class="p4 center">TO<br>
+<span class="line15">EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN,</span><br>
+A SCHOLAR WHO INHERITS THE GIFT OF MIDAS, AND<br>
+    TURNS INTO GOLD WHATEVER SUBJECT HE<br>
+    TOUCHES, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, WITH<br>
+        GRATITUDE FOR ALL THAT HE<br>
+              HAS TAUGHT ME</p>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagev" name="pagev"></a>(p. v)</span> PREFACE.</h2>
+
+<p>The present work is the outcome of two lines of study pursued, with more
+or less interruption from other studies, for about thirty years. It will
+be observed that the book has two themes, as different in character as
+the themes for voice and piano in Schubert's "Frühlingsglaube," and yet
+so closely related that the one is needful for an adequate comprehension
+of the other. In order to view in their true perspective the series of
+events comprised in the Discovery of America, one needs to form a mental
+picture of that strange world of savagery and barbarism to which
+civilized Europeans were for the first time introduced in the course of
+the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in their voyages along the
+African coast, into the Indian and Pacific oceans, and across the
+Atlantic. Nothing that Europeans discovered during that stirring period
+was so remarkable as these antique phases of human society, the mere
+existence of which had scarcely been suspected, and the real character
+of which it has been left for the present generation to begin to
+understand. Nowhere was <span class="pagenum"><a id="pagevi" name="pagevi"></a>(p. vi)</span> this ancient society so full of
+instructive lessons as in aboriginal America, which had pursued its own
+course of development, cut off and isolated from the Old World, for
+probably more than fifty thousand years. The imperishable interest of
+those episodes in the Discovery of America known as the conquests of
+Mexico and Peru consists chiefly in the glimpses they afford us of this
+primitive world. It was not an uninhabited continent that the Spaniards
+found, and in order to comprehend the course of events it is necessary
+to know something about those social features that formed a large part
+of the burden of the letters of Columbus and Vespucius, and excited even
+more intense and general interest in Europe than the purely geographical
+questions suggested by the voyages of those great sailors. The
+descriptions of ancient America, therefore, which form a kind of
+background to the present work, need no apology.</p>
+
+<p>It was the study of prehistoric Europe and of early Aryan institutions
+that led me by a natural sequence to the study of aboriginal America. In
+1869, after sketching the plan of a book on our Aryan forefathers, I was
+turned aside for five years by writing "Cosmic Philosophy." During that
+interval I also wrote "Myths and Myth-Makers" as a side-work to the
+projected book on the Aryans, and as soon as the excursion into the
+field of general philosophy was ended, in 1874, the work on <span class="pagenum"><a id="pagevii" name="pagevii"></a>(p. vii)</span>
+that book was resumed. Fortunately it was not then carried to
+completion, for it would have been sadly antiquated by this time. The
+revolution in theory concerning the Aryans has been as remarkable as the
+revolution in chemical theory which some years ago introduced the New
+Chemistry. It is becoming eminently probable that the centre of
+diffusion of Aryan speech was much nearer to Lithuania than to any part
+of Central Asia, and it has for some time been quite clear that the
+state of society revealed in Homer and the Vedas is not at all like
+primitive society, but very far from it. By 1876 I had become convinced
+that there was no use in going on without widening the field of study.
+The conclusions of the Aryan school needed to be supplemented, and often
+seriously modified, by the study of the barbaric world, and it soon
+became manifest that for the study of barbarism there is no other field
+that for fruitfulness can be compared with aboriginal America.</p>
+
+<p>This is because the progress of society was much slower in the western
+hemisphere than in the eastern, and in the days of Columbus and Cortes
+it had nowhere "caught up" to the points reached by the Egyptians of the
+Old Empire or by the builders of Mycenæ and Tiryns. In aboriginal
+America we therefore find states of society preserved in stages of
+development similar to those of our ancestral societies in the Old World
+long ages <span class="pagenum"><a id="pageviii" name="pageviii"></a>(p. viii)</span> before Homer and the Vedas. Many of the social
+phenomena of ancient Europe are also found in aboriginal America, but
+always in a more primitive condition. The clan, phratry, and tribe among
+the Iroquois help us in many respects to get back to the original
+conceptions of the gens, curia, and tribe among the Romans. We can
+better understand the growth of kingship of the Agamemnon type when we
+have studied the less developed type in Montezuma. The house-communities
+of the southern Slavs are full of interest for the student of the early
+phases of social evolution, but the Mandan round-house and the Zuñi
+pueblo carry us much deeper into the past. Aboriginal American
+institutions thus afford one of the richest fields in the world for the
+application of the comparative method, and the red Indian, viewed in
+this light, becomes one of the most interesting of men; for in studying
+him intelligently, one gets down into the stone age of human thought. No
+time should be lost in gathering whatever can be learned of his ideas
+and institutions, before their character has been wholly lost under the
+influence of white men. Under that influence many Indians have been
+quite transformed, while others have been as yet but little affected.
+Some extremely ancient types of society, still preserved on this
+continent in something like purity, are among the most instructive
+monuments of the past that can now be <span class="pagenum"><a id="pageix" name="pageix"></a>(p. ix)</span> found in the world. Such
+a type is that of the Moquis of northeastern Arizona. I have heard a
+rumour, which it is to be hoped is ill-founded, that there are persons
+who wish the United States government to interfere with this peaceful
+and self-respecting people, break up their pueblo life, scatter them in
+farmsteads, and otherwise compel them, against their own wishes, to
+change their habits and customs. If such a cruel and stupid thing were
+ever to be done, we might justly be said to have equalled or surpassed
+the folly of those Spaniards who used to make bonfires of Mexican
+hieroglyphics. It is hoped that the present book, in which of course it
+is impossible to do more than sketch the outlines and indicate the
+bearings of so vast a subject, will serve to awaken readers to the
+interest and importance of American archæology for the general study of
+the evolution of human society.</p>
+
+<p>So much for the first and subsidiary theme. As for my principal theme,
+the Discovery of America, I was first drawn to it through its close
+relations with a subject which for some time chiefly occupied my mind,
+the history of the contact between the Aryan and Semitic worlds, and
+more particularly between Christians and Mussulmans about the shores of
+the Mediterranean. It is also interesting as part of the history of
+science, and furthermore as connected with the beginnings of <span class="pagenum"><a id="pagex" name="pagex"></a>(p. x)</span> one
+of the most momentous events in the career of mankind, the colonization
+of the barbaric world by Europeans. Moreover, the discovery of America
+has its full share of the romantic fascination that belongs to most of
+the work of the Renaissance period. I have sought to exhibit these
+different aspects of the subject.</p>
+
+<p>The present book is in all its parts written from the original sources
+of information. The work of modern scholars has of course been freely
+used, but never without full acknowledgment in text or notes, and seldom
+without independent verification from the original sources.
+Acknowledgments are chiefly due to Humboldt, Morgan, Bandelier, Major,
+Varnhagen, Markham, Helps, and Harrisse. To the last-named scholar I owe
+an especial debt of gratitude, in common with all who have studied this
+subject since his arduous researches were begun. Some of the most
+valuable parts of his work have consisted in the discovery,
+reproduction, and collation of documents; and to some extent his pages
+are practically equivalent to the original sources inspected by him in
+the course of years of search through European archives, public and
+private. In the present book I must have expressed dissent from his
+conclusions at least as often as agreement with them, but whether one
+agrees with him or not, one always finds him helpful and stimulating.
+Though he has in some sort made <span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexi" name="pagexi"></a>(p. xi)</span> himself a Frenchman in the
+course of his labours, it is pleasant to recall the fact that M.
+Harrisse is by birth our fellow-countryman; and there are surely few
+Americans of our time whom students of history have more reason for
+holding in honour.</p>
+
+<p>I have not seen Mr. Winsor's "Christopher Columbus" in time to make any
+use of it. Within the last few days, while my final chapter is going to
+press, I have received the sheets of it, a few days in advance of
+publication. I do not find in it any references to sources of
+information which I have not already fully considered, so that our
+differences of opinion on sundry points may serve to show what diverse
+conclusions may be drawn from the same data. The most conspicuous
+difference is that which concerns the personal character of Columbus.
+Mr. Winsor writes in a spirit of energetic (not to say violent) reaction
+against the absurdities of Roselly de Lorgues and others who have tried
+to make a saint of Columbus; and under the influence of this reaction he
+offers us a picture of the great navigator that serves to raise a
+pertinent question. No one can deny that Las Casas was a keen judge of
+men, or that his standard of right and wrong was quite as lofty as any
+one has reached in our own time. He had a much more intimate knowledge
+of Columbus than any modern historian can ever hope to acquire, and he
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexii" name="pagexii"></a>(p. xii)</span> always speaks of him with warm admiration and respect. But how
+could Las Casas ever have respected the feeble, mean-spirited driveller
+whose portrait Mr. Winsor asks us to accept as that of the Discoverer of
+America?</p>
+
+<p>If, however, instead of his biographical estimate of Columbus, we
+consider Mr. Winsor's contributions toward a correct statement of the
+difficult geographical questions connected with the subject, we
+recognize at once the work of an acknowledged master in his chosen
+field. It is work, too, of the first order of importance. It would be
+hard to mention a subject on which so many reams of direful nonsense
+have been written as on the discovery of America; and the prolific
+source of so much folly has generally been what Mr. Freeman fitly calls
+"bondage to the modern map." In order to understand what the great
+mariners of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were trying to do, and
+what people supposed them to have done, one must begin by resolutely
+banishing the modern map from one's mind. The ancient map must take its
+place, but this must not be the ridiculous "Orbis Veteribus Notus," to
+be found in the ordinary classical atlas, <i>which simply copies the
+outlines of countries with modern accuracy from the modern map, and then
+scatters ancient names over them!</i> Such maps are worse than useless. In
+dealing with the discovery of America one must steadily keep before
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexiii" name="pagexiii"></a>(p. xiii)</span> one's mind the quaint notions of ancient geographers,
+especially Ptolemy and Mela, as portrayed upon such maps as are
+reproduced in the present volume. It was just these distorted and hazy
+notions that swayed the minds and guided the movements of the great
+discoverers, and went on reproducing themselves upon newly-made maps for
+a century or more after the time of Columbus. Without constant reference
+to these old maps one cannot begin to understand the circumstances of
+the discovery of America.</p>
+
+<p>In no way can one get at the heart of the matter more completely than by
+threading the labyrinth of causes and effects through which the western
+hemisphere came slowly and gradually to be known by the name <span class="smcap">America</span>.
+The reader will not fail to observe the pains which I have taken to
+elucidate this subject, not from any peculiar regard for Americus
+Vespucius, but because the quintessence of the whole geographical
+problem of the discovery of the New World is in one way or another
+involved in the discussion. I can think of no finer instance of the
+queer complications that can come to surround and mystify an increase of
+knowledge too great and rapid to be comprehended by a single generation
+of men.</p>
+
+<p>In the solution of the problem as to the first Vespucius voyage I follow
+the lead of Varnhagen, but always independently and with the documentary
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexiv" name="pagexiv"></a>(p. xiv)</span> evidence fully in sight. For some years I vainly tried to
+pursue Humboldt's clues to some intelligible conclusion, and felt
+inhospitably inclined toward Varnhagen's views as altogether too
+plausible; he seemed to settle too many difficulties at once. But after
+becoming convinced of the spuriousness of the Bandini letter (see below,
+vol. ii. p. 94); and observing how the air at once was cleared in some
+directions, it seemed that further work in textual criticism would be
+well bestowed. I made a careful study of the diction of the letter from
+Vespucius to Soderini in its two principal texts:&mdash;1. the Latin version
+of 1507, the original of which is in the library of Harvard University,
+appended to Waldseemüller's "Cosmographiæ Introductio"; 2. the Italian
+text reproduced severally by Bandini, Canovai, and Varnhagen, from the
+excessively rare original, of which only five copies are now known to be
+in existence. It is this text that Varnhagen regards as the original
+from which the Latin version of 1507 was made, through an intermediate
+French version now lost. In this opinion Varnhagen does not stand alone,
+as Mr. Winsor seems to think ("Christopher Columbus," p. 540, line 5
+from bottom), for Harrisse and Avezac have expressed themselves plainly
+to the same effect (see below, vol. ii. p. 42). A minute study of this
+text, with all its quaint interpolations of Spanish and <span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexv" name="pagexv"></a>(p. xv)</span>
+Portuguese idioms and seafaring phrases into the Italian ground-work of
+its diction, long ago convinced me that it never was a <i>translation</i>
+from anything in heaven or earth or the waters under the earth. Nobody
+would ever have translated a document <i>into</i> such an extremely peculiar
+and individual jargon. It is most assuredly an original text, and its
+author was either Vespucius or the Old Nick. It was by starting from
+this text as primitive that Varnhagen started correctly in his
+interpretation of the statements in the letter, and it was for that
+reason that he was able to dispose of so many difficulties at one blow.
+When he showed that the landfall of Vespucius on his first voyage was
+near Cape Honduras and had nothing whatever to do with the Pearl Coast,
+he began to follow the right trail, and so the facts which had puzzled
+everybody began at once to fall into the right places. This is all made
+clear in the seventh chapter of the present work, where the general
+argument of Varnhagen is in many points strongly reinforced. The
+evidence here set forth in connection with the Cantino map is especially
+significant.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting on many accounts to see the first voyage of Vespucius
+thus elucidated, though it had no connection with the application of his
+name by Waldseemüller to an entirely different region from any that was
+visited upon that voyage. <span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexvi" name="pagexvi"></a>(p. xvi)</span> The real significance of the third
+voyage of Vespucius, in connection with the naming of America, is now
+set forth, I believe, for the first time in the light thrown upon the
+subject by the opinions of Ptolemy and Mela. Neither Humboldt nor Major
+nor Harrisse nor Varnhagen seems to have had a firm grasp of what was in
+Waldseemüller's mind when he wrote the passage photographed below in
+vol. ii. p. 136 of this work. It is only when we keep the Greek and
+Roman theories in the foreground and unflinchingly bar out that
+intrusive modern atlas, that we realize what the Freiburg geographer
+meant and why Ferdinand Columbus was not in the least shocked or
+surprised.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>I have at various times given lectures on the discovery of America and
+questions connected therewith, more especially at University College,
+London, in 1879, at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, in 1880,
+at the Lowell Institute in Boston, in 1890, and in the course of my work
+as professor in the Washington University at St. Louis; but the present
+work is in no sense whatever a reproduction of such lectures.</p>
+
+<p>Acknowledgments are due to Mr. Winsor for his cordial permission to make
+use of a number of reproductions of old maps and facsimiles already used
+by him in the "Narrative and Critical History of America;" they are
+mentioned in the lists <span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexvii" name="pagexvii"></a>(p. xvii)</span> of illustrations. I have also to thank
+Dr. Brinton for allowing me to reproduce a page of old Mexican music,
+and the Hakluyt Society for permission to use the Zeno and Catalan maps
+and the view of Kakortok church. Dr. Fewkes has very kindly favoured me
+with a sight of proof-sheets of some recent monographs by Bandelier. And
+for courteous assistance at various libraries I have most particularly
+to thank Mr. Kiernan of Harvard University, Mr. Appleton Griffin of the
+Boston Public Library, and Mr. Uhler of the Peabody Institute in
+Baltimore.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>There is one thing which I feel obliged, though with extreme hesitation
+and reluctance, to say to my readers in this place, because the time has
+come when something ought to be said, and there seems to be no other
+place available for saying it. For many years letters&mdash;often in a high
+degree interesting and pleasant to receive&mdash;have been coming to me from
+persons with whom I am not acquainted, and I have always done my best to
+answer them. It is a long time since such letters came to form the
+larger part of a voluminous mass of correspondence. The physical fact
+has assumed dimensions with which it is no longer possible to cope. If I
+were to answer all the letters which arrive by every mail, I should
+never be able to do another day's work. It is becoming impossible
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexviii" name="pagexviii"></a>(p. xviii)</span> even to <i>read</i> them all; and there is scarcely time for
+giving due attention to one in ten. Kind friends and readers will thus
+understand that if their queries seem to be neglected, it is by no means
+from any want of good will, but simply from the lamentable fact that the
+day contains only four-and-twenty hours.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Cambridge</span>, <i>October 25, 1891.</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexix" name="pagexix"></a>(p. xix)</span> CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<a id="toc" name="toc"></a>
+
+<p class="p2 center line15">CHAPTER I.<br>
+
+<span class="smaller">ANCIENT AMERICA.</span></p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>&nbsp;<span class="ralign smcap">page</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> American aborigines
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page001">1</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Question</span> as to their origin
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page002">2</a>, <a href="#page003">3</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Antiquity</span> of man in America
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page004">4</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Shell-mounds,</span> or middens
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page004">4</a>, <a href="#page005">5</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Glacial Period
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page006">6</a>, <a href="#page007">7</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Discoveries</span> in the Trenton gravel
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page008">8</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Discoveries</span> in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page009">9</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mr. Cresson's</span> discovery at Claymont, Delaware
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page010">10</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Calaveras skull
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page011">11</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Pleistocene</span> men and mammals
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page012">12</a>, <a href="#page013">13</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Elevation</span> and subsidence
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page013">13</a>, <a href="#page014">14</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Waves</span> of migration
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page015">15</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Cave men of Europe in the Glacial Period
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page016">16</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Eskimos are probably a remnant of the Cave men
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page017">17</a>-19</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">There</span> was probably no connection or intercourse by
+water between ancient America and the Old World
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page020">20</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">There</span> is one great American red race
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page021">21</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Different</span> senses in which the word "race" is used
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page021">21</a>-23</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">No necessary</span> connection between differences in culture
+and differences in race
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page023">23</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mr. Lewis</span> Morgan's classification of grades of culture
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page024">24</a>-32</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Distinction</span> between Savagery and Barbarism
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page025">25</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Origin</span> of pottery
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page025">25</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Lower,</span> middle, and upper status of savagery
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page026">26</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Lower</span> status of barbarism; it ended differently in the
+two hemispheres; in ancient America there was no
+pastoral stage of development
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page027">27</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexx" name="pagexx"></a>(p. xx)</span> Importance</span> of Indian corn
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page028">28</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Tillage</span> with irrigation
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page029">29</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Use</span> of adobe-brick and stone in building
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page029">29</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Middle</span> status of barbarism
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page029">29</a>, <a href="#page030">30</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Stone</span> and copper tools
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page030">30</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Working</span> of metals; smelting of iron
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page030">30</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Upper</span> status of barbarism
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page031">31</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> alphabet and the beginnings of civilization
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page032">32</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">So-called</span> "civilizations" of Mexico and Peru
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page033">33</a>, <a href="#page034">34</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Loose</span> use of the words "savagery" and "civilization"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page035">35</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Value</span> and importance of the term "barbarism"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page035">35</a>, <a href="#page036">36</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> status of barbarism is most completely exemplified
+in ancient America
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page036">36</a>, <a href="#page037">37</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Survival</span> of bygone epochs of culture; work of the
+Bureau of Ethnology
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page037">37</a>, <a href="#page038">38</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Tribal</span> society and multiplicity of languages in aboriginal
+America
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page038">38</a>, <a href="#page039">39</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Tribes</span> in the upper status of savagery; Athabaskans,
+Apaches, Shoshones, etc.
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page039">39</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Tribes</span> in the lower status of barbarism; the Dakota
+group or family
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page040">40</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Minnitarees and Mandans
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page041">41</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Pawnee and Arickaree group
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page042">42</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Maskoki group
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page042">42</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Algonquin group
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page043">43</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Huron-Iroquois group
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page044">44</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Five Nations
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page045">45</a>-47</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Distinction</span> between horticulture and field agriculture
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page048">48</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Perpetual</span> intertribal warfare, with torture and
+cannibalism
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page049">49</a>-51</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Myths</span> and folk-lore
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page051">51</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ancient</span> law
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page052">52</a>, <a href="#page053">53</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> patriarchal family not primitive
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page053">53</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">"Mother-right"</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page054">54</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Primitive</span> marriage
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page055">55</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> system of reckoning kinship through females only
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page056">56</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Original</span> reason for the system
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page057">57</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> primeval human horde
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page058">58</a>, <a href="#page059">59</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Earliest</span> family-group; the clan
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page060">60</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">"Exogamy"</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page060">60</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxi" name="pagexxi"></a>(p. xxi)</span> Phratry</span> and tribe
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page061">61</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Effect</span> of pastoral life upon property and upon the
+family
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page061">61</a>-63</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> exogamous clan in ancient America
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page064">64</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Intimate</span> connection of aboriginal architecture with
+social life
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page065">65</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> long houses of the Iroquois
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page066">66</a>, <a href="#page067">67</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Summary</span> divorce
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page068">68</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Hospitality</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page068">68</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Structure</span> of the clan
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page069">69</a>, <a href="#page070">70</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Origin</span> and structure of the phratry
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page070">70</a>, <a href="#page071">71</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Structure</span> of the tribe
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page072">72</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Cross-relationships</span> between clans and tribes; the Iroquois
+Confederacy
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page072">72</a>-74</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Structure</span> of the confederacy
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page075">75</a>, <a href="#page076">76</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> "Long House"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page076">76</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Symmetrical</span> development of institutions in ancient
+America
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page077">77</a>, <a href="#page078">78</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Circular</span> houses of the Mandans
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page079">79</a>-81</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Indians of the pueblos, in the middle status of
+barbarism
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page082">82</a>, <a href="#page083">83</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Horticulture</span> with irrigation, and architecture with
+adobe
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page083">83</a>, <a href="#page084">84</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Possible</span> origin of adobe architecture
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page084">84</a>, <a href="#page085">85</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mr. Cushing's</span> sojourn at Zuñi
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page086">86</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Typical</span> structure of the pueblo
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page086">86</a>-88</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Pueblo</span> society
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page089">89</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Wonderful</span> ancient pueblos in the Chaco valley
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page090">90</a>-92</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Moqui pueblos
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page093">93</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> cliff-dwellings
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page093">93</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Pueblo</span> of Zuñi
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page093">93</a>, <a href="#page094">94</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Pueblo</span> of Tlascala
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page094">94</a>-96</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> ancient city of Mexico was a great composite
+pueblo
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page097">97</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Spanish discoverers could not be expected to understand
+the state of society which they found there
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page097">97</a>, <a href="#page098">98</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Contrast</span> between feudalism and gentilism
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page098">98</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Change</span> from gentile society to political society in
+Greece and Rome
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page099">99</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxii" name="pagexxii"></a>(p. xxii)</span> First</span> suspicions as to the erroneousness of the Spanish
+accounts
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page101">101</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Detection</span> and explanation of the errors, by Lewis
+Morgan
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page102">102</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Adolf</span> Bandelier's researches
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page103">103</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Aztec Confederacy
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page104">104</a>, <a href="#page105">105</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Aztec</span> clans
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page106">106</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Clan</span> officers
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page107">107</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Rights</span> and duties of the clan
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page108">108</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Aztec</span> phratries
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page108">108</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> <i>tlatocan</i>, or tribal council
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page109">109</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> <i>cihuacoatl</i>, or "snake-woman"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page110">110</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> <i>tlacatecuhtli</i>, or "chief-of-men"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page111">111</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Evolution</span> of kingship in Greece and Rome
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page112">112</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mediæval</span> kingship
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page113">113</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Montezuma</span> was a "priest-commander"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page114">114</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mode</span> of succession to the office
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page114">114</a>, <a href="#page115">115</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Manner</span> of collecting tribute
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page116">116</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mexican</span> roads
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page117">117</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Aztec</span> and Iroquois confederacies contrasted
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page118">118</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Aztec</span> priesthood; human sacrifices
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page119">119</a>, <a href="#page120">120</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Aztec</span> slaves
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href="#page122">122</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Aztec family
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page123">123</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Aztec</span> property
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page124">124</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mr. Morgan's</span> rules of criticism
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page125">125</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">He</span> sometimes disregarded his own rules
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page126">126</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Amusing</span> illustrations from his remarks on "Montezuma's
+Dinner"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page126">126</a>-128</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements
+was often carried too far by Mr. Morgan
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page128">128</a>, <a href="#page129">129</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Great</span> importance of the middle period of barbarism
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page130">130</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Mexicans compared with the Mayas
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page131">131</a>-133</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Maya</span> hieroglyphic writing
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page132">132</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ruined</span> cities of Central America
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page134">134</a>-138</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">They</span> are probably not older than the twelfth century
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page136">136</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Recent</span> discovery of the Chronicle of Chicxulub
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page138">138</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Maya</span> culture very closely related to Mexican
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page139">139</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> "Mound-Builders"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page140">140</a>-146</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> notion that they were like the Aztecs
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page142">142</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Or,</span> perhaps, like the Zuñis
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page143">143</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxiii" name="pagexxiii"></a>(p. xxiii)</span> These</span> notions are not well sustained
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page144">144</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> mounds were probably built by different peoples
+in the lower status of barbarism, by Cherokees,
+Shawnees, and other tribes
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page144">144</a>, <a href="#page145">145</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">It is</span> not likely that there was a "race of Mound Builders"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page146">146</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Society</span> in America at the time of the Discovery had
+reached stages similar to stages reached by eastern
+Mediterranean peoples fifty or sixty centuries
+earlier
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page146">146</a>, <a href="#page147">147</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<p class="p2 center line15">CHAPTER II.<br>
+<span class="smaller">PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.</span></p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><span class="min1em">Stories</span> of voyages to America before Columbus; the
+Chinese
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page148">148</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Irish.
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page149">149</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Blowing</span> and drifting; Cousin, of Dieppe
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page150">150</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">These</span> stories are of small value
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page150">150</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">But</span> the case of the Northmen is quite different
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page151">151</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Viking exodus from Norway
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page151">151</a>, <a href="#page152">152</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Founding</span> of a colony in Iceland, <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 874
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page153">153</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Icelandic</span> literature
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page154">154</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Discovery</span> of Greenland, <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 876
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page155">155</a>, <a href="#page156">156</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Eric</span> the Red, and his colony in Greenland,
+<span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 986
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page157">157</a>-161</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Voyage</span> of Bjarni Herjulfsson
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page162">162</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Conversion</span> of the Northmen to Christianity
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page163">163</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Leif</span> Ericsson's voyage, <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1000; Helluland and
+Markland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page164">164</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Leif's</span> winter in Vinland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page154">165</a>, <a href="#page166">166</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Voyages</span> of Thorvald and Thorstein
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page167">167</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Thorfinn</span> Karlsefni, and his unsuccessful attempt to
+found a colony in Vinland, <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1007-10
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page167">167</a>-169</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Freydis,</span> and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1011-12
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page170">170</a>, <a href="#page171">171</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Voyage</span> into Baffin's Bay, 1135
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page172">172</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Description</span> of a Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord,
+in Norway
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page173">173</a>-175</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxiv" name="pagexxiv"></a>(p. xxiv)</span> To</span> what extent the climate of Greenland may have
+changed within the last thousand years
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page176">176</a>, <a href="#page177">177</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">With</span> the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery
+of the American continent was inevitable
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page178">178</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ear-marks</span> of truth in the Icelandic narratives
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page179">179</a>, <a href="#page180">180</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Northern</span> limit of the vine
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page181">181</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Length</span> of the winter day
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page182">182</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Indian</span> corn
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page182">182</a>, <a href="#page183">183</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Winter</span> weather in Vinland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page184">184</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Vinland</span> was probably situated somewhere between Cape Breton
+and Point Judith
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page185">185</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Further</span> ear-marks of truth; savages and barbarians of the
+lower status were unknown to mediæval Europeans
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page185">185</a>, <a href="#page186">186</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> natives of Vinland as described in the Icelandic
+narratives
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page187">187</a>-193</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Meaning</span> of the epithet "Skrælings"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page188">188</a>, <a href="#page189">189</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Personal</span> appearance of the Skrælings
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page189">189</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Skrælings of Vinland were Indians,&mdash;very likely
+Algonquins
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page190">190</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> "balista" or "demon's head"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page191">191</a>, <a href="#page192">192</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> story of the "uniped"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page193">193</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Character</span> of the Icelandic records; misleading associations
+with the word "saga"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page194">194</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon, made by
+a committee of the Massachusetts Historical Society, was
+peculiarly unfortunate and inappropriate
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page194">194</a>, <a href="#page197">197</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> story of the Trojan War, in the shape in which we find
+it in Greek poetry, is pure folk-lore
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page195">195</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page196">196</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mythical</span> and historical sagas
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page197">197</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> western or Hauks-bók version of Eric the Red's Saga
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page198">198</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> northern or Flateyar-bók version
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page199">199</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Presumption</span> against sources not contemporary
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page200">200</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Hauk</span> Erlendsson and his manuscripts
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page201">201</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's
+time by oral tradition only
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page202">202</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Allusions</span> to Vinland in other Icelandic documents
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page202">202</a>-207</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxv" name="pagexxv"></a>(p. xxv)</span> Eyrbyggja</span> Saga
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page203">203</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> abbot Nikulas, etc.
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page204">204</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ari</span> Fródhi and his works
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page204">204</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> significant allusion to Vinland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page205">205</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Other</span> references
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page206">206</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Differences</span> between Hauks-bók and Flateyar-bók versions
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page207">207</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Adam</span> of Bremen
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page208">208</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Importance</span> of his testimony
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page209">209</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> misconception of the situation of Vinland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page210">210</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Summary</span> of the argument
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page211">211</a>-213</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Absurd</span> speculations of zealous antiquarians
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page213">213</a>-215</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Dighton inscription was made by Algonquins, and has
+nothing to do with the Northmen
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page213">213</a>, <a href="#page214">214</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Governor</span> Arnold's stone windmill
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page215">215</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">There</span> is no reason for supposing that the Northmen founded a
+colony in Vinland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page216">216</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">No</span> archæological remains of them have been found south of
+Davis strait
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page217">217</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">If</span> the Northmen had founded a successful colony, they would
+have introduced domestic cattle into the North American
+fauna
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page218">218</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">And</span> such animals could not have vanished and left no trace
+of their existence
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page219">219</a>, <a href="#page220">220</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Further</span> fortunes of the Greenland colony
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page221">221</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Bishop</span> Eric's voyage in search of Vinland, 1121
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page222">222</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> ship from Markland, 1347
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page223">223</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Greenland colony attacked by Eskimos, 1349
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page224">224</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Queen</span> Margaret's monopoly, and its baneful effects
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page225">225</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Story</span> of the Venetian brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page226">226</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Nicolò</span> Zeno wrecked upon one of the Færoe islands
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page227">227</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">He</span> enters the service of Henry Sinclair, Earl of the Orkneys
+and Caithness
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page228">228</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Nicolò's</span> voyage to Greenland, cir. 1394
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page229">229</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Voyage</span> of Earl Sinclair and Antonio Zeno
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page229">229</a>, <a href="#page230">230</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Publication</span> of the remains of the documents by the younger
+Nicolò Zeno, 1558
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page231">231</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Zeno map
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page231">232</a>, 233</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Queer</span> transformations of names
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page234">234</a>-236</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxvi" name="pagexxvi"></a>(p. xxvi)</span> The</span> name <i>Færoislander</i> became <i>Frislanda</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page236">236</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> narrative nowhere makes a claim to the "discovery
+of America"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page237">237</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> "Zichmni" of the narrative means Henry Sinclair
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page238">238</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Bardsen's</span> "Description of Greenland"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page239">239</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> monastery of St. Olaus and its hot spring
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page240">240</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Volcanoes</span> of the north Atlantic ridge
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page241">241</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Fate</span> of Gunnbjörn's Skerries, 1456
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page242">242</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Volcanic</span> phenomena in Greenland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page242">242</a>, <a href="#page243">243</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Estotiland</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page244">244</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Drogio</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page245">245</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Inhabitants</span> of Drogio and the countries beyond
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page246">246</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Fisherman's return to Frislanda
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page247">247</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Was</span> the account of Drogio woven into the narrative
+by the younger Nicolò?
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page248">248</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Or</span> does it represent actual experiences in North
+America?
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page249">249</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> case of David Ingram, 1568
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page250">250</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> case of Cabeza de Vaca, 1528-36
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page251">251</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">There</span> may have been unrecorded instances of visits to
+North America
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page252">252</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> pre-Columbian voyages made no real contributions
+to geographical knowledge
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page253">253</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">And</span> were in no true sense a discovery of America
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page254">254</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Real</span> contact between the eastern and western hemisphere
+was first established by Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page255">255</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p class="p2 center line15">CHAPTER III.<br>
+<span class="smaller">EUROPE AND CATHAY.</span></p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><span class="min1em">Why</span> the voyages of the Northmen were not followed up
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page256">256</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ignorance</span> of their geographical significance
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page257">257</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Lack</span> of instruments for ocean navigation
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page257">257</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Condition</span> of Europe in the year 1000
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page258">258</a>, <a href="#page259">259</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">It</span> was not such as to favour colonial enterprise
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page260">260</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> outlook of Europe was toward Asia
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page261">261</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Routes</span> of trade between Europe and Asia
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page262">262</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxvii" name="pagexxvii"></a>(p. xxvii)</span> Claudius</span> Ptolemy and his knowledge of the earth
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page263">263</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Early</span> mention of China
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page264">264</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> monk Cosmas Indicopleustes
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page265">265</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Shape</span> of the earth, according to Cosmas
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page266">266</a>, <a href="#page267">267</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> knowledge of Asia
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page268">268</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Nestorians
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page268">268</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Effects</span> of the Saracen conquests
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page269">269</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Constantinople</span> in the twelfth century
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page270">270</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Crusades
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page270">270</a>-274</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Barbarizing</span> character of Turkish conquest
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page271">271</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">General</span> effects of the Crusades
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page272">272</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Fourth Crusade
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page273">273</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Rivalry</span> between Venice and Genoa
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page274">274</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Centres</span> and routes of mediæval trade
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page275">275</a>, <a href="#page276">276</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Effects</span> of the Mongol conquests
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page277">277</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Cathay,</span> origin of the name
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page277">277</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Carpini</span> and Rubruquis
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page278">278</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">First</span> knowledge of an eastern ocean beyond Cathay
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page278">278</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> data were thus prepared for Columbus; but as yet nobody
+reasoned from these data to a practical conclusion
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page279">279</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Polo brothers
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page280">280</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Kublai</span> Khan's message to the Pope
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page281">281</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Marco</span> Polo and his travels in Asia
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page281">281</a>, <a href="#page282">282</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">First</span> recorded voyage of Europeans around the Indo-Chinese
+peninsula
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page282">282</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Return</span> of the Polos to Venice
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page283">283</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Marco</span> Polo's book, written in prison at Genoa, 1299;
+its great contributions to geographical knowledge
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page284">284</a>, <a href="#page285">285</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Prester</span> John
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page285">285</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Griffins</span> and Arimaspians
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page286">286</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Catalan map, 1375
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page287">288</a>, 289</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Other</span> visits to China
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page287">287</a>-291</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Overthrow</span> of the Mongol dynasty, and shutting up of China
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page291">291</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">First</span> rumours of the Molucca islands and Japan
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page292">292</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> accustomed routes of Oriental trade were cut off in the
+fifteenth century by the Ottoman Turks
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page293">293</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Necessity</span> for finding an "outside route to the Indies"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page294">294</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<p class="p2 center line15"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxviii" name="pagexxviii"></a>(p. xxviii)</span> CHAPTER IV.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.<br>
+<i>EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE.</i></span></p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><span class="min1em">Question</span> as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing
+around Africa
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page295">295</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Views</span> of Eratosthenes
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page296">296</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Opposing</span> theory of Ptolemy
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page297">297</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Story</span> of the Ph&oelig;nician voyage in the time of Necho
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page298">298</a>-300</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Voyage</span> of Hanno
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page300">300</a>, <a href="#page301">301</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Voyages</span> of Sataspes and Eudoxus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page302">302</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Wild</span> exaggerations
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page303">303</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Views</span> of Pomponius Mela
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page304">304</a>, <a href="#page305">305</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ancient</span> theory of the five zones
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page306">306</a>, <a href="#page307">307</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Inhabited World, or &OElig;cumene, and the Antipodes
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page308">308</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Curious</span> notions about Taprobane (Ceylon)
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page309">309</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Question</span> as to the possibility of crossing the torrid zone
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page309">309</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Notions</span> about sailing "up and down hill"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page310">310</a>, <a href="#page311">311</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Superstitious</span> fancies
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page311">311</a>, <a href="#page312">312</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Clumsiness</span> of ships in the fifteenth century
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page312">312</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Dangers</span> from famine and scurvy
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page313">313</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> mariner's compass; an interesting letter from Brunetto
+Latini to Guido Cavalcanti
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page313">313</a>-315</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Calculating</span> latitudes and longitudes
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page315">315</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Prince</span> Henry the Navigator
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page316">316</a>-326</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> idea of an ocean route to the Indies, and what it
+might bring
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page318">318</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Sacred Promontory
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page319">319</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Madeira and Canary islands
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page320">320</a>-322</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Gil</span> Eannes passes Cape Bojador
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page323">323</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Beginning</span> of the modern slave-trade, 1442
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page323">323</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Papal</span> grant of heathen countries to the Portuguese
+crown
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page324">324</a>, <a href="#page325">325</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Advance</span> to Sierra Leone
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page326">326</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Advance</span> to the Hottentot coast
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page326">326</a>, <a href="#page327">327</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Note</span> upon the extent of European acquaintance with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxix" name="pagexxix"></a>(p. xxix)</span> savagery and the lower forms of barbarism previous
+to the fifteenth century
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page327">327</a>-329</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Effect</span> of the Portuguese discoveries upon the theories
+of Ptolemy and Mela
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page329">329</a>, <a href="#page330">330</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">News</span> of Prester John; Covilham's journey
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page331">331</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Bartholomew</span> Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope and enters the
+Indian ocean
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page332">332</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Some</span> effects of this discovery
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page333">333</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Bartholomew</span> Columbus took part in it
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page333">333</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Connection</span> between these voyages and the work of Christopher
+Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page334">334</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p class="p2 center line15">CHAPTER V.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.<br>
+<i>WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE.</i></span></p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><span class="min1em">Sources</span> of information concerning the life of Columbus;
+Las Casas and Ferdinand Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page335">335</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Biblioteca Colombina at Seville
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page336">336</a>, <a href="#page337">337</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Bernaldez</span> and Peter Martyr
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page338">338</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Letters</span> of Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page338">338</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Defects</span> in Ferdinand's information
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page339">339</a>, <a href="#page340">340</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Researches</span> of Henry Harrisse
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page341">341</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Date</span> of the birth of Columbus; archives of Savona
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page342">342</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Statement</span> of Bernaldez
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page343">343</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus's</span> letter of September, 1501
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page344">344</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> balance of probability is in favour of 1436
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page345">345</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> family of Domenico Colombo, and its changes of
+residence
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page346">346</a>, <a href="#page347">347</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> tells us that he was born in the city of Genoa
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page348">348</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> early years
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page349">349</a>-351</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Christopher</span> and his brother Bartholomew at Lisbon
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page351">351</a>, <a href="#page352">352</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Philippa</span> Moñiz de Perestrelo
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page352">352</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Personal</span> appearance of Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page353">353</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> marriage, and life upon the island of Porto Santo
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page353">353</a>, <a href="#page354">354</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> king of Portugal asks advice of the great astronomer
+Toscanelli
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page355">355</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxx" name="pagexxx"></a>(p. xxx)</span> Toscanelli's</span> first letter to Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page356">356</a>-361</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> second letter to Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page361">361</a>, <a href="#page362">362</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Who</span> first suggested the feasibleness of a westward route
+to the Indies? Was it Columbus?
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page363">363</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Perhaps</span> it was Toscanelli
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page363">363</a>, <a href="#page364">364</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Note</span> on the date of Toscanelli's first letter to
+Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page365">365</a>-367</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> idea, being naturally suggested by the globular form of
+the earth, was as old as Aristotle
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page368">368</a>, <a href="#page369">369</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Opinions</span> of ancient writers
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page370">370</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Opinions</span> of Christian writers
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page371">371</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> "Imago Mundi" of Petrus Alliacus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page372">372</a>, 373</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ancient</span> estimates of the size of the globe and the length of
+the &OElig;cumene
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page374">374</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Toscanelli's</span> calculation of the size of the earth, and of
+the position of Japan (Cipango)
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page375">375</a>, <a href="#page376">376</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus's</span> opinions of the size of the globe, the length of
+the &OElig;cumene, and the width of the Atlantic ocean from
+Portugal to Japan
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page377">377</a>-380</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">There</span> was a fortunate mixture of truth and error in these
+opinions of Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page381">381</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> whole point and purport of Columbus's scheme lay in its
+promise of a route to the Indies shorter than that which the
+Portuguese were seeking by way of Guinea
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page381">381</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus's</span> speculations on climate; his voyages to Guinea
+and into the Arctic ocean
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page382">382</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">He</span> may have reached Jan Mayen island, and stopped
+at Iceland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page383">383</a>, <a href="#page384">384</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Scandinavian hypothesis that Columbus "must
+have" heard and understood the story of the Vinland
+voyages
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page384">384</a>, <a href="#page385">385</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">It</span> has not a particle of evidence in its favour
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page385">385</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">It</span> is not probable that Columbus knew of Adam of
+Bremen's allusion to Vinland, or that he would have
+understood it if he had read it
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page386">386</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">It</span> is doubtful if he would have stumbled upon the
+story in Iceland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page387">387</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">If</span> he had heard it, he would probably have classed it
+with such tales as that of St. Brandan's isle
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page388">388</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxxi" name="pagexxxi"></a>(p. xxxi)</span> He</span> could not possibly have obtained from such a source his
+opinion of the width of the ocean
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page388">388</a>, <a href="#page389">389</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">If</span> he had known and understood the Vinland story, he had the
+strongest motives for proclaiming it and no motive whatever
+for concealing it
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page390">390</a>-392</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">No</span> trace of a thought of Vinland appears in any of his
+voyages
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page393">393</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Why</span> did not Norway or Iceland utter a protest in 1493?
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page393">393</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> idea of Vinland was not associated with the idea of
+America until the seventeenth century
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page394">394</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Recapitulation</span> of the genesis of Columbus's scheme
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page395">395</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Martin</span> Behaim's improved astrolabe
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page395">395</a>, <a href="#page396">396</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Negotiations</span> of Columbus with John II. of Portugal
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page396">396</a>, <a href="#page397">397</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> king is persuaded into a shabby trick
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page398">398</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> leaves Portugal and enters into the service
+of Ferdinand and Isabella, 1486
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page398">398</a>-400</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> junto at Salamanca, 1486
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page401">401</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Birth</span> of Ferdinand Columbus, August 15, 1488
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page401">401</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Bartholomew</span> Columbus returns from the Cape of Good Hope,
+December, 1487
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page402">402</a>, <a href="#page403">403</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Christopher</span> visits Bartholomew at Lisbon, cir. September,
+1488, and sends him to England
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page404">404</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Bartholomew,</span> after mishaps, reaches England cir. February,
+1490, and goes thence to France before 1492
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page405">405</a>-407</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The duke</span> of Medina-Celi proposes to furnish the ships for
+Columbus, but the queen withholds her consent
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page408">408</a>, <a href="#page409">409</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> makes up his mind to get his family together and go
+to France, October, 1491
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page409">409</a>, <a href="#page410">410</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">A change</span> of fortune; he stops at La Rábida, and meets the
+prior Juan Perez, who writes to the queen
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page411">411</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> is summoned back to court
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page411">411</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> junto before Granada, December, 1491
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page412">412</a>, <a href="#page413">413</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Surrender</span> of Granada, January 2, 1492
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page414">414</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> negotiates with the queen, who considers his terms
+exorbitant
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page400">414</a>-416</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Interposition</span> of Luis de Santangel
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page416">416</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxxii" name="pagexxxii"></a>(p. xxxii)</span> Agreement</span> between Columbus and the sovereigns
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page417">417</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Cost</span> of the voyage
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page418">418</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Dismay</span> at Palos
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page419">419</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> three famous caravels
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page420">420</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Delay</span> at the Canary islands
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page421">421</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Martin</span> Behaim and his globe
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page421">422</a>, <a href="#page424">423</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> starts for Japan, September 6, 1492
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page424">424</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Terrors</span> of the voyage:&mdash;1. Deflection of the needle
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page425">425</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="add87em">2. The Sargasso sea</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page426">426</a>, <a href="#page427">427</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="add87em">3. The trade wind</span>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page428">428</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Impatience</span> of the crews
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page428">428</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Change</span> of course from W. to W. S. W
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page429">429</a>, <a href="#page430">430</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Discovery</span> of land, October 12, 1492
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page431">431</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Guanahani:</span> which of the Bahama islands was it?
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page432">432</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Groping</span> for Cipango and the route to Quinsay
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page433">433</a>, <a href="#page434">434</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> reaches Cuba, and sends envoys to find a
+certain Asiatic prince
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page434">434</a>, <a href="#page435">435</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">He</span> turns eastward and Pinzon deserts him
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page435">435</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> arrives at Hayti and thinks it must be Japan
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page436">436</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> flag-ship is wrecked, and he decides to go back to
+Spain
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page437">437</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Building</span> of the blockhouse, La Navidad
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page438">438</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Terrible</span> storm in mid-ocean on the return voyage
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page439">439</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Cold</span> reception at the Azores
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page440">440</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> is driven ashore in Portugal, where the king is
+advised to have him assassinated
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page440">440</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">But</span> to offend Spain so grossly would be imprudent
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page441">441</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Arrival</span> of Columbus and Pinzon at Palos; death of Pinzon
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page442">442</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> is received by the sovereigns at Barcelona
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page443">443</a>, <a href="#page444">444</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">General</span> excitement at the news that a way to the Indies had
+been found
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page445">445</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">This</span> voyage was an event without any parallel in history
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page446">446</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<p class="p2 center line15"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxxiii" name="pagexxxiii"></a>(p. xxxiii)</span> CHAPTER VI.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.</span></p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Discovery of America was a gradual process
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page447">447</a>, <a href="#page448">448</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> letters of Columbus to Santangel and to Sanchez
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page449">449</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Versification</span> of the story by Giuliano Dati
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page450">450</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Earliest</span> references to the discovery
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page451">451</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> earliest reference in English
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page452">452</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> Portuguese claim to the Indies
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page453">453</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Bulls</span> of Pope Alexander VI.
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page454">454</a>-458</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> treaty of Tordesillas
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page459">459</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Juan</span> Rodriguez Fonseca, and his relations with
+Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page460">460</a>-462</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Friar</span> Boyle
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page462">462</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Notable</span> persons who embarked on the second voyage
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page463">463</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Departure</span> from Cadiz
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page464">464</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Cruise</span> among the Cannibal (Caribbee) islands
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page465">465</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Fate</span> of the colony at La Navidad
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page466">466</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Building</span> the town of Isabella
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page467">467</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Exploration</span> of Cibao
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page467">467</a>, <a href="#page468">468</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Westward</span> cruise; Cape Alpha and Omega
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page468">468</a>-470</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Discovery</span> of Jamaica
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page471">471</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Coasting</span> the south side of Cuba
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page472">472</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> "people of Mangon"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page473">473</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Speculations</span> concerning the Golden Chersonese
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page474">474</a>-476</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">A solemn</span> expression of opinion
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page477">477</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Vicissitudes</span> of theory
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page477">477</a>, <a href="#page478">478</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Arrival</span> of Bartholomew Columbus in Hispaniola
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page478">478</a>, <a href="#page479">479</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mutiny</span> in Hispaniola; desertion of Boyle and Margarite
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page478">479</a>, <a href="#page480">480</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> government of Columbus was not tyrannical
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page481">481</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Troubles</span> with the Indians
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page481">481</a>, <a href="#page482">482</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Mission</span> of Juan Aguado
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page482">482</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Discovery</span> of gold mines, and speculations about Ophir
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page483">483</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Founding</span> of San Domingo, 1496
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page484">484</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> return voyage to Spain
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page485">485</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Edicts</span> of 1495 and 1497
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page486">486</a>, <a href="#page487">487</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Vexatious</span> conduct of Fonseca; Columbus loses his temper
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page487">487</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxxiv" name="pagexxxiv"></a>(p. xxxiv)</span> Departure</span> from San Lucar on the third voyage
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page488">488</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> belt of calms
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page489">489</a>-491</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Trinidad</span> and the Orinoco
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page491">491</a>, <a href="#page492">492</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Speculations</span> as to the earth's shape; the mountain of
+Paradise
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page494">494</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Relation</span> of the "Eden continent" to "Cochin China"
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page495">495</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Discovery</span> of the Pearl Coast
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page495">495</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> arrives at San Domingo
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page496">496</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Roldan's</span> rebellion and Fonseca's machinations
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page496">496</a>, <a href="#page497">497</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Gama's</span> voyage to Hindustan, 1497
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page498">498</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Fonseca's</span> creature, Bobadilla, sent to investigate the
+troubles in Hispaniola
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page499">499</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">He</span> imprisons Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page500">500</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">And</span> sends him in chains to Spain
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page501">501</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Release</span> of Columbus; his interview with the sovereigns
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page502">502</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">How</span> far were the sovereigns responsible for Bobadilla?
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page503">503</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ovando,</span> another creature of Fonseca, appointed governor
+of Hispaniola
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page503">503</a>, <a href="#page504">504</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Purpose</span> of Columbus's fourth voyage, to find a passage
+from the Caribbee waters into the Indian ocean
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page504">504</a>, <a href="#page506">506</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">The</span> voyage across the Atlantic
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page506">506</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> not allowed to stop at San Domingo
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page507">507</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> arrival at Cape Honduras
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page508">508</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Cape</span> Gracias a Dios, and the coast of Veragua
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page509">509</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="min1em">Fruitless</span> search for the strait of Malacca
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page510">510</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="min1em">Futile</span> attempt to make a settlement in Veragua
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page511">511</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus</span> is shipwrecked on the coast of Jamaica; shameful
+conduct of Ovando
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page512">512</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="min1em">Columbus's</span> last return to Spain
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page513">513</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="min1em">His</span> death at Valladolid, May 20, 1506
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page513">513</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="min1em">"Nuevo</span> Mundo;" arms of Ferdinand Columbus
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page514">514</a>, <a href="#page515">515</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="min1em">When</span> Columbus died, the fact that a New World had been
+discovered by him had not yet begun to dawn upon his mind,
+or upon the mind of any voyager or any writer
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page515">515</a>, <a href="#page516">516</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxxv" name="pagexxxv"></a>(p. xxxv)</span> ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+<ul>
+<li>&nbsp;<span class="ralign smcap">page</span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Portrait</span> of the author
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img024"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">View</span> and ground-plan of Seneca-Iroquois long house
+<i>reduced from Morgan's Houses and House-Life of the
+American Aborigines</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img002">66</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">View,</span> cross-section, and ground-plan of Mandan round
+house, <i>ditto</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img004">80</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ground-plan</span> of Pueblo Hungo Pavie, <i>ditto</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img005">86</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Restoration</span> of Pueblo Hungo Pavie, <i>ditto</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img006">88</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Restoration</span> of Pueblo Bonito, <i>ditto</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img007">90</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ground-plan</span> of Pueblo Peñasca Blanca, <i>ditto</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img008">92</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ground-plan</span> of so-called "House of the Nuns" at Uxmal,
+<i>ditto</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img009">133</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Map</span> of the East Bygd, or eastern settlement of the Northmen
+in Greenland, <i>reduced from Rafn's Antiquitates
+Americanæ</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img010">160, 161</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Ruins</span> of the church at Kakortok, <i>from Major's Voyages of
+the Zeni, published by the Hakluyt Society</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img011">222</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Zeno</span> Map, cir. 1400, <i>ditto</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img012">232, 233</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Map</span> of the World according to Claudius Ptolemy, cir. <span class="smcap">A. D.</span>
+150, <i>an abridged sketch after a map in Bunbury's History of
+Ancient Geography</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img023"><i>Facing</i>     265</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Two</span> sheets of the Catalan Map, 1375, <i>from Yule's Cathay,
+published by the Hakluyt Society</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img013l">288, 289</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Map</span> of the World according to Pomponius Mela, cir. <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 50,
+<i>from Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img014">304</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Map</span> illustrating Portuguese voyages on the coast of Africa,
+<i>from a sketch by the author</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img015">324</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Toscanelli's</span> Map, 1474, <i>redrawn and improved from a sketch
+in Winsor's America</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img022"><i>Facing</i>          357</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagexxxvi" name="pagexxxvi"></a>(p. xxxvi)</span> Annotations</span> by Columbus, <i>reduced from a photograph in
+Harrisse's Notes on Columbus</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img016">373</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Sketch</span> of Martin Behaim's Globe, 1492, preserved in the city
+hall at Nuremberg, <i>reduced to Mercator's projection and
+sketched by the author</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img017">422, 423</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Sketch</span> of Martin Behaim's Atlantic Ocean, with outline of the
+American continent superimposed, <i>from Winsor's America</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img018">429</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Map</span> of the discoveries made by Columbus in his first and
+second voyages, <i>sketched by the author</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img019">469</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Map</span> of the discoveries made by Columbus in his third and
+fourth voyages, <i>ditto</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img020">493</a></span></li>
+<li><span class="min1em">Arms</span> of Ferdinand Columbus, <i>from the title-page of
+Harrisse's Fernand Colomb</i>
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#img021">515</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h1><span class="pagenum"><a id="page001" name="page001"></a>(p. 001)</span> THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.</h1>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I.<br>
+
+<span class="smaller">ANCIENT AMERICA.</span></h2>
+
+<p>When the civilized people of Europe first became acquainted with the
+continents of North and South America, they found them inhabited by a
+race of men quite unlike any of the races with which they were familiar
+in the Old World. <span class="sidenote">The American aborigines.</span>
+Between the various tribes of this aboriginal American
+race, except in the sub-arctic region, there is now seen to be a general
+physical likeness, such as to constitute an American type of mankind as
+clearly recognizable as those types which we call Mongolian and Malay,
+though far less pronounced than such types as the Australian or the
+negro. The most obvious characteristics possessed in common by the
+American aborigines are the copper-coloured or rather the
+cinnamon-coloured complexion, along with the high cheek-bones and small
+deep-set eyes, the straight black hair and absence or scantiness of
+beard. With regard to stature, length of limbs, massiveness of frame,
+and shape of skull, considerable <span class="pagenum"><a id="page002" name="page002"></a>(p. 002)</span> divergencies may be noticed
+among the various American tribes, as indeed is also the case among the
+members of the white race in Europe, and of other races. With regard to
+culture the differences have been considerable, although, with two or
+three apparent but not real exceptions, there was nothing in
+pre-Columbian America that could properly be called civilization; the
+general condition of the people ranged all the way from savagery to
+barbarism of a high type.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after America was proved not to be part of Asia, a puzzling
+question arose. Whence came these "Indians," and in what manner did they
+find their way to the western hemisphere. Since the beginning of the
+present century discoveries in geology have entirely altered our mental
+attitude toward this question. It was formerly argued upon the two
+assumptions that the geographical relations of land and water had been
+always pretty much the same as we now find them, and that all the racial
+differences among men have arisen since the date of the "Noachian
+Deluge," which was generally placed somewhere between two and three
+thousand years before the Christian era. <span class="sidenote">Question as to their origin.</span>
+Hence inasmuch as European
+tradition knows nothing of any such race as the Indians, it was supposed
+that at some time within the historic period they must have moved
+eastward from Asia into America; and thus "there was felt to be a sort
+of speculative necessity for discovering points of resemblance between
+American languages, myths, and social observances and those of the
+Oriental world. Now the aborigines <span class="pagenum"><a id="page003" name="page003"></a>(p. 003)</span> of this Continent were made
+out to be Kamtchatkans, and now Chinamen, and again they were shown,
+with quaint erudition, to be remnants of the ten tribes of Israel.
+Perhaps none of these theories have been exactly disproved, but they
+have all been superseded and laid on the shelf."<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1" title="Go to footnote 1"><span class="small">[1]</span></a> <span class="pagenum"><a id="page004" name="page004"></a>(p. 004)</span> The
+tendency of modern discovery is indeed toward agreement with the
+time-honoured tradition which makes the Old World, and perhaps Asia, the
+earliest dwelling-place of mankind. Competition has been far more active
+in the fauna of the eastern hemisphere than in that of the western,
+natural selection has accordingly resulted in the evolution of higher
+forms, and it is there that we find both extinct and surviving species
+of man's nearest collateral relatives, those tailless half-human apes,
+the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon.
+<span class="sidenote">Antiquity of man in America.</span>
+It is altogether probable
+that the people whom the Spaniards found in America came by migration
+from the Old World. But it is by no means probable that their migration
+occurred within so short a period as five or six thousand years.
+A series of observations and discoveries kept up for the last half-century
+seem to show that North America has been continuously inhabited by human
+beings since the earliest Pleistocene times, if not earlier.</p>
+
+<p>The first group of these observations and discoveries relate to
+"middens" or shell-heaps. On the banks of the Damariscotta river in
+Maine are some of the most remarkable shell-heaps in the world. With an
+average thickness of six or seven feet, they rise in places to a height
+of twenty-five feet.
+<span class="sidenote">Shell-mounds.</span>
+They consist almost entirely of huge oyster-shells
+often ten inches in length and sometimes much longer. The shells belong
+to a salt-water species. In some places "there is an appearance of
+stratification covered by an alternation of shells and earth, as if the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page005" name="page005"></a>(p. 005)</span> deposition of shells had been from time to time interrupted,
+and a vegetable mould had covered the surface." In these heaps have been
+found fragments of pottery and of the bones of such edible animals as
+the moose and deer. "At the very foundation of one of the highest
+heaps," in a situation which must for long ages have been undisturbed,
+Mr. Edward Morse "found the remains of an ancient fire-place, where he
+exhumed charcoal, bones, and pottery."<a id="footnotetag2" name="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2" title="Go to footnote 2"><span class="small">[2]</span></a> The significant circumstance
+is that "at the present time oysters are only found in very small
+numbers, too small to make it an object to gather them," and so far as
+memory and tradition can reach, such seems to have been the case. The
+great size of the heap, coupled with the notable change in the
+distribution of this mollusk since the heap was abandoned, implies a
+very considerable lapse of time since the vestiges of human occupation
+were first left here. Similar conclusions have been drawn from the banks
+or mounds of shells on the St. John's river in Florida,<a id="footnotetag3" name="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3" title="Go to footnote 3"><span class="small">[3]</span></a> on the
+Alabama river, at Grand Lake on the lower Mississippi, and at San Pablo
+in the bay of San Francisco. Thus at various points from Maine to
+California, and in connection with one particular kind of memorial, we
+find records of the presence of man at a period undoubtedly prehistoric,
+but not necessarily many thousands of years old.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page006" name="page006"></a>(p. 006)</span>
+
+<p>The second group of discoveries carries us back much farther, even into
+the earlier stages of that widespread glaciation which was the most
+remarkable feature of the Pleistocene period.
+<span class="sidenote">The Glacial Period.</span>
+At the periods of greatest
+cold "the continent of North America was deeply swathed in ice as far
+south as the latitude of Philadelphia, while glaciers descended into
+North Carolina."<a id="footnotetag4" name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4" title="Go to footnote 4"><span class="small">[4]</span></a> The valleys of the Rocky Mountains also supported
+enormous glaciers, and a similar state of things existed at the same
+time in Europe. These periods of intense cold were alternated with long
+interglacial periods during which the climate was warmer than it is
+to-day. Concerning the antiquity of the Pleistocene age, which was
+characterized by such extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold, there
+has been, as in all questions relating to geological time, much conflict
+of opinion. Twenty years ago geologists often argued as if there were an
+unlimited fund of past time upon which to draw; but since Sir William
+Thomson and other physicists emphasized the point that in an antiquity
+very far from infinite this earth must have been a molten mass, there
+has been a reaction. In many instances further study has shown that less
+time was needed in order to effect a given change than had formerly been
+supposed; and so there has grown up a tendency to shorten the time
+assigned to geological periods. Here, as in so many other cases, the
+truth is doubtless to be sought within the extremes. If we adopt the
+magnificent argument of Dr. Croll, which seems <span class="pagenum"><a id="page007" name="page007"></a>(p. 007)</span> to me still to
+hold its ground against all adverse criticism,<a id="footnotetag5" name="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5" title="Go to footnote 5"><span class="small">[5]</span></a> and regard the Glacial
+epoch as coincident with the last period of high eccentricity of the
+earth's orbit, we obtain a result that is moderate and probable. That
+astronomical period began about 240,000 years ago and came to an end
+about 80,000 years ago. During this period the eccentricity was seldom
+less than .04, and at one time rose to .0569. At the present time the
+eccentricity is .0168, and nearly 800,000 years will pass before it
+attains such a point as it reached during the Glacial epoch. For the
+last 50,000 years the departure of the earth's orbit from a circular
+form has been exceptionally small.</p>
+
+<p>Now the traces of the existence of men in North America during the
+Glacial epoch have in recent years been discovered in abundance, as for
+example, the palæolithic quartzite implements found in the drift near
+the city of St. Paul, which date from toward the close of the Glacial
+epoch<a id="footnotetag6" name="footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6" title="Go to footnote 6"><span class="small">[6]</span></a>; the fragment of a human jaw found in the red clay deposited in
+Minnesota during an earlier part of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page008" name="page008"></a>(p. 008)</span> that epoch;<a id="footnotetag7" name="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7" title="Go to footnote 7"><span class="small">[7]</span></a> the noble
+collection of palæoliths found by Dr. C. C. Abbott in the Trenton
+gravels in New Jersey; and the more recent discoveries of Dr. Metz and
+Mr. H. T. Cresson.</p>
+
+<p>The year 1873 marks an era in American archæology as memorable as the
+year 1841 in the investigation of the antiquity of man in Europe. With
+reference to these problems Dr. Abbott occupies a position similar to
+that of Boucher de Perthes in the Old World, and the Trenton valley is
+coming to be classic ground, like the valley of the Somme. In April,
+1873, Dr. Abbott published his description of three rude implements
+which he had found some sixteen feet below the surface of the ground "in
+the gravels of a bluff overlooking the Delaware river."
+<span class="sidenote">Discoveries in the Trenton gravel.</span>
+The implements
+were in place in an undisturbed deposit, and could not have found their
+way thither in any recent time; Dr. Abbott assigned them to the age of
+the Glacial drift. This was the beginning of a long series of
+investigations, in which Dr. Abbott's work was assisted and supplemented
+by Messrs. Whitney, Carr, Putnam, Shaler, Lewis, Wright, Haynes,
+Dawkins, and other eminent geologists and archæologists. By 1888 Dr.
+Abbott had obtained not less than 60 implements from various recorded
+depths in the gravel, while many others were found at depths not
+recorded or in the talus of the banks.<a id="footnotetag8" name="footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8" title="Go to footnote 8"><span class="small">[8]</span></a> Three human skulls and other
+bones, along with the tusk <span class="pagenum"><a id="page009" name="page009"></a>(p. 009)</span> of a mastodon, have been discovered
+in the same gravel. Careful studies have been made of the conditions
+under which the gravel-banks were deposited and their probable age; and
+it is generally agreed that they date from the later portion of the
+Glacial period, or about the time of the final recession of the
+ice-sheet from this region. At that time, in its climate and general
+aspect, New York harbour must have been much like a Greenland fiord of
+the present day. In 1883 Professor Wright of Oberlin, after a careful
+study of the Trenton deposits and their relations to the terrace and
+gravel deposits to the westward, predicted that similar palæolithic
+implements would be found in Ohio. Two years afterward, the prediction
+was verified by Dr. Metz, who found a true palæolith of black flint at
+Madisonville, in the Little Miami valley, eight feet below the surface.
+<span class="sidenote">Discoveries in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota;</span>
+Since then further discoveries have been made in the same neighbourhood
+by Dr. Metz, and in Jackson county, Indiana, by Mr. H. T. Cresson; and
+the existence of man in that part of America toward the close of the
+Glacial period may be regarded as definitely established. The
+discoveries of Miss Babbitt and Professor Winchell, in Minnesota, carry
+the conclusion still farther, and add to the probability of the
+existence of a human population all the way from the Atlantic coast to
+the upper Mississippi valley at that remote antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>A still more remarkable discovery was made by Mr. Cresson in July, 1887,
+at Claymont, in the north of Delaware. In a deep cut of the Baltimore
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page010" name="page010"></a>(p. 010)</span> and Ohio Railroad, in a stratum of Philadelphia red gravel and
+brick clay, <span class="sidenote">and in Delaware.</span>
+Mr. Cresson obtained an unquestionable palæolith, and a few
+months afterward his diligent search was rewarded with another.<a id="footnotetag9" name="footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9" title="Go to footnote 9"><span class="small">[9]</span></a> This
+formation dates from far back in the Glacial period. If we accept Dr.
+Croll's method of reckoning, we can hardly assign to it an antiquity
+less than 150,000 years.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page011" name="page011"></a>(p. 011)</span>
+
+<p>But according to Professor Josiah Whitney there is reason for supposing
+that man existed in California at a still more remote period.
+<span class="sidenote">The Calaveras skull.</span>
+He holds
+that the famous skull discovered in 1866, in the gold-bearing gravels of
+Calaveras county, belongs to the Pliocene age.<a id="footnotetag10" name="footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10" title="Go to footnote 10"><span class="small">[10]</span></a> If this be so, it
+seems to suggest an antiquity not less than twice as great as that just
+mentioned. The question as to the antiquity of the Calaveras skull is
+still hotly disputed among the foremost palæontologists, but as one
+reads the arguments one cannot help feeling that theoretical
+difficulties have put the objectors into a somewhat inhospitable
+attitude toward the evidence so ably presented by Professor Whitney. It
+has been too hastily assumed that, from the point of view of evolution,
+the existence of Pliocene man is improbable. Upon general
+considerations, however, we have strong reason for believing that human
+beings must have inhabited some portions of the earth throughout the
+whole duration of the Pliocene period, and it need not surprise us if
+their remains are presently discovered in more places than one.<a id="footnotetag11" name="footnotetag11"></a><a href="#footnote11" title="Go to footnote 11"><span class="small">[11]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page012" name="page012"></a>(p. 012)</span>
+
+<p>Whatever may be the final outcome of the Calaveras controversy, there
+can be no doubt as to the existence of man in North America far back in
+early Pleistocene times. The men of the River-drift, who long dwelt in
+western Europe during <span class="pagenum"><a id="page013" name="page013"></a>(p. 013)</span> the milder intervals of the Glacial
+period, but seem to have become extinct toward the end of it, are well
+known to palæontologists through their bones and their rude tools.
+Contemporaneously with these Europeans of the River-drift there
+certainly lived some kind of men, of a similar low grade of culture, in
+the Mississippi valley and on both the Atlantic and Pacific slopes of
+North America.
+<span class="sidenote">Pleistocene men and mammals.</span>
+Along with these ancient Americans lived some terrestrial
+mammals that still survive, such as the elk, reindeer, prairie wolf,
+bison, musk-ox, and beaver; and many that have long been extinct, such
+as the mylodon, megatherium, megalonyx, mastodon, Siberian elephant,
+mammoth, at least six or seven species of ancestral horse, a huge bear
+similar to the cave bear of ancient Europe, a lion similar to the
+European cave lion, and a tiger as large as the modern tiger of Bengal.</p>
+
+<p>Now while the general relative positions of those stupendous abysses
+that hold the oceans do not appear to have undergone any considerable
+change since an extremely remote geological period, their shallow
+marginal portions have been repeatedly raised so as to add extensive
+territories to the edges of continents, and in some cases to convert
+archipelagoes into continents, and to join continents previously
+separated. Such elevation is followed in turn by an era of subsidence,
+and almost everywhere either the one process or the other is slowly
+going on. If you look at a model in relief of the continents and
+ocean-floors, such as may be seen at the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy
+in Cambridge, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page014" name="page014"></a>(p. 014)</span> showing the results of a vast number of
+soundings in all parts of the world, you cannot fail to be struck with
+the shallowness of Bering Sea; <span class="sidenote">Elevation and subsidence.</span>
+it looks like a part of the continent
+rather than of the ocean, and indeed it is just that,&mdash;an area of
+submerged continent. So in the northern Atlantic there is a lofty ridge
+running from France to Greenland. The British islands, the Orkney,
+Shetland, and Færoe groups, and Iceland are the parts of this ridge high
+enough to remain out of water. The remainder of it is shallow sea. Again
+and again it has been raised, together with the floor of the German
+ocean, so as to become dry land. Both before and since the time when
+those stone tools were dropped into the red gravel from which Mr.
+Cresson took them the other day, the northwestern part of Europe has
+been solid continent for more than a hundred miles to the west of the
+French and Irish coasts, the Thames and Humber have been tributaries to
+the Rhine, which emptied into the Arctic ocean, and across the Atlantic
+ridge one might have walked to the New World dry-shod.<a id="footnotetag12" name="footnotetag12"></a><a href="#footnote12" title="Go to footnote 12"><span class="small">[12]</span></a> In similar
+wise the northwestern corner of America has repeatedly been joined to
+Siberia through the elevation of Bering Sea.</p>
+
+<p>There have therefore been abundant opportunities for men to get into
+America from the Old World without crossing salt water. Probably this
+was the case with the ancient inhabitants of the Delaware and Little
+Miami valleys; it is not at all <span class="pagenum"><a id="page015" name="page015"></a>(p. 015)</span> likely that men who used their
+kind of tools knew much about going on the sea in boats.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the Indians are descended from this ancient population or not,
+is a question with which we have as yet no satisfactory method of
+dealing. It is not unlikely that these glacial men may have perished
+from off the face of the earth, having been crushed and supplanted by
+stronger races. <span class="sidenote">Waves of migration.</span>
+There may have been several successive waves of
+migration, of which the Indians were the latest.<a id="footnotetag13" name="footnotetag13"></a><a href="#footnote13" title="Go to footnote 13"><span class="small">[13]</span></a> There is time
+enough for a great many things to happen in a thousand centuries. It
+will doubtless be long before all the evidence can be brought in and
+ransacked, but of one thing we may feel pretty sure; the past is more
+full of changes than we are apt to realize. Our first theories are
+usually too simple, and have to be enlarged and twisted into all manner
+of shapes in order to cover the actual complication of facts.<a id="footnotetag14" name="footnotetag14"></a><a href="#footnote14" title="Go to footnote 14"><span class="small">[14]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page016" name="page016"></a>(p. 016)</span>
+
+<p>In this connection the history of the Eskimos introduces us to some
+interesting problems. Mention has been made of the River-drift men who
+lived in Europe during the milder intervals of the Glacial period. At
+such times they made their way into Germany and Britain, along with
+leopards, hyænas, and African elephants. But as the cold intervals came
+on and the edge of the polar ice-sheet crept southward and mountain
+glaciers filled up the valleys, these men and beasts retreated into
+Africa; <span class="sidenote">The Cave men of Europe in the Glacial Period.</span>
+and their place was taken by a sub-arctic race of men known as
+the Cave men, along with the reindeer and arctic fox and musk-sheep.
+More than once with the secular alternations of temperature did the
+River-drift men thus advance and retreat and advance again, and as they
+advanced the Cave men retreated, both races yielding to an enemy
+stronger than either,&mdash;to wit, the hostile climate. At length all traces
+of the River-drift men vanish, but what of the Cave men? They have left
+no representatives among the present populations of Europe, but the
+musk-sheep, which always went and came with the Cave men, is to-day
+found only in sub-arctic <span class="pagenum"><a id="page017" name="page017"></a>(p. 017)</span> America among the Eskimos, and the
+fossilized bones of the musk-sheep lie in a regular trail across the
+eastern hemisphere, from the Pyrenees through Germany and Russia and all
+the vast length of Siberia. The stone arrow-heads, the sewing-needles,
+the necklaces and amulets of cut teeth, and the daggers made from
+antler, used by the Eskimos, resemble so minutely the implements of the
+Cave men, that if recent Eskimo remains were to be put into the
+Pleistocene caves of France and England they would be indistinguishable
+in appearance from the remains of the Cave men which are now found
+there.<a id="footnotetag15" name="footnotetag15"></a><a href="#footnote15" title="Go to footnote 15"><span class="small">[15]</span></a> There is another striking point of resemblance. The Eskimos
+have a talent for artistic sketching of men and beasts, and scenes in
+which men and beasts figure, which is absolutely unrivalled among rude
+peoples. One need but look at the sketches by common Eskimo fishermen
+which illustrate Dr. Henry Rink's fascinating book on Danish Greenland,
+to realize that this rude Eskimo art has a character as pronounced and
+unmistakable in its way as the much higher art of the Japanese.
+<span class="sidenote">The Eskimos are probably a remnant of the Cave men.</span>
+Now
+among the European remains of the Cave men are many sketches of
+mammoths, cave bears, and other animals now extinct, and hunting scenes
+so artfully and vividly portrayed as to bring distinctly before us many
+details of daily life in an antiquity so vast that in comparison with it
+the interval between the pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel tower shrinks
+into a point. Such a talent is unique among savage peoples. It exists
+only among the living Eskimos and the ancient Cave men; and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page018" name="page018"></a>(p. 018)</span>
+when considered in connection with so many other points of agreement,
+and with the indisputable fact that the Cave men were a sub-arctic race,
+it affords a strong presumption in favour of the opinion of that great
+palæontologist, Professor Boyd Dawkins, that the Eskimos of North
+America are to-day the sole survivors of the race that made their homes
+in the Pleistocene caves of western Europe.<a id="footnotetag16" name="footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16" title="Go to footnote 16"><span class="small">[16]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page019" name="page019"></a>(p. 019)</span> If we have always been accustomed to think of races of men only
+as they are placed on modern maps, it at first seems strange to think of
+England and France as ever having been inhabited by Eskimos. Facts
+equally strange may be cited in abundance from zoölogy and botany. The
+camel is found to-day only in Arabia and Bactria; yet in all probability
+the camel originated in America,<a id="footnotetag17" name="footnotetag17"></a><a href="#footnote17" title="Go to footnote 17"><span class="small">[17]</span></a> and is an intruder into what we are
+accustomed to call his native deserts, just as the people of the United
+States are European intruders upon the soil of America. So the giant
+trees of Mariposa grove are now found only in California, but there was
+once a time when they were as common in Europe<a id="footnotetag18" name="footnotetag18"></a><a href="#footnote18" title="Go to footnote 18"><span class="small">[18]</span></a> as maple-trees to-day
+in a New England village.</p>
+
+<p>Familiarity with innumerable facts of this sort, concerning the
+complicated migrations and distribution of plants and animals, has
+entirely altered our way of looking at the question as to the origin of
+the American Indians. As already observed, we can hardly be said to
+possess sufficient data for determining whether they are descended from
+the Pleistocene inhabitants of America, or have come in some later wave
+of migration from the Old World. Nor can we as yet determine whether
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page020" name="page020"></a>(p. 020)</span> they were earlier or later comers than the Eskimos. But since
+we have got rid of that feeling of speculative necessity above referred
+to, for bringing the red men from Asia within the historic period, it
+has become more and more clear that they have dwelt upon American soil
+for a very long time. The aboriginal American, as we know him, with his
+language and legends, his physical and mental peculiarities, his social
+observances and customs, is most emphatically a native and not an
+imported article. He belongs to the American continent as strictly as
+its opossums and armadillos, its maize and its golden-rod, or any
+members of its aboriginal fauna and flora belong to it.
+<span class="sidenote">There was probably no connection or intercourse by water
+between ancient America and the Old World.</span>
+In all
+probability he came from the Old World at some ancient period, whether
+pre-glacial or post-glacial, when it was possible to come by land; and
+here in all probability, until the arrival of white men from Europe, he
+remained undisturbed by later comers, unless the Eskimos may have been
+such. There is not a particle of evidence to suggest any connection or
+intercourse between aboriginal America and Asia within any such period
+as the last twenty thousand years, except in so far as there may perhaps
+now and then have been slight surges of Eskimo tribes back and forth
+across Bering strait.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians must surely be regarded as an entirely different stock from
+the Eskimos. On the other hand, the most competent American ethnologists
+are now pretty thoroughly agreed that all the aborigines south of the
+Eskimo region, all the way from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, belong
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page021" name="page021"></a>(p. 021)</span> to one and the same race. It was formerly supposed that the
+higher culture of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians must indicate that
+they were of different race from the more barbarous Algonquins and
+Dakotas; <span class="sidenote">There is one great American "red" race.</span>
+and a speculative necessity was felt for proving that, whatever
+may have been the case with the other American peoples, this higher
+culture at any rate must have been introduced within the historic period
+from the Old World.<a id="footnotetag19" name="footnotetag19"></a><a href="#footnote19" title="Go to footnote 19"><span class="small">[19]</span></a> This feeling was caused partly by the fact that,
+owing to crude and loosely-framed conceptions of the real points of
+difference between civilization and barbarism, this Central American
+culture was absurdly exaggerated. As the further study of the
+uncivilized parts of the world has led to more accurate and precise
+conceptions, this kind of speculative necessity has ceased to be felt.
+There is an increasing disposition among scholars to agree that the
+warrior of Anahuac and the shepherd of the Andes were just simply
+Indians, and that their culture was no less indigenous than that of the
+Cherokees or Mohawks.</p>
+
+<p>To prevent any possible misconception of my meaning, a further word of
+explanation may be needed at this point.
+<span class="sidenote">Different senses in which the word "race" is used.</span>
+The word "race" is used in such
+widely different senses that there is apt to be more or less vagueness
+about it. The difference is <span class="pagenum"><a id="page022" name="page022"></a>(p. 022)</span> mainly in what logicians call
+extension; sometimes the word covers very little ground, sometimes a
+great deal. We say that the people of England, of the United States, and
+of New South Wales belong to one and the same race; and we say that an
+Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Greek belong to three different races.
+There is a sense in which both these statements are true. But there is
+also a sense in which we may say that the Englishman, the Frenchman, and
+the Greek belong to one and the same race; and that is when we are
+contrasting them as white men with black men or yellow men. Now we may
+correctly say that a Shawnee, an Ojibwa, and a Kickapoo belong to one
+and the same Algonquin race; that a Mohawk and a Tuscarora belong to one
+and the same Iroquois race; but that an Algonquin differs from an
+Iroquois somewhat as an Englishman differs from a Frenchman. No doubt we
+may fairly say that the Mexicans encountered by Cortes differed in race
+from the Iroquois encountered by Champlain, as much as an Englishman
+differs from an Albanian or a Montenegrin. But when we are contrasting
+aboriginal Americans with white men or yellow men, it is right to say
+that Mexicans and Iroquois belong to the same great red race.</p>
+
+<p>In some parts of the world two strongly contrasted races have become
+mingled together, or have existed side by side for centuries without
+intermingling. In Europe the big blonde Aryan-speaking race has mixed
+with the small brunette Iberian race, producing the endless varieties in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page023" name="page023"></a>(p. 023)</span> stature and complexion which may be seen in any drawing-room
+in London or New York. In Africa south of Sahara, on the other hand, we
+find, interspersed among negro tribes but kept perfectly distinct, that
+primitive dwarfish race with yellow skin and tufted hair to which belong
+the Hottentots and Bushmen, the Wambatti lately discovered by Mr.
+Stanley, and other tribes.<a id="footnotetag20" name="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20" title="Go to footnote 20"><span class="small">[20]</span></a> Now in America south of Hudson's Bay the
+case seems to have been quite otherwise, and more as it would have been
+in Europe if there had been only Aryans, or in Africa if there had been
+only blacks.<a id="footnotetag21" name="footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21" title="Go to footnote 21"><span class="small">[21]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The belief that the people of the Cordilleras must be of radically
+different race from other Indians was based upon the vague notion that
+grades of culture have some necessary connection with likenesses and
+differences of race.
+<span class="sidenote">No necessary connection between differences in culture and
+differences in race.</span>
+There is no such necessary connection.<a id="footnotetag22" name="footnotetag22"></a><a href="#footnote22" title="Go to footnote 22"><span class="small">[22]</span></a> Between
+the highly civilized Japanese and their barbarous Mandshu cousins the
+difference in culture is much greater <span class="pagenum"><a id="page024" name="page024"></a>(p. 024)</span> than the difference
+between Mohawks and Mexicans; and the same may be said of the people of
+Israel and Judah in contrast with the Arabs of the desert, or of the
+imperial Romans in comparison with their Teutonic kinsmen as described
+by Tacitus.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>At this point, in order to prepare ourselves the more clearly to
+understand sundry facts with which we shall hereafter be obliged to
+deal, especially the wonderful experiences of the Spanish conquerors,
+<span class="sidenote">Grades of culture.</span>
+it
+will be well to pause for a moment and do something toward defining the
+different grades of culture through which men have passed in attaining
+to the grade which can properly be called civilization. Unless we begin
+with clear ideas upon this head we cannot go far toward understanding
+the ancient America that was first visited and described for us by
+Spaniards. The various grades of culture need to be classified, and that
+most original and suggestive scholar, the late Lewis Morgan of
+Rochester, made a brilliant attempt in this direction, to which the
+reader's attention is now invited.</p>
+
+<p>Below <i>Civilization</i> Mr. Morgan<a id="footnotetag23" name="footnotetag23"></a><a href="#footnote23" title="Go to footnote 23"><span class="small">[23]</span></a> distinguishes two principal grades
+or stages of culture, namely <i>Savagery</i> and <i>Barbarism</i>. There is much
+looseness and confusion in the popular use of these <span class="pagenum"><a id="page025" name="page025"></a>(p. 025)</span> terms, and
+this is liable to become a fruitful source of misapprehension in the
+case of any statement involving either of them.
+<span class="sidenote">Distinction between Savagery and Barbarism.</span>
+When popular usage
+discriminates between them it discriminates in the right direction;
+there is a vague but not uncertain feeling that savagery is a lower
+stage than barbarism. But ordinarily the discrimination is not made and
+the two terms are carelessly employed as if interchangeable. Scientific
+writers long since recognized a general difference between savagery and
+barbarism, but Mr. Morgan was the first to suggest a really useful
+criterion for distinguishing between them. His criterion is the making
+of pottery; and his reason for selecting it is that the making of
+pottery is something that presupposes village life and more or less
+progress in the simpler arts. The earlier methods of boiling food were
+either putting it into holes in the ground lined with skins and then
+using heated stones, or else putting it into baskets coated with clay to
+be supported over a fire. <span class="sidenote">Origin of pottery.</span>
+The clay served the double purpose of
+preventing liquids from escaping and protecting the basket against the
+flame. It was probably observed that the clay was hardened by the fire,
+and thus in course of time it was found that the clay would answer the
+purpose without the basket.<a id="footnotetag24" name="footnotetag24"></a><a href="#footnote24" title="Go to footnote 24"><span class="small">[24]</span></a> Whoever first made this ingenious
+discovery led the way from savagery to barbarism. Throughout the present
+work <span class="pagenum"><a id="page026" name="page026"></a>(p. 026)</span> we shall apply the name "savages" only to uncivilized
+people who do not make pottery.</p>
+
+<p>But within each of these two stages Mr. Morgan distinguishes three
+subordinate stages, or Ethnic Periods, which may be called either lower,
+middle, and upper status, or older, middle, and later periods.
+<span class="sidenote">Lower status of savagery.</span>
+The lower
+status of savagery was that wholly prehistoric stage when men lived in
+their original restricted habitat and subsisted on fruit and nuts. To
+this period must be assigned the beginning of articulate speech. All
+existing races of men had passed beyond it at an unknown antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>Men began to pass beyond it when they discovered how to catch fish and
+how to use fire. They could then begin
+<span class="sidenote">Middle status of savagery.</span>
+(following coasts and rivers) to
+spread over the earth. The middle status of savagery, thus introduced,
+ends with the invention of that compound weapon, the bow and arrow. The
+natives of Australia, who do not know this weapon, are still in the
+middle status of savagery.<a id="footnotetag25" name="footnotetag25"></a><a href="#footnote25" title="Go to footnote 25"><span class="small">[25]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The invention of the bow and arrow, which marks the upper status of
+savagery, was not only a great advance in military art,
+<span class="sidenote">Upper status of savagery.</span>
+but it also
+vastly increased men's supply of food by increasing their power of
+killing wild game. The lowest tribes in America, such as those upon the
+Columbia river, the Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay, the Fuegians and some
+other South American tribes, are in the upper status of savagery.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page027" name="page027"></a>(p. 027)</span>
+
+<p>The transition from this status to the lower status of barbarism was
+marked, as before observed, by the invention of pottery. The end of the
+lower status of barbarism was marked in the Old World by the
+domestication of animals other than the dog, which was probably
+domesticated at a much earlier period as an aid to the hunter.
+<span class="sidenote">Lower status of barbarism: it ended differently in
+the two hemispheres.</span>The
+domestication of horses and asses, oxen and sheep, goats and pigs, marks
+of course an immense advance. Along with it goes considerable
+development of agriculture, thus enabling a small territory to support
+many people. It takes a wide range of country to support hunters. In the
+New World, except in Peru, the only domesticated animal was the dog.
+Horses, oxen, and the other animals mentioned did not exist in America,
+during the historic period, until they were brought over from Europe by
+the Spaniards. In ancient American society there was no such thing as a
+pastoral stage of development,<a id="footnotetag26" name="footnotetag26"></a><a href="#footnote26" title="Go to footnote 26"><span class="small">[26]</span></a> and the absence of domesticable
+animals from the western hemisphere may well be reckoned as very
+important among the causes which retarded the progress of mankind in
+this part of the world.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand the ancient Americans had a cereal plant peculiar to
+the New World, which made comparatively small demands upon the
+intelligence and industry of the cultivator. Maize or "Indian corn" has
+played a most important <span class="pagenum"><a id="page028" name="page028"></a>(p. 028)</span> part in the history of the New World,
+as regards both the red men and the white men. It could be planted
+without clearing or ploughing the soil. It was only necessary to girdle
+the trees with a stone hatchet, so as to destroy their leaves and let in
+the sunshine. A few scratches and digs were made in the ground with a
+stone digger, and the seed once dropped in took care of itself.
+<span class="sidenote">Importance of Indian corn.</span>
+The ears
+could hang for weeks after ripening, and could be picked off without
+meddling with the stalk; there was no need of threshing and winnowing.
+None of the Old World cereals can be cultivated without much more
+industry and intelligence. At the same time, when Indian corn is sown in
+tilled land it yields with little labour more than twice as much food
+per acre as any other kind of grain. This was of incalculable advantage
+to the English settlers of New England, who would have found it much
+harder to gain a secure foothold upon the soil if they had had to begin
+by preparing it for wheat and rye without the aid of the beautiful and
+beneficent American plant.<a id="footnotetag27" name="footnotetag27"></a><a href="#footnote27" title="Go to footnote 27"><span class="small">[27]</span></a> The Indians of the Atlantic coast of
+North America for the most part lived in stockaded villages, and
+cultivated their corn along with beans, pumpkins, squashes, and tobacco;
+but their cultivation was of the rudest sort,<a id="footnotetag28" name="footnotetag28"></a><a href="#footnote28" title="Go to footnote 28"><span class="small">[28]</span></a> and population was too
+sparse for much progress toward civilization. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page029" name="page029"></a>(p. 029)</span> But Indian corn,
+when sown in carefully tilled and irrigated land, had much to do with
+the denser population, the increasing organization of labour, and the
+higher development in the arts, which characterized the confederacies of
+Mexico and Central America and all the pueblo Indians of the southwest.
+The potato played a somewhat similar part in Peru. Hence it seems proper
+to take the regular employment of tillage with irrigation as marking the
+end of the lower period of barbarism in the New World. To this Mr.
+Morgan adds the use of adobe-brick and stone in architecture, which also
+distinguished the Mexicans and their neighbours from the ruder tribes of
+North and South America. All these ruder tribes, except the few already
+mentioned as in the upper period of savagery, were somewhere within the
+lower period of barbarism. Thus the Algonquins and Iroquois, the Creeks,
+the Dakotas, etc., when first seen by white men, were within this
+period; but some had made much further progress within it than others.
+For example, the Algonquin tribe of Ojibwas had little more than emerged
+from savagery, while the Creeks and Cherokees had made considerable
+advance toward the middle status of barbarism.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now observe some characteristics of this extremely interesting
+middle period. <span class="sidenote">Middle status of barbarism.</span>
+It began, we see, in the eastern hemisphere with the
+domestication of other animals than the dog, and in the western
+hemisphere with cultivation by irrigation and the use of adobe-brick and
+stone for building. It also possessed another <span class="pagenum"><a id="page030" name="page030"></a>(p. 030)</span> feature which
+distinguished it from earlier periods, in the materials of which its
+tools were made. In the periods of savagery hatchets and spear-heads
+were made of rudely chipped stones. In the lower period of barbarism the
+chipping became more and more skilful until it gave place to polishing.
+In the middle period tools were greatly multiplied, improved polishing
+gave sharp and accurate points and edges, and at last metals began to be
+used as materials preferable to stone. In America the metal used was
+copper, and in some spots where it was very accessible there were
+instances of its use by tribes not in other respects above the lower
+status of barbarism,&mdash;as for example, the "mound-builders." In the Old
+World the metal used was the alloy of copper and tin familiarly known as
+bronze, and in its working it called for a higher degree of intelligence
+than copper.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the close of the middle period of barbarism the working of metals
+became the most important element of progress,
+<span class="sidenote">Working of metals.</span>
+and the period may be
+regarded as ending with the invention of the process of smelting iron
+ore. According to this principle of division, the inhabitants of the
+lake villages of ancient Switzerland, who kept horses and oxen, pigs and
+sheep, raised wheat and ground it into flour, and spun and wove linen
+garments, but knew nothing of iron, were in the middle status of
+barbarism. The same was true of the ancient Britons before they learned
+the use of iron from their neighbours in Gaul. In the New World the
+representatives of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page031" name="page031"></a>(p. 031)</span> the middle status of barbarism were such
+peoples as the Zuñis, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Peruvians.</p>
+
+<p>The upper status of barbarism, in so far as it implies a knowledge of
+smelting iron, was never reached in aboriginal America.
+<span class="sidenote">Upper status of barbarism.</span>
+In the Old World
+it is the stage which had been reached by the Greeks of the Homeric
+poems<a id="footnotetag29" name="footnotetag29"></a><a href="#footnote29" title="Go to footnote 29"><span class="small">[29]</span></a> and the Germans in the time of Cæsar. The end <span class="pagenum"><a id="page032" name="page032"></a>(p. 032)</span> of
+this period and the beginning of true civilization is marked by the
+invention of a phonetic alphabet and the production of written records.
+<span class="sidenote">Beginning of civilization.</span>
+This brings within the pale of civilization such people as the ancient
+Ph&oelig;nicians, the Hebrews after the exodus, the ruling classes at
+Nineveh and Babylon, the Aryans of Persia and India, and the Japanese.
+But clearly it will not do to insist too narrowly upon the phonetic
+character of the alphabet. Where people acquainted with iron have
+enshrined in hieroglyphics so much matter of historic record and
+literary interest as the Chinese and the ancient Egyptians, they too
+must be classed as civilized; and this Mr. Morgan by implication admits.</p>
+
+<p>This brilliant classification of the stages of early culture will be
+found very helpful if we only keep in mind the fact that in all wide
+generalizations of this sort the case is liable to be somewhat unduly
+simplified. The story of human progress is really not quite so easy to
+decipher as such descriptions would make it appear, and when we have
+laid down rules of this sort we need not be surprised if we now and then
+come upon facts that will not exactly fit into them. In such an
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page033" name="page033"></a>(p. 033)</span> event it is best not to try to squeeze or distort the unruly
+facts, but to look and see if our rules will not bear some little
+qualification. The faculty for generalizing is a good servant but a bad
+master. If we observe this caution we shall find Mr. Morgan's work to be
+of great value. It will be observed that, with one exception, his
+restrictions leave the area of civilization as wide as that which we are
+accustomed to assign to it in our ordinary speaking and thinking. That
+exception is the case of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. We have so
+long been accustomed to gorgeous accounts of the civilization of these
+countries at the time of their discovery by the Spaniards that it may at
+first shock our preconceived notions to see them set down as in the
+"middle status of barbarism," one stage higher than Mohawks, and one
+stage lower than the warriors of the Iliad.
+<span class="sidenote">"Civilizations" of Mexico and Peru.</span>
+This does indeed mark a
+change since Dr. Draper expressed the opinion that the Mexicans and
+Peruvians were morally and intellectually superior to the Europeans of
+the sixteenth century.<a id="footnotetag30" name="footnotetag30"></a><a href="#footnote30" title="Go to footnote 30"><span class="small">[30]</span></a> The reaction from the state of opinion in
+which such an extravagant remark was even possible has been attended
+with some controversy; but on the whole Mr. Morgan's main position has
+been steadily and rapidly gaining ground, and it is becoming more and
+more clear that if we are to use language correctly when we speak of the
+civilizations of Mexico and Peru we really mean civilizations of an
+extremely archaic type, considerably <span class="pagenum"><a id="page034" name="page034"></a>(p. 034)</span> more archaic than that of
+Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. A "civilization" like that of the
+Aztecs, without domestic animals or iron tools, with trade still in the
+primitive stage of barter, with human sacrifices, and with cannibalism,
+has certainly some of the most vivid features of barbarism. Along with
+these primitive features, however, there seem to have been&mdash;after making
+all due allowances&mdash;some features of luxury and splendour such as we are
+wont to associate with civilization. The Aztecs, moreover, though
+doubtless a full ethnical period behind the ancient Egyptians in general
+advancement, had worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had
+begun to put it to some literary use. It would seem that a people may in
+certain special points reach a level of attainment higher than the level
+which they occupy in other points. The Cave men of the Glacial period
+were ignorant of pottery, and thus had not risen above the upper status
+of savagery; but their artistic talent, upon which we have remarked, was
+not such as we are wont to associate with savagery. Other instances will
+occur to us in the proper place.</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty which people usually find in realizing the true position
+of the ancient Mexican culture arises partly from the misconceptions
+which have until recently distorted the facts, and partly from the loose
+employment of terms above noticed.
+<span class="sidenote">Loose use of the words "savagery" and "civilization".</span>
+It is quite correct to speak of the
+Australian blackfellows as "savages," but nothing is more common than to
+hear the same epithet employed to characterize Shawnees <span class="pagenum"><a id="page035" name="page035"></a>(p. 035)</span> and
+Mohawks; and to call those Indians "savages" is quite misleading. So on
+the other hand the term "civilization" is often so loosely used as to
+cover a large territory belonging to "barbarism." One does not look for
+scientific precision in newspapers, but they are apt to reflect popular
+habits of thought quite faithfully, and for that reason it is proper
+here to quote from one. In a newspaper account of Mr. Cushing's recent
+discoveries of buried towns, works of irrigation, etc., in Arizona, we
+are first told that these are the remains of a "splendid prehistoric
+civilization," and the next moment we are told, in entire
+unconsciousness of the contradiction, that the people who constructed
+these works had only stone tools. Now to call a people "civilized" who
+have only stone tools is utterly misleading. Nothing but confusion of
+ideas and darkening of counsel can come from such a misuse of words.
+Such a people may be in a high degree interesting and entitled to credit
+for what they have achieved, but the grade of culture which they have
+reached is not "civilization."</p>
+
+<p>With "savagery" thus encroaching upon its area of meaning on the one
+side, and "civilization" encroaching on the other, the word "barbarism,"
+as popularly apprehended, is left in a vague and unsatisfactory plight.
+If we speak of Montezuma's people as barbarians one stage further
+advanced than Mohawks, we are liable to be charged with calling them
+"savages." <span class="sidenote">Value and importance of the term "barbarism."</span>
+Yet the term "barbarism" is a very useful one; indispensable,
+indeed, in the history of human progress. There is no other word which
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page036" name="page036"></a>(p. 036)</span> can serve in its stead as a designation of the enormous
+interval which begins with the invention of pottery and ends with the
+invention of the alphabet. The popular usage of the word is likely to
+become more definite as it comes to be more generally realized how
+prodigious that interval has been. When we think what a considerable
+portion of man's past existence has been comprised within it, and what a
+marvellous transformation in human knowledge and human faculty has been
+gradually wrought between its beginning and its end, the period of
+barbarism becomes invested with most thrilling interest, and its name
+ceases to appear otherwise than respectable. It is Mr. Morgan's chief
+title to fame that he has so thoroughly explored this period and
+described its features with such masterly skill.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth while to observe that Mr. Morgan's view of the successive
+stages of culture is one which could not well have been marked out in
+all its parts except by a student of American archæology. Aboriginal
+America is the richest field in the world for the study of barbarism.
+<span class="sidenote">The status of barbarism is most completely exemplified in
+ancient America.</span>
+Its people present every gradation in social life during three ethnical
+periods&mdash;the upper period of savagery and the lower and middle periods
+of barbarism&mdash;so that the process of development may be most
+systematically and instructively studied. Until we have become familiar
+with ancient American society, and so long as our view is confined to
+the phases of progress in the Old World, the demarcation between
+civilized and uncivilized life <span class="pagenum"><a id="page037" name="page037"></a>(p. 037)</span> seems too abrupt and sudden; we
+do not get a correct measure of it. The oldest European tradition
+reaches back only through the upper period of barbarism.<a id="footnotetag31" name="footnotetag31"></a><a href="#footnote31" title="Go to footnote 31"><span class="small">[31]</span></a> The middle
+and lower periods have lapsed into utter oblivion, and it is only modern
+archæological research that is beginning to recover the traces of them.
+But among the red men of America the social life of ages more remote
+than that of the lake villages of Switzerland is in many particulars
+preserved for us to-day, and when we study it we begin to realize as
+never before the continuity of human development, its enormous duration,
+and the almost infinite accumulation of slow efforts by which progress
+has been achieved. Ancient America is further instructive in presenting
+the middle status of barbarism in a different form from that which it
+assumed in the eastern hemisphere. Its most conspicuous outward
+manifestations, instead of tents and herds, were strange and imposing
+edifices of stone, so that it was quite natural that observers
+interpreting it from a basis of European experience should mistake it
+for civilization. <span class="sidenote">Survivals of bygone epochs of culture.</span>
+Certain aspects of that middle period may be studied
+to-day in New Mexico and Arizona, as phases of the older periods may
+still be found among the wilder tribes, even after all the contact they
+have had with white men. These survivals from antiquity will not
+permanently outlive that contact, and it is important that no time
+should be lost in gathering and putting <span class="pagenum"><a id="page038" name="page038"></a>(p. 038)</span> on record all that can
+be learned of the speech and arts, the customs and beliefs, everything
+that goes to constitute the philology and anthropology of the red men.
+For the intelligent and vigorous work of this sort now conducted by the
+Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, under the direction
+of Major Powell, no praise can be too strong and no encouragement too
+hearty.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>A brief enumeration of the principal groups of Indians will be helpful
+in enabling us to comprehend the social condition of ancient America.
+The groups are in great part defined by differences of language, which
+are perhaps a better criterion of racial affinity in the New World than
+in the Old, because there seems to have been little or nothing of that
+peculiar kind of conquest with incorporation resulting in complete
+change of speech which we sometimes find in the Old World; as, for
+example, when we see the Celto-Iberian population of Spain and the
+Belgic, Celtic, and Aquitanian populations of Gaul forgetting their
+native tongues, and adopting that of a confederacy of tribes in Latium.
+<span class="sidenote">Tribal society and multiplicity of languages in aboriginal
+America.</span>
+Except in the case of Peru there is no indication that anything of this
+sort went on, or that there was anything even superficially analogous to
+"empire," in ancient America. What strikes one most forcibly at first is
+the vast number of American languages. Adelung, in his "Mithridates,"
+put the number at 1,264, and Ludewig, in his "Literature of the American
+Languages," put it roundly at 1,100. Squier, on the other hand, was
+content <span class="pagenum"><a id="page039" name="page039"></a>(p. 039)</span> with 400.<a id="footnotetag32" name="footnotetag32"></a><a href="#footnote32" title="Go to footnote 32"><span class="small">[32]</span></a> The discrepancy arises from the fact
+that where one scholar sees two or three distinct languages another sees
+two or three dialects of one language and counts them as one; it is like
+the difficulty which naturalists find in agreeing as to what are species
+and what are only varieties. The great number of languages and dialects
+spoken by a sparse population is one mark of the universal prevalence of
+a rude and primitive form of tribal society.<a id="footnotetag33" name="footnotetag33"></a><a href="#footnote33" title="Go to footnote 33"><span class="small">[33]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The lowest tribes in North America were those that are still to be found
+in California, in the valley of the Columbia river, and on the shores of
+Puget Sound. The Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay were on about the same
+level of savagery. <span class="sidenote">Tribes in the upper status of savagery.</span>
+They made no pottery, knew nothing of horticulture,
+depended for subsistence entirely upon bread-roots, fish, and game, and
+thus had no village life. They were mere prowlers in the upper status of
+savagery.<a id="footnotetag34" name="footnotetag34"></a><a href="#footnote34" title="Go to footnote 34"><span class="small">[34]</span></a> The Apaches of Arizona, preëminent even among red men for
+atrocious cruelty, are an offshoot from the Athabaskan stock. Very
+little better are the Shoshones and Bannocks that still wander <span class="pagenum"><a id="page040" name="page040"></a>(p. 040)</span>
+among the lonely bare mountains and over the weird sage-brush plains of
+Idaho. The region west of the Rocky Mountains and north of New Mexico is
+thus the region of savagery.</p>
+
+<p>Between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic coast the aborigines, at
+the time of the Discovery, might have been divided into six or seven
+groups, of which three were situated mainly to the east of the
+Mississippi river, the others mainly to the west of it.
+<span class="sidenote">The Dakota family of tribes.</span>
+All were in the
+lower period of barbarism. Of the western groups, by far the most
+numerous were the Dakotas, comprising the Sioux, Poncas, Omahas, Iowas,
+Kaws, Otoes, and Missouris. From the headwaters of the Mississippi their
+territory extended westward on both sides of the Missouri for a thousand
+miles. One of their tribes, the Winnebagos, had crossed the Mississippi
+and pressed into the region between that river and Lake Michigan.</p>
+
+<p>A second group, very small in numbers but extremely interesting to the
+student of ethnology, comprises the Minnitarees and Mandans on the upper
+Missouri.<a id="footnotetag35" name="footnotetag35"></a><a href="#footnote35" title="Go to footnote 35"><span class="small">[35]</span></a> The remnants of these tribes now live together in the same
+village, and in personal appearance, as well as in intelligence, they
+are described as superior to any other red men <span class="pagenum"><a id="page041" name="page041"></a>(p. 041)</span> north of New
+Mexico. From their first discovery, by the brothers La Vérendrye in
+1742, <span class="sidenote">The Minnitarees and Mandans.</span>
+down to Mr. Catlin's visit nearly a century later, there was no
+change in their condition,<a id="footnotetag36" name="footnotetag36"></a><a href="#footnote36" title="Go to footnote 36"><span class="small">[36]</span></a> but shortly afterward, in 1838, the
+greater part of them were swept away by small-pox. The excellence of
+their horticulture, the framework of their houses, and their peculiar
+religious ceremonies early attracted attention. Upon Mr. Catlin they
+made such an impression that he fancied there must be an infusion of
+white blood in them; and after the fashion of those days he sought to
+account for it by a reference to the legend of Madoc, a Welsh prince who
+was dimly imagined to have sailed to America about 1170. He thought that
+Madoc's party might have sailed to the Mississippi and founded a colony
+which ascended that river and the Ohio, built the famous mounds of the
+Ohio valley, and finally migrated to the upper Missouri.<a id="footnotetag37" name="footnotetag37"></a><a href="#footnote37" title="Go to footnote 37"><span class="small">[37]</span></a> To this
+speculation was appended the inevitable list of words which happen to
+sound somewhat alike in Mandan and in Welsh. In the realm of free fancy
+everything is easy. That there was a Madoc who went somewhere in 1170 is
+quite possible, but as shrewd old John Smith said about it, "where this
+place was no history can show."<a id="footnotetag38" name="footnotetag38"></a><a href="#footnote38" title="Go to footnote 38"><span class="small">[38]</span></a> But one <span class="pagenum"><a id="page042" name="page042"></a>(p. 042)</span> part of Mr.
+Catlin's speculation may have hit somewhat nearer the truth. It is
+possible that the Minnitarees or the Mandans, or both, may be a remnant
+of some of those Mound-builders in the Mississippi valley concerning
+whom something will presently be said.</p>
+
+<p>The third group in this western region consists of the Pawnees
+<span class="sidenote">Pawnees, etc.</span>
+and
+Arickarees,<a id="footnotetag39" name="footnotetag39"></a><a href="#footnote39" title="Go to footnote 39"><span class="small">[39]</span></a> of the Platte valley in Nebraska, with a few kindred
+tribes farther to the south.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three groups eastward of the Mississippi we may first mention the
+Maskoki,<span class="sidenote">Maskoki family.</span>
+ or Muskhogees, consisting of the Choctaws, Chickasaws,
+Seminoles, and others, with the Creek confederacy.<a id="footnotetag40" name="footnotetag40"></a><a href="#footnote40" title="Go to footnote 40"><span class="small">[40]</span></a> These tribes were
+intelligent and powerful, with a culture well advanced toward the end of
+the lower period of barbarism.</p>
+
+<p>The Algonquin family, bordering at its southern limits upon the Maskoki,
+had a vast range northeasterly along the Atlantic coast until it reached
+the confines of Labrador, and northwesterly through the region of the
+Great Lakes and as far as the Churchill river<a id="footnotetag41" name="footnotetag41"></a><a href="#footnote41" title="Go to footnote 41"><span class="small">[41]</span></a> to the west of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page043" name="page043"></a>(p. 043)</span> Hudson's Bay. In other words, the Algonquins were bounded on
+the south by the Maskoki,<span class="sidenote">Algonquin family of tribes.</span>
+<a id="footnotetag42" name="footnotetag42"></a><a href="#footnote42" title="Go to footnote 42"><span class="small">[42]</span></a> on the west by the Dakotas, on the
+northwest by the Athabaskans, on the northeast by Eskimos, and on the
+east by the ocean. Between Lake Superior and the Red River of the North
+the Crees had their hunting grounds, and closely related to them were
+the Pottawatomies, Ojibwas, and Ottawas. One offshoot, including the
+Blackfeet, Cheyennes, and Arrapahos, roamed as far west as the Rocky
+Mountains. The great triangle between the upper Mississippi and the Ohio
+was occupied by the Menomonees and Kickapoos, the Sacs and Foxes, the
+Miamis and Illinois, and the Shawnees. Along the coast region the
+principal Algonquin tribes were the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenape or
+Delawares, the Munsees or Minisinks of the mountains about the
+Susquehanna, the Mohegans on the Hudson, the Adirondacks between that
+river and the St. Lawrence, the Narragansetts and their congeners in New
+England, and finally the Micmacs and Wabenaki far down East, as the last
+name implies. There is a tradition, supported to some extent by
+linguistic evidence,<a id="footnotetag43" name="footnotetag43"></a><a href="#footnote43" title="Go to footnote 43"><span class="small">[43]</span></a> that the Mohegans, with their cousins the
+Pequots, were more closely related to the Shawnees than to the Delaware
+or coast group. While all the Algonquin tribes were in the lower period
+of barbarism, there was a noticeable gradation among them, the Crees
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page044" name="page044"></a>(p. 044)</span> and Ojibwas of the far North standing lowest in culture, and
+the Shawnees, at their southernmost limits, standing highest.</p>
+
+<p>We have observed the Dakota tribes pressing eastward against their
+neighbours and sending out an offshoot, the Winnebagos, across the
+Mississippi river. <span class="sidenote">Huron-Iroquois family of tribes.</span>
+It has been supposed that the Huron-Iroquois group of
+tribes was a more remote offshoot from the Dakotas. This is very
+doubtful; but in the thirteenth or fourteenth century the general trend
+of the Huron-Iroquois movement seems to have been eastward, either in
+successive swarms, or in a single swarm, which became divided and
+scattered by segmentation, as was common with all Indian tribes. They
+seem early to have proved their superiority over the Algonquins in
+bravery and intelligence. Their line of invasion seems to have run
+eastward to Niagara, and thereabouts to have bifurcated, one line
+following the valley of the St. Lawrence, and the other that of the
+Susquehanna. The Hurons established themselves in the peninsula between
+the lake that bears their name and Lake Ontario. South of them and along
+the northern shore of Lake Erie were settled their kindred, afterward
+called the "Neutral Nation."<a id="footnotetag44" name="footnotetag44"></a><a href="#footnote44" title="Go to footnote 44"><span class="small">[44]</span></a> On the southern shore the Eries planted
+themselves, while the Susquehannocks pushed on in a direction
+sufficiently described by their name. Farthest <span class="pagenum"><a id="page045" name="page045"></a>(p. 045)</span> of all
+penetrated the Tuscaroras, even into the pine forests of North Carolina,
+where they maintained themselves in isolation from their kindred until
+1715. These invasions resulted in some displacement of Algonquin tribes,
+and began to sap the strength of the confederacy or alliance in which
+the Delawares had held a foremost place.</p>
+
+<p>But by far the most famous and important of the Huron-Iroquois were
+those that followed the northern shore of Lake Ontario into the valley
+of the St. Lawrence. In that direction their progress was checked by the
+Algonquin tribe of Adirondacks, but they succeeded in retaining a
+foothold in the country for a long time; for in 1535 Jacques Cartier
+found on the site which he named Montreal an Iroquois village which had
+vanished before Champlain's arrival seventy years later. Those Iroquois
+who were thrust back in the struggle for the St. Lawrence valley, early
+in the fifteenth century, made their way across Lake Ontario and
+established themselves at the mouth of the Oswego river. They were then
+in three small tribes,&mdash;the Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas,&mdash;but as
+they grew in numbers and spread eastward to the Hudson and westward to
+the Genesee, the intermediate tribes of Oneidas and Cayugas were formed
+by segmentation.<a id="footnotetag45" name="footnotetag45"></a><a href="#footnote45" title="Go to footnote 45"><span class="small">[45]</span></a> About 1450 the five tribes&mdash;afterwards known as the
+Five Nations&mdash;were
+<span class="sidenote">The Five Nations.</span>
+joined in a confederacy in pursuance of the wise
+counsel which Hayowentha, or Hiawatha,<a id="footnotetag46" name="footnotetag46"></a><a href="#footnote46" title="Go to footnote 46"><span class="small">[46]</span></a> according to the legend,
+whispered into <span class="pagenum"><a id="page046" name="page046"></a>(p. 046)</span> the ears of the Onondaga sachem, Daganoweda.
+This union of their resources combined, with their native bravery and
+cunning, and their occupation of the most commanding military position
+in eastern North America, to render them invincible among red men. They
+exterminated their old enemies the Adirondacks, and pushed the Mohegans
+over the mountains from the Hudson river to the Connecticut. When they
+first encountered white men in 1609 their name had become a terror in
+New England, insomuch that as soon as a single Mohawk was caught sight
+of by the Indians in that country, they would raise the cry from hill to
+hill, "A Mohawk! a Mohawk!" and forthwith would flee like sheep before
+wolves, never dreaming of resistance.<a id="footnotetag47" name="footnotetag47"></a><a href="#footnote47" title="Go to footnote 47"><span class="small">[47]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>After the Five Nations had been supplied with firearms by the Dutch
+their power increased with portentous rapidity.<a id="footnotetag48" name="footnotetag48"></a><a href="#footnote48" title="Go to footnote 48"><span class="small">[48]</span></a> At first they sought
+to persuade their neighbours of kindred blood and speech, the Eries and
+others, to join their confederacy; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page047" name="page047"></a>(p. 047)</span> and failing in this they
+went to war and exterminated them.<a id="footnotetag49" name="footnotetag49"></a><a href="#footnote49" title="Go to footnote 49"><span class="small">[49]</span></a> Then they overthrew one Algonquin
+tribe after another until in 1690 their career was checked by the
+French. By that time they had reduced to a tributary condition most of
+the Algonquin tribes, even to the Mississippi river. Some writers have
+spoken of the empire of the Iroquois, and it has been surmised that, if
+they had not been interfered with by white men, they might have played a
+part analogous to that of the Romans in the Old World; but there is no
+real similarity between the two cases. The Romans acquired their mighty
+strength by incorporating vanquished peoples into their own body
+politic.<a id="footnotetag50" name="footnotetag50"></a><a href="#footnote50" title="Go to footnote 50"><span class="small">[50]</span></a> No American aborigines ever had a glimmering of the process
+of state-building after the Roman fashion. No incorporation resulted
+from the victories of the Iroquois. Where their burnings and massacres
+stopped short of extermination, they simply took tribute, which was as
+far as state-craft had got in the lower period of barbarism. General
+Walker has summed up their military career in a single sentence: "They
+were the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent."<a id="footnotetag51" name="footnotetag51"></a><a href="#footnote51" title="Go to footnote 51"><span class="small">[51]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The six groups here enumerated&mdash;Dakota, Mandan, Pawnee, Maskoki,
+Algonquin, Iroquois&mdash;made <span class="pagenum"><a id="page048" name="page048"></a>(p. 048)</span> up the great body of the aborigines
+of North America who at the time of the Discovery lived in the lower
+status of barbarism. All made pottery of various degrees of rudeness.
+Their tools and weapons were of the Neolithic type,&mdash;stone
+<span class="sidenote">Horticulture must be distinguished from field agriculture.</span>
+either
+polished or accurately and artistically chipped. For the most part they
+lived in stockaded villages, and cultivated maize, beans, pumpkins,
+squashes, sunflowers, and tobacco. They depended for subsistence partly
+upon such vegetable products, partly upon hunting and fishing, the women
+generally attending to the horticulture, the men to the chase.
+<i>Horticulture</i> is an appropriate designation for this stage in which the
+ground is merely scratched with stone spades and hoes. It is incipient
+agriculture, but should be carefully distinguished from the <i>field
+agriculture</i> in which extensive pieces of land are subdued by the
+plough. The assistance of domestic animals is needed before such work
+can be carried far, and it does not appear that there was an approach to
+field agriculture in any part of pre-Columbian America except Peru,
+where men were harnessed to the plough, and perhaps occasionally llamas
+were used in the same way.<a id="footnotetag52" name="footnotetag52"></a><a href="#footnote52" title="Go to footnote 52"><span class="small">[52]</span></a> Where subsistence depended upon rude
+horticulture eked out by game and fish, it required a large territory to
+support a sparse population. The great diversity of languages
+contributed to maintain the isolation of tribes and prevent extensive
+confederation. Intertribal <span class="pagenum"><a id="page049" name="page049"></a>(p. 049)</span> warfare was perpetual, save now and
+then for truces of brief duration. Warfare was attended by wholesale
+massacre. <span class="sidenote">Perpetual warfare.</span>
+As many prisoners as could be managed were taken home by their
+captors; in some cases they were adopted into the tribe of the latter as
+a means of increasing its fighting strength, otherwise they were put to
+death with lingering torments.<a id="footnotetag53" name="footnotetag53"></a><a href="#footnote53" title="Go to footnote 53"><span class="small">[53]</span></a> There was nothing which afforded the
+red men such exquisite delight as the spectacle of live human flesh
+lacerated with stone knives or hissing under the touch of firebrands,
+and for elaborate ingenuity in devising tortures they have never been
+equalled.<a id="footnotetag54" name="footnotetag54"></a><a href="#footnote54" title="Go to footnote 54"><span class="small">[54]</span></a> <span class="pagenum"><a id="page050" name="page050"></a>(p. 050)</span> Cannibalism was quite commonly practised.<a id="footnotetag55" name="footnotetag55"></a><a href="#footnote55" title="Go to footnote 55"><span class="small">[55]</span></a>
+The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page051" name="page051"></a>(p. 051)</span> scalps of slain enemies were always taken, and until they
+had attained such trophies the young men were not likely to find favour
+in the eyes of women. The Indian's notions of morality were those that
+belong to that state of society in which the tribe is the largest
+well-established political aggregate. Murder without the tribe was
+meritorious unless it entailed risk of war at an obvious disadvantage;
+murder within the tribe was either revenged by blood-feud or compounded
+by a present given to the victim's kinsmen. Such rudimentary <i>wergild</i>
+was often reckoned in wampum, or strings of beads made of a kind of
+mussel shell, and put to divers uses, as personal ornament, mnemonic
+record, and finally money. Religious thought was in the fetishistic or
+animistic stage,<a id="footnotetag56" name="footnotetag56"></a><a href="#footnote56" title="Go to footnote 56"><span class="small">[56]</span></a> while many tribes had risen to a vague conception
+of tutelar deities embodied in human or animal forms. Myth-tales
+abounded, and the folk-lore of the red men is found to be extremely
+interesting and instructive.<a id="footnotetag57" name="footnotetag57"></a><a href="#footnote57" title="Go to footnote 57"><span class="small">[57]</span></a> Their religion consisted mainly
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page052" name="page052"></a>(p. 052)</span> in a devout belief in witchcraft. No well-defined priestly
+class had been evolved; the so-called "medicine men" were mere
+conjurers, though possessed of considerable influence.</p>
+
+<p>But none of the characteristics of barbarous society above specified
+will carry us so far toward realizing the gulf which divides it from
+civilized society as the imperfect development of its domestic
+relations. The importance of this subject is such as to call for a few
+words of special elucidation.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>Thirty years ago, when Sir Henry Maine published that magnificent
+treatise on Ancient Law, which, when considered in all its potency of
+suggestiveness, has perhaps done more than any other single book of our
+century toward placing the study of history upon a scientific basis,
+<span class="sidenote">Ancient Law.</span>
+he
+began by showing that in primitive society the individual is nothing and
+the state nothing, while the family-group is everything, and that the
+progress of civilization politically has <span class="pagenum"><a id="page053" name="page053"></a>(p. 053)</span> consisted on the one
+hand in the aggregation and building up of family-groups through
+intermediate tribal organizations into states, and on the other hand in
+the disentanglement of individuals from the family thraldom. In other
+words, we began by having no political communities larger than clans,
+and no bond of political union except blood relationship, and in this
+state of things the individual, as to his rights and obligations, was
+submerged in the clan. We at length come to have great nations like the
+English or the French, in which blood-relationship as a bond of
+political union is no longer indispensable or even much thought of, and
+in which the individual citizen is the possessor of legal rights and
+subject to legal obligations. No one in our time can forget how
+beautifully Sir Henry Maine, with his profound knowledge of early Aryan
+law and custom, from Ireland to Hindustan, delineated the slow growth of
+individual ownership of property and individual responsibility for
+delict and crime out of an earlier stage in which ownership and
+responsibility belonged only to family-groups or clans.</p>
+
+<p>In all these brilliant studies Sir Henry Maine started with the
+patriarchal family as we find it at the dawn of history among all
+peoples of Aryan and Semitic speech,&mdash;the
+<span class="sidenote">The patriarchal family not primitive.</span>
+patriarchal family of the
+ancient Roman and the ancient Jew, the family in which kinship is
+reckoned through males, and in which all authority centres in the eldest
+male, and descends to his eldest son. Maine treated this patriarchal
+family as primitive; but his great book had hardly <span class="pagenum"><a id="page054" name="page054"></a>(p. 054)</span> appeared
+when other scholars, more familiar than he with races in savagery or in
+the lower status of barbarism, showed that his view was too restricted.
+We do not get back to primitive society by studying Greeks, Romans, and
+Jews, peoples who had nearly emerged from the later period of barbarism
+when we first know them.<a id="footnotetag58" name="footnotetag58"></a><a href="#footnote58" title="Go to footnote 58"><span class="small">[58]</span></a> Their patriarchal family was perfected in
+shape during the later period of barbarism, and it was preceded by a
+much ruder and less definite form of family-group in which kinship was
+reckoned only through the mother, and the headship never descended from
+father to son. As so often happens, this discovery was made almost
+simultaneously by two investigators, each working in ignorance of what
+the other was doing. In 1861, the same year in which "Ancient Law" was
+published, <span class="sidenote">"Mother-right."</span>
+Professor Bachofen, of Basel, published his famous book, "Das
+Mutterrecht," of which his co-discoverer and rival, after taking
+exception to some of his statements, thus cordially writes: "It remains,
+however, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page055" name="page055"></a>(p. 055)</span> after all qualifications and deductions, that
+Bachofen, before any one else, discovered the fact that a system of
+kinship through mothers only, had anciently everywhere prevailed before
+the tie of blood between father and child had found a place in systems
+of relationships. And the honour of that discovery, the importance of
+which, as affording a new starting-point for all history, cannot be
+overestimated, must without stint or qualification be assigned to
+him."<a id="footnotetag59" name="footnotetag59"></a><a href="#footnote59" title="Go to footnote 59"><span class="small">[59]</span></a> Such are the generous words of the late John Ferguson
+McLennan, who had no knowledge of Bachofen's work when his own treatise
+on "Primitive Marriage" was published in 1865. Since he was so modest in
+urging his own claims, it is due to the Scotch lawyer's memory to say
+that, while he was inferior in point of erudition to the Swiss
+professor, <span class="sidenote">Primitive marriage.</span>
+his book is characterized by greater sagacity, goes more
+directly to the mark, and is less encumbered by visionary speculations
+of doubtful value.<a id="footnotetag60" name="footnotetag60"></a><a href="#footnote60" title="Go to footnote 60"><span class="small">[60]</span></a> Mr. McLennan proved, from evidence collected
+chiefly from Australians and South Sea Islanders, and sundry non-Aryan
+tribes of Hindustan and Thibet, that systems of kinship in which the
+father is ignored exist to-day, and he furthermore discovered
+unmistakable and very significant traces of the former existence of such
+a state of things among the Mongols, the Greeks and Ph&oelig;nicians, and
+the ancient Hebrews. By those who were inclined to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page056" name="page056"></a>(p. 056)</span> regard Sir
+Henry Maine's views as final, it was argued that Mr. McLennan's facts
+were of a sporadic and exceptional character. But when the evidence from
+this vast archaic world of America began to be gathered in and
+interpreted by Mr. Morgan, this argument fell to the ground, and as to
+the point chiefly in contention, Mr. McLennan was proved to be right.
+<span class="sidenote">The system of reckoning kinship through females only.</span>
+Throughout aboriginal America, with one or two exceptions, kinship was
+reckoned through females only, and in the exceptional instances the
+vestiges of that system were so prominent as to make it clear that the
+change had been but recently effected. During the past fifteen years,
+evidence has accumulated from various parts of the world, until it is
+beginning to appear as if it were the patriarchal system that is
+exceptional, having been reached only by the highest races.<a id="footnotetag61" name="footnotetag61"></a><a href="#footnote61" title="Go to footnote 61"><span class="small">[61]</span></a> Sir
+Henry Maine's work has lost none of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page057" name="page057"></a>(p. 057)</span> its value, only, like all
+human work, it is not final; it needs to be supplemented by the further
+study of savagery as best exemplified in Australia and some parts of
+Polynesia, and of barbarism as best exemplified in America. The subject
+is, moreover, one of great and complicated difficulty, and leads
+incidentally to many questions for solving which the data at our command
+are still inadequate. It is enough for us now to observe in general that
+while there are plenty of instances of change from the system of
+reckoning kinship only through females, to the system of reckoning
+through males, there do not appear to have been any instances of change
+in the reverse direction; and that in ancient America the earlier system
+was prevalent.</p>
+
+<p>If now we ask the reason for such a system of reckoning kinship and
+inheritance, so strange according to all our modern notions,
+<span class="sidenote">Original reason for the system.</span>
+the true
+answer doubtless is that which was given by prudent
+(&#928;&#949;&#928;&#957;&#965;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#959;&#962;)
+Telemachus to the goddess Athene when she asked him to tell her truly if
+he was the son of Odysseus:&mdash;"My mother says I am his son, for my part,
+I don't know; one never knows of one's self who one's father is."<a id="footnotetag62" name="footnotetag62"></a><a href="#footnote62" title="Go to footnote 62"><span class="small">[62]</span></a>
+Already, no doubt, in Homer's time <span class="pagenum"><a id="page058" name="page058"></a>(p. 058)</span> there was a gleam of satire
+about this answer, such as it would show on a modern page; but in more
+primitive times it was a very serious affair. From what we know of the
+ideas and practices of uncivilized tribes all over the world, it is
+evident that the sacredness of the family based upon indissoluble
+marriage is a thing of comparatively modern growth. If the sexual
+relations of the Australians, as observed to-day,<a id="footnotetag63" name="footnotetag63"></a><a href="#footnote63" title="Go to footnote 63"><span class="small">[63]</span></a> are an improvement
+upon an antecedent state of things,
+<span class="sidenote">The primeval human horde.</span>
+that antecedent state must have been
+sheer promiscuity. There is ample warrant for supposing, with Mr.
+McLennan, that at the beginning of the lower status of savagery, long
+since everywhere extinct, the family had not made itself distinctly
+visible, but men lived in a horde very much like gregarious brutes.<a id="footnotetag64" name="footnotetag64"></a><a href="#footnote64" title="Go to footnote 64"><span class="small">[64]</span></a>
+I have shown that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page059" name="page059"></a>(p. 059)</span> the essential difference between this
+primeval human horde and a mere herd of brutes consisted in the fact
+that the gradual but very great prolongation of infancy had produced two
+effects: the lengthening of the care of children tended to differentiate
+the horde into family-groups, and the lengthening of the period of
+youthful mental plasticity made it more possible for a new generation to
+improve upon the ideas and customs of its predecessors.<a id="footnotetag65" name="footnotetag65"></a><a href="#footnote65" title="Go to footnote 65"><span class="small">[65]</span></a> In these two
+concomitant processes&mdash;the development of the family and the increase of
+mental plasticity, or ability to adopt new methods and strike out into
+new paths of thought&mdash;lies the whole explanation of the moral and
+intellectual superiority of men over dumb animals. But in each case the
+change was very gradual.<a id="footnotetag66" name="footnotetag66"></a><a href="#footnote66" title="Go to footnote 66"><span class="small">[66]</span></a> The true savage is only a little less
+unteachable than the beasts of the field. The savage family is at first
+barely discernible amid the primitive social chaos <span class="pagenum"><a id="page060" name="page060"></a>(p. 060)</span> in which it
+had its origin. Along with polyandry and polygyny in various degrees and
+forms, instances of exclusive pairing, of at least a temporary
+character, are to be found among the lowest existing savages,
+<span class="sidenote">Earliest family-group: the clan.</span>
+and there
+are reasons for supposing that such may have been the case even in
+primeval times. But it was impossible for strict monogamy to flourish in
+the ruder stages of social development; and the kind of family-group
+that was first clearly and permanently differentiated from the primeval
+horde was not at all like what civilized people would recognize as a
+family. It was the <i>gens</i> or <i>clan</i>, as we find it exemplified in all
+stages from the middle period of savagery to the middle period of
+barbarism. The <i>gens</i> or <i>clan</i> was simply&mdash;to define it by a third
+synonym&mdash;the <i>kin</i>; it was originally a group of males and females who
+were traditionally aware of their common descent reckoned in the female
+line. <span class="sidenote">"Exogamy."</span>
+At this stage of development there was quite generally though not
+universally prevalent the custom of "exogamy," by which a man was
+forbidden to marry a woman of his own clan. Among such Australian tribes
+as have been studied, this primitive restriction upon promiscuity seems
+to be about the only one.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout all the earlier stages of culture, and even into the
+civilized period, we find society organized with the clan for its
+ultimate unit, although in course of time its character becomes greatly
+altered by the substitution of kinship in the paternal, for that in the
+maternal line. By <span class="pagenum"><a id="page061" name="page061"></a>(p. 061)</span> long-continued growth and repeated
+segmentation the primitive clan was developed into a more complex
+structure, in which a group of clans constituted a
+<span class="sidenote">Phratry and tribe.</span>
+<i>phratry</i> or
+brotherhood, and a group of phratries constituted a <i>tribe</i>. This
+threefold grouping is found so commonly in all parts of the world as to
+afford good ground for the belief that it has been universal. It was
+long ago familiar to historians in the case of Greece and Rome, and of
+our Teutonic forefathers,<a id="footnotetag67" name="footnotetag67"></a><a href="#footnote67" title="Go to footnote 67"><span class="small">[67]</span></a> but it also existed generally in ancient
+America, and many obscure points connected with the history of the Greek
+and Roman groups have been elucidated through the study of Iroquois and
+Algonquin institutions. Along with the likenesses, however, there are
+numerous unlikenesses, due to the change of kinship, among the European
+groups, from the female line to the male.</p>
+
+<p>This change, as it occurred among Aryan and Semitic peoples, marked one
+of the most momentous revolutions in the history of mankind. It probably
+occurred early in the upper period of barbarism, or late in the middle
+period, after the long-continued domestication of animals had resulted
+in the acquisition of private property (<i>pecus, peculium, pecunia</i>) in
+large amounts by individuals.
+<span class="sidenote">Effect of pastoral life upon property and upon the family.</span>
+In primitive society there was very little
+personal property except in weapons, clothing (such as it was), and
+trinkets. Real estate was unknown. Land was simply <i>occupied</i> by the
+tribe. There was general communism and social equality. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page062" name="page062"></a>(p. 062)</span> In the
+Old World the earliest instance of extensive "adverse possession" on the
+part of individuals, as against other individuals in the clan-community,
+was the possession of flocks and herds. Distinctions in wealth and rank
+were thus inaugurated; slavery began to be profitable and personal
+retainers and adherents useful in new ways. As in earlier stages the
+community in marital relations had been part of the general community in
+possessions, so now the exclusive possession of a wife or wives was part
+of the system of private property that was coming into vogue. The man of
+many cattle, the man who could attach subordinates to him through
+motives of self-interest as well as personal deference, the man who
+could defend his property against robbers, could also have his separate
+household and maintain its sanctity. In this way, it is believed,
+indissoluble marriage, in its two forms of monogamy and polygamy,
+originated. That it had already existed sporadically is not denied, but
+it now acquired such stability and permanence that the older and looser
+forms of alliance, hitherto prevalent, fell into disfavour. A natural
+result of the growth of private wealth and the permanence of the marital
+relation was the change in reckoning kinship from the maternal to the
+paternal line. This change was probably favoured by the prevalence of
+polygamy among those who were coming to be distinguished as "upper
+classes," since a large family of children by different mothers could be
+held together only by reckoning the kinship through the father. Thus, we
+may suppose, originated the patriarchal <span class="pagenum"><a id="page063" name="page063"></a>(p. 063)</span> family. Even in its
+rudest form it was an immense improvement upon what had gone before, and
+to the stronger and higher social organization thus acquired we must
+largely ascribe the rise of the Aryan and Semitic peoples to the
+foremost rank of civilization.<a id="footnotetag68" name="footnotetag68"></a><a href="#footnote68" title="Go to footnote 68"><span class="small">[68]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>It is not intended to imply that there is no other way in which the
+change to the male line may have been brought about among other peoples.
+The explanation just given applies very well to the Aryan and Semitic
+peoples, but it is inapplicable to the state of things which seems to
+have existed in Mexico at the time of the Discovery.<a id="footnotetag69" name="footnotetag69"></a><a href="#footnote69" title="Go to footnote 69"><span class="small">[69]</span></a> The subject is
+a difficult one, and sometimes confronts us with questions much easier
+to ask than to answer. The change has been observed among tribes in a
+lower stage than that just described.<a id="footnotetag70" name="footnotetag70"></a><a href="#footnote70" title="Go to footnote 70"><span class="small">[70]</span></a> On the other hand, as old
+customs die hard, no doubt inheritance has in many places continued in
+the maternal line long after paternity is fully known. Symmetrical
+regularity in the development of human institutions has by no means been
+the rule, and there is often much difficulty in explaining particular
+cases, even when the direction of the general drift can be discerned.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page064" name="page064"></a>(p. 064)</span>
+
+<p>In aboriginal America, as already observed, kinship through females only
+was the rule,
+<span class="sidenote">The exogamous clan in ancient America.</span>
+and exogamy was strictly enforced,&mdash;the wife must be taken
+from a different clan. Indissoluble marriage, whether monogamous or
+polygamous, seems to have been unknown. The marriage relation was
+terminable at the will of either party.<a id="footnotetag71" name="footnotetag71"></a><a href="#footnote71" title="Go to footnote 71"><span class="small">[71]</span></a> The abiding unit upon which
+the social structure was founded was not the family but the exogamous
+clan.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>I have been at some pains to elucidate this point because the house-life
+of the American aborigines found visible, and in some instances very
+durable, expression in a remarkable style of house-architecture. The
+manner in which the Indians built their houses grew directly out of the
+requirements of their life. It was an unmistakably characteristic
+architecture, and while it exhibits <span class="pagenum"><a id="page065" name="page065"></a>(p. 065)</span> manifold unlikenesses in
+detail, due to differences in intelligence as well as to the presence or
+absence of sundry materials,
+<span class="sidenote">Intimate connection of aboriginal architecture with social
+life.</span>
+there is one underlying principle always
+manifest. That underlying principle is adaptation to a certain mode of
+communal living such as all American aborigines that have been carefully
+studied are known to have practised. Through many gradations, from the
+sty of the California savage up to the noble sculptured ruins of Uxmal
+and Chichen-Itza, the principle is always present. Taken in connection
+with evidence from other sources, it enables us to exhibit a gradation
+of stages of culture in aboriginal North America, with the savages of
+the Sacramento and Columbia valleys at the bottom, and the Mayas of
+Yucatan at the top; and while in going from one end to the other a very
+long interval was traversed, we feel that the progress of the aborigines
+in crossing that interval was made along similar lines.<a id="footnotetag72" name="footnotetag72"></a><a href="#footnote72" title="Go to footnote 72"><span class="small">[72]</span></a></p>
+
+<a id="img002" name="img002"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img002.jpg" width="500" height="216" alt="" title="">
+<p>Seneca-Iroquois long house.</p>
+</div>
+
+<a id="img003" name="img003"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img003.jpg" width="500" height="105" alt="" title="">
+<p>Ground-plan of long house.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The principle was first studied and explained by Mr. Morgan in the case
+of the famous "long houses" of the Iroquois. "The long house ... was
+from fifty to eighty and sometimes one hundred feet long. It consisted
+of a strong frame of upright poles set in the ground, which was
+strengthened with horizontal poles attached with withes, and surmounted
+with a triangular, and in some cases with a round roof. It was covered
+over, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page066" name="page066"></a>(p. 066)</span> both sides and roof, with long strips of elm bark tied
+to the frame with strings or splints. An external frame of poles for the
+sides and of rafters for the roof were then adjusted to hold the bark
+shingles between them, the two frames being tied together.
+<span class="sidenote">The long houses of the Iroquois.</span>
+The interior
+of the house was comparted<a id="footnotetag73" name="footnotetag73"></a><a href="#footnote73" title="Go to footnote 73"><span class="small">[73]</span></a> at intervals of six or eight feet,
+leaving each chamber entirely open like a stall upon the passageway
+which passed through the centre of the house from end to end. At each
+end was a doorway covered with suspended skins. Between each four
+apartments, two on a side, was a fire-pit in the centre of the hall,
+used in common by their occupants. Thus a house with five fires would
+contain twenty apartments <span class="pagenum"><a id="page067" name="page067"></a>(p. 067)</span> and accommodate twenty families,
+unless some apartments were reserved for storage. They were warm, roomy,
+and tidily-kept habitations. Raised bunks were constructed around the
+walls of each apartment for beds. From the roof-poles were suspended
+their strings of corn in the ear, braided by the husks, also strings of
+dried squashes and pumpkins. Spaces were contrived here and there to
+store away their accumulations of provisions. Each house, as a rule, was
+occupied by related families, the mothers and their children belonging
+to the same gens, while their husbands and the fathers of these children
+belonged to other gentes; consequently the gens or clan of the mother
+largely predominated in the household. Whatever was taken in the hunt or
+raised by cultivation by any member of the household ... was for the
+common benefit. Provisions were made a common stock within the
+household."<a id="footnotetag74" name="footnotetag74"></a><a href="#footnote74" title="Go to footnote 74"><span class="small">[74]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>"Over every such household a matron presided, whose duty it was to
+supervise its domestic economy. After the single daily meal had been
+cooked at the different fires within the house, it was her province to
+divide the food from the kettle to the several families according to
+their respective needs. What remained was placed in the custody of
+another person until she again required it."<a id="footnotetag75" name="footnotetag75"></a><a href="#footnote75" title="Go to footnote 75"><span class="small">[75]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page068" name="page068"></a>(p. 068)</span>
+
+<p>Not only the food was common property, but many chattels, including the
+children, belonged to the gens or clan. When a young woman got married
+she brought her husband home with her. Though thenceforth an inmate of
+this household he remained an alien to her clan. "If he proved lazy and
+failed to do his share of the providing, woe be to him.
+<span class="sidenote">Summary divorce.</span>
+No matter how
+many children, or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at
+any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge; and after such
+orders it would not be healthful for him to disobey; the house would be
+too hot for him; and unless saved by the intercession of some aunt or
+grandmother [of his wife] he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was
+often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other....
+The female portion ruled the house."<a id="footnotetag76" name="footnotetag76"></a><a href="#footnote76" title="Go to footnote 76"><span class="small">[76]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Though there was but one freshly-cooked meal, taken about the middle of
+the day, any member of the household when hungry could be helped from
+the common stock. Hospitality was universal. If a person from one of the
+other communal households, or a stranger from another tribe (in time of
+peace), <span class="sidenote">Hospitality.</span>
+were to visit the house, the women would immediately offer him
+food, and it was a breach of etiquette to decline to eat it. This custom
+was strictly observed all over the continent and in the West India
+Islands, and was often remarked upon by the early discoverers, in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page069" name="page069"></a>(p. 069)</span> whose minds it was apt to implant idyllic notions that were
+afterward rudely disturbed. The prevalence of hospitality among
+uncivilized races has long been noted by travellers, and is probably in
+most cases, as it certainly was in ancient America, closely connected
+with communism in living.</p>
+
+<p>The clan, which practised this communism, had its definite organization,
+officers, rights, and duties. Its official head was the "sachem," whose
+functions were of a civil nature. The sachem was elected by the clan and
+must be a member of it, so that a son could not be chosen to succeed his
+father, <span class="sidenote">Structure of the clan.</span>
+but a sachem could be succeeded by his uterine brother or by his
+sister's son, and in this way customary lines of succession could and
+often did tend to become established. The clan also elected its
+"chiefs," whose functions were military; the number of chiefs was
+proportionate to that of the people composing the clan, usually one
+chief to every fifty or sixty persons. The clan could depose its sachem
+or any of its chiefs. Personal property, such as weapons, or trophies,
+or rights of user in the garden-plots, was inheritable in the female
+line, and thus stayed within the clan. The members were reciprocally
+bound to help, defend, and avenge one another. The clan had the right of
+adopting strangers to strengthen itself. It had the right of naming its
+members, and these names were always obviously significant, like Little
+Turtle, Yellow Wolf, etc.; of names like our Richard or William, with
+the meaning lost, or obvious only to scholars, no trace is to be found
+in aboriginal America. The clan <span class="pagenum"><a id="page070" name="page070"></a>(p. 070)</span> itself, too, always had a
+name, which was usually that of some animal,&mdash;as Wolf, Eagle, or Salmon,
+and a rude drawing or pictograph of the creature served as a "totem" or
+primitive heraldic device. A mythological meaning was attached to this
+emblem. The clan had its own common religious rites and common burial
+place. There was a clan-council, of which women might be members; there
+were instances, indeed, of its being composed entirely of women, whose
+position was one of much more dignity and influence than has commonly
+been supposed. Instances of squaw sachems were not so very rare.<a id="footnotetag77" name="footnotetag77"></a><a href="#footnote77" title="Go to footnote 77"><span class="small">[77]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The number of clans in a tribe naturally bore some proportion to the
+populousness of the tribe, varying from three, in the case of the
+Delawares, to twenty or more, as in the case of the Ojibwas and Creeks.
+There were usually eight or ten, and these were usually grouped into two
+or three phratries. <span class="sidenote">Origin and structure of the phratry.</span>
+The phratry seems to have originated in the
+segmentation of the overgrown clan, for in some cases exogamy was
+originally practised as between the phratries and afterward the custom
+died out while it was retained as between their constituent clans.<a id="footnotetag78" name="footnotetag78"></a><a href="#footnote78" title="Go to footnote 78"><span class="small">[78]</span></a>
+The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page071" name="page071"></a>(p. 071)</span> system of naming often indicates this origin of the
+phratry, though seldom quite so forcibly as in the case of the Mohegan
+tribe, which was thus composed:<a id="footnotetag79" name="footnotetag79"></a><a href="#footnote79" title="Go to footnote 79"><span class="small">[79]</span></a>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<p>I. <span class="smcap">Wolf Phratry.</span><br>
+<i>Clans:</i> 1. Wolf, 2. Bear, 3. Dog, 4. Opossum.</p>
+
+<p>II. <span class="smcap">Turtle Phratry.</span><br>
+<i>Clans:</i> 5. Little Turtle, 6. Mud Turtle, 7. Great Turtle, 8. Yellow
+Eel.</p>
+
+<p>III. <span class="smcap">Turkey Phratry.</span><br>
+<i>Clans:</i> 9. Turkey, 10. Crane, 11. Chicken.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Here the senior clan in the phratry tends to keep
+the original clan-name, while the junior clans have been guided by a
+sense of kinship in choosing their new names. This origin of the phratry
+is further indicated by the fact that the phratry does not always occur;
+sometimes the clans are organized directly into the tribe. The phratry
+was not so much a governmental as a religious and social organization.
+Its most important function seems to have been supplementing or
+reinforcing the action of the single clan in exacting compensation for
+murder; and this point is full of interest because it helps us to
+understand how among our Teutonic forefathers the "hundred" (the
+equivalent of the phratry) became charged with the duty of prosecuting
+criminals. The Greek phratry had a precisely analogous function.<a id="footnotetag80" name="footnotetag80"></a><a href="#footnote80" title="Go to footnote 80"><span class="small">[80]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page072" name="page072"></a>(p. 072)</span>
+
+<p>The Indian tribe was a group of people distinguished by the exclusive
+possession of a dialect in common.
+<span class="sidenote">Structure of the tribe.</span>
+It possessed a tribal name and
+occupied a more or less clearly defined territory; there were also
+tribal religious rites. Its supreme government was vested in the council
+of its clan-chiefs and sachems; and as these were thus officers of the
+tribe as well as of the clan, the tribe exercised the right of investing
+them with office, amid appropriate solemnities, after their election by
+their respective clans. The tribal-council had also the right to depose
+chiefs and sachems. In some instances, not always, there was a head
+chief or military commander for the tribes, elected by the tribal
+council. Such, was the origin of the office which, in most societies of
+the Old World, gradually multiplied its functions and accumulated power
+until it developed into true kingship. Nowhere in ancient North America
+did it quite reach such a stage.</p>
+
+<p>Among the greater part of the aborigines no higher form of social
+structure was attained than the tribe.
+<span class="sidenote">Cross-relationships between clans and tribes: the Iroquois
+Confederacy.</span>
+There were, however, several
+instances of permanent confederation, of which the two most interesting
+and most highly developed were the League of the Iroquois, mentioned
+above, and the Mexican Confederacy, presently to be considered. The
+principles upon which the Iroquois league <span class="pagenum"><a id="page073" name="page073"></a>(p. 073)</span> was founded have
+been thoroughly and minutely explained by Mr. Morgan.<a id="footnotetag81" name="footnotetag81"></a><a href="#footnote81" title="Go to footnote 81"><span class="small">[81]</span></a> It originated
+in a union of five tribes composed of clans in common, and speaking five
+dialects of a common language. These tribes had themselves arisen
+through the segmentation of a single overgrown tribe, so that portions
+of the original clans survived in them all. The Wolf, Bear, and Turtle
+clan were common to all the five tribes; three other clans were common
+to three of the five. "All the members of the same gens [clan], whether
+Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, or Senecas, were brothers and
+sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common
+[female] ancestor, and they recognized each other as such with the
+fullest cordiality. When they met, the first inquiry was the name of
+each other's gens, and next the immediate pedigree of each other's
+sachems; after which they were able to find, under their peculiar system
+of consanguinity, the relationship in which they stood to each other....
+This cross-relationship between persons of the same gens in the
+different tribes is still preserved and recognized among them in all its
+original force. It explains the tenacity with which the fragments of the
+old confederacy still cling together."<a id="footnotetag82" name="footnotetag82"></a><a href="#footnote82" title="Go to footnote 82"><span class="small">[82]</span></a> Acknowledged <span class="pagenum"><a id="page074" name="page074"></a>(p. 074)</span>
+consanguinity is to the barbarian a sound reason, and the only one
+conceivable, for permanent political union; and the very existence of
+such a confederacy as that of the Five Nations was rendered possible
+only through the permanence of the clans or communal households which
+were its ultimate units. We have here a clue to the policy of these
+Indians toward the kindred tribes who refused to join their league.
+These tribes, too, so far as is known, would seem to have contained the
+same clans. After a separation of at least four hundred years the
+Wyandots have still five of their eight clans in common with the
+Iroquois. When the Eries and other tribes would not join the league of
+their kindred, the refusal smacked of treason to the kin, and we can
+quite understand the deadly fury with which the latter turned upon them
+and butchered every man, woman, and child except such as they saw fit to
+adopt into their own clans.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page075" name="page075"></a>(p. 075)</span>
+
+<p>Each of the Five Tribes retained its local self-government. The supreme
+government of the confederacy was vested in a General Council of fifty
+sachems, "equal in rank and authority." The fifty sachemships were
+created in perpetuity in certain clans of the several tribes; whenever a
+vacancy occurred, it was filled by the clan electing one of its own
+members; <span class="sidenote">Structure of the confederacy.</span>
+a sachem once thus elected could be deposed by the clan-council
+for good cause; "but the right to invest these sachems with office was
+reserved to the General Council." These fifty sachems of the confederacy
+were likewise sachems in their respective tribes, "and with the chiefs
+of these tribes formed the council of each, which was supreme over all
+matters pertaining to the tribe exclusively." The General Council could
+not convene itself, but could be convened by any one of the five tribal
+councils. The regular meeting was once a year in the autumn, in the
+valley of Onondaga, but in stirring times extra sessions were frequent.
+The proceedings were opened by an address from one of the sachems, "in
+the course of which he thanked the Great Spirit [i. e. Ioskeha, the
+sky-god] for sparing their lives and permitting them to meet together;"
+after this they were ready for business. It was proper for any orator
+from among the people to address the Council with arguments, and the
+debates were sometimes very long and elaborate. When it came to voting,
+the fifty sachems voted by tribes, each tribe counting as a unit, and
+unanimity was as imperative as in an English jury, so that one tribe
+could <span class="pagenum"><a id="page076" name="page076"></a>(p. 076)</span> block the proceedings. The confederacy had no
+head-sachem, or civil chief-magistrate; but a military commander was
+indispensable, and, curiously enough, without being taught by the
+experience of a Tarquin, the Iroquois made this a dual office, like the
+Roman consulship. There were two permanent chieftainships, one in the
+Wolf, the other in the Turtle clan, and both in the Seneca tribe,
+because the western border was the most exposed to attack.<a id="footnotetag83" name="footnotetag83"></a><a href="#footnote83" title="Go to footnote 83"><span class="small">[83]</span></a> The
+chiefs were elected by the clan, and inducted into office by the General
+Council; their tenure was during life or good behaviour. This office
+never encroached upon the others in its powers, but an able warrior in
+this position could wield great influence.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the famous confederacy of the Iroquois. They called it the Long
+House,
+<span class="sidenote">The "Long House."</span>
+and by this name as commonly as any other it is known in history.
+The name by which they called themselves was Hodenosaunee, or "People of
+the Long House." The name was picturesquely descriptive of the long and
+narrow strip of villages with its western outlook toward the Niagara,
+and its eastern toward the Hudson, three hundred miles distant. But it
+was appropriate also for another and a deeper reason than this. We have
+seen that in its social and political <span class="pagenum"><a id="page077" name="page077"></a>(p. 077)</span> structure, from top to
+bottom and from end to end, the confederacy was based upon and held
+together by the gentes, clans, communal households, or "long houses,"
+which were its component units. They may be compared to the hypothetical
+indestructible atoms of modern physics, whereof all material objects are
+composed. The whole institutional fabric was the outgrowth of the group
+of ideas and habits that belong to a state of society ignorant of and
+incapable of imagining any other form of organization than the clan held
+together by the tie of a common maternal ancestry. The house
+architecture was as much a constituent part of the fabric as the council
+of sachems. There is a transparency about the system that is very
+different from the obscurity we continually find in Europe and Asia,
+where different strata of ideas and institutions have been superimposed
+one upon another and crumpled and distorted with as little apparent
+significance or purpose as the porches and gables of a so-called "Queen
+Anne" house.<a id="footnotetag84" name="footnotetag84"></a><a href="#footnote84" title="Go to footnote 84"><span class="small">[84]</span></a> Conquest in the Old World has resulted in the
+commingling and manifold fusion of peoples in very different stages of
+development. In the New World there has been very little of that sort of
+thing. Conquest in ancient America was pretty much all of the Iroquois
+type, entailing in its milder form the imposition of tribute, in its
+more desperate form the extermination of a tribe with the adoption of
+its remnants into the similarly-constituted <span class="pagenum"><a id="page078" name="page078"></a>(p. 078)</span> tribe of the
+conquerors. There was therefore but little modification of the social
+structure while the people, gradually acquiring new arts, were passing
+through savagery and into a more or less advanced stage of barbarism.
+The symmetry of the structure and the relation of one institution to
+another is thus distinctly apparent.</p>
+
+<p>The communal household and the political structure built upon it, as
+above described in the case of the Iroquois, seem to have existed all
+over ancient North America, with agreement in fundamental
+characteristics and variation in details and degree of development.
+There are many corners as yet imperfectly explored, but hitherto, in so
+far as research has been rewarded with information, it all points in the
+same general direction. Among the tribes above enumerated as either in
+savagery or in the lower status of barbarism, so far as they have been
+studied, there seems to be a general agreement, as to the looseness of
+the marriage tie the clan with descent in the female line, the
+phratry, the tribe, the
+officers and councils, the social equality, the community in goods (with
+exceptions already noted), and the wigwam or house adapted to communal
+living.</p>
+
+<a id="img004" name="img004"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img004.jpg" width="300" height="521" alt="" title="">
+<p>View, Cross-section, and Ground-plan of Mandan round
+house.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The extreme of variation consistent with adherence to the common
+principle was to be found in the shape and material of the houses. Those
+of the savage tribes were but sorry huts. The long house was used by the
+Powhatans and other Algonquin tribes. The other most highly developed
+type may be illustrated by the circular frame-houses <span class="pagenum"><a id="page079" name="page079"></a>(p. 079)</span> of the
+Mandans.<a id="footnotetag85" name="footnotetag85"></a><a href="#footnote85" title="Go to footnote 85"><span class="small">[85]</span></a>
+These houses were from forty to sixty feet in diameter.
+<span class="sidenote">Circular houses of the Mandans.</span>
+A
+dozen or more posts, each about eight inches in diameter, were set in
+the ground, "at equal distances in the circumference of a circle, and
+rising about six feet above the level of the floor." The tops of the
+posts were connected by horizontal stringers; and outside each post a
+slanting wooden brace sunk in the ground about four feet distant served
+as a firm support to the structure. The spaces between these braces were
+filled by tall wooden slabs, set with the same slant and resting against
+the stringers. Thus the framework of the outer wall was completed. To
+support the roof four posts were set in the ground about ten feet apart
+in the form of a square, near the centre of the building. They were from
+twelve to fifteen feet in height, and were connected at the top by four
+stringers forming a square. The rafters rested upon these stringers and
+upon the top of the circular wall below. The rafters were covered with
+willow matting, and upon this was spread a layer of prairie grass. Then
+both wall and roof, from the ground up to the summit, were covered with
+earth, solid and hard, to a thickness of at least two feet. The rafters
+projected above the square framework at the summit, so as to leave a
+circular opening in the centre about four feet in diameter. This hole
+let in a little light, and let out some of the smoke from the fire which
+blazed underneath in a fire-pit lined with <span class="pagenum"><a id="page081" name="page081"></a>(p. 081)</span> stone slabs set on
+edge. The only other aperture for light was the doorway, which was a
+kind of vestibule or passage some ten feet in length. Curtains of
+buffalo robes did duty instead of doors. The family compartments were
+triangles with base at the outer wall, and apex opening upon the central
+hearth; and the partitions were hanging mats or skins, which were
+tastefully fringed and ornamented with quill-work and pictographs.<a id="footnotetag86" name="footnotetag86"></a><a href="#footnote86" title="Go to footnote 86"><span class="small">[86]</span></a>
+In the lower Mandan village, visited by Catlin, there were about fifty
+such houses, each able to accommodate from thirty to forty persons. The
+village, situated upon a bold bluff at a bend of the Missouri river, and
+surrounded by a palisade of stout timbers more than ten feet in height,
+was very strong for defensive purposes. Indeed, it was virtually
+impregnable to Indian methods of attack, for the earth-covered houses
+could not be set on fire by blazing arrows, and just within the palisade
+ran a trench in which the defenders could securely skulk, while through
+the narrow chinks between the timbers they could shoot arrows fast
+enough to keep their assailants at a distance. This purpose was further
+secured by rude bastions, and considering the structure as a whole one
+cannot help admiring the ingenuity which it exhibits. It shows a marked
+superiority over the conceptions of military defence attained by the
+Iroquois or any other Indians north of New Mexico. Besides the communal
+houses the village contained its "medicine lodge," or council house, and
+an open area for games and ceremonies. In the spaces <span class="pagenum"><a id="page082" name="page082"></a>(p. 082)</span> between
+the houses were the scaffolds for drying maize, buffalo meat, etc.,
+ascended by well-made portable ladders. Outside the village, at a short
+distance on the prairie, was a group of such scaffolds upon which the
+dead were left to moulder, somewhat after the fashion of the
+Parsees.<a id="footnotetag87" name="footnotetag87"></a><a href="#footnote87" title="Go to footnote 87"><span class="small">[87]</span></a></p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>We are now prepared to understand some essential points in the life of
+the groups of Indians occupying the region of the Cordilleras, both
+north and south of the Isthmus of Darien, all the way from Zuñi to
+Quito. <span class="sidenote">The Indians of the pueblos,&mdash;in the middle status of
+barbarism.</span>
+The principal groups are the Moquis and Zuñis of Arizona and New
+Mexico, the Nahuas or Nahuatlac tribes of Mexico, the Mayas, Quichés,
+and kindred peoples of Central America; and beyond the isthmus, the
+Chibchas of New Granada, and sundry peoples comprised within the domain
+of the Incas. With regard to the ethnic relationships of these various
+groups, opinion is still in a state of confusion; but it is not
+necessary for our present purpose that we should pause to discuss the
+numerous questions thus arising. Our business is to get a clear notion
+in outline of the character of the culture to which these peoples had
+attained at the time of the Discovery. Here we observe, on the part of
+all, a very considerable divergence from the average Indian level which
+we have thus far been describing.</p>
+
+<p>This divergence increases as we go from Zuñi toward Cuzco, reaching its
+extreme, on the whole, among the Peruvians, though in some respects the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page083" name="page083"></a>(p. 083)</span> nearest approach to civilization was made by the Mayas. All
+these peoples were at least one full ethnical period nearer to true
+civilization than the Iroquois,&mdash;and a vast amount of change and
+improvement is involved in the conception of an entire ethnical period.
+According to Mr. Morgan, one more such period would have brought the
+average level of these Cordilleran peoples to as high a plane as that of
+the Greeks described in the Odyssey. Let us now observe the principal
+points involved in the change, bearing in mind that it implies a
+considerable lapse of time. While the date 1325, at which the city of
+Mexico was founded, is the earliest date in the history of that country
+which can be regarded as securely established, it was preceded by a long
+series of generations of migration and warfare, the confused and
+fragmentary record of which historians have tried&mdash;hitherto with scant
+success&mdash;to unravel. To develop such a culture as that of the Aztecs out
+of an antecedent culture similar to that of the Iroquois must of course
+have taken a long time.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that the most conspicuous distinctive marks of the
+grade of culture attained by the Cordilleran peoples were two,&mdash;the
+<span class="sidenote">Horticulture with irrigation, and architecture with adobe.</span>
+cultivation of maize in large quantities by irrigation, and the use of
+adobe-brick or stone in building. Probably there was at first, to some
+extent, a causal connection between the former and the latter. The
+region of the Moqui-Zuñi culture is a region in which arid plains become
+richly fertile when water from neighbouring cliffs or peaks is <span class="pagenum"><a id="page084" name="page084"></a>(p. 084)</span>
+directed down upon them. It is mainly an affair of sluices, not of pump
+or well, which seem to have been alike beyond the ken of aboriginal
+Americans of whatever grade. The change of occupation involved in
+raising large crops of corn by the aid of sluices would facilitate an
+increase in density of population, and would encourage a preference for
+agricultural over predatory life. Such changes would be likely to favour
+the development of defensive military art. The Mohawk's surest defence
+lay in the terror which his prowess created hundreds of miles away. One
+can easily see how the forefathers of our Moquis and Zuñis may have come
+to prefer the security gained by living more closely together and
+building impregnable fortresses.</p>
+
+<p>The earthen wall of the Mandan, supported on a framework of posts and
+slabs, seems to me curiously and strikingly suggestive of the incipient
+pottery made by surrounding a basket with a coating of clay.<a id="footnotetag88" name="footnotetag88"></a><a href="#footnote88" title="Go to footnote 88"><span class="small">[88]</span></a> When it
+was discovered how to make the earthen bowl or dish without the basket,
+a new era in progress was begun. So when it was discovered that an
+earthen wall could be fashioned to answer the requirements of
+house-builders without the need of a permanent wooden framework, another
+great step was taken. <span class="sidenote">Possible origin of adobe architecture.</span>
+Again the consequences were great enough to make
+it mark the beginning of a new ethnical period. If we suppose the
+central portion of our continent, the Mississippi and Missouri valleys,
+to have been occupied at <span class="pagenum"><a id="page085" name="page085"></a>(p. 085)</span> some time by tribes familiar with the
+Mandan style of building; and if we further suppose a gradual extension
+or migration of this population, or some part of it, westward into the
+mountain region; that would be a movement into a region in which timber
+was scarce, while adobe clay was abundant. Under such circumstances the
+useful qualities of that peculiar clay could not fail to be soon
+discovered. The simple exposure to sunshine would quickly convert a
+Mandan house built with it into an adobe house; the coating of earth
+would become a coating of brick. It would not then take long to
+ascertain that with such adobe-brick could be built walls at once light
+and strong, erect and tall, such as could not be built with common clay.
+In some such way as this I think the discovery must have been made by
+the ancestors of the Zuñis, and others who have built pueblos. After the
+pueblo style of architecture, with its erect walls and terraced stories,
+had become developed, it was an easy step, when the occasion suggested
+it, to substitute for the adobe-brick coarse rubble-stones embedded in
+adobe. The final stage was reached in Mexico and Yucatan, when soft
+coralline limestone was shaped into blocks with a flint chisel and laid
+in courses with adobe-mortar.</p>
+
+<p>The pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona are among the most interesting
+structures in the world. Several are still inhabited by the descendants
+of the people who were living in them at the time of the Spanish
+Discovery, and their primitive customs and habits of thought have been
+preserved to the present day with but little <span class="pagenum"><a id="page086" name="page086"></a>(p. 086)</span> change. The long
+sojourn of Mr. Cushing, <span class="sidenote">Mr. Cushing at Zuñi.</span>
+of the Bureau of Ethnology, in the Zuñi pueblo,
+has already thrown a flood of light upon many points in American
+archæology.<a id="footnotetag89" name="footnotetag89"></a><a href="#footnote89" title="Go to footnote 89"><span class="small">[89]</span></a> As in the case of American aborigines generally, the
+social life of these people is closely connected with their
+architecture, and the pueblos which are still inhabited seem to furnish
+us with the key to the interpretation of those that we find deserted or
+in ruins, whether in Arizona or in Guatemala.</p>
+
+<a id="img005" name="img005"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img005.jpg" width="500" height="296" alt="" title="">
+<p>Pueblo Hungo Pavie. Chaco Cañon N. M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the architecture of the pueblos one typical form is reproduced with
+sundry variations in detail. <span class="sidenote">Typical structure of the pueblo.</span>
+The typical form is that of a solid block
+of buildings making three sides of an extensive rectangular enclosure
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page087" name="page087"></a>(p. 087)</span> or courtyard. On the inside, facing upon the courtyard, the
+structure is but one story in height; on the outside, looking out upon
+the surrounding country, it rises to three, or perhaps even five or six
+stories. From inside to outside the flat roofs rise in a series of
+terraces, so that the floor of the second row is continuous with the
+roof of the first, the floor of the third row is continuous with the
+roof of the second, and so on. The fourth side of the rectangle is
+formed by a solid block of one-story apartments, usually with one or two
+narrow gateways overlooked by higher structures within the enclosure.
+Except these gateways there is no entrance from without; the only
+windows are frowning loop-holes, and access to the several apartments is
+gained through skylights reached by portable ladders. Such a structure
+is what our own forefathers would have naturally called a "burgh," or
+fortress; it is in one sense a house, yet in another sense a town;<a id="footnotetag90" name="footnotetag90"></a><a href="#footnote90" title="Go to footnote 90"><span class="small">[90]</span></a>
+its divisions are not so much houses as compartments; it is a
+joint-tenement affair, like the Iroquois long houses, but in a higher
+stage of development.</p>
+
+<a id="img006" name="img006"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img006.jpg" width="500" height="246" alt="" title="">
+<p>Restoration of Pueblo Hungo Pavie.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>So far as they have been studied, the pueblo Indians are found to be
+organized in clans, with descent in the female line, as in the case of
+the ruder Indians above described. In the event of marriage the young
+husband goes to live with his wife, and she may turn him out of doors if
+he <span class="pagenum"><a id="page089" name="page089"></a>(p. 089)</span> deserves it.<a id="footnotetag91" name="footnotetag91"></a><a href="#footnote91" title="Go to footnote 91"><span class="small">[91]</span></a>
+The ideas of property seem still limited
+to that of possessory right,
+<span class="sidenote">Pueblo society.</span>
+with the ultimate title in the clan, except
+that portable articles subject to individual ownership have become more
+numerous. In government the council of sachems reappears with a
+principal sachem, or cacique, called by the Spaniards "gobernador."
+There is an organized priesthood, with distinct orders, and a ceremonial
+more elaborate than those of the ruder Indians. In every pueblo there is
+to be found at least one "estufa," or council-house, for governmental or
+religious transactions. Usually there are two or three or more such
+estufas. In mythology, in what we may call pictography or rudimentary
+hieroglyphics, as well as in ordinary handicrafts, there is a marked
+advance beyond the Indians of the lower status of barbarism, after
+making due allowances for such things as the people of the pueblos have
+learned from white men.<a id="footnotetag92" name="footnotetag92"></a><a href="#footnote92" title="Go to footnote 92"><span class="small">[92]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page090" name="page090"></a>(p. 090)</span>
+<a id="img007" name="img007"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img007.jpg" width="500" height="247" alt="" title="">
+<p>Restoration of Pueblo Bonito.</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page091" name="page091"></a>(p. 091)</span>
+
+<a id="img008" name="img008"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img008b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img008.jpg" width="300" height="462" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Pueblo Peñasca Blanca.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>From the pueblos still existing, whether inhabited or in ruins, we may
+eventually get some sort of clue to the populations of ancient towns
+visited by the Spanish <span class="sidenote">Wonderful ancient pueblos in the Chaco valley.</span>
+discoverers.<a id="footnotetag93" name="footnotetag93"></a><a href="#footnote93" title="Go to footnote 93"><span class="small">[93]</span></a> The pueblo of Zuñi seems to have
+had at one time a population of 5,000, but it has dwindled to less than
+2,000. Of the ruined pueblos, built of stone with adobe mortar, in the
+valley of the Rio Chaco, the Pueblo Hungo Pavie contained 73 apartments
+in the first story, 53 in the second, and 29 in the third, with an
+average size of 18 feet by 13; and would have accommodated about 1,000
+Indians. In the same valley Pueblo Bonito, with four stories, contained
+not less than 640 apartments, with room enough for a population of
+3,000; within a third of a mile from this huge structure stood Pueblo
+Chettro Kettle, with 506 apartments. The most common variation from the
+rectangular shape was that in which a terraced semicircle was
+substituted for the three terraced sides, as in Pueblo Bonito, or the
+whole rectangular design was converted into an ellipse, as in Pueblo
+Peñasca Blanca. There are indications that these fortresses were not in
+all cases built at one time, but that, at least in some cases, they grew
+by gradual accretions.<a id="footnotetag94" name="footnotetag94"></a><a href="#footnote94" title="Go to footnote 94"><span class="small">[94]</span></a> The smallness of the distances between those
+in the Chaco valley suggests that their inhabitants must have been
+united in a confederation; and one can easily see that an actual
+juxtaposition or partial coalescence <span class="pagenum"><a id="page092" name="page092"></a>(p. 092)</span> of such communities would
+have made a city of very imposing appearance. The pueblos are always
+found situated near a river, and their gardens, lying outside, are
+easily accessible to sluices <span class="pagenum"><a id="page093" name="page093"></a>(p. 093)</span> from neighbouring cliffs or
+mesas. <span class="sidenote">The Moqui pueblos.</span>
+But in some cases, as the Wolpi pueblo of the Moquis, the whole
+stronghold is built upon the summit of the cliff; there is a coalescence
+of communal structures, each enclosing a courtyard, in which there is a
+spring for the water-supply; and the irrigated gardens are built in
+terrace-form just below on the bluff, and protected by solid walls. From
+this curious pueblo another transition takes us to the extraordinary
+cliff-houses found in the Chelly, Mancos, and McElmo cañons, and
+elsewhere,&mdash;veritable <span class="sidenote">The cliff pueblos.</span>
+human eyries perched in crevices or clefts of the
+perpendicular rock, accessible only by dint of a toilsome and perilous
+climb; places of refuge, perhaps for fragments of tribes overwhelmed by
+more barbarous invaders, yet showing in their dwelling-rooms and estufas
+marks of careful building and tasteful adornment.<a id="footnotetag95" name="footnotetag95"></a><a href="#footnote95" title="Go to footnote 95"><span class="small">[95]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The pueblo of Zuñi is a more extensive and complex structure than the
+ruined pueblos on the Chaco river. It is not so much an enormous
+communal house as a small town formed of a number of such houses crowded
+together, with access from one to another along their roof-terraces.
+<span class="sidenote">Pueblo of Zuñi.</span>
+Some of the structures are of adobe brick, others of stone embedded in
+adobe mortar <span class="pagenum"><a id="page094" name="page094"></a>(p. 094)</span> and covered with plaster. There are two open
+plazas or squares in the town, and several streets, some of which are
+covered ways passing beneath the upper stories of houses. The effect,
+though not splendid, must be very picturesque, and would doubtless
+astonish and bewilder visitors unprepared for such a sight. When
+Coronado's men discovered Zuñi in 1540, although that style of building
+was no longer a novelty to them, they compared the place to Granada.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is worthy of note that Cortes made the same comparison in the
+case of Tlascala, one of the famous towns at which he stopped on his
+march from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico. In his letter to the emperor
+Charles V.,
+<span class="sidenote">Pueblo of Tlascala.</span>
+he compared Tlascala to Granada, "affirming that it was
+larger, stronger, and more populous than the Moorish capital at the time
+of the conquest, and quite as well built."<a id="footnotetag96" name="footnotetag96"></a><a href="#footnote96" title="Go to footnote 96"><span class="small">[96]</span></a> Upon this Mr. Prescott
+observes, "we shall be slow to believe that its edifices could have
+rivalled those monuments of Oriental magnificence, whose light aerial
+forms still survive after the lapse of ages, the admiration of every
+traveller of sensibility and taste. The truth is that Cortes, like
+Columbus, saw objects through the warm medium of his own fond
+imagination, giving them a higher tone of colouring and larger
+dimensions than were strictly warranted by the fact." Or, as Mr.
+Bandelier puts <span class="pagenum"><a id="page095" name="page095"></a>(p. 095)</span> it, when it comes to general statements about
+numbers and dimensions, "the descriptions of the conquerors cannot be
+taken as facts, only as the expression of feelings, honestly entertained
+but uncritical." From details given in various Spanish descriptions,
+including those of Cortes himself, it is evident that there could not
+have been much difference in size between Tlascala and its neighbour
+Cholula. The population of the latter town has often been given as from
+150,000 to 200,000; but, from elaborate archæological investigations
+made on the spot in 1881, Mr. Bandelier concludes that it cannot have
+greatly exceeded 30,000, and this number really agrees with the
+estimates of two very important Spanish authorities, Las Casas and
+Torquemada, when correctly understood.<a id="footnotetag97" name="footnotetag97"></a><a href="#footnote97" title="Go to footnote 97"><span class="small">[97]</span></a> We may therefore suppose that
+the population of Tlascala was about 30,000. Now the population of the
+city of Granada, at the time of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page096" name="page096"></a>(p. 096)</span> its conquest by Ferdinand and
+Isabella, is said by the greatest of Spanish historians<a id="footnotetag98" name="footnotetag98"></a><a href="#footnote98" title="Go to footnote 98"><span class="small">[98]</span></a> to have been
+about 200,000. It would thus appear that Cortes sometimes let his
+feelings run away with him; and, all things considered, small blame to
+him if he did! In studying the story of the Spanish conquest of America,
+liberal allowance must often be made for inaccuracies of statement that
+were usually pardonable and sometimes inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>But when Cortes described Tlascala as "quite as well built" as Granada,
+it is not at all likely that he was thinking about that exquisite
+Moorish architecture which in the mind of Mr. Prescott or any cultivated
+modern writer is the first thing to be suggested by the name. The
+Spaniards of those days did not admire the artistic work of "infidels;"
+they covered up beautiful arabesques with a wash of dirty plaster, and
+otherwise behaved very much like the Puritans who smashed the
+"idolatrous" statues in English cathedrals. When Cortes looked at
+Tlascala, and Coronado looked at Zuñi, and both soldiers were reminded
+of Granada, they were probably looking at those places with a
+professional eye as fortresses hard to capture; and from this point of
+view there was doubtless some justice in the comparison.</p>
+
+<p>In the description of Tlascala by the Spaniards who first saw it, with
+its dark and narrow streets, its houses of adobe, or "the better sort"
+of stone laid in adobe mortar, and its flat and terraced roofs, one is
+irresistibly reminded of such a pueblo <span class="pagenum"><a id="page097" name="page097"></a>(p. 097)</span> as Zuñi. Tlascala was a
+town of a type probably common in Mexico.
+<span class="sidenote">The ancient city of Mexico was a great composite pueblo.</span>
+In some respects, as will
+hereafter appear, the city of Mexico showed striking variations from the
+common type. Yet there too were to be seen the huge houses, with
+terraced roofs, built around a square courtyard; in one of them 450
+Spaniards, with more than 1,000 Tlascalan allies, were accommodated; in
+another, called "Montezuma's palace," one of the conquerors, who came
+several times intending to see the whole of it, got so tired with
+wandering through the interminable succession of rooms that at length he
+gave it up and never saw them all.<a id="footnotetag99" name="footnotetag99"></a><a href="#footnote99" title="Go to footnote 99"><span class="small">[99]</span></a> This might have happened in such
+a building as Pueblo Bonito; and a suspicion is raised that Montezuma's
+city was really a vast composite pueblo, and that its so-called palaces
+were communal buildings in principle like the pueblos of the Chaco
+valley.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the Spanish discoverers could not be expected to understand
+the meaning of what they saw.
+<span class="sidenote">Natural mistake of the Spanish discoverers.</span>
+It dazed and bewildered them. They knew
+little or nothing of any other kind of society than feudal monarchy, and
+if they made such mistakes as to call the head war-chief a "king" (i. e.
+feudal king) or "emperor," and the clan-chiefs "lords" or "noblemen," if
+they supposed that these huge fortresses <span class="pagenum"><a id="page098" name="page098"></a>(p. 098)</span> were like feudal
+castles and palaces in Europe, they were quite excusable. Such
+misconceptions were common enough before barbarous societies had been
+much studied; and many a dusky warrior, without a tithe of the pomp and
+splendour about him that surrounded Montezuma, has figured in the pages
+of history as a mighty potentate girt with many of the trappings of
+feudalism.<a id="footnotetag100" name="footnotetag100"></a><a href="#footnote100" title="Go to footnote 100"><span class="small">[100]</span></a> Initial misconceptions that were natural enough, indeed
+unavoidable, found expression in an absurdly inappropriate nomenclature;
+and then the use of wrong names and titles bore fruit in what one cannot
+properly call a theory but rather an incoherent medley of notions about
+barbaric society. Nothing could be further from <i>feudalism</i>, in which
+the relation of landlord and tenant is a fundamental element, than the
+society of the American aborigines, in which that relation was utterly
+unknown and inconceivable. <span class="sidenote">Contrast between feudalism and gentilism.</span>
+This more primitive form of society is not
+improperly called <i>gentilism</i>, inasmuch as it is based upon the gens or
+clan, with communism in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page099" name="page099"></a>(p. 099)</span> living, and with the conception of
+individual ownership of property undeveloped. It was gentilism that
+everywhere prevailed throughout the myriads of unrecorded centuries
+during which the foremost races of mankind struggled up through savagery
+and barbarism into civilization, while weaker and duller races lagged
+behind at various stages on the way.
+<span class="sidenote">Change from gentile society to political society.</span>
+The change from "gentile" society
+to political society as we know it was in some respects the most
+important change that has occurred in human affairs since men became
+human. It might be roughly defined as the change from personal to
+territorial organization. It was accomplished when the stationary clan
+became converted into the township, and the stationary tribe into the
+small state;<a id="footnotetag101" name="footnotetag101"></a><a href="#footnote101" title="Go to footnote 101"><span class="small">[101]</span></a> when the conception of individual property in land was
+fully acquired; when the tie of physical kinship ceased to be
+indispensable as a bond for holding a society together; when the
+<i>clansman</i> became a <i>citizen</i>. This momentous change was accomplished
+among the Greeks during a period beginning <span class="pagenum"><a id="page100" name="page100"></a>(p. 100)</span> shortly before the
+first Olympiad (<span class="smcap">B. C.</span> 776), and ending with the reforms of Kleisthenes
+at Athens (<span class="smcap">B. C.</span> 509); among the Romans it was accomplished by the
+series of legislative changes beginning with those ascribed to Servius
+Tullius (about <span class="smcap">B. C.</span> 550), and perfected by the time of the first Punic
+War (<span class="smcap">B. C.</span> 264-241). In each case about three centuries was required to
+work the change.<a id="footnotetag102" name="footnotetag102"></a><a href="#footnote102" title="Go to footnote 102"><span class="small">[102]</span></a> If now the reader, familiar with European history,
+will reflect upon the period of more than a thousand years which
+intervened between the date last named and the time when feudalism
+became thoroughly established, if he will recall to mind the vast and
+powerful complication of causes which operated to transform civil
+society from the aspect which it wore in the days of Regulus and the
+second Ptolemy to that which it had assumed in the times of Henry the
+Fowler or Fulk of Anjou, he will begin to realize how much "feudalism"
+implies, and what a wealth of experience it involves, above and beyond
+the change from "gentile" to "civil" society. It does not appear that
+any people in ancient America ever approached very near to this earlier
+change. None had fairly begun to emerge from gentilism; none had
+advanced so far as the Greeks of the first Olympiad or the Romans under
+the rule of the Tarquins.</p>
+
+<p>The first eminent writer to express a serious <span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101"></a>(p. 101)</span> doubt as to the
+correctness of the earlier views of Mexican civilization was that
+sagacious Scotchman, <span class="sidenote">Suspicions as to the erroneousness of the Spanish accounts.</span>
+William Robertson.<a id="footnotetag103" name="footnotetag103"></a><a href="#footnote103" title="Go to footnote 103"><span class="small">[103]</span></a> The illustrious statesman
+and philologist, Albert Gallatin, founder of the American Ethnological
+Society, published in the first volume of its "Transactions" an essay
+which recognized the danger of trusting the Spanish narratives without
+very careful and critical scrutiny.<a id="footnotetag104" name="footnotetag104"></a><a href="#footnote104" title="Go to footnote 104"><span class="small">[104]</span></a> It is to be observed that Mr.
+Gallatin approached the subject with somewhat more knowledge of
+aboriginal life in America than had been possessed by previous writers.
+A similar scepticism was expressed by Lewis Cass, who also knew a great
+deal about Indians.<a id="footnotetag105" name="footnotetag105"></a><a href="#footnote105" title="Go to footnote 105"><span class="small">[105]</span></a> Next came Mr. Morgan,<a id="footnotetag106" name="footnotetag106"></a><a href="#footnote106" title="Go to footnote 106"><span class="small">[106]</span></a> the man of
+path-breaking ideas, whose minute and profound acquaintance with Indian
+life was joined with a power of penetrating the hidden implications of
+facts so keen and so sure as to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page102" name="page102"></a>(p. 102)</span> amount to genius. Mr. Morgan
+saw the nature of the delusion under which the Spaniards laboured;
+<span class="sidenote">Detection and explanation of the errors, by Lewis Morgan.</span>
+he
+saw that what they mistook for feudal castles owned by great lords, and
+inhabited by dependent retainers, were really huge communal houses,
+owned and inhabited by clans, or rather by segments of overgrown clans.
+He saw this so vividly that it betrayed him now and then into a somewhat
+impatient and dogmatic manner of statement; but that was a slight fault,
+for what he saw was not the outcome of dreamy speculation but of
+scientific insight. His researches, which reduced "Montezuma's empire"
+to a confederacy of tribes dwelling in pueblos, governed by a council of
+chiefs, and collecting tribute from neighbouring pueblos, have been
+fully sustained by subsequent investigation.</p>
+
+<p>The state of society which Cortes saw has, indeed, passed away, and its
+monuments and hieroglyphic records have been in great part destroyed.
+Nevertheless some monuments and some hieroglyphic records remain, and
+the people are still there. Tlascalans and Aztecs, descendants in the
+eleventh or twelfth generation from the men whose bitter feuds gave such
+a golden opportunity to Cortes, still dwell upon the soil of Mexico, and
+speak the language in which Montezuma made his last harangue to the
+furious people. There is, moreover, a great mass of literature in
+Spanish, besides more or less in Nahuatl, written during the century
+following the conquest, and the devoted missionaries and painstaking
+administrators, who wrote books about the country in which they were
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103"></a>(p. 103)</span> working, were not engaged in a wholesale conspiracy for
+deceiving mankind. From a really critical study of this literature,
+combined with archæological investigation, much may be expected; and a
+noble beginning has already been made. A more extensive acquaintance
+with Mexican literature would at times have materially modified Mr.
+Morgan's conclusions, though without altering their general drift. At
+this point the work has been taken up by
+<span class="sidenote">Adolf Bandelier's researches.</span>
+Mr. Adolf Bandelier, of
+Highland, Illinois, to whose rare sagacity and untiring industry as a
+field archæologist is joined such a thorough knowledge of Mexican
+literature as few men before him have possessed. Armed with such
+resources, Mr. Bandelier is doing for the ancient history of America
+work as significant as that which Mommsen has done for Rome, or Baur for
+the beginnings of Christianity. When a sufficient mass of facts and
+incidents have once been put upon record, it is hard for ignorant
+misconception to bury the truth in a pit so deep but that the delving
+genius of critical scholarship will sooner or later drag it forth into
+the light of day.<a id="footnotetag107" name="footnotetag107"></a><a href="#footnote107" title="Go to footnote 107"><span class="small">[107]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>At this point in our exposition a very concise summary of Mr.
+Bandelier's results will suffice to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page104" name="page104"></a>(p. 104)</span> enable the reader to
+understand their import. What has been called the "empire of Montezuma"
+was in reality a confederacy of three tribes, the Aztecs, Tezcucans, and
+Tlacopans,<a id="footnotetag108" name="footnotetag108"></a><a href="#footnote108" title="Go to footnote 108"><span class="small">[108]</span></a> dwelling in three large composite pueblos situated very
+near together in one of the strongest defensive positions ever occupied
+by Indians. <span class="sidenote">The Aztec confederacy.</span>
+This Aztec confederacy extended its "sway" over a
+considerable portion of the Mexican peninsula, but that "sway" could not
+correctly be described as "empire," for it was in no sense a military
+occupation of the country. The confederacy did not have garrisons in
+subject pueblos or civil officials to administer their affairs for them.
+It simply sent some of its chiefs about from one pueblo to another to
+collect tribute. This tax consisted in great part of maize and other
+food, and each tributary pueblo reserved a certain portion of its tribal
+territory to be cultivated for the benefit of the domineering
+confederacy. If a pueblo proved delinquent or recalcitrant, Aztec
+warriors swooped down upon it in stealthy midnight assault, butchered
+its inhabitants and emptied its granaries, and when the paroxysm of rage
+had spent itself, went exulting homeward, carrying away women for
+concubines, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page105" name="page105"></a>(p. 105)</span> men to be sacrificed, and such miscellaneous booty
+as could be conveyed without wagons or beasts to draw them.<a id="footnotetag109" name="footnotetag109"></a><a href="#footnote109" title="Go to footnote 109"><span class="small">[109]</span></a> If the
+sudden assault, with scaling ladders, happened to fail, the assailants
+were likely to be baffled, for there was no artillery, and so little
+food could be carried that a siege meant starvation for the besiegers.</p>
+
+<p>The tributary pueblos were also liable to be summoned to furnish a
+contingent of warriors to the war-parties of the confederacy, under the
+same penalties for delinquency as in the case of refusal of tribute. In
+such cases it was quite common for the confederacy to issue a peremptory
+summons, followed by a declaration of war. When a pueblo was captured,
+the only way in which the vanquished people could stop the massacre was
+by holding out signals of submission; a parley then sometimes adjusted
+the affair, and the payment of a year's tribute in advance induced the
+conquerors to depart, but captives once taken could seldom if ever be
+ransomed. If the parties could not agree upon terms, the slaughter was
+renewed, and sometimes went on until the departing victors left nought
+behind them but ruined houses belching from loop-hole and doorway lurid
+clouds of smoke and flame upon narrow silent streets heaped up with
+mangled corpses.</p>
+
+<p>The sway of the Aztec confederacy over the Mexican peninsula was thus
+essentially similar to the sway of the Iroquois confederacy over a great
+part of the tribes between the Connecticut river <span class="pagenum"><a id="page106" name="page106"></a>(p. 106)</span> and the
+Mississippi. It was simply the levying of tribute,&mdash;a system of plunder
+enforced by terror. The so-called empire was "only a partnership formed
+for the purpose of carrying on the business of warfare, and that
+intended, not for the extension of territorial ownership, but only for
+an increase of the means of subsistence."<a id="footnotetag110" name="footnotetag110"></a><a href="#footnote110" title="Go to footnote 110"><span class="small">[110]</span></a> There was none of that
+coalescence and incorporation of peoples which occurs after the change
+from gentilism to civil society has been effected. Among the Mexicans,
+as elsewhere throughout North America, the tribe remained intact as the
+highest completed political integer.</p>
+
+<p>The Aztec tribe was organized in clans and phratries,
+<span class="sidenote">Aztec clans.</span>
+and the number of
+clans would indicate that the tribe was a very large one.<a id="footnotetag111" name="footnotetag111"></a><a href="#footnote111" title="Go to footnote 111"><span class="small">[111]</span></a> There
+were twenty clans, called in the Nahuatl language "calpullis." We may
+fairly suppose that the average size of a clan was larger <span class="pagenum"><a id="page107" name="page107"></a>(p. 107)</span> than
+the average tribe of Algonquins or Iroquois; but owing to the compact
+"city" life, this increase of numbers did not result in segmentation and
+scattering, as among Indians in the lower status. Each Aztec clan seems
+to have occupied a number of adjacent communal houses, forming a kind of
+precinct, with its special house or houses for official purposes,
+corresponding to the <i>estufas</i> in the New Mexican pueblos. The houses
+were the common property of the clan, and so was the land which its
+members cultivated; and such houses and land could not be sold or
+bartered away by the clan, or in anywise alienated. The idea of "real
+estate" had not been developed; the clan simply exercised a right of
+occupancy, and&mdash;as among some ruder Indians&mdash;its individual members
+exercised certain limited rights of user in particular garden-plots.</p>
+
+<p>The clan was governed by a clan council, consisting of chiefs
+(<i>tecuhtli</i>) elected by the clan, and inducted into office after a cruel
+religious ordeal, in which the candidate was bruised, tortured, and half
+starved. <span class="sidenote">Clan officers.</span>
+An executive department was more clearly differentiated from
+the council than among the Indians of the lower status. The clan
+(<i>calpulli</i>) had an official head, or sachem, called the <i>calpullec</i>;
+and also a military commander called the <i>ahcacautin</i>, or "elder
+brother." The <i>ahcacautin</i> was also a kind of peace officer, or
+constable, for the precinct occupied by the clan, and carried about with
+him a staff of office; a tuft of white feathers attached to this staff
+betokened that his errand was one of death. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108"></a>(p. 108)</span> The clan elected
+its <i>calpullec</i> and <i>ahcacautin</i>, and could depose them for cause.<a id="footnotetag112" name="footnotetag112"></a><a href="#footnote112" title="Go to footnote 112"><span class="small">[112]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The members of the clan were reciprocally bound to aid, defend, and
+avenge one another; but wergild was no longer accepted, and the penalty
+for murder was death. The clan exercised the right of naming its
+members. Such names were invariably significant (as <i>Nezahualcoyotl</i>,
+"Hungry Coyote," <i>Axayacatl</i>, "Face-in-the-Water," etc.),
+<span class="sidenote">Rights and duties of the clan.</span>
+and more or
+less "medicine," or superstitious association, was attached to the name.
+The clans also had their significant names and totems. Each clan had its
+peculiar religious rites, its priests or medicine-men who were members
+of the clan council, and its temple or medicine-house. Instead of
+burying their dead the Mexican tribes practised cremation; there was,
+therefore, no common cemetery, but the funeral ceremonies were conducted
+by the clan.</p>
+
+<p>The clans of the Aztecs, like those of many other Mexican tribes, were
+organized into four phratries; and this divided the city of Mexico,
+<span class="sidenote">Aztec phratries.</span>
+as
+the Spaniards at once remarked, into four quarters. The phratry had
+acquired more functions than it possessed in the lower status. Besides
+certain religious and social duties, and besides its connection with the
+punishment of criminals, the Mexican phratry was an organization for
+military purposes.<a id="footnotetag113" name="footnotetag113"></a><a href="#footnote113" title="Go to footnote 113"><span class="small">[113]</span></a> The four <span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109"></a>(p. 109)</span> phratries were four divisions
+of the tribal host, each with its captain. In each of the quarters was
+an arsenal, or "dart-house," where weapons were stored, and from which
+they were handed out to war-parties about to start on an expedition.</p>
+
+<p>The supreme government of the Aztecs was vested in the tribal council
+composed of twenty members, <span class="sidenote">The tribal council.</span>
+one for each clan. The member, representing
+a clan, was not its <i>calpullec</i>, or "sachem;" he was one of the
+<i>tecuhtli</i>, or clan-chiefs, and was significantly called the "speaker"
+(<i>tlatoani</i>). The tribal council, thus composed of twenty speakers, was
+called the <i>tlatocan</i>, or "place of speech."<a id="footnotetag114" name="footnotetag114"></a><a href="#footnote114" title="Go to footnote 114"><span class="small">[114]</span></a> At least as often as
+once in ten days the council assembled at the <i>tecpan</i>, or official
+house of the tribe, but it could be convened whenever occasion required,
+and in cases of emergency was continually in session. Its powers and
+duties were similar to those of an ancient English shiremote, in so far
+as they were partly directive and partly judicial. A large part of its
+business was settling disputes between the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page110" name="page110"></a>(p. 110)</span> clans. It
+superintended the ceremonies of investiture with which the chiefs and
+other officers of the clans were sworn into office. At intervals of
+eighty days there was an "extra session" of the <i>tlatocan</i>, attended
+also by the twenty "elder brothers," the four phratry-captains, the two
+executive chiefs of the tribe, and the leading priests, and at such
+times a reconsideration of an unpopular decision might be urged; but the
+authority of the <i>tlatocan</i> was supreme, and from its final decision
+there could be no appeal.<a id="footnotetag115" name="footnotetag115"></a><a href="#footnote115" title="Go to footnote 115"><span class="small">[115]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The executive chiefs of the tribe were two in number, as was commonly
+the case in ancient America. The tribal sachem, or civil executive, bore
+the grotesque title of <i>cihuacoatl</i>,<span class="sidenote">The "snake-woman."</span>
+or "snake-woman."<a id="footnotetag116" name="footnotetag116"></a><a href="#footnote116" title="Go to footnote 116"><span class="small">[116]</span></a> His relation
+to the tribe was in general like that of the <i>calpullec</i> to the clan. He
+executed the decrees of the tribal council, of which he was <i>ex officio</i>
+a member, and was responsible for the housing of tribute and its proper
+distribution among the clans. He was also chief judge, and he was
+lieutenant to the head war-chief in command of the tribal <span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111"></a>(p. 111)</span>
+host.<a id="footnotetag117" name="footnotetag117"></a><a href="#footnote117" title="Go to footnote 117"><span class="small">[117]</span></a> He was elected for life by the tribal council, which could
+depose him for misconduct.</p>
+
+<p>The office of head war-chief was an instance of primitive royalty in a
+very interesting stage of development. The title of this officer was
+<i>tlacatecuhtli</i>,<span class="sidenote">The "chief-of men."</span>
+or "chief-of-men."<a id="footnotetag118" name="footnotetag118"></a><a href="#footnote118" title="Go to footnote 118"><span class="small">[118]</span></a> He was primarily head war-chief
+of the Aztec tribe, but about 1430 became supreme military commander of
+the three confederate tribes, so that his office was one of peculiar
+dignity and importance. When the Spaniards arrived upon the scene
+Montezuma was <i>tlacatecuhtli</i>, and they naturally called him "king." To
+understand precisely how far such an epithet could correctly be applied
+to him, and how far it was misleading, we must recall the manner in
+which early kingship arose in Europe. The Roman <i>rex</i> was an officer
+elected for life; the typical Greek <i>basileus</i> was a somewhat more fully
+developed king, inasmuch as his office was becoming practically
+hereditary; <span class="sidenote">Evolution of kingship in Greece and Rome.</span>
+otherwise <i>rex</i> was about equivalent to <i>basileus</i>. Alike in
+Rome and in Greece the king had at least three great functions, and
+possibly four.<a id="footnotetag119" name="footnotetag119"></a><a href="#footnote119" title="Go to footnote 119"><span class="small">[119]</span></a> He was, primarily, chief <span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112"></a>(p. 112)</span> commander,
+secondly, chief priest, thirdly, chief judge; whether he had reached the
+fourth stage and added the functions of chief civil executive, is matter
+of dispute. Kingship in Rome and in most Greek cities was overthrown at
+so early a date that some questions of this sort are difficult to
+settle. But in all probability the office grew up through the successive
+acquisition of ritual, judicial, and civil functions by the military
+commander. The paramount necessity of consulting the tutelar deities
+before fighting resulted in making the general a priest competent to
+perform sacrifices and interpret omens;<a id="footnotetag120" name="footnotetag120"></a><a href="#footnote120" title="Go to footnote 120"><span class="small">[120]</span></a> he thus naturally became
+the most important among priests; an increased sanctity invested his
+person and office; and by and by he acquired control over the
+dispensation of justice, and finally over the whole civil
+administration. One step more was needed to develop the <i>basileus</i> into
+a despot, like the king of Persia, and that was to let him get into his
+hands the law-making power, involving complete control over taxation.
+When the Greeks and Romans became dissatisfied with the increasing
+powers of their kings, they destroyed the office. The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113"></a>(p. 113)</span> Romans
+did not materially diminish its functions, but put them into commission,
+by entrusting them to two consuls of equal authority elected annually.
+The Greeks, on the other hand, divided the royal functions among
+different officers, as e. g. at Athens among the nine archons.<a id="footnotetag121" name="footnotetag121"></a><a href="#footnote121" title="Go to footnote 121"><span class="small">[121]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The typical kingship in mediæval Europe, after the full development of
+the feudal system, was very different indeed from the kingship in early
+Greece and Rome. <span class="sidenote">Mediæval kingship.</span>
+In the Middle Ages all priestly functions had passed
+into the hands of the Church.<a id="footnotetag122" name="footnotetag122"></a><a href="#footnote122" title="Go to footnote 122"><span class="small">[122]</span></a> A king like Charles VII. of France,
+or Edward III. of England, was military commander, civil magistrate,
+chief judge, and <i>supreme landlord</i>; the people were his tenants. That
+was the kind of king with which the Spanish discoverers of Mexico were
+familiar.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Mexican <i>tlacatecuhtli</i>, or "chief-of-men," was much more like
+Agamemnon in point of kingship than like Edward III. He was not supreme
+landlord, for landlordship did not exist in Mexico. He was not chief
+judge or civil magistrate; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114"></a>(p. 114)</span> those functions belonged to the
+"snake-woman." Mr. Bandelier regards the "chief-of-men" as simply a
+military commander; <span class="sidenote">Montezuma was a "priest-commander."</span>
+but for reasons which I shall state hereafter,<a id="footnotetag123" name="footnotetag123"></a><a href="#footnote123" title="Go to footnote 123"><span class="small">[123]</span></a>
+it seems quite clear that he exercised certain very important priestly
+functions, although beside him there was a kind of high-priest or
+medicine-chief. If I am right in holding that Montezuma was a
+"priest-commander," then incipient royalty in Mexico had advanced at
+least one stage beyond the head war-chief of the Iroquois, and remained
+one stage behind the <i>basileus</i> of the Homeric Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>tlacatecuhtli</i>, or "chief-of-men," was elected by an assembly
+consisting of the tribal council, the "elder brothers" of the several
+clans, and certain leading priests. <span class="sidenote">Mode of succession to the office.</span>
+Though the office was thus elective,
+the choice seems to have been practically limited to a particular clan,
+and in the eleven chiefs who were chosen from 1375 to 1520 a certain
+principle or custom of succession seems to be plainly indicated.<a id="footnotetag124" name="footnotetag124"></a><a href="#footnote124" title="Go to footnote 124"><span class="small">[124]</span></a>
+There was a further limit to the order of succession. Allusion has been
+made to the four phratry-captains commanding the quarters of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page115" name="page115"></a>(p. 115)</span> city. Their cheerful titles were "man of the house of darts,"
+"cutter of men," "bloodshedder," and "chief of the eagle and cactus."
+These captains were military chiefs of the phratries, and also
+magistrates charged with the duty of maintaining order and enforcing the
+decrees of the council in their respective quarters. The "chief of the
+eagle and cactus" was chief executioner,&mdash;Jack Ketch. He was not
+eligible for the office of "chief-of-men;" the three other
+phratry-captains were eligible. Then there was a member of the
+priesthood entitled "man of the dark house." This person, with the three
+eligible captains, made a quartette, and one of this privileged four
+<i>must</i> succeed to the office of "chief-of-men."</p>
+
+<p>The eligibility of the "man of the dark house" may be cited here as
+positive proof that sometimes the "chief-of-men" could be a
+"priest-commander." That in all cases he acquired priestly functions
+after election, even when he did not possess them before, is indicated
+by the fact that at the ceremony of his induction into office he
+ascended to the summit of the pyramid sacred to the war-god
+Huitzilopochtli, where he was anointed by the high-priest with a black
+ointment, and sprinkled with sanctified water; having thus become
+consecrated he took a censer of live coals and a bag of copal, and as
+his first official act offered incense to the war-god.<a id="footnotetag125" name="footnotetag125"></a><a href="#footnote125" title="Go to footnote 125"><span class="small">[125]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page116" name="page116"></a>(p. 116)</span>
+
+<p>As the "chief-of-men" was elected, so too he could be deposed for
+misbehaviour. He was <i>ex officio</i> a member of the tribal council, and he
+had his official residence in the <i>tecpan</i>, or tribal house, where the
+meetings of the council were held, and where the hospitalities of the
+tribe were extended to strangers. As an administrative officer, the
+"chief-of-men" had little to do within the limits of the tribe; that, as
+already observed, was the business of the "snake-woman." But outside of
+the confederacy the "chief-of-men" exercised administrative functions.
+He superintended the collection of tribute.
+<span class="sidenote">Manner of collecting tribute.</span>
+Each of the three
+confederate tribes appointed, through its tribal council, agents to
+visit the subjected pueblos and gather in the tribute. These agents were
+expressively termed <i>calpixqui</i>, "crop-gatherers." As these men were
+obliged to spend considerable time in the vanquished pueblos in the
+double character of tax-collectors and spies, we can imagine how hateful
+their position was. Their security from injury depended upon the
+reputation of their tribes for ruthless ferocity.<a id="footnotetag126" name="footnotetag126"></a><a href="#footnote126" title="Go to footnote 126"><span class="small">[126]</span></a> The tiger-like
+confederacy was only too ready to take offence; in the lack of a decent
+pretext it often went to war without one, simply in order to get human
+victims for sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>Once appointed, the tax-gatherers were directed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page117" name="page117"></a>(p. 117)</span> by the
+"chief-of-men." The tribute was chiefly maize, but might be anything the
+conquerors chose to demand,&mdash;weapons, fine pottery or featherwork, gold
+ornaments, or female slaves. Sometimes the tributary pueblo, instead of
+sacrificing all its prisoners of war upon its own altars, sent some of
+them up to Mexico as part of its tribute. The ravening maw of the
+horrible deities was thus appeased, not by the pueblo that paid the
+blackmail, but by the power that extorted it, and thus the latter
+obtained a larger share of divine favour. Generally the unhappy
+prisoners were forced to carry the corn and other articles. They were
+convoyed by couriers who saw that everything was properly delivered at
+the <i>tecpan</i>, and also brought information by word of mouth and by
+picture-writing from the <i>calpixqui</i> to the "chief-of-men." When the
+newly-arrived Spaniards saw these couriers coming and going they fancied
+that they were "ambassadors." This system of tribute-taking made it
+necessary to build roads, and this in turn facilitated, not only
+military operations, but trade, which had already made some progress
+albeit of a simple sort. These "roads" might perhaps more properly be
+called Indian trails,<a id="footnotetag127" name="footnotetag127"></a><a href="#footnote127" title="Go to footnote 127"><span class="small">[127]</span></a> but they served their purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The general similarity of the Aztec confederacy <span class="pagenum"><a id="page118" name="page118"></a>(p. 118)</span> to that of the
+Iroquois, in point of social structure, is thus clearly manifest.
+<span class="sidenote">Aztec and Iroquois confederacies contrasted.</span>
+Along
+with this general similarity we have observed some points of higher
+development, such as one might expect to find in traversing the entire
+length of an ethnical period. Instead of stockaded villages, with houses
+of bark or of clay supported upon a wooden framework, we have pueblos of
+adobe-brick or stone, in various stages of evolution, the most advanced
+of which present the appearance of castellated cities. Along with the
+systematic irrigation and increased dependence upon horticulture, we
+find evidences of greater density of population; and we see in the
+victorious confederacy a more highly developed organization for adding
+to its stock of food and other desirable possessions by the systematic
+plunder of neighbouring weaker communities. Naturally such increase in
+numbers and organization entails some increase in the number of officers
+and some differentiation of their functions, as illustrated in the
+representation of the clans (<i>calpulli</i>) in the tribal council
+(<i>tlatocan</i>), by speakers (<i>tlatoani</i>) chosen for the purpose, and not
+by the official heads (<i>calpullec</i>) of the clan. Likewise in the
+military commander-in-chief (<i>tlacatecuhtli</i>) we observe a marked
+increase in dignity, and&mdash;as I have already suggested and hope to
+maintain&mdash;we find that his office has been clothed with sacerdotal
+powers, and has thus taken a decided step toward kingship of the ancient
+type, as depicted in the Homeric poems.</p>
+
+<p>No feature of the advance is more noteworthy <span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119"></a>(p. 119)</span> than the
+development of the medicine-men into an organized priesthood.<a id="footnotetag128" name="footnotetag128"></a><a href="#footnote128" title="Go to footnote 128"><span class="small">[128]</span></a> The
+<span class="sidenote">Aztec priesthood: human sacrifices.</span>
+presence of this priesthood and its ritual was proclaimed to the eyes of
+the traveller in ancient Mexico by the numerous tall truncated pyramids
+(<i>teocallis</i>), on the flat summits of which men, women, and children
+were sacrificed to the gods. This custom of human sacrifice seems to
+have been a characteristic of the middle period of barbarism, and to
+have survived, with diminishing frequency, into the upper period. There
+are abundant traces of its existence throughout the early Aryan world,
+from Britain to Hindustan, as well as among the ancient Hebrews and
+their kindred.<a id="footnotetag129" name="footnotetag129"></a><a href="#footnote129" title="Go to footnote 129"><span class="small">[129]</span></a> But among all these peoples, at the earliest times
+at which we can study them with trustworthy records, we find the custom
+of human sacrifice in an advanced stage of decline, and generally no
+longer accompanied by the custom of cannibalism in which it probably
+originated.<a id="footnotetag130" name="footnotetag130"></a><a href="#footnote130" title="Go to footnote 130"><span class="small">[130]</span></a> Among the Mexicans, however, when they were first
+visited by the Spaniards, cannibalism flourished as nowhere else in the
+world except perhaps in Fiji, and human sacrifices were conducted
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page120" name="page120"></a>(p. 120)</span> on such a scale as could not have been witnessed in Europe
+without going back more than forty centuries.</p>
+
+<p>The custom of sacrificing captives to the gods was a marked advance upon
+the practice in the lower period of barbarism, when the prisoner, unless
+saved by adoption into the tribe of his captors, was put to death with
+lingering torments. There were occasions on which the Aztecs tortured
+their prisoners before sending them to the altar,<a id="footnotetag131" name="footnotetag131"></a><a href="#footnote131" title="Go to footnote 131"><span class="small">[131]</span></a> but in general
+the prisoner was well-treated and highly fed,&mdash;fatted, in short, for the
+final banquet in which the worshippers participated with their savage
+deity.<a id="footnotetag132" name="footnotetag132"></a><a href="#footnote132" title="Go to footnote 132"><span class="small">[132]</span></a> In a more advanced stage of development than that which the
+Aztecs had reached, in the stage when agriculture became extensive
+enough to create a steady demand for servile labour, the practice of
+enslaving prisoners became general; and as slaves became more and more
+valuable, men gradually succeeded in compounding with their deities for
+easier terms,&mdash;a ram, or a kid, or a bullock, instead of the human
+victim.<a id="footnotetag133" name="footnotetag133"></a><a href="#footnote133" title="Go to footnote 133"><span class="small">[133]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121"></a>(p. 121)</span>
+
+<p>The ancient Mexicans had not arrived at this stage, which in the Old
+World characterized the upper period of barbarism. Slavery had, however,
+made a beginning among the Aztecs. <span class="sidenote">Aztec slaves.</span>
+The nucleus of the small
+slave-population of Mexico consisted of <i>outcasts</i>, persons expelled
+from the clan for some misdemeanour. The simplest case was that in which
+a member of a clan failed for two years to cultivate his
+garden-plot.<a id="footnotetag134" name="footnotetag134"></a><a href="#footnote134" title="Go to footnote 134"><span class="small">[134]</span></a> The delinquent member was deprived, not only of his
+right of user, but of all his rights as a clansman, and the only way to
+escape starvation was to work upon some other lot, either <span class="pagenum"><a id="page122" name="page122"></a>(p. 122)</span> in
+his own or in some other clan, and be paid in such pittance from its
+produce as the occupant might choose to give him. This was slavery in
+embryo. The occupant did not own this outcast labourer, any more than he
+owned his lot; he only possessed a limited right of user in both
+labourer and lot. To a certain extent it was "adverse" or exclusive
+possession. If the slave ran away or was obstinately lazy, he could be
+made to wear a wooden collar and sold without his consent; if it proved
+too troublesome to keep him, the collared slave could be handed over to
+the priests for sacrifice.<a id="footnotetag135" name="footnotetag135"></a><a href="#footnote135" title="Go to footnote 135"><span class="small">[135]</span></a> In this class of outcasts and their
+masters we have an interesting illustration of a rudimentary phase of
+slavery and of private property.</p>
+
+<p>At this point it is worthy of note that in the development of the family
+the Aztecs had advanced considerably beyond the point attained by
+Shawnees and Mohawks, and a little way toward the point attained in the
+patriarchal family of the ancient Romans and Hebrews. In the Aztec clan
+(which was exogamous<a id="footnotetag136" name="footnotetag136"></a><a href="#footnote136" title="Go to footnote 136"><span class="small">[136]</span></a>)
+<span class="sidenote">The Aztec family.</span>
+the change to descent in the male line seems
+to have been accomplished before the time of the Discovery. Apparently
+it had been recently accomplished. Names for designating family
+relationships remained in that primitive stage in which no distinction
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123"></a>(p. 123)</span> is made between father and uncle, grandchildren and cousins.
+The family was still too feebly established to count for much in the
+structure of society, which still rested firmly upon the clan.<a id="footnotetag137" name="footnotetag137"></a><a href="#footnote137" title="Go to footnote 137"><span class="small">[137]</span></a>
+Nevertheless the marriage bonds were drawn much tighter than among
+Indians of the lower status, and penalties for incontinence were more
+severe. The wife became her husband's property and was entitled to the
+protection of his clan. All matrimonial arrangements were controlled by
+the clan, and no member of it, male or female, was allowed to remain
+unmarried, except for certain religious reasons. The penalty for
+contumacy was expulsion from the clan, and the same penalty was
+inflicted for such sexual irregularities as public opinion, still in
+what we should call quite a primitive stage, condemned. Men and women
+thus expelled went to swell the numbers of that small class of outcasts
+already noted. With men the result, as we have seen, was a kind of
+slavery; with women it was prostitution; and it is curious to see that
+the same penalty, entailing such a result, was visited alike upon
+unseemly frailty and upon refusal to marry. In either case the sin
+consisted in rebellion against the clan's standards of proper or
+permissible behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>The inheritance in the male line, the beginnings of individual property
+in slaves, the tightening of the marriage bond, accompanied by the
+condemnation of sundry irregularities heretofore tolerated, are
+phenomena which we might expect to find associated together. They are
+germs of the upper <span class="pagenum"><a id="page124" name="page124"></a>(p. 124)</span> status of barbarism, as well as of the
+earliest status of civilization more remotely to follow. The common
+cause, of which they are the manifestations, is an increasing sense of
+the value and importance of personal property.
+<span class="sidenote">Aztec property.</span>
+In the Old World this
+sense grew up during a pastoral stage of society such as the New World
+never knew, and by the ages of Abraham and Agamemnon<a id="footnotetag138" name="footnotetag138"></a><a href="#footnote138" title="Go to footnote 138"><span class="small">[138]</span></a> it had
+produced results such as had not been reached in Mexico at the time of
+the Discovery. Still the tendency in the latter country was in a similar
+direction. Though there was no notion of real estate, and the house was
+still clan-property, yet the number and value of articles of personal
+ownership had no doubt greatly increased during the long interval which
+must have elapsed since the ancestral Mexicans entered upon the middle
+status. The mere existence of large and busy market-places with regular
+and frequent fairs, even though trade had scarcely begun to emerge from
+the stage of barter, is sufficient proof of this. Such fairs and markets
+do not belong to the Mohawk chapter in human progress. They imply a
+considerable number and diversity of artificial products, valued as
+articles of personal property. A legitimate inference from them is the
+existence of a certain degree of luxury, though doubtless luxury of a
+barbaric type.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page125" name="page125"></a>(p. 125)</span>
+
+<p>It is at this point, I think, that a judicious critic will begin to part
+company with Mr. Morgan. As regards the outward aspect of the society
+which the Spaniards found in Mexico, <span class="sidenote">Mr. Morgan's rules.</span>
+that eminent scholar more than once
+used arguments that were inconsistent with principles of criticism laid
+down by himself. At the beginning of his chapter on the Aztec
+confederacy Mr. Morgan proposed the following rules:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The histories of Spanish America may be trusted in whatever relates to
+the acts of the Spaniards, and to the acts and personal characteristics
+of the Indians; in whatever relates to their weapons, implements and
+utensils, fabrics, food and raiment, and things of a similar character.</p>
+
+<p>"But in whatever relates to Indian society and government, their social
+relations and plan of life, they are nearly worthless, because they
+learned nothing and knew nothing of either. We are at full liberty to
+reject them in these respects and commence anew; using any facts they
+may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society."<a id="footnotetag139" name="footnotetag139"></a><a href="#footnote139" title="Go to footnote 139"><span class="small">[139]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it would have been better if the second of these rules had been
+somewhat differently worded; for even with regard to the strange society
+and government, the Spanish writers have recorded an immense number of
+valuable facts, without which Mr. Bandelier's work would have been
+impossible. It is not so much the <i>facts</i> as the <i>interpretations</i> of
+the Spanish historians that are "nearly worthless," and even their
+misinterpretations <span class="pagenum"><a id="page126" name="page126"></a>(p. 126)</span> are interesting and instructive when once
+we rightly understand them. Sometimes they really help us toward the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>The broad distinction, however, as stated in Mr. Morgan's pair of rules,
+is well taken. In regard to such a strange form of society the Spanish
+discoverers of Mexico could not help making mistakes, but in regard to
+utensils and dress their senses were not likely to deceive them, and
+their statements, according to Mr. Morgan, may be trusted.
+<span class="sidenote">Mr. Morgan sometimes disregarded his own rules: "Montezuma's
+Dinner."</span>
+Very good.
+But as soon as Mr. Morgan had occasion to write about the social life of
+the Aztecs, he forgot his own rules and paid as little respect to the
+senses of eye-witnesses as to their judgment. This was amusingly
+illustrated in his famous essay on "Montezuma's Dinner."<a id="footnotetag140" name="footnotetag140"></a><a href="#footnote140" title="Go to footnote 140"><span class="small">[140]</span></a> When
+Bernal Diaz describes Montezuma as sitting on a low chair at a table
+covered with a white cloth, Mr. Morgan declares that it could not have
+been so,&mdash;there were no chairs or tables! On second thought he will
+admit that there may have been a wooden block hollowed out for a stool,
+but in the matter of a table he is relentless. So when Cortes, in his
+despatch to the emperor, speaks of the "wine-cellar" and of the presence
+of "secretaries" at dinner, Mr. Morgan observes, "Since cursive writing
+was unknown among the Aztecs, the presence of these secretaries is an
+amusing feature in the account. The wine-cellar also is remarkable for
+two reasons: firstly, because the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page127" name="page127"></a>(p. 127)</span> level of the streets and
+courts was but four feet above the level of the water, which made
+cellars impossible; and, secondly, because the Aztecs had no knowledge
+of wine. An acid beer (<i>pulque</i>), made by fermenting the juice of the
+maguey, was a common beverage of the Aztecs; but it is hardly supposable
+that even this was used at dinner."<a id="footnotetag141" name="footnotetag141"></a><a href="#footnote141" title="Go to footnote 141"><span class="small">[141]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>To this I would reply that the fibre of that same useful plant from
+which the Aztecs made their "beer" supplied them also with paper, upon
+which they were in the habit of writing, not indeed in cursive
+characters, but in hieroglyphics. This kind of writing, as well as any
+other, accounts for the presence of secretaries, which seems to me, by
+the way, a very probable and characteristic feature in the narrative.
+From the moment the mysterious strangers landed, every movement of
+theirs had been recorded in hieroglyphics, and there is no reason why
+notes of what they said and did should not have been taken at dinner. As
+for the place where the <i>pulque</i> was kept, it was a venial slip of the
+pen to call it a "wine-cellar," even if it was not below the ground. The
+language of Cortes does not imply that he visited the "cellar;" he saw a
+crowd of Indians drinking the beverage, and supposing the great house he
+was in to be Montezuma's, he expressed his sense of that person's
+hospitality by saying that "his wine-cellar was open to all." And
+really, is it not rather a captious criticism which in one breath chides
+Cortes for calling the beverage "wine," and in the next breath goes on
+to call it "beer"? <span class="pagenum"><a id="page128" name="page128"></a>(p. 128)</span> The <i>pulque</i> was neither the one nor the
+other; for want of any other name a German might have called it beer, a
+Spaniard would be more likely to call it wine. And why is it "hardly
+supposable" that <i>pulque</i> was used at dinner? Why should Mr. Morgan, who
+never dined with Montezuma, know so much more about <i>such things</i> than
+Cortes and Bernal Diaz, who did?<a id="footnotetag142" name="footnotetag142"></a><a href="#footnote142" title="Go to footnote 142"><span class="small">[142]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The Spanish statements of facts are, of course, not to be accepted
+uncritically. When we are told of cut slabs of porphyry inlaid in the
+walls of a room,
+<span class="sidenote">The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements.</span>
+we have a right to inquire how so hard a stone could be
+cut with flint or copper chisels,<a id="footnotetag143" name="footnotetag143"></a><a href="#footnote143" title="Go to footnote 143"><span class="small">[143]</span></a> and are ready to entertain the
+suggestion that some other stone might easily have been mistaken for
+porphyry. Such a critical inquiry is eminently profitable, and none the
+less so when it brings us to the conclusion that the Aztecs did succeed
+in cutting porphyry. Again, when we read about Indian armies of 200,000
+men, pertinent questions arise as to the commissariat, and we are led to
+reflect that there is nothing about which old soldiers spin such
+unconscionable yarns as about the size <span class="pagenum"><a id="page129" name="page129"></a>(p. 129)</span> of the armies they have
+thrashed. In a fairy tale, of course, such suggestions are impertinent;
+things can go on anyhow. In real life it is different. The trouble with
+most historians of the conquest of Mexico has been that they have made
+it like a fairy tale, and the trouble with Mr. Morgan was that, in a
+wholesome and much-needed spirit of reaction, he was too much inclined
+to dismiss the whole story as such. He forgot the first of his pair of
+rules, and applied the second to everything alike. He felt "at full
+liberty to reject" the testimony of the discoverers as to what they saw
+and tasted, and to "commence anew," reasoning from "what is known of
+Indian society." And here Mr. Morgan's mind was so full of the kind of
+Indian society which he knew more minutely and profoundly than any other
+man, that he was apt to forget that there could be any other kind. He
+overlooked his own distinction between the lower and middle periods of
+barbarism in his attempt to ignore or minimize the points of difference
+between Aztecs and Iroquois.<a id="footnotetag144" name="footnotetag144"></a><a href="#footnote144" title="Go to footnote 144"><span class="small">[144]</span></a> In this way he did injustice to his
+own brilliant and useful classification of stages of culture, and in
+particular to the middle period of barbarism, the significance of which
+he was the first to detect, but failed to realize fully because his
+attention had been so intensely concentrated upon the lower period.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page130" name="page130"></a>(p. 130)</span>
+
+<p>In truth, the middle period of barbarism was one of the most important
+periods in the career of the human race, and full of fascination to the
+student, <span class="sidenote">Importance of the middle period of barbarism.</span>
+as the unfading interest in ancient Mexico and the huge mass of
+literature devoted to it show. It spanned the interval between such
+society as that of Hiawatha and such as that of the Odyssey. One more
+such interval (and, I suspect, a briefer one, because the use of iron
+and the development of inheritable wealth would accelerate progress) led
+to the age that could <i>write</i> the Odyssey, one of the most beautiful
+productions of the human mind. If Mr. Morgan had always borne in mind
+that, on his own classification, Montezuma must have been at least as
+near to Agamemnon as to Powhatan, his attitude toward the Spanish
+historians would have been less hostile. A Moqui pueblo stands near the
+lower end of the middle period of barbarism; ancient Troy stood next the
+upper end. Mr. Morgan found apt illustrations in the former; perhaps if
+he had lived long enough to profit by the work of Schliemann and
+Bandelier, he might have found equally apt ones in the latter. Mr.
+Bandelier's researches certainly show that the ancient city of Mexico,
+in point of social development, stood somewhere between the two.</p>
+
+<p>How that city looked may best be described when we come to tell what its
+first Spanish visitors saw. Let it suffice here to say that, upon a
+reasonable estimate of their testimony, pleasure-gardens, menageries and
+aviaries, fountains and baths, tessellated marble floors, finely wrought
+pottery, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131"></a>(p. 131)</span> exquisite featherwork, brilliant mats and tapestries,
+silver goblets, dainty spices burning in golden censers, varieties of
+highly seasoned dishes, dramatic performances, jugglers and acrobats,
+ballad singers and dancing girls,&mdash;such things were to be seen in this
+city of snake-worshipping cannibals. It simulated civilization as a
+tree-fern simulates a tree.</p>
+
+<a id="img009" name="img009"></a>
+<div class="p2 figcenter">
+<img src="images/img009.jpg" width="400" height="445" alt="" title="">
+<p>Ground-plan of so-called "House of the Nuns" at Uxmal.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>In its general outlines the account here given of Aztec society and
+government at the time of the Discovery will probably hold true of all
+the semi-civilized communities of the Mexican peninsula and Central
+America. The pueblos of Mexico were doubtless of various grades of size,
+strength, and comfort, ranging from such structures as Zuñi up to the
+city of Mexico. <span class="sidenote">Mexicans and Mayas.</span>
+The cities of Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala, whose
+ruins, in those tropical forests, are so impressive, probably belong to
+the same class. The Maya-Quiché tribes, who dwelt and still dwell in
+this region, were different in stock-language from their neighbours of
+Mexico; but there are strong reasons for believing that the two great
+groups, Mexicans and Mayas, arose from the expansion and segmentation of
+one common stock, and there is no doubt as to the very close similarity
+between the two in government, religion, and social advancement. In some
+points the Mayas were superior. They possessed a considerable
+literature, written in highly developed hieroglyphic characters upon
+maguey paper and upon deerskin parchment, so that from this point of
+view they <span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132"></a>(p. 132)</span> stood upon the threshold of civilization as strictly
+defined.<a id="footnotetag145" name="footnotetag145"></a><a href="#footnote145" title="Go to footnote 145"><span class="small">[145]</span></a> But, like the Mexicans, they were ignorant <span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133"></a>(p. 133)</span> of
+iron, their society was organized upon the principle of gentilism, they
+were cannibals and sacrificed men and women to idols, some of which were
+identical with those of Mexico. The Mayas had no conception of property
+in land; their buildings were great communal houses, like pueblos; in
+some cases these so-called palaces, at first supposed to be scanty
+remnants of vast cities, were themselves the entire "cities;" in other
+cases <span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134"></a>(p. 134)</span> there were doubtless large composite pueblos fit to be
+called cities.</p>
+
+<p>These noble ruins have excited great and increasing interest since the
+publication of Mr. Stephens's charming book just fifty years ago.<a id="footnotetag146" name="footnotetag146"></a><a href="#footnote146" title="Go to footnote 146"><span class="small">[146]</span></a>
+An air of profound mystery surrounded them, and many wild theories were
+propounded to account for their existence.
+<span class="sidenote">Ruined cities of Central America.</span>
+They were at first accredited
+with a fabulous antiquity, and in at least one instance this notion was
+responsible for what must be called misrepresentation, if not
+humbug.<a id="footnotetag147" name="footnotetag147"></a><a href="#footnote147" title="Go to footnote 147"><span class="small">[147]</span></a> Having been placed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page135" name="page135"></a>(p. 135)</span> by popular fancy at such a
+remote age, they were naturally supposed to have been built, not by the
+Mayas,&mdash;who still inhabit Yucatan and do not absolutely dazzle us with
+their exalted civilization,&mdash;but by some wonderful people long since
+vanished. Now as to this point the sculptured slabs of Uxmal and
+Chichen-Itza tell their own story. They are covered with hieroglyphic
+inscriptions, and these hieroglyphs are the same as those in which the
+Dresden Codex and other Maya manuscripts still preserved are written;
+though their decipherment is not yet complete, there is no sort of doubt
+as to their being written in the Maya characters. Careful inspection,
+moreover, shows that the buildings in which these inscriptions occur are
+not so very ancient. Mr. Stephens, who was one of their earliest as well
+as sanest explorers, believed them to be the work of the Mayas at a
+comparatively recent period.<a id="footnotetag148" name="footnotetag148"></a><a href="#footnote148" title="Go to footnote 148"><span class="small">[148]</span></a> The notion of their antiquity was
+perhaps suggested by the belief that certain colossal mahogany trees
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136"></a>(p. 136)</span> growing between and over the ruins at Palenque must be nearly
+2,000 years old. But when M. de Charnay visited Palenque in 1859 he had
+the eastern side of the "palace" cleared of its dense vegetation in
+order to get a good photograph; and when he revisited the spot in 1881
+he found a sturdy growth of young mahogany the age of which he knew did
+not exceed twenty-two years. Instead of making a ring once a year, as in
+our sluggish and temperate zone, these trees had made rings at the rate
+of about one in a month; their trunks were already more than two feet in
+diameter; judging from this rate of growth the biggest giant on the
+place need not have been more than 200 years old, if as much.<a id="footnotetag149" name="footnotetag149"></a><a href="#footnote149" title="Go to footnote 149"><span class="small">[149]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>These edifices are not so durably constructed as those which in Europe
+have stood for more than a thousand years. They do not indicate a high
+civilization on the part of their builders.
+<span class="sidenote">They are probably not older than the twelfth century.</span>
+They do not, as Mr. Andrew
+Lang says, "throw Mycenæ into the shade, and rival the remains of
+Cambodia."<a id="footnotetag150" name="footnotetag150"></a><a href="#footnote150" title="Go to footnote 150"><span class="small">[150]</span></a> In pictures they may seem to do so, but M. de Charnay,
+after close and repeated examination of these buildings, assures us that
+as structures they "cannot be compared with those at Cambodia, which
+belong to nearly the same period, the twelfth century, and which,
+notwithstanding their greater and more resisting proportions, are found
+in the same dilapidated condition."<a id="footnotetag151" name="footnotetag151"></a><a href="#footnote151" title="Go to footnote 151"><span class="small">[151]</span></a> <span class="pagenum"><a id="page137" name="page137"></a>(p. 137)</span> It seems to me that
+if Mr. Lang had spoken of the Yucatan ruins as rivalling the remains of
+Mycenæ, instead of "throwing them into the shade," he would have come
+nearer the mark. The builders of Uxmal, like those of Mycenæ, did not
+understand the principle of the arch, but were feeling their way toward
+it.<a id="footnotetag152" name="footnotetag152"></a><a href="#footnote152" title="Go to footnote 152"><span class="small">[152]</span></a> And here again we are brought back, as seems to happen whatever
+road we follow, to the middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan
+architecture shows the marks of its origin in the adobe and rubble-stone
+work of the New Mexico pueblos. The inside of the wall "is a rude
+mixture of friable mortar and small irregular stones," and under the
+pelting tropical rains the dislocation of the outer facing is presently
+effected. The large blocks, cut with flint chisels, are of a soft stone
+that is soon damaged by weather; and the cornices and lintels are beams
+of a very hard wood, yet not so hard but that insects bore into it. From
+such considerations it is justly inferred that the highest probable
+antiquity for most of the ruins in Yucatan or Central America is the
+twelfth or thirteenth century of our era.<a id="footnotetag153" name="footnotetag153"></a><a href="#footnote153" title="Go to footnote 153"><span class="small">[153]</span></a> Some, perhaps, may be no
+older than the ancient city of Mexico, built <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1325.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page138" name="page138"></a>(p. 138)</span>
+
+<p>But we are no longer restricted to purely archæological evidence. One of
+the most impressive of all these ruined cities is Chichen-Itza, which is
+regarded as older than Uxmal, but not so old as Izamal.
+<span class="sidenote">Chronicle of Chicxulub.</span>
+Now in recent
+times sundry old Maya documents have been discovered in Yucatan, and
+among them is a brief history of the Spanish conquest of that country,
+written in the Roman character by a native chief, Nakuk Pech, about
+1562. It has been edited, with an English translation, by that zealous
+and indefatigable scholar, to whom American philology owes such a debt
+of gratitude,&mdash;Dr. Daniel Brinton. This chronicle tells us several
+things that we did not know before, and, among others, it refers most
+explicitly to Chichen-Itza and Izamal as inhabited towns during the time
+that the Spaniards were coming, from 1519 to 1542. If there could have
+been any lingering doubt as to the correctness of the views of Stephens,
+Morgan, and Charnay, this contemporaneous documentary testimony dispels
+it once for all.<a id="footnotetag154" name="footnotetag154"></a><a href="#footnote154" title="Go to footnote 154"><span class="small">[154]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139"></a>(p. 139)</span>
+
+<p>The Mexicans and Mayas believed themselves to be akin to each other,
+they had several deities and a large stock of traditional lore in
+common, <span class="sidenote">Maya culture very closely related to Mexican.</span>
+and there was an essential similarity in their modes of life; so
+that, since we are now assured that such cities as Izamal and
+Chichen-Itza were contemporary with the city of Mexico, we shall
+probably not go very far astray if we assume that the elaborately carved
+and bedizened ruins of the former may give us some hint as to how things
+might have looked in the latter. Indeed this complicated and grotesque
+carving on walls, door-posts, and lintels was one of the first things to
+attract the attention of the Spaniards in Mexico. They regarded it with
+mingled indignation and awe, for serpents, coiled or uncoiled, with
+gaping mouths, were most conspicuous among the objects represented. The
+visitors soon learned that all this had a symbolic and religious
+meaning, and with some show of reason they concluded that this strange
+people worshipped the Devil.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>We have now passed in review the various peoples of North America, from
+the Arctic circle to the neighbourhood of the isthmus of Darien, and can
+form some sort of a mental picture of the continent at the time of its
+discovery by Europeans in the fifteenth century. Much more might have
+been said without going beyond the requirements of an outline sketch,
+but quite as much has been said as is consistent with the general plan
+of this book. I have not undertaken at present to go beyond the isthmus
+of Darien, because this preliminary <span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140"></a>(p. 140)</span> chapter is already
+disproportionately long, and after this protracted discussion the
+reader's attention may be somewhat relieved by an entire change of
+scene. Enough has been set forth to explain the narrative that follows,
+and to justify us henceforth in taking certain things for granted. The
+outline description of Mexico will be completed when we come to the
+story of its conquest by Spaniards, and then we shall be ready to
+describe some principal features of Peruvian society and to understand
+how the Spaniards conquered that country.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>There is, however, one conspicuous feature of North American antiquity
+which has not yet received our attention, and which calls for a few
+words before we close this chapter. <span class="sidenote">The "Mound-Builders."</span>
+I refer to the mounds that are
+scattered over so large a part of the soil of the United States, and
+more particularly to those between the Mississippi river and the
+Alleghany mountains, which have been the subject of so much theorizing,
+and in late years of so much careful study.<a id="footnotetag155" name="footnotetag155"></a><a href="#footnote155" title="Go to footnote 155"><span class="small">[155]</span></a> Vague <span class="pagenum"><a id="page141" name="page141"></a>(p. 141)</span> and
+wild were the speculations once rife about the "Mound-Builders" and
+their wonderful civilization. They were supposed to have been a race
+quite different from the red men, with a culture perhaps superior to our
+own, and more or less eloquence was wasted over the vanished "empire" of
+the mound-builders. There is no reason, however, for supposing that
+there ever was an empire of any sort in ancient North America, and no
+relic of the past has ever been seen at any spot on our planet which
+indicates the former existence of a vanished civilization even remotely
+approaching our own. The sooner the student of history gets his head
+cleared of all such rubbish, the better. As for the mounds, which are
+scattered in such profusion over the country west of the Alleghanies,
+there are some which have been built by Indians <span class="pagenum"><a id="page142" name="page142"></a>(p. 142)</span> since the
+arrival of white men in America, and which contain knives and trinkets
+of European manufacture. There are many others which are much older, and
+in which the genuine remains sometimes indicate a culture like that of
+Shawnees or Senecas, and sometimes suggest something perhaps a little
+higher. With the progress of research the vast and vague notion of a
+distinct race of <span class="sidenote">The notion that they were like the Aztecs;</span>
+"Mound-Builders" became narrowed and defined. It began
+to seem probable that the builders of the more remarkable mounds were
+tribes of Indians who had advanced beyond the average level in
+horticulture, and consequently in density of population, and perhaps in
+political and priestly organization. Such a conclusion seemed to be
+supported by the size of some of the "ancient garden-beds," often
+covering more than a hundred acres, filled with the low parallel ridges
+in which corn was planted. The mound people were thus supposed to be
+semi-civilized red men, like the Aztecs, and some of their elevated
+earthworks were explained as places for human sacrifice, like the
+pyramids of Mexico and Central America. It was thought that the
+"civilization" of the Cordilleran peoples might formerly have extended
+northward and eastward into the Mississippi valley, and might after a
+while have been pushed back by powerful hordes of more barbarous
+invaders. A further modification and reduction of this theory likened
+the mound-builders to the pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Such was the
+opinion of Mr. Morgan, who offered a very ingenious explanation of the
+extensive <span class="pagenum"><a id="page143" name="page143"></a>(p. 143)</span> earthworks at High Bank, in Ross county, Ohio, as
+the fortified site of a pueblo.<a id="footnotetag156" name="footnotetag156"></a><a href="#footnote156" title="Go to footnote 156"><span class="small">[156]</span></a> Although there is no reason for
+supposing that the mound-builders practised irrigation (which would not
+be required in the Mississippi valley) or used adobe-brick, <span class="sidenote">or like the Zuñis.</span>
+yet Mr.
+Morgan was inclined to admit them into his middle status of barbarism
+because of the copper hatchets and chisels found in some of the mounds,
+and because of the apparent superiority in horticulture and the
+increased reliance upon it. He suggested that a people somewhat like the
+Zuñis might have migrated eastward and modified their building habits to
+suit the altered conditions of the Mississippi valley, where they dwelt
+for several centuries, until at last, for some unknown reason, they
+retired to the Rocky Mountain region. It seems to me that an opinion
+just the reverse of Mr. Morgan's would be more easily
+defensible,&mdash;namely, that the ancestors of the pueblo Indians were a
+people of building habits somewhat similar to the Mandans, and that
+their habits became modified in adaptation to a country which demanded
+careful irrigation and supplied adobe-clay in abundance. If ever they
+built any of the mounds in the Mississippi valley, I should be disposed
+to place their mound-building period before their pueblo period.</p>
+
+<p>Recent researches, however, make it more and more improbable that the
+mound-builders were nearly akin to such people as the Zuñis or similar
+to them in grade of culture. Of late years the exploration <span class="pagenum"><a id="page144" name="page144"></a>(p. 144)</span> of
+the mounds has been carried on with increasing diligence. More than
+2,000 mounds have been opened, and at least 38,000 ancient relics have
+been gathered from them: such as quartzite arrow-heads and spades,
+greenstone axes and hammers, mortars and pestles, tools for spinning and
+weaving, and cloth, made of spun thread and woven with warp and woof,
+somewhat like a coarse sail-cloth. The water-jugs, kettles, pipes, and
+sepulchral urns have been elaborately studied.
+<span class="sidenote">The mounds were probably built by different peoples in the
+lower status of barbarism;</span>
+The net results of all
+this investigation, up to the present time, have been concisely summed
+up by Dr. Cyrus Thomas.<a id="footnotetag157" name="footnotetag157"></a><a href="#footnote157" title="Go to footnote 157"><span class="small">[157]</span></a> The mounds were not all built by one
+people, but by different tribes as clearly distinguishable from one
+another as Algonquins are distinguishable from Iroquois. These
+mound-building tribes were not superior in culture to the Iroquois and
+many of the Algonquins as first seen by white men. They are not to be
+classified with Zuñis, still less with Mexicans or Mayas, in point of
+culture, but with Shawnees and Cherokees. Nay more,&mdash;some of them <i>were</i>
+Shawnees and Cherokees. The missionary Johann Heckewelder long ago
+published the Lenape tradition of the Tallegwi or Allighewi people, who
+have left their name upon the Alleghany river and mountains.<a id="footnotetag158" name="footnotetag158"></a><a href="#footnote158" title="Go to footnote 158"><span class="small">[158]</span></a> The
+Tallegwi have been identified <span class="pagenum"><a id="page145" name="page145"></a>(p. 145)</span> with the Cherokees, who are now
+reckoned among the most intelligent and progressive of Indian
+peoples.<a id="footnotetag159" name="footnotetag159"></a><a href="#footnote159" title="Go to footnote 159"><span class="small">[159]</span></a>
+<span class="sidenote">by Cherokees;</span>
+The Cherokees were formerly classed in the Muskoki group,
+along with the Creeks and Choctaws, but a closer study of their language
+seems to show that they were a somewhat remote offshoot of the
+Huron-Iroquois stock. For a long time they occupied the country between
+the Ohio river and the Great Lakes, and probably built the mounds that
+are still to be seen there. Somewhere about the thirteenth or fourteenth
+century they were gradually pushed southward into the Muskoki region by
+repeated attacks from the Lenape and Hurons. The Cherokees were probably
+also the builders of the mounds of eastern Tennessee and western North
+Carolina. They retained their mound-building habits some time after the
+white men came upon the scene. <span class="sidenote">and by Shawnees, and other tribes.</span>
+On the other hand the mounds and
+box-shaped stone graves of Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Georgia
+were probably the work of Shawnees, and the stone graves in the Delaware
+valley are to be ascribed to the Lenape. There are many reasons for
+believing that the mounds of northern Mississippi were constructed by
+Chickasaws, and the burial tumuli and "effigy mounds" of Wisconsin by
+Winnebagos. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page146" name="page146"></a>(p. 146)</span> The Minnitarees and Mandans were also very likely
+at one time a mound-building people.</p>
+
+<p>If this view, which is steadily gaining ground, be correct, our
+imaginary race of "Mound-Builders" is broken up and vanishes, and
+henceforth we may content ourselves with speaking of the authors of the
+ancient earthworks as "Indians." There were times in the career of
+sundry Indian tribes when circumstances induced them to erect mounds as
+sites for communal houses or council houses, medicine-lodges or
+burial-places; somewhat as there was a period in the history of our own
+forefathers in England when circumstances led them to build moated
+castles, with drawbridge and portcullis; and there is no more occasion
+for assuming a mysterious race of "Mound-Builders" in America than for
+assuming a mysterious race of "Castle-Builders" in England.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>Thus, at whatever point we touch the subject of ancient America, we find
+scientific opinion tending more and more steadily toward the conclusion
+that its people and their culture were indigenous.
+<span class="sidenote">Society in America at the time of the Discovery had reached
+stages similar to stages reached by eastern Mediterranean peoples fifty
+or sixty centuries earlier.</span>
+One of the most
+important lessons impressed upon us by a long study of comparative
+mythology is that human minds in different parts of the world, but under
+the influence of similar circumstances, develop similar ideas and clothe
+them in similar forms of expression. It is just the same with political
+institutions, with the development of the arts, with social customs,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page147" name="page147"></a>(p. 147)</span> with culture generally. To repeat the remark already quoted
+from Sir John Lubbock,&mdash;and it is well worth repeating,&mdash;"Different
+races in similar stages of development often present more features of
+resemblance to one another than the same race does to itself in
+different stages of its history." When the zealous Abbé Brasseur found
+things in the history of Mexico that reminded him of ancient Egypt, he
+hastened to the conclusion that Mexican culture was somehow "derived"
+from that of Egypt. It was natural enough for him to do so, but such
+methods of explanation are now completely antiquated. Mexican culture
+was no more Egyptian culture than a prickly-pear is a lotus. It was an
+outgrowth of peculiar American conditions acting upon the aboriginal
+American mind, and such of its features as remind us of ancient Egypt or
+prehistoric Greece show simply that it was approaching, though it had
+not reached, the standard attained in those Old World countries. From
+this point of view the resemblances become invested with surpassing
+interest. Ancient America, as we have seen, was a much more archaic
+world than the world of Europe and Asia, and presented in the time of
+Columbus forms of society that on the shores of the Mediterranean had
+been outgrown before the city of Rome was built. Hence the intense and
+peculiar fascination of American archæology, and its profound importance
+to the student of general history.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page148" name="page148"></a>(p. 148)</span> CHAPTER II.<br>
+
+<span class="smaller">PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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. <span class="sidenote">The Chinese.</span>
+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 assure us that, after all,
+Fusang was really Japan, perhaps one feels a slight sense of
+relief.<a id="footnotetag160" name="footnotetag160"></a><a href="#footnote160" title="Go to footnote 160"><span class="small">[160]</span></a> So of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page149" name="page149"></a>(p. 149)</span> 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,<a id="footnotetag161" name="footnotetag161"></a><a href="#footnote161" title="Go to footnote 161"><span class="small">[161]</span></a>
+<span class="sidenote">The Irish.</span>
+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,<a id="footnotetag162" name="footnotetag162"></a><a href="#footnote162" title="Go to footnote 162"><span class="small">[162]</span></a> 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 Japanese junks have been driven ashore on the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page150" name="page150"></a>(p. 150)</span>
+coasts of Oregon and California;<a id="footnotetag163" name="footnotetag163"></a><a href="#footnote163" title="Go to footnote 163"><span class="small">[163]</span></a>
+<span class="sidenote">Cousin, of Dieppe.</span>
+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.<a id="footnotetag164" name="footnotetag164"></a><a href="#footnote164" title="Go to footnote 164"><span class="small">[164]</span></a> 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;<a id="footnotetag165" name="footnotetag165"></a><a href="#footnote165" title="Go to footnote 165"><span class="small">[165]</span></a>
+nevertheless, the evidence adduced in support of the story will hardly
+bear a critical examination.<a id="footnotetag166" name="footnotetag166"></a><a href="#footnote166" title="Go to footnote 166"><span class="small">[166]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>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,
+<span class="sidenote">Those stories are of little value;</span>
+but at the same time the
+proof that any one of them <i>did</i> do it is very far from
+satisfactory.<a id="footnotetag167" name="footnotetag167"></a><a href="#footnote167" title="Go to footnote 167"><span class="small">[167]</span></a> 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.<a id="footnotetag168" name="footnotetag168"></a><a href="#footnote168" title="Go to footnote 168"><span class="small">[168]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page151" name="page151"></a>(p. 151)</span>
+
+<p>But when we come to the voyages of the Northmen in the tenth and
+eleventh centuries, <span class="sidenote">but the case of the Northmen is entirely different.</span>
+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. <span class="sidenote">The Viking exodus from Norway.</span>
+This resulted in making Harold the feudal
+landlord of Norway. Allodial tenures were abolished, and the Jarls were
+required to become his vassals. 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<a id="footnotetag169" name="footnotetag169"></a><a href="#footnote169" title="Go to footnote 169"><span class="small">[169]</span></a> followers, to whom, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page152" name="page152"></a>(p. 152)</span> as to the ancient
+Greeks, the sea was not a barrier, but a highway,<a id="footnotetag170" name="footnotetag170"></a><a href="#footnote170" title="Go to footnote 170"><span class="small">[170]</span></a> had no mind to
+stay at home and submit to unwonted thraldom. So they manned their
+dragon-prowed keels, invoked the blessing of Wodan, god of storms, upon
+their enterprise, and sailed away. Some went to reinforce their kinsmen
+who were making it so hot for Alfred in England<a id="footnotetag171" name="footnotetag171"></a><a href="#footnote171" title="Go to footnote 171"><span class="small">[171]</span></a> 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;<a id="footnotetag172" name="footnotetag172"></a><a href="#footnote172" title="Go to footnote 172"><span class="small">[172]</span></a> some found their amphibious natures better satisfied upon
+the islands of the Atlantic ridge,&mdash;the Orkneys, Shetlands, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page153" name="page153"></a>(p. 153)</span>
+and Færoes, and especially noble Iceland.
+<span class="sidenote">Founding of Iceland, <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 874.</span>
+There an aristocratic republic
+soon grew up, owning slight and indefinite allegiance to the kings of
+Norway.<a id="footnotetag173" name="footnotetag173"></a><a href="#footnote173" title="Go to footnote 173"><span class="small">[173]</span></a> 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
+Massachusetts 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&mdash;with fish, oil, butter, skins, and wool, in
+exchange for meal and malt&mdash;was kept up with Norway, Denmark, and the
+British islands, political freedom was unimpaired,<a id="footnotetag174" name="footnotetag174"></a><a href="#footnote174" title="Go to footnote 174"><span class="small">[174]</span></a> justice was (for
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page154" name="page154"></a>(p. 154)</span> 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<a id="footnotetag175" name="footnotetag175"></a><a href="#footnote175" title="Go to footnote 175"><span class="small">[175]</span></a> 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 "Landnáma-bók," 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.<a id="footnotetag176" name="footnotetag176"></a><a href="#footnote176" title="Go to footnote 176"><span class="small">[176]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page155" name="page155"></a>(p. 155)</span>
+
+<p>Now from various Icelandic chronicles<a id="footnotetag177" name="footnotetag177"></a><a href="#footnote177" title="Go to footnote 177"><span class="small">[177]</span></a> we learn that in 876, only
+two years after the island commonwealth <span class="pagenum"><a id="page156" name="page156"></a>(p. 156)</span> was founded, one of
+the settlers named <span class="sidenote">Discovery of Greenland, 876.</span>
+Gunnbjörn was driven by foul weather to some point on
+the coast of Greenland, where he and his crew contrived to pass the
+winter, their ship being locked in ice; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page157" name="page157"></a>(p. 157)</span> when the spring set
+them free, they returned to Iceland. In the year 983 Eric the Red, a
+settler upon Öxney (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 Gunnbjörn 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.<a id="footnotetag178" name="footnotetag178"></a><a href="#footnote178" title="Go to footnote 178"><span class="small">[178]</span></a> 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 grassy plain may still be seen the ruins of
+seventeen houses built of rough blocks of sandstone, their chinks
+caulked up with clay and gravel. <span class="sidenote">Eric's Colony in Greenland, 986.</span>
+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 <span class="pagenum"><a id="page158" name="page158"></a>(p. 158)</span> 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.<a id="footnotetag179" name="footnotetag179"></a><a href="#footnote179" title="Go to footnote 179"><span class="small">[179]</span></a> 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 Godthaab. The
+older settlement, which began at Igaliko fiord, was known as the East
+Bygd;<a id="footnotetag180" name="footnotetag180"></a><a href="#footnote180" title="Go to footnote 180"><span class="small">[180]</span></a> the younger settlement, near Godthaab, was called the West
+Bygd.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page159" name="page159"></a>(p. 159)</span>
+
+<a id="img010" name="img010"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img010b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img010.jpg" width="400" height="347" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>The East Bygd, or Eastern Settlement of the
+Northmen in Greenland.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This colonization of Greenland by the Northmen in the tenth century is
+as well established as any event that occurred in the Middle Ages. For
+four hundred years the fortunes of the Greenland colony formed a part,
+albeit a very humble part, of European history. Geographically speaking,
+Greenland is reckoned as a part of America, of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page162" name="page162"></a>(p. 162)</span> the western
+hemisphere, and not of the eastern. The Northmen who settled in
+Greenland had, therefore, in this sense found their way to America.
+Nevertheless one rightly feels that in the history of geographical
+discovery an arrival of Europeans in Greenland is equivalent merely to
+reaching the vestibule or ante-chamber of the western hemisphere. It is
+an affair begun and ended outside of the great world of the red men.</p>
+
+<p>But the story does not end here. Into the world of the red men the
+voyagers from Iceland did assuredly come, as indeed, after once getting
+a foothold upon Greenland, they could hardly fail to do. Let us pursue
+the remainder of the story as we find it in our Icelandic sources of
+information, and afterwards it will be proper to inquire into the
+credibility of these sources.</p>
+
+<p>One of the men who accompanied Eric to Greenland was named Herjulf,
+whose son Bjarni, after roving the seas for some years, came home to
+Iceland in 986 to drink the Yuletide ale with his father. Finding him
+gone, he weighed anchor and started after him to Greenland,
+<span class="sidenote">Voyage of Bjarni Herjulfson, 986.</span>
+but
+encountered foggy weather, and sailed on for many days by guess-work
+without seeing sun or stars. When at length he sighted land it was a
+shore without mountains, showing only small heights covered with dense
+woods. It was evidently not the land of fiords and glaciers for which
+Bjarni was looking. So without stopping to make explorations he turned
+his prow to the north and kept on. The sky was now fair, and after
+scudding nine or ten days with a brisk breeze <span class="pagenum"><a id="page163" name="page163"></a>(p. 163)</span> astern, Bjarni
+saw the icy crags of Greenland looming up before him, and after some
+further searching found his way to his father's new home.<a id="footnotetag181" name="footnotetag181"></a><a href="#footnote181" title="Go to footnote 181"><span class="small">[181]</span></a> On the
+route he more than once sighted land on the larboard.</p>
+
+<p>This adventure of Bjarni's seems not to have excited general curiosity
+or to have awakened speculation. Indeed, in the dense geographical
+ignorance of those times there is no reason why it should have done so.
+About 994 Bjarni was in Norway, and one or two people expressed some
+surprise that he did not take more pains to learn something about the
+country he had seen; but nothing came of such talk till it reached the
+ears of Leif, the famous son of Eric the Red. This wise and stately
+man<a id="footnotetag182" name="footnotetag182"></a><a href="#footnote182" title="Go to footnote 182"><span class="small">[182]</span></a>
+spent a year or two in Norway about 998.
+<span class="sidenote">Conversion of the Northmen to Christianity.</span>
+Roman missionary
+priests were then preaching up and down the land, and had converted the
+king, Olaf Tryggvesson, great-grandson of Harold Fairhair. Leif became a
+Christian and was baptised, and when he returned to Greenland he took
+priests with him who converted many people, though old Eric, it is said,
+preferred to go in the way of his fathers, and deemed boisterous
+Valhalla, with its cups of wassail, a place of better cheer than the New
+Jerusalem, with its streets of gold.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page164" name="page164"></a>(p. 164)</span>
+
+<p>Leif's zeal for the conversion of his friends in Greenland did not so
+far occupy his mind as to prevent him from undertaking a voyage of
+discovery. His curiosity had been stimulated by what he had heard about
+Bjarni's experiences, and he made up his mind to go and see what the
+coasts to the south of Greenland were like. He sailed from
+<span class="sidenote">Leif Ericsson's voyage, 1000.</span>
+Brattahlid&mdash;probably in the summer or early autumn of the year
+1000<a id="footnotetag183" name="footnotetag183"></a><a href="#footnote183" title="Go to footnote 183"><span class="small">[183]</span></a>&mdash;with a crew of five and thirty men. Some distance to the
+southward they came upon a barren country covered with big flat stones,
+so that they called it Helluland,
+<span class="sidenote">Helluland.</span>
+or "slate-land." There is little room
+for doubt that this was the coast opposite Greenland, either west or
+east of the strait of Belle Isle; in other words, it was either Labrador
+or the northern coast of Newfoundland. Thence, keeping generally to the
+southward, our explorers came after some days to a thickly wooded coast,
+where they landed and inspected the country. What chiefly impressed them
+was the extent of the forest, so that they called the place Markland,
+<span class="sidenote">Markland.</span>
+or
+"wood-land." Some critics have supposed that this spot was somewhere
+upon the eastern or southern coast of Newfoundland, but the more general
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page165" name="page165"></a>(p. 165)</span> opinion places it somewhere upon the coast of Cape Breton
+island or Nova Scotia. From this Markland our voyagers stood out to sea,
+and running briskly before a stiff northeaster it was more than two days
+before they came in sight of land. Then, after following the coast for a
+while, they went ashore at a place where a river, issuing from a lake,
+fell into the sea. They brought their ship up into the lake and cast
+anchor. The water abounded in excellent fish, and the country seemed so
+pleasant that Leif decided to pass the winter there, and accordingly his
+men put up some comfortable wooden huts or booths. One day one of the
+party, a "south country" man, whose name was Tyrker,<a id="footnotetag184" name="footnotetag184"></a><a href="#footnote184" title="Go to footnote 184"><span class="small">[184]</span></a> came in from a
+ramble in the neighbourhood making grimaces and talking to himself in
+his own language <span class="sidenote">Vinland.</span>
+(probably German), which his comrades did not
+understand. On being interrogated as to the cause of his <span class="pagenum"><a id="page166" name="page166"></a>(p. 166)</span>
+excitement, he replied that he had discovered vines loaded with grapes,
+and was much pleased at the sight inasmuch as he had been brought up in
+a vine country. Wild grapes, indeed, abounded in this autumn season, and
+Leif accordingly called the country Vinland. The winter seems to have
+passed off very comfortably. Even the weather seemed mild to these
+visitors from high latitudes, and they did not fail to comment on the
+unusual length of the winter day. Their language on this point has been
+so construed as to make the length of the shortest winter day exactly
+nine hours, which would place their Vinland in about the latitude of
+Boston. But their expressions do not admit of any such precise
+construction; and when we remember that they had no accurate instruments
+for measuring time, and that a difference of about fourteen minutes
+between sunrise and sunset on the shortest winter day would make all the
+difference between Boston and Halifax, we see how idle it is to look for
+the requisite precision in narratives of this sort, and to treat them as
+one would treat the reports of a modern scientific exploring expedition.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1001 Leif returned to Greenland with a cargo of
+timber.<a id="footnotetag185" name="footnotetag185"></a><a href="#footnote185" title="Go to footnote 185"><span class="small">[185]</span></a> The voyage made much talk. Leif's brother Thorvald caught
+the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page167" name="page167"></a>(p. 167)</span> inspiration,<a id="footnotetag186" name="footnotetag186"></a><a href="#footnote186" title="Go to footnote 186"><span class="small">[186]</span></a> and, borrowing Leif's ship, sailed in
+1002, and succeeded in finding Vinland and Leif's huts, where his men
+spent two winters.
+<span class="sidenote">Voyages of Thorvald and Thorstein, 1002-05.</span>
+In the intervening summer they went on an exploring
+expedition along the coast, fell in with some savages in canoes, and got
+into a fight in which Thorvald was killed by an arrow. In the spring of
+1004 the ship returned to Brattahlid. Next year the third brother,
+Thorstein Ericsson, set out in the same ship, with his wife Gudrid and a
+crew of thirty-five men; but they were sore bestead with foul weather,
+got nowhere, and accomplished nothing. Thorstein died on the voyage, and
+his widow returned to Greenland.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the next summer, 1006, there came to Brattahlid from
+Iceland a notable personage, a man of craft and resource, wealthy withal
+and well born, with the blood of many kinglets or jarls flowing in his
+veins. This man, Thorfinn Karlsefni, straightway fell in love with the
+young and beautiful widow Gudrid, and in the course of the winter there
+was a merry wedding at Brattahlid.
+<span class="sidenote">Thorfinn Karlsefni, and his unsuccessful attempt to found a
+colony in Vinland, 1007-10.</span>
+Persuaded by his adventurous bride,
+whose spirit had been roused by the reports from Vinland and by her
+former unsuccessful attempt to find it, Thorfinn now undertook to visit
+that country in force sufficient for founding a colony there.
+Accordingly in the spring of 1007 he <span class="pagenum"><a id="page168" name="page168"></a>(p. 168)</span> started with three or
+four ships,<a id="footnotetag187" name="footnotetag187"></a><a href="#footnote187" title="Go to footnote 187"><span class="small">[187]</span></a> carrying one hundred and sixty men, several women, and
+quite a cargo of cattle. In the course of that year his son Snorro was
+born in Vinland,<a id="footnotetag188" name="footnotetag188"></a><a href="#footnote188" title="Go to footnote 188"><span class="small">[188]</span></a> and our chronicle tells us that this child was
+three years old before the disappointed company turned their backs upon
+that land of promise and were fain to make their way homeward to the
+fiords of Greenland. It was the hostility of the natives that compelled
+Thorfinn to abandon his enterprise. At first they traded with him,
+bartering valuable furs for little strips of scarlet cloth which they
+sought most eagerly; and they were as terribly frightened by his cattle
+as the Aztecs were in later days by the Spanish horses.<a id="footnotetag189" name="footnotetag189"></a><a href="#footnote189" title="Go to footnote 189"><span class="small">[189]</span></a> The chance
+bellowing of a bull sent them squalling to the woods, and they did not
+show themselves again for three weeks. After a while quarrels arose, the
+natives attacked in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page169" name="page169"></a>(p. 169)</span> great numbers, many Northmen were killed,
+and in 1010 the survivors returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber
+and peltries. On the way thither the ships seem to have separated, and
+one of them, commanded by Bjarni Grimolfsson, found itself bored by
+worms (the <i>teredo</i>) and sank, with its commander and half the
+crew.<a id="footnotetag190" name="footnotetag190"></a><a href="#footnote190" title="Go to footnote 190"><span class="small">[190]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Among Karlsefni's companions on this memorable expedition was one
+Thorvard, with his wife Freydis, a natural daughter of Eric the Red.
+About the time of their return to Greenland in the summer of 1010, a
+ship arrived from Norway, commanded by two brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page170" name="page170"></a>(p. 170)</span> During the winter a new expedition was planned, and in the
+summer of 1011
+<span class="sidenote">Freydis, and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1011-12.</span>
+two ships set sail for Vinland, one with Freydis,
+Thorvard, and a crew of 30 men, the other with Helgi and Finnbogi, and a
+crew of 35 men. There were also a number of women. The purpose was not
+to found a colony but to cut timber. The brothers arrived first at
+Leif's huts and had begun carrying in their provisions and tools, when
+Freydis, arriving soon afterward, ordered them off the premises. They
+had no right, she said, to occupy her brother's houses. So they went out
+and built other huts for their party a little farther from the shore.
+Before their business was accomplished "winter set in, and the brothers
+proposed to have some games for amusement to pass the time. So it was
+done for a time, till discord came among them, and the games were given
+up, and none went from one house to the other; and things went on so
+during a great part of the winter." At length came the catastrophe.
+Freydis one night complained to her husband that the brothers had given
+her evil words and struck her, and insisted that he should forthwith
+avenge the affront. Presently Thorvard, unable to bear her taunts, was
+aroused to a deed of blood. With his followers he made a night attack
+upon the huts of Helgi and Finnbogi, seized and bound all the occupants,
+and killed the men one after another in cold blood. Five women were left
+whom Thorvard would have spared; as none of his men would raise a hand
+against them, Freydis herself took an axe and brained them one and all.
+In the spring <span class="pagenum"><a id="page171" name="page171"></a>(p. 171)</span> of 1012 the party sailed for Brattahlid in the
+ship of the murdered brothers, which was the larger and better of the
+two. Freydis pretended that they had exchanged ships and left the other
+party in Vinland. With gifts to her men, and dire threats for any who
+should dare tell what had been done, she hoped to keep them silent.
+Words were let drop, however, which came to Leif's ears, and led him to
+arrest three of the men and put them to the torture until they told the
+whole story. "'I have not the heart,' said Leif, 'to treat my wicked
+sister as she deserves; but this I will foretell them [Freydis and
+Thorvard] that their posterity will never thrive.' So it went that
+nobody thought anything of them save evil from that time."</p>
+
+<p>With this grewsome tale ends all account of Norse attempts at exploring
+or colonizing Vinland, though references to Vinland by no means end
+here.<a id="footnotetag191" name="footnotetag191"></a><a href="#footnote191" title="Go to footnote 191"><span class="small">[191]</span></a> Taking the narrative as a whole, it seems to me a sober,
+straightforward, and eminently probable story.
+<span class="sidenote">The whole story is eminently probable.</span>
+We may not be able to say
+with confidence exactly where such places as Markland and Vinland were,
+but it is clear that the coasts visited on these southerly and
+southwesterly voyages from Brattahlid must have been parts of the coast
+of North America, unless the whole story is to be dismissed as a figment
+of somebody's imagination. But for a figment of the imagination, and of
+European <span class="pagenum"><a id="page172" name="page172"></a>(p. 172)</span> imagination withal, it has far too many points of
+verisimilitude, as I shall presently show.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, it is an extremely probable story from the time that
+Eric once gets settled in Brattahlid. The founding of the Greenland
+colony is the only strange or improbable part of the narrative, but that
+is corroborated in so many other ways that we know it to be true; as
+already observed, no fact in mediæval history is better established.
+When I speak of the settlement of Greenland as strange, I do not mean
+that there is anything strange in the Northmen's accomplishing the
+voyage thither from Iceland. That island is nearer to Greenland than to
+Norway, and we know, moreover, that Norse sailors achieved more
+difficult things than penetrating the fiords of southern Greenland. Upon
+the island of Kingitorsook in Baffin's Bay (72° 55' N., 56° 5' W.)
+<span class="sidenote">Voyage into Baffin's Bay, 1135.</span>
+near
+Upernavik, in a region supposed to have been unvisited by man before the
+modern age of Arctic exploration, there were found in 1824 some small
+artificial mounds with an inscription upon stone:&mdash;"Erling Sighvatson
+and Bjarni Thordharson and Eindrid Oddson raised these marks and cleared
+ground on Saturday before Ascension Week, 1135." That is to say, they
+took symbolic possession of the land.<a id="footnotetag192" name="footnotetag192"></a><a href="#footnote192" title="Go to footnote 192"><span class="small">[192]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>In order to appreciate how such daring voyages were practicable, we must
+bear in mind that the Viking "ships" were probably stronger and more
+seaworthy, and certainly much swifter, than the Spanish vessels of the
+time of Columbus. One <span class="pagenum"><a id="page173" name="page173"></a>(p. 173)</span> was unearthed a few years ago at
+Sandefiord in Norway, and may be seen at the museum in Christiania.
+<span class="sidenote">A Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord, in Norway.</span>
+Its
+pagan owner had been buried in it, and his bones were found amidships,
+along with the bones of a dog and a peacock, a few iron fish-hooks and
+other articles. Bones of horses and dogs, probably sacrificed at the
+funeral according to the ancient Norse custom, lay scattered about. This
+craft has been so well described by Colonel Higginson,<a id="footnotetag193" name="footnotetag193"></a><a href="#footnote193" title="Go to footnote 193"><span class="small">[193]</span></a> that I may
+as well quote the passage in full:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She "was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the greatest length, and
+sixteen feet eleven inches at the greatest width, and from the top of
+the keel to the gunwale amidships she was five feet nine inches deep.
+She had twenty ribs, and would draw less than four feet of water. She
+was clinker-built; that is, had plates slightly overlapped, like the
+shingles on the side of a house. The planks and timbers of the frame
+were fastened together with withes made of roots, but the oaken boards
+of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. The bow and
+stern were similar in shape, and must have risen high out of water, but
+were so broken that it was impossible to tell how they originally ended.
+<span class="sidenote">Description of the ship.</span>
+The keel was deep and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace of
+any metallic sheathing; but an iron anchor was found almost rusted to
+pieces. There was no deck and the seats for rowers had been taken out.
+The oars were twenty feet long, and the oar-holes, sixteen on each side,
+had slits sloping towards the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page174" name="page174"></a>(p. 174)</span> stern to allow the blades of the
+oars to be put through from inside. The most peculiar thing about the
+ship was the rudder, which was on the starboard or right side, this side
+being originally called 'steerboard' from this circumstance. The rudder
+was like a large oar, with long blade and short handle, and was
+attached, not to the side of the boat, but to the end of a conical piece
+of wood which projected almost a foot from the side of the vessel, and
+almost two feet from the stern. This piece of wood was bored down its
+length, and no doubt a rope passing through it secured the rudder to the
+ship's side. It was steered by a tiller attached to the handle, and
+perhaps also by a rope fastened to the blade. As a whole, this
+disinterred vessel proved to be anything but the rude and primitive
+craft which might have been expected; it was neatly built and well
+preserved, constructed on what a sailor would call beautiful lines, and
+eminently fitted for sea service. Many such vessels may be found
+depicted on the celebrated Bayeux tapestry; and the peculiar position of
+the rudder explains the treaty mentioned in the Heimskringla, giving to
+Norway all lands lying west of Scotland between which and the mainland a
+vessel could pass with her rudder shipped.... This was not one of the
+very largest ships, for some of them had thirty oars on each side, and
+vessels carrying from twenty to twenty-five were not uncommon. The
+largest of these were called Dragons, and other sizes were known as
+Serpents or Cranes. The ship itself was often so built as to represent
+the name it bore: the dragon, for instance, was a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page175" name="page175"></a>(p. 175)</span> long low
+vessel, with the gilded head of a dragon at the bow, and the gilded tail
+at the stern; the moving oars at the side might represent the legs of
+the imaginary creature, the row of shining red and white shields that
+were hung over the gunwale looked like the monster's scales, and the
+sails striped with red and blue might suggest his wings. The ship
+preserved at Christiania is described as having had but a single mast,
+set into a block of wood so large that it is said no such block could
+now be cut in Norway. Probably the sail was much like those still
+carried by large open boats in that country,&mdash;a single square on a mast
+forty feet long.<a id="footnotetag194" name="footnotetag194"></a><a href="#footnote194" title="Go to footnote 194"><span class="small">[194]</span></a> These masts have no standing rigging, and are
+taken down when not in use; and this was probably the practice of the
+Vikings."</p>
+
+<p>In such vessels, well stocked with food and weapons, the Northmen were
+accustomed to spend many weeks together on the sea, now and then
+touching land. In such vessels they made their way to Algiers and
+Constantinople, to the White Sea, to Baffin's Bay. It is not, therefore,
+their voyage to Greenland that seems strange, but it is their success in
+founding a colony which could last for more than four centuries in that
+inhospitable climate. The question is sometimes asked whether the
+climate of Greenland <span class="sidenote">The climate of Greenland.</span>
+may not have undergone some change within the last
+thousand years.<a id="footnotetag195" name="footnotetag195"></a><a href="#footnote195" title="Go to footnote 195"><span class="small">[195]</span></a> If there has been <span class="pagenum"><a id="page176" name="page176"></a>(p. 176)</span> any change, it must
+have been very slight; such as, perhaps, a small variation in the flow
+of ocean currents might occasion. I am inclined to believe that there
+may have been such a change, from the testimony of Ivar Bardsen, steward
+of the Gardar bishopric in the latter half of the fourteenth century, or
+about halfway between the time of Eric the Red and our own time.
+According to Bardsen there had long been a downward drifting of ice from
+the north and a consequent accumulation of bergs and floes upon the
+eastern coast of Greenland, insomuch that the customary route formerly
+followed by ships coming from Iceland was no longer safe, and a more
+southerly route had been generally adopted.<a id="footnotetag196" name="footnotetag196"></a><a href="#footnote196" title="Go to footnote 196"><span class="small">[196]</span></a> This slow southward
+extension of the polar ice-sheet upon the east of Greenland seems still
+to be going on at the present day.<a id="footnotetag197" name="footnotetag197"></a><a href="#footnote197" title="Go to footnote 197"><span class="small">[197]</span></a> It is therefore not at all
+improbable, but on the contrary quite probable, that a thousand years
+ago the mean annual temperature of the tip end of Greenland, at Cape
+Farewell, was a few degrees <span class="pagenum"><a id="page177" name="page177"></a>(p. 177)</span> higher than now.<a id="footnotetag198" name="footnotetag198"></a><a href="#footnote198" title="Go to footnote 198"><span class="small">[198]</span></a> But a slight
+difference of this sort might have an important bearing upon the
+fortunes of a colony planted there. For example, it would directly
+affect the extent of the hay crop. Grass grows very well now in the
+neighbourhood of Julianeshaab. In summer it is still a "green land,"
+with good pasturage for cattle, but there is difficulty in getting hay
+enough to last through the nine months of winter. In 1855 "there were in
+Greenland 30 to 40 head of horned cattle, about 100 goats, and 20
+sheep;" but in the ancient colony, with a population not exceeding 6,000
+persons, "herds of cattle were kept which even yielded produce for
+exportation to Europe."<a id="footnotetag199" name="footnotetag199"></a><a href="#footnote199" title="Go to footnote 199"><span class="small">[199]</span></a> So strong a contrast seems to indicate a
+much more plentiful grass crop than to-day, although some hay might
+perhaps have been imported from Iceland in exchange for Greenland
+exports, which were chiefly whale oil, eider-down, and skins of seals,
+foxes, and white bears.</p>
+
+<p>When once the Northmen had found their way to Cape Farewell, it would
+have been marvellous if such active sailors could long have avoided
+stumbling upon the continent of North America. Without compass or
+astrolabe these daring men were accustomed to traverse long stretches of
+open <span class="pagenum"><a id="page178" name="page178"></a>(p. 178)</span> sea, trusting to the stars;
+<span class="sidenote">With the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery of the
+American continent was almost inevitable.</span>
+and it needed only a stiff
+northeasterly breeze, with persistent clouds and fog, to land a westward
+bound "dragon" anywhere from Cape Race to Cape Cod. This is what appears
+to have happened to Bjarni Herjulfsson in 986, and something quite like
+it happened to Henry Hudson in 1609.<a id="footnotetag200" name="footnotetag200"></a><a href="#footnote200" title="Go to footnote 200"><span class="small">[200]</span></a> Curiosity is a motive quite
+sufficient to explain Leif's making the easy summer voyage to find out
+what sort of country Bjarni had seen. He found it thickly wooded, and as
+there was a dearth of good timber both in Greenland and in Iceland, it
+would naturally occur to Leif's friends that voyages for timber, to be
+used at home and also to be exported to Iceland, <span class="sidenote">Voyages for timber.</span>
+might turn out to be
+profitable.<a id="footnotetag201" name="footnotetag201"></a><a href="#footnote201" title="Go to footnote 201"><span class="small">[201]</span></a> As Laing says, "to go in quest of the wooded countries
+to the southwest, from whence driftwood came to their shores, was a
+reasonable, intelligible motive for making a voyage in search of the
+lands from whence it came, and where this valuable material could be got
+for nothing."<a id="footnotetag202" name="footnotetag202"></a><a href="#footnote202" title="Go to footnote 202"><span class="small">[202]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>If now we look at the details of the story we shall find many ear-marks
+of truth in it. We must not look for absolute accuracy in a narrative
+which&mdash;as we have it&mdash;is not the work of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page179" name="page179"></a>(p. 179)</span> Leif or Thorfinn or
+any of their comrades, but of compilers or copyists, honest and careful
+as it seems to me, but liable to misplace details and to call by wrong
+names things which they had never seen. Starting with these modest
+expectations we shall find the points of verisimilitude numerous.
+<span class="sidenote">Ear-marks of truth in the narrative.</span>
+To
+begin with the least significant, somewhere on our northeastern coast
+the voyagers found many foxes.<a id="footnotetag203" name="footnotetag203"></a><a href="#footnote203" title="Go to footnote 203"><span class="small">[203]</span></a> These animals, to be sure, are found
+in a great many countries, but the point for us is that in a southerly
+and southwesterly course from Cape Farewell these sailors are said to
+have found them. If our narrators had been drawing upon their
+imaginations or dealing with semi-mythical materials, they would as
+likely as not have lugged into the story elephants from Africa or
+hippogriffs from Dreamland; mediæval writers were blissfully ignorant of
+all canons of probability in such matters.<a id="footnotetag204" name="footnotetag204"></a><a href="#footnote204" title="Go to footnote 204"><span class="small">[204]</span></a> But our narrators simply
+mention an animal which has for ages abounded on our northeastern
+coasts. One such instance is enough to suggest that they were following
+reports or documents which emanated ultimately from eye-witnesses and
+told the plain truth. A dozen such instances, if not neutralized by
+counter-instances, are enough to make this view extremely probable; and
+then one or two instances <span class="pagenum"><a id="page180" name="page180"></a>(p. 180)</span> which could not have originated in
+the imagination of a European writer will suffice to prove it.</p>
+
+<p>Let us observe, then, that on coming to Markland they "slew a
+bear;"<a id="footnotetag205" name="footnotetag205"></a><a href="#footnote205" title="Go to footnote 205"><span class="small">[205]</span></a> the river and lake (or bay) in Vinland abounded with salmon
+bigger than Leif's people had ever seen;<a id="footnotetag206" name="footnotetag206"></a><a href="#footnote206" title="Go to footnote 206"><span class="small">[206]</span></a> on the coast they caught
+halibut;<a id="footnotetag207" name="footnotetag207"></a><a href="#footnote207" title="Go to footnote 207"><span class="small">[207]</span></a> they came to an island where there were so many eider
+ducks breeding that they could hardly avoid treading on their eggs;<a id="footnotetag208" name="footnotetag208"></a><a href="#footnote208" title="Go to footnote 208"><span class="small">[208]</span></a>
+and, as already observed, it was because of the abundance of wild grapes
+that Leif named the southernmost country he visited Vinland.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page181" name="page181"></a>(p. 181)</span>
+
+<p>From the profusion of grapes&mdash;such that the ship's stern boat is said on
+one occasion to have been filled with them<a id="footnotetag209" name="footnotetag209"></a><a href="#footnote209" title="Go to footnote 209"><span class="small">[209]</span></a>&mdash;we get a clue, though
+less decisive than could be wished, to the location of Vinland. The
+extreme northern limit of the vine in Canada is 47°,
+<span class="sidenote">Northern limit of the vine.</span>
+the parallel which
+cuts across the tops of Prince Edward and Cape Breton islands on the
+map.<a id="footnotetag210" name="footnotetag210"></a><a href="#footnote210" title="Go to footnote 210"><span class="small">[210]</span></a> Near this northern limit, however, wild grapes are by no means
+plenty; so that the coast upon which Leif wintered must apparently have
+been south of Cape Breton. Dr. Storm, who holds that Vinland was on the
+southern coast of Nova Scotia, has collected some interesting testimony
+as to the growth of wild grapes in that region, but on the whole the
+abundance of this fruit seems rather to point to the shores of
+Massachusetts Bay.<a id="footnotetag211" name="footnotetag211"></a><a href="#footnote211" title="Go to footnote 211"><span class="small">[211]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>We may now observe that, while it is idle to attempt to determine
+accurately the length of the winter day,
+<span class="sidenote">Length of the winter day.</span>
+as given in our chronicles,
+nevertheless since that length attracted the attention of the voyagers,
+as something remarkable, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page182" name="page182"></a>(p. 182)</span> it may fairly be supposed to indicate
+a latitude lower than they were accustomed to reach in their trading
+voyages in Europe. Such a latitude as that of Dublin, which lies
+opposite Labrador, would have presented no novelty to them, for voyages
+of Icelanders to their kinsmen in Dublin, and in Rouen as well, were
+common enough. Halifax lies about opposite Bordeaux, and Boston a little
+south of opposite Cape Finisterre, in Spain, so that either of these
+latitudes would satisfy the conditions of the case; either would show a
+longer winter day than Rouen, which was about the southern limit of
+ordinary trading voyages from Iceland. At all events, the length of day
+indicates for Vinland a latitude south of Cape Breton.</p>
+
+<p>The next point to be observed is the mention of "self-sown
+wheat-fields."<a id="footnotetag212" name="footnotetag212"></a><a href="#footnote212" title="Go to footnote 212"><span class="small">[212]</span></a> This is not only an important ear-mark of truth in
+the narrative, but it helps us somewhat further in determining the
+position of Vinland. The "self-sown" cereal, which these Icelanders
+called "wheat," was in all probability what the English settlers six
+hundred years afterward called "corn," <span class="sidenote">Indian corn.</span>
+in each case applying to a new
+and nameless thing the most serviceable name at hand. In England "corn"
+means either wheat, barley, rye, and oats collectively, or more
+specifically wheat; in Scotland it generally means oats; in America it
+means maize, the "Indian corn," the cereal peculiar to the western
+hemisphere. The beautiful waving plant, with its exquisitely tasselled
+ears, which <span class="pagenum"><a id="page183" name="page183"></a>(p. 183)</span> was one of the first things to attract Champlain's
+attention, could not have escaped the notice of such keen observers as
+we are beginning to find Leif and Thorfinn to have been. A cereal like
+this, requiring so little cultivation that without much latitude of
+speech it might be described as growing wild, would be interesting to
+Europeans visiting the American coast; but it would hardly occur to
+European fancy to invent such a thing. The mention of it is therefore a
+very significant ear-mark of the truth of the narrative. As regards the
+position of Vinland, the presence of maize seems to indicate a somewhat
+lower latitude than Nova Scotia. Maize requires intensely hot summers,
+and even under the most careful European cultivation does not flourish
+north of the Alps. In the sixteenth century its northern-most limit on
+the American coast seems to have been at the mouth of the Kennebec
+(44°), though farther inland it was found by Cartier at Hochelaga, on
+the site of Montreal (45° 30'). A presumption is thus raised in favour
+of the opinion that Vinland was not farther north than Massachusetts
+Bay.<a id="footnotetag213" name="footnotetag213"></a><a href="#footnote213" title="Go to footnote 213"><span class="small">[213]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>This presumption is supported by what is said about the climate of
+Vinland, though it must be borne in mind that general statements about
+climate are apt to be very loose and misleading. We <span class="pagenum"><a id="page184" name="page184"></a>(p. 184)</span> are told
+that it seemed to Leif's people that cattle would be able to pass the
+winter out of doors there, <span class="sidenote">Winter weather in Vinland.</span>
+for there was no frost and the grass was not
+much withered.<a id="footnotetag214" name="footnotetag214"></a><a href="#footnote214" title="Go to footnote 214"><span class="small">[214]</span></a> On the other hand, Thorfinn's people found the
+winter severe, and suffered from cold and hunger.<a id="footnotetag215" name="footnotetag215"></a><a href="#footnote215" title="Go to footnote 215"><span class="small">[215]</span></a> Taken in
+connection with each other, these two statements would apply very well
+to-day to our variable winters on the coast southward from Cape Ann. The
+winter of 1889-90 in Cambridge, for example, might very naturally have
+been described by visitors from higher latitudes as a winter without
+frost and with grass scarcely withered. Indeed, we might have described
+it so ourselves. On Narragansett and Buzzard's bays such soft winter
+weather is still more common; north of Cape Ann it is much less common.
+The severe winter (<i>magna hiems</i>) is of course familiar enough anywhere
+along the northeastern coast of America.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, we may say with some confidence that the place described
+by our chroniclers <span class="sidenote">Probable situation of Vinland.</span>
+as Vinland was situated somewhere between Point
+Judith and Cape Breton; possibly we may narrow our limits and say
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page185" name="page185"></a>(p. 185)</span> that it was somewhere between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. But the
+latter conclusion is much less secure than the former. In such a case as
+this, the more we narrow our limits the greater our liability to
+error.<a id="footnotetag216" name="footnotetag216"></a><a href="#footnote216" title="Go to footnote 216"><span class="small">[216]</span></a> While by such narrowing, moreover, the question may acquire
+more interest as a bone of contention among local antiquarians, its
+value for the general historian is not increased.</p>
+
+<p>But we have not yet done with the points of verisimilitude in our story.
+We have now to cite two or three details that are far more striking than
+any as yet mentioned,&mdash;details that could never have been conjured up by
+the fancy of any mediæval European. <span class="sidenote">"Savages" unknown to mediæval Europeans.</span>
+We must bear in mind that "savages,"
+whether true savages or people in the lower status of barbarism, were
+practically unknown to Europeans before the fifteenth century. There
+were no such people in Europe or in any part of Asia or Africa visited
+by Europeans before the great voyages of the Portuguese. Mediæval
+Europeans knew nothing whatever about people who would show surprise at
+the sight of an iron tool<a id="footnotetag217" name="footnotetag217"></a><a href="#footnote217" title="Go to footnote 217"><span class="small">[217]</span></a> or frantic terror at the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page186" name="page186"></a>(p. 186)</span> voice
+of a bull, or who would eagerly trade off valuable property for
+worthless trinkets. Their imagination might be up to inventing
+hobgoblins and people with heads under their shoulders,<a id="footnotetag218" name="footnotetag218"></a><a href="#footnote218" title="Go to footnote 218"><span class="small">[218]</span></a> but it was
+not up to inventing such simple touches of nature as these. Bearing this
+in mind, let us observe that Thorfinn found the natives of Vinland eager
+to give valuable furs<a id="footnotetag219" name="footnotetag219"></a><a href="#footnote219" title="Go to footnote 219"><span class="small">[219]</span></a> in exchange for <span class="pagenum"><a id="page187" name="page187"></a>(p. 187)</span> little strips of
+scarlet cloth to bind about their heads. When the Northmen found the
+cloth growing scarce they cut it into extremely narrow strips, but the
+desire of the natives was so great that they would still give a whole
+skin for the smallest strip. <span class="sidenote">The natives of Vinland.</span>
+They wanted also to buy weapons, but
+Thorfinn forbade his men to sell them. One of the natives picked up an
+iron hatchet and cut wood with it; one after another tried and admired
+it; at length one tried it on a stone and broke its edge, and then they
+scornfully threw it down.<a id="footnotetag220" name="footnotetag220"></a><a href="#footnote220" title="Go to footnote 220"><span class="small">[220]</span></a> One day while they were trading,
+Thorfinn's bull ran out before them and bellowed, whereupon the whole
+company was instantly scattered in headlong flight. After this, when
+threatened with an attack by the natives, Thorfinn drew up his men for a
+fight and put the bull in front, very much as Pyrrhus used elephants&mdash;at
+first with success&mdash;to frighten the Romans and their horses.<a id="footnotetag221" name="footnotetag221"></a><a href="#footnote221" title="Go to footnote 221"><span class="small">[221]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page188" name="page188"></a>(p. 188)</span>
+
+<p>These incidents are of surpassing interest, for they were attendant upon
+the first meeting (in all probability) that ever took place between
+civilized Europeans and any people below the upper status of
+barbarism.<a id="footnotetag222" name="footnotetag222"></a><a href="#footnote222" title="Go to footnote 222"><span class="small">[222]</span></a> Who were these natives encountered by Thorfinn? The
+Northmen called them "Skrælings," a name which one is at first sight
+strongly tempted to derive from the Icelandic verb <i>skrækja</i>, identical
+with the English <i>screech</i>. A crowd of excited Indians might most
+appropriately be termed Screechers.<a id="footnotetag223" name="footnotetag223"></a><a href="#footnote223" title="Go to footnote 223"><span class="small">[223]</span></a> This derivation, however, is
+not correct. <span class="sidenote">Meaning of the epithet "Skrælings."</span>
+The word <i>skræling</i> survives in modern Norwegian, and means
+a feeble or puny or <i>insignificant</i> person. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in
+all probability correct, that the name "Skrælings," as applied to the
+natives of America, had no ethnological significance, but simply meant
+"inferior people;" it gave concise expression to the white man's opinion
+that they were "a bad lot." In Icelandic literature the name is usually
+applied to the Eskimos, and hence it has been rashly inferred that
+Thorfinn found Eskimos in Vinland. Such was Rafn's opinion, and since
+his time the commentators <span class="pagenum"><a id="page189" name="page189"></a>(p. 189)</span> have gone off upon a wrong trail and
+much ingenuity has been wasted.<a id="footnotetag224" name="footnotetag224"></a><a href="#footnote224" title="Go to footnote 224"><span class="small">[224]</span></a> It would be well to remember,
+however, that the Europeans of the eleventh century were not
+ethnologists; in meeting these inferior peoples for the first time they
+were more likely to be impressed with the broad fact of their
+inferiority than to be nice in making distinctions. When we call both
+Australians and Fuegians "savages," we do not assert identity or
+relationship between them; and so when the Northmen called Eskimos and
+Indians by the same disparaging epithet, they doubtless simply meant to
+call them savages.</p>
+
+
+<p>Our chronicle describes the Skrælings of Vinland as swarthy in hue,
+ferocious in aspect, with ugly hair, big eyes, and broad cheeks.<a id="footnotetag225" name="footnotetag225"></a><a href="#footnote225" title="Go to footnote 225"><span class="small">[225]</span></a>
+<span class="sidenote">Personal appearance of the Skrælings.</span>
+This will do very well for Indians, except as to the eyes. We are
+accustomed to think of Indian eyes as small; but in this connection it
+is worthy of note that a very keen <span class="pagenum"><a id="page190" name="page190"></a>(p. 190)</span> observer, Marc Lescarbot,
+in his minute and elaborate description of the physical appearance of
+the Micmacs of Acadia, speaks with some emphasis of their large
+eyes.<a id="footnotetag226" name="footnotetag226"></a><a href="#footnote226" title="Go to footnote 226"><span class="small">[226]</span></a> Dr. Storm quite reasonably suggests that the Norse expression
+may refer to the size not of the eye-ball, but of the eye-socket, which
+in the Indian face is apt to be large; and very likely this is what the
+Frenchman also had in mind.</p>
+
+<p>These Skrælings were clad in skins, and their weapons were bows and
+arrows, slings, and stone hatchets. In the latter we may now, I think,
+be allowed to recognize the familiar tomahawk; and when we read that, in
+a sharp fight with the natives, Thorbrand, son of the commander Snorro,
+was slain, and the woman Freydis afterward found his corpse in the
+woods, with a flat stone sticking in the head, and his naked sword lying
+on the ground beside him, we seem to see how it all happened.<a id="footnotetag227" name="footnotetag227"></a><a href="#footnote227" title="Go to footnote 227"><span class="small">[227]</span></a>
+<span class="sidenote">The Skrælings of Vinland were Indians,&mdash;very likely
+Algonquins.</span>
+We
+seem to see the stealthy Indian suddenly dealing the death-blow, and
+then obliged for his own safety to dart away among the trees without
+recovering his tomahawk or seizing the sword. The Skrælings came up the
+river or lake in a swarm of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page191" name="page191"></a>(p. 191)</span> canoes, all yelling at the top of
+their voices (<i>et illi omnes valde acutum ululabant</i>), and, leaping
+ashore, began a formidable attack with slings and arrows. The narrative
+calls these canoes "skin-boats" (<i>hudhkeipar</i>), whence it has been
+inferred that the writer had in mind the <i>kayaks</i> and <i>umiaks</i> of the
+Eskimos.<a id="footnotetag228" name="footnotetag228"></a><a href="#footnote228" title="Go to footnote 228"><span class="small">[228]</span></a> I suspect that the writer did have such boats in mind, and
+accordingly used a word not strictly accurate. Very likely his
+authorities failed to specify a distinction between bark-boats and
+skin-boats, and simply used the handiest word for designating canoes as
+contrasted with their own keeled boats.<a id="footnotetag229" name="footnotetag229"></a><a href="#footnote229" title="Go to footnote 229"><span class="small">[229]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>One other point which must be noticed here in connection with the
+Skrælings is a singular man&oelig;uvre which they are said to have
+practised in the course of the fight. They raised upon the end of a pole
+a big ball, not unlike a sheep's paunch, and of a bluish colour; this
+ball they swung from the pole over the heads of the white men, and it
+fell to the ground with a horrid noise.<a id="footnotetag230" name="footnotetag230"></a><a href="#footnote230" title="Go to footnote 230"><span class="small">[230]</span></a> Now, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page192" name="page192"></a>(p. 192)</span> according to
+Mr. Schoolcraft, this was a mode of fighting formerly common among the
+Algonquins, in New England and elsewhere. This big ball was what Mr.
+Schoolcraft calls the "balista," or what the Indians themselves call the
+"demon's head." It was a large round boulder, sewed up in a new skin and
+attached to a pole. As the skin dried it enwrapped the stone tightly;
+and then it was daubed with grotesque devices in various colours. "It
+was borne by several warriors who acted as balisteers. Plunged upon a
+boat or canoe, it was capable of sinking it. Brought down upon a group
+of men on a sudden, it produced consternation and death."<a id="footnotetag231" name="footnotetag231"></a><a href="#footnote231" title="Go to footnote 231"><span class="small">[231]</span></a> This is a
+most remarkable feature in the narrative, for it shows us the Icelandic
+writer (here manifestly controlled by some authoritative source of
+information) describing a very strange mode of fighting, which we know
+to have been characteristic of the Algonquins. Karlsefni's men do not
+seem to have relished this outlandish style of fighting; they retreated
+along the river bank until they came to a favourable situation among
+some rocks, where they made a stand and beat off their swarming
+assailants. The latter, as soon as they found themselves losing many
+warriors without gaining their point, suddenly <span class="pagenum"><a id="page193" name="page193"></a>(p. 193)</span> turned and fled
+to their canoes, and paddled away with astonishing celerity. Throughout
+the account it seems to me perfectly clear that we are dealing with
+Indians.</p>
+
+<p>The coexistence of so many unmistakable marks of truth in our narratives
+may fairly be said to amount to a demonstration that they must be
+derived, through some eminently trustworthy channel, from the statements
+of intelligent eye-witnesses who took part in the events related. Here
+and there, no doubt, we come upon some improbable incident or a touch of
+superstition, such as we need not go back to the eleventh century to
+<span class="sidenote">The uniped.</span>
+find very common among seamen's narratives; but the remarkable thing in
+the present case is that there are so few such features. One fabulous
+creature is mentioned. Thorfinn and his men saw from their vessel a
+glittering speck upon the shore at an opening in the woods. They hailed
+it, whereupon the creature proceeded to perform the quite human act of
+shooting an arrow, which killed the man at the helm. The narrator calls
+it a "uniped," or some sort of one-footed goblin,<a id="footnotetag232" name="footnotetag232"></a><a href="#footnote232" title="Go to footnote 232"><span class="small">[232]</span></a> but that is
+hardly reasonable, for after the shooting it went on to perform the
+further quite human and eminently Indian-like act of running away.<a id="footnotetag233" name="footnotetag233"></a><a href="#footnote233" title="Go to footnote 233"><span class="small">[233]</span></a>
+Evidently this discreet "uniped" was impressed with the desirableness of
+living to fight <span class="pagenum"><a id="page194" name="page194"></a>(p. 194)</span> another day. In a narrative otherwise
+characterized by sobriety, such an instance of fancy, even supposing it
+to have come down from the original sources, counts for as much or as
+little as Henry Hudson's description of a mermaid.<a id="footnotetag234" name="footnotetag234"></a><a href="#footnote234" title="Go to footnote 234"><span class="small">[234]</span></a></p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>It is now time for a few words upon the character of the records upon
+which our story is based. And first, let us remark upon a possible
+source of misapprehension due to the associations with which a certain
+Norse word has been clothed. The old Norse narrative-writings are called
+"sagas," a word which we are in the habit of using in English as
+equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives.
+<span class="sidenote">Misleading associations with the word "saga."</span>
+To cite a "saga" as
+authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as
+inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale; and I cannot help suspecting that
+to some such misleading association of ideas is due the particular form
+of the opinion expressed some time ago by a committee of the
+Massachusetts Historical Society,&mdash;"that there is the same sort of
+reason for believing in the existence of Leif Ericsson that there is for
+believing in the existence of Agamemnon. They are both traditions
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page195" name="page195"></a>(p. 195)</span> accepted by later writers, and there is no more reason for
+regarding as true the details
+<span class="sidenote">Unfortunate comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon.</span>
+related about the discoveries of the
+former than there is for accepting as historic truth the narrative
+contained in the Homeric poems." The report goes on to observe that "it
+is antecedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the
+early part of the eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed by
+the same sort of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called
+evidence, upon which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history
+rests."<a id="footnotetag235" name="footnotetag235"></a><a href="#footnote235" title="Go to footnote 235"><span class="small">[235]</span></a> The second of these statements is characterized by critical
+moderation, and expresses the inevitable and wholesome reaction against
+the rash enthusiasm of Professor Rafn half a century ago, and the
+vagaries of many an uninstructed or uncritical writer since his time.
+But the first statement is singularly unfortunate. It would be difficult
+to find a comparison more inappropriate than that between Agamemnon and
+Leif, <span class="sidenote">The story of the Trojan War, as we have it, is pure
+folk-lore.</span>
+between the Iliad and the Saga of Eric the Red. The story of the
+Trojan War and its heroes, as we have it in Homer and the Athenian
+dramatists, is pure folk-lore as regards form, and chiefly folk-lore as
+regards contents. It is in a high degree probable that this mass of
+folk-lore surrounds a kernel of plain fact, that in times long before
+the first Olympiad an actual "king of men" at Mycenæ conducted an
+expedition against the great city by the Simois, that the Agamemnon of
+the poet stands in some <span class="pagenum"><a id="page196" name="page196"></a>(p. 196)</span> such relation toward this chieftain as
+that in which the Charlemagne of mediæval romance stands toward the
+mighty Emperor of the West.<a id="footnotetag236" name="footnotetag236"></a><a href="#footnote236" title="Go to footnote 236"><span class="small">[236]</span></a> Nevertheless the story, as we have it,
+is simply folk-lore. If the Iliad and Odyssey contain faint
+reminiscences of actual events, these events are so inextricably wrapped
+up with mythical phraseology that by no cunning of the scholar can they
+be construed into history. The motives and capabilities of the actors
+and the conditions under which they accomplish their destinies are such
+as exist only in fairy-tales. Their world is as remote from that in
+which we live as the world of Sindbad and Camaralzaman; and this is not
+essentially altered by the fact that Homer introduces us to definite
+localities and familiar customs as often as the Irish legends of Finn
+M'Cumhail.<a id="footnotetag237" name="footnotetag237"></a><a href="#footnote237" title="Go to footnote 237"><span class="small">[237]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>It would be hard to find anything more unlike such writings than the
+class of Icelandic sagas to which that of Eric the Red belongs.
+<span class="sidenote">The Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore.</span>
+Here we
+have quiet and sober narrative, not in the least like a fairy-tale, but
+often much like a ship's log. Whatever such narrative may be, it is not
+folk-lore. In act and motive, in its conditions and laws, its world is
+the every-day world in which we live. If now and then a "uniped" happens
+to stray into it, the incongruity <span class="pagenum"><a id="page197" name="page197"></a>(p. 197)</span> is as conspicuous as in the
+case of Hudson's mermaid, or a ghost in a modern country inn; whereas in
+the Homeric fabric the supernatural is warp and woof. To assert a
+likeness between two kinds of literature so utterly different is to go
+very far astray.</p>
+
+<p>As already observed, I suspect that misleading associations with the
+word "saga" may have exerted an unconscious influence in producing this
+particular kind of blunder,&mdash;for it is nothing less than a blunder.
+Resemblance is tacitly assumed between the Iliad and an Icelandic saga.
+Well, between the Iliad and <i>some</i> Icelandic sagas there is a real and
+strong resemblance. In truth these sagas are divisible into two well
+marked and sharply contrasted classes. In the one class belong the Eddic
+Lays, and the <span class="sidenote">Mythical and historical sagas.</span>
+<i>mythical sagas</i>, such as the Volsunga, the stories of
+Ragnar, Frithiof, and others; and along with these, though totally
+different in source, we may for our present purpose group the <i>romantic
+sagas</i>, such as Parceval, Remund, Karlamagnus, and others brought from
+southern Europe. These are alike in being composed of legendary and
+mythical materials; they belong essentially to the literature of
+folk-lore. In the other class come the <i>historical sagas</i>, such as those
+of Njal and Egil, the Sturlunga, and many others, with the numerous
+biographies and annals.<a id="footnotetag238" name="footnotetag238"></a><a href="#footnote238" title="Go to footnote 238"><span class="small">[238]</span></a> These <span class="pagenum"><a id="page198" name="page198"></a>(p. 198)</span> writings give us history,
+and often very good history indeed. "Saga" meant simply any kind of
+literature in narrative form; the good people of Iceland did not happen
+to have such a handy word as "history," which they could keep entire
+when they meant it in sober earnest and chop down into "story" when they
+meant it otherwise. It is very much as if we were to apply the same word
+to the Arthur legends and to William of Malmesbury's judicious and
+accurate chronicles, and call them alike "stories."</p>
+
+<p>The narrative upon which our account of the Vinland voyages is chiefly
+based belongs to the class of historical sagas. It is the Saga of Eric
+the Red, and it exists in two different versions, of which one seems to
+have been made in the north, the other in the west, of Iceland. The
+western version is the earlier and in some respects the better.
+<span class="sidenote">The western or Hauks-bók version of Eric the Red's Saga.</span>
+It is
+found in two vellums, that of the great collection known as <i>Hauks-bók</i>
+(AM. 544), and that which is simply known as AM. 557 from its catalogue
+number in Arni Magnusson's collection. Of these the former, which is the
+best preserved, was written in a beautiful hand by Hauk Erlendsson,
+between 1305 and 1334, the year of his death. This western version is
+the one which has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of
+Thorfinn Karlsefni." It is the one to which I have most frequently
+referred in the present chapter.<a id="footnotetag239" name="footnotetag239"></a><a href="#footnote239" title="Go to footnote 239"><span class="small">[239]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page199" name="page199"></a>(p. 199)</span>
+
+<p>The northern version is that which was made about the year 1387 by the
+priest Jón Thórdharson, and contained in the famous compilation known as
+the <i>Flateyar-bók</i>, or <span class="sidenote">The northern or Flateyar-bók version.</span>
+"Flat Island Book."<a id="footnotetag240" name="footnotetag240"></a><a href="#footnote240" title="Go to footnote 240"><span class="small">[240]</span></a> This priest was editing
+the saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson, which is contained in that
+compilation, and inasmuch as Leif Ericsson's presence at King Olaf's
+court was connected both with the introduction of Christianity into
+Greenland and with the discovery of Vinland, Jón paused, after the
+manner of mediæval chroniclers, and inserted then and there what he knew
+about Eric and Leif and Thorfinn. In doing this, he used parts of the
+original saga of Eric the Red (as we find it reproduced in the western
+version), and added thereunto a considerable amount of material
+concerning the Vinland voyages derived from other sources. Jón's version
+thus made has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of Eric the
+Red."<a id="footnotetag241" name="footnotetag241"></a><a href="#footnote241" title="Go to footnote 241"><span class="small">[241]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Now the older version, written at the beginning of the fourteenth
+century, gives an account of things which happened three centuries
+before it was written. A cautious scholar will, as a rule, be slow to
+consider any historical narrative as quite <span class="pagenum"><a id="page200" name="page200"></a>(p. 200)</span> satisfactory
+authority, even when it contains no improbable statements,
+<span class="sidenote">Presumption against sources not contemporary.</span>
+unless it is
+nearly contemporary with the events which it records. Such was the rule
+laid down by the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and it is a very good
+rule; the proper application of it has disencumbered history of much
+rubbish. At the same time, like all rules, it should be used with
+judicious caution and not allowed to run away with us. As applied by
+Lewis to Roman history it would have swept away in one great cataclysm
+not only kings and decemvirs, but Brennus and his Gauls to boot, and
+left us with nothing to swear by until the invasion of Pyrrhus.<a id="footnotetag242" name="footnotetag242"></a><a href="#footnote242" title="Go to footnote 242"><span class="small">[242]</span></a>
+Subsequent research has shown that this was going altogether too far.
+The mere fact of distance in time between a document and the events
+which it records is only negative testimony against its value, for it
+may be a faithful transcript of some earlier document or documents since
+lost. It is so difficult to prove a negative that the mere lapse of time
+simply raises a presumption the weight of which should be estimated by a
+careful survey of all the probabilities in the case. Among the many
+Icelandic vellums that are known to have perished<a id="footnotetag243" name="footnotetag243"></a><a href="#footnote243" title="Go to footnote 243"><span class="small">[243]</span></a> there <span class="pagenum"><a id="page201" name="page201"></a>(p. 201)</span>
+may well have been earlier copies of Eric the Red's Saga.</p>
+
+<p>Hauk Erlendsson reckoned himself a direct descendant, in the eighth
+generation, from Snorro, son of Thorfinn and Gudrid, born in Vinland. He
+was an important personage in Iceland, a man of erudition, author of a
+brief book of contemporary annals and a treatise on arithmetic in which
+he introduced the Arabic numerals into Iceland. In those days the lover
+of books, <span class="sidenote">Hauk Erlendsson and his manuscripts.</span>
+if he would add them to his library, might now and then obtain
+an original manuscript, but usually he had to copy them or have them
+copied by hand. The Hauks-bók, with its 200 skins, one of the most
+extensive Icelandic vellums now in existence, is really Hauk's private
+library, or what there is left of it, and it shows that he was a man who
+knew how to make a good choice of books. He did a good deal of his
+copying himself, and also employed two clerks in the same kind of
+work.<a id="footnotetag244" name="footnotetag244"></a><a href="#footnote244" title="Go to footnote 244"><span class="small">[244]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Now I do not suppose it will occur to any rational being to suggest that
+Hauk may have written down his version of Eric the Red's Saga from an
+oral tradition nearly three centuries old. The narrative could not have
+been so long preserved in its integrity, with so little extravagance of
+statement and so many marks of truthfulness in details foreign to
+ordinary Icelandic experience, if <span class="pagenum"><a id="page202" name="page202"></a>(p. 202)</span> it had been entrusted to
+oral tradition alone. <span class="sidenote">The story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's time
+by oral tradition only.</span>
+One might as well try to imagine Drake's "World
+Encompassed" handed down by oral tradition from the days of Queen
+Elizabeth to the days of Queen Victoria. Such transmission is possible
+enough with heroic poems and folk-tales, which deal with a few dramatic
+situations and a stock of mythical conceptions familiar at every
+fireside; but in a simple matter-of-fact record of sailors' observations
+and experiences on a strange coast, oral tradition would not be long in
+distorting and jumbling the details into a result quite undecipherable.
+The story of the Zeno brothers, presently to be cited, shows what
+strange perversions occur, even in written tradition, when the copyist,
+instead of faithfully copying records of unfamiliar events, tries to
+edit and amend them. One cannot reasonably doubt that Hauk's vellum of
+Eric the Red's Saga, with its many ear-marks of truth above mentioned,
+was copied by him&mdash;and quite carefully and faithfully withal&mdash;from some
+older vellum not now forthcoming.</p>
+
+<p>As we have no clue, however, beyond the internal evidence, to the age or
+character of the sources from which Hauk copied, <span class="sidenote">Allusions to Vinland in other documents.</span>
+there is nothing left
+for us to do but to look into other Icelandic documents, to see if
+anywhere they betray a knowledge of Vinland and the voyages thither.
+Incidental references to Vinland, in narratives concerned with other
+matters, are of great significance in this connection; for they imply on
+the part of the narrator a presumption that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page203" name="page203"></a>(p. 203)</span> his readers
+understand such references, and that it is not necessary to interrupt
+his story in order to explain them. Such incidental references imply the
+existence, during the interval between the Vinland voyages and Hauk's
+manuscript, of many intermediate links of sound testimony that have
+since dropped out of sight; and therefore they go far toward removing
+whatever presumption may be alleged against Hauk's manuscript because of
+its distance from the events.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Eyrbyggja Saga, written between 1230 and 1260, is largely
+devoted to the settlement of Iceland, and is full of valuable notices of
+the heathen institutions and customs of the tenth century. <span class="sidenote">Eyrbyggja Saga.</span>
+The
+Eyrbyggja, having occasion to speak of Thorbrand Snorrason, observes
+incidentally that he went from Greenland to Vinland with Karlsefni and
+was killed in a battle with the Skrælings.<a id="footnotetag245" name="footnotetag245"></a><a href="#footnote245" title="Go to footnote 245"><span class="small">[245]</span></a> We have already
+mentioned the death of this Thorbrand, and how Freydis found his body in
+the woods.</p>
+
+<p>Three Icelandic tracts on geography, between the twelfth and fourteenth
+centuries, mention Helluland and Vinland, and in two of these accounts
+Markland is interposed between Helluland and Vinland.<a id="footnotetag246" name="footnotetag246"></a><a href="#footnote246" title="Go to footnote 246"><span class="small">[246]</span></a> One of these
+tracts mentions the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn. It forms part of an
+essay called "Guide to the Holy Land," by <span class="sidenote">The abbot Nikulas, etc.</span>
+Nikulas <span class="pagenum"><a id="page204" name="page204"></a>(p. 204)</span> Sæmundsson,
+abbot of Thvera, in the north of Iceland, who died 1159. This Nikulas
+was curious in matters of geography, and had travelled extensively.</p>
+
+<p>With the celebrated Ari Thorgilsson, usually known as Fródhi, "the
+learned," we come to testimony nearly contemporaneous in time and
+extremely valuable in character. This erudite priest, born in 1067, was
+the founder of historical writing in Iceland. He was the principal
+author of the <span class="sidenote">Ari Fródhi.</span>
+"Landnáma-bók," already mentioned as a work of thorough
+and painstaking research unequalled in mediæval literature. His other
+principal works were the "Konunga-bók," or chronicle of the kings of
+Norway, and the "Islendinga-bók," or description of Iceland.<a id="footnotetag247" name="footnotetag247"></a><a href="#footnote247" title="Go to footnote 247"><span class="small">[247]</span></a> Ari's
+books, written not in monkish Latin, but in a good vigorous vernacular,
+were a mine of information from which all subsequent Icelandic
+historians were accustomed to draw such treasures as they needed. To his
+diligence and acumen they were all, from Snorro Sturlason down, very
+much indebted. He may be said to have given the tone to history-writing
+in Iceland, and it was a high tone.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately Ari's Islendinga-bók has perished. One cannot help
+suspecting that it may have contained the contemporary materials from
+which Eric the Red's Saga in the Hauks-bók was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page205" name="page205"></a>(p. 205)</span> ultimately
+drawn. For Ari made an abridgment or epitome of his great book, and this
+epitome, commonly known as "Libellus Islandorum," still survives. In it
+Ari makes brief mention of Greenland, and refers to his paternal uncle,
+Thorkell Gellison, as authority for his statements. This Thorkell
+Gellison, of Helgafell, <span class="sidenote">Ari's significant allusion to Vinland.</span>
+a man of high consideration who flourished about
+the middle of the eleventh century, had visited Greenland and talked
+with one of the men who accompanied Eric when he went to settle in
+Brattahlid in 986. From this source Ari gives us the interesting
+information that Eric's party found in Greenland "traces of human
+habitations, fragments of boats, and stone implements; so from this one
+might conclude that people of the kind who inhabited Vinland and were
+known by the (Norse) Greenlanders as Skrælings must have roamed about
+there."<a id="footnotetag248" name="footnotetag248"></a><a href="#footnote248" title="Go to footnote 248"><span class="small">[248]</span></a> Observe the force of this allusion. The settlers in
+Greenland did not at first (nor for a long time) meet with barbarous or
+savage natives there, but only with the vestiges of their former
+presence. But when Ari wrote the above passage, the memory of Vinland
+and its fierce Skrælings was still fresh, and Ari very properly inferred
+from the archæological remains in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page206" name="page206"></a>(p. 206)</span> Greenland that a people
+similar (in point of barbarism) to the Skrælings must have been there.
+Unless Ari and his readers had a distinct recollection of the accounts
+of Vinland, such a reference would have been only an attempt to explain
+the less obscure by the more obscure. It is to be regretted that we have
+in this book no more allusions to Vinland; but if Ari could only leave
+us one such allusion, he surely could not have made that one more
+pointed.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not quite the only reference that Ari makes to Vinland.
+There are three others that must in all probability be assigned to him.
+Two occur in the Landnáma-bók, the first in a passage where mention is
+made of Ari Marsson's voyage to a place in the western ocean near
+Vinland;<a id="footnotetag249" name="footnotetag249"></a><a href="#footnote249" title="Go to footnote 249"><span class="small">[249]</span></a> the only point in this allusion which need here concern us
+is that <span class="sidenote">Other references.</span>
+Vinland is tacitly assumed to be a known geographical situation
+to which others may be referred. The second reference occurs in one of
+those elaborate and minutely specific genealogies in the Landnáma-bók:
+"Their son was Thordhr Hest-höfdhi, father of Karlsefni, who found
+Vinland the Good, Snorri's father," etc.<a id="footnotetag250" name="footnotetag250"></a><a href="#footnote250" title="Go to footnote 250"><span class="small">[250]</span></a> The third reference occurs
+in the Kristni Saga, a kind of supplement to the Landnáma-bók, giving an
+account of the introduction of Christianity into Iceland; here it is
+related how Leif Ericsson came to be called "Leif the Lucky," 1. from
+having rescued a shipwrecked crew off the coast of Greenland, 2. from
+having <span class="pagenum"><a id="page207" name="page207"></a>(p. 207)</span> discovered "Vinland the Good."<a id="footnotetag251" name="footnotetag251"></a><a href="#footnote251" title="Go to footnote 251"><span class="small">[251]</span></a> From these brief
+allusions, and from the general relation in which Ari Fródhi stood to
+later writers, I suspect that if the greater Islendinga-bók had survived
+to our time we should have found in it more about Vinland and its
+discoverers. At any rate, as to the existence of a definite and
+continuous tradition all the way from Ari down to Hauk Erlendsson, there
+can be no question whatever.<a id="footnotetag252" name="footnotetag252"></a><a href="#footnote252" title="Go to footnote 252"><span class="small">[252]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page208" name="page208"></a>(p. 208)</span>
+
+<p>The testimony of Adam of Bremen brings us yet one generation nearer to
+the Vinland voyages, and is very significant. <span class="sidenote">Adam of Bremen.</span>
+Adam was much interested
+in the missionary work in the north of Europe, and in 1073, the same
+year that Hildebrand was elected to the papacy, he published his famous
+"Historia Ecclesiastica" in which he gave an account of the conversion
+of the northern nations from the time of Leo III. to that of
+Hildebrand's predecessor. In prosecuting his studies, Adam made a visit
+to the court of Swend Estridhsen, king of Denmark, nephew of Cnut the
+Great, king of Denmark and England. Swend's reign began in 1047, so that
+Adam's visit must have occurred between that date and 1073. The voyage
+of Leif and Thorfinn would at that time have been within the memory of
+living men, and would be likely to be known in Denmark, because the
+intercourse between the several parts of the Scandinavian world was
+incessant; there was continual coming and going. Adam learned what he
+could of Scandinavian geography, and when he published his history, he
+did just what a modern writer would do under similar circumstances; he
+appended to his book some notes on the geography of those remote
+countries, then so little known to his readers in central and southern
+Europe. After giving some account of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, he
+describes the colony in Iceland, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page209" name="page209"></a>(p. 209)</span> then the further colony
+in Greenland, and concludes by saying that out in that ocean there is
+another country, or island, which has been visited by many persons, and
+is called Vinland because of wild grapes that grow there, out of which a
+very good wine can be made. Either rumour had exaggerated the virtues of
+fox-grape juice, or the Northmen were not such good judges of wine as of
+ale. Adam goes on to say that corn, likewise, grows in Vinland without
+cultivation; and as such a statement to European readers must needs have
+a smack of falsehood, he adds that it is based not upon fable and
+guess-work, but upon "trustworthy reports (<i>certa relatione</i>) of the
+Danes."</p>
+
+
+<p>Scanty as it is, this single item of strictly contemporary testimony is
+very important, because quite incidentally it gives to the later
+accounts such confirmation as to show that they rest upon a solid basis
+of continuous tradition and not upon mere unintelligent hearsay.<a id="footnotetag253" name="footnotetag253"></a><a href="#footnote253" title="Go to footnote 253"><span class="small">[253]</span></a>
+The unvarying character of the tradition, in its essential details,
+indicates that it must have been committed to writing at a very early
+period, probably not later than the time of Ari's uncle Thorkell, who
+was contemporary with Adam of Bremen. If, however, we read the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page210" name="page210"></a>(p. 210)</span>
+whole passage in which Adam's mention of Vinland occurs, it is clear
+from the context that his own information was not derived from an
+inspection of Icelandic documents. He got it, as he tells us, by talking
+with King Swend; and all that he got, or all that he thought worth
+telling, was this curious fact about vines and self-sown corn growing so
+near to Greenland; <span class="sidenote">Adam's misconception of the situation.</span>
+for Adam quite misconceived the situation of Vinland,
+and imagined it far up in the frozen North. After his mention of
+Vinland, the continental character of which he evidently did not
+suspect, he goes on immediately to say, "After this island nothing
+inhabitable is to be found in that ocean, all being covered with
+unendurable ice and boundless darkness." That most accomplished king,
+Harold Hardrada, says Adam, tried not long since to ascertain how far
+the northern ocean extended, and plunged along through this darkness
+until he actually reached the end of the world, and came near tumbling
+off!<a id="footnotetag254" name="footnotetag254"></a><a href="#footnote254" title="Go to footnote 254"><span class="small">[254]</span></a> Thus the worthy Adam, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page211" name="page211"></a>(p. 211)</span> while telling the truth about
+fox-grapes and maize as well as he knew how, spoiled the effect of his
+story by putting Vinland in the Arctic regions. The juxtaposition of
+icebergs and vines was a little too close even for the mediæval mind so
+hospitable to strange yarns. Adam's readers generally disbelieved the
+"trustworthy reports of the Danes," and when they thought of Vinland at
+all, doubtless thought of it as somewhere near the North Pole.<a id="footnotetag255" name="footnotetag255"></a><a href="#footnote255" title="Go to footnote 255"><span class="small">[255]</span></a> We
+shall do well to bear this in mind when we come to consider the
+possibility of Columbus having obtained from Adam of Bremen any hint in
+the least likely to be of use in his own enterprise.<a id="footnotetag256" name="footnotetag256"></a><a href="#footnote256" title="Go to footnote 256"><span class="small">[256]</span></a></p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>To sum up the argument:&mdash;we have in Eric the Red's Saga, as copied by
+Hauk Erlendsson, <span class="sidenote">Summary of the argument.</span>
+a document for the existence of which we are required
+to account. That document <span class="pagenum"><a id="page212" name="page212"></a>(p. 212)</span> contains unmistakable knowledge of
+some things which mediæval Europeans could by no human possibility have
+learned, except through a visit to some part of the coast of North
+America further south than Labrador or Newfoundland. It tells an
+eminently probable story in a simple, straightforward way, agreeing in
+its details with what we know of the North American coast between Point
+Judith and Cape Breton. Its general accuracy in the statement and
+grouping of so many remote details is proof that its statements were
+controlled by an exceedingly strong and steady tradition,&mdash;altogether
+too strong and steady, in my opinion, to have been maintained simply by
+word of mouth. These Icelanders were people so much given to writing
+that their historic records during the Middle Ages were, as the late Sir
+Richard Burton truly observed, more complete than those of any other
+country in Europe.<a id="footnotetag257" name="footnotetag257"></a><a href="#footnote257" title="Go to footnote 257"><span class="small">[257]</span></a> It is probable that the facts mentioned in
+Hauk's document rested upon some kind of a written basis as early as the
+eleventh century; and it seems quite clear that the constant tradition,
+by which all the allusions to Vinland and the Skrælings are controlled,
+had become established by that time. The data are more scanty than we
+could wish, but they all point in the same direction as surely as straws
+blown by a steady wind, and their cumulative force is so great as to
+fall but little short of demonstration. For these reasons it seems to me
+that the Saga of Eric the Red should be accepted as history; and there
+is another reason which might not have counted <span class="pagenum"><a id="page213" name="page213"></a>(p. 213)</span> for much at the
+beginning of this discussion, but at the end seems quite solid and
+worthy of respect. The narrative begins with the colonization of
+Greenland and goes on with the visits to Vinland. It is unquestionably
+sound history for the first part; why should it be anything else for the
+second part? What shall be said of a style of criticism which, in
+dealing with one and the same document, arbitrarily cuts it in two in
+the middle and calls the first half history and the last half legend?
+which accepts its statements as serious so long as they keep to the
+north of the sixtieth parallel, and dismisses them as idle as soon as
+they pass to the south of it? Quite contrary to common sense, I should
+say.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>The only discredit which has been thrown upon the story of the Vinland
+voyages, in the eyes either of scholars or of the general public, has
+arisen from the eager credulity with which ingenious
+<span class="sidenote">Absurd speculations of zealous antiquarians.</span>
+antiquarians have
+now and then tried to prove more than facts will warrant. It is
+peculiarly a case in which the judicious historian has had frequent
+occasion to exclaim, Save me from my friends! The only fit criticism
+upon the wonderful argument from the Dighton inscription is a reference
+to the equally wonderful discovery made by Mr. Pickwick at Cobham;<a id="footnotetag258" name="footnotetag258"></a><a href="#footnote258" title="Go to footnote 258"><span class="small">[258]</span></a>
+and when it was attempted, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page214" name="page214"></a>(p. 214)</span> some sixty years ago, to prove that
+Governor <span class="pagenum"><a id="page215" name="page215"></a>(p. 215)</span> Arnold's old stone windmill at Newport<a id="footnotetag259" name="footnotetag259"></a><a href="#footnote259" title="Go to footnote 259"><span class="small">[259]</span></a> was a
+tower built by the Northmen, no wonder if the exposure of this rather
+laughable notion should have led many people to suppose that the story
+of Leif and Thorfinn had thereby been deprived of some part of its
+support. But the story never rested upon any such evidence, and does not
+call for evidence of such sort. There is nothing in the story to
+indicate that the Northmen ever founded <span class="pagenum"><a id="page216" name="page216"></a>(p. 216)</span> a colony in
+<span class="sidenote">There is no reason for supposing that the Northmen founded a
+colony in Vinland.</span>
+Vinland,
+or built durable buildings there. The distinction implicitly drawn by
+Adam of Bremen, who narrates the colonization of Iceland and Greenland,
+and then goes on to speak of Vinland, not as colonized, but simply as
+discovered, is a distinction amply borne out by our chronicles. Nowhere
+is there the slightest hint of a colony or settlement established in
+Vinland. On the contrary, our plain, business-like narrative tells us
+that Thorfinn Karlsefni tried to found a colony and failed; and it tells
+us why he failed. The Indians were too many for him. The Northmen of the
+eleventh century, without firearms, were in much less favourable
+condition for withstanding the Indians than the Englishmen of the
+seventeenth; and at the former period there existed no cause for
+emigration from Norway and Iceland at all comparable to the economic,
+political, and religious circumstances which, in a later age, sent
+thousands of Englishmen to Virginia and New England. The founding of
+colonies in America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was no
+pastime; it was a tale of drudgery, starvation, and bloodshed, that
+curdles one's blood to read; more attempts failed than succeeded.
+Assuredly Thorfinn gave proof of the good sense ascribed to him when he
+turned his back upon Vinland. But if he or any other Northman had ever
+succeeded in establishing a colony there, can anybody explain why it
+should not have stamped the fact of its existence either upon the soil,
+or upon history, or both, as unmistakably as the colony of Greenland?
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page217" name="page217"></a>(p. 217)</span> Archæological remains of the Northmen abound in Greenland, all
+the way from Immartinek to near Cape Farewell; the existence of one such
+relic on the North American continent has never yet been proved.
+<span class="sidenote">No archæological remains of the Northmen have been found
+south of Davis strait.</span>
+Not a
+single vestige of the Northmen's presence here, at all worthy of
+credence, has ever been found. The writers who have, from time to time,
+mistaken other things for such vestiges, have been led astray because
+they have failed to distinguish between the different conditions of
+proof in Greenland and in Vinland. As Mr. Laing forcibly put the case,
+nearly half a century ago, "Greenland was a colony with communications,
+trade, civil and ecclesiastical establishments, and a considerable
+population," for more than four centuries. "Vinland was only visited by
+flying parties of woodcutters, remaining at the utmost two or three
+winters, but never settling there permanently.... To expect here, as in
+Greenland, material proofs to corroborate the documentary proofs, is
+weakening the latter by linking them to a sort of evidence which, from
+the very nature of the case,&mdash;the temporary visits of a ship's
+crew,&mdash;cannot exist in Vinland, and, as in the case of Greenland, come
+in to support them."<a id="footnotetag260" name="footnotetag260"></a><a href="#footnote260" title="Go to footnote 260"><span class="small">[260]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The most convincing proof that the Northmen never founded a colony in
+America, south of Davis strait, is furnished by the total absence of
+horses, cattle, and other domestic animals from the soil of North
+America until they were brought hither by the Spanish, French, and
+English settlers <span class="pagenum"><a id="page218" name="page218"></a>(p. 218)</span> in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+<span class="sidenote">If the Northmen had founded a successful colony, they would
+have introduced domestic cattle into the North American fauna;</span>
+If the Northmen had ever settled in Vinland, they would have brought
+cattle with them, and if their colony had been successful, it would have
+introduced such cattle permanently into the fauna of the country.
+Indeed, our narrative tells us that Karlsefni's people "had with them
+all kinds of cattle, having the intention to settle in the land if they
+could."<a id="footnotetag261" name="footnotetag261"></a><a href="#footnote261" title="Go to footnote 261"><span class="small">[261]</span></a> Naturally the two things are coupled in the narrator's
+mind. So the Portuguese carried livestock in their earliest
+expeditions to the Atlantic islands;<a id="footnotetag262" name="footnotetag262"></a><a href="#footnote262" title="Go to footnote 262"><span class="small">[262]</span></a> Columbus brought horses and
+cows, with vines and all kinds of grain, on his second voyage to the
+West Indies;<a id="footnotetag263" name="footnotetag263"></a><a href="#footnote263" title="Go to footnote 263"><span class="small">[263]</span></a> when the French, under Baron Léry, made a disastrous
+attempt to found a colony on or about Cape Breton in 1518, they left
+behind them, upon Sable island, a goodly stock of cows and pigs, which
+throve and multiplied long after their owners had gone;<a id="footnotetag264" name="footnotetag264"></a><a href="#footnote264" title="Go to footnote 264"><span class="small">[264]</span></a> the
+Pilgrims at Plymouth had cattle, goats, and swine as early as 1623.<a id="footnotetag265" name="footnotetag265"></a><a href="#footnote265" title="Go to footnote 265"><span class="small">[265]</span></a>
+In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page219" name="page219"></a>(p. 219)</span> community of
+Europeans subsisting anywhere for any length of time without domestic
+animals. We have seen that the Northmen took pains to raise cattle in
+Greenland, and were quick to comment upon the climate of Vinland as
+favourable for pasturage. To suppose that these men ever founded a
+colony in North America, but did not bring domestic animals thither,
+would be absurd. But it would be scarcely less absurd to suppose that
+such animals, having been once fairly introduced into the fauna of North
+America, <span class="sidenote">and such animals could not have vanished and left no trace of
+their existence.</span>
+would afterward have vanished without leaving a vestige of
+their presence. As for the few cattle for which Thorfinn could find room
+in his three or four dragon-ships, we may easily believe that his people
+ate them up before leaving the country, especially since we are told
+they were threatened with famine. But that domestic cattle, after being
+supported on American soil during the length of time involved in the
+establishment of a successful colony (say, for fifty or a hundred
+years), should have disappeared without leaving abundant traces of
+themselves, is simply incredible. Horses and kine are not dependent upon
+man for their existence; when left to themselves, in almost any part of
+the world, they run wild and flourish in what naturalists call a "feral"
+state. Thus we find feral horned cattle in the Falkland and in the
+Ladrone islands, as well as in the ancient Chillingham Park, in
+Northumberland; we find feral pigs in Jamaica; feral European dogs in La
+Plata; feral horses in Turkestan, and also in Mexico, descended from
+Spanish <span class="pagenum"><a id="page220" name="page220"></a>(p. 220)</span> horses.<a id="footnotetag266" name="footnotetag266"></a><a href="#footnote266" title="Go to footnote 266"><span class="small">[266]</span></a> If the Northmen had ever founded a colony
+in Vinland, how did it happen that the English and French in the
+seventeenth century, and from that day to this, have never set eyes upon
+a wild horse, or wild cattle, pigs, or hounds, or any such indication
+whatever of the former presence of civilized Europeans? I do not
+recollect ever seeing this argument used before, but it seems to me
+conclusive. It raises against the hypothesis of a Norse colonization in
+Vinland a presumption extremely difficult if not impossible to
+overcome.<a id="footnotetag267" name="footnotetag267"></a><a href="#footnote267" title="Go to footnote 267"><span class="small">[267]</span></a>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page221" name="page221"></a>(p. 221)</span>
+
+<a id="img011" name="img011"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img011.jpg" width="500" height="394" alt="" title="">
+<p>Ruins of the church at Kakortok.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>As for the colony in Greenland, while its population seems never to have
+exceeded 5,000 or 6,000 souls, it maintained its existence <span class="sidenote">Further fortunes of the Greenland colony.</span>
+and its
+intercourse with Europe uninterruptedly from its settlement in 986, by
+Eric the Red, for more than four hundred years. Early in the fourteenth
+century the West Bygd, or western settlement, near Godthaab, seems to
+have contained ninety farmsteads and four churches; while the East Bygd,
+or eastern settlement, near Julianeshaab, contained one hundred and
+ninety farmsteads, with one cathedral and eleven smaller churches, two
+villages, and three or four monasteries.<a id="footnotetag268" name="footnotetag268"></a><a href="#footnote268" title="Go to footnote 268"><span class="small">[268]</span></a> Between Tunnudliorbik and
+Igaliko fiords, and about thirty miles from the ruined stone houses of
+Brattahlid, there now stands, imposing in its decay, the simple but
+massive structure of Kakortok church, once the "cathedral" church of the
+Gardar bishopric, where the Credo was intoned and censers swung, while
+not less than ten generations lived and died. About the beginning of the
+twelfth century there was a movement at Rome for establishing new
+dioceses in "the islands of the ocean;" in 1106 a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page222" name="page222"></a>(p. 222)</span> bishop's see
+was erected in the north of Iceland, and one at about the same time in
+the Færoes. In 1112, Eric Gnupsson,<a id="footnotetag269" name="footnotetag269"></a><a href="#footnote269" title="Go to footnote 269"><span class="small">[269]</span></a> having been appointed by Pope
+Paschal II. "bishop of Greenland and Vinland <i>in partibus infidelium</i>,"
+went from Iceland to organize his new diocese in Greenland. It is
+mentioned in at least six different vellums that in 1121 <span class="sidenote">Bishop Eric's voyage in search of Vinland, 1121.</span>
+Bishop Eric
+"went in search of Vinland."<a id="footnotetag270" name="footnotetag270"></a><a href="#footnote270" title="Go to footnote 270"><span class="small">[270]</span></a> It is nowhere mentioned that he found
+it, and Dr. Storm thinks it probable that he perished in the enterprise,
+for, within the next year or next but one, the Greenlanders asked for a
+new bishop, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page223" name="page223"></a>(p. 223)</span> and Eric's successor, Bishop Arnold, was
+consecrated in 1124.<a id="footnotetag271" name="footnotetag271"></a><a href="#footnote271" title="Go to footnote 271"><span class="small">[271]</span></a> After Eric there was a regular succession of
+bishops appointed by the papal court, down at least to 1409, and
+seventeen of these bishops are mentioned by name. We do not learn that
+any of them ever repeated Eric's experiment of searching for Vinland. So
+far as existing Icelandic vellums know, there was no voyage to Vinland
+after 1121. Very likely, however, there may have been occasional voyages
+for timber from Greenland to the coast of the American continent, which
+did not attract attention or call for comment in Iceland. This is
+rendered somewhat probable from an entry in the "Elder Skálholt Annals,"
+<span class="sidenote">The ship from Markland, 1347.</span>
+a vellum written about 1362. This informs us that in 1347 "there came a
+ship from Greenland, less in size than small Icelandic trading-vessels.
+It was without an anchor. There were seventeen men on board, and they
+had sailed to Markland, but had afterwards been driven hither by storms
+at sea."<a id="footnotetag272" name="footnotetag272"></a><a href="#footnote272" title="Go to footnote 272"><span class="small">[272]</span></a> <span class="pagenum"><a id="page224" name="page224"></a>(p. 224)</span> This is the latest mention of any voyage to or
+from the countries beyond Greenland.</p>
+
+<p>If the reader is inclined to wonder why a colony could be maintained in
+southern Greenland more easily than on the coasts of Nova Scotia or
+Massachusetts, or even why the Northmen did not at once abandon their
+fiords at Brattahlid and come in a flock to these pleasanter places, he
+must call to mind two important circumstances. First, the settlers in
+southern Greenland did not meet with barbarous natives, but only with
+vestiges of their former presence. It was not until the twelfth century
+that, in roaming the icy deserts of the far north in quest of seals and
+bearskins, the Norse hunters encountered tribes of Eskimo using stone
+knives and whalebone arrow-heads;<a id="footnotetag273" name="footnotetag273"></a><a href="#footnote273" title="Go to footnote 273"><span class="small">[273]</span></a> and it was not until the
+fourteenth century that we hear of their getting into a war with these
+people. <span class="sidenote">The Greenland colony attacked by Eskimos.</span>
+In 1349 the West Bygd was attacked and destroyed by Eskimos; in
+1379 they invaded the East Bygd and wrought sad havoc; and it is
+generally believed that some time after 1409 they completed the
+destruction of the colony.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, the relative proximity of Greenland to the mother country,
+Iceland, made it much easier to sustain a colony there than in the more
+distant Vinland. In colonizing, as in campaigning, distance from one's
+base is sometimes the supreme circumstance. This is illustrated by the
+fact that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page225" name="page225"></a>(p. 225)</span> the very existence of the Greenland colony itself
+depended upon perpetual and untrammelled exchange of commodities with
+Iceland; and when once the source of supply was cut off, the colony soon
+languished. In 1380 and 1387 the crowns of Norway and Denmark descended
+upon Queen Margaret, and soon she made her precious contribution to the
+innumerable swarm of instances that show with how little wisdom the
+world is ruled. She made the trade to <span class="sidenote">Queen Margaret's monopoly, and its baneful effects.</span>
+Greenland, Iceland, and the Færoe
+isles "a royal monopoly which could only be carried on in ships
+belonging to, or licensed by, the sovereign.... Under the monopoly of
+trade the Icelanders could have no vessels, and no object for sailing to
+Greenland; and the vessels fitted out by government, or its lessees,
+would only be ready to leave Denmark or Bergen for Iceland at the season
+they ought to have been ready to leave Iceland to go to Greenland. The
+colony gradually fell into oblivion."<a id="footnotetag274" name="footnotetag274"></a><a href="#footnote274" title="Go to footnote 274"><span class="small">[274]</span></a> When this prohibitory
+management was abandoned after 1534 by Christian III., it was altogether
+too late. Starved by the miserable policy of governmental interference
+with freedom of trade, the little Greenland colony soon became too weak
+to sustain itself against the natives whose hostility had, for half a
+century, been growing more and more dangerous. Precisely when or how
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page226" name="page226"></a>(p. 226)</span> it perished we do not know. The latest notice we have of the
+colony is of a marriage ceremony performed (probably in the Kakortok
+church), in 1409, by Endrede Andreasson, the last bishop.<a id="footnotetag275" name="footnotetag275"></a><a href="#footnote275" title="Go to footnote 275"><span class="small">[275]</span></a> When,
+after three centuries, the great missionary, Hans Egede, visited
+Greenland, in 1721, he found the ruins of farmsteads and villages, the
+population of which had vanished.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>Our account of pre-Columbian voyages to America would be very incomplete
+without some mention of the latest voyage said to have been made by
+European vessels to the ancient settlement of the East Bygd. I refer to
+the famous narrative of the Zeno brothers, <span class="sidenote">The story of the Venetian brothers.</span>
+which has furnished so many
+subjects of contention for geographers that a hundred years ago John
+Pinkerton called it "one of the most puzzling in the whole circle of
+literature."<a id="footnotetag276" name="footnotetag276"></a><a href="#footnote276" title="Go to footnote 276"><span class="small">[276]</span></a> Nevertheless a great deal has been done, chiefly
+through the acute researches of Mr. Richard Henry Major and Baron
+Nordenskjöld, toward clearing up this mystery, so that certain points in
+the Zeno narrative may now be regarded as established;<a id="footnotetag277" name="footnotetag277"></a><a href="#footnote277" title="Go to footnote 277"><span class="small">[277]</span></a> and from
+these essential points we may <span class="pagenum"><a id="page227" name="page227"></a>(p. 227)</span> form an opinion as to the
+character of sundry questionable details.</p>
+
+<p>The Zeno family was one of the oldest and most distinguished in Venice.
+<span class="sidenote">The Zeno family.</span>
+Among its members in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we find a
+doge, several senators and members of the Council of Ten, and military
+commanders of high repute. Of these, Pietro Dracone Zeno, about 1350,
+was captain-general of the Christian league for withstanding the Turks;
+and his son Carlo achieved such success in the war against Genoa that he
+was called the Lion of St. Mark, and his services to Venice were
+compared with those of Camillus to Rome. Now this Carlo had two
+brothers,&mdash;Nicolò, known as "the Chevalier," and Antonio. After the
+close of the Genoese war the Chevalier Nicolò was seized with a desire
+to see the world,<a id="footnotetag278" name="footnotetag278"></a><a href="#footnote278" title="Go to footnote 278"><span class="small">[278]</span></a> and more particularly England and Flanders. So
+about 1390 he fitted up a ship at his own expense, and, passing out from
+the strait of Gibraltar, sailed northward upon the Atlantic.
+<span class="sidenote">Nicolò Zeno wrecked upon one of the Færoe islands, 1390.</span>
+After some
+days of fair weather, he was caught in a storm and blown along for many
+days more, until at length the ship was cast ashore on one of the Færoe
+islands and wrecked, though most of the crew and goods were rescued.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page228" name="page228"></a>(p. 228)</span> According to the barbarous custom of the Middle Ages, some of
+the natives of the island (Scandinavians) came swarming about the
+unfortunate strangers to kill and rob them, but a great chieftain, with
+a force of knights and men-at-arms, arrived upon the spot in time to
+prevent such an outrage. This chief was Henry Sinclair of Roslyn, who in
+1379 had been invested by King Hacon VI., of Norway, with the earldom of
+the Orkneys and Caithness. On learning Zeno's rank and importance,
+Sinclair treated him with much courtesy, and presently a friendship
+sprang up between the two. Sinclair was then engaged with a fleet of
+thirteen vessels in conquering and annexing to his earldom the Færoe
+islands, and on several occasions profited by the military and nautical
+skill of the Venetian captain. Nicolò seems to have enjoyed this
+stirring life, for he presently sent to his brother Antonio in Venice an
+account of it, which induced the latter to come and join him in the
+Færoe islands. Antonio arrived in the course of 1391, and remained in
+the service of Sinclair fourteen years, returning to Venice in time to
+die there in 1406. After Antonio's arrival, his brother Nicolò was
+appointed to the chief command of Sinclair's little fleet, and assisted
+him in taking possession of the Shetland islands, which were properly
+comprised within his earldom. In the course of these adventures, Nicolò
+seems to have had his interest aroused in reports about Greenland. It
+was not more than four or five years since Queen Margaret had undertaken
+to make a royal monopoly of the Greenland trade in furs and whale oil,
+and this would <span class="pagenum"><a id="page229" name="page229"></a>(p. 229)</span> be a natural topic of conversation in the
+Færoes. In July, 1393, or 1394, Nicolò Zeno sailed to Greenland with
+three ships, and visited the East Bygd.
+<span class="sidenote">Nicolò's voyage to Greenland, cir. 1394.</span>
+After spending some time there,
+not being accustomed to such a climate, he caught cold, and died soon
+after his return to the Færoes, probably in 1395. His brother Antonio
+succeeded to his office and such emoluments as pertained to it; and
+after a while, at Earl Sinclair's instigation, he undertook a voyage of
+discovery in the Atlantic ocean, in order to verify some fishermen's
+reports of the existence of land a thousand miles or more to the west.
+One of these fishermen was to serve as guide to the expedition, but
+unfortunately he died three days before the ships were ready to sail.
+Nevertheless, the expedition started,
+<span class="sidenote">Voyage of Earl Sinclair and Antonio Zeno.</span>
+with Sinclair himself on board,
+and encountered vicissitudes of weather and fortune. In fog and storm
+they lost all reckoning of position, and found themselves at length on
+the western coast of a country which, in the Italian narrative, is
+called "Icaria," but which has been supposed, with some probability, to
+have been Kerry, in Ireland. Here, as they went ashore for fresh water,
+they were attacked by the natives and several of their number were
+slain. From this point they sailed out into the broad Atlantic again,
+and reached a place supposed to be Greenland, but which is so vaguely
+described that the identification is very difficult.<a id="footnotetag279" name="footnotetag279"></a><a href="#footnote279" title="Go to footnote 279"><span class="small">[279]</span></a> Our narrative
+here ends <span class="pagenum"><a id="page230" name="page230"></a>(p. 230)</span> somewhat confusedly. We are told that Sinclair
+remained in this place, "and explored the whole of the country with
+great diligence, as well as the coasts on both sides of Greenland."
+Antonio Zeno, on the other hand, returned with part of the fleet to the
+Færoe islands, where he arrived after sailing eastward for about a
+month, during five and twenty days of which he saw no land. After
+relating these things and paying a word of affectionate tribute to the
+virtues of Earl Sinclair, "a prince as worthy of immortal memory as any
+that ever lived for his great bravery and remarkable goodness," Antonio
+closes his letter abruptly: "But of this I will say no more in this
+letter, and hope to be with you very shortly, and to satisfy your
+curiosity on other subjects by word of mouth."<a id="footnotetag280" name="footnotetag280"></a><a href="#footnote280" title="Go to footnote 280"><span class="small">[280]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The person thus addressed by Antonio was his brother, the illustrious
+Carlo Zeno. Soon after reaching home, after this long and eventful
+absence, Antonio died. Besides his letters he had written a more
+detailed account of the affairs in the northern seas. These papers
+remained for more than a century in the palace of the family at Venice,
+until one of the children, in his mischievous play, got hold of them and
+tore them up. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page231" name="page231"></a>(p. 231)</span> This child was Antonio's
+great-great-great-grandson, Nicolò, born in 1515. When this young Nicolò
+had come to middle age, and was a member of the Council of Ten, he
+happened to come across some remnants of these documents, and then all
+at once he remembered with grief how he had, in his boyhood, pulled them
+to pieces.<a id="footnotetag281" name="footnotetag281"></a><a href="#footnote281" title="Go to footnote 281"><span class="small">[281]</span></a> In the light of the rapid progress in geographical
+discovery since 1492, <span class="sidenote">Publication of the remains of the documents by the younger
+Nicolò Zeno.</span>
+this story of distant voyages had now for Nicolò
+an interest such as it could not have had for his immediate ancestors.
+Searching the palace he found a few grimy old letters and a map or
+sailing chart, rotten with age, which had been made or at any rate
+brought home by his ancestor Antonio. Nicolò drew a fresh copy of this
+map, and pieced together the letters as best he could, with more or less
+explanatory text of his own, and the result was the little book which he
+published in 1558.<a id="footnotetag282" name="footnotetag282"></a><a href="#footnote282" title="Go to footnote 282"><span class="small">[282]</span></a></p>
+
+<a id="img012" name="img012"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img012b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img012.jpg" width="400" height="307" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Zeno Map, cir. 1400&mdash;western half &amp; eastern half.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Unfortunately young Nicolò, with the laudable purpose of making it all
+as clear as he could, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page234" name="page234"></a>(p. 234)</span> thought it necessary not simply to
+reproduce the old weather-beaten map, but to amend it by putting on here
+and there such places and names as his diligent perusal of the
+manuscript led him to deem wanting to its completeness.<a id="footnotetag283" name="footnotetag283"></a><a href="#footnote283" title="Go to footnote 283"><span class="small">[283]</span></a> Under the
+most favourable circumstances that is a very difficult sort of thing to
+do, but in this case the circumstances were far from favourable. Of
+course Nicolò got these names and places into absurd <span class="pagenum"><a id="page235" name="page235"></a>(p. 235)</span>
+positions, thus perplexing the map and damaging its reputation. With
+regard to names, there was obscurity enough, to begin with. In the first
+place, they were Icelandic names falling upon the Italian ears of old
+Nicolò and Antonio, <span class="sidenote">Queer transformations of names.</span>
+and spelled by them according to their own notions;
+in the second place, these outlandish names, blurred and defaced withal
+in the weather-stained manuscript, were a puzzle to the eye of young
+Nicolò, who could but decipher them according to <i>his</i> notions. The
+havoc that can be wrought upon winged words, subjected to such
+processes, is sometimes marvellous.<a id="footnotetag284" name="footnotetag284"></a><a href="#footnote284" title="Go to footnote 284"><span class="small">[284]</span></a> Perhaps the slightest sufferer,
+in this case, was the name of the group of islands upon one of which the
+shipwrecked Nicolò was rescued by Sinclair. The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page236" name="page236"></a>(p. 236)</span> name
+<i>Færoislander</i> sounded to Italian ears as <i>Frislanda</i>, and was uniformly
+so written.<a id="footnotetag285" name="footnotetag285"></a><a href="#footnote285" title="Go to footnote 285"><span class="small">[285]</span></a> Then the pronunciation of <i>Shetland</i> was helped by
+prefixing a vowel sound, as is common in Italian, and so it came to be
+<i>Estland</i> and <i>Esland</i>. This led young Nicolò's eye in two or three
+places to confound it with <i>Islanda</i>, or <i>Iceland</i>, and probably in one
+place with <i>Irlanda</i>, or <i>Ireland</i>. Where old Nicolò meant to say that
+the island upon which he was living with Earl Sinclair was somewhat
+larger than Shetland, young Nicolò understood him as saying that it was
+somewhat larger than Ireland; <span class="sidenote">"Frislanda."</span>
+and so upon the amended map "Frislanda"
+appears as one great island surrounded by tiny islands.<a id="footnotetag286" name="footnotetag286"></a><a href="#footnote286" title="Go to footnote 286"><span class="small">[286]</span></a> After the
+publication of this map, in 1558, sundry details were copied from it by
+the new maps of that day, so that even far down into the seventeenth
+century it was common to depict a big "Frislanda" somewhere in
+mid-ocean. When at length it was proved that no such island exists, the
+reputation of the Zeno narrative was seriously damaged. The nadir of
+reaction against it was reached when it was declared to be a tissue of
+lies invented by the younger Nicolò,<a id="footnotetag287" name="footnotetag287"></a><a href="#footnote287" title="Go to footnote 287"><span class="small">[287]</span></a> apparently for the purpose of
+setting up a Venetian claim to the discovery of America.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page237" name="page237"></a>(p. 237)</span>
+
+<p>The narrative, however, not only sets up no such claim, but nowhere
+betrays a consciousness that its incidents entitle it to make such a
+claim. <span class="sidenote">The narrative nowhere makes a claim to the
+"discovery of America."</span>
+It had evidently not occurred to young Nicolò to institute any
+comparison between his ancestors' voyages to Greenland and the voyages
+of Columbus to the western hemisphere, of which <i>we now know</i> Greenland
+to be a part. The knowledge of the North American coast, and of the
+bearing of one fact upon another fact in relation to it, was still, in
+1558, in an extremely vague and rudimentary condition. In the mind of
+the Zeno brothers, as the map shows, Greenland was a European peninsula;
+such was the idea common among mediæval Northmen, as is nowhere better
+illustrated than in this map. Neither in his references to Greenland,
+nor to Estotiland and Drogio, presently to be considered, does young
+Nicolò appear in the light of a man urging or suggesting a "claim." He
+appears simply as a modest and conscientious editor, interested in the
+deeds of his ancestors and impressed with the fact that he has got hold
+of important documents, but intent only upon giving his material as
+correctly as possible, and refraining from all sort of comment except
+such as now <span class="pagenum"><a id="page238" name="page238"></a>(p. 238)</span> and then seems needful to explain the text as he
+himself understands it.</p>
+
+<p>The identification of "Frislanda" with the Færoe islands was put beyond
+doubt by the discovery that the "Zichmni" of the narrative means Henry
+Sinclair; <span class="sidenote">Earl Sinclair.</span>
+and, in order to make this discovery, it was only necessary to
+know something about the history of the Orkneys; hence old Pinkerton, as
+above remarked, got it right. The name "Zichmni" is, no doubt, a fearful
+and wonderful bejugglement; but Henry Sinclair is a personage well known
+to history in that corner of the world, and the deeds of "Zichmni," as
+recounted in the narrative, are neither more nor less than the deeds of
+Sinclair. Doubtless Antonio spelled the name in some queer way of his
+own, and then young Nicolò, unable to read his ancestor's pot-hooks
+where&mdash;as in the case of proper names&mdash;there was no clue to guide him,
+contrived to make it still queerer. Here we have strong proof of the
+genuineness of the narrative. If Nicolò had been concocting a story in
+which Earl Sinclair was made to figure, he would have obtained his
+knowledge from literary sources, and thus would have got his names
+right; the earl might have appeared as Enrico de Santo Claro, but not as
+"Zichmni." It is not at all likely, however, that any literary knowledge
+of Sinclair and his doings was obtainable in Italy in the sixteenth
+century. The Zeno narrative, moreover, in its references to Greenland in
+connection with the Chevalier Nicolò's visit to the East Bygd, shows a
+topographical knowledge that was otherwise <span class="pagenum"><a id="page239" name="page239"></a>(p. 239)</span> quite inaccessible
+to the younger Nicolò. Late in the fourteenth century Ivar Bardsen,
+steward to the Gardar bishopric, wrote a description of
+<span class="sidenote">Bardsen's "Description of Greenland."</span>
+Greenland, with
+sailing directions for reaching it, which modern research has proved to
+have been accurate in every particular. Bardsen's details and those of
+the Zeno narrative mutually corroborate each other. But Bardsen's book
+did not make its way down into Europe until the very end of the
+sixteenth century,<a id="footnotetag288" name="footnotetag288"></a><a href="#footnote288" title="Go to footnote 288"><span class="small">[288]</span></a> and then amid the dense ignorance prevalent
+concerning Greenland its details were not understood until actual
+exploration within the last seventy years has at length revealed their
+meaning. The genuineness of the Zeno narrative is thus conclusively
+proved by its knowledge of Arctic geography, such as could have been
+obtained only by a visit to the far North at a time before the Greenland
+colony had finally lost touch with its mother country.</p>
+
+<p>The visit of the Chevalier Nicolò, therefore, about 1394, has a peculiar
+interest as the last distinct glimpse afforded us of the colony founded
+by Eric the Red before its melancholy disappearance from history.
+Already the West Bygd had ceased to exist. Five and forty years before
+that time it <span class="pagenum"><a id="page240" name="page240"></a>(p. 240)</span> had been laid waste and its people massacred by
+Eskimos, and trusty Ivar Bardsen, tardily sent with a small force to the
+rescue, found nothing left alive but a few cattle and sheep running
+wild.<a id="footnotetag289" name="footnotetag289"></a><a href="#footnote289" title="Go to footnote 289"><span class="small">[289]</span></a>
+Nicolò Zeno, arriving in the
+<span class="sidenote">The monastery of St. Olaus and its hot spring.</span>
+East Bygd, found there a
+monastery dedicated to St. Olaus, a name which in the narrative has
+become St. Thomas. To this monastery came friars from Norway and other
+countries, but for the most part from Iceland.<a id="footnotetag290" name="footnotetag290"></a><a href="#footnote290" title="Go to footnote 290"><span class="small">[290]</span></a> It stood "hard by a
+hill which vomited fire like Vesuvius and Etna." There was also in the
+neighbourhood a spring of hot water which the ingenious friars conducted
+in pipes into their monastery and church, thereby keeping themselves
+comfortable in the coldest weather. This water, as it came into the
+kitchen, was hot enough to boil meats and vegetables. The monks even
+made use of it in warming covered gardens or hot-beds in which they
+raised sundry fruits and herbs that in milder climates grow out of
+doors.<a id="footnotetag291" name="footnotetag291"></a><a href="#footnote291" title="Go to footnote 291"><span class="small">[291]</span></a> "Hither in summertime <span class="pagenum"><a id="page241" name="page241"></a>(p. 241)</span> come many vessels from ...
+the Cape above Norway, and from Trondheim, and bring the friars all
+sorts of comforts, taking in exchange fish ... and skins of different
+kinds of animals.... There are continually in the harbour a number of
+vessels detained by the sea being frozen, and waiting for the next
+season to melt the ice."<a id="footnotetag292" name="footnotetag292"></a><a href="#footnote292" title="Go to footnote 292"><span class="small">[292]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>This mention of the volcano and the hot spring is very interesting. In
+the Miocene period the Atlantic <span class="sidenote">Volcanoes of the north Atlantic ridge.</span>
+ridge was one of the principal 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.<a id="footnotetag293" name="footnotetag293"></a><a href="#footnote293" title="Go to footnote 293"><span class="small">[293]</span></a> Midway between Iceland and
+Greenland there appears to have stood, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page242" name="page242"></a>(p. 242)</span> in the Middle Ages, a
+small volcanic island discovered by that Gunnbjörn who first went to
+Greenland. It was known as <span class="sidenote">Fate of Gunnbjörn's Skerries, 1456.</span>
+Gunnbjörn's Skerries, and was described by
+Ivar Bardsen.<a id="footnotetag294" name="footnotetag294"></a><a href="#footnote294" title="Go to footnote 294"><span class="small">[294]</span></a> 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 hæc anno Domini 1456 fuit totaliter combusta,"&mdash;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.<a id="footnotetag295" name="footnotetag295"></a><a href="#footnote295" title="Go to footnote 295"><span class="small">[295]</span></a> 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.<a id="footnotetag296" name="footnotetag296"></a><a href="#footnote296" title="Go to footnote 296"><span class="small">[296]</span></a> Now
+in <span class="sidenote">Volcanic phenomena in Greenland.</span>
+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. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page243" name="page243"></a>(p. 243)</span> These springs seem to be the same that
+were described five hundred years ago by Ivar Bardsen. As to volcanoes,
+it has been generally assumed 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.<a id="footnotetag297" name="footnotetag297"></a><a href="#footnote297" title="Go to footnote 297"><span class="small">[297]</span></a> 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&mdash;too
+strange to have been invented, but altogether probable in itself&mdash;that
+adds to the credit of the narrative.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far, in dealing with the places actually visited by Nicolò 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-bók. 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 <span class="pagenum"><a id="page244" name="page244"></a>(p. 244)</span> in order to verify certain reports of the
+existence of land more than a thousand miles west of the Færoe islands.</p>
+
+<p>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 <span class="sidenote">Estotiland.</span>
+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.<a id="footnotetag298" name="footnotetag298"></a><a href="#footnote298" title="Go to footnote 298"><span class="small">[298]</span></a> There
+happened, however, to be one European among them, who had himself been
+cast ashore 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 nobody could read.<a id="footnotetag299" name="footnotetag299"></a><a href="#footnote299" title="Go to footnote 299"><span class="small">[299]</span></a> All kinds of metals
+abounded, and especially gold.<a id="footnotetag300" name="footnotetag300"></a><a href="#footnote300" title="Go to footnote 300"><span class="small">[300]</span></a> 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 compass. For this reason, they
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page245" name="page245"></a>(p. 245)</span> held the newcomers in high estimation.<a id="footnotetag301" name="footnotetag301"></a><a href="#footnote301" title="Go to footnote 301"><span class="small">[301]</span></a> The name of the
+country was Estotiland.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>For some reason not specified an expedition was undertaken by people
+from Estotiland to a country to the southward named <span class="sidenote">Drogio.</span>
+Drogio, and these
+Norse mariners, or some of them, because they understood the compass,
+were put in charge of it.<a id="footnotetag302" name="footnotetag302"></a><a href="#footnote302" title="Go to footnote 302"><span class="small">[302]</span></a> But the people of Drogio were cannibals,
+and the people from Estotiland on their arrival were taken prisoners and
+devoured,&mdash;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, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page246" name="page246"></a>(p. 246)</span> so that he was
+passed about among more than twenty chiefs, and "wandering up and down
+the country without any fixed abode, ... he became acquainted with all
+those parts."</p>
+
+<p>And now comes quite an interesting passage. The Fisherman "says that it
+is a very great country, and, as it were, a new world; the <span class="sidenote">Inhabitants of Drogio and the countries beyond.</span>
+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 God's speed, and remained themselves where
+they were. Accordingly, he bade them farewell, and made his escape
+through the woods in the direction of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page247" name="page247"></a>(p. 247)</span> 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 passing
+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."<a id="footnotetag303" name="footnotetag303"></a><a href="#footnote303" title="Go to footnote 303"><span class="small">[303]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<p>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 <span class="sidenote">The Fisherman's return to "Frislanda."</span>
+Færoes after
+these six and twenty years of strange adventures. It was apparently the
+Fisherman's description of Estotiland as a very rich country (<i>paese
+ricchissimo</i>) 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page248" name="page248"></a>(p. 248)</span> 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>With Drogio, however, it is otherwise. The description of <span class="sidenote">Was the account of Drogio woven into the narrative by the
+younger Nicolò?</span>
+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
+Nicolò 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 Nicolò 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? <span class="pagenum"><a id="page249" name="page249"></a>(p. 249)</span> 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 Nicolò, still remains valid and
+trustworthy.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose we take the other alternative. As in the earlier part of the
+story we feel sure that young Nicolò must have reproduced the ancestral
+documents 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.
+<span class="sidenote">Or does it represent actual experiences in North America?</span>
+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 Færoe
+islands to tell the tale! Could such a thing be possible? Was anything
+of the sort ever done before or since?</p>
+
+<p>Yes: something of the sort appears to have been done about ten years
+after the Zeno narrative was published. In October, 1568, that great
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page250" name="page250"></a>(p. 250)</span> sailor, Sir John Hawkins, by reason of scarcity of food,
+<span class="sidenote">The case of David Ingram, 1568.</span>
+was
+compelled to set about a hundred men ashore 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.<a id="footnotetag304" name="footnotetag304"></a><a href="#footnote304" title="Go to footnote 304"><span class="small">[304]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page251" name="page251"></a>(p. 251)</span>
+
+<p>Far more important, historically, and in many ways more instructive than
+the wanderings of David Ingram, was the journey of <span class="sidenote">The case of Cabeza de Vaca, 1528-36.</span>
+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.<a id="footnotetag305" name="footnotetag305"></a><a href="#footnote305" title="Go to footnote 305"><span class="small">[305]</span></a> 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 <span class="pagenum"><a id="page252" name="page252"></a>(p. 252)</span>
+undetermined value.<a id="footnotetag306" name="footnotetag306"></a><a href="#footnote306" title="Go to footnote 306"><span class="small">[306]</span></a> 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 analogy 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.</p>
+
+<p>Now if the younger Nicolò 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>It was this and other unrecorded but possible
+<span class="sidenote">There may have been unrecorded instances of visits to North
+America.</span>
+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 <span class="pagenum"><a id="page253" name="page253"></a>(p. 253)</span> that our scanty
+records&mdash;naturally somewhat perplexed and dim, as treating of remote and
+unknown places&mdash;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.<a id="footnotetag307" name="footnotetag307"></a><a href="#footnote307" title="Go to footnote 307"><span class="small">[307]</span></a></p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>Nothing can be clearer, however, from a survey of the whole subject,
+than that these <span class="sidenote">The pre-Columbian voyages made no real contributions to
+geographical knowledge;</span>
+pre-Columbian voyages were quite barren of results of
+historic importance. In point of colonization they produced the two
+ill-fated settlements on the Greenland coast, and nothing more.
+Otherwise they made no real addition to the stock of geographical
+knowledge, they wrought no effect whatever upon the European mind
+outside of Scandinavia, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page254" name="page254"></a>(p. 254)</span> and even in Iceland itself the mention
+of coasts beyond Greenland awakened no definite ideas, and, except for a
+brief season, excited no interest. The Zeno narrative indicates that the
+Vinland voyages had practically lapsed from memory before the end of the
+fourteenth century.<a id="footnotetag308" name="footnotetag308"></a><a href="#footnote308" title="Go to footnote 308"><span class="small">[308]</span></a> Scholars familiar with saga literature of
+course knew the story; it was just at this time that Jón Thórdharson
+wrote out the version of it which is preserved in the Flateyar-bók. But
+by the general public it must have been forgotten, or else the
+Fisherman's tale of Estotiland and Drogio would surely have awakened
+reminiscences of Markland and Vinland, and some traces of this would
+have appeared in Antonio's narrative or upon his map. The principal
+naval officer of the Færoes, and personal friend of the sovereign, after
+dwelling several years among these Northmen, whose intercourse with
+their brethren in Iceland was frequent, apparently knew nothing of Leif
+or Thorfinn, or the mere names of the coasts which they had visited.
+<span class="sidenote">and were in no true sense a Discovery of America.</span>
+Nothing had been accomplished by those voyages which could properly be
+called a contribution to geographical knowledge. To speak of them as
+constituting, in any legitimate sense of the phrase, a Discovery of
+America is simply absurd. Except for Greenland, which was supposed to be
+a part of the European world, America remained as much undiscovered
+after the eleventh century as before. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page255" name="page255"></a>(p. 255)</span> In the midsummer of 1492
+it needed to be discovered as much as if Leif Ericsson or the whole race
+of Northmen had never existed.</p>
+
+<p>As these pre-Columbian voyages produced no effect in the eastern
+hemisphere, except to leave in Icelandic literature a scanty but
+interesting record, so in the western hemisphere they seem to have
+produced no effect beyond cutting down a few trees and killing a few
+Indians. In the outlying world of Greenland it is not improbable that
+the blood of the Eskimos may have received some slight Scandinavian
+infusion. But upon the aboriginal world of the red men, from Davis
+strait to Cape Horn, it is not likely that any impression of any sort
+was ever made. It is in the highest degree probable that Leif Ericsson
+and his friends made a few voyages to <i>what we now know to have been</i>
+the coast of America; but it is an abuse of language to say that they
+"discovered" America. In no sense was any real contact established
+between the eastern and the western halves of our planet until the great
+voyage of Columbus in 1492.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page256" name="page256"></a>(p. 256)</span> CHAPTER III.<br>
+
+<span class="smaller">EUROPE AND CATHAY.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The question has sometimes been asked, Why did the knowledge of the
+voyages to Vinland so long remain confined to the Scandinavian people or
+a portion of them, and then lapse into oblivion, insomuch that it did
+not become a matter of notoriety in Europe until after the publication
+of the celebrated book of <span class="sidenote">Why the voyages of the Northmen were not followed up.</span>
+Thormodus Torfæus in 1705? Why did not the
+news of the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn spread rapidly over Europe,
+like the news of the voyage of Columbus? and why was it not presently
+followed, like the latter, by a rush of conquerors and colonizers across
+the Atlantic?</p>
+
+<p>Such questions arise from a failure to see historical events in their
+true perspective, and to make the proper allowances for the manifold
+differences in knowledge and in social and economic conditions which
+characterize different periods of history. In the present case, the
+answer is to be found, first, in the geographical ignorance which
+prevented the Northmen from realizing in the smallest degree what such
+voyages really signified or were going to signify to posterity; and,
+secondly, in the political and commercial condition of Europe at the
+close of the tenth century.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page257" name="page257"></a>(p. 257)</span>
+
+<p>In the first place the route which the Norse voyagers pursued, from
+Iceland to Greenland and thence to Vinland, was not such as to give
+them, in their ignorance of the shape of the earth, and with their
+imperfect knowledge of latitude and longitude, any adequate gauge
+wherewith to measure their achievement. <span class="sidenote">Ignorance of geography.</span>
+The modern reader, who has in
+his mind a general picture of the shape of the northern Atlantic ocean
+with its coasts, must carefully expel that picture before he can begin
+to realize how things must have seemed to the Northmen. None of the
+Icelandic references to Markland and Vinland betray a consciousness that
+these countries belong to a geographical world outside of Europe. There
+was not enough organized geographical knowledge for that. They were
+simply conceived as remote places beyond Greenland, inhabited by
+inferior but dangerous people. The accidental finding of such places
+served neither to solve any great commercial problem nor to gratify and
+provoke scientific curiosity. It was, therefore, not at all strange that
+it bore no fruit.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, even if it had been realized, and could have been duly
+proclaimed throughout Europe, that across the broad Atlantic a new world
+lay open for colonization, Europe could not have taken advantage of the
+fact. Now and then a ship might make its way, or be blown,
+<span class="sidenote">Lack of instruments for ocean navigation.</span>
+across the
+waste of waters without compass or astrolabe; but until these
+instruments were at hand anything like systematic ocean navigation was
+out of the question; and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page258" name="page258"></a>(p. 258)</span> from a colonization which could only
+begin by creeping up into the Arctic seas and taking Greenland on the
+way, not much was to be expected, after all.</p>
+
+<p>But even if the compass and other facilities for oceanic navigation had
+been at hand, the state of Europe in the days of Eric the Red was not
+such as to afford surplus energy for distant enterprise of this sort.
+Let us for a moment recall what was going on in Europe in the year of
+grace 1000, just enough to get a suggestive picture of the time. In
+England the Danish invader, fork-bearded Swend, father of the great
+Cnut, was wresting the kingship from the feeble grasp of Ethelred the
+Redeless. <span class="sidenote">Europe in the year 1000.</span>
+In Gaul the little duchy of France, between the Somme and the
+Loire, had lately become the kingdom of France, and its sovereign, Hugh
+Capet, had succeeded to feudal rights of lordship over the great dukes
+and counts whose territories surrounded him on every side; and now
+Hugh's son, Robert the Debonair, better hymn-writer than warrior, was
+waging a doubtful struggle with these unruly vassals. It was not yet in
+any wise apparent what the kingdoms of England and France were going to
+be. In Germany the youthful Otto III., the "wonder of the world," had
+just made his weird visit to the tomb of his mighty predecessor at
+Aachen, before starting on that last journey to Rome which was so soon
+to cost him his life. Otto's teacher, Gerbert, most erudite of
+popes,&mdash;too learned not to have had dealings with the Devil,&mdash;was
+beginning to raise the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page259" name="page259"></a>(p. 259)</span> papacy out of the abyss of infamy into
+which the preceding age had seen it sink, and so to prepare the way for
+the far-reaching reforms of Hildebrand. The boundaries of Christendom
+were as yet narrow and insecure. With the overthrow of Olaf Tryggvesson
+in this year 1000, and the temporary partition of Norway between Swedes
+and Danes, the work of Christianizing the North seemed, for the moment,
+to languish. Upon the eastern frontier the wild Hungarians had scarcely
+ceased to be a terror to Europe, and in this year Stephen, their first
+Christian king, began to reign. At the same time the power of heretical
+Bulgaria, which had threatened to overwhelm the Eastern Empire, was
+broken down by the sturdy blows of the Macedonian emperor Basil. In this
+year the Christians of Spain met woful defeat at the hands of Almansor,
+and there seemed no reason why the Mussulman rule over the greater part
+of that peninsula should not endure forever.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, from end to end, Europe was a scene of direst confusion, and
+though, as we now look back upon it, the time seems by no means devoid
+of promise, there was no such cheering outlook then. Nowhere were the
+outlines of kingdoms or the ownership of crowns definitely settled.
+Private war was both incessant and universal; the Truce of God had not
+yet been proclaimed.<a id="footnotetag309" name="footnotetag309"></a><a href="#footnote309" title="Go to footnote 309"><span class="small">[309]</span></a> As for the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page260" name="page260"></a>(p. 260)</span> common people, their
+hardships were well-nigh incredible. Amid all this anarchy and misery,
+at the close of the thousandth year from the birth of Christ, the belief
+was quite common throughout Europe that the Day of Judgment was at hand
+for a world grown old in wickedness and ripe for its doom.</p>
+
+<p>It hardly need be argued that a period like this, in which all the vital
+energy in Europe was consumed in the adjustment of affairs at home, was
+not fitted for colonial enterprises. Before a people can send forth
+colonies it must have solved the problem of political life so far as to
+ensure stability of trade. <span class="sidenote">The condition of things was not such as to favour colonial
+enterprise.</span>
+It is the mercantile spirit that has
+supported modern colonization, aided by the spirit of intellectual
+curiosity and the thirst for romantic adventure. In the eleventh century
+there was no intellectual curiosity outside the monastery walls, nor had
+such a feeling become enlisted in the service of commerce. Of trade
+there was indeed, even in western Europe, a considerable amount, but the
+commercial marine was in its infancy, and on land the trader suffered
+sorely at the hands of the robber baron. In those days the fashionable
+method of compounding with your creditors was, not to offer them fifty
+cents on the dollar, but to inveigle them into your castle and broil
+them over a slow fire.</p>
+
+<p>In so far as the attention of people in Europe <span class="pagenum"><a id="page261" name="page261"></a>(p. 261)</span> was called to
+any quarter of the globe outside of the seething turbulence in which
+they dwelt, it was directed toward Asia. Until after 1492, Europe stood
+with her back toward the Atlantic. What there might be out beyond that
+"Sea of Darkness" (<i>Mare Tenebrosum</i>), as it used commonly to be called,
+was a question of little interest and seems to have excited no
+speculation. <span class="sidenote">The outlook of Europe was toward Asia.</span>
+In the view of mediæval Europe the inhabited world was cut
+off on the west by this mysterious ocean, and on the south by the
+burning sands of Sahara; but eastward it stretched out no one knew how
+far, and in that direction dwelt tribes and nations which Europe, from
+time immemorial, had reason to fear. As early as the time of Herodotus,
+the secular antagonism between Europe and Asia had become a topic of
+reflection among the Greeks, and was wrought with dramatic effect by
+that great writer into the structure of his history, culminating in the
+grand and stirring scenes of the Persian war. A century and a half later
+the conquests of Alexander the Great added a still more impressive
+climax to the story. The struggle was afterward long maintained between
+Roman and Parthian, but from the fifth century after Christ onward
+through the Middle Ages, it seemed as if the Oriental world would never
+rest until it had inflicted the extremities of retaliation upon Europe.
+Whether it was the heathen of the steppes who were in question, from
+Attila in the fifth century to Batu Khan in the thirteenth, or the
+followers of the Prophet, who tore away from Christendom the southern
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page262" name="page262"></a>(p. 262)</span> shores of the Mediterranean, and held Spain in their iron
+grasp, while from age to age they exhausted their strength in vain
+against the Eastern Empire, the threatening danger was always coming
+with the morning sun; whatever might be the shock that took the
+attention of Europe away from herself, it directed it upon Asia. This is
+a fact of cardinal importance for us, inasmuch as it was directly
+through the interest, more and more absorbing, which Europe felt in Asia
+that the discovery of the western hemisphere was at last effected.</p>
+
+<p>It was not only in war, but in commerce, that the fortunes of Europe
+were dependent upon her relations with Asia. <span class="sidenote">Routes of trade between Europe and Asia.</span>
+Since prehistoric times
+there has always been some commercial intercourse between the eastern
+shores of the Mediterranean and the peninsula of Hindustan. Tyre and
+Sidon carried on such trade by way of the Red Sea.<a id="footnotetag310" name="footnotetag310"></a><a href="#footnote310" title="Go to footnote 310"><span class="small">[310]</span></a> After Alexander
+had led his army to Samarcand and to the river Hyphasis, the
+acquaintance of the Greeks with Asia was very considerably increased,
+and important routes of trade were established. One was practically the
+old Ph&oelig;nician route, with its western terminus moved from Tyre to
+Alexandria. Another was by way of the Caspian sea, up the river Oxus,
+and thence with camels to the banks of the Indus.<a id="footnotetag311" name="footnotetag311"></a><a href="#footnote311" title="Go to footnote 311"><span class="small">[311]</span></a> An intermediate
+route was through Syria and by way of the Euphrates and the Persian
+gulf; the route which at one time made the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page263" name="page263"></a>(p. 263)</span> greatness of
+Palmyra. After the extension of Roman sway to the Nile, the Euphrates,
+and the Euxine, these same routes continued to be used. The European
+commodities carried to India were light woollen cloths, linens, coral,
+black lead, various kinds of glass vessels, and wine. In exchange for
+these the traders brought back to Europe divers aromatic spices, black
+pepper, ivory, cotton fabrics, diamonds, sapphires, and pearls, silk
+thread and silk stuffs.<a id="footnotetag312" name="footnotetag312"></a><a href="#footnote312" title="Go to footnote 312"><span class="small">[312]</span></a> Detailed accounts of these commercial
+transactions, and of the wealth of personal experiences that must have
+been connected with them, are excessively scant. Of the Europeans who,
+during all the centuries between Alexander and Justinian, made their way
+to Hindustan or beyond, we know very few by name. The amount of
+geographical information that was gathered during the first half of this
+period is shown in the map <span class="sidenote">Claudius Ptolemy.</span>
+representing Claudius Ptolemy's knowledge of
+the earth, about the middle of the second century after Christ. Except
+for the Scandinavian world, and some very important additions made to
+the knowledge of Asia by Marco Polo, this map fairly represents the
+maximum of acquaintance with the earth's surface possessed by Europeans
+previous to the great voyages of the fifteenth century. It shows a dim
+knowledge of the mouths of the Ganges, of the island of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page264" name="page264"></a>(p. 264)</span>
+Ceylon, and of what we sometimes call Farther India. A very dim
+knowledge, indeed; for the huge peninsula of Hindustan is shrunk into
+insignificance, while Taprobane, or Ceylon, unduly magnified, usurps the
+place belonging to the Deccan. At the same time we see that some hearsay
+knowledge of China had made its way into the Roman world before the days
+of Ptolemy. The two names by which China was first known to Europeans
+were <span class="sidenote">Early mention of China.</span>
+"Seres" or "Serica," and "Sinæ" or "Thin." These two differing
+names are the records of two different methods of approach to different
+parts of a vast country, very much as the Northmen called their part of
+eastern North America "Vinland," while the Spaniards called their part
+"Florida." The name "Seres" was given to northwestern China by traders
+who approached it through the highlands of central Asia from Samarcand,
+while "Sinæ" was the name given to southeastern China by traders who
+approached it by way of the Indian ocean, and heard of it in India, but
+never reached it. Apparently no European ships ever reached China before
+the Portuguese, in 1517.<a id="footnotetag313" name="footnotetag313"></a><a href="#footnote313" title="Go to footnote 313"><span class="small">[313]</span></a> The name "Sinæ" or "Thin" seems to mean
+the country of the "Tchin" dynasty, which ruled over the whole of China
+in the second century before Christ, and over a portion of it for a much
+longer time. The name "Seres," on the other hand, was always associated
+with the trade in silks, and was known <span class="pagenum"><a id="page265" name="page265"></a>(p. 265)</span> to the Romans in the
+time of the Emperor Claudius,<a id="footnotetag314" name="footnotetag314"></a><a href="#footnote314" title="Go to footnote 314"><span class="small">[314]</span></a> and somewhat earlier. The Romans in
+Virgil's time set a high value upon silk, and every scrap of it they had
+came from China. They knew nothing about the silk-worm, and supposed
+that the fibres or threads of this beautiful stuff grew upon trees. Of
+actual intercourse between the Roman and Chinese empires there was no
+more than is implied in this current of trade, passing through many
+hands. But that each knew, in a vague way, of the existence of the
+other, there is no doubt.<a id="footnotetag315" name="footnotetag315"></a><a href="#footnote315" title="Go to footnote 315"><span class="small">[315]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>In the course of the reign of Justinian, we get references at first hand
+to India, and coupled withal to a general theory of cosmography. This
+curious information we have in the book of the monk <span class="sidenote">Cosmas Indicopleustes.</span>
+Cosmas
+Indicopleustes, written somewhere between <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 530 and 550. A pleasant
+book it is, after its kind. In his younger days Cosmas had been a
+merchant, and in divers voyages had become familiar with the coasts of
+Ethiopia and the Persian gulf, and had visited India and Ceylon. After
+becoming a monk at Alexandria, Cosmas wrote his book of Christian
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page266" name="page266"></a>(p. 266)</span> geography,<a id="footnotetag316" name="footnotetag316"></a><a href="#footnote316" title="Go to footnote 316"><span class="small">[316]</span></a> maintaining, in opposition to Ptolemy, that
+the earth is not a sphere, but a rectangular plane forming the floor of
+the universe; the heavens rise on all four sides about this rectangle,
+like the four walls of a room, and, at an indefinite height above the
+floor, <span class="sidenote">Shape of the earth, according to Cosmas.</span>
+these blue walls support a vaulted roof or firmament, in which
+God dwells with the angels. In the centre of the floor are the inhabited
+lands of the earth, surrounded on all sides by a great ocean, beyond
+which, somewhere out in a corner, is the Paradise from which Adam and
+Eve were expelled. In its general shape, therefore, the universe
+somewhat resembles the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, or a modern
+"Saratoga <span class="pagenum"><a id="page267" name="page267"></a>(p. 267)</span> trunk." On the northern part of the floor, under the
+firmament, is a lofty conical mountain, around which the sun, moon, and
+planets perform their daily revolutions. In the summer the sun takes a
+turn around the apex of the cone, and is, therefore, hidden only for a
+short night; but in the winter he travels around the base, which takes
+longer, and, accordingly, the nights are long. Such is the doctrine
+drawn from Holy Scripture, says Cosmas, and as for the vain blasphemers
+who pretend that the earth is a round ball, the Lord hath stultified
+them for their sins until they impudently prate of Antipodes, where
+trees grow downward and rain falls upward. As for such nonsense, the
+worthy Cosmas cannot abide it.</p>
+
+<p>I cite these views of Cosmas because there can be no doubt that they
+represent beliefs current among the general public until after the time
+of Columbus,<a id="footnotetag317" name="footnotetag317"></a><a href="#footnote317" title="Go to footnote 317"><span class="small">[317]</span></a> in spite of the deference paid to Ptolemy's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page268" name="page268"></a>(p. 268)</span>
+views by the learned. Along with these cosmographical speculations,
+Cosmas shows a wider geographical knowledge of Asia than any earlier
+writer. He gives a good deal of interesting information about India and
+Ceylon, and has a fairly correct idea of the position of China, which he
+calls Tzinista or Chinistan. This land of silk is the remotest of all
+the Indies, and beyond it "there is neither navigation nor inhabited
+country.... And the Indian philosophers, called Brachmans, tell you that
+if you were to stretch a straight cord from Tzinista through Persia to
+the Roman territory, you would just divide the world in halves. And
+mayhap they are right."<a id="footnotetag318" name="footnotetag318"></a><a href="#footnote318" title="Go to footnote 318"><span class="small">[318]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>In the fourth and following centuries, Nestorian missionaries were very
+active in Asia, <span class="sidenote">The Nestorians.</span>
+and not only made multitudes of converts and established
+metropolitan sees in such places as Kashgar and Herat, but even found
+their <span class="pagenum"><a id="page269" name="page269"></a>(p. 269)</span> way into China. Their work forms an interesting though
+melancholy chapter in history, but it does not seem to have done much
+toward making Asia better known to Europe. As declared heretics, the
+Nestorians were themselves almost entirely cut off from intercourse with
+European Christians.</p>
+
+<p>The immediate effect of the sudden rise of the vast Saracen empire, in
+the seventh and eighth centuries, was to interpose a barrier to the
+extension of intercourse between Europe and the Far East. <span class="sidenote">Effects of the Saracen conquests.</span>
+Trade between
+the eastern and western extremities of Asia went on more briskly than
+ever, but it was for a long time exclusively in Mussulman hands. The
+mediæval Arabs were bold sailors, and not only visited Sumatra and Java,
+but made their way to Canton. Upon the southern and middle routes the
+Arab cities of Cairo and Bagdad became thriving centres of trade; but as
+Spain and the whole of northern Africa were now Arab countries, most of
+the trade between east and west was conducted within Mussulman
+boundaries. Saracen cruisers prowled in the Mediterranean and sorely
+harassed the Christian coasts. During the eighth, ninth, and tenth
+centuries, Europe was more shut in upon herself than ever before or
+since. In many respects these were especially the dark ages of
+Europe,&mdash;the period of least comfort and least enlightenment since the
+days of pre-Roman barbarism. But from this general statement
+Constantinople should be in great measure excepted. The current of
+mediæval trade through the noble highway of the Dardanelles and the
+Bosphorus <span class="pagenum"><a id="page270" name="page270"></a>(p. 270)</span> was subject to fluctuations, but it was always
+great. The city of the Byzantine emperors was before all things a
+commercial city, like Venice in later days. <span class="sidenote">Constantinople in the twelfth century.</span>
+Until the time of the
+Crusades Constantinople was the centre of the Levant trade. The great
+northern route from Asia remained available for commercial intercourse
+in this direction. Persian and Armenian merchants sent their goods to
+Batoum, whence they were shipped to Constantinople; and silk was brought
+from northwestern China by caravan to the Oxus, and forwarded thence by
+the Caspian sea, the rivers Cyrus and Phasis, and the Euxine sea.<a id="footnotetag319" name="footnotetag319"></a><a href="#footnote319" title="Go to footnote 319"><span class="small">[319]</span></a>
+When it was visited by Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century,
+Constantinople was undoubtedly the richest and most magnificent city,
+and the seat of the highest civilization, to be found anywhere upon the
+globe.</p>
+
+<p>In the days of its strength the Eastern Empire was the staunch bulwark
+of Christendom against the dangerous assaults of Persian, Saracen, and
+Turk; alike in prosperity and in calamity, it proved to be the teacher
+and civilizer of the western world. The events which, at the close of
+the eleventh century, brought thousands upon thousands of adventurous,
+<span class="sidenote">The Crusades.</span>
+keen-witted people from western Europe into this home of wealth and
+refinement, were the occasion of the most remarkable intellectual
+awakening that the world had ever witnessed up to that time. The
+Crusades, in their beginning, were a symptom of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page271" name="page271"></a>(p. 271)</span> the growing
+energy of western Europe under the ecclesiastical reformation effected
+by the mighty Hildebrand. They were the military response of Europe to
+the most threatening, and, as time has proved, the most deadly of all
+the blows that have ever been aimed at her from Asia. Down to this time
+the Mahometanism with which Christendom had so long been in conflict was
+a Mahometanism of civilized peoples. The Arabs and Moors were
+industrious merchants, agriculturists, and craftsmen; in their society
+one might meet with learned scholars, refined poets, and profound
+philosophers. But at the end of the tenth century, Islam happened to
+make converts of the Turks, a nomad race in the upper status of
+barbarism, with flocks and herds and patriarchal families. Inspired with
+the sudden zeal for conquest which has always characterized new converts
+to Islam, the Turks began to pour down from the plains of central Asia
+like a deluge upon the Eastern Empire. In 1016 they overwhelmed Armenia,
+and presently advanced into Asia Minor. <span class="sidenote">Barbarizing character of Turkish conquest.</span>
+Their mode of conquest was
+peculiarly baleful, for at first they deliberately annihilated the works
+of civilization in order to prepare the country for their nomadic life;
+they pulled down cities to put up tents. Though they long ago ceased to
+be nomads, they have to this day never learned to comprehend civilized
+life, and they have been simply a blight upon every part of the earth's
+surface which they have touched. At the beginning of the eleventh
+century, Asia Minor was one of the most prosperous and highly civilized
+parts of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page272" name="page272"></a>(p. 272)</span> the world;<a id="footnotetag320" name="footnotetag320"></a><a href="#footnote320" title="Go to footnote 320"><span class="small">[320]</span></a> and the tale of its devastation by
+the terrible Alp Arslan and the robber chiefs that came after him is one
+of the most mournful chapters in history. At the end of that century,
+when the Turks were holding Nicæa and actually had their outposts on the
+Marmora, it was high time for Christendom to rise <i>en masse</i> in
+self-defence. The idea was worthy of the greatest of popes. Imperfectly
+and spasmodically as it was carried out, it undoubtedly did more than
+anything that had ever gone before toward strengthening the wholesome
+sentiment of a common Christendom among the peoples of western Europe.
+<span class="sidenote">General effects of the Crusades.</span>
+The Crusades increased the power of the Church, which was equivalent to
+putting a curb upon the propensities of the robber baron and making
+labour and traffic more secure. In another way they aided this good work
+by carrying off the robber baron in large numbers to Egypt and Syria,
+and killing him there. In this way they did much toward ridding European
+society of its most turbulent elements; while at the same time they gave
+fresh development to the spirit of romantic adventure, and connected it
+with something better than vagrant freebooting.<a id="footnotetag321" name="footnotetag321"></a><a href="#footnote321" title="Go to footnote 321"><span class="small">[321]</span></a> By renewing the
+long-suspended <span class="pagenum"><a id="page273" name="page273"></a>(p. 273)</span> intercourse between the minds of western Europe
+and the Greek culture of Constantinople, they served as a mighty
+stimulus to intellectual curiosity, and had a large share in bringing
+about that great thirteenth century renaissance which is forever
+associated with the names of Giotto and Dante and Roger Bacon.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that in these ways the Crusades were for our
+forefathers in Europe the most bracing and stimulating events that
+occurred in the whole millennium between the complicated disorders of
+the fifth century and the outburst of maritime discovery in the
+fifteenth. How far they justified themselves from the military point of
+view, it is not so easy to say. On the one hand, they had much to do
+with retarding the progress of the enemy for two hundred years; they
+overwhelmed the Seljukian Turks so effectually that their successors,
+the Ottomans, did not become formidable until about 1300, after the last
+crusading wave had spent its force. <span class="sidenote">The Fourth Crusade.</span>
+On the other hand, the Fourth
+Crusade, with better opportunities than any of the others for striking a
+crushing blow at the Moslem, played false to Christendom, and in 1204
+captured and despoiled Constantinople in order to gratify Venice's
+hatred of her commercial rival and superior. It was a sorry piece of
+business, and one cannot look with unmixed pleasure at the four superb
+horses that now adorn the front of the church of St. Mark as a trophy of
+this unhallowed exploit.<a id="footnotetag322" name="footnotetag322"></a><a href="#footnote322" title="Go to footnote 322"><span class="small">[322]</span></a> One cannot <span class="pagenum"><a id="page274" name="page274"></a>(p. 274)</span> help feeling that but
+for this colossal treachery, the great city of Constantine, to which our
+own civilization owes more than can ever be adequately told, might,
+perhaps, have retained enough strength to withstand the barbarian in
+1453, and thus have averted one of the most lamentable catastrophes in
+the history of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The general effect of the Crusades upon Oriental commerce was to
+increase the amount of traffic through Egypt and Syria. Of this
+lucrative trade Venice got the lion's share, and while she helped
+support the short-lived Latin dynasty upon the throne at Constantinople,
+she monopolized a great part of the business of the Black Sea also.
+<span class="sidenote">Rivalry between Venice and Genoa.</span>
+But
+in 1261 Venice's rival, Genoa, allied herself with the Greek emperor,
+Michael Palæologus, at Nicæa, placed him upon the Byzantine throne, and
+again cut off Venice from the trade that came through the Bosphorus.
+From this time forth the mutual hatred between Venice and Genoa "waxed
+fiercer than ever; no merchant fleet of either state could go to sea
+without convoy, and wherever their ships met they fought. It was
+something like the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page275" name="page275"></a>(p. 275)</span> state of things between Spain and England
+in the days of Drake."<a id="footnotetag323" name="footnotetag323"></a><a href="#footnote323" title="Go to footnote 323"><span class="small">[323]</span></a> In the one case as in the other, it was a
+strife for the mastery of the sea and its commerce. Genoa obtained full
+control of the Euxine, took possession of the Crimea, and thus acquired
+a monopoly of the trade from central Asia along the northern route. With
+the fall of Acre in 1291, and the consequent expulsion of Christians
+from Syria, Venice lost her hold upon the middle route. But with the
+pope's leave<a id="footnotetag324" name="footnotetag324"></a><a href="#footnote324" title="Go to footnote 324"><span class="small">[324]</span></a> she succeeded in making a series of advantageous
+commercial treaties with the new Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt, and the
+dealings between the Red Sea and the Adriatic soon came to be
+prodigious. The Venetians gained control of part of the Peloponnesus,
+with many islands of the Ægean and eastern Mediterranean. During the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries their city was the most splendid and
+luxurious in all Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>Such a development of wealth in Venice and Genoa implies a large
+producing and consuming area behind them, able to take and pay for the
+costly products of India and China.
+<span class="sidenote">Centres and routes of mediæval trade.</span>
+Before the end of the thirteenth
+century the volume of European trade had swelled to great proportions.
+How full of historic and literary interest are the very names of the
+centres and leading routes of this trade as it was established in those
+days, with its outlook upon the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page276" name="page276"></a>(p. 276)</span> Mediterranean and the distant
+East! Far up in the North we see Wisby, on the little isle of Gothland
+in the Baltic, giving its name to new rules of international law; and
+the merchants of the famous Hansa towns extending their operations as
+far as Novgorod in one direction, and in another to the Steelyard in
+London, where the pound of these honest "Easterlings" was adopted as the
+"sterling" unit of sound money. Fats and tallows, furs and wax from
+Russia, iron and copper from Sweden, strong hides and unrivalled wools
+from England, salt cod and herring (much needed on meagre church
+fast-days) from the North and Baltic seas, appropriately followed by
+generous casks of beer from Hamburg, were sent southward in exchange for
+fine cloths and tapestries, the products of the loom in Ghent and
+Bruges, in Ulm and Augsburg, with delicious vintages of the Rhine,
+supple chain armour from Milan, Austrian yew-wood for English long-bows,
+ivory and spices, pearls and silks from Italy and the Orient. Along the
+routes from Venice and Florence to Antwerp and Rotterdam we see the
+progress in wealth and refinement, in artistic and literary
+productiveness. We see the early schools of music and painting in Italy
+meet with prompt response in Flanders; in the many-gabled streets of
+Nuremberg we hear the voice of the Meistersinger, and under the low
+oaken roof of a Canterbury inn we listen to joyous if sometimes naughty
+tales erst told in pleasant groves outside of fever-stricken Florence.</p>
+
+<p>With this increase of wealth and culture in central Europe there came a
+considerable extension of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page277" name="page277"></a>(p. 277)</span> knowledge and a powerful stimulus to
+curiosity concerning the remote parts of Asia. The conquering career of
+Jenghis Khan (1206-1227) had shaken the world to its foundations. In the
+middle of that century, to adopt Colonel Yule's lively expression,
+<span class="sidenote">Effects of the Mongol conquests.</span>
+"throughout Asia and eastern Europe, scarcely a dog might bark without
+Mongol leave, from the borders of Poland and the coast of Cilicia to the
+Amur and the Yellow Sea." About these portentous Mongols, who had thus
+in a twinkling overwhelmed China and Russia, and destroyed the Caliphate
+of Bagdad, there was a refreshing touch of open-minded heathenism. They
+were barbarians willing to learn. From end to end of Asia the barriers
+were thrown down. It was a time when Alan chiefs from the Volga served
+as police in Tunking, and Chinese physicians could be consulted at
+Tabriz. For about a hundred years China was more accessible than at any
+period before or since,&mdash;more even than to-day; and that country now for
+the first time became really known to a few Europeans. In the northern
+provinces of China, shortly before the Mongol deluge, there had reigned
+a dynasty known as the <i>Khitai</i>, and hence China was (and still is)
+commonly spoken of in central Asia as the country of the Khitai. When
+this name reached European ears it became <span class="sidenote">Cathay.</span>
+<i>Cathay</i>, the name by which
+China was best known in Europe during the next four centuries.<a id="footnotetag325" name="footnotetag325"></a><a href="#footnote325" title="Go to footnote 325"><span class="small">[325]</span></a> In
+1245, Friar John of Plano Carpini, a friend and disciple of St. Francis,
+was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page278" name="page278"></a>(p. 278)</span> sent by Pope Innocent IV. <span class="sidenote">Carpini and Rubruquis.</span>
+on a missionary errand to the
+Great Khan, and visited him in his camp at Karakorum in the very depths
+of Mongolia. In 1253 the king of France, St. Louis, sent another
+Franciscan monk, Willem de Rubruquis, to Karakorum, on a mission of
+which the purpose is now not clearly understood. Both these Franciscans
+were men of shrewd and cultivated minds, especially Rubruquis, whose
+narrative, "in its rich detail, its vivid pictures, its acuteness of
+observation and strong good sense ... has few superiors in the whole
+library of travel."<a id="footnotetag326" name="footnotetag326"></a><a href="#footnote326" title="Go to footnote 326"><span class="small">[326]</span></a> Neither Rubruquis nor Friar John visited China,
+but they fell in with Chinese folk at Karakorum, and obtained
+information concerning the geography of eastern Asia far more definite
+than had ever before been possessed by Europeans. They both describe
+<span class="sidenote">First knowledge of an eastern ocean beyond Cathay.</span>
+Cathay as bordering upon an eastern ocean, and this piece of information
+constituted the first important leap of geographical knowledge to the
+eastward since the days of Ptolemy, who supposed that beyond the "Seres
+and Sinæ" lay an unknown land of vast extent, "full of reedy and
+impenetrable swamps."<a id="footnotetag327" name="footnotetag327"></a><a href="#footnote327" title="Go to footnote 327"><span class="small">[327]</span></a> The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page279" name="page279"></a>(p. 279)</span> information gathered by
+Rubruquis and Friar John indicated that there was an end to the
+continent of Asia; that, not as a matter of vague speculation, but of
+positive knowledge, Asia was bounded on the east, just as Europe was
+bounded on the west, by an ocean.</p>
+
+<p>Here we arrive at a notable landmark in the history of the Discovery of
+America. Here from the camp of bustling heathen at Karakorum there is
+brought to Europe the first announcement of a geographical fact from
+which the poetic mind of <span class="sidenote">The data were thus prepared for Columbus;</span>
+Christopher Columbus will hereafter reap a
+wonderful harvest. This is one among many instances of the way in which,
+throughout all departments of human thought and action, the glorious
+thirteenth century was beginning to give shape to the problems of which
+the happy solution has since made the modern world so different from the
+ancient.<a id="footnotetag328" name="footnotetag328"></a><a href="#footnote328" title="Go to footnote 328"><span class="small">[328]</span></a> Since there is an ocean east of Cathay and an ocean west
+of Spain, how natural the inference&mdash;and albeit quite wrong, how
+amazingly fruitful&mdash;that these oceans are one and the same, so that by
+sailing westward from Spain one might go straight to Cathay!
+<span class="sidenote">but as yet nobody reasoned from these data to a practical
+conclusion.</span>
+The data
+for such an inference were now all at hand, but it does not appear that
+any one as yet reasoned from the data to the conclusion, although we
+find Roger Bacon, in 1267, citing the opinions of Aristotle and other
+ancient <span class="pagenum"><a id="page280" name="page280"></a>(p. 280)</span> writers to the effect that the distance by sea from
+the western shores of Spain to the eastern shores of Asia cannot be so
+very great.<a id="footnotetag329" name="footnotetag329"></a><a href="#footnote329" title="Go to footnote 329"><span class="small">[329]</span></a> In those days it took a long time for such ideas to get
+from the heads of philosophers into the heads of men of action; and in
+the thirteenth century, when Cathay was more accessible by land than at
+any time before or since, there was no practical necessity felt for a
+water route thither. Europe still turned her back upon the Atlantic and
+gazed more intently than ever upon Asia. Stronger and more general grew
+the interest in Cathay.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the thirteenth century, some members of the <span class="sidenote">The Polo brothers.</span>
+Polo
+family, one of the aristocratic families of Venice, had a commercial
+house at Constantinople. Thence, in 1260, the brothers Nicolò and Maffeo
+Polo started on a trading journey to the Crimea, whence one opportunity
+after another for making money and gratifying their curiosity with new
+sights led them northward and eastward to the Volga, thence into
+Bokhara, and so on until they reached the court of the Great Khan, in
+one of the northwestern provinces of Cathay. The reigning sovereign was
+the famous Kublai Khan, grandson of the all-conquering Jenghis. Kublai
+was an able and benevolent despot, earnest in the wish to improve the
+condition of his Mongol kinsmen. He had never before met European
+gentlemen, and was charmed with the cultivated and polished Venetians.
+He seemed quite ready to enlist the Roman Church in aid of his
+civilizing schemes, and entrusted the Polos with <span class="pagenum"><a id="page281" name="page281"></a>(p. 281)</span> a message to
+the Pope, asking him for a hundred missionary teachers. The brothers
+reached <span class="sidenote">Kublai Khan's message to the Pope.</span>
+Venice in 1269, and found that Pope Clement IV. was dead and
+there was an interregnum. After two years Gregory X. was elected and
+received the Khan's message, but could furnish only a couple of
+Dominican friars, and these men were seized with the dread not
+uncommonly felt for "Tartareans," and at the last moment refused to go.
+Nicolò and his brother then set out in the autumn of 1271 to return to
+China, taking with them Nicolò's son Marco, a lad of seventeen years.
+From Acre they went by way of Bagdad to Hormuz, at the mouth of the
+Persian gulf, apparently with the intention of proceeding thence by sea,
+but for some reason changed their course, and travelled through Kerman,
+Khorassan, and Balkh, to Kashgar, and thence by way of Yarkand and
+Khotan, and across the desert of Gobi into northwestern China, where
+they arrived in the summer of 1275, and found the Khan at Kaipingfu, not
+far from the northern end of the Great Wall.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that the failure of Kublai's mission to the Pope led
+him to apply to the Grand Lama, at Thibet, who responded more
+efficiently and successfully than Gregory X., so that Buddhism seized
+the chance which Catholicism failed to grasp. The Venetians, however,
+lost nothing in the good Khan's esteem. <span class="sidenote">Marco Polo and his travels in Asia.</span>
+Young Marco began to make
+himself proficient in speaking and writing several Asiatic languages,
+and was presently taken into the Khan's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page282" name="page282"></a>(p. 282)</span> service. His name is
+mentioned in the Chinese Annals of 1277 as a newly-appointed
+commissioner of the privy council.<a id="footnotetag330" name="footnotetag330"></a><a href="#footnote330" title="Go to footnote 330"><span class="small">[330]</span></a> He remained in Kublai's service
+until 1292, while his father and uncle were gathering wealth in various
+ways. Marco made many official journeys up and down the Khan's vast
+dominions, not only in civilized China, but in regions of the heart of
+Asia seldom visited by Europeans to this day,&mdash;"a vast ethnological
+garden," says Colonel Yule, "of tribes of various race and in every
+stage of uncivilization." In 1292 a royal bride for the Khan of Persia
+was to be sent all the way from Peking to Tabriz, and as war that year
+made some parts of the overland route very unsafe, it was decided to
+send her by sea. The three Polos had for some time been looking for an
+opportunity to return to Venice, but Kublai was unwilling to have them
+go. Now, however, as every Venetian of that day was deemed to be from
+his very cradle a seasoned seadog, and as the kindly old Mongol
+sovereign had an inveterate land-lubber's misgivings about ocean
+voyages, he consented to part with his dear friends, so that he might
+entrust the precious princess to their care. <span class="sidenote">First recorded voyage of Europeans around the Indo-Chinese
+peninsula, 1292-94.</span>
+They sailed from the port
+of Zaiton (Chinchow) early in 1292, and after long delays on the coasts
+of Sumatra and Hindustan, in order to avoid unfavourable monsoons, they
+reached the Persian gulf in 1294. They found that the royal bridegroom,
+somewhat advanced in years, had died before they started from China;
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page283" name="page283"></a>(p. 283)</span> so the young princess became the bride of his son. After
+tarrying awhile in Tabriz, the Polos returned, by way of Trebizond and
+the Bosphorus, <span class="sidenote">Return of the Polos to Venice.</span>
+to Venice, arriving in 1295. When they got there, says
+Ramusio, after their absence of four and twenty years, "the same fate
+befel them as befel Ulysses, who, when he returned to his native Ithaca,
+was recognized by nobody." Their kinsfolk had long since given them up
+for dead; and when the three wayworn travellers arrived at the door of
+their own palace, the middle-aged men now wrinkled graybeards, the
+stripling now a portly man, all three attired in rather shabby clothes
+of Tartar cut, and "with a certain indescribable smack of the Tartar
+about them, both in air and accent," some words of explanation were
+needed to prove their identity. After a few days they invited a party of
+old friends to dinner, and bringing forth three shabby coats, ripped
+open the seams and welts, and began pulling out and tumbling upon the
+table such treasures of diamonds and emeralds, rubies and sapphires, as
+could never have been imagined, "which had all been stitched up in those
+dresses in so artful a fashion that nobody could have suspected the
+fact." In such wise had they brought home from Cathay their ample
+earnings; and when it became known about Venice that the three long-lost
+citizens had come back, "straightway the whole city, gentle and simple,
+flocked to the house to embrace them, and to make much of them, with
+every conceivable demonstration of affection and respect."<a id="footnotetag331" name="footnotetag331"></a><a href="#footnote331" title="Go to footnote 331"><span class="small">[331]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page284" name="page284"></a>(p. 284)</span>
+<p>Three years afterward, in 1298, Marco commanded a galley in the great
+naval battle with the Genoese near Curzola. The Venetians were totally
+defeated, and Marco was one of the 7,000 prisoners taken to Genoa, where
+he was kept in durance for about a year. <span class="sidenote">Marco Polo's book written in prison at Genoa, 1299.</span>
+One of his companions in
+captivity was a certain Rusticiano, of Pisa, who was glad to listen to
+his descriptions of Asia, and to act as his amanuensis. French was then,
+at the close of the Crusades, a language as generally understood
+throughout Europe as later, in the age of Louis XIV.; and Marco's
+narrative was duly taken down by the worthy Rusticiano in rather lame
+and shaky French. In the summer of 1299 Marco was set free and returned
+to Venice, where he seems to have led a quiet life until his death in
+1324.</p>
+
+<p>"The Book of Ser Marco Polo concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the
+East" is one of the most famous and important books of the Middle Ages.
+<span class="sidenote">Its great contributions to geographical knowledge.</span>
+It contributed more new facts toward a knowledge of the earth's surface
+than any book that had ever been written before. Its author was "the
+first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia;"
+the first to describe China in its vastness, with its immense cities,
+its manufactures and wealth, and to tell, whether from personal
+experience or direct hearsay, of Thibet and Burmah, of Siam and Cochin
+China, of the Indian archipelago, with its islands of spices, of Java
+and Sumatra, and of the savages of Andaman. He <span class="pagenum"><a id="page285" name="page285"></a>(p. 285)</span> knew of Japan
+and the woful defeat of the Mongols there, when they tried to invade the
+island kingdom in 1281. He gave a description of Hindustan far more
+complete and characteristic than had ever before been published. From
+Arab sailors, accustomed to the Indian ocean, he learned something about
+Zanzibar and Madagascar and the semi-Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. To
+the northward from Persia he described the country of the Golden Horde,
+whose khans were then holding Russia in subjection; and he had gathered
+some accurate information concerning Siberia as far as the country of
+the Samoyeds, with their dog-sledges and polar bears.<a id="footnotetag332" name="footnotetag332"></a><a href="#footnote332" title="Go to footnote 332"><span class="small">[332]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Here was altogether too much geographical knowledge for European
+ignorance in those days to digest. While Marco's book attracted much
+attention, its influence upon the progress of geography was slighter
+than it would have been if addressed to a more enlightened public. Many
+of its sober statements of fact were received with incredulity. Many of
+the places described were indistinguishable, in European imagination,
+from the general multitude of fictitious countries mentioned in
+fairy-tales or in romances of chivalry. Perhaps no part of Marco's story
+was so likely to interest his readers as his references to <span class="sidenote">Prester John.</span>
+Prester John.
+In the course of the twelfth century the notion had somehow gained
+possession of the European mind that somewhere out in the dim vastness
+of the Orient there dwelt a mighty Christian potentate, known as John
+the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page286" name="page286"></a>(p. 286)</span> Presbyter or "Prester."<a id="footnotetag333" name="footnotetag333"></a><a href="#footnote333" title="Go to footnote 333"><span class="small">[333]</span></a> At different times he was
+identified with various known Asiatic sovereigns. Marco Polo identified
+him with one Togrul Wang, who was overcome and slain by the mighty
+Jenghis; but he would not stay dead, any more than the grewsome warlock
+in Russian nursery lore. The notion of Prester John and his wealthy
+kingdom could no more be expelled from the European mind in the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than the kindred notion of El Dorado
+in the sixteenth. The position of this kingdom was shifted about here
+and there, as far as from Chinese Tartary to <span class="sidenote">The "Arimaspians."</span>
+Abyssinia and back again,
+but somewhere or other in people's vague mental picture of the East it
+was sure to occur. Other remote regions in Asia were peopled with elves
+and griffins and "one-eyed Arimaspians,"<a id="footnotetag334" name="footnotetag334"></a><a href="#footnote334" title="Go to footnote 334"><span class="small">[334]</span></a> and we may be sure that to
+Marco's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page287" name="page287"></a>(p. 287)</span> readers these beings were quite as real as the
+polished citizens of Cambaluc (Peking) or the cannibals of the Andaman
+islands. From such a chaos of ideas sound geographical knowledge must
+needs be a slow evolution, and Marco Polo's acquisitions were altogether
+too far in advance of his age to be readily assimilated.</p>
+
+<a id="img013l" name="img013l"></a>
+<div class="floatleft">
+<a href="images/img013lb.jpg">
+<img src="images/img013l.jpg" width="300" height="393" alt="" title=""></a>
+</div>
+<a id="img013r" name="img013r"></a>
+<div class="floatright">
+<a href="images/img013rb.jpg">
+<img src="images/img013r.jpg" width="300" height="391" alt="" title=""></a>
+</div>
+<p class="nofloat center">Two sheets of the Catalan Map, 1375.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, in the Catalan map, made in 1375, and now to be seen in
+the National Library at Paris, there is a thorough-going and not
+unsuccessful attempt to embody the results of <span class="sidenote">Other visits to China.</span>
+Polo's travels. In the
+interval of three quarters of a century since the publication of Marco's
+narrative, several adventurous travellers had found their way to Cathay.
+There was Friar <span class="pagenum"><a id="page290" name="page290"></a>(p. 290)</span> Odoric, of Pordenone, who, during the years
+1316-30 visited Hindustan, Sumatra, Java, Cochin China, the Chinese
+Empire, and Thibet.<a id="footnotetag335" name="footnotetag335"></a><a href="#footnote335" title="Go to footnote 335"><span class="small">[335]</span></a> It was from this worthy monk that the arrant
+old impostor, "Sir John Mandeville," stole his descriptions of India and
+Cathay, seasoning them with yarns from Pliny and Ktesias, and grotesque
+conceits of his own.<a id="footnotetag336" name="footnotetag336"></a><a href="#footnote336" title="Go to footnote 336"><span class="small">[336]</span></a> Several other missionary friars visited China
+between 1302 and 1330, and about ten years after the latter date the
+Florentine merchant, Francesco Pegolotti, wrote a very useful handbook
+for commercial travellers on the overland <span class="pagenum"><a id="page291" name="page291"></a>(p. 291)</span> route to that
+country.<a id="footnotetag337" name="footnotetag337"></a><a href="#footnote337" title="Go to footnote 337"><span class="small">[337]</span></a> Between 1338 and 1353 Giovanni Marignolli spent some years
+at Peking, as papal legate from Benedict XI. to the Great Khan, and also
+travelled in Ceylon and Hindustan.<a id="footnotetag338" name="footnotetag338"></a><a href="#footnote338" title="Go to footnote 338"><span class="small">[338]</span></a> That seems to have been the last
+of these journeys to the Far East. <span class="sidenote">Overthrow of the Mongol dynasty, and shutting up of China.</span>
+In 1368, the people of China rose
+against the Mongol dynasty and overthrew it. The first emperor of the
+native Ming dynasty was placed upon the throne, and the Chinese retorted
+upon their late conquerors by overrunning vast Mongolia and making it
+Chinese Tartary. The barriers thrown down by the liberal policy of the
+Mongol sovereigns were now put up again, and no more foreigners were
+allowed to set foot upon the sacred soil of the Flowery Kingdom.</p>
+
+
+<p>Thus, for just a century,&mdash;from Carpini and Rubruquis to
+Marignolli,&mdash;while China was open to strangers as never before or since,
+a few Europeans had availed themselves of the opportunity in such wise
+as to mark the beginning of a new era <span class="pagenum"><a id="page292" name="page292"></a>(p. 292)</span> in the history of
+geographical knowledge. Though the discoveries of Marco Polo were as yet
+but imperfectly appreciated, one point, and that the most significant of
+all, was thoroughly established. It was shown that the continent of Asia
+did not extend indefinitely eastward, nor was it bounded and barricaded
+on that side, as Ptolemy had imagined, by vast impenetrable swamps. On
+the contrary, its eastern shores were perfectly accessible through an
+open sea, and half a dozen Europeans in Chinese ships had now actually
+made the voyage between the coast of China and the Persian gulf.
+Moreover, some hearsay knowledge&mdash;enough to provoke curiosity and
+greed&mdash;had been gained of the existence of numerous islands in that
+far-off <span class="sidenote">First rumours of the Molucca islands and Japan.</span>
+eastern ocean, rich in the spices which from time immemorial had
+formed such an important element in Mediterranean commerce. News, also,
+had been brought to Europe of the wonderful island kingdom of Japan
+(Cipango or Zipangu) lying out in that ocean some hundreds of miles
+beyond the coast of Cathay. These were rich countries, abounding in
+objects of lucrative traffic. Under the liberal Mongol rule the Oriental
+trade had increased enough for Europe to feel in many ways its
+beneficial effects. Now this trade began to be suddenly and severely
+checked, and while access to the interior of Asia was cut off, European
+merchants might begin to reflect upon the value of what they were
+losing, and to consider if there were any feasible method of recovering
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It was not merely the shutting up of China by <span class="pagenum"><a id="page293" name="page293"></a>(p. 293)</span> the first Ming
+emperor, in 1368, that checked the intercourse between Europe and Asia.
+A still more baleful obstacle to all such intercourse had lately come
+upon the scene. In Asia Minor the <span class="sidenote">The accustomed routes of Oriental trade cut off by the
+Ottoman Turks.</span>
+beastly Turk, whose career had been
+for two centuries arrested by the Crusades, now reared his head again.
+The Seljukian had been only scotched, not killed; and now he sprang to
+life as the Ottoman, with sharper fangs than before. In 1365 the Turks
+established themselves in the Balkan peninsula, with Adrianople as their
+capital, and began tightening their coils about the doomed city of
+Constantine. Each point that they gained meant the strangling of just so
+much Oriental trade; for, as we have seen, the alliance of
+Constantinople with Genoa since 1261 had secured to the latter city, and
+to western Europe, the advantages of the overland routes from Asia,
+whether through the Volga country or across Armenia. When at length, in
+1453, the Turks took Constantinople, the splendid commercial career of
+Genoa was cut with the shears of Atropos. At the same time, as their
+power was rapidly extending over Syria and down toward Egypt,
+threatening the overthrow of the liberal Mameluke dynasty there, the
+commercial prosperity of Venice also was seriously imperilled. Moreover,
+as Turkish corsairs began to swarm in the eastern waters of the
+Mediterranean, the voyage became more and more unsafe for Christian
+vessels. It was thus, while the volume of trade with Asia was, in the
+natural course of things, swelling year by year, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page294" name="page294"></a>(p. 294)</span> that its
+accustomed routes were being ruthlessly cut off. It was fast becoming
+necessary to consider whether there might not be other practicable
+routes to <span class="sidenote">Necessity for finding an "outside route to the Indies."</span>
+"the Indies" than those which had from time immemorial been
+followed. Could there be such a thing as an "outside route" to that land
+of promise? A more startling question has seldom been propounded; for it
+involved a radical departure from the grooves in which the human mind
+had been running ever since the days of Solomon. Two generations of men
+lived and died while this question was taking shape, and all that time
+Cathay and India and the islands of Spices were objects of increasing
+desire, clothed by eager fancy with all manner of charms and riches. The
+more effectually the eastern Mediterranean was closed, the stronger grew
+the impulse to venture upon unknown paths in order to realize the vague
+but glorious hopes that began to cluster about these remote countries.
+Such an era of romantic enterprise as was thus ushered in, the world has
+never seen before or since. It was equally remarkable as an era of
+discipline in scientific thinking. In the maritime ventures of
+unparalleled boldness now to be described, the human mind was groping
+toward the era of enormous extensions of knowledge in space and time
+represented by the names of Newton and Darwin. It was learning the right
+way of putting its trust in the Unseen.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page295" name="page295"></a>(p. 295)</span> CHAPTER IV.<br>
+
+<span class="smaller">THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.<br>
+
+<i>EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE.</i></span></h2>
+
+
+<p>As it dawned upon men's minds that to find some oceanic route from
+Europe to the remote shores of <span class="sidenote">Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing
+around Africa.</span>
+Asia was eminently desirable, the first
+attempt would naturally be to see what could be done by sailing down the
+western coast of Africa, and ascertaining whether that continent could
+be circumnavigated. It was also quite in the natural order of things
+that this first attempt should be made by the Portuguese.</p>
+
+<p>In the general history of the Middle Ages the Spanish peninsula had been
+to some extent cut off from the main currents of thought and feeling
+which actuated the rest of Europe. Its people had never joined the other
+Christian nations in the Crusades, for the good reason that they always
+had quite enough to occupy them in their own domestic struggle with the
+Moors. From the throes of this prolonged warfare Portugal emerged
+somewhat sooner than the Spanish kingdoms, and thus had somewhat earlier
+a surplus of energy released for work of another sort. It was not
+strange that the Portuguese should be the first people since the old
+Northmen to engage in distant <span class="pagenum"><a id="page296" name="page296"></a>(p. 296)</span> maritime adventure upon a grand
+scale. Nor was it strange that Portuguese seamanship should at first
+have thriven upon naval warfare with Mussulmans. It was in attempting to
+suppress the intolerable nuisance of Moorish piracy that Portuguese
+ships became accustomed to sail a little way down the west coast of
+Africa; and such voyages, begun for military purposes, were kept up in
+the interests of commerce, and presently served as a mighty stimulus to
+geographical curiosity. We have now to consider at some length how grave
+was the problem that came up for immediate solution.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>With regard to the circumnavigability of Africa two opposite opinions
+were maintained by the ancient Greek and Latin writers whose authority
+the men of the Middle Ages were wont to quote as decisive of every vexed
+question. The old Homeric notion of an ocean encompassing the
+terrestrial world, although mentioned with doubt by <span class="sidenote">Views of Eratosthenes, <span class="smcap">B. C.</span> 276-196.</span>
+Herodotus,<a id="footnotetag339" name="footnotetag339"></a><a href="#footnote339" title="Go to footnote 339"><span class="small">[339]</span></a>
+continued to survive after the globular form of the earth had come to be
+generally maintained by ancient geographers. The greatest of these
+geographers, Eratosthenes, correctly assumed that the Indian ocean was
+continuous with the Atlantic,<a id="footnotetag340" name="footnotetag340"></a><a href="#footnote340" title="Go to footnote 340"><span class="small">[340]</span></a> and that Africa could be
+circumnavigated, just as he incorrectly <span class="pagenum"><a id="page297" name="page297"></a>(p. 297)</span> assumed that the
+Caspian sea was a huge gulf communicating with a northern ocean, by
+which it would be possible to sail around the continent of Asia as he
+imagined it.<a id="footnotetag341" name="footnotetag341"></a><a href="#footnote341" title="Go to footnote 341"><span class="small">[341]</span></a> A similar opinion as to Africa was held by Posidonius
+and by Strabo.<a id="footnotetag342" name="footnotetag342"></a><a href="#footnote342" title="Go to footnote 342"><span class="small">[342]</span></a> It was called in question, however, by
+Polybius,<a id="footnotetag343" name="footnotetag343"></a><a href="#footnote343" title="Go to footnote 343"><span class="small">[343]</span></a> and was flatly denied by the great astronomer Hipparchus,
+who thought that certain observations on the tides, reported by Seleucus
+of Babylon, proved that there could be no connection between the
+Atlantic and Indian oceans.<a id="footnotetag344" name="footnotetag344"></a><a href="#footnote344" title="Go to footnote 344"><span class="small">[344]</span></a> Claudius Ptolemy, writing in the second
+century after Christ, <span class="sidenote">Opposing theory of Ptolemy, cir. <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 150.</span>
+followed the opinion of Hipparchus, and carried to
+an extreme the reaction against Eratosthenes. By Ptolemy's time the
+Caspian had been proved to be an inland sea, and it was evident that
+Asia extended much farther to the north and east than had once been
+supposed. This seems to have discredited in his mind the whole
+conception of outside oceans, and he not only gave an indefinite
+northward and eastward extension to Asia and an indefinite southern
+extension to Africa, but brought these two continents together far to
+the southeast, thus making the Indian ocean a land-locked sea.<a id="footnotetag345" name="footnotetag345"></a><a href="#footnote345" title="Go to footnote 345"><span class="small">[345]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>These views of Hipparchus and Ptolemy took <span class="pagenum"><a id="page298" name="page298"></a>(p. 298)</span> no heed of the
+story told to Herodotus of the circumnavigation of Africa by a
+Ph&oelig;nician <span class="sidenote">Story of the Ph&oelig;nician voyage, in the time of Necho.</span>
+squadron at some time during the reign of Necho in Egypt
+(610-595 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span>).<a id="footnotetag346" name="footnotetag346"></a><a href="#footnote346" title="Go to footnote 346"><span class="small">[346]</span></a> The Ph&oelig;nician ships were said to have sailed
+from the Red Sea and to have returned through the Mediterranean in the
+third year after starting. In each of the two autumn seasons they
+stopped and sowed grain and waited for it to ripen, which in southern
+Africa would require ten or twelve weeks.<a id="footnotetag347" name="footnotetag347"></a><a href="#footnote347" title="Go to footnote 347"><span class="small">[347]</span></a> On their return to Egypt
+they declared ("I for my part do not believe them," says Herodotus, "but
+perhaps others may") that in thus sailing from east to west around
+Africa they had the sun upon their right hand. About this alleged voyage
+there has been a good deal of controversy.<a id="footnotetag348" name="footnotetag348"></a><a href="#footnote348" title="Go to footnote 348"><span class="small">[348]</span></a> No other expedition in
+any wise comparable <span class="pagenum"><a id="page299" name="page299"></a>(p. 299)</span> to it for length and difficulty can be
+cited from ancient history, and a critical scholar is inclined to look
+with suspicion upon all such accounts of unique and isolated events. As
+we have not the details of the story, it is impossible to give it a
+satisfactory critical examination. The circumstance most likely to
+convince us of its truth is precisely that which dear old Herodotus
+deemed incredible. The position of the sun, to the north of the
+mariners, is something that could hardly have been imagined by people
+familiar only with the northern hemisphere. It is therefore almost
+certain that Necho's expedition sailed beyond the equator.<a id="footnotetag349" name="footnotetag349"></a><a href="#footnote349" title="Go to footnote 349"><span class="small">[349]</span></a> But that
+is as far as inference can properly carry us; for our experience of the
+uncritical temper of ancient narrators is enough to suggest that such
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page300" name="page300"></a>(p. 300)</span> an achievement might easily be magnified by rumour into the
+story told, more than a century after the event, to Herodotus. The data
+are too slight to justify us in any dogmatic opinion. One thing,
+however, is clear. Even if the circumnavigation was effected,&mdash;which, on
+the whole, seems improbable,&mdash;it remained quite barren of results. It
+produced no abiding impression upon men's minds<a id="footnotetag350" name="footnotetag350"></a><a href="#footnote350" title="Go to footnote 350"><span class="small">[350]</span></a> and added nothing
+to geographical knowledge. The veil of mystery was not lifted from
+southern Africa. The story was doubted by Strabo and Posidonius, and
+passed unheeded, as we have seen, by Hipparchus and Ptolemy.</p>
+
+<p>Of Ph&oelig;nician and other voyages along the Atlantic coast of Africa we
+have much more detailed and trustworthy information. As early as the
+twelfth century before Christ traders from Tyre had founded Cadiz
+(Gades),<a id="footnotetag351" name="footnotetag351"></a><a href="#footnote351" title="Go to footnote 351"><span class="small">[351]</span></a> and at a later date the same hardy people seem to have
+made the beginnings of Lisbon (Olisipo). From such advanced stations
+Tyrian and Carthaginian ships sometimes found their way northward as far
+as Cornwall, and in the opposite direction fishing voyages were made
+along the African coast. <span class="sidenote">Voyage of Hanno.</span>
+The most remarkable undertaking in this quarter
+was the famous voyage of the Carthaginian commander Hanno, whose own
+brief but interesting account <span class="pagenum"><a id="page301" name="page301"></a>(p. 301)</span> of it has been preserved.<a id="footnotetag352" name="footnotetag352"></a><a href="#footnote352" title="Go to footnote 352"><span class="small">[352]</span></a>
+This expedition consisted of sixty penteconters (fifty-oared ships), and
+its chief purpose was colonization. Upon the Mauritanian coast seven
+small trading stations were founded, one of which&mdash;Kerne, at the mouth
+of the Rio d' Ouro<a id="footnotetag353" name="footnotetag353"></a><a href="#footnote353" title="Go to footnote 353"><span class="small">[353]</span></a>&mdash;existed for a long time. From this point Hanno
+made two voyages of exploration, the second of which carried him as far
+as Sierra Leone and the neighbouring Sherboro island, where he found
+"wild men and women covered with hair," called by the interpreters
+"gorillas."<a id="footnotetag354" name="footnotetag354"></a><a href="#footnote354" title="Go to footnote 354"><span class="small">[354]</span></a> At that point the ships turned back, apparently for
+want of provisions.</p>
+
+<p>No other expedition in ancient times is known to have proceeded so far
+south as Sierra Leone. Two other voyages upon this Atlantic coast are
+mentioned, but without definite details. The one was that of Sataspes
+(about 470 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span>), narrated <span class="pagenum"><a id="page302" name="page302"></a>(p. 302)</span> by Herodotus, who merely tells us
+that a coast was reached where undersized men, clad in palm-leaf
+garments, <span class="sidenote">Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus.</span>
+fled to the hills at sight of the strange visitors.<a id="footnotetag355" name="footnotetag355"></a><a href="#footnote355" title="Go to footnote 355"><span class="small">[355]</span></a> The
+other was that of Eudoxus (about 85 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span>), related by Posidonius, the
+friend and teacher of Cicero. The story is that this Eudoxus, in a
+voyage upon the east coast of Africa, having a philological turn of
+mind, wrote down the words of some of the natives whom he met here and
+there along the shore. He also picked up a ship's prow in the form of a
+horse's head, and upon his return to Alexandria some merchants professed
+to recognize it as belonging to a ship of Cadiz. Eudoxus thereupon
+concluded that Africa was circumnavigable, and presently sailed through
+the Mediterranean and out upon the Atlantic. Somewhere upon the coast of
+Mauritania he found natives who used some words of similar sound to
+those which he had written down when visiting the eastern coast, whence
+he concluded that they were people of the same race. At this point he
+turned back, and the sequel of the story was unknown to Posidonius.<a id="footnotetag356" name="footnotetag356"></a><a href="#footnote356" title="Go to footnote 356"><span class="small">[356]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>It is worthy of note that both Pliny and Pomponius Mela, quoting
+Cornelius Nepos as their authority, speak of Eudoxus as having
+circumnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to Cadiz; and Pliny, moreover,
+tells us that Hanno sailed around that continent as far as
+Arabia,<a id="footnotetag357" name="footnotetag357"></a><a href="#footnote357" title="Go to footnote 357"><span class="small">[357]</span></a>&mdash;a statement which is <span class="pagenum"><a id="page303" name="page303"></a>(p. 303)</span> clearly false. These
+examples show how stories grow when carelessly and uncritically
+repeated, <span class="sidenote">Wild exaggerations.</span>
+and they strongly tend to confirm the doubt with which one is
+inclined to regard the tale of Necho's sailors above mentioned. In
+truth, the island of Gorillas, discovered by Hanno, was doubtless the
+most southerly point on that coast reached by navigators in ancient
+times. Of the islands in the western ocean the Carthaginians certainly
+knew the Canaries (where they have left undoubted inscriptions),
+probably also the Madeiras, and possibly the Cape Verde group.<a id="footnotetag358" name="footnotetag358"></a><a href="#footnote358" title="Go to footnote 358"><span class="small">[358]</span></a></p>
+
+<a id="img014" name="img014"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img014b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img014.jpg" width="400" height="334" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Pomponius Mela's World, cir. <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 50.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The extent of the knowledge which the ancients thus had of western
+Africa is well illustrated in the map representing the geographical
+theories of Pomponius Mela, whose book was written about <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 50. Of
+the eastern coast and the interior <span class="pagenum"><a id="page304" name="page304"></a>(p. 304)</span> Mela knew less than Ptolemy
+a century later, <span class="sidenote">Views of Pomponius Mela, cir. <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 50.</span>
+but of the Atlantic coast he knew more than Ptolemy.
+The fact that the former geographer was a native of Spain and the latter
+a native of Egypt no doubt had something to do with this. Mela had
+profited by the Carthaginian discoveries. His general conception of the
+earth was substantially that of Eratosthenes. It was what has been
+styled the "oceanic" <span class="pagenum"><a id="page305" name="page305"></a>(p. 305)</span> theory, in contrast with the
+"continental" theory of Ptolemy. In the unvisited regions on all sides
+of the known world Eratosthenes imagined vast oceans, Ptolemy imagined
+vast deserts or impenetrable swamps. The former doctrine was of course
+much more favourable to maritime enterprise than the latter. The works
+of Ptolemy exercised over the mediæval mind an almost despotic sway,
+which, in spite of their many merits, was in some respects a hindrance
+to progress; so that, inasmuch as the splendid work of Strabo, the most
+eminent follower of Eratosthenes, was unknown to mediæval Europe until
+about 1450, it was fortunate that the Latin treatise of Mela was
+generally read and highly esteemed. People in those days were such
+uncritical readers that very likely the antagonism between Ptolemy and
+Mela may have failed to excite comment,<a id="footnotetag359" name="footnotetag359"></a><a href="#footnote359" title="Go to footnote 359"><span class="small">[359]</span></a> especially in view of the
+lack of suitable maps such as emphasize that antagonism to our modern
+minds. But in the fifteenth century, when men were getting their first
+inklings of critical scholarship, and when the practical question of an
+ocean voyage to Asia was pressing for solution, such a point could no
+longer fail to attract attention; and it happened fortunately that the
+wet theory, no less than the dry theory, had a popular advocate among
+those classical authors to whose authority so much deference was paid.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page306" name="page306"></a>(p. 306)</span>
+
+<p>If the Portuguese mariners of the generation before Columbus had
+acquiesced in Ptolemy's views as final, they surely would not have
+devoted their energies to the task of circumnavigating Africa. But there
+were yet other theoretical or fanciful obstacles in the way. When you
+look at a modern map of the world, the "five zones" may seem like a mere
+graphic device <span class="sidenote">Ancient theory of the five zones.</span>
+for marking conveniently the relations of different
+regions to the solar source of heat; but before the great Portuguese
+voyages and the epoch-making third voyage of Vespucius, to be described
+hereafter, a discouraging doctrine was entertained with regard to these
+zones. Ancient travellers in Scythia and voyagers to "Thule"&mdash;which in
+Ptolemy's scheme perhaps meant the Shetland isles<a id="footnotetag360" name="footnotetag360"></a><a href="#footnote360" title="Go to footnote 360"><span class="small">[360]</span></a>&mdash;had learned
+something of Arctic phenomena. The long winter nights,<a id="footnotetag361" name="footnotetag361"></a><a href="#footnote361" title="Go to footnote 361"><span class="small">[361]</span></a> the snow and
+ice, and the bitter winds, made a deep impression upon visitors from the
+Mediterranean;<a id="footnotetag362" name="footnotetag362"></a><a href="#footnote362" title="Go to footnote 362"><span class="small">[362]</span></a> and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page307" name="page307"></a>(p. 307)</span> when such facts were contrasted with
+the scorching blasts that came from Sahara, the resulting theory was
+undeniably plausible. In the extreme north the ocean must be frozen and
+the country uninhabitable by reason of the cold; contrariwise, in the
+far south the ocean must be boiling hot and the country inhabitable only
+by gnomes and salamanders. Applying these ideas to the conception of the
+earth as a sphere, Pomponius Mela tells us that the surface of the
+sphere is divided into five zones, of which only two are fit to support
+human life. About each pole stretches a dead and frozen zone; the
+southern and northern hemispheres have each a temperate zone, with the
+same changes of seasons, but not occurring at the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page308" name="page308"></a>(p. 308)</span> same (but
+opposite) times; the north temperate zone is the seat of the &OElig;cumene
+(&#959;&#7984;&#954;&#959;&#965;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#951;), or Inhabited
+World; the south temperate <span class="sidenote">The Inhabited World and the Antipodes.</span>
+zone is also inhabited by the Antichthones or
+Antipodes, but about these people we know nothing, because between us
+and them there intervenes the burning zone, which it is impossible to
+cross.<a id="footnotetag363" name="footnotetag363"></a><a href="#footnote363" title="Go to footnote 363"><span class="small">[363]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>This notion of an antipodal world in the southern hemisphere will have
+especial interest for us when we come to deal with the voyages of
+Vespucius. The idea seems to have originated in a guess of Hipparchus
+that Taprobane&mdash;the island of Ceylon, about which the most absurd
+reports were brought to Europe&mdash;might be the beginning of another world.
+This is very probable, says Mela, with delightful <i>naïveté</i>, because
+Taprobane is inhabited, and still we do not know of anybody who has ever
+made the tour of it.<a id="footnotetag364" name="footnotetag364"></a><a href="#footnote364" title="Go to footnote 364"><span class="small">[364]</span></a> Mela's contemporary, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page309" name="page309"></a>(p. 309)</span> the elder
+Pliny, declares that Taprobane <span class="sidenote">Curious notions about Ceylon.</span>
+"has long been regarded" as part of
+another world, the name of which is Antichthon, or Opposite-Earth;<a id="footnotetag365" name="footnotetag365"></a><a href="#footnote365" title="Go to footnote 365"><span class="small">[365]</span></a>
+at the same time Pliny vouchsafes three closely-printed pages of
+information about this mysterious country. Throughout the Middle Ages
+the conception of some sort of an antipodal inhabited world was vaguely
+entertained by writers here and there, but many of the clergy condemned
+it as implying the existence of people cut off from the knowledge of the
+gospel and not included in the plan of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>As to the possibility of crossing the torrid zone, opinion was not
+unanimous. Greek explorers from Alexandria (cir. <span class="smcap">B. C.</span> 100) seem to have
+gone far up the Nile toward the equator, and the astronomer Geminus
+quotes their testimony in proof of his opinion that the torrid zone is
+inhabitable.<a id="footnotetag366" name="footnotetag366"></a><a href="#footnote366" title="Go to footnote 366"><span class="small">[366]</span></a> Panætius, the friend of the younger Scipio Africanus,
+had already expressed a similar opinion. But the flaming theory
+prevailed. Macrobius, writing about six hundred years later, maintained
+that the southernmost limit of the habitable earth was 850 miles south
+of Syene, which lies just under the tropic of Cancer.<a id="footnotetag367" name="footnotetag367"></a><a href="#footnote367" title="Go to footnote 367"><span class="small">[367]</span></a> Beyond this
+point no man could go without danger from the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page310" name="page310"></a>(p. 310)</span> fiery
+atmosphere. <span class="sidenote">The fiery zone.</span>
+Beyond some such latitude on the ocean no ship could venture
+without risk of being engulfed in some steaming whirlpool.<a id="footnotetag368" name="footnotetag368"></a><a href="#footnote368" title="Go to footnote 368"><span class="small">[368]</span></a> Such was
+the common belief before the great voyages of the Portuguese.</p>
+
+<p>Besides this dread of the burning zone, another fanciful obstacle beset
+the mariner who proposed to undertake a long voyage upon the outer
+ocean. It had been observed that a ship which disappears in the offing
+seems to be going downhill; and many people feared that if they should
+happen thus to descend too far away from the land they could never get
+back again. <span class="sidenote">Going downhill.</span>
+Men accustomed to inland sea travel did not feel this dread
+within the regions of which they had experience, but it assailed them
+whenever they thought of braving the mighty waters outside.<a id="footnotetag369" name="footnotetag369"></a><a href="#footnote369" title="Go to footnote 369"><span class="small">[369]</span></a> Thus
+the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page311" name="page311"></a>(p. 311)</span> master mariner, in the Middle Ages, might contemplate the
+possible chance of being drawn by force of gravity into the fiery gulf,
+should he rashly approach too near; and in such misgivings he would be
+confirmed by Virgil, who was as much read then as he is to-day and
+esteemed an authority, withal, on scientific questions; for according to
+Virgil the Inhabited World descends toward the equator and has its apex
+in the extreme north.<a id="footnotetag370" name="footnotetag370"></a><a href="#footnote370" title="Go to footnote 370"><span class="small">[370]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>To such notions as these, which were supposed to have some sort of
+scientific basis, we must add the wild superstitious fancies that
+clustered about all remote and unvisited corners of the world. In maps
+made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in such places as we
+should label "Unexplored Region," there were commonly depicted uncouth
+shapes of "Gorgons and Hydras and Chimæras <span class="pagenum"><a id="page312" name="page312"></a>(p. 312)</span> dire," furnishing
+eloquent testimony to the feelings with which the unknown was regarded.
+<span class="sidenote">Superstitious fancies.</span>
+The barren wastes of the Sea of Darkness awakened a shuddering dread
+like that with which children shrink from the gloom of a cellar. When we
+remember all these things, and consider how the intelligent purpose
+which urged the commanders onward was scarcely within the comprehension
+of their ignorant and refractory crews, we can begin to form some idea
+of the difficulties that confronted the brave mariners who first sought
+an ocean route to the far-off shores of Cathay.</p>
+
+<p>Less formidable than these obstacles based on fallacious reasoning or
+superstitious whim were those that were furnished by the clumsiness of
+the ships and the crudeness of the appliances for navigation. As already
+observed, the Spanish and Portuguese caravels of the fifteenth century
+were less <span class="sidenote">Clumsiness of the caravels.</span>
+swift and manageable craft than the Norwegian "dragons" of the
+tenth. Mere yachts in size we should call them, but far from yachtlike
+in shape or nimbleness. With their length seldom more than thrice their
+width of beam, with narrow tower-like poops, with broad-shouldered bows
+and bowsprit weighed down with spritsail yards, and with no canvas
+higher than a topsail, these clumsy caravels could make but little
+progress against head-winds, and the amount of tacking and beating to
+and fro was sometimes enough to quadruple the length of the voyage. For
+want of metallic sheathing below the waterline the ship was liable to be
+sunk by the terrible <span class="pagenum"><a id="page313" name="page313"></a>(p. 313)</span> worm which, in Hakluyt's phrase, "many
+times pearceth and eateth through the strongest oake." For want of
+vegetable food in the larder, or anything save the driest of bread and
+beef stiffened with brine, the sailors were sure to be attacked by
+scurvy, and in a very long voyage the crew was deemed fortunate that did
+not lose half its number from that foul disease. <span class="sidenote">Famine and scurvy.</span>
+Often in traversing
+unknown seas the sturdy men who survived all other perils were brought
+face to face with starvation when they had ventured too far without
+turning back.<a id="footnotetag371" name="footnotetag371"></a><a href="#footnote371" title="Go to footnote 371"><span class="small">[371]</span></a> We need not wonder that the first steps in oceanic
+discovery were slow and painful.</p>
+
+<p>First among the instruments without which systematic ocean navigation
+would have been impossible, the magnetic compass had been introduced
+into southern Europe and <span class="sidenote">The mariner's compass.</span>
+was used by Biscayan and Catalan sailors before
+the end of the twelfth century.<a id="footnotetag372" name="footnotetag372"></a><a href="#footnote372" title="Go to footnote 372"><span class="small">[372]</span></a> Parties of Crusaders had learned
+the virtues of the suspended needle from the Arabs, who are said to have
+got their knowledge indirectly from China in the course of their eastern
+voyages.<a id="footnotetag373" name="footnotetag373"></a><a href="#footnote373" title="Go to footnote 373"><span class="small">[373]</span></a> It seems to have been <span class="pagenum"><a id="page314" name="page314"></a>(p. 314)</span> at Amalfi that the needle
+was first enclosed in a box and connected with a graduated compass-card.
+Apparently it had not come into general use in the middle of the
+thirteenth century, for in 1258 the famous Brunetto Latini, afterwards
+tutor of Dante, made a visit to Roger Bacon, of which he gives a
+description in a letter to his friend the poet Guido Cavalcanti: "The
+Parliament being summoned to assemble at Oxford, I did not fail to see
+Friar Bacon as soon as I arrived, and (among other things) he showed me
+a black ugly stone called a magnet, which has the surprising property of
+drawing iron to it; and upon which, if a needle be rubbed, and
+afterwards fastened to a straw so that it shall swim upon water, the
+needle will instantly turn toward the Pole-star: therefore, be the night
+ever so dark, so that neither moon nor star be visible, yet shall the
+mariner be able, by the help of this needle, to steer his vessel aright.
+This discovery, which appears useful in so great a degree to all who
+travel by sea, must remain concealed until other times; because no
+master mariner dares to use it lest he should fall under the imputation
+of being a magician; nor would the sailors venture themselves out to sea
+under his command, if he took with him an instrument which carries so
+great an appearance of being constructed under the influence of some
+infernal spirit.<a id="footnotetag374" name="footnotetag374"></a><a href="#footnote374" title="Go to footnote 374"><span class="small">[374]</span></a> A <span class="pagenum"><a id="page315" name="page315"></a>(p. 315)</span> time may arrive when these prejudices,
+which are of such great hindrance to researches into the secrets of
+nature, will be overcome; and it will be then that mankind shall reap
+the benefit of the labours of such learned men as Friar Bacon, and do
+justice to that industry and intelligence for which he and they now meet
+with no other return than obloquy and reproach."<a id="footnotetag375" name="footnotetag375"></a><a href="#footnote375" title="Go to footnote 375"><span class="small">[375]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<p>That time was after all not so long in arriving, for by the end of the
+thirteenth century the compass had come to be quite generally used,<a id="footnotetag376" name="footnotetag376"></a><a href="#footnote376" title="Go to footnote 376"><span class="small">[376]</span></a>
+and the direction of a ship's course could be watched continuously in
+foul and fair weather alike. For taking the sun's altitude rude
+astrolabes and jack-staffs were in use, very crazy affairs as compared
+with the modern quadrant, but sufficiently accurate to enable a
+<span class="sidenote">Latitude and longitude.</span>
+well-trained observer, in calculating his latitude, to get somewhere
+within two or three degrees of the truth. In calculating longitude the
+error was apt to be much greater, for in the absence of chronometers
+there were no accurate means for marking differences in time. It was
+necessary to depend upon the dead-reckoning, and the custom was first to
+sail due north or south to the parallel of the place of destination and
+then to turn at right angles and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page316" name="page316"></a>(p. 316)</span> sail due east or west. Errors
+of eight or even ten degrees were not uncommon. Thus at the end of a
+long outward voyage the ship might find itself a hundred miles or more
+to the north or south, and six or seven hundred miles to the east or
+west, of the point at which it had been aimed. Under all these
+difficulties, the approximations made to correct sailing by the most
+skilful mariners were sometimes wonderful. Doubtless this very poverty
+of resources served to sharpen their watchful sagacity.<a id="footnotetag377" name="footnotetag377"></a><a href="#footnote377" title="Go to footnote 377"><span class="small">[377]</span></a> To sail the
+seas was in those days a task requiring high mental equipment; it was no
+work for your commonplace skipper. Human faculty was taxed to its
+utmost, and human courage has never been more grandly displayed than by
+the glorious sailors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>We are now prepared to appreciate the character of the work that was
+done in the course of the first attempts to find an oceanic route from
+Europe to Asia. <span class="sidenote">Prince Henry the Navigator, 1394-1463.</span>
+Then, as in other great epochs of history, men of genius
+arose to meet the occasion. In 1394 was born Prince Henry of Portugal,
+since known as Henry the Navigator.<a id="footnotetag378" name="footnotetag378"></a><a href="#footnote378" title="Go to footnote 378"><span class="small">[378]</span></a> He was fourth son of King John
+I., <span class="pagenum"><a id="page317" name="page317"></a>(p. 317)</span> the valiant and prudent king under whom began the golden
+age of Portugal, which lasted until the conquest of that country in 1580
+by Philip II. of Spain. Henry's mother was Philippa, daughter of John of
+Gaunt. He was therefore cousin to our own Henry V. of England, whom he
+quite equalled in genius, while the laurels that he won were more
+glorious than those of Agincourt. In 1415, being then in his
+twenty-first year, Prince Henry played a distinguished part in the
+expedition which captured Ceuta from the Moors. While in Morocco he
+gathered such information as he could concerning the interior of the
+continent; he learned something about the oases of Sahara, the distant
+river Gambia, and the caravan trade between Tunis and Timbuctoo, whereby
+gold was carried from the Guinea coast to Mussulman ports on the
+Mediterranean. If this coast could be reached by sea, its gold might be
+brought to Lisbon as well. To divert such treasure from the infidel and
+secure it for a Christian nation was an enterprise fitted to kindle a
+prince's enthusiasm. While Henry felt the full force of these
+considerations, his thoughts took a wider range. The views of Pomponius
+Mela had always been held in high esteem by scholars of the Spanish
+peninsula,<a id="footnotetag379" name="footnotetag379"></a><a href="#footnote379" title="Go to footnote 379"><span class="small">[379]</span></a> and down past that Gold Coast Prince Henry saw <span class="pagenum"><a id="page318" name="page318"></a>(p. 318)</span>
+the ocean route to the Indies, the road whereby a vast empire might be
+won for <span class="sidenote">His idea of an ocean route to the Indies, and what it might
+bring.</span>
+Portugal and millions of wandering heathen souls might be
+gathered into the fold of Christ. To doubt the sincerity of the latter
+motive, or to belittle its influence, would be to do injustice to Prince
+Henry,&mdash;such cynical injustice as our hard-headed age is only too apt to
+mete out to that romantic time and the fresh enthusiasm which inspired
+its heroic performances. Prince Henry was earnest, conscientious,
+large-minded, and in the best sense devout; and there can be no question
+that in his mind, as in that of Columbus, and (with somewhat more alloy)
+in the minds of Cortes and others, the desire of converting the heathen
+and strengthening the Church served as a most powerful incentive to the
+actions which in the course of little more than a century quite changed
+the face of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Filled with such lofty and generous thoughts, Prince Henry, on his
+return from Morocco, in 1418, chose for himself a secluded place of
+abode where he could devote himself to his purposes undisturbed by the
+court life at Lisbon or by political solicitations of whatever sort. In
+the Morocco campaign he had won such military renown that he was now
+invited by Pope Martin V. to take chief command of the papal army; and
+presently he received similar flattering offers from his own cousin,
+Henry V. of England, from John II. of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page319" name="page319"></a>(p. 319)</span> Castile, and from the
+Emperor Sigismund, who, for shamefully violating his imperial word and
+permitting the burning of John Huss, was now sorely pressed by the
+enraged and rebellious Bohemians. Such invitations had no charm for
+Henry. Refusing them one and all, <span class="sidenote">The Sacred Promontory.</span>
+he retired to the promontory of
+Sagres, in the southernmost province of Portugal, the ancient kingdom of
+Algarve, of which his father now appointed him governor. That lonely and
+barren rock, protruding into the ocean, had long ago impressed the
+imagination of Greek and Roman writers; they called it the Sacred
+Promontory, and supposed it to be the westernmost limit of the habitable
+earth.<a id="footnotetag380" name="footnotetag380"></a><a href="#footnote380" title="Go to footnote 380"><span class="small">[380]</span></a> There the young prince proceeded to build an astronomical
+observatory, the first that his country had ever seen, and to gather
+about him a school of men competent to teach and men eager to learn the
+mysteries of map-making and the art of navigation. There he spent the
+greater part of his life; thence he sent forth his captains to plough
+the southern seas; and as year after year the weather-beaten ships
+returned from their venturesome pilgrimage, the first glimpse of home
+that greeted them was likely to be the beacon-light in the tower where
+the master sat poring over problems of Archimedes or watching the stars.
+For Henry, whose motto was "Talent de bien faire," or (in the old French
+usage) "Desire<a id="footnotetag381" name="footnotetag381"></a><a href="#footnote381" title="Go to footnote 381"><span class="small">[381]</span></a> to do well," <span class="pagenum"><a id="page320" name="page320"></a>(p. 320)</span> was wont to throw himself
+whole-hearted into whatever he undertook, and the study of astronomy and
+mathematics he pursued so zealously as to reach a foremost place among
+the experts of his time. With such tastes and such ambition, he was
+singularly fortunate in wielding ample pecuniary resources; if such a
+combination could be more often realized, the welfare of mankind would
+be notably enhanced. Prince Henry was Grand Master of the Order of
+Christ, an organization half military, half religious, and out of its
+abundant revenues he made the appropriations needful for the worthy
+purpose of advancing the interests of science, converting the heathen,
+and winning a commercial empire for Portugal. At first he had to
+encounter the usual opposition to lavish expenditure for a distant
+object without hope of immediate returns; but after a while his dogged
+perseverance began to be rewarded with such successes as to silence all
+adverse comment.</p>
+
+<p>The first work in hand was the rediscovery of coasts and islands that
+had ceased to be visited even before the breaking up of the Roman
+Empire. <span class="sidenote">The Madeira and Canary islands.</span>
+For more than a thousand years the Madeiras and Canaries had
+been well-nigh forgotten, and upon the coast of the African continent no
+ship ventured beyond Cape Non, the headland so named because it said
+"No!" to the wistful mariner.<a id="footnotetag382" name="footnotetag382"></a><a href="#footnote382" title="Go to footnote 382"><span class="small">[382]</span></a> There <span class="pagenum"><a id="page321" name="page321"></a>(p. 321)</span> had been some
+re-awakening of maritime activity in the course of the fourteenth
+century, chiefly due, no doubt, to the use of the compass. Between 1317
+and 1351 certain Portuguese ships, with Genoese pilots, had visited not
+only the Madeiras and Canaries, but even the Azores, a thousand miles
+out in the Atlantic; and these groups of islands are duly laid down upon
+the so-called Medici map of 1351, preserved in the Laurentian library at
+Florence.<a id="footnotetag383" name="footnotetag383"></a><a href="#footnote383" title="Go to footnote 383"><span class="small">[383]</span></a> The voyage to the Azores was probably the greatest feat
+of ocean navigation that had been performed down to that time, but it
+was not followed by colonization. Again, somewhere about 1377 Madeira
+seems to have been visited by Robert Machin, an Englishman, whose
+adventures make a most romantic story; and in 1402 the Norman knight,
+Jean de Béthencourt, had begun to found a colony in the Canaries, for
+which, in return for aid and supplies, he did homage to the King of
+Castile.<a id="footnotetag384" name="footnotetag384"></a><a href="#footnote384" title="Go to footnote 384"><span class="small">[384]</span></a> As for the African <span class="pagenum"><a id="page322" name="page322"></a>(p. 322)</span> coast, Cape Non had also been
+passed at some time during the fourteenth century, for Cape Bojador is
+laid down on the Catalan map of 1375; but beyond that point no one had
+dared take the risks of the unknown sea.</p>
+
+<p>The first achievement under Prince Henry's guidance was the final
+rediscovery and colonization of Porto Santo and Madeira in 1418-25 by
+Gonsalvez Zarco, Tristam Vaz, and Bartholomew Perestrelo.<a id="footnotetag385" name="footnotetag385"></a><a href="#footnote385" title="Go to footnote 385"><span class="small">[385]</span></a> This work
+occupied the prince's attention for some years, and then came up the
+problem of Cape Bojador. The difficulty was twofold; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page323" name="page323"></a>(p. 323)</span> the waves
+about that headland were apt to be boisterous, and wild sailor's fancies
+were apt to enkindle a mutinous spirit in the crews. <span class="sidenote">Gil Eannes passes Cape Bojador.</span>
+It was not until
+1433-35 that Gil Eannes, a commander of unusually clear head and steady
+nerves, made three attempts and fairly passed the dreaded spot. In the
+first attempt he failed, as his predecessors had done, to double the
+cape; in the second attempt he doubled it; in the third he sailed nearly
+two hundred miles beyond.</p>
+
+<a id="img015" name="img015"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img015b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img015.jpg" width="300" height="394" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Portuguese voyages on the coast of Africa.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This achievement of Gil Eannes (<i>anglicè</i>, plain Giles Jones) marks an
+era. It was the beginning of great things. When we think of the
+hesitation with which this step was taken, and the vociferous applause
+that greeted the successful captain, it is strange to reflect that babes
+were already born in 1435 who were to live to hear of the prodigious
+voyages of Columbus and Gama, Vespucius and Magellan. After seven years
+a further step was taken in advance; in 1442 Antonio Gonçalves brought
+gold and <span class="sidenote">Beginning of the modern slave-trade, 1442.</span>
+negro slaves from the Rio d' Ouro, or Rio del Oro, four hundred
+miles beyond Cape Bojador. Of this beginning of the modern slave-trade I
+shall treat in a future chapter.<a id="footnotetag386" name="footnotetag386"></a><a href="#footnote386" title="Go to footnote 386"><span class="small">[386]</span></a> Let it suffice here to observe
+that Prince Henry did not discourage but sanctioned it. The first aspect
+which this baleful traffic assumed in his mind was that of a means for
+converting the heathen, by bringing black men and women to Portugal to
+be taught the true faith and the ways of civilized people, that they
+might in due season be sent back to their native <span class="pagenum"><a id="page324" name="page324"></a>(p. 324)</span> land to
+instruct their heathen brethren. The kings of Portugal should have a
+Christian empire in <span class="sidenote">Papal grant of heathen countries to the Portuguese crown.</span>
+Africa, and in course of time the good work might be
+extended to the Indies. Accordingly a special message was sent to Pope
+Eugenius IV., informing him of the discovery of the country of these
+barbarous <span class="pagenum"><a id="page325" name="page325"></a>(p. 325)</span> people beyond the limits of the Mussulman world, and
+asking for a grant in perpetuity to Portugal of all heathen lands that
+might be discovered in further voyages beyond Cape Bojador, even so far
+as to include the Indies.<a id="footnotetag387" name="footnotetag387"></a><a href="#footnote387" title="Go to footnote 387"><span class="small">[387]</span></a> The request found favour in the eyes of
+Eugenius, and the grant was solemnly confirmed by succeeding popes. To
+these proceedings we shall again have occasion to refer. We have here to
+observe that the discovery of gold and the profits of the
+slave-trade&mdash;though it was as yet conducted upon a very small
+scale&mdash;served to increase the interest of the Portuguese people in
+Prince Henry's work and to diminish the obstacles in his way. A
+succession of gallant captains, whose names make a glorious roll of
+honour, carried on the work of exploration, reaching the farthest point
+that had been attained by the ancients. In 1445 Dinis Fernandez passed
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page326" name="page326"></a>(p. 326)</span> Cape Verde, and two years later Lançarote found the mouth of
+the Gambia. In 1456 Luigi Cadamosto&mdash;a Venetian captain in the service
+of Portugal&mdash;went as far as the Rio Grande; in 1460 Diego Gomez
+<span class="sidenote">Advance to Sierra Leone.</span>
+discovered the Cape Verde islands; and in 1462 Piedro de Cintra reached
+Sierra Leone.<a id="footnotetag388" name="footnotetag388"></a><a href="#footnote388" title="Go to footnote 388"><span class="small">[388]</span></a> At the same time, in various expeditions between 1431
+and 1466, the Azores (i. e. "Hawk" islands) were rediscovered and
+colonized, and voyages out into the Sea of Darkness began to lose
+something of their manifold terrors.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Henry did not live to see Africa circumnavigated. At the time of
+his death, in 1468, his ships had not gone farther than the spot where
+Hanno found his gorillas two thousand years before. But the work of this
+excellent prince did not end with his death. His adventurous spirit
+lived on in the school of accomplished navigators he had trained. Many
+voyages were made after 1462, of which we need mention only those that
+marked new stages of discovery. In 1471 two knights of the royal
+household, João de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar, sailed down the Gold
+Coast and crossed the equator; <span class="sidenote">Advance to the Hottentot coast.</span>
+three years later the line was again
+crossed by Fernando Po, discoverer of the island that bears his name. In
+1484 Diego Cam went on as far as the mouth of the Congo, and entered
+into <span class="pagenum"><a id="page327" name="page327"></a>(p. 327)</span> very friendly relations with the negroes there. In a
+second voyage in 1485 this enterprising captain pushed on a thousand
+miles farther, and set up a cross in 22° south latitude on the coast of
+the Hottentot country. Brisk trading went on along the Gold Coast, and
+missionaries were sent to the Congo.<a id="footnotetag389" name="footnotetag389"></a><a href="#footnote389" title="Go to footnote 389"><span class="small">[389]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page328" name="page328"></a>(p. 328)</span>
+
+<p>These voyages into the southern hemisphere dealt a damaging blow to the
+theory of an impassable <span class="pagenum"><a id="page329" name="page329"></a>(p. 329)</span> fiery zone; but as to the
+circumnavigability of the African continent, the long stretch of coast
+beyond the equator seemed more in harmony with Ptolemy's views than with
+those of Mela. <span class="sidenote">Effect of these discoveries upon the theories of
+Ptolemy and Mela.</span>
+The eastward trend of the Guinea coast was at first in
+favour of the latter geographer, but when Santarem and Escobar found it
+turning southward to the equator the facts began to refute him.
+According to Mela <span class="pagenum"><a id="page330" name="page330"></a>(p. 330)</span> they should have found it possible at once
+to sail eastward to the gulf of Aden. What if it should turn out after
+all that there was no connection between the Atlantic and Indian oceans?
+Every added league of voyaging toward the tropic of Capricorn must have
+been fraught with added discouragement, for it went to prove that, even
+if Ptolemy's theory was wrong, at any rate the ocean route to Asia was
+indefinitely longer than had been supposed. But was it possible to
+imagine any other route that should be more direct? To a trained mariner
+of original and imaginative mind, sojourning in Portugal and keenly
+watching the progress of African discovery, the years just following the
+voyage of Santarem and Escobar would be a period eminently fit for
+suggesting such a question. Let us not forget this date of 1471 while we
+follow Prince Henry's work to its first grand climax.</p>
+
+<p>About the time that Diego Cam was visiting the tribes on the Congo, the
+negro king of Benin, a country by the mouth of the Niger, sent an
+embassy to John II. of Portugal (Prince Henry's nephew), with a request
+that missionary priests might be sent to Benin. It has been thought that
+the woolly-haired chieftain was really courting an alliance with the
+Portuguese, or perhaps he thought their "medicine men" might have the
+knack of confounding his foes. The negro envoy told King John that a
+thousand miles or so east of Benin there was an august sovereign who
+ruled over many subject peoples, and at whose court there was an order
+of chivalry whose badge or emblem was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page331" name="page331"></a>(p. 331)</span> a brazen cross. Such, at
+least, was the king's interpretation of the negro's words, and forthwith
+he jumped to the conclusion that this <span class="sidenote">News of Prester John.</span>
+African potentate must be Prester
+John, whose name was redolent of all the marvels of the mysterious East.
+To find Prester John would be a long step toward golden Cathay and the
+isles of spice. So the king of Portugal rose to the occasion, and
+attacked the problem on both flanks at once. He sent Pedro de Covilham
+by way of Egypt to Aden, and he sent Bartholomew Dias, with three
+fifty-ton caravels, to make one more attempt to find an end to the
+Atlantic coast of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Covilham's journey was full of interesting experiences. He sailed from
+Aden to Hindustan, and on his return visited <span class="sidenote">Covilham's journey.</span>
+Abyssinia, where the
+semi-Christian king took such a liking to him that he would never let
+him go. So Covilham spent the rest of his life, more than thirty years,
+in Abyssinia, whence he was able now and then to send to Portugal items
+of information concerning eastern Africa that were afterwards quite
+serviceable in voyages upon the Indian ocean.<a id="footnotetag390" name="footnotetag390"></a><a href="#footnote390" title="Go to footnote 390"><span class="small">[390]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The daring captain, Bartholomew Dias, started in August, 1486, and after
+passing nearly four hundred miles beyond the tropic of Capricorn, was
+driven due south before heavy winds for thirteen days without seeing
+land. At the end of this stress of weather he turned his prows eastward,
+expecting soon to reach the coast. But as he had passed the southernmost
+point of Africa <span class="pagenum"><a id="page332" name="page332"></a>(p. 332)</span> and no land appeared before him, after a while
+<span class="sidenote">Bartholomew Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope and enters the
+Indian ocean.</span>
+he steered northward and landed near the mouth of Gauritz river, more
+than two hundred miles east of the Cape of Good Hope. Thence he pushed
+on about four hundred miles farther eastward as far as the Great Fish
+river (about 33° 30' S., 27° 10' E.), where the coast begins to have a
+steady trend to the northeast. Dias was now fairly in the Indian ocean,
+and could look out with wistful triumph upon that waste of waters, but
+his worn-out crews refused to go any farther and he was compelled
+reluctantly to turn back. On the way homeward the ships passed in full
+sight of the famous headland which Dias called the Stormy Cape; but
+after arriving at Lisbon, in December, 1487, when the report of this
+noble voyage was laid before King John II., his majesty said, Nay, let
+it rather be called the Cape of Good Hope, since there was now much
+reason to believe that they had found the long-sought ocean route to the
+Indies.<a id="footnotetag391" name="footnotetag391"></a><a href="#footnote391" title="Go to footnote 391"><span class="small">[391]</span></a> Though this opinion turned out to be correct, it is well
+for us to remember that the proof was not yet complete. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page333" name="page333"></a>(p. 333)</span> No one
+could yet say with certainty that the African coast, if followed a few
+miles east of Great Fish river, would not again trend southward and run
+all the way to the pole. The completed proof was not obtained until
+Vasco da Gama crossed the Indian ocean ten years later.</p>
+
+<p>This voyage of Bartholomew Dias was longer and in many respects more
+remarkable than any that is known to have been made before that time.
+From Lisbon back to Lisbon, reckoning the sinuosities of the coast, but
+making no allowance for tacking, the distance run by those tiny craft
+was not less than thirteen thousand miles. <span class="sidenote">Some effects of the discovery.</span>
+This voyage completed the
+overthrow of the fiery-zone doctrine, so far as Africa was concerned; it
+penetrated far into the southern temperate zone where Mela had placed
+his antipodal world; it dealt a staggering blow to the continental
+theory of Ptolemy; and its success made men's minds readier for yet more
+daring enterprises. Among the shipmates of Dias on this ever memorable
+voyage was a <span class="sidenote">Bartholomew Columbus.</span>
+well-trained and enthusiastic Italian mariner, none other
+than Bartholomew, the younger brother of Christopher Columbus. There was
+true dramatic propriety in the presence of that man at just this time;
+for not only did all these later African voyages stand in a direct
+causal relation to the discovery of America, but as an immediate
+consequence of the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope we shall presently
+find Bartholomew Columbus in the very next year on his way to England,
+to enlist the aid of King Henry VII. in behalf of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page334" name="page334"></a>(p. 334)</span> a scheme of
+unprecedented boldness for which his elder brother had for some years
+been seeking to obtain the needful funds. Not long after that
+disappointing voyage of Santarem and Escobar in 1471, this original and
+imaginative sailor, Christopher Columbus, had conceived (or adopted and
+made his own) a new method of solving the problem of an ocean route to
+Cathay. We have now to sketch the early career of this epoch-making man,
+and to see how he came to be brought into close relations with the work
+of the Portuguese explorers.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page335" name="page335"></a>(p. 335)</span> CHAPTER V.<br>
+
+<span class="smaller">THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.<br>
+
+<i>WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE.</i></span></h2>
+
+
+<p>Our information concerning the life of Columbus before 1492 is far from
+being as satisfactory as one could wish. Unquestionably he is to be
+deemed fortunate in having had for his biographers two such men as his
+friend Las Casas, one of the noblest characters and most faithful
+historians of that or any age, and his own son Ferdinand Columbus, a
+most accomplished scholar and bibliographer. <span class="sidenote">Sources of information concerning the life of Columbus: Las
+Casas and Ferdinand Columbus.</span>
+The later years of
+Ferdinand's life were devoted, with loving care, to the preparation of a
+biography of his father; and his book&mdash;which unfortunately survives only
+in the Italian translation of Alfonso Ulloa,<a id="footnotetag392" name="footnotetag392"></a><a href="#footnote392" title="Go to footnote 392"><span class="small">[392]</span></a> published in Venice in
+1571&mdash;is of priceless value. As Washington Irving long ago wrote, it is
+"an invaluable document, entitled to great faith, and is the
+cornerstone <span class="pagenum"><a id="page336" name="page336"></a>(p. 336)</span> of the history of the American continent."<a id="footnotetag393" name="footnotetag393"></a><a href="#footnote393" title="Go to footnote 393"><span class="small">[393]</span></a>
+After Ferdinand's death, in 1539, his papers seem to have passed into
+the hands of Las Casas, who, from 1552 to 1561, in the seclusion of the
+college of San Gregorio at Valladolid, was engaged in writing his great
+"History of the Indies."<a id="footnotetag394" name="footnotetag394"></a><a href="#footnote394" title="Go to footnote 394"><span class="small">[394]</span></a> Ferdinand's superb library, one of the
+finest in Europe, was bequeathed to the cathedral at Seville.<a id="footnotetag395" name="footnotetag395"></a><a href="#footnote395" title="Go to footnote 395"><span class="small">[395]</span></a> It
+contained some twenty thousand volumes in print and manuscript, four
+fifths of which, through shameful neglect or vandalism, have perished or
+been scattered. Four thousand volumes, however, are still preserved, and
+this library <span class="sidenote">The Biblioteca Colombina at Seville.</span>
+(known as the "Biblioteca Colombina") is full of interest
+for the historian. Book-buying was to Ferdinand Columbus one of the most
+important occupations in life. His books were not only carefully
+numbered, but on the last leaf of each one he wrote a memorandum of the
+time and place of its purchase and the sum of money paid for it.<a id="footnotetag396" name="footnotetag396"></a><a href="#footnote396" title="Go to footnote 396"><span class="small">[396]</span></a>
+This habit of Ferdinand's has furnished <span class="pagenum"><a id="page337" name="page337"></a>(p. 337)</span> us with clues to the
+solution of some interesting questions. Besides this, he was much given
+to making marginal notes and comments, which are sometimes of immense
+value, and, more than all, there are still to be seen in this library a
+few books that belonged to Christopher Columbus himself, with very
+important notes in his own handwriting and in that of his brother
+Bartholomew. Las Casas was familiar with this grand collection in the
+days of its completeness, he was well acquainted with all the members of
+the Columbus family, and he had evidently read the manuscript sources of
+Ferdinand's book; for a comparison with Ulloa's version shows that
+considerable portions of the original Spanish text&mdash;or of the documents
+upon which it rested&mdash;are preserved in the work of Las Casas.<a id="footnotetag397" name="footnotetag397"></a><a href="#footnote397" title="Go to footnote 397"><span class="small">[397]</span></a> The
+citation and adoption of Ferdinand's statements by the latter writer,
+who was able independently to verify them, is therefore in most cases
+equivalent to corroboration, and the two writers together form an
+authority of the weightiest kind, and not lightly to be questioned or
+set aside.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page338" name="page338"></a>(p. 338)</span>
+
+<p>Besides these books of most fundamental importance, we have valuable
+accounts of some parts of the life of Columbus by his friend Andres
+Bernaldez, <span class="sidenote">Bernaldez and Peter Martyr.</span>
+the curate of Los Palacios near Seville.<a id="footnotetag398" name="footnotetag398"></a><a href="#footnote398" title="Go to footnote 398"><span class="small">[398]</span></a> Peter Martyr,
+of Anghiera, by Lago Maggiore, was an intimate friend of Columbus, and
+gives a good account of his voyages, besides mentioning him in sundry
+epistles.<a id="footnotetag399" name="footnotetag399"></a><a href="#footnote399" title="Go to footnote 399"><span class="small">[399]</span></a> Columbus himself, moreover, was such a voluminous writer
+that his contemporaries laughed about it. "God grant," says Zuñiga in a
+letter to the Marquis de Pescara, "God grant that Gutierrez may never
+come short for paper, for he writes more than Ptolemy, more than
+Columbus, the man who discovered the Indies."<a id="footnotetag400" name="footnotetag400"></a><a href="#footnote400" title="Go to footnote 400"><span class="small">[400]</span></a>
+These <span class="sidenote">Letters of Columbus.</span>
+writings are in
+great part lost, though doubtless a good many things will yet be brought
+to light in Spain by persistent rummaging. We have, however, from sixty
+to seventy letters and reports by Columbus, of which twenty-three at
+least are in his own handwriting; and all these have been
+published.<a id="footnotetag401" name="footnotetag401"></a><a href="#footnote401" title="Go to footnote 401"><span class="small">[401]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, while these contemporary materials <span class="pagenum"><a id="page339" name="page339"></a>(p. 339)</span> give us
+abundant information concerning the great discoverer, from the year 1492
+until his death, it is quite otherwise with his earlier years,
+especially before his arrival in Spain in 1484. His own allusions to
+these earlier years are sometimes hard to interpret;<a id="footnotetag402" name="footnotetag402"></a><a href="#footnote402" title="Go to footnote 402"><span class="small">[402]</span></a> and as for his
+son Ferdinand, that writer confesses, with characteristic and winning
+frankness, <span class="sidenote">Defects in Ferdinand's information.</span>
+that his information is imperfect, inasmuch as filial respect
+had deterred him from closely interrogating his father on such points,
+or, to tell the plain truth, being still very young when his father
+died, he had not then come to recognize their importance.<a id="footnotetag403" name="footnotetag403"></a><a href="#footnote403" title="Go to footnote 403"><span class="small">[403]</span></a> This does
+not seem strange when we reflect that Ferdinand must have seen very
+little of his father until in 1502, at the age of fourteen, he
+accompanied him on that last difficult and disastrous voyage, in which
+the sick and harassed old man could have had but little time or strength
+for aught but the work in hand. It is not strange that when, a quarter
+of a century later, the son set about his literary task, he should now
+and then have got a date wrong, or have narrated some incidents
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page340" name="page340"></a>(p. 340)</span> in a confused manner, or have admitted some gossiping stories,
+the falsehood of which can now plainly be detected. Such blemishes,
+which occur chiefly in the earlier part of Ferdinand's book, do not
+essentially detract from its high authority.<a id="footnotetag404" name="footnotetag404"></a><a href="#footnote404" title="Go to footnote 404"><span class="small">[404]</span></a> The limits which
+bounded the son's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page341" name="page341"></a>(p. 341)</span> accurate knowledge seem also to have bounded
+that of such friends as Bernaldez, who did not become acquainted with
+Columbus until after his arrival in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>In recent years elaborate researches have been made, by Henry Harrisse
+and others, in the archives of Genoa, Savona, Seville, and other places
+with <span class="sidenote">Researches of Henry Harrisse.</span>
+which Columbus was connected, in the hope of supplementing this
+imperfect information concerning his earlier years.<a id="footnotetag405" name="footnotetag405"></a><a href="#footnote405" title="Go to footnote 405"><span class="small">[405]</span></a> A number of
+data have thus been obtained, which, while clearing up the subject most
+remarkably in some directions, have been made to mystify and embroil it
+in others. There is scarcely a date or a fact relating to Columbus
+before 1492 but has been made the subject of hot dispute; and some
+pretty wholesale reconstructions of his biography have been
+attempted.<a id="footnotetag406" name="footnotetag406"></a><a href="#footnote406" title="Go to footnote 406"><span class="small">[406]</span></a> The general impression, however, which the discussions
+of the past twenty years have left upon my mind, is that the more
+violent hypotheses are not likely <span class="pagenum"><a id="page342" name="page342"></a>(p. 342)</span> to be sustained, and that
+the newly-ascertained facts do not call for any very radical
+interference with the traditional lines upon which the life of Columbus
+has heretofore been written.<a id="footnotetag407" name="footnotetag407"></a><a href="#footnote407" title="Go to footnote 407"><span class="small">[407]</span></a> At any rate there seems to be no
+likelihood of such interference as to modify our views of the causal
+sequence of events that led to the westward search for the Indies; and
+it is this relation of cause and effect that chiefly concerns us in a
+history of the Discovery of America.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>The date of the birth of Columbus is easy to determine approximately,
+but hard to determine with precision. In the voluminous discussion upon
+this subject the extreme limits assigned have been 1430 and 1456, but
+neither of these extremes is admissible, and our choice really lies
+somewhere between <span class="sidenote">Date of the birth of Columbus: archives of Savona.</span>
+1436 and 1446. Among the town archives of Savona is a
+deed of sale executed August 7, 1473, by the father of Christopher
+Columbus, and ratified by Christopher and his next brother
+Giovanni.<a id="footnotetag408" name="footnotetag408"></a><a href="#footnote408" title="Go to footnote 408"><span class="small">[408]</span></a> Both brothers must then have attained <span class="pagenum"><a id="page343" name="page343"></a>(p. 343)</span> their
+majority, which in the republic of Genoa was fixed at the age of
+twenty-five. Christopher, therefore, can hardly have been less than
+seven and twenty, so that the latest probable date for his birth is
+1446, and this is the date accepted by Muñoz, Major, Harrisse, and
+Avezac. There is no documentary proof, however, to prevent our taking an
+earlier date; and the curate of Los Palacios&mdash;strong authority on such a
+point&mdash;says <span class="sidenote">Statement of Bernaldez.</span>
+expressly that at the time of his death, in 1506, Columbus
+was "in a good old age, seventy years a little more or less."<a id="footnotetag409" name="footnotetag409"></a><a href="#footnote409" title="Go to footnote 409"><span class="small">[409]</span></a> Upon
+this statement Navarrete and Humboldt have accepted 1436 as the probable
+date of birth.<a id="footnotetag410" name="footnotetag410"></a><a href="#footnote410" title="Go to footnote 410"><span class="small">[410]</span></a> The most plausible objection to this is a statement
+made by Columbus himself in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, written
+in 1501. In this letter, as first given in the biography by his son,
+Columbus says that he was of "very tender age" when he began to sail the
+seas, an occupation which he has kept up until the present moment; and
+in the next sentence but one he adds that "now for forty years I have
+been <span class="pagenum"><a id="page344" name="page344"></a>(p. 344)</span> in this business and have gone to every place where there
+is any navigation up to the present time."<a id="footnotetag411" name="footnotetag411"></a><a href="#footnote411" title="Go to footnote 411"><span class="small">[411]</span></a>
+<span class="sidenote">Columbus's letter of September, 1501.</span>
+The expression "very
+tender age" agrees with Ferdinand's statement that his father was
+fourteen years old when he first took to the sea.<a id="footnotetag412" name="footnotetag412"></a><a href="#footnote412" title="Go to footnote 412"><span class="small">[412]</span></a> Since 1446 +
+14-40 = 1500, it is argued that Columbus was probably born about 1446;
+some sticklers for extreme precision say 1447. But now there were eight
+years spent by Columbus in Spain, from 1484 to 1492, without any voyages
+at all; they were years, as he forcibly says, "dragged out in
+disputations."<a id="footnotetag413" name="footnotetag413"></a><a href="#footnote413" title="Go to footnote 413"><span class="small">[413]</span></a> Did he mean to include those eight years in his
+forty spent upon the sea? Navarrete thinks he did not. When he wrote
+under excitement, as in this letter, his language was apt to be loose,
+and it is fair to construe it according to the general probabilities of
+the case. This addition of eight years brings his statement
+substantially into harmony with that of Bernaldez, which it really will
+not do to set aside lightly. Moreover, in the original text of the
+letter, since published by Navarrete, Columbus appears to say, "now for
+<i>more than</i> forty years," so that the agreement with Bernaldez becomes
+practically complete.<a id="footnotetag414" name="footnotetag414"></a><a href="#footnote414" title="Go to footnote 414"><span class="small">[414]</span></a> The good curate <span class="pagenum"><a id="page345" name="page345"></a>(p. 345)</span> spoke from direct
+personal acquaintance, and his phrases "seventy years" and "a good old
+age" <span class="sidenote">The balance of probability is in favour of 1436.</span>
+are borne out by the royal decree of February 23, 1505, permitting
+Columbus to ride on a mule, instead of a horse, by reason of his old age
+(<i>ancianidad</i>) and infirmities.<a id="footnotetag415" name="footnotetag415"></a><a href="#footnote415" title="Go to footnote 415"><span class="small">[415]</span></a> Such a phrase applies much better
+to a man of sixty-nine than to a man of fifty-nine. On the whole, I
+think that Washington Irving showed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page346" name="page346"></a>(p. 346)</span> good sense in accepting
+the statement of the curate of Los Palacios as decisive, dating as it
+does the birth of Columbus at 1436, "a little more or less."</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the place where the great discoverer was born there ought
+to be no dispute, since we have his own most explicit and unmistakable
+word for it, as I shall presently show. Nevertheless there has been no
+end of dispute. He has been claimed by as many places as Homer,<a id="footnotetag416" name="footnotetag416"></a><a href="#footnote416" title="Go to footnote 416"><span class="small">[416]</span></a> but
+the only real question is whether he was born in the city of Genoa or in
+some neighbouring village within the boundaries of the Genoese republic.
+It is easy to understand how doubt has arisen on this point, if we trace
+the changes of residence of his family. The grandfather of Columbus
+seems to have been Giovanni Colombo, of Terrarossa, an inland hamlet
+some twenty miles east by north from <span class="pagenum"><a id="page347" name="page347"></a>(p. 347)</span> Genoa. Giovanni's son,
+Domenico Colombo, was probably born at Terrarossa, and moved thence with
+his father, somewhere between <span class="sidenote">The family of Domenico Colombo, and its changes of
+residence.</span>
+1430 and 1445, to Quinto al Mare, four
+miles east of Genoa on the coast. All the family seem to have been
+weavers. Before 1445, but how many years before is not known, Domenico
+married Susanna Fontanarossa, who belonged to a family of weavers,
+probably of Quezzi, four miles northeast of Genoa. Between 1448 and 1451
+Domenico, with his wife and three children, moved into the city of
+Genoa, where he became the owner of a house and was duly qualified as a
+citizen. In 1471 Domenico moved to Savona, thirty miles west on the
+Corniche road, where he set up a weaving establishment and also kept a
+tavern. He had then five children, Cristoforo, Giovanni, Bartolommeo,
+Giacomo, and a daughter. Domenico lived in Savona till 1484. At that
+time his wife and his son Giovanni were dead, Giacomo was an apprentice,
+learning the weaver's trade, Christopher and Bartholomew had long been
+domiciled in Portugal, the daughter had married a cheese merchant in
+Genoa, and to that city Domenico returned in the autumn of 1484, and
+lived there until his death, at a great age, in 1499 or 1500. He was
+always in pecuniary difficulties, and died poor and in debt, though his
+sons seem to have sent him from Portugal and Spain such money as they
+could spare.<a id="footnotetag417" name="footnotetag417"></a><a href="#footnote417" title="Go to footnote 417"><span class="small">[417]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The reader will observe that Christopher and his two next brothers were
+born before the family <span class="pagenum"><a id="page348" name="page348"></a>(p. 348)</span> went to live in the city of Genoa. It
+has hence been plausibly inferred that they were born either in Quinto
+or in Terrarossa; more likely the latter, since both Christopher and
+Bartholomew, as well as their father, were called, and sometimes signed
+themselves, Columbus of Terrarossa.<a id="footnotetag418" name="footnotetag418"></a><a href="#footnote418" title="Go to footnote 418"><span class="small">[418]</span></a> In this opinion the most
+indefatigable modern investigator, Harrisse, agrees with Las Casas.<a id="footnotetag419" name="footnotetag419"></a><a href="#footnote419" title="Go to footnote 419"><span class="small">[419]</span></a>
+Nevertheless, in a solemn legal instrument executed February 22, 1498,
+establishing a <i>mayorazgo</i>, or right of succession to his estates and
+emoluments in the Indies, <span class="sidenote">Christopher tells us that he was born in the city of Genoa.</span>
+Columbus expressly declares that he was born
+in the city of Genoa: "I enjoin it upon my son, the said Don Diego, or
+whoever may inherit the said <i>mayorazgo</i>, always to keep and maintain in
+the City of Genoa one person of our lineage, because from thence I came
+and in it I was born."<a id="footnotetag420" name="footnotetag420"></a><a href="#footnote420" title="Go to footnote 420"><span class="small">[420]</span></a> I do not see how such a definite and
+positive statement, occurring in such a document, can be doubted or
+explained away. It seems clear that the son was born while the parents
+were dwelling either at <span class="pagenum"><a id="page349" name="page349"></a>(p. 349)</span> Terrarossa or at Quinto, but what is
+to hinder our supposing that the event might have happened when the
+mother was in the city on some errand or visit? The fact that
+Christopher and his brother were often styled "of Terrarossa" does not
+prove that they were born in that hamlet. A family moving thence to
+Quinto and to Genoa would stand in much need of some such distinctive
+epithet, because the name Colombo was extremely common in that part of
+Italy; insomuch that the modern historian, who prowls among the archives
+of those towns, must have a care lest he get hold of the wrong person,
+and thus open a fresh and prolific source of confusion. This has
+happened more than once.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, then, it seems most probable that the Discoverer of
+America was born in the city of Genoa in 1436, or not much later. Of his
+childhood we know next to nothing. Las Casas tells us that he studied at
+the University of Pavia and acquired a good knowledge of Latin.<a id="footnotetag421" name="footnotetag421"></a><a href="#footnote421" title="Go to footnote 421"><span class="small">[421]</span></a>
+This has been doubted, as incompatible with the statement of Columbus
+that he began a seafaring life at the age of fourteen. <span class="sidenote">Christopher's early years.</span>
+It is clear,
+however, that the earlier years of Columbus, before his departure for
+Portugal, were not all spent in seafaring. Somewhere, if not at Pavia,
+he not only learned Latin, but found time to study geography, with a
+little astronomy and mathematics, and to become an expert draughtsman.
+He seems to have gone to and fro upon the Mediterranean in merchant
+voyages, now and then <span class="pagenum"><a id="page350" name="page350"></a>(p. 350)</span> taking a hand in sharp scrimmages with
+Mussulman pirates.<a id="footnotetag422" name="footnotetag422"></a><a href="#footnote422" title="Go to footnote 422"><span class="small">[422]</span></a> In the intervals of this adventurous life he was
+probably to be found in Genoa, earning his bread by making maps and
+charts, for which there was a great and growing demand. About 1470,
+having become noted for his skill in such work, he followed his younger
+brother Bartholomew to Lisbon,<a id="footnotetag423" name="footnotetag423"></a><a href="#footnote423" title="Go to footnote 423"><span class="small">[423]</span></a> whither Prince Henry's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page351" name="page351"></a>(p. 351)</span>
+undertakings had attracted able navigators and learned geographers until
+that city had come to be the chief centre of nautical science in Europe.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page352" name="page352"></a>(p. 352)</span> Las Casas assures us that Bartholomew was quite equal to
+<span class="sidenote">Christopher and Bartholomew at Lisbon.</span>
+Christopher as a sailor, and surpassed him in the art of making maps and
+globes, as well as in the beauty of his handwriting.<a id="footnotetag424" name="footnotetag424"></a><a href="#footnote424" title="Go to footnote 424"><span class="small">[424]</span></a> In Portugal,
+as before in Italy, the work of the brothers Columbus was an alternation
+of map-making on land and adventure on the sea. We have Christopher's
+own word for it that he sailed with more than one of those Portuguese
+expeditions down the African coast;<a id="footnotetag425" name="footnotetag425"></a><a href="#footnote425" title="Go to footnote 425"><span class="small">[425]</span></a> and I think it not altogether
+unlikely that he may have been with Santarem and Escobar in their famous
+voyage of 1471.</p>
+
+<p>He had not been long in Portugal before he found a wife. We have already
+met the able Italian navigator, Bartholomew Perestrelo, who was sent by
+Prince Henry to the island of Porto Santo with Zarco and Vaz, about
+1425. In recognition of eminent services Prince Henry afterwards, in
+1446, <span class="sidenote">Philippa Moñiz de Perestrelo.</span>
+appointed him governor of Porto Santo. Perestrelo died in 1457,
+leaving a widow (his second wife, Isabella Moñiz) and a charming
+daughter Philippa,<a id="footnotetag426" name="footnotetag426"></a><a href="#footnote426" title="Go to footnote 426"><span class="small">[426]</span></a> <span class="pagenum"><a id="page353" name="page353"></a>(p. 353)</span> whom Columbus is said to have first
+met at a religious service in the chapel of the convent of All Saints at
+Lisbon. From the accounts of his personal appearance, given by Las Casas
+and others who knew him, we can well understand how Columbus should have
+won the heart of this lady, so far above him at that time in social
+position. He was a man of noble and commanding presence, tall and
+powerfully built, <span class="sidenote">Personal appearance of Columbus.</span>
+with fair ruddy complexion and keen blue-gray eyes
+that easily kindled; while his waving white hair must have been quite
+picturesque. His manner was at once courteous and cordial and his
+conversation charming, so that strangers were quickly won, and in
+friends who knew him well he inspired strong affection and respect.<a id="footnotetag427" name="footnotetag427"></a><a href="#footnote427" title="Go to footnote 427"><span class="small">[427]</span></a>
+There was an indefinable air of authority about him, as befitted a man
+of great heart and lofty thoughts.<a id="footnotetag428" name="footnotetag428"></a><a href="#footnote428" title="Go to footnote 428"><span class="small">[428]</span></a> Out of those kindling eyes
+looked a grand and poetic soul, touched with that divine spark of
+religious enthusiasm which makes true genius.</p>
+
+<p>The acquaintance between Columbus and Philippa Moñiz de Perestrelo was
+not long in ripening into affection, for they were married in 1473. As
+there was a small estate at <span class="sidenote">His marriage, and life upon the island of Porto Santo.</span>
+Porto Santo, Columbus went home thither with
+his bride to live for a while in quiet and seclusion. Such repose we may
+believe to have been <span class="pagenum"><a id="page354" name="page354"></a>(p. 354)</span> favourable to meditation, and on that
+little island, three hundred miles out on the mysterious ocean, we are
+told that the great scheme of sailing westward to the Indies first took
+shape in the mind of Columbus.<a id="footnotetag429" name="footnotetag429"></a><a href="#footnote429" title="Go to footnote 429"><span class="small">[429]</span></a> His father-in-law Perestrelo had
+left a quantity of sailing charts and nautical notes, and these Columbus
+diligently studied, while ships on their way to and from Guinea every
+now and then stopped at the island, and one can easily imagine the eager
+discussions that must have been held over the great commercial problem
+of the age,&mdash;how far south that African coast extended and whether there
+was any likelihood of ever finding an end to it.</p>
+
+<p>How long Columbus lived upon Porto Santo is not known, but he seems to
+have gone from time to time back to Lisbon, and at length to have made
+his home&mdash;or in the case of such a rover we might better say his
+headquarters&mdash;in that city. We come now to a document of supreme
+importance for our narrative. Paolo del Pozzo dei Toscanelli, born at
+Florence in 1397, was one of the most famous astronomers and
+cosmographers of his time, a man to whom it was natural that questions
+involving the size and shape of the earth <span class="pagenum"><a id="page355" name="page355"></a>(p. 355)</span> should be referred.
+To him Alfonso V. of Portugal made application, through a gentleman of
+the royal household, <span class="sidenote">Alfonso V. asks advice of the great astronomer Toscanelli.</span>
+Fernando Martinez, who happened to be an old friend
+of Toscanelli. What Alfonso wanted to know was whether there could be a
+shorter oceanic route to the Indies than that which his captains were
+seeking by following the African coast; if so, he begged that Toscanelli
+would explain the nature and direction of such a route. The Florentine
+astronomer replied with the letter presently to be quoted in full, dated
+June 25, 1474; and along with the letter he sent to the king a sailing
+chart, exhibiting his conception of the Atlantic ocean, with Europe on
+the east and Cathay on the west. The date of this letter is eloquent. It
+was early in 1472 that Santarem and Escobar brought back to Lisbon the
+news that beyond the Gold Coast the African shore turned southwards and
+stretched away in that direction beyond the equator. As I have already
+observed, this was the moment when the question as to the possibility of
+a shorter route was likely to arise;<a id="footnotetag430" name="footnotetag430"></a><a href="#footnote430" title="Go to footnote 430"><span class="small">[430]</span></a> and this is precisely the
+question we find the king of Portugal putting to Toscanelli some time
+before the middle of 1474. Now about this same time, or not long
+afterwards, we find Columbus himself appealing to Toscanelli. An aged
+Florentine merchant, Lorenzo Giraldi, then settled in Lisbon, was going
+back to his native city for a visit, and to him Columbus entrusted a
+letter for the eminent astronomer. He received the following answer:</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page356" name="page356"></a>(p. 356)</span>
+<p>"Paul, the physicist, to Christopher Columbus greeting.<a id="footnotetag431" name="footnotetag431"></a><a href="#footnote431" title="Go to footnote 431"><span class="small">[431]</span></a> I perceive
+your great and noble desire to go to the place where the spices grow;
+<span class="sidenote">Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus.</span>
+wherefore in reply to a letter of yours, I send you a copy of another
+letter, which I wrote a few days ago [or some time ago] to a friend of
+mine, a gentleman of the household of the most gracious king of Portugal
+before the wars of Castile,<a id="footnotetag432" name="footnotetag432"></a><a href="#footnote432" title="Go to footnote 432"><span class="small">[432]</span></a> in reply to another, which by command
+of His Highness he wrote me concerning that matter: and I send you
+another sailing chart, similar to the one I sent him, by which your
+demands will be satisfied. The copy of that letter of mine is as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Paul, the physicist, to Fernando Martinez, canon, at Lisbon,
+greeting.<a id="footnotetag433" name="footnotetag433"></a><a href="#footnote433" title="Go to footnote 433"><span class="small">[433]</span></a> I was glad to hear <span class="pagenum"><a id="page357" name="page357"></a>(p. 357)</span> of your intimacy and favour
+with your most noble and illustrious king.
+<span class="sidenote">Toscanelli's copy of his former letter to Martinez&mdash;enclosed
+in his first letter to Columbus.</span>
+I have formerly spoken with
+you about a shorter route to the places of Spices by ocean navigation
+than that which you are pursuing by Guinea. The most gracious king now
+desires from me some statement, or rather an exhibition to the eye, so
+that even slightly educated persons can grasp and comprehend that route.
+Although I am well aware that this can be proved from the spherical
+shape of the earth, nevertheless, in order to make the point clearer and
+to facilitate the enterprise, I have decided to exhibit that route by
+means of a sailing chart. I therefore send to his majesty a chart made
+by my own hands,<a id="footnotetag434" name="footnotetag434"></a><a href="#footnote434" title="Go to footnote 434"><span class="small">[434]</span></a> upon which are laid down your coasts, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page358" name="page358"></a>(p. 358)</span> the islands from which you must begin to shape your course
+steadily westward, and the places at which you are bound to arrive, and
+how far from the pole or from the equator you ought to keep away, and
+through how much space or through how many miles you are to arrive at
+places most fertile in all sorts of spices and gems; and do not wonder
+at my calling <i>west</i> the parts where the spices are, whereas they are
+commonly called <i>east</i>, because to persons sailing persistently westward
+those parts will be found by courses on the under side of the earth. For
+if [you go] by land and by routes on this upper side, they will always
+be found in the east. The straight lines drawn lengthwise upon the map
+indicate distance from east to west, while the transverse lines show
+distances from south to north. I have drawn upon the map various places
+upon which you may come, for the better information of the navigators in
+case of their arriving, whether through accident of wind or what not, at
+some different place from what they had expected; but partly in order
+that they may show the inhabitants that they have some knowledge of
+their country, which is sure to be a pleasant thing. It is said that
+none but merchants dwell in the islands.<a id="footnotetag435" name="footnotetag435"></a><a href="#footnote435" title="Go to footnote 435"><span class="small">[435]</span></a> For so great there is the
+number of navigators with their merchandise that in all the rest of the
+world there are not so many as in one very splendid port called
+Zaiton.<a id="footnotetag436" name="footnotetag436"></a><a href="#footnote436" title="Go to footnote 436"><span class="small">[436]</span></a> For they say that a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page359" name="page359"></a>(p. 359)</span> hundred great ships of pepper
+unload in that port every year, besides other ships bringing other
+spices. That country is very populous and very rich, with a multitude of
+provinces and kingdoms and cities without number, under one sovereign
+who is called the Great Khan, which name signifies King of Kings, whose
+residence is for the most part in the province of Cathay. His
+predecessors two hundred years ago desired an alliance with Christendom;
+they sent to the pope and asked for a number of persons learned in the
+faith, that they might be enlightened; but those who were sent, having
+encountered obstacles on the way, returned.<a id="footnotetag437" name="footnotetag437"></a><a href="#footnote437" title="Go to footnote 437"><span class="small">[437]</span></a> Even in the time of
+Eugenius<a id="footnotetag438" name="footnotetag438"></a><a href="#footnote438" title="Go to footnote 438"><span class="small">[438]</span></a> there came one to Eugenius and made a declaration
+concerning their great goodwill toward Christians, and I had a long talk
+with him about many things, about the great size of their royal palaces
+and the remarkable length and breadth of their rivers, and the multitude
+of cities on the banks of the rivers, such that on one river there are
+about two hundred cities, with marble bridges very long and wide and
+everywhere adorned with columns. This country is worth seeking by the
+Latins, not only because great treasures may be obtained from it,&mdash;gold,
+silver, and all sorts of jewels and spices,&mdash;but on account of its
+learned men, philosophers, and skilled astrologers, and [in order that
+we may see] with what arts and devices so powerful and splendid a
+province is governed, and also [how] they conduct their wars. This for
+some sort of answer <span class="pagenum"><a id="page360" name="page360"></a>(p. 360)</span> to his request, so far as haste and my
+occupations have allowed, ready in future to make further response to
+his royal majesty as much as he may wish. Given at Florence 25th June,
+1474.'</p>
+
+<p>"From<a id="footnotetag439" name="footnotetag439"></a><a href="#footnote439" title="Go to footnote 439"><span class="small">[439]</span></a>
+the city of Lisbon due west there are 26 spaces marked on the
+map, <span class="sidenote">Conclusion of Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus.</span>
+each of which contains 250 miles, as far as the very great and
+splendid city of Quinsay.<a id="footnotetag440" name="footnotetag440"></a><a href="#footnote440" title="Go to footnote 440"><span class="small">[440]</span></a> For it is a hundred miles in
+circumference and has ten bridges, and its name means City of Heaven,
+and many wonderful things are told about it and about the multitude of
+its arts and revenues. This space is almost a third part of the whole
+sphere. That city is in the province of Mangi, or near the province of
+Cathay in which land is the royal residence. But from the island of
+Antilia, which you know, to the very splendid island of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page361" name="page361"></a>(p. 361)</span>
+Cipango<a id="footnotetag441" name="footnotetag441"></a><a href="#footnote441" title="Go to footnote 441"><span class="small">[441]</span></a> there are ten spaces. For that island abounds in gold,
+pearls, and precious stones, and they cover the temples and palaces with
+solid gold. So through the unknown parts of the route the stretches of
+sea to be traversed are not great. Many things might perhaps have been
+stated more clearly, but one who duly considers what I have said will be
+able to work out the rest for himself. Farewell, most esteemed one."</p>
+
+<p>Some time after the receipt of this letter Columbus wrote again to
+Toscanelli, apparently sending him either some charts of his own, or
+some notes, or something bearing upon the subject in hand. No such
+letter is preserved, but Toscanelli replied as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Paul, the physicist, to Christopher Columbus greeting.<a id="footnotetag442" name="footnotetag442"></a><a href="#footnote442" title="Go to footnote 442"><span class="small">[442]</span></a> I have
+received your letters, with the things which you sent me, for which I
+thank you very much. <span class="sidenote">Toscanelli's second letter to Columbus.</span>
+I regard as noble and grand your project of sailing
+from east to west according to the indications furnished by the map
+which I sent you, and which would appear still more plainly upon a
+sphere. I am much pleased to see that I have been well understood, and
+that the voyage has become not only possible <span class="pagenum"><a id="page362" name="page362"></a>(p. 362)</span> but certain,<a id="footnotetag443" name="footnotetag443"></a><a href="#footnote443" title="Go to footnote 443"><span class="small">[443]</span></a>
+fraught with honour as it must be, and inestimable gain, and most lofty
+fame among all Christian people. You cannot take in all that it means
+except by actual experience, or without such copious and accurate
+information as I have had from eminent and learned men who have come
+from those places to the Roman court, and from merchants who have traded
+a long time in those parts, persons whose word is to be believed
+(<i>persone di grande autorità</i>). When that voyage shall be accomplished,
+it will be a voyage to powerful kingdoms, and to cities and provinces
+most wealthy and noble, abounding in all sorts of things most desired by
+us; I mean, with all kinds of spices and jewels in great abundance. It
+will also be advantageous for those kings and princes who are eager to
+have dealings and make alliances with the Christians of our countries,
+and to learn from the erudite men of these parts,<a id="footnotetag444" name="footnotetag444"></a><a href="#footnote444" title="Go to footnote 444"><span class="small">[444]</span></a> as well in
+religion as in all other branches of knowledge. For these reasons, and
+many others that might be mentioned, I do not wonder that you, who are
+of great courage, and the whole Portuguese nation, which has always had
+men distinguished in all such enterprises, are now inflamed with
+desire<a id="footnotetag445" name="footnotetag445"></a><a href="#footnote445" title="Go to footnote 445"><span class="small">[445]</span></a> to execute the said voyage."</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page363" name="page363"></a>(p. 363)</span>
+
+<p>These letters are intensely interesting, especially the one to Martinez,
+which reveals the fact that as early as 1474 the notion that a westward
+route to the Indies would be shorter than the southward route had
+somehow been suggested to Alfonso V.; <span class="sidenote">Who first suggested the feasibleness of a westward
+route? Was it Columbus?</span>
+and had, moreover, sufficiently
+arrested his attention to lead him to make inquiries of the most eminent
+astronomer within reach. Who could have suggested this notion to the
+king of Portugal? Was it Columbus, the trained mariner and map-maker,
+who might lately have been pondering the theories of Ptolemy and Mela as
+affected by the voyage of Santarem and Escobar, and whose connection
+with the Moñiz and Perestrelo families would now doubtless facilitate
+his access to the court? On some accounts this may seem probable,
+especially if we bear in mind Columbus's own statement implying that his
+appeals to the crown dated almost from the beginning of his fourteen
+years in Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>All the circumstances, however, seem to be equally consistent with the
+hypothesis that the first suggestion of the <span class="sidenote">Perhaps it was Toscanelli.</span>
+westward route may have come
+from Toscanelli himself, through the medium of the canon Martinez, who
+had for so many years been a member of King Alfonso's household. The
+words at the beginning of the letter lend some probability to this view:
+"I have formerly spoken with you about a shorter route to the places of
+Spices by <span class="pagenum"><a id="page364" name="page364"></a>(p. 364)</span> ocean navigation than that which you are pursuing by
+Guinea." It was accordingly earlier than 1474&mdash;how much earlier does not
+appear&mdash;that such discussions between Toscanelli and Martinez must
+probably have come to the ears of King Alfonso; and now, very likely
+owing to the voyage of Santarem and Escobar, that monarch began to think
+it worth while to seek for further information, "an exhibition to the
+eye," so that mariners not learned in astronomy like Toscanelli might
+"grasp and comprehend" the shorter route suggested. It is altogether
+probable that the Florentine astronomer, who was seventy-seven years old
+when he wrote this letter, had already for a long time entertained the
+idea of a westward route; and a man in whom the subject aroused so much
+enthusiasm could hardly have been reticent about it. It is not likely
+that Martinez was the only person to whom he descanted<a id="footnotetag446" name="footnotetag446"></a><a href="#footnote446" title="Go to footnote 446"><span class="small">[446]</span></a> upon the
+glory <span class="pagenum"><a id="page365" name="page365"></a>(p. 365)</span> and riches to be found by sailing "straight to Cathay,"
+and there were many channels through which Columbus might have got some
+inkling of his views, even before going to Portugal.</p>
+
+<p>However this may have been, the letter clearly proves that at that most
+interesting period, in or about 1474, Columbus was already meditating
+upon the westward route.<a id="footnotetag447" name="footnotetag447"></a><a href="#footnote447" title="Go to footnote 447"><span class="small">[447]</span></a> Whether he owed the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page366" name="page366"></a>(p. 366)</span> idea to
+Toscanelli, or not, is a question of no great <span class="sidenote">The idea was suggested by the globular form of the earth;</span>
+importance so far as
+concerns his own originality; for the idea was already in the air. The
+originality of Columbus did not consist in his conceiving the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page367" name="page367"></a>(p. 367)</span>
+possibility of reaching the shores of Cathay by sailing west, but in his
+conceiving it in such distinct <span class="pagenum"><a id="page368" name="page368"></a>(p. 368)</span> and practical shape as to be
+ready to make the adventure in his own person. As a matter of theory the
+possibility of such a voyage could not fail to be suggested by the
+globular form of the earth; and ever since the days of Aristotle that
+had been generally admitted by men learned in physical science.
+Aristotle proved, from the different altitudes of the pole-star in
+different places, that the earth must necessarily be a globe. Moreover,
+says Aristotle, "some stars are seen in Egypt or at Cyprus, but are not
+seen in the countries to the north of these; and the stars that in the
+north are visible while they make a complete circuit, there undergo a
+setting. So that from this it is manifest, not only that the form of the
+earth is round, but also that it is part of not a very large sphere; for
+otherwise the difference would not be so obvious to persons making so
+small a change of place. Wherefore we may judge that <i>those persons who
+connect the region in the neighbourhood of the Pillars of Hercules with
+that towards India, and who assert that in this way the sea is</i> <span class="smcap">ONE</span>, do
+not assert things very improbable."<a id="footnotetag448" name="footnotetag448"></a><a href="#footnote448" title="Go to footnote 448"><span class="small">[448]</span></a> It <span class="pagenum"><a id="page369" name="page369"></a>(p. 369)</span> thus appears that
+more than eighteen centuries before <span class="sidenote">and was as old as Aristotle.</span>
+Columbus took counsel of Toscanelli,
+"those persons" to whom Aristotle alludes were discussing, as a matter
+of theory, this same subject. Eratosthenes held that it would be easy
+enough to sail from Spain to India on the same parallel were it not for
+the vast extent of the Atlantic ocean.<a id="footnotetag449" name="footnotetag449"></a><a href="#footnote449" title="Go to footnote 449"><span class="small">[449]</span></a> On the other hand, Seneca
+maintained that the distance was probably not so very great, and that
+with favouring winds a ship might make the voyage in a few days.<a id="footnotetag450" name="footnotetag450"></a><a href="#footnote450" title="Go to footnote 450"><span class="small">[450]</span></a> In
+one of his tragedies Seneca has a striking passage<a id="footnotetag451" name="footnotetag451"></a><a href="#footnote451" title="Go to footnote 451"><span class="small">[451]</span></a> which has been
+repeatedly quoted as referring to the discovery of America, and is
+certainly one of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page370" name="page370"></a>(p. 370)</span> the most notable instances of prophecy on
+record. There will come a time, he says, in the later years, when Ocean
+shall loosen the bonds by which we have been confined, when an immense
+land shall lie revealed, and <span class="sidenote">Opinions of ancient writers.</span>
+Tethys shall disclose new worlds, and Thule
+will no longer be the most remote of countries. In Strabo there is a
+passage, less commonly noticed, which hits the truth&mdash;as we know it
+to-day&mdash;even more closely. Having argued that the total length of the
+Inhabited World is only about a third part of the circumference of the
+earth in the temperate zone, he suggests it as possible, or even
+probable, that within this space there may be another Inhabited World,
+or even more than one; but such places would be inhabited by different
+races of men, with whom the geographer, whose task it is to describe the
+<i>known</i> world, has no concern.<a id="footnotetag452" name="footnotetag452"></a><a href="#footnote452" title="Go to footnote 452"><span class="small">[452]</span></a> Nothing could better illustrate the
+philosophical character of Strabo's mind. In such speculations, so far
+as his means of verification went, he was situated somewhat as we are
+to-day with regard to the probable inhabitants of Venus or Mars.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the Christian era we are told by an <span class="pagenum"><a id="page371" name="page371"></a>(p. 371)</span> eminent Greek
+astronomer that the doctrine of the earth's sphericity was accepted by
+all competent persons except the Epicureans.<a id="footnotetag453" name="footnotetag453"></a><a href="#footnote453" title="Go to footnote 453"><span class="small">[453]</span></a> Among the Fathers of
+the Church there was some difference of opinion; while in general they
+<span class="sidenote">Opinions of Christian writers.</span>
+denied the existence of human beings beyond the limits of their
+&OElig;cumene, or Inhabited World, this denial did not necessarily involve
+disbelief in the globular figure of the earth.<a id="footnotetag454" name="footnotetag454"></a><a href="#footnote454" title="Go to footnote 454"><span class="small">[454]</span></a> The views of the
+great mass of people, and of the more ignorant of the clergy, down to
+the time of Columbus, were probably well represented in the book of
+Cosmas Indicopleustes already cited.<a id="footnotetag455" name="footnotetag455"></a><a href="#footnote455" title="Go to footnote 455"><span class="small">[455]</span></a> Nevertheless among the more
+enlightened clergy the views of the ancient astronomers were never quite
+forgotten, and in the great revival of intellectual life in the
+thirteenth century the doctrine of the earth's sphericity was again
+brought prominently into the foreground. We find Dante basing upon it
+the cosmical theory elaborated in his immortal poem.<a id="footnotetag456" name="footnotetag456"></a><a href="#footnote456" title="Go to footnote 456"><span class="small">[456]</span></a>
+In 1267 <span class="sidenote">Roger Bacon.</span>
+Roger
+Bacon&mdash;stimulated, no doubt, by the reports of the ocean east of
+Cathay&mdash;collected passages from ancient writers <span class="pagenum"><a id="page372" name="page372"></a>(p. 372)</span> to prove that
+the distance from Spain to the eastern shores of Asia could not be very
+great. Bacon's argument and citations were copied in an extremely
+curious book, the "Imago Mundi," published in 1410 by the Cardinal
+Pierre d'Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai, better known by the Latinized form of
+his name as <span class="sidenote">The "Imago Mundi" of Petrus Alliacus.</span>
+Petrus Alliacus. This treatise, which throughout the
+fifteenth century enjoyed a great reputation, was a favourite book with
+Columbus, and his copy of it, covered with marginal annotations in his
+own handwriting, is still preserved among the priceless treasures of the
+Biblioteca Colombina.<a id="footnotetag457" name="footnotetag457"></a><a href="#footnote457" title="Go to footnote 457"><span class="small">[457]</span></a> He found in it strong confirmation of his
+views, and it is not impossible that the reading of it may have first
+put such ideas into his head. Such a point, however, can hardly be
+determined. As I have already observed, these ideas were in the air.
+What Columbus did was not to originate them, but to incarnate them in
+facts and breathe into them the breath of life. It was one thing to
+suggest, as a theoretical <span class="pagenum"><a id="page374" name="page374"></a>(p. 374)</span> possibility, that Cathay might be
+reached by sailing westward; and it was quite another thing to prove
+that the enterprise was feasible with the ships and instruments then at
+command.</p>
+
+<a id="img016" name="img016"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img016b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img016.jpg" width="400" height="653" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Annotations by Columbus.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The principal consideration, of course, was the distance to be
+traversed; and here Columbus was helped by an error which he shared with
+many geographers of his day. He somewhat underestimated the size of the
+earth, and at the same time greatly overestimated the length of Asia.
+The first astronomer to calculate, by scientific methods, the
+circumference of our planet at the equator was <span class="sidenote">Ancient estimates of the size of the globe and the length of
+the &OElig;cumene.</span>
+Eratosthenes (<span class="smcap">B. C.</span>
+276-196), and he came&mdash;all things considered&mdash;fairly near the truth; he
+made it 25,200 geographical miles (of ten stadia), or about one seventh
+too great. The true figure is 21,600 geographical miles, equivalent to
+24,899 English statute miles.<a id="footnotetag458" name="footnotetag458"></a><a href="#footnote458" title="Go to footnote 458"><span class="small">[458]</span></a> Curiously enough, Posidonius, in
+revising this calculation a century later, reduced the figure to 18,000
+miles, or about one seventh too small. The circumference in the latitude
+of Gibraltar he estimated at 14,000 miles; the length of the &OElig;cumene,
+or Inhabited World, he called 7,000; the distance across the Atlantic
+from the Spanish strand to the eastern shores of Asia was the other
+7,000. The error of Posidonius was partially rectified by Ptolemy, who
+made the equatorial circumference 20,400 geographical miles, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page375" name="page375"></a>(p. 375)</span> the length of a degree 56.6 miles.<a id="footnotetag459" name="footnotetag459"></a><a href="#footnote459" title="Go to footnote 459"><span class="small">[459]</span></a> This estimate, in
+which the error was less than one sixteenth, prevailed until modern
+times. Ptolemy also supposed the Inhabited World to extend over about
+half the circumference of the temperate zone, but the other half he
+imagined as consisting largely of bad lands, quagmires, and land-locked
+seas, instead of a vast and open ocean.<a id="footnotetag460" name="footnotetag460"></a><a href="#footnote460" title="Go to footnote 460"><span class="small">[460]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Ptolemy's opinion as to the length of the Inhabited World was
+considerably modified in the minds of those writers who toward the end
+of the Middle Ages had been strongly impressed by the book of Marco
+Polo. Among these persons was Toscanelli. <span class="sidenote">Toscanelli's calculation of the size of the earth,</span>
+This excellent astronomer
+calculated the earth's equatorial circumference at almost exactly the
+true figure; his error was less than 124 English miles in excess. The
+circumference in the latitude of Lisbon he made 26 × 250 × 3 = 19,500
+miles.<a id="footnotetag461" name="footnotetag461"></a><a href="#footnote461" title="Go to footnote 461"><span class="small">[461]</span></a> Two thirds of this figure, or 13,000 miles, he allowed
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page376" name="page376"></a>(p. 376)</span> for the length of the &OElig;cumene, from Lisbon eastward to
+Quinsay (i. e. Hang-chow), leaving 6,500 for the westward voyage from
+Lisbon to Quinsay. Thus Toscanelli elongated Asia by nearly the whole
+width of the Pacific ocean. His Quinsay would come about 130° W., a few
+hundred miles west of the mouth of the Columbia river. Zaiton (i. e.
+Chang-chow), the easternmost city in Toscanelli's China, would come not
+far from the tip end of Lower California. Thus the eastern coast of
+<span class="sidenote">and of the position of Cipango.</span>
+Cipango, about a thousand miles east from Zaiton, would fall in the Gulf
+of Mexico somewhere near the ninety-third meridian, and that island,
+being over a thousand miles in length north and south, would fill up the
+space between the parallel of New Orleans and that of the city of
+Guatemala. The westward voyage from the Canaries to Cipango, according
+to Toscanelli, would be rather more than 3,250 miles, but at a third of
+the distance out he placed the imaginary island of "Antilia," with which
+he seems to have supposed Portuguese sailors to be familiar.<a id="footnotetag462" name="footnotetag462"></a><a href="#footnote462" title="Go to footnote 462"><span class="small">[462]</span></a> "So
+through the unknown parts of the route," said the venerable astronomer,
+"the stretches of sea to be traversed are not great,"&mdash;not <span class="pagenum"><a id="page377" name="page377"></a>(p. 377)</span>
+much more than 2,000 English miles, not so long as the voyage from
+Lisbon to the Guinea coast.</p>
+
+<p>While Columbus attached great importance to these calculations and
+carried Toscanelli's map with him upon his first voyage, he improved
+somewhat upon the estimates of distance, and thus made his case still
+more hopeful. <span class="sidenote">Columbus's opinion of the size of the globe, the length of
+the &OElig;cumene, and the width of the Atlantic ocean.</span>
+Columbus was not enough of an astronomer to adopt
+Toscanelli's improved measurement of the size of the earth. He accepted
+Ptolemy's figure of 20,400 geographical miles for the equatorial
+girth,<a id="footnotetag463" name="footnotetag463"></a><a href="#footnote463" title="Go to footnote 463"><span class="small">[463]</span></a> which would make the circumference in the latitude of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page378" name="page378"></a>(p. 378)</span> the Canaries about 18,000; and Columbus, on the strength of
+sundry passages from ancient authors which he found in Alliacus (cribbed
+from Roger Bacon), concluded that six sevenths of this circumference
+must be occupied by the &OElig;cumene, including Cipango, so that in order
+to reach that wonderful island he would only have to sail over one
+seventh, or not much more than 2,500 miles from the Canaries.<a id="footnotetag464" name="footnotetag464"></a><a href="#footnote464" title="Go to footnote 464"><span class="small">[464]</span></a> An
+authority upon which he <span class="pagenum"><a id="page379" name="page379"></a>(p. 379)</span> placed great reliance in this
+connection was the fourth book of <span class="sidenote">The fourth book of Esdras.</span>
+Esdras, which although not a canonical
+part of the Bible was approved by holy men, and which expressly
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page380" name="page380"></a>(p. 380)</span> asserted that six parts of the earth (i. e. of the length of
+the &OElig;cumene, or north temperate zone) are inhabited and only the
+seventh part covered with water. From the general habit of Columbus's
+mind it may be inferred that it was chiefly upon this scriptural
+authority that he based his confident expectation of finding land soon
+after accomplishing seven hundred leagues from the Canaries. Was it not
+as good as written in the Bible that land was to be found there?</p>
+
+<p>Thus did Columbus arrive at his decisive conclusion, estimating the
+distance across the Sea of Darkness to Japan at something less than the
+figure which actually expresses the distance to the West Indies. Many a
+hopeful enterprise has been ruined by errors in figuring, but this wrong
+calculation <span class="pagenum"><a id="page381" name="page381"></a>(p. 381)</span> was certainly a great help to Columbus.
+<span class="sidenote">Fortunate mixture of truth and error.</span>
+When we
+consider how difficult he found it to obtain men and ships for a voyage
+supposed to be not more than 2,500 miles in this new and untried
+direction, we must admit that his chances would have been poor indeed if
+he had proposed to sail westward on the Sea of Darkness for nearly
+12,000 miles, the real distance from the Canaries to Japan. It was a
+case where the littleness of the knowledge was not a dangerous but a
+helpful thing. If instead of the somewhat faulty astronomy of Ptolemy
+and the very hazy notions prevalent about "the Indies," the correct
+astronomy of Toscanelli had prevailed and had been joined to an accurate
+knowledge of eastern Asia, Columbus would surely never have conceived
+his great scheme, and the discovery of America would probably have
+waited to be made by accident.<a id="footnotetag465" name="footnotetag465"></a><a href="#footnote465" title="Go to footnote 465"><span class="small">[465]</span></a>
+<span class="sidenote">The whole point and purport of Columbus's scheme.</span>
+The whole point of his scheme lay in
+its promise of a shorter route to the Indies than that which the
+Portuguese were seeking by way of Guinea. Unless it was probable that it
+could furnish such a shorter route, there was no reason for such an
+extraordinary enterprise.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>The years between 1474 and 1480 were not favourable for new maritime
+ventures on the part of the Portuguese government. The war with Castile
+absorbed the energies of Alfonso V. as well as his money, and he was
+badly beaten into the bargain. About this time Columbus was writing a
+treatise <span class="pagenum"><a id="page382" name="page382"></a>(p. 382)</span> on "the five habitable zones," intended to refute the
+<span class="sidenote">Columbus's speculations on climate.</span>
+old notions about regions so fiery or so frozen as to be inaccessible to
+man. As this book is lost we know little or nothing of its views and
+speculations, but it appears that in writing it Columbus utilized sundry
+observations made by himself in long voyages into the torrid and arctic
+zones. <span class="sidenote">His voyage to Guinea.</span>
+He spent some time at the fortress of San Jorge de la Mina, on
+the Gold Coast, and made a study of that equinoctial climate.<a id="footnotetag466" name="footnotetag466"></a><a href="#footnote466" title="Go to footnote 466"><span class="small">[466]</span></a> This
+could not have been earlier than 1482, the year in which the fortress
+was built. Five years before this he seems to have gone far in the
+opposite direction. In a fragment of a letter or diary, preserved by his
+son and by Las Casas, <span class="sidenote">His voyage into the Arctic ocean, 1477.</span>
+he says:&mdash;"In the month of February, 1477, I
+sailed a hundred leagues beyond the island of Thule, [to?] an island of
+which the south part is in latitude 73°, not 63°, as some say; and it
+[i. e. Thule] does not lie within Ptolemy's western boundary, but much
+farther west. And to this island, which is as big as England, the
+English go with their wares, especially from Bristol. When I was there
+the sea was not frozen. In some places the tide rose and fell twenty-six
+fathoms. It is true that the Thule mentioned by Ptolemy lies where he
+says it does, and this by the moderns is called Frislanda."<a id="footnotetag467" name="footnotetag467"></a><a href="#footnote467" title="Go to footnote 467"><span class="small">[467]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page383" name="page383"></a>(p. 383)</span>
+
+<p>Taken as it stands this passage is so bewildering that we can hardly
+suppose it to have come in just this shape from the pen of Columbus. It
+looks as if it had been abridged from some diary of his by some person
+unfamiliar with the Arctic seas; and I have ventured to insert in
+brackets a little preposition which may perhaps help to straighten out
+the meaning. By Thule Columbus doubtless means Iceland, which lies
+between latitudes 64° and 67°, and it looks as if he meant to say that
+he ran beyond it as far as the little island, just a hundred leagues
+from Iceland and in <span class="sidenote">He may have reached Jan Mayen island,</span>
+latitude 71°, since discovered by Jan Mayen in 1611.
+The rest of the paragraph is more intelligible. It is true that Iceland
+lies thirty degrees farther west than Ptolemy placed Thule; and that for
+a century before the discovery of the Newfoundland fisheries the English
+did much fishing in the waters about Iceland, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page384" name="page384"></a>(p. 384)</span> and carried
+wares thither, especially from Bristol.<a id="footnotetag468" name="footnotetag468"></a><a href="#footnote468" title="Go to footnote 468"><span class="small">[468]</span></a> There can be no doubt that
+by Frislanda Columbus means the Færoe <span class="sidenote">and stopped at Iceland.</span>
+islands,<a id="footnotetag469" name="footnotetag469"></a><a href="#footnote469" title="Go to footnote 469"><span class="small">[469]</span></a> which do lie in the
+latitude though not in the longitude mentioned by Ptolemy. As for the
+voyage into the Jan Mayen waters in February, it would be dangerous but
+by no means impossible.<a id="footnotetag470" name="footnotetag470"></a><a href="#footnote470" title="Go to footnote 470"><span class="small">[470]</span></a> In another letter Columbus mentions
+visiting England, apparently in connection with this voyage,<a id="footnotetag471" name="footnotetag471"></a><a href="#footnote471" title="Go to footnote 471"><span class="small">[471]</span></a> and it
+is highly probable that he went in an English ship from Bristol.</p>
+
+<p>The object of Columbus in making these long voyages to the equator and
+into the polar circle was, as he tells us, to gather observations upon
+climate. From the circumstance of his having made a stop at some point
+in Iceland, it was conjectured by Finn Magnusson
+<span class="sidenote">The hypothesis that Columbus "must have" heard and understood
+the story of the Vinland voyages.</span>
+that Columbus might
+have learned something about Vinland which served to guide him to his
+own enterprise or to encourage him in it. Starting from this suggestion,
+it has been argued<a id="footnotetag472" name="footnotetag472"></a><a href="#footnote472" title="Go to footnote 472"><span class="small">[472]</span></a> that Columbus must have read the geographical
+appendix to Adam of Bremen's "Ecclesiastical History;" that he must
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page385" name="page385"></a>(p. 385)</span> have understood, as we now do, the reference therein made to
+Vinland; that he made his voyage to Iceland in order to obtain further
+information; that he there not only heard about Vinland and other
+localities mentioned in the sagas, but also mentally placed them about
+where they were placed in 1837 by Professor Rafn; that, among other
+things, he thus obtained a correct knowledge of the width of the
+Atlantic ocean in latitude 28° N.; and that during fifteen subsequent
+years of weary endeavour to obtain ships and men for his westward
+voyage, he sedulously refrained from using the most convincing argument
+at his command,&mdash;namely that land of continental dimensions had actually
+been found (though by a very different route) in the direction which he
+indicated.</p>
+
+<p>I have already given an explanation of the process by which Columbus
+arrived at the firm belief that by sailing not more than about 2,500
+geographical miles due west from the Canaries he should reach the coast
+of Japan. Every step of that explanation is sustained by documentary
+evidence, and as his belief is thus completely accounted for, the
+hypothesis that he may have based it upon information obtained in
+Iceland is, to say the least, superfluous. We do not need it in order to
+explain his actions, and accordingly his actions do not afford a
+presumption in favour of it. <span class="sidenote">That hypothesis has no evidence in its favour.</span>
+There is otherwise no reason, of course,
+for refusing to admit that he might have obtained information in
+Iceland, were there any evidence that he did. But not a scrap <span class="pagenum"><a id="page386" name="page386"></a>(p. 386)</span>
+of such evidence has ever been produced. Every step in the Scandinavian
+hypothesis is a pure assumption.</p>
+
+<p>First it is assumed that Columbus <i>must</i> have read the appendix to Adam
+of Bremen's history. But really, while it is not impossible that he
+should have read that <span class="sidenote">It is not probable that Columbus knew of Adam of Bremen's
+allusion to Vinland,</span>
+document, it is, on the whole, improbable. The
+appendix was first printed in Lindenbrog's edition, published at Leyden,
+in 1595. The eminent Norwegian historian, Gustav Storm, finds that in
+the sixteenth century just six MSS. of Adam's works can now be traced.
+Of these, two were preserved in Denmark, two in Hamburg, one had
+<i>perhaps</i> already wandered southward to Leyden, and one as far as
+<span class="sidenote">or that he would have understood it if he had read it.</span>
+Vienna. Dr. Storm, therefore, feels sure that Columbus never saw Adam's
+mention of Vinland, and pithily adds that "had Columbus known it, it
+would not have been able to show him the way to the West Indies, but
+perhaps to the North Pole."<a id="footnotetag473" name="footnotetag473"></a><a href="#footnote473" title="Go to footnote 473"><span class="small">[473]</span></a> From the account of this mention and
+its context, which I have already given,<a id="footnotetag474" name="footnotetag474"></a><a href="#footnote474" title="Go to footnote 474"><span class="small">[474]</span></a> it is in the highest
+degree improbable that if Columbus had read the passage he could have
+understood it as bearing upon his own problem. There is, therefore, no
+ground for the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page387" name="page387"></a>(p. 387)</span> assumption that Columbus went to Iceland in
+order to make inquiries about Vinland.</p>
+
+<p>It may be argued that even if he did not go for such a purpose,
+nevertheless when once there he could hardly have failed incidentally to
+get the information. This, however, is not at all clear. Observe that
+our sole authority for the journey to Iceland is the passage above
+quoted at second-hand from Columbus himself; and there is nothing in it
+to show whether he staid a <span class="sidenote">It is doubtful if Columbus would have stumbled upon the story
+in Iceland.</span>
+few hours or several weeks ashore, or met
+with any one likely to be possessed of the knowledge in question. The
+absence of any reference to Vinland in the Zeno narrative is an
+indication that the memory of it had faded away before 1400, and it was
+not distinctly and generally revived until the time of Torfæus in
+1705.<a id="footnotetag475" name="footnotetag475"></a><a href="#footnote475" title="Go to footnote 475"><span class="small">[475]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page388" name="page388"></a>(p. 388)</span>
+
+<p>But to hear about Vinland was one thing, to be guided by it to Japan was
+quite another affair. It was not the mention of timber and peltries and
+Skrælings that would fire the imagination of Columbus; his dreams were
+of stately cities with busy wharves where ships were laden with silks
+and jewels, and of <span class="sidenote">If he had heard it, he would probably have classed
+it with such tales as that of St. Brandan's isle.</span>
+Oriental magnates decked out with "barbaric pearl and
+gold," dwelling in pavilions of marble and jasper amid flowery gardens
+in "a summer fanned with spice." The mention of Vinland was no more
+likely to excite Columbus's attention than that of St. Brandan's isle or
+other places supposed to lie in the western ocean. He was after higher
+game.</p>
+
+<p>To suppose that Columbus, even had he got hold of the Saga of Eric the
+Red and conned it from beginning to end, with a learned interpreter at
+his elbow, could have gained from it a knowledge of the width of the
+<span class="sidenote">He could not have obtained from such a source his opinion of
+the width of the ocean.</span>
+Atlantic ocean, is simply preposterous. It would be impossible to
+extract any such knowledge from that document to-day without the aid of
+our modern maps. The most diligent critical study of all the Icelandic
+sources of information, with all the resources of modern scholarship,
+enables us with some confidence to place Vinland somewhere between Cape
+Breton and Point Judith, that is to say, somewhere between two points
+distant from each other more than four degrees in latitude and more than
+eleven degrees in longitude! When we have got thus far, knowing as we do
+that the coast in question belongs <span class="pagenum"><a id="page389" name="page389"></a>(p. 389)</span> to the same continental
+system as the West Indies, we can look at our map and pick up our pair
+of compasses and measure the width of the ocean at the twenty-eighth
+parallel. But it is not the mediæval document, but our modern map that
+guides us to this knowledge. And yet it is innocently assumed that
+Columbus, without any knowledge or suspicion of the existence of
+America, and from such vague data concerning voyages made five hundred
+years before his time, by men who had no means of reckoning latitude and
+longitude, could have obtained his figure of 2,500 miles for the voyage
+from the Canaries to Japan!<a id="footnotetag476" name="footnotetag476"></a><a href="#footnote476" title="Go to footnote 476"><span class="small">[476]</span></a> The fallacy here is that which
+underlies the whole Scandinavian hypothesis and many other fanciful
+geographical <span class="pagenum"><a id="page390" name="page390"></a>(p. 390)</span> speculations. It is the fallacy of projecting our
+present knowledge into the past.</p>
+
+<p>We have next to inquire, if Columbus had heard of Vinland and
+comprehended its relation to his own theory about land at the west, why
+in the world should he have <span class="sidenote">If he had known and understood the Vinland story, he had the
+strongest motives for proclaiming it and no motive for concealing it.</span>
+concealed this valuable knowledge? The
+notion seems to be that he must have kept it secret through an unworthy
+desire to claim a priority in discovery to which he knew that he was not
+entitled.<a id="footnotetag477" name="footnotetag477"></a><a href="#footnote477" title="Go to footnote 477"><span class="small">[477]</span></a> This is projecting our present knowledge into the past
+with a vengeance. Columbus never professed to have discovered America;
+he died in the belief that what he had done was to reach the eastern
+shores of Asia by a shorter route than the Portuguese. If he had reason
+to suppose that the Northmen had once come down from the Arctic seas to
+some unknown part of the Asiatic coast, he had no motive for concealing
+such a fact, but the strongest of motives for proclaiming it, inasmuch
+as it would have given him the kind of inductive argument which he
+sorely needed. The chief obstacle for Columbus was that for want of
+tangible evidence he was obliged to appeal to men's reason with
+scientific arguments. When you show things to young children they are
+not content with looking; they crave a more intimate acquaintance than
+the eyes alone can give, and so they reach out and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page391" name="page391"></a>(p. 391)</span> handle the
+things. So when ideas are presented to grown-up men, they are apt to be
+unwilling to trust to the eye of reason until it has been supplemented
+by the eye of sense; and indeed in most affairs of life such caution is
+wholesome. The difference between Columbus and many of the "practical"
+men whom he sought to convince was that he could see with his mind's eye
+solid land beyond the Sea of Darkness while they could not. To them the
+ocean, like the sky, had nothing beyond, unless it might be the
+supernatural world.<a id="footnotetag478" name="footnotetag478"></a><a href="#footnote478" title="Go to footnote 478"><span class="small">[478]</span></a> For while the argument from the earth's
+rotundity was intelligible enough, there were few to whom, as to
+Toscanelli, it was a living truth. Even of those who admitted, in
+theory, that Cathay lay to the west of Europe, most deemed the distance
+untraversable. Inductive proof of the existence of accessible land to
+the west was thus what Columbus chiefly needed, and what he sought every
+opportunity to find and produce; but it was not easy to find anything
+more substantial than sailors' vague mention of driftwood of foreign
+aspect or other outlandish jetsam washed up on the Portuguese
+strand.<a id="footnotetag479" name="footnotetag479"></a><a href="#footnote479" title="Go to footnote 479"><span class="small">[479]</span></a> What a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page392" name="page392"></a>(p. 392)</span> godsend it would have been for Columbus if
+he could have had the Vinland business to hurl at the heads of his
+adversaries! If he could have said, "Five hundred years ago some
+Icelanders coasted westward in the polar regions, and then coasted
+southward until they reached a country beyond the ocean and about
+opposite to France or Portugal; therefore that country must be Asia, and
+I can reach it by striking boldly across the ocean, which will obviously
+be shorter than going down by Guinea,"&mdash;if he could have said this, he
+would have had precisely the unanswerable argument for lack of which his
+case was waiting and suffering. In persuading men to furnish hard cash,
+for his commercial enterprise, as Colonel Higginson so neatly says, "an
+ounce of Vinland would have been worth a pound of cosmography."<a id="footnotetag480" name="footnotetag480"></a><a href="#footnote480" title="Go to footnote 480"><span class="small">[480]</span></a> We
+may be sure that the silence of Columbus about the Norse voyages proves
+that he knew nothing about them or quite failed to see their bearings
+upon his own undertaking. It seems to me absolutely decisive.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, this silence is in harmony with the fact that in none of
+his four voyages across the Atlantic did Columbus betray any
+consciousness that there was anything for him to gain by steering toward
+the northwest. If he could correctly have conceived the position of
+Vinland he surely would not have conceived it as south of the fortieth
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page393" name="page393"></a>(p. 393)</span> parallel. On his first voyage he steered due west in latitude
+<span class="sidenote">No trace of a thought of Vinland appears in the voyages of
+Columbus.</span>
+28° because Toscanelli placed Japan opposite the Canaries. When at
+length some doubts began to arise and he altered his course, as we shall
+hereafter see, the change was toward the southwest. His first two
+voyages did not reveal to him the golden cities for which he was
+looking, and when on his third and fourth voyages he tried a different
+course it was farther toward the equator, not farther away from it, that
+he turned his prows. Not the slightest trace of a thought of Vinland
+appears in anything that he did.</p>
+
+<p>Finally it may be asked, if the memory of Vinland was such a living
+thing in Iceland in 1477 that a visitor would be likely to be told about
+it, why was it not sufficiently alive in
+<span class="sidenote">Why did not Norway or Iceland utter a protest in 1493?</span>
+1493 to call forth a protest
+from the North? When the pope, as we shall presently see, was
+proclaiming to the world that the Spanish crown was entitled to all
+heathen lands and islands already discovered or to be discovered in the
+ocean west of the Azores, why did not some zealous Scandinavian at once
+jump up and cry out, "Look here, old Columbus, <i>we</i> discovered that
+western route, you know! Stop thief!" Why was it necessary to wait more
+than a hundred years longer before the affair of Vinland was mentioned
+in this connection?</p>
+
+<p>Simply because it was not until the seventeenth century that the
+knowledge of North American geography had reached such a stage of
+completeness as to suggest to anybody the true significance <span class="pagenum"><a id="page394" name="page394"></a>(p. 394)</span> of
+the old voyages from Greenland. That significance could not have been
+understood by Leif and Thorfinn themselves, or by the compilers of
+Hauks-bók and Flateyar-bók, or by any human being, until about the time
+of <span class="sidenote">The idea of Vinland was not associated with the idea of
+America until the seventeenth century.</span>
+Henry Hudson. Not earlier than that time should we expect to find it
+mentioned, and it is just then, in 1610, that we do find it mentioned by
+Arngrim Jonsson, who calls Vinland "an island of <i>America</i>, in the
+region of Greenland, perhaps the modern Estotilandia."<a id="footnotetag481" name="footnotetag481"></a><a href="#footnote481" title="Go to footnote 481"><span class="small">[481]</span></a> This is the
+earliest glimmering of an association of the idea of Vinland with that
+of America.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page395" name="page395"></a>(p. 395)</span>
+
+<p>The genesis of the grand scheme of Columbus has now been set forth, I
+believe, with sufficient fulness. The cardinal facts are 1, that the
+need for some such scheme was suggested in <span class="sidenote">Résumé of the genesis of Columbus's scheme.</span>
+1471, by the discovery that
+the Guinea coast extended south of the equator; 2, that by 1474 advice
+had been sought from Toscanelli by the king of Portugal, and not very
+long after 1474 by Columbus; 3, that upon Toscanelli's letters and map,
+amended by the Ptolemaic estimate of the earth's size and by the
+authority of passages quoted in the book of Alliacus (one of which was a
+verse from the Apocrypha), Columbus based his firm conviction of the
+feasibleness of the western route. How or by whom the suggestion of that
+route was first made&mdash;whether by Columbus himself or by Toscanelli or by
+Fernando Martinez or, as Antonio Gallo declares, by Bartholomew
+Columbus,<a id="footnotetag482" name="footnotetag482"></a><a href="#footnote482" title="Go to footnote 482"><span class="small">[482]</span></a> or by some person in Portugal whose name we know not&mdash;it
+would be difficult to decide. Neither can we fix the date when Columbus
+first sought aid for his scheme from the Portuguese government. There
+seems to be no good reason why he should not have been talking about it
+before 1474; but the affair did not come to any kind of a climax until
+after his return from Guinea, some time after <span class="sidenote">Martin Behaim's improved astrolabe.</span>
+1482 and certainly not
+later than 1484. It was on some accounts a favourable time. The war with
+Castile was out of the way, and Martin Behaim had just invented an
+improved astrolabe which <span class="pagenum"><a id="page396" name="page396"></a>(p. 396)</span> made it ever so much easier to find
+and keep one's latitude at sea. It was in 1484 that Portuguese
+discoveries took a fresh start after a ten years' lull, and Diego Cam,
+with the learned Behaim and his bran-new astrolabe on board, was about
+to sail a thousand miles farther south than white men had ever gone
+before. About this time the scheme of Columbus was formally referred by
+King John II. to the junto of learned cosmographers from whom the crown
+had been wont to seek advice. The project was condemned as
+"visionary,"<a id="footnotetag483" name="footnotetag483"></a><a href="#footnote483" title="Go to footnote 483"><span class="small">[483]</span></a> as indeed it was,&mdash;the outcome of vision that saw
+farther than those men could see. But the king, who had some of his
+uncle Prince Henry's love for bold enterprises, was more hospitably
+inclined toward the ideas of <span class="sidenote">Negotiations of Columbus with John II. of Portugal.</span>
+Columbus, and he summoned a council of the
+most learned men in the kingdom to discuss the question.<a id="footnotetag484" name="footnotetag484"></a><a href="#footnote484" title="Go to footnote 484"><span class="small">[484]</span></a> In this
+council the new scheme found some defenders, while others correctly
+urged that Columbus must be wrong in supposing Asia to extend so far to
+the east, and it must be a much longer voyage than he supposed to
+Cipango and Cathay,<a id="footnotetag485" name="footnotetag485"></a><a href="#footnote485" title="Go to footnote 485"><span class="small">[485]</span></a> Others <span class="pagenum"><a id="page397" name="page397"></a>(p. 397)</span> argued that the late war had
+impoverished the country, and that the enterprises on the African coast
+were all that the treasury could afford. Here the demands of Columbus
+were of themselves an obstacle to his success. He never at any time held
+himself cheap,<a id="footnotetag486" name="footnotetag486"></a><a href="#footnote486" title="Go to footnote 486"><span class="small">[486]</span></a> and the rewards and honours for which he insisted on
+stipulating were greater than the king of Portugal felt inclined to
+bestow upon a plain Genoese mariner. It was felt that if the enterprise
+should prove a failure, as very likely it would, the less heartily the
+government should have committed itself to it beforehand, the less it
+would expose itself to ridicule. King John was not in general disposed
+toward unfair and dishonest dealings, but on this occasion, after much
+parley, he was persuaded to sanction a proceeding <span class="pagenum"><a id="page398" name="page398"></a>(p. 398)</span> quite
+unworthy of him. Having obtained <span class="sidenote">A shabby trick.</span>
+Columbus's sailing plans, he sent out a
+ship secretly, to carry some goods to the Cape Verde islands, and then
+to try the experiment of the westward voyage. If there should turn out
+to be anything profitable in the scheme, this would be safer and more
+frugal than to meet the exorbitant demands of this ambitious foreigner.
+So it was done; but the pilots, having no grand idea to urge them
+forward, lost heart before the stupendous expanse of waters that
+confronted them, and beat an ignominious retreat to Lisbon; <span class="sidenote">Columbus leaves Portugal,</span>
+whereupon
+Columbus, having been informed of the trick,<a id="footnotetag487" name="footnotetag487"></a><a href="#footnote487" title="Go to footnote 487"><span class="small">[487]</span></a> departed in high
+dudgeon, to lay his proposals before the crown of Castile. He seems to
+have gone rather suddenly, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page399" name="page399"></a>(p. 399)</span> leaving his wife, who died shortly
+after, and one or two children who must also have died, for he tells us
+that he never saw them again. But his son Diego, aged perhaps four or
+five years, he took with him as far as the town of Huelva, near the
+little port of Palos in Andalusia, where he left him with one of his
+wife's sisters, who had married a man of that town named Muliar.<a id="footnotetag488" name="footnotetag488"></a><a href="#footnote488" title="Go to footnote 488"><span class="small">[488]</span></a>
+This arrival in Spain was probably late in the autumn of 1484, and
+Columbus seems to have entered into the service of <span class="sidenote">and enters the service of the Spanish sovereigns, 1486.</span>
+Ferdinand and
+Isabella January 20, 1486. What he was doing in the interval of rather
+more than a year is not known. There is a very doubtful tradition
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page400" name="page400"></a>(p. 400)</span> that he tried to interest the republic of Genoa in his
+enterprise,<a id="footnotetag489" name="footnotetag489"></a><a href="#footnote489" title="Go to footnote 489"><span class="small">[489]</span></a> and a still more doubtful rumour that he afterwards
+made proposals to the Venetian senate.<a id="footnotetag490" name="footnotetag490"></a><a href="#footnote490" title="Go to footnote 490"><span class="small">[490]</span></a> If these things ever
+happened, there was time enough for them in this year, and they can
+hardly be assigned to any later period. In 1486 we find Columbus at
+Cordova, where the sovereigns were holding court. He was unable to
+effect anything until he had gained the ear of Isabella's finance
+minister Alonso de Quintanilla, who had a mind hospitable to large
+ideas. The two sovereigns had scarcely time to attend to such things,
+for there was a third king in Spain, the Moor at Granada, whom there now
+seemed a fair prospect of driving to Africa, and thus ending the
+struggle that had lasted with few intermissions for nearly eight
+centuries. The final war with Granada had been going on since the end of
+1481, and considering how it weighed upon the minds of Ferdinand and
+Isabella it is rather remarkable that cosmography got any hearing at
+all. The affair was referred to the queen's confessor Fernando de
+Talavera, whose first impression was that if what Columbus said was
+true, it was very strange that other geographers should have failed to
+know all about it long ago. Ideas of evolution had not yet begun to
+exist in those days, and it was thought that what the ancients did not
+know was not worth <span class="pagenum"><a id="page401" name="page401"></a>(p. 401)</span> knowing. Toward the end of 1486 the Spanish
+sovereigns were at Salamanca, and <span class="sidenote">The junto at Salamanca.</span>
+Talavera referred the question to a
+junto of learned men, including professors of the famous
+university.<a id="footnotetag491" name="footnotetag491"></a><a href="#footnote491" title="Go to footnote 491"><span class="small">[491]</span></a> There was no lack of taunt and ridicule, and a whole
+arsenal of texts from Scripture and the Fathers were discharged at
+Columbus, but it is noticeable that quite a number were inclined to
+think that his scheme might be worth trying, and that some of his most
+firmly convinced supporters were priests. No decision had been reached
+when the sovereigns started on the Malaga campaign in the spring of
+1487.</p>
+
+<p>After the surrender of Malaga in August, 1487, Columbus visited the
+court in that city. For a year or more after that time silken chains
+seem to have bound him to Cordova. He had formed a connection with a
+lady of noble family, <span class="sidenote">Birth of Ferdinand Columbus, Aug. 15, 1488.</span>
+Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, who gave birth to his
+son Ferdinand on the 15th of August, 1488.<a id="footnotetag492" name="footnotetag492"></a><a href="#footnote492" title="Go to footnote 492"><span class="small">[492]</span></a> Shortly after this
+event, Columbus made a visit to Lisbon, in all probability for <span class="pagenum"><a id="page402" name="page402"></a>(p. 402)</span>
+the purpose of meeting his brother <span class="sidenote">Bartholomew Columbus returns from the Cape of Good Hope, Dec,
+1487.</span>
+Bartholomew, who had returned in the
+last week of December, 1487, in the Dias expedition, with the proud news
+of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope,<a id="footnotetag493" name="footnotetag493"></a><a href="#footnote493" title="Go to footnote 493"><span class="small">[493]</span></a> which was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page403" name="page403"></a>(p. 403)</span>
+rightly believed to be the extremity of Africa; and we can well
+understand how Christopher, on seeing the success of Prince Henry's
+method of reaching the Indies so nearly vindicated, must have become
+more impatient than ever to prove the superiority of his own method. It
+was probably not long <span class="pagenum"><a id="page404" name="page404"></a>(p. 404)</span> after Bartholomew's return that
+Christopher determined to go and see him, for he applied to King John
+II. for a kind of safe-conduct, which was duly granted March 20, 1488.
+This document<a id="footnotetag494" name="footnotetag494"></a><a href="#footnote494" title="Go to footnote 494"><span class="small">[494]</span></a> guarantees Christopher against arrest or arraignment
+or detention on any charge civil or criminal whatever, during his stay
+in Portugal, and commands all magistrates in that kingdom to respect it.
+From this it would seem probable that in the eagerness of his
+geographical speculations he had neglected his business affairs and left
+debts behind him in Portugal for which he was liable to be arrested.
+<span class="sidenote">Christopher visits Bartholomew at Lisbon, cir. Sept., 1488;</span>
+The
+king's readiness to grant the desired privilege seems to indicate that
+he may have cherished a hope of regaining the services of this
+accomplished chart-maker and mariner. Christopher did not avail himself
+of the privilege until late in the summer,<a id="footnotetag495" name="footnotetag495"></a><a href="#footnote495" title="Go to footnote 495"><span class="small">[495]</span></a> and it is only fair to
+suppose that he waited for the birth of his child and some assurance of
+its mother's safety. On meeting Bartholomew he evidently set him to work
+forthwith in <span class="sidenote">and sends him to England.</span>
+making overtures to the courts of England and France. It
+was natural enough that Bartholomew should first set out for Bristol,
+where old shipmates and acquaintances were sure to be found. It appears
+that on the way he was captured by pirates, and thus some delay was
+occasioned before he arrived in London <span class="pagenum"><a id="page405" name="page405"></a>(p. 405)</span> and showed the king a
+map, probably similar to Toscanelli's and embellished with quaint Latin
+verses. <span class="sidenote">Bartholomew, after mishaps, reaches England cir. Feb., 1490;</span>
+An entry on this map informs us that it was made by Bartholomew
+Columbus in London, February 10, 1488, which I think should be read 1489
+or even 1490, so we may suppose it to have been about that time or
+perhaps later that he approached the throne.<a id="footnotetag496" name="footnotetag496"></a><a href="#footnote496" title="Go to footnote 496"><span class="small">[496]</span></a> Henry VII. was
+intelligent enough <span class="pagenum"><a id="page406" name="page406"></a>(p. 406)</span> to see the bearings of Bartholomew's
+arguments, and at the same time, as a good man of business, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page407" name="page407"></a>(p. 407)</span> he
+was likely to be cautious about investing money in remote or doubtful
+enterprises. What arguments were used we do not know, but the spring of
+1492 had arrived before any decisive answer had been given. <span class="sidenote">and goes thence to France before 1492.</span>
+Meanwhile
+Bartholomew had made his way to France, and found a powerful protector
+in a certain Madame de Bourbon,<a id="footnotetag497" name="footnotetag497"></a><a href="#footnote497" title="Go to footnote 497"><span class="small">[497]</span></a> while he made maps for <span class="pagenum"><a id="page408" name="page408"></a>(p. 408)</span>
+people at the court and waited to see if there were any chances of
+getting help from Charles VIII.</p>
+
+<p>As for Christopher Columbus, we find him back in Spain again, in May,
+1489, attending court at Cordova. In the following autumn there was much
+suffering in Spain from floods and famine,<a id="footnotetag498" name="footnotetag498"></a><a href="#footnote498" title="Go to footnote 498"><span class="small">[498]</span></a> and the sovereigns were
+too busy with the Moorish war to give ear to Columbus. It was no time
+for new undertakings, and the weary suitor began to think seriously of
+going in person to the French court. First, however, he thought it worth
+while to make an attempt to get private capital enlisted in his
+enterprise, and in the Spain of that day such private capital meant a
+largess from some wealthy grandee. Accordingly about Christmas of 1489,
+after the Beza campaign in which Columbus is said to have fought with
+distinguished valour,<a id="footnotetag499" name="footnotetag499"></a><a href="#footnote499" title="Go to footnote 499"><span class="small">[499]</span></a> he seems to have applied to the most powerful
+nobleman in Spain, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, but without success. But
+at the hands of <span class="sidenote">The Duke of Medina-Celi proposes to furnish the ships for
+Columbus,</span>
+Luis de la Cerda, Duke of Medina-Celi, he met with more
+encouragement than he had as yet found in any quarter. That nobleman
+entertained Columbus most hospitably at his castle at Puerto de Santa
+Maria for nearly two years, until the autumn of 1491. He became
+convinced that the scheme of Columbus was feasible, and decided to fit
+up two or three caravels at his own expense, if necessary, but first he
+thought it proper to ask the queen's consent, and to offer her another
+chance to take part in the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page409" name="page409"></a>(p. 409)</span> enterprise.<a id="footnotetag500" name="footnotetag500"></a><a href="#footnote500" title="Go to footnote 500"><span class="small">[500]</span></a> Isabella was
+probably unwilling to have the duke come in for a large share of the
+profits in case the venture should prove successful. <span class="sidenote">but Isabella withholds her consent.</span>
+She refused the
+royal license, saying that she had not quite made up her mind whether to
+take up the affair or not, but if she should decide to do so she would
+be glad to have the duke take part in it.<a id="footnotetag501" name="footnotetag501"></a><a href="#footnote501" title="Go to footnote 501"><span class="small">[501]</span></a> Meanwhile she referred
+the question to Alonso de Quintanilla, comptroller of the treasury of
+Castile. This was in the spring of 1491, when the whole country was in a
+buzz of excitement with the preparations for the siege of Granada. The
+baffled Columbus visited the sovereigns in camp, but could not get them
+to attend to him, and early in the autumn, thoroughly disgusted and sick
+at heart, <span class="sidenote">Columbus makes up his mind to get his family together and go
+to France, Oct., 1491.</span>
+he made up his mind to shake the dust of Castile from his feet
+and see what could be done in France. In October or November he went to
+Huelva, apparently to get his son Diego, who had been left there, in
+charge of his aunt. It was probably his intention to take all the family
+he had&mdash;Beatriz <span class="pagenum"><a id="page410" name="page410"></a>(p. 410)</span> and her infant son Ferdinand, of whom he was
+extremely fond, as well as Diego&mdash;and find a new home in either France
+or England, besides ascertaining what had become of his brother
+Bartholomew, from whom he had not heard a word since the latter left
+Portugal for England.<a id="footnotetag502" name="footnotetag502"></a><a href="#footnote502" title="Go to footnote 502"><span class="small">[502]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>But now at length events took a favourable turn. Fate had grown tired of
+fighting against such indomitable perseverance. For some years now the
+stately figure of Columbus had been a familiar sight in the streets of
+Seville and Cordova, and as he passed along, with his white hair
+streaming in the breeze, and countenance aglow with intensity of purpose
+or haggard with disappointment at some fresh rebuff, the ragged urchins
+of the pavement tapped their foreheads and smiled with mingled wonder
+and amusement at this madman. Seventeen years had elapsed since the
+letter from Toscanelli to Martinez, and all that was mortal of the
+Florentine astronomer had long since been laid in the grave. For
+Columbus himself old age was not far away, yet he seemed no nearer the
+fulfilment of his grand purpose than when he had first set it forth to
+the king of Portugal. We can well imagine that when he started from
+Huelva, with his little son Diego, now some eleven or twelve years old,
+again to begin renewing his suit in a strange country, his thoughts must
+have been sombre enough. For some reason or other&mdash;tradition says to ask
+for some bread and water for his boy&mdash;he stopped at the Franciscan
+monastery <span class="pagenum"><a id="page411" name="page411"></a>(p. 411)</span> of La Rábida, about half a league from Palos. The
+prior, <span class="sidenote">He stops at La Rábida, and meets the prior Juan Perez.</span>
+Juan Perez, who had never seen Columbus before, became greatly
+interested in him and listened with earnest attention to his story. This
+worthy monk, who before 1478 had been Isabella's father-confessor, had a
+mind hospitable to new ideas. He sent for Garcia Fernandez, a physician
+of Palos, who was somewhat versed in cosmography, and for Martin Alonso
+Pinzon, a well-to-do ship-owner and trained mariner of that town, and in
+the quiet of the monastery a conference was held in which Columbus
+carried conviction to the minds of these new friends. Pinzon declared
+himself ready to embark in the enterprise in person. <span class="sidenote">Perez writes to the queen,</span>
+The venerable prior
+forthwith sent a letter to the queen, and received a very prompt reply
+summoning him to attend her in the camp before Granada. The result of
+the interview was that within a few days Perez returned to the convent
+with a purse of 20,000 maravedis (equivalent to about 1,180 dollars of
+the present day), out of which Columbus bought a new suit of clothes and
+a mule; <span class="sidenote">and Columbus is summoned back to court.</span>
+and about the first of December he set out for the camp in
+company with Juan Perez, leaving the boy Diego in charge of the priest
+Martin Sanchez and a certain Rodriguez Cabejudo, upon whose sworn
+testimony, together with that of the physician Garcia Fernandez, some
+years afterward, several of these facts are related.<a id="footnotetag503" name="footnotetag503"></a><a href="#footnote503" title="Go to footnote 503"><span class="small">[503]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page412" name="page412"></a>(p. 412)</span>
+
+<p>At once upon the arrival of Columbus in the camp before Granada, his
+case was argued then <span class="pagenum"><a id="page413" name="page413"></a>(p. 413)</span> and there before an assembly of learned
+men and was received more hospitably than formerly, at Salamanca.
+<span class="sidenote">The junto before Granada, Dec, 1491.</span>
+Several eminent prelates had come to think favourably of his project or
+to deem it at least worth a trial. Among these were the royal
+confessors, Deza and Talavera, the latter having changed his mind, and
+especially Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo, who now threw his vast
+influence decisively in favour of Columbus.<a id="footnotetag504" name="footnotetag504"></a><a href="#footnote504" title="Go to footnote 504"><span class="small">[504]</span></a> The treasurers of the
+two kingdoms, moreover, Quintanilla for Castile and Luis de Santangel
+for Aragon, were among his most enthusiastic supporters; and the result
+of the conference was the queen's promise to take up the matter in
+earnest as soon as the Moor should have surrendered Granada.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page414" name="page414"></a>(p. 414)</span>
+
+<p>Columbus had not long to wait for that great event, which came on the 2d
+of January, 1492, <span class="sidenote">Surrender of Granada, Jan. 2, 1492.</span>
+and was hailed with rejoicings throughout Europe as in
+some sort a compensation for the loss of Constantinople. It must have
+been with a manifold sense of triumph that Columbus saw the banner of
+Spain unfurled to the breeze from the highest tower of the Alhambra. But
+at this critical moment in his fortunes the same obstacle was
+encountered that long before had broken off his negotiations with the
+king of Portugal. With pride and self-confidence not an inch abated by
+all these years of trial, he demanded such honours and substantial
+rewards as seemed extravagant to the queen, and Talavera advised her not
+to grant them. Columbus insisted upon being appointed admiral of the
+ocean and viceroy of such heathen countries as he might discover,
+<span class="sidenote">Columbus negotiates with the queen.</span>
+besides having for his own use and behoof one eighth part of such
+revenues and profits as might accrue from the expedition. In principle
+this sort of remuneration did not differ from that which the crown of
+Portugal had been wont to award to its eminent discoverers;<a id="footnotetag505" name="footnotetag505"></a><a href="#footnote505" title="Go to footnote 505"><span class="small">[505]</span></a> but in
+amount it was liable to prove <span class="pagenum"><a id="page415" name="page415"></a>(p. 415)</span> indefinitely great, enough
+perhaps to raise to princely power and rank this foreign adventurer.
+Could he not be satisfied with something less? But Columbus was as
+inexorable as the Sibyl with her books, and would hear of no abatement
+in his price. For this "great constancy and loftiness of soul,"<a id="footnotetag506" name="footnotetag506"></a><a href="#footnote506" title="Go to footnote 506"><span class="small">[506]</span></a> Las
+Casas warmly commends his friend Columbus. A querulous critic might call
+it unreasonable obstinacy. But in truth the good man seems to have
+entertained another grand scheme of his own, to which he wished to make
+his maritime venture contribute. It was natural that his feelings toward
+Turks should have been no more amiable than those of Hannibal toward the
+Romans. It was the Turks who had ruined the commerce of his native
+Genoa, in his youth he had more than once crossed swords with their
+corsairs, and now he looked forward to the time when he might play the
+part of a second Godfrey de Bouillon and deliver Jerusalem from the
+miscreant followers of Mahound.<a id="footnotetag507" name="footnotetag507"></a><a href="#footnote507" title="Go to footnote 507"><span class="small">[507]</span></a> Vast resources would be needed for
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page416" name="page416"></a>(p. 416)</span> such work, and from Cipango with its gold-roofed temples, and
+the nameless and numberless isles of spices that crowded the Cathayan
+seas, he hoped to obtain them. Long brooding over his cherished
+projects, in which chimeras were thus mixed with anticipations of
+scientific truth, had imparted to his character a tinge of religious
+fanaticism. He had come to regard himself as a man with a mission to
+fulfil, <span class="sidenote">His terms are considered exorbitant.</span>
+as God's chosen instrument for enlarging the bounds of
+Christendom and achieving triumphs of untold magnificence for its
+banners. In this mood he was apt to address kings with an air of
+equality that ill comported with his humble origin and slender means;
+and on the present occasion, if Talavera felt his old doubts and
+suspicions reviving, and was more than half inclined to set Columbus
+down as a mere vendor of crotchets, one can hardly wonder.</p>
+
+<p>The negotiations were broken off, and the indomitable enthusiast once
+more prepared to go to France. He had actually started on his mule one
+fine winter day, when <span class="sidenote">Interposition of Luis de Santangel.</span>
+Luis de Santangel rushed into the queen's room and
+spoke to her with all the passionate and somewhat reproachful energy of
+one who felt that a golden opportunity was slipping away forever. His
+arguments were warmly seconded by Quintanilla, who had followed him into
+the room, as well as by the queen's bosom friend Beatriz de Bobadilla,
+Marchioness of Moya, who happened to be sitting on the sofa and was a
+devoted admirer of Columbus. An impulse seized Isabella. A courier was
+sent on a fleet horse, and overtook Columbus <span class="pagenum"><a id="page417" name="page417"></a>(p. 417)</span> as he was jogging
+quietly over the bridge of Pinos, about six miles out from Granada. The
+matter was reconsidered and an arrangement was soon made. It was
+agreed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"1. That Columbus should have, for himself, during his life, and for his
+heirs and successors forever, the <span class="sidenote">Agreement between Columbus and the sovereigns.</span>
+office of admiral in all the islands
+and continents which he might discover or acquire in the ocean, with
+similar honours and prerogatives to those enjoyed by the high admiral of
+Castile in his district.</p>
+
+<p>"2. That he should be viceroy and governor-general over all the said
+lands and continents; with the privilege of nominating three candidates
+for the government of each island or province, one of whom should be
+selected by the sovereigns.</p>
+
+<p>"3. That he should be entitled to reserve for himself one tenth of all
+pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and all other articles
+and merchandises, in whatever manner found, bought, bartered, or gained
+within his admiralty, the costs being first deducted.</p>
+
+<p>"4. That he, or his lieutenant, should be the sole judge in all causes
+and disputes arising out of traffic between those countries and Spain,
+provided the high admiral of Castile had similar jurisdiction in his
+district.</p>
+
+<p>"5. That he might then, and at all after times, contribute an eighth
+part of the expense in fitting out vessels to sail on this enterprise,
+and receive an eighth part of the profits."<a id="footnotetag508" name="footnotetag508"></a><a href="#footnote508" title="Go to footnote 508"><span class="small">[508]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page418" name="page418"></a>(p. 418)</span> Columbus was not long in finding friends to advance or promise
+on his account an eighth part of the sum immediately required. A
+considerable amount was assessed upon the town of Palos in punishment
+for certain misdeeds or delinquencies on the part of its people or some
+of them. Castile assumed the rest of the burden, though Santangel may
+have advanced a million maravedis out of the treasury of Aragon, or out
+of the funds of the <i>Hermandad</i>,<a id="footnotetag509" name="footnotetag509"></a><a href="#footnote509" title="Go to footnote 509"><span class="small">[509]</span></a> or perhaps more likely on his own
+account.<a id="footnotetag510" name="footnotetag510"></a><a href="#footnote510" title="Go to footnote 510"><span class="small">[510]</span></a> In any case it was a loan to the treasury of Castile
+simply. It was always distinctly understood <span class="pagenum"><a id="page419" name="page419"></a>(p. 419)</span> that Ferdinand as
+king of Aragon had no share in the enterprise, and that the Spanish
+Indies were an appurtenance to the crown of Castile. The agreement was
+signed April 17, 1492, and with tears of joy Columbus vowed to devote
+every maravedi that should come to him to the rescue of the Holy
+Sepulchre.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached Palos in May, with royal orders for ships and men, there
+had like to have been a riot. <span class="sidenote">Dismay at Palos.</span>
+Terrible dismay was felt at the prospect
+of launching out for such a voyage <span class="pagenum"><a id="page420" name="page420"></a>(p. 420)</span> upon the Sea of Darkness.
+Groans and curses greeted the announcement of the forced contribution.
+But Martin Pinzon and his brothers were active in supporting the crown
+officials, and the work went on. To induce men to enlist, debts were
+forgiven and civil actions suspended. Criminals were released from jail
+on condition of serving. Three caravels were impressed into the service
+of the crown for a time unlimited; and <span class="sidenote">The three famous caravels; the Santa Maria.</span>
+the rent and maintenance of two
+of these vessels for two months was to be paid by the town. The largest
+caravel, called the Santa Maria or Capitana, belonged to Juan de La
+Cosa, a Biscayan mariner whose name was soon to become famous.<a id="footnotetag511" name="footnotetag511"></a><a href="#footnote511" title="Go to footnote 511"><span class="small">[511]</span></a> He
+now commanded her, with another consummate sailor, Sancho Ruiz, for his
+pilot. This single-decked craft, about ninety feet in length by twenty
+feet breadth of beam, was the Admiral's flag-ship. The second caravel,
+called the <span class="sidenote">The Pinta.</span>
+Pinta, a much swifter vessel, was commanded by Martin Pinzon.
+She belonged to two citizens of Palos, Gomez Rascon and Cristobal
+Quintero, who were now in her crew, sulky and ready for mischief. The
+third and smallest caravel, the <span class="sidenote">The Niña.</span>
+Niña ("Baby"), had for her commander
+Vicente Yañez Pinzon, the youngest of the brothers, now about thirty
+years of age. Neither the Pinta nor the Niña were decked amidships. On
+board the three caravels were just ninety persons.<a id="footnotetag512" name="footnotetag512"></a><a href="#footnote512" title="Go to footnote 512"><span class="small">[512]</span></a> And so they
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page421" name="page421"></a>(p. 421)</span> set sail from Palos on Friday, August 3, 1492, half an hour
+before sunrise, and by sunset had run due south five and forty
+geographical miles, when they shifted their course a couple of points to
+starboard and stood for the Canaries.</p>
+
+<p>No thought of Vinland is betrayed in these proceedings. Columbus was
+aiming at the northern end of Cipango (Japan). Upon Toscanelli's map,
+which he carried with him, the great island of Cipango extends from 5°
+to about 28° north latitude. He evidently aimed at the northern end of
+Cipango as being directly on the route to Zaiton (Chang-chow) and other
+Chinese cities mentioned by Marco Polo. Accordingly he began by running
+down to the Canaries, in order that he might sail thence due west on the
+<span class="sidenote">They go to the Canaries and are delayed there.</span>
+28th parallel without shifting his course by a single point until he
+should see the coast of Japan looming up before him.<a id="footnotetag513" name="footnotetag513"></a><a href="#footnote513" title="Go to footnote 513"><span class="small">[513]</span></a> On this
+preliminary run signs of mischief began already to show themselves. The
+Pinta's rudder was broken and unshipped, and Columbus suspected her two
+angry and chafing owners of having done it on purpose, in order that
+they and their vessel might be left behind. The Canaries at this
+juncture merited the name of Fortunate Islands; fortunately they, alone
+among African islands, were Spanish, so that Columbus could stop there
+and make repairs. While this was going on the sailors <span class="pagenum"><a id="page424" name="page424"></a>(p. 424)</span> were
+scared out of their wits by an eruption of Teneriffe, which they deemed
+an omen of evil, and it was also reported that some Portuguese caravels
+were hovering in those waters, with intent to capture Columbus and carry
+him off to Lisbon.</p>
+
+<a id="img017" name="img017"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img017b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img017.jpg" width="500" height="363" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Martin Behaim's Globe, 1492, Martin Behaim's Globe, 1492,
+reduced to Mercator's projection.<a id="footnotetag514" name="footnotetag514"></a><a href="#footnote514" title="Go to footnote 514"><span class="small">[514]</span></a></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>At length, on the 6th of September, they set sail from <span class="sidenote">Columbus starts for Japan, Sept. 6, 1492.</span>
+Gomera, but were
+becalmed and had made only thirty miles by the night of the 8th. The
+breeze then freshened, and when next day the shores of Ferro, the last
+of the Canaries, sank from sight on the eastern horizon, many of the
+sailors loudly lamented their unseemly fate, and cried and sobbed like
+children. Columbus well understood the difficulty of dealing with these
+men. He provided against one chief source of discontent by keeping two
+different reckonings, a true one for himself <span class="pagenum"><a id="page425" name="page425"></a>(p. 425)</span> and a false one
+for his officers and crews. He was shrewd enough not to overdo it and
+awaken distrust. Thus after a twenty-four hours' run of 180 miles on
+September 10, he reported it as 144 miles; next day the run was 120
+miles and he announced it as 108, and so on. But for this prudent if
+somewhat questionable device, it is not unlikely that the first week of
+October would have witnessed a mutiny in which Columbus would have been
+either thrown overboard or forced to turn back.</p>
+
+<p>The weather was delicious, and but for the bug-a-boos that worried those
+poor sailors it would have been a most pleasant voyage. Chief among the
+imaginary terrors were three which deserve especial mention. At
+nightfall on September 13 the ships had crossed the magnetic line of no
+variation, and Columbus was astonished to see that the compass-needle,
+instead of <span class="sidenote">Deflection of the needle.</span>
+pointing a little to the right of the pole-star, began to
+sway toward the left, and next day this deviation increased. It was
+impossible to hide such a fact from the sharp eyes of the pilots, and
+all were seized with alarm at the suspicion that this witch instrument
+was beginning to play them some foul trick in punishment of their
+temerity; but Columbus was ready with an ingenious astronomical
+explanation, and their faith in the profundity of his knowledge
+prevailed over their terrors.</p>
+
+<p>The second alarm came on September 16, when they struck into vast
+meadows of floating seaweeds and grasses, abounding in tunny fish and
+crabs. They had now come more than 800 miles from <span class="pagenum"><a id="page426" name="page426"></a>(p. 426)</span> Ferro and
+were entering the wonderful <span class="sidenote">The Sargasso Sea.</span>
+Sargasso Sea, that region of the Atlantic
+six times as large as France, where vast tangles of vegetation grow upon
+the surface of water that is more than 2,000 fathoms deep, and furnish
+sustenance for an untold wealth of fishy life.<a id="footnotetag515" name="footnotetag515"></a><a href="#footnote515" title="Go to footnote 515"><span class="small">[515]</span></a> To <span class="pagenum"><a id="page427" name="page427"></a>(p. 427)</span> the eye
+of the mariner the Sargasso Sea presents somewhat the appearance of an
+endless green prairie, but modern ships plough through it with ease and
+so did the caravels of Columbus at first. After two or three days,
+however, the wind being light, their progress was somewhat impeded. It
+was not strange that the crews were frightened at such a sight. It
+seemed uncanny and weird, and revived ancient fancies about mysterious
+impassable seas and overbold mariners whose ships had been stuck fast in
+them. The more practical spirits were afraid of running aground upon
+submerged shoals, but all were somewhat reassured on this point when it
+was found that their longest plummet-lines failed to find bottom.</p>
+
+<p>On September 22 the journal reports "no more grass." They were in clear
+water again, and more than 1,400 geographical miles from the Canaries.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page428" name="page428"></a>(p. 428)</span> A third source of alarm had already begun to disturb the
+sailors. They were discovering much more than they had bargained for.
+<span class="sidenote">The trade wind.</span>
+They were in the belt of the trade winds, and as the gentle but
+unfailing breeze wafted them steadily westward, doubts began to arise as
+to whether it would ever be possible to return. Fortunately soon after
+this question began to be discussed, the wind, jealous of its character
+for capriciousness even there, veered into the southwest.</p>
+
+<p>By September 25 the Admiral's chief difficulty had come to be the
+impatience of his crews at not finding land. <span class="sidenote">Impatience of the crews.</span>
+On that day there was a
+mirage, or some such illusion, which Columbus and all hands supposed to
+be a coast in front of them, and hymns of praise were sung, but at dawn
+next day they were cruelly undeceived. Flights of strange birds and
+other signs of land kept raising hopes which were presently dashed
+again, and the men passed through alternately hot and cold fits of
+exultation and dejection. Such mockery seemed to show that they were
+entering a realm of enchantment. Somebody, perhaps one of the released
+jail-birds, hinted that if a stealthy thrust should happen some night to
+push the Admiral overboard, it could be plausibly said that he had
+slipped and fallen while star-gazing. His situation grew daily more
+perilous, and the fact that he was an Italian commanding Spaniards did
+not help him. Perhaps what saved him was their vague belief in his
+superior knowledge; they may have felt that they should need him in
+going back.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page429" name="page429"></a>(p. 429)</span>
+
+<a id="img018" name="img018"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img018b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img018.jpg" width="400" height="352" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Martin Behaim's Atlantic Ocean (with outline of
+American continent superimposed).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>By October 4 there were ominous symptoms of mutiny, and the anxiety of
+Columbus was evinced in the extent of his bold understatement of that
+day's run,&mdash;138 miles instead of the true figure 189. For some days his
+pilots had been begging him to change his course; perhaps they had
+passed between islands. Anything for a change! On the 7th at sunrise,
+they had come <span class="sidenote">Change of course from W. to W. S. W.</span>
+2,724 geographical miles from the Canaries, which was
+farther than the Admiral's estimate of the distance to Cipango; but
+according to his false statement of the runs, it appeared that they had
+come scarcely 2,200 miles. This leads one to suspect that in stating the
+length of the voyage, as he had so often done, at 700 leagues, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page430" name="page430"></a>(p. 430)</span>
+he may have purposely made it out somewhat shorter than he really
+believed it to be. But now after coming more than 2,500 miles he began
+to fear that he might be sailing past Cipango on the north, and so he
+shifted his course two points to larboard, or west-southwest. If a
+secret knowledge of Vinland had been his guiding-star he surely would
+not have turned his helm that way; but a glance at the Toscanelli map
+shows what was in his mind. Numerous flights of small birds confirmed
+his belief that land at the southwest was not far off. The change of
+direction was probably fortunate. If he had persisted in keeping on the
+parallel, 720 miles would have brought him to the coast of Florida, a
+little south of Cape Malabar. After the change he had but 505 miles of
+water before him, and the temper of the sailors was growing more
+dangerous with every mile,<a id="footnotetag516" name="footnotetag516"></a><a href="#footnote516" title="Go to footnote 516"><span class="small">[516]</span></a>&mdash;until October 11, when the signs of
+land became unmistakable, and the wildest excitement prevailed. A reward
+of 10,000 maravedis had been promised to the person who should first
+discover land, and ninety pair of eyes were strained that night with
+looking. About ten o'clock the Admiral, standing on the tower-like poop
+of his vessel, saw a distant light moving as if somebody were running
+along <span class="pagenum"><a id="page431" name="page431"></a>(p. 431)</span> the shore with a torch. This interpretation was doubted,
+but a few hours later a sailor on the Pinta saw land distinctly, and
+soon it was visible to all, <span class="sidenote">Land ahead! Oct. 12 (N. S. 21), 1492.</span>
+a long low coast about five miles distant.
+This was at two in the morning of Friday, October 12,<a id="footnotetag517" name="footnotetag517"></a><a href="#footnote517" title="Go to footnote 517"><span class="small">[517]</span></a>&mdash;just ten
+weeks since they had sailed from Palos, just thirty-three days since
+they had lost sight of the coast of Ferro. The sails were now taken in,
+and the ships lay to, awaiting the dawn.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>At daybreak the boats were lowered and Columbus, with a large part of
+his company, went ashore. Upon every side were trees of unknown kinds,
+and the landscape seemed exceedingly beautiful. <span class="sidenote">The crews go ashore.</span>
+Confident that they must
+have attained the object for which they had set sail, the crews were
+wild with exultation. Their heads were dazed with fancies of princely
+fortunes close at hand. The officers embraced Columbus or kissed his
+hands, while the sailors threw themselves at his feet, craving pardon
+and favour.</p>
+
+<p>These proceedings were watched with unutterable amazement and awe by a
+multitude of men, women, and <span class="sidenote">The astonished natives.</span>
+children of cinnamon hue, different from
+any kind of people the Spaniards had ever seen. All were stark naked and
+most of them were more or less greased and painted. They thought that
+the ships were sea-monsters and the white men supernatural creatures
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page432" name="page432"></a>(p. 432)</span> descended from the sky.<a id="footnotetag518" name="footnotetag518"></a><a href="#footnote518" title="Go to footnote 518"><span class="small">[518]</span></a> At first they fled in terror as
+these formidable beings came ashore, but presently, as they found
+themselves unmolested, curiosity began to overcome fear, and they slowly
+approached the Spaniards, stopping at every few paces to prostrate
+themselves in adoration. After a time, as the Spaniards received them
+with encouraging nods and smiles, they waxed bold enough to come close
+to the visitors and pass their hands over them, doubtless to make sure
+that all this marvel was a reality and not a mere vision. Experiences in
+Africa had revealed the eagerness of barbarians to trade off their
+possessions for trinkets, and now the Spaniards began exchanging glass
+beads and hawks' bells for cotton yarn, tame parrots, and small gold
+ornaments. Some sort of conversation in dumb show went on, and Columbus
+naturally interpreted everything in such wise as to fit his theories.
+Whether the natives understood him or not when he asked them where they
+got their gold, at any rate they pointed to the south, and thus
+confirmed Columbus in his suspicion that he had come to some island a
+little to the north of the opulent Cipango. <span class="sidenote">Guanahani: where was it?</span>
+He soon found that it was a
+small island, and he understood the name of it to be Guanahani. He took
+formal possession of it for Castile, just as the discoverers of the Cape
+Verde islands and the Guinea coasts had taken possession of those places
+for <span class="pagenum"><a id="page433" name="page433"></a>(p. 433)</span> Portugal; and he gave it a Christian name, San Salvador.
+That name has since the seventeenth century been given to Cat island,
+but perhaps in pursuance of a false theory of map-makers; it is not
+proved that Cat island is the Guanahani of Columbus. All that can
+positively be asserted of Guanahani is that it was one of the Bahamas:
+there has been endless discussion as to which one, and the question is
+not easy to settle. Perhaps the theory of Captain Gustavus Fox, of the
+United States navy, is on the whole best supported. Captain Fox
+maintains that the true Guanahani was the little island now known as
+Samana or Atwood's Cay.<a id="footnotetag519" name="footnotetag519"></a><a href="#footnote519" title="Go to footnote 519"><span class="small">[519]</span></a> The problem well illustrates the difficulty
+in identifying any route from even a good description of landmarks,
+without the help of persistent proper names, especially after the lapse
+of time has somewhat altered the landmarks. From this point of view it
+is a very interesting problem and has its lessons for us; otherwise it
+is of no importance.</p>
+
+<p>A cruise of ten days among the Bahamas, with visits to four of the
+islands, satisfied Columbus that he was in the ocean just east of
+Cathay, for <span class="sidenote">Groping for Cipango and the route to Quinsay.</span>
+Marco Polo had described it as studded with thousands of
+spice-bearing islands, and the Catalan map shows that some of these were
+supposed to be inhabited by naked savages. To be sure, he could not find
+any spices or <span class="pagenum"><a id="page434" name="page434"></a>(p. 434)</span> valuable drugs, but the air was full of
+fragrance and the trees and herbs were strange in aspect and might mean
+anything; so for a while he was ready to take the spices on trust. Upon
+inquiries about gold the natives always pointed to the south, apparently
+meaning Cipango; and in that direction Columbus steered on the 25th of
+October, intending to stay in that wealthy island long enough to obtain
+all needful information concerning its arts and commerce. Thence a sail
+of less than ten days would bring him to the Chinese coast, along which
+he might comfortably cruise northwesterly as far as Quinsay and deliver
+to the Great Khan a friendly letter with which Ferdinand and Isabella
+had provided him. Alas, poor Columbus&mdash;unconscious prince of
+discoverers&mdash;groping here in Cuban waters for the way to a city on the
+other side of the globe and to a sovereign whose race had more than a
+century since been driven from the throne and expelled from the very
+soil of Cathay! Could anything be more pathetic, or better illustrate
+the profound irony with which our universe seems to be governed?</p>
+
+<p>On reaching Cuba the Admiral was charmed with the marvellous beauty of
+the landscape,&mdash;a point in which he seems to have been unusually
+sensitive. <span class="sidenote">Columbus reaches Cuba, and sends envoys to find a certain
+Asiatic prince.</span>
+He found pearl oysters along the shore, and although no
+splendid cities as yet appeared, he did not doubt that he had reached
+Cipango. But his attempts at talking with the amazed natives only served
+to darken counsel. He understood them to say that Cuba was part of the
+Asiatic continent, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page435" name="page435"></a>(p. 435)</span> and that there was a king in the
+neighbourhood who was at war with the Great Khan! So he sent two
+messengers to seek this refractory potentate,&mdash;one of them a converted
+Jew acquainted with Arabic, a language sometimes heard far eastward in
+Asia, as Columbus must have known. These envoys found pleasant villages,
+with large houses, surrounded with fields of such unknown vegetables as
+maize, potatoes, and tobacco; they saw men and women smoking
+cigars,<a id="footnotetag520" name="footnotetag520"></a><a href="#footnote520" title="Go to footnote 520"><span class="small">[520]</span></a> and little dreamed that in that fragrant and soothing herb
+there was a richer source of revenue than the spices of the East. They
+passed acres of growing cotton and saw in the houses piles of yarn
+waiting to be woven into rude cloth or twisted into nets for hammocks.
+But they found neither cities nor kings, neither gold nor spices, and
+after a tedious quest returned, somewhat disappointed, to the coast.</p>
+
+<p>Columbus seems now to have become perplexed, and to have vacillated
+somewhat in his purposes. If this was the continent of <span class="sidenote">Columbus turns eastward; Pinzon deserts him.</span>
+Asia it was
+nearer than he had supposed, and how far mistaken he had been in his
+calculations no one could tell. But where was Cipango? He gathered from
+the natives that there was a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page436" name="page436"></a>(p. 436)</span> great island to the southeast,
+abounding in gold, and so he turned his prows in that direction. On the
+20th of November he was deserted by Martin Pinzon, whose ship could
+always outsail the others. It seems to have been Pinzon's design to get
+home in advance with such a story as would enable him to claim for
+himself an undue share of credit for the discovery of the Indies. This
+was the earliest instance of a kind of treachery such as too often
+marred the story of Spanish exploration and conquest in the New World.</p>
+
+
+<p>For a fortnight after Pinzon's desertion Columbus crept slowly eastward
+along the coast of Cuba, now and then landing to examine the country and
+its products; and it seemed to him that besides pearls and mastic and
+aloes he found in the rivers indications of gold. When he reached the
+cape at the end of the island he named it Alpha and Omega, as being the
+extremity of Asia,&mdash;Omega from the Portuguese point of view, Alpha from
+his own. On the 6th of December he landed upon the northwestern coast of
+the island of Hayti, which he called <span class="sidenote">Columbus arrives at Hayti and thinks it must be Japan.</span>
+Española, Hispaniola, or "Spanish
+land."<a id="footnotetag521" name="footnotetag521"></a><a href="#footnote521" title="Go to footnote 521"><span class="small">[521]</span></a> Here, as the natives seemed to tell him of a region to the
+southward and quite inland which abounded in gold, and which they called
+Cibao, the Admiral at once caught upon the apparent similarity of sounds
+and fancied that Cibao must be Cipango, and that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page437" name="page437"></a>(p. 437)</span> at length he
+had arrived upon that island of marvels. It was much nearer the Asiatic
+mainland (i. e. Cuba) than he had supposed, but then, it was beginning
+to appear that in any case somebody's geography must be wrong. Columbus
+was enchanted with the scenery. "The land is elevated," he says, "with
+many mountains and peaks ... most beautiful, of a thousand varied forms,
+accessible, and full of trees of endless varieties, so tall that they
+seem to touch the sky; and I have been told that they never lose their
+foliage. The nightingale [i. e. some kind of thrush] and other small
+birds of a thousand kinds were singing in the month of November
+[December] when I was there."<a id="footnotetag522" name="footnotetag522"></a><a href="#footnote522" title="Go to footnote 522"><span class="small">[522]</span></a> Before he had done much toward
+exploring this paradise, a sudden and grave mishap quite altered his
+plans. <span class="sidenote">Wreck of the Santa Maria, Dec. 25, 1492.</span>
+On Christmas morning, between midnight and dawn, owing to
+careless disobedience of orders on the part of the helmsman, the
+flag-ship struck upon a sand-bank near the present site of Port au Paix.
+All attempts to get her afloat were unavailing, and the waves soon beat
+her to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>This catastrophe brought home, with startling force, to the mind of
+Columbus, the fact that the news of his discovery of land was not yet
+known in Europe. As for the Pinta and her insubordinate commander, none
+could say <span class="sidenote">Columbus decides to go back to Spain.</span>
+whether they would ever be seen again or whether their speedy
+arrival in Spain might not portend more harm than good to Columbus.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page438" name="page438"></a>(p. 438)</span> His armament was now reduced to the little undecked Niña
+alone, such a craft as we should deem about fit for a summer excursion
+on Long Island Sound. What if his party should all perish, or be
+stranded helpless on these strange coasts, before any news of their
+success should reach the ears of friends in Europe! Then the name of
+Columbus would serve as a by-word for foolhardiness, and his mysterious
+fate would simply deter other expeditions from following in the same
+course. Obviously the first necessity of the situation was to return to
+Spain immediately and report what had already been done. Then it would
+be easy enough to get ships and men for a second voyage.</p>
+
+<p>This decision led to the founding of an embryo colony upon Hispaniola.
+There was not room enough for all the party to go in the Nina, and quite
+a number begged to be left behind, because they found life upon the
+island lazy and the natives, especially the women, seemed well-disposed
+toward them. So a blockhouse was built out of the <span class="sidenote">Building of the blockhouse, La Navidad.</span>
+wrecked ship's timbers
+and armed with her guns, and in commemoration of that eventful Christmas
+it was called Fort Nativity (<i>La Navidad</i>). Here forty men were left
+behind, with provisions enough for a whole year, and on January 4, 1493,
+the rest of the party went on board the Niña and set sail for Spain. Two
+days later in following the northern coast of Hispaniola they
+encountered the Pinta, whose <span class="sidenote">Meeting with Pinzon.</span>
+commander had been delayed by trading with
+the natives and by finding some gold. Pinzon tried to explain his sudden
+disappearance by alleging that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page439" name="page439"></a>(p. 439)</span> stress of weather had parted
+him from his comrades, but his excuses were felt to be lame and
+improbable. However it may have been with his excuses, there was no
+doubt as to the lameness of his foremast; it had been too badly sprung
+to carry much sail, so that the Pinta could not again run away from her
+consort.</p>
+
+<p>On this return voyage the Admiral, finding the trade winds dead against
+him, took a northeasterly course until he had passed the thirty-seventh
+parallel and then headed straight toward Spain. On the <span class="sidenote">Terrible storm in mid-ocean, Feb., 1493.</span>
+12th of February
+a storm was brewing, and during the next four days it raged with such
+terrific violence that it is a wonder how those two frail caravels ever
+came out of it. They were separated this time not to meet again upon the
+sea. Expecting in all likelihood to be engulfed in the waves with his
+tiny craft, Columbus sealed and directed to Ferdinand and Isabella two
+brief reports of his discovery, written upon parchment. Each of these he
+wrapped in a cloth and inclosed in the middle of a large cake of wax,
+which was then securely shut up in a barrel. One of the barrels was
+flung into the sea, the other remained standing on the little
+quarter-deck to await the fate of the caravel. The anxiety was not
+lessened by the sight of land on the 15th, for it was impossible to
+approach it so as to go ashore, and there was much danger of being
+dashed to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>At length on the 18th, the storm having abated, the ship's boat went
+ashore and found that it was the island of St. Mary, one of the Azores.
+It is <span class="pagenum"><a id="page440" name="page440"></a>(p. 440)</span> worthy of note that such skilful sailors as the Nina's
+captain, Vicente Yañez Pinzon, and the pilot Ruiz were so confused in
+their <span class="sidenote">Cold reception at the Azores.</span>
+reckoning as to suppose themselves near the Madeiras, whereas
+Columbus had correctly maintained that they were approaching the
+Azores,&mdash;a good instance of his consummate judgment in nautical
+questions.<a id="footnotetag523" name="footnotetag523"></a><a href="#footnote523" title="Go to footnote 523"><span class="small">[523]</span></a> From the Portuguese governor of the island this Spanish
+company met with a very ungracious reception. A party of sailors whom
+Columbus sent ashore to a small chapel of the Virgin, to give thanks for
+their deliverance from shipwreck, were seized and held as prisoners for
+five days. It afterwards appeared that this was done in pursuance of
+general instructions from the king of Portugal to the governors of his
+various islands. If Columbus had gone ashore he would probably have been
+arrested himself. As it was, he took such a high tone and threatened to
+such good purpose that the governor of St. Mary was fain to give up his
+prisoners for fear of bringing on another war between Portugal and
+Castile.</p>
+
+<p>Having at length got away from this unfriendly island, as the Niña was
+making her way toward Cape St. Vincent and within 400 miles of it, she
+was seized by another fierce tempest and driven upon the coast of
+Portugal, <span class="sidenote">Columbus is driven ashore in Portugal, where the king is
+advised to have him assassinated;</span>
+where Columbus and his crew were glad of a chance to run into
+the river Tagus for shelter. The news of his voyage and his discoveries
+aroused intense excitement in Lisbon. Astonishment was mingled with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page441" name="page441"></a>(p. 441)</span> chagrin at the thought that the opportunity for all this glory
+and profit had first been offered to Portugal and foolishly lost. The
+king even now tried to persuade himself that Columbus had somehow or
+other been trespassing upon the vast and vague undiscovered dominions
+granted to the Crown of Portugal by Pope Eugenius IV. Some of the king's
+counsellors are said to have urged him to have Columbus assassinated; it
+would be easy enough to provoke such a high-spirited man into a quarrel
+and then run him through the body.<a id="footnotetag524" name="footnotetag524"></a><a href="#footnote524" title="Go to footnote 524"><span class="small">[524]</span></a> To clearer heads, however, the
+imprudence of such a course was manifest. It was already impossible to
+keep the news of the discovery from reaching <span class="sidenote">but to offend Spain so grossly would be dangerous.</span>
+Spain, and Portugal could
+not afford to go to war with her stronger neighbour. In fact even had
+John II. been base enough to resort to assassination, which seems quite
+incompatible with the general character of Lope de Vega's "perfect
+prince," Columbus was now too important a personage to be safely
+interfered with. So he was invited to court and made much of. On the
+13th of March he set sail again and arrived in the harbour of Palos at
+noon of the 15th. His little caravel was promptly recognized by the
+people, and as her story flew from mouth to mouth all the business of
+the town was at an end for that day.<a id="footnotetag525" name="footnotetag525"></a><a href="#footnote525" title="Go to footnote 525"><span class="small">[525]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page442" name="page442"></a>(p. 442)</span>
+<p>Towards evening, while the bells were ringing and the streets brilliant
+with torches, another vessel entered the harbour and dropped anchor. She
+was none other than the <span class="sidenote">Columbus and Pinzon at Palos; death of Pinzon.</span>
+Pinta! The storm had driven her to Bayonne,
+whence Martin Pinzon instantly despatched a message to Ferdinand and
+Isabella, making great claims for himself and asking permission to wait
+upon them with a full account of the discovery. As soon as practicable
+he made his way to Palos, but when on arriving he saw the Niña already
+anchored in the harbour his guilty heart failed him. He took advantage
+of the general hub-bub to slink ashore as quickly and quietly as
+possible, and did not dare to show himself until after the Admiral had
+left for Seville. The news from Columbus reached the sovereigns before
+they had time to reply to the message of Pinzon; so when their answer
+came to him it was cold and stern and forbade him to appear in their
+presence. Pinzon was worn out with the hardships of the homeward voyage,
+and this crushing reproof was more than he could bear. His sudden death,
+a few days afterward, was generally attributed to chagrin.<a id="footnotetag526" name="footnotetag526"></a><a href="#footnote526" title="Go to footnote 526"><span class="small">[526]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>From Seville the Admiral was summoned to attend court at Barcelona,
+where he was received with triumphal honours. He was directed to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page443" name="page443"></a>(p. 443)</span> seat himself in the presence of the sovereigns, a courtesy
+usually reserved for royal personages.<a id="footnotetag527" name="footnotetag527"></a><a href="#footnote527" title="Go to footnote 527"><span class="small">[527]</span></a>
+<span class="sidenote">Columbus is received by the sovereigns at Barcelona, April,
+1493.</span>
+Intense interest was felt in
+his specimens of stuffed birds and small mammals, his live parrots, his
+collection of herbs which he supposed to have medicinal virtues, his few
+pearls and trinkets of gold, and especially his six painted and
+bedizened barbarians, the survivors of ten with whom he had started from
+Hispaniola. Since in the vague terminology of that time the remote and
+scarcely known parts of Asia were called the Indies, and since the
+islands and coasts just discovered were Indies, of course these red men
+must be Indians. So Columbus had already named them in his first letter
+written from the Niña, off the Azores, sent by special messenger from
+Palos, and now in April, 1493, printed at Barcelona, containing the
+particulars of his discovery,&mdash;a letter appropriately addressed to the
+worthy Santangel but for whose timely intervention he might have ridden
+many a weary league on <span class="pagenum"><a id="page444" name="page444"></a>(p. 444)</span> that mule of his to no good
+purpose.<a id="footnotetag528" name="footnotetag528"></a><a href="#footnote528" title="Go to footnote 528"><span class="small">[528]</span></a> It was generally assumed without question that the
+Admiral's theory of his discovery must be correct, that the coast of
+Cuba must be the eastern extremity of China, that the coast of
+Hispaniola must be the northern extremity of Cipango, and that a direct
+route&mdash;much shorter than that which Portugal had so long been
+seeking&mdash;had now been found to those lands of illimitable wealth
+described by Marco Polo.<a id="footnotetag529" name="footnotetag529"></a><a href="#footnote529" title="Go to footnote 529"><span class="small">[529]</span></a> To be sure Columbus had not <span class="pagenum"><a id="page445" name="page445"></a>(p. 445)</span> as
+yet seen the evidences of this Oriental splendour, and had been puzzled
+at not finding them, but he felt confident that he had come very near
+them and would come full upon them in a second voyage. There was nobody
+who knew enough to refute these opinions,<a id="footnotetag530" name="footnotetag530"></a><a href="#footnote530" title="Go to footnote 530"><span class="small">[530]</span></a> and really why should not
+this great geographer, <span class="sidenote">General excitement at the news that a way to the Indies had
+been found.</span>
+who had accomplished so much already which people
+had scouted as impossible,&mdash;why should he not know what he was about? It
+was easy enough now to get men and money for the second voyage. When the
+Admiral sailed from Cadiz on September 25, 1493, it was with seventeen
+ships carrying 1,500 men. Their dreams were of the marble palaces of
+Quinsay, of isles of spices, and the treasures of Prester John. The
+sovereigns wept for joy as they thought that such untold riches were
+vouchsafed them by the special decree of Heaven, as a reward for having
+overcome the Moor at Granada and banished the Jews from Spain.<a id="footnotetag531" name="footnotetag531"></a><a href="#footnote531" title="Go to footnote 531"><span class="small">[531]</span></a>
+Columbus shared these views and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page446" name="page446"></a>(p. 446)</span> regarded himself as a special
+instrument for executing the divine decrees. He renewed his vow to
+rescue the Holy Sepulchre, promising within the next seven years to
+equip at his own expense a crusading army of 50,000 foot and 4,000
+horse; within five years thereafter he would follow this with a second
+army of like dimensions.</p>
+
+<p>Thus nobody had the faintest suspicion of what had been done. In the
+famous letter to Santangel there is of course not a word about a New
+World. The grandeur of the achievement was quite beyond the ken of the
+generation that witnessed it. <span class="sidenote">This voyage was an event without any parallel in history.</span>
+For we have since come to learn that in
+1492 the contact between the eastern and the western halves of our
+planet was first really begun, and the two streams of human life which
+had flowed on for countless ages apart were thenceforth to mingle
+together. The first voyage of Columbus is thus a unique event in the
+history of mankind. Nothing like it was ever done before, and nothing
+like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for a future Columbus
+to conquer. The era of which this great Italian mariner was the most
+illustrious representative has closed forever.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="page447" name="page447"></a>(p. 447)</span> CHAPTER VI.<br>
+
+<span class="smaller">THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>But that era did not close with Columbus, nor did he live long enough to
+complete the Discovery of America. Our practice of affixing specific
+dates to great events is on many accounts indispensable, but it is
+sometimes <span class="sidenote">The Discovery of America was a gradual process.</span>
+misleading. Such an event as the discovery of a pair of vast
+continents does not take place within a single year. When we speak of
+America as discovered in 1492, we do not mean that the moment Columbus
+landed on two or three islands of the West Indies, a full outline map of
+the western hemisphere from Labrador and Alaska to Cape Horn suddenly
+sprang into existence&mdash;like Pallas from the forehead of Zeus&mdash;in the
+minds of European men. Yet people are perpetually using arguments which
+have neither force nor meaning save upon the tacit assumption that
+somehow or other some such sort of thing must have happened. This
+grotesque fallacy lies at the bottom of the tradition which has caused
+so many foolish things to be said about that gallant mariner, Americus
+Vespucius. In geographical discussions the tendency to overlook the fact
+that Columbus and his immediate successors did not sail with the latest
+edition of Black's General Atlas in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page448" name="page448"></a>(p. 448)</span> their cabins is almost
+inveterate; it keeps revealing itself in all sorts of queer statements,
+and probably there is no cure for it except in familiarity with the long
+series of perplexed and struggling maps made in the sixteenth century.
+Properly regarded, the Discovery of America was not a single event, but
+a very gradual process. It was not like a case of special creation, for
+it was a case of evolution, and the voyage of 1492 was simply the most
+decisive and epoch-marking incident in that evolution. Columbus himself,
+after all his four eventful voyages across the Sea of Darkness, died in
+the belief that he had simply discovered the best and straightest route
+to the eastern shores of Asia. Yet from his first experiences in Cuba
+down to his latest voyage upon the coasts of Honduras and Veragua, he
+was more or less puzzled at finding things so different from what he had
+anticipated. If he had really known anything with accuracy about the
+eastern coast of Asia, he would doubtless soon have detected his
+fundamental error, but no European in his day had any such knowledge. In
+his four voyages Columbus was finding what he supposed to be parts of
+Asia, what we now know to have been parts of America, but what were
+really to him and his contemporaries neither more nor less than Strange
+Coasts. We have now to consider briefly his further experiences upon
+these strange coasts.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>The second voyage of Columbus was begun in a very different mood and
+under very different auspices from either his former or his two
+subsequent <span class="pagenum"><a id="page449" name="page449"></a>(p. 449)</span> voyages. On his first departure from Palos, in
+1492, all save a few devoted friends regarded him as a madman rushing
+upon his doom; and outside the Spanish peninsula the expedition seems to
+have attracted no notice. But on the second start, in 1493, all hands
+supposed that they were going straight to golden Cathay and to boundless
+riches. It was not now with groans but with pæans that they flocked on
+board the ships; and the occasion was observed, with more or less
+interest, by some people in other countries of Europe,&mdash;as in Italy, and
+for the moment in France and England.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time with his letter to Santangel, the Admiral had
+despatched another account, substantially the same,<a id="footnotetag532" name="footnotetag532"></a><a href="#footnote532" title="Go to footnote 532"><span class="small">[532]</span></a> to Gabriel
+<span class="sidenote">The letter to Sanchez.</span>
+Sanchez,<a id="footnotetag533" name="footnotetag533"></a><a href="#footnote533" title="Go to footnote 533"><span class="small">[533]</span></a> another officer of the royal treasury. Several copies of a
+Latin translation of this letter were published at Rome, at Paris, and
+elsewhere, in the course of the year 1493.<a id="footnotetag534" name="footnotetag534"></a><a href="#footnote534" title="Go to footnote 534"><span class="small">[534]</span></a> The story which
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page450" name="page450"></a>(p. 450)</span> it contained was at once paraphrased in Italian verse by
+Giuliano Dati, one of the most popular poets of the age, and perhaps in
+the autumn of 1493 the amazing news that the Indies had been found by
+sailing west<a id="footnotetag535" name="footnotetag535"></a><a href="#footnote535" title="Go to footnote 535"><span class="small">[535]</span></a> was sung by street <span class="pagenum"><a id="page451" name="page451"></a>(p. 451)</span> urchins in Florence. We
+are also informed, in an ill-vouched but not improbable clause in
+Ramusio, that not far from that same time the news was heard with
+admiration in London, where it was pronounced "a thing more divine than
+human to sail by the West unto the East, where spices grow, by a way
+that was never known before;"<a id="footnotetag536" name="footnotetag536"></a><a href="#footnote536" title="Go to footnote 536"><span class="small">[536]</span></a> and it seems altogether likely that
+it was this news that prompted the expedition of John Cabot hereafter to
+be mentioned.<a id="footnotetag537" name="footnotetag537"></a><a href="#footnote537" title="Go to footnote 537"><span class="small">[537]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The references to the discovery are very scanty, however, until after
+the year 1500, and extremely vague withal. For example, Bernardino de
+Carvajal, the Spanish ambassador at the papal court, delivered an
+oration in Rome on June 19, 1493, in which he said: "And Christ placed
+under their <span class="sidenote">Earliest references to the discovery.</span>
+[Ferdinand and Isabella's] rule the Fortunate [Canary]
+islands, the fertility of which has been ascertained to be wonderful.
+And he has lately disclosed some other unknown ones towards the Indies
+which may be considered among the most precious things on earth; and it
+is believed that they will be gained <span class="pagenum"><a id="page452" name="page452"></a>(p. 452)</span> over to Christ by the
+emissaries of the king."<a id="footnotetag538" name="footnotetag538"></a><a href="#footnote538" title="Go to footnote 538"><span class="small">[538]</span></a> Outside of the Romance countries we find
+one German version of the first letter of Columbus, published at
+Strasburg, in 1497,<a id="footnotetag539" name="footnotetag539"></a><a href="#footnote539" title="Go to footnote 539"><span class="small">[539]</span></a> and a brief allusion to the discovery in
+Sebastian Brandt's famous allegorical poem, "Das Narrenschiff," the
+first edition of which appeared in 1494.<a id="footnotetag540" name="footnotetag540"></a><a href="#footnote540" title="Go to footnote 540"><span class="small">[540]</span></a> The earliest distinct
+reference to Columbus in the English language is to be found in a
+translation of this poem, "The Shyppe of Fooles," by Henry Watson,
+published in London by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509. <span class="sidenote">Earliest reference in English.</span>
+The purpose of Brandt's
+allegory was to satirize the follies committed by all sorts and
+conditions of men. In the chapter, "Of hym that wyll wryte and enquere
+of all regyons," it is said: "There was one that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page453" name="page453"></a>(p. 453)</span> knewe that in
+y<sup>e</sup> ysles of Spayne was enhabitantes. Wherefore he asked men of Kynge
+Ferdynandus &amp; wente &amp; founde them, the whiche lyved as beestes."<a id="footnotetag541" name="footnotetag541"></a><a href="#footnote541" title="Go to footnote 541"><span class="small">[541]</span></a>
+Until after the middle of the sixteenth century no English chronicler
+mentions either Columbus or the Cabots, nor is there anywhere an
+indication that the significance of the discoveries in the western ocean
+was at all understood.<a id="footnotetag542" name="footnotetag542"></a><a href="#footnote542" title="Go to footnote 542"><span class="small">[542]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>North of the Alps and Pyrenees the interest in what was going on at the
+Spanish court in 1493 was probably confined to very few people. As for
+Venice and Genoa we have no adequate means of knowing how they felt
+about the matter,&mdash;a fact which in itself is significant. The interest
+was centred in Spain and Portugal. There it was intense and awakened
+fierce heart-burnings. Though John II. had not given his consent to the
+proposal for murdering Columbus, he appears to have seriously
+entertained the thought of <span class="sidenote">Portuguese claim to the Indies.</span>
+sending a small fleet across the Atlantic as
+soon as possible, to take possession of some point in Cathay or Cipango
+and then dispute the claims of the Spaniards.<a id="footnotetag543" name="footnotetag543"></a><a href="#footnote543" title="Go to footnote 543"><span class="small">[543]</span></a> Such a summary
+proceeding might perhaps be defended on the ground that the grant from
+Pope Eugenius V. to the crown of Portugal expressly included "the
+Indies." In the treaty of 1479, moreover, Spain had promised not to
+interfere with the discoveries and possessions of the Portuguese.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever King John may have intended, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page454" name="page454"></a>(p. 454)</span> Ferdinand and
+Isabella were too quick for him. No sooner had Columbus arrived at
+Barcelona than an embassy was despatched to Rome, asking for a grant of
+the Indies just discovered by that navigator in the service of Castile.
+The notorious Rodrigo Borgia, who had lately been placed in the
+apostolic chair as Alexander VI., was a native of Valencia in the
+kingdom of Aragon, and would not be likely to refuse such a request
+through any excess of regard for Portugal. <span class="sidenote">Bulls of Pope Alexander VI.</span>
+As between the two rival
+powers the pontiff's arrangement was made in a spirit of even-handed
+justice. On the 3d of May, 1493, he issued a bull conferring upon the
+Spanish sovereigns all lands already discovered or thereafter to be
+discovered in the western ocean, with jurisdiction and privileges in all
+respects similar to those formerly bestowed upon the crown of Portugal.
+This grant was made by the pope "out of our pure liberality, certain
+knowledge, and plenitude of apostolic power," and by virtue of "the
+authority of omnipotent God granted to us in St. Peter, and of the
+Vicarship of Jesus Christ which we administer upon the earth."<a id="footnotetag544" name="footnotetag544"></a><a href="#footnote544" title="Go to footnote 544"><span class="small">[544]</span></a> It
+was a substantial reward for the monarchs who had completed the
+overthrow of Mahometan rule in Spain, and it afforded them <span class="pagenum"><a id="page455" name="page455"></a>(p. 455)</span>
+opportunities for further good work in converting the heathen
+inhabitants of the islands and mainland of Asia.<a id="footnotetag545" name="footnotetag545"></a><a href="#footnote545" title="Go to footnote 545"><span class="small">[545]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>On the following day Alexander issued a second bull in order to prevent
+any occasion for quarrel between Spain and Portugal.<a id="footnotetag546" name="footnotetag546"></a><a href="#footnote546" title="Go to footnote 546"><span class="small">[546]</span></a> He decreed
+that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page456" name="page456"></a>(p. 456)</span> all lands discovered or to be discovered to the west of a
+meridian one hundred leagues west of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page457" name="page457"></a>(p. 457)</span> the Azores and Cape Verde
+islands should belong to the Spaniards. Inasmuch as between the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page458" name="page458"></a>(p. 458)</span> westernmost of the Azores and the easternmost of the Cape
+Verde group the difference in longitude is not far from ten degrees,
+this description must be allowed to be somewhat vague, especially in a
+document emanating from "certain knowledge;"<a id="footnotetag547" name="footnotetag547"></a><a href="#footnote547" title="Go to footnote 547"><span class="small">[547]</span></a> <span class="pagenum"><a id="page459" name="page459"></a>(p. 459)</span> and it left
+open a source of future disputes which one would suppose the "plenitude
+of apostolic power" might have been worthily employed in closing. The
+meridian 25° W., however, would have satisfied the conditions, and the
+equitable intent of the arrangement is manifest. The Portuguese were
+left free to pursue their course of discovery and conquest along the
+routes which they had always preferred. King John, however, was not
+satisfied. He entertained vague hopes of finding spice islands, or
+something worth having, in the western waters; and he wished to have the
+Line of Demarcation carried farther to the west. After a year of
+diplomatic wrangling a treaty was signed at <span class="sidenote">Treaty of Tordesillas.</span>
+Tordesillas, June 7, 1494,
+in which Spain consented to the moving of the line to a distance of 370
+leagues west from the Cape Verde islands.<a id="footnotetag548" name="footnotetag548"></a><a href="#footnote548" title="Go to footnote 548"><span class="small">[548]</span></a> It would thus on a modern
+map fall somewhere between the 41st and 44th meridians west of
+Greenwich. This amendment had important and curious consequences. It
+presently gave the Brazilian coast to the Portuguese, and thereupon
+played a leading part in the singular and complicated series of events
+that ended in giving the name of Americus Vespucius to that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page460" name="page460"></a>(p. 460)</span>
+region, whence it was afterwards gradually extended to the whole western
+hemisphere.<a id="footnotetag549" name="footnotetag549"></a><a href="#footnote549" title="Go to footnote 549"><span class="small">[549]</span></a></p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>Already in April, 1493, without waiting for the papal sanction,
+Ferdinand and Isabella bent all their energies to the work of fitting
+out an expedition for taking possession of "the Indies." First, a
+department of Indian affairs was created, <span class="sidenote">Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca.</span>
+and at its head was placed
+Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, archdeacon of Seville: in Spain a man in high
+office was apt to be a clergyman. This Fonseca was all-powerful in
+Indian affairs for the next thirty years. He won and retained the
+confidence of the sovereigns by virtue of his executive ability. He was
+a man of coarse fibre, ambitious and domineering, cold-hearted and
+perfidious, with a cynical contempt&mdash;such as low-minded people are apt
+to call "smart"&mdash;for the higher human feelings. He was one of those ugly
+customers who crush, without a twinge of compunction, whatever comes in
+their way. The slightest opposition made him furious, and his
+vindictiveness was insatiable. This dexterous and pushing Fonseca held
+one after another the bishoprics of Badajoz, Cordova, Palencia, and
+Conde, the archbishopric of Rosano in Italy, together with the bishopric
+of Burgos, and he was also principal chaplain to Isabella and afterwards
+to Ferdinand. As Sir Arthur Helps observes, "the student of early
+American history will have a bad opinion of many Spanish bishops, if he
+does not discover that it is Bishop Fonseca who reappears <span class="pagenum"><a id="page461" name="page461"></a>(p. 461)</span>
+under various designations."<a id="footnotetag550" name="footnotetag550"></a><a href="#footnote550" title="Go to footnote 550"><span class="small">[550]</span></a> Sir Arthur fitly calls him "the
+ungodly bishop."</p>
+
+<p>The headquarters of Fonseca and of the Indian department were
+established at Seville, and a special Indian custom-house was set up at
+Cadiz. There was to be another custom-house upon the island of
+Hispaniola (supposed to be Japan), and a minute registry was to be kept
+of all ships and their crews and cargoes, going out or coming in. Nobody
+was to be allowed to go to the Indies for any purpose whatever without a
+license formally obtained. Careful regulations were made for hampering
+trade and making everything as vexatious as possible for traders,
+according to the ordinary wisdom of governments in such matters. All
+expenses were to be borne and all profits received by the crown of
+Castile, saving the rights formerly guaranteed to Columbus. The cost of
+the present expedition was partly defrayed with stolen money, the
+plunder wrung from the worthy and industrious Jews who had been driven
+from their homes by the infernal edict of the year before. Extensive
+"requisitions" were also made; in other words, when the sovereigns
+wanted a ship or a barrel of gunpowder they seized it, and impressed it
+into the good work of converting the heathen. To superintend this
+missionary work, a Franciscan monk<a id="footnotetag551" name="footnotetag551"></a><a href="#footnote551" title="Go to footnote 551"><span class="small">[551]</span></a> was selected who had lately
+distinguished <span class="pagenum"><a id="page462" name="page462"></a>(p. 462)</span> himself as a diplomatist in the dispute with
+France over the border province of <span class="sidenote">Friar Boyle.</span>
+Rousillon. This person was a native
+of Catalonia, and his name was Bernardo Boyle, which strongly suggests
+an Irish origin. Alexander VI. appointed him his apostolic vicar for the
+Indies,<a id="footnotetag552" name="footnotetag552"></a><a href="#footnote552" title="Go to footnote 552"><span class="small">[552]</span></a> and he seems to have been the first clergyman to perform
+mass on the western shores of the Atlantic. To assist the vicar, the six
+Indians brought over by Columbus were baptized at Barcelona, with the
+king and queen for their godfather and godmother. It was hoped that they
+would prove useful as missionaries, and when one of them presently died
+he was said to be the first Indian ever admitted to heaven.<a id="footnotetag553" name="footnotetag553"></a><a href="#footnote553" title="Go to footnote 553"><span class="small">[553]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The three summer months were occupied in fitting out the little fleet.
+There were fourteen caravels, and three larger store-ships known as
+carracks. Horses, mules, and other cattle were put on board,<a id="footnotetag554" name="footnotetag554"></a><a href="#footnote554" title="Go to footnote 554"><span class="small">[554]</span></a> as
+well as vines and sugar-canes, and the seeds of several European
+cereals, for it was intended to establish a permanent colony upon
+Hispaniola. In the course of this work some slight matters of
+disagreement came up between Columbus and Fonseca, and the question
+having been referred to the sovereigns, Fonseca was mildly snubbed and
+told that he must in all respects be guided by the Admiral's wishes.
+From that time forth this ungodly prelate nourished a deadly hatred
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page463" name="page463"></a>(p. 463)</span> toward Columbus, and never lost an opportunity for whispering
+evil things about him. The worst of the grievous afflictions that
+afterward beset the great discoverer must be ascribed to the secret
+machinations of this wretch.</p>
+
+<p>At last the armament was ready. People were so eager to embark that it
+was felt necessary to restrain them. It was not intended to have more
+than 1,200, but about 1,500 in all contrived to go, so that some of the
+caravels must have been overcrowded. The character of the company was
+very different from that of the year before. Those who went in the first
+voyage were chiefly common sailors. Now there were many aristocratic
+young men, hot-blooded and feather-headed hidalgos whom the surrender of
+Granada had left without an occupation. Most distinguished among these
+was <span class="sidenote">Notable persons who embarked on the second voyage.</span>
+Alonso de Ojeda, a dare-devil of unrivalled muscular strength, full
+of energy and fanfaronade, and not without generous qualities, but with
+very little soundness of judgment or character. Other notable personages
+in this expedition were Columbus's youngest brother Giacomo (henceforth
+called Diego), who had come from Genoa at the first news of the
+Admiral's triumphant return; the monk Antonio de Marchena,<a id="footnotetag555" name="footnotetag555"></a><a href="#footnote555" title="Go to footnote 555"><span class="small">[555]</span></a> whom
+historians have so long confounded with the prior Juan Perez; an
+Aragonese gentleman named Pedro Margarite, a favourite of the king and
+destined to work sad mischief; Juan <span class="pagenum"><a id="page464" name="page464"></a>(p. 464)</span> Ponce de Leon, who
+afterwards gave its name to Florida; Francisco de Las Casas, father of
+the great apostle and historian of the Indies; and, last but not least,
+the pilot Juan de La Cosa, now charged with the work of chart-making, in
+which he was an acknowledged master.<a id="footnotetag556" name="footnotetag556"></a><a href="#footnote556" title="Go to footnote 556"><span class="small">[556]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The pomp and bustle of the departure from Cadiz, September 25, 1493, at
+which the Admiral's two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, were present, must
+have been one of the earliest recollections of the younger boy, then
+just five years of age.<a id="footnotetag557" name="footnotetag557"></a><a href="#footnote557" title="Go to footnote 557"><span class="small">[557]</span></a> Again Columbus stopped at the Canary
+islands, this time to take on board goats and sheep, pigs and fowls, for
+he had been struck by the absence of all such animals on the coasts
+which he had visited.<a id="footnotetag558" name="footnotetag558"></a><a href="#footnote558" title="Go to footnote 558"><span class="small">[558]</span></a> Seeds of melons, oranges, and lemons were
+also taken. On the 7th of October the ships weighed anchor, heading a
+trifle to the south of west, and after a pleasant and uneventful voyage
+they sighted land on the 3d of November.<a id="footnotetag559" name="footnotetag559"></a><a href="#footnote559" title="Go to footnote 559"><span class="small">[559]</span></a> It <span class="pagenum"><a id="page465" name="page465"></a>(p. 465)</span> turned out to
+be a small mountainous island, and as it was discovered on Sunday they
+called it Dominica. In a fortnight's cruise in these Caribbean waters
+they discovered and named several islands, such as Marigalante,
+Guadaloupe, Antigua, and others, and at length reached Porto
+Rico. <span class="sidenote">Cruise among the cannibal islands.</span>
+The
+inhabitants of these islands were ferocious cannibals, very different
+from the natives encountered on the former voyage. There were skirmishes
+in which a few Spaniards were killed with poisoned arrows. On Guadaloupe
+the natives lived in square houses made of saplings intertwined with
+reeds, and on the rude porticoes attached to these houses some of the
+wooden pieces were carved so as to look like serpents. In some of these
+houses human limbs were hanging from the roof, cured with smoke, like
+ham; and fresh pieces of human flesh were found stewing in earthen
+kettles, along with the flesh of parrots. Now at length, said Peter
+Martyr, was proved the truth of the stories of Polyphemus and the
+Læstrygonians, and the reader must look out lest his hair stand on
+end.<a id="footnotetag560" name="footnotetag560"></a><a href="#footnote560" title="Go to footnote 560"><span class="small">[560]</span></a> These western Læstrygonians were known as Caribbees,
+Caribales, or Canibales, and have thus furnished an epithet which we
+have since learned to apply to man-eaters the world over.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page466" name="page466"></a>(p. 466)</span>
+
+<p>It was late at night on the 27th of November that Columbus arrived in
+the harbour of La Navidad and fired a salute to arouse the attention of
+the party that had been left there the year before. There was no reply
+and the silence seemed fraught with evil omen. On going ashore next
+morning and exploring the neighbourhood, the Spaniards came upon sights
+of dismal significance. <span class="sidenote">Fate of the colony at La Navidad.</span>
+The fortress was pulled to pieces and partly
+burnt, the chests of provisions were broken open and emptied, tools and
+fragments of European clothing were found in the houses of the natives,
+and finally eleven corpses, identifiable as those of white men, were
+found buried near the fort. Not one of the forty men who had been left
+behind in that place ever turned up to tell the tale. The little colony
+of La Navidad had been wiped out of existence. From the Indians,
+however, Columbus gathered bits of information that made a sufficiently
+probable story. It was a typical instance of the beginnings of
+colonization in wild countries. In such instances human nature has shown
+considerable uniformity. Insubordination and deadly feuds among
+themselves had combined with reckless outrages upon the natives to
+imperil the existence of this little party of rough sailors. The cause
+to which Horace ascribes so many direful wars, both before and since the
+days of fairest Helen, seems to have been the principal cause on this
+occasion. At length a fierce chieftain named Caonabo, from the region of
+Xaragua, had attacked the Spaniards in overwhelming force, knocked their
+blockhouse about <span class="pagenum"><a id="page467" name="page467"></a>(p. 467)</span> their heads, and butchered all that were left
+of them.</p>
+
+<p>This was a gloomy welcome to the land of promise. There was nothing to
+be done but to build new fortifications and found a town. The site
+chosen for this new settlement, which was named <span class="sidenote">Building of Isabella.</span>
+Isabella, was at a good
+harbour about thirty miles east of Monte Christi. It was chosen because
+Columbus understood from the natives that it was not far from there to
+the gold-bearing mountains of Cibao, a name which still seemed to
+signify Cipango. Quite a neat little town was presently built, with
+church, marketplace, public granary, and dwelling-houses, the whole
+encompassed with a stone wall. An exploring party led by Ojeda into the
+mountains of Cibao found gold dust and pieces of gold ore in the beds of
+the brooks, and returned elated with this discovery. Twelve of the ships
+were now sent back to Spain for further supplies and reinforcements, and
+<span class="sidenote">Exploration of Cibao.</span>
+specimens of the gold were sent as an earnest of what was likely to be
+found. At length, in March, 1494, Columbus set forth, with 400 armed
+men, to explore the Cibao country. The march was full of interest. It is
+upon this occasion that we first find mention of the frantic terror
+manifested by Indians at the sight of horses. At first they supposed the
+horse and his rider to be a kind of centaur, and when the rider
+dismounted this separation of one creature into two overwhelmed them
+with supernatural terror. Even when they had begun to get over this
+notion they <span class="pagenum"><a id="page468" name="page468"></a>(p. 468)</span> were in dread of being eaten by the horses.<a id="footnotetag561" name="footnotetag561"></a><a href="#footnote561" title="Go to footnote 561"><span class="small">[561]</span></a>
+These natives lived in houses grouped into villages, and had carved
+wooden idols and rude estufas for their tutelar divinities. It was
+ascertained that different tribes tried to steal each other's idols and
+even fought for the possession of valuable objects of "medicine."<a id="footnotetag562" name="footnotetag562"></a><a href="#footnote562" title="Go to footnote 562"><span class="small">[562]</span></a>
+Columbus observed and reported the customs of these people with some
+minuteness. There was nothing that agreed with Marco Polo's descriptions
+of Cipango, but so far as concerned the discovery of gold mines, the
+indications were such as to leave little doubt of the success of this
+reconnaissance. The Admiral now arranged his forces so as to hold the
+inland regions just visited and gave the general command to Margarite,
+who was to continue the work of exploration. He left his brother, Diego
+Columbus, in charge of the colony, and taking three caravels set sail
+from Isabella on the 24th of April, on a cruise of discovery in these
+Asiatic waters.</p>
+
+<a id="img019" name="img019"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img019b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img019.jpg" width="500" height="248" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Discoveries made by Columbus in his first and second
+voyages.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A brief westward sail brought the little squadron into the Windward
+Passage and in sight of Cape Mayzi, which Columbus on his first voyage
+had named <span class="sidenote">Cape Alpha and Omega.</span>
+Cape Alpha and Omega as being the easternmost point on the
+Chinese coast. He believed that if he were to sail to the right of this
+cape he should have the continent on his port side for a thousand miles
+and more, as far as Quinsay and Cambaluc (Peking). If he had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page470" name="page470"></a>(p. 470)</span>
+sailed in this direction and had succeeded in keeping to the east of
+Florida, he would have kept a continent on his port side, and a thousand
+miles would have taken him a long way toward that Vinland which our
+Scandinavian friends would fondly have us believe was his secret
+guiding-star, and the geographical position of which they suppose him to
+have known with such astounding accuracy. But on this as on other
+occasions, if the Admiral had ever received any information about
+Vinland, it must be owned that he treated it very cavalierly, for he
+chose the course to the left of Cape Mayzi. His decision is intelligible
+if we bear in mind that he had not yet circumnavigated Hayti and was not
+yet cured of his belief that its northern shore was the shore of the
+great Cipango. At the same time he had seen enough on his first voyage
+to convince him that the relative positions of Cipango and the mainland
+of Cathay were not correctly laid down upon the Toscanelli map. He had
+already inspected two or three hundred miles of the coast to the right
+of Cape Mayzi without finding traces of civilization; and whenever
+inquiries were made about gold or powerful kingdoms the natives
+invariably pointed to the south or southwest. Columbus, therefore,
+decided to try his luck in this direction. He passed to the left of Cape
+Mayzi and followed the southern coast of Cuba.</p>
+
+<p>By the 3d of May the natives were pointing so persistently to the south
+and off to sea that he <span class="sidenote">Discovery of Jamaica.</span>
+changed his course in that direction and soon
+came upon the northern coast of the island which we still know by its
+native name <span class="pagenum"><a id="page471" name="page471"></a>(p. 471)</span> Jamaica. Here he found Indians more intelligent
+and more warlike than any he had as yet seen. He was especially struck
+with the elegance of their canoes, some of them nearly a hundred feet in
+length, carved and hollowed from the trunks of tall trees. We may
+already observe that different tribes of Indians comported themselves
+very differently at the first sight of white men. While the natives of
+some of the islands prostrated themselves in adoration of these
+sky-creatures, or behaved with a timorous politeness which the Spaniards
+mistook for gentleness of disposition, in other places the red men
+showed fight at once, acting upon the brute impulse to drive away
+strangers. In both cases, of course, dread of the unknown was the
+prompting impulse, though so differently manifested. As the Spaniards
+went ashore upon Jamaica, the Indians greeted them with a shower of
+javelins and for a few moments stood up against the deadly fire of the
+cross-bows, but when they turned to flee, a single bloodhound, let loose
+upon them, scattered them in wildest panic.<a id="footnotetag563" name="footnotetag563"></a><a href="#footnote563" title="Go to footnote 563"><span class="small">[563]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Finding no evidences of civilization upon this beautiful island,
+Columbus turned northward and struck the Cuban coast again at the point
+which still bears the name he gave it, Cape Cruz. Between the general
+contour of this <span class="sidenote">Coasting the south side of Cuba.</span>
+end of Cuba and that of the eastern extremity of Cathay
+upon the Toscanelli map there is a curious resemblance, save that the
+direction <span class="pagenum"><a id="page472" name="page472"></a>(p. 472)</span> is in the one case more east and west and in the
+other more north and south. Columbus passed no cities like Zaiton, nor
+cities of any sort, but when he struck into the smiling archipelago
+which he called the Queen's Gardens, now known as Cayos de las Doce
+Leguas, he felt sure that he was among Marco Polo's seven thousand spice
+islands. On the 3d of June, at some point on the Cuban coast, probably
+near Trinidad, the crops of several doves were opened and spices found
+in them. None of the natives here had ever heard of an end to Cuba, and
+they believed it was endless.<a id="footnotetag564" name="footnotetag564"></a><a href="#footnote564" title="Go to footnote 564"><span class="small">[564]</span></a> The next country to the west of
+themselves was named Mangon, and it was inhabited by people with tails
+which they carefully hid by wearing loose robes of cloth. This
+information seemed decisive to Columbus. Evidently this Mangon was
+Mangi, the province in which was the city of Zaiton, the province just
+south of Cathay. And as for the tailed men, the book of Mandeville had a
+story of some naked savages in eastern Asia who spoke of their more
+civilized neighbours as wearing clothes in order to cover up some bodily
+peculiarity or defect. Could there be any doubt that the Spanish
+caravels had come at length to the coast of opulent Mangi?<a id="footnotetag565" name="footnotetag565"></a><a href="#footnote565" title="Go to footnote 565"><span class="small">[565]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page473" name="page473"></a>(p. 473)</span>
+
+<p>Under the influence of this belief, when a few days later they landed in
+search of fresh water, and a certain archer, on the lookout for game,
+caught distant glimpses of a flock of tall white cranes feeding in an
+everglade, he fled to his comrades with the story that he had seen a
+party of men clad in long white tunics, and all agreed <span class="sidenote">The "people of Mangon."</span>
+that these must
+be the people of Mangon.<a id="footnotetag566" name="footnotetag566"></a><a href="#footnote566" title="Go to footnote 566"><span class="small">[566]</span></a> Columbus sent a small company ashore to
+find them. It is needless to add that the search was fruitless, but
+footprints of alligators, interpreted as footprints of griffins guarding
+hoarded gold,<a id="footnotetag567" name="footnotetag567"></a><a href="#footnote567" title="Go to footnote 567"><span class="small">[567]</span></a> frightened the men back to their ships. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page474" name="page474"></a>(p. 474)</span>
+From the natives, with whom the Spaniards could converse only by signs,
+they seemed to learn that they were going toward the realm of Prester
+John;<a id="footnotetag568" name="footnotetag568"></a><a href="#footnote568" title="Go to footnote 568"><span class="small">[568]</span></a> and in such wise did they creep along the coast to the point,
+some fifty miles west of Broa Bay, where it begins to trend decidedly to
+the southwest. Before they had reached Point Mangles, a hundred miles
+farther on, inasmuch as they found this southwesterly trend persistent,
+the proof that they were upon the coast of the Asiatic continent began
+to seem complete. Columbus thought that they had passed the point (lat.
+23°, long. 145° on Toscanelli's map) where the coast of Asia began to
+trend steadily toward the southwest.<a id="footnotetag569" name="footnotetag569"></a><a href="#footnote569" title="Go to footnote 569"><span class="small">[569]</span></a> By pursuing this coast he felt
+sure that he would eventually reach the peninsula (Malacca) which
+Ptolemy, who knew of it only by vague hearsay, called the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page475" name="page475"></a>(p. 475)</span>
+Golden Chersonese.<a id="footnotetag570" name="footnotetag570"></a><a href="#footnote570" title="Go to footnote 570"><span class="small">[570]</span></a> An immense idea now flitted through the mind of
+Columbus. <span class="sidenote">The Golden Chersonese.</span>
+If he could reach and double that peninsula he could then find
+his way to the mouth of the Ganges river; thence he might cross the
+Indian ocean, pass the Cape of Good Hope (for Dias had surely shown that
+the way was open), and return that way to Spain after circumnavigating
+the globe! But fate had reserved this achievement for another man of
+great heart and lofty thoughts, a quarter of a century later, who should
+indeed accomplish what Columbus dreamed, but only after crossing another
+Sea of Darkness, the most stupendous body of water on our globe, the
+mere existence of which until after Columbus had died no European ever
+suspected.<a id="footnotetag571" name="footnotetag571"></a><a href="#footnote571" title="Go to footnote 571"><span class="small">[571]</span></a> If Columbus had now sailed about a hundred miles
+farther, he would have found the end of Cuba, and might perhaps have
+skirted the northern shore of Yucatan and come upon the barbaric
+splendours of Uxmal and Campeche. The excitement which such news would
+have caused in Spain might perhaps have changed all the rest of his life
+and saved him from the worst of his troubles. But the crews were now
+unwilling to go farther, and the Admiral realized that it would be
+impossible to undertake such a voyage as he had in mind with no more
+than their present outfit. So it was decided to return to Hispaniola.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page476" name="page476"></a>(p. 476)</span> Upon consultation with La Cosa and others, it was unanimously
+agreed that they were upon the coast of the continent of Asia. The
+evidence seemed conclusive. From Cape Mayzi (Alpha and Omega) they had
+observed, upon their own reckoning, 335 leagues, or about 1,000
+geographical miles, of continuous coast running steadily in nearly the
+same direction.<a id="footnotetag572" name="footnotetag572"></a><a href="#footnote572" title="Go to footnote 572"><span class="small">[572]</span></a> Clearly it was too long for the coast of an island;
+and then there was the name Mangon = Mangi. The only puzzling
+circumstance was that they did not find any of Marco Polo's cities. They
+kept getting scraps of information which seemed to refer to gorgeous
+kingdoms, but these were always in the dim distance. Still there was no
+doubt that they had discovered the coast of a continent, and of course
+such a continent could be nothing else but Asia!</p>
+
+<p>Such unanimity of opinion might seem to leave nothing to be desired. But
+Columbus had already met with cavillers. Before he started on this
+cruise from Isabella, some impatient hidalgos, disgusted at finding much
+to do and little to get, had begun to hint that the Admiral was a
+humbug, and that his "Indies" were no such great affair after all. In
+order to silence these ill-natured critics, he sent his notary,
+accompanied by four witnesses, to every person in those three caravels,
+to get a sworn statement. If anybody had a grain of doubt about this
+coast being the coast of Asia, so that you could <span class="pagenum"><a id="page477" name="page477"></a>(p. 477)</span> go ashore
+there and walk on dry land all the way to Spain if so disposed, let him
+declare his doubts once for all, so that they might now be duly
+considered. <span class="sidenote">A solemn expression of opinion.</span>
+No one expressed any doubts. All declared, under oath, their
+firm belief. It was then agreed that if any of the number should
+thereafter deny or contradict this sworn statement, he should have his
+tongue slit;<a id="footnotetag573" name="footnotetag573"></a><a href="#footnote573" title="Go to footnote 573"><span class="small">[573]</span></a> and if an officer, he should be further punished with
+a fine of 10,000 maravedis, or if a sailor, with a hundred lashes. These
+proceedings were embodied in a formal document, dated June 12, 1494,
+which is still to be seen in the Archives of the Indies at Seville.<a id="footnotetag574" name="footnotetag574"></a><a href="#footnote574" title="Go to footnote 574"><span class="small">[574]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Having disposed of this solemn matter, the three caravels turned
+eastward, touching at the Isle of Pines and coasting back along the
+south side of Cuba. The headland where the Admiral first became
+convinced of the significance of the curvature of the coast, he named
+Cape of Good Hope,<a id="footnotetag575" name="footnotetag575"></a><a href="#footnote575" title="Go to footnote 575"><span class="small">[575]</span></a> believing it to be much nearer the goal which
+all were seeking than the other cape of that name, discovered by Dias
+seven years before.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that the Admiral, upon his first voyage,
+<span class="sidenote">Vicissitudes of theory.</span>
+had
+carried home with him two theories,&mdash;first, that in the Cuban coast he
+had already discovered that of the continent <span class="pagenum"><a id="page478" name="page478"></a>(p. 478)</span> of Asia, secondly
+that Hispaniola was Cipango. The first theory seemed to be confirmed by
+further experience; the second was now to receive a serious shock.
+Leaving Cape Cruz the caravels stood over to Jamaica, leisurely explored
+the southern side of that island, and as soon as adverse winds would let
+them, kept on eastward till land appeared on the port bow. Nobody
+recognized it until an Indian chief who had learned some Spanish hailed
+them from the shore and told them it was Hispaniola. They then followed
+that southern coast its whole length, discovering the tiny islands,
+Beata, Saona, and Mona. Here Columbus, overcome by long-sustained
+fatigue and excitement, suddenly fell into a death-like lethargy, and in
+this sad condition was carried all the way to Isabella, and to his own
+house, where he was put to bed. Hispaniola had thus been
+circumnavigated, and either it was not Cipango or else that wonderland
+must be a much smaller affair than Toscanelli and Martin Behaim had
+depicted it.<a id="footnotetag576" name="footnotetag576"></a><a href="#footnote576" title="Go to footnote 576"><span class="small">[576]</span></a> There was something truly mysterious about these
+Strange Coasts!</p>
+
+<p>When Columbus, after many days, recovered consciousness, he found his
+<span class="sidenote">Arrival of Bartholomew Columbus.</span>
+brother Bartholomew standing by his bedside. It was six years since they
+had last parted company at Lisbon, whence the younger brother started
+for England, while the elder returned to Spain. The news of
+Christopher's return from his <span class="pagenum"><a id="page479" name="page479"></a>(p. 479)</span> first voyage found Bartholomew
+in Paris, whence he started as soon as he could for Seville, but did not
+arrive there until just after the second expedition had started.
+Presently the sovereigns sent him with three ships to Hispaniola, to
+carry supplies to the colony; and there he arrived while the Admiral was
+exploring the coast of Cuba. The meeting of the two brothers was a great
+relief to both. The affection between them was very strong, and each was
+a support for the other. The Admiral at once proceeded to appoint
+Bartholomew to the office of Adelantado, which in this instance was
+equivalent to making him governor of Hispaniola under himself, the
+Viceroy of the Indies. In making this appointment Columbus seems to have
+exceeded the authority granted him by the second article of his
+agreement of April, 1492, with the sovereigns;<a id="footnotetag577" name="footnotetag577"></a><a href="#footnote577" title="Go to footnote 577"><span class="small">[577]</span></a> but they mended the
+matter in 1497 by themselves investing Bartholomew with the office and
+dignity of Adelantado.<a id="footnotetag578" name="footnotetag578"></a><a href="#footnote578" title="Go to footnote 578"><span class="small">[578]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Columbus was in need of all the aid he could summon, for, during his
+absence, the island had become a pandemonium.
+<span class="sidenote">Mutiny in Hispaniola; desertion of Boyle and Margarite.</span>
+His brother Diego, a man
+of refined and studious habits, who afterwards became a priest, was too
+mild in disposition to govern the hot-heads who had come to Hispaniola
+to get rich without labour. They would not submit to the rule of this
+foreigner. Instead of doing honest work they roamed about the island,
+abusing the Indians and slaying one another in silly quarrels. Chief
+among <span class="pagenum"><a id="page480" name="page480"></a>(p. 480)</span> the offenders was King Ferdinand's favourite, the
+commander Margarite; and he was aided and abetted by Friar Boyle. Some
+time after Bartholomew's arrival, these two men of Aragon gathered about
+them a party of malcontents and, seizing the ships which had brought
+that mariner, sailed away to Spain. Making their way to court, they
+sought pardon for thus deserting the colony, saying that duty to their
+sovereigns demanded that they should bring home a report of what was
+going on in the Indies. They decried the value of Columbus's
+discoveries, and reminded the king that Hispaniola was taking money out
+of the treasury much faster than it was putting it in; an argument well
+calculated to influence Ferdinand that summer, for he was getting ready
+to go to war with France over the Naples affair. Then the two recreants
+poured forth a stream of accusations against the brothers Columbus, the
+general purport of which was that they were gross tyrants not fit to be
+trusted with the command of Spaniards.</p>
+
+<p>No marked effect seems to have been produced by these first complaints,
+but when Margarite and Boyle were once within reach of Fonseca, we need
+not wonder that mischief was soon brewing. It was unfortunate for
+Columbus that his work of exploration was hampered by the necessity of
+founding a colony and governing a parcel of unruly men let loose in the
+wilderness, far away from the powerful restraints of civilized society.
+Such work required undivided attention and extraordinary talent for
+command. It does not appear that Columbus was lacking in such talent. On
+the contrary <span class="pagenum"><a id="page481" name="page481"></a>(p. 481)</span> both he and his brother Bartholomew seem to have
+possessed it in a high degree. But the situation was desperately bad
+when the spirit of mutiny was fomented by deadly enemies at court.
+<span class="sidenote">The government of Columbus was not tyrannical.</span>
+I do
+not find adequate justification for the charges of tyranny brought
+against Columbus. The veracity and fairness of the history of Las Casas
+are beyond question; in his divinely beautiful spirit one sees now and
+then a trace of tenderness even for Fonseca, whose conduct toward him
+was always as mean and malignant as toward Columbus. One gets from Las
+Casas the impression that the Admiral's high temper was usually kept
+under firm control, and that he showed far less severity than most men
+would have done under similar provocation. Bartholomew was made of
+sterner stuff, but his whole career presents no instance of wanton
+cruelty; toward both white men and Indians his conduct was distinguished
+by clemency and moderation. Under the government of these brothers a few
+scoundrels were hanged in Hispaniola. Many more ought to have been.</p>
+
+<p>Of the attempt of Columbus to collect tribute from the native
+population, and its <span class="sidenote">Troubles with the Indians.</span>
+consequences in developing the system of
+<i>repartimientos</i> out of which grew Indian slavery, I shall treat in a
+future chapter.<a id="footnotetag579" name="footnotetag579"></a><a href="#footnote579" title="Go to footnote 579"><span class="small">[579]</span></a> That attempt, which was ill-advised and
+ill-managed, was part of a plan for checking wanton depredations and
+regulating the relations between the Spaniards and the Indians. The
+colonists behaved so badly toward <span class="pagenum"><a id="page482" name="page482"></a>(p. 482)</span> the red men that the
+chieftain Caonabo, who had destroyed La Navidad the year before, now
+formed a scheme<a id="footnotetag580" name="footnotetag580"></a><a href="#footnote580" title="Go to footnote 580"><span class="small">[580]</span></a> for a general alliance among the native tribes,
+hoping with sufficient numbers to overwhelm and exterminate the
+strangers, in spite of their solid-hoofed monsters and death-dealing
+thunderbolts. This scheme was revealed to Columbus, soon after his
+return from the coast of Cuba, by the chieftain Guacanagari, who was an
+enemy to Caonabo and courted the friendship of the Spaniards. Alonso de
+Ojeda, by a daring stratagem, captured Caonabo and brought him to
+Columbus, who treated him kindly but kept him a prisoner until it should
+be convenient to send him to Spain. But this chieftain's scheme was
+nevertheless put in operation through the influence of his principal
+wife Anacaona. An Indian war broke out; roaming bands of Spaniards were
+ambushed and massacred; and there was fighting in the field, where the
+natives&mdash;assailed by firearms and cross-bows, horses and
+bloodhounds&mdash;were wofully defeated.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in the difficult task of controlling mutinous white men and
+<span class="sidenote">Mission of Aguado.</span>
+defending the colony against infuriated red men Columbus spent the first
+twelvemonth after his return from Cuba. In October, 1495, there arrived
+in the harbour of Isabella four caravels laden with welcome supplies. In
+one of these ships came Juan Aguado, sent by the sovereigns to gather
+information respecting the troubles of the colony. This <span class="pagenum"><a id="page483" name="page483"></a>(p. 483)</span>
+appointment was doubtless made in a friendly spirit, for Columbus had
+formerly recommended Aguado to favour. But the arrival of such a person
+created a hope, which quickly grew into a belief, that the sovereigns
+were preparing to deprive Columbus of the government of the island; and,
+as Irving neatly says, "it was a time of jubilee for offenders; every
+culprit started up into an accuser." All the ills of the colony, many of
+them inevitable in such an enterprise, many of them due to the
+shiftlessness and folly, the cruelty and lust of idle swash-bucklers,
+were now laid at the door of Columbus. <span class="sidenote">Discovery of gold mines.</span>
+Aguado was presently won over by
+the malcontents, so that by the time he was ready to return to Spain,
+early in 1496, Columbus felt it desirable to go along with him and make
+his own explanations to the sovereigns. Fortunately for his purposes,
+just before he started, some rich gold mines were discovered on the
+south side of the island, in the neighbourhood of the Hayna and Ozema
+rivers. Moreover there were sundry pits in these mines, which looked
+like excavations and seemed to indicate that in former times there had
+been digging done.<a id="footnotetag581" name="footnotetag581"></a><a href="#footnote581" title="Go to footnote 581"><span class="small">[581]</span></a> This discovery confirmed the Admiral in a new
+theory, which he was beginning to form. If it should turn out that
+Hispaniola was not Cipango, as the last voyage seemed to suggest,
+perhaps it might prove to be Ophir!<a id="footnotetag582" name="footnotetag582"></a><a href="#footnote582" title="Go to footnote 582"><span class="small">[582]</span></a> Probably these ancient
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page484" name="page484"></a>(p. 484)</span> excavations were made by King Solomon's men when they came
+here to get gold for the temple at Jerusalem! <span class="sidenote">Speculations about Ophir.</span>
+If so, one might expect to
+find silver, ivory, red sandal-wood, apes, and peacocks at no great
+distance. Just where Ophir was situated no one could exactly tell,<a id="footnotetag583" name="footnotetag583"></a><a href="#footnote583" title="Go to footnote 583"><span class="small">[583]</span></a>
+but the things that were carried thence to Jerusalem certainly came from
+"the Indies." Columbus conceived it as probably lying northeastward of
+the Golden Chersonese (Malacca) and as identical with the island of
+Hispaniola.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of these mines led to the transfer of the headquarters of
+the colony to the mouth of the <span class="sidenote">Founding of San Domingo, 1496.</span>
+Ozema river, where, in the summer of
+1496, Bartholomew Columbus made a settlement which became the city of
+San Domingo.<a id="footnotetag584" name="footnotetag584"></a><a href="#footnote584" title="Go to footnote 584"><span class="small">[584]</span></a> Meanwhile Aguado and the Admiral sailed for Spain
+early in March, in two caravels overloaded with more than two hundred
+homesick passengers. In choosing his course Columbus did not show so
+much sagacity as on his <span class="pagenum"><a id="page485" name="page485"></a>(p. 485)</span> first return voyage. Instead of
+working northward till clear of the <span class="sidenote">The return voyage.</span>
+belt of trade-winds, he kept
+straight to the east, and so spent a month in beating and tacking before
+getting out of the Caribbean Sea. Scarcity of food was imminent, and it
+became necessary to stop at Guadaloupe and make a quantity of cassava
+bread.<a id="footnotetag585" name="footnotetag585"></a><a href="#footnote585" title="Go to footnote 585"><span class="small">[585]</span></a> It was well that this was done, for as the ships worked
+slowly across the Atlantic, struggling against perpetual head-winds, the
+provisions were at length exhausted, and by the first week in June the
+famine was such that Columbus had some difficulty in preventing the
+crews from eating their Indian captives, of whom there were thirty or
+more on board.<a id="footnotetag586" name="footnotetag586"></a><a href="#footnote586" title="Go to footnote 586"><span class="small">[586]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>At length, on the 11th of June, the haggard and starving company arrived
+at Cadiz, and Columbus, while awaiting orders from the sovereigns,
+stayed at the house of his good friend Bernaldez, the curate of Los
+Palacios.<a id="footnotetag587" name="footnotetag587"></a><a href="#footnote587" title="Go to footnote 587"><span class="small">[587]</span></a> After a month he attended court at Burgos, and was kindly
+received. No allusion was made to the complaints against him, and the
+sovereigns promised to furnish ships for a third voyage of discovery.
+For the moment, however, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page486" name="page486"></a>(p. 486)</span> other things interfered with this
+enterprise. One was the marriage of the son and daughter of Ferdinand
+and Isabella to the daughter and son of the Emperor Maximilian. The war
+with France was at the same time fast draining the treasury. Indeed, for
+more than twenty years, Castile had been at war nearly all the time,
+first with Portugal, next with Granada, then with France; and the crown
+never found it easy to provide money for maritime enterprises.
+Accordingly, at the earnest solicitation of Vicente Yañez Pinzon and
+other enterprising mariners, the sovereigns had issued a proclamation,
+<span class="sidenote">Edicts of 1495 and 1497.</span>
+April 10, 1495, granting to all native Spaniards the privilege of
+making, at their own risk and expense, voyages of discovery or traffic
+to the newly found coasts. As the crown was to take a pretty heavy
+tariff out of the profits of these expeditions, while all losses were to
+be borne by the adventurers, a fairly certain source of revenue, be it
+great or small, seemed likely to be opened.<a id="footnotetag588" name="footnotetag588"></a><a href="#footnote588" title="Go to footnote 588"><span class="small">[588]</span></a> Columbus protested
+against <span class="pagenum"><a id="page487" name="page487"></a>(p. 487)</span> this edict, inasmuch as he deemed himself entitled to
+a patent or monopoly in the work of conducting expeditions to Cathay.
+The sovereigns evaded the difficulty by an edict of June 2, 1497,
+declaring that it was never their intention "in any way to affect the
+rights of the said Don Christopher Columbus." This declaration was,
+doubtless, intended simply to pacify the Admiral. It did not prevent the
+authorization of voyages conducted by other persons a couple of years
+later; and, as I shall show in the next chapter, there are strong
+reasons for believing that on May 10, 1497, three weeks before this
+edict, an expedition sailed from Cadiz under the especial auspices of
+King Ferdinand, with Vicente Yañez Pinzon for its chief commander and
+Americus Vespucius for one of its pilots.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until late in the spring of 1498 that the ships were ready
+for Columbus. Everything that <span class="sidenote">Columbus loses his temper.</span>
+Fonseca could do to vex and delay him was
+done. One of the bishop's minions, a converted Moor or Jew named Ximeno
+Breviesca, behaved with such outrageous insolence that on the day of
+sailing the Admiral's indignation, so long restrained, at last broke
+out, and he drove away the fellow with kicks and cuffs.<a id="footnotetag589" name="footnotetag589"></a><a href="#footnote589" title="Go to footnote 589"><span class="small">[589]</span></a> This
+imprudent act gave Fonseca the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page488" name="page488"></a>(p. 488)</span> opportunity to maintain that
+what the Admiral's accusers said about his tyrannical disposition must
+be true.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>The expedition started on May 30, 1498, from the little port of San
+Lucar de Barrameda. <span class="sidenote">The third voyage.</span>
+There were six ships, carrying about 200 men besides
+the sailors. On June 21, at the Isle of Ferro, the Admiral divided his
+fleet, sending three ships directly to Hispaniola, while with the other
+three he kept on to the Cape Verde islands, whence he steered southwest
+on the 4th of July. A week later, after a run of about 900 miles, his
+astrolabe seemed to show that he was within five degrees of the
+equator.<a id="footnotetag590" name="footnotetag590"></a><a href="#footnote590" title="Go to footnote 590"><span class="small">[590]</span></a> There were three reasons for going so far to the
+south:&mdash;1, the natives of the islands already visited always <span class="pagenum"><a id="page489" name="page489"></a>(p. 489)</span>
+pointed in that direction when gold was mentioned; 2, a learned
+jeweller, who had travelled in the East, had assured Columbus that gold
+and gems, as well as spices and rare drugs, were to be found for the
+most part among black people near the equator; 3, if he should not find
+any rich islands on the way, a sufficiently long voyage would bring him
+to the coast of Champa (Cochin China) at a lower point than he had
+reached on the preceding voyage, and nearer to the Golden Chersonese
+(Malacca), by doubling which he could enter the Indian ocean. It will be
+remembered that he supposed the southwesterly curve in the Cuban coast,
+the farthest point reached in his second voyage, to be the beginning of
+the coast of Cochin China according to Marco Polo.</p>
+
+<p>Once more through ignorance of the atmospheric conditions of the regions
+within the tropics Columbus encountered needless perils and hardships.
+If he had steered from Ferro straight across the ocean a trifle south of
+west-southwest, he might have made a quick and comfortable voyage, with
+the trade-wind filling his sails, to the spot where he actually struck
+land.<a id="footnotetag591" name="footnotetag591"></a><a href="#footnote591" title="Go to footnote 591"><span class="small">[591]</span></a>
+As it was, however, he naturally followed the custom then so
+common, <span class="sidenote">The belt of calms.</span>
+of first running to the parallel upon which he intended to sail.
+This long southerly run brought him into the belt of calms or neutral
+zone between the northern and southern trade-winds, a little north of
+the equator.<a id="footnotetag592" name="footnotetag592"></a><a href="#footnote592" title="Go to footnote 592"><span class="small">[592]</span></a> <span class="pagenum"><a id="page490" name="page490"></a>(p. 490)</span> No words can describe what followed so well
+as those of Irving: "The wind suddenly fell, and a dead sultry calm
+commenced, which lasted for eight days. The air was like a furnace; the
+tar melted, the seams of the ship yawned; the salt meat became putrid;
+the wheat was parched as if with fire; the hoops shrank from the wine
+and water casks, some of which leaked and others burst, while the heat
+in the holds of the vessels was so suffocating that no one could remain
+below a sufficient time to prevent the damage that was taking place. The
+mariners lost all strength and spirits, and sank under the oppressive
+heat. It seemed as if the old fable of the torrid zone was about to be
+realized; and that they were approaching a fiery region where it would
+be impossible to exist."<a id="footnotetag593" name="footnotetag593"></a><a href="#footnote593" title="Go to footnote 593"><span class="small">[593]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, they were in a region where the ocean is comparatively
+narrow. The longitude reached by Columbus on July 13, when the wind died
+away, must have been about 36° or 37° W., <span class="pagenum"><a id="page491" name="page491"></a>(p. 491)</span> and a run of only
+800 miles west from that point would have brought him to Cayenne. His
+course between the 13th and 21st of July must have intersected the
+thermal equator, or line of greatest mean annual heat on the globe,&mdash;an
+irregular curve which is here deflected as much as five degrees north of
+the equinoctial line. But although there was not a breath of wind, the
+powerful equatorial current was quietly driving the ships, much faster
+than the Admiral could have suspected, to the northwest and toward land.
+By the end of that stifling week they were in latitude 7° N., and caught
+the trade-wind on the starboard quarter. Thence after a brisk run of ten
+days, in sorry plight, with ugly leaks and scarcely a cask of fresh
+water left, they arrived within sight of land. Three mountain peaks
+loomed up in the offing before them, and as they drew nearer it appeared
+that those peaks belonged to one great mountain; wherefore the pious
+Admiral named the island Trinidad.</p>
+
+<p>Here some surprises were in store for Columbus. Instead of finding black
+and woolly-haired natives, he found men of cinnamon hue, like those in
+Hispaniola, <span class="sidenote">Trinidad and the Orinoco.</span>
+only&mdash;strange to say&mdash;lighter in colour. Then in coasting
+Trinidad he caught a glimpse of land at the delta of the Orinoco, and
+called it Isla Santa, or Holy Island.<a id="footnotetag594" name="footnotetag594"></a><a href="#footnote594" title="Go to footnote 594"><span class="small">[594]</span></a> <span class="pagenum"><a id="page492" name="page492"></a>(p. 492)</span> But, on passing
+into the gulf of Paria, through the strait which he named Serpent's
+Mouth, his ships were in sore danger of being swamped by the raging
+surge that poured from three or four of the lesser mouths of that
+stupendous river. Presently, finding that the water in the gulf was
+fresh to the taste, he gradually reasoned his way to the correct
+conclusion, that the billows which had so nearly overwhelmed him must
+have come out from a river greater than any he had ever known or dreamed
+of, and that so vast a stream of running water could be produced only
+upon land of continental dimensions.<a id="footnotetag595" name="footnotetag595"></a><a href="#footnote595" title="Go to footnote 595"><span class="small">[595]</span></a> This coast to the south of him
+was, therefore, the coast of a continent, with indefinite extension
+toward the south, a land not laid down upon Toscanelli's or any other
+map, and of which no one had until that time known anything.<a id="footnotetag596" name="footnotetag596"></a><a href="#footnote596" title="Go to footnote 596"><span class="small">[596]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page493" name="page493"></a>(p. 493)</span>
+
+<a id="img020" name="img020"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img020b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img020.jpg" width="500" height="270" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Discoveries made by Columbus in his third and
+fourth voyages.</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page494" name="page494"></a>(p. 494)</span>
+
+<p>In spite of the correctness of this surmise, Columbus was still as far
+from a true interpretation of the whole situation as when he supposed
+Hispaniola to be Ophir. He entered upon a series of speculations which
+forcibly remind us how empirical was the notion of the earth's rotundity
+before the inauguration of physical astronomy by <span class="sidenote">Speculations as to the earth's shape.</span>
+Galileo, Kepler, and
+Newton. We now know that our planet has the only shape possible for such
+a rotating mass that once was fluid or nebulous, the shape of a spheroid
+slightly protuberant at the equator and flattened at the poles; but this
+knowledge is the outcome of mechanical principles utterly unknown and
+unsuspected in the days of Columbus. He understood that the earth is a
+round body, but saw no necessity for its being strictly spherical or
+spheroidal. He now suggested that it was probably shaped like a pear,
+rather a blunt and corpulent pear, nearly spherical in its lower part,
+but with a short, stubby apex in the equatorial region somewhere beyond
+the point which he had just reached. He fancied he had been sailing up a
+gentle slope from the burning glassy sea where his ships had been
+becalmed to this strange and beautiful coast where <span class="sidenote">The mountain of Paradise.</span>
+he found the climate
+enchanting. If he were to follow up the mighty river just now revealed,
+it might lead him to the summit of this apex of the world, the place
+where the terrestrial paradise, the Garden which the Lord <span class="pagenum"><a id="page495" name="page495"></a>(p. 495)</span>
+planted eastward in Eden, was in all probability situated!<a id="footnotetag597" name="footnotetag597"></a><a href="#footnote597" title="Go to footnote 597"><span class="small">[597]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>As Columbus still held to the opinion that by keeping to the west from
+that point he should soon reach the coast of <span class="sidenote">Relation of the "Eden continent" to "Cochin China."</span>
+Cochin China, his
+conception of the position of Eden is thus pretty clearly indicated. He
+imagined it as situated about on the equator, upon a continental mass
+till then unknown, but evidently closely connected with the continent of
+Asia if not a part of it. If he had lived long enough to hear of Quito
+and its immense elevation, I should suppose that might very well have
+suited his idea of the position of Eden. The coast of this continent,
+upon which he had now arrived, was either continuous with the coast of
+Cochin China (Cuba) and Malacca, or would be found to be divided from it
+by a strait through which one might pass directly into the Indian ocean.</p>
+
+
+<p>It took some little time for this theory to come to maturity in the mind
+of Columbus. Not expecting to find any mainland in that <span class="sidenote">The Pearl Coast.</span>
+quarter, he
+began by calling different points of the coast different islands. Coming
+out through the passage which he named Dragon's Mouth, he caught distant
+glimpses of Tobago and Grenada to starboard, and turning westward
+followed the Pearl Coast as far as the islands of Margarita and Cubagua.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page496" name="page496"></a>(p. 496)</span> The fine pearls which he found there in abundance confirmed
+him in the good opinion he had formed of that country. By this time, the
+15th of August, he had so far put facts together as to become convinced
+of the continental character of that coast, and would have been glad to
+pursue it westward. But now his strength gave out. During most of the
+voyage he had suffered acute torments with gout, his temperature had
+been very feverish, and his eyes were at length so exhausted with
+perpetual watching that he could no longer make observations. So he left
+the coast a little beyond Cubagua, and steered straight for Hispaniola,
+aiming at <span class="sidenote">Arrival at San Domingo.</span>
+San Domingo, but hitting the island of Beata because he did
+not make allowance for the westerly flow of the currents. He arrived at
+San Domingo on the 30th of August, and found his brother Bartholomew,
+whom he intended to send at once on a further cruise along the Pearl
+Coast, while he himself should be resting and recovering strength.</p>
+
+<p>But alas! there was to be no cruising now for the younger brother nor
+rest for the elder. It was a sad story that <span class="sidenote">Roldan's rebellion.</span>
+Bartholomew had to tell. War
+with the Indians had broken out afresh, and while the Adelantado was
+engaged in this business a scoundrel named Roldan had taken advantage of
+his absence to stir up civil strife. Roldan's rebellion was a result of
+the ill-advised mission of Aguado. The malcontents in the colony
+interpreted the Admiral's long stay in Spain as an indication that he
+had lost favour with the sovereigns and was not coming back to the
+island. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page497" name="page497"></a>(p. 497)</span> Gathering together a strong body of rebels, Roldan
+retired to Xaragua and formed an alliance with the brother of the late
+chieftain Caonabo. By the time the Admiral arrived the combination of
+mutiny with barbaric warfare had brought about a frightful state of
+things. A party of soldiers, sent by him to suppress Roldan, straightway
+deserted and joined that rebel. It thus became necessary to come to
+terms with Roldan, and this revelation of the weakness of the government
+only made matters worse. Two wretched years were passed in attempts to
+restore order in Hispaniola, while the work of discovery and exploration
+was postponed. Meanwhile the items of information that found their way
+to Spain were skilfully employed by <span class="sidenote">Fonseca's machinations.</span>
+Fonseca in poisoning the minds of
+the sovereigns, until at last they decided to send out a judge to the
+island, armed with plenary authority to make investigations and settle
+disputes. The glory which Columbus had won by the first news of the
+discovery of the Indies had now to some extent faded away. The
+enterprise yielded as yet no revenue and entailed great expense; and
+whenever some reprobate found his way back to Spain, the malicious
+Fonseca prompted him to go to the treasury with a claim for pay alleged
+to have been wrongfully withheld by the Admiral. Ferdinand Columbus
+tells how some fifty such scamps were gathered one day in the courtyard
+of the Alhambra, cursing his father and catching hold of the king's
+robe, crying, "Pay us! pay us!" and as he and his brother Diego, who
+were pages in the queen's service, happened <span class="pagenum"><a id="page498" name="page498"></a>(p. 498)</span> to pass by, they
+were greeted with hoots:&mdash;"There go the sons of the Admiral of
+Mosquito-land, the man who has discovered a land of vanity and deceit,
+the grave of Spanish gentlemen!"<a id="footnotetag598" name="footnotetag598"></a><a href="#footnote598" title="Go to footnote 598"><span class="small">[598]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>An added sting was given to such taunts by a great event that happened
+about this time. In the summer of <span class="sidenote">Gama's voyage to Hindustan, 1497.</span>
+1497, Vasco da Gama started from
+Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope, and in the summer of 1499 he returned,
+after having doubled the cape and crossed the Indian ocean to Calicut on
+the Malabar coast of Hindustan. His voyage was the next Portuguese step
+sequent upon that of Bartholomew Dias. There was nothing questionable or
+dubious about Gama's triumph. He had seen splendid cities, talked with a
+powerful Rajah, and met with Arab vessels, their crews madly jealous at
+the unprecedented sight of Christian ships in those waters; and he
+brought back with him to Lisbon nutmegs and cloves, pepper and ginger,
+rubies and emeralds, damask robes with satin linings, bronze chairs with
+cushions, trumpets of carved ivory, a sunshade of crimson satin, a sword
+in a silver scabbard, and no end of such gear.<a id="footnotetag599" name="footnotetag599"></a><a href="#footnote599" title="Go to footnote 599"><span class="small">[599]</span></a> An old civilization
+had been found and a route of commerce discovered, and a factory was to
+be set up at once on that Indian coast. What a contrast to the miserable
+performance of Columbus, who had started with the flower of Spain's
+chivalry for rich Cipango, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page499" name="page499"></a>(p. 499)</span> and had only led them to a land
+where they must either starve or do work fit for peasants, while he
+spent his time in cruising among wild islands! The king of Portugal
+could now snap his fingers at Ferdinand and Isabella, and if a doubt
+should have sometimes crossed the minds of those chagrined sovereigns,
+as to whether this plausible Genoese mariner might not, after all, be a
+humbug or a crazy enthusiast, we can hardly wonder at it.</p>
+
+<p>The person sent to investigate the affairs of Hispaniola was Francisco
+de Bobadilla, a knight commander of the order of Calatrava. He carried
+several <span class="sidenote">Fonseca's creature, Bobadilla.</span>
+documents, one of them directing him to make inquiries and
+punish offenders, another containing his appointment as governor, a
+third commanding Columbus and his brothers to surrender to him all
+fortresses and other public property.<a id="footnotetag600" name="footnotetag600"></a><a href="#footnote600" title="Go to footnote 600"><span class="small">[600]</span></a> The two latter papers were to
+be used only in case of such grave misconduct proved against Columbus as
+to justify his removal from the government. These papers were made out
+in the spring of 1499, but Bobadilla was not sent out until July, 1500.
+When he arrived at San Domingo on the 23d of August, the insurrection
+had been suppressed; the Admiral and Bartholomew were bringing things
+into order in distant parts of the island, while Diego was left in
+command at San Domingo. Seven ringleaders had just been hanged, and five
+more were in prison under sentence of death. If Bobadilla had not
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page500" name="page500"></a>(p. 500)</span> come upon the scene this wholesome lesson might have worked
+some improvement in affairs.<a id="footnotetag601" name="footnotetag601"></a><a href="#footnote601" title="Go to footnote 601"><span class="small">[601]</span></a> He destroyed its moral in a twinkling.
+The first day after landing, he read aloud, at the church door, the
+paper directing him to make inquiries and punish offenders; and
+forthwith demanded of Diego Columbus that the condemned prisoners should
+be delivered up to him. Diego declined to take so important a step until
+he could get orders from the Admiral. Next day Bobadilla read his second
+and third papers, proclaimed himself governor, called on Diego to
+surrender the fortress and public buildings, and renewed his demand for
+the prisoners. As Diego still hesitated to act before news of these
+proceedings could be sent to his brother, Bobadilla broke into the
+fortress, took the prisoners out, and presently set them free. All the
+rebellious spirits in the colony were thus drawn to the side of
+Bobadilla, whose royal commission, under such circumstances, gave him
+irresistible power. He threw Diego into prison and loaded him with
+fetters. He seized the Admiral's house, and confiscated all his personal
+property, even including his business papers and private letters. When
+the Admiral arrived in San Domingo, Bobadilla, <span class="sidenote">Columbus in chains.</span>
+without even waiting to
+see him, sent an officer to put him in irons and take him to prison.
+When Bartholomew arrived, he received the same treatment. The three
+brothers were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page501" name="page501"></a>(p. 501)</span> confined in different places, nobody was allowed
+to visit them, and they were not informed of the offences with which
+they were charged. While they lay in prison, Bobadilla busied himself
+with inventing an excuse for this violent behaviour. Finally he hit upon
+one at which Satan from the depths of his bottomless pit must have
+grimly smiled. He said that he had arrested and imprisoned the brothers
+only because he had reason to believe they were inciting the Indians to
+aid them in resisting the commands of Ferdinand and Isabella!! In short,
+from the day of his landing Bobadilla made common cause with the
+insurgent rabble, and when they had furnished him with a ream or so of
+charges against the Admiral and his brothers, it seemed safe to send
+these gentlemen to Spain. They were put on board ship, with their
+fetters upon them, and the officer in charge was instructed by Bobadilla
+to deliver them into the hands of Bishop Fonseca, who was thus to have
+the privilege of glutting to the full his revengeful spite.</p>
+
+<p>The master of the ship, shocked at the sight of fetters upon such a man
+as the Admiral, would have taken them off, but <span class="sidenote">Return to Spain.</span>
+Columbus would not let it
+be done. No, indeed! they should never come off except by order of the
+sovereigns, and then he would keep them for the rest of his life, to
+show how his labours had been rewarded.<a id="footnotetag602" name="footnotetag602"></a><a href="#footnote602" title="Go to footnote 602"><span class="small">[602]</span></a> The event&mdash;which always
+justifies true manliness&mdash;proved the sagacity of this proud <span class="pagenum"><a id="page502" name="page502"></a>(p. 502)</span>
+demeanour. Fonseca was baulked of his gratification. The clumsy
+Bobadilla had overdone the business. The sight of the Admiral's stately
+and venerable figure in chains, as he passed through the streets of
+Cadiz, on a December day of that year 1500, awakened a popular outburst
+of sympathy for him and indignation at his persecutors. While on the
+ship he had written or dictated a beautiful and touching letter<a id="footnotetag603" name="footnotetag603"></a><a href="#footnote603" title="Go to footnote 603"><span class="small">[603]</span></a> to
+a lady of whom the queen was fond, the former nurse of the Infante,
+whose untimely death, three years since, his mother was still mourning.
+This letter reached the court at Granada, and was read to the queen
+before she had heard of Bobadilla's performances from any other quarter.
+A courier was sent in all haste to Cadiz, with orders that the brothers
+should at once be released, and with a letter to the Admiral, inviting
+him to court and enclosing an order for money to cover his expenses.
+<span class="sidenote">Release of Columbus.</span>
+The
+scene in the Alhambra, when Columbus arrived, is one of the most
+touching in history. Isabella received him with tears in her eyes, and
+then this much-enduring old man, whose proud and masterful spirit had so
+long been proof against all wrongs and insults, broke down. He threw
+himself at the feet of the sovereigns in an agony of tears and
+sobs.<a id="footnotetag604" name="footnotetag604"></a><a href="#footnote604" title="Go to footnote 604"><span class="small">[604]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>How far the sovereigns should be held responsible for the behaviour of
+their agent is not altogether easy to determine. The appointment of such
+a creature as Bobadilla was a sad blunder, but one <span class="pagenum"><a id="page503" name="page503"></a>(p. 503)</span> such as is
+liable to be made under any government.
+<span class="sidenote">How far were the sovereigns responsible for Bobadilla?</span>
+Fonseca was very powerful at
+court, and Bobadilla never would have dared to proceed as he did if he
+had not known that the bishop would support him. Indeed, from the
+indecent haste with which he went about his work, without even the
+pretence of a judicial inquiry, it is probable that he started with
+private instructions from that quarter. But, while Fonseca had some of
+the wisdom along with the venom of the serpent, Bobadilla was simply a
+jackass, and behaved so that in common decency the sovereigns were
+obliged to disown him. They took no formal or public notice of his
+written charges against the Admiral, and they assured the latter that he
+should be reimbursed for his losses and restored to his viceroyalty and
+other dignities.</p>
+
+<p>This last promise, however, was not fulfilled; partly, perhaps, because
+Fonseca's influence was still strong enough to prevent it, partly
+because the sovereigns may have come to the sound and reasonable
+conclusion that for the present there was no use in committing the
+government of that disorderly rabble in Hispaniola to a foreigner. What
+was wanted was a Spanish priest, and a military priest withal, of the
+sort that Spain then had in plenty. Obedience to priests came natural to
+Spaniards. <span class="sidenote">Ovando, another creature of Fonseca, appointed governor of
+Hispaniola.</span>
+The man now selected was Nicolas de Ovando, a knight
+commander of the order of Alcántara, of whom we shall have more to say
+hereafter.<a id="footnotetag605" name="footnotetag605"></a><a href="#footnote605" title="Go to footnote 605"><span class="small">[605]</span></a> Suffice it now to observe that he proved himself a
+famous <span class="pagenum"><a id="page504" name="page504"></a>(p. 504)</span> disciplinarian, and that he was a great favourite with
+Fonseca, to whom he seems to have owed his appointment. He went out in
+February, 1502, with a fleet of thirty ships carrying 2,500 persons, for
+the pendulum of public opinion had taken another swing, and faith in the
+Indies was renewed. Some great discoveries, to be related in the next
+chapter, had been made since 1498; and, moreover, the gold mines of
+Hispaniola were beginning to yield rich treasures.</p>
+
+<p>But, while the sovereigns were not disposed to restore Columbus to his
+viceroyalty, they were quite ready to send him on <span class="sidenote">Purpose of Columbus's fourth voyage.</span>
+another voyage of
+discovery which was directly suggested by the recent Portuguese voyage
+of Gama. Since nothing was yet known about the discovery of a New World,
+the achievement of Gama seemed to have eclipsed that of Columbus. Spain
+must make a response to Portugal. As already observed, the Admiral
+supposed the coast of his "Eden continent" (South America) either to be
+continuous with the coast of Cochin China (Cuba) and Malacca, or else to
+be divided from that coast by a strait. The latter opinion was the more
+probable, since Marco Polo and a few other Europeans had sailed from
+China into the Indian ocean without encountering any great continent
+that had to be circumnavigated. The recent expedition of Vespucius and
+Ojeda (1499-1500) had followed the northern coast of South America for a
+long distance to the west of Cubagua, as far as the gulf of Maracaibo.
+Columbus now decided to return to the coast of Cochin China (Cuba) and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page505" name="page505"></a>(p. 505)</span> follow the coast southwestward until he should find the
+passage between his Eden continent and the Golden Chersonese (Malacca)
+into the Indian ocean. He would thus be able to reach by this western
+route the same shores of Hindustan which Gama had lately reached by
+sailing eastward. So confident did he feel of the success of this
+enterprise, that he wrote a letter to Pope Alexander VI., renewing his
+vow to furnish troops for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre.<a id="footnotetag606" name="footnotetag606"></a><a href="#footnote606" title="Go to footnote 606"><span class="small">[606]</span></a> It was
+no doubt the symptom of a reaction against his misfortunes that he grew
+more and more mystical in these days, consoling himself with the belief
+that he was a chosen instrument in the hands of Providence for enlarging
+the bounds of Christendom. In this mood he made some studies on the
+prophecies, after the fantastic fashion of his time,<a id="footnotetag607" name="footnotetag607"></a><a href="#footnote607" title="Go to footnote 607"><span class="small">[607]</span></a> and a habit
+grew upon him of attributing his discoveries to miraculous inspiration
+rather than to the good use to which his poetical and scientific mind
+had put the data furnished by Marco Polo and the ancient geographers.</p>
+
+<p>The armament for the Admiral's fourth and last voyage consisted of four
+small caravels, of from fifty to seventy tons burthen, with crews
+numbering, all told, 150 men. <span class="sidenote">Crossing the Atlantic.</span>
+His brother Bartholomew, and his younger
+son Ferdinand, then a boy of fourteen, accompanied him. They sailed from
+Cadiz on the 11th of May, 1502, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page506" name="page506"></a>(p. 506)</span> and finally left the Canaries
+behind on the 26th of the same month. The course chosen was the same as
+on the second voyage, and the unfailing trade-winds brought the ships on
+the 15th of June to an island called Mantinino, probably Martinique, not
+more than ten leagues distant from Dominica. The Admiral had been
+instructed not to touch at Hispaniola upon his way out, probably for
+fear of further commotions there until Ovando should have succeeded in
+bringing order out of the confusion ten times worse confounded into
+which Bobadilla's misgovernment had thrown that island. Columbus might
+stop there on his return, but not on his outward voyage. His intention
+had, therefore, been, on reaching the cannibal islands, to steer for
+Jamaica, thence make the short run to "Cochin China," and then turn
+southwards. But as one of his caravels threatened soon to become
+unmanageable, he thought himself justified in touching at San Domingo
+long enough to hire a sound vessel in place of her. Ovando had assumed
+the government there in April, and a squadron of 26 or 28 ships,
+containing Roldan and Bobadilla, with huge quantities of gold wrung from
+the enslaved Indians, was ready to start for Spain about the end of
+June. In one of these ships were 4,000 pieces of gold destined for
+Columbus, probably a part of the reimbursement that had been promised
+him. On the 29th of June the Admiral arrived in the harbour and stated
+the nature of his errand. At the same time, as his practised eye had
+detected the symptoms of an approaching hurricane, he requested
+permission to stay in the harbour until it should <span class="pagenum"><a id="page507" name="page507"></a>(p. 507)</span> be over, and
+he furthermore sent to the commander of the fleet a friendly warning not
+to venture out to sea at present. His requests and his warnings were
+alike treated with contumely. <span class="sidenote">Columbus not allowed to stop at San Domingo.</span>
+He was ordered to leave the harbour, and
+did so in great indignation. As his first care was for the approaching
+tempest, he did not go far but found safe anchorage in a sheltered and
+secluded cove, where his vessels rode the storm with difficulty but
+without serious damage. Meanwhile the governor's great fleet had rashly
+put out to sea, and was struck with fatal fury by wind and wave. Twenty
+or more ships went to the bottom, with Bobadilla, Roldan, and most of
+the Admiral's principal enemies, besides all the ill-gotten treasure;
+five or six shattered caravels, unable to proceed, found their way back
+to San Domingo; of all the fleet, only one ship arrived safe and sound
+in Spain, and that, says Ferdinand, was the one that had on board his
+father's gold. Truly it was such an instance of poetical justice as one
+does not often witness in this world. "We will not inquire now," says
+Las Casas, who witnessed the affair, "into this remarkable divine
+judgment, for at the last day of the world it will be made quite clear
+to us."<a id="footnotetag608" name="footnotetag608"></a><a href="#footnote608" title="Go to footnote 608"><span class="small">[608]</span></a> If such judgments were more often visited upon the right
+persons, perhaps the ways of Providence would not have so generally come
+to be regarded as inscrutable.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page508" name="page508"></a>(p. 508)</span>
+
+<p>The hurricane was followed by a dead calm, during which the Admiral's
+ships were carried by the currents into the <span class="sidenote">Arrival at Cape Honduras.</span>
+group of tiny islands called
+the Queen's Gardens, on the south side of Cuba. With the first
+favourable breeze he took a southwesterly course, in order to strike
+that Cochin-Chinese coast farther down toward the Malay peninsula. This
+brought him directly to the island of Guanaja and to Cape Honduras,
+which he thus reached without approaching the Yucatan channel.<a id="footnotetag609" name="footnotetag609"></a><a href="#footnote609" title="Go to footnote 609"><span class="small">[609]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Upon the Honduras coast the Admiral found evidences of semi-civilization
+with which he was much elated,&mdash;such as copper knives and hatchets,
+pottery of skilled and artistic workmanship, and cotton garments finely
+woven and beautifully dyed. Here the Spaniards first tasted the
+<i>chicha</i>, or maize beer, and marvelled at the heavy clubs, armed with
+sharp blades of obsidian, with which the soldiers of Cortes were by and
+by to become unpleasantly acquainted. The people here wore cotton
+clothes, and, according to Ferdinand, the women covered themselves as
+carefully as the Moorish women of Granada.<a id="footnotetag610" name="footnotetag610"></a><a href="#footnote610" title="Go to footnote 610"><span class="small">[610]</span></a> On inquiring as to the
+sources of gold and other wealth, the Admiral was now referred to the
+west, evidently to Yucatan and Guatemala, or, as he supposed, to the
+neighbourhood of the Ganges. Evidently the way to reach these countries
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page509" name="page509"></a>(p. 509)</span> was to keep the land on the starboard and search for the
+passage between the Eden continent and the Malay peninsula.<a id="footnotetag611" name="footnotetag611"></a><a href="#footnote611" title="Go to footnote 611"><span class="small">[611]</span></a> This
+course at first led Columbus eastward for a greater number of leagues
+than he could have relished. Wind and current were dead against him,
+too; and when, after forty days of wretched weather,
+<span class="sidenote">Cape Gracias a Dios.</span>
+he succeeded in
+doubling the cape which marks on that coast the end of Honduras and the
+beginning of Nicaragua, and found it turning square to the south, it was
+doubtless joy at this auspicious change of direction, as well as the
+sudden relief from head-winds, that prompted him to name that bold
+prominence Cape Gracias a Dios, or Thanks to God.</p>
+
+<span class="sidenote">Columbus shipwrecked.</span>
+
+<p>As the ships proceeded southward in the direction of Veragua, evidences
+of the kind of semi-civilization which we recognize as characteristic of
+that part of aboriginal America grew more and more numerous. Great
+houses were seen, built of "stone and lime," or perhaps of rubble stone
+with adobe mortar. Walls were adorned with carvings and pictographs.
+<span class="sidenote">The coast of Veragua.</span>
+Mummies were found in a good state of preservation. There were signs of
+abundant gold; the natives wore plates <span class="pagenum"><a id="page510" name="page510"></a>(p. 510)</span> of it hung by cotton
+cords about their necks, and were ready to exchange pieces worth a
+hundred ducats for tawdry European trinkets. From these people Columbus
+heard what we should call the first "news of the Pacific Ocean," though
+it had no such meaning to his mind. From what he heard he understood
+that he was on the east side of a peninsula, and that there was another
+sea on the other side, by gaining which he might in ten days reach the
+mouth of the Ganges.<a id="footnotetag612" name="footnotetag612"></a><a href="#footnote612" title="Go to footnote 612"><span class="small">[612]</span></a> By proceeding on his present course he would
+soon come to a "narrow place" between the two seas. There was a curious
+equivocation here. No doubt the Indians were honest and correct in what
+they tried to tell Columbus. But by the "narrow place" they meant narrow
+land, not narrow water; <span class="sidenote">Fruitless search for the Strait of Malacca.</span>
+not a strait which connected but an isthmus
+which divided the two seas, not the Strait of Malacca, but the Isthmus
+of Darien!<a id="footnotetag613" name="footnotetag613"></a><a href="#footnote613" title="Go to footnote 613"><span class="small">[613]</span></a> Columbus, of course, understood them to mean the strait
+for which he was looking, and in his excitement at approaching the
+long-expected goal he pressed on without waiting to verify the reports
+of gold mines in the neighbourhood, a thing that could be done at any
+time.<a id="footnotetag614" name="footnotetag614"></a><a href="#footnote614" title="Go to footnote 614"><span class="small">[614]</span></a> By the 5th of December, however, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page511" name="page511"></a>(p. 511)</span> having reached a
+point on the isthmus, a few leagues east of Puerto Bello, without
+finding the strait, he yielded to the remonstrances of the crews, and
+retraced his course to Veragua. If the strait could not be found, the
+next best tidings to carry home to Spain would be the certain
+information of the discovery of gold mines, and it was decided to make a
+<span class="sidenote">Futile attempt to make a settlement.</span>
+settlement here which might serve as a base for future operations. Three
+months of misery followed. Many of the party were massacred by the
+Indians, the stock of food was nearly exhausted, and the ships were
+pierced by worms until it was feared there would be no means left for
+going home. Accordingly, it was decided to abandon the enterprise and
+return to Hispaniola.<a id="footnotetag615" name="footnotetag615"></a><a href="#footnote615" title="Go to footnote 615"><span class="small">[615]</span></a> In order to allow for the strong westerly
+currents in the Caribbean sea, the Admiral first sailed eastward almost
+to the gulf of Darien, and then turned to the north. The allowance was
+not enough, however. The ships were again carried into the Queen's
+Gardens, where they were caught in a storm and nearly beaten to pieces.
+At length, on St. John's eve, June 23, 1503, the crazy wrecks&mdash;now full
+of water and unable to sail another league&mdash;were beached on <span class="pagenum"><a id="page512" name="page512"></a>(p. 512)</span>
+the coast of Jamaica and converted into a sort of rude fortress; and
+while two trusty men were sent over to San Domingo in a canoe, to obtain
+relief, Columbus and his party remained shipwrecked in Jamaica. They
+waited there a whole year before it proved possible to get any relief
+from Ovando. He was a slippery knave, who knew how to deal out promises
+without taking the first step toward fulfilment.</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible year that Columbus spent upon the wild coast of
+Jamaica. <span class="sidenote">A year of misery.</span>
+To all the horrors inseparable from such a situation there was
+added the horror of mutiny. The year did not end until there had been a
+pitched battle, in which the doughty Bartholomew was, as usual,
+victorious. The ringleader was captured, and of the other mutineers such
+as were not slain in the fight were humbled and pardoned. At length
+Ovando's conduct began to arouse indignation in San Domingo, and was
+openly condemned from the pulpit; so that, late in June, 1504, he sent
+over to Jamaica a couple of ships which brought away the Admiral and his
+starving party. Ovando greeted the brothers Columbus with his customary
+hypocritical courtesy, which they well understood. During the past year
+the island of Hispaniola had been the scene of atrocities such as have
+scarcely been surpassed in history. I shall give a brief account of them
+in a future chapter. Columbus was not cheered by what he saw and heard,
+and lost no time in starting for Spain. On the 7th of November, 1504,
+after a tempestuous voyage and narrow escape from shipwreck, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page513" name="page513"></a>(p. 513)</span>
+he landed at San Lucar de Barrameda and made his way to Seville.
+<span class="sidenote">Last return to Spain.</span>
+Queen
+Isabella was then on her death-bed, and breathed her last just nineteen
+days later.</p>
+
+<p>The death of the queen deprived Columbus of the only protector who could
+stand between him and Fonseca. The reimbursement for the wrongs which he
+had suffered at that man's hands was never made. The last eighteen
+months of the Admiral's life were spent in sickness and poverty.
+Accumulated hardship and disappointment had broken him down, and he died
+on <span class="sidenote">Death of Columbus.</span>
+Ascension day, May 20, 1506, at Valladolid. So little heed was taken
+of his passing away that the local annals of that city, "which give
+almost every insignificant event from 1333 to 1539, day by day, do not
+mention it."<a id="footnotetag616" name="footnotetag616"></a><a href="#footnote616" title="Go to footnote 616"><span class="small">[616]</span></a> His remains were buried in the Franciscan monastery at
+Valladolid, whence they were removed in 1513 to the monastery of Las
+Cuevas, at Seville, where the body of his son Diego, second Admiral and
+Viceroy of the Indies, was buried in 1526. Ten years after this date,
+the bones of father and son were removed to Hispaniola, to the cathedral
+of San Domingo; whence they have since been transferred to Havana. The
+result of so many removals has been to raise doubts as to whether the
+ashes now reposing at Havana are really those of Columbus and his son;
+and over this question there has been much critical discussion, of a
+sort that we may cheerfully leave to those who like to spend their time
+over such trivialities.</p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page514" name="page514"></a>(p. 514)</span>
+
+<p>There is a tradition that Ferdinand and Isabella, at some date
+unspecified, had granted to Columbus, as a legend for his coat-of-arms,
+the noble motto:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="left30">Á Castilla y á Leon<br>
+Nuevo mundo dió Colon,</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><i>i. e.</i> "To Castile-and-Leon Columbus gave a New World;" and we are
+further told that, when the <span class="sidenote">"Nuevo Mundo."</span>
+Admiral's bones were removed to Seville,
+this motto was, by order of King Ferdinand, inscribed upon his
+tomb.<a id="footnotetag617" name="footnotetag617"></a><a href="#footnote617" title="Go to footnote 617"><span class="small">[617]</span></a> This tradition crumbles under the touch of historical
+criticism. The Admiral's coat-of-arms, as finally emblazoned under his
+own inspection at Seville in 1502, quarters the royal Castle-and-Lion of
+the kingdom of Castile with his own devices of five anchors, and a group
+of golden islands with a bit of Terra Firma, upon a blue sea. But there
+is no legend of any sort, nor is anything of the kind mentioned by Las
+Casas or Bernaldez or Peter Martyr. The first allusion to such a motto
+is by Oviedo, in 1535, who gives it a somewhat different turn:&mdash;
+
+<p class="left30">Por Castilla y por Leon<br>
+Nuevo mundo halló Colon,</p>
+
+<p class="noident"><i>i. e.</i> "For Castile-and-Leon Columbus found a New World." But the other
+form is no doubt the better, for Ferdinand Columbus, at some time not
+later than 1537, had adopted it, and it may be read to-day upon his tomb
+in the cathedral at Seville. The time-honoured tradition has evidently
+transferred <span class="pagenum"><a id="page515" name="page515"></a>(p. 515)</span> to the father the legend adopted, if not
+originally devised, by his son.</p>
+
+<a id="img021" name="img021"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img021.jpg" width="400" height="306" alt="Arms." title="">
+</div>
+
+<p>But why is this mere question of heraldry a matter of importance for the
+historian? Simply because it furnishes one of the most striking among
+many illustrations of the fact that at no time during the life of
+Columbus, nor for some years after his death, did anybody use the phrase
+"New World" with conscious reference to <i>his</i> discoveries. At the time
+of his death their true significance had not yet begun to dawn upon the
+mind of any voyager or any writer. It was supposed that he had found a
+new route to the Indies by sailing west, and that in the course of this
+achievement he had discovered some new islands and a bit or bits of
+Terra Firma of more or less doubtful commercial value. To group these
+items of discovery into an organic whole, and to ascertain that they
+belonged to a whole quite distinct from the Old World, required the work
+of many other discoverers, companions and successors to Columbus. In the
+following chapter I shall <span class="pagenum"><a id="page516" name="page516"></a>(p. 516)</span> endeavour to show how the conception
+of the New World was thus originated and at length became developed into
+the form with which we are now familiar.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page517" name="page517"></a>(p. 517)</span>
+
+<a id="img022" name="img022"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img022b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img022.jpg" width="400" height="254" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p>Sketch of Toscanelli's map, sent to Portugal in
+1474, and used by Columbus in his first voyage across the Atlantic.</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page518" name="page518"></a>(p. 518)</span>
+
+<a id="img023" name="img023"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img023b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img023.jpg" width="400" height="226" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p> Claudius Ptolemy's world, cir. <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 150.</p>
+</div>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page519" name="page519"></a>(p. 519)</span>
+
+<p class="p4"><a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 1:</strong> See my <i>Excursions of an Evolutionist</i>, p. 148. A good
+succinct account of these various theories, monuments of wasted
+ingenuity, is given in Short's <i>North Americans of Antiquity</i>, chap.
+iii. The most elaborate statement of the theory of an Israelite
+colonization of America is to be found in the ponderous tomes of Lord
+Kingsborough, <i>Mexican Antiquities</i>, London, 1831-48, 9 vols.
+elephant-folio. Such a theory was entertained by the author of that
+curious piece of literary imposture, <i>The Book of Mormon</i>. In this book
+we are told that, when the tongues were confounded at Babel, the Lord
+selected a certain Jared, with his family and friends, and instructed
+them to build eight ships, in which, after a voyage of 344 days, they
+were brought to America, where they "did build many mighty cities," and
+"prosper exceedingly." But after some centuries they perished because of
+their iniquities. In the reign of Zedekiah, when calamity was impending
+over Judah, two brothers, Nephi and Laman, under divine guidance led a
+colony to America. There, says the veracious chronicler, their
+descendants became great nations, and worked in <i>iron</i>, and had stuffs
+of <i>silk</i>, besides keeping plenty of <i>oxen</i> and <i>sheep</i>. (<i>Ether</i>, ix.
+18, 19; x. 23, 24.) Christ appeared and wrought many wonderful works;
+people spake with tongues, and the dead were raised. (3 <i>Nephi</i>, xxvi.
+14, 15.) But about the close of the fourth century of our era, a
+terrible war between Lamanites and Nephites ended in the destruction of
+the latter. Some two million warriors, with their wives and children,
+having been slaughtered, the prophet Mormon escaped, with his son
+Moroni, to the "hill Cumorah," hard by the "waters of Ripliancum," or
+Lake Ontario. (<i>Ether</i>, xv. 2, 8, 11.) There they hid the sacred
+tablets, which remained concealed until they were miraculously
+discovered and translated by Joseph Smith in 1827. There is, of course,
+no element of tradition in this story. It is all pure fiction, and of a
+very clumsy sort, such as might easily be devised by an ignorant man
+accustomed to the language of the Bible; and of course it was suggested
+by the old notion of the Israelitish origin of the red men. The
+references are to <i>The Book of Mormon</i>, Salt Lake City: Deseret News
+Co., 1885.<a href="#footnotetag1"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 2:</strong> <i>Second Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of American
+Archæology</i>, etc., p. 18.<a href="#footnotetag2"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 3:</strong> Visited in 1866-74 by Professor Jeffries Wyman, and
+described in his <i>Fresh-Water Shell Mounds of the St. John's River</i>,
+Cambridge, 1875.<a href="#footnotetag3"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 4:</strong> <i>Excursions of an Evolutionist</i>,
+p. 39.<a href="#footnotetag4"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 5:</strong> Croll, <i>Climate and Time in their Geological Relations</i>,
+New York, 1875; <i>Discussions on Climate and Cosmology</i>, New York, 1886;
+Archibald Geikie, <i>Text Book of Geology</i>, pp. 23-29, 883-909, London,
+1882; James Geikie, <i>The Great Ice Age</i>, pp. 94-136, New York, 1874;
+<i>Prehistoric Europe</i>, pp. 558-562, London, 1881; Wallace, <i>Island Life</i>,
+pp. 101-225, New York, 1881. Some objections to Croll's theory may be
+found in Wright's <i>Ice Age in North America</i>, pp. 405-505, 585-595, New
+York, 1889. I have given a brief account of the theory in my <i>Excursions
+of an Evolutionist</i>, pp. 57-76.<a href="#footnotetag5"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote6" name="footnote6"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 6:</strong> See Miss F. E. Babbitt, "Vestiges of Glacial Man in
+Minnesota," in <i>Proceedings of the American Association</i>, vol. xxxii.,
+1883.<a href="#footnotetag6"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote7" name="footnote7"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 7:</strong> See N. H. Winchell, <i>Annual Report of the State Geologist
+of Minnesota</i>, 1877, p. 60.<a href="#footnotetag7"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote8" name="footnote8"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 8:</strong> Wright's <i>Ice Age in North America</i>,
+p. 516.<a href="#footnotetag8"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote9" name="footnote9"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 9:</strong> The chipped implements discovered by Messrs. Abbott, Metz,
+and Cresson, and by Miss Babbitt, are all on exhibition at the Peabody
+Museum in Cambridge, whither it is necessary to go if one would get a
+comprehensive view of the relics of interglacial man in North America.
+The collection of implements made by Dr. Abbott includes much more than
+the palæoliths already referred to. It is one of the most important
+collections in the world, and is worth a long journey to see. Containing
+more than 20,000 implements, all found within a very limited area in New
+Jersey, "as now arranged, the collection exhibits at one and the same
+time the sequence of peoples and phases of development in the valley of
+the Delaware, from palæolithic man, through the intermediate period, to
+the recent Indians, and the relative numerical proportion of the many
+forms of their implements, each in its time.... It is doubtful whether
+any similar collection exists from which a student can gather so much
+information at sight as in this, where the natural pebbles from the
+gravel begin the series, and the beautifully chipped points of chert,
+jasper, and quartz terminate it in one direction, and the polished celts
+and grooved stone axes in the other." There are three principal
+groups,&mdash;first, the interglacial palæoliths, secondly, the argillite
+points and flakes, and thirdly, the arrow-heads, knives, mortars and
+pestles, axes and hoes, ornamental stones, etc., of Indians of the
+recent period. Dr. Abbott's <i>Primitive Industry</i>, published in 1881, is
+a useful manual for studying this collection; and an account of his
+discoveries in the glacial gravels is given in <i>Reports of the Peabody
+Museum</i>, vol. ii. pp. 30-48, 225-258; see also vol. iii. p. 492. A
+succinct and judicious account of the whole subject is given by H. W.
+Haynes, "The Prehistoric Archæology of North America," in Winsor's
+<i>Narrative and Critical History</i>, vol. i. pp. 329-368.<a href="#footnotetag9"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote10" name="footnote10"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 10:</strong> J. D. Whitney, "The Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra
+Nevada", <i>Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard
+College</i>, Cambridge, 1880, vol. vi.<a href="#footnotetag10"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote11" name="footnote11"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 11:</strong> In an essay published in 1882 on "Europe before the
+Arrival of Man" (<i>Excursions of an Evolutionist</i>, pp. 1-40), I argued
+that if we are to find traces of the "missing link," or primordial stock
+of primates from which man has been derived, we must undoubtedly look
+for it in the Miocene (p. <a href="#page036">36</a>). I am pleased at finding the same opinion
+lately expressed by one of the highest living authorities. The case is
+thus stated by Alfred Russel Wallace: "The evidence we now possess of
+the exact nature of the resemblance of man to the various species of
+anthropoid apes, shows us that he has little special affinity for any
+one rather than another species, while he differs from them all in
+several important characters in which they agree with each other. The
+conclusion to be drawn from these facts is, that his points of affinity
+connect him with the whole group, while his special peculiarities
+equally separate him from the whole group, and that he must, therefore,
+have diverged from the common ancestral form before the existing types
+of anthropoid apes had diverged from each other. Now this divergence
+almost certainly took place as early as the Miocene period, because in
+the Upper Miocene deposits of western Europe remains of two species of
+ape have been found allied to the gibbons, one of them, dryopithecus,
+nearly as large as a man, and believed by M. Lartet to have approached
+man in its dentition more than the existing apes. We seem hardly,
+therefore, to have reached in the Upper Miocene the epoch of the common
+ancestor of man and the anthropoids." (<i>Darwinism</i>, p. 455, London,
+1889.) Mr. Wallace goes on to answer the objection of Professor Boyd
+Dawkins, "that man did not probably exist in Pliocene times, because
+almost all the known mammalia of that epoch are distinct species from
+those now living on the earth, and that the same changes of the
+environment which led to the modification of other mammalian species
+would also have led to a change in man." This argument, at first sight
+apparently formidable, quite overlooks the fact that in the evolution of
+man there came a point after which variations in his intelligence were
+seized upon more and more exclusively by natural selection, to the
+comparative neglect of physical variations. After that point man changed
+but little in physical characteristics, except in size and complexity of
+brain. This is the theorem first propounded by Mr. Wallace in the
+<i>Anthropological Review</i>, May, 1864; restated in his <i>Contributions to
+Natural Selection</i>, chap. ix., in 1870; and further extended and
+developed by me in connection with the theory of man's origin first
+suggested in my lectures at Harvard in 1871, and worked out in <i>Cosmic
+Philosophy</i>, part ii., chapters xvi., xxi., xxii.<a href="#footnotetag11"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote12" name="footnote12"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 12:</strong> See, for example, the map of Europe in early post-glacial
+times, in James Geikie's <i>Prehistoric Europe</i>.<a href="#footnotetag12"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote13" name="footnote13"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 13:</strong> "There are three human crania in the Museum, which were
+found in the gravel at Trenton, one several feet below the surface, the
+others near the surface. These skulls, which are of remarkable
+uniformity, are of small size and of oval shape, differing from all
+other skulls in the Museum. In fact they are of a distinct type, and
+hence of the greatest importance. So far as they go they indicate that
+palæolithic man was exterminated, or has become lost by admixture with
+others during the many thousand years which have passed since he
+inhabited the Delaware valley." F. W. Putnam, "The Peabody Museum,"
+<i>Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society</i>, 1889, New Series,
+vol. vi. p. 189.<a href="#footnotetag13"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote14" name="footnote14"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 14:</strong> An excellent example of this is the expansion and
+modification undergone during the past twenty years by our theories of
+the Aryan settlement of Europe. See Benfey's preface to Fick's
+<i>Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen Grundsprache</i>, 1868; Geiger, <i>Zur
+Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit</i>, 1871; Cuno, <i>Forschungen im
+Gebiete der alten Voelkerkunde</i>, 1871; Schmidt, <i>Die
+Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der Indogermanischen Sprachen</i>, 1872;
+Poesche, <i>Die Arier</i>, 1878; Lindenschmit, <i>Handbuch der deutschen
+Alterthumskunde</i>, 1880; Penka, <i>Origines Ariacæ</i>, 1883, and <i>Die
+Herkunft der Arier</i>, 1886; Spiegel, <i>Die arische Periode und ihre
+Zustande</i>, 1887; Rendal, <i>Cradle of the Aryans</i>, 1889; Schrader,
+<i>Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte</i>, 1883, and second edition
+translated into English, with the title <i>Prehistoric Antiquities of the
+Aryan Peoples</i>, 1890. Schrader's is an epoch-making book. An attempt to
+defend the older and simpler views is made by Max Müller, <i>Biographies
+of Words and the Home of the Aryas</i>, 1888; see also Van den Gheyn,
+<i>L'origine européenne des Aryas</i>, 1889. The whole case is well summed up
+by Isaac Taylor, <i>Origin of the Aryans</i>, 1889.<a href="#footnotetag14"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote15" name="footnote15"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 15:</strong> See Dawkins, <i>Early Man in Britain</i>,
+pp. 233-245.<a href="#footnotetag15"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote16" name="footnote16"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 16:</strong> According to Dr. Rink the Eskimos formerly inhabited the
+central portions of North America, and have retreated or been driven
+northward; he would make the Eskimos of Siberia an offshoot from those
+of America, though he freely admits that there are grounds for
+entertaining the opposite view. Dr. Abbott is inclined to attribute an
+Eskimo origin to some of the palæoliths of the Trenton gravel. On the
+other hand, Mr. Clements Markham derives the American Eskimos from those
+of Siberia. It seems to me that these views may be comprehended and
+reconciled in a wider one. I would suggest that during the Glacial
+period the ancestral Eskimos may have gradually become adapted to arctic
+conditions of life; that in the mild interglacial intervals they
+migrated northward along with the musk-sheep; and that upon the return
+of the cold they migrated southward again, keeping always near the edge
+of the ice-sheet. Such a southward migration would naturally enough
+bring them in one continent down to the Pyrenees, in the other down to
+the Alleghanies; and naturally enough the modern inquirer has his
+attention first directed to the indications of their final retreat,
+<i>both</i> northward in America and northeastward from Europe through
+Siberia. This is like what happened with so many plants and animals.
+Compare Darwin's remarks on "Dispersal in the Glacial Period," <i>Origin
+of Species</i>, chap. xii.</p>
+
+<p>The best books on the Eskimos are those of Dr. Rink, <i>Tales and
+Traditions of the Eskimo</i>, Edinburgh, 1875; <i>Danish Greenland</i>, London,
+1877; <i>The Eskimo Tribes, their Distribution and Characteristics,
+especially in regard to Language</i>, Copenhagen, 1887. See also Franz
+Boas, "The Central Eskimo," <i>Sixth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology</i>,
+Washington, 1888, pp. 399-669; W. H. Dall. <i>Alaska and its Resources</i>,
+1870; Markham, "Origin and Migrations of the Greenland Esquimaux,"
+<i>Journal of the Royal Geographical Society</i>, 1865; Cranz, <i>Historie von
+Groenland</i>, Leipsic, 1765; Petitot, <i>Traditions indiennes du Canada
+nord-ouest</i>, Paris, 1886; Pilling's <i>Bibliography of the Eskimo
+Language</i>, Washington, 1887; Wells and Kelly, <i>English-Eskimo and
+Eskimo-English Vocabularies, with Ethnographical Memoranda concerning
+the Arctic Eskimos in Alaska and Siberia</i>, Washington, 1890;
+Carstensen's <i>Two Summers in Greenland</i>, London, 1890.<a href="#footnotetag16"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote17" name="footnote17"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 17:</strong> Wallace, <i>Geographical Distribution of Animals</i>, vol. ii.
+p. 155.<a href="#footnotetag17"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote18" name="footnote18"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 18:</strong> Asa Gray, "Sequoia and its History," in his <i>Darwiniana</i>,
+pp. 205-235.<a href="#footnotetag18"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote19" name="footnote19"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 19:</strong> Illustrations may be found in plenty in the learned works
+of Brasseur de Bourbourg:&mdash;<i>Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique
+et de l'Amérique centrale</i>, 4 vols., Paris, 1857-58; <i>Popol Vuh</i>, Paris,
+1861; <i>Quatre lettres sur le Mexique</i>, Paris, 1868; <i>Le manuscrit
+Troano</i>, Paris, 1870, etc.<a href="#footnotetag19"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote20" name="footnote20"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 20:</strong> See Werner, "The African Pygmies," <i>Popular Science
+Monthly</i>, September, 1890,&mdash;a thoughtful and interesting
+article.<a href="#footnotetag20"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote21" name="footnote21"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 21:</strong> This sort of illustration requires continual limitation
+and qualification. The case in ancient America was not <i>quite</i> as it
+would have been in Europe if there had been only Aryans there. The
+semi-civilized people of the Cordilleras were relatively brachycephalous
+as compared with the more barbarous Indians north and east of New
+Mexico. It is correct to call this a distinction of race if we mean
+thereby a distinction developed upon American soil, a differentiation
+within the limits of the red race, and not an intrusion from without. In
+this sense the Caribs also may be regarded as a distinct sub-race; and,
+in the same sense, we may call the Kafirs a distinct sub-race of African
+blacks. See, as to the latter, Tylor, <i>Anthropology</i>,
+p. 39.<a href="#footnotetag21"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote22" name="footnote22"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 22:</strong> As Sir John Lubbock well says, "Different races in similar
+stages of development often present more features of resemblance to one
+another than the same race does to itself in different stages of its
+history." (<i>Origin of Civilization</i>, p. 11.) If every student of history
+and ethnology would begin by learning this lesson, the world would be
+spared a vast amount of unprofitable theorizing.<a href="#footnotetag22"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote23" name="footnote23"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 23:</strong> See his great work on <i>Ancient Society</i>,
+New York, 1877.<a href="#footnotetag23"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote24" name="footnote24"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 24:</strong> See the evidence in Tylor, <i>Researches into the Early
+History of Mankind</i>, pp. 269-272; cf. Lubbock, <i>Prehistoric Times</i>, p.
+573; and see Cushing's masterly "Study of Pueblo Pottery," etc.,
+<i>Reports of Bureau of Ethnology</i>, iv., 473-521.<a href="#footnotetag24"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote25" name="footnote25"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 25:</strong> Lumholtz, <i>Among Cannibals</i>, London, 1889, gives a vivid
+picture of aboriginal life in Australia.<a href="#footnotetag25"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote26" name="footnote26"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 26:</strong> The case of Peru, which forms an apparent but not real
+exception to this general statement, will be considered below in chap.
+ix.<a href="#footnotetag26"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote27" name="footnote27"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 27:</strong> See Shaler, "Physiography of North America," in Winsor's
+<i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i> vol. iv. p. xiii.<a href="#footnotetag27"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote28" name="footnote28"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 28:</strong> "No manure was used," says Mr. Parkman, speaking of the
+Hurons, "but at intervals of from ten to twenty years, when the soil was
+exhausted and firewood distant, the village was abandoned and a new one
+built." <i>Jesuits in North America</i>,
+p. xxx.<a href="#footnotetag28"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote29" name="footnote29"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 29:</strong> In the interesting architectural remains unearthed by Dr.
+Schliemann at Mycenæ and Tiryns, there have been found at the former
+place a few iron keys and knives, at the latter one iron lance-head; but
+the form and workmanship of these objects mark them as not older than
+the beginning of the fifth century <span class="smcap">B. C.</span>, or the time of the Persian
+wars. With these exceptions the weapons and tools found in these cities,
+as also in Troy, were of bronze and stone. Bronze was in common use, but
+obsidian knives and arrow-heads of fine workmanship abound in the ruins.
+According to Professor Sayce, these ruins must date from 2000 to 1700 <span class="smcap">B.
+C.</span> The Greeks of that time would accordingly be placed in the middle
+status of barbarism. (See Schliemann's <i>Mycenæ</i>, pp. 75, 364; <i>Tiryns</i>,
+p. 171.) In the state of society described in the Homeric poems the
+smelting of iron was well known, but the process seems to have been
+costly, so that bronze weapons were still commonly used. (Tylor,
+<i>Anthropology</i>, p. 279.) The Romans of the regal period were ignorant of
+iron. (Lanciani, <i>Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries</i>,
+Boston, 1888, pp. 39-48.) The upper period of barbarism was shortened
+for Greece and Rome through the circumstance that they learned the
+working of iron from Egypt and the use of the alphabet from Ph&oelig;nicia.
+Such copying, of course, affects the symmetry of such schemes as Mr.
+Morgan's, and allowances have to be made for it. It is curious that both
+Greeks and Romans seem to have preserved some tradition of the Bronze
+Age:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+&#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962;
+&#948;'
+&#7974;&#957;
+&#967;&#945;&#955;&#954;&#949;&#945;
+&#956;&#949;&#957;
+&#964;&#949;&#965;&#967;&#949;&#945;,
+&#967;&#945;&#955;&#954;&#949;&#959;&#953;
+&#948;&#949;
+&#964;&#949;
+&#959;&#7990;&#954;&#959;&#953;,<br>
+
+&#967;&#945;&#955;&#954;&#8183;
+&#948;'
+&#949;&#953;&#961;&#947;&#945;&#950;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#959;&#183;
+&#956;&#949;&#955;&#945;&#962;
+&#948;'
+&#959;&#8016;&#954;
+&#7956;&#963;&#954;&#949;
+&#963;&#953;&#948;&#951;&#961;&#959;&#962;.<br>
+
+<span class="left50">Hesiod, <i>Opp. Di.</i> 134.</span></p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fuerunt<br>
+Et lapides et item silvarum fragmina rami,<br>
+Et flamma atque ignes, postquam sunt cognita primum.<br>
+Posterius ferri vis est, ærisque reperta.<br>
+Et prior æris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus, etc.<br>
+<span class="left50">Lucretius, v. 1283.</span></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, as Munro suggests, Lucretius was thinking of Hesiod; but it
+does not seem improbable that in both cases there may have been a
+genuine tradition that their ancestors used bronze tools and weapons
+before iron, since the change was comparatively recent, and sundry
+religious observances tended to perpetuate the memory of it.<a href="#footnotetag29"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote30" name="footnote30"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 30:</strong> See his <i>Intellectual Development of Europe</i>, New York,
+1863, pp. 448, 464.<a href="#footnotetag30"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote31" name="footnote31"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 31:</strong> Now and then, perhaps, but very rarely, it just touches
+the close of the middle period, as, e. g., in the lines from Hesiod and
+Lucretius above quoted.<a href="#footnotetag31"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote32" name="footnote32"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 32:</strong> Winsor, "Bibliographical Notes on American Linguistics,"
+in his <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>, vol. i. pp. 420-428, gives an admirable
+survey of the subject. See also Pilling's bibliographical bulletins of
+Iroquoian, Siouan, and Muskhogean languages, published by the Bureau of
+Ethnology.<a href="#footnotetag32"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote33" name="footnote33"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 33:</strong> <i>Excursions of an Evolutionist</i>,
+pp. 147-174.<a href="#footnotetag33"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote34" name="footnote34"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 34:</strong> For a good account of Indians in the upper status of
+savagery until modified by contact with civilization, see Myron Eells,
+"The Twana, Chemakum, and Klallam Indians of Washington Territory,"
+<i>Smithsonian Report</i>, 1887, pp. 605-681.<a href="#footnotetag34"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote35" name="footnote35"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 35:</strong> An excellent description of them, profusely illustrated
+with coloured pictures, may be found in Catlin's <i>North American
+Indians</i>, vol. i. pp. 66-207, 7th ed., London, 1848; the author was an
+accurate and trustworthy observer. Some writers have placed these tribes
+in the Dakota group because of the large number of Dakota words in their
+language; but these are probably borrowed words, like the numerous
+French words in English.<a href="#footnotetag35"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote36" name="footnote36"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 36:</strong> See Francis Parkman's paper, "The Discovery of the Rocky
+Mountains," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, June, 1888. I hope the appearance of
+this article, two years ago, indicates that we have not much longer to
+wait for the next of that magnificent series of volumes on the history
+of the French in North America.<a href="#footnotetag36"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote37" name="footnote37"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 37:</strong> <i>North American Indians</i>, vol. ii.,
+Appendix A.<a href="#footnotetag37"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote38" name="footnote38"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 38:</strong> Smith's <i>Generall Historie of Virginia, New England and
+the Summer Isles</i>, p. 1, London, 1626.<a href="#footnotetag38"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote39" name="footnote39"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 39:</strong> For the history and ethnology of these interesting tribes,
+see three learned papers by J. B. Dunbar, in <i>Magazine of American
+History</i>, vol. iv. pp. 241-281; vol. v. pp. 321-342; vol. viii. pp.
+734-756; also Grinnell's <i>Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales</i>, New York,
+1889.<a href="#footnotetag39"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote40" name="footnote40"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 40:</strong> These tribes of the Gulf region were formerly grouped,
+along with others not akin to them, as "Mobilians." The Cherokees were
+supposed to belong to the Maskoki family, but they have lately been
+declared an intrusive offshoot from the Iroquois stock. The remnants of
+another alien tribe, the once famous Natchez, were adopted into the
+Creek confederacy. For a full account of these tribes, see Gatschet, <i>A
+Migration Legend of the Creek Indians</i>, vol. i., Philadelphia,
+1884.<a href="#footnotetag40"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote41" name="footnote41"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 41:</strong> Howse, <i>Grammar of the Cree Language</i>, London, 1865, p.
+vii.<a href="#footnotetag41"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote42" name="footnote42"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 42:</strong> Except in so far as the Cherokees and Tuscaroras,
+presently to be mentioned, were interposed.<a href="#footnotetag42"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote43" name="footnote43"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 43:</strong> Brinton, <i>The Lenape and their Legends</i>,
+p. 30.<a href="#footnotetag43"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote44" name="footnote44"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 44:</strong> Because they refused to take part in the strife between
+the Hurons and the Five Nations. Their Indian name was Attiwandarons.
+They were unsurpassed for ferocity. See Parkman, <i>Jesuits in North
+America</i>, p. xliv.<a href="#footnotetag44"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote45" name="footnote45"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 45:</strong> Morgan, <i>Ancient Society</i>,
+p. 125.<a href="#footnotetag45"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote46" name="footnote46"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 46:</strong> Whether there was ever such a person as Hiawatha is, to
+say the least, doubtful. As a traditional culture-hero his attributes
+are those of Ioskeha, Michabo, Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, and all that
+class of sky-gods to which I shall again have occasion to refer. See
+Brinton's <i>Myths of the New World</i>, p. 172. When the Indian speaks of
+Hiawatha whispering advice to Daganoweda, his meaning is probably the
+same as that of the ancient Greek when he attributed the wisdom of some
+mortal hero to whispered advice from Zeus or his messenger Hermes.
+Longfellow's famous poem is based upon Schoolcraft's book entitled <i>The
+Hiawatha Legends</i>, which is really a misnomer, for the book consists
+chiefly of Ojibwa stories about Manabozho, son of the West Wind. There
+was really no such legend of Hiawatha as that which the poet has
+immortalized. See Hale, <i>The Iroquois Book of Rites</i>, pp. 36,
+180-183.<a href="#footnotetag46"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote47" name="footnote47"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 47:</strong> Cadwallader Colden, <i>History of the Five Nations</i>, New
+York, 1727.<a href="#footnotetag47"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote48" name="footnote48"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 48:</strong> Morgan, <i>League of the Iroquois</i>,
+p. 12.<a href="#footnotetag48"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote49" name="footnote49"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 49:</strong> All except the distant Tuscaroras, who in 1715 migrated
+from North Carolina to New York, and joining the Iroquois league made it
+the Six Nations. All the rest of the outlying Huron-Iroquois stock was
+wiped out of existence before the end of the seventeenth century, except
+the remnant of Hurons since known as Wyandots.<a href="#footnotetag49"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote50" name="footnote50"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 50:</strong> See my <i>Beginnings of New England</i>,
+chap. i.<a href="#footnotetag50"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote51" name="footnote51"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 51:</strong> F. A. Walker, "The Indian Question," <i>North American
+Review</i>, April, 1873, p. 370.<a href="#footnotetag51"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote52" name="footnote52"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 52:</strong> See Humboldt, <i>Ansichten der Natur</i>, 3d ed., Stuttgart,
+1849, vol. i. p. 203.<a href="#footnotetag52"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote53" name="footnote53"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 53:</strong> "Women and children joined in these fiendish atrocities,
+and when at length the victim yielded up his life, his heart, if he were
+brave, was ripped from his body, cut in pieces, broiled, and given to
+the young men, under the belief that it would increase their courage;
+they drank his blood, thinking it would make them more wary; and finally
+his body was divided limb from limb, roasted or thrown into the seething
+pot, and hands and feet, arms and legs, head and trunk, were all stewed
+into a horrid mess and eaten amidst yells, songs, and dances." Jeffries
+Wyman, in <i>Seventh Report of Peabody Museum</i>, p. 37. For details of the
+most appalling character, see Butterfield's <i>History of the Girtys</i>, pp.
+176-182; Stone's <i>Life of Joseph Brant</i>, vol. ii. pp. 31, 32; Dodge's
+<i>Plains of the Great West</i>, p. 418, and <i>Our Wild Indians</i>, pp. 525-529;
+Parkman's <i>Jesuits in North America</i>, pp. 387-391; and many other places
+in Parkman's writings.<a href="#footnotetag53"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote54" name="footnote54"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 54:</strong> One often hears it said that the cruelty of the Indians
+was not greater than that of mediæval Europeans, as exemplified in
+judicial torture and in the horrors of the Inquisition. But in such a
+judgment there is lack of due discrimination. In the practice of torture
+by civil and ecclesiastical tribunals in the Middle Ages, there was a
+definite moral purpose which, however lamentably mistaken or perverted,
+gave it a very different character from torture wantonly inflicted for
+amusement. The atrocities formerly attendant upon the sack of towns, as
+e. g. Beziers, Magdeburg, etc., might more properly be regarded as an
+illustration of the survival of a spirit fit only for the lowest
+barbarism: and the Spanish conquerors of the New World themselves often
+exhibited cruelty such as even Indians seldom surpass. See below, vol.
+ii. p. 444. In spite of such cases, however, it must be held that for
+artistic skill in inflicting the greatest possible intensity of
+excruciating pain upon every nerve in the body, the Spaniard was a
+bungler and a novice as compared with the Indian. See Dodge's <i>Our Wild
+Indians</i>, pp. 536-538. Colonel Dodge was in familiar contact with
+Indians for more than thirty years, and writes with fairness and
+discrimination.</p>
+
+<p>In truth the question as to comparative cruelty is not so much one of
+race as of occupation, except in so far as race is moulded by long
+occupation. The "old Adam," i. e. the inheritance from our brute
+ancestors, is very strong in the human race. Callousness to the
+suffering of others than self is part of this brute-inheritance, and
+under the influence of certain habits and occupations this germ of
+callousness may be developed to almost any height of devilish cruelty.
+In the lower stages of culture the lack of political aggregation on a
+large scale is attended with incessant warfare in the shape in which it
+comes home to everybody's door. This state of things keeps alive the
+passion of revenge and stimulates cruelty to the highest degree. As long
+as such a state of things endures, as it did in Europe to a limited
+extent throughout the Middle Ages, there is sure to be a dreadful amount
+of cruelty. The change in the conditions of modern warfare has been a
+very important factor in the rapidly increasing mildness and humanity of
+modern times. See my <i>Beginnings of New England</i>, pp. 226-229. Something
+more will be said hereafter with reference to the special causes
+concerned in the cruelty and brutality of the Spaniards in America.
+Meanwhile it may be observed in the present connection, that the Spanish
+taskmasters who mutilated and burned their slaves were not
+representative types of their own race to anything like the same extent
+as the Indians who tortured Brébeuf or Crawford. If the fiendish
+Pedrarias was a Spaniard, so too was the saintly Las Casas. The latter
+type would be as impossible among barbarians as an Aristotle or a
+Beethoven. Indeed, though there are writers who would like to prove the
+contrary, it may be doubted whether that type has ever attained to
+perfection except under the influence of Christianity.<a href="#footnotetag54"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote55" name="footnote55"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 55:</strong> See the evidence collected by Jeffries Wyman, in <i>Seventh
+Report of Peabody Museum</i>, pp. 27-37; cf. Wake, <i>Evolution of Morality</i>,
+vol. i. p. 243. Many illustrations are given by Mr. Parkman. In this
+connection it may be observed that the name "Mohawk" means "Cannibal."
+It is an Algonquin word, applied to this Iroquois tribe by their enemies
+in the Connecticut valley and about the lower Hudson. The name by which
+the Mohawks called themselves was "Caniengas," or "People-at-the-Flint."
+See Hale, <i>The Iroquois Book of Rites</i>, p. 173.<a href="#footnotetag55"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote56" name="footnote56"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 56:</strong> For accounts and explanations of animism see Tylor's
+<i>Primitive Culture</i>, London, 1871, 2 vols.; Caspari, <i>Urgeschichte der
+Menschheit</i>, Leipsic, 1877, 2 vols.; Spencer's <i>Principles of
+Sociology</i>, part i.; and my <i>Myths and Mythmakers</i>,
+chap. vii.<a href="#footnotetag56"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote57" name="footnote57"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 57:</strong> No time should be lost in gathering and recording every
+scrap of this folk-lore that can be found. The American Folk-Lore
+Society, founded chiefly through the exertions of my friend Mr. W. W.
+Newell, and organized January 4, 1888, is already doing excellent work
+and promises to become a valuable aid, within its field, to the work of
+the Bureau of Ethnology. Of the <i>Journal of American Folk-Lore</i>,
+published for the society by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Co., nine
+numbers have appeared, and the reader will find them full of valuable
+information. One may also profitably consult Knortz's <i>Märchen und Sagen
+der nordamerikanischen Indianer</i>, Jena, 1871; Brinton's <i>Myths of the
+New World</i>, N. Y., 1868, and his <i>American Hero-Myths</i>, Phila., 1882;
+Leland's <i>Algonquin Legends of New England</i>, Boston, 1884; Mrs.
+Emerson's <i>Indian Myths</i>, Boston, 1884. Some brief reflections and
+criticisms of much value, in relation to aboriginal American folk-lore,
+may be found in Curtin's <i>Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland</i>,
+pp. 12-27.<a href="#footnotetag57"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote58" name="footnote58"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 58:</strong> Until lately our acquaintance with human history was
+derived almost exclusively from literary memorials, among which the
+Bible, the Homeric poems, and the Vedas, carried us back about as far as
+literature could take us. It was natural, therefore, to suppose that the
+society of the times of Abraham or Agamemnon was "primitive," and the
+wisest scholars reasoned upon such an assumption. With vision thus
+restricted to civilized man and his ideas and works, people felt free to
+speculate about uncivilized races (generally grouped together
+indiscriminately as "savages") according to any <i>à priori</i> whim that
+might happen to captivate their fancy. But the discoveries of the last
+half-century have opened such stupendous vistas of the past that the age
+of Abraham seems but as yesterday. The state of society described in the
+book of Genesis had five entire ethnical periods, and the greater part
+of a sixth, behind it; and its institutions were, comparatively
+speaking, modern.<a href="#footnotetag58"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote59" name="footnote59"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 59:</strong> McLennan's <i>Studies in Ancient History, comprising a
+reprint of Primitive Marriage</i>, etc. London, 1876, p. 421.<a href="#footnotetag59"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote60" name="footnote60"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 60:</strong> There is much that is unsound in it, however, as is often
+inevitably the case with books that strike boldly into a new field of
+inquiry.<a href="#footnotetag60"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote61" name="footnote61"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 61:</strong> A general view of the subject may be obtained from the
+following works: Bachofen, <i>Das Mutterrecht</i>, Stuttgart, 1871, and <i>Die
+Sage von Tanaquil</i>, Heidelberg, 1870; McLennan's <i>Studies in Ancient
+History</i>, London, 1876, and <i>The Patriarchal Theory</i>, London, 1884;
+Morgan's <i>Systems of Consanguinity</i> (Smithsonian Contributions to
+Knowledge, vol. xvii.), Washington, 1871, and <i>Ancient Society</i>, New
+York, 1877; Robertson Smith, <i>Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia</i>,
+Cambridge, Eng., 1885; Lubbock, <i>Origin of Civilization</i>, 5th ed.,
+London, 1889; Giraud-Teulon, <i>La Mère chez certains peuples de
+l'antiquité</i>, Paris, 1867, and <i>Les Origines de la Famille</i>, Geneva,
+1874; Starcke (of Copenhagen), <i>The Primitive Family</i>, London, 1889.
+Some criticisms upon McLennan and Morgan may be found in Maine's later
+works, <i>Early History of Institutions</i>, London, 1875, and <i>Early Law and
+Custom</i>, London, 1883. By far the ablest critical survey of the whole
+field is that in Spencer's <i>Principles of Sociology</i>, vol. i. pp.
+621-797.<a href="#footnotetag61"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote62" name="footnote62"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 62:</strong></p>
+
+<div class="poem10">
+<p>&#7944;&#955;&#955;' &#7940;&#947;&#949; &#956;&#959;&#953;
+&#964;&#8057;&#948;&#949; &#949;&#7984;&#960;&#8050; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#7936;&#964;&#961;&#949;&#954;&#8051;&#969;&#962;
+&#954;&#945;&#964;&#8049;&#955;&#949;&#958;&#959;&#957;,<br>
+
+&#949;&#7984; &#948;&#8052; &#7952;&#958;
+&#945;&#8016;&#964;&#959;&#8150;&#959; &#964;&#8057;&#963;&#959;&#962;
+&#960;&#945;&#8150;&#962; &#949;&#7990;&#962;
+&#8008;&#948;&#965;&#963;&#8134;&#959;&#962;.<br>
+
+&#945;&#7984;&#957;&#8182;&#962; &#947;&#8048;&#961;
+&#954;&#949;&#966;&#945;&#955;&#8053;&#957; &#964;&#949;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#8004;&#956;&#956;&#945;&#964;&#945;
+&#954;&#945;&#955;&#8048; &#7956;&#959;&#953;&#954;&#945;&#962;<br>
+
+&#954;&#949;&#8055;&#957;&#8179;, &#7952;&#960;&#949;&#8054;
+&#952;&#945;&#956;&#8048; &#964;&#959;&#8150;&#959;&#957;
+&#7952;&#956;&#953;&#963;&#947;&#8057;&#956;&#949;&#952;'
+&#7936;&#955;&#955;&#8053;&#955;&#959;&#953;&#963;&#953;&#957;,<br>
+
+&#960;&#961;&#8055;&#957; &#947;&#949; &#964;&#8056;&#957; &#7952;&#962;
+&#932;&#961;&#959;&#8055;&#951;&#957;
+&#7936;&#957;&#945;&#946;&#8053;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#945;&#953;,
+&#7956;&#957;&#952;&#945; &#960;&#949;&#961;
+&#7940;&#955;&#955;&#959;&#953;<br>
+
+&#7944;&#961;&#947;&#949;&#8055;&#969;&#957; &#959;&#7985;
+&#7940;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#953; &#7956;&#946;&#945;&#957;
+&#954;&#959;&#8055;&#955;&#8131;&#962; &#7952;&#960;&#8054;
+&#957;&#951;&#965;&#963;&#8055;&#957;&#183;<br>
+
+&#7952;&#954; &#964;&#959;&#8166; &#948;' &#959;&#8020;&#964;'
+&#8008;&#948;&#965;&#963;&#8134;&#945; &#7952;&#947;&#8060;&#957;
+&#7988;&#948;&#959;&#957; &#959;&#8020;&#964;' &#7952;&#956;&#8050;
+&#954;&#949;&#8150;&#957;&#959;&#962;.</p>
+
+<p>&#932;&#8052;&#957; &#948;' &#945;&#8022;
+&#932;&#951;&#955;&#8051;&#956;&#945;&#967;&#959;&#962;
+&#960;&#949;&#960;&#957;&#965;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#959;&#962;
+&#7936;&#957;&#964;&#8055;&#959;&#957; &#951;&#8020;&#948;&#945;<br>
+
+&#964;&#959;&#953;&#947;&#8048;&#961; &#7952;&#947;&#8061;
+&#964;&#959;&#953;, &#958;&#949;&#8150;&#957;&#949;,
+&#956;&#8049;&#955;' &#7936;&#964;&#961;&#949;&#954;&#8051;&#969;&#962;
+&#7936;&#947;&#959;&#961;&#949;&#8059;&#963;&#969;.<br>
+
+&#956;&#8053;&#964;&#951;&#961; &#956;&#8051;&#957; &#964;'
+&#7952;&#956;&#8051; &#966;&#951;&#963;&#953; &#964;&#959;&#8166;
+&#7956;&#956;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#945;&#953;,
+&#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8048;&#961; &#7956;&#947;&#969;&#947;&#949;<br>
+
+&#959;&#8016;&#954; &#959;&#7990;&#948;'&#183; &#959;&#8016;
+&#947;&#8049;&#961; &#960;&#8061; &#964;&#953;&#962;
+&#7953;&#8056;&#957; &#947;&#8057;&#957;&#959;&#957;
+&#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8056;&#962; &#7936;&#957;&#8051;&#947;&#957;&#969;.<br>
+
+<span class="left30"><i>Odyssey</i>, i. 206.</span><a href="#footnotetag62"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a id="footnote63" name="footnote63"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 63:</strong> Lumholtz, <i>Among Cannibals</i>, p. 213; Lubbock, <i>Origin of
+Civilization</i>, p. 107; Morgan, <i>Ancient Society</i>, part iii., chap. iii.
+"After battle it frequently happens among the native tribes of Australia
+that the wives of the conquered, of their own free-will, go over to the
+victors; reminding us of the lioness which, quietly watching the fight
+between two lions, goes off with the conqueror." Spencer, <i>Principles of
+Sociology</i>, vol. i. p. 632.<a href="#footnotetag63"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote64" name="footnote64"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 64:</strong> The notion of the descent of the human race from a single
+"pair," or of different races from different "pairs," is a curious
+instance of transferring modern institutions into times primeval. Of
+course the idea is absurd. When the elder Agassiz so emphatically
+declared that "pines have originated in forests, heaths in heaths,
+grasses in prairies, bees in hives, herrings in shoals, buffaloes in
+herds, men in nations" (<i>Essay on Classification</i>, London, 1859, p. 58),
+he made, indeed, a mistake of the same sort, so far as concerns the
+origin of Man, for the nation is a still more modern institution than
+the family; but in the other items of his statement he was right, and as
+regards the human race he was thinking in the right direction when he
+placed <i>multitude</i> instead of <i>duality</i> at the beginning. If instead of
+that extremely complex and highly organized multitude called "nation"
+(in the plural), he had started with the extremely simple and almost
+unorganized multitude called "horde" (in the singular), the statement
+for Man would have been correct. Such views were hardly within the reach
+of science thirty years ago.<a href="#footnotetag64"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote65" name="footnote65"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 65:</strong> <i>Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy</i>, part ii., chaps. xvi.,
+xxi., xxii.; <i>Excursions of an Evolutionist</i>, pp. 306-319; <i>Darwinism,
+and other Essays</i>, pp. 40-49; <i>The Destiny of Man</i>,
+§§ iii.-ix.<a href="#footnotetag65"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote66" name="footnote66"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 66:</strong> The slowness of the development has apparently been such
+as befits the transcendent value of the result. Though the question is
+confessedly beyond the reach of science, may we not hold that civilized
+man, the creature of an infinite past, is the child of eternity,
+maturing for an inheritance of immortal life?<a href="#footnotetag66"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote67" name="footnote67"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 67:</strong> The Teutonic <i>hundred</i> and Roman <i>curia</i> answered to the
+Greek <i>phratry</i>.<a href="#footnotetag67"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote68" name="footnote68"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 68:</strong> Fenton's <i>Early Hebrew Life</i>, London, 1880, is an
+interesting study of the upper period of barbarism; see also Spencer,
+<i>Princip. of Sociol.</i>, i. 724-737.<a href="#footnotetag68"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote69" name="footnote69"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 69:</strong> See below, p. <a href="#page122">122</a>.<a href="#footnotetag69"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote70" name="footnote70"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 70:</strong> As among the Hervey Islanders; Gill, <i>Myths and Songs of
+the South Pacific</i>, p. 36. Sir John Lubbock would account for the
+curious and widely spread custom of the <i>Couvade</i> as a feature of this
+change. <i>Origin of Civilization</i>, pp. 14-17, 159; cf. Tylor, <i>Early
+Hist. of Mankind</i>, pp. 288, 297.<a href="#footnotetag70"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote71" name="footnote71"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 71:</strong> "There is no embarrassment growing out of problems
+respecting the woman's future support, the division of property, or the
+adjustment of claims for the possession of the children. The independent
+self-support of every adult healthy Indian, male or female, and the
+gentile relationship, which is more wide-reaching and authoritative than
+that of marriage, have already disposed of these questions, which are
+usually so perplexing for the white man. So far as personal maintenance
+is concerned, a woman is, as a rule, just as well off without a husband
+as with one. What is hers, in the shape of property, remains her own
+whether she is married or not. In fact, marriage among these Indians
+seems to be but the natural mating of the sexes, to cease at the option
+of either of the interested parties." Clay MacCauley, "The Seminole
+Indians of Florida", in <i>Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of
+Ethnology</i>, Washington, 1887, p. 497. For a graphic account of the state
+of things among the Cheyennes and Arrapahos, see Dodge, <i>Our Wild
+Indians</i>, pp. 204-220.<a href="#footnotetag71"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote72" name="footnote72"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 72:</strong> See Morgan's <i>Houses and House-Life of the American
+Aborigines</i>, Washington, 1881, an epoch-making book of rare and
+absorbing interest.<a href="#footnotetag72"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote73" name="footnote73"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 73:</strong> This verb of Mr. Morgan's at first struck me as odd, but
+though rarely used, it is supported by good authority; see <i>Century
+Dictionary</i>, s. v.<a href="#footnotetag73"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote74" name="footnote74"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 74:</strong> The Iroquois ceased to build such houses before the
+beginning of the present century. I quote Mr. Morgan's description at
+length, because his book is out of print and hard to obtain. It ought to
+be republished, and in octavo, like his <i>Ancient Society</i>, of which it
+is a continuation.<a href="#footnotetag74"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote75" name="footnote75"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 75:</strong> Lucien Carr, "On the Social and Political Position of
+Woman among the Huron-Iroquois Tribes," <i>Reports of Peabody Museum</i>,
+vol. iii. p. 215.<a href="#footnotetag75"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote76" name="footnote76"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 76:</strong> This was not incompatible with the subjection of women to
+extreme drudgery and ill-treatment. For an instructive comparison with
+the case among the tribes of the Far West, see Dodge, <i>Our Wild
+Indians</i>, chap. xvi.<a href="#footnotetag76"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote77" name="footnote77"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 77:</strong> Among the Wyandots there is in each clan a council
+composed of four squaws, and this council elects the male sachem who is
+its head. Therefore the tribal council, which is the aggregate of the
+clan-councils, consists one fifth of men and four fifths of women. See
+Powell, "Wyandot Government: a Short Study of Tribal Society," in <i>First
+Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology</i>, Washington, 1881, pp. 59-69;
+and also Mr. Carr's interesting essay above cited.<a href="#footnotetag77"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote78" name="footnote78"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 78:</strong> H. H. Bancroft, <i>Native Races of the Pacific States</i>, vol.
+i. p. 109.<a href="#footnotetag78"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote79" name="footnote79"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 79:</strong> Morgan, <i>Houses and House-Life</i>,
+p. 16.<a href="#footnotetag79"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote80" name="footnote80"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 80:</strong> See Freeman, <i>Comparative Politics</i>, p. 117; Stubbs,
+<i>Const. Hist.</i>, vol. i. pp. 98-104; Grote, <i>History of Greece</i>, vol.
+iii. pp. 74, 88. It is interesting to compare Grote's description with
+Morgan's (<i>Anc. Soc.</i>, pp. 71, 94) and note both the closeness of the
+general parallelism and the character of the specific variations.<a href="#footnotetag80"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote81" name="footnote81"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 81:</strong> In his <i>League of the Iroquois</i>, Rochester, 1851, a book
+now out of print and excessively rare. A brief summary is given in his
+<i>Ancient Society</i>, chap. v., and in his <i>Houses and House-Life</i>, pp.
+23-41. Mr. Morgan was adopted into the Seneca tribe, and his life work
+was begun by a profound and exhaustive study of this interesting
+people.<a href="#footnotetag81"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote82" name="footnote82"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 82:</strong> <i>Houses and House-Life</i>, p. 33. At the period of its
+greatest power, about 1675, the people of the confederacy were about
+25,000 in number. In 1875, according to official statistics (see table
+appended to Dodge's <i>Plains of the Great West</i>, pp. 441-448), there were
+in the state of New York 198 Oneidas, 203 Onondagas, 165 Cayugas, 3,043
+Senecas, and 448 Tuscaroras,&mdash;in all 4,057. Besides these there were
+1,279 Oneidas on a reservation in Wisconsin, and 207 Senecas in the
+Indian Territory. The Mohawks are not mentioned in the list. During the
+Revolutionary War, and just afterward, the Mohawks migrated into Upper
+Canada (Ontario), for an account of which the reader may consult the
+second volume of Stone's <i>Life of Brant</i>. Portions of the other tribes
+also went to Canada. In New York the Oneidas and Tuscaroras were
+converted to Christianity by Samuel Kirkland and withheld from alliance
+with the British during the Revolution; the others still retain their
+ancient religion. They are for the most part farmers and are now
+increasing in numbers. Their treatment by the state of New York has been
+honourably distinguished for justice and humanity.<a href="#footnotetag82"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote83" name="footnote83"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 83:</strong> Somewhat on the same principle that in mediæval Europe led
+an earl or count, commanding an exposed border district or <i>march</i> to
+rise in power and importance and become a "margrave" [<i>mark</i> + <i>graf</i> =
+march-count] or "marquis." Compare the increase of sovereignty accorded
+to the earls of Chester and bishops of Durham as rulers of the two
+principal march counties of England.<a href="#footnotetag83"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote84" name="footnote84"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 84:</strong> For instance, the whole discussion in Gomme's <i>Village
+Community</i>, London, 1890, an excellent book, abounds with instances of
+this crumpling.<a href="#footnotetag84"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote85" name="footnote85"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 85:</strong> Morgan, <i>Houses and House-life</i>, pp. 126-129; Catlin's
+<i>North Amer. Indians</i>, i. 81 <i>ff.</i><a href="#footnotetag85"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote86" name="footnote86"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 86:</strong> Catlin, i. 83.<a href="#footnotetag86"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote87" name="footnote87"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 87:</strong> Catlin, i. 90.<a href="#footnotetag87"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote88" name="footnote88"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 88:</strong> See above, p. <a href="#page025">25</a>.<a href="#footnotetag88"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote89" name="footnote89"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 89:</strong> See his articles in the <i>Century Magazine</i>, Dec., 1882,
+Feb., 1883, May, 1883; and his papers on "Zuñi Fetiches," <i>Reports of
+the Bureau of Ethnology</i>, ii. 9-45; "A Study of Pueblo Pottery as
+Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth," id. iv. 473-521; see also Mrs.
+Stevenson's paper, "Religious Life of a Zuñi Child," id. v. 539-555;
+Sylvester Baxter, "An Aboriginal Pilgrimage," <i>Century Magazine</i>, Aug.,
+1882.<a href="#footnotetag89"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote90" name="footnote90"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 90:</strong> Cf. Greek &#959;&#7990;&#954;&#959;&#962;,
+"house," with Latin <i>vicus</i>, "street" or "village," Sanskrit <i>vesa</i>,
+"dwelling-place," English <i>wick</i>, "mansion" or "village."<a href="#footnotetag90"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote91" name="footnote91"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 91:</strong> "With the woman rests the security of the marriage ties;
+and it must be said, in her high honour, that she rarely abuses the
+privilege; that is, never sends her husband 'to the home of his
+fathers,' unless he richly deserves it." But should not Mr. Cushing have
+said "home of his mothers," or perhaps, of "his sisters and his cousins
+and his aunts?" For a moment afterward he tells us, "To her belong all
+the children; and descent, including inheritance, is on her side."
+<i>Century Magazine</i>, May, 1883, p. 35.<a href="#footnotetag91"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote92" name="footnote92"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 92:</strong> For example, since the arrival of the Spaniards some or
+perhaps all of the pueblos have introduced chimneys into their
+apartments; but when they were first visited by Coronado, he found the
+people wearing cotton garments, and Franciscan friars in 1581 remarked
+upon the superior quality of their shoes. In spinning and weaving, as
+well as in the grinding of meal, a notable advance had been made.<a href="#footnotetag92"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote93" name="footnote93"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 93:</strong> At least a better one than Mr. Prescott had when he
+naively reckoned five persons to a household, <i>Conquest of Mexico</i>, ii.
+97.<a href="#footnotetag93"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote94" name="footnote94"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 94:</strong> Morgan, <i>Houses and House-Life</i>,
+chap. vii.<a href="#footnotetag94"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote95" name="footnote95"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 95:</strong> For careful descriptions of the ruined pueblos and
+cliff-houses, see Nadaillac's <i>Prehistoric America</i>, chap. v., and
+Short's <i>North Americans of Antiquity</i>, chap. vii. The latter sees in
+them the melancholy vestiges of a people gradually "succumbing to their
+unpropitious surroundings&mdash;a land which is fast becoming a howling
+wilderness, with its scourging sands and roaming savage Bedouin&mdash;the
+Apaches."<a href="#footnotetag95"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote96" name="footnote96"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 96:</strong> "La qual ciudad ... es muy mayor que Granada, y muy mas
+fuerte, y de tan buenos edificios, y de mucha mas gente, que Granada
+tenia al tiempo que se gaño." Cortes, <i>Relacion segunda al Emperador</i>,
+ap. Lorenzana, p. 58, cited in Prescott's <i>Conquest of Mexico</i>, vol. i.
+p. 401 (7th ed., London, 1855).<a href="#footnotetag96"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote97" name="footnote97"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 97:</strong> See Bandelier's <i>Archæological Tour in Mexico</i>, Boston,
+1885, pp. 160-164. Torquemada's words, cited by Bandelier, are "Quando
+entraron los Españoles, dicen que tenia mas de quarenta mil vecinos esta
+ciudad." <i>Monarquía Indiana</i>, lib. iii. cap. xix. p. 281. A prolific
+source of error is the ambiguity in the word <i>vecinos</i>, which may mean
+either "inhabitants" or "householders." Where Torquemada meant 40,000
+inhabitants, uncritical writers fond of the marvellous have understood
+him to mean 40,000 houses, and multiplying this figure by 5, the average
+number of persons <i>in a modern family</i>, have obtained the figure
+200,000. But 40,000 houses peopled after the old Mexican fashion, with
+at least 200 persons in a house (to put it as low as possible), would
+make a city of 8,000,000 inhabitants! Las Casas, in his <i>Destruycion de
+las Indias</i>, vii., puts the population of Cholula at about 30,000. I
+observe that Llorente (in his <i>&OElig;uvres de Las Casas</i>, tom. i. p. 38)
+translates the statement correctly. I shall recur to this point below,
+vol. ii. p. 264.<a href="#footnotetag97"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote98" name="footnote98"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 98:</strong> Mariana, <i>Historia de España</i>, Valencia, 1795, tom. viii.
+p. 317.<a href="#footnotetag98"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote99" name="footnote99"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 99:</strong> "Et io entrai piu di quattro volte in una casa del gran
+Signor non por altro effetto che per vederla, et ogni volta vi camminauo
+tanto che mi stancauo, et mai la fini di vedere tutta." <i>Relatione fatta
+per un gentil' huomo del Signor Fernando Cortese</i>, apud Ramusio,
+<i>Navigationi et Viaggi</i>, Venice, 1556, tom. iii.
+fol. 309.<a href="#footnotetag99"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote100" name="footnote100"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 100:</strong> When Pocahontas visited London in 1616 she was received
+at court as befitted a "king's daughter," and the old Virginia
+historian, William Stith (born in 1689), says it was a "constant
+tradition" in his day that James I. "became jealous, and was highly
+offended at Mr. Rolfe for marrying a princess." The notion was that "if
+Virginia descended to Pocahontas, as it might do at Powhatan's death, at
+her own death the kingdom would be vested in Mr. Rolfe's posterity."
+Esten Cooke's <i>Virginia</i>, p. 100. Powhatan (i. e. Wahunsunakok, chief of
+the Powhatan tribe) was often called "emperor" by the English settlers.
+To their intense bewilderment he told one of them that his office would
+descend to his [maternal] brothers, even though he had sons living. It
+was thought that this could not be true.<a href="#footnotetag100"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote101" name="footnote101"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 101:</strong> The small states into which tribes were at first
+transformed have in many cases survived to the present time as portions
+of great states or nations. The shires or counties of England, which
+have been reproduced in the United States, originated in this way, as I
+have briefly explained in my little book on <i>Civil Government in the
+United States</i>, p. 49. When you look on the map of England, and see the
+town of <i>Icklingham</i> in the county of <i>Suffolk</i>, it means that this
+place was once the "home" of the "Icklings" or "children of Ickel," a
+clan which formed part of the tribe of Angles known as "South folk." So
+the names of Gaulish tribes survived as names of French provinces, e. g.
+<i>Auvergne</i> from the <i>Arverni</i>, <i>Poitou</i> from the <i>Pictavi</i>, <i>Anjou</i> from
+the <i>Andecavi</i>, <i>Béarn</i> from the <i>Bigerrones</i>,
+etc.<a href="#footnotetag101"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote102" name="footnote102"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 102:</strong> "It was no easy task to accomplish such a fundamental
+change, however simple and obvious it may now seem.... Anterior to
+experience, a township, as the unit of a political system, was abstruse
+enough to tax the Greeks and Romans to the depths of their capacities
+before the conception was formed and set in practical operation."
+Morgan, <i>Ancient Society</i>, p. 218.<a href="#footnotetag102"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote103" name="footnote103"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 103:</strong> Robertson's <i>History of America</i>, 9th ed. vol. iii. pp.
+274, 281.<a href="#footnotetag103"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote104" name="footnote104"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 104:</strong> "Notes on the Semi-civilized Nations of Mexico, Yucatan,
+and Central America," <i>American Ethnological Society's Transactions</i>,
+vol. i., New York, 1852. There is a brief account of Mr. Gallatin's
+pioneer work in American philology and ethnology in Stevens's <i>Albert
+Gallatin</i>, pp. 386-396.<a href="#footnotetag104"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote105" name="footnote105"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 105:</strong> Cass, "Aboriginal Structures," <i>North Amer. Review</i>,
+Oct., 1840.<a href="#footnotetag105"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote106" name="footnote106"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 106:</strong> Mr. R. A. Wilson's <i>New History of the Conquest of
+Mexico</i>, Philadelphia, 1859, denounced the Spanish conquerors as
+wholesale liars, but as his book was ignorant, uncritical, and full of
+wild fancies, it produced little effect. It was demolished, with
+neatness and despatch, in two articles in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, April
+and May, 1859, by the eminent historian John Foster Kirk, whose <i>History
+of Charles the Bold</i> is in many respects a worthy companion to the works
+of Prescott and Motley. Mr. Kirk had been Mr. Prescott's
+secretary.<a href="#footnotetag106"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote107" name="footnote107"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 107:</strong> A summary of Mr. Bandelier's principal results, with
+copious citation and discussion of original Spanish and Nahuatl sources,
+is contained in his three papers, "On the art of war and mode of warfare
+of the ancient Mexicans,"&mdash;"On the distribution and tenure of land, and
+the customs with respect to inheritance, among the ancient
+Mexicans,"&mdash;"On the social organization and mode of government of the
+ancient Mexicans," <i>Peabody Museum Reports</i>, vol. ii., 1876-79, pp.
+95-161, 385-448, 557-699.<a href="#footnotetag107"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote108" name="footnote108"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 108:</strong> In the Iroquois confederacy the Mohawks enjoyed a certain
+precedence or seniority, the Onondagas had the central council-fire, and
+the Senecas, who had the two head war-chiefs, were much the most
+numerous. In the Mexican confederacy the various points of superiority
+seem to have been more concentrated in the Aztecs; but spoils and
+tribute were divided into five portions, of which Mexico and Tezcuco
+each took two, and Tlacopan one.<a href="#footnotetag108"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote109" name="footnote109"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 109:</strong> The wretched prisoners were ordinarily compelled to carry
+the booty.<a href="#footnotetag109"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote110" name="footnote110"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 110:</strong> Bandelier, <i>op. cit.</i>
+p. 563.<a href="#footnotetag110"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote111" name="footnote111"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 111:</strong> The notion of an immense population groaning under the
+lash of taskmasters, and building huge palaces for idle despots must be
+dismissed. The statements which refer to such a vast population are apt
+to be accompanied by incompatible statements. Mr. Morgan is right in
+throwing the burden of proof upon those who maintain that a people
+without domestic animals or field agriculture could have been so
+numerous (<i>Anc. Soc.</i>, p. 195). On the other hand, I believe Mr. Morgan
+makes a grave mistake in the opposite direction, in underestimating the
+numbers that could be supported upon Indian corn even under a system of
+horticulture without the use of the plough. Some pertinent remarks on
+the extraordinary reproductive power of maize in Mexico may be found in
+Humboldt, <i>Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne</i>, Paris, 1811, tom.
+iii. pp. 51-60; the great naturalist is of course speaking of the yield
+of maize in ploughed lands, but, after making due allowances, the yield
+under the ancient system must have been well-nigh unexampled in barbaric
+agriculture.<a href="#footnotetag111"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote112" name="footnote112"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 112:</strong> Compare this description with that of the institutions of
+Indians in the lower status, above, p. <a href="#page069">69</a>.<a href="#footnotetag112"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote113" name="footnote113"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 113:</strong> In this respect it seems to have had some resemblance to
+the Roman <i>centuria</i> and Teutonic <i>hundred</i>. So in prehistoric Greece we
+may perhaps infer from Nestor's advice to Agamemnon that a similar
+organization existed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+&#954;&#961;&#8150;&#957;'
+&#7940;&#957;&#948;&#961;&#945;&#962;
+&#954;&#945;&#964;&#8048;
+&#966;&#8166;&#955;&#945;,
+&#954;&#945;&#964;&#8048;
+&#966;&#961;&#8053;&#964;&#961;&#945;&#962;,
+&#7944;&#947;&#8049;&#956;&#949;&#956;&#957;&#959;&#957;,<br>
+
+&#8033;&#962;
+&#966;&#961;&#8053;&#964;&#961;&#951;
+&#966;&#961;&#8053;&#964;&#961;&#951;&#966;&#953;&#957;
+&#7936;&#961;&#8053;&#947;&#8131;,
+&#966;&#8166;&#955;&#945;
+&#948;&#8050;
+&#966;&#8166;&#955;&#959;&#953;&#962;.<br>
+
+<span class="left50"><i>Iliad</i>, ii. 362.</span></p>
+
+<p>But the phratry seems never to have reached so high a development among
+the Greeks as among the Romans and the early English.<a href="#footnotetag113"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote114" name="footnote114"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 114:</strong> Compare <i>parliament</i> from <i>parler</i>. These twenty were the
+"grandees," "counsellors," and "captains" mentioned by Bernal Diaz as
+always in Montezuma's company; "y siempre á la contina estaban en su
+compañía veinte grandes señores y consejeros y capitanes," etc.
+<i>Historia verdadera</i>, ii. 95. See Bandelier, <i>op. cit.</i>
+p. 646.<a href="#footnotetag114"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote115" name="footnote115"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 115:</strong> Mr. Bandelier's note on this point gives an especially
+apt illustration of the confusion of ideas and inconsistencies of
+statement amid which the early Spanish writers struggled to understand
+and describe this strange society: <i>op. cit.</i> p. 651.<a href="#footnotetag115"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote116" name="footnote116"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 116:</strong> In Aztec mythology Cihuacoatl was wife of the supreme
+night deity, Tezcatlipoca. Squier, <i>Serpent Symbol in America</i>, pp.
+159-166, 174-183. On the connection between serpent worship and human
+sacrifices, see Fergusson's <i>Tree and Serpent Worship</i>, pp. 3-5, 38-41.
+Much evidence as to American serpent worship is collected in J. G.
+Müller's <i>Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen</i>, Basel, 1855. The
+hieroglyphic emblem of the Aztec tribal sachem was a female head
+surmounted by a snake.<a href="#footnotetag116"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote117" name="footnote117"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 117:</strong> Other tribes besides the Aztec had the "snake-woman." In
+the city of Mexico the Spaniards mistook him for a "second-king," or
+"royal lieutenant." In other towns they regarded him, somewhat more
+correctly, as "governor," and called him <i>gobernador</i>,&mdash;a title still
+applied to the tribal sachem of the pueblo Indians, as e. g. in Zuñi
+heretofore mentioned; see above p. <a href="#page089">89</a>.<a href="#footnotetag117"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote118" name="footnote118"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 118:</strong> This title seems precisely equivalent to
+&#7940;&#957;&#945;&#958; &#7936;&#957;&#948;&#961;&#8182;&#957;,
+commonly applied to Agamemnon,
+and sometimes to other chieftains, in the Iliad.<a href="#footnotetag118"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote119" name="footnote119"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 119:</strong> Ramsay's <i>Roman Antiquities</i>, p. 64; Hermann's <i>Political
+Antiquities of Greece</i>, p. 105; Morgan, <i>Anc. Soc.</i>,
+p. 248.<a href="#footnotetag119"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote120" name="footnote120"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 120:</strong> Such would naturally result from the desirableness of
+securing unity of command. If Demosthenes had been in sole command of
+the Athenian armament in the harbour of Syracuse, and had been a
+<i>basileus</i>, with priestly authority, who can doubt that some such theory
+of the eclipse as that suggested by Philochorus would have been adopted,
+and thus one of the world's great tragedies averted? See Grote, <i>Hist.
+Greece</i>, vol. vii. chap. lx. M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his admirable
+book <i>La Cité antique</i>, pp. 205-210, makes the priestly function of the
+king primitive, and the military function secondary; which is entirely
+inconsistent with what we know of barbarous races.<a href="#footnotetag120"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote121" name="footnote121"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 121:</strong> It is worthy of note that the archon who retained the
+priestly function was called <i>basileus</i>, showing perhaps that at that
+time this had come to be most prominent among the royal functions, or
+more likely that it was the one with which reformers had some religious
+scruples about interfering. The Romans, too, retained part of the king's
+priestly function in an officer called <i>rex sacrorum</i>, whose duty was at
+times to offer a sacrifice in the forum, and then run away as fast as
+legs could carry him,&mdash;&#7971;&#957; &#952;&#8059;&#963;&#945;&#962; &#8001;
+&#946;&#945;&#963;&#953;&#955;&#949;&#8058;&#962;,
+&#954;&#945;&#964;&#8048; &#964;&#8049;&#967;&#959;&#962;
+&#7940;&#960;&#949;&#953;&#963;&#953;
+&#966;&#949;&#8059;&#947;&#969;&#957; &#7952;&#958;
+&#7936;&#947;&#959;&#961;&#8118;&#962; (!) Plutarch, <i>Quæst. Rom.</i>
+63.<a href="#footnotetag121"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote122" name="footnote122"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 122:</strong> Something of the priestly quality of "sanctity," however,
+surrounded the king's person; and the ceremony of anointing the king at
+his coronation was a survival of the ancient rite which invested the
+head war-chief with priestly attributes.<a href="#footnotetag122"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote123" name="footnote123"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 123:</strong> They can be most conveniently stated in connection with
+the story of the conquest of Mexico; see below, vol. ii. p. 278. When
+Mr. Bandelier completes his long-promised paper on the ancient Mexican
+religion, perhaps it will appear that he has taken these facts into the
+account.<a href="#footnotetag123"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote124" name="footnote124"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 124:</strong> I cannot follow Mr. Bandelier in discrediting Clavigero's
+statement that the office of <i>tlacatecuhtli</i> "should always remain in
+the house of Acamapitzin," inasmuch as the eleven who were actually
+elected were all closely akin to one another. In point of fact it <i>did</i>
+remain "in the house of Acamapitzin."<a href="#footnotetag124"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote125" name="footnote125"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 125:</strong> H. H. Bancroft, <i>Native Races of the Pacific States</i>,
+vol. ii. p. 145. Hence the accounts of the reverent demeanour of the
+people toward Montezuma, though perhaps overcoloured, are not so absurd
+as Mr. Morgan deemed them. Mr. Morgan was sometimes too anxious to
+reduce Montezuma to the level of an Iroquois
+war-chief.<a href="#footnotetag125"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote126" name="footnote126"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 126:</strong> As I have elsewhere observed in a similar case:&mdash;"Each
+summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the dread that Iroquois
+prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and down the Connecticut valley
+they seized the tribute of weapons and wampum, and proclaimed the last
+harsh edict issued from the savage council at Onondaga." <i>Beginnings of
+New England</i>, p. 121.<a href="#footnotetag126"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote127" name="footnote127"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 127:</strong> See Salmeron's letter of August 13, 1531, to the Council
+of the Indies, cited in Bandelier, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 696. The letter
+recommends that to increase the security of the Spanish hold upon the
+country the roads should be made practicable for beasts and wagons. They
+were narrow paths running straight ahead up hill and down dale,
+sometimes crossing narrow ravines upon heavy stone culverts.<a href="#footnotetag127"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote128" name="footnote128"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 128:</strong> The priesthood was not hereditary, nor did it form a
+caste. There was no hereditary nobility in ancient Mexico, nor were
+there any hereditary vocations, as "artisans," "merchants," etc. See
+Bandelier, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 599.<a href="#footnotetag128"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote129" name="footnote129"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 129:</strong> See the copious references in Tylor's <i>Primitive
+Culture</i>, ii. 340-371; Mackay, <i>Religious Development of the Greeks and
+Hebrews</i>, ii. 406-434; Oort and Hooykaas, <i>The Bible for Young People</i>,
+i. 30, 189-193; ii. 102, 220; iii. 21, 170, 316, 393, 395; iv. 85, 226.
+Ghillany, <i>Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer</i>, Nuremberg, 1842, treats
+the subject with much learning.<a href="#footnotetag129"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote130" name="footnote130"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 130:</strong> Spencer, <i>Princip. Sociol.</i>, i. 287; Tylor, <i>op. cit.</i>
+ii. 345.<a href="#footnotetag130"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote131" name="footnote131"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 131:</strong> Mr. Prescott, to avoid shocking the reader with details,
+refers him to the twenty-first canto of Dante's Inferno, <i>Conquest of
+Mexico</i>, vol. i. p. 64.<a href="#footnotetag131"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote132" name="footnote132"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 132:</strong> See below, vol. ii. p. 283.<a href="#footnotetag132"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote133" name="footnote133"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 133:</strong> The victim, by the offer of which the wrath of the god
+was appeased or his favour solicited, must always be some valued
+possession of the sacrificer. Hence, e. g., among the Hebrews "wild
+animals, as not being property, were generally considered unfit for
+sacrifice." (Mackay, <i>op. cit.</i> ii. 398.) Among the Aztecs (Prescott,
+<i>loc. cit.</i>) on certain occasions of peculiar solemnity the clan offered
+some of its own members, usually children. In the lack of prisoners such
+offerings would more often be necessary, hence one powerful incentive to
+war. The use of prisoners to buy the god's favour was to some extent a
+substitute for the use of the clan's own members, and at a later stage
+the use of domestic animals was a further substitution. The legend of
+Abraham and Isaac (<i>Genesis</i>, xxii. 1-14) preserves the tradition of
+this latter substitution among the ancient Hebrews. Compare the
+B&oelig;otian legend of the temple of Dionysos
+Aigobolos:&mdash;&#952;&#8059;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#949;&#962; &#947;&#8048;&#961;
+&#964;&#8183; &#952;&#949;&#8183;
+&#960;&#961;&#959;&#8053;&#967;&#952;&#951;&#963;&#8049;&#957;
+&#960;&#959;&#964;&#949; &#8017;&#960;&#8056;
+&#956;&#8051;&#952;&#951;&#962; &#7952;&#962;
+&#8021;&#946;&#961;&#953;&#957;, &#8037;&#963;&#964;&#949;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#964;&#959;&#8166;
+&#916;&#953;&#959;&#957;&#8059;&#963;&#959;&#965; &#964;&#8056;&#957;
+&#7985;&#949;&#961;&#8051;&#945;
+&#7936;&#960;&#959;&#954;&#964;&#949;&#8055;&#957;&#959;&#965;&#963;&#953;&#957;&#183;
+
+&#7936;&#960;&#959;&#954;&#964;&#949;&#8055;&#957;&#945;&#957;&#964;&#945;&#962;
+&#948;&#8050; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8055;&#954;&#945;
+&#7952;&#960;&#8051;&#955;&#945;&#946;&#949;
+&#957;&#8057;&#963;&#959;&#962;
+&#955;&#959;&#953;&#956;&#8061;&#948;&#951;&#962;&#183;
+&#954;&#945;&#8055; &#963;&#966;&#953;&#963;&#953;&#957;
+&#7936;&#966;&#8055;&#954;&#949;&#964;&#959; &#7941;&#956;&#945;
+&#7952;&#954; &#916;&#949;&#955;&#966;&#8182;&#957;, &#964;&#8183;
+&#916;&#953;&#959;&#957;&#8059;&#963;&#8179;
+&#952;&#8059;&#949;&#953;&#957; &#960;&#945;&#8150;&#948;&#945;
+&#8033;&#961;&#945;&#8150;&#959;&#957;&#183;
+
+&#7956;&#964;&#949;&#963;&#953; &#948;&#8050; &#959;&#8016;
+&#960;&#959;&#955;&#955;&#959;&#8150;&#962;
+&#8021;&#963;&#964;&#949;&#961;&#959;&#957; &#964;&#8056;&#957;
+&#952;&#949;&#8057;&#957; &#966;&#945;&#963;&#953;&#957;
+&#945;&#7990;&#947;&#945; &#7985;&#949;&#961;&#949;&#8150;&#959;&#957;
+&#8017;&#960;&#945;&#955;&#955;&#8049;&#958;&#945;&#953;
+&#963;&#966;&#8055;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#7936;&#957;&#964;&#8054;
+&#964;&#959;&#8166; &#960;&#945;&#953;&#948;&#8057;&#962;.
+Pausanias, ix. 8. A further stage of progress was the substitution of a
+mere inanimate symbol for a living victim, whether human or brute, as
+shown in the old Roman custom of appeasing "Father Tiber" once a year by
+the ceremony of drowning a lot of dolls in that river. Of this
+significant rite Mommsen aptly observes, "Die Ideen göttlicher Gnade und
+Versöhnbarkeit sind hier ununterscheidbar gemischt mit der frommen
+Schlauigkeit, welche es versucht den gefährlichen Herrn durch
+scheinhafte Befriedigung zu berücken und abzufinden." <i>Römische
+Geschichte</i>, 4<sup>e</sup> Aufl., 1865, Bd. i. p. 176. After reading such a remark
+it may seem odd to find the writer, in a footnote, refusing to accept
+the true explanation of the custom; but that was a quarter of a century
+ago, when much less was known about ancient society than now.<a href="#footnotetag133"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote134" name="footnote134"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 134:</strong> Bandelier, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 611.<a href="#footnotetag134"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote135" name="footnote135"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 135:</strong> There was, however, in this extreme case, a right of
+sanctuary. If the doomed slave could flee and hide himself in the
+<i>tecpan</i> before the master or one of his sons could catch him, he became
+free and recovered his clan-rights; and no third person was allowed to
+interfere in aid of the pursuer. Torquemada, <i>Monarquía indiana</i>, ii.
+564-566.<a href="#footnotetag135"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote136" name="footnote136"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 136:</strong> Bancroft, <i>Native Races of the Pacific States</i>, vol. ii.
+p. 251.<a href="#footnotetag136"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote137" name="footnote137"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 137:</strong> Bandelier, <i>op. cit.</i>
+pp. 429, 570, 620.<a href="#footnotetag137"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote138" name="footnote138"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 138:</strong> I here use these world-famous names without any
+implication as to their historical character, or their precise date,
+which are in themselves interesting subjects for discussion. I use them
+as best symbolizing the state of society which existed about the
+northern and eastern shores of the eastern Mediterranean, several
+centuries before the Olympiads.<a href="#footnotetag138"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote139" name="footnote139"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 139:</strong> Morgan, <i>Ancient Society</i>, p. 186,
+note.<a href="#footnotetag139"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote140" name="footnote140"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 140:</strong> <i>North Amer. Review</i>, April, 1876. The substance of it
+was reproduced in his <i>Houses and House-Life</i>,
+chap. x.<a href="#footnotetag140"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote141" name="footnote141"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 141:</strong> <i>Houses and House-Life</i>,
+p. 241.<a href="#footnotetag141"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote142" name="footnote142"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 142:</strong> Mr. Andrew Lang asks some similar questions in his <i>Myth,
+Ritual, and Religion</i>, vol. ii. p. 349, but in a tone of impatient
+contempt which, as applied to a man of Mr. Morgan's calibre, is hardly
+becoming.<a href="#footnotetag142"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote143" name="footnote143"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 143:</strong> For an excellent account of ancient Mexican knives and
+chisels, see Dr. Valentini's paper on "Semi-Lunar and Crescent-Shaped
+Tools," in <i>Proceedings of Amer. Antiq. Soc.</i>, New Series, vol. iii. pp.
+449-474. Compare the very interesting Spanish observations on copper
+hatchets and flint chisels in Clavigero, <i>Historia antigua</i>, tom. i. p.
+242; Mendieta, <i>Historia ecclesiastica indiana</i>,
+tom. iv. cap. xii.<a href="#footnotetag143"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote144" name="footnote144"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 144:</strong> It often happens that the followers of a great man are
+more likely to run to extremes than their master, as, for example, when
+we see the queen of pueblos rashly described as "a collection of mud
+huts, such as Cortes found and dignified with the name of a city."
+<i>Smithsonian Report</i>, 1887, part i. p. 691. This is quite
+inadmissible.<a href="#footnotetag144"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote145" name="footnote145"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 145:</strong> This writing was at once recognized by learned Spaniards,
+like Las Casas, as entirely different from anything found elsewhere in
+America. He found in Yucatan "letreros de ciertos caracteres que en otra
+ninguna parte," Las Casas, <i>Historia apologética</i>, cap. cxxiii. For an
+account of the hieroglyphics, see the learned essays of Dr. Cyrus
+Thomas, <i>A Study of the Manuscript Troano</i>, Washington, 1882; "Notes on
+certain Maya and Mexican MSS.," <i>Third Report of the Bureau of
+Ethnology</i>, pp. 7-153; "Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices," <i>Sixth
+Report</i>, pp. 259-371. (The paper last mentioned ends with the weighty
+words, "The more I study these characters the stronger becomes the
+conviction that they have grown out of a pictographic system similar to
+that common among the Indians of North America." Exactly so; and this is
+typical of every aspect and every detail of ancient American culture. It
+is becoming daily more evident that the old notion of an influence from
+Asia has not a leg to stand on.) See also a suggestive paper by the
+astronomer, E. S. Holden, "Studies in Central American Picture-Writing,"
+<i>First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology</i>, pp. 205-245; Brinton,
+<i>Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan</i>, New York, 1870; <i>Essays of an
+Americanist</i>, Philadelphia, 1890, pp. 193-304; Léon de Rosny, <i>Les
+écritures figuratives</i>, Paris, 1870; <i>L'interprétation des anciens
+textes Mayas</i>, Paris, 1875; <i>Essai sur le déchiffrement de l'écriture
+hiératique de l'Amérique Centrale</i>, Paris, 1876; Förstemann,
+<i>Erläuterungen der Maya Handschrift</i>, Dresden, 1886. The decipherment is
+as yet but partially accomplished. The Mexican system of writing is
+clearly developed from the ordinary Indian pictographs; it could not
+have arisen from the Maya system, but the latter might well have been a
+further development of the Mexican system; the Maya system had probably
+developed some characters with a phonetic value, i. e. was groping
+toward the alphabetical stage; but how far this groping had gone must
+remain very doubtful until the decipherment has proceeded further. Dr.
+Isaac Taylor is too hasty in saying that "the Mayas employed
+twenty-seven characters which must be admitted to be alphabetic"
+(Taylor, <i>The Alphabet</i>, vol. i. p. 24); this statement is followed by
+the conclusion that the Maya system of writing was "superior in
+simplicity and convenience to that employed ... by the great Assyrian
+nation at the epoch of its greatest power and glory." Dr. Taylor has
+been misled by Diego de Landa, whose work (<i>Relation des choses de
+l'Yucatan</i>, ed. Brasseur, Paris, 1864) has in it some pitfalls for the
+unwary.<a href="#footnotetag145"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote146" name="footnote146"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 146:</strong> Stephens, <i>Incidents of Travel in Central America,
+Chiapas, and Yucatan</i>, 2 vols., New York,
+1841.<a href="#footnotetag146"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote147" name="footnote147"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 147:</strong> It occurred in the drawings of the artist Fréderic de
+Waldeck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but whose researches were
+published later. "His drawings," says Mr. Winsor, "are exquisite; but he
+was not free from a tendency to improve and restore, where the
+conditions gave a hint, and so as we have them in the final publication
+they have not been accepted as wholly trustworthy." <i>Narr. and Crit.
+Hist.</i>, i. 194. M. de Charnay puts it more strongly. Upon his drawing of
+a certain panel at Palenque, M. de Waldeck "has seen fit to place three
+or four elephants. What end did he propose to himself in giving this
+fictitious representation? Presumably to give a prehistoric origin to
+these ruins, since it is an ascertained fact that elephants in a fossil
+state only have been found on the American continent. It is needless to
+add that neither Catherwood, who drew these inscriptions most minutely,
+nor myself who brought impressions of them away, nor living man, ever
+saw these elephants and their fine trunks. But such is the mischief
+engendered by preconceived opinions. With some writers it would seem
+that to give a recent date to these monuments would deprive them of all
+interest. It would have been fortunate had explorers been imbued with
+fewer prejudices and gifted with a little more common sense, for then we
+should have known the truth with regard to these ruins long since."
+Charnay, <i>The Ancient Cities of the New World</i>, London, 1887, p. 248.
+The gallant explorer's indignation is certainly quite
+pardonable.<a href="#footnotetag147"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote148" name="footnote148"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 148:</strong> Some of his remarks are worth quoting in detail,
+especially in view of the time when they were written: "I repeat my
+opinion that we are not warranted in going back to any ancient nation of
+the Old World for the builders of these cities; that they are not the
+work of people who have passed away and whose history is lost, but that
+there are strong reasons to believe them the creations of the same races
+who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or some
+not very distant progenitors. And I would remark that we began our
+exploration without any theory to support.... Some are beyond doubt
+older than others; some are known to have been inhabited at the time of
+the Spanish conquest, and others, perhaps, were really in ruins before;
+... but in regard to Uxmal, at least, we believe that it was an existing
+and inhabited city at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards."
+Stephens, <i>Central America</i>, etc., vol. ii. p. 455.<a href="#footnotetag148"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote149" name="footnote149"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 149:</strong> Charnay, <i>The Ancient Cities of the New World</i>,
+p. 260.<a href="#footnotetag149"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote150" name="footnote150"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 150:</strong> Lang, <i>Myth, Ritual, and Religion</i>,
+vol. ii. p. 348.<a href="#footnotetag150"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote151" name="footnote151"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 151:</strong> Charnay, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 209. "I may remark that [the]
+virgin forests [here] have no very old trees, being destroyed by
+insects, moisture, lianas, etc.; and old monteros tell me that mahogany
+and cedar trees, which are most durable, do not live above 200 years,"
+id. p. 447.<a href="#footnotetag151"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote152" name="footnote152"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 152:</strong> The reader will find it suggestive to compare portions of
+Schliemann's <i>Mycenæ</i> and M. de Charnay's book, just cited, with
+Morgan's <i>Houses and House-Life</i>, chap. xi.<a href="#footnotetag152"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote153" name="footnote153"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 153:</strong> Charnay, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 411. Copan and Palenque may be two
+or three centuries older, and had probably fallen into ruins before the
+arrival of the Spaniards.<a href="#footnotetag153"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote154" name="footnote154"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 154:</strong> Brinton, <i>The Maya Chronicles</i>, Philadelphia, 1882,
+"Chronicle of Chicxulub," pp. 187-259. This book is of great importance,
+and for the ancient history of Guatemala Brinton's <i>Annals of the
+Cakchiquels</i>, Philadelphia, 1885, is of like value and interest.</p>
+
+<p>Half a century ago Mr. Stephens wrote in truly prophetic vein, "the
+convents are rich in manuscripts and documents written by the early
+fathers, caciques, and Indians, who very soon acquired the knowledge of
+Spanish and the art of writing. These have never been examined with the
+slightest reference to this subject; <i>and I cannot help thinking that
+some precious memorial is now mouldering in the library of a
+neighbouring convent, which would determine the history of some one of
+these ruined cities</i>." Vol. ii. p. 456. The italicizing, of course, is
+mine.<a href="#footnotetag154"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote155" name="footnote155"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 155:</strong> For original researches in the mounds one cannot do
+better than consult the following papers in the <i>Reports of the Bureau
+of Ethnology</i>:&mdash;1. by W. H. Holmes, "Art in Shell of the Ancient
+Americans," ii. 181-305; "The Ancient Pottery of the Mississippi
+Valley," iv. 365-436; "Prehistoric Textile Fabrics of the United
+States," iii. 397-431; followed by an illustrated catalogue of objects
+collected chiefly from mounds, iii. 433-515;&mdash;2. H. W. Henshaw, "Animal
+Carvings from the Mounds of the Mississippi Valley," ii. 121-166;&mdash;3.
+Cyrus Thomas, "Burial Mounds of the Northern Section of the United
+States," v. 7-119; also three of the Bureau's "Bulletins" by Dr. Thomas,
+"The Problem of the Ohio Mounds," "The Circular, Square, and Octagonal
+Earthworks of Ohio," and "Work in Mound Exploration of the Bureau of
+Ethnology;" also two articles by Dr. Thomas in the <i>Magazine of American
+History</i>:&mdash;"The Houses of the Mound-Builders," xi. 110-115; "Indian
+Tribes in Prehistoric Times," xx. 193-201. See also Horatio Hale,
+"Indian Migrations," in <i>American Antiquarian</i>, v. 18-28, 108-124; M. F.
+Force, <i>To What Race did the Mound-Builders belong?</i> Cincinnati, 1875;
+Lucien Carr, <i>Mounds of the Mississippi Valley historically considered</i>,
+1883; Nadaillac's <i>Prehistoric America</i>, ed. W. H. Dall, chaps. iii.,
+iv. The earliest work of fundamental importance on the subject was
+Squier's <i>Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley</i>, Philadelphia,
+1848, being the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to
+Knowledge.&mdash;For statements of the theory which presumes either a race
+connection or a similarity in culture between the mound-builders and the
+pueblo Indians, see Dawson, <i>Fossil Men</i>, p. 55; Foster, <i>Prehistoric
+Races of the United States</i>, Chicago, 1873, chaps. iii., v.-x.; Sir
+Daniel Wilson, <i>Prehistoric Man</i>, chap. x. The annual <i>Smithsonian
+Reports</i> for thirty years past illustrate the growth of knowledge and
+progressive changes of opinion on the subject. The bibliographical
+account in Winsor's <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>, i. 397-412, is full of
+minute information.<a href="#footnotetag155"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote156" name="footnote156"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 156:</strong> <i>Houses and House-Life</i>,
+chap. ix.<a href="#footnotetag156"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote157" name="footnote157"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 157:</strong> <i>Work in Mound Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology</i>,
+Washington, 1887. For a sight of the thousands of objects gathered from
+the mounds, one should visit the Peabody Museum at Cambridge and the
+Smithsonian Institution at Washington.<a href="#footnotetag157"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote158" name="footnote158"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 158:</strong> Heckewelder, <i>History of the Indian Nations of
+Pennsylvania</i>, etc., Philadelphia, 1818; cf. Squier, <i>Historical and
+Mythological Traditions of the Algonquins</i>, a paper read before the New
+York Historical Society in June, 1848; also Brinton, <i>The Lenape and
+their Legends</i>, Philadelphia, 1885.<a href="#footnotetag158"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote159" name="footnote159"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 159:</strong> For a detailed account of their later history, see C. C.
+Royce, "The Cherokee Nation," <i>Reports of Bureau of Ethnology</i>, v.
+121-378.<a href="#footnotetag159"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote160" name="footnote160"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 160:</strong> This notion of the Chinese visiting Mexico was set forth
+by the celebrated Deguignes in 1761, in the <i>Mémoires de l'Académie des
+Inscriptions</i>, tom. xxviii. pp. 506-525. Its absurdity was shown by
+Klaproth, "Recherches sur le pays de Fou Sang," <i>Nouvelles annales des
+voyages</i>, Paris, 1831, 2e série, tom. xxi. pp. 58-68; see also
+Klaproth's introduction to <i>Annales des empereurs du Japon</i>, Paris,
+1834, pp. iv.-ix.; Humboldt, <i>Examen critique de l'histoire de la
+géographie du nouveau continent</i>, Paris, 1837, tom. ii. pp. 62-84. The
+fancy was revived by C. G. Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), in his <i>Fusang</i>,
+London, 1875, and was again demolished by the missionary, S. W.
+Williams, in the <i>Journal of the American Oriental Society</i>, vol. xi.,
+New Haven, 1881.<a href="#footnotetag160"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote161" name="footnote161"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 161:</strong> On the noble work of the Irish church and its
+missionaries in the sixth and seventh centuries, see Montalembert, <i>Les
+moines d'Occident</i>, tom. ii. pp. 465-661; tom. iii. pp. 79-332; Burton's
+<i>History of Scotland</i>, vol. i. pp. 234-277; and the instructive map in
+Miss Sophie Bryant's <i>Celtic Ireland</i>, London, 1889, p. 60. The notice
+of the subject in Milman's <i>Latin Christianity</i>, vol. ii. pp. 236-247,
+is entirely inadequate.<a href="#footnotetag161"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote162" name="footnote162"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 162:</strong> The passion 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, Færoes, and Iceland, where a colony of them remained
+until the arrival of the Northmen in 874. See Dicuil, <i>Liber de mensura
+Orbis Terræ</i> (<span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 825), Paris, 1807; Innes, <i>Scotland in the Middle
+Ages</i>, p. 101; Lanigan, <i>Ecclesiastical History of Ireland</i>, chap. iii.;
+Maurer, <i>Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte des Germanischen Nordens</i>, i. 35.
+For the legend of St. Brandan, see Gaffarel, <i>Les voyages de St.
+Brandan</i>, Paris, 1881.<a href="#footnotetag162"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote163" name="footnote163"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 163:</strong> C. W. Brooks, of San Francisco, cited in Higginson,
+<i>Larger History of the United States</i>,
+p. 24.<a href="#footnotetag163"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote164" name="footnote164"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 164:</strong> Desmarquets, <i>Mémoires chronologiques pour servir à
+l'histoire de Dieppe</i>, Paris, 1785, tom. i. pp. 91-98; Estancelin,
+<i>Recherches sur les voyages et découvertes des navigateurs normands</i>,
+etc., Paris, 1832, pp. 332-361.<a href="#footnotetag164"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote165" name="footnote165"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 165:</strong> See below, vol. ii.
+p. 96.<a href="#footnotetag165"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote166" name="footnote166"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 166:</strong> As Harrisse says, concerning the alleged voyages of
+Cousin and others, "Quant aux voyages du Dieppois Jean Cousin en 1488,
+de João Ramalho en 1490, et de João Vaz Cortereal en 1464 ou 1474, le
+lecteur nous pardonnera de les passer sous silence." <i>Christophe
+Colomb</i>, Paris, 1884, tom. i. p. 307.<a href="#footnotetag166"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote167" name="footnote167"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 167:</strong> Winsor, <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>,
+i. 59.<a href="#footnotetag167"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote168" name="footnote168"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 168:</strong> Sufficiently full references may be found in Watson's
+<i>Bibliography of the Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America</i>, appended to
+Anderson's <i>America not discovered by Columbus</i>, 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 <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>, vol. i.<a href="#footnotetag168"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote169" name="footnote169"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 169:</strong> The proper division of this Old Norse word is not into
+<i>v&#299;-king</i>, but into <i>v&#301;k-ing</i>. The first syllable means a
+"bay" or "fiord," the second is a patronymic termination, so that
+"vikings" are "sons of the fiord,"&mdash;an eminently appropriate and
+descriptive name.<a href="#footnotetag169"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote170" name="footnote170"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 170:</strong> Curtius (<i>Griechische Etymologie</i>, p. 237) connects
+&#960;&#8057;&#957;&#964;&#959;&#962; with &#960;&#8049;&#964;&#959;&#962;;
+compare the Homeric
+expressions
+&#8017;&#947;&#961;&#8048; &#954;&#8051;&#955;&#949;&#965;&#952;&#945;,
+&#7984;&#967;&#952;&#965;&#8057;&#949;&#957;&#964;&#945;
+&#954;&#8051;&#955;&#949;&#965;&#952;&#945;, etc.<a href="#footnotetag170"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote171" name="footnote171"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 171:</strong> 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 <i>Beginnings of New England</i>, p. 62.<a href="#footnotetag171"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote172" name="footnote172"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 172:</strong> They were the Varangian guard at Constantinople,
+described by Sir Walter Scott in <i>Count Robert of Paris</i>. 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, <i>The Relations between
+Ancient Russia and Scandinavia</i>, Oxford, 1877.<a href="#footnotetag172"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote173" name="footnote173"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 173:</strong> Fealty to Norway was not formally declared until 1262.<a href="#footnotetag173"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote174" name="footnote174"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 174:</strong> 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 classical education, his own early studies must
+always have been a source of comfort to him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem10">
+<p>&#935;&#945;&#8150;&#961;&#949; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7952;&#957;
+&#957;&#949;&#966;&#8051;&#955;&#945;&#953;&#963;&#953;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7952;&#957;
+&#957;&#953;&#966;&#8049;&#948;&#949;&#963;&#963;&#953;
+&#946;&#945;&#961;&#949;&#8055;&#945;&#953;&#962;<br>
+
+<span class="add1em">&#922;&#945;&#8054; &#960;&#965;&#961;&#8054; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#963;&#949;&#953;&#963;&#956;&#959;&#8150;&#962;
+&#957;&#8134;&#963;&#949;
+&#963;&#945;&#955;&#949;&#965;&#959;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#951;&#183;</span><br>
+
+&#7960;&#957;&#952;&#8049;&#948;&#949; &#947;&#8048;&#961;
+&#946;&#945;&#963;&#953;&#955;&#8134;&#959;&#962;
+&#8017;&#960;&#8051;&#961;&#946;&#953;&#959;&#957;
+&#8021;&#946;&#961;&#953;&#957; &#7936;&#955;&#8059;&#958;&#945;&#962;<br>
+
+<span class="add1em">&#916;&#8134;&#956;&#959;&#962;
+&#8025;&#960;&#949;&#961;&#946;&#959;&#961;&#8051;&#969;&#957;,
+&#954;&#8057;&#963;&#956;&#959;&#965; &#7952;&#960;'
+&#7952;&#963;&#967;&#945;&#964;&#953;&#8135;,</span><br>
+
+&#913;&#8016;&#964;&#8049;&#961;&#954;&#951;
+&#946;&#8055;&#959;&#964;&#959;&#957; &#952;&#949;&#8055;&#969;&#957;
+&#964;' &#7952;&#961;&#949;&#952;&#8055;&#963;&#956;&#945;&#964;&#945;
+&#924;&#959;&#965;&#963;&#8182;&#957;<br>
+
+<span class="add1em">&#922;&#945;&#8054; &#952;&#949;&#963;&#956;&#959;&#8058;&#962;
+&#7937;&#947;&#957;&#8134;&#962; &#949;&#8023;&#961;&#949;&#957;
+&#7952;&#955;&#949;&#965;&#952;&#949;&#961;&#8055;&#945;&#962;.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>These verses are thus rendered by Sir Edmund Head (<i>Viga Glums Saga</i>, p.
+v.):&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+"Hail, Isle! with mist and snowstorms girt around,<br>
+Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,&mdash;<br>
+Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path<br>
+The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath:<br>
+Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free,<br>
+And held unscathed their laws and liberty."</p>
+
+<p>Laing (<i>Heimskringla</i>, 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."<a href="#footnotetag174"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote175" name="footnote175"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 175:</strong> 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, <i>Heimskringla</i>, vol. i. pp.
+191, 193.<a href="#footnotetag175"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote176" name="footnote176"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 176:</strong> 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 <i>Story of Burnt Njal</i>, Edinburgh, 1861, 2 vols., translated
+from the <i>Njals Saga</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<a href="#footnotetag176"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote177" name="footnote177"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 177:</strong> A full collection of these chronicles is given in Rafn's
+<i>Antiquitates Americanæ</i>, 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, <i>Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen</i>, 2d
+ed., Albany, 1890; see also Slafter, <i>Voyages of the Northmen to
+America</i>, Boston, 1877 (Prince Society). An Icelandic version,
+interpolated in Peringskiold's edition of the <i>Heimskringla</i>, 1697, is
+translated in Laing, vol. iii. pp. 344-361.</p>
+
+<p>The first modern writer to call attention to the Icelandic voyages to
+Greenland and Vinland was Arngrim Jónsson, in his <i>Crymog&oelig;a</i>,
+Hamburg, 1610, and more explicitly in his <i>Specimen Islandiæ
+historicum</i>, Amsterdam, 1643. The voyages are also mentioned by
+Campanius, in his <i>Kort beskrifning om provincien Nya Swerige uti
+America</i>, Stockholm, 1702. The first, however, to bring the subject
+prominently before European readers was that judicious scholar Thormodus
+Torfæus, in his two books <i>Historia Vinlandiæ antiquæ</i>, and <i>Historia
+Gronlandiæ antiquæ</i>, Copenhagen, 1705 and 1706. Later writers have until
+very recently added but little that is important to the work of Torfæus.
+In the voluminous literature of the subject the discussions chiefly
+worthy of mention are Forster's <i>Geschichte der Entdeckungen und
+Schiffahrten im Norden</i>, Frankfort, 1784, pp. 44-88; and Humboldt,
+<i>Examen critique</i>, etc., Paris, 1837, tom. i. pp. 84-104; see, also,
+Major, <i>Select Letters of Columbus</i>, London, 1847 (Hakluyt Soc.) pp.
+xii.-xxi. The fifth chapter of Samuel Laing's preliminary dissertation
+to the <i>Heimskringla</i>, 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 <i>Aarbøger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og
+Historie</i>, Copenhagen, 1887, pp. 293-372.</p>
+
+<p>Since this chapter was written I have seen an English translation of the
+valuable paper just mentioned, "Studies on the Vineland Voyages," in
+<i>Mémoires de la société royale des antiquaires du Nord</i>, 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, <i>The
+Finding of Wineland the Good&mdash;the History of the Icelandic Discovery of
+America</i>, 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 <i>Hauks-bók</i>, the MS. AM.
+557, and the <i>Flateyar-bók</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<a href="#footnotetag177"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote178" name="footnote178"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 178:</strong> Rink, <i>Danish Greenland</i>,
+p. 6.<a href="#footnotetag178"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote179" name="footnote179"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 179:</strong> We thus see the treacherousness of one of the arguments
+cited by the illustrious 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, <i>Sur l'état thermométrique du globe terrestre</i>, in his
+<i>&OElig;uvres</i>, tom. v. p. 243. There are reasons, however, for believing
+that Greenland was warmer in the tenth century than at present. See
+below, p. <a href="#page176">176</a>.<a href="#footnotetag179"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote180" name="footnote180"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 180:</strong> The map is reduced from Rafn's <i>Antiquitates Americanæ</i>,
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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. <a href="#page222">222</a>), 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 Nicolò Zeno (see below, p. <a href="#page240">240</a>), is supposed by Mr. Major to have
+been situated near the Iisblink at the bottom of Tessermiut fiord,
+between the east shore of the fiord and the small lake indicated on the
+map.<a href="#footnotetag180"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote181" name="footnote181"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 181:</strong> In Herjulfsfiord, at the entrance to which the modern
+Friedrichsthal is situated. Across the fiord from Friedrichsthal a
+ruined church stands upon the cape formerly known as Herjulfsness. See
+map.<a href="#footnotetag181"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote182" name="footnote182"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 182:</strong> "Leifr var mikill madhr ok sterkr, manna sköruligastr at
+sjá, vitr madhr ok gódhr hófsmadhr um alla hluti," i. e. "Leif was a
+large man and strong, of noble aspect, prudent and moderate in all
+things." Rafn, p. 33.<a href="#footnotetag182"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote183" name="footnote183"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 183:</strong> The year seems to have been that in which Christianity
+was definitely established by law in Iceland, viz., <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1000. The
+chronicle <i>Thattr Eireks Raudha</i> is careful about verifying its dates by
+checking one against another. See Rafn, p. 15. The most masterly work on
+the conversion of the Scandinavian people is Maurer's <i>Die Bekehrung des
+Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume</i>, Munich, 1855; for an account of
+the missionary work in Iceland and Greenland, see vol. i. pp. 191-242,
+443-452.<a href="#footnotetag183"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote184" name="footnote184"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 184:</strong> The name means "Turk," and has served as a touchstone for
+the dullness of commentators. To the Northmen a "Southman" would
+naturally be a German, and why should a German be called a Turk? or how
+should these Northmen happen to have had a Turk in their company? Mr.
+Laing suggests that he may have been a Magyar. Yes; or he may have
+visited the Eastern Empire and taken part in a fight <i>against</i> Turks,
+and so have got a soubriquet, just as Thorhall Gamlason, after returning
+from Vinland to Iceland, was ever afterward known as "the Vinlander."
+That did not mean that he was an American redskin. See below, p. <a href="#page203">203</a>.
+From Tyrker's grimaces one commentator sagely infers that he had been
+eating grapes and got drunk; and another (even Mr. Laing!) thinks it
+necessary to remind us that all the grape-juice in Vinland would not
+fuddle a man unless it had been fermented,&mdash;and then goes on to ascribe
+the absurdity to our innocent chronicle, instead of the stupid
+annotator. See <i>Heimskringla</i>, vol. i.
+p. 168.<a href="#footnotetag184"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote185" name="footnote185"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 185:</strong> On the homeward voyage he rescued some shipwrecked
+sailors near the coast of Greenland, and was thenceforward called Leif
+the Lucky (et postea cognominatus est Leivus Fortunatus). The pleasant
+reports from the newly found country gave it the name of "Vinland the
+Good." In the course of the winter following Leif's return his father
+died.<a href="#footnotetag185"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote186" name="footnote186"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 186:</strong> "Jam crebri de Leivi in Vinlandiam profectione sermones
+serebantur, Thorvaldus vero, frater ejus, nimis pauca terræ loca
+explorata fuisse judicavit." Rafn, p. 39.<a href="#footnotetag186"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote187" name="footnote187"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 187:</strong> Three is the number usually given, but at least four of
+their ships would be needed for so large a company; and besides Thorfinn
+himself, three other captains are mentioned,&mdash;Snorro Thorbrandsson,
+Bjarni Grimolfsson, and Thorhall Gamlason. The narrative gives a
+picturesque account of this Thorhall, who was a pagan and fond of
+deriding his comrades for their belief in the new-fangled Christian
+notions. He seems to have left his comrades and returned to Europe
+before they had abandoned their enterprise. A further reference to him
+will be made below, p. <a href="#page203">203</a>.<a href="#footnotetag187"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote188" name="footnote188"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 188:</strong> To this boy Snorro many eminent men have traced their
+ancestry,&mdash;bishops, university professors, governors of Iceland, and
+ministers of state in Norway and Denmark. The learned antiquarian Finn
+Magnusson and the celebrated sculptor Thorwaldsen regarded themselves as
+thus descended from Thorfinn Karlsefni.<a href="#footnotetag188"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote189" name="footnote189"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 189:</strong> Compare the alarm of the Wampanoag Indians in 1603 at the
+sight of Martin Pring's mastiff. Winsor, <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>, iii.
+174.<a href="#footnotetag189"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote190" name="footnote190"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 190:</strong> The fate of Bjarni was pathetic and noble. It was decided
+that as many as possible should save themselves in the stern boat. "Then
+Bjarni ordered that the men should go in the boat by lot, and not
+according to rank. As it would not hold all, they accepted the saying,
+and when the lots were drawn, the men went out of the ship into the
+boat. The lot was that Bjarni should go down from the ship to the boat
+with one half of the men. Then those to whom the lot fell went down from
+the ship to the boat. When they had come into the boat, a young
+Icelander, who was the companion of Bjarni, said: 'Now thus do you
+intend to leave me, Bjarni?' Bjarni replied, 'That now seems necessary.'
+He replied with these words: 'Thou art not true to the promise made when
+I left my father's house in Iceland.' Bjarni replied: 'In this thing I
+do not see any other way'; continuing, 'What course can you suggest?' He
+said: 'I see this, that we change places and thou come up here and I go
+down there.' Bjarni replied: 'Let it be so, since I see that you are so
+anxious to live, and are frightened by the prospect of death.' Then they
+changed places, and he descended into the boat with the men, and Bjarni
+went up into the ship. It is related that Bjarni and the sailors with
+him in the ship perished in the worm sea. Those who went in the boat
+went on their course until they came to land, where they told all these
+things." De Costa's version from <i>Saga Thorfinns Karlsefnis</i>, Rafn, pp.
+184-186.<a href="#footnotetag190"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote191" name="footnote191"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 191:</strong> The stories of Gudleif Gudlaugsson and Ari Marsson, with
+the fanciful speculations about "Hvitramannaland" and "Irland it Mikla,"
+do not seem worthy of notice in this connection. They may be found in De
+Costa, <i>op. cit.</i> pp. 159-177; and see Reeves, <i>The Finding of Wineland
+the Good</i>, chap. v.<a href="#footnotetag191"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote192" name="footnote192"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 192:</strong> Laing, <i>Heimskringla</i>,
+i. 152.<a href="#footnotetag192"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote193" name="footnote193"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 193:</strong> See his <i>Larger History of the United States</i>, pp.
+32-34.<a href="#footnotetag193"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote194" name="footnote194"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 194:</strong> Perhaps it may have been a square-headed lug, like those
+of the Deal galley-punts; see Leslie's <i>Old Sea Wings, Ways, and Words,
+in the Days of Oak and Hemp</i>, London, 1890, p. 21.<a href="#footnotetag194"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote195" name="footnote195"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 195:</strong> Some people must have queer notions about the lapse of
+past time. I have more than once had this question put to me in such a
+way as to show that what the querist really had in mind was some vague
+impression of the time when oaks and chestnuts, vines and magnolias,
+grew luxuriantly over a great part of Greenland! But that was in the
+Miocene period, probably not less than a million years ago, and has no
+obvious bearing upon the deeds of Eric the Red.<a href="#footnotetag195"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote196" name="footnote196"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 196:</strong> Bardsen, <i>Descriptio Gr&oelig;nlandiæ</i>, appended to Major's
+<i>Voyages of the Venetian Brothers</i>, etc., pp. 40, 41; and see below, p.
+<a href="#page242">242</a>.<a href="#footnotetag196"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote197" name="footnote197"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 197:</strong> Zahrtmann, <i>Journal of Royal Geographical Society</i>,
+London, 1836, vol. v. p. 102. On this general subject see J. D. Whitney,
+"The Climate Changes of Later Geological Times," in <i>Memoirs of the
+Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard College</i>, Cambridge, 1882, vol.
+vii. According to Professor Whitney there has also been a deterioration
+in the climate of Iceland.<a href="#footnotetag197"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote198" name="footnote198"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 198:</strong> One must not too hastily infer that the mean temperature
+of points on the American coast south of Davis strait would be affected
+in the same way. The relation between the phenomena is not quite so
+simple. For example, a warm early spring on the coast of Greenland
+increases the discharge of icebergs from its fiords to wander down the
+Atlantic ocean; and this increase of floating ice tends to chill and
+dampen the summers at least as far South as Long Island, if not
+farther.<a href="#footnotetag198"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote199" name="footnote199"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 199:</strong> Rink's <i>Danish Greenland</i>,
+pp. 27, 96, 97.<a href="#footnotetag199"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote200" name="footnote200"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 200:</strong> See Read's <i>Historical Inquiry concerning Henry Hudson</i>,
+Albany, 1866, p. 160.<a href="#footnotetag200"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote201" name="footnote201"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 201:</strong> "Nú tekst umrædha at nýju um Vínlandsferdh, thviat sú
+ferdh thikir bædhi gódh til fjár ok virdhíngar," i. e. "Now they began
+to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for the voyage thither was both
+gainful and honourable." Rafn, p. 65.<a href="#footnotetag201"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote202" name="footnote202"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 202:</strong> <i>Heimskringla</i>, i, 168.<a href="#footnotetag202"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote203" name="footnote203"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 203:</strong> "Fjöldi var thar melrakka," i. e. "ibi vulpium magnus
+numerus erat," Rafn, p. 138.<a href="#footnotetag203"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote204" name="footnote204"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 204:</strong> It is extremely difficult for an impostor to concoct a
+narrative without making blunders that can easily be detected by a
+critical scholar. For example, the Book of Mormon, in the passage cited
+(see above, p. <a href="#page003">3</a>), in supremely blissful ignorance introduces oxen,
+sheep, and silk-worms, as well as the knowledge of smelting iron, into
+pre-Columbian America.<a href="#footnotetag204"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote205" name="footnote205"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 205:</strong> "Thar í drápu their einn björn," i. e. "in qua ursum
+interfecerunt," id. p. 138.<a href="#footnotetag205"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote206" name="footnote206"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 206:</strong> "Hvorki skorti thar lax í ánni nè í vatninu, ok stærra
+lax enn their hefdhi fyrr sèdh," i. e. "ibi neque in fluvio neque in
+lacu deerat salmonum copia, et quidem majoris corporis quam antea
+vidissent," id. p. 32.<a href="#footnotetag206"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote207" name="footnote207"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 207:</strong> "Helgir fiskar," i. e. "sacri pisces," id. p. 148. The
+Danish phrase is "helleflyndre," i. e. "holy flounder." The English
+<i>halibut</i> is <i>hali</i> = <i>holy</i> + <i>but</i> = <i>flounder</i>. This word <i>but</i> is
+classed as Middle English, but may still be heard in the north of
+England. The fish may have been so called "from being eaten particularly
+on holy days" (<i>Century Dict.</i> s.v.); or possibly from a pagan
+superstition that water abounding in flat fishes is especially safe for
+mariners (Pliny, <i>Hist. Nat.</i> ix. 70); or possibly from some lost
+folk-tale about St. Peter (Maurer, <i>Isländische Volkssagen der
+Gegenwart</i>, Leipsic, 1860, p. 195).<a href="#footnotetag207"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote208" name="footnote208"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 208:</strong> "Svâ var mörg ædhr í eynni, at varla mátti gánga fyri
+eggjum," i. e. "tantus in insula anatum mollissimarum numerus erat, ut
+præ ovis transiri fere non posset," id. p. 141. Eider ducks breed on our
+northeastern coasts as far south as Portland, and are sometimes in
+winter seen as far south as Delaware. They also abound in Greenland and
+Iceland, and, as Wilson observes, "their nests are crowded so close
+together that a person can scarcely walk without treading on them....
+The Icelanders have for ages known the value of eider down, and have
+done an extensive business in it." See Wilson's <i>American Ornithology</i>,
+vol. iii. p. 50.<a href="#footnotetag208"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote209" name="footnote209"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 209:</strong></p>
+
+<table class="center" border="0" cellpadding="3" summary="Translation.">
+<tr>
+<td>"Svâ</td>
+<td>er sagt</td>
+<td>at</td>
+<td>eptirbátr</td>
+<td>theirra</td>
+<td>var</td>
+<td>fylldr</td>
+<td>af vinberjurn."</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>So</td>
+<td>it-is-said</td>
+<td>that</td>
+<td>afterboat</td>
+<td>their</td>
+<td>was</td>
+<td>filled</td>
+<td>of vine-berries.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Rafn, p. 36.<a href="#footnotetag209"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote210" name="footnote210"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 210:</strong> Storm, "Studies on the Vinland Voyages," <i>Mémoires de la
+société royale des antiquaires du Nord</i>, Copenhagen, 1888, p. 351. The
+limit of the vine at this latitude is some distance inland; near the
+shore the limit is a little farther south, and in Newfoundland it does
+not grow at all. Id. p. 308.<a href="#footnotetag210"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote211" name="footnote211"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 211:</strong> The attempt of Dr. Kohl (<i>Maine Hist. Soc.</i>, New Series,
+vol. i.) to connect the voyage of Thorfinn with the coast of Maine seems
+to be successfully refuted by De Costa, <i>Northmen in Maine</i>, etc.,
+Albany, 1870.<a href="#footnotetag211"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote212" name="footnote212"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 212:</strong></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="3" summary="Translation.">
+<tr>
+<td>"Sjálfsána hveitiakra"</td>
+<td rowspan="2">Rafn, p. 147.<a href="#footnotetag212"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Self-sown wheat-acres</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><a id="footnote213" name="footnote213"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 213:</strong> Dr. Storm makes perhaps too much of this presumption. He
+treats it as decisive against his own opinion that Vinland was the
+southern coast of Nova Scotia, and accordingly he tries to prove that
+the self-sown corn was not maize, but "wild rice" (<i>Zizania aquatica</i>).
+<i>Mémoires</i>, etc., p. 356. But his argument is weakened by excess of
+ingenuity.<a href="#footnotetag213"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote214" name="footnote214"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 214:</strong> "Thar var svâ gódhr landskostr at thví er theim sýndist,
+at thar mundi eingi fènadhr fódhr thurfa á vetrum; thar kvomu eingi
+frost á vetrum, ok lítt rènudhu thar grös," i. e. "tanta autem erat
+terræ bonitas, ut inde intelligere esset, pecora hieme pabulo non
+indigere posse, nullis incidentibus algoribus hiemalibus, et graminibus
+parum flaccescentibus." Rafn, p. 32.<a href="#footnotetag214"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote215" name="footnote215"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 215:</strong> "Thar voru their um vetrinn; ok gjördhist vetr mikill, en
+ekki fyri unnit ok gjördhist íllt til matarins, ok tókust af
+veidhirnar," i. e. "hic hiemarunt; cum vero magna incideret hiems,
+nullumque provisum esset alimentum, cibus c&oelig;pit deficere capturaque
+cessabat," Id. p. 174.<a href="#footnotetag215"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote216" name="footnote216"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 216:</strong> A favourite method of determining the exact spots visited
+by the Northmen has been to compare their statements regarding the shape
+and trend of the coasts, their bays, headlands, etc., with various
+well-known points on the New England coast. It is a tempting method, but
+unfortunately treacherous, because the same general description will
+often apply well enough to several different places. It is like summer
+boarders in the country struggling to tell one another where they have
+been to drive,&mdash;past a school-house, down a steep hill, through some
+woods, and by a saw-mill, etc.<a href="#footnotetag216"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote217" name="footnote217"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 217:</strong> It is not meant that stone implements did not continue to
+be used in some parts of Europe far into the Middle Ages. But this was
+not because iron was not perfectly well known, but because in many
+backward regions it was difficult to obtain or to work, so that stone
+continued in use. As my friend, Mr. T. S. Perry, reminds me, Helbig says
+that stone-pointed spears were used by some of the English at the battle
+of Hastings, and stone battle-axes by some of the Scots under William
+Wallace at the end of the thirteenth century. <i>Die Italiker in der
+Poebene</i>, Leipsic, 1879, p. 42. Helbig's statement as to Hastings is
+confirmed by Freeman, <i>Norman Conquest of England</i>, vol. iii.
+p. 473.<a href="#footnotetag217"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote218" name="footnote218"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 218:</strong> My use of the word "inventing" is, in this connection, a
+slip of the pen. Of course the tales of "men whose heads do grow beneath
+their shoulders," the Sciopedæ, etc., as told by Sir John Mandeville,
+were not invented by the mediæval imagination, but copied from ancient
+authors. They may be found in Pliny, <i>Hist. Nat.</i>, lib. vii., and were
+mentioned before his time by Ktesias, as well as by Hecatæus, according
+to Stephanus of Byzantium. Cf. Aristophanes, <i>Aves</i>, 1553; Julius
+Solinus, <i>Polyhistor</i>, ed. Salmasius, cap. 240. Just as these sheets are
+going to press there comes to me Mr. Perry's acute and learned <i>History
+of Greek Literature</i>, New York, 1890, in which this subject is mentioned
+in connection with the mendacious and medical Ktesias:&mdash;These stories
+have probably acquired a literary currency "by exercise of the habit,
+not unknown even to students of science, of indiscriminate copying from
+one's predecessors, so that in reading Mandeville we have the ghosts of
+the lies of Ktesias, almost sanctified by the authority of Pliny, who
+quoted them and thereby made them a part of mediæval folk-lore&mdash;and from
+folk-lore, probably, they took their remote start"
+(p. 522).<a href="#footnotetag218"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote219" name="footnote219"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 219:</strong> "En that var grávara ok safvali ok allskonar skinnavara"
+(Rafn, p. 59),&mdash;i. e. gray fur and sable and all sorts of skinwares; in
+another account, "skinnavöru ok algrá skinn," which in the Danish
+version is "skindvarer og ægte graaskind" (id. p. 150),&mdash;i. e. skinwares
+and genuine gray furs. Cartier in Canada and the Puritans in
+Massachusetts were not long in finding that the natives had good furs to
+sell.<a href="#footnotetag219"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote220" name="footnote220"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 220:</strong> Rafn,
+p. 156.<a href="#footnotetag220"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote221" name="footnote221"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 221:</strong> Much curious information respecting the use of elephants
+in war may be found in the learned work of the Chevalier Armandi,
+<i>Histoire militaire des éléphants</i>, Paris, 1843. As regards Thorfinn's
+bull, Mr. Laing makes the kind of blunder that our British cousins are
+sometimes known to make when they get the Rocky Mountains within sight
+of Bunker Hill monument. "A continental people in that part of America,"
+says Mr. Laing, "could not be strangers to the much more formidable
+bison." <i>Heimskringla</i>, p. 169. Bisons on the Atlantic coast, Mr.
+Laing?! And then his comparison quite misses the point; a bison, if the
+natives had been familiar with him, would not have been at all
+formidable as compared to the bull which they had never before seen. A
+horse is much less formidable than a cougar, but Aztec warriors who did
+not mind a cougar were paralyzed with terror at the sight of men on
+horseback. It is the unknown that frightens in such cases. Thorfinn's
+natives were probably familiar with such large animals as moose and
+deer, but a deer isn't a bull.<a href="#footnotetag221"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote222" name="footnote222"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 222:</strong> The Ph&oelig;nicians, however (who in this connection may be
+classed with Europeans), must have met with some such people in the
+course of their voyages upon the coasts of Africa. I shall treat of this
+more fully below, p. <a href="#page327">327</a>.<a href="#footnotetag222"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote223" name="footnote223"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 223:</strong> As for Indians, says Cieza de Leon, they are all noisy
+(alharaquientos). <i>Segunda Parte de la Crónica del Peru</i>,
+cap. xxiii.<a href="#footnotetag223"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote224" name="footnote224"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 224:</strong> For example, Dr. De Costa refers to Dr. Abbott's
+discoveries as indicating "that the Indian was preceded by a people like
+the Eskimos, whose stone implements are found in the Trenton gravel."
+<i>Pre-Columbian Discovery</i>, p. 132. Quite so; but that was in the Glacial
+Period (!!), and when the edge of the ice-sheet slowly retreated
+northward, the Eskimo, who is emphatically an Arctic creature, doubtless
+retreated with it, just as he retreated from Europe. See above, p. <a href="#page018">18</a>.
+There is not the slightest reason for supposing that there were any
+Eskimos south of Labrador so lately as nine hundred years
+ago.<a href="#footnotetag224"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote225" name="footnote225"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 225:</strong> "Their voru svartir menn ok illiligir, ok havdhu íllt hár
+á höfdhi. Their voru mjök eygdhir ok breidhir í kinnum," i. e. "Hi
+homines erant nigri, truculenti specie, f&oelig;dam in capite comam
+habentes, oculis magnis et genis latis." Rafn, p. 149. The Icelandic
+<i>svartr</i> is more precisely rendered by the identical English <i>swarthy</i>
+than by the Latin <i>niger</i>.<a href="#footnotetag225"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote226" name="footnote226"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 226:</strong> "Mais quãt à noz Sauvages, pour ce qui regarde les ïeux
+ilz ne les ont ni bleuz, ni verds, mais noirs pour la pluspart, ainsi
+que les cheveux; &amp; neantmoins ne sont petits, cõme ceux des anciens
+Scythes, mais d'une grandeur bien agréable." Lescarbot, <i>Histoire de la
+Nouvelle France</i>, Paris, 1612, tom. ii. p. 714.<a href="#footnotetag226"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote227" name="footnote227"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 227:</strong> "Hún fann fyrir sèr mann daudhan, thar var Thorbrandr
+Snorrason, ok stódh hellusteinn í höfdhi honum; sverdhit lá bert í hjá
+honum," i. e. "Illa incidit in mortuum hominem, Thorbrandum Snorrii
+filium, cujus capiti lapis planus impactus stetit; nudus juxta eum
+gladius jacuit." Rafn, p. 154.<a href="#footnotetag227"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote228" name="footnote228"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 228:</strong> These Eskimo skin-boats are described in Rink's <i>Danish
+Greenland</i>, pp. 113, 179.<a href="#footnotetag228"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote229" name="footnote229"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 229:</strong> Cf. Storm, <i>op. cit.</i>
+pp. 366, 367.<a href="#footnotetag229"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote230" name="footnote230"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 230:</strong> "That sá their Karlsefni at Skrælíngar færdhu upp á stöng
+knött stundar mykinn thví nær til at jafna sem saudharvömb, ok helzt
+blán at lit, ok fleygdhu af stönginni upp á landit yfir lidh theirra
+Karlsefnis, ok lèt illilega vidhr, thar sem nidhr kom. Vidh thetta sló
+ótta myklum á Karlsefni ok allt lidh hans, svâ at thá fýsti engis annars
+enn flýja, ok halda undan upp medh ánni, thvíat theim thótti lidh
+Skrælínga drífa at sèr allum megin, ok lètta eigi, fyrr enn their koma
+til hamra nokkurra, ok veittu thar vidhrtöku hardha," i. e. "Viderunt
+Karlsefniani quod Skrælingi longurio sustulerunt globum ingentem, ventri
+ovillo haud absimilem, colore fere cæruleo; hune ex longurio in terram
+super manum Karlsefnianorum contorserunt, qui ut decidit, dirum sonuit.
+Hac re terrore perculsus est Karlsefnius suique omnes, ut nihil aliud
+cuperent quam fugere et gradum referre sursum secundum fluvium:
+credebant enim se ab Skrælingis undique circumveniri. Hinc non gradum
+stitere, priusquam ad rupes quasdam pervenissent, ubi acriter
+resistebant." Rafn, p. 153.<a href="#footnotetag230"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote231" name="footnote231"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 231:</strong> Schoolcraft, <i>Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge</i>,
+Philadelphia, 1860, 6 vols. 4to, vol. i. p. 89; a figure of this weapon
+is given in the same volume, plate xv. fig. 2, from a careful
+description by Chingwauk, an Algonquin chief.<a href="#footnotetag231"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote232" name="footnote232"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 232:</strong> Rafn, p. 160; De Costa, p. 134; Storm,
+p. 330.<a href="#footnotetag232"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote233" name="footnote233"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 233:</strong> Here the narrator seems determined to give us a genuine
+smack of the marvellous, for when the fleeing uniped comes to a place
+where his retreat seems cut off by an arm of the sea, he runs (glides,
+or hops?) across the water without sinking. In Vigfusson's version,
+however, the marvellous is eliminated, and the creature simply runs over
+the stubble and disappears. The incident is evidently an instance where
+the narrative has been "embellished" by introducing a feature from
+ancient classical writers. The "Monocoli," or one-legged people, are
+mentioned by Pliny, <i>Hist. Nat.</i>, vii. 2: "Item hominum genus qui
+Monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, miræ pernicitatis ad saltum."
+Cf. Aulus Gellius, <i>Noctes Atticæ</i>,
+viii. 4.<a href="#footnotetag233"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote234" name="footnote234"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 234:</strong> Between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, June 15, 1608. For
+the description, with its droll details, see <i>Purchas his Pilgrimes</i>,
+iii. 575.<a href="#footnotetag234"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote235" name="footnote235"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 235:</strong> <i>Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc.</i>,
+December, 1887.<a href="#footnotetag235"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote236" name="footnote236"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 236:</strong> I used this argument twenty years ago in qualification of
+the over-zealous solarizing views of Sir G. W. Cox and others. See my
+<i>Myths and Mythmakers</i>, pp. 191-202; and cf. Freeman on "The Mythical
+and Romantic Elements in Early English History," in his <i>Historical
+Essays</i>, i. 1-39.<a href="#footnotetag236"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote237" name="footnote237"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 237:</strong> Curtin, <i>Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland</i>, pp. 12, 204,
+303; Kennedy, <i>Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts</i>,
+pp. 203-311.<a href="#footnotetag237"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote238" name="footnote238"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 238:</strong> Nowhere can you find a more masterly critical account of
+Icelandic literature than in Vigfusson's "Prolegomena" to his edition of
+<i>Sturlunga Saga</i>, Oxford, 1878, vol. i. pp. ix.-ccxiv. There is a good
+but very brief account in Horn's <i>History of the Literature of the
+Scandinavian North</i>, transl. by R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1884, pp.
+50-70.<a href="#footnotetag238"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote239" name="footnote239"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 239:</strong> It is printed in Rafn, pp. 84-187, and in <i>Grönlands
+historiske Mindesmærker</i>, i. 352-443. The most essential part of it may
+now be found, under its own name, in Vigfusson's <i>Icelandic Prose
+Reader</i>, pp. 123-140.<a href="#footnotetag239"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote240" name="footnote240"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 240:</strong> It belonged to a man who lived on Flat Island, in one of
+the Iceland fiords.<a href="#footnotetag240"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote241" name="footnote241"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 241:</strong> It is printed in Rafn, pp. 1-76, under the title "Thættir
+af Eireki Rauda ok Grænlendíngum." For a critical account of these
+versions, see Storm, <i>op. cit.</i> pp. 319-325; I do not, in all respects,
+follow him in his depreciation of the Flateyar-bók
+version.<a href="#footnotetag241"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote242" name="footnote242"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 242:</strong> Lewis's <i>Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman
+History</i>, 2 vols., London, 1855.<a href="#footnotetag242"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote243" name="footnote243"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 243:</strong> And notably in that terrible fire of October, 1728, which
+consumed the University Library at Copenhagen, and broke the heart of
+the noble collector of manuscripts, Arni Magnusson. The great eruption
+of Hecla in 1390 overwhelmed two famous homesteads in the immediate
+neighbourhood. From the local history of these homesteads and their
+inmates, Vigfusson thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be
+there "awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann." <i>Sturlunga
+Saga</i>, p. cliv.<a href="#footnotetag243"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote244" name="footnote244"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 244:</strong> An excellent facsimile of Hauk's handwriting is given in
+Rafn, tab. iii., lower part; tab. iv. and the upper part of tab. iii.
+are in the hands of his two amanuenses. See Vigfusson, <i>op. cit.</i> p.
+clxi.<a href="#footnotetag244"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote245" name="footnote245"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 245:</strong> Vigfusson, <i>Eyrbyggja Saga</i>, pp. 91, 92. Another of
+Karlsefni's comrades, Thorhall Gamlason, is mentioned in <i>Grettis Saga</i>,
+Copenhagen, 1859, pp. 22, 70; he went back to Iceland, settled on a farm
+there, and was known for the rest of his life as "the Vinlander." See
+above, pp. <a href="#page165">165</a>, <a href="#page168">168</a>.<a href="#footnotetag245"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote246" name="footnote246"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 246:</strong> Werlauf, <i>Symbolæ ad Geogr. Medii Ævi</i>, Copenhagen,
+1820.<a href="#footnotetag246"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote247" name="footnote247"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 247:</strong> For a critical estimate of Ari's literary activity and
+the extent of his work, the reader is referred to Möbius, <i>Are's
+Isländerbuch</i>, Leipsic, 1869; Maurer, "Über Ari Thorgilsson und sein
+Isländerbuch," in <i>Germania</i>, xv.; Olsen, <i>Ari Thorgilsson hinn Fródhi</i>,
+Reykjavik, 1889, pp. 214-240.<a href="#footnotetag247"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote248" name="footnote248"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 248:</strong> Their "fundo thar manna vister bæthi austr ok vestr á
+landi ok kæiplabrot ok steinsmíthi, that es af thví má scilja, at thar
+hafdhi thessconar thjóth farith es Vínland hefer bygt, ok Grænlendínger
+calla Skrelínga," i. e. "invenerunt ibi, tam in orientali quam
+occidentali terræ parte, humanæ habitationis vestigia, navicularum
+fragmenta et opera fabrilia ex lapide, ex quo intelligi potest, ibi
+versatum esse nationem quæ Vinlandiam incoluit quamque Grænlandi
+Skrælingos appellant." Rafn, p. 207.<a href="#footnotetag248"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote249" name="footnote249"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 249:</strong> <i>Landnáma-bók</i>, part ii.
+chap. xxii.<a href="#footnotetag249"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote250" name="footnote250"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 250:</strong> Id. part iii.
+chap. x.<a href="#footnotetag250"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote251" name="footnote251"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 251:</strong> <i>Kristni Saga</i>, apud <i>Biskupa Sögur</i>, Copenhagen, 1858,
+vol. i. p. 20.<a href="#footnotetag251"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote252" name="footnote252"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 252:</strong> Indeed, the parallel existence of the Flateyar-bók
+version of Eric the Red's Saga, alongside of the Hauks-bók version, is
+pretty good proof of the existence of a written account older than
+Hauk's time. The discrepancies between the two versions are such as to
+show that Jón Thordharson did not copy from Hauk, but followed some
+other version not now forthcoming. Jón mentions six voyages in
+connection with Vinland: 1. Bjarni Herjulfsson; 2. Leif; 3. Thorvald; 4.
+Thorstein and Gudrid; 5. Thorfinn Karlsefni; 6. Freydis. Hauk, on the
+other hand, mentions only the two principal voyages, those of Leif and
+Thorfinn; ignoring Bjarni, he accredits his adventures to Leif on his
+return voyage from Norway in 999, and he makes Thorvald a comrade of
+Thorfinn, and mixes his adventures with the events of Thorfinn's voyage.
+Dr. Storm considers Hauk's account intrinsically the more probable, and
+thinks that in the Flateyar-bók we have a later amplification of the
+tradition. But while I agree with Dr. Storm as to the general
+superiority of the Hauk version, I am not convinced by his arguments on
+this point. It seems to me likely that the Flateyar-bók here preserves
+more faithfully the details of an older tradition too summarily
+epitomized in the Hauks-bók. As the point in no way affects the general
+conclusions of the present chapter, it is hardly worth arguing here. The
+main thing for us is that the divergencies between the two versions,
+when coupled with their agreement in the most important features,
+indicate that both writers were working upon the basis of an antecedent
+written tradition, like the authors of the first and third synoptic
+gospels. Only here, of course, there are in the divergencies no symptoms
+of what the Tübingen school would call "<i>tendenz</i>," impairing and
+obscuring to an indeterminate extent the general trustworthiness of the
+narratives. On the whole, it is pretty clear that Hauks-bók and
+Flateyar-bók were independent of each other, and collated, each in its
+own way, earlier documents that have probably since
+perished.<a href="#footnotetag252"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote253" name="footnote253"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 253:</strong> It is further interesting as the only undoubted reference
+to Vinland in a mediæval book written beyond the limits of the
+Scandinavian world. There is also, however, a passage in Ordericus
+Vitalis (<i>Historia Ecclesiastica</i>, iv. 29), in which <i>Finland</i> and the
+Orkneys, along with Greenland and Iceland, are loosely described as
+forming part of the dominions of the kings of Norway. This Finland does
+not appear to refer to the country of the Finns, east of the Baltic, and
+it has been supposed that it may have been meant for Vinland. The book
+of Ordericus was written about 1140.<a href="#footnotetag253"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote254" name="footnote254"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 254:</strong> The passage from Adam of Bremen deserves to be quoted in
+full: "Præterea unam adhuc insulam [regionam] recitavit [i. e. Svendus
+rex] a multis in eo repertam oceano, quæ dicitur Vinland, eo quod ibi
+vites sponte nascantur, vinum bonum gerentes [ferentes]; nam et fruges
+ibi non seminatas abundare, non fabulosa opinione, sed certa comperimus
+relatione Danorum. Post quam insulam terra nulla invenitur habitabilis
+in illo oceano, sed omnia quæ ultra sunt glacie intolerabili ac caligine
+immensa plena sunt; cujus rei Marcianus ita meminit: ultra Thyle,
+inquiens, navigare unius diei mare concretum est. Tentavit hoc nuper
+experientissimus Nordmannorum princeps Haroldus, qui latitudinem
+septentrionalis oceani perscrutatus navibus, tandem caligantibus ante
+ora deficientis mundi finibus, immane abyssi baratrum, retroactis
+vestigiis, vix salvus evasit." <i>Descriptio insularum aquilonis</i>, cap.
+38, apud <i>Hist. Ecclesiastica</i>, iv. ed. Lindenbrog, Leyden, 1595. No
+such voyage is known to have been undertaken by Harold of Norway, nor is
+it likely. Adam was probably thinking of an Arctic voyage undertaken by
+one Thorir under the auspices of King Harold; one of the company brought
+back a polar bear and gave it to King Swend, who was much pleased with
+it. See Rafn, 339. "Regionam" and "ferentes" in the above extract are
+variant readings found in some editions.<a href="#footnotetag254"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote255" name="footnote255"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 255:</strong> "Det har imidlertid ikke forhindret de senere forfattere,
+der benyttede Adam, fra at blive mistænksomme, og saalænge Adams
+beretning stod alene, har man i regelen vægret sig for at tro den. Endog
+den norske forfatter, der skrev 'Historia Norvegiæ' og som foruden Adam
+vel ogsaa bar kjendt de hjemlige sagn om Vinland, maa have anseet
+beretningen for fabelagtig og derfor forbigaaet den; han kjendte altfor
+godt Grønland som et nordligt isfyldt Polarland til at ville tro paa, at
+i nærheden fandtes et Vinland." Storm, in <i>Aarbøger for Nordisk
+Oldkyndighed</i>, etc., Copenhagen, 1887, p. 300.<a href="#footnotetag255"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote256" name="footnote256"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 256:</strong> See below, p. <a href="#page386">386</a>.<a href="#footnotetag256"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote257" name="footnote257"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 257:</strong> Burton, <i>Ultima Thule</i>, London, 1875,
+i. 237.<a href="#footnotetag257"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote258" name="footnote258"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 258:</strong> See <i>Pickwick Papers</i>, chap. xi. I am indebted to Mr.
+Tillinghast, of Harvard University Library, for calling my attention to
+a letter from Rev. John Lathrop, of Boston, to Hon. John Davis, August
+10, 1809, containing George Washington's opinion of the Dighton
+inscription. When President Washington visited Cambridge in the fall of
+1789, he was shown about the college buildings by the president and
+fellows of the university. While in the museum he was observed to "fix
+his eye" upon a full-size copy of the Dighton inscription made by the
+librarian, James Winthrop. Dr. Lathrop, who happened to be standing near
+Washington, "ventured to give the opinion which several learned men had
+entertained with respect to the origin of the inscription." Inasmuch as
+some of the characters were thought to resemble "oriental" characters,
+and inasmuch as the ancient Ph&oelig;nicians had sailed outside of the
+Pillars of Hercules, it was "conjectured" that some Ph&oelig;nician vessels
+had sailed into Narragansett bay and up the Taunton river. "While
+detained by winds, or other causes now unknown, the people, it has been
+conjectured, made the inscription, now to be seen on the face of the
+rock, and which we may suppose to be a record of their fortunes or of
+their fate."</p>
+
+<p>"After I had given the above account, the President smiled and said he
+believed the learned gentlemen whom I had mentioned were mistaken; and
+added that in the younger part of his life his business called him to be
+very much in the wilderness of Virginia, which gave him an opportunity
+to become acquainted with many of the customs and practices of the
+Indians. The Indians, he said, had a way of writing and recording their
+transactions, either in war or hunting. When they wished to make any
+such record, or leave an account of their exploits to any who might come
+after them, they scraped off the outer bark of a tree, and with a
+vegetable ink, or a little paint which they carried with them, on the
+smooth surface they wrote in a way that was generally understood by the
+people of their respective tribes. As he had so often examined the rude
+way of writing practised by the Indians of Virginia, and observed many
+of the characters on the inscription then before him so nearly resembled
+the characters used by the Indians, he had no doubt the inscription was
+made long ago by some natives of America." <i>Proceedings of Massachusetts
+Historical Society</i>, vol. x. p. 115. This pleasant anecdote shows in a
+new light Washington's accuracy of observation and unfailing
+common-sense. Such inscriptions have been found by the thousand,
+scattered over all parts of the United States; for a learned study of
+them see Garrick Mallery, "Pictographs of the North American Indians,"
+<i>Reports of Bureau of Ethnology</i>, iv. 13-256. "The voluminous discussion
+upon the Dighton rock inscription," says Colonel Mallery, "renders it
+impossible wholly to neglect it.... It is merely a type of Algonquin
+rock-carving, not so interesting as many others.... It is of purely
+Indian origin, and is executed in the peculiar symbolic character of the
+Kekeewin," p. 20. The characters observed by Washington in the Virginia
+forests would very probably have been of the same type. Judge Davis, to
+whom Dr. Lathrop's letter was addressed, published in 1809 a paper
+maintaining the Indian origin of the Dighton inscription.</p>
+
+<p>A popular error, once started on its career, is as hard to kill as a
+cat. Otherwise it would be surprising to find, in so meritorious a book
+as Oscar Peschel's <i>Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen</i>,
+Stuttgart, 1877, p. 82, an unsuspecting reliance upon Rafn's ridiculous
+interpretation of this Algonquin pictograph. In an American writer as
+well equipped as Peschel, this particular kind of blunder would of
+course be impossible; and one is reminded of Humboldt's remark, "Il est
+des recherches qui ne peuvent s'exécuter que près des sources mêmes."
+<i>Examen critique</i>, etc., tom. ii. p. 102.</p>
+
+<p>In old times, I may add, such vagaries were usually saddled upon the
+Ph&oelig;nicians, until since Rafn's time the Northmen have taken their
+place as the pack-horses for all sorts of antiquarian
+"conjecture."<a href="#footnotetag258"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote259" name="footnote259"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 259:</strong> See Palfrey's <i>History of New England</i>, vol. i. pp.
+57-59; Mason's <i>Reminiscences of Newport</i>, pp. 392-407. Laing
+(<i>Heimskringla</i>, pp. 182-185) thinks the Yankees must have intended to
+fool Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of Antiquaries at Copenhagen;
+"Those sly rogues of Americans," says he, "dearly love a quiet hoax;"
+and he can almost hear them chuckling over their joke in their club-room
+at Newport. I am afraid these Yankees were less rogues and more fools
+than Mr. Laing makes out.<a href="#footnotetag259"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote260" name="footnote260"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 260:</strong> Laing, <i>Heimskringla</i>, vol. i.
+p. 181.<a href="#footnotetag260"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote261" name="footnote261"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 261:</strong> "Their höfdhu medh sèr allskonar fènadh, thvíat their
+ætlödhu at byggja landit, ef their mætti that," i. e., "illi omne
+pecudum genus secum habuerunt, nam terram, si liceret, coloniis
+frequentare cogitarunt." Rafn,
+p. 57.<a href="#footnotetag261"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote262" name="footnote262"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 262:</strong> Major, <i>Prince Henry the Navigator</i>,
+p. 241.<a href="#footnotetag262"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote263" name="footnote263"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 263:</strong> Irving's <i>Life of Columbus</i>, New York, 1828, vol. i. p.
+293.<a href="#footnotetag263"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote264" name="footnote264"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 264:</strong> <i>Histoire chronologique de la Nouvelle France</i>, pp. 40,
+58; this work, written in 1689 by the Recollet friar Sixte le Tac, has
+at length been published (Paris, 1888) with notes and other original
+documents by Eugène Réveillaud. See, also, Læt, <i>Novus Orbis</i>,
+39.<a href="#footnotetag264"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote265" name="footnote265"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 265:</strong> John Smith, <i>Generall Historie</i>,
+247.<a href="#footnotetag265"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote266" name="footnote266"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 266:</strong> Darwin, <i>Animals and Plants under Domestication</i>, London,
+1868, vol. i pp. 27, 77, 84.<a href="#footnotetag266"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote267" name="footnote267"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 267:</strong> The views of Professor Horsford as to the geographical
+situation of Vinland and its supposed colonization by Northmen are set
+forth in his four monographs, <i>Discovery of America by Northmen&mdash;address
+at the unveiling of the statue of Leif Eriksen</i>, etc., Boston, 1888;
+<i>The Problem of the Northmen</i>, Cambridge, 1889; <i>The Discovery of the
+Ancient City of Norumbega</i>, Boston, 1890; <i>The Defences of Norumbega</i>,
+Boston, 1891. Among Professor Horsford's conclusions the two principal
+are: 1. that the "river flowing through a lake into the sea" (Rafn, p.
+147) is Charles river, and that Leif's booths were erected near the site
+of the present Cambridge hospital; 2. that "Norumbega"&mdash;a word loosely
+applied by some early explorers to some region or regions somewhere
+between the New Jersey coast and the Bay of Fundy&mdash;was the Indian
+utterance of "Norbega" or "Norway;" and that certain stone walls and
+dams at and near Watertown are vestiges of an ancient "city of
+Norumbega," which was founded and peopled by Northmen and carried on a
+more or less extensive trade with Europe for more than three centuries.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the first of these conclusions, it is perhaps as likely
+that Leif's booths were within the present limits of Cambridge as in any
+of the numerous places which different writers have confidently assigned
+for them, all the way from Point Judith to Cape Breton. A judicious
+scholar will object not so much to the conclusion as to the character of
+the arguments by which it is reached. Too much weight is attached to
+hypothetical etymologies.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the Norse colony alleged to have flourished for three
+centuries, it is pertinent to ask, what became of its cattle and horses?
+Why do we find no vestiges of the burial-places of these Europeans? or
+of iron tools and weapons of mediæval workmanship? Why is there no
+documentary mention, in Scandinavia or elsewhere in Europe, of this
+transatlantic trade? etc., etc. Until such points as these are disposed
+of, any further consideration of the hypothesis may properly be
+postponed.<a href="#footnotetag267"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote268" name="footnote268"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 268:</strong> Laing, <i>Heimskringla</i>, i. 141. A description of the ruins
+may be found in two papers in <i>Meddelelser om Gronland</i>, Copenhagen,
+1883 and 1889.<a href="#footnotetag268"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote269" name="footnote269"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 269:</strong> Sometimes called Eric Uppsi; he is mentioned in the
+Landnáma-bók as a native of Iceland.<a href="#footnotetag269"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote270" name="footnote270"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 270:</strong> Storm, <i>Islandske Annaler</i>, Christiania, 1888; Reeves,
+<i>The Finding of Wineland the Good</i>, London, 1890,
+pp. 79-81.<a href="#footnotetag270"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote271" name="footnote271"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 271:</strong> Storm, in <i>Aarbøger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed</i>, 1887, p.
+319.<a href="#footnotetag271"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote272" name="footnote272"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 272:</strong> Reeves, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 83. In another vellum it is
+mentioned that in 1347 "a ship came from Greenland, which had sailed to
+Markland, and there were eighteen men on board." As Mr. Reeves well
+observes: "The nature of the information indicates that the knowledge of
+the discovery had not altogether faded from the memories of the
+Icelanders settled in Greenland. It seems further to lend a measure of
+plausibility to a theory that people from the Greenland colony may from
+time to time have visited the coast to the southwest of their home for
+supplies of wood, or for some kindred purpose. The visitors in this case
+had evidently intended to return directly from Markland to Greenland,
+and had they not been driven out of their course to Iceland, the
+probability is that this voyage would never have found mention in
+Icelandic chronicles, and all knowledge of it must have vanished as
+completely as did the colony to which the Markland visitors
+belonged."<a href="#footnotetag272"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote273" name="footnote273"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 273:</strong> Storm, <i>Monumenta historica Norvegiæ</i>,
+p. 77.<a href="#footnotetag273"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote274" name="footnote274"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 274:</strong> Laing, <i>Heimskringla</i>, i. 147. It has been supposed that
+the Black Death, by which all Europe was ravaged in the middle part of
+the fourteenth century, may have crossed to Greenland, and fatally
+weakened the colony there; but Vigfusson says that the Black Death never
+touched Iceland (<i>Sturlunga Saga</i>, vol. i. p. cxxix.), so that it is not
+so likely to have reached Greenland.<a href="#footnotetag274"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote275" name="footnote275"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 275:</strong> Laing, <i>op. cit.</i>
+i. 142.<a href="#footnotetag275"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote276" name="footnote276"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 276:</strong> Yet this learned historian was quite correct in his own
+interpretation of Zeno's story, for in the same place he says, "If real,
+his Frisland is the Ferro islands, and his Zichmni is Sinclair."
+Pinkerton's <i>History of Scotland</i>, London, 1797,
+vol. i. p. 261.<a href="#footnotetag276"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote277" name="footnote277"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 277:</strong> Major, <i>The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, Nicolò and
+Antonio Zeno, to the Northern Seas in the XIVth Century</i>, London, 1873
+(Hakluyt Society); cf. Nordenskjöld, <i>Om bröderna Zenos resor och de
+äldsta kartor öfner Norden</i>, Stockholm, 1883.<a href="#footnotetag277"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote278" name="footnote278"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 278:</strong> "Or M. Nicolò il Caualiere ... entrò in grandissimo
+desiderio di ueder il mondo, e peregrinare, e farsi capace di varij
+costumi e di lingue de gli huomini, acciò che con le occasioni poi
+potesse meglio far seruigio alla sua patria ed à se acquistar fama e
+onore." The narrative gives 1380 as the date of the voyage, but Mr.
+Major has shown that it must have been a mistake for 1390 (<i>op. cit.</i>
+xlii.-xlviii.).<a href="#footnotetag278"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote279" name="footnote279"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 279:</strong> It appears on the Zeno map as "Trin [p-]montor,"
+about the site of Cape Farewell; but how could six days' sail W. from
+Kerry, followed by four days' sail N. E., reach any such point? and how
+does this short outward sail consist with the return voyage, twenty days
+E. and eight days S. E., to the Færoes? The place is also said to have
+had "a fertile soil" and "good rivers," a description in nowise
+answering to Greenland.<a href="#footnotetag279"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote280" name="footnote280"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 280:</strong> "Però non ni dirò altro in questa lettera, sperando tosto
+di essere con uoi, e di sodisfarui di molte altre cose con la uiua
+uoce." Major, p. 34.<a href="#footnotetag280"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote281" name="footnote281"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 281:</strong> "All these letters were written by Messire Antonio to
+Messire Carlo, his brother; and I am grieved that the book and many
+other writings on these subjects have, I don't know how, come sadly to
+ruin; for, being but a child when they fell into my hands, I, not
+knowing what they were, tore them in pieces, as children will do, and
+sent them all to ruin: a circumstance which I cannot now recall without
+the greatest sorrow. Nevertheless, in order that such an important
+memorial should not be lost, I have put the whole in order, as well as I
+could, in the above narrative." Major, p. 35.<a href="#footnotetag281"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote282" name="footnote282"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 282:</strong> Nicolò Zeno, <i>Dello scoprimento dell' isole Frislanda,
+Eslanda, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, &amp; Icaria, fatto per due fratelli
+Zeni, M. Nicolò it Caualiere, &amp; M. Antonio. Libro Vno, col disegno di
+dette Isole.</i> Venice, 1558. Mr. Major's book contains the entire text,
+with an English translation.<a href="#footnotetag282"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote283" name="footnote283"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 283:</strong> The map is taken from Winsor's <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>,
+i. 127, where it is reduced from Nordenskjöld's <i>Studien ok
+Forskningar</i>. A better because larger copy may be found in Major's
+<i>Voyages of the Venetian Brothers</i>. The original map measures 12 x
+15-<sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub> inches. In the legend at the top the date is given as <span class="smcap">M CCC LXXX</span>.
+but evidently one <span class="smcap">X</span> has been omitted, for it should be 1390, and is
+correctly so given by Marco Barbaro, in his <i>Genealogie dei nobili
+Veneti</i>; of Antonio Zeno he says, "Scrisse con il fratello Nicolò Kav.
+li viaggi dell' Isole sotto il polo artico, e di quei scoprimente del
+1390, e che per ordine di Zieno, re di Frislanda, si portò nel
+continente d'Estotilanda nell' America settentrionale e che si fermò 14
+anni in Frislanda, cioè 4 con suo fratello Nicolò e 10 solo." (This
+valuable work has never been published. The original MS., in Barbaro's
+own handwriting, is preserved in the Biblioteca di San Marco at Venice.
+There is a seventeenth century copy of it among the Egerton MSS. in the
+British Museum.)&mdash;Nicolò did not leave Italy until after December 14,
+1388 (Muratori, <i>Rerum Italicarum Scriptores</i>, tom. xxii. p. 779). The
+map can hardly have been made before Antonio's voyage, about 1400. The
+places on the map are wildly out of position, as was common enough in
+old maps. Greenland is attached to Norway according to the general
+belief in the Middle Ages. In his confusion between the names "Estland"
+and "Islanda," young Nicolò has tried to reproduce the Shetland group,
+or something like it, and attach it to Iceland. "Icaria," probably
+Kerry, in Ireland, has been made into an island and carried far out into
+the Atlantic. The queerest of young Nicolò's mistakes was in placing the
+monastery of St. Olaus ("St. Thomas"). He should have placed it on the
+southwest coast of Greenland, near his "Af [p-]montor;"
+but he has got it on the extreme northeast, just about
+where Greenland is joined to Europe.<a href="#footnotetag283"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote284" name="footnote284"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 284:</strong> "Combien de coquilles typographiques ou de lectures
+défectueuses ont créé de noms boiteux, qu'il est ensuite bien difficile,
+quelquefois impossible de redresser! L'histoire et la géographie en sont
+pleines." Avezac, <i>Martin Waltzemüller</i>, p. 9.</p>
+
+<p>It is interesting to see how thoroughly words can be disguised by an
+unfamiliar phonetic spelling. I have seen people hopelessly puzzled by
+the following bill, supposed to have been made out by an illiterate
+stable-keeper somewhere in England:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table  border="0" cellpadding="1" summary="Bill.">
+<colgroup>
+    <col width="50%">
+    <col width="15%">
+    <col width="15%">
+</colgroup>
+<tr>
+<td>Osafada</td>
+<td class="right">7s</td>
+<td class="right">6d</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Takinonimome</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="right">4d</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td colspan="2" class="right">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="right">7s</td>
+<td class="right">10d</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Some years ago Professor Huxley told me of a letter from France which
+came to the London post-office thus addressed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="left20">Sromfrédévi,<br>
+<span class="add2em">Piqué du lait,</span><br>
+<span class="add4em">Londres,</span><br>
+<span class="add6em">Angleterre.</span></p>
+
+<p>This letter, after exciting at first helpless bewilderment and then busy
+speculation, was at length delivered to the right person, <i>Sir Humphry
+Davy</i>, in his rooms at the Royal Institution on Albemarle street, just
+off from <i>Piccadilly</i>!<a href="#footnotetag284"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote285" name="footnote285"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 285:</strong> Columbus, on his journey to Iceland in 1477, also heard
+the name <i>Færoislander</i> as <i>Frislanda</i>, and so wrote it in the letter
+preserved for us in his biography by his son Ferdinand, hereafter to be
+especially noticed. See Major's remarks on this, <i>op. cit.</i>
+p. xix.<a href="#footnotetag285"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote286" name="footnote286"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 286:</strong> Perhaps in the old worn-out map the archipelago may have
+been blurred so as to be mistaken for one island. This would aid in
+misleading young Nicolò.<a href="#footnotetag286"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote287" name="footnote287"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 287:</strong> See the elaborate paper by Admiral Zahrtmann, in <i>Nordisk
+Tidsskrift for Oldkyndighed</i>, Copenhagen, 1834, vol. i., and the English
+translation of it in <i>Journal of Royal Geographical Society</i>, London,
+1836, vol. v. All that human ingenuity is ever likely to devise against
+the honesty of Zeno's narrative is presented in this erudite essay,
+which has been so completely demolished under Mr. Major's heavy strokes
+that there is not enough of it left to pick up. As to this part of the
+question, we may now safely cry, "finis, laus Deo!"<a href="#footnotetag287"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote288" name="footnote288"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 288:</strong> It was translated into Dutch by the famous Arctic
+explorer, William Barentz, whose voyages are so graphically described in
+Motley's <i>United Netherlands</i>, vol. iii. pp. 552-576. An English
+translation was made for Henry Hudson. A very old Danish version may be
+found in Rafn's <i>Antiquitates Americanæ</i>, pp. 300-318; Danish, Latin,
+and English versions in Major's <i>Voyages of the Venetian Brothers</i>,
+etc., pp. 39-54; and an English version in De Costa's <i>Sailing
+Directions of Henry Hudson</i>, Albany, 1869, pp. 61-96.<a href="#footnotetag288"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote289" name="footnote289"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 289:</strong> So he tells us himself: "Quo cum 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." <i>Descriptio Gr&oelig;nlandiæ</i>, apud Major,
+p. 53. The glacial men had done their work of slaughter and
+vanished.<a href="#footnotetag289"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote290" name="footnote290"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 290:</strong> "Ma la maggior parte sono delle Islande." Mr. Major is
+clearly wrong in translating it "from the Shetland Isles." The younger
+Nicolò 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.<a href="#footnotetag290"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote291" name="footnote291"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 291:</strong> 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 <i>Kosmos</i>,
+ii. 130.<a href="#footnotetag291"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote292" name="footnote292"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 292:</strong> Major, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 16. The narrative goes on to give a
+description of the skin-boats of the Eskimo fishermen.<a href="#footnotetag292"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote293" name="footnote293"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 293:</strong> Daubeny, <i>Description of Active and Extinct Volcanoes</i>,
+London, 1848, pp. 307; cf. Judd, <i>Volcanoes</i>, London, 1881,
+p. 234.<a href="#footnotetag293"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote294" name="footnote294"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 294:</strong> "Ab Snefelsneso Islandiæ, quâ brevissimus in Gronlandiam
+trajectus est, duorum dierum et duarum noctium spatio navigandum est
+recto cursu versus occidentem; ibique Gunnbj&oelig;rnis scopulos invenies,
+inter Gronlandiam et Islandiam medio situ interjacentes. Hic cursus
+antiquitûs frequentabatur, nunc vero glacies ex recessu oceani
+euroaquilonari delata scopulos ante memoratos tam prope attigit, ut nemo
+sine vitæ discrimine antiquum cursum tenere possit, quemadmodum infra
+dicetur." <i>Descriptio Gr&oelig;nlandiæ</i>, apud Major,
+<i>op. cit.</i> p. 40.<a href="#footnotetag294"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote295" name="footnote295"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 295:</strong> <i>Op. cit.</i> p. lxxvi. See below, vol. ii. p. 115,
+note B.<a href="#footnotetag295"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote296" name="footnote296"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 296:</strong> Judd, <i>op. cit.</i>
+pp. 217-220.<a href="#footnotetag296"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote297" name="footnote297"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 297:</strong> 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.<a href="#footnotetag297"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote298" name="footnote298"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 298:</strong> They were, therefore, not
+Northmen.<a href="#footnotetag298"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote299" name="footnote299"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 299:</strong> 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?<a href="#footnotetag299"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote300" name="footnote300"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 300:</strong> With all possible latitude of interpretation, this could
+not be made to apply to any part of America north of
+Mexico.<a href="#footnotetag300"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote301" name="footnote301"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 301:</strong> The magnetic needle had been used by the mariners of
+western and northern Europe since the end of the thirteenth
+century.<a href="#footnotetag301"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote302" name="footnote302"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 302:</strong> "Fanno nauigli e nauigano, ma non hanno la calamìta ne
+intendeno col bossolo la tramontana. Per ilche questi pescatori furono
+in gran pregio, si che il re li spedì con dodici nauigli uerso ostro nel
+paese che essi chiamano Drogio." Major, <i>op. cit.</i>
+p. 21.<a href="#footnotetag302"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote303" name="footnote303"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 303:</strong> Major, <i>op. cit.</i> pp.
+20-22.<a href="#footnotetag303"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote304" name="footnote304"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 304:</strong> Ingram's narrative was first published in Hakluyt's folio
+of 1589, pp. 557-562, but in his larger work, <i>Principal Navigations</i>,
+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." <i>Purchas his
+Pilgrimes</i>, 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<sup>ch</sup> he reported
+vnto S<sup>r</sup> Frauncys Walsinghm&#771;, Knight, and diuers others of good
+judgment and creditt, in August and Septembar, A<sup>o</sup> Dñi, 1582," is in
+the British Museum, Sloane MS. No. 1447, fol. 1-18; it was copied and
+privately printed in Plowden Weston's <i>Documents connected with the
+History of South Carolina</i>, 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 <i>Discourse concerning
+Westerne Planting</i>, Cambridge, 1877, p. 229 (<i>Collections of Maine Hist.
+Soc.</i>, 2d series, vol. ii.); see, also, Winsor, <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>,
+iii. 186.<a href="#footnotetag304"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote305" name="footnote305"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 305:</strong> See below, vol. ii.
+p. 501.<a href="#footnotetag305"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote306" name="footnote306"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 306:</strong> In the first reception of the Spaniards in Peru, we shall
+see a similar idea at work, vol. ii. pp. 398,
+407.<a href="#footnotetag306"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote307" name="footnote307"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 307:</strong> 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, <i>Historia de las Indias</i>, Saragossa, 1553, cap.
+xxxvii.; Wytfliet, <i>Descriptionis Ptolemaicæ Augmentum</i>, Douay, 1603, p.
+102; Pontanus, <i>Rerum Danicarum Historia</i>, Amsterdam, 1631, p. 763. The
+wise Humboldt mentions the report without expressing an opinion, <i>Examen
+critique</i>, tom. ii. p. 153.<a href="#footnotetag307"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote308" name="footnote308"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 308:</strong> Practically, but not entirely, for we have seen Markland
+mentioned in the "Elder Skálholt Annals," about 1362. See above, p.
+<a href="#page223">223</a>.<a href="#footnotetag308"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote309" name="footnote309"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 309:</strong> The "Truce of God" (<i>Treuga Dei</i>) was introduced by the
+clergy in Guienne about 1032; it was adopted in Spain before 1050, and
+in England by 1080. See Datt, <i>De pace imperii publica</i>, lib. i. cap.
+ii. A cessation of all violent quarrels was enjoined, under
+ecclesiastical penalties, during church festivals, and from every
+Wednesday evening until the following Monday morning. This left only
+about eighty days in the year available for shooting and stabbing one's
+neighbours. The truce seems to have accomplished much good, though it
+was very imperfectly observed.<a href="#footnotetag309"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote310" name="footnote310"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 310:</strong> Diodorus Siculus,
+i. 70.<a href="#footnotetag310"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote311" name="footnote311"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 311:</strong> Strabo, xi. 7,
+§ 3.<a href="#footnotetag311"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote312" name="footnote312"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 312:</strong> Robertson, <i>Historical Disquisition concerning the
+Knowledge which the Ancients had of India</i>, Dublin, 1791, p. 55. I never
+have occasion to consult Dr. Robertson without being impressed anew with
+his scientific habit of thought and the solidity of his scholarship; and
+in none of his works are these qualities better illustrated than in this
+noble essay.<a href="#footnotetag312"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote313" name="footnote313"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 313:</strong> The Polos sailed back from China to the Persian gulf in
+1292-94; see below, p. <a href="#page282">282</a>.<a href="#footnotetag313"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote314" name="footnote314"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 314:</strong> The name "Seres" appears on the map of Pomponius Mela
+(cir. <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 50), while "Sinæ" does not. See below, p. <a href="#page304">304</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Jam Tartessiaco quos solverat æquore Titan<br>
+In noctem diffusus equos, jungebat Eoïs<br>
+Littoribus, primique novo Phaethonte retecti<br>
+Seres lanigeris repetebant vellera lucis.<br>
+<span class="left30">Silius Italicus, lib. vi. <i>ad init.</i></span>
+<a href="#footnotetag314"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote315" name="footnote315"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 315:</strong> For this whole subject see Colonel Sir Henry Yule's
+<i>Cathay and the Way Thither</i>, London, 1866, 2 vols.,&mdash;a work of profound
+learning and more delightful than a novel.<a href="#footnotetag315"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote316" name="footnote316"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 316:</strong> Its title is
+&#935;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#953;&#945;&#957;&#8182;&#957;
+&#946;&#8055;&#946;&#955;&#959;&#962;,
+&#7953;&#961;&#956;&#951;&#957;&#949;&#8055;&#945; &#949;&#7984;&#962;
+&#964;&#8052;&#957;
+&#927;&#954;&#964;&#8049;&#964;&#949;&#965;&#967;&#959;&#957;,
+i. e. against Ptolemy's Geography in eight books. The name Cosmas
+Indicopleustes seems merely to mean "the cosmographer who has sailed to
+India." He begins his book in a tone of extreme and somewhat unsavory
+humility:
+&#7944;&#957;&#959;&#8055;&#947;&#969; &#964;&#8048;
+&#956;&#959;&#947;&#953;&#955;&#8049;&#955;&#945; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#946;&#961;&#945;&#948;&#8059;&#947;&#955;&#969;&#963;&#963;&#945;
+&#967;&#949;&#8055;&#955;&#951; &#8001;
+&#7937;&#956;&#945;&#961;&#964;&#969;&#955;&#8056;&#962;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#964;&#8049;&#955;&#945;&#962;
+&#7952;&#947;&#8061;&mdash;"I, the sinner and wretch, open my stammering,
+stuttering lips," etc.&mdash;The book has been the occasion of some
+injudicious excitement within the last half century. Cosmas gave a
+description of some comparatively recent inscriptions on the peninsula
+of Sinai, and because he could not find anybody able to read them, he
+inferred that they must be records of the Israelites on their passage
+through the desert. (Compare the Dighton rock, above, p. <a href="#page214">214</a>.) Whether
+in the sixth century of grace or in the nineteenth, your unregenerate
+and unchastened antiquary snaps at conclusions as a drowsy dog does at
+flies. Some years ago an English clergyman, Charles Forster, started up
+the nonsense again, and argued that these inscriptions might afford a
+clue to man's primeval speech! Cf. Bunsen, <i>Christianity and Mankind</i>,
+vol. iii. p. 231; Müller and Donaldson, <i>History of Greek Literature</i>,
+vol. iii. p. 353; Bury, <i>History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius
+to Irene</i>, vol. ii. p. 177.<a href="#footnotetag316"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote317" name="footnote317"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 317:</strong> Such views have their advocates even now. There still
+lives, I believe, in England, a certain John Hampden, who with dauntless
+breast maintains that the earth is a circular plane with centre at the
+north pole and a circumference of nearly 30,000 miles where poor
+misguided astronomers suppose the south pole to be. The sun moves across
+the sky at a distance of about 800 miles. From the boundless abyss
+beyond the southern circumference, with its barrier of icy mountains,
+came the waters which drowned the antediluvian world; for, as this
+author quite reasonably observes, "on a globular earth such a deluge
+would have been physically Impossible." Hampden's title is somewhat like
+that of Cosmas,&mdash;<i>The New Manual of Biblical Cosmography</i>, London, 1877;
+and he began in 1876 to publish a periodical called <i>The Truth-Seeker's
+Oracle and Scriptural Science Review</i>. Similar views have been set forth
+by one Samuel Rowbotham, under the pseudonym of "Parallax," <i>Zetetic
+Astronomy. Earth not a Globe. An experimental inquiry into the true
+figure of the earth, proving it a plane without orbital or axial
+motion</i>, etc., London, 1873; and by a William Carpenter, <i>One Hundred
+Proofs that the Earth is not a Globe</i>, Baltimore, 1885. There is a very
+considerable quantity of such literature afloat, the product of a kind
+of mental aberration that thrives upon paradox. When I was
+superintendent of the catalogue of Harvard University library, I made
+the class "Eccentric Literature" under which to group such books,&mdash;the
+lucubrations of circle-squarers, angle-trisectors, inventors of
+perpetual motion, devisers of recipes for living forever without dying,
+crazy interpreters of Daniel and the Apocalypse, upsetters of the
+undulatory theory of light, the Bacon-Shakespeare lunatics, etc.; a
+dismal procession of long-eared bipeds, with very raucous bray. The late
+Professor De Morgan devoted a bulky and instructive volume to an account
+of such people and their crotchets. See his <i>Budget of Paradoxes</i>,
+London, 1872.<a href="#footnotetag317"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote318" name="footnote318"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 318:</strong> Cosmas, ii. 138. Further mention of China was made early
+in the seventh century by Theophylactus Samocatta, vii. 7. See Yule's
+<i>Cathay</i>, vol. i. pp. xlix., clxviii.<a href="#footnotetag318"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote319" name="footnote319"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 319:</strong> Robertson, <i>Historical Disquisition</i>, p. 93; Pears, <i>The
+Fall of Constantinople</i>, p. 177,&mdash;a book of great merit.<a href="#footnotetag319"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote320" name="footnote320"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 320:</strong> "It is difficult for the modern traveller who ventures
+into the heart of Asia Minor, and finds nothing but rude Kurds and
+Turkish peasants living among mountains and wild pastures, not connected
+even by ordinary roads, to imagine the splendour and rich cultivation of
+this vast country, with its brilliant cities and its teeming
+population." Mahaffy, <i>The Greek World under Roman Sway</i>, London, 1890,
+p. 229.<a href="#footnotetag320"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote321" name="footnote321"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 321:</strong> The general effects of the Crusades are discussed, with
+much learning and sagacity, by Choiseul-Daillecourt, <i>De l'Influence des
+Croisades sur l'état des peuples de l'Europe</i>,
+Paris, 1809.<a href="#footnotetag321"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote322" name="footnote322"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 322:</strong> They were taken from Chios in the fourth century by the
+emperor Theodosius, and placed in the hippodrome at Constantinople,
+whence they were taken by the Venetians in 1204. The opinion that "the
+results of the Fourth Crusade upon European civilization were altogether
+disastrous" is ably set forth by Mr. Pears, <i>The Fall of
+Constantinople</i>, London, 1885, and would be difficult to refute.
+Voltaire might well say in this case, "Ainsi le seul fruit des chrétiens
+dans leurs barbares croisades fut d'exterminer d'autres chrétiens. Ces
+croisés, qui ruinaient l'empire auraient pu, bien plus aisément que tous
+leurs prédécesseurs, chasser les Turcs de l'Asie." <i>Essai sur les
+M&oelig;urs</i>, tom. ii. p. 158. Voltaire's general view of the Crusades is,
+however, very superficial.<a href="#footnotetag322"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote323" name="footnote323"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 323:</strong> Yule's <i>Marco Polo</i>,
+vol. i. p. lxxi.<a href="#footnotetag323"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote324" name="footnote324"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 324:</strong> A papal dispensation was necessary before a commercial
+treaty could be made with Mahometans. See Leibnitz, <i>Codex Jur. Gent.
+Diplomat.</i>, i. 489.<a href="#footnotetag324"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote325" name="footnote325"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 325:</strong> Yule's <i>Cathay</i>, vol. i. p. cxvi.; <i>Marco Polo</i>, vol. i.
+p. xlii.<a href="#footnotetag325"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote326" name="footnote326"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 326:</strong> Yule's <i>Marco Polo</i>, vol. i. p. cxxx.; cf. Humboldt,
+<i>Examen critique</i>, tom. i. p. 71. The complete original texts of the
+reports of both monks, with learned notes, may be found in the <i>Recueil
+de Voyages et de Mémoires, publié par la Société de Géographie</i>, Paris,
+1839, tom. iv., viz.: <i>Johannis de Plano Carpini Historia Mongolorum
+quos nos Tartaros appellamus</i>, ed. M. d'Avezac; <i>Itinerarium Willelmi de
+Rubruk</i>, ed. F. Michel et T. Wright.<a href="#footnotetag326"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote327" name="footnote327"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 327:</strong> Yule's <i>Cathay</i>, vol. i. p. xxxix.; Ptolemy, i. 17. Cf.
+Bunbury's <i>History of Ancient Geography</i>, London, 1883, vol. ii. p.
+606.<a href="#footnotetag327"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote328" name="footnote328"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 328:</strong> See my <i>Beginnings of New England</i>, chap. i. How richly
+suggestive to an American is the contemporaneity of Rubruquis and Earl
+Simon of Leicester!<a href="#footnotetag328"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote329" name="footnote329"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 329:</strong> Roger Bacon, <i>Opus Majus</i>, ed. Jebb, London, 1733, p.
+183.<a href="#footnotetag329"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote330" name="footnote330"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 330:</strong> Pauthier's <i>Marco Polo</i>, p. 361; Yule's <i>Marco Polo</i>, p.
+li.<a href="#footnotetag330"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote331" name="footnote331"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 331:</strong> Ramusio, <i>apud</i> Yule's <i>Marco Polo</i>,
+vol. i. p. xxxvii.<a href="#footnotetag331"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote332" name="footnote332"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 332:</strong> Yule's <i>Marco Polo</i>, vol. i.
+p. cxxxi.<a href="#footnotetag332"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote333" name="footnote333"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 333:</strong></p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+"But for to speake of riches and of stones,<br>
+And men and horse, I trow the large wones<br>
+Of Prestir John, ne all his tresorie,<br>
+Might not unneth have boght the tenth partie."<br>
+<span class="left50">Chaucer, <i>The Flower and the Leaf</i>, 200.</span></p>
+
+<p>The fabulous kingdom of Prester John is ably treated in Yule's <i>Cathay</i>,
+vol. i. pp. 174-182; <i>Marco Polo</i>, vol. i. p. 204-216. Colonel Yule
+suspects that its prototype may have been the semi-Christian kingdom of
+Abyssinia. This is very likely. As for its range, shifted hither and
+thither as it was, all the way from the upper Nile to the Thian-Shan
+mountains, we can easily understand this if we remember how an ignorant
+mind conceives all points distant from its own position as near to one
+another; i. e. if you are about to start from New York for Arizona, your
+housemaid will perhaps ask you to deliver a message to her brother in
+Manitoba. Nowhere more than in the history of geography do we need to
+keep before us, at every step, the limitations of the untutored mind and
+its feebleness in grasping the space-relations of remote
+regions.<a href="#footnotetag333"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote334" name="footnote334"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 334:</strong> These Arimaspians afford an interesting example of the
+uncritical statements of travellers at an early time, as well as of
+their tenacious vitality. The first mention of these mythical people
+seems to have been made by Greek travellers in Scythia as early as the
+seventh century before Christ; and they furnished Aristeas of
+Proconnesus, somewhat later, with the theme of his poem "Arimaspeia,"
+which has perished, all except six verses quoted by Longinus. See Mure's
+<i>Literature of Antient Greece</i>, vol. iv. p. 68. Thence the notion of the
+Arimaspians seems to have passed to Herodotus (iii. 116; iv. 27) and to
+Æschylus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+&#8000;&#958;&#965;&#963;&#964;&#8057;&#956;&#959;&#965;&#962;
+&#947;&#8048;&#961;
+&#918;&#951;&#957;&#8056;&#962;
+&#7936;&#954;&#961;&#945;&#947;&#949;&#8150;&#962;
+&#954;&#8059;&#957;&#945;&#962;<br>
+
+&#947;&#961;&#8166;&#960;&#945;&#962;
+&#966;&#8059;&#955;&#945;&#958;&#945;&#953;,
+&#964;&#8057;&#957;
+&#964;&#949;
+&#956;&#959;&#965;&#957;&#8182;&#960;&#945;
+&#963;&#964;&#961;&#945;&#964;&#8056;&#957;<br>
+
+&#7944;&#961;&#953;&#956;&#945;&#963;&#960;&#8056;&#957;
+&#7985;&#960;&#960;&#959;&#946;&#8049;&#956;&#959;&#957;',
+&#959;&#7987;
+&#967;&#961;&#965;&#963;&#8057;&#8164;&#8165;&#965;&#964;&#959;&#957;<br>
+
+&#959;&#7984;&#954;&#959;&#8166;&#963;&#953;&#957;
+&#7936;&#956;&#966;&#8054;
+&#957;&#8118;&#956;&#945;
+&#928;&#955;&#959;&#8059;&#964;&#969;&#957;&#959;&#962;
+&#960;&#8057;&#961;&#959;&#965;&#183;<br>
+
+&#964;&#959;&#8059;&#964;&#959;&#953;&#962;
+&#963;&#8058;
+&#956;&#8052;
+&#960;&#8051;&#955;&#945;&#950;&#949;.<br>
+
+<span class="left50"><i>Prometheus</i>, 802.</span></p>
+
+<p>Thence it passed on to Pausanias, i. 24; Pomponius Mela, ii. 1; Pliny,
+<i>Hist. Nat.</i>, vii. 2; Lucan, <i>Pharsalia</i>, iii. 280; and so on to
+Milton:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+"As when a gryphon through the wilderness,<br>
+With winged course o'er hill or moory dale,<br>
+Pursues the Arimaspian who by stealth<br>
+Had from his wakeful custody purloined<br>
+The guarded gold."<br>
+
+<span class="left30"><i>Paradise Lost</i>, ii. 944.</span>
+<a href="#footnotetag334"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote335" name="footnote335"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 335:</strong> Odoric mentions Juggernaut processions and the burning of
+widows; in Sumatra he observed cannibalism and community of wives; he
+found the kingdom of Prester John in Chinese Tartary; "but as regards
+him," says wise Odoric, "not one hundredth part is true of what is told
+of him as if it were undeniable." Yule's <i>Cathay</i>, vol. i. pp. 79, 85,
+146.<a href="#footnotetag335"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote336" name="footnote336"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 336:</strong> Colonel Yule gives a list of fourteen important passages
+taken bodily from Odoric by Mandeville. <i>Op. cit.</i> i. 28. It is very
+doubtful if that famous book, "Sir John Mandeville's Travels," was
+written by a Mandeville, or by a knight, or even by an Englishman. It
+seems to have been originally written in French by Jean de Bourgogne, a
+physician who lived for some years at Liège, and died there somewhere
+about 1370. He may possibly have been an Englishman named John Burgoyne,
+who was obliged some years before that date to flee his country for
+homicide or for some political offence. He had travelled as far as Egypt
+and Palestine, but no farther. His book is almost entirely cribbed from
+others, among which may be mentioned the works of Jacques de Vitry,
+Plano Carpini, Hayton the Armenian, Boldensele's Itinerary, Albert of
+Aix's chronicle of the first crusade, Brunetto Latini's <i>Trésor</i>, Petrus
+Comestor's <i>Historia scholastica</i>, the <i>Speculum</i> of Vincent de
+Beauvais, etc., etc. It is one of the most wholesale and successful
+instances of plagiarism and imposture on record. See <i>The Buke of John
+Mandevill, from the unique copy (Egerton MS. 1982) in the British
+Museum. Edited by G. F. Warner.</i> Westminster, 1889.
+(Roxburghe Club.)<a href="#footnotetag336"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote337" name="footnote337"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 337:</strong> One piece of Pegolotti's advice is still useful for
+travellers in the nineteenth century who visit benighted heathen
+countries afflicted with robber tariffs: "And don't forget that if you
+treat the custom-house officers with respect, and make them something of
+a present in goods or money, they will behave with great civility and
+always be ready to appraise your wares below their real value." <i>Op.
+cit.</i> ii. 307.<a href="#footnotetag337"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote338" name="footnote338"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 338:</strong> The works of all the writers mentioned in this paragraph,
+or copious extracts from them, may be found in Yule's <i>Cathay</i>, which
+comprises also the book of the celebrated Ibn Batuta, of Tangier, whose
+travels, between 1325 and 1355, covered pretty much the whole of Asia
+except Siberia, besides a journey across Sahara to the river Niger. His
+book does not seem to have attracted attention in Europe until early in
+the present century.<a href="#footnotetag338"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote339" name="footnote339"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 339:</strong>
+&#932;&#8056;&#957; &#948;&#8050;
+&#8040;&#954;&#949;&#945;&#957;&#8056;&#957; &#955;&#8057;&#947;&#8179;
+&#956;&#8050;&#957; &#955;&#8051;&#947;&#959;&#965;&#963;&#953;
+&#7936;&#960;' &#7969;&#955;&#8055;&#959;&#965;
+&#7936;&#957;&#945;&#964;&#959;&#955;&#8051;&#969;&#957;
+&#7936;&#961;&#958;&#8049;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#957;
+&#947;&#8134;&#957; &#960;&#949;&#961;&#8054;
+&#960;&#8118;&#963;&#945;&#957; &#8165;&#8051;&#949;&#953;&#957;,
+&#7956;&#961;&#947;&#8179; &#948;&#8050; &#959;&#8016;&#954;
+&#7936;&#960;&#959;&#948;&#949;&#953;&#954;&#957;&#8166;&#963;&#953;.
+Herodotus, iv. 8.<a href="#footnotetag339"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote340" name="footnote340"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 340:</strong>
+&#922;&#945;&#8054; &#947;&#8048;&#961;
+&#954;&#945;&#964;' &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8056;&#957;
+&#7960;&#961;&#945;&#964;&#959;&#963;&#952;&#8051;&#957;&#951;
+&#964;&#8052;&#957; &#7952;&#954;&#964;&#8056;&#962;
+&#952;&#8049;&#955;&#945;&#964;&#964;&#945;&#957;
+&#7941;&#960;&#945;&#963;&#945;&#957;
+&#963;&#8059;&#961;&#961;&#959;&#965;&#957;
+&#949;&#7990;&#957;&#945;&#953;, &#8037;&#963;&#964;&#949;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#964;&#8052;&#957;
+&#7961;&#963;&#960;&#8051;&#961;&#953;&#959;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#964;&#8052;&#957; &#7960;&#961;&#965;&#952;&#961;&#8048;&#957;
+&#952;&#8049;&#955;&#945;&#964;&#964;&#945;&#957;
+&#956;&#8055;&#945;&#957; &#949;&#7990;&#957;&#945;&#953;. Strabo, i.
+3, § 13.<a href="#footnotetag340"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote341" name="footnote341"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 341:</strong> Bunbury, <i>History of Ancient Geography</i>,
+vol. i. p. 644.<a href="#footnotetag341"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote342" name="footnote342"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 342:</strong> Strabo, ii. 3, § 4; xvii. 3, § 1.<a href="#footnotetag342"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote343" name="footnote343"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 343:</strong>
+&#922;&#945;&#952;&#8049;&#960;&#949;&#961; &#948;&#8050;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#964;&#8134;&#962; &#7944;&#963;&#8055;&#945;&#962;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#964;&#8134;&#962;
+&#923;&#953;&#946;&#8059;&#951;&#962;, &#954;&#945;&#952;&#8056;
+&#963;&#965;&#957;&#8049;&#960;&#964;&#959;&#965;&#963;&#953;&#957;
+&#7936;&#955;&#955;&#8053;&#955;&#945;&#953;&#962;
+&#960;&#949;&#961;&#8054; &#964;&#8052;&#957;
+&#913;&#7984;&#952;&#953;&#959;&#960;&#8055;&#945;&#957;,
+&#959;&#8016;&#948;&#949;&#8054;&#962; &#7956;&#967;&#949;&#953;
+
+&#955;&#8051;&#947;&#949;&#953;&#957;
+&#7936;&#964;&#961;&#949;&#954;&#8182;&#962; &#7957;&#969;&#962;
+&#964;&#8182;&#957; &#954;&#945;&#952;' &#7969;&#956;&#8118;&#962;
+&#954;&#945;&#953;&#961;&#8182;&#957;,
+&#960;&#8057;&#964;&#949;&#961;&#959;&#957;
+&#7972;&#960;&#949;&#953;&#961;&#8057;&#962; &#7952;&#963;&#964;&#953;
+&#954;&#945;&#964;&#8048; &#964;&#8056;
+&#963;&#965;&#957;&#949;&#967;&#8050;&#962; &#964;&#8048;
+&#960;&#961;&#8056;&#962; &#964;&#8052;&#957;
+&#956;&#949;&#963;&#951;&#956;&#946;&#961;&#8055;&#945;&#957;,
+
+&#7969; &#952;&#945;&#955;&#8049;&#964;&#964;&#7970;
+&#960;&#949;&#961;&#953;&#8051;&#967;&#949;&#964;&#945;&#953;.
+Polybius, iii. 38.<a href="#footnotetag343"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote344" name="footnote344"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 344:</strong> Bunbury, <i>op. cit.</i>
+vol. ii. p. 15.<a href="#footnotetag344"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote345" name="footnote345"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 345:</strong> See the map of Ptolemy's world, above,
+p. <a href="#img023">264</a>.<a href="#footnotetag345"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote346" name="footnote346"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 346:</strong> Ptolemy expressly declares that the equatorial regions
+had never been visited by people from the northern hemisphere:
+&#932;&#8055;&#957;&#949;&#962; &#948;&#8051;
+&#949;&#7984;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#945;&#7985;
+&#959;&#7984;&#954;&#8053;&#963;&#949;&#953;&#962; &#959;&#8016;&#954;
+&#7938;&#957; &#7956;&#967;&#959;&#953;&#956;&#949;&#957;
+&#960;&#949;&#960;&#949;&#953;&#963;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#969;&#962;
+&#949;&#7984;&#960;&#949;&#8150;&#957;.
+&#7948;&#964;&#961;&#953;&#960;&#964;&#959;&#953; &#947;&#8049;&#961;
+&#949;&#7984;&#963;&#953; &#956;&#8051;&#967;&#961;&#953;
+&#964;&#959;&#8166; &#948;&#949;&#8166;&#961;&#959;
+
+&#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962; &#7936;&#960;&#8056; &#964;&#8134;&#962;
+&#954;&#945;&#952;' &#7969;&#956;&#8118;&#962;
+&#959;&#7984;&#954;&#959;&#965;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#951;&#962;,
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#949;&#7984;&#954;&#945;&#963;&#8055;&#945;&#957;
+&#956;&#8118;&#955;&#955;&#959;&#957; &#7940;&#957; &#964;&#953;&#962;
+&#7970; &#7985;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#961;&#8055;&#945;&#957;
+&#7969;&#947;&#8053;&#963;&#945;&#953;&#964;&#959; &#964;&#8048;
+&#955;&#949;&#947;&#8057;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#945;
+&#960;&#949;&#961;&#8054;
+
+&#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8182;&#957;. <i>Syntaxis</i>, ii. 6.<a href="#footnotetag346"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote347" name="footnote347"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 347:</strong> Rawlinson's <i>Herodotus</i>, vol. iii.
+p. 29, note 8.<a href="#footnotetag347"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote348" name="footnote348"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 348:</strong> The story is discredited by Mannert, <i>Geographie der
+Griechen und Römer</i>, bd. i. pp. 19-26; Gossellin, <i>Recherches sur la
+géographie des Anciens</i>, tom. i. p. 149; Lewis, <i>Astronomy of the
+Ancients</i>, pp. 508-515; Vincent, <i>Commerce and Navigation of the
+Ancients in the Indian Ocean</i>, vol. i. pp. 303-311, vol. ii. pp. 13-15;
+Leake, <i>Disputed Questions of Ancient Geography</i>, pp. 1-8. It is
+defended by Heeren, <i>Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr</i>, etc., 3e
+aufl., Göttingen, 1815, bd. i. abth. ii. pp. 87-93; Rennell, <i>Geography
+of Herodotus</i>, pp. 672-714; Grote, <i>History of Greece</i>, vol. iii. pp.
+377-385. The case is ably presented in Bunbury's <i>History of Ancient
+Geography</i>, vol. i. pp. 289-296, where it is concluded that the story
+"cannot be disproved or pronounced to be absolutely impossible; but the
+difficulties and improbabilities attending it are so great that they
+cannot reasonably be set aside without better evidence than the mere
+statement of Herodotus, upon the authority of unknown informants." Mr.
+Bunbury (vol. i. p. 317) says that he has reasons for believing that Mr.
+Grote afterwards changed his opinion and came to agree with Sir George
+Lewis.<a href="#footnotetag348"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote349" name="footnote349"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 349:</strong> In reading the learned works of Sir George Cornewall
+Lewis, one is often reminded of what Sainte-Beuve somewhere says of the
+great scholar Letronne, when he had spent the hour of his lecture in
+demolishing some pretty or popular belief: "Il se frotta les mains et
+s'en alla bien content." When it came to ancient history, Sir George was
+undeniably fond of "the everlasting No." In the present case his
+skepticism seems on the whole well-judged, but some of his arguments
+savour of undue haste toward a negative conclusion. He thus strangely
+forgets that what we call autumn is springtime in the southern
+hemisphere (<i>Astronomy of the Ancients</i>, p. 511). His argument that the
+time alleged was insufficient for the voyage is fully met by Major
+Rennell, who has shown that the time was amply sufficient, and that the
+direction of winds and ocean currents would make the voyage around
+southern Africa from east to west much easier than from west to
+east.<a href="#footnotetag349"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote350" name="footnote350"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 350:</strong> "No trace of it could be found in the Alexandrian
+library, either by Eratosthenes in the third, or by Marinus of Tyre in
+the second, century before Christ, although both of them were diligent
+examiners of ancient records." Major, <i>Prince Henry the Navigator</i>, p.
+90.<a href="#footnotetag350"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote351" name="footnote351"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 351:</strong> Rawlinson's <i>History of Ph&oelig;nicia</i>, pp. 105, 418;
+Pseudo-Aristotle, <i>Mirab. Auscult.</i>, 146; Velleius Paterculus, i. 2, §
+6.<a href="#footnotetag351"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote352" name="footnote352"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 352:</strong> Hanno, <i>Periplus</i>, in Müller, <i>Geographi Græci Minores</i>,
+tom. i. pp. 1-14. Of two or three commanders named Hanno it is uncertain
+which was the one who led this expedition, and thus its date has been
+variously assigned from 570 to 470
+<span class="smcap">B. C.</span><a href="#footnotetag352"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote353" name="footnote353"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 353:</strong> For the determination of these localities see Bunbury,
+<i>op. cit.</i> vol. i. pp. 318-335. There is an interesting Spanish
+description of Hanno's expedition in Mariana, <i>Historia de España</i>,
+Madrid, 1783, tom. i. pp. 89-93.<a href="#footnotetag353"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote354" name="footnote354"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 354:</strong> The sailors pursued them, but did not capture any of the
+males, who scrambled up the cliffs out of their reach. They captured
+three females, who bit and scratched so fiercely that it was useless to
+try to take them away. So they killed them and took their skins home to
+Carthage. <i>Periplus</i>, xviii. According to Pliny (<i>Hist. Nat.</i>, vi. 36)
+these skins were hung up as a votive offering in the temple of Juno (i.
+e. Astarte or Ashtoreth: see Apuleius, <i>Metamorph.</i>, xi. 257; Gesenius,
+<i>Monumenta Ph&oelig;nic.</i>, p. 168), where they might have been seen at any
+time before the Romans destroyed the city.<a href="#footnotetag354"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote355" name="footnote355"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 355:</strong> Herodotus, iv. 43.<a href="#footnotetag355"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote356" name="footnote356"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 356:</strong> The story is preserved by Strabo, ii. 3, §§ 4, 5, who
+rejects it with a vehemence for which no adequate reason is assigned.<a href="#footnotetag356"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote357" name="footnote357"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 357:</strong> Pliny, <i>Hist. Nat.</i>, ii. 67; Mela, <i>De Situ Orbis</i>, iii.
+9.<a href="#footnotetag357"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote358" name="footnote358"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 358:</strong> After the civil war of Sertorius (<span class="smcap">B. C.</span> 80-72), the
+Romans became acquainted with the Canaries, which, because of their
+luxuriant vegetation and soft climate, were identified with the Elysium
+described by Homer, and were commonly known as the Fortunate islands.
+"Contra Fortunatæ Insulæ abundant sua sponte genitis, et subinde aliis
+super aliis innascentibus nihil sollicitos alunt, beatius quam aliæ
+urbes excultæ." Mela, iii. 10.</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+&#7944;&#955;&#955;&#8049;
+&#963;'
+&#7952;&#962;
+&#7976;&#955;&#8059;&#963;&#953;&#959;&#957;
+&#960;&#949;&#948;&#8055;&#959;&#957;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#960;&#949;&#8055;&#961;&#945;&#964;&#945;
+&#947;&#945;&#8055;&#951;&#962;<br>
+
+&#7936;&#952;&#8049;&#957;&#945;&#964;&#959;&#953;
+&#960;&#8051;&#956;&#968;&#959;&#965;&#963;&#953;&#957;,
+&#8005;&#952;&#953;
+&#958;&#945;&#957;&#952;&#8056;&#962;
+&#8172;&#945;&#948;&#8049;&#956;&#945;&#957;&#952;&#965;&#962;,<br>
+
+&#964;&#8134;&#960;&#949;&#961;
+&#8165;&#951;&#8147;&#963;&#964;&#951;
+&#946;&#953;&#959;&#964;&#8052;
+&#960;&#8051;&#955;&#949;&#953;
+&#7936;&#957;&#952;&#961;&#8061;&#960;&#959;&#953;&#963;&#953;&#957;&#183;<br>
+
+&#959;&#8016;
+&#957;&#953;&#966;&#949;&#964;&#8056;&#962;,
+&#959;&#8020;&#964;'
+&#7938;&#961;
+&#967;&#949;&#953;&#956;&#8060;&#957;
+&#960;&#959;&#955;&#8058;&#962;
+&#959;&#8020;&#964;&#949;
+&#960;&#959;&#964;'
+&#8004;&#956;&#946;&#961;&#959;&#962;,<br>
+
+&#7936;&#955;&#955;'
+&#945;&#7984;&#949;&#8054;
+&#918;&#949;&#966;&#8059;&#961;&#959;&#953;&#959;
+&#955;&#953;&#947;&#8058;
+&#960;&#957;&#949;&#8055;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#945;&#962;
+&#7936;&#8053;&#964;&#945;&#962;<br>
+
+&#8040;&#954;&#949;&#945;&#957;&#8056;&#962;
+&#7936;&#957;&#8055;&#951;&#963;&#953;&#957;
+&#7936;&#957;&#945;&#968;&#8059;&#967;&#949;&#953;&#957;
+&#7936;&#957;&#952;&#961;&#8061;&#960;&#959;&#965;&#962;.<br>
+
+<span class="left50"><i>Odyssey</i>, iv. 563.</span></p>
+
+<p>Since Horace's time (<i>Epod.</i> vi. 41-66) the Canary islands have been a
+favourite theme for poets. It was here that Tasso placed the loves of
+Rinaldo and Armida, in the delicious garden where</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Vezzosi augelli infra le verde fronde<br>
+Temprano a prova lascivette note.<br>
+Mormora l' aura, e fa le foglie e l' onde<br>
+Garrir, che variamente ella percote.<br>
+
+<span class="left30"><i>Gerusalemme Liberata</i>, xvi. 12.</span><a href="#footnotetag358"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote359" name="footnote359"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 359:</strong> Just as our grandfathers used to read the Bible without
+noticing such points as the divergences between the books of Kings and
+Chronicles, the contradictions between the genealogies of Jesus in
+Matthew and Luke, the radically different theories of Christ's
+personality and career in the Fourth Gospel as compared with the three
+Synoptics, etc.<a href="#footnotetag359"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote360" name="footnote360"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 360:</strong> Bunbury, <i>op. cit.</i> vol. ii. pp. 492, 527. The name is
+used in different geographical senses by various ancient writers, as is
+well shown in Lewis's <i>Astronomy of the Ancients</i>, pp. 467-481.<a href="#footnotetag360"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote361" name="footnote361"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 361:</strong> The Romans, at least by the first century <span class="smcap">A. D.</span>, knew
+also of the shortness of northern nights in summer.</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+<span class="add8em">Arma quidem ultra</span><br>
+Littora Invernæ promovimus, et modo captas<br>
+Orcadas, ac minima contentos nocte Britannos.<br>
+<span class="left50">Juvenal, ii. 159.</span></p>
+
+<p>See also Pliny, <i>Hist. Nat.</i>, iv. 30; Martianus Capella, vi. 595;
+Achilles Tatius, <span class="smcap">XXXV</span>.<a href="#footnotetag361"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote362" name="footnote362"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 362:</strong> The reader will remember Virgil's magnificent description
+of a Scythian winter (<i>Georg.</i>, iii. 352):&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Illic clausa tenent stabulis armenta; neque ullæ<br>
+Aut herbæ campo apparent, aut arbore frondes:<br>
+Sed jacet aggeribus niveis informis, et alto<br>
+Terra gelu late, septemque assurgit in ulnas;<br>
+Semper hiems, semper spirantes frigora Cauri.<br>
+Tum Sol pallentes haud unquam discutit umbras;<br>
+Nec cum invectus equis altum petit æthera, nec cum<br>
+Præcipitem Oceani rubro lavit æquore currum.<br>
+Concrescunt subitæ currenti in flumine crustæ;<br>
+Undaque jam tergo ferratos sustinet orbes,<br>
+Puppibus illa prius patulis, nunc hospita plaustris,<br>
+Æraque dissiliunt vulgo, vestesque rigescunt<br>
+Indutæ, cæduntque securibus humida vina<br>
+Et totæ solidam in glaciem vertêre lacunæ,<br>
+Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis.<br>
+Interea toto non secius aëre ningit;<br>
+Intereunt pecudes; stant circumfusa pruinis<br>
+Corpora magna boum; confertoque agmine cervi<br>
+Torpent mole nova, et summis vix cornibus exstant.<br>
+...........................................<br>
+Ipsi in defossis specubus, secura sub alta<br>
+Otia agunt terra, congestaque robora, totasque<br>
+Advolvere focis ulmos, ignique dedere.<br>
+Hic noctem ludo ducunt, et pocula læti<br>
+Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis.<br>
+Talis Hyperboreo Septem subjecta trioni<br>
+Gens effræna virûm Rhipæo tunditur Euro,<br>
+Et pecudum fulvis velantur corpora sætis.</p>
+
+<p>The Roman conception of the situation of these "Hyperboreans" and of the
+Rhipæan mountains may be seen in the map of Mela's world.<a href="#footnotetag362"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote363" name="footnote363"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 363:</strong> "Huic medio terra sublimis cingitur undique mari:
+eodemque in duo latera, quæ hemisphæria nominantur, ab oriente divisa ad
+occasum, zonis quinque distinguitur. Mediam æstus infestat, frigus
+ultimas: reliquæ habitabiles paria agunt anni tempora, verum non
+pariter. Antichthones alteram, nos alteram incolimus. Illius situ ab
+ardorem intercedentis plagæ incognito, hujus dicendus est," etc. <i>De
+Situ Orbis</i>, i. 1. A similar theory is set forth by Ovid (<i>Metamorph.</i>,
+i. 45), and by Virgil (<i>Georg.</i>, i. 233):&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Quinque tenent c&oelig;lum zonæ; quarum una corusco<br>
+Semper Sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni;<br>
+Quam circum extremæ dextra lævaque trahuntur,<br>
+Cærulea glacie concretæ atque imbribus atris.<br>
+Has inter mediamque, duæ mortalibus ægris<br>
+Munere concessæ Divûm; et via secta per ambas,<br>
+Obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo.<a href="#footnotetag363"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote364" name="footnote364"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 364:</strong> "Taprobane aut grandis admodum insula aut prima pars
+orbis alterius Hipparcho dicitur; sed quia habitata, nec quisquam
+circummeasse traditur, prope verum est." <i>De Situ Orbis</i>,
+iii. 7.<a href="#footnotetag364"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote365" name="footnote365"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 365:</strong> "Taprobanen alterum orbem terrarum esse, diu existimatum
+est, Antichthonum appellatione." <i>Hist. Nat.</i>, vi. 24.<a href="#footnotetag365"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote366" name="footnote366"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 366:</strong> Geminus, <i>Isagoge</i>, cap. 13.<a href="#footnotetag366"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote367" name="footnote367"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 367:</strong> Macrobius, <i>Somnium Scipionis</i>, ii. 8. Strabo (ii. 5, §§
+7, 8) sets the southern boundary of the Inhabited World 800 miles south
+of Syene, and the northern boundary at the north of Ireland.<a href="#footnotetag367"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote368" name="footnote368"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 368:</strong> Another notion, less easily explicable and less commonly
+entertained, but interesting for its literary associations, was the
+notion of a mountain of loadstone in the Indian ocean, which prevented
+access to the torrid zone by drawing the nails from ships and thus
+wrecking them. This imaginary mountain, with some variations in the
+description, is made to carry a serious geographical argument by the
+astrologer Pietro d' Abano, in his book <i>Conciliator Differentiarum</i>,
+written about 1312. (See Major, <i>Prince Henry the Navigator</i>, p. 100.)
+It plays an important part in one of the finest tales in the <i>Arabian
+Nights</i>,&mdash;the story of the "Third Royal Mendicant."<a href="#footnotetag368"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote369" name="footnote369"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 369:</strong> Ferdinand Columbus tells us that this objection was urged
+against the Portuguese captains and afterwards against his father: "E
+altri di ciò quasi così disputavano, come già i Portoghesi intorno al
+navigare in Guinea; dicendo che, se si allargasse alcuno a far cammino
+diritto al occidente, come l' Ammiraglio diceva, non potrebbe poi
+tornare in Ispagna per la rotondità della sfera; tenendo per certissime,
+che qualunque uscisse del emisperio conosciuto da Tolomeo, anderebbe in
+giù, e poi gli sarebbe impossibile dar la volta; e affermando che ciò
+sarebbe quasi uno ascendere all' insù di un monte. Il che non potrebbono
+fare i navigli con grandissimo vento." <i>Vita deli' Ammiraglio</i>, Venice,
+1571, cap. xii. The same thing is told, in almost the same words, by Las
+Casas, since both writers followed the same original documents: "Añidian
+mas, que quien navegase por vía derecha la vuelta del poniente, como el
+Cristóbal Colon proferia, no podria despues volver, suponiendo que el
+mundo era redondo y yendo hácia el occidente iban cuesta abajo, y
+saliendo del hemisferio que Ptolomeo escribiò, á la vuelta érales
+necesario subir cuesta arriba, lo que los navíos era imposible hacer."
+The gentle but keen sarcasm that follows is very characteristic of Las
+Casas: "Esta era gentil y profunda razon, y señal de haber bien el
+negocio entendido!" <i>Historia de las Indias</i>, tom. i. p. 230.<a href="#footnotetag369"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote370" name="footnote370"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 370:</strong></p>
+
+<p class="poem10">Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipæasque arduus arces<br>
+Consurgit, premitur Libyæ devexus in austros.<br>
+Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum<br>
+Sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi.<br>
+<span class="left50"><i>Georg.</i>, i. 240.</span></p>
+
+<p>For an account of the deference paid to Virgil in the Middle Ages, as
+well as the grotesque fancies about him, see Tunison's <i>Master Virgil</i>,
+2d ed., Cincinnati, 1890.<a href="#footnotetag370"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote371" name="footnote371"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 371:</strong> Or simply because a wrong course happened to be taken,
+through ignorance of atmospheric conditions, as in the second homeward
+and third outward voyages of Columbus. See below, pp. <a href="#page485">485</a>, <a href="#page490">490</a>.<a href="#footnotetag371"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote372" name="footnote372"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 372:</strong> Navarrete, <i>Discurso historico sobre los progresos del
+arte de navegar en España</i>, p. 28; see also Raymond Lully's treatise,
+<i>Libro felix, ó Maravillas del mundo</i> (<span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1286).<a href="#footnotetag372"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote373" name="footnote373"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 373:</strong> See Humboldt's <i>Kosmos</i>, bd. i. p. 294; Klaproth, <i>Lettre
+à M. de Humboldt sur l'invention de la boussole</i>, pp. 41, 45, 50, 66,
+79, 90. But some of Klaproth's conclusions have been doubted: "Pour la
+boussole, rien ne prouve que les Chinois l'aient employée pour la
+navigation, tandis que nous la trouvons dès le xi<sup>e</sup> siècle chez les
+Arabes qui s'en servent non seulement dans leurs traversées maritimes,
+mais dans les voyages de caravanes au milieu des déserts," etc.
+Sédillot, <i>Histoire des Arabes</i>, tom. ii. p. 130.<a href="#footnotetag373"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote374" name="footnote374"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 374:</strong> Is it not a curious instance of human perversity that
+while customary usage from time immemorial has characterized as "acts of
+God" such horrible events as famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, on
+the other hand when some purely beneficent invention has appeared, such
+as the mariner's compass or the printing press, it has commonly been
+accredited to the Devil? The case of Dr. Faustus is the most familiar
+example.<a href="#footnotetag374"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote375" name="footnote375"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 375:</strong> This version is cited from Major's <i>Prince Henry the
+Navigator</i>, p. 58.<a href="#footnotetag375"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote376" name="footnote376"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 376:</strong> Hüllmann, <i>Städtewesen des Mittelalters</i>, bd. i. pp.
+125-137.<a href="#footnotetag376"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote377" name="footnote377"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 377:</strong> Compare the remarks of Mr. Clark Russell on the mariners
+of the seventeenth century, in his <i>William Dampier</i>, p. 12.<a href="#footnotetag377"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote378" name="footnote378"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 378:</strong> My chief authorities for the achievements of Prince Henry
+and his successors are the Portuguese historians, Barros and Azurara.
+The best edition of the former is a modern one, Barros y Couto, <i>Decadas
+da Asia, nova edicão con Indice geral</i>, Lisbon, 1778-88, 24 vols. 12mo.
+I also refer sometimes to the Lisbon, 1752, edition of the <i>Decada
+primeira</i>, in folio. The priceless contemporary work of Azurara, written
+in 1453 under Prince Henry's direction, was not printed until the
+present century; Azurara, <i>Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista de
+Guiné</i>, Paris, 1841, a superb edition in royal quarto, edited by the
+Viscount da Carreira, with introduction and notes by the Viscount de
+Santarem.<a href="#footnotetag378"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote379" name="footnote379"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 379:</strong> Partly, perhaps, because Mela was himself a Spaniard, and
+partly because his opinions had been shared and supported by St.
+Isidore, of Seville (<span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 570-636), whose learned works exercised
+immense authority throughout the Middle Ages. It is in one of St.
+Isidore's books (<i>Etymologiarum</i>, xiii. 16, apud Migne, <i>Patrologia</i>,
+tom. lxxxii. col. 484) that we first find the word "Mediterranean" used
+as a proper name for that great land-locked sea.<a href="#footnotetag379"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote380" name="footnote380"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 380:</strong>
+&#8009;&#956;&#959;&#8055;&#969;&#962; &#948;&#8050; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#960;&#949;&#961;&#8054; &#964;&#8134;&#962; &#7956;&#958;&#969;
+&#963;&#964;&#951;&#955;&#8182;&#957;
+&#955;&#8051;&#947;&#949;&#964;&#945;&#953;&#183;
+
+&#948;&#965;&#963;&#956;&#953;&#954;&#8061;&#964;&#945;&#964;&#959;&#957;
+&#956;&#8050;&#957; &#947;&#8048;&#961;
+&#963;&#951;&#956;&#949;&#8150;&#959;&#957; &#964;&#8134;&#962;
+&#959;&#7984;&#954;&#959;&#965;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#951;&#962;,
+&#964;&#8056; &#964;&#8182;&#957; &#7992;&#946;&#8053;&#961;&#969;&#957;
+&#7936;&#954;&#961;&#969;&#964;&#8053;&#961;&#953;&#959;&#957;, &#8003;
+&#954;&#945;&#955;&#959;&#8166;&#963;&#953;&#957;
+&#7993;&#949;&#961;&#8057;&#957;.] Strabo, ii. 5, § 14; cf. Dionysius
+Periegetes, v. 161. In reality it lies not quite so far west as the
+country around Lisbon.<a href="#footnotetag380"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote381" name="footnote381"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 381:</strong> See Littré, <i>Dictionnaire</i>, s. v. "Talent;" Du Cange,
+<i>Glossarium</i>, "talentum, animi decretum, voluntas, desiderium,
+cupiditas," etc.; cf. Raynouard, <i>Glossaire Provençale</i>, tom. v. p. 296.
+French was then fashionable at court, in Lisbon as well as in
+London.<a href="#footnotetag381"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote382" name="footnote382"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 382:</strong> The Portuguese proverb was "Quem passar o Cabo de Não ou
+voltará ou <i>não</i>," i. e. "Whoever passes Cape <i>Non</i> will return or
+<i>not</i>." See Las Casas, <i>Hist. de las Indias</i>, tom. i. p. 173; Mariana,
+<i>Hist. de España</i>, tom. i. p. 91; Barros, tom. i. p. 36.<a href="#footnotetag382"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote383" name="footnote383"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 383:</strong> An engraved copy of this map may be found in Major's
+<i>Prince Henry the Navigator</i>, London, 1868, facing p. 107. I need hardly
+say that in all that relates to the Portuguese voyages I am under great
+obligation to Mr. Major's profoundly learned and critical researches. He
+has fairly conquered this subject and made it his own, and whoever
+touches it after him, however lightly, must always owe him a tribute of
+acknowledgment.<a href="#footnotetag383"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote384" name="footnote384"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 384:</strong> See Bontier and Le Verrier, <i>The Canarian, or, Book of
+the Conquest and Conversion of the Canaries</i>, translated and edited by
+R. H. Major, London, 1872 (Hakluyt Soc). In 1414, Béthencourt's nephew,
+left in charge of these islands, sold them to Prince Henry, but Castile
+persisted in claiming them, and at length in 1479 her claim was
+recognized by treaty with Portugal. Of all the African islands,
+therefore, the Canaries alone came to belong, and still belong, to
+Spain.<a href="#footnotetag384"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote385" name="footnote385"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 385:</strong> Perestrelo had with him a female rabbit which littered on
+the voyage, and being landed, with her young, at Porto Santo, forthwith
+illustrated the fearful rate of multiplication of which organisms are
+capable in the absence of enemies or other adverse circumstances to
+check it. (Darwin, <i>Origin of Species</i>, chap. iii.) These rabbits
+swarmed all over the island and devoured every green and succulent
+thing, insomuch that they came near converting it into a desert. Prince
+Henry's enemies, who were vexed at the expenditure of money in such
+colonizing enterprises, were thus furnished with a wonderful argument.
+They maintained that God had evidently created those islands for beasts
+alone, not for men! "En este tiempo habia en todo Portugal grandísimas
+murmuraciones del Infante, viéndolo tan cudicioso y poner tanta
+diligencia en el descubrir de la tierra y costa de África, diciendo que
+destruia el reino en los gastos que hacia, y consumia los vecinos dél en
+poner en tanto peligro y daño la gente portoguesa, donde muchos morian,
+enviándolos en demanda de tierras que nunca los reyes de España pasados
+se atrevieron á emprender, donde habia de hacer muchas viudas y
+huérfanos con esta su porfia. Tomaban por argumento, que Dios no habia
+criado aquellas tierras sino para bestias, pues en tan poco tiempo en
+aquella isla tantos conejos habia multiplicado, que no dejaban cosa que
+para sustentacion de los hombres fuese menester." Las Casas, <i>Hist. de
+las Indias</i>, tom. i. p. 180. See also Azurara, <i>Chronica do
+descobrimento e conquista de Guiné</i>, cap. lxxxiii.<a href="#footnotetag385"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote386" name="footnote386"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 386:</strong> See below, vol. ii. pp. 429-431.<a href="#footnotetag386"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote387" name="footnote387"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 387:</strong> "En el año de 1442, viendo el Infante que se habia pasado
+el cabo del Boxador y que la tierra iba muy adelante, y que todos los
+navíos que inviaba traian muchos esclavos moros, con que pagaba los
+gastos que hacia y que cada dia crecia más el provecho y se prosperaba
+su amada negociacion, determinó de inviar á suplicar al Papa Martino V.,
+... que hiciese gracia á la Corona real de Portogal de los reinos y
+señoríos que habia y hobiese desde el cabo del Boxador adelante, hácia
+el Oriente y la India inclusive; y ansí se las concedió, ... con todas
+las tierras, puertos, islas, tratos, rescates, pesquerías y cosas á esto
+pertenecientes, poniendo censuras y penas á todos los reyes cristianos,
+príncipes, y señores y comunidades que á esto le perturbasen; despues,
+dicen, que los sumos pontífices, sucesores de Martino, como Eugenio IV.
+y Nicolas V. y Calixto IV. lo confirmaron." Las Casas, <i>Hist. de las
+Indias</i>, tom. i. p. 185. The name of Martin V. is a slip of the memory
+on the part of Las Casas. That pope had died of apoplexy eleven years
+before. It was Eugenius IV. who made this memorable grant to the crown
+of Portugal. The error is repeated in Irving's <i>Columbus</i>, vol. i. p.
+339.<a href="#footnotetag387"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote388" name="footnote388"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 388:</strong> The first published account of the voyages of Cadamosto
+and Cintra was in the <i>Paesi nouamente retrouati</i>, Vicenza, 1507, a
+small quarto which can now sometimes be bought for from twelve to
+fifteen hundred dollars. See also Grynæus, <i>Novus Orbis</i>, Basel, 1532.<a href="#footnotetag388"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote389" name="footnote389"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 389:</strong> It was in the course of these voyages upon the African
+coast that civilized Europeans first became familiar with people below
+the upper status of barbarism. Savagery and barbarism of the lower types
+were practically unknown in the Middle Ages, and almost, though probably
+not quite unknown, to the civilized peoples of the Mediterranean in
+ancient times. The history of the two words is interesting. The Greek
+word
+&#946;&#8049;&#961;&#946;&#945;&#961;&#959;&#962;, whence Eng.
+<i>barbarian</i> (=Sanskrit <i>barbara</i>, Latin <i>balbus</i>), means "a stammerer,"
+or one who talks gibberish, i. e. in a language we do not understand.
+Aristophanes (<i>Aves</i>, 199) very prettily applies the epithet to the
+inarticulate singing of birds. The names <i>Welsh</i>, <i>Walloon</i>,
+<i>Wallachian</i>, and <i>Belooch</i>, given to these peoples by their neighbours,
+have precisely the same meaning (Kuhn's <i>Zeitschrift</i>, ii. 252); and in
+like manner the Russians call the Germans <i>Nyemetch</i>, or people who
+cannot talk (Schafarik, <i>Slawische Alterthumer</i>, i. 443; Pott, <i>Etym.
+Forsch.</i>, ii. 521). The Greeks called all men but themselves barbarians,
+including such civilized people as the Persians. The Romans applied the
+name to all tribes and nations outside the limits of the Empire, and the
+Italians of the later Middle Ages bestowed it upon all nations outside
+of Italy. Upon its lax use in recent times I have already commented
+(above, pp. <a href="#page025">25</a>-35). The tendency to apply the epithet to savages is
+modern. The word <i>savage</i>, on the other hand, which came to us as the
+Old French <i>sauvage</i> or <i>salvage</i> (Ital. <i>selvaggio</i>, <i>salvatico</i>), is
+the Latin <i>silvaticus</i>, <i>sylvaticus</i>, <i>salvaticus</i>, that which pertains
+to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its earliest usage it had
+reference to plants and beasts rather than to men. Wild apples, pears,
+or laurels are characterized by the epithet <i>sylvaticus</i> in Varro, <i>De
+re rustica</i>, i. 40; and either this adjective, or its equivalent
+<i>silvestris</i>, was used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated
+beasts, as wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or
+wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22. (Occasionally
+it is used of men, as in Pliny, viii. 79.) The meaning was the same in
+mediæval Latin (Du Cange, <i>Glossarium</i>, Niort, 1886, tom. vii. p. 686)
+and in Old French, as "La douce voiz du loussignol sauvage" (Michel,
+<i>Chansons de chatelain de Coucy</i>, xix.). In the romance of <i>Robert le
+Diable</i>, in the verses</p>
+
+<p class="poem20">
+Sire, se vos fustes Sauvages<br>
+Viers moi, je n'i pris mie garde, etc.,</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">the reference is plainly to degenerate civilized men frequenting the
+forests, such as bandits or outlaws, not to what we call savages.</p>
+
+<p>Mediæval writers certainly had some idea of savages, but it was not
+based upon any actual acquaintance with such people, but upon
+imperfectly apprehended statements of ancient writers. At the famous
+ball at the Hotel de Saint Pol in Paris, in 1393, King Charles VI. and
+five noblemen were dressed in close-fitting suits of linen, thickly
+covered from head to foot with tow or flax, the colour of hair, so as to
+look like "savages." In this attire nobody recognized them, and the Duke
+of Orleans, in his eagerness to make out who they were, brought a torch
+too near, so that the flax took fire, and four of the noblemen were
+burned to death. See Froissart's <i>Chronicles</i>, tr. Johnes, London, 1806,
+vol. xi. pp. 69-76. The point of the story is that savages were supposed
+to be men covered with hair, like beasts, and Froissart, in relating it,
+evidently knew no better. Whence came this notion of hairy men? Probably
+from Hanno's gorillas (see above, p. <a href="#page301">301</a>), through Pliny, whose huge
+farrago of facts and fancies was a sort of household Peter Parley in
+mediæval monasteries. Pliny speaks repeatedly of men covered with hair
+from head to foot, and scatters them about according to his fancy, in
+Carmania and other distant places (<i>Hist. Nat.</i>, vi. 28, 36, vii. 2).</p>
+
+<p>Greek and Roman writers seem to have had some slight knowledge of
+savagery and the lower status of barbarism as prevailing in remote
+places ("Ptolomée dit que es extremités de la terre habitable sont gens
+sauvages," Oresme, <i>Les Éthiques d'Aristote</i>, Paris, 1488), but their
+remarks are usually vague. Seldom do we get such a clean-cut statement
+as that of Tacitus about the Finns, that they have neither horses nor
+houses, sleep on the ground, are clothed in skins, live by the chase,
+and for want of iron use bone-tipped arrows (<i>Germania</i>, cap. 46). More
+often we have unconscionable yarns about men without noses, or with only
+one eye, tailed men, solid-hoofed men, Amazons, and parthenogenesis. The
+Troglodytes, or Cave-dwellers, on the Nubian coast of the Red Sea seem
+to have been in the middle status of barbarism (Diodorus, iii. 32;
+Agatharchides, 61-63), and the Ichthyophagi, or Fish-eaters, whom
+Nearchus found on the shores of Gedrosia (Arrian, <i>Indica</i>, cap. 29),
+were probably in a lower stage, perhaps true savages. It is exceedingly
+curious that Mela puts a race of pygmies at the headwaters of the Nile
+(see map above, p. <a href="#img014">304</a>). Is this only an echo from <i>Iliad</i>, iii. 6, or
+can any ancient traveller have penetrated far enough inland toward the
+equator to have heard reports of the dwarfish race lately visited by
+Stanley (<i>In Darkest Africa</i>, vol. ii. pp. 100-104, 164)? Strabo had no
+real knowledge of savagery in Africa (cf. Bunbury, <i>Hist. Ancient
+Geog.</i>, ii. 331). Sataspes may have seen barbarians of low type,
+possibly on one of the Canary isles (see description of Canarians in
+Major's <i>Prince Henry</i>, p. 212). Ptolemy had heard of an island of
+cannibals in the Indian ocean, perhaps one of the Andaman group, visited
+<span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1293 by Marco Polo. The people of these islands rank among the
+lowest savages on the earth, and Marco was disgusted and horrified;
+their beastly faces, with huge prognathous jaws and projecting canine
+teeth, he tried to describe by calling them a dog-headed people. Sir
+Henry Yule suggests that the mention of Cynocephali, or Dog-heads, in
+ancient writers may have had an analogous origin (<i>Marco Polo</i>, vol. ii.
+p. 252). This visit of the Venetian traveller to Andaman was one of very
+few real glimpses of savagery vouchsafed to Europeans before the
+fifteenth century; and a general review of the subject brings out in a
+strong light the truthfulness and authenticity of the description of
+American Indians in Eric the Red's Saga, as shown above, pp. <a href="#page185">185</a>-192.<a href="#footnotetag389"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote390" name="footnote390"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 390:</strong> See Major's <i>India in the Fifteenth Century</i>, pp.
+lxxxv.-xc.<a href="#footnotetag390"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote391" name="footnote391"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 391:</strong> The greatest of Portuguese poets represents the Genius of
+the Cape as appearing to the storm-tossed mariners in cloud-like shape,
+like the Jinni that the fisherman of the Arabian tale released from a
+casket. He expresses indignation at their audacity in discovering his
+secret, hitherto hidden from mankind:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Eu sou aquelle occulto e grande Cabo,<br>
+A quem chamais vós outros Tormentorio,<br>
+Que nunca á Ptolomeo, Pomponio, Estrabo,<br>
+Plinio, e quantos passaram, fui notorio:<br>
+Aqui toda a Africana costa acabo<br>
+Neste meu nunca vista promontorio,<br>
+Que para o polo Antarctico se estende,<br>
+A quem vossa ousadia tanto offende.<br>
+
+<span class="left30">Camoens, <i>Os Lusiadas</i>, v. 50.</span><a href="#footnotetag391"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote392" name="footnote392"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 392:</strong> <i>Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; Nelle quali s' ha
+particolare, &amp; vera relatione della vita, &amp; de' fatti dell' Ammiraglio
+D. Christoforo Colombo, suo padre: Et dello scoprimento, ch' egli fece
+dell' Indie Occidentali, dette Monde-Nuovo, hora possedute dal Sereniss.
+Re Catolico: Nuouamente di lingua Spagnuola tradotte nell' Italiana dal
+S. Alfonso Vlloa. Con. privilegio.</i> <span class="smcap">In Venetia, m d lxxi</span>. <i>Appresso
+Francesco de' Franceschi Sanese.</i> The principal reprints are those of
+Milan, 1614; Venice, 1676 and 1678; London, 1867. I always cite it as
+<i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>.<a href="#footnotetag392"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote393" name="footnote393"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 393:</strong> Irving's <i>Life of Columbus</i>, New York, 1868, vol. iii. p.
+375. My references, unless otherwise specified, are to this, the
+"Geoffrey Crayon," edition.<a href="#footnotetag393"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote394" name="footnote394"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 394:</strong> Las Casas, <i>Historia de las Indias, ahora por primera vez
+dada á luz por el Marqués de la Fuensanta del Valle y D. José Sancho
+Rayon</i>, Madrid, 1875, 5 vols. 8vo.<a href="#footnotetag394"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote395" name="footnote395"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 395:</strong> "Fu questo D. Ernando di non minor valore del padre, ma
+di molte più lettere et scienze dotato che quelle non fu; et il quale
+lasciò alla Chiesa maggiore di Siviglia, dove hoggi si vede
+honorevolmente sepolto, una, non sola numerosissima, ma richissima
+libraria, et piena di molti libri in ogni facoltà et scienza rarissimi:
+laquale da coloro che l' han veduta, vien stimata delle più rare cose di
+tutta Europa." Moleto's prefatory letter to <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>,
+April 25, 1571.<a href="#footnotetag395"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote396" name="footnote396"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 396:</strong> For example, "<i>Manuel de la Sancta Fe católica</i>, Sevilla,
+1495, in-4. Costó en Toledo 34 maravedis, año 1511, 9 de Octubre, No.
+3004." "<i>Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea</i>, Sevilla, 1502, in-4. Muchas
+figuras. Costó en Roma 25 cuatrines, por Junio de 1515. No. 2417," etc.
+See Harrisse, <i>Fernand Colomb</i>, Paris, 1872, p. 13.<a href="#footnotetag396"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote397" name="footnote397"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 397:</strong> "L' autorita di Las Casas è d' una suprema e vitale
+importanza tanto nella storia di Cristoforo Colombo, come nell' esame
+delle <i>Historie</i> di Fernando suo figlio.... E dal confronto tra questi
+due scrittori emergerà una omogeneità si perfetta, che si potrebbe coi
+termini del frate domenicano ritrovare o rifare per due terzi il testo
+originale spagnuolo delle <i>Historie</i> di Fernando Colombo." Peragallo,
+<i>L' autenticità delle Historie di Fernando Colombo</i>, Genoa, 1884, p.
+23.<a href="#footnotetag397"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote398" name="footnote398"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 398:</strong> <i>Historia de los Reyes Católicos D. Fernando y D<sup>a</sup>
+Isabel. Crónica inédita del siglo XV, escrita por el Bachiller Andrés
+Bernaldez, cura que fué de Los Palacios</i>, Granada, 1856, 2 vols. small
+4to. It is a book of very high authority.<a href="#footnotetag398"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote399" name="footnote399"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 399:</strong> <i>De orbe novo Decades</i>, Alcalá, 1516; <i>Opus epistolarum</i>,
+Compluti (Alcalá), 1530; Harrisse, <i>Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima</i>,
+Nos. 88, 160.<a href="#footnotetag399"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote400" name="footnote400"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 400:</strong> "A Gutierrez vuestro solicitador, ruego à Dios que nunca
+le falte papel, porque escribe mas que Tolomeo y que Colon, el que halló
+las Indias." Rivadeneyra, <i>Curiosidades bibliográficas</i>, p. 59, apud
+Harrisse, <i>Christophe Colomb</i>, tom. i. p. 1.<a href="#footnotetag400"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote401" name="footnote401"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 401:</strong> Harrisse, <i>loc. cit.</i>, in 1884, gives the number at
+sixty-four.<a href="#footnotetag401"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote402" name="footnote402"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 402:</strong> Sometimes from a slip of memory or carelessness of
+phrasing, on Columbus's part, sometimes from our lacking the clue,
+sometimes from an error in numerals, common enough at all times.<a href="#footnotetag402"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote403" name="footnote403"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 403:</strong> "Ora, l' Ammiraglio avendo cognizione delle dette
+scienze, cominciò ad attendere al mare, e a fare alcuni viaggi in
+levante e in ponente; de' quali, e di molte altre cose di quei primi dì
+io non ho piena notizia; perciocchè egli venne a morte a tempo che io
+non aveva tanto ardire, o pratica, per la riverenza filiale, che io
+ardissi di richiederlo di cotali cose; o, per parlare più veramente,
+allora mi ritrovava io, come giovane, molto lontano da cotal pensiero."
+<i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. iv.<a href="#footnotetag403"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote404" name="footnote404"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 404:</strong> Twenty years ago M. Harrisse published in Spanish and
+French a critical essay maintaining that the <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i> was
+not written by Ferdinand Columbus, but probably by the famous scholar
+Perez de Oliva, professor in the university of Salamanca, who died in
+1530 (<i>D. Fernando Colon, historiador de su padre</i>, Seville, 1871;
+<i>Fernand Colomb: sa vie, ses &oelig;uvres</i>, Paris, 1872). The Spanish
+manuscript of the book had quite a career. As already observed, it is
+clear that Las Casas used it, probably between 1552 and 1561. From
+Ferdinand's nephew, Luis Columbus, it seems to have passed in 1568 into
+the hands of Baliano di Fornari, a prominent citizen of Genoa, who sent
+it to Venice with the intention of having it edited and published with
+Latin and Italian versions. All that ever appeared, however, was the
+Italian version made by Ulloa and published in 1571. Harrisse supposes
+that the Spanish manuscript, written by Oliva, was taken to Genoa by
+some adventurer and palmed off upon Baliano di Fornari as the work of
+Ferdinand Columbus. But inasmuch as Harrisse also supposes that Oliva
+probably wrote the book (about 1525) at Seville, under Ferdinand's eyes
+and with documents furnished by him, it becomes a question, in such
+case, how far was Oliva anything more than an amanuensis to Ferdinand?
+and there seems really to be precious little wool after so much loud
+crying. If the manuscript was actually written "sous les yeux de Fernand
+et avec documents fournis par lui," most of the arguments alleged to
+prove that it could not have emanated from the son of Columbus fall to
+the ground. It becomes simply a question whether Ulloa may have here and
+there tampered with the text, or made additions of his own. To some
+extent he seems to have done so, but wherever the Italian version is
+corroborated by the Spanish extracts in Las Casas, we are on solid
+ground, for Las Casas died five years before the Italian version was
+published. M. Harrisse does not seem as yet to have convinced many
+scholars. His arguments have been justly, if somewhat severely,
+characterized by my old friend, the lamented Henry Stevens (<i>Historical
+Collections</i>, London, 1881, vol. i. No. 1379), and have been elaborately
+refuted by M. d'Avezac, <i>Le livre de Ferdinand Colomb: revue critique
+des allegations proposées contre son authenticité</i>, Paris, 1873; and by
+Prospero Peragallo, <i>L' autenticità delle Historie di Fernando Colombo</i>,
+Genoa, 1884. See also Fabié, <i>Vida de Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas</i>,
+Madrid, 1869, tom. i. pp. 360-372.<a href="#footnotetag404"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote405" name="footnote405"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 405:</strong> See Harrisse, <i>Christophe Colomb</i>, Paris, 1884, 2 vols.,
+a work of immense research, absolutely indispensable to every student of
+the subject, though here and there somewhat over-ingenious and
+hypercritical, and in general unduly biased by the author's private
+crotchet about the work of Ferdinand.<a href="#footnotetag405"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote406" name="footnote406"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 406:</strong> One of the most radical of these reconstructions may be
+found in the essay by M. d'Avezac, "Canevas chronologique de la vie de
+Christophe Colomb," in <i>Bulletin de la Société de Géographie</i>, Paris,
+1872, 6<sup>e</sup> série, tom. iv. pp. 5-59.<a href="#footnotetag406"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote407" name="footnote407"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 407:</strong> Washington Irving's <i>Life of Columbus</i>, says Harrisse,
+"is a history written with judgment and impartiality, which leaves far
+behind it all descriptions of the discovery of the New World published
+before or since." <i>Christophe Colomb</i>, tom. i. p. 136. Irving was the
+first to make use of the superb work of Navarrete, <i>Coleccion de los
+viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los Españoles desde fines
+del siglo XV.</i>, Madrid, 1825-37, 5 vols. 4to. Next followed Alexander
+von Humboldt, with his <i>Examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie
+de Nouveau Continent</i>, Paris, 1836-39, 5 vols. 8vo. This monument of
+gigantic erudition (which, unfortunately, was never completed) will
+always remain indispensable to the historian.<a href="#footnotetag407"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote408" name="footnote408"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 408:</strong> Harrisse, <i>op. cit.</i> tom. i.
+p. 196.<a href="#footnotetag408"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote409" name="footnote409"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 409:</strong> "In <i>senectute bona</i>, de edad de setenta años poco mas o
+menos." Bernaldez, <i>Reyes Católicos</i>, tom. i. p. 334.<a href="#footnotetag409"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote410" name="footnote410"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 410:</strong> M. d'Avezac (<i>Canevas chronologique</i>, etc.) objects to
+this date that we have positive documentary evidence of the birth of
+Christopher's youngest brother Giacomo (afterwards spanished into Diego)
+in 1468, which makes an interval of 32 years; so that if the mother were
+(say) 18 in 1436 she must have borne a child at the age of 50. That
+would be unusual, but not unprecedented. But M. Harrisse (tom. ii. p.
+214), from a more thorough sifting of this documentary evidence, seems
+to have proved that while Giacomo cannot have been born later than 1468
+he may have been born as early as 1460; so that whatever is left of M.
+d'Avezac's objection falls to the ground.<a href="#footnotetag410"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote411" name="footnote411"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 411:</strong> "Serenissimi principi, di età molto tenera io entrai in
+mare navigando, et vi ho continovato fin' hoggi: ... et hoggimai passano
+quaranta anni che io uso per tutte quelle parti che fin hoggi si
+navigano." <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. iv.<a href="#footnotetag411"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote412" name="footnote412"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 412:</strong> <i>Op. cit.</i> cap. iv. <i>ad fin</i>.<a href="#footnotetag412"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote413" name="footnote413"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 413:</strong> "Traido en disputas," Navarrete, <i>Coleccion</i>, tom. ii. p.
+254.<a href="#footnotetag413"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote414" name="footnote414"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 414:</strong> "Muy altos Reyes, de muy pequeña edad entré en la mar
+navegando, é lo he continuado fasta hoy.... Yá pasan de cuarenta años
+que yo voy en este uso: todo lo que hoy se navega, todo lo he andado."
+Navarrete, <i>Coleccion</i>, tom. ii. p. 262. Observe the lame phrase "pasan
+de cuarenta;" what business has that "de" in such a place without "mas"
+before it? "Pasan mas de cuarenta," i. e. "more than forty;" writing in
+haste and excitement, Columbus left out a little word; or shall we blame
+the proof-reader? Avezac himself translates it "il y a plus de quarante
+ans," and so does Eugène Müller, in his French version of Ferdinand's
+book, <i>Histoire de la vie de Christophe Colomb</i>, Paris, 1879, p. 15.<a href="#footnotetag414"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote415" name="footnote415"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 415:</strong> That was the golden age of sumptuary laws. Because
+Alfonso XI. of Castile (1312-1350), when he tried to impress horses for
+the army, found it hard to get as many as he wanted, he took it into his
+head that his subjects were raising too many mules and not enough
+horses. So he tried to remedy the evil by a wholesale decree prohibiting
+all Castilians from riding upon mules! In practice this precious decree,
+like other villainous prohibitory laws that try to prevent honest people
+from doing what they have a perfect right to do, proved so vexatious and
+ineffective withal that it had to be perpetually fussed with and
+tinkered. One year you could ride a mule and the next year you couldn't.
+In 1492, as we shall see, Columbus immortalized one of these patient
+beasts by riding it a few miles from Granada. But in 1494 Ferdinand and
+Isabella decreed that nobody except women, children, and clergymen could
+ride on mules,&mdash;"dont la marche est beaucoup plus douce que celle des
+chevaux" (Humboldt, <i>Examen critique</i>, tom. iii. p. 338). This edict
+remained in force in 1505, so that the Discoverer of the New World, the
+inaugurator of the greatest historic event since the birth of Christ,
+could not choose an easygoing animal for the comfort of his weary old
+weather-shaken bones without the bother of getting a special edict to
+fit his case. <i>Eheu, quam parva sapientia regitur mundus!</i><a href="#footnotetag415"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote416" name="footnote416"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 416:</strong> "Nous avons démontré l'inanité des théories qui le font
+naître à Pradello, à Cuccaro, à Cogoleto, à Savona, à Nervi, à
+Albissola, à Bogliasco, à Cosseria, à Finale, à Oneglia, voire même en
+Angleterre ou dans l'isle de Corse." Harrisse, tom. i. p. 217. In
+Cogoleto, about sixteen miles west of Genoa on the Corniche road, the
+visitor is shown a house where Columbus is said first to have seen the
+light. Upon its front is a quaint inscription in which the discoverer is
+compared to the dove (<i>Colomba</i>) which, when sent by Noah from the ark,
+discovered dry land amid the waters:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Con generoso ardir dall' Arca all' onde<br>
+Ubbidiente il vol Colomba prende,<br>
+Corre, s' aggira, terren scopre, e fronde<br>
+D' olivo in segno, al gran Noè ne rende.<br>
+L' imita in ciò Colombo, ne' s' asconde,<br>
+E da sua patria il mar solcando fende;<br>
+Terreno al fin scoprendo diede fondo,<br>
+Offerendo all' Ispano un Nuovo Mondo.</p>
+
+<p>This house is or has been mentioned in Baedeker's <i>Northern Italy</i> as
+the probable birthplace, along with Peschel's absurd date 1456. It is
+pretty certain that Columbus was <i>not</i> born in that house or in
+Cogoleto. See Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 148-155.<a href="#footnotetag416"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote417" name="footnote417"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 417:</strong> Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 166-216.<a href="#footnotetag417"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote418" name="footnote418"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 418:</strong> Harrisse, tom. i. p. 188; <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap.
+xi.<a href="#footnotetag418"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote419" name="footnote419"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 419:</strong> "Fué este varon escogido de nacion genovés, de algun
+lugar de la provincia de Génova; cual fuese, donde nació ó qué nombre
+tuvo el tal lugar, no consta la verdad dello más de que se solia llamar
+ántes que llegase al estado que llegó, Cristobal Colombo de Terra-rubia
+y lo mismo su hermano Bartolomé Colon." Las Casas, <i>Historia de las
+Indias</i>, tom. i. p. 42; cf. Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 217-222.<a href="#footnotetag419"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote420" name="footnote420"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 420:</strong> "Mando al dicho D. Diego, mi hijo, ó á la persona que
+heredare el dicho mayorazgo, que tenga y sostenga siempre en la <i>Ciudad
+de Génova</i> una persona de nuestro linage ... pues que della salí <i>y en
+ella naci</i>" [italics mine]. Navarrete, <i>Coleccion</i>,
+tom. ii. p. 232.<a href="#footnotetag420"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote421" name="footnote421"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 421:</strong> Las Casas, <i>Historia</i>,
+tom. i. p. 46.<a href="#footnotetag421"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote422" name="footnote422"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 422:</strong> The reader must beware, however, of some of the stories
+of adventure attaching to this part of his life, even where they are
+confirmed by Las Casas. They evidently rest upon hearsay, and the
+incidents are so confused that it is almost impossible to extract the
+kernel of truth.<a href="#footnotetag422"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote423" name="footnote423"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 423:</strong> The date 1470 rests upon a letter of Columbus to King
+Ferdinand of Aragon in May, 1505. He says that God must have directed
+him into the service of Spain by a kind of miracle, since he had already
+been in Portugal, whose king was more interested than any other
+sovereign in making discoveries, and yet God closed his eyes, his ears,
+and all his senses to such a degree that <i>in fourteen years</i> Columbus
+could not prevail upon him to lend aid to his scheme. "Dije
+milagrosamente porque fui á aportar á Portugal, adonde el Rey de allí
+entendia en el descubrir mas que otro: él le atajó la vista, oido y
+todos los sentidos, que en catorce años no le pude hacer entender lo que
+yo dije." Las Casas, <i>op. cit.</i> tom. iii. p. 187; Navarrete, tom. iii.
+p. 528. Now it is known that Columbus finally left Portugal late in
+1484, or very early in 1485, so that fourteen years would carry us back
+to before 1471 for the first arrival of Columbus in that country. M.
+Harrisse (<i>op. cit.</i> tom. i. p. 263) is unnecessarily troubled by the
+fact that the same person was not king of Portugal during the whole of
+that period. Alfonso V. (brother of Henry the Navigator) died in 1481,
+and was succeeded by his son John II.; but during a considerable part of
+the time between 1475 and 1481 the royal authority was exercised by the
+latter. Both kings were more interested in making discoveries than any
+other European sovereigns. Which king did Columbus mean? Obviously his
+words were used loosely; he was too much preoccupied to be careful about
+trifles; he probably had John in his mind, and did not bother himself
+about Alfonso; King Ferdinand, to whom he was writing, did not need to
+have such points minutely specified, and could understand an elliptical
+statement; and the fact stated by Columbus was simply that during a
+residence of fourteen years in Portugal he had not been able to enlist
+even that enterprising government in behalf of his novel scheme.</p>
+
+<p>In the town archives of Savona we find Christopher Columbus witnessing a
+document March 20, 1472, endorsing a kind of promissory note for his
+father August 26, 1472, and joining with his mother and his next brother
+Giovanni, August 7, 1473, in relinquishing all claims to the house in
+Genoa sold by his father Domenico by deed of that date. It will be
+remembered that Domenico had moved from Genoa to Savona in 1471. From
+these documents (which are all printed in his <i>Christophe Colomb</i>, tom.
+ii. pp. 419, 420, 424-426) M. Harrisse concludes that Christopher cannot
+have gone to Portugal until after August 7, 1473. Probably not, so far
+as to be domiciled there; but inasmuch as he had long been a sailor, why
+should he not have been in Portugal, or upon the African coast in a
+Portuguese ship, in 1470 and 1471, and nevertheless have been with his
+parents in Savona in 1472 and part of 1473? His own statement "fourteen
+years" is not to be set aside on such slight grounds as this.
+Furthermore, from the fact that Bartholomew's name is not signed to the
+deed of August 7, 1473, M. Harrisse infers that he was then a minor; i.
+e. under five and twenty. But it seems to me more likely that
+Bartholomew was already domiciled at Lisbon, since we are expressly told
+by two good contemporary authorities&mdash;both of them Genoese writers
+withal&mdash;that he moved to Lisbon and began making maps there at an
+earlier date than Christopher. See Antonio Gallo, <i>De navigatione
+Columbi per inaccessum antea Oceanum Commentariolus</i>, apud Muratori,
+tom. xxiii. col. 301-304; Giustiniani, <i>Psalterium</i>, Milan, 1516
+(annotation to Psalm xix.); Harrisse, <i>Bibliotheca Americana
+Vetustissima</i>, No. 88. To these statements M. Harrisse objects that he
+finds (in Belloro, <i>Notizie</i>, p. 8) mention of a document dated Savona,
+June 16, 1480, in which Domenico Colombo gives a power of attorney to
+his son Bartholomew to act for him in some matter. The document itself,
+however, is not forthcoming, and the notice cited by M. Harrisse really
+affords no ground for the assumption that Bartholomew was in 1480
+domiciled at Savona or at Genoa.<a href="#footnotetag423"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote424" name="footnote424"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 424:</strong> Las Casas, <i>op. cit.</i> tom. i. p. 224; tom. ii. p. 80. He
+possessed many maps and documents by both the brothers.<a href="#footnotetag424"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote425" name="footnote425"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 425:</strong> "Spesse volte navigando da Lisbona a Guinea," etc. <i>Vita
+dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. iv. The original authority is Columbus's
+marginal note in his copy of the <i>Imago Mundi</i> of Alliacus, now
+preserved in the Colombina at Seville: "Nota quod sepius navigando ex
+Ulixbona ad austrum in Guineam, notavi cum diligentia viam,
+etc." Compare the allusions to Guinea in his letters, Navarrete,
+<i>Coleccion</i>, tom. i. pp. 55, 71, 101.<a href="#footnotetag425"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote426" name="footnote426"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 426:</strong> There are some vexed questions concerning this lady and
+the connections between the Moñiz and Perestrelo families, for which see
+Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 267-292.<a href="#footnotetag426"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote427" name="footnote427"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 427:</strong> Las Casas, <i>Historia</i>, tom. i. p. 43. He describes
+Bartholomew as not unlike his brother, but not so tall, less affable in
+manner, and more stern in disposition, <i>id.</i> tom. ii. p. 80.<a href="#footnotetag427"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote428" name="footnote428"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 428:</strong> "Christoval Colon ... persona de gran corazon y altos
+pensamientos." Mariana, <i>Historia de España</i>, tom. viii. p. 341.<a href="#footnotetag428"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote429" name="footnote429"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 429:</strong> Upon that island his eldest son Diego was born. This
+whole story of the life upon Porto Santo and its relation to the genesis
+of Columbus's scheme is told very explicitly by Las Casas, who says that
+it was told to him by Diego Columbus at Barcelona in 1519, when they
+were waiting upon Charles V., just elected Emperor and about to start
+for Aachen to be crowned. And yet there are modern critics who are
+disposed to deny the whole story. (See Harrisse, tom. i. p. 298.) The
+grounds for doubt are, however, extremely trivial when confronted with
+Las Casas, <i>Historia</i>, tom. i. p. 54.<a href="#footnotetag429"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote430" name="footnote430"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 430:</strong> See above, p. <a href="#page330">330</a>.<a href="#footnotetag430"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote431" name="footnote431"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 431:</strong> I translate this prologue from the Italian text of the
+<i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. viii. The original Latin has nowhere been
+found. A Spanish version of the whole may be found in Las Casas,
+<i>Historia</i>, tom. i. pp. 92-96. Las Casas, by a mere slip of the pen,
+calls "Paul, the physicist," <i>Marco Paulo</i>, and fifty years later
+Mariana calls him <i>Marco Polo, physician</i>: "por aviso que le dió un
+cierto Marco Polo médico Florentin," etc. <i>Historia de España</i>, tom.
+viii. p. 343. Thus step by step doth error grow.<a href="#footnotetag431"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote432" name="footnote432"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 432:</strong> He means that his friend Martinez has been a member of
+King Alfonso's household ever since the time before the civil wars that
+began with the attempted deposition of Henry IV. in 1465 and can hardly
+be said to have come to an end before the death of that prince in
+December, 1474. See Humboldt, <i>Examen critique</i>, tom. i. p. 225.<a href="#footnotetag432"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote433" name="footnote433"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 433:</strong> I translate this enclosed letter from the original Latin
+text, as found, a few years ago, in the handwriting of Columbus upon the
+fly-leaves of his copy of the <i>Historia rerum ubique gestarum</i> of Æneas
+Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II.), published at Venice in 1477, in
+folio, and now preserved in the Colombina at Seville. This Latin text is
+given by Harrisse, in his <i>Fernand Colomb</i>, pp. 178-180, and also (with
+more strict regard to the abbreviations of the original) in his
+<i>Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima&mdash;Additions</i>, Paris, 1872, pp.
+xvi.-xviii. Very likely Columbus had occasion to let the original MS. go
+out of his hands, and so preserved a copy of it upon the fly-leaves of
+one of his books. These same fly-leaves contain extracts from Josephus
+and Saint Augustine. The reader will rightly infer from my translation
+that the astronomer's Latin was somewhat rugged and lacking in literary
+grace. Apparently he was anxious to jot down quickly what he had to say,
+and get back to his work.<a href="#footnotetag433"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote434" name="footnote434"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 434:</strong> A sketch of this most memorable of maps is given
+opposite. Columbus carried it with him upon his first voyage, and shaped
+his course in accordance with it. Las Casas afterwards had it in his
+possession (<i>Hist. de las Indias</i>, tom. i. pp. 96, 279). It has since
+been lost, that is to say, it may still be in existence, but nobody
+knows where. But it has been so well described that the work of
+restoring its general outlines is not difficult and has several times
+been done. The sketch here given is taken from Winsor (<i>Narr. and Crit.
+Hist.</i>, ii. 103), who takes it from <i>Das Ausland</i>, 1867, p. 5. Another
+restoration may be found in St. Martin's <i>Atlas</i>, pl. ix. This map was
+the source of the western part of Martin Behaim's globe, as given below,
+p. <a href="#page421">422</a>.<a href="#footnotetag434"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote435" name="footnote435"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 435:</strong> All the description that follows is taken by Toscanelli
+from the book of Marco Polo.<a href="#footnotetag435"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote436" name="footnote436"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 436:</strong> On modern maps usually called Chang-chow, about 100 miles
+S. W. from Fou-chow.<a href="#footnotetag436"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote437" name="footnote437"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 437:</strong> I have given an account of this mission, above, p.
+<a href="#page281">281</a>.<a href="#footnotetag437"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote438" name="footnote438"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 438:</strong> Eugenius IV., pope from 1431 to 1447.<a href="#footnotetag438"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote439" name="footnote439"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 439:</strong> This paragraph is evidently the conclusion of the letter
+to Columbus, and not a part of the letter to Martinez, which has just
+ended with the date. In <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i> the two letters are
+mixed together.<a href="#footnotetag439"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote440" name="footnote440"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 440:</strong> On modern maps Hang-chow. After 1127 that city was for
+some time the capital of China, and Marco Polo's name <i>Quinsay</i>
+represents the Chinese word <i>King-sse</i> or "capital," now generally
+applied to Peking. Marco Polo calls it the finest and noblest city in
+the world. It appears that he does not overstate the circumference of
+its walls at 100 Chinese miles or <i>li</i>, equivalent to about 30 English
+miles. It has greatly diminished since Polo's time, while other cities
+have grown. Toscanelli was perhaps afraid to repeat Polo's figure as to
+the number of stone bridges; Polo says there were 12,000 of them, high
+enough for ships to pass under! We thus see how his Venetian
+fellow-citizens came to nickname him "Messer Marco Milione." As Colonel
+Yule says, "I believe we must not bring Marco to book for the literal
+accuracy of his statements as to the bridges; but all travellers have
+noticed the number and elegance of the bridges of cut stone in this part
+of China." <i>Marco Polo</i>, vol. ii, p. 144.<a href="#footnotetag440"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote441" name="footnote441"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 441:</strong> For Cipango, or Japan, see Yule's <i>Marco Polo</i>, vol. ii.
+pp. 195-207. The venerable astronomer's style of composition is amusing.
+He sets out to demonstrate to Columbus that the part of the voyage to be
+accomplished through new and unfamiliar stretches of the Atlantic is not
+great; but he is so full of the glories of Cathay and Cipango that he
+keeps reverting to that subject, to the manifest detriment of his
+exposition. His argument, however, is perfectly clear.<a href="#footnotetag441"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote442" name="footnote442"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 442:</strong> The original of this letter is not forthcoming. I
+translate from <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. viii.<a href="#footnotetag442"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote443" name="footnote443"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 443:</strong> Yet poor old Toscanelli did not live to see it
+accomplished; he died in 1482, before Columbus left Portugal.<a href="#footnotetag443"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote444" name="footnote444"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 444:</strong> That is, of Europe, and especially of Italy. Toscanelli
+again refers to Kublai Khan's message to the pope which&mdash;more or less
+mixed up with the vague notions about Prester John&mdash;had evidently left a
+deep impression upon the European mind. In translating the above
+sentence I have somewhat retrenched its excessive verbiage without
+affecting the meaning.<a href="#footnotetag444"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote445" name="footnote445"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 445:</strong> In including the "whole Portuguese nation" as feeling
+this desire, the good astronomer's enthusiasm again runs away with him.<a href="#footnotetag445"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote446" name="footnote446"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 446:</strong> Luigi Pulci, in his famous romantic poem published in
+1481, has a couple of striking stanzas in which Astarotte says to
+Rinaldo that the time is at hand when Hercules shall blush to see how
+far beyond his Pillars the ships shall soon go forth to find another
+hemisphere, for although the earth is as round as a wheel, yet the water
+at any given point is a plane, and inasmuch as all things tend to a
+common centre so that by a divine mystery the earth is suspended in
+equilibrium among the stars, just so there is an antipodal world with
+cities and castles unknown to men of olden time, and the sun in
+hastening westwards descends to shine upon those peoples who are
+awaiting him below the horizon:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Sappi che questa opinione è vana<br>
+Perchè più oltre navicar si puote,<br>
+Però che l' acqua in ogni parte è piana,<br>
+Benchè la terra abbi forma di ruote;<br>
+Era più grossa allor la gente umana,<br>
+Tal che potrebbe arrossirne le gote<br>
+Ercule ancor, d' aver posti que' segni,<br>
+Perchè più oltre passeranno i legni.<br>
+E puossi andar giù nell' altro emisperio,<br>
+Però che al centro ogni cosa reprime:<br>
+Sicchè la terra per divin misterio<br>
+Sospesa sta fra le stelle sublime,<br>
+E laggiù son città, castella, e imperio;<br>
+Ma nol cognobbon quelle gente prime.<br>
+Vedi che il sol di camminar s' affretta,<br>
+Dove io dico che laggiù s' aspetta.<br>
+
+<span class="left30">Pulci, <i>Morgante Maggiore</i>, xxv. 229, 230.</span></p>
+
+<p>This prophecy of western discovery combines with the astronomical
+knowledge here shown, to remind us that the Florentine Pulci was a
+fellow-townsman and most likely an acquaintance of Toscanelli.<a href="#footnotetag446"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote447" name="footnote447"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 447:</strong> It was formerly assumed, without hesitation, that the
+letter from Toscanelli to Columbus was written and sent in 1474. The
+reader will observe, however, that while the enclosed letter to Martinez
+is dated June 25, 1474, the letter to Columbus, in which it was
+enclosed, has no date. But according to the text as given in <i>Vita dell'
+Ammiraglio</i>, cap. viii., this would make no difference, for the letter
+to Columbus was sent only a few days later than the original letter to
+Martinez: "I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days
+ago (<i>alquanti giorni fa</i>) to a friend of mine, a gentleman of the
+household of the king of Portugal before the wars of Castile, in reply
+to another," etc. This friend, Martinez, had evidently been a gentleman
+of the household of Alfonso V. since before the civil wars of Castile,
+which in 1474 had been going on intermittently for nine years under the
+feeble Henry IV., who did not die until December 12, 1474. Toscanelli
+apparently means to say "a friend of mine who has for ten years or more
+been a gentleman of the royal household," etc.; only instead of
+mentioning the number of years, he alludes less precisely (as most
+people, and perhaps especially old people, are apt to do) to the most
+notable, mentionable, and glaring fact in the history of the Peninsula
+for that decade,&mdash;namely, the civil wars of Castile. As if an American
+writer in 1864 had said, "a friend of mine, who has been secretary to A.
+B. since before the war," instead of saying "for four years or more."
+This is the only reasonable interpretation of the phrase as it stands
+above, and it was long ago suggested by Humboldt (<i>Examen critique</i>,
+tom. i. p. 225). Italian and Spanish writers of that day, however, were
+lavish with their commas and sprinkled them in pretty much at haphazard.
+In this case Ferdinand's translator, Ulloa, sprinkled in one comma too
+many, and it fell just in front of the clause "before the wars of
+Castile;" so that Toscanelli's sentence was made to read as follows: "I
+send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days ago to a
+friend of mine, a gentleman of the household of the king of Portugal,
+before the wars of Castile, in reply to another," etc. Now this unhappy
+comma, coming after the word "Portugal," has caused ream after ream of
+good paper to be inked up in discussion, for it has led some critics to
+understand the sentence as follows: "I send you a copy of another
+letter, which I wrote a few days ago, before the wars of Castile, to a
+friend of mine," etc. This reading brought things to a pretty pass.
+Evidently a letter dated June 25, 1474, could not have been written
+before the civil wars of Castile, which began in 1465. It was therefore
+assumed that the phrase must refer to the "War of Succession" between
+Castile and Portugal (in some ways an outgrowth from the civil wars of
+Castile) which began in May, 1475, and ended in September, 1479. M.
+d'Avezac thinks that the letter to Columbus must have been written after
+the latter date, or more than five years later than the enclosed letter.
+M. Harrisse is somewhat less exacting, and is willing to admit that it
+may have been written at any time after this war had fairly begun,&mdash;say
+in the summer of 1475, not more than a year or so later than the
+enclosed letter. Still he is disposed on some accounts to put the date
+as late as 1482. The phrase <i>alquanti giorni fa</i> will not allow either
+of these interpretations. It means "a few days ago," and cannot possibly
+mean a year ago, still less five years ago. The Spanish retranslator
+from Ulloa renders it exactly <i>algunos dias há</i> (Navarrete, <i>Coleccion</i>,
+tom. ii. p. 7), and Humboldt (<i>loc. cit.</i>) has it <i>il y a quelques
+jours</i>. If we could be sure that the expression is a correct rendering
+of the lost Latin original, we might feel sure that the letter to
+Columbus must have been written as early as the beginning of August,
+1474. But now the great work of Las Casas, after lying in manuscript for
+314 years, has at length been published in 1875. Las Casas gives a
+Spanish version of the Toscanelli letters (<i>Historia de las Indias</i>,
+tom. i. pp. 92-97), which is unquestionably older than Ulloa's Italian
+version, though perhaps not necessarily more accurate. The phrase in Las
+Casas is not <i>algunos dias há</i>, but <i>há dias</i>, i. e. not "a few days
+ago," but "some time ago." Just which expression Toscanelli used cannot
+be determined unless somebody is fortunate enough to discover the lost
+Latin original. The phrase in Las Casas admits much more latitude of
+meaning than the other. I should suppose that <i>há dias</i> might refer to
+an event a year or two old, which would admit of the interpretation
+considered admissible by M. Harrisse. I should hardly suppose that it
+could refer to an event five or six years old; if Toscanelli had been
+referring in 1479 or 1480 to a letter written in 1474, his phrase would
+probably have appeared in Spanish as <i>algunos años há</i>, i. e. "a few
+years ago," not as <i>há dias</i>. M. d'Avezac's hypothesis seems to me not
+only inconsistent with the phrase <i>há dias</i>, but otherwise improbable.
+The frightful anarchy in Castile, which began in 1465 with the attempt
+to depose Henry IV. and alter the succession, was in great measure a
+series of ravaging campaigns and raids, now more general, now more
+local, and can hardly be said to have come to an end before Henry's
+death in 1474. The war which began with the invasion of Castile by
+Alfonso V. of Portugal, in May, 1475, was simply a later phase of the
+same series of conflicts, growing out of disputed claims to the crown
+and rivalries among great barons, in many respects similar to the
+contemporary anarchy in England called the Wars of the Roses. It is not
+likely that Toscanelli, writing at any time between 1475 and 1480, and
+speaking of the "wars of Castile" in the plural, could have had 1474 in
+his mind as a date previous to those wars; to his mind it would have
+rightly appeared as a date in the midst of them. In any case, therefore,
+his reference must be to a time before 1465, and Humboldt's
+interpretation is in all probability correct. The letter from Toscanelli
+to Columbus was probably written within a year or two after June 25,
+1474.</p>
+
+<p>On account of the vast importance of the Toscanelli letters, and because
+the early texts are found in books which the reader is not likely to
+have at hand, I have given them entire in the Appendix at the end of
+this work.<a href="#footnotetag447"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote448" name="footnote448"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 448:</strong> &#8045;&#963;&#964;&#949; &#964;&#8048; &#8017;&#960;&#8050;&#961;
+&#964;&#8134;&#962; &#954;&#949;&#966;&#945;&#955;&#8134;&#962;
+&#7940;&#963;&#964;&#961;&#945;
+&#956;&#949;&#947;&#8049;&#955;&#951;&#957;
+&#7956;&#967;&#949;&#953;&#957; &#964;&#8052;&#957;
+&#956;&#949;&#964;&#945;&#946;&#959;&#955;&#8052;&#957;,
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#956;&#8052; &#964;&#945;&#8166;&#964;&#945;
+
+&#966;&#945;&#8055;&#957;&#949;&#963;&#952;&#945;&#953;
+&#960;&#961;&#8056;&#962; &#7940;&#961;&#954;&#964;&#959;&#957;
+&#964;&#949; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#956;&#949;&#963;&#951;&#956;&#946;&#961;&#8055;&#945;&#957;
+&#956;&#949;&#964;&#945;&#946;&#945;&#8055;&#957;&#959;&#965;&#963;&#953;&#957;&#183;
+&#7956;&#957;&#953;&#959;&#953; &#947;&#8048;&#961; &#7952;&#957;
+&#913;&#7984;&#947;&#8059;&#960;&#964;&#8179;
+
+&#956;&#8050;&#957; &#7936;&#963;&#964;&#8051;&#961;&#949;&#962;
+&#8001;&#961;&#8182;&#957;&#964;&#945;&#953;, &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#960;&#949;&#961;&#8054; &#922;&#8059;&#960;&#961;&#959;&#957;&#183;
+
+&#7952;&#957; &#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962; &#960;&#961;&#8056;&#962;
+&#7940;&#961;&#954;&#964;&#959;&#957; &#948;&#8050;
+&#967;&#969;&#961;&#8055;&#959;&#965;&#962; &#959;&#8016;&#967;
+&#8001;&#961;&#8182;&#957;&#964;&#945;&#953; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#964;&#8048; &#948;&#953;&#8048; &#960;&#945;&#957;&#964;&#8056;&#962;
+&#7952;&#957; &#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962; &#960;&#961;&#8056;&#962;
+
+&#7936;&#961;&#954;&#964;&#8056;&#957;
+&#966;&#945;&#953;&#957;&#8057;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#945;
+&#964;&#8182;&#957; &#7936;&#963;&#964;&#961;&#8182;&#957;,
+&#7952;&#957; &#7952;&#954;&#949;&#8055;&#957;&#959;&#953;&#962;
+&#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962; &#964;&#8057;&#960;&#959;&#953;&#962;
+&#960;&#959;&#953;&#949;&#8150;&#964;&#945;&#953;
+&#948;&#8059;&#963;&#953;&#957;. &#8045;&#963;&#964;' &#959;&#8016;
+&#956;&#8057;&#957;&#959;&#957; &#7952;&#954;
+&#964;&#959;&#8059;&#964;&#969;&#957; &#948;&#8134;&#955;&#959;&#957;
+&#960;&#949;&#961;&#953;&#966;&#949;&#961;&#8050;&#962;
+
+&#8002;&#957; &#964;&#8056; &#963;&#967;&#8134;&#956;&#945;
+
+&#964;&#8134;&#962; &#947;&#8134;&#962;, &#7936;&#955;&#955;&#8048;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#963;&#966;&#945;&#8055;&#961;&#945;&#962;
+&#959;&#8016; &#956;&#949;&#947;&#8049;&#955;&#951;&#962;. &#927;&#8016;
+&#947;&#8048;&#961; &#7938;&#957; &#959;&#8021;&#964;&#969;
+&#964;&#945;&#967;&#8058;
+&#7952;&#960;&#8055;&#948;&#951;&#955;&#959;&#957;
+&#7952;&#960;&#959;&#8055;&#949;&#953;
+
+&#956;&#949;&#952;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#949;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#959;&#953;&#962;
+&#959;&#8021;&#964;&#969; &#946;&#961;&#945;&#967;&#8059;.
+&#916;&#953;&#8056; &#964;&#959;&#8058;&#962;
+&#8017;&#960;&#959;&#955;&#945;&#956;&#946;&#8049;&#957;&#959;&#957;&#964;&#945;&#962;
+&#963;&#965;&#957;&#8049;&#960;&#964;&#949;&#953;&#957;
+
+&#964;&#8056;&#957; &#960;&#949;&#961;&#8054; &#964;&#8048;&#962;
+&#7977;&#961;&#945;&#954;&#955;&#949;&#8055;&#959;&#965;&#962;
+&#963;&#964;&#8053;&#955;&#945;&#962; &#964;&#8057;&#960;&#959;&#957;
+&#964;&#8183; &#960;&#949;&#961;&#8054; &#964;&#8052;&#957;
+&#7992;&#957;&#948;&#953;&#954;&#8052;&#957;, &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#964;&#959;&#8166;&#964;&#959;&#957; &#964;&#8056;&#957;
+&#964;&#961;&#8057;&#960;&#959;&#957; &#949;&#7990;&#957;&#945;&#953;
+&#964;&#8052;&#957; &#920;&#8049;&#955;&#945;&#964;&#964;&#945;&#957;,
+&#956;&#8052; &#955;&#8055;&#945;&#957;
+
+&#8017;&#960;&#959;&#955;&#945;&#956;&#946;&#8049;&#957;&#949;&#953;&#957;
+&#7940;&#960;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#945;
+&#948;&#959;&#954;&#949;&#8150;&#957;. Aristotle, <i>De C&oelig;lo</i>, ii. 14.
+He goes on to say that "those persons" allege the existence of elephants
+alike in Mauretania and in India in proof of their theory.<a href="#footnotetag448"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote449" name="footnote449"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 449:</strong>
+
+&#8045;&#963;&#964;' &#949;&#7984; &#956;&#8052; &#964;&#8056;
+&#956;&#8051;&#947;&#949;&#952;&#959;&#962; &#964;&#959;&#8166;
+&#7944;&#964;&#955;&#945;&#957;&#964;&#953;&#954;&#959;&#8166;
+&#960;&#949;&#955;&#8049;&#947;&#959;&#965;&#962;
+&#7952;&#954;&#8061;&#955;&#965;&#949;, &#954;&#8066;&#957;
+&#960;&#955;&#949;&#8150;&#957; &#7969;&#956;&#8118;&#962; &#7952;&#954;
+&#964;&#8134;&#962; &#7992;&#946;&#951;&#961;&#8055;&#945;&#962;
+&#949;&#7984;&#962;
+
+&#964;&#8052;&#957; &#7992;&#957;&#948;&#953;&#954;&#8052;&#957;
+&#948;&#953;&#8048; &#964;&#959;&#8166; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#959;&#8166;
+&#960;&#945;&#961;&#945;&#955;&#955;&#8053;&#955;&#959;&#965;. Strabo,
+i. 4, § 6.<a href="#footnotetag449"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote450" name="footnote450"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 450:</strong> "Quantum enim est, quod ab ultimis litoribus Hispaniæ
+usque ad Indos jacet? Paucissimorum dierum spatium, si navem suus ventus
+implevit." Seneca, <i>Nat. Quæst.</i>, i. præf. § 11.<a href="#footnotetag450"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote451" name="footnote451"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 451:</strong></p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Venient annis sæcula seris,<br>
+Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum<br>
+Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,<br>
+Tethysque novos detegat orbes,<br>
+Nec sit terris ultima Thule.<br>
+
+<span class="left30">Seneca, <i>Medea</i>, 376.</span></p>
+
+<p>In the copy of Seneca's tragedies, published at Venice in 1510, bought
+at Valladolid by Ferdinand Columbus in March, 1518, for 4 reals (plus 2
+reals for binding), and now to be seen at the Biblioteca Colombina,
+there is a marginal note attached to these verses: "hæc prophetia
+expleta &#275; per patr&#275; meu&#658; cristofor&#363; col
+almir&#257;t&#275; anno 1492."<a href="#footnotetag451"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote452" name="footnote452"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 452:</strong>
+
+&#922;&#945;&#955;&#959;&#8166;&#956;&#949;&#957; &#947;&#8048;&#961;
+&#959;&#7984;&#954;&#959;&#965;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#951;&#957;
+&#7971;&#957; &#959;&#7984;&#954;&#959;&#8166;&#956;&#949;&#957;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#947;&#957;&#969;&#961;&#8055;&#950;&#959;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#183;
+&#7952;&#957;&#948;&#8051;&#954;&#949;&#964;&#945;&#953; &#948;&#8050;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7952;&#957;
+
+&#964;&#8135; &#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8135;
+&#949;&#8016;&#954;&#961;&#8049;&#964;&#8179; &#950;&#8061;&#957;&#8131;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#948;&#8059;&#959;
+&#959;&#7984;&#954;&#959;&#965;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#945;&#962;
+&#949;&#7990;&#957;&#945;&#953; &#7970; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#960;&#955;&#949;&#8055;&#959;&#965;&#962;.
+
+Strabo, i. 4, § 6;
+
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#947;&#8048;&#961; &#949;&#7984;
+&#959;&#8021;&#964;&#969;&#962; &#7956;&#967;&#949;&#953;,
+&#959;&#8016;&#967; &#8017;&#960;&#8056;
+&#964;&#959;&#8059;&#964;&#969;&#957; &#947;&#949;
+&#959;&#7984;&#954;&#949;&#8150;&#964;&#945;&#953; &#964;&#8182;&#957;
+&#960;&#945;&#961;' &#7969;&#956;&#8150;&#957;&#183;
+&#7936;&#955;&#955;' &#7952;&#954;&#949;&#8055;&#957;&#951;&#957;
+&#7940;&#955;&#955;&#951;&#957;
+
+&#959;&#7984;&#954;&#959;&#965;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#951;&#957;
+&#952;&#949;&#964;&#8051;&#959;&#957;. &#8005;&#960;&#949;&#961;
+&#7952;&#963;&#964;&#8054; &#960;&#953;&#952;&#945;&#957;&#8057;&#957;.
+&#7977;&#956;&#8150;&#957; &#948;&#8050; &#964;&#8048; &#7952;&#957;
+&#945;&#8016;&#964;&#8135; &#964;&#945;&#8166;&#964;&#945;
+&#955;&#949;&#954;&#964;&#8051;&#959;&#957;. Id. ii. 5, § 13. This has
+always seemed to me one of the most remarkable anticipations of modern
+truth in all ancient literature. Mr. Bunbury thinks it may have
+suggested the famous verses of Seneca just quoted. <i>History of Ancient
+Geography</i>, vol. ii. p. 224.<a href="#footnotetag452"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote453" name="footnote453"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 453:</strong> &#927;&#7985; &#948;&#8050;
+&#7969;&#956;&#8051;&#964;&#949;&#961;&#959;&#953; [i. e. the Stoics]
+&#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7936;&#960;&#8056;
+
+&#956;&#945;&#952;&#951;&#956;&#8049;&#964;&#969;&#957;
+&#960;&#8049;&#957;&#964;&#949;&#962;, &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#959;&#7985;
+&#960;&#955;&#949;&#8055;&#959;&#965;&#962; &#964;&#8182;&#957;
+&#7936;&#960;&#8056; &#964;&#959;&#8166;
+&#931;&#969;&#954;&#961;&#945;&#964;&#953;&#954;&#959;&#8166;
+&#948;&#953;&#948;&#945;&#963;&#954;&#945;&#955;&#949;&#8055;&#959;&#965;
+&#963;&#966;&#945;&#953;&#961;&#953;&#954;&#8056;&#957;
+&#949;&#7990;&#957;&#945;&#953; &#964;&#8056;
+&#963;&#967;&#8134;&#956;&#945; &#964;&#8134;&#962; &#947;&#8134;&#962;
+&#948;&#953;&#949;&#946;&#949;&#946;&#945;&#953;&#8061;&#963;&#945;&#957;&#964;&#959;.
+Cleomedes, i. 8; cf. Lucretius, <i>De Rerum Nat.</i>, i. 1052-1082; Stobæus,
+<i>Eclog.</i> i. 19; Plutarch, <i>De facie in Orbe Luna</i>, cap. vii.<a href="#footnotetag453"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote454" name="footnote454"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 454:</strong> See Augustine, <i>De civitate Dei</i>, xvi. 9; Lactantius,
+<i>Inst. Div.</i>, iii. 23; Jerome, <i>Comm. in Ezechiel</i>, i. 6; Whewell's
+<i>History of the Inductive Sciences</i>, vol i. p. 196.<a href="#footnotetag454"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote455" name="footnote455"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 455:</strong> See above, p. <a href="#page266">266</a>.<a href="#footnotetag455"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote456" name="footnote456"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 456:</strong> For an account of the cosmography of the Divine Comedy,
+illustrated with interesting diagrams, see Artaud de Montor, <i>Histoire
+de Dante Alighieri</i>, Paris, 1841.<a href="#footnotetag456"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote457" name="footnote457"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 457:</strong> It was first printed without indication of place or date,
+but probably the place was Paris and the date somewhere from 1483 to
+1490. Manuscript copies were very common, and Columbus probably knew the
+book long before that time. There is a good account of it in Humboldt's
+<i>Examen critique</i>, tom. i. pp. 61-76, 96-108. Humboldt thinks that such
+knowledge as Columbus had of the opinions of ancient writers was chiefly
+if not wholly obtained from Alliacus. It is doubtful if Columbus had any
+direct acquaintance with the works of Roger Bacon, but he knew the
+<i>Liber Cosmographicus</i> of Albertus Magnus and the <i>Speculum Naturale</i> of
+Vincent de Beauvais (both about 1250), and drew encouragement from them.
+He also knew the book of Mandeville, first printed in French at Lyons in
+1480, and a Latin translation of Marco Polo, published in 1485, a copy
+of which, with marginal MS. notes, is now in the Colombina.<a href="#footnotetag457"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote458" name="footnote458"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 458:</strong> See Herschel's <i>Outlines of Astronomy</i>, p. 140. For an
+account of the method employed by Eratosthenes, see Delambre, <i>Histoire
+de l'astronomie ancienne</i>, tom. i. pp. 86-91; Lewis, <i>Astronomy of the
+Ancients</i>, p. 198.<a href="#footnotetag458"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote459" name="footnote459"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 459:</strong> See Bunbury's <i>History of Ancient Geography</i>, vol. ii.
+pp. 95-97, 546-579; Müller and Donaldson, <i>History of Greek Literature</i>,
+vol. iii. p. 268.<a href="#footnotetag459"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote460" name="footnote460"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 460:</strong> Strabo, in arguing against this theory of bad lands,
+etc., as obstacles to ocean navigation&mdash;a theory which seems to be at
+least as old as Hipparchus&mdash;has a passage which finely expresses the
+loneliness of the
+sea:&mdash;&#927;&#7989;&#964;&#949; &#947;&#8048;&#961;
+&#960;&#949;&#961;&#953;&#960;&#955;&#949;&#8150;&#957;
+
+&#7952;&#960;&#953;&#967;&#949;&#953;&#961;&#8053;&#963;&#945;&#957;&#964;&#949;&#962;,
+&#949;&#7990;&#964;&#945;
+&#7936;&#957;&#945;&#963;&#964;&#961;&#8051;&#968;&#945;&#957;&#964;&#949;&#962;,
+&#959;&#8016;&#967; &#8017;&#960;&#8056;
+&#7968;&#960;&#949;&#8055;&#961;&#959;&#965;
+&#964;&#953;&#957;&#8056;&#962;
+&#7936;&#957;&#964;&#953;&#960;&#953;&#960;&#964;&#959;&#8059;&#963;&#951;&#962;
+&#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#954;&#969;&#955;&#965;&#959;&#8059;&#963;&#951;&#962;,
+&#964;&#8056;&#957; &#7952;&#960;&#8051;&#954;&#949;&#953;&#957;&#945;
+&#960;&#955;&#959;&#8166;&#957;
+&#7936;&#957;&#945;&#954;&#961;&#959;&#965;&#963;&#952;&#8134;&#957;&#945;&#953;
+&#966;&#945;&#963;&#8054;&#957;, &#7936;&#955;&#955;&#8048;
+&#8017;&#960;&#8056;
+
+&#7936;&#960;&#959;&#961;&#8055;&#945;&#962; &#954;&#945;&#8054;
+&#7952;&#961;&#951;&#956;&#8055;&#945;&#962;,
+&#959;&#8016;&#948;&#8050;&#957; &#7975;&#964;&#964;&#959;&#957;
+&#964;&#8134;&#962; &#952;&#945;&#955;&#8049;&#964;&#964;&#951;&#962;
+&#7952;&#967;&#959;&#8059;&#963;&#951;&#962; &#964;&#8056;&#957;
+&#960;&#8057;&#961;&#959;&#957; (lib. i. cap. i. § 8). When one thinks
+of this &#7936;&#960;&#959;&#961;&#8055;&#945; and
+&#7952;&#961;&#951;&#956;&#8055;&#945;, one fancies
+oneself far out on the Atlantic, alone in an open boat on a cloudy
+night, bewildered and hopeless.<a href="#footnotetag460"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote461" name="footnote461"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 461:</strong> See above, p. <a href="#page360">360</a>. Toscanelli's mile was nearly
+equivalent to the English statute mile. See the very important note in
+Winsor, <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>, vol. i. p. 51.<a href="#footnotetag461"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote462" name="footnote462"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 462:</strong> The reader will also notice upon Toscanelli's map the
+islands of Brazil and St. Brandan. For an account of all these fabulous
+islands see Winsor, <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>, vol. i. pp. 46-51. The name
+of "Antilia" survives in the name "Antilles," applied since about 1502
+to the West India islands. All the islands west of Toscanelli's
+ninetieth meridian belong in the Pacific. He drew them from his
+understanding of the descriptions of Marco Polo, Friar Odoric, and other
+travellers. These were the islands supposed, rightly, though vaguely, to
+abound in spices.<a href="#footnotetag462"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote463" name="footnote463"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 463:</strong> Columbus was confirmed in this opinion by the book of the
+Arabian astronomer Alfragan, written about <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 950, a Latin
+translation of which appeared in 1447. There is a concise summary of it
+in Delambre, <i>Histoire de l'astronomie du Moyen Âge</i>, pp. 63-73.
+Columbus proceeded throughout on the assumption that the length of a
+degree at the equator is 56.6 geographical miles, instead of the correct
+figure 60. This would oblige him to reduce all Toscanelli's figures by
+about six per cent., to begin with. Upon this point we have the highest
+authority, that of Columbus himself, in an autograph marginal note in
+his copy of the <i>Imago Mundi</i>, where he expresses himself most
+explicitly: "Nota quod sepius navigando ex Ulixbona ad Austrum in
+Guineam, notavi cum diligentia viam, ut solitum naucleris et malineriis,
+et preteria accepi altitudinem solis cum quadrante et aliis instrumentis
+plures vices, et inveni concordare cum Alfragano, videlicet respondere
+quemlibet gradum milliariis 56-<sup>2</sup>/<sub>3</sub>. Quare ad hanc mensuram fidem
+adhibendam. Tunc igitur possumus dicere quod circuitus Terræ sub aræ
+equinoctiali est 20,400 milliariorum. Similiter que id invenit magister
+Josephus phisicus et astrologus et alii plures missi specialiter ad hoc
+per serenissimum regem Portugaliæ," etc.; <i>anglicè</i>, "Observe that in
+sailing often from Lisbon southward to Guinea, I carefully marked the
+course, according to the custom of skippers and mariners, and moreover I
+took the sun's altitude several times with a quadrant and other
+instruments, and in agreement with Alfragan I found that each degree [i.
+e. of longitude, measured on a great circle] answers to 56-<sup>2</sup>/<sub>3</sub> miles. So
+that one may rely upon this measure. We may therefore say that the
+equatorial circumference of the earth is 20,400 miles. A similar result
+was obtained by Master Joseph, the physicist [or, perhaps, physician]
+and astronomer, and several others sent for this special purpose by the
+most gracious king of Portugal."&mdash;Master Joseph was physician to John
+II. of Portugal, and was associated with Martin Behaim in the invention
+of an improved astrolabe which greatly facilitated ocean
+navigation.&mdash;The exact agreement with Ptolemy's figures shows that by a
+mile Columbus meant a geographical mile, equivalent to ten Greek
+stadia.<a href="#footnotetag463"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote464" name="footnote464"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 464:</strong> One seventh of 18,000 is 2,571 geographical miles,
+equivalent to 2,963 English miles. The actual length of Columbus's first
+voyage, from last sight of land in the Canaries to first sight of land
+in the Bahamas, was according to his own dead reckoning about 3,230
+geographical miles. See his journal in Navarrete, <i>Coleccion</i>, tom. i.
+pp. 6-20.</p>
+
+<p>I give here in parallel columns the passage from Bacon and the one from
+Alliacus upon which Columbus placed so much reliance. In the Middle Ages
+there was a generous tolerance of much that we have since learned to
+stigmatize as plagiarism.</p>
+
+<table  border="0" cellpadding="1" summary="To compare.">
+<colgroup>
+    <col width="50%">
+    <col width="50%">
+</colgroup>
+<tr>
+<td>From Roger Bacon, <i>Opus</i></td>
+<td>From Petrus Alliacus, <i>De</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><i>Majus</i> (<span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1267), London,</td>
+<td><i>imagine Mundi</i> (<span class="smcap">A. D</span>. 1410),</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1733, ed. Jebb, p. 183:&mdash;"Sed</td>
+<td>Paris, cir. 1490, cap. viii. fol.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Aristoteles vult in fine secundi</td>
+<td>13 b:&mdash;"Summus Aristoteles</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>C&oelig;li et Mundi quod plus [terræ]</td>
+<td>dicit quod mare parvum est inter</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>habitetur quam quarta pars. Et</td>
+<td>finem Hispaniæ a parte occidentis</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Averroes hoc confirmat. Dicit</td>
+<td>et inter principium Indiæ</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Aristoteles quod mare parvum</td>
+<td>a parte orientis, et vult quod</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>est inter finem Hispaniæ a parte</td>
+<td>plus habitetur quam quarta</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>occidentis et inter principium</td>
+<td>pars, et Averroes hoc confirmat.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Indiæ a parte orientis. Et Seneca,</td>
+<td>Insuper Seneca libro</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>libro quinto Naturalium,</td>
+<td>quinto Naturalium, dicit quod</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>dicit quod mare hoc est navigabile</td>
+<td>mare est navigabile in paucis</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>in paucissimis diebus si</td>
+<td>diebus si ventus sit conveniens.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ventus sit conveniens. Et Plinius</td>
+<td>Et Plinius docet in Naturalibus,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>docet in Naturalibus quod</td>
+<td>libro secundo, quod navigatum</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>navigatum est a sinu Arabico</td>
+<td>est a sinu Arabico usque ad</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>usque ad Gades: unde refert</td>
+<td>Gades Herculis non multum</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>quendam fugisse a rego suo</td>
+<td>magno tempore,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>præ timore et intravit sinum</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Maris Rubri ... qui circiter</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>spatium navigationis annualis</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>distat a Mari Indico: ... ex</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>quo patet principium Indiæ in</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>oriente multum a nobis distare</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>et ab Hispania, postquam tantum</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>distat a principio Arabiæ</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>versus Indiam. A fine Hispaniæ</td>
+<td><span class="add6em">unde concludunt</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>sub terra tam parvum mare est</td>
+<td>aliqui, quod mare non est</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>quod non potest cooperire tres</td>
+<td>tantum quod possit cooperire</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>quartas terræ. Et hoc per</td>
+<td>tres quartas terræ. Accedit ad</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>auctoritatem alterius considerationis</td>
+<td>hoc auctoritas Esdræ libro suo</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>probatur. Nam Esdras</td>
+<td>quarto, dicentis quod sex partes</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>dicit quarto libro, quod sex</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>partes terræ sunt habitatæ et</td>
+<td>terrae sunt habitatæ et septima</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>septima est cooperta aquis. Et</td>
+<td>est cooperta aquis,</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ne aliquis impediat hanc auctoritatem,</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>dicens quod liber ille</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>est apocryphus et ignotæ auctoritatis,</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>dicendum est quod</td>
+<td>cujus libri auctoritatem sancti</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>sancti habuerunt illum librum</td>
+<td>habuerunt in reverentia."</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>in usu et confirmant veritates</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>sacras per illum librum."</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Columbus must either have carried the book of Alliacus with him on his
+voyages, or else have read his favourite passages until he knew them by
+heart, as may be seen from the following passage of a letter, written
+from Hispaniola in 1498 to Ferdinand and Isabella (Navarrete, tom i. p.
+261):&mdash;"El Aristotel dice que este mundo es pequeño y es el agua muy
+poca, y que facilmente se puede pasar de España à las Indias, y esto
+confirma el Avenryz [Averroes], y le alega el cardenal Pedro de Aliaco,
+autorizando este decir y aquel de Seneca, el qual conforma con estos....
+À esto trac una autoridad de Esdras del tercero libro suyo, adonde dice
+que de siete partes del mundo las seis son descubiertas y la una es
+cubierta de agua, la cual autoridad es aprobada por Santos, los cuales
+dan autoridad al 3<sup>o</sup> é 4<sup>o</sup> libro de Esdras, ansí come es S. Agustin é S.
+Ambrosio en su <i>exámeron</i>," etc.&mdash;"Singular period," exclaims Humboldt,
+"when a mixture of testimonies from Aristotle and Averroes, Esdras and
+Seneca, on the small extent of the ocean compared with the magnitude of
+continental land, afforded to monarchs guarantees for the safety and
+expediency of costly enterprises!" <i>Cosmos</i>, tr. Sabine, vol. ii. p.
+250. The passages cited in this note may be found in Humboldt,
+<i>Examen critique</i>, tom. i. pp. 65-69. Another interesting passage from
+<i>Imago Mundi</i>, cap. xv., is quoted on p. 78 of the same work.<a href="#footnotetag464"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote465" name="footnote465"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 465:</strong> See below, vol. ii. p. 96.<a href="#footnotetag465"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote466" name="footnote466"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 466:</strong> <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. iv.; Las Casas,
+<i>Historia</i>, tom. i. p. 49.<a href="#footnotetag466"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote467" name="footnote467"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 467:</strong> "Io navigai l' anno <span class="smcap">M CCCC LXXVII</span> nel mese di Febraio
+oltra Tile isola cento leghe, la cui parte Australe è lontana dall'
+Equinottiale settantatrè gradi, e non sessantatrè, come alcuni vogliono;
+nè giace dentro della linea, che include l' Occidente di Tolomeo, ma è
+molto più Occidentale. Et a questa isola, che è tanto grande, come
+l'Inghilterra, vanno gl' Inglesi con le loro mercatantie, specialmente
+quelli di Bristol. Et al tempo che io vi andai, non era congelato il
+mare, quantunque vi fossero si grosse maree, che in alcuni luoghi
+ascendeva ventisei braccia, e discendeva altretanti in altezza. È bene
+il vero, che Tile, quella, di cui Tolomeo fa mentione, giace dove egli
+dice; &amp; questa da' moderni è chiamata Frislanda." <i>Vita dell'
+Ammiraglio</i>, cap. iv. In the original edition of 1571, there are no
+quotation-marks; and in some modern editions, where these are supplied,
+the quotation is wrongly made to end just before the last sentence, so
+as to make it appear like a gloss of Ferdinand's. This is, however,
+impossible. Ferdinand died in 1539, and the Zeno narrative of Frislanda
+was not published till 1558, so that the only source from which that
+name could have come into his book was his father's document. The
+genuineness of the passage is proved by its recurrence, almost word for
+word, in Las Casas, <i>Historia</i>, tom. i. p. 48.<a href="#footnotetag467"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote468" name="footnote468"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 468:</strong> See Thorold Rogers, <i>The Economic Interpretation of
+History</i>, London, 1888, pp. 103, 319.<a href="#footnotetag468"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote469" name="footnote469"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 469:</strong> See above, p. <a href="#page236">236</a>.<a href="#footnotetag469"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote470" name="footnote470"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 470:</strong> See the graphic description of a voyage in these waters
+in March, 1882, in Nansen's <i>The First Crossing of Greenland</i>, London,
+1890, vol. i. pp. 149-152.<a href="#footnotetag470"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote471" name="footnote471"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 471:</strong> "E vidi tutto il Levante, e tutto il Ponente, che si dice
+per andare verso il Settentrione, cioè l'Inghilterra, e ho camminato per
+la Guinea." <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. iv.<a href="#footnotetag471"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote472" name="footnote472"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 472:</strong> See Anderson's <i>America not discovered by Columbus</i>,
+Chicago, 1874; 3d ed. enlarged, Chicago, 1883.<a href="#footnotetag472"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote473" name="footnote473"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 473:</strong> "Det er derfor sikkert, at Columbus ikke, som nogle har
+formodet, kan have kjendt Adam af Bremens Beretning on Vinland; vi kan
+gjerne tilføie, at havde Columbus kjendt den, vilde den ikke have kunnet
+vise ham Vei til Vesten (Indien), men kanske til Nordpolen." <i>Aarbøger
+for Nordisk Oldkyndighed</i>, 1887, ii. 2, p. 301.<a href="#footnotetag473"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote474" name="footnote474"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 474:</strong> See above, p. <a href="#page210">210</a>.<a href="#footnotetag474"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote475" name="footnote475"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 475:</strong> In 1689 the Swedish writer, Ole Rudbeck, could not
+understand Adam of Bremen's allusion to Vinland. The passage is
+instructive. Rudbeck declares that in speaking of a wine-growing country
+near to the Arctic ocean, Adam must have been misled by some poetical or
+figurative phrase; he was deceived either by his trust in the Danes, or
+by his own credulity, for he manifestly refers to <i>Finland</i>, for which
+the form <i>Vinland</i> does not once occur in Sturleson, etc.:&mdash;"Ne tamen
+poetis solis hoc loquendi genus in suis regionum laudationibus familiare
+fuisse quis existimet, sacras adeat literas quæ Palæstinæ fæcunditatem
+appellatione <i>fluentorum lactis &amp; mellis</i> designant. Tale aliquid, sine
+omne dubio, Adamo Bremensi quondam persuaserat insulam esse in ultimo
+septentrione sitam, mari glaciali vicinam, vini feracem, &amp; ea propter
+fide tamen Danorum, <i>Vinlandiam</i> dictam prout ipse ... fateri non
+dubitat. Sed deceptum eum hae sive Danorum fide, sive credulitate sua
+planum facit affine isti vocabulum <i>Finlandiæ</i> provinciæ ad Regnum
+nostrum pertinentis, pro quo apud Snorronem &amp; in Hist. Regum non semel
+occurrit <i>Vinlandiæ</i> nomen, cujus promontorium ad ultimum septentrionem
+&amp; usque ad mare glaciale sese extendit." Rudbeck, <i>Atland eller
+Manheim</i>, Upsala, cir. 1689, p. 291.<a href="#footnotetag475"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote476" name="footnote476"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 476:</strong> The source of such a confusion of ideas is probably the
+ridiculous map in Rafn's <i>Antiquitates Americanæ</i>, upon which North
+America is represented in all the accuracy of outline attainable by
+modern maps, and then the Icelandic names are put on where Rafn thought
+they ought to go, i. e. Markland upon Nova Scotia, Vinland upon New
+England, etc. Any person using such a map is liable to forget that it
+cannot possibly represent the crude notions of locality to which the
+reports of the Norse voyages must have given rise in an ignorant age.
+(The reader will find the map reproduced in Winsor, <i>Narr. and Crit.
+Hist.</i>, i. 95.) Rafn's fault was, however, no greater than that
+committed by the modern makers of so-called "ancient atlases"&mdash;still
+current and in use in schools&mdash;when, for example, they take a correct
+modern map of Europe, with parts of Africa and Asia, and upon countries
+so dimly known to the ancients as Scandinavia and Hindustan, but now
+drawn with perfect accuracy, they simply print the ancient names!!
+Nothing but confusion can come from using such wretched maps. The only
+safe way to study the history of geography is to reproduce the ancient
+maps themselves, as I have done in the present work. Many of the maps
+given below in the second volume will illustrate the slow and painful
+growth of the knowledge of the North American coast during the two
+centuries after Columbus.<a href="#footnotetag476"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote477" name="footnote477"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 477:</strong> "The fault that we find with Columbus is, that he was not
+honest and frank enough to tell where and how he had obtained his
+previous information about the lands which he pretended to discover."
+Anderson, <i>America not discovered by Columbus</i>, p. 90.<a href="#footnotetag477"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote478" name="footnote478"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 478:</strong> See below, p. <a href="#page398">398</a>, note.<a href="#footnotetag478"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote479" name="footnote479"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 479:</strong> For example, the pilot Martin Vicenti told Columbus that
+1,200 miles west of Cape St. Vincent he had picked up from the sea a
+piece of carved wood evidently not carved with iron tools. Pedro Correa,
+who had married Columbus's wife's sister, had seen upon Porto Santo a
+similar piece of carving that had drifted from the west. Huge reeds
+sometimes floated ashore upon those islands, and had not Ptolemy
+mentioned enormous reeds as growing in eastern Asia? Pine-trees of
+strange species were driven by west winds upon the coast of Fayal, and
+two corpses of men of an unknown race had been washed ashore upon the
+neighbouring island of Flores. Certain sailors, on a voyage from the
+Azores to Ireland, had caught glimpses of land on the west, and believed
+it to be the coast of "Tartary;" etc., etc. See <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>,
+cap. ix. Since he cited these sailors, why did he not cite the Northmen
+also, if he knew what they had done?<a href="#footnotetag479"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote480" name="footnote480"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 480:</strong> <i>Larger History of the United States</i>, p. 54.<a href="#footnotetag480"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote481" name="footnote481"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 481:</strong> "Terram veró Landa Rolfoni quæsitam existimarem esse
+Vinlandiam olim Islandis sic dictam; de qua alibi insulam nempe Americæ
+e regione Gronlandiæ, quæ fortè hodie Estotilandia," etc. <i>Crymog&oelig;a</i>,
+Hamburg, 1610, p. 120.</p>
+
+<p>Abraham Ortelius in 1606 speaks of the Northmen coming to America, but
+bases his opinion upon the Zeno narrative (published in 1558) and upon
+the sound of the name <i>Norumbega</i>, and apparently knows nothing of
+Vinland:&mdash;"Iosephus Acosta in his book <i>De Natura noui orbis</i> indeuors
+by many reasons to proue, that this part of <i>America</i> was originally
+inhabited by certaine Indians, forced thither by tempestuous weather
+ouer the South sea which now they call Mare del Zur. But to me it seemes
+more probable, out of the historie of the two Zeni, gentlemen of Venice,
+... that this New World many ages past was entred upon by some islanders
+of <i>Europe</i>, as namely of <i>Gr&oelig;nland</i>, Island, and Frisland; being
+much neerer thereunto than the Indians, nor disioyned thence ... by an
+Ocean so huge, and to the Indians so vnnauigable. Also, what else may we
+coniecture to be signified by this <i>Norumbega</i> [the name of a North
+region of <i>America</i>] but that from <i>Norway</i>, signifying a North land,
+some Colonie in times past hath hither beene transplanted?" <i>Theatre of
+the Whole World</i>, London, 1606, p. 5. These passages are quoted and
+discussed by Reeves, <i>The Finding of Wineland the Good</i>, pp. 95, 96. The
+supposed connection of <i>Norumbega</i> with <i>Norway</i> is very doubtful.
+Possibly Stephanius, in his map of 1570 (Torfæus, <i>Gronlandia antiqua</i>,
+1706), may have had reference to Labrador or the north of Newfoundland.<a href="#footnotetag481"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote482" name="footnote482"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 482:</strong> Gallo, <i>De navigatione Columbi</i>, apud Muratori, <i>Rerum
+Italicarum Scriptores</i>, tom. xxiii. col. 302.<a href="#footnotetag482"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote483" name="footnote483"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 483:</strong> Lafuente, <i>Historia de España</i>, tom. ix, p. 428.<a href="#footnotetag483"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote484" name="footnote484"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 484:</strong> Vasconcellos, <i>Vida del rey Don Juan II.</i>, lib. iv.; La
+Clède, <i>Histoire de Portugal</i>, lib. xiii.<a href="#footnotetag484"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote485" name="footnote485"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 485:</strong> The Portuguese have never been able to forgive Columbus
+for discovering a new world for Spain, and their chagrin sometimes vents
+itself in amusing ways. After all, says Cordeiro, Columbus was no such
+great man as some people think, for he did not discover what he promised
+to discover; and, moreover, the Portuguese geographers were right in
+condemning his scheme, because it really is not so far by sea from
+Lisbon around Africa to Hindustan as from Lisbon by any practicable
+route westward to Japan! See Luciano Cordeiro, <i>De la part prise par les
+Portugais dans la découverte d'Amérique</i>, Lisbon, 1876, pp. 23, 24, 29,
+30. Well, I don't know that there is any answer to be made to this
+argument. Logic is logic, says the wise Autocrat:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+"End of the wonderful one-hoss shay,<br>
+Logic is logic, that's all I say."</p>
+
+<p>Cordeiro's book is elaborately criticised in the learned work of
+Prospero Peragallo, <i>Cristoforo Colombo in Portogallo: studi critici</i>,
+Genoa, 1882.<a href="#footnotetag485"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote486" name="footnote486"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 486:</strong> "Perciocchè essendo l' Ammiraglio di generosi ed alti
+pensieri, volle capitolare con suo grande onore e vantaggio, per lasciar
+la memoria sua, e la grandezza della sua casa, conforme alla grandezza
+delle sue opere e de' suoi meriti." <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. xi.
+The jealous Portuguese historian speaks in a somewhat different tone
+from the affectionate son:&mdash;"Veó requerer á el rey Dom João que le desse
+algums navios pera ir á descobrir a ilha de Gypango [<i>sic</i>] per esta mar
+occidental.... El rey, porque via ser este Christovão Colom homem
+falador e glorioso em mostrar suas habilidades, e mas fantastico et de
+imaginacão com sua ilha de Cypango, que certo no que dezia: davalhe
+pouco credito." Barros, <i>Decada primeira da Asia</i>, Lisbon, 1752, liv.
+iii. cap. xi. fol. 56.<a href="#footnotetag486"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote487" name="footnote487"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 487:</strong> It has been urged in the king's defence that "such a
+proceeding was not an instance of bad faith or perfidy (!) but rather of
+the policy customary at that time, which consisted in distrusting
+everything that was foreign, and in promoting by whatever means the
+national glory." Yes, indeed, whether the means were fair or foul. Of
+course it was a common enough policy, but it was lying and cheating all
+the same. "Não foi sem duvida por mà fè ou perfidia que tacitamente se
+mandon armar hum navio à cujo capitão se confiou o plano que Colombo
+havia proposto, e cuja execuçao se lhe encarregou; mas sim por seguir a
+politica naquelle tempo usada, que toda consistia em olhar com
+desconfiança para tudo o que era estrangeiro, e en promover por todos os
+modos a gloria nacional. O capitão nomeado para a empreza, como não
+tivesse nem o espirito, nem a convicção de Colombo, depois de huma curta
+viagem nos mares do Oeste, fez-se na volta da terra: e arribou à Lisboa
+descontente e desanimado." Campe, <i>Historia do descobrimento da
+America</i>, Paris, 1836, tom. i. p. 13. The frightened sailors protested
+that <span class="smcap">YOU MIGHT AS WELL EXPECT TO FIND LAND IN THE SKY AS IN THAT WASTE
+OF WATERS</span>! See Las Casas, <i>Hist. de las Indias</i>, tom. i. p. 221. Las
+Casas calls the king's conduct by its right name, <i>dobladura</i>,
+"trickery."<a href="#footnotetag487"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote488" name="footnote488"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 488:</strong> It has generally been supposed, on the authority of <i>Vita
+dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. xi., that his wife had lately died; but an
+autograph letter of Columbus, in the possession of his lineal descendant
+and representative the present Duke of Veraguas, proves that this is a
+mistake. In this letter Columbus says expressly that when he left
+Portugal he left wife and children, and never saw them again.
+(Navarrete, <i>Coleccion</i>, tom. ii. doc. cxxxvii. p. 255.) As Las Casas,
+who knew Diego so well, also supposed his mother to have died before his
+father left Portugal, it is most likely that she died soon afterwards.
+Ferdinand Columbus says that Diego was left in charge of some friars at
+the convent of La Rábida near Palos (<i>loc. cit.</i>); Las Casas is not
+quite so sure; he thinks Diego was left with some friend of his father
+at Palos, or perhaps (<i>por ventura</i>) at La Rábida. (<i>Historia</i>, tom. i.
+p. 227.) These mistakes were easy to make, for both La Rábida and Huelva
+were close by Palos, and we know that Diego's aunt Muliar was living at
+Huelva. (Las Casas, <i>op. cit.</i> tom. i. p. 241; Harrisse, tom. i. pp.
+279, 356, 391; tom. ii. p. 229.) It is pretty clear that Columbus never
+visited La Rábida before the autumn of 1491 (see below, p. <a href="#page412">412</a>). My own
+notion is that Columbus may have left his wife with an infant and
+perhaps one older child, relieving her of the care of Diego by taking
+him to his aunt, and intending as soon as practicable to reunite the
+family. He clearly did not know at the outset whether he should stay in
+Spain or not.<a href="#footnotetag488"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote489" name="footnote489"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 489:</strong> It rests upon an improbable statement of Ramusio, who
+places the event as early as 1470. The first Genoese writer to allude to
+it is Casoni, <i>Annali della Republica di Genova</i>, Genoa, 1708, pp.
+26-31. Such testimony is of small value.<a href="#footnotetag489"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote490" name="footnote490"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 490:</strong> First mentioned in 1800 by Marin, <i>Storia del commercio
+de Veneziani</i>, Venice, 1798-1808, tom. vii. p. 236.<a href="#footnotetag490"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote491" name="footnote491"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 491:</strong> The description usually given of this conference rests
+upon the authority of Remesal, <i>Historia de la prouincia de Chyapa</i>,
+Madrid, 1619, lib. ii. cap. vii. p. 52. Las Casas merely says that the
+question was referred to certain persons at the court, <i>Hist. de las
+Indias</i>, tom. i. p. 228. It is probably not true that the project of
+Columbus was officially condemned by the university of Salamanca as a
+corporate body. See Camara, <i>Religion y Ciencia</i>, Valladolid, 1880, p.
+261.<a href="#footnotetag491"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote492" name="footnote492"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 492:</strong> Some historians, unwilling to admit any blemishes in the
+character of Columbus, have supposed that this union was sanctioned by
+marriage, but this is not probable. He seems to have been tenderly
+attached to Beatriz, who survived him many years. See Harrisse, tom. ii.
+pp. 353-357.<a href="#footnotetag492"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote493" name="footnote493"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 493:</strong> The authority for Bartholomew Columbus having sailed to
+the Cape of Good Hope with Dias is a manuscript note of his own in
+Christopher's copy of the <i>Imago Mundi</i>: "Nota quod hoc anno de 88 [it
+should be 87] in mense decembri appulit in Ulixbona Bartholomeus Didacus
+capitaneus trium carabelarum quem miserat serenissimus rex Portugalie in
+Guineam ad tentandum terrain. Et renunciavit ipse serenissimo regi prout
+navigaverat ultra jam navigata leuchas 600, videlicet 450 ad austrum et
+150 ad aquilonem usque montem per ipsum nominatum <i>Cabo de boa
+esperança</i> quem in Agesimba estimamus. Qui quidem in eo loco invenit se
+distare per astrolabium ultra lineam equinoctialem gradus 35. Quem
+viagium pictavit et scripsit de leucha in leucham in una carta
+navigationis ut oculi visum ostenderet ipso serenissimo regi. In quibus
+omnibus interfui." M. Varnhagen has examined this note and thinks it is
+in the handwriting of Christopher Columbus (<i>Bulletin de Géographie</i>,
+janvier, 1858, tom. xv. p. 71); and M. d'Avezac (<i>Canevas
+chronologique</i>, p. 58), accepting this opinion, thinks that the words
+<i>in quibus omnibus interfui</i>, "in all of which I took part," only mean
+that Christopher was present in Lisbon when the expedition returned, and
+heard the whole story! With all possible respect for such great scholars
+as MM. d'Avezac and Varnhagen, I submit that the opinion of Las Casas,
+who first called attention to this note, must be much better than theirs
+on such a point as the handwriting of the two brothers. When Las Casas
+found the note he wondered whether it was meant for Bartholomew or
+Christopher, i. e. wondered which of the two was meant to be described
+as having "taken part;" but at all events, says Las Casas, the
+handwriting is Bartholomew's:&mdash;"Estas son palabras escritas de la mano
+de Bartolomé Colon, no sé si las escribió de sí ó de su letra por su
+hermano Cristóbal Colon." Under these circumstances it seems idle to
+suppose that Las Casas could have been mistaken about the handwriting;
+he evidently put his mind on that point, and in the next breath he goes
+on to say, "la letra yo conozco ser de Bartolomé Colon, porque tuve
+muchas suyas," i. e. "I know it is Bartholomew's writing, for I have had
+many letters of his;" and again "estas palabras ... de la misma letra y
+mano de Bartolomé Colon, la cual muy bien conocí y agora tengo hartas
+cartas y letras suyas, tratando deste viaje," i. e. "these words ...
+from the very writing and hand of Bartholomew Columbus, which I knew
+very well, and I have to-day many charts and letters of his, treating of
+this voyage." (<i>Hist. de las Indias</i>, tom. i. pp. 213, 214.) This last
+sentence makes Las Casas an independent witness to Bartholomew's
+presence in the expedition, a matter about which he was not likely to be
+mistaken. What puzzled him was the question, not whether Bartholomew
+went, but whether Christopher could have gone also, "pudo ser tambien
+que se hallase Cristóbal Colon." Now Christopher certainly did not go on
+that voyage. The expedition started in August, 1486, and returned to
+Lisbon in December, 1487, after an absence of sixteen months and
+seventeen days, "anendo dezaseis meses et dezasete dias que erão
+partidos delle." (Barros, <i>Decada primeira da Asia</i>, Lisbon, 1752, tom.
+i. fol. 42, 44.) The account-book of the treasury of Castile shows that
+sums of money were paid to Christopher at Seville, May 5, July 3, August
+27, and October 15, 1487; so that he could not have gone with Dias (see
+Harrisse, tom. ii. p. 191). Neither could Christopher have been in
+Lisbon in December, 1487, when the little fleet returned, for his
+safe-conduct from King John is dated March 20, 1488. It was not until
+the autumn of 1488 that Columbus made this visit to Portugal, and M.
+d'Avezac has got the return of the fleet a year too late. Bartholomew's
+note followed a custom which made 1488 begin at Christmas, 1487.</p>
+
+<p>In reading a later chapter of Las Casas for another purpose (tom. i. p.
+227), I come again upon this point. He rightly concludes that
+Christopher could not have gone with Dias, and again declares most
+positively that the handwriting of the note was Bartholomew's and not
+Christopher's.</p>
+
+<p>This footnote affords a good illustration of the kind of difficulties
+that surround such a subject as the life of Columbus, and the ease with
+which an excess of ingenuity may discover mare's nests.<a href="#footnotetag493"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote494" name="footnote494"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 494:</strong> It may be found in Navarrete, <i>Coleccion de viages</i>, tom.
+ii. pp. 5, 6.<a href="#footnotetag494"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote495" name="footnote495"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 495:</strong> The account-book of the treasury shows that on June 16 he
+was still in Spain. See Harrisse, tom. i. p. 355.<a href="#footnotetag495"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote496" name="footnote496"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 496:</strong> The entry, as given by Las Casas, is "Pro authore, seu
+pictore, &#9553; Gennua cui patria est, nomen cui Bartolomeus &#9553;
+Columbus de terra rubea, opus edidit istud &#9553; Londonije: anno domini
+millesimo quatercentessimo octiesque uno &#9553; Atque insuper anno octavo:
+decimaque die mensis Februarii. &#9553; Laudes Christo cantentur abunde."
+<i>Historia</i>, tom. i. p. 225. Now since Bartholomew Columbus was a fairly
+educated man, writing this note in England on a map made for the eyes of
+the king of England, I suppose he used the old English style which made
+the year begin at the vernal equinox instead of Christmas, so that his
+February, 1488, means the next month but one after December, 1488, i. e.
+what in our new style becomes February, 1489. Bartholomew returned to
+Lisbon from Africa in the last week of December, 1487, and it is not
+likely that his plans could have been matured and himself settled down
+in London in less than seven weeks. The logical relation of the events,
+too, shows plainly that Christopher's visit to Lisbon was for the
+purpose of consulting his brother and getting first-hand information
+about the greatest voyage the world had ever seen. In the early weeks of
+1488 Christopher sends his request for a safe-conduct, gets it March 20,
+waits till his child is born, August 15, and then presently goes.
+Bartholomew may have sailed by the first of October for England, where
+(according to this reading of his date) we actually find him four months
+later. What happened to him in this interval? Here we come to the story
+of the pirates. M. Harrisse, who never loses an opportunity for throwing
+discredit upon the <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, has failed to make the
+correction of date which I have here suggested. He puts Bartholomew in
+London in February, 1488, and is thus unable to assign any reason for
+Christopher's visit to Lisbon. He also finds that in the forty-six days
+between Christmas, 1487, and February, 10, 1488, there is hardly room
+enough for any delay due to so grave a cause as capture by pirates.
+(<i>Christophe Colomb</i>, vol. ii. p. 192.) He therefore concludes that the
+statement in the <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. xi., is unworthy of
+credit, and it is upon an accumulation of small difficulties like this
+that he bases his opinion that Ferdinand Columbus cannot have written
+that book. But Las Casas also gives the story of the pirates, and adds
+the information that they were "Easterlings," though he cannot say of
+what nation, i. e. whether Dutch, German, or perhaps Danes. He says that
+Bartholomew was stripped of his money and fell sick, and after his
+recovery was obliged to earn money by map-making before he could get to
+England. (<i>Historia</i>, tom. i. p. 225.) Could all this have happened
+within the four months which I have allowed between October, 1488, and
+February, 1489? Voyages before the invention of steamboats were of very
+uncertain duration. John Adams in 1784 was fifty-four days in getting
+from London to Amsterdam (see my <i>Critical Period of American History</i>,
+p. 156). But with favourable weather a Portuguese caravel in 1488 ought
+to have run from Lisbon to Bristol in fourteen days or less, so that in
+four months there would be time enough for quite a chapter of accidents.
+Las Casas, however, says it was <i>a long time</i> before Bartholomew was
+able to reach England:&mdash;"Esto fué causa que enfermase y viniese á mucha
+pobreza, y estuviese mucho tempo sin poder llegar á Inglaterra, hasta
+tanto que quiso Dies sanarle; y reformado algo, por su industria y
+trabajos de sus manos, haciendo cartas de marear, llegó á Inglaterra, y,
+pasados un dia y otros, hobo de alcanzar que le oyese Enrique VII." It
+is impossible, I think, to read this passage without feeling that at
+least a year must have been consumed; and I do not think we are entitled
+to disregard the words of Las Casas in such a matter. But how shall we
+get the time?</p>
+
+<p>Is it possible that Las Casas made a slight mistake in deciphering the
+date on Bartholomew's map? Either that mariner did not give the map to
+Henry VII., or the king gave it back, or more likely it was made in
+duplicate. At any rate Las Casas had it, along with his many other
+Columbus documents, and for aught we know it may still be tumbling about
+somewhere in the Spanish archives. It was so badly written (<i>de muy mala
+é corrupta letra</i>), apparently in abbreviations (<i>sin ortografía</i>), that
+Las Casas says he found extreme difficulty in making it out. Now let us
+observe that date, which is given in fantastic style, apparently because
+the inscription is in a rude doggerel, and the writer seems to have
+wished to keep his "verses" tolerably even. (They don't scan much better
+than Walt Whitman's.) As it stands, the date reads <i>anno
+domini millesimo quatercentessimo octiesque uno atque insuper anno
+octavo</i>, i. e. "in the year of our Lord the thousandth, four hundredth,
+<span class="smcap">AND EIGHT-TIMES-ONE</span>, and thereafter the eighth year." What business has
+this cardinal number <i>octiesque uno</i> in a row of ordinals? If it were
+translatable, which it is not, it would give us 1,000 + 400 + 8 + 8 =
+1416, an absurd date. The most obvious way to make the passage readable
+is to insert the ordinal <i>octogesimo primo</i> instead of the incongruous
+<i>octiesque uno</i>; then it will read "in the year of our Lord the
+one-thousand-four-hundred-and-eighty-first, and thereafter the eighth
+year," that is to say 1489. Now translate old style into new style, and
+February, 1489, becomes February, 1490, which I believe to be the
+correct date. This allows sixteen months for Bartholomew's mishaps; it
+justifies the statement in which Las Casas confirms Ferdinand Columbus;
+and it harmonizes with the statement of Lord Bacon: "For Christopherus
+Columbus, refused by the king of Portugal (who would not embrace at once
+both east and west), employed his brother Bartholomew Columbus unto King
+Henry to negotiate for his discovery. And it so fortuned that he was
+taken by pirates at sea; by which accidental impediment he was long ere
+he came to the king; so long that before he had obtained a capitulation
+with the king for his brother the enterprise was achieved, and so the
+West Indies by Providence were then reserved for the crown of Castilia."
+<i>Historie of the Raygne of K. Henry the Seventh</i>, Bacon's <i>Works</i>,
+Boston, 1860, vol. xi. p. 296. Lord Bacon may have taken the statement
+from Ferdinand's biography; but it probably agreed with English
+traditions, and ought not to be slighted in this connection.<a href="#footnotetag496"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote497" name="footnote497"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 497:</strong> One of the sisters of Charles VIII. See Harrisse, tom.
+ii. p. 194.<a href="#footnotetag497"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote498" name="footnote498"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 498:</strong> Bernaldez, <i>Reyes Católicos</i>, cap. xci.<a href="#footnotetag498"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote499" name="footnote499"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 499:</strong> Zuñiga, <i>Anales de Sevilla</i>, lib. xii. p. 404.<a href="#footnotetag499"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote500" name="footnote500"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 500:</strong> See the letter of March 19, 1493, from the Duke of
+Medina-Celi to the Grand Cardinal of Spain (from the archives of
+Simancas) in Navarrete <i>Coleccion de viages</i>, tom. ii. p. 20.<a href="#footnotetag500"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote501" name="footnote501"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 501:</strong> This promise was never fulfilled. When Columbus returned
+in triumph, arriving March 6, 1493, at Lisbon, and March 15 at Palos,
+the Duke of Medina-Celi wrote the letter just cited, recalling the
+queen's promise and asking to be allowed to send to the Indies once each
+year an expedition on his own account; for, he says, if he had not kept
+Columbus with him in 1490 and 1491 he would have gone to France, and
+Castile would have lost the prize. There was some force in this, but
+Isabella does not appear to have heeded the request.<a href="#footnotetag501"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote502" name="footnote502"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 502:</strong> This theory of the situation is fully sustained by Las
+Casas, tom. i. p. 241.<a href="#footnotetag502"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote503" name="footnote503"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 503:</strong> My account of these proceedings at La Rábida differs in
+some particulars from any heretofore given, and I think gets the events
+into an order of sequence that is at once more logical and more in
+harmony with the sources of information than any other. The error of
+Ferdinand Columbus&mdash;a very easy one to commit, and not in the least
+damaging to his general character as biographer&mdash;lay in confusing his
+father's two real visits (in 1484 and 1491) to Huelva with two visits
+(one imaginary in 1484 and one real in 1491) to La Rábida, which was
+close by, between Huelva and Palos. The visits were all the more likely
+to get mixed up in recollection because in each case their object was
+little Diego and in each case he was left in charge of somebody in that
+neighbourhood. The confusion has been helped by another for which
+Ferdinand is not responsible, viz.: the friar Juan Perez has been
+confounded with another friar Antonio de Marchena, who Columbus says was
+the only person who from the time of his first arrival in Spain had
+always befriended him and never mocked at him. These worthy friars twain
+have been made into one (e. g. "the prior of the convent, Juan Perez de
+Marchena," Irving's <i>Columbus</i>, vol. i. p. 128), and it has often been
+supposed that Marchena's acquaintance began with Columbus at La Rábida
+in 1484, and that Diego was left at the convent at that time. But some
+modern sources of information have served at first to bemuddle, and then
+when more carefully sifted, to clear up the story. In 1508 Diego
+Columbus brought suit against the Spanish crown to vindicate his claim
+to certain territories discovered by his father, and there was a long
+investigation in which many witnesses were summoned and past events were
+busily raked over the coals. Among these witnesses were Rodriguez
+Cabejudo and the physician Garcia Fernandez, who gave from personal
+recollection a very lucid account of the affairs at La Rábida. These
+proceedings are printed in Navarrete, <i>Coleccion de viages</i>, tom. iii.
+pp. 238-591. More recently the publication of the great book of Las
+Casas has furnished some very significant clues, and the elaborate
+researches of M. Harrisse have furnished others. (See Las Casas, lib. i.
+cap. xxix., xxxi.; Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 341-372; tom. ii. pp.
+237-231; cf. Peragallo, <i>L' autenticità</i>, etc., pp.
+117-134.)&mdash;It now seems clear that Marchena, whom Columbus knew from his
+first arrival in Spain, was not associated with La Rábida. At that time
+Columbus left Diego, a mere infant, with his wife's sister at Huelva.
+Seven years later, intending to leave Spain forever, he went to Huelva
+and took Diego, then a small boy. On his way from Huelva to the Seville
+road, and thence to Cordova (where he would have been joined by Beatriz
+and Ferdinand), he happened to pass by La Rábida, where up to that time
+he was evidently unknown, and to attract the attention of the prior Juan
+Perez, and the wheel of fortune suddenly and unexpectedly turned. As
+Columbus's next start was not for France, but for Granada, his boy was
+left in charge of two trustworthy persons. On May 8, 1492, the little
+Diego was appointed page to Don John, heir-apparent to the thrones of
+Castile and Aragon, with a stipend of 9,400 maravedis. On February 19,
+1498, after the death of that young prince, Diego became page to Queen
+Isabella.<a href="#footnotetag503"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote504" name="footnote504"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 504:</strong> In popular allusions to Columbus it is quite common to
+assume or imply that he encountered nothing but opposition from the
+clergy. For example the account in Draper's <i>Conflict between Science
+and Religion</i>, p. 161, can hardly be otherwise understood by the reader.
+But observe that Marchena who never mocked at Columbus, Juan Perez who
+gave the favourable turn to his affairs, the great prelates Deza and
+Mendoza, and the two treasurers Santangel and Quintanilla, were every
+one of them priests! Without cordial support from the clergy no such
+enterprise as that of Columbus could have been undertaken, in Spain at
+least. It is quite right that we should be free-thinkers; and it is also
+desirable that we should have some respect for facts.<a href="#footnotetag504"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote505" name="footnote505"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 505:</strong> Our Scandinavian friends are fond of pointing to this
+demand of Columbus as an indication that he secretly expected to
+"discover America," and not merely to find the way to Asia. But how
+about Ferdinand and Isabella, who finally granted what was demanded, and
+their ministers who drew up the agreement, to say nothing of the clerks
+who engrossed it? What did they all understand by "discovering islands
+and continents in the ocean"? Were they all in this precious Vinland
+secret? If so, it was pretty well kept. But in truth there was nothing
+singular in these stipulations. Portugal paid for discovery in just this
+way by granting governorships over islands like the Azores, or long
+stretches of continent like Guinea, along with a share of the revenues
+yielded by such places. See for example the cases of Gonzalo Cabral,
+Fernando Gomez, and others in Major, <i>Prince Henry the Navigator</i>, pp.
+238, 321, and elsewhere. In their search for the Indies the Portuguese
+were continually finding new lands, and it was likely to be the same
+with the western route, which was supposed (see Catalan, Toscanelli, and
+Behaim maps) to lead among spice islands innumerable, and to Asiatic
+kingdoms whose heathen people had no rights of sovereignty that
+Christian monarchs felt bound to respect.<a href="#footnotetag505"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote506" name="footnote506"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 506:</strong> Las Casas, <i>op. cit.</i> tom i. p. 243.<a href="#footnotetag506"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote507" name="footnote507"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 507:</strong> See his letter of February, 1502, to Pope Alexander VI.
+in Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 280; and cf. Helps, <i>Spanish Conquest in
+America</i>, vol. i. p. 96; Roselly de Lorgues, <i>Christophe Colomb</i>, p.
+394.<a href="#footnotetag507"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote508" name="footnote508"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 508:</strong> I cite this version from Irving's <i>Columbus</i>, vol. i. p.
+142, making a slight amendment in the rendering; the original text is in
+Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 7. A few days later the title of "Don" was
+granted to Columbus and made hereditary in his family along with the
+offices of viceroy and governor-general.<a href="#footnotetag508"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote509" name="footnote509"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 509:</strong> A police organization formed in 1476 for suppressing
+highway robbery.<a href="#footnotetag509"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote510" name="footnote510"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 510:</strong> It is not easy to give an accurate account of the cost of
+this most epoch-making voyage in all history. Conflicting statements by
+different authorities combine with the fluctuating values of different
+kinds of money to puzzle and mislead us. According to M. Harrisse
+1,000,000 maravedis would be equivalent to 295,175 francs, or about
+59,000 gold dollars of United States money at present values. Las Casas
+(tom. i. p. 256) says that the eighth part, raised by Columbus, was
+500,000 maravedis (29,500 dollars). Account-books preserved in the
+archives of Simancas show that the sums paid from the treasury of
+Castile amounted to 1,140,000 maravedis (67,500 dollars). Assuming the
+statement of Las Casas to be correct, the amounts contributed would
+perhaps have been as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table  border="0" cellpadding="1" summary="A,mounts.">
+<colgroup>
+    <col width="60%">
+    <col width="30%">
+</colgroup>
+<tr>
+<td>Queen Isabella, from Castile treasury</td>
+<td class="right">$67,500</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><span class="add2em">"</span><span class="add2em">loan from Santangel</span></td>
+<td class="right">59,000</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Columbus</td>
+<td class="right">29,500</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Other sources, including contribution levied
+upon the town of Palos</td>
+<td class="right">80,000</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="right">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Total</td>
+<td class="right">$236,000</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>This total seems to me altogether too large for probability, and so does
+the last item, which is simply put at the figure necessary to make the
+total eight times 29,500. I am inclined to suspect that Las Casas (with
+whom arithmetic was not always a strong point) may have got his figures
+wrong. The amount of Santangel's loan also depends upon the statement of
+Las Casas, and we do not know whether he took it from a document or from
+hearsay. Nor do we know whether it should be added to, or included in,
+the first item. More likely, I think, the latter. The only item that we
+know with documentary certainty is the first, so that our statement
+becomes modified as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table  border="0" cellpadding="1" summary="A,mounts.">
+<colgroup>
+    <col width="60%">
+    <col width="30%">
+</colgroup>
+<tr>
+<td>Queen Isabella, from Castile treasury</td>
+<td class="center">$67,500</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><span class="add2em">"</span><span class="add2em">loan from Santangel</span></td>
+<td class="center">?</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Columbus</td>
+<td class="center">?</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Town of Palos</td>
+<td class="center">rent of two fully equipped caravels for two months, etc.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="center">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Total</td>
+<td class="center">?</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>(Cf. Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 391-404.) Unsatisfactory, but certain as far
+as it goes. Alas, how often historical statements are thus reduced to
+meagreness, after the hypothetical or ill-supported part has been sifted
+out! The story that the Pinzon brothers advanced to Columbus his portion
+is told by Las Casas, but he very shrewdly doubts it. The famous story
+that Isabella pledged her crown jewels (<i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap.
+xiv.) has also been doubted, but perhaps on insufficient grounds, by M.
+Harrisse. It is confirmed by Las Casas (tom. i. p. 249). According to
+one account she pledged them to Santangel in security for his
+loan,&mdash;which seems not altogether improbable. See Pizarro y Orellana,
+<i>Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo</i>, Madrid, 1639, p. 16.<a href="#footnotetag510"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote511" name="footnote511"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 511:</strong> Navarrete, <i>Biblioteca maritima</i>, tom. ii.
+pp. 208, 209.<a href="#footnotetag511"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote512" name="footnote512"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 512:</strong> The accounts of the armament are well summed up and
+discussed in Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 405-408. Eighty-seven names, out of
+the ninety, have been recovered, and the list is given below, Appendix
+C.<a href="#footnotetag512"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote513" name="footnote513"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 513:</strong> "Para de allí tomar mi derrota, y navegar tanto que yo
+llegase á las Indias," he says in his journal, Navarrete, <i>Coleccion de
+viages</i>, tom. i.p. 3.<a href="#footnotetag513"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote514" name="footnote514"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 514:</strong> Martin Behaim was born at Nuremberg in 1436, and is said
+to have been a pupil of the celebrated astronomer, Regiomontanus, author
+of the first almanac published in Europe, and of Ephemerides, of
+priceless value to navigators. He visited Portugal about 1480, invented
+a new kind of astrolabe, and sailed with it in 1484 as cosmographer in
+Diego Cam's voyage to the Congo. On his return to Lisbon he was
+knighted, and presently went to live on the island of Fayal, of which
+his wife's father was governor. He was a friend of Columbus. Toward 1492
+he visited Nuremberg, to look after some family affairs, and while there
+"he gratified some of his townspeople by embodying in a globe the
+geographical views which prevailed in the maritime countries; and the
+globe was finished before Columbus had yet accomplished his voyage. The
+next year (1493) Behaim returned to Portugal; and after having been sent
+to the Low Countries on a diplomatic mission, he was captured by English
+cruisers and carried to England. Escaping finally, and reaching the
+Continent, he passes from our view in 1494, and is scarcely heard of
+again." (Winsor, <i>Narr. and Crit. Hist.</i>, ii. 104.) He died in May,
+1506. A ridiculous story that he anticipated Columbus in the discovery
+of America originated in the misunderstanding of an interpolated passage
+in the Latin text of Schedel's <i>Registrum</i>, Nuremberg, 1498, p. 290 (the
+so-called <i>Nuremberg Chronicle</i>). See Winsor, <i>op. cit.</i> ii. 34; Major's
+<i>Prince Henry</i>, p. 326; Humboldt, <i>Examen critique</i>, tom. i.p. 256;
+Murr, <i>Diplomatische Geschichte des Ritters Behaim</i>, Nuremberg, 1778;
+Cladera, <i>Investigaciones históricas</i>, Madrid, 1794; Harrisse,
+<i>Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima</i>, pp. 37-43.&mdash;The globe made by
+Behaim may now be seen in the city hall at Nuremberg. It "is made of
+<i>papier-maché</i>, covered with gypsum, and over this a parchment surface
+received the drawing; it is twenty inches in diameter." (Winsor, <i>op.
+cit.</i> ii. 105.) The portion west of the 330th meridian is evidently
+copied from Toscanelli's map. I give below (p. <a href="#page429">429</a>) a sketch (from
+Winsor, after Ruge's <i>Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen</i>, p.
+230) of Behaim's ocean, with the outline of the American continent
+superimposed in the proper place.<a href="#footnotetag514"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote515" name="footnote515"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 515:</strong> The situation of this Sargasso region in mid-ocean seems
+to be determined by its character as a quiet neutral ground between the
+great ocean-currents that flow past it on every side. Sargasso plants
+are found elsewhere upon the surface of the waves, but nowhere else do
+they congregate as here. There are reasons for supposing that in ancient
+times this region extended nearer to the African coast. Skylax
+(<i>Periplus</i>, cap. 109) says that beyond Kerne, at the mouth of Rio d'
+Ouro the sea cannot be navigated on account of the mud and seaweed.
+Sataspes, on his return to Persia, <span class="smcap">B. C.</span> 470, told King Xerxes that his
+voyage failed because his ship stopped or was stuck fast. (Herodotus,
+iv. 43.) Festus Avienus mentions vast quantities of seaweed in the ocean
+west of the Pillars of Hercules:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Exsuperat autem gurgitem fucus frequens<br>
+Atque impeditur æstus ex uligine....<br>
+Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,<br>
+Sic segnis humor æquoris pigri stupet.<br>
+Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites<br>
+Exstare fucum, et sæpe virgulti vice<br>
+Retinere puppim, etc.<br>
+
+<span class="left30">Avienus, <i>Ora Maritima</i>, 108, 117.</span></p>
+
+<p>See also Aristotle, <i>Meteorol.</i>, ii. 1, 14; Pseudo-Aristotle, <i>De Mirab.
+Auscult.</i>, p. 106; Theophrastus, <i>Historia plantarum</i>, iv. 7 Jornandes,
+<i>De rebus Geticis</i>, apud Muratori, tom. i.p. 191; according to Strabo
+(iii. 2, § 7) tunny fish were caught in abundance in the ocean west of
+Spain, and were highly valued for the table on account of their fatness
+which was due to submarine vegetables on which they fed. Possibly the
+reports of these Sargasso meadows may have had some share in suggesting
+to Plato his notion of a huge submerged island Atlantis (<i>Timæus</i>, 25;
+<i>Kritias</i>, 108; cf. the notion of a viscous sea in Plutarch, <i>De facie
+in Orbe Luna</i>, 26), Plato's fancy has furnished a theme for much wild
+speculation. See, for example, Bailly, <i>Lettres sur l'Atlantide de
+Platon</i>, Paris, 1779. The belief that there can ever have been such an
+island in that part of the Atlantic is disposed of by the fact that the
+ocean there is nowhere less than two miles in depth. See the beautiful
+map of the Atlantic sea-bottom in Alexander Agassiz's <i>Three Cruises of
+the Blake</i>, Boston, 1888, vol. i.p. 108, and compare chap. vi. of that
+noble work, on "The Permanence of Continents and of Oceanic Basins;" see
+also Wallace's <i>Island Life</i>, chap. vi. It was formerly supposed that
+the Sargasso plants grow on the sea-bottom, and becoming detached rise
+to the surface (Peter Martyr, <i>De rebus oceanicis</i>, dec. iii. lib. v. p.
+53; Humboldt, <i>Personal Narrative</i>, book i. chap, i.); but it is now
+known that they are simply rooted in the surface water itself.
+"L'accumulation de ces plantes marines est l'exemple le plus frappant de
+plantes congénères réunies sur le même point. Ni les forêts colossales
+de l'Himalaya, ni les graminées qui s'étendent à perte de vue dans les
+savanes américaines ou les steppes sibériens ne rivalisent avec ces
+prairies océaniques. Jamais sur un espace aussi étendu, ne se
+rencontrent de telles masses de plantes semblables. Quand on a vu la mer
+des Sargasses, on n'oublie point un pareil spectacle." Paul Gaffarel,
+"La Mer des Sargasses," <i>Bulletin de Géographie</i>, Paris, 1872, 6<sup>e</sup>
+série, tom. iv. p. 622.<a href="#footnotetag515"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote516" name="footnote516"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 516:</strong> The often-repeated story that a day or two before the end
+of the voyage Columbus capitulated with his crew, promising to turn back
+if land were not seen within three days, rests upon the single and
+relatively inferior authority of Oviedo. It is not mentioned by Las
+Casas or Bernaldez or Peter Martyr or Ferdinand Columbus, and it is
+discredited by the tone of the Admiral's journal, which shows as
+unconquerable determination on the last day of the voyage as on any
+previous day. Cf. Irving, vol. i. p. 187.<a href="#footnotetag516"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote517" name="footnote517"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 517:</strong> Applying the Gregorian Calendar, or "new style," it
+becomes the 21st. The four hundredth anniversary will properly fall on
+October 21, 1892.<a href="#footnotetag517"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote518" name="footnote518"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 518:</strong> This is a common notion among barbarians. "The
+Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and encloses
+the earth. Hence they call foreigners <i>papalangi</i>, or 'heaven-bursters,'
+as having broken in from another world outside." Max Müller, <i>Chips from
+a German Workshop</i>, vol. ii. p. 268.<a href="#footnotetag518"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote519" name="footnote519"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 519:</strong> "An Attempt to solve the Problem of the First Landing
+Place of Columbus in the New World," in <i>United States Coast and
+Geodetic Survey&mdash;Report for 1880&mdash;Appendix 18</i>, Washington, 1882.<a href="#footnotetag519"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote520" name="footnote520"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 520:</strong> The first recorded mention of tobacco is in Columbus's
+diary for November 20, 1492:&mdash;"Hallaron los dos cristianos por el camino
+mucha gente que atravesaba á sus pueblos, mugeres y hombres con un tizon
+en la mano, yerbas para tomar sus sahumerios que acostumbraban," i. e.
+"the two Christians met on the road a great many people going to their
+villages, men and women with brands in their hands, made of herbs for
+taking their customary smoke." Navarrete, tom. i. p. 51.<a href="#footnotetag520"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote521" name="footnote521"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 521:</strong> Not "Little Spain," as the form of the word, so much like
+a diminutive, might seem to indicate. It is simply the feminine of
+<i>Español</i>, "Spanish," sc. <i>tierra</i> or <i>isla</i>. Columbus believed that the
+island was larger than Spain. See his letter to Gabriel Sanchez, in
+Harrisse, tom. i. p. 428.<a href="#footnotetag521"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote522" name="footnote522"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 522:</strong> Columbus to Santangel, February 15, 1493 (Navarrete, tom.
+i. p. 168).<a href="#footnotetag522"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote523" name="footnote523"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 523:</strong> Las Casas, tom. i. pp. 443, 449.<a href="#footnotetag523"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote524" name="footnote524"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 524:</strong> This story rests upon the explicit statement of a
+contemporary Portuguese historian of high authority, Garcia de Resende,
+<i>Chronica del Rey Dom João II.</i>, Lisbon, 1622, cap. clxiv. (written
+about 1516); see also Vasconcellos, <i>Vida del Rey Don Juan II.</i>, Madrid,
+1639, lib. vi.<a href="#footnotetag524"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote525" name="footnote525"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 525:</strong> "When they learnt that she returned in triumph from the
+discovery of a world, the whole community broke forth into transports of
+joy." Irving's <i>Columbus</i>, vol. i. p. 318. This is projecting our
+present knowledge into the past. We now know that Columbus had
+discovered a new world. He did not so much as suspect that he had done
+anything of the sort; neither did the people of Palos.<a href="#footnotetag525"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote526" name="footnote526"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 526:</strong> Charlevoix, <i>Histoire de l'isle Espagnole, ou de St.
+Domingue</i>, Paris, 1730, liv. ii.; Muñoz, <i>Historia de las Indias ó Nuevo
+Mundo</i>, Madrid, 1793, lib. iv. § 14.<a href="#footnotetag526"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote527" name="footnote527"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 527:</strong> He was also allowed to quarter the royal arms with his
+own, "which consisted of a group of golden islands amid azure billows.
+To these were afterwards added five anchors, with the celebrated motto,
+well known as being carved on his sepulchre." Prescott's <i>Ferdinand and
+Isabella</i>, pt. i. chap. vii. This statement about the motto is
+erroneous. See below, p. <a href="#page514">514</a>. Considering the splendour of the reception
+given to Columbus, and the great interest felt in his achievement, Mr.
+Prescott is surprised at finding no mention of this occasion in the
+local annals of Barcelona, or in the royal archives of Aragon. He
+conjectures, with some probability, that the cause of the omission may
+have been what an American would call "sectional" jealousy. This Cathay
+and Cipango business was an affair of Castile's, and, as such, quite
+beneath the notice of patriotic Aragonese archivists! That is the way
+history has too often been treated. With most people it is only a kind
+of ancestor worship.<a href="#footnotetag527"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote528" name="footnote528"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 528:</strong> The unique copy of this first edition of this Spanish
+letter is a small folio of two leaves, or four pages. It was announced
+for sale in Quaritch's Catalogue, April 16, 1891, No. 111, p. 47, for
+£1,750. Evidently most book-lovers will have to content themselves with
+the facsimile published in London, 1891, price two guineas. A unique
+copy of a Spanish reprint in small quarto, made in 1493, is preserved in
+the Ambrosian library at Milan. In 1889 Messrs. Ellis &amp; Elvey, of
+London, published a facsimile <i>alleged</i> to have been made from an
+edition of about the same date as the Ambrosian quarto; but there are
+good reasons for believing that these highly respectable publishers have
+been imposed upon. It is a time just now when fictitious literary
+discoveries of this sort may command a high price, and the dealer in
+early Americana must keep his eyes open. See Quaritch's note, <i>op. cit.</i>
+p. 49; and Justin Winsor's letter in <i>The Nation</i>, April 9, 1891, vol.
+lii. p. 298.<a href="#footnotetag528"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote529" name="footnote529"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 529:</strong> "The lands, therefore, which Columbus had visited were
+called the West Indies; and as he seemed to have entered upon a vast
+region of unexplored countries, existing in a state of nature, the whole
+received the comprehensive appellation of the New World." Irving's
+<i>Columbus</i>, vol. i. p. 333. These are very grave errors, again involving
+the projection of our modern knowledge into the past. The lands which
+Columbus had visited were called simply the Indies; it was not until
+long after his death, and after the crossing of the Pacific ocean, that
+they were distinguished from the East Indies. The <i>New World</i> was not at
+first a "comprehensive appellation" for the countries discovered by
+Columbus; it was at first applied to one particular region never visited
+by him, viz. to that portion of the southeastern coast of South America
+first explored by Vespucius. See vol. ii. pp. 129, 130.<a href="#footnotetag529"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote530" name="footnote530"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 530:</strong> Peter Martyr, however, seems to have entertained some
+vague doubts, inasmuch as this assumed nearness of the China coast on
+the west implied a greater eastward extension of the Asiatic continent
+than seemed to him probable:&mdash;"Insulas reperit plures; has esse, de
+quibus fit apud cosmographos mentio extra oceanum orientalem, adjacentes
+Indiæ arbitrantur. Nec inficior ego penitus, <i>quamvis sphæræ magnitudo
+aliter sentire videatur</i>; neque enim desunt qui parvo tractu a finibus
+Hispaniæ distare littus Indicum putent." <i>Opus Epist.</i>, No. 135. The
+italicizing is mine.<a href="#footnotetag530"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote531" name="footnote531"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 531:</strong> This abominable piece of wickedness, driving 200,000 of
+Spain's best citizens from their homes and their native land, was
+accomplished in pursuance of an edict signed March 30, 1492. There is a
+brief account of it in Prescott's <i>Ferdinand and Isabella</i>, pt. i. chap.
+vi.<a href="#footnotetag531"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote532" name="footnote532"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 532:</strong> "Un duplicata de cette relation," Harrisse, <i>Christophe
+Colomb</i>, tom i. p. 419.<a href="#footnotetag532"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote533" name="footnote533"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 533:</strong> Often called Raphael Sanchez.<a href="#footnotetag533"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote534" name="footnote534"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 534:</strong> The following epigram was added to the first Latin
+edition of the latter by Corbaria, Bishop of Monte-Peloso:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Ad Invictissimum Regem Hispaniarum</i>:</p>
+
+<p class="poem20">Iam nulla Hispanis tellus addenda triumphis,<br>
+<span class="add1em">Atque parum tantis viribus orbis erat.</span><br>
+Nunc longe eois regio deprensa sub undis,<br>
+<span class="add1em">Auctura est titulos Betice magne tuos.</span><br>
+Unde repertori inerita referenda Columbo<br>
+<span class="add1em">Gratia, sed summo est maior habenda deo,</span><br>
+Qui vincenda parat noua regna tibique sibique<br>
+<span class="add1em">Teque simul fortem prestat et esse pium.</span></p>
+
+<p>These lines are thus paraphrased by M. Harrisse:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>To the Invincible King of the Spains</i>:</p>
+
+<p class="poem20">Less wide the world than the renown of Spain,<br>
+To swell her triumphs no new lands remain.<br>
+Rejoice, Iberia! see thy fame increased!<br>
+Another world Columbus from the East<br>
+And the mid-ocean summons to thy sway!<br>
+Give thanks to him&mdash;but loftier homage pay<br>
+To God Supreme, who gives its realms to thee!<br>
+Greatest of monarchs, first of servants be!<br>
+
+<span class="left30"><i>Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima</i>, p. 13.</span></p>
+
+<p>The following is a literal version:&mdash;"Already there is no land to be
+added to the triumphs of Spain, and the earth was too small for such
+great deeds. Now a far country under the eastern waves has been
+discovered, and will be an addition to thy titles, O great Bætica!
+wherefore thanks are due to the illustrious discover Columbus; but
+greater thanks to the supreme God, who is making ready new realms to be
+conquered for thee and for Himself, and vouchsafes to thee to be at once
+strong and pious." It will be observed that nothing is said about
+"another world."</p>
+
+<p>An elaborate account of these earliest and excessively rare editions is
+given by M. Harrisse, <i>loc. cit.</i><a href="#footnotetag534"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote535" name="footnote535"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 535:</strong> Or, as Mr. Major carelessly puts it, "the astounding news
+of the discovery of a new world." (<i>Select Letters of Columbus</i>, p. vi.)
+Mr. Major knows very well that no such "news" was possible for many a
+year after 1493; his remark is, of course, a mere slip of the pen, but
+if we are ever going to straighten out the tangle of misconceptions with
+which this subject is commonly surrounded, we must be careful in our
+choice of words.&mdash;As a fair specimen, of the chap-book style of Dati's
+stanzas, we may cite the fourteenth:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Hor vo tornar almio primo tractato<br>
+dellisole trovate incognite a te<br>
+in q&#771;sto anno presente q&#771;sto e stato<br>
+nel millequatrocento nov&#257;tatre,<br>
+uno che xp&#771;ofan col&#333;bo chiamato,<br>
+che e stato in corte der prefecto Re<br>
+ha molte volte questa stimolato,<br>
+el Re ch'cerchi acrescere il suo stato.</p>
+
+<p>M. Harrisse gives the following version:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Back to my theme, O Listener, turn with me<br>
+And hear of islands all unknown to thee!<br>
+Islands whereof the grand discovery<br>
+Chanced in this year of fourteen ninety-three.<br>
+One Christopher Colombo, whose resort<br>
+Was ever in the King Fernando's court,<br>
+Bent himself still to rouse and stimulate<br>
+The King to swell the borders of his State.<br>
+
+<span class="left30"><i>Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima</i>, p. 29.</span></p>
+
+<p>The entire poem of sixty-eight stanzas is given in Major, <i>op. cit.</i> pp.
+lxxiii.-xc. It was published at Florence, Oct. 26, 1493, and was called
+"the story of the discovery [not of a new world, but] of the new Indian
+islands of Canary!" (<i>Storia della inventione delle nuove isole
+dicanaria indiane.</i>)<a href="#footnotetag535"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote536" name="footnote536"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 536:</strong> <i>Raccolta di Navigazioni</i>, etc., Venice, 1550, tom. i.
+fol. 414.<a href="#footnotetag536"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote537" name="footnote537"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 537:</strong> See below, vol. ii. pp. 2-15.<a href="#footnotetag537"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote538" name="footnote538"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 538:</strong> Harrisse, <i>Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima</i>,
+p. 35.<a href="#footnotetag538"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote539" name="footnote539"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 539:</strong> Id. p. 50.<a href="#footnotetag539"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote540" name="footnote540"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 540:</strong></p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Auch hat man sydt in Portigall<br>
+Und in Hyspanyen uberall<br>
+Golt-inseln funden, und nacket l&#367;t<br>
+Von den man vor wust sagen n&#367;t.<br>
+
+<span class="left30">Harrisse, <i>Bibl. Amer. Vet.</i>; <i>Additions</i>, p. 4.</span></p>
+
+<p>Or, in more modern German:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Wie man auch jüngst von Portugal<br>
+Und Hispanien aus schier überall<br>
+Goldinseln fand und nakte Leute,<br>
+Von denen man erst weiss seit heute.<br>
+
+<span class="left30"><i>Das Narrenschiff</i>, ed. Simrock, Berlin, 1872, p. 161.</span></p>
+
+<p>In the Latin version of 1497, now in the National Library at Paris, it
+goes somewhat differently:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Antea que fuerat priscis incognita tellus:<br>
+<span class="add1em">Exposita est oculis &amp; manifesta patet.</span><br>
+Hesperie occidue rex Ferdinandus: in alto<br>
+Aequore nunc gentes repperit innumeras.<br>
+
+<span class="left30">Harrisse, <i>op. cit.</i>; <i>Additions</i>, p. 7.</span></p>
+
+<p>It will be observed that these foreign references are so ungallant, and
+so incorrect, as to give all the credit to Ferdinand, while poor
+Isabella is not mentioned!<a href="#footnotetag540"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote541" name="footnote541"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 541:</strong> Harrisse, <i>op. cit.</i>; <i>Additions</i>,
+p. 45.<a href="#footnotetag541"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote542" name="footnote542"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 542:</strong> Harrisse, <i>Jean et Sebastien Cabot</i>, Paris, 1882,
+p. 15.<a href="#footnotetag542"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote543" name="footnote543"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 543:</strong> Vasconcellos, <i>Vida del Rey Don Juan II.</i>, Madrid, 1639,
+lib. vi.<a href="#footnotetag543"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote544" name="footnote544"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 544:</strong> "De nostra mera liberalitate, et ex certa scientia, ac de
+apostolicæ potestatis plenitudine." ... "auctoritate omnipotentis Dei
+nobis in beato Petro concessa, ac vicariatus Jesu Christi qua fungimur
+in terris." The same language is used in the second bull. Mr. Prescott
+(<i>Ferdinand and Isabella</i>, part i. chap, vii.) translates <i>certa
+scientia</i> "infallible knowledge," but in order to avoid any
+complications with modern theories concerning papal infallibility, I
+prefer to use a less technical word.<a href="#footnotetag544"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote545" name="footnote545"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 545:</strong> A year or two later the sovereigns were further rewarded
+with the decorative title of "Most Catholic." See Zurita, <i>Historia del
+Rey Hernando</i>, Saragossa, 1580, lib. ii. cap. xl.; Peter Martyr,
+<i>Epist.</i> clvii.<a href="#footnotetag545"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote546" name="footnote546"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 546:</strong> The complete text of this bull, with Richard Eden's
+translation, is given at the end of this work; see below, Appendix B.
+The official text is in <i>Magnum Bullarium Romanum</i>, ed. Cherubini,
+Lyons, 1655, tom. i. p. 466. The original document received by Ferdinand
+and Isabella is preserved in the Archives of the Indies at Seville; it
+is printed entire in Navarrete, <i>Coleccion de viages</i>, tom. ii. No. 18.
+Another copy, less complete, may be found in Raynaldus, <i>Annales
+ecclesiastici</i>, Lucca, 1754, tom. xi. p. 214, No. 19-22; and another in
+Leibnitz, <i>Codex Diplomaticus</i>, tom. i. pt. i. p. 471. It is often
+called the Bull "Inter Cetera," from its opening words.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of the pope's claim to apostolic authority for giving away
+kingdoms is closely connected with the fictitious "Donation of
+Constantine," an edict probably fabricated in Rome about the middle of
+the eighth century. The title of the old Latin text is <i>Edictum domini
+Constantini Imp.</i>, apud Pseudo-Isidorus, <i>Decretalia</i>. Constantine's
+transfer of the seat of empire from the Tiber to the Bosphorus tended
+greatly to increase the dignity and power of the papacy, and I presume
+that the fabrication of this edict, four centuries afterward, was the
+expression of a sincere belief that the first Christian emperor <i>meant</i>
+to leave the temporal supremacy over Italy in the hands of the Roman
+see. The edict purported to be such a donation from Constantine to Pope
+Sylvester I., but the extent and character of the donation was stated
+with such vagueness as to allow a wide latitude of interpretation. Its
+genuineness was repeatedly called in question, but belief in it seems to
+have grown in strength until after the thirteenth century. Leo IX., who
+was a strong believer in its genuineness, granted in 1054 to the Normans
+their conquests in Sicily and Calabria, to be held as a fief of the
+Roman see. (Muratori, <i>Annali d' Italia</i>, tom. vi. pt. ii. p. 245.) It
+was next used to sustain the papal claim to suzerainty over the island
+of Corsica. A century later John of Salisbury maintained the right of
+the pope to dispose "of all <i>islands</i> on which Christ, the Sun of
+righteousness, hath shined," and in conformity with this opinion Pope
+Adrian IV. (Nicholas Breakspeare, an Englishman) authorized in 1164 King
+Henry II. of England to invade and conquer Ireland. (See Adrian IV.,
+<i>Epist.</i> 76, apud Migne, <i>Patrologia</i>, tom. clxxxviii.) Dr. Lanigan, in
+treating of this matter, is more an Irishman than a papist, and derides
+"this nonsense of the pope's being the head-owner of all Christian
+islands." (<i>Ecclesiastical History of Ireland</i>, vol. iv. p.
+159.)&mdash;Gregory VII., in working up to the doctrine that all Christian
+kingdoms should be held as fiefs under St. Peter (Baronius, <i>Annales</i>,
+tom. xvii. p. 430; cf. Villemain, <i>Histoire de Grégoire VII.</i>, Paris,
+1873, tom. ii. pp. 59-61), does not seem to have appealed to the
+Donation. Perhaps he was shrewd enough to foresee the kind of objection
+afterwards raised by the Albigensians, who pithily declared that if the
+suzerainty of the popes was derived from the Donation, then they were
+successors of Constantine and not of St. Peter. (Moneta Cremonensis,
+<i>Adversus Catharos et Waldenses</i>, ed. Ricchini, Rome, 1743, v. 2.) But
+Innocent IV. summarily disposed of this argument at the Council of Lyons
+in 1245, when he deposed the Emperor Frederick II. and King Sancho II.
+of Portugal,&mdash;saying that Christ himself had bestowed temporal as well
+as spiritual headship upon St. Peter and his successors, so that
+Constantine only gave up to the Church what belonged to it already. The
+opposite or Ghibelline theory was eloquently set forth by Dante, in his
+treatise <i>De Monarchia</i>; he held that inasmuch as the Empire existed
+before the Church, it could not be derived from it. Dante elsewhere
+expressed his abhorrence of the Donation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Ahi Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,<br>
+<span class="add1em">Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote</span><br>
+<span class="add1em">Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!</span><br>
+
+<span class="left30"><i>Inferno</i>, xix. 115.</span></p>
+
+<p>Similar sentiments were expressed by many of the most popular poets from
+the twelfth century to the sixteenth. Walther von der Vogelweide was
+sure that if the first Christian emperor could have foreseen the evils
+destined to flow from his Donation, he would have withheld it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Solte ich den pfaffen raten an den triuwen min,<br>
+So spræche ir haut den armen zuo: se, daz ist din,<br>
+Ir zunge sünge, unde lieze mengem man daz sin,<br>
+Gedæhten daz ouch si dur Got wæren almuosenære.<br>
+Do gab ir erste teil der Kuenik Konstantin,<br>
+Het er gewest, daz da von uebel kuenftik wære,<br>
+So het er wol underkomen des riches swære,<br>
+Wan daz si do waren kiusche, und uebermuete lære.<br>
+
+<span class="left30">Hagen, <i>Minnesinger-Sammlung</i>, Leipsic, 1838, bd. i. p. 270.</span></p>
+
+<p>Ariosto, in a passage rollicking with satire, makes his itinerant
+paladin find the "stinking" Donation in the course of his journey upon
+the moon:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem10">
+Di varii fiori ad un gran monte passa,<br>
+Ch' ebber già buono odore, or puzzan forte,<br>
+Questo era il dono, se però dir lece,<br>
+Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece.<br>
+
+<span class="left30"><i>Orlando Furioso</i>, xxxiv. 80.</span></p>
+
+<p>The Donation was finally proved to be a forgery by Laurentius Valla in
+1440, in his <i>De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione
+declamatio</i> (afterward spread far and wide by Ulrich von Hutten), and
+independently by the noble Reginald Pecock, bishop of Chichester, in his
+<i>Repressor</i>, written about 1447.&mdash;During the preceding century the
+theory of Gregory VII. and Innocent IV. had been carried to its
+uttermost extreme by the Franciscan monk Alvaro Pelayo, in his <i>De
+Planctu Ecclesiæ</i>, written at Avignon during the "Babylonish Captivity,"
+about 1350 (printed at Venice in 1560), and by Agostino Trionfi, in his
+<i>Summa de potestate ecclesiastica</i>, Augsburg, 1473, an excessively rare
+book, of which there is a copy in the British Museum. These writers
+maintained that the popes were suzerains of the whole earth and had
+absolute power to dispose not only of all Christian kingdoms, but also
+of all heathen lands and powers. It was upon this theory that Eugenius
+IV. seems to have acted with reference to Portugal and Alexander VI.
+with reference to Spain. Of course there was never a time when such
+claims for the papacy were not denied by a large party within the
+Church. The Spanish sovereigns in appealing to Alexander VI. took care
+to hint that some of their advisers regarded them as already entitled to
+enjoy the fruits of their discoveries, even before obtaining the papal
+permission, but they did not choose to act upon that opinion (Herrera,
+decad. i. lib. ii. cap. 4). The kings of Portugal were less reserved in
+their submission. In <i>Valasci Ferdinandi ad Innocentium octauum de
+obedientia oratio</i>, a small quarto printed at Rome about 1488, John II.
+did homage to the pope for the countries just discovered by Bartholomew
+Dias. His successor Emanuel did the same after the voyages of Gama and
+Vespucius. In a small quarto, <i>Obedientia potentissimi Emanuelis
+Lusitaniæ regis &amp;c. per clarissimum juris consultum Dieghum Pacett&#363;
+oratorem ad Iuli&#363; Pont. Max.</i>, Rome, 1505, all the newly found lands
+are laid at the feet of Julius II. in a passage that ends with words
+worth noting: "Accipe tandem orbem ipsum terrarum, Deus enim noster es,"
+i. e. "Accept in fine the earth itself, for thou art our God." Similar
+homage was rendered to Leo X. in 1513, on account of Albuquerque's
+conquests in Asia.&mdash;We may suspect that if the papacy had retained, at
+the end of the fifteenth century, anything like the overshadowing power
+which it possessed at the end of the twelfth, the kings of Portugal
+would not have been quite so unstinted in their homage. As it came to be
+less of a reality and more of a flourish of words, it cost less to offer
+it. Among some modern Catholics I have observed a disposition to imagine
+that in the famous bull of partition Alexander VI. acted not as supreme
+pontiff but merely as an arbiter, in the modern sense, between the
+crowns of Spain and Portugal; but such an interpretation is hardly
+compatible with Alexander's own words. An arbiter, as such, does not
+make awards by virtue of "the authority of Omnipotent God granted to us
+in St. Peter, and of the Vicarship of Jesus Christ which we administer
+upon the earth."</p>
+
+<p>Since writing this note my attention has been called to Dr. Ignaz von
+Döllinger's <i>Fables respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages</i>, London,
+1871; and I find in it a chapter on the Donation of Constantine, in
+which the subject is treated with a wealth of learning. Some of my brief
+references are there discussed at considerable length. To the references
+to Dante there is added a still more striking passage, where Constantine
+is admitted into Heaven <i>in spite of</i> his Donation (<i>Paradiso</i>, xx.
+55).<a href="#footnotetag546"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote547" name="footnote547"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 547:</strong> The language of the bull is even more vague than my
+version in the text. His Holiness describes the lands to be given to the
+Spaniards as lying "to the west and south" (versus occidentem et
+meridiem) of his dividing meridian. Land to the south of a meridian
+would be in a queer position! Probably it was meant to say that the
+Spaniards, once west of the papal meridian, might go south as well as
+north. For the king of Portugal had suggested that they ought to confine
+themselves to northern waters.<a href="#footnotetag547"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote548" name="footnote548"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 548:</strong> For the original Spanish text of the treaty of
+Tordesillas, see Navarrete, tom. ii. pp. 116-130.<a href="#footnotetag548"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote549" name="footnote549"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 549:</strong> See below, vol. ii. pp. 98-154.<a href="#footnotetag549"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote550" name="footnote550"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 550:</strong> <i>History of the Spanish Conquest</i>,
+vol. i. p. 487.<a href="#footnotetag550"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote551" name="footnote551"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 551:</strong> Irving calls him a Benedictine, but he is addressed as
+"fratri ordinis Minorum" in the bull clothing him with apostolic
+authority in the Indies, June 25, 1493. See Raynaldus, <i>Annales
+ecclesiastici</i>, tom. xi. p. 216. I cannot imagine what M. Harrisse means
+by calling him "religieux de Saint-Vincent de Paule" (<i>Christophe
+Colomb</i>, tom. ii. p. 55). Vincent de Paul was not born till
+1576.<a href="#footnotetag551"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote552" name="footnote552"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 552:</strong> Not for "the New World," as Irving carelessly has it in
+his <i>Columbus</i>, vol. i. p. 346. No such phrase had been thought of in
+1493, or until long afterward.<a href="#footnotetag552"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote553" name="footnote553"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 553:</strong> Herrera, <i>Hist. de las Indias</i>, decad. i. lib. ii. cap.
+5.<a href="#footnotetag553"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote554" name="footnote554"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 554:</strong> <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>,
+cap. xliv.<a href="#footnotetag554"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote555" name="footnote555"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 555:</strong> He went as astronomer, from which we may perhaps suppose
+that scientific considerations had made him one of the earliest and most
+steadfast upholders of Columbus's views.<a href="#footnotetag555"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote556" name="footnote556"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 556:</strong> See Harrisse, <i>Christophe Colomb</i>, tom. ii. pp. 55, 56;
+Las Casas, <i>Hist. de las Indias</i>, tom. i. p. 498; Fabié, <i>Vida de Las
+Casas</i>, Madrid, 1879, tom. i. p. 11; Oviedo, <i>Hist. de las Indias</i>, tom.
+i. p. 467; Navarrete, <i>Coleccion de viages</i>, tom. ii.
+pp. 143-149.<a href="#footnotetag556"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote557" name="footnote557"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 557:</strong> "E con questo preparamento il mercoledé ai 25 del mese di
+settembre dell' anno 1493 un' ora avanti il levar del sole, essendovi io
+e mio fratel presenti, l' Ammiraglio levò le ancore," etc. <i>Vita dell'
+Ammiraglio</i>, cap. xliv.<a href="#footnotetag557"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote558" name="footnote558"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 558:</strong> Eight sows were bought for 70 maravedis apiece, and
+"destas ocho puercas se han multiplicado todos los puercos que, hasta
+hoy, ha habido y hay en todas estas Indias," etc. Las Casas, <i>Historia</i>,
+tom. ii. p. 3.<a href="#footnotetag558"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote559" name="footnote559"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 559:</strong> The relation of this second voyage by Dr. Chanca may be
+found in Navarrete, tom. i. pp. 198-241; an interesting relation in
+Italian by Simone Verde, a Florentine merchant then living in
+Valladolid, is published in Harrisse, <i>Christophe Colomb</i>, tom. ii. pp.
+68-78. The narrative of the curate of Los Palacios is of especial value
+for this voyage.<a href="#footnotetag559"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote560" name="footnote560"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 560:</strong> Martyr, <i>Epist.</i> cxlvii. <i>ad Pomponium Lætum</i>; cf.
+<i>Odyssey</i>, x. 119; Thucyd. vi. 2.&mdash;Irving (vol. i. p. 385) finds it hard
+to believe these stories, but the prevalence of cannibalism, not only in
+these islands, but throughout a very large part of aboriginal America,
+has been superabundantly proved.<a href="#footnotetag560"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote561" name="footnote561"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 561:</strong> For an instance of 400 hostile Indians fleeing before a
+single armed horseman, see <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. lii.; Las
+Casas, <i>Hist.</i> tom. ii. p. 46.<a href="#footnotetag561"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote562" name="footnote562"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 562:</strong> Compare the Fisherman's story of Drogio, above, pp. <a href="#page246">246</a>,
+<a href="#page252">252</a>.<a href="#footnotetag562"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote563" name="footnote563"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 563:</strong> Bernaldez, <i>Reyes Católicos</i>, cap. cxxv. Domesticated
+dogs were found generally in aboriginal America, but they were very
+paltry curs compared to these fierce hounds, one of which could handle
+an unarmed man as easily as a terrier handles a rat.<a href="#footnotetag563"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote564" name="footnote564"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 564:</strong> As a Greek would have said,
+&#7972;&#960;&#949;&#953;&#961;&#959;&#962;, a continent.<a href="#footnotetag564"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote565" name="footnote565"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 565:</strong> Bernaldez, <i>Reyes Católicos</i>, cap. cxxvii, Mr. Irving, in
+citing these same incidents from Bernaldez, could not quite rid himself
+of the feeling that there was something strange or peculiar in the
+Admiral's method of interpreting such information: "Animated by one of
+the pleasing illusions of his ardent imagination, Columbus pursued his
+voyage, with a prosperous breeze, along the supposed continent of Asia."
+(<i>Life of Columbus</i>, vol. i. p. 493.) This lends a false colour to the
+picture, which the general reader is pretty sure to make still falser.
+To suppose the southern coast of Cuba to be the southern coast of
+Toscanelli's Mangi required no illusion of an "ardent imagination." It
+was simply a plain common-sense conclusion reached by sober reasoning
+from such data as were then accessible (i. e. the Toscanelli map,
+amended by information such as was understood to be given by the
+natives); it was more probable than any other theory of the situation
+likely to be devised from those data; and it seems fanciful to us to-day
+only because knowledge acquired since the time of Columbus has shown us
+how far from correct it was. Modern historians abound in unconscious
+turns of expression&mdash;as in this quotation from Irving&mdash;which project
+modern knowledge back into the past, and thus destroy the historical
+perspective. I shall mention several other instances from Irving, and
+the reader must not suppose that this is any indication of captiousness
+on my part toward a writer for whom my only feeling is that of sincerest
+love and veneration.<a href="#footnotetag565"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote566" name="footnote566"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 566:</strong> These tropical birds are called <i>soldados</i>, or
+"soldiers," because their stately attitudes remind one of sentinels on
+duty. The whole town of Angostura, in Venezuela, was one day frightened
+out of its wits by the sudden appearance of a flock of these cranes on
+the summit of a neighbouring hill. They were mistaken for a war-party of
+Indians. Humboldt, <i>Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau
+Continent</i>, tom. ii. p. 314.<a href="#footnotetag566"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote567" name="footnote567"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 567:</strong> See above, p. <a href="#page287">287</a>, note.<a href="#footnotetag567"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote568" name="footnote568"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 568:</strong> For these events, see Bernaldez, <i>Reyes Católicos</i>, cap.
+cxxiii.; F. Columbus, <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. lvi.; Muñoz,
+<i>Historia del Nuevo Mundo</i>, lib. v. § 16; Humboldt, <i>Examen critique</i>,
+tom. iv. pp. 237-263; Irving's <i>Columbus</i>, vol. i. pp. 491-504.<a href="#footnotetag568"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote569" name="footnote569"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 569:</strong> That is to say, he thought he had passed the coast of
+Mangi (southern China) and reached the beginning of the coast of Champa
+(Cochin China; see Yule's <i>Marco Polo</i>, vol. ii. p. 213). The name
+Champa, coming to European writers through an Italian source, was
+written Ciampa and Ciamba. See its position on the Behaim and Toscanelli
+maps, and also on Ruysch's map, 1508, below, vol. ii. p. 114. Peter Martyr
+says that Columbus was sure that he had
+reached the coast of Gangetic (i. e. what we call Farther) India: "Indiæ
+Gangetidis continentem eam (Cubæ) plagam esse contendit Colonus."
+<i>Epist.</i> xciii. <i>ad Bernardinum</i>. Of course Columbus understood that
+this region, while agreeing well enough with Toscanelli's latitude, was
+far from agreeing with his longitude. But from the moment when he turned
+eastward on his first voyage he seems to have made up his mind that
+Toscanelli's longitudes needed serious amendment. Indeed he had always
+used different measurements from Toscanelli.<a href="#footnotetag569"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote570" name="footnote570"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 570:</strong> For an account of Ptolemy's almost purely hypothetical
+and curiously distorted notions about southeastern Asia, see Bunbury's
+<i>History of Ancient Geography</i>, vol. ii. pp. 604-608.<a href="#footnotetag570"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote571" name="footnote571"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 571:</strong> See below, vol. ii. pp. 200-210.<a href="#footnotetag571"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote572" name="footnote572"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 572:</strong> The length of Cuba from Cape Mayzi to Cape San Antonio is
+about 700 English miles. But in following the sinuosities of the coast,
+and including tacks, the estimate of these pilots was probably not far
+from correct.<a href="#footnotetag572"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote573" name="footnote573"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 573:</strong> "É cortada la lengua;" "y le cortarian la lengua." Irving
+understands it to mean cutting off the tongue. But in those days of
+symbolism slitting the tip of that unruly member was a recognized
+punishment for serious lying.<a href="#footnotetag573"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote574" name="footnote574"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 574:</strong> It is printed in full in Navarrete, torn. ii. pp.
+143-149.<a href="#footnotetag574"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote575" name="footnote575"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 575:</strong> It is given upon La Cosa's map; see below, vol. ii.,
+frontispiece.<a href="#footnotetag575"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote576" name="footnote576"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 576:</strong> Hispaniola continued, however, for many years to be
+commonly identified with Cipango. See note D on Ruysch's map, 1508,
+below, vol. ii. p. 114.<a href="#footnotetag576"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote577" name="footnote577"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 577:</strong> See above, p. <a href="#page417">417</a>.<a href="#footnotetag577"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote578" name="footnote578"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 578:</strong> Las Casas, <i>Hist. de las Indias</i>,
+tom. ii. p. 80.<a href="#footnotetag578"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote579" name="footnote579"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 579:</strong> See below, vol. ii. pp. 433, 434.<a href="#footnotetag579"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote580" name="footnote580"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 580:</strong> The first of a series of such schemes in American
+history, including those of Sassacus, Philip, Pontiac, and to some
+extent Tecumseh.<a href="#footnotetag580"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote581" name="footnote581"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 581:</strong> The Indians then living upon the island did not dig, but
+scraped up the small pieces of gold that were more or less abundant in
+the beds of shallow streams.<a href="#footnotetag581"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote582" name="footnote582"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 582:</strong> Peter Martyr, <i>De Rebus Oceanicis</i>,
+dec. i. lib. iv.<a href="#footnotetag582"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote583" name="footnote583"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 583:</strong> The original Ophir may be inferred, from <i>Genesis</i> x. 29,
+to have been situated where, as Milton says,</p>
+
+<p class="poem20">
+<span class="add4em">"northeast winds blow</span><br>
+Sabæan odours from the spicy shore<br>
+Of Araby the Blest,"</p>
+
+<p>but the name seems to have become applied indiscriminately to the remote
+countries reached by ships that sailed past that coast; chiefly no
+doubt, to Hindustan. See Lassen, <i>Indische Alterthumskunde</i>, bd. i. p.
+538.<a href="#footnotetag583"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote584" name="footnote584"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 584:</strong> Bartholomew's town was built on the left side of the
+river, and was called New Isabella. In 1504 it was destroyed by a
+hurricane, and rebuilt on the right bank in its present situation. It
+was then named San Domingo after the patron saint of Domenico, the
+father of Columbus.<a href="#footnotetag584"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote585" name="footnote585"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 585:</strong> While the Spaniards were on this island they encountered
+a party of tall and powerful women armed with bows and arrows; so that
+Columbus supposed it must be the Asiatic island of Amazons mentioned by
+Marco Polo. See Yule's <i>Marco Polo</i>, vol. ii. pp. 338-340.<a href="#footnotetag585"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote586" name="footnote586"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 586:</strong> Among them was Caonabo, who died on the voyage.<a href="#footnotetag586"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote587" name="footnote587"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 587:</strong> The curate thus heard the story of the second voyage from
+Columbus himself while it was fresh in his mind. Columbus also left with
+him written memoranda, so that for the events of this expedition the
+<i>Historia de los Reyes Católicos</i> is of the highest authority.<a href="#footnotetag587"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote588" name="footnote588"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 588:</strong> "All vessels were to sail exclusively from the port of
+Cadiz, and under the inspection of officers appointed by the crown.
+Those who embarked for Hispaniola without pay, and at their own expense,
+were to have lands assigned to them, and to be provisioned for one year,
+with a right to retain such lands and all houses they might erect upon
+them. Of all gold which they might collect, they were to retain one
+third for themselves, and pay two thirds to the crown. Of all other
+articles of merchandise, the produce of the island, they were to pay
+merely one tenth to the crown. Their purchases were to be made in the
+presence of officers appointed by the sovereigns, and the royal duties
+paid into the hands of the king's receiver. Each ship sailing on private
+enterprise was to take one or two persons named by the royal officers at
+Cadiz. One tenth of the tonnage of the ship was to be at the service of
+the crown, free of charge. One tenth of whatever such ships should
+procure in the newly-discovered countries was to be paid to the crown on
+their return. These regulations included private ships trading to
+Hispaniola with provisions. For every vessel thus fitted out on private
+adventure, Columbus, in consideration of his privilege of an eighth of
+tonnage, was to have the right to freight one on his own account."
+Irving's <i>Columbus</i>, vol. ii. p. 76.<a href="#footnotetag588"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote589" name="footnote589"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 589:</strong> "Parece que uno debiera de, en estos reveses, y, por
+ventura, en palábras contra él y contra la negociacion destas Indias,
+mas que otro señalarse, y segun entendí, no debiera ser cristiano viejo,
+y creo que se llamaba Ximeno, contra el cual debió el Almirante
+gravemente sentirse y enojarse, y aguardó el dia que se hizo á la vela,
+y, ó en la nao que entró, por ventura, el dicho oficial, ó en tierra
+quando queria desembarcarse, arrebatólo el Almirante, y dále muchas
+coces ó remesones, por manera que lo trató mal; y á mi parecer, por esta
+causa principalmente, sobre otras quejas que fueron de acá, y cosas que
+murmuraron dél y contra él los que bien con él no estaban y le
+acumularon; los Reyes indignados proveyeron de quitarle la gobernacion."
+Las Casas, <i>Historia de las Indias</i>, tom. ii. p. 199.<a href="#footnotetag589"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote590" name="footnote590"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 590:</strong> The figure given by Columbus is equivalent only to 360
+geographical miles (Navarrete, <i>Coleccion</i>, tom. i. p. 246), but as Las
+Casas (<i>Hist.</i> tom. ii. p. 226) already noticed, there must be some
+mistake here, for on a S. W. course from the Cape Verde islands it would
+require a distance of 900 geographical miles to cut the fifth parallel.
+From the weather that followed, it is clear that Columbus stated his
+latitude pretty correctly; he had come into the belt of calms. Therefore
+his error must be in the distance run.<a href="#footnotetag590"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote591" name="footnote591"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 591:</strong> Humboldt in 1799 did just this thing, starting from
+Teneriffe and reaching Trinidad in nineteen days. See Bruhn's <i>Life of
+Humboldt</i>, vol. i. p. 263.<a href="#footnotetag591"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote592" name="footnote592"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 592:</strong> "The strength of the trade-winds depends entirely upon
+the difference in temperature between the equator and the pole; the
+greater the difference, the stronger the wind. Now, at the present time,
+the south pole is much colder than the north pole, and the southern
+trades are consequently much stronger than the northern, so that the
+neutral zone in which they meet lies some five degrees north of the
+equator." <i>Excursions of an Evolutionist</i>, p. 64.<a href="#footnotetag592"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote593" name="footnote593"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 593:</strong> Irving's <i>Columbus</i>, vol. ii. p. 137. One is reminded of
+a scene in the <i>Rime of the Ancient Mariner</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem20">
+<p>"All in a hot and copper sky<br>
+The bloody sun, at noon,<br>
+Right up above the mast did stand,<br>
+No bigger than the moon.</p>
+
+<p>"Day after day, day after day,<br>
+We stuck,&mdash;nor breath nor motion;<br>
+As idle as a painted ship<br>
+Upon a painted ocean."
+<a href="#footnotetag593"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a id="footnote594" name="footnote594"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 594:</strong> He "gave it the name of Isla Santa," says Irving (vol.
+ii. p. 140), "little imagining that he now, for the first time, beheld
+that continent, that Terra Firma, which had been the object of his
+earnest search." The reader of this passage should bear in mind that the
+continent of South America, which nobody had ever heard of, was <i>not</i>
+the object of Columbus's search. The Terra Firma which was the object of
+his search was the mainland of Asia, and that he never beheld, though he
+felt positively sure that he had already set foot upon it in 1492 and
+1494.<a href="#footnotetag594"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote595" name="footnote595"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 595:</strong> A modern traveller thus describes this river: "Right and
+left of us lay, at some distance off, the low banks of the Apuré, at
+this point quite a broad stream. But before us the waters spread out
+like a wide dark flood, limited on the horizon only by a low black
+streak, and here and there showing a few distant hills. This was the
+Orinoco, rolling with irrepressible power and majesty sea-wards, and
+often upheaving its billows like the ocean when lashed to fury by the
+wind.... The Orinoco sends a current of fresh water far into the ocean,
+its waters&mdash;generally green, but in the shallows milk-white&mdash;contrasting
+sharply with the indigo blue of the surrounding sea." Bates, <i>Central
+America, the West Indies, and South America</i>, 2d ed., London, 1882, pp.
+234, 235. The island of Trinidad forms an obstacle to the escape of this
+huge volume of fresh water, and hence the furious commotion at the two
+outlets, the Serpent's Mouth and Dragon's Mouth, especially in July and
+August, when the Orinoco is swollen with tropical rains.<a href="#footnotetag595"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote596" name="footnote596"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 596:</strong> In Columbus's own words, in his letter to the sovereigns
+describing this third voyage, "Y digo que ... viene este rio y procede
+de tierra infinita, pues al austro, de la cual fasta agora no se ha
+habido noticia." Navarrete, <i>Coleccion</i>, tom. i. p. 262.<a href="#footnotetag596"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote597" name="footnote597"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 597:</strong> Thus would be explained the astounding force with which
+the water was poured down. It was common in the Middle Ages to imagine
+the terrestrial paradise at the top of a mountain. See Dante,
+<i>Purgatorio</i>, canto xxviii. Columbus quotes many authorities in favour
+of his opinion. The whole letter is worth reading. See Navarrete, tom.
+i. pp. 242-264.<a href="#footnotetag597"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote598" name="footnote598"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 598:</strong> "Ecco i figliuoli dell' Ammiraglio de' Mosciolini, di
+colui che ha trovate terre di vanitá e d' inganno, per sepoltura e
+miseria de' gentiluomini castigliani." <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap.
+lxxxiv.<a href="#footnotetag598"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote599" name="footnote599"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 599:</strong> Major, <i>Prince Henry the Navigator</i>,
+pp. 398-401.<a href="#footnotetag599"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote600" name="footnote600"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 600:</strong> The documents are given in Navarrete, <i>Coleccion de
+viages</i>, tom. ii. pp. 235-240; and, with accompanying narrative, in Las
+Casas, <i>Hist. de las Indias</i>, tom. ii. pp. 472-487.<a href="#footnotetag600"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote601" name="footnote601"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 601:</strong> No better justification for the government of the
+brothers Columbus can be found than to contrast it with the infinitely
+worse state of affairs that ensued under the administrations of
+Bobadilla and Ovando. See below, vol. ii. pp. 442-446.<a href="#footnotetag601"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote602" name="footnote602"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 602:</strong> Las Casas, <i>Hist. de las Indias</i>, tom. ii. p. 501; F.
+Columbus, <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. lxxxv. Ferdinand adds that he
+had often seen these fetters hanging in his father's room.<a href="#footnotetag602"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote603" name="footnote603"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 603:</strong> It is given in full in Las Casas, <i>op. cit.</i> tom. ii. pp.
+502-510.<a href="#footnotetag603"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote604" name="footnote604"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 604:</strong> Herrera, <i>Historia</i>, dec. i.
+lib. iv. cap. 10.<a href="#footnotetag604"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote605" name="footnote605"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 605:</strong> See below, vol. ii. pp. 435-446.<a href="#footnotetag605"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote606" name="footnote606"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 606:</strong> Navarrete, <i>Coleccion</i>, tom. ii. pp. 280-282.<a href="#footnotetag606"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote607" name="footnote607"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 607:</strong> The MS. volume of notes on the prophecies is in the
+Colombina. There is a description of it in Navarrete, tom. ii. pp.
+260-273.<a href="#footnotetag607"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote608" name="footnote608"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 608:</strong> "Aqueste tan gran juicio de Dios no curemos de
+escudriñallo, pues en el dia final deste mundo nos será bien claro."
+<i>Hist. do las Indias</i>, tom. iii. p. 32; cf. <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>,
+cap. lxxxvii. As Las Casas was then in San Domingo, having come out in
+Ovando's fleet, and as Ferdinand Columbus was with his father, the
+testimony is very direct.<a href="#footnotetag608"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote609" name="footnote609"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 609:</strong> In the next chapter I shall give some reasons for
+supposing that the Admiral had learned the existence of the Yucatan
+channel from the pilot Ledesma, coupled with information which made it
+unlikely that a passage into the Indian ocean would be found that way.
+See below, vol. ii. p. 92.<a href="#footnotetag609"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote610" name="footnote610"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 610:</strong> <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. lxxxviii.<a href="#footnotetag610"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote611" name="footnote611"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 611:</strong> Irving (vol. ii. pp. 386, 387) seems to think it strange
+that Columbus did not at once turn westward and circumnavigate Yucatan.
+But if&mdash;as Irving supposed&mdash;Columbus had not seen the Yucatan channel,
+and regarded the Honduras coast as continuous with that of Cuba, he
+could only expect by turning westward to be carried back to Cape Alpha
+and Omega, where he had already been twice before! In the next chapter,
+however, I shall show that Columbus may have shaped his course in
+accordance with the advice of the pilot Ledesma.<a href="#footnotetag611"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote612" name="footnote612"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 612:</strong> Navarrete, <i>Coleccion de viages</i>, tom. i. p. 299.<a href="#footnotetag612"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote613" name="footnote613"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 613:</strong> <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap. lxxxix.; Humboldt, <i>Examen
+Critique</i>, tom. i. p. 350.<a href="#footnotetag613"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote614" name="footnote614"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 614:</strong> "Nothing could evince more clearly his generous ambition
+than hurrying in this brief manner along a coast where wealth was to be
+gathered at every step, for the purpose of seeking a strait which,
+however it might produce vast benefit to mankind, could yield little
+else to himself than the glory of the discovery." Irving's <i>Columbus</i>,
+vol. ii. p. 406. In this voyage, however, the express purpose from the
+start was to find the strait of Malacca as a passage to the very same
+regions which had been visited by Gama, and Columbus expected thus to
+get wealth enough to equip an army of Crusaders. Irving's statement does
+not correctly describe the Admiral's purpose, and as savouring of
+misplaced eulogy, is sure to provoke a reaction on the part of captious
+critics.<a href="#footnotetag614"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote615" name="footnote615"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 615:</strong> A graphic account of these scenes, in which he took part,
+is given by Ferdinand Columbus, <i>Vita dell' Ammiraglio</i>, cap.
+xciii.-cvi.<a href="#footnotetag615"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote616" name="footnote616"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 616:</strong> Harrisse, <i>Notes on Columbus</i>, New York, 1866, p. 73.<a href="#footnotetag616"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote617" name="footnote617"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 617:</strong> <i>Vita del Ammiraglio</i>, cap. cvii. This is unquestionably
+a gloss of the translator Ulloa. Cf. Harrisse, <i>Christophe Colomb</i>, tom.
+ii. pp. 177-179.<a href="#footnotetag617"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2), by John Fiske
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2)
+       with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest
+
+Author: John Fiske
+
+Release Date: November 13, 2008 [EBook #27253]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
+other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has
+been maintained.
+
+Unusual superscripts are shown as ^{xx}, e.g.: w^{ch} for which.
+
+Description of the characters not found in the Unicode tables:
+
+  [=a] a with macron.
+  [=e] e with macron.
+  [=i] i with macron.
+  [=o] o with macron.
+  [=u] u with macron.
+  [)i] i with breve.
+  [-p] p with stroke.
+  [~m] m with tilde.
+  [~p] p with tilde.
+  [~q] q with tilde.
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+  [ deg.u] u with ring.]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
+
+_WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF ANCIENT AMERICA AND THE SPANISH CONQUEST_
+
+
+BY
+
+JOHN FISKE
+
+
+_IN TWO VOLUMES_
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+  Then I unbar the doors; my paths lead out
+  The exodus of nations; I disperse
+  Men to all shores that front the hoary main.
+      I too have arts and sorceries;
+  Illusion dwells forever with the wave.
+  I make some coast alluring, some lone isle
+  To distant men, who must go there or die.
+                                    EMERSON
+
+
+[Illustration: Editor's arm.]
+
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+  1897
+
+
+Copyright, 1892, By JOHN FISKE.
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+SIXTEENTH THOUSAND.
+
+
+  _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
+  Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
+
+
+
+
+                    TO
+
+           EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN,
+
+  A SCHOLAR WHO INHERITS THE GIFT OF MIDAS, AND
+      TURNS INTO GOLD WHATEVER SUBJECT HE
+      TOUCHES, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, WITH
+          GRATITUDE FOR ALL THAT HE
+                HAS TAUGHT ME
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present work is the outcome of two lines of study pursued, with more
+or less interruption from other studies, for about thirty years. It will
+be observed that the book has two themes, as different in character as
+the themes for voice and piano in Schubert's "Fruehlingsglaube," and yet
+so closely related that the one is needful for an adequate comprehension
+of the other. In order to view in their true perspective the series of
+events comprised in the Discovery of America, one needs to form a mental
+picture of that strange world of savagery and barbarism to which
+civilized Europeans were for the first time introduced in the course of
+the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in their voyages along the
+African coast, into the Indian and Pacific oceans, and across the
+Atlantic. Nothing that Europeans discovered during that stirring period
+was so remarkable as these antique phases of human society, the mere
+existence of which had scarcely been suspected, and the real character
+of which it has been left for the present generation to begin to
+understand. Nowhere was this ancient society so full of instructive
+lessons as in aboriginal America, which had pursued its own course of
+development, cut off and isolated from the Old World, for probably more
+than fifty thousand years. The imperishable interest of those episodes
+in the Discovery of America known as the conquests of Mexico and Peru
+consists chiefly in the glimpses they afford us of this primitive world.
+It was not an uninhabited continent that the Spaniards found, and in
+order to comprehend the course of events it is necessary to know
+something about those social features that formed a large part of the
+burden of the letters of Columbus and Vespucius, and excited even more
+intense and general interest in Europe than the purely geographical
+questions suggested by the voyages of those great sailors. The
+descriptions of ancient America, therefore, which form a kind of
+background to the present work, need no apology.
+
+It was the study of prehistoric Europe and of early Aryan institutions
+that led me by a natural sequence to the study of aboriginal America. In
+1869, after sketching the plan of a book on our Aryan forefathers, I was
+turned aside for five years by writing "Cosmic Philosophy." During that
+interval I also wrote "Myths and Myth-Makers" as a side-work to the
+projected book on the Aryans, and as soon as the excursion into the
+field of general philosophy was ended, in 1874, the work on that book
+was resumed. Fortunately it was not then carried to completion, for it
+would have been sadly antiquated by this time. The revolution in theory
+concerning the Aryans has been as remarkable as the revolution in
+chemical theory which some years ago introduced the New Chemistry. It is
+becoming eminently probable that the centre of diffusion of Aryan speech
+was much nearer to Lithuania than to any part of Central Asia, and it
+has for some time been quite clear that the state of society revealed in
+Homer and the Vedas is not at all like primitive society, but very far
+from it. By 1876 I had become convinced that there was no use in going
+on without widening the field of study. The conclusions of the Aryan
+school needed to be supplemented, and often seriously modified, by the
+study of the barbaric world, and it soon became manifest that for the
+study of barbarism there is no other field that for fruitfulness can be
+compared with aboriginal America.
+
+This is because the progress of society was much slower in the western
+hemisphere than in the eastern, and in the days of Columbus and Cortes
+it had nowhere "caught up" to the points reached by the Egyptians of the
+Old Empire or by the builders of Mycenae and Tiryns. In aboriginal
+America we therefore find states of society preserved in stages of
+development similar to those of our ancestral societies in the Old World
+long ages before Homer and the Vedas. Many of the social phenomena of
+ancient Europe are also found in aboriginal America, but always in a
+more primitive condition. The clan, phratry, and tribe among the
+Iroquois help us in many respects to get back to the original
+conceptions of the gens, curia, and tribe among the Romans. We can
+better understand the growth of kingship of the Agamemnon type when we
+have studied the less developed type in Montezuma. The house-communities
+of the southern Slavs are full of interest for the student of the early
+phases of social evolution, but the Mandan round-house and the Zuni
+pueblo carry us much deeper into the past. Aboriginal American
+institutions thus afford one of the richest fields in the world for the
+application of the comparative method, and the red Indian, viewed in
+this light, becomes one of the most interesting of men; for in studying
+him intelligently, one gets down into the stone age of human thought. No
+time should be lost in gathering whatever can be learned of his ideas
+and institutions, before their character has been wholly lost under the
+influence of white men. Under that influence many Indians have been
+quite transformed, while others have been as yet but little affected.
+Some extremely ancient types of society, still preserved on this
+continent in something like purity, are among the most instructive
+monuments of the past that can now be found in the world. Such a type
+is that of the Moquis of northeastern Arizona. I have heard a rumour,
+which it is to be hoped is ill-founded, that there are persons who wish
+the United States government to interfere with this peaceful and
+self-respecting people, break up their pueblo life, scatter them in
+farmsteads, and otherwise compel them, against their own wishes, to
+change their habits and customs. If such a cruel and stupid thing were
+ever to be done, we might justly be said to have equalled or surpassed
+the folly of those Spaniards who used to make bonfires of Mexican
+hieroglyphics. It is hoped that the present book, in which of course it
+is impossible to do more than sketch the outlines and indicate the
+bearings of so vast a subject, will serve to awaken readers to the
+interest and importance of American archaeology for the general study of
+the evolution of human society.
+
+So much for the first and subsidiary theme. As for my principal theme,
+the Discovery of America, I was first drawn to it through its close
+relations with a subject which for some time chiefly occupied my mind,
+the history of the contact between the Aryan and Semitic worlds, and
+more particularly between Christians and Mussulmans about the shores of
+the Mediterranean. It is also interesting as part of the history of
+science, and furthermore as connected with the beginnings of one of the
+most momentous events in the career of mankind, the colonization of the
+barbaric world by Europeans. Moreover, the discovery of America has its
+full share of the romantic fascination that belongs to most of the work
+of the Renaissance period. I have sought to exhibit these different
+aspects of the subject.
+
+The present book is in all its parts written from the original sources
+of information. The work of modern scholars has of course been freely
+used, but never without full acknowledgment in text or notes, and seldom
+without independent verification from the original sources.
+Acknowledgments are chiefly due to Humboldt, Morgan, Bandelier, Major,
+Varnhagen, Markham, Helps, and Harrisse. To the last-named scholar I owe
+an especial debt of gratitude, in common with all who have studied this
+subject since his arduous researches were begun. Some of the most
+valuable parts of his work have consisted in the discovery,
+reproduction, and collation of documents; and to some extent his pages
+are practically equivalent to the original sources inspected by him in
+the course of years of search through European archives, public and
+private. In the present book I must have expressed dissent from his
+conclusions at least as often as agreement with them, but whether one
+agrees with him or not, one always finds him helpful and stimulating.
+Though he has in some sort made himself a Frenchman in the course of
+his labours, it is pleasant to recall the fact that M. Harrisse is by
+birth our fellow-countryman; and there are surely few Americans of our
+time whom students of history have more reason for holding in honour.
+
+I have not seen Mr. Winsor's "Christopher Columbus" in time to make any
+use of it. Within the last few days, while my final chapter is going to
+press, I have received the sheets of it, a few days in advance of
+publication. I do not find in it any references to sources of
+information which I have not already fully considered, so that our
+differences of opinion on sundry points may serve to show what diverse
+conclusions may be drawn from the same data. The most conspicuous
+difference is that which concerns the personal character of Columbus.
+Mr. Winsor writes in a spirit of energetic (not to say violent) reaction
+against the absurdities of Roselly de Lorgues and others who have tried
+to make a saint of Columbus; and under the influence of this reaction he
+offers us a picture of the great navigator that serves to raise a
+pertinent question. No one can deny that Las Casas was a keen judge of
+men, or that his standard of right and wrong was quite as lofty as any
+one has reached in our own time. He had a much more intimate knowledge
+of Columbus than any modern historian can ever hope to acquire, and he
+always speaks of him with warm admiration and respect. But how could
+Las Casas ever have respected the feeble, mean-spirited driveller whose
+portrait Mr. Winsor asks us to accept as that of the Discoverer of
+America?
+
+If, however, instead of his biographical estimate of Columbus, we
+consider Mr. Winsor's contributions toward a correct statement of the
+difficult geographical questions connected with the subject, we
+recognize at once the work of an acknowledged master in his chosen
+field. It is work, too, of the first order of importance. It would be
+hard to mention a subject on which so many reams of direful nonsense
+have been written as on the discovery of America; and the prolific
+source of so much folly has generally been what Mr. Freeman fitly calls
+"bondage to the modern map." In order to understand what the great
+mariners of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were trying to do, and
+what people supposed them to have done, one must begin by resolutely
+banishing the modern map from one's mind. The ancient map must take its
+place, but this must not be the ridiculous "Orbis Veteribus Notus," to
+be found in the ordinary classical atlas, _which simply copies the
+outlines of countries with modern accuracy from the modern map, and then
+scatters ancient names over them!_ Such maps are worse than useless. In
+dealing with the discovery of America one must steadily keep before
+one's mind the quaint notions of ancient geographers, especially
+Ptolemy and Mela, as portrayed upon such maps as are reproduced in the
+present volume. It was just these distorted and hazy notions that swayed
+the minds and guided the movements of the great discoverers, and went on
+reproducing themselves upon newly-made maps for a century or more after
+the time of Columbus. Without constant reference to these old maps one
+cannot begin to understand the circumstances of the discovery of
+America.
+
+In no way can one get at the heart of the matter more completely than by
+threading the labyrinth of causes and effects through which the western
+hemisphere came slowly and gradually to be known by the name AMERICA.
+The reader will not fail to observe the pains which I have taken to
+elucidate this subject, not from any peculiar regard for Americus
+Vespucius, but because the quintessence of the whole geographical
+problem of the discovery of the New World is in one way or another
+involved in the discussion. I can think of no finer instance of the
+queer complications that can come to surround and mystify an increase of
+knowledge too great and rapid to be comprehended by a single generation
+of men.
+
+In the solution of the problem as to the first Vespucius voyage I follow
+the lead of Varnhagen, but always independently and with the documentary
+evidence fully in sight. For some years I vainly tried to pursue
+Humboldt's clues to some intelligible conclusion, and felt inhospitably
+inclined toward Varnhagen's views as altogether too plausible; he seemed
+to settle too many difficulties at once. But after becoming convinced of
+the spuriousness of the Bandini letter (see below, vol. ii. p. 94); and
+observing how the air at once was cleared in some directions, it seemed
+that further work in textual criticism would be well bestowed. I made a
+careful study of the diction of the letter from Vespucius to Soderini in
+its two principal texts:--1. the Latin version of 1507, the original of
+which is in the library of Harvard University, appended to
+Waldseemueller's "Cosmographiae Introductio"; 2. the Italian text
+reproduced severally by Bandini, Canovai, and Varnhagen, from the
+excessively rare original, of which only five copies are now known to be
+in existence. It is this text that Varnhagen regards as the original
+from which the Latin version of 1507 was made, through an intermediate
+French version now lost. In this opinion Varnhagen does not stand alone,
+as Mr. Winsor seems to think ("Christopher Columbus," p. 540, line 5
+from bottom), for Harrisse and Avezac have expressed themselves plainly
+to the same effect (see below, vol. ii. p. 42). A minute study of this
+text, with all its quaint interpolations of Spanish and Portuguese
+idioms and seafaring phrases into the Italian ground-work of its
+diction, long ago convinced me that it never was a _translation_ from
+anything in heaven or earth or the waters under the earth. Nobody would
+ever have translated a document _into_ such an extremely peculiar and
+individual jargon. It is most assuredly an original text, and its author
+was either Vespucius or the Old Nick. It was by starting from this text
+as primitive that Varnhagen started correctly in his interpretation of
+the statements in the letter, and it was for that reason that he was
+able to dispose of so many difficulties at one blow. When he showed that
+the landfall of Vespucius on his first voyage was near Cape Honduras and
+had nothing whatever to do with the Pearl Coast, he began to follow the
+right trail, and so the facts which had puzzled everybody began at once
+to fall into the right places. This is all made clear in the seventh
+chapter of the present work, where the general argument of Varnhagen is
+in many points strongly reinforced. The evidence here set forth in
+connection with the Cantino map is especially significant.
+
+It is interesting on many accounts to see the first voyage of Vespucius
+thus elucidated, though it had no connection with the application of his
+name by Waldseemueller to an entirely different region from any that was
+visited upon that voyage. The real significance of the third voyage of
+Vespucius, in connection with the naming of America, is now set forth, I
+believe, for the first time in the light thrown upon the subject by the
+opinions of Ptolemy and Mela. Neither Humboldt nor Major nor Harrisse
+nor Varnhagen seems to have had a firm grasp of what was in
+Waldseemueller's mind when he wrote the passage photographed below in
+vol. ii. p. 136 of this work. It is only when we keep the Greek and
+Roman theories in the foreground and unflinchingly bar out that
+intrusive modern atlas, that we realize what the Freiburg geographer
+meant and why Ferdinand Columbus was not in the least shocked or
+surprised.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have at various times given lectures on the discovery of America and
+questions connected therewith, more especially at University College,
+London, in 1879, at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, in 1880,
+at the Lowell Institute in Boston, in 1890, and in the course of my work
+as professor in the Washington University at St. Louis; but the present
+work is in no sense whatever a reproduction of such lectures.
+
+Acknowledgments are due to Mr. Winsor for his cordial permission to make
+use of a number of reproductions of old maps and facsimiles already used
+by him in the "Narrative and Critical History of America;" they are
+mentioned in the lists of illustrations. I have also to thank Dr.
+Brinton for allowing me to reproduce a page of old Mexican music, and
+the Hakluyt Society for permission to use the Zeno and Catalan maps and
+the view of Kakortok church. Dr. Fewkes has very kindly favoured me with
+a sight of proof-sheets of some recent monographs by Bandelier. And for
+courteous assistance at various libraries I have most particularly to
+thank Mr. Kiernan of Harvard University, Mr. Appleton Griffin of the
+Boston Public Library, and Mr. Uhler of the Peabody Institute in
+Baltimore.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is one thing which I feel obliged, though with extreme hesitation
+and reluctance, to say to my readers in this place, because the time has
+come when something ought to be said, and there seems to be no other
+place available for saying it. For many years letters--often in a high
+degree interesting and pleasant to receive--have been coming to me from
+persons with whom I am not acquainted, and I have always done my best to
+answer them. It is a long time since such letters came to form the
+larger part of a voluminous mass of correspondence. The physical fact
+has assumed dimensions with which it is no longer possible to cope. If I
+were to answer all the letters which arrive by every mail, I should
+never be able to do another day's work. It is becoming impossible even
+to _read_ them all; and there is scarcely time for giving due attention
+to one in ten. Kind friends and readers will thus understand that if
+their queries seem to be neglected, it is by no means from any want of
+good will, but simply from the lamentable fact that the day contains
+only four-and-twenty hours.
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _October 25, 1891._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT AMERICA.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+  The American aborigines                                            1
+
+  Question as to their origin                                     2, 3
+
+  Antiquity of man in America                                        4
+
+  Shell-mounds, or middens                                        4, 5
+
+  The Glacial Period                                              6, 7
+
+  Discoveries in the Trenton gravel                                  8
+
+  Discoveries in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota                        9
+
+  Mr. Cresson's discovery at Claymont, Delaware                     10
+
+  The Calaveras skull                                               11
+
+  Pleistocene men and mammals                                   12, 13
+
+  Elevation and subsidence                                      13, 14
+
+  Waves of migration                                                15
+
+  The Cave men of Europe in the Glacial Period                      16
+
+  The Eskimos are probably a remnant of the Cave men             17-19
+
+  There was probably no connection or intercourse by
+    water between ancient America and the Old World                 20
+
+  There is one great American red race                              21
+
+  Different senses in which the word "race" is used              21-23
+
+  No necessary connection between differences in culture
+    and differences in race                                         23
+
+  Mr. Lewis Morgan's classification of grades of culture         24-32
+
+  Distinction between Savagery and Barbarism                        25
+
+  Origin of pottery                                                 25
+
+  Lower, middle, and upper status of savagery                       26
+
+  Lower status of barbarism; it ended differently in the
+    two hemispheres; in ancient America there was no
+    pastoral stage of development                                   27
+
+  Importance of Indian corn                                         28
+
+  Tillage with irrigation                                           29
+
+  Use of adobe-brick and stone in building                          29
+
+  Middle status of barbarism                                    29, 30
+
+  Stone and copper tools                                            30
+
+  Working of metals; smelting of iron                               30
+
+  Upper status of barbarism                                         31
+
+  The alphabet and the beginnings of civilization                   32
+
+  So-called "civilizations" of Mexico and Peru                  33, 34
+
+  Loose use of the words "savagery" and "civilization"              35
+
+  Value and importance of the term "barbarism"                  35, 36
+
+  The status of barbarism is most completely exemplified
+    in ancient America                                          36, 37
+
+  Survival of bygone epochs of culture; work of the
+    Bureau of Ethnology                                         37, 38
+
+  Tribal society and multiplicity of languages in aboriginal
+    America                                                     38, 39
+
+  Tribes in the upper status of savagery; Athabaskans,
+    Apaches, Shoshones, etc.                                        39
+
+  Tribes in the lower status of barbarism; the Dakota
+    group or family                                                 40
+
+  The Minnitarees and Mandans                                       41
+
+  The Pawnee and Arickaree group                                    42
+
+  The Maskoki group                                                 42
+
+  The Algonquin group                                               43
+
+  The Huron-Iroquois group                                          44
+
+  The Five Nations                                               45-47
+
+  Distinction between horticulture and field agriculture            48
+
+  Perpetual intertribal warfare, with torture and
+    cannibalism                                                  49-51
+
+  Myths and folk-lore                                               51
+
+  Ancient law                                                   52, 53
+
+  The patriarchal family not primitive                              53
+
+  "Mother-right"                                                    54
+
+  Primitive marriage                                                55
+
+  The system of reckoning kinship through females only              56
+
+  Original reason for the system                                    57
+
+  The primeval human horde                                      58, 59
+
+  Earliest family-group; the clan                                   60
+
+  "Exogamy"                                                         60
+
+  Phratry and tribe                                                 61
+
+  Effect of pastoral life upon property and upon the
+    family                                                       61-63
+
+  The exogamous clan in ancient America                             64
+
+  Intimate connection of aboriginal architecture with
+    social life                                                     65
+
+  The long houses of the Iroquois                               66, 67
+
+  Summary divorce                                                   68
+
+  Hospitality                                                       68
+
+  Structure of the clan                                         69, 70
+
+  Origin and structure of the phratry                           70, 71
+
+  Structure of the tribe                                            72
+
+  Cross-relationships between clans and tribes; the Iroquois
+    Confederacy                                                  72-74
+
+  Structure of the confederacy                                  75, 76
+
+  The "Long House"                                                  76
+
+  Symmetrical development of institutions in ancient
+    America                                                     77, 78
+
+  Circular houses of the Mandans                                 79-81
+
+  The Indians of the pueblos, in the middle status of
+    barbarism                                                   82, 83
+
+  Horticulture with irrigation, and architecture with
+    adobe                                                       83, 84
+
+  Possible origin of adobe architecture                         84, 85
+
+  Mr. Cushing's sojourn at Zuni                                     86
+
+  Typical structure of the pueblo                                86-88
+
+  Pueblo society                                                    89
+
+  Wonderful ancient pueblos in the Chaco valley                  90-92
+
+  The Moqui pueblos                                                 93
+
+  The cliff-dwellings                                               93
+
+  Pueblo of Zuni                                                93, 94
+
+  Pueblo of Tlascala                                             94-96
+
+  The ancient city of Mexico was a great composite
+    pueblo                                                          97
+
+  The Spanish discoverers could not be expected to understand
+    the state of society which they found there                 97, 98
+
+  Contrast between feudalism and gentilism                          98
+
+  Change from gentile society to political society in
+    Greece and Rome                                            99, 100
+
+  First suspicions as to the erroneousness of the Spanish
+    accounts                                                       101
+
+  Detection and explanation of the errors, by Lewis
+    Morgan                                                         102
+
+  Adolf Bandelier's researches                                     103
+
+  The Aztec Confederacy                                       104, 105
+
+  Aztec clans                                                      106
+
+  Clan officers                                                    107
+
+  Rights and duties of the clan                                    108
+
+  Aztec phratries                                                  108
+
+  The _tlatocan_, or tribal council                                109
+
+  The _cihuacoatl_, or "snake-woman"                               110
+
+  The _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men"                           111
+
+  Evolution of kingship in Greece and Rome                         112
+
+  Mediaeval kingship                                                113
+
+  Montezuma was a "priest-commander"                               114
+
+  Mode of succession to the office                            114, 115
+
+  Manner of collecting tribute                                     116
+
+  Mexican roads                                                    117
+
+  Aztec and Iroquois confederacies contrasted                      118
+
+  Aztec priesthood; human sacrifices                          119, 120
+
+  Aztec slaves                                                121, 122
+
+  The Aztec family                                            122, 123
+
+  Aztec property                                                   124
+
+  Mr. Morgan's rules of criticism                                  125
+
+  He sometimes disregarded his own rules                           126
+
+  Amusing illustrations from his remarks on "Montezuma's
+    Dinner"                                                    126-128
+
+  The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements
+    was often carried too far by Mr. Morgan                   128, 129
+
+  Great importance of the middle period of barbarism               130
+
+  The Mexicans compared with the Mayas                         131-133
+
+  Maya hieroglyphic writing                                        132
+
+  Ruined cities of Central America                             134-138
+
+  They are probably not older than the twelfth century             136
+
+  Recent discovery of the Chronicle of Chicxulub                   138
+
+  Maya culture very closely related to Mexican                     139
+
+  The "Mound-Builders"                                         140-146
+
+  The notion that they were like the Aztecs                        142
+
+  Or, perhaps, like the Zunis                                      143
+
+  These notions are not well sustained                             144
+
+  The mounds were probably built by different peoples
+    in the lower status of barbarism, by Cherokees,
+    Shawnees, and other tribes                                144, 145
+
+  It is not likely that there was a "race of Mound Builders"       146
+
+  Society in America at the time of the Discovery had
+    reached stages similar to stages reached by eastern
+    Mediterranean peoples fifty or sixty centuries
+    earlier                                                   146, 147
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.
+
+  Stories of voyages to America before Columbus; the
+    Chinese                                                        148
+
+  The Irish.                                                       149
+
+  Blowing and drifting; Cousin, of Dieppe                          150
+
+  These stories are of small value                                 150
+
+  But the case of the Northmen is quite different                  151
+
+  The Viking exodus from Norway                               151, 152
+
+  Founding of a colony in Iceland, A. D. 874                       153
+
+  Icelandic literature                                             154
+
+  Discovery of Greenland, A. D. 876                           155, 156
+
+  Eric the Red, and his colony in Greenland,
+    A. D. 986                                                  157-161
+
+  Voyage of Bjarni Herjulfsson                                     162
+
+  Conversion of the Northmen to Christianity                       163
+
+  Leif Ericsson's voyage, A. D. 1000; Helluland and
+    Markland                                                       164
+
+  Leif's winter in Vinland                                    165, 166
+
+  Voyages of Thorvald and Thorstein                                167
+
+  Thorfinn Karlsefni, and his unsuccessful attempt to
+    found a colony in Vinland, A. D. 1007-10                   167-169
+
+  Freydis, and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1011-12             170, 171
+
+  Voyage into Baffin's Bay, 1135                                   172
+
+  Description of a Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord,
+    in Norway                                                  173-175
+
+  To what extent the climate of Greenland may have
+    changed within the last thousand years                    176, 177
+
+  With the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery
+    of the American continent was inevitable                       178
+
+  Ear-marks of truth in the Icelandic narratives              179, 180
+
+  Northern limit of the vine                                       181
+
+  Length of the winter day                                         182
+
+  Indian corn                                                 182, 183
+
+  Winter weather in Vinland                                        184
+
+  Vinland was probably situated somewhere between Cape Breton
+    and Point Judith                                               185
+
+  Further ear-marks of truth; savages and barbarians of the
+    lower status were unknown to mediaeval Europeans           185, 186
+
+  The natives of Vinland as described in the Icelandic
+    narratives                                                 187-193
+
+  Meaning of the epithet "Skraelings"                          188, 189
+
+  Personal appearance of the Skraelings                             189
+
+  The Skraelings of Vinland were Indians,--very likely
+    Algonquins                                                     190
+
+  The "balista" or "demon's head"                             191, 192
+
+  The story of the "uniped"                                        193
+
+  Character of the Icelandic records; misleading associations
+    with the word "saga"                                           194
+
+  The comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon, made by
+    a committee of the Massachusetts Historical Society, was
+    peculiarly unfortunate and inappropriate                  194, 197
+
+  The story of the Trojan War, in the shape in which we find
+    it in Greek poetry, is pure folk-lore                          195
+
+  The Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore                        196
+
+  Mythical and historical sagas                                    197
+
+  The western or Hauks-bok version of Eric the Red's Saga          198
+
+  The northern or Flateyar-bok version                             199
+
+  Presumption against sources not contemporary                     200
+
+  Hauk Erlendsson and his manuscripts                              201
+
+  The story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's
+    time by oral tradition only                                    202
+
+  Allusions to Vinland in other Icelandic documents            202-207
+
+  Eyrbyggja Saga                                                   203
+
+  The abbot Nikulas, etc.                                          204
+
+  Ari Frodhi and his works                                         204
+
+  His significant allusion to Vinland                              205
+
+  Other references                                                 206
+
+  Differences between Hauks-bok and Flateyar-bok versions          207
+
+  Adam of Bremen                                                   208
+
+  Importance of his testimony                                      209
+
+  His misconception of the situation of Vinland                    210
+
+  Summary of the argument                                      211-213
+
+  Absurd speculations of zealous antiquarians                  213-215
+
+  The Dighton inscription was made by Algonquins, and has
+    nothing to do with the Northmen                           213, 214
+
+  Governor Arnold's stone windmill                                 215
+
+  There is no reason for supposing that the Northmen founded a
+    colony in Vinland                                              216
+
+  No archaeological remains of them have been found south of
+    Davis strait                                                   217
+
+  If the Northmen had founded a successful colony, they would
+    have introduced domestic cattle into the North American
+    fauna                                                          218
+
+  And such animals could not have vanished and left no trace
+    of their existence                                        219, 220
+
+  Further fortunes of the Greenland colony                         221
+
+  Bishop Eric's voyage in search of Vinland, 1121                  222
+
+  The ship from Markland, 1347                                     223
+
+  The Greenland colony attacked by Eskimos, 1349                   224
+
+  Queen Margaret's monopoly, and its baneful effects               225
+
+  Story of the Venetian brothers, Nicolo and Antonio Zeno          226
+
+  Nicolo Zeno wrecked upon one of the Faeroe islands                227
+
+  He enters the service of Henry Sinclair, Earl of the Orkneys
+    and Caithness                                                  228
+
+  Nicolo's voyage to Greenland, cir. 1394                          229
+
+  Voyage of Earl Sinclair and Antonio Zeno                    229, 230
+
+  Publication of the remains of the documents by the younger
+    Nicolo Zeno, 1558                                              231
+
+  The Zeno map                                                232, 233
+
+  Queer transformations of names                               234-236
+
+  The name _Faeroislander_ became _Frislanda_                       236
+
+  The narrative nowhere makes a claim to the "discovery
+    of America"                                                    237
+
+  The "Zichmni" of the narrative means Henry Sinclair              238
+
+  Bardsen's "Description of Greenland"                             239
+
+  The monastery of St. Olaus and its hot spring                    240
+
+  Volcanoes of the north Atlantic ridge                            241
+
+  Fate of Gunnbjoern's Skerries, 1456                               242
+
+  Volcanic phenomena in Greenland                             242, 243
+
+  Estotiland                                                       244
+
+  Drogio                                                           245
+
+  Inhabitants of Drogio and the countries beyond                   246
+
+  The Fisherman's return to Frislanda                              247
+
+  Was the account of Drogio woven into the narrative
+    by the younger Nicolo?                                         248
+
+  Or does it represent actual experiences in North
+    America?                                                       249
+
+  The case of David Ingram, 1568                                   250
+
+  The case of Cabeza de Vaca, 1528-36                              251
+
+  There may have been unrecorded instances of visits to
+    North America                                                  252
+
+  The pre-Columbian voyages made no real contributions
+    to geographical knowledge                                      253
+
+  And were in no true sense a discovery of America                 254
+
+  Real contact between the eastern and western hemisphere
+    was first established by Columbus                              255
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EUROPE AND CATHAY.
+
+  Why the voyages of the Northmen were not followed up             256
+
+  Ignorance of their geographical significance                     257
+
+  Lack of instruments for ocean navigation                         257
+
+  Condition of Europe in the year 1000                        258, 259
+
+  It was not such as to favour colonial enterprise                 260
+
+  The outlook of Europe was toward Asia                            261
+
+  Routes of trade between Europe and Asia                          262
+
+  Claudius Ptolemy and his knowledge of the earth                  263
+
+  Early mention of China                                           264
+
+  The monk Cosmas Indicopleustes                                   265
+
+  Shape of the earth, according to Cosmas                     266, 267
+
+  His knowledge of Asia                                            268
+
+  The Nestorians                                                   268
+
+  Effects of the Saracen conquests                                 269
+
+  Constantinople in the twelfth century                            270
+
+  The Crusades                                                 270-274
+
+  Barbarizing character of Turkish conquest                        271
+
+  General effects of the Crusades                                  272
+
+  The Fourth Crusade                                               273
+
+  Rivalry between Venice and Genoa                                 274
+
+  Centres and routes of mediaeval trade                        275, 276
+
+  Effects of the Mongol conquests                                  277
+
+  Cathay, origin of the name                                       277
+
+  Carpini and Rubruquis                                            278
+
+  First knowledge of an eastern ocean beyond Cathay                278
+
+  The data were thus prepared for Columbus; but as yet nobody
+    reasoned from these data to a practical conclusion             279
+
+  The Polo brothers                                                280
+
+  Kublai Khan's message to the Pope                                281
+
+  Marco Polo and his travels in Asia                          281, 282
+
+  First recorded voyage of Europeans around the Indo-Chinese
+    peninsula                                                      282
+
+  Return of the Polos to Venice                                    283
+
+  Marco Polo's book, written in prison at Genoa, 1299;
+    its great contributions to geographical knowledge         284, 285
+
+  Prester John                                                     285
+
+  Griffins and Arimaspians                                         286
+
+  The Catalan map, 1375                                       288, 289
+
+  Other visits to China                                        287-291
+
+  Overthrow of the Mongol dynasty, and shutting up of China        291
+
+  First rumours of the Molucca islands and Japan                   292
+
+  The accustomed routes of Oriental trade were cut off in the
+    fifteenth century by the Ottoman Turks                         293
+
+  Necessity for finding an "outside route to the Indies"           294
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.
+
+_EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE._
+
+  Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing
+    around Africa                                                  295
+
+  Views of Eratosthenes                                            296
+
+  Opposing theory of Ptolemy                                       297
+
+  Story of the Phoenician voyage in the time of Necho          298-300
+
+  Voyage of Hanno                                             300, 301
+
+  Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus                                  302
+
+  Wild exaggerations                                               303
+
+  Views of Pomponius Mela                                     304, 305
+
+  Ancient theory of the five zones                            306, 307
+
+  The Inhabited World, or Oecumene, and the Antipodes              308
+
+  Curious notions about Taprobane (Ceylon)                         309
+
+  Question as to the possibility of crossing the torrid zone       309
+
+  Notions about sailing "up and down hill"                    310, 311
+
+  Superstitious fancies                                       311, 312
+
+  Clumsiness of ships in the fifteenth century                     312
+
+  Dangers from famine and scurvy                                   313
+
+  The mariner's compass; an interesting letter from Brunetto
+    Latini to Guido Cavalcanti                                 313-315
+
+  Calculating latitudes and longitudes                             315
+
+  Prince Henry the Navigator                                   316-326
+
+  His idea of an ocean route to the Indies, and what it
+    might bring                                                    318
+
+  The Sacred Promontory                                            319
+
+  The Madeira and Canary islands                               320-322
+
+  Gil Eannes passes Cape Bojador                                   323
+
+  Beginning of the modern slave-trade, 1442                        323
+
+  Papal grant of heathen countries to the Portuguese
+    crown                                                     324, 325
+
+  Advance to Sierra Leone                                          326
+
+  Advance to the Hottentot coast                              326, 327
+
+  Note upon the extent of European acquaintance with
+    savagery and the lower forms of barbarism previous
+    to the fifteenth century                                   327-329
+
+  Effect of the Portuguese discoveries upon the theories
+    of Ptolemy and Mela                                       329, 330
+
+  News of Prester John; Covilham's journey                         331
+
+  Bartholomew Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope and enters the
+    Indian ocean                                                   332
+
+  Some effects of this discovery                                   333
+
+  Bartholomew Columbus took part in it                             333
+
+  Connection between these voyages and the work of Christopher
+    Columbus                                                       334
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.
+
+_WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE._
+
+  Sources of information concerning the life of Columbus;
+    Las Casas and Ferdinand Columbus                               335
+
+  The Biblioteca Colombina at Seville                         336, 337
+
+  Bernaldez and Peter Martyr                                       338
+
+  Letters of Columbus                                              338
+
+  Defects in Ferdinand's information                          339, 340
+
+  Researches of Henry Harrisse                                     341
+
+  Date of the birth of Columbus; archives of Savona                342
+
+  Statement of Bernaldez                                           343
+
+  Columbus's letter of September, 1501                             344
+
+  The balance of probability is in favour of 1436                  345
+
+  The family of Domenico Colombo, and its changes of
+    residence                                                 346, 347
+
+  Columbus tells us that he was born in the city of Genoa          348
+
+  His early years                                              349-351
+
+  Christopher and his brother Bartholomew at Lisbon           351, 352
+
+  Philippa Moniz de Perestrelo                                     352
+
+  Personal appearance of Columbus                                  353
+
+  His marriage, and life upon the island of Porto Santo       353, 354
+
+  The king of Portugal asks advice of the great astronomer
+    Toscanelli                                                     355
+
+  Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus                        356-361
+
+  His second letter to Columbus                               361, 362
+
+  Who first suggested the feasibleness of a westward route
+    to the Indies? Was it Columbus?                                363
+
+  Perhaps it was Toscanelli                                   363, 364
+
+  Note on the date of Toscanelli's first letter to
+    Columbus                                                   365-367
+
+  The idea, being naturally suggested by the globular form of
+    the earth, was as old as Aristotle                        368, 369
+
+  Opinions of ancient writers                                      370
+
+  Opinions of Christian writers                                    371
+
+  The "Imago Mundi" of Petrus Alliacus                        372, 373
+
+  Ancient estimates of the size of the globe and the length of
+    the Oecumene                                                   374
+
+  Toscanelli's calculation of the size of the earth, and of
+    the position of Japan (Cipango)                           375, 376
+
+  Columbus's opinions of the size of the globe, the length of
+    the Oecumene, and the width of the Atlantic ocean from
+    Portugal to Japan                                          377-380
+
+  There was a fortunate mixture of truth and error in these
+    opinions of Columbus                                           381
+
+  The whole point and purport of Columbus's scheme lay in its
+    promise of a route to the Indies shorter than that which the
+    Portuguese were seeking by way of Guinea                       381
+
+  Columbus's speculations on climate; his voyages to Guinea
+    and into the Arctic ocean                                      382
+
+  He may have reached Jan Mayen island, and stopped
+    at Iceland                                                383, 384
+
+  The Scandinavian hypothesis that Columbus "must
+    have" heard and understood the story of the Vinland
+    voyages                                                   384, 385
+
+  It has not a particle of evidence in its favour                  385
+
+  It is not probable that Columbus knew of Adam of
+    Bremen's allusion to Vinland, or that he would have
+    understood it if he had read it                                386
+
+  It is doubtful if he would have stumbled upon the
+    story in Iceland                                               387
+
+  If he had heard it, he would probably have classed it
+    with such tales as that of St. Brandan's isle                  388
+
+  He could not possibly have obtained from such a source his
+    opinion of the width of the ocean                         388, 389
+
+  If he had known and understood the Vinland story, he had the
+    strongest motives for proclaiming it and no motive whatever
+    for concealing it                                          390-392
+
+  No trace of a thought of Vinland appears in any of his
+    voyages                                                        393
+
+  Why did not Norway or Iceland utter a protest in 1493?           393
+
+  The idea of Vinland was not associated with the idea of
+    America until the seventeenth century                          394
+
+  Recapitulation of the genesis of Columbus's scheme               395
+
+  Martin Behaim's improved astrolabe                          395, 396
+
+  Negotiations of Columbus with John II. of Portugal          396, 397
+
+  The king is persuaded into a shabby trick                        398
+
+  Columbus leaves Portugal and enters into the service
+    of Ferdinand and Isabella, 1486                            398-400
+
+  The junto at Salamanca, 1486                                     401
+
+  Birth of Ferdinand Columbus, August 15, 1488                     401
+
+  Bartholomew Columbus returns from the Cape of Good Hope,
+    December, 1487                                            402, 403
+
+  Christopher visits Bartholomew at Lisbon, cir. September,
+    1488, and sends him to England                                 404
+
+  Bartholomew, after mishaps, reaches England cir. February,
+    1490, and goes thence to France before 1492                405-407
+
+  The duke of Medina-Celi proposes to furnish the ships for
+    Columbus, but the queen withholds her consent             408, 409
+
+  Columbus makes up his mind to get his family together and go
+    to France, October, 1491                                  409, 410
+
+  A change of fortune; he stops at La Rabida, and meets the
+    prior Juan Perez, who writes to the queen                      411
+
+  Columbus is summoned back to court                               411
+
+  The junto before Granada, December, 1491                    412, 413
+
+  Surrender of Granada, January 2, 1492                            414
+
+  Columbus negotiates with the queen, who considers his terms
+    exorbitant                                                 414-416
+
+  Interposition of Luis de Santangel                               416
+
+  Agreement between Columbus and the sovereigns                    417
+
+  Cost of the voyage                                               418
+
+  Dismay at Palos                                                  419
+
+  The three famous caravels                                        420
+
+  Delay at the Canary islands                                      421
+
+  Martin Behaim and his globe                                 422, 423
+
+  Columbus starts for Japan, September 6, 1492                     424
+
+  Terrors of the voyage:--1. Deflection of the needle              425
+
+                          2. The Sargasso sea                 426, 427
+
+                          3. The trade wind                        428
+
+  Impatience of the crews                                          428
+
+  Change of course from W. to W. S. W                         429, 430
+
+  Discovery of land, October 12, 1492                              431
+
+  Guanahani: which of the Bahama islands was it?                   432
+
+  Groping for Cipango and the route to Quinsay                433, 434
+
+  Columbus reaches Cuba, and sends envoys to find a
+    certain Asiatic prince                                    434, 435
+
+  He turns eastward and Pinzon deserts him                         435
+
+  Columbus arrives at Hayti and thinks it must be Japan            436
+
+  His flag-ship is wrecked, and he decides to go back to
+    Spain                                                          437
+
+  Building of the blockhouse, La Navidad                           438
+
+  Terrible storm in mid-ocean on the return voyage                 439
+
+  Cold reception at the Azores                                     440
+
+  Columbus is driven ashore in Portugal, where the king is
+    advised to have him assassinated                               440
+
+  But to offend Spain so grossly would be imprudent                441
+
+  Arrival of Columbus and Pinzon at Palos; death of Pinzon         442
+
+  Columbus is received by the sovereigns at Barcelona         443, 444
+
+  General excitement at the news that a way to the Indies had
+    been found                                                     445
+
+  This voyage was an event without any parallel in history         446
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.
+
+  The Discovery of America was a gradual process              447, 448
+
+  The letters of Columbus to Santangel and to Sanchez              449
+
+  Versification of the story by Giuliano Dati                      450
+
+  Earliest references to the discovery                             451
+
+  The earliest reference in English                                452
+
+  The Portuguese claim to the Indies                               453
+
+  Bulls of Pope Alexander VI.                                  454-458
+
+  The treaty of Tordesillas                                        459
+
+  Juan Rodriguez Fonseca, and his relations with
+    Columbus                                                   460-462
+
+  Friar Boyle                                                      462
+
+  Notable persons who embarked on the second voyage                463
+
+  Departure from Cadiz                                             464
+
+  Cruise among the Cannibal (Caribbee) islands                     465
+
+  Fate of the colony at La Navidad                                 466
+
+  Building the town of Isabella                                    467
+
+  Exploration of Cibao                                        467, 468
+
+  Westward cruise; Cape Alpha and Omega                        468-470
+
+  Discovery of Jamaica                                             471
+
+  Coasting the south side of Cuba                                  472
+
+  The "people of Mangon"                                           473
+
+  Speculations concerning the Golden Chersonese                474-476
+
+  A solemn expression of opinion                                   477
+
+  Vicissitudes of theory                                      477, 478
+
+  Arrival of Bartholomew Columbus in Hispaniola               478, 479
+
+  Mutiny in Hispaniola; desertion of Boyle and Margarite      479, 480
+
+  The government of Columbus was not tyrannical                    481
+
+  Troubles with the Indians                                   481, 482
+
+  Mission of Juan Aguado                                           482
+
+  Discovery of gold mines, and speculations about Ophir            483
+
+  Founding of San Domingo, 1496                                    484
+
+  The return voyage to Spain                                       485
+
+  Edicts of 1495 and 1497                                     486, 487
+
+  Vexatious conduct of Fonseca; Columbus loses his temper          487
+
+  Departure from San Lucar on the third voyage                     488
+
+  The belt of calms                                            489-491
+
+  Trinidad and the Orinoco                                    491, 492
+
+  Speculations as to the earth's shape; the mountain of
+    Paradise                                                       494
+
+  Relation of the "Eden continent" to "Cochin China"               495
+
+  Discovery of the Pearl Coast                                     495
+
+  Columbus arrives at San Domingo                                  496
+
+  Roldan's rebellion and Fonseca's machinations               496, 497
+
+  Gama's voyage to Hindustan, 1497                                 498
+
+  Fonseca's creature, Bobadilla, sent to investigate the
+    troubles in Hispaniola                                         499
+
+  He imprisons Columbus                                            500
+
+  And sends him in chains to Spain                                 501
+
+  Release of Columbus; his interview with the sovereigns           502
+
+  How far were the sovereigns responsible for Bobadilla?           503
+
+  Ovando, another creature of Fonseca, appointed governor
+    of Hispaniola                                             503, 504
+
+  Purpose of Columbus's fourth voyage, to find a passage
+    from the Caribbee waters into the Indian ocean            504, 506
+
+  The voyage across the Atlantic                                   506
+
+  Columbus not allowed to stop at San Domingo                      507
+
+  His arrival at Cape Honduras                                     508
+
+  Cape Gracias a Dios, and the coast of Veragua                    509
+
+  Fruitless search for the strait of Malacca                       510
+
+  Futile attempt to make a settlement in Veragua                   511
+
+  Columbus is shipwrecked on the coast of Jamaica; shameful
+    conduct of Ovando                                              512
+
+  Columbus's last return to Spain                                  513
+
+  His death at Valladolid, May 20, 1506                            513
+
+  "Nuevo Mundo;" arms of Ferdinand Columbus                   514, 515
+
+  When Columbus died, the fact that a New World had been
+    discovered by him had not yet begun to dawn upon his mind,
+    or upon the mind of any voyager or any writer             515, 516
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+  Portrait of the author                                _Frontispiece_
+
+  View and ground-plan of Seneca-Iroquois long house
+    _reduced from Morgan's Houses and House-Life of the
+    American Aborigines_                                            66
+
+  View, cross-section, and ground-plan of Mandan round
+    house, _ditto_                                                  80
+
+  Ground-plan of Pueblo Hungo Pavie, _ditto_                        86
+
+  Restoration of Pueblo Hungo Pavie, _ditto_                        88
+
+  Restoration of Pueblo Bonito, _ditto_                             90
+
+  Ground-plan of Pueblo Penasca Blanca, _ditto_                     92
+
+  Ground-plan of so-called "House of the Nuns" at Uxmal,
+    _ditto_                                                        133
+
+  Map of the East Bygd, or eastern settlement of the Northmen
+    in Greenland, _reduced from Rafn's Antiquitates
+    Americanae_                                                160, 161
+
+  Ruins of the church at Kakortok, _from Major's Voyages of
+    the Zeni, published by the Hakluyt Society_                    222
+
+  Zeno Map, cir. 1400, _ditto_                                232, 233
+
+  Map of the World according to Claudius Ptolemy, cir. A. D.
+    150, _an abridged sketch after a map in Bunbury's History of
+    Ancient Geography_                                    _Facing_ 265
+
+  Two sheets of the Catalan Map, 1375, _from Yule's Cathay,
+    published by the Hakluyt Society_                         288, 289
+
+  Map of the World according to Pomponius Mela, cir. A. D. 50,
+    _from Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America_      304
+
+  Map illustrating Portuguese voyages on the coast of Africa,
+    _from a sketch by the author_                                  324
+
+  Toscanelli's Map, 1474, _redrawn and improved from a sketch
+    in Winsor's America_                                 _Facing_  357
+
+  Annotations by Columbus, _reduced from a photograph in
+    Harrisse's Notes on Columbus_                                  373
+
+  Sketch of Martin Behaim's Globe, 1492, preserved in the city
+    hall at Nuremberg, _reduced to Mercator's projection and
+    sketched by the author_                                   422, 423
+
+  Sketch of Martin Behaim's Atlantic Ocean, with outline of the
+    American continent superimposed, _from Winsor's America_       429
+
+  Map of the discoveries made by Columbus in his first and
+    second voyages, _sketched by the author_                       469
+
+  Map of the discoveries made by Columbus in his third and
+    fourth voyages, _ditto_                                        493
+
+  Arms of Ferdinand Columbus, _from the title-page of
+    Harrisse's Fernand Colomb_                                     515
+
+
+
+
+THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT AMERICA.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The American aborigines.]
+
+When the civilized people of Europe first became acquainted with the
+continents of North and South America, they found them inhabited by a
+race of men quite unlike any of the races with which they were familiar
+in the Old World. Between the various tribes of this aboriginal American
+race, except in the sub-arctic region, there is now seen to be a general
+physical likeness, such as to constitute an American type of mankind as
+clearly recognizable as those types which we call Mongolian and Malay,
+though far less pronounced than such types as the Australian or the
+negro. The most obvious characteristics possessed in common by the
+American aborigines are the copper-coloured or rather the
+cinnamon-coloured complexion, along with the high cheek-bones and small
+deep-set eyes, the straight black hair and absence or scantiness of
+beard. With regard to stature, length of limbs, massiveness of frame,
+and shape of skull, considerable divergencies may be noticed among the
+various American tribes, as indeed is also the case among the members of
+the white race in Europe, and of other races. With regard to culture the
+differences have been considerable, although, with two or three apparent
+but not real exceptions, there was nothing in pre-Columbian America that
+could properly be called civilization; the general condition of the
+people ranged all the way from savagery to barbarism of a high type.
+
+[Sidenote: Question as to their origin.]
+
+[Sidenote: Antiquity of man in America.]
+
+Soon after America was proved not to be part of Asia, a puzzling
+question arose. Whence came these "Indians," and in what manner did they
+find their way to the western hemisphere. Since the beginning of the
+present century discoveries in geology have entirely altered our mental
+attitude toward this question. It was formerly argued upon the two
+assumptions that the geographical relations of land and water had been
+always pretty much the same as we now find them, and that all the racial
+differences among men have arisen since the date of the "Noachian
+Deluge," which was generally placed somewhere between two and three
+thousand years before the Christian era. Hence inasmuch as European
+tradition knows nothing of any such race as the Indians, it was supposed
+that at some time within the historic period they must have moved
+eastward from Asia into America; and thus "there was felt to be a sort
+of speculative necessity for discovering points of resemblance between
+American languages, myths, and social observances and those of the
+Oriental world. Now the aborigines of this Continent were made out to
+be Kamtchatkans, and now Chinamen, and again they were shown, with
+quaint erudition, to be remnants of the ten tribes of Israel. Perhaps
+none of these theories have been exactly disproved, but they have all
+been superseded and laid on the shelf."[1] The tendency of modern
+discovery is indeed toward agreement with the time-honoured tradition
+which makes the Old World, and perhaps Asia, the earliest dwelling-place
+of mankind. Competition has been far more active in the fauna of the
+eastern hemisphere than in that of the western, natural selection has
+accordingly resulted in the evolution of higher forms, and it is there
+that we find both extinct and surviving species of man's nearest
+collateral relatives, those tailless half-human apes, the gorilla,
+chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon. It is altogether probable that the people
+whom the Spaniards found in America came by migration from the Old
+World. But it is by no means probable that their migration occurred
+within so short a period as five or six thousand years. A series of
+observations and discoveries kept up for the last half-century seem to
+show that North America has been continuously inhabited by human beings
+since the earliest Pleistocene times, if not earlier.
+
+         [Footnote 1: See my _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, p. 148. A
+         good succinct account of these various theories, monuments of
+         wasted ingenuity, is given in Short's _North Americans of
+         Antiquity_, chap. iii. The most elaborate statement of the
+         theory of an Israelite colonization of America is to be found
+         in the ponderous tomes of Lord Kingsborough, _Mexican
+         Antiquities_, London, 1831-48, 9 vols. elephant-folio. Such a
+         theory was entertained by the author of that curious piece of
+         literary imposture, _The Book of Mormon_. In this book we are
+         told that, when the tongues were confounded at Babel, the Lord
+         selected a certain Jared, with his family and friends, and
+         instructed them to build eight ships, in which, after a voyage
+         of 344 days, they were brought to America, where they "did
+         build many mighty cities," and "prosper exceedingly." But after
+         some centuries they perished because of their iniquities. In
+         the reign of Zedekiah, when calamity was impending over Judah,
+         two brothers, Nephi and Laman, under divine guidance led a
+         colony to America. There, says the veracious chronicler, their
+         descendants became great nations, and worked in _iron_, and had
+         stuffs of _silk_, besides keeping plenty of _oxen_ and _sheep_.
+         (_Ether_, ix. 18, 19; x. 23, 24.) Christ appeared and wrought
+         many wonderful works; people spake with tongues, and the dead
+         were raised. (3 _Nephi_, xxvi. 14, 15.) But about the close of
+         the fourth century of our era, a terrible war between Lamanites
+         and Nephites ended in the destruction of the latter. Some two
+         million warriors, with their wives and children, having been
+         slaughtered, the prophet Mormon escaped, with his son Moroni,
+         to the "hill Cumorah," hard by the "waters of Ripliancum," or
+         Lake Ontario. (_Ether_, xv. 2, 8, 11.) There they hid the
+         sacred tablets, which remained concealed until they were
+         miraculously discovered and translated by Joseph Smith in 1827.
+         There is, of course, no element of tradition in this story. It
+         is all pure fiction, and of a very clumsy sort, such as might
+         easily be devised by an ignorant man accustomed to the language
+         of the Bible; and of course it was suggested by the old notion
+         of the Israelitish origin of the red men. The references are to
+         _The Book of Mormon_, Salt Lake City: Deseret News Co., 1885.]
+
+[Sidenote: Shell-mounds.]
+
+The first group of these observations and discoveries relate to
+"middens" or shell-heaps. On the banks of the Damariscotta river in
+Maine are some of the most remarkable shell-heaps in the world. With an
+average thickness of six or seven feet, they rise in places to a height
+of twenty-five feet. They consist almost entirely of huge oyster-shells
+often ten inches in length and sometimes much longer. The shells belong
+to a salt-water species. In some places "there is an appearance of
+stratification covered by an alternation of shells and earth, as if the
+deposition of shells had been from time to time interrupted, and a
+vegetable mould had covered the surface." In these heaps have been found
+fragments of pottery and of the bones of such edible animals as the
+moose and deer. "At the very foundation of one of the highest heaps," in
+a situation which must for long ages have been undisturbed, Mr. Edward
+Morse "found the remains of an ancient fire-place, where he exhumed
+charcoal, bones, and pottery."[2] The significant circumstance is that
+"at the present time oysters are only found in very small numbers, too
+small to make it an object to gather them," and so far as memory and
+tradition can reach, such seems to have been the case. The great size of
+the heap, coupled with the notable change in the distribution of this
+mollusk since the heap was abandoned, implies a very considerable lapse
+of time since the vestiges of human occupation were first left here.
+Similar conclusions have been drawn from the banks or mounds of shells
+on the St. John's river in Florida,[3] on the Alabama river, at Grand
+Lake on the lower Mississippi, and at San Pablo in the bay of San
+Francisco. Thus at various points from Maine to California, and in
+connection with one particular kind of memorial, we find records of the
+presence of man at a period undoubtedly prehistoric, but not necessarily
+many thousands of years old.
+
+         [Footnote 2: _Second Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of
+         American Archaeology_, etc., p. 18.]
+
+         [Footnote 3: Visited in 1866-74 by Professor Jeffries Wyman,
+         and described in his _Fresh-Water Shell Mounds of the St.
+         John's River_, Cambridge, 1875.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Glacial Period.]
+
+The second group of discoveries carries us back much farther, even into
+the earlier stages of that widespread glaciation which was the most
+remarkable feature of the Pleistocene period. At the periods of greatest
+cold "the continent of North America was deeply swathed in ice as far
+south as the latitude of Philadelphia, while glaciers descended into
+North Carolina."[4] The valleys of the Rocky Mountains also supported
+enormous glaciers, and a similar state of things existed at the same
+time in Europe. These periods of intense cold were alternated with long
+interglacial periods during which the climate was warmer than it is
+to-day. Concerning the antiquity of the Pleistocene age, which was
+characterized by such extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold, there
+has been, as in all questions relating to geological time, much conflict
+of opinion. Twenty years ago geologists often argued as if there were an
+unlimited fund of past time upon which to draw; but since Sir William
+Thomson and other physicists emphasized the point that in an antiquity
+very far from infinite this earth must have been a molten mass, there
+has been a reaction. In many instances further study has shown that less
+time was needed in order to effect a given change than had formerly been
+supposed; and so there has grown up a tendency to shorten the time
+assigned to geological periods. Here, as in so many other cases, the
+truth is doubtless to be sought within the extremes. If we adopt the
+magnificent argument of Dr. Croll, which seems to me still to hold its
+ground against all adverse criticism,[5] and regard the Glacial epoch as
+coincident with the last period of high eccentricity of the earth's
+orbit, we obtain a result that is moderate and probable. That
+astronomical period began about 240,000 years ago and came to an end
+about 80,000 years ago. During this period the eccentricity was seldom
+less than .04, and at one time rose to .0569. At the present time the
+eccentricity is .0168, and nearly 800,000 years will pass before it
+attains such a point as it reached during the Glacial epoch. For the
+last 50,000 years the departure of the earth's orbit from a circular
+form has been exceptionally small.
+
+         [Footnote 4: _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, p. 39.]
+
+         [Footnote 5: Croll, _Climate and Time in their Geological
+         Relations_, New York, 1875; _Discussions on Climate and
+         Cosmology_, New York, 1886; Archibald Geikie, _Text Book of
+         Geology_, pp. 23-29, 883-909, London, 1882; James Geikie, _The
+         Great Ice Age_, pp. 94-136, New York, 1874; _Prehistoric
+         Europe_, pp. 558-562, London, 1881; Wallace, _Island Life_, pp.
+         101-225, New York, 1881. Some objections to Croll's theory may
+         be found in Wright's _Ice Age in North America_, pp. 405-505,
+         585-595, New York, 1889. I have given a brief account of the
+         theory in my _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp. 57-76.]
+
+Now the traces of the existence of men in North America during the
+Glacial epoch have in recent years been discovered in abundance, as for
+example, the palaeolithic quartzite implements found in the drift near
+the city of St. Paul, which date from toward the close of the Glacial
+epoch[6]; the fragment of a human jaw found in the red clay deposited in
+Minnesota during an earlier part of that epoch;[7] the noble collection
+of palaeoliths found by Dr. C. C. Abbott in the Trenton gravels in New
+Jersey; and the more recent discoveries of Dr. Metz and Mr. H. T.
+Cresson.
+
+         [Footnote 6: See Miss F. E. Babbitt, "Vestiges of Glacial Man
+         in Minnesota," in _Proceedings of the American Association_,
+         vol. xxxii., 1883.]
+
+         [Footnote 7: See N. H. Winchell, _Annual Report of the State
+         Geologist of Minnesota_, 1877, p. 60.]
+
+[Sidenote: Discoveries in the Trenton gravel.]
+
+[Sidenote: Discoveries in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota;]
+
+The year 1873 marks an era in American archaeology as memorable as the
+year 1841 in the investigation of the antiquity of man in Europe. With
+reference to these problems Dr. Abbott occupies a position similar to
+that of Boucher de Perthes in the Old World, and the Trenton valley is
+coming to be classic ground, like the valley of the Somme. In April,
+1873, Dr. Abbott published his description of three rude implements
+which he had found some sixteen feet below the surface of the ground "in
+the gravels of a bluff overlooking the Delaware river." The implements
+were in place in an undisturbed deposit, and could not have found their
+way thither in any recent time; Dr. Abbott assigned them to the age of
+the Glacial drift. This was the beginning of a long series of
+investigations, in which Dr. Abbott's work was assisted and supplemented
+by Messrs. Whitney, Carr, Putnam, Shaler, Lewis, Wright, Haynes,
+Dawkins, and other eminent geologists and archaeologists. By 1888 Dr.
+Abbott had obtained not less than 60 implements from various recorded
+depths in the gravel, while many others were found at depths not
+recorded or in the talus of the banks.[8] Three human skulls and other
+bones, along with the tusk of a mastodon, have been discovered in the
+same gravel. Careful studies have been made of the conditions under
+which the gravel-banks were deposited and their probable age; and it is
+generally agreed that they date from the later portion of the Glacial
+period, or about the time of the final recession of the ice-sheet from
+this region. At that time, in its climate and general aspect, New York
+harbour must have been much like a Greenland fiord of the present day.
+In 1883 Professor Wright of Oberlin, after a careful study of the
+Trenton deposits and their relations to the terrace and gravel deposits
+to the westward, predicted that similar palaeolithic implements would be
+found in Ohio. Two years afterward, the prediction was verified by Dr.
+Metz, who found a true palaeolith of black flint at Madisonville, in the
+Little Miami valley, eight feet below the surface. Since then further
+discoveries have been made in the same neighbourhood by Dr. Metz, and in
+Jackson county, Indiana, by Mr. H. T. Cresson; and the existence of man
+in that part of America toward the close of the Glacial period may be
+regarded as definitely established. The discoveries of Miss Babbitt and
+Professor Winchell, in Minnesota, carry the conclusion still farther,
+and add to the probability of the existence of a human population all
+the way from the Atlantic coast to the upper Mississippi valley at that
+remote antiquity.
+
+         [Footnote 8: Wright's _Ice Age in North America_, p. 516.]
+
+[Sidenote: and in Delaware.]
+
+A still more remarkable discovery was made by Mr. Cresson in July, 1887,
+at Claymont, in the north of Delaware. In a deep cut of the Baltimore
+and Ohio Railroad, in a stratum of Philadelphia red gravel and brick
+clay, Mr. Cresson obtained an unquestionable palaeolith, and a few months
+afterward his diligent search was rewarded with another.[9] This
+formation dates from far back in the Glacial period. If we accept Dr.
+Croll's method of reckoning, we can hardly assign to it an antiquity
+less than 150,000 years.
+
+         [Footnote 9: The chipped implements discovered by Messrs.
+         Abbott, Metz, and Cresson, and by Miss Babbitt, are all on
+         exhibition at the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, whither it is
+         necessary to go if one would get a comprehensive view of the
+         relics of interglacial man in North America. The collection of
+         implements made by Dr. Abbott includes much more than the
+         palaeoliths already referred to. It is one of the most important
+         collections in the world, and is worth a long journey to see.
+         Containing more than 20,000 implements, all found within a very
+         limited area in New Jersey, "as now arranged, the collection
+         exhibits at one and the same time the sequence of peoples and
+         phases of development in the valley of the Delaware, from
+         palaeolithic man, through the intermediate period, to the recent
+         Indians, and the relative numerical proportion of the many
+         forms of their implements, each in its time.... It is doubtful
+         whether any similar collection exists from which a student can
+         gather so much information at sight as in this, where the
+         natural pebbles from the gravel begin the series, and the
+         beautifully chipped points of chert, jasper, and quartz
+         terminate it in one direction, and the polished celts and
+         grooved stone axes in the other." There are three principal
+         groups,--first, the interglacial palaeoliths, secondly, the
+         argillite points and flakes, and thirdly, the arrow-heads,
+         knives, mortars and pestles, axes and hoes, ornamental stones,
+         etc., of Indians of the recent period. Dr. Abbott's _Primitive
+         Industry_, published in 1881, is a useful manual for studying
+         this collection; and an account of his discoveries in the
+         glacial gravels is given in _Reports of the Peabody Museum_,
+         vol. ii. pp. 30-48, 225-258; see also vol. iii. p. 492. A
+         succinct and judicious account of the whole subject is given by
+         H. W. Haynes, "The Prehistoric Archaeology of North America," in
+         Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History_, vol. i. pp.
+         329-368.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Calaveras skull.]
+
+But according to Professor Josiah Whitney there is reason for supposing
+that man existed in California at a still more remote period. He holds
+that the famous skull discovered in 1866, in the gold-bearing gravels of
+Calaveras county, belongs to the Pliocene age.[10] If this be so, it
+seems to suggest an antiquity not less than twice as great as that just
+mentioned. The question as to the antiquity of the Calaveras skull is
+still hotly disputed among the foremost palaeontologists, but as one
+reads the arguments one cannot help feeling that theoretical
+difficulties have put the objectors into a somewhat inhospitable
+attitude toward the evidence so ably presented by Professor Whitney. It
+has been too hastily assumed that, from the point of view of evolution,
+the existence of Pliocene man is improbable. Upon general
+considerations, however, we have strong reason for believing that human
+beings must have inhabited some portions of the earth throughout the
+whole duration of the Pliocene period, and it need not surprise us if
+their remains are presently discovered in more places than one.[11]
+
+         [Footnote 10: J. D. Whitney, "The Auriferous Gravels of the
+         Sierra Nevada", _Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zooelogy
+         at Harvard College_, Cambridge, 1880, vol. vi.]
+
+         [Footnote 11: In an essay published in 1882 on "Europe before
+         the Arrival of Man" (_Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp.
+         1-40), I argued that if we are to find traces of the "missing
+         link," or primordial stock of primates from which man has been
+         derived, we must undoubtedly look for it in the Miocene (p.
+         36). I am pleased at finding the same opinion lately expressed
+         by one of the highest living authorities. The case is thus
+         stated by Alfred Russel Wallace: "The evidence we now possess
+         of the exact nature of the resemblance of man to the various
+         species of anthropoid apes, shows us that he has little special
+         affinity for any one rather than another species, while he
+         differs from them all in several important characters in which
+         they agree with each other. The conclusion to be drawn from
+         these facts is, that his points of affinity connect him with
+         the whole group, while his special peculiarities equally
+         separate him from the whole group, and that he must, therefore,
+         have diverged from the common ancestral form before the
+         existing types of anthropoid apes had diverged from each other.
+         Now this divergence almost certainly took place as early as the
+         Miocene period, because in the Upper Miocene deposits of
+         western Europe remains of two species of ape have been found
+         allied to the gibbons, one of them, dryopithecus, nearly as
+         large as a man, and believed by M. Lartet to have approached
+         man in its dentition more than the existing apes. We seem
+         hardly, therefore, to have reached in the Upper Miocene the
+         epoch of the common ancestor of man and the anthropoids."
+         (_Darwinism_, p. 455, London, 1889.) Mr. Wallace goes on to
+         answer the objection of Professor Boyd Dawkins, "that man did
+         not probably exist in Pliocene times, because almost all the
+         known mammalia of that epoch are distinct species from those
+         now living on the earth, and that the same changes of the
+         environment which led to the modification of other mammalian
+         species would also have led to a change in man." This argument,
+         at first sight apparently formidable, quite overlooks the fact
+         that in the evolution of man there came a point after which
+         variations in his intelligence were seized upon more and more
+         exclusively by natural selection, to the comparative neglect of
+         physical variations. After that point man changed but little in
+         physical characteristics, except in size and complexity of
+         brain. This is the theorem first propounded by Mr. Wallace in
+         the _Anthropological Review_, May, 1864; restated in his
+         _Contributions to Natural Selection_, chap. ix., in 1870; and
+         further extended and developed by me in connection with the
+         theory of man's origin first suggested in my lectures at
+         Harvard in 1871, and worked out in _Cosmic Philosophy_, part
+         ii., chapters xvi., xxi., xxii.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pleistocene men and mammals.]
+
+Whatever may be the final outcome of the Calaveras controversy, there
+can be no doubt as to the existence of man in North America far back in
+early Pleistocene times. The men of the River-drift, who long dwelt in
+western Europe during the milder intervals of the Glacial period, but
+seem to have become extinct toward the end of it, are well known to
+palaeontologists through their bones and their rude tools.
+Contemporaneously with these Europeans of the River-drift there
+certainly lived some kind of men, of a similar low grade of culture, in
+the Mississippi valley and on both the Atlantic and Pacific slopes of
+North America. Along with these ancient Americans lived some terrestrial
+mammals that still survive, such as the elk, reindeer, prairie wolf,
+bison, musk-ox, and beaver; and many that have long been extinct, such
+as the mylodon, megatherium, megalonyx, mastodon, Siberian elephant,
+mammoth, at least six or seven species of ancestral horse, a huge bear
+similar to the cave bear of ancient Europe, a lion similar to the
+European cave lion, and a tiger as large as the modern tiger of Bengal.
+
+[Sidenote: Elevation and subsidence.]
+
+Now while the general relative positions of those stupendous abysses
+that hold the oceans do not appear to have undergone any considerable
+change since an extremely remote geological period, their shallow
+marginal portions have been repeatedly raised so as to add extensive
+territories to the edges of continents, and in some cases to convert
+archipelagoes into continents, and to join continents previously
+separated. Such elevation is followed in turn by an era of subsidence,
+and almost everywhere either the one process or the other is slowly
+going on. If you look at a model in relief of the continents and
+ocean-floors, such as may be seen at the Museum of Comparative Zooelogy
+in Cambridge, showing the results of a vast number of soundings in all
+parts of the world, you cannot fail to be struck with the shallowness of
+Bering Sea; it looks like a part of the continent rather than of the
+ocean, and indeed it is just that,--an area of submerged continent. So
+in the northern Atlantic there is a lofty ridge running from France to
+Greenland. The British islands, the Orkney, Shetland, and Faeroe groups,
+and Iceland are the parts of this ridge high enough to remain out of
+water. The remainder of it is shallow sea. Again and again it has been
+raised, together with the floor of the German ocean, so as to become dry
+land. Both before and since the time when those stone tools were dropped
+into the red gravel from which Mr. Cresson took them the other day, the
+northwestern part of Europe has been solid continent for more than a
+hundred miles to the west of the French and Irish coasts, the Thames and
+Humber have been tributaries to the Rhine, which emptied into the Arctic
+ocean, and across the Atlantic ridge one might have walked to the New
+World dry-shod.[12] In similar wise the northwestern corner of America
+has repeatedly been joined to Siberia through the elevation of Bering
+Sea.
+
+         [Footnote 12: See, for example, the map of Europe in early
+         post-glacial times, in James Geikie's _Prehistoric Europe_.]
+
+There have therefore been abundant opportunities for men to get into
+America from the Old World without crossing salt water. Probably this
+was the case with the ancient inhabitants of the Delaware and Little
+Miami valleys; it is not at all likely that men who used their kind of
+tools knew much about going on the sea in boats.
+
+[Sidenote: Waves of migration.]
+
+Whether the Indians are descended from this ancient population or not,
+is a question with which we have as yet no satisfactory method of
+dealing. It is not unlikely that these glacial men may have perished
+from off the face of the earth, having been crushed and supplanted by
+stronger races. There may have been several successive waves of
+migration, of which the Indians were the latest.[13] There is time
+enough for a great many things to happen in a thousand centuries. It
+will doubtless be long before all the evidence can be brought in and
+ransacked, but of one thing we may feel pretty sure; the past is more
+full of changes than we are apt to realize. Our first theories are
+usually too simple, and have to be enlarged and twisted into all manner
+of shapes in order to cover the actual complication of facts.[14]
+
+         [Footnote 13: "There are three human crania in the Museum,
+         which were found in the gravel at Trenton, one several feet
+         below the surface, the others near the surface. These skulls,
+         which are of remarkable uniformity, are of small size and of
+         oval shape, differing from all other skulls in the Museum. In
+         fact they are of a distinct type, and hence of the greatest
+         importance. So far as they go they indicate that palaeolithic
+         man was exterminated, or has become lost by admixture with
+         others during the many thousand years which have passed since
+         he inhabited the Delaware valley." F. W. Putnam, "The Peabody
+         Museum," _Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society_,
+         1889, New Series, vol. vi. p. 189.]
+
+         [Footnote 14: An excellent example of this is the expansion and
+         modification undergone during the past twenty years by our
+         theories of the Aryan settlement of Europe. See Benfey's
+         preface to Fick's _Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen
+         Grundsprache_, 1868; Geiger, _Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der
+         Menschheit_, 1871; Cuno, _Forschungen im Gebiete der alten
+         Voelkerkunde_, 1871; Schmidt, _Die Verwandtschaftsverhaeltnisse
+         der Indogermanischen Sprachen_, 1872; Poesche, _Die Arier_,
+         1878; Lindenschmit, _Handbuch der deutschen Alterthumskunde_,
+         1880; Penka, _Origines Ariacae_, 1883, and _Die Herkunft der
+         Arier_, 1886; Spiegel, _Die arische Periode und ihre Zustande_,
+         1887; Rendal, _Cradle of the Aryans_, 1889; Schrader,
+         _Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte_, 1883, and second edition
+         translated into English, with the title _Prehistoric
+         Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_, 1890. Schrader's is an
+         epoch-making book. An attempt to defend the older and simpler
+         views is made by Max Mueller, _Biographies of Words and the Home
+         of the Aryas_, 1888; see also Van den Gheyn, _L'origine
+         europeenne des Aryas_, 1889. The whole case is well summed up
+         by Isaac Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans_, 1889.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Cave men of Europe in the Glacial Period.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Eskimos are probably a remnant of the Cave men.]
+
+In this connection the history of the Eskimos introduces us to some
+interesting problems. Mention has been made of the River-drift men who
+lived in Europe during the milder intervals of the Glacial period. At
+such times they made their way into Germany and Britain, along with
+leopards, hyaenas, and African elephants. But as the cold intervals came
+on and the edge of the polar ice-sheet crept southward and mountain
+glaciers filled up the valleys, these men and beasts retreated into
+Africa; and their place was taken by a sub-arctic race of men known as
+the Cave men, along with the reindeer and arctic fox and musk-sheep.
+More than once with the secular alternations of temperature did the
+River-drift men thus advance and retreat and advance again, and as they
+advanced the Cave men retreated, both races yielding to an enemy
+stronger than either,--to wit, the hostile climate. At length all traces
+of the River-drift men vanish, but what of the Cave men? They have left
+no representatives among the present populations of Europe, but the
+musk-sheep, which always went and came with the Cave men, is to-day
+found only in sub-arctic America among the Eskimos, and the fossilized
+bones of the musk-sheep lie in a regular trail across the eastern
+hemisphere, from the Pyrenees through Germany and Russia and all the
+vast length of Siberia. The stone arrow-heads, the sewing-needles, the
+necklaces and amulets of cut teeth, and the daggers made from antler,
+used by the Eskimos, resemble so minutely the implements of the Cave
+men, that if recent Eskimo remains were to be put into the Pleistocene
+caves of France and England they would be indistinguishable in
+appearance from the remains of the Cave men which are now found
+there.[15] There is another striking point of resemblance. The Eskimos
+have a talent for artistic sketching of men and beasts, and scenes in
+which men and beasts figure, which is absolutely unrivalled among rude
+peoples. One need but look at the sketches by common Eskimo fishermen
+which illustrate Dr. Henry Rink's fascinating book on Danish Greenland,
+to realize that this rude Eskimo art has a character as pronounced and
+unmistakable in its way as the much higher art of the Japanese. Now
+among the European remains of the Cave men are many sketches of
+mammoths, cave bears, and other animals now extinct, and hunting scenes
+so artfully and vividly portrayed as to bring distinctly before us many
+details of daily life in an antiquity so vast that in comparison with it
+the interval between the pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel tower shrinks
+into a point. Such a talent is unique among savage peoples. It exists
+only among the living Eskimos and the ancient Cave men; and when
+considered in connection with so many other points of agreement, and
+with the indisputable fact that the Cave men were a sub-arctic race, it
+affords a strong presumption in favour of the opinion of that great
+palaeontologist, Professor Boyd Dawkins, that the Eskimos of North
+America are to-day the sole survivors of the race that made their homes
+in the Pleistocene caves of western Europe.[16]
+
+         [Footnote 15: See Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, pp.
+         233-245.]
+
+         [Footnote 16: According to Dr. Rink the Eskimos formerly
+         inhabited the central portions of North America, and have
+         retreated or been driven northward; he would make the Eskimos
+         of Siberia an offshoot from those of America, though he freely
+         admits that there are grounds for entertaining the opposite
+         view. Dr. Abbott is inclined to attribute an Eskimo origin to
+         some of the palaeoliths of the Trenton gravel. On the other
+         hand, Mr. Clements Markham derives the American Eskimos from
+         those of Siberia. It seems to me that these views may be
+         comprehended and reconciled in a wider one. I would suggest
+         that during the Glacial period the ancestral Eskimos may have
+         gradually become adapted to arctic conditions of life; that in
+         the mild interglacial intervals they migrated northward along
+         with the musk-sheep; and that upon the return of the cold they
+         migrated southward again, keeping always near the edge of the
+         ice-sheet. Such a southward migration would naturally enough
+         bring them in one continent down to the Pyrenees, in the other
+         down to the Alleghanies; and naturally enough the modern
+         inquirer has his attention first directed to the indications of
+         their final retreat, _both_ northward in America and
+         northeastward from Europe through Siberia. This is like what
+         happened with so many plants and animals. Compare Darwin's
+         remarks on "Dispersal in the Glacial Period," _Origin of
+         Species_, chap. xii.
+
+         The best books on the Eskimos are those of Dr. Rink, _Tales and
+         Traditions of the Eskimo_, Edinburgh, 1875; _Danish Greenland_,
+         London, 1877; _The Eskimo Tribes, their Distribution and
+         Characteristics, especially in regard to Language_, Copenhagen,
+         1887. See also Franz Boas, "The Central Eskimo," _Sixth Report
+         of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1888, pp. 399-669; W.
+         H. Dall. _Alaska and its Resources_, 1870; Markham, "Origin and
+         Migrations of the Greenland Esquimaux," _Journal of the Royal
+         Geographical Society_, 1865; Cranz, _Historie von Groenland_,
+         Leipsic, 1765; Petitot, _Traditions indiennes du Canada
+         nord-ouest_, Paris, 1886; Pilling's _Bibliography of the Eskimo
+         Language_, Washington, 1887; Wells and Kelly, _English-Eskimo
+         and Eskimo-English Vocabularies, with Ethnographical Memoranda
+         concerning the Arctic Eskimos in Alaska and Siberia_,
+         Washington, 1890; Carstensen's _Two Summers in Greenland_,
+         London, 1890.]
+
+If we have always been accustomed to think of races of men only as they
+are placed on modern maps, it at first seems strange to think of England
+and France as ever having been inhabited by Eskimos. Facts equally
+strange may be cited in abundance from zooelogy and botany. The camel is
+found to-day only in Arabia and Bactria; yet in all probability the
+camel originated in America,[17] and is an intruder into what we are
+accustomed to call his native deserts, just as the people of the United
+States are European intruders upon the soil of America. So the giant
+trees of Mariposa grove are now found only in California, but there was
+once a time when they were as common in Europe[18] as maple-trees to-day
+in a New England village.
+
+         [Footnote 17: Wallace, _Geographical Distribution of Animals_,
+         vol. ii. p. 155.]
+
+         [Footnote 18: Asa Gray, "Sequoia and its History," in his
+         _Darwiniana_, pp. 205-235.]
+
+[Sidenote: There was probably no connection or intercourse by water
+between ancient America and the Old World.]
+
+Familiarity with innumerable facts of this sort, concerning the
+complicated migrations and distribution of plants and animals, has
+entirely altered our way of looking at the question as to the origin of
+the American Indians. As already observed, we can hardly be said to
+possess sufficient data for determining whether they are descended from
+the Pleistocene inhabitants of America, or have come in some later wave
+of migration from the Old World. Nor can we as yet determine whether
+they were earlier or later comers than the Eskimos. But since we have
+got rid of that feeling of speculative necessity above referred to, for
+bringing the red men from Asia within the historic period, it has become
+more and more clear that they have dwelt upon American soil for a very
+long time. The aboriginal American, as we know him, with his language
+and legends, his physical and mental peculiarities, his social
+observances and customs, is most emphatically a native and not an
+imported article. He belongs to the American continent as strictly as
+its opossums and armadillos, its maize and its golden-rod, or any
+members of its aboriginal fauna and flora belong to it. In all
+probability he came from the Old World at some ancient period, whether
+pre-glacial or post-glacial, when it was possible to come by land; and
+here in all probability, until the arrival of white men from Europe, he
+remained undisturbed by later comers, unless the Eskimos may have been
+such. There is not a particle of evidence to suggest any connection or
+intercourse between aboriginal America and Asia within any such period
+as the last twenty thousand years, except in so far as there may perhaps
+now and then have been slight surges of Eskimo tribes back and forth
+across Bering strait.
+
+[Sidenote: There is one great American "red" race.]
+
+The Indians must surely be regarded as an entirely different stock from
+the Eskimos. On the other hand, the most competent American ethnologists
+are now pretty thoroughly agreed that all the aborigines south of the
+Eskimo region, all the way from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn, belong to
+one and the same race. It was formerly supposed that the higher culture
+of the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians must indicate that they were of
+different race from the more barbarous Algonquins and Dakotas; and a
+speculative necessity was felt for proving that, whatever may have been
+the case with the other American peoples, this higher culture at any
+rate must have been introduced within the historic period from the Old
+World.[19] This feeling was caused partly by the fact that, owing to
+crude and loosely-framed conceptions of the real points of difference
+between civilization and barbarism, this Central American culture was
+absurdly exaggerated. As the further study of the uncivilized parts of
+the world has led to more accurate and precise conceptions, this kind of
+speculative necessity has ceased to be felt. There is an increasing
+disposition among scholars to agree that the warrior of Anahuac and the
+shepherd of the Andes were just simply Indians, and that their culture
+was no less indigenous than that of the Cherokees or Mohawks.
+
+         [Footnote 19: Illustrations may be found in plenty in the
+         learned works of Brasseur de Bourbourg:--_Histoire des nations
+         civilisees du Mexique et de l'Amerique centrale_, 4 vols.,
+         Paris, 1857-58; _Popol Vuh_, Paris, 1861; _Quatre lettres sur
+         le Mexique_, Paris, 1868; _Le manuscrit Troano_, Paris, 1870,
+         etc.]
+
+[Sidenote: Different senses in which the word "race" is used.]
+
+To prevent any possible misconception of my meaning, a further word of
+explanation may be needed at this point. The word "race" is used in such
+widely different senses that there is apt to be more or less vagueness
+about it. The difference is mainly in what logicians call extension;
+sometimes the word covers very little ground, sometimes a great deal. We
+say that the people of England, of the United States, and of New South
+Wales belong to one and the same race; and we say that an Englishman, a
+Frenchman, and a Greek belong to three different races. There is a sense
+in which both these statements are true. But there is also a sense in
+which we may say that the Englishman, the Frenchman, and the Greek
+belong to one and the same race; and that is when we are contrasting
+them as white men with black men or yellow men. Now we may correctly say
+that a Shawnee, an Ojibwa, and a Kickapoo belong to one and the same
+Algonquin race; that a Mohawk and a Tuscarora belong to one and the same
+Iroquois race; but that an Algonquin differs from an Iroquois somewhat
+as an Englishman differs from a Frenchman. No doubt we may fairly say
+that the Mexicans encountered by Cortes differed in race from the
+Iroquois encountered by Champlain, as much as an Englishman differs from
+an Albanian or a Montenegrin. But when we are contrasting aboriginal
+Americans with white men or yellow men, it is right to say that Mexicans
+and Iroquois belong to the same great red race.
+
+In some parts of the world two strongly contrasted races have become
+mingled together, or have existed side by side for centuries without
+intermingling. In Europe the big blonde Aryan-speaking race has mixed
+with the small brunette Iberian race, producing the endless varieties in
+stature and complexion which may be seen in any drawing-room in London
+or New York. In Africa south of Sahara, on the other hand, we find,
+interspersed among negro tribes but kept perfectly distinct, that
+primitive dwarfish race with yellow skin and tufted hair to which belong
+the Hottentots and Bushmen, the Wambatti lately discovered by Mr.
+Stanley, and other tribes.[20] Now in America south of Hudson's Bay the
+case seems to have been quite otherwise, and more as it would have been
+in Europe if there had been only Aryans, or in Africa if there had been
+only blacks.[21]
+
+         [Footnote 20: See Werner, "The African Pygmies," _Popular
+         Science Monthly_, September, 1890,--a thoughtful and
+         interesting article.]
+
+         [Footnote 21: This sort of illustration requires continual
+         limitation and qualification. The case in ancient America was
+         not _quite_ as it would have been in Europe if there had been
+         only Aryans there. The semi-civilized people of the Cordilleras
+         were relatively brachycephalous as compared with the more
+         barbarous Indians north and east of New Mexico. It is correct
+         to call this a distinction of race if we mean thereby a
+         distinction developed upon American soil, a differentiation
+         within the limits of the red race, and not an intrusion from
+         without. In this sense the Caribs also may be regarded as a
+         distinct sub-race; and, in the same sense, we may call the
+         Kafirs a distinct sub-race of African blacks. See, as to the
+         latter, Tylor, _Anthropology_, p. 39.]
+
+[Sidenote: No necessary connection between differences in culture and
+differences in race.]
+
+The belief that the people of the Cordilleras must be of radically
+different race from other Indians was based upon the vague notion that
+grades of culture have some necessary connection with likenesses and
+differences of race. There is no such necessary connection.[22] Between
+the highly civilized Japanese and their barbarous Mandshu cousins the
+difference in culture is much greater than the difference between
+Mohawks and Mexicans; and the same may be said of the people of Israel
+and Judah in contrast with the Arabs of the desert, or of the imperial
+Romans in comparison with their Teutonic kinsmen as described by
+Tacitus.
+
+         [Footnote 22: As Sir John Lubbock well says, "Different races
+         in similar stages of development often present more features of
+         resemblance to one another than the same race does to itself in
+         different stages of its history." (_Origin of Civilization_, p.
+         11.) If every student of history and ethnology would begin by
+         learning this lesson, the world would be spared a vast amount
+         of unprofitable theorizing.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Grades of culture.]
+
+At this point, in order to prepare ourselves the more clearly to
+understand sundry facts with which we shall hereafter be obliged to
+deal, especially the wonderful experiences of the Spanish conquerors, it
+will be well to pause for a moment and do something toward defining the
+different grades of culture through which men have passed in attaining
+to the grade which can properly be called civilization. Unless we begin
+with clear ideas upon this head we cannot go far toward understanding
+the ancient America that was first visited and described for us by
+Spaniards. The various grades of culture need to be classified, and that
+most original and suggestive scholar, the late Lewis Morgan of
+Rochester, made a brilliant attempt in this direction, to which the
+reader's attention is now invited.
+
+[Sidenote: Distinction between Savagery and Barbarism.]
+
+[Sidenote: Origin of pottery.]
+
+Below _Civilization_ Mr. Morgan[23] distinguishes two principal grades
+or stages of culture, namely _Savagery_ and _Barbarism_. There is much
+looseness and confusion in the popular use of these terms, and this is
+liable to become a fruitful source of misapprehension in the case of any
+statement involving either of them. When popular usage discriminates
+between them it discriminates in the right direction; there is a vague
+but not uncertain feeling that savagery is a lower stage than barbarism.
+But ordinarily the discrimination is not made and the two terms are
+carelessly employed as if interchangeable. Scientific writers long since
+recognized a general difference between savagery and barbarism, but Mr.
+Morgan was the first to suggest a really useful criterion for
+distinguishing between them. His criterion is the making of pottery; and
+his reason for selecting it is that the making of pottery is something
+that presupposes village life and more or less progress in the simpler
+arts. The earlier methods of boiling food were either putting it into
+holes in the ground lined with skins and then using heated stones, or
+else putting it into baskets coated with clay to be supported over a
+fire. The clay served the double purpose of preventing liquids from
+escaping and protecting the basket against the flame. It was probably
+observed that the clay was hardened by the fire, and thus in course of
+time it was found that the clay would answer the purpose without the
+basket.[24] Whoever first made this ingenious discovery led the way from
+savagery to barbarism. Throughout the present work we shall apply the
+name "savages" only to uncivilized people who do not make pottery.
+
+         [Footnote 23: See his great work on _Ancient Society_, New
+         York, 1877.]
+
+         [Footnote 24: See the evidence in Tylor, _Researches into the
+         Early History of Mankind_, pp. 269-272; cf. Lubbock,
+         _Prehistoric Times_, p. 573; and see Cushing's masterly "Study
+         of Pueblo Pottery," etc., _Reports of Bureau of Ethnology_,
+         iv., 473-521.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lower status of savagery.]
+
+But within each of these two stages Mr. Morgan distinguishes three
+subordinate stages, or Ethnic Periods, which may be called either lower,
+middle, and upper status, or older, middle, and later periods. The lower
+status of savagery was that wholly prehistoric stage when men lived in
+their original restricted habitat and subsisted on fruit and nuts. To
+this period must be assigned the beginning of articulate speech. All
+existing races of men had passed beyond it at an unknown antiquity.
+
+[Sidenote: Middle status of savagery.]
+
+Men began to pass beyond it when they discovered how to catch fish and
+how to use fire. They could then begin (following coasts and rivers) to
+spread over the earth. The middle status of savagery, thus introduced,
+ends with the invention of that compound weapon, the bow and arrow. The
+natives of Australia, who do not know this weapon, are still in the
+middle status of savagery.[25]
+
+         [Footnote 25: Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, London, 1889, gives
+         a vivid picture of aboriginal life in Australia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Upper status of savagery.]
+
+The invention of the bow and arrow, which marks the upper status of
+savagery, was not only a great advance in military art, but it also
+vastly increased men's supply of food by increasing their power of
+killing wild game. The lowest tribes in America, such as those upon the
+Columbia river, the Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay, the Fuegians and some
+other South American tribes, are in the upper status of savagery.
+
+[Sidenote: Lower status of barbarism: it ended differently in the two
+hemispheres.]
+
+The transition from this status to the lower status of barbarism was
+marked, as before observed, by the invention of pottery. The end of the
+lower status of barbarism was marked in the Old World by the
+domestication of animals other than the dog, which was probably
+domesticated at a much earlier period as an aid to the hunter. The
+domestication of horses and asses, oxen and sheep, goats and pigs, marks
+of course an immense advance. Along with it goes considerable
+development of agriculture, thus enabling a small territory to support
+many people. It takes a wide range of country to support hunters. In the
+New World, except in Peru, the only domesticated animal was the dog.
+Horses, oxen, and the other animals mentioned did not exist in America,
+during the historic period, until they were brought over from Europe by
+the Spaniards. In ancient American society there was no such thing as a
+pastoral stage of development,[26] and the absence of domesticable
+animals from the western hemisphere may well be reckoned as very
+important among the causes which retarded the progress of mankind in
+this part of the world.
+
+         [Footnote 26: The case of Peru, which forms an apparent but not
+         real exception to this general statement, will be considered
+         below in chap. ix.]
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of Indian corn.]
+
+On the other hand the ancient Americans had a cereal plant peculiar to
+the New World, which made comparatively small demands upon the
+intelligence and industry of the cultivator. Maize or "Indian corn" has
+played a most important part in the history of the New World, as
+regards both the red men and the white men. It could be planted without
+clearing or ploughing the soil. It was only necessary to girdle the
+trees with a stone hatchet, so as to destroy their leaves and let in the
+sunshine. A few scratches and digs were made in the ground with a stone
+digger, and the seed once dropped in took care of itself. The ears could
+hang for weeks after ripening, and could be picked off without meddling
+with the stalk; there was no need of threshing and winnowing. None of
+the Old World cereals can be cultivated without much more industry and
+intelligence. At the same time, when Indian corn is sown in tilled land
+it yields with little labour more than twice as much food per acre as
+any other kind of grain. This was of incalculable advantage to the
+English settlers of New England, who would have found it much harder to
+gain a secure foothold upon the soil if they had had to begin by
+preparing it for wheat and rye without the aid of the beautiful and
+beneficent American plant.[27] The Indians of the Atlantic coast of
+North America for the most part lived in stockaded villages, and
+cultivated their corn along with beans, pumpkins, squashes, and tobacco;
+but their cultivation was of the rudest sort,[28] and population was too
+sparse for much progress toward civilization. But Indian corn, when
+sown in carefully tilled and irrigated land, had much to do with the
+denser population, the increasing organization of labour, and the higher
+development in the arts, which characterized the confederacies of Mexico
+and Central America and all the pueblo Indians of the southwest. The
+potato played a somewhat similar part in Peru. Hence it seems proper to
+take the regular employment of tillage with irrigation as marking the
+end of the lower period of barbarism in the New World. To this Mr.
+Morgan adds the use of adobe-brick and stone in architecture, which also
+distinguished the Mexicans and their neighbours from the ruder tribes of
+North and South America. All these ruder tribes, except the few already
+mentioned as in the upper period of savagery, were somewhere within the
+lower period of barbarism. Thus the Algonquins and Iroquois, the Creeks,
+the Dakotas, etc., when first seen by white men, were within this
+period; but some had made much further progress within it than others.
+For example, the Algonquin tribe of Ojibwas had little more than emerged
+from savagery, while the Creeks and Cherokees had made considerable
+advance toward the middle status of barbarism.
+
+         [Footnote 27: See Shaler, "Physiography of North America," in
+         Winsor's _Narr. and Crit. Hist._ vol. iv. p. xiii.]
+
+         [Footnote 28: "No manure was used," says Mr. Parkman, speaking
+         of the Hurons, "but at intervals of from ten to twenty years,
+         when the soil was exhausted and firewood distant, the village
+         was abandoned and a new one built." _Jesuits in North America_,
+         p. xxx.]
+
+[Sidenote: Middle status of barbarism.]
+
+Let us now observe some characteristics of this extremely interesting
+middle period. It began, we see, in the eastern hemisphere with the
+domestication of other animals than the dog, and in the western
+hemisphere with cultivation by irrigation and the use of adobe-brick and
+stone for building. It also possessed another feature which
+distinguished it from earlier periods, in the materials of which its
+tools were made. In the periods of savagery hatchets and spear-heads
+were made of rudely chipped stones. In the lower period of barbarism the
+chipping became more and more skilful until it gave place to polishing.
+In the middle period tools were greatly multiplied, improved polishing
+gave sharp and accurate points and edges, and at last metals began to be
+used as materials preferable to stone. In America the metal used was
+copper, and in some spots where it was very accessible there were
+instances of its use by tribes not in other respects above the lower
+status of barbarism,--as for example, the "mound-builders." In the Old
+World the metal used was the alloy of copper and tin familiarly known as
+bronze, and in its working it called for a higher degree of intelligence
+than copper.
+
+[Sidenote: Working of metals.]
+
+Toward the close of the middle period of barbarism the working of metals
+became the most important element of progress, and the period may be
+regarded as ending with the invention of the process of smelting iron
+ore. According to this principle of division, the inhabitants of the
+lake villages of ancient Switzerland, who kept horses and oxen, pigs and
+sheep, raised wheat and ground it into flour, and spun and wove linen
+garments, but knew nothing of iron, were in the middle status of
+barbarism. The same was true of the ancient Britons before they learned
+the use of iron from their neighbours in Gaul. In the New World the
+representatives of the middle status of barbarism were such peoples as
+the Zunis, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Peruvians.
+
+[Sidenote: Upper status of barbarism.]
+
+[Sidenote: Beginning of civilization.]
+
+The upper status of barbarism, in so far as it implies a knowledge of
+smelting iron, was never reached in aboriginal America. In the Old World
+it is the stage which had been reached by the Greeks of the Homeric
+poems[29] and the Germans in the time of Caesar. The end of this period
+and the beginning of true civilization is marked by the invention of a
+phonetic alphabet and the production of written records. This brings
+within the pale of civilization such people as the ancient Phoenicians,
+the Hebrews after the exodus, the ruling classes at Nineveh and Babylon,
+the Aryans of Persia and India, and the Japanese. But clearly it will
+not do to insist too narrowly upon the phonetic character of the
+alphabet. Where people acquainted with iron have enshrined in
+hieroglyphics so much matter of historic record and literary interest as
+the Chinese and the ancient Egyptians, they too must be classed as
+civilized; and this Mr. Morgan by implication admits.
+
+         [Footnote 29: In the interesting architectural remains
+         unearthed by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenae and Tiryns, there have
+         been found at the former place a few iron keys and knives, at
+         the latter one iron lance-head; but the form and workmanship of
+         these objects mark them as not older than the beginning of the
+         fifth century B. C., or the time of the Persian wars. With
+         these exceptions the weapons and tools found in these cities,
+         as also in Troy, were of bronze and stone. Bronze was in common
+         use, but obsidian knives and arrow-heads of fine workmanship
+         abound in the ruins. According to Professor Sayce, these ruins
+         must date from 2000 to 1700 B. C. The Greeks of that time would
+         accordingly be placed in the middle status of barbarism. (See
+         Schliemann's _Mycenae_, pp. 75, 364; _Tiryns_, p. 171.) In the
+         state of society described in the Homeric poems the smelting of
+         iron was well known, but the process seems to have been costly,
+         so that bronze weapons were still commonly used. (Tylor,
+         _Anthropology_, p. 279.) The Romans of the regal period were
+         ignorant of iron. (Lanciani, _Ancient Rome in the Light of
+         Recent Discoveries_, Boston, 1888, pp. 39-48.) The upper period
+         of barbarism was shortened for Greece and Rome through the
+         circumstance that they learned the working of iron from Egypt
+         and the use of the alphabet from Phoenicia. Such copying, of
+         course, affects the symmetry of such schemes as Mr. Morgan's,
+         and allowances have to be made for it. It is curious that both
+         Greeks and Romans seem to have preserved some tradition of the
+         Bronze Age:--
+
+            [Greek: tois d' en chalkea men teuchea, chalkeoi de te oikoi,
+            chalko d' eirgazonto; melas d' ouk eske sideros.]
+                                             Hesiod, _Opp. Di._ 134.
+
+            Arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fuerunt
+            Et lapides et item silvarum fragmina rami,
+            Et flamma atque ignes, postquam sunt cognita primum.
+            Posterius ferri vis est, aerisque reperta.
+            Et prior aeris erat, quam ferri cognitus usus, etc.
+                                             Lucretius, v. 1283.
+
+         Perhaps, as Munro suggests, Lucretius was thinking of Hesiod;
+         but it does not seem improbable that in both cases there may
+         have been a genuine tradition that their ancestors used bronze
+         tools and weapons before iron, since the change was
+         comparatively recent, and sundry religious observances tended
+         to perpetuate the memory of it.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Civilizations" of Mexico and Peru.]
+
+This brilliant classification of the stages of early culture will be
+found very helpful if we only keep in mind the fact that in all wide
+generalizations of this sort the case is liable to be somewhat unduly
+simplified. The story of human progress is really not quite so easy to
+decipher as such descriptions would make it appear, and when we have
+laid down rules of this sort we need not be surprised if we now and then
+come upon facts that will not exactly fit into them. In such an event
+it is best not to try to squeeze or distort the unruly facts, but to
+look and see if our rules will not bear some little qualification. The
+faculty for generalizing is a good servant but a bad master. If we
+observe this caution we shall find Mr. Morgan's work to be of great
+value. It will be observed that, with one exception, his restrictions
+leave the area of civilization as wide as that which we are accustomed
+to assign to it in our ordinary speaking and thinking. That exception is
+the case of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. We have so long been
+accustomed to gorgeous accounts of the civilization of these countries
+at the time of their discovery by the Spaniards that it may at first
+shock our preconceived notions to see them set down as in the "middle
+status of barbarism," one stage higher than Mohawks, and one stage lower
+than the warriors of the Iliad. This does indeed mark a change since Dr.
+Draper expressed the opinion that the Mexicans and Peruvians were
+morally and intellectually superior to the Europeans of the sixteenth
+century.[30] The reaction from the state of opinion in which such an
+extravagant remark was even possible has been attended with some
+controversy; but on the whole Mr. Morgan's main position has been
+steadily and rapidly gaining ground, and it is becoming more and more
+clear that if we are to use language correctly when we speak of the
+civilizations of Mexico and Peru we really mean civilizations of an
+extremely archaic type, considerably more archaic than that of Egypt in
+the time of the Pharaohs. A "civilization" like that of the Aztecs,
+without domestic animals or iron tools, with trade still in the
+primitive stage of barter, with human sacrifices, and with cannibalism,
+has certainly some of the most vivid features of barbarism. Along with
+these primitive features, however, there seem to have been--after making
+all due allowances--some features of luxury and splendour such as we are
+wont to associate with civilization. The Aztecs, moreover, though
+doubtless a full ethnical period behind the ancient Egyptians in general
+advancement, had worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had
+begun to put it to some literary use. It would seem that a people may in
+certain special points reach a level of attainment higher than the level
+which they occupy in other points. The Cave men of the Glacial period
+were ignorant of pottery, and thus had not risen above the upper status
+of savagery; but their artistic talent, upon which we have remarked, was
+not such as we are wont to associate with savagery. Other instances will
+occur to us in the proper place.
+
+         [Footnote 30: See his _Intellectual Development of Europe_, New
+         York, 1863, pp. 448, 464.]
+
+[Sidenote: Loose use of the words "savagery" and "civilization".]
+
+The difficulty which people usually find in realizing the true position
+of the ancient Mexican culture arises partly from the misconceptions
+which have until recently distorted the facts, and partly from the loose
+employment of terms above noticed. It is quite correct to speak of the
+Australian blackfellows as "savages," but nothing is more common than to
+hear the same epithet employed to characterize Shawnees and Mohawks;
+and to call those Indians "savages" is quite misleading. So on the other
+hand the term "civilization" is often so loosely used as to cover a
+large territory belonging to "barbarism." One does not look for
+scientific precision in newspapers, but they are apt to reflect popular
+habits of thought quite faithfully, and for that reason it is proper
+here to quote from one. In a newspaper account of Mr. Cushing's recent
+discoveries of buried towns, works of irrigation, etc., in Arizona, we
+are first told that these are the remains of a "splendid prehistoric
+civilization," and the next moment we are told, in entire
+unconsciousness of the contradiction, that the people who constructed
+these works had only stone tools. Now to call a people "civilized" who
+have only stone tools is utterly misleading. Nothing but confusion of
+ideas and darkening of counsel can come from such a misuse of words.
+Such a people may be in a high degree interesting and entitled to credit
+for what they have achieved, but the grade of culture which they have
+reached is not "civilization."
+
+[Sidenote: Value and importance of the term "barbarism."]
+
+With "savagery" thus encroaching upon its area of meaning on the one
+side, and "civilization" encroaching on the other, the word "barbarism,"
+as popularly apprehended, is left in a vague and unsatisfactory plight.
+If we speak of Montezuma's people as barbarians one stage further
+advanced than Mohawks, we are liable to be charged with calling them
+"savages." Yet the term "barbarism" is a very useful one; indispensable,
+indeed, in the history of human progress. There is no other word which
+can serve in its stead as a designation of the enormous interval which
+begins with the invention of pottery and ends with the invention of the
+alphabet. The popular usage of the word is likely to become more
+definite as it comes to be more generally realized how prodigious that
+interval has been. When we think what a considerable portion of man's
+past existence has been comprised within it, and what a marvellous
+transformation in human knowledge and human faculty has been gradually
+wrought between its beginning and its end, the period of barbarism
+becomes invested with most thrilling interest, and its name ceases to
+appear otherwise than respectable. It is Mr. Morgan's chief title to
+fame that he has so thoroughly explored this period and described its
+features with such masterly skill.
+
+[Sidenote: The status of barbarism is most completely exemplified in
+ancient America.]
+
+[Sidenote: Survivals of bygone epochs of culture.]
+
+It is worth while to observe that Mr. Morgan's view of the successive
+stages of culture is one which could not well have been marked out in
+all its parts except by a student of American archaeology. Aboriginal
+America is the richest field in the world for the study of barbarism.
+Its people present every gradation in social life during three ethnical
+periods--the upper period of savagery and the lower and middle periods
+of barbarism--so that the process of development may be most
+systematically and instructively studied. Until we have become familiar
+with ancient American society, and so long as our view is confined to
+the phases of progress in the Old World, the demarcation between
+civilized and uncivilized life seems too abrupt and sudden; we do not
+get a correct measure of it. The oldest European tradition reaches back
+only through the upper period of barbarism.[31] The middle and lower
+periods have lapsed into utter oblivion, and it is only modern
+archaeological research that is beginning to recover the traces of them.
+But among the red men of America the social life of ages more remote
+than that of the lake villages of Switzerland is in many particulars
+preserved for us to-day, and when we study it we begin to realize as
+never before the continuity of human development, its enormous duration,
+and the almost infinite accumulation of slow efforts by which progress
+has been achieved. Ancient America is further instructive in presenting
+the middle status of barbarism in a different form from that which it
+assumed in the eastern hemisphere. Its most conspicuous outward
+manifestations, instead of tents and herds, were strange and imposing
+edifices of stone, so that it was quite natural that observers
+interpreting it from a basis of European experience should mistake it
+for civilization. Certain aspects of that middle period may be studied
+to-day in New Mexico and Arizona, as phases of the older periods may
+still be found among the wilder tribes, even after all the contact they
+have had with white men. These survivals from antiquity will not
+permanently outlive that contact, and it is important that no time
+should be lost in gathering and putting on record all that can be
+learned of the speech and arts, the customs and beliefs, everything that
+goes to constitute the philology and anthropology of the red men. For
+the intelligent and vigorous work of this sort now conducted by the
+Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, under the direction
+of Major Powell, no praise can be too strong and no encouragement too
+hearty.
+
+         [Footnote 31: Now and then, perhaps, but very rarely, it just
+         touches the close of the middle period, as, e. g., in the lines
+         from Hesiod and Lucretius above quoted.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Tribal society and multiplicity of languages in aboriginal
+America.]
+
+A brief enumeration of the principal groups of Indians will be helpful
+in enabling us to comprehend the social condition of ancient America.
+The groups are in great part defined by differences of language, which
+are perhaps a better criterion of racial affinity in the New World than
+in the Old, because there seems to have been little or nothing of that
+peculiar kind of conquest with incorporation resulting in complete
+change of speech which we sometimes find in the Old World; as, for
+example, when we see the Celto-Iberian population of Spain and the
+Belgic, Celtic, and Aquitanian populations of Gaul forgetting their
+native tongues, and adopting that of a confederacy of tribes in Latium.
+Except in the case of Peru there is no indication that anything of this
+sort went on, or that there was anything even superficially analogous to
+"empire," in ancient America. What strikes one most forcibly at first is
+the vast number of American languages. Adelung, in his "Mithridates,"
+put the number at 1,264, and Ludewig, in his "Literature of the American
+Languages," put it roundly at 1,100. Squier, on the other hand, was
+content with 400.[32] The discrepancy arises from the fact that where
+one scholar sees two or three distinct languages another sees two or
+three dialects of one language and counts them as one; it is like the
+difficulty which naturalists find in agreeing as to what are species and
+what are only varieties. The great number of languages and dialects
+spoken by a sparse population is one mark of the universal prevalence of
+a rude and primitive form of tribal society.[33]
+
+         [Footnote 32: Winsor, "Bibliographical Notes on American
+         Linguistics," in his _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i. pp.
+         420-428, gives an admirable survey of the subject. See also
+         Pilling's bibliographical bulletins of Iroquoian, Siouan, and
+         Muskhogean languages, published by the Bureau of Ethnology.]
+
+         [Footnote 33: _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp. 147-174.]
+
+[Sidenote: Tribes in the upper status of savagery.]
+
+The lowest tribes in North America were those that are still to be found
+in California, in the valley of the Columbia river, and on the shores of
+Puget Sound. The Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay were on about the same
+level of savagery. They made no pottery, knew nothing of horticulture,
+depended for subsistence entirely upon bread-roots, fish, and game, and
+thus had no village life. They were mere prowlers in the upper status of
+savagery.[34] The Apaches of Arizona, preeminent even among red men for
+atrocious cruelty, are an offshoot from the Athabaskan stock. Very
+little better are the Shoshones and Bannocks that still wander among
+the lonely bare mountains and over the weird sage-brush plains of Idaho.
+The region west of the Rocky Mountains and north of New Mexico is thus
+the region of savagery.
+
+         [Footnote 34: For a good account of Indians in the upper status
+         of savagery until modified by contact with civilization, see
+         Myron Eells, "The Twana, Chemakum, and Klallam Indians of
+         Washington Territory," _Smithsonian Report_, 1887, pp.
+         605-681.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Dakota family of tribes.]
+
+Between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic coast the aborigines, at
+the time of the Discovery, might have been divided into six or seven
+groups, of which three were situated mainly to the east of the
+Mississippi river, the others mainly to the west of it. All were in the
+lower period of barbarism. Of the western groups, by far the most
+numerous were the Dakotas, comprising the Sioux, Poncas, Omahas, Iowas,
+Kaws, Otoes, and Missouris. From the headwaters of the Mississippi their
+territory extended westward on both sides of the Missouri for a thousand
+miles. One of their tribes, the Winnebagos, had crossed the Mississippi
+and pressed into the region between that river and Lake Michigan.
+
+[Sidenote: The Minnitarees and Mandans.]
+
+A second group, very small in numbers but extremely interesting to the
+student of ethnology, comprises the Minnitarees and Mandans on the upper
+Missouri.[35] The remnants of these tribes now live together in the same
+village, and in personal appearance, as well as in intelligence, they
+are described as superior to any other red men north of New Mexico.
+From their first discovery, by the brothers La Verendrye in 1742, down
+to Mr. Catlin's visit nearly a century later, there was no change in
+their condition,[36] but shortly afterward, in 1838, the greater part of
+them were swept away by small-pox. The excellence of their horticulture,
+the framework of their houses, and their peculiar religious ceremonies
+early attracted attention. Upon Mr. Catlin they made such an impression
+that he fancied there must be an infusion of white blood in them; and
+after the fashion of those days he sought to account for it by a
+reference to the legend of Madoc, a Welsh prince who was dimly imagined
+to have sailed to America about 1170. He thought that Madoc's party
+might have sailed to the Mississippi and founded a colony which ascended
+that river and the Ohio, built the famous mounds of the Ohio valley, and
+finally migrated to the upper Missouri.[37] To this speculation was
+appended the inevitable list of words which happen to sound somewhat
+alike in Mandan and in Welsh. In the realm of free fancy everything is
+easy. That there was a Madoc who went somewhere in 1170 is quite
+possible, but as shrewd old John Smith said about it, "where this place
+was no history can show."[38] But one part of Mr. Catlin's speculation
+may have hit somewhat nearer the truth. It is possible that the
+Minnitarees or the Mandans, or both, may be a remnant of some of those
+Mound-builders in the Mississippi valley concerning whom something will
+presently be said.
+
+         [Footnote 35: An excellent description of them, profusely
+         illustrated with coloured pictures, may be found in Catlin's
+         _North American Indians_, vol. i. pp. 66-207, 7th ed., London,
+         1848; the author was an accurate and trustworthy observer. Some
+         writers have placed these tribes in the Dakota group because of
+         the large number of Dakota words in their language; but these
+         are probably borrowed words, like the numerous French words in
+         English.]
+
+         [Footnote 36: See Francis Parkman's paper, "The Discovery of
+         the Rocky Mountains," _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1888. I hope
+         the appearance of this article, two years ago, indicates that
+         we have not much longer to wait for the next of that
+         magnificent series of volumes on the history of the French in
+         North America.]
+
+         [Footnote 37: _North American Indians_, vol. ii., Appendix A.]
+
+         [Footnote 38: Smith's _Generall Historie of Virginia, New
+         England and the Summer Isles_, p. 1, London, 1626.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pawnees, etc.]
+
+The third group in this western region consists of the Pawnees and
+Arickarees,[39] of the Platte valley in Nebraska, with a few kindred
+tribes farther to the south.
+
+         [Footnote 39: For the history and ethnology of these
+         interesting tribes, see three learned papers by J. B. Dunbar,
+         in _Magazine of American History_, vol. iv. pp. 241-281; vol.
+         v. pp. 321-342; vol. viii. pp. 734-756; also Grinnell's _Pawnee
+         Hero Stories and Folk-Tales_, New York, 1889.]
+
+[Sidenote: Maskoki family.]
+
+Of the three groups eastward of the Mississippi we may first mention the
+Maskoki, or Muskhogees, consisting of the Choctaws, Chickasaws,
+Seminoles, and others, with the Creek confederacy.[40] These tribes were
+intelligent and powerful, with a culture well advanced toward the end of
+the lower period of barbarism.
+
+         [Footnote 40: These tribes of the Gulf region were formerly
+         grouped, along with others not akin to them, as "Mobilians."
+         The Cherokees were supposed to belong to the Maskoki family,
+         but they have lately been declared an intrusive offshoot from
+         the Iroquois stock. The remnants of another alien tribe, the
+         once famous Natchez, were adopted into the Creek confederacy.
+         For a full account of these tribes, see Gatschet, _A Migration
+         Legend of the Creek Indians_, vol. i., Philadelphia, 1884.]
+
+[Sidenote: Algonquin family of tribes.]
+
+The Algonquin family, bordering at its southern limits upon the Maskoki,
+had a vast range northeasterly along the Atlantic coast until it reached
+the confines of Labrador, and northwesterly through the region of the
+Great Lakes and as far as the Churchill river[41] to the west of
+Hudson's Bay. In other words, the Algonquins were bounded on the south
+by the Maskoki,[42] on the west by the Dakotas, on the northwest by the
+Athabaskans, on the northeast by Eskimos, and on the east by the ocean.
+Between Lake Superior and the Red River of the North the Crees had their
+hunting grounds, and closely related to them were the Pottawatomies,
+Ojibwas, and Ottawas. One offshoot, including the Blackfeet, Cheyennes,
+and Arrapahos, roamed as far west as the Rocky Mountains. The great
+triangle between the upper Mississippi and the Ohio was occupied by the
+Menomonees and Kickapoos, the Sacs and Foxes, the Miamis and Illinois,
+and the Shawnees. Along the coast region the principal Algonquin tribes
+were the Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenape or Delawares, the Munsees or
+Minisinks of the mountains about the Susquehanna, the Mohegans on the
+Hudson, the Adirondacks between that river and the St. Lawrence, the
+Narragansetts and their congeners in New England, and finally the
+Micmacs and Wabenaki far down East, as the last name implies. There is a
+tradition, supported to some extent by linguistic evidence,[43] that the
+Mohegans, with their cousins the Pequots, were more closely related to
+the Shawnees than to the Delaware or coast group. While all the
+Algonquin tribes were in the lower period of barbarism, there was a
+noticeable gradation among them, the Crees and Ojibwas of the far North
+standing lowest in culture, and the Shawnees, at their southernmost
+limits, standing highest.
+
+         [Footnote 41: Howse, _Grammar of the Cree Language_, London,
+         1865, p. vii.]
+
+         [Footnote 42: Except in so far as the Cherokees and Tuscaroras,
+         presently to be mentioned, were interposed.]
+
+         [Footnote 43: Brinton, _The Lenape and their Legends_, p. 30.]
+
+[Sidenote: Huron-Iroquois family of tribes.]
+
+We have observed the Dakota tribes pressing eastward against their
+neighbours and sending out an offshoot, the Winnebagos, across the
+Mississippi river. It has been supposed that the Huron-Iroquois group of
+tribes was a more remote offshoot from the Dakotas. This is very
+doubtful; but in the thirteenth or fourteenth century the general trend
+of the Huron-Iroquois movement seems to have been eastward, either in
+successive swarms, or in a single swarm, which became divided and
+scattered by segmentation, as was common with all Indian tribes. They
+seem early to have proved their superiority over the Algonquins in
+bravery and intelligence. Their line of invasion seems to have run
+eastward to Niagara, and thereabouts to have bifurcated, one line
+following the valley of the St. Lawrence, and the other that of the
+Susquehanna. The Hurons established themselves in the peninsula between
+the lake that bears their name and Lake Ontario. South of them and along
+the northern shore of Lake Erie were settled their kindred, afterward
+called the "Neutral Nation."[44] On the southern shore the Eries planted
+themselves, while the Susquehannocks pushed on in a direction
+sufficiently described by their name. Farthest of all penetrated the
+Tuscaroras, even into the pine forests of North Carolina, where they
+maintained themselves in isolation from their kindred until 1715. These
+invasions resulted in some displacement of Algonquin tribes, and began
+to sap the strength of the confederacy or alliance in which the
+Delawares had held a foremost place.
+
+         [Footnote 44: Because they refused to take part in the strife
+         between the Hurons and the Five Nations. Their Indian name was
+         Attiwandarons. They were unsurpassed for ferocity. See Parkman,
+         _Jesuits in North America_, p. xliv.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Five Nations.]
+
+But by far the most famous and important of the Huron-Iroquois were
+those that followed the northern shore of Lake Ontario into the valley
+of the St. Lawrence. In that direction their progress was checked by the
+Algonquin tribe of Adirondacks, but they succeeded in retaining a
+foothold in the country for a long time; for in 1535 Jacques Cartier
+found on the site which he named Montreal an Iroquois village which had
+vanished before Champlain's arrival seventy years later. Those Iroquois
+who were thrust back in the struggle for the St. Lawrence valley, early
+in the fifteenth century, made their way across Lake Ontario and
+established themselves at the mouth of the Oswego river. They were then
+in three small tribes,--the Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas,--but as
+they grew in numbers and spread eastward to the Hudson and westward to
+the Genesee, the intermediate tribes of Oneidas and Cayugas were formed
+by segmentation.[45] About 1450 the five tribes--afterwards known as the
+Five Nations--were joined in a confederacy in pursuance of the wise
+counsel which Hayowentha, or Hiawatha,[46] according to the legend,
+whispered into the ears of the Onondaga sachem, Daganoweda. This union
+of their resources combined, with their native bravery and cunning, and
+their occupation of the most commanding military position in eastern
+North America, to render them invincible among red men. They
+exterminated their old enemies the Adirondacks, and pushed the Mohegans
+over the mountains from the Hudson river to the Connecticut. When they
+first encountered white men in 1609 their name had become a terror in
+New England, insomuch that as soon as a single Mohawk was caught sight
+of by the Indians in that country, they would raise the cry from hill to
+hill, "A Mohawk! a Mohawk!" and forthwith would flee like sheep before
+wolves, never dreaming of resistance.[47]
+
+         [Footnote 45: Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 125.]
+
+         [Footnote 46: Whether there was ever such a person as Hiawatha
+         is, to say the least, doubtful. As a traditional culture-hero
+         his attributes are those of Ioskeha, Michabo, Quetzalcoatl,
+         Viracocha, and all that class of sky-gods to which I shall
+         again have occasion to refer. See Brinton's _Myths of the New
+         World_, p. 172. When the Indian speaks of Hiawatha whispering
+         advice to Daganoweda, his meaning is probably the same as that
+         of the ancient Greek when he attributed the wisdom of some
+         mortal hero to whispered advice from Zeus or his messenger
+         Hermes. Longfellow's famous poem is based upon Schoolcraft's
+         book entitled _The Hiawatha Legends_, which is really a
+         misnomer, for the book consists chiefly of Ojibwa stories about
+         Manabozho, son of the West Wind. There was really no such
+         legend of Hiawatha as that which the poet has immortalized. See
+         Hale, _The Iroquois Book of Rites_, pp. 36, 180-183.]
+
+         [Footnote 47: Cadwallader Colden, _History of the Five
+         Nations_, New York, 1727.]
+
+After the Five Nations had been supplied with firearms by the Dutch
+their power increased with portentous rapidity.[48] At first they sought
+to persuade their neighbours of kindred blood and speech, the Eries and
+others, to join their confederacy; and failing in this they went to war
+and exterminated them.[49] Then they overthrew one Algonquin tribe after
+another until in 1690 their career was checked by the French. By that
+time they had reduced to a tributary condition most of the Algonquin
+tribes, even to the Mississippi river. Some writers have spoken of the
+empire of the Iroquois, and it has been surmised that, if they had not
+been interfered with by white men, they might have played a part
+analogous to that of the Romans in the Old World; but there is no real
+similarity between the two cases. The Romans acquired their mighty
+strength by incorporating vanquished peoples into their own body
+politic.[50] No American aborigines ever had a glimmering of the process
+of state-building after the Roman fashion. No incorporation resulted
+from the victories of the Iroquois. Where their burnings and massacres
+stopped short of extermination, they simply took tribute, which was as
+far as state-craft had got in the lower period of barbarism. General
+Walker has summed up their military career in a single sentence: "They
+were the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent."[51]
+
+         [Footnote 48: Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 12.]
+
+         [Footnote 49: All except the distant Tuscaroras, who in 1715
+         migrated from North Carolina to New York, and joining the
+         Iroquois league made it the Six Nations. All the rest of the
+         outlying Huron-Iroquois stock was wiped out of existence before
+         the end of the seventeenth century, except the remnant of
+         Hurons since known as Wyandots.]
+
+         [Footnote 50: See my _Beginnings of New England_, chap. i.]
+
+         [Footnote 51: F. A. Walker, "The Indian Question," _North
+         American Review_, April, 1873, p. 370.]
+
+[Sidenote: Horticulture must be distinguished from field agriculture.]
+
+[Sidenote: Perpetual warfare.]
+
+The six groups here enumerated--Dakota, Mandan, Pawnee, Maskoki,
+Algonquin, Iroquois--made up the great body of the aborigines of North
+America who at the time of the Discovery lived in the lower status of
+barbarism. All made pottery of various degrees of rudeness. Their tools
+and weapons were of the Neolithic type,--stone either polished or
+accurately and artistically chipped. For the most part they lived in
+stockaded villages, and cultivated maize, beans, pumpkins, squashes,
+sunflowers, and tobacco. They depended for subsistence partly upon such
+vegetable products, partly upon hunting and fishing, the women generally
+attending to the horticulture, the men to the chase. _Horticulture_ is
+an appropriate designation for this stage in which the ground is merely
+scratched with stone spades and hoes. It is incipient agriculture, but
+should be carefully distinguished from the _field agriculture_ in which
+extensive pieces of land are subdued by the plough. The assistance of
+domestic animals is needed before such work can be carried far, and it
+does not appear that there was an approach to field agriculture in any
+part of pre-Columbian America except Peru, where men were harnessed to
+the plough, and perhaps occasionally llamas were used in the same
+way.[52] Where subsistence depended upon rude horticulture eked out by
+game and fish, it required a large territory to support a sparse
+population. The great diversity of languages contributed to maintain the
+isolation of tribes and prevent extensive confederation. Intertribal
+warfare was perpetual, save now and then for truces of brief duration.
+Warfare was attended by wholesale massacre. As many prisoners as could
+be managed were taken home by their captors; in some cases they were
+adopted into the tribe of the latter as a means of increasing its
+fighting strength, otherwise they were put to death with lingering
+torments.[53] There was nothing which afforded the red men such
+exquisite delight as the spectacle of live human flesh lacerated with
+stone knives or hissing under the touch of firebrands, and for elaborate
+ingenuity in devising tortures they have never been equalled.[54]
+Cannibalism was quite commonly practised.[55] The scalps of slain
+enemies were always taken, and until they had attained such trophies the
+young men were not likely to find favour in the eyes of women. The
+Indian's notions of morality were those that belong to that state of
+society in which the tribe is the largest well-established political
+aggregate. Murder without the tribe was meritorious unless it entailed
+risk of war at an obvious disadvantage; murder within the tribe was
+either revenged by blood-feud or compounded by a present given to the
+victim's kinsmen. Such rudimentary _wergild_ was often reckoned in
+wampum, or strings of beads made of a kind of mussel shell, and put to
+divers uses, as personal ornament, mnemonic record, and finally money.
+Religious thought was in the fetishistic or animistic stage,[56] while
+many tribes had risen to a vague conception of tutelar deities embodied
+in human or animal forms. Myth-tales abounded, and the folk-lore of the
+red men is found to be extremely interesting and instructive.[57] Their
+religion consisted mainly in a devout belief in witchcraft. No
+well-defined priestly class had been evolved; the so-called "medicine
+men" were mere conjurers, though possessed of considerable influence.
+
+         [Footnote 52: See Humboldt, _Ansichten der Natur_, 3d ed.,
+         Stuttgart, 1849, vol. i. p. 203.]
+
+         [Footnote 53: "Women and children joined in these fiendish
+         atrocities, and when at length the victim yielded up his life,
+         his heart, if he were brave, was ripped from his body, cut in
+         pieces, broiled, and given to the young men, under the belief
+         that it would increase their courage; they drank his blood,
+         thinking it would make them more wary; and finally his body was
+         divided limb from limb, roasted or thrown into the seething
+         pot, and hands and feet, arms and legs, head and trunk, were
+         all stewed into a horrid mess and eaten amidst yells, songs,
+         and dances." Jeffries Wyman, in _Seventh Report of Peabody
+         Museum_, p. 37. For details of the most appalling character,
+         see Butterfield's _History of the Girtys_, pp. 176-182; Stone's
+         _Life of Joseph Brant_, vol. ii. pp. 31, 32; Dodge's _Plains of
+         the Great West_, p. 418, and _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 525-529;
+         Parkman's _Jesuits in North America_, pp. 387-391; and many
+         other places in Parkman's writings.]
+
+         [Footnote 54: One often hears it said that the cruelty of the
+         Indians was not greater than that of mediaeval Europeans, as
+         exemplified in judicial torture and in the horrors of the
+         Inquisition. But in such a judgment there is lack of due
+         discrimination. In the practice of torture by civil and
+         ecclesiastical tribunals in the Middle Ages, there was a
+         definite moral purpose which, however lamentably mistaken or
+         perverted, gave it a very different character from torture
+         wantonly inflicted for amusement. The atrocities formerly
+         attendant upon the sack of towns, as e. g. Beziers, Magdeburg,
+         etc., might more properly be regarded as an illustration of the
+         survival of a spirit fit only for the lowest barbarism: and the
+         Spanish conquerors of the New World themselves often exhibited
+         cruelty such as even Indians seldom surpass. See below, vol.
+         ii. p. 444. In spite of such cases, however, it must be held
+         that for artistic skill in inflicting the greatest possible
+         intensity of excruciating pain upon every nerve in the body,
+         the Spaniard was a bungler and a novice as compared with the
+         Indian. See Dodge's _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 536-538. Colonel
+         Dodge was in familiar contact with Indians for more than thirty
+         years, and writes with fairness and discrimination.
+
+         In truth the question as to comparative cruelty is not so much
+         one of race as of occupation, except in so far as race is
+         moulded by long occupation. The "old Adam," i. e. the
+         inheritance from our brute ancestors, is very strong in the
+         human race. Callousness to the suffering of others than self is
+         part of this brute-inheritance, and under the influence of
+         certain habits and occupations this germ of callousness may be
+         developed to almost any height of devilish cruelty. In the
+         lower stages of culture the lack of political aggregation on a
+         large scale is attended with incessant warfare in the shape in
+         which it comes home to everybody's door. This state of things
+         keeps alive the passion of revenge and stimulates cruelty to
+         the highest degree. As long as such a state of things endures,
+         as it did in Europe to a limited extent throughout the Middle
+         Ages, there is sure to be a dreadful amount of cruelty. The
+         change in the conditions of modern warfare has been a very
+         important factor in the rapidly increasing mildness and
+         humanity of modern times. See my _Beginnings of New England_,
+         pp. 226-229. Something more will be said hereafter with
+         reference to the special causes concerned in the cruelty and
+         brutality of the Spaniards in America. Meanwhile it may be
+         observed in the present connection, that the Spanish
+         taskmasters who mutilated and burned their slaves were not
+         representative types of their own race to anything like the
+         same extent as the Indians who tortured Brebeuf or Crawford. If
+         the fiendish Pedrarias was a Spaniard, so too was the saintly
+         Las Casas. The latter type would be as impossible among
+         barbarians as an Aristotle or a Beethoven. Indeed, though there
+         are writers who would like to prove the contrary, it may be
+         doubted whether that type has ever attained to perfection
+         except under the influence of Christianity.]
+
+         [Footnote 55: See the evidence collected by Jeffries Wyman, in
+         _Seventh Report of Peabody Museum_, pp. 27-37; cf. Wake,
+         _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 243. Many illustrations are
+         given by Mr. Parkman. In this connection it may be observed
+         that the name "Mohawk" means "Cannibal." It is an Algonquin
+         word, applied to this Iroquois tribe by their enemies in the
+         Connecticut valley and about the lower Hudson. The name by
+         which the Mohawks called themselves was "Caniengas," or
+         "People-at-the-Flint." See Hale, _The Iroquois Book of Rites_,
+         p. 173.]
+
+         [Footnote 56: For accounts and explanations of animism see
+         Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, London, 1871, 2 vols.; Caspari,
+         _Urgeschichte der Menschheit_, Leipsic, 1877, 2 vols.;
+         Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, part i.; and my _Myths and
+         Mythmakers_, chap. vii.]
+
+         [Footnote 57: No time should be lost in gathering and recording
+         every scrap of this folk-lore that can be found. The American
+         Folk-Lore Society, founded chiefly through the exertions of my
+         friend Mr. W. W. Newell, and organized January 4, 1888, is
+         already doing excellent work and promises to become a valuable
+         aid, within its field, to the work of the Bureau of Ethnology.
+         Of the _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, published for the
+         society by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., nine numbers have
+         appeared, and the reader will find them full of valuable
+         information. One may also profitably consult Knortz's _Maerchen
+         und Sagen der nordamerikanischen Indianer_, Jena, 1871;
+         Brinton's _Myths of the New World_, N. Y., 1868, and his
+         _American Hero-Myths_, Phila., 1882; Leland's _Algonquin
+         Legends of New England_, Boston, 1884; Mrs. Emerson's _Indian
+         Myths_, Boston, 1884. Some brief reflections and criticisms of
+         much value, in relation to aboriginal American folk-lore, may
+         be found in Curtin's _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, pp.
+         12-27.]
+
+But none of the characteristics of barbarous society above specified
+will carry us so far toward realizing the gulf which divides it from
+civilized society as the imperfect development of its domestic
+relations. The importance of this subject is such as to call for a few
+words of special elucidation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Ancient Law.]
+
+Thirty years ago, when Sir Henry Maine published that magnificent
+treatise on Ancient Law, which, when considered in all its potency of
+suggestiveness, has perhaps done more than any other single book of our
+century toward placing the study of history upon a scientific basis, he
+began by showing that in primitive society the individual is nothing and
+the state nothing, while the family-group is everything, and that the
+progress of civilization politically has consisted on the one hand in
+the aggregation and building up of family-groups through intermediate
+tribal organizations into states, and on the other hand in the
+disentanglement of individuals from the family thraldom. In other words,
+we began by having no political communities larger than clans, and no
+bond of political union except blood relationship, and in this state of
+things the individual, as to his rights and obligations, was submerged
+in the clan. We at length come to have great nations like the English or
+the French, in which blood-relationship as a bond of political union is
+no longer indispensable or even much thought of, and in which the
+individual citizen is the possessor of legal rights and subject to legal
+obligations. No one in our time can forget how beautifully Sir Henry
+Maine, with his profound knowledge of early Aryan law and custom, from
+Ireland to Hindustan, delineated the slow growth of individual ownership
+of property and individual responsibility for delict and crime out of an
+earlier stage in which ownership and responsibility belonged only to
+family-groups or clans.
+
+[Sidenote: The patriarchal family not primitive.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Mother-right."]
+
+[Sidenote: Primitive marriage.]
+
+[Sidenote: The system of reckoning kinship through females only.]
+
+In all these brilliant studies Sir Henry Maine started with the
+patriarchal family as we find it at the dawn of history among all
+peoples of Aryan and Semitic speech,--the patriarchal family of the
+ancient Roman and the ancient Jew, the family in which kinship is
+reckoned through males, and in which all authority centres in the eldest
+male, and descends to his eldest son. Maine treated this patriarchal
+family as primitive; but his great book had hardly appeared when other
+scholars, more familiar than he with races in savagery or in the lower
+status of barbarism, showed that his view was too restricted. We do not
+get back to primitive society by studying Greeks, Romans, and Jews,
+peoples who had nearly emerged from the later period of barbarism when
+we first know them.[58] Their patriarchal family was perfected in shape
+during the later period of barbarism, and it was preceded by a much
+ruder and less definite form of family-group in which kinship was
+reckoned only through the mother, and the headship never descended from
+father to son. As so often happens, this discovery was made almost
+simultaneously by two investigators, each working in ignorance of what
+the other was doing. In 1861, the same year in which "Ancient Law" was
+published, Professor Bachofen, of Basel, published his famous book, "Das
+Mutterrecht," of which his co-discoverer and rival, after taking
+exception to some of his statements, thus cordially writes: "It remains,
+however, after all qualifications and deductions, that Bachofen, before
+any one else, discovered the fact that a system of kinship through
+mothers only, had anciently everywhere prevailed before the tie of blood
+between father and child had found a place in systems of relationships.
+And the honour of that discovery, the importance of which, as affording
+a new starting-point for all history, cannot be overestimated, must
+without stint or qualification be assigned to him."[59] Such are the
+generous words of the late John Ferguson McLennan, who had no knowledge
+of Bachofen's work when his own treatise on "Primitive Marriage" was
+published in 1865. Since he was so modest in urging his own claims, it
+is due to the Scotch lawyer's memory to say that, while he was inferior
+in point of erudition to the Swiss professor, his book is characterized
+by greater sagacity, goes more directly to the mark, and is less
+encumbered by visionary speculations of doubtful value.[60] Mr. McLennan
+proved, from evidence collected chiefly from Australians and South Sea
+Islanders, and sundry non-Aryan tribes of Hindustan and Thibet, that
+systems of kinship in which the father is ignored exist to-day, and he
+furthermore discovered unmistakable and very significant traces of the
+former existence of such a state of things among the Mongols, the Greeks
+and Phoenicians, and the ancient Hebrews. By those who were inclined to
+regard Sir Henry Maine's views as final, it was argued that Mr.
+McLennan's facts were of a sporadic and exceptional character. But when
+the evidence from this vast archaic world of America began to be
+gathered in and interpreted by Mr. Morgan, this argument fell to the
+ground, and as to the point chiefly in contention, Mr. McLennan was
+proved to be right. Throughout aboriginal America, with one or two
+exceptions, kinship was reckoned through females only, and in the
+exceptional instances the vestiges of that system were so prominent as
+to make it clear that the change had been but recently effected. During
+the past fifteen years, evidence has accumulated from various parts of
+the world, until it is beginning to appear as if it were the patriarchal
+system that is exceptional, having been reached only by the highest
+races.[61] Sir Henry Maine's work has lost none of its value, only,
+like all human work, it is not final; it needs to be supplemented by the
+further study of savagery as best exemplified in Australia and some
+parts of Polynesia, and of barbarism as best exemplified in America. The
+subject is, moreover, one of great and complicated difficulty, and leads
+incidentally to many questions for solving which the data at our command
+are still inadequate. It is enough for us now to observe in general that
+while there are plenty of instances of change from the system of
+reckoning kinship only through females, to the system of reckoning
+through males, there do not appear to have been any instances of change
+in the reverse direction; and that in ancient America the earlier system
+was prevalent.
+
+         [Footnote 58: Until lately our acquaintance with human history
+         was derived almost exclusively from literary memorials, among
+         which the Bible, the Homeric poems, and the Vedas, carried us
+         back about as far as literature could take us. It was natural,
+         therefore, to suppose that the society of the times of Abraham
+         or Agamemnon was "primitive," and the wisest scholars reasoned
+         upon such an assumption. With vision thus restricted to
+         civilized man and his ideas and works, people felt free to
+         speculate about uncivilized races (generally grouped together
+         indiscriminately as "savages") according to any _a priori_ whim
+         that might happen to captivate their fancy. But the discoveries
+         of the last half-century have opened such stupendous vistas of
+         the past that the age of Abraham seems but as yesterday. The
+         state of society described in the book of Genesis had five
+         entire ethnical periods, and the greater part of a sixth,
+         behind it; and its institutions were, comparatively speaking,
+         modern.]
+
+         [Footnote 59: McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History,
+         comprising a reprint of Primitive Marriage_, etc. London, 1876,
+         p. 421.]
+
+         [Footnote 60: There is much that is unsound in it, however, as
+         is often inevitably the case with books that strike boldly into
+         a new field of inquiry.]
+
+         [Footnote 61: A general view of the subject may be obtained
+         from the following works: Bachofen, _Das Mutterrecht_,
+         Stuttgart, 1871, and _Die Sage von Tanaquil_, Heidelberg, 1870;
+         McLennan's _Studies in Ancient History_, London, 1876, and _The
+         Patriarchal Theory_, London, 1884; Morgan's _Systems of
+         Consanguinity_ (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol.
+         xvii.), Washington, 1871, and _Ancient Society_, New York,
+         1877; Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_,
+         Cambridge, Eng., 1885; Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_, 5th
+         ed., London, 1889; Giraud-Teulon, _La Mere chez certains
+         peuples de l'antiquite_, Paris, 1867, and _Les Origines de la
+         Famille_, Geneva, 1874; Starcke (of Copenhagen), _The Primitive
+         Family_, London, 1889. Some criticisms upon McLennan and Morgan
+         may be found in Maine's later works, _Early History of
+         Institutions_, London, 1875, and _Early Law and Custom_,
+         London, 1883. By far the ablest critical survey of the whole
+         field is that in Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i.
+         pp. 621-797.]
+
+[Sidenote: Original reason for the system.]
+
+[Sidenote: The primeval human horde.]
+
+[Sidenote: Earliest family-group: the clan.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Exogamy."]
+
+If now we ask the reason for such a system of reckoning kinship and
+inheritance, so strange according to all our modern notions, the true
+answer doubtless is that which was given by prudent ([Greek:
+Pepnymenos]) Telemachus to the goddess Athene when she asked him to tell
+her truly if he was the son of Odysseus:--"My mother says I am his son,
+for my part, I don't know; one never knows of one's self who one's
+father is."[62] Already, no doubt, in Homer's time there was a gleam of
+satire about this answer, such as it would show on a modern page; but in
+more primitive times it was a very serious affair. From what we know of
+the ideas and practices of uncivilized tribes all over the world, it is
+evident that the sacredness of the family based upon indissoluble
+marriage is a thing of comparatively modern growth. If the sexual
+relations of the Australians, as observed to-day,[63] are an improvement
+upon an antecedent state of things, that antecedent state must have been
+sheer promiscuity. There is ample warrant for supposing, with Mr.
+McLennan, that at the beginning of the lower status of savagery, long
+since everywhere extinct, the family had not made itself distinctly
+visible, but men lived in a horde very much like gregarious brutes.[64]
+I have shown that the essential difference between this primeval human
+horde and a mere herd of brutes consisted in the fact that the gradual
+but very great prolongation of infancy had produced two effects: the
+lengthening of the care of children tended to differentiate the horde
+into family-groups, and the lengthening of the period of youthful mental
+plasticity made it more possible for a new generation to improve upon
+the ideas and customs of its predecessors.[65] In these two concomitant
+processes--the development of the family and the increase of mental
+plasticity, or ability to adopt new methods and strike out into new
+paths of thought--lies the whole explanation of the moral and
+intellectual superiority of men over dumb animals. But in each case the
+change was very gradual.[66] The true savage is only a little less
+unteachable than the beasts of the field. The savage family is at first
+barely discernible amid the primitive social chaos in which it had its
+origin. Along with polyandry and polygyny in various degrees and forms,
+instances of exclusive pairing, of at least a temporary character, are
+to be found among the lowest existing savages, and there are reasons for
+supposing that such may have been the case even in primeval times. But
+it was impossible for strict monogamy to flourish in the ruder stages of
+social development; and the kind of family-group that was first clearly
+and permanently differentiated from the primeval horde was not at all
+like what civilized people would recognize as a family. It was the
+_gens_ or _clan_, as we find it exemplified in all stages from the
+middle period of savagery to the middle period of barbarism. The _gens_
+or _clan_ was simply--to define it by a third synonym--the _kin_; it was
+originally a group of males and females who were traditionally aware of
+their common descent reckoned in the female line. At this stage of
+development there was quite generally though not universally prevalent
+the custom of "exogamy," by which a man was forbidden to marry a woman
+of his own clan. Among such Australian tribes as have been studied, this
+primitive restriction upon promiscuity seems to be about the only one.
+
+         [Footnote 62: [Greek:
+            All' age moi tode eipe kai atrekeos katalexon,
+            ei de ex autoio tosos pais eis Odyseos.
+            ainos gar kephalen te kai ommata kala eoikas
+            keino, epei thama toion emisgometh' alleloisin,
+            prin ge ton es Troien anabemenai, entha per alloi
+            Argeion hoi aristoi eban koiles epi neusin
+            ek tou d' out' Odysea egon idon out' eme keinos.
+
+            Ten d' au Telemachos pepnymenos antion euda
+            toigar ego toi, xeine, mal' atrekeos agoreuso.
+            meter men t' eme phesi tou emmenai, autar egoge
+            ouk oid'; ou gar po tis heon gonon autos anegno.]
+                                             _Odyssey_, i. 206.]
+
+         [Footnote 63: Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, p. 213; Lubbock,
+         _Origin of Civilization_, p. 107; Morgan, _Ancient Society_,
+         part iii., chap. iii. "After battle it frequently happens among
+         the native tribes of Australia that the wives of the conquered,
+         of their own free-will, go over to the victors; reminding us of
+         the lioness which, quietly watching the fight between two
+         lions, goes off with the conqueror." Spencer, _Principles of
+         Sociology_, vol. i. p. 632.]
+
+         [Footnote 64: The notion of the descent of the human race from
+         a single "pair," or of different races from different "pairs,"
+         is a curious instance of transferring modern institutions into
+         times primeval. Of course the idea is absurd. When the elder
+         Agassiz so emphatically declared that "pines have originated in
+         forests, heaths in heaths, grasses in prairies, bees in hives,
+         herrings in shoals, buffaloes in herds, men in nations" (_Essay
+         on Classification_, London, 1859, p. 58), he made, indeed, a
+         mistake of the same sort, so far as concerns the origin of Man,
+         for the nation is a still more modern institution than the
+         family; but in the other items of his statement he was right,
+         and as regards the human race he was thinking in the right
+         direction when he placed _multitude_ instead of _duality_ at
+         the beginning. If instead of that extremely complex and highly
+         organized multitude called "nation" (in the plural), he had
+         started with the extremely simple and almost unorganized
+         multitude called "horde" (in the singular), the statement for
+         Man would have been correct. Such views were hardly within the
+         reach of science thirty years ago.]
+
+         [Footnote 65: _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, part ii., chaps.
+         xvi., xxi., xxii.; _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp.
+         306-319; _Darwinism, and other Essays_, pp. 40-49; _The Destiny
+         of Man_, Sec.Sec. iii.-ix.]
+
+         [Footnote 66: The slowness of the development has apparently
+         been such as befits the transcendent value of the result.
+         Though the question is confessedly beyond the reach of science,
+         may we not hold that civilized man, the creature of an infinite
+         past, is the child of eternity, maturing for an inheritance of
+         immortal life?]
+
+[Sidenote: Phratry and tribe.]
+
+Throughout all the earlier stages of culture, and even into the
+civilized period, we find society organized with the clan for its
+ultimate unit, although in course of time its character becomes greatly
+altered by the substitution of kinship in the paternal, for that in the
+maternal line. By long-continued growth and repeated segmentation the
+primitive clan was developed into a more complex structure, in which a
+group of clans constituted a _phratry_ or brotherhood, and a group of
+phratries constituted a _tribe_. This threefold grouping is found so
+commonly in all parts of the world as to afford good ground for the
+belief that it has been universal. It was long ago familiar to
+historians in the case of Greece and Rome, and of our Teutonic
+forefathers,[67] but it also existed generally in ancient America, and
+many obscure points connected with the history of the Greek and Roman
+groups have been elucidated through the study of Iroquois and Algonquin
+institutions. Along with the likenesses, however, there are numerous
+unlikenesses, due to the change of kinship, among the European groups,
+from the female line to the male.
+
+         [Footnote 67: The Teutonic _hundred_ and Roman _curia_ answered
+         to the Greek _phratry_.]
+
+[Sidenote: Effect of pastoral life upon property and upon the family.]
+
+This change, as it occurred among Aryan and Semitic peoples, marked one
+of the most momentous revolutions in the history of mankind. It probably
+occurred early in the upper period of barbarism, or late in the middle
+period, after the long-continued domestication of animals had resulted
+in the acquisition of private property (_pecus, peculium, pecunia_) in
+large amounts by individuals. In primitive society there was very little
+personal property except in weapons, clothing (such as it was), and
+trinkets. Real estate was unknown. Land was simply _occupied_ by the
+tribe. There was general communism and social equality. In the Old
+World the earliest instance of extensive "adverse possession" on the
+part of individuals, as against other individuals in the clan-community,
+was the possession of flocks and herds. Distinctions in wealth and rank
+were thus inaugurated; slavery began to be profitable and personal
+retainers and adherents useful in new ways. As in earlier stages the
+community in marital relations had been part of the general community in
+possessions, so now the exclusive possession of a wife or wives was part
+of the system of private property that was coming into vogue. The man of
+many cattle, the man who could attach subordinates to him through
+motives of self-interest as well as personal deference, the man who
+could defend his property against robbers, could also have his separate
+household and maintain its sanctity. In this way, it is believed,
+indissoluble marriage, in its two forms of monogamy and polygamy,
+originated. That it had already existed sporadically is not denied, but
+it now acquired such stability and permanence that the older and looser
+forms of alliance, hitherto prevalent, fell into disfavour. A natural
+result of the growth of private wealth and the permanence of the marital
+relation was the change in reckoning kinship from the maternal to the
+paternal line. This change was probably favoured by the prevalence of
+polygamy among those who were coming to be distinguished as "upper
+classes," since a large family of children by different mothers could be
+held together only by reckoning the kinship through the father. Thus, we
+may suppose, originated the patriarchal family. Even in its rudest form
+it was an immense improvement upon what had gone before, and to the
+stronger and higher social organization thus acquired we must largely
+ascribe the rise of the Aryan and Semitic peoples to the foremost rank
+of civilization.[68]
+
+         [Footnote 68: Fenton's _Early Hebrew Life_, London, 1880, is an
+         interesting study of the upper period of barbarism; see also
+         Spencer, _Princip. of Sociol._, i. 724-737.]
+
+It is not intended to imply that there is no other way in which the
+change to the male line may have been brought about among other peoples.
+The explanation just given applies very well to the Aryan and Semitic
+peoples, but it is inapplicable to the state of things which seems to
+have existed in Mexico at the time of the Discovery.[69] The subject is
+a difficult one, and sometimes confronts us with questions much easier
+to ask than to answer. The change has been observed among tribes in a
+lower stage than that just described.[70] On the other hand, as old
+customs die hard, no doubt inheritance has in many places continued in
+the maternal line long after paternity is fully known. Symmetrical
+regularity in the development of human institutions has by no means been
+the rule, and there is often much difficulty in explaining particular
+cases, even when the direction of the general drift can be discerned.
+
+         [Footnote 69: See below, p. 122.]
+
+         [Footnote 70: As among the Hervey Islanders; Gill, _Myths and
+         Songs of the South Pacific_, p. 36. Sir John Lubbock would
+         account for the curious and widely spread custom of the
+         _Couvade_ as a feature of this change. _Origin of
+         Civilization_, pp. 14-17, 159; cf. Tylor, _Early Hist. of
+         Mankind_, pp. 288, 297.]
+
+[Sidenote: The exogamous clan in ancient America.]
+
+In aboriginal America, as already observed, kinship through females only
+was the rule, and exogamy was strictly enforced,--the wife must be taken
+from a different clan. Indissoluble marriage, whether monogamous or
+polygamous, seems to have been unknown. The marriage relation was
+terminable at the will of either party.[71] The abiding unit upon which
+the social structure was founded was not the family but the exogamous
+clan.
+
+         [Footnote 71: "There is no embarrassment growing out of
+         problems respecting the woman's future support, the division of
+         property, or the adjustment of claims for the possession of the
+         children. The independent self-support of every adult healthy
+         Indian, male or female, and the gentile relationship, which is
+         more wide-reaching and authoritative than that of marriage,
+         have already disposed of these questions, which are usually so
+         perplexing for the white man. So far as personal maintenance is
+         concerned, a woman is, as a rule, just as well off without a
+         husband as with one. What is hers, in the shape of property,
+         remains her own whether she is married or not. In fact,
+         marriage among these Indians seems to be but the natural mating
+         of the sexes, to cease at the option of either of the
+         interested parties." Clay MacCauley, "The Seminole Indians of
+         Florida", in _Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_,
+         Washington, 1887, p. 497. For a graphic account of the state of
+         things among the Cheyennes and Arrapahos, see Dodge, _Our Wild
+         Indians_, pp. 204-220.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Intimate connection of aboriginal architecture with social
+life.]
+
+I have been at some pains to elucidate this point because the house-life
+of the American aborigines found visible, and in some instances very
+durable, expression in a remarkable style of house-architecture. The
+manner in which the Indians built their houses grew directly out of the
+requirements of their life. It was an unmistakably characteristic
+architecture, and while it exhibits manifold unlikenesses in detail,
+due to differences in intelligence as well as to the presence or absence
+of sundry materials, there is one underlying principle always manifest.
+That underlying principle is adaptation to a certain mode of communal
+living such as all American aborigines that have been carefully studied
+are known to have practised. Through many gradations, from the sty of
+the California savage up to the noble sculptured ruins of Uxmal and
+Chichen-Itza, the principle is always present. Taken in connection with
+evidence from other sources, it enables us to exhibit a gradation of
+stages of culture in aboriginal North America, with the savages of the
+Sacramento and Columbia valleys at the bottom, and the Mayas of Yucatan
+at the top; and while in going from one end to the other a very long
+interval was traversed, we feel that the progress of the aborigines in
+crossing that interval was made along similar lines.[72]
+
+         [Footnote 72: See Morgan's _Houses and House-Life of the
+         American Aborigines_, Washington, 1881, an epoch-making book of
+         rare and absorbing interest.]
+
+[Illustration: Seneca-Iroquois long house.]
+
+[Illustration: Ground-plan of long house.]
+
+[Sidenote: The long houses of the Iroquois.]
+
+The principle was first studied and explained by Mr. Morgan in the case
+of the famous "long houses" of the Iroquois. "The long house ... was
+from fifty to eighty and sometimes one hundred feet long. It consisted
+of a strong frame of upright poles set in the ground, which was
+strengthened with horizontal poles attached with withes, and surmounted
+with a triangular, and in some cases with a round roof. It was covered
+over, both sides and roof, with long strips of elm bark tied to the
+frame with strings or splints. An external frame of poles for the sides
+and of rafters for the roof were then adjusted to hold the bark shingles
+between them, the two frames being tied together. The interior of the
+house was comparted[73] at intervals of six or eight feet, leaving each
+chamber entirely open like a stall upon the passageway which passed
+through the centre of the house from end to end. At each end was a
+doorway covered with suspended skins. Between each four apartments, two
+on a side, was a fire-pit in the centre of the hall, used in common by
+their occupants. Thus a house with five fires would contain twenty
+apartments and accommodate twenty families, unless some apartments were
+reserved for storage. They were warm, roomy, and tidily-kept
+habitations. Raised bunks were constructed around the walls of each
+apartment for beds. From the roof-poles were suspended their strings of
+corn in the ear, braided by the husks, also strings of dried squashes
+and pumpkins. Spaces were contrived here and there to store away their
+accumulations of provisions. Each house, as a rule, was occupied by
+related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same
+gens, while their husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to
+other gentes; consequently the gens or clan of the mother largely
+predominated in the household. Whatever was taken in the hunt or raised
+by cultivation by any member of the household ... was for the common
+benefit. Provisions were made a common stock within the household."[74]
+
+         [Footnote 73: This verb of Mr. Morgan's at first struck me as
+         odd, but though rarely used, it is supported by good authority;
+         see _Century Dictionary_, s. v.]
+
+         [Footnote 74: The Iroquois ceased to build such houses before
+         the beginning of the present century. I quote Mr. Morgan's
+         description at length, because his book is out of print and
+         hard to obtain. It ought to be republished, and in octavo, like
+         his _Ancient Society_, of which it is a continuation.]
+
+"Over every such household a matron presided, whose duty it was to
+supervise its domestic economy. After the single daily meal had been
+cooked at the different fires within the house, it was her province to
+divide the food from the kettle to the several families according to
+their respective needs. What remained was placed in the custody of
+another person until she again required it."[75]
+
+         [Footnote 75: Lucien Carr, "On the Social and Political
+         Position of Woman among the Huron-Iroquois Tribes," _Reports of
+         Peabody Museum_, vol. iii. p. 215.]
+
+[Sidenote: Summary divorce.]
+
+Not only the food was common property, but many chattels, including the
+children, belonged to the gens or clan. When a young woman got married
+she brought her husband home with her. Though thenceforth an inmate of
+this household he remained an alien to her clan. "If he proved lazy and
+failed to do his share of the providing, woe be to him. No matter how
+many children, or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at
+any time be ordered to pick up his blanket and budge; and after such
+orders it would not be healthful for him to disobey; the house would be
+too hot for him; and unless saved by the intercession of some aunt or
+grandmother [of his wife] he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was
+often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other....
+The female portion ruled the house."[76]
+
+         [Footnote 76: This was not incompatible with the subjection of
+         women to extreme drudgery and ill-treatment. For an instructive
+         comparison with the case among the tribes of the Far West, see
+         Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_, chap. xvi.]
+
+[Sidenote: Hospitality.]
+
+Though there was but one freshly-cooked meal, taken about the middle of
+the day, any member of the household when hungry could be helped from
+the common stock. Hospitality was universal. If a person from one of the
+other communal households, or a stranger from another tribe (in time of
+peace), were to visit the house, the women would immediately offer him
+food, and it was a breach of etiquette to decline to eat it. This custom
+was strictly observed all over the continent and in the West India
+Islands, and was often remarked upon by the early discoverers, in whose
+minds it was apt to implant idyllic notions that were afterward rudely
+disturbed. The prevalence of hospitality among uncivilized races has
+long been noted by travellers, and is probably in most cases, as it
+certainly was in ancient America, closely connected with communism in
+living.
+
+[Sidenote: Structure of the clan.]
+
+The clan, which practised this communism, had its definite organization,
+officers, rights, and duties. Its official head was the "sachem," whose
+functions were of a civil nature. The sachem was elected by the clan and
+must be a member of it, so that a son could not be chosen to succeed his
+father, but a sachem could be succeeded by his uterine brother or by his
+sister's son, and in this way customary lines of succession could and
+often did tend to become established. The clan also elected its
+"chiefs," whose functions were military; the number of chiefs was
+proportionate to that of the people composing the clan, usually one
+chief to every fifty or sixty persons. The clan could depose its sachem
+or any of its chiefs. Personal property, such as weapons, or trophies,
+or rights of user in the garden-plots, was inheritable in the female
+line, and thus stayed within the clan. The members were reciprocally
+bound to help, defend, and avenge one another. The clan had the right of
+adopting strangers to strengthen itself. It had the right of naming its
+members, and these names were always obviously significant, like Little
+Turtle, Yellow Wolf, etc.; of names like our Richard or William, with
+the meaning lost, or obvious only to scholars, no trace is to be found
+in aboriginal America. The clan itself, too, always had a name, which
+was usually that of some animal,--as Wolf, Eagle, or Salmon, and a rude
+drawing or pictograph of the creature served as a "totem" or primitive
+heraldic device. A mythological meaning was attached to this emblem. The
+clan had its own common religious rites and common burial place. There
+was a clan-council, of which women might be members; there were
+instances, indeed, of its being composed entirely of women, whose
+position was one of much more dignity and influence than has commonly
+been supposed. Instances of squaw sachems were not so very rare.[77]
+
+         [Footnote 77: Among the Wyandots there is in each clan a
+         council composed of four squaws, and this council elects the
+         male sachem who is its head. Therefore the tribal council,
+         which is the aggregate of the clan-councils, consists one fifth
+         of men and four fifths of women. See Powell, "Wyandot
+         Government: a Short Study of Tribal Society," in _First Annual
+         Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1881, pp.
+         59-69; and also Mr. Carr's interesting essay above cited.]
+
+[Sidenote: Origin and structure of the phratry.]
+
+The number of clans in a tribe naturally bore some proportion to the
+populousness of the tribe, varying from three, in the case of the
+Delawares, to twenty or more, as in the case of the Ojibwas and Creeks.
+There were usually eight or ten, and these were usually grouped into two
+or three phratries. The phratry seems to have originated in the
+segmentation of the overgrown clan, for in some cases exogamy was
+originally practised as between the phratries and afterward the custom
+died out while it was retained as between their constituent clans.[78]
+The system of naming often indicates this origin of the phratry, though
+seldom quite so forcibly as in the case of the Mohegan tribe, which was
+thus composed:[79]--
+
+I. WOLF PHRATRY.
+
+_Clans:_ 1. Wolf, 2. Bear, 3. Dog, 4. Opossum.
+
+II. TURTLE PHRATRY.
+
+_Clans:_ 5. Little Turtle, 6. Mud Turtle, 7. Great Turtle, 8. Yellow
+Eel.
+
+III. TURKEY PHRATRY.
+
+_Clans:_ 9. Turkey, 10. Crane, 11. Chicken.
+
+Here the senior clan in the phratry tends to keep the original
+clan-name, while the junior clans have been guided by a sense of kinship
+in choosing their new names. This origin of the phratry is further
+indicated by the fact that the phratry does not always occur; sometimes
+the clans are organized directly into the tribe. The phratry was not so
+much a governmental as a religious and social organization. Its most
+important function seems to have been supplementing or reinforcing the
+action of the single clan in exacting compensation for murder; and this
+point is full of interest because it helps us to understand how among
+our Teutonic forefathers the "hundred" (the equivalent of the phratry)
+became charged with the duty of prosecuting criminals. The Greek phratry
+had a precisely analogous function.[80]
+
+         [Footnote 78: H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific
+         States_, vol. i. p. 109.]
+
+         [Footnote 79: Morgan, _Houses and House-Life_, p. 16.]
+
+         [Footnote 80: See Freeman, _Comparative Politics_, p. 117;
+         Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 98-104; Grote, _History of
+         Greece_, vol. iii. pp. 74, 88. It is interesting to compare
+         Grote's description with Morgan's (_Anc. Soc._, pp. 71, 94) and
+         note both the closeness of the general parallelism and the
+         character of the specific variations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Structure of the tribe.]
+
+The Indian tribe was a group of people distinguished by the exclusive
+possession of a dialect in common. It possessed a tribal name and
+occupied a more or less clearly defined territory; there were also
+tribal religious rites. Its supreme government was vested in the council
+of its clan-chiefs and sachems; and as these were thus officers of the
+tribe as well as of the clan, the tribe exercised the right of investing
+them with office, amid appropriate solemnities, after their election by
+their respective clans. The tribal-council had also the right to depose
+chiefs and sachems. In some instances, not always, there was a head
+chief or military commander for the tribes, elected by the tribal
+council. Such, was the origin of the office which, in most societies of
+the Old World, gradually multiplied its functions and accumulated power
+until it developed into true kingship. Nowhere in ancient North America
+did it quite reach such a stage.
+
+[Sidenote: Cross-relationships between clans and tribes: the Iroquois
+Confederacy.]
+
+Among the greater part of the aborigines no higher form of social
+structure was attained than the tribe. There were, however, several
+instances of permanent confederation, of which the two most interesting
+and most highly developed were the League of the Iroquois, mentioned
+above, and the Mexican Confederacy, presently to be considered. The
+principles upon which the Iroquois league was founded have been
+thoroughly and minutely explained by Mr. Morgan.[81] It originated in a
+union of five tribes composed of clans in common, and speaking five
+dialects of a common language. These tribes had themselves arisen
+through the segmentation of a single overgrown tribe, so that portions
+of the original clans survived in them all. The Wolf, Bear, and Turtle
+clan were common to all the five tribes; three other clans were common
+to three of the five. "All the members of the same gens [clan], whether
+Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, or Senecas, were brothers and
+sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common
+[female] ancestor, and they recognized each other as such with the
+fullest cordiality. When they met, the first inquiry was the name of
+each other's gens, and next the immediate pedigree of each other's
+sachems; after which they were able to find, under their peculiar system
+of consanguinity, the relationship in which they stood to each other....
+This cross-relationship between persons of the same gens in the
+different tribes is still preserved and recognized among them in all its
+original force. It explains the tenacity with which the fragments of the
+old confederacy still cling together."[82] Acknowledged consanguinity
+is to the barbarian a sound reason, and the only one conceivable, for
+permanent political union; and the very existence of such a confederacy
+as that of the Five Nations was rendered possible only through the
+permanence of the clans or communal households which were its ultimate
+units. We have here a clue to the policy of these Indians toward the
+kindred tribes who refused to join their league. These tribes, too, so
+far as is known, would seem to have contained the same clans. After a
+separation of at least four hundred years the Wyandots have still five
+of their eight clans in common with the Iroquois. When the Eries and
+other tribes would not join the league of their kindred, the refusal
+smacked of treason to the kin, and we can quite understand the deadly
+fury with which the latter turned upon them and butchered every man,
+woman, and child except such as they saw fit to adopt into their own
+clans.
+
+         [Footnote 81: In his _League of the Iroquois_, Rochester, 1851,
+         a book now out of print and excessively rare. A brief summary
+         is given in his _Ancient Society_, chap. v., and in his _Houses
+         and House-Life_, pp. 23-41. Mr. Morgan was adopted into the
+         Seneca tribe, and his life work was begun by a profound and
+         exhaustive study of this interesting people.]
+
+         [Footnote 82: _Houses and House-Life_, p. 33. At the period of
+         its greatest power, about 1675, the people of the confederacy
+         were about 25,000 in number. In 1875, according to official
+         statistics (see table appended to Dodge's _Plains of the Great
+         West_, pp. 441-448), there were in the state of New York 198
+         Oneidas, 203 Onondagas, 165 Cayugas, 3,043 Senecas, and 448
+         Tuscaroras,--in all 4,057. Besides these there were 1,279
+         Oneidas on a reservation in Wisconsin, and 207 Senecas in the
+         Indian Territory. The Mohawks are not mentioned in the list.
+         During the Revolutionary War, and just afterward, the Mohawks
+         migrated into Upper Canada (Ontario), for an account of which
+         the reader may consult the second volume of Stone's _Life of
+         Brant_. Portions of the other tribes also went to Canada. In
+         New York the Oneidas and Tuscaroras were converted to
+         Christianity by Samuel Kirkland and withheld from alliance with
+         the British during the Revolution; the others still retain
+         their ancient religion. They are for the most part farmers and
+         are now increasing in numbers. Their treatment by the state of
+         New York has been honourably distinguished for justice and
+         humanity.]
+
+[Sidenote: Structure of the confederacy.]
+
+Each of the Five Tribes retained its local self-government. The supreme
+government of the confederacy was vested in a General Council of fifty
+sachems, "equal in rank and authority." The fifty sachemships were
+created in perpetuity in certain clans of the several tribes; whenever a
+vacancy occurred, it was filled by the clan electing one of its own
+members; a sachem once thus elected could be deposed by the clan-council
+for good cause; "but the right to invest these sachems with office was
+reserved to the General Council." These fifty sachems of the confederacy
+were likewise sachems in their respective tribes, "and with the chiefs
+of these tribes formed the council of each, which was supreme over all
+matters pertaining to the tribe exclusively." The General Council could
+not convene itself, but could be convened by any one of the five tribal
+councils. The regular meeting was once a year in the autumn, in the
+valley of Onondaga, but in stirring times extra sessions were frequent.
+The proceedings were opened by an address from one of the sachems, "in
+the course of which he thanked the Great Spirit [i. e. Ioskeha, the
+sky-god] for sparing their lives and permitting them to meet together;"
+after this they were ready for business. It was proper for any orator
+from among the people to address the Council with arguments, and the
+debates were sometimes very long and elaborate. When it came to voting,
+the fifty sachems voted by tribes, each tribe counting as a unit, and
+unanimity was as imperative as in an English jury, so that one tribe
+could block the proceedings. The confederacy had no head-sachem, or
+civil chief-magistrate; but a military commander was indispensable, and,
+curiously enough, without being taught by the experience of a Tarquin,
+the Iroquois made this a dual office, like the Roman consulship. There
+were two permanent chieftainships, one in the Wolf, the other in the
+Turtle clan, and both in the Seneca tribe, because the western border
+was the most exposed to attack.[83] The chiefs were elected by the clan,
+and inducted into office by the General Council; their tenure was during
+life or good behaviour. This office never encroached upon the others in
+its powers, but an able warrior in this position could wield great
+influence.
+
+         [Footnote 83: Somewhat on the same principle that in mediaeval
+         Europe led an earl or count, commanding an exposed border
+         district or _march_ to rise in power and importance and become
+         a "margrave" [_mark_ + _graf_ = march-count] or "marquis."
+         Compare the increase of sovereignty accorded to the earls of
+         Chester and bishops of Durham as rulers of the two principal
+         march counties of England.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "Long House."]
+
+Such was the famous confederacy of the Iroquois. They called it the Long
+House, and by this name as commonly as any other it is known in history.
+The name by which they called themselves was Hodenosaunee, or "People of
+the Long House." The name was picturesquely descriptive of the long and
+narrow strip of villages with its western outlook toward the Niagara,
+and its eastern toward the Hudson, three hundred miles distant. But it
+was appropriate also for another and a deeper reason than this. We have
+seen that in its social and political structure, from top to bottom and
+from end to end, the confederacy was based upon and held together by the
+gentes, clans, communal households, or "long houses," which were its
+component units. They may be compared to the hypothetical indestructible
+atoms of modern physics, whereof all material objects are composed. The
+whole institutional fabric was the outgrowth of the group of ideas and
+habits that belong to a state of society ignorant of and incapable of
+imagining any other form of organization than the clan held together by
+the tie of a common maternal ancestry. The house architecture was as
+much a constituent part of the fabric as the council of sachems. There
+is a transparency about the system that is very different from the
+obscurity we continually find in Europe and Asia, where different strata
+of ideas and institutions have been superimposed one upon another and
+crumpled and distorted with as little apparent significance or purpose
+as the porches and gables of a so-called "Queen Anne" house.[84]
+Conquest in the Old World has resulted in the commingling and manifold
+fusion of peoples in very different stages of development. In the New
+World there has been very little of that sort of thing. Conquest in
+ancient America was pretty much all of the Iroquois type, entailing in
+its milder form the imposition of tribute, in its more desperate form
+the extermination of a tribe with the adoption of its remnants into the
+similarly-constituted tribe of the conquerors. There was therefore but
+little modification of the social structure while the people, gradually
+acquiring new arts, were passing through savagery and into a more or
+less advanced stage of barbarism. The symmetry of the structure and the
+relation of one institution to another is thus distinctly apparent.
+
+         [Footnote 84: For instance, the whole discussion in Gomme's
+         _Village Community_, London, 1890, an excellent book, abounds
+         with instances of this crumpling.]
+
+The communal household and the political structure built upon it, as
+above described in the case of the Iroquois, seem to have existed all
+over ancient North America, with agreement in fundamental
+characteristics and variation in details and degree of development.
+There are many corners as yet imperfectly explored, but hitherto, in so
+far as research has been rewarded with information, it all points in the
+same general direction. Among the tribes above enumerated as either in
+savagery or in the lower status of barbarism, so far as they have been
+studied, there seems to be a general agreement, as to the looseness of
+the marriage tie the clan with descent in the female line, the phratry,
+the tribe, the officers and councils, the social equality, the community
+in goods (with exceptions already noted), and the wigwam or house
+adapted to communal living.
+
+[Illustration: View, Cross-section, and Ground-plan of Mandan round
+house.]
+
+[Sidenote: Circular houses of the Mandans.]
+
+The extreme of variation consistent with adherence to the common
+principle was to be found in the shape and material of the houses. Those
+of the savage tribes were but sorry huts. The long house was used by the
+Powhatans and other Algonquin tribes. The other most highly developed
+type may be illustrated by the circular frame-houses of the
+Mandans.[85] These houses were from forty to sixty feet in diameter. A
+dozen or more posts, each about eight inches in diameter, were set in
+the ground, "at equal distances in the circumference of a circle, and
+rising about six feet above the level of the floor." The tops of the
+posts were connected by horizontal stringers; and outside each post a
+slanting wooden brace sunk in the ground about four feet distant served
+as a firm support to the structure. The spaces between these braces were
+filled by tall wooden slabs, set with the same slant and resting against
+the stringers. Thus the framework of the outer wall was completed. To
+support the roof four posts were set in the ground about ten feet apart
+in the form of a square, near the centre of the building. They were from
+twelve to fifteen feet in height, and were connected at the top by four
+stringers forming a square. The rafters rested upon these stringers and
+upon the top of the circular wall below. The rafters were covered with
+willow matting, and upon this was spread a layer of prairie grass. Then
+both wall and roof, from the ground up to the summit, were covered with
+earth, solid and hard, to a thickness of at least two feet. The rafters
+projected above the square framework at the summit, so as to leave a
+circular opening in the centre about four feet in diameter. This hole
+let in a little light, and let out some of the smoke from the fire which
+blazed underneath in a fire-pit lined with stone slabs set on edge.
+The only other aperture for light was the doorway, which was a kind of
+vestibule or passage some ten feet in length. Curtains of buffalo robes
+did duty instead of doors. The family compartments were triangles with
+base at the outer wall, and apex opening upon the central hearth; and
+the partitions were hanging mats or skins, which were tastefully fringed
+and ornamented with quill-work and pictographs.[86] In the lower Mandan
+village, visited by Catlin, there were about fifty such houses, each
+able to accommodate from thirty to forty persons. The village, situated
+upon a bold bluff at a bend of the Missouri river, and surrounded by a
+palisade of stout timbers more than ten feet in height, was very strong
+for defensive purposes. Indeed, it was virtually impregnable to Indian
+methods of attack, for the earth-covered houses could not be set on fire
+by blazing arrows, and just within the palisade ran a trench in which
+the defenders could securely skulk, while through the narrow chinks
+between the timbers they could shoot arrows fast enough to keep their
+assailants at a distance. This purpose was further secured by rude
+bastions, and considering the structure as a whole one cannot help
+admiring the ingenuity which it exhibits. It shows a marked superiority
+over the conceptions of military defence attained by the Iroquois or any
+other Indians north of New Mexico. Besides the communal houses the
+village contained its "medicine lodge," or council house, and an open
+area for games and ceremonies. In the spaces between the houses were
+the scaffolds for drying maize, buffalo meat, etc., ascended by
+well-made portable ladders. Outside the village, at a short distance on
+the prairie, was a group of such scaffolds upon which the dead were left
+to moulder, somewhat after the fashion of the Parsees.[87]
+
+         [Footnote 85: Morgan, _Houses and House-life_, pp. 126-129;
+         Catlin's _North Amer. Indians_, i. 81 _ff._]
+
+         [Footnote 86: Catlin, i. 83.]
+
+         [Footnote 87: Catlin, i. 90.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The Indians of the pueblos,--in the middle status of
+barbarism.]
+
+We are now prepared to understand some essential points in the life of
+the groups of Indians occupying the region of the Cordilleras, both
+north and south of the Isthmus of Darien, all the way from Zuni to
+Quito. The principal groups are the Moquis and Zunis of Arizona and New
+Mexico, the Nahuas or Nahuatlac tribes of Mexico, the Mayas, Quiches,
+and kindred peoples of Central America; and beyond the isthmus, the
+Chibchas of New Granada, and sundry peoples comprised within the domain
+of the Incas. With regard to the ethnic relationships of these various
+groups, opinion is still in a state of confusion; but it is not
+necessary for our present purpose that we should pause to discuss the
+numerous questions thus arising. Our business is to get a clear notion
+in outline of the character of the culture to which these peoples had
+attained at the time of the Discovery. Here we observe, on the part of
+all, a very considerable divergence from the average Indian level which
+we have thus far been describing.
+
+This divergence increases as we go from Zuni toward Cuzco, reaching its
+extreme, on the whole, among the Peruvians, though in some respects the
+nearest approach to civilization was made by the Mayas. All these
+peoples were at least one full ethnical period nearer to true
+civilization than the Iroquois,--and a vast amount of change and
+improvement is involved in the conception of an entire ethnical period.
+According to Mr. Morgan, one more such period would have brought the
+average level of these Cordilleran peoples to as high a plane as that of
+the Greeks described in the Odyssey. Let us now observe the principal
+points involved in the change, bearing in mind that it implies a
+considerable lapse of time. While the date 1325, at which the city of
+Mexico was founded, is the earliest date in the history of that country
+which can be regarded as securely established, it was preceded by a long
+series of generations of migration and warfare, the confused and
+fragmentary record of which historians have tried--hitherto with scant
+success--to unravel. To develop such a culture as that of the Aztecs out
+of an antecedent culture similar to that of the Iroquois must of course
+have taken a long time.
+
+[Sidenote: Horticulture with irrigation, and architecture with adobe.]
+
+It will be remembered that the most conspicuous distinctive marks of the
+grade of culture attained by the Cordilleran peoples were two,--the
+cultivation of maize in large quantities by irrigation, and the use of
+adobe-brick or stone in building. Probably there was at first, to some
+extent, a causal connection between the former and the latter. The
+region of the Moqui-Zuni culture is a region in which arid plains become
+richly fertile when water from neighbouring cliffs or peaks is
+directed down upon them. It is mainly an affair of sluices, not of pump
+or well, which seem to have been alike beyond the ken of aboriginal
+Americans of whatever grade. The change of occupation involved in
+raising large crops of corn by the aid of sluices would facilitate an
+increase in density of population, and would encourage a preference for
+agricultural over predatory life. Such changes would be likely to favour
+the development of defensive military art. The Mohawk's surest defence
+lay in the terror which his prowess created hundreds of miles away. One
+can easily see how the forefathers of our Moquis and Zunis may have come
+to prefer the security gained by living more closely together and
+building impregnable fortresses.
+
+[Sidenote: Possible origin of adobe architecture.]
+
+The earthen wall of the Mandan, supported on a framework of posts and
+slabs, seems to me curiously and strikingly suggestive of the incipient
+pottery made by surrounding a basket with a coating of clay.[88] When it
+was discovered how to make the earthen bowl or dish without the basket,
+a new era in progress was begun. So when it was discovered that an
+earthen wall could be fashioned to answer the requirements of
+house-builders without the need of a permanent wooden framework, another
+great step was taken. Again the consequences were great enough to make
+it mark the beginning of a new ethnical period. If we suppose the
+central portion of our continent, the Mississippi and Missouri valleys,
+to have been occupied at some time by tribes familiar with the Mandan
+style of building; and if we further suppose a gradual extension or
+migration of this population, or some part of it, westward into the
+mountain region; that would be a movement into a region in which timber
+was scarce, while adobe clay was abundant. Under such circumstances the
+useful qualities of that peculiar clay could not fail to be soon
+discovered. The simple exposure to sunshine would quickly convert a
+Mandan house built with it into an adobe house; the coating of earth
+would become a coating of brick. It would not then take long to
+ascertain that with such adobe-brick could be built walls at once light
+and strong, erect and tall, such as could not be built with common clay.
+In some such way as this I think the discovery must have been made by
+the ancestors of the Zunis, and others who have built pueblos. After the
+pueblo style of architecture, with its erect walls and terraced stories,
+had become developed, it was an easy step, when the occasion suggested
+it, to substitute for the adobe-brick coarse rubble-stones embedded in
+adobe. The final stage was reached in Mexico and Yucatan, when soft
+coralline limestone was shaped into blocks with a flint chisel and laid
+in courses with adobe-mortar.
+
+         [Footnote 88: See above, p. 25.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Cushing at Zuni.]
+
+The pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona are among the most interesting
+structures in the world. Several are still inhabited by the descendants
+of the people who were living in them at the time of the Spanish
+Discovery, and their primitive customs and habits of thought have been
+preserved to the present day with but little change. The long sojourn
+of Mr. Cushing, of the Bureau of Ethnology, in the Zuni pueblo, has
+already thrown a flood of light upon many points in American
+archaeology.[89] As in the case of American aborigines generally, the
+social life of these people is closely connected with their
+architecture, and the pueblos which are still inhabited seem to furnish
+us with the key to the interpretation of those that we find deserted or
+in ruins, whether in Arizona or in Guatemala.
+
+         [Footnote 89: See his articles in the _Century Magazine_, Dec.,
+         1882, Feb., 1883, May, 1883; and his papers on "Zuni Fetiches,"
+         _Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_, ii. 9-45; "A Study of
+         Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth," id. iv.
+         473-521; see also Mrs. Stevenson's paper, "Religious Life of a
+         Zuni Child," id. v. 539-555; Sylvester Baxter, "An Aboriginal
+         Pilgrimage," _Century Magazine_, Aug., 1882.]
+
+[Illustration: Pueblo Hungo Pavie. Chaco Canon N. M.]
+
+[Sidenote: Typical structure of the pueblo.]
+
+In the architecture of the pueblos one typical form is reproduced with
+sundry variations in detail. The typical form is that of a solid block
+of buildings making three sides of an extensive rectangular enclosure
+or courtyard. On the inside, facing upon the courtyard, the structure
+is but one story in height; on the outside, looking out upon the
+surrounding country, it rises to three, or perhaps even five or six
+stories. From inside to outside the flat roofs rise in a series of
+terraces, so that the floor of the second row is continuous with the
+roof of the first, the floor of the third row is continuous with the
+roof of the second, and so on. The fourth side of the rectangle is
+formed by a solid block of one-story apartments, usually with one or two
+narrow gateways overlooked by higher structures within the enclosure.
+Except these gateways there is no entrance from without; the only
+windows are frowning loop-holes, and access to the several apartments is
+gained through skylights reached by portable ladders. Such a structure
+is what our own forefathers would have naturally called a "burgh," or
+fortress; it is in one sense a house, yet in another sense a town;[90]
+its divisions are not so much houses as compartments; it is a
+joint-tenement affair, like the Iroquois long houses, but in a higher
+stage of development.
+
+         [Footnote 90: Cf. [Greek: oikos], "house," with Latin _vicus_,
+         "street" or "village," Sanskrit _vesa_, "dwelling-place,"
+         English _wick_, "mansion" or "village."]
+
+[Illustration: Restoration of Pueblo Hungo Pavie.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pueblo society.]
+
+So far as they have been studied, the pueblo Indians are found to be
+organized in clans, with descent in the female line, as in the case of
+the ruder Indians above described. In the event of marriage the young
+husband goes to live with his wife, and she may turn him out of doors if
+he deserves it.[91] The ideas of property seem still limited to that
+of possessory right, with the ultimate title in the clan, except that
+portable articles subject to individual ownership have become more
+numerous. In government the council of sachems reappears with a
+principal sachem, or cacique, called by the Spaniards "gobernador."
+There is an organized priesthood, with distinct orders, and a ceremonial
+more elaborate than those of the ruder Indians. In every pueblo there is
+to be found at least one "estufa," or council-house, for governmental or
+religious transactions. Usually there are two or three or more such
+estufas. In mythology, in what we may call pictography or rudimentary
+hieroglyphics, as well as in ordinary handicrafts, there is a marked
+advance beyond the Indians of the lower status of barbarism, after
+making due allowances for such things as the people of the pueblos have
+learned from white men.[92]
+
+         [Footnote 91: "With the woman rests the security of the
+         marriage ties; and it must be said, in her high honour, that
+         she rarely abuses the privilege; that is, never sends her
+         husband 'to the home of his fathers,' unless he richly deserves
+         it." But should not Mr. Cushing have said "home of his
+         mothers," or perhaps, of "his sisters and his cousins and his
+         aunts?" For a moment afterward he tells us, "To her belong all
+         the children; and descent, including inheritance, is on her
+         side." _Century Magazine_, May, 1883, p. 35.]
+
+         [Footnote 92: For example, since the arrival of the Spaniards
+         some or perhaps all of the pueblos have introduced chimneys
+         into their apartments; but when they were first visited by
+         Coronado, he found the people wearing cotton garments, and
+         Franciscan friars in 1581 remarked upon the superior quality of
+         their shoes. In spinning and weaving, as well as in the
+         grinding of meal, a notable advance had been made.]
+
+[Illustration: Restoration of Pueblo Bonito.]
+
+[Illustration: Pueblo Penasca Blanca.]
+
+[Sidenote: Wonderful ancient pueblos in the Chaco valley.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Moqui pueblos.]
+
+[Sidenote: The cliff pueblos.]
+
+From the pueblos still existing, whether inhabited or in ruins, we may
+eventually get some sort of clue to the populations of ancient towns
+visited by the Spanish discoverers.[93] The pueblo of Zuni seems to have
+had at one time a population of 5,000, but it has dwindled to less than
+2,000. Of the ruined pueblos, built of stone with adobe mortar, in the
+valley of the Rio Chaco, the Pueblo Hungo Pavie contained 73 apartments
+in the first story, 53 in the second, and 29 in the third, with an
+average size of 18 feet by 13; and would have accommodated about 1,000
+Indians. In the same valley Pueblo Bonito, with four stories, contained
+not less than 640 apartments, with room enough for a population of
+3,000; within a third of a mile from this huge structure stood Pueblo
+Chettro Kettle, with 506 apartments. The most common variation from the
+rectangular shape was that in which a terraced semicircle was
+substituted for the three terraced sides, as in Pueblo Bonito, or the
+whole rectangular design was converted into an ellipse, as in Pueblo
+Penasca Blanca. There are indications that these fortresses were not in
+all cases built at one time, but that, at least in some cases, they grew
+by gradual accretions.[94] The smallness of the distances between those
+in the Chaco valley suggests that their inhabitants must have been
+united in a confederation; and one can easily see that an actual
+juxtaposition or partial coalescence of such communities would have
+made a city of very imposing appearance. The pueblos are always found
+situated near a river, and their gardens, lying outside, are easily
+accessible to sluices from neighbouring cliffs or mesas. But in some
+cases, as the Wolpi pueblo of the Moquis, the whole stronghold is built
+upon the summit of the cliff; there is a coalescence of communal
+structures, each enclosing a courtyard, in which there is a spring for
+the water-supply; and the irrigated gardens are built in terrace-form
+just below on the bluff, and protected by solid walls. From this curious
+pueblo another transition takes us to the extraordinary cliff-houses found
+in the Chelly, Mancos, and McElmo canons, and elsewhere,--veritable
+human eyries perched in crevices or clefts of the perpendicular rock,
+accessible only by dint of a toilsome and perilous climb; places of
+refuge, perhaps for fragments of tribes overwhelmed by more barbarous
+invaders, yet showing in their dwelling-rooms and estufas marks of
+careful building and tasteful adornment.[95]
+
+         [Footnote 93: At least a better one than Mr. Prescott had when
+         he naively reckoned five persons to a household, _Conquest of
+         Mexico_, ii. 97.]
+
+         [Footnote 94: Morgan, _Houses and House-Life_, chap. vii.]
+
+         [Footnote 95: For careful descriptions of the ruined pueblos
+         and cliff-houses, see Nadaillac's _Prehistoric America_, chap.
+         v., and Short's _North Americans of Antiquity_, chap. vii. The
+         latter sees in them the melancholy vestiges of a people
+         gradually "succumbing to their unpropitious surroundings--a
+         land which is fast becoming a howling wilderness, with its
+         scourging sands and roaming savage Bedouin--the Apaches."]
+
+[Sidenote: Pueblo of Zuni.]
+
+The pueblo of Zuni is a more extensive and complex structure than the
+ruined pueblos on the Chaco river. It is not so much an enormous
+communal house as a small town formed of a number of such houses crowded
+together, with access from one to another along their roof-terraces.
+Some of the structures are of adobe brick, others of stone embedded in
+adobe mortar and covered with plaster. There are two open plazas or
+squares in the town, and several streets, some of which are covered ways
+passing beneath the upper stories of houses. The effect, though not
+splendid, must be very picturesque, and would doubtless astonish and
+bewilder visitors unprepared for such a sight. When Coronado's men
+discovered Zuni in 1540, although that style of building was no longer a
+novelty to them, they compared the place to Granada.
+
+[Sidenote: Pueblo of Tlascala.]
+
+Now it is worthy of note that Cortes made the same comparison in the
+case of Tlascala, one of the famous towns at which he stopped on his
+march from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico. In his letter to the emperor
+Charles V., he compared Tlascala to Granada, "affirming that it was
+larger, stronger, and more populous than the Moorish capital at the time
+of the conquest, and quite as well built."[96] Upon this Mr. Prescott
+observes, "we shall be slow to believe that its edifices could have
+rivalled those monuments of Oriental magnificence, whose light aerial
+forms still survive after the lapse of ages, the admiration of every
+traveller of sensibility and taste. The truth is that Cortes, like
+Columbus, saw objects through the warm medium of his own fond
+imagination, giving them a higher tone of colouring and larger
+dimensions than were strictly warranted by the fact." Or, as Mr.
+Bandelier puts it, when it comes to general statements about numbers
+and dimensions, "the descriptions of the conquerors cannot be taken as
+facts, only as the expression of feelings, honestly entertained but
+uncritical." From details given in various Spanish descriptions,
+including those of Cortes himself, it is evident that there could not
+have been much difference in size between Tlascala and its neighbour
+Cholula. The population of the latter town has often been given as from
+150,000 to 200,000; but, from elaborate archaeological investigations
+made on the spot in 1881, Mr. Bandelier concludes that it cannot have
+greatly exceeded 30,000, and this number really agrees with the
+estimates of two very important Spanish authorities, Las Casas and
+Torquemada, when correctly understood.[97] We may therefore suppose that
+the population of Tlascala was about 30,000. Now the population of the
+city of Granada, at the time of its conquest by Ferdinand and Isabella,
+is said by the greatest of Spanish historians[98] to have been about
+200,000. It would thus appear that Cortes sometimes let his feelings run
+away with him; and, all things considered, small blame to him if he did!
+In studying the story of the Spanish conquest of America, liberal
+allowance must often be made for inaccuracies of statement that were
+usually pardonable and sometimes inevitable.
+
+         [Footnote 96: "La qual ciudad ... es muy mayor que Granada, y
+         muy mas fuerte, y de tan buenos edificios, y de mucha mas
+         gente, que Granada tenia al tiempo que se gano." Cortes,
+         _Relacion segunda al Emperador_, ap. Lorenzana, p. 58, cited in
+         Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 401 (7th ed.,
+         London, 1855).]
+
+         [Footnote 97: See Bandelier's _Archaeological Tour in Mexico_,
+         Boston, 1885, pp. 160-164. Torquemada's words, cited by
+         Bandelier, are "Quando entraron los Espanoles, dicen que tenia
+         mas de quarenta mil vecinos esta ciudad." _Monarquia Indiana_,
+         lib. iii. cap. xix. p. 281. A prolific source of error is the
+         ambiguity in the word _vecinos_, which may mean either
+         "inhabitants" or "householders." Where Torquemada meant 40,000
+         inhabitants, uncritical writers fond of the marvellous have
+         understood him to mean 40,000 houses, and multiplying this
+         figure by 5, the average number of persons _in a modern
+         family_, have obtained the figure 200,000. But 40,000 houses
+         peopled after the old Mexican fashion, with at least 200
+         persons in a house (to put it as low as possible), would make a
+         city of 8,000,000 inhabitants! Las Casas, in his _Destruycion
+         de las Indias_, vii., puts the population of Cholula at about
+         30,000. I observe that Llorente (in his _Oeuvres de Las Casas_,
+         tom. i. p. 38) translates the statement correctly. I shall
+         recur to this point below, vol. ii. p. 264.]
+
+         [Footnote 98: Mariana, _Historia de Espana_, Valencia, 1795,
+         tom. viii. p. 317.]
+
+But when Cortes described Tlascala as "quite as well built" as Granada,
+it is not at all likely that he was thinking about that exquisite
+Moorish architecture which in the mind of Mr. Prescott or any cultivated
+modern writer is the first thing to be suggested by the name. The
+Spaniards of those days did not admire the artistic work of "infidels;"
+they covered up beautiful arabesques with a wash of dirty plaster, and
+otherwise behaved very much like the Puritans who smashed the
+"idolatrous" statues in English cathedrals. When Cortes looked at
+Tlascala, and Coronado looked at Zuni, and both soldiers were reminded
+of Granada, they were probably looking at those places with a
+professional eye as fortresses hard to capture; and from this point of
+view there was doubtless some justice in the comparison.
+
+[Sidenote: The ancient city of Mexico was a great composite pueblo.]
+
+In the description of Tlascala by the Spaniards who first saw it, with
+its dark and narrow streets, its houses of adobe, or "the better sort"
+of stone laid in adobe mortar, and its flat and terraced roofs, one is
+irresistibly reminded of such a pueblo as Zuni. Tlascala was a town of
+a type probably common in Mexico. In some respects, as will hereafter
+appear, the city of Mexico showed striking variations from the common
+type. Yet there too were to be seen the huge houses, with terraced
+roofs, built around a square courtyard; in one of them 450 Spaniards,
+with more than 1,000 Tlascalan allies, were accommodated; in another,
+called "Montezuma's palace," one of the conquerors, who came several
+times intending to see the whole of it, got so tired with wandering
+through the interminable succession of rooms that at length he gave it
+up and never saw them all.[99] This might have happened in such a
+building as Pueblo Bonito; and a suspicion is raised that Montezuma's
+city was really a vast composite pueblo, and that its so-called palaces
+were communal buildings in principle like the pueblos of the Chaco
+valley.
+
+         [Footnote 99: "Et io entrai piu di quattro volte in una casa
+         del gran Signor non por altro effetto che per vederla, et ogni
+         volta vi camminauo tanto che mi stancauo, et mai la fini di
+         vedere tutta." _Relatione fatta per un gentil' huomo del Signor
+         Fernando Cortese_, apud Ramusio, _Navigationi et Viaggi_,
+         Venice, 1556, tom. iii. fol. 309.]
+
+[Sidenote: Natural mistake of the Spanish discoverers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Contrast between feudalism and gentilism.]
+
+[Sidenote: Change from gentile society to political society.]
+
+Of course the Spanish discoverers could not be expected to understand
+the meaning of what they saw. It dazed and bewildered them. They knew
+little or nothing of any other kind of society than feudal monarchy, and
+if they made such mistakes as to call the head war-chief a "king" (i. e.
+feudal king) or "emperor," and the clan-chiefs "lords" or "noblemen," if
+they supposed that these huge fortresses were like feudal castles and
+palaces in Europe, they were quite excusable. Such misconceptions were
+common enough before barbarous societies had been much studied; and many
+a dusky warrior, without a tithe of the pomp and splendour about him
+that surrounded Montezuma, has figured in the pages of history as a
+mighty potentate girt with many of the trappings of feudalism.[100]
+Initial misconceptions that were natural enough, indeed unavoidable,
+found expression in an absurdly inappropriate nomenclature; and then the
+use of wrong names and titles bore fruit in what one cannot properly
+call a theory but rather an incoherent medley of notions about barbaric
+society. Nothing could be further from _feudalism_, in which the
+relation of landlord and tenant is a fundamental element, than the
+society of the American aborigines, in which that relation was utterly
+unknown and inconceivable. This more primitive form of society is not
+improperly called _gentilism_, inasmuch as it is based upon the gens or
+clan, with communism in living, and with the conception of individual
+ownership of property undeveloped. It was gentilism that everywhere
+prevailed throughout the myriads of unrecorded centuries during which
+the foremost races of mankind struggled up through savagery and
+barbarism into civilization, while weaker and duller races lagged behind
+at various stages on the way. The change from "gentile" society to
+political society as we know it was in some respects the most important
+change that has occurred in human affairs since men became human. It
+might be roughly defined as the change from personal to territorial
+organization. It was accomplished when the stationary clan became
+converted into the township, and the stationary tribe into the small
+state;[101] when the conception of individual property in land was fully
+acquired; when the tie of physical kinship ceased to be indispensable as
+a bond for holding a society together; when the _clansman_ became a
+_citizen_. This momentous change was accomplished among the Greeks
+during a period beginning shortly before the first Olympiad (B. C.
+776), and ending with the reforms of Kleisthenes at Athens (B. C. 509);
+among the Romans it was accomplished by the series of legislative
+changes beginning with those ascribed to Servius Tullius (about B. C.
+550), and perfected by the time of the first Punic War (B. C. 264-241).
+In each case about three centuries was required to work the change.[102]
+If now the reader, familiar with European history, will reflect upon the
+period of more than a thousand years which intervened between the date
+last named and the time when feudalism became thoroughly established, if
+he will recall to mind the vast and powerful complication of causes
+which operated to transform civil society from the aspect which it wore
+in the days of Regulus and the second Ptolemy to that which it had
+assumed in the times of Henry the Fowler or Fulk of Anjou, he will begin
+to realize how much "feudalism" implies, and what a wealth of experience
+it involves, above and beyond the change from "gentile" to "civil"
+society. It does not appear that any people in ancient America ever
+approached very near to this earlier change. None had fairly begun to
+emerge from gentilism; none had advanced so far as the Greeks of the
+first Olympiad or the Romans under the rule of the Tarquins.
+
+         [Footnote 100: When Pocahontas visited London in 1616 she was
+         received at court as befitted a "king's daughter," and the old
+         Virginia historian, William Stith (born in 1689), says it was a
+         "constant tradition" in his day that James I. "became jealous,
+         and was highly offended at Mr. Rolfe for marrying a princess."
+         The notion was that "if Virginia descended to Pocahontas, as it
+         might do at Powhatan's death, at her own death the kingdom
+         would be vested in Mr. Rolfe's posterity." Esten Cooke's
+         _Virginia_, p. 100. Powhatan (i. e. Wahunsunakok, chief of the
+         Powhatan tribe) was often called "emperor" by the English
+         settlers. To their intense bewilderment he told one of them
+         that his office would descend to his [maternal] brothers, even
+         though he had sons living. It was thought that this could not
+         be true.]
+
+         [Footnote 101: The small states into which tribes were at first
+         transformed have in many cases survived to the present time as
+         portions of great states or nations. The shires or counties of
+         England, which have been reproduced in the United States,
+         originated in this way, as I have briefly explained in my
+         little book on _Civil Government in the United States_, p. 49.
+         When you look on the map of England, and see the town of
+         _Icklingham_ in the county of _Suffolk_, it means that this
+         place was once the "home" of the "Icklings" or "children of
+         Ickel," a clan which formed part of the tribe of Angles known
+         as "South folk." So the names of Gaulish tribes survived as
+         names of French provinces, e. g. _Auvergne_ from the _Arverni_,
+         _Poitou_ from the _Pictavi_, _Anjou_ from the _Andecavi_,
+         _Bearn_ from the _Bigerrones_, etc.]
+
+         [Footnote 102: "It was no easy task to accomplish such a
+         fundamental change, however simple and obvious it may now
+         seem.... Anterior to experience, a township, as the unit of a
+         political system, was abstruse enough to tax the Greeks and
+         Romans to the depths of their capacities before the conception
+         was formed and set in practical operation." Morgan, _Ancient
+         Society_, p. 218.]
+
+[Sidenote: Suspicions as to the erroneousness of the Spanish accounts.]
+
+[Sidenote: Detection and explanation of the errors, by Lewis Morgan.]
+
+The first eminent writer to express a serious doubt as to the
+correctness of the earlier views of Mexican civilization was that
+sagacious Scotchman, William Robertson.[103] The illustrious statesman
+and philologist, Albert Gallatin, founder of the American Ethnological
+Society, published in the first volume of its "Transactions" an essay
+which recognized the danger of trusting the Spanish narratives without
+very careful and critical scrutiny.[104] It is to be observed that Mr.
+Gallatin approached the subject with somewhat more knowledge of
+aboriginal life in America than had been possessed by previous writers.
+A similar scepticism was expressed by Lewis Cass, who also knew a great
+deal about Indians.[105] Next came Mr. Morgan,[106] the man of
+path-breaking ideas, whose minute and profound acquaintance with Indian
+life was joined with a power of penetrating the hidden implications of
+facts so keen and so sure as to amount to genius. Mr. Morgan saw the
+nature of the delusion under which the Spaniards laboured; he saw that
+what they mistook for feudal castles owned by great lords, and inhabited
+by dependent retainers, were really huge communal houses, owned and
+inhabited by clans, or rather by segments of overgrown clans. He saw
+this so vividly that it betrayed him now and then into a somewhat
+impatient and dogmatic manner of statement; but that was a slight fault,
+for what he saw was not the outcome of dreamy speculation but of
+scientific insight. His researches, which reduced "Montezuma's empire"
+to a confederacy of tribes dwelling in pueblos, governed by a council of
+chiefs, and collecting tribute from neighbouring pueblos, have been
+fully sustained by subsequent investigation.
+
+         [Footnote 103: Robertson's _History of America_, 9th ed. vol.
+         iii. pp. 274, 281.]
+
+         [Footnote 104: "Notes on the Semi-civilized Nations of Mexico,
+         Yucatan, and Central America," _American Ethnological Society's
+         Transactions_, vol. i., New York, 1852. There is a brief
+         account of Mr. Gallatin's pioneer work in American philology
+         and ethnology in Stevens's _Albert Gallatin_, pp. 386-396.]
+
+         [Footnote 105: Cass, "Aboriginal Structures," _North Amer.
+         Review_, Oct., 1840.]
+
+         [Footnote 106: Mr. R. A. Wilson's _New History of the Conquest
+         of Mexico_, Philadelphia, 1859, denounced the Spanish
+         conquerors as wholesale liars, but as his book was ignorant,
+         uncritical, and full of wild fancies, it produced little
+         effect. It was demolished, with neatness and despatch, in two
+         articles in the _Atlantic Monthly_, April and May, 1859, by the
+         eminent historian John Foster Kirk, whose _History of Charles
+         the Bold_ is in many respects a worthy companion to the works
+         of Prescott and Motley. Mr. Kirk had been Mr. Prescott's
+         secretary.]
+
+[Sidenote: Adolf Bandelier's researches.]
+
+The state of society which Cortes saw has, indeed, passed away, and its
+monuments and hieroglyphic records have been in great part destroyed.
+Nevertheless some monuments and some hieroglyphic records remain, and
+the people are still there. Tlascalans and Aztecs, descendants in the
+eleventh or twelfth generation from the men whose bitter feuds gave such
+a golden opportunity to Cortes, still dwell upon the soil of Mexico, and
+speak the language in which Montezuma made his last harangue to the
+furious people. There is, moreover, a great mass of literature in
+Spanish, besides more or less in Nahuatl, written during the century
+following the conquest, and the devoted missionaries and painstaking
+administrators, who wrote books about the country in which they were
+working, were not engaged in a wholesale conspiracy for deceiving
+mankind. From a really critical study of this literature, combined with
+archaeological investigation, much may be expected; and a noble beginning
+has already been made. A more extensive acquaintance with Mexican
+literature would at times have materially modified Mr. Morgan's
+conclusions, though without altering their general drift. At this point
+the work has been taken up by Mr. Adolf Bandelier, of Highland,
+Illinois, to whose rare sagacity and untiring industry as a field
+archaeologist is joined such a thorough knowledge of Mexican literature
+as few men before him have possessed. Armed with such resources, Mr.
+Bandelier is doing for the ancient history of America work as
+significant as that which Mommsen has done for Rome, or Baur for the
+beginnings of Christianity. When a sufficient mass of facts and
+incidents have once been put upon record, it is hard for ignorant
+misconception to bury the truth in a pit so deep but that the delving
+genius of critical scholarship will sooner or later drag it forth into
+the light of day.[107]
+
+         [Footnote 107: A summary of Mr. Bandelier's principal results,
+         with copious citation and discussion of original Spanish and
+         Nahuatl sources, is contained in his three papers, "On the art
+         of war and mode of warfare of the ancient Mexicans,"--"On the
+         distribution and tenure of land, and the customs with respect
+         to inheritance, among the ancient Mexicans,"--"On the social
+         organization and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans,"
+         _Peabody Museum Reports_, vol. ii., 1876-79, pp. 95-161,
+         385-448, 557-699.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Aztec confederacy.]
+
+At this point in our exposition a very concise summary of Mr.
+Bandelier's results will suffice to enable the reader to understand
+their import. What has been called the "empire of Montezuma" was in
+reality a confederacy of three tribes, the Aztecs, Tezcucans, and
+Tlacopans,[108] dwelling in three large composite pueblos situated very
+near together in one of the strongest defensive positions ever occupied
+by Indians. This Aztec confederacy extended its "sway" over a
+considerable portion of the Mexican peninsula, but that "sway" could not
+correctly be described as "empire," for it was in no sense a military
+occupation of the country. The confederacy did not have garrisons in
+subject pueblos or civil officials to administer their affairs for them.
+It simply sent some of its chiefs about from one pueblo to another to
+collect tribute. This tax consisted in great part of maize and other
+food, and each tributary pueblo reserved a certain portion of its tribal
+territory to be cultivated for the benefit of the domineering
+confederacy. If a pueblo proved delinquent or recalcitrant, Aztec
+warriors swooped down upon it in stealthy midnight assault, butchered
+its inhabitants and emptied its granaries, and when the paroxysm of rage
+had spent itself, went exulting homeward, carrying away women for
+concubines, men to be sacrificed, and such miscellaneous booty as could
+be conveyed without wagons or beasts to draw them.[109] If the sudden
+assault, with scaling ladders, happened to fail, the assailants were
+likely to be baffled, for there was no artillery, and so little food
+could be carried that a siege meant starvation for the besiegers.
+
+         [Footnote 108: In the Iroquois confederacy the Mohawks enjoyed
+         a certain precedence or seniority, the Onondagas had the
+         central council-fire, and the Senecas, who had the two head
+         war-chiefs, were much the most numerous. In the Mexican
+         confederacy the various points of superiority seem to have been
+         more concentrated in the Aztecs; but spoils and tribute were
+         divided into five portions, of which Mexico and Tezcuco each
+         took two, and Tlacopan one.]
+
+         [Footnote 109: The wretched prisoners were ordinarily compelled
+         to carry the booty.]
+
+The tributary pueblos were also liable to be summoned to furnish a
+contingent of warriors to the war-parties of the confederacy, under the
+same penalties for delinquency as in the case of refusal of tribute. In
+such cases it was quite common for the confederacy to issue a peremptory
+summons, followed by a declaration of war. When a pueblo was captured,
+the only way in which the vanquished people could stop the massacre was
+by holding out signals of submission; a parley then sometimes adjusted
+the affair, and the payment of a year's tribute in advance induced the
+conquerors to depart, but captives once taken could seldom if ever be
+ransomed. If the parties could not agree upon terms, the slaughter was
+renewed, and sometimes went on until the departing victors left nought
+behind them but ruined houses belching from loop-hole and doorway lurid
+clouds of smoke and flame upon narrow silent streets heaped up with
+mangled corpses.
+
+The sway of the Aztec confederacy over the Mexican peninsula was thus
+essentially similar to the sway of the Iroquois confederacy over a great
+part of the tribes between the Connecticut river and the Mississippi.
+It was simply the levying of tribute,--a system of plunder enforced by
+terror. The so-called empire was "only a partnership formed for the
+purpose of carrying on the business of warfare, and that intended, not
+for the extension of territorial ownership, but only for an increase of
+the means of subsistence."[110] There was none of that coalescence and
+incorporation of peoples which occurs after the change from gentilism to
+civil society has been effected. Among the Mexicans, as elsewhere
+throughout North America, the tribe remained intact as the highest
+completed political integer.
+
+         [Footnote 110: Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 563.]
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec clans.]
+
+The Aztec tribe was organized in clans and phratries, and the number of
+clans would indicate that the tribe was a very large one.[111] There
+were twenty clans, called in the Nahuatl language "calpullis." We may
+fairly suppose that the average size of a clan was larger than the
+average tribe of Algonquins or Iroquois; but owing to the compact "city"
+life, this increase of numbers did not result in segmentation and
+scattering, as among Indians in the lower status. Each Aztec clan seems
+to have occupied a number of adjacent communal houses, forming a kind of
+precinct, with its special house or houses for official purposes,
+corresponding to the _estufas_ in the New Mexican pueblos. The houses
+were the common property of the clan, and so was the land which its
+members cultivated; and such houses and land could not be sold or
+bartered away by the clan, or in anywise alienated. The idea of "real
+estate" had not been developed; the clan simply exercised a right of
+occupancy, and--as among some ruder Indians--its individual members
+exercised certain limited rights of user in particular garden-plots.
+
+         [Footnote 111: The notion of an immense population groaning
+         under the lash of taskmasters, and building huge palaces for
+         idle despots must be dismissed. The statements which refer to
+         such a vast population are apt to be accompanied by
+         incompatible statements. Mr. Morgan is right in throwing the
+         burden of proof upon those who maintain that a people without
+         domestic animals or field agriculture could have been so
+         numerous (_Anc. Soc._, p. 195). On the other hand, I believe
+         Mr. Morgan makes a grave mistake in the opposite direction, in
+         underestimating the numbers that could be supported upon Indian
+         corn even under a system of horticulture without the use of the
+         plough. Some pertinent remarks on the extraordinary
+         reproductive power of maize in Mexico may be found in Humboldt,
+         _Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne_, Paris, 1811, tom.
+         iii. pp. 51-60; the great naturalist is of course speaking of
+         the yield of maize in ploughed lands, but, after making due
+         allowances, the yield under the ancient system must have been
+         well-nigh unexampled in barbaric agriculture.]
+
+[Sidenote: Clan officers.]
+
+The clan was governed by a clan council, consisting of chiefs
+(_tecuhtli_) elected by the clan, and inducted into office after a cruel
+religious ordeal, in which the candidate was bruised, tortured, and half
+starved. An executive department was more clearly differentiated from
+the council than among the Indians of the lower status. The clan
+(_calpulli_) had an official head, or sachem, called the _calpullec_;
+and also a military commander called the _ahcacautin_, or "elder
+brother." The _ahcacautin_ was also a kind of peace officer, or
+constable, for the precinct occupied by the clan, and carried about with
+him a staff of office; a tuft of white feathers attached to this staff
+betokened that his errand was one of death. The clan elected its
+_calpullec_ and _ahcacautin_, and could depose them for cause.[112]
+
+         [Footnote 112: Compare this description with that of the
+         institutions of Indians in the lower status, above, p. 69.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rights and duties of the clan.]
+
+The members of the clan were reciprocally bound to aid, defend, and
+avenge one another; but wergild was no longer accepted, and the penalty
+for murder was death. The clan exercised the right of naming its
+members. Such names were invariably significant (as _Nezahualcoyotl_,
+"Hungry Coyote," _Axayacatl_, "Face-in-the-Water," etc.), and more or
+less "medicine," or superstitious association, was attached to the name.
+The clans also had their significant names and totems. Each clan had its
+peculiar religious rites, its priests or medicine-men who were members
+of the clan council, and its temple or medicine-house. Instead of
+burying their dead the Mexican tribes practised cremation; there was,
+therefore, no common cemetery, but the funeral ceremonies were conducted
+by the clan.
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec phratries.]
+
+The clans of the Aztecs, like those of many other Mexican tribes, were
+organized into four phratries; and this divided the city of Mexico, as
+the Spaniards at once remarked, into four quarters. The phratry had
+acquired more functions than it possessed in the lower status. Besides
+certain religious and social duties, and besides its connection with the
+punishment of criminals, the Mexican phratry was an organization for
+military purposes.[113] The four phratries were four divisions of the
+tribal host, each with its captain. In each of the quarters was an
+arsenal, or "dart-house," where weapons were stored, and from which they
+were handed out to war-parties about to start on an expedition.
+
+         [Footnote 113: In this respect it seems to have had some
+         resemblance to the Roman _centuria_ and Teutonic _hundred_. So
+         in prehistoric Greece we may perhaps infer from Nestor's advice
+         to Agamemnon that a similar organization existed:--
+
+            [Greek: krin' andras kata phyla, kata phretras, Agamemnon,
+            hos phretre phretrephin arege, phyla de phylois.]
+                                             _Iliad_, ii. 362.
+
+         But the phratry seems never to have reached so high a
+         development among the Greeks as among the Romans and the early
+         English.]
+
+[Sidenote: The tribal council.]
+
+The supreme government of the Aztecs was vested in the tribal council
+composed of twenty members, one for each clan. The member, representing
+a clan, was not its _calpullec_, or "sachem;" he was one of the
+_tecuhtli_, or clan-chiefs, and was significantly called the "speaker"
+(_tlatoani_). The tribal council, thus composed of twenty speakers, was
+called the _tlatocan_, or "place of speech."[114] At least as often as
+once in ten days the council assembled at the _tecpan_, or official
+house of the tribe, but it could be convened whenever occasion required,
+and in cases of emergency was continually in session. Its powers and
+duties were similar to those of an ancient English shiremote, in so far
+as they were partly directive and partly judicial. A large part of its
+business was settling disputes between the clans. It superintended the
+ceremonies of investiture with which the chiefs and other officers of
+the clans were sworn into office. At intervals of eighty days there was
+an "extra session" of the _tlatocan_, attended also by the twenty "elder
+brothers," the four phratry-captains, the two executive chiefs of the
+tribe, and the leading priests, and at such times a reconsideration of
+an unpopular decision might be urged; but the authority of the
+_tlatocan_ was supreme, and from its final decision there could be no
+appeal.[115]
+
+         [Footnote 114: Compare _parliament_ from _parler_. These twenty
+         were the "grandees," "counsellors," and "captains" mentioned by
+         Bernal Diaz as always in Montezuma's company; "y siempre a la
+         contina estaban en su compania veinte grandes senores y
+         consejeros y capitanes," etc. _Historia verdadera_, ii. 95. See
+         Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 646.]
+
+         [Footnote 115: Mr. Bandelier's note on this point gives an
+         especially apt illustration of the confusion of ideas and
+         inconsistencies of statement amid which the early Spanish
+         writers struggled to understand and describe this strange
+         society: _op. cit._ p. 651.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "snake-woman."]
+
+The executive chiefs of the tribe were two in number, as was commonly
+the case in ancient America. The tribal sachem, or civil executive, bore
+the grotesque title of _cihuacoatl_, or "snake-woman."[116] His relation
+to the tribe was in general like that of the _calpullec_ to the clan. He
+executed the decrees of the tribal council, of which he was _ex officio_
+a member, and was responsible for the housing of tribute and its proper
+distribution among the clans. He was also chief judge, and he was
+lieutenant to the head war-chief in command of the tribal host.[117]
+He was elected for life by the tribal council, which could depose him
+for misconduct.
+
+         [Footnote 116: In Aztec mythology Cihuacoatl was wife of the
+         supreme night deity, Tezcatlipoca. Squier, _Serpent Symbol in
+         America_, pp. 159-166, 174-183. On the connection between
+         serpent worship and human sacrifices, see Fergusson's _Tree and
+         Serpent Worship_, pp. 3-5, 38-41. Much evidence as to American
+         serpent worship is collected in J. G. Mueller's _Geschichte der
+         amerikanischen Urreligionen_, Basel, 1855. The hieroglyphic
+         emblem of the Aztec tribal sachem was a female head surmounted
+         by a snake.]
+
+         [Footnote 117: Other tribes besides the Aztec had the
+         "snake-woman." In the city of Mexico the Spaniards mistook him
+         for a "second-king," or "royal lieutenant." In other towns they
+         regarded him, somewhat more correctly, as "governor," and
+         called him _gobernador_,--a title still applied to the tribal
+         sachem of the pueblo Indians, as e. g. in Zuni heretofore
+         mentioned; see above p. 89.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "chief-of men."]
+
+[Sidenote: Evolution of kingship in Greece and Rome.]
+
+The office of head war-chief was an instance of primitive royalty in a
+very interesting stage of development. The title of this officer was
+_tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men."[118] He was primarily head war-chief
+of the Aztec tribe, but about 1430 became supreme military commander of
+the three confederate tribes, so that his office was one of peculiar
+dignity and importance. When the Spaniards arrived upon the scene
+Montezuma was _tlacatecuhtli_, and they naturally called him "king." To
+understand precisely how far such an epithet could correctly be applied
+to him, and how far it was misleading, we must recall the manner in
+which early kingship arose in Europe. The Roman _rex_ was an officer
+elected for life; the typical Greek _basileus_ was a somewhat more fully
+developed king, inasmuch as his office was becoming practically
+hereditary; otherwise _rex_ was about equivalent to _basileus_. Alike in
+Rome and in Greece the king had at least three great functions, and
+possibly four.[119] He was, primarily, chief commander, secondly, chief
+priest, thirdly, chief judge; whether he had reached the fourth stage
+and added the functions of chief civil executive, is matter of dispute.
+Kingship in Rome and in most Greek cities was overthrown at so early a
+date that some questions of this sort are difficult to settle. But in
+all probability the office grew up through the successive acquisition of
+ritual, judicial, and civil functions by the military commander. The
+paramount necessity of consulting the tutelar deities before fighting
+resulted in making the general a priest competent to perform sacrifices
+and interpret omens;[120] he thus naturally became the most important
+among priests; an increased sanctity invested his person and office; and
+by and by he acquired control over the dispensation of justice, and
+finally over the whole civil administration. One step more was needed to
+develop the _basileus_ into a despot, like the king of Persia, and that
+was to let him get into his hands the law-making power, involving
+complete control over taxation. When the Greeks and Romans became
+dissatisfied with the increasing powers of their kings, they destroyed
+the office. The Romans did not materially diminish its functions, but
+put them into commission, by entrusting them to two consuls of equal
+authority elected annually. The Greeks, on the other hand, divided the
+royal functions among different officers, as e. g. at Athens among the
+nine archons.[121]
+
+         [Footnote 118: This title seems precisely equivalent to [Greek:
+         anax andron], commonly applied to Agamemnon, and sometimes to
+         other chieftains, in the Iliad.]
+
+         [Footnote 119: Ramsay's _Roman Antiquities_, p. 64; Hermann's
+         _Political Antiquities of Greece_, p. 105; Morgan, _Anc. Soc._,
+         p. 248.]
+
+         [Footnote 120: Such would naturally result from the
+         desirableness of securing unity of command. If Demosthenes had
+         been in sole command of the Athenian armament in the harbour of
+         Syracuse, and had been a _basileus_, with priestly authority,
+         who can doubt that some such theory of the eclipse as that
+         suggested by Philochorus would have been adopted, and thus one
+         of the world's great tragedies averted? See Grote, _Hist.
+         Greece_, vol. vii. chap. lx. M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his
+         admirable book _La Cite antique_, pp. 205-210, makes the
+         priestly function of the king primitive, and the military
+         function secondary; which is entirely inconsistent with what we
+         know of barbarous races.]
+
+         [Footnote 121: It is worthy of note that the archon who
+         retained the priestly function was called _basileus_, showing
+         perhaps that at that time this had come to be most prominent
+         among the royal functions, or more likely that it was the one
+         with which reformers had some religious scruples about
+         interfering. The Romans, too, retained part of the king's
+         priestly function in an officer called _rex sacrorum_, whose
+         duty was at times to offer a sacrifice in the forum, and then
+         run away as fast as legs could carry him,--[Greek: hen thysas
+         ho basileus, kata tachos apeisi pheugon ex agoras] (!)
+         Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 63.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mediaeval kingship.]
+
+The typical kingship in mediaeval Europe, after the full development of
+the feudal system, was very different indeed from the kingship in early
+Greece and Rome. In the Middle Ages all priestly functions had passed
+into the hands of the Church.[122] A king like Charles VII. of France,
+or Edward III. of England, was military commander, civil magistrate,
+chief judge, and _supreme landlord_; the people were his tenants. That
+was the kind of king with which the Spanish discoverers of Mexico were
+familiar.
+
+         [Footnote 122: Something of the priestly quality of "sanctity,"
+         however, surrounded the king's person; and the ceremony of
+         anointing the king at his coronation was a survival of the
+         ancient rite which invested the head war-chief with priestly
+         attributes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Montezuma was a "priest-commander."]
+
+Now the Mexican _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men," was much more like
+Agamemnon in point of kingship than like Edward III. He was not supreme
+landlord, for landlordship did not exist in Mexico. He was not chief
+judge or civil magistrate; those functions belonged to the
+"snake-woman." Mr. Bandelier regards the "chief-of-men" as simply a
+military commander; but for reasons which I shall state hereafter,[123]
+it seems quite clear that he exercised certain very important priestly
+functions, although beside him there was a kind of high-priest or
+medicine-chief. If I am right in holding that Montezuma was a
+"priest-commander," then incipient royalty in Mexico had advanced at
+least one stage beyond the head war-chief of the Iroquois, and remained
+one stage behind the _basileus_ of the Homeric Greeks.
+
+         [Footnote 123: They can be most conveniently stated in
+         connection with the story of the conquest of Mexico; see below,
+         vol. ii. p. 278. When Mr. Bandelier completes his long-promised
+         paper on the ancient Mexican religion, perhaps it will appear
+         that he has taken these facts into the account.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mode of succession to the office.]
+
+The _tlacatecuhtli_, or "chief-of-men," was elected by an assembly
+consisting of the tribal council, the "elder brothers" of the several
+clans, and certain leading priests. Though the office was thus elective,
+the choice seems to have been practically limited to a particular clan,
+and in the eleven chiefs who were chosen from 1375 to 1520 a certain
+principle or custom of succession seems to be plainly indicated.[124]
+There was a further limit to the order of succession. Allusion has been
+made to the four phratry-captains commanding the quarters of the city.
+Their cheerful titles were "man of the house of darts," "cutter of men,"
+"bloodshedder," and "chief of the eagle and cactus." These captains were
+military chiefs of the phratries, and also magistrates charged with the
+duty of maintaining order and enforcing the decrees of the council in
+their respective quarters. The "chief of the eagle and cactus" was chief
+executioner,--Jack Ketch. He was not eligible for the office of
+"chief-of-men;" the three other phratry-captains were eligible. Then
+there was a member of the priesthood entitled "man of the dark house."
+This person, with the three eligible captains, made a quartette, and one
+of this privileged four _must_ succeed to the office of "chief-of-men."
+
+         [Footnote 124: I cannot follow Mr. Bandelier in discrediting
+         Clavigero's statement that the office of _tlacatecuhtli_
+         "should always remain in the house of Acamapitzin," inasmuch as
+         the eleven who were actually elected were all closely akin to
+         one another. In point of fact it _did_ remain "in the house of
+         Acamapitzin."]
+
+The eligibility of the "man of the dark house" may be cited here as
+positive proof that sometimes the "chief-of-men" could be a
+"priest-commander." That in all cases he acquired priestly functions
+after election, even when he did not possess them before, is indicated
+by the fact that at the ceremony of his induction into office he
+ascended to the summit of the pyramid sacred to the war-god
+Huitzilopochtli, where he was anointed by the high-priest with a black
+ointment, and sprinkled with sanctified water; having thus become
+consecrated he took a censer of live coals and a bag of copal, and as
+his first official act offered incense to the war-god.[125]
+
+         [Footnote 125: H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific
+         States_, vol. ii. p. 145. Hence the accounts of the reverent
+         demeanour of the people toward Montezuma, though perhaps
+         overcoloured, are not so absurd as Mr. Morgan deemed them. Mr.
+         Morgan was sometimes too anxious to reduce Montezuma to the
+         level of an Iroquois war-chief.]
+
+[Sidenote: Manner of collecting tribute.]
+
+As the "chief-of-men" was elected, so too he could be deposed for
+misbehaviour. He was _ex officio_ a member of the tribal council, and he
+had his official residence in the _tecpan_, or tribal house, where the
+meetings of the council were held, and where the hospitalities of the
+tribe were extended to strangers. As an administrative officer, the
+"chief-of-men" had little to do within the limits of the tribe; that, as
+already observed, was the business of the "snake-woman." But outside of
+the confederacy the "chief-of-men" exercised administrative functions.
+He superintended the collection of tribute. Each of the three
+confederate tribes appointed, through its tribal council, agents to
+visit the subjected pueblos and gather in the tribute. These agents were
+expressively termed _calpixqui_, "crop-gatherers." As these men were
+obliged to spend considerable time in the vanquished pueblos in the
+double character of tax-collectors and spies, we can imagine how hateful
+their position was. Their security from injury depended upon the
+reputation of their tribes for ruthless ferocity.[126] The tiger-like
+confederacy was only too ready to take offence; in the lack of a decent
+pretext it often went to war without one, simply in order to get human
+victims for sacrifice.
+
+         [Footnote 126: As I have elsewhere observed in a similar
+         case:--"Each summer there came two Mohawk elders, secure in the
+         dread that Iroquois prowess had everywhere inspired; and up and
+         down the Connecticut valley they seized the tribute of weapons
+         and wampum, and proclaimed the last harsh edict issued from the
+         savage council at Onondaga." _Beginnings of New England_, p.
+         121.]
+
+Once appointed, the tax-gatherers were directed by the "chief-of-men."
+The tribute was chiefly maize, but might be anything the conquerors
+chose to demand,--weapons, fine pottery or featherwork, gold ornaments,
+or female slaves. Sometimes the tributary pueblo, instead of sacrificing
+all its prisoners of war upon its own altars, sent some of them up to
+Mexico as part of its tribute. The ravening maw of the horrible deities
+was thus appeased, not by the pueblo that paid the blackmail, but by the
+power that extorted it, and thus the latter obtained a larger share of
+divine favour. Generally the unhappy prisoners were forced to carry the
+corn and other articles. They were convoyed by couriers who saw that
+everything was properly delivered at the _tecpan_, and also brought
+information by word of mouth and by picture-writing from the _calpixqui_
+to the "chief-of-men." When the newly-arrived Spaniards saw these
+couriers coming and going they fancied that they were "ambassadors."
+This system of tribute-taking made it necessary to build roads, and this
+in turn facilitated, not only military operations, but trade, which had
+already made some progress albeit of a simple sort. These "roads" might
+perhaps more properly be called Indian trails,[127] but they served
+their purpose.
+
+         [Footnote 127: See Salmeron's letter of August 13, 1531, to the
+         Council of the Indies, cited in Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 696.
+         The letter recommends that to increase the security of the
+         Spanish hold upon the country the roads should be made
+         practicable for beasts and wagons. They were narrow paths
+         running straight ahead up hill and down dale, sometimes
+         crossing narrow ravines upon heavy stone culverts.]
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec and Iroquois confederacies contrasted.]
+
+The general similarity of the Aztec confederacy to that of the
+Iroquois, in point of social structure, is thus clearly manifest. Along
+with this general similarity we have observed some points of higher
+development, such as one might expect to find in traversing the entire
+length of an ethnical period. Instead of stockaded villages, with houses
+of bark or of clay supported upon a wooden framework, we have pueblos of
+adobe-brick or stone, in various stages of evolution, the most advanced
+of which present the appearance of castellated cities. Along with the
+systematic irrigation and increased dependence upon horticulture, we
+find evidences of greater density of population; and we see in the
+victorious confederacy a more highly developed organization for adding
+to its stock of food and other desirable possessions by the systematic
+plunder of neighbouring weaker communities. Naturally such increase in
+numbers and organization entails some increase in the number of officers
+and some differentiation of their functions, as illustrated in the
+representation of the clans (_calpulli_) in the tribal council
+(_tlatocan_), by speakers (_tlatoani_) chosen for the purpose, and not
+by the official heads (_calpullec_) of the clan. Likewise in the
+military commander-in-chief (_tlacatecuhtli_) we observe a marked
+increase in dignity, and--as I have already suggested and hope to
+maintain--we find that his office has been clothed with sacerdotal
+powers, and has thus taken a decided step toward kingship of the ancient
+type, as depicted in the Homeric poems.
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec priesthood: human sacrifices.]
+
+No feature of the advance is more noteworthy than the development of
+the medicine-men into an organized priesthood.[128] The presence of this
+priesthood and its ritual was proclaimed to the eyes of the traveller in
+ancient Mexico by the numerous tall truncated pyramids (_teocallis_), on
+the flat summits of which men, women, and children were sacrificed to
+the gods. This custom of human sacrifice seems to have been a
+characteristic of the middle period of barbarism, and to have survived,
+with diminishing frequency, into the upper period. There are abundant
+traces of its existence throughout the early Aryan world, from Britain
+to Hindustan, as well as among the ancient Hebrews and their
+kindred.[129] But among all these peoples, at the earliest times at
+which we can study them with trustworthy records, we find the custom of
+human sacrifice in an advanced stage of decline, and generally no longer
+accompanied by the custom of cannibalism in which it probably
+originated.[130] Among the Mexicans, however, when they were first
+visited by the Spaniards, cannibalism flourished as nowhere else in the
+world except perhaps in Fiji, and human sacrifices were conducted on
+such a scale as could not have been witnessed in Europe without going
+back more than forty centuries.
+
+         [Footnote 128: The priesthood was not hereditary, nor did it
+         form a caste. There was no hereditary nobility in ancient
+         Mexico, nor were there any hereditary vocations, as "artisans,"
+         "merchants," etc. See Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 599.]
+
+         [Footnote 129: See the copious references in Tylor's _Primitive
+         Culture_, ii. 340-371; Mackay, _Religious Development of the
+         Greeks and Hebrews_, ii. 406-434; Oort and Hooykaas, _The Bible
+         for Young People_, i. 30, 189-193; ii. 102, 220; iii. 21, 170,
+         316, 393, 395; iv. 85, 226. Ghillany, _Die Menschenopfer der
+         alten Hebraeer_, Nuremberg, 1842, treats the subject with much
+         learning.]
+
+         [Footnote 130: Spencer, _Princip. Sociol._, i. 287; Tylor, _op.
+         cit._ ii. 345.]
+
+The custom of sacrificing captives to the gods was a marked advance upon
+the practice in the lower period of barbarism, when the prisoner, unless
+saved by adoption into the tribe of his captors, was put to death with
+lingering torments. There were occasions on which the Aztecs tortured
+their prisoners before sending them to the altar,[131] but in general
+the prisoner was well-treated and highly fed,--fatted, in short, for the
+final banquet in which the worshippers participated with their savage
+deity.[132] In a more advanced stage of development than that which the
+Aztecs had reached, in the stage when agriculture became extensive
+enough to create a steady demand for servile labour, the practice of
+enslaving prisoners became general; and as slaves became more and more
+valuable, men gradually succeeded in compounding with their deities for
+easier terms,--a ram, or a kid, or a bullock, instead of the human
+victim.[133]
+
+         [Footnote 131: Mr. Prescott, to avoid shocking the reader with
+         details, refers him to the twenty-first canto of Dante's
+         Inferno, _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 64.]
+
+         [Footnote 132: See below, vol. ii. p. 283.]
+
+         [Footnote 133: The victim, by the offer of which the wrath of
+         the god was appeased or his favour solicited, must always be
+         some valued possession of the sacrificer. Hence, e. g., among
+         the Hebrews "wild animals, as not being property, were
+         generally considered unfit for sacrifice." (Mackay, _op. cit._
+         ii. 398.) Among the Aztecs (Prescott, _loc. cit._) on certain
+         occasions of peculiar solemnity the clan offered some of its
+         own members, usually children. In the lack of prisoners such
+         offerings would more often be necessary, hence one powerful
+         incentive to war. The use of prisoners to buy the god's favour
+         was to some extent a substitute for the use of the clan's own
+         members, and at a later stage the use of domestic animals was a
+         further substitution. The legend of Abraham and Isaac
+         (_Genesis_, xxii. 1-14) preserves the tradition of this latter
+         substitution among the ancient Hebrews. Compare the Boeotian
+         legend of the temple of Dionysos Aigobolos:--[Greek: thyontes
+         gar to theo proechthesan pote hypo methes es hybrin, hoste kai
+         tou Dionysou ton hierea apokteinousin; apokteinantas de autika
+         epelabe nosos loimodes; kai sphisin aphiketo hama ek Delphon,
+         to Dionyso thyein paida horaion; etesi de ou pollois hysteron
+         ton theon phasin aiga hiereion hypallaxai sphisin anti tou
+         paidos.]
+
+Pausanias, ix. 8. A further stage of progress was the substitution of a
+mere inanimate symbol for a living victim, whether human or brute, as
+shown in the old Roman custom of appeasing "Father Tiber" once a year by
+the ceremony of drowning a lot of dolls in that river. Of this
+significant rite Mommsen aptly observes, "Die Ideen goettlicher Gnade und
+Versoehnbarkeit sind hier ununterscheidbar gemischt mit der frommen
+Schlauigkeit, welche es versucht den gefaehrlichen Herrn durch
+scheinhafte Befriedigung zu beruecken und abzufinden." _Roemische
+Geschichte_, 4e Aufl., 1865, Bd. i. p. 176. After reading such a remark
+it may seem odd to find the writer, in a footnote, refusing to accept
+the true explanation of the custom; but that was a quarter of a century
+ago, when much less was known about ancient society than now.]
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec slaves.]
+
+The ancient Mexicans had not arrived at this stage, which in the Old
+World characterized the upper period of barbarism. Slavery had, however,
+made a beginning among the Aztecs. The nucleus of the small
+slave-population of Mexico consisted of _outcasts_, persons expelled
+from the clan for some misdemeanour. The simplest case was that in which
+a member of a clan failed for two years to cultivate his
+garden-plot.[134] The delinquent member was deprived, not only of his
+right of user, but of all his rights as a clansman, and the only way to
+escape starvation was to work upon some other lot, either in his own or
+in some other clan, and be paid in such pittance from its produce as the
+occupant might choose to give him. This was slavery in embryo. The
+occupant did not own this outcast labourer, any more than he owned his
+lot; he only possessed a limited right of user in both labourer and lot.
+To a certain extent it was "adverse" or exclusive possession. If the
+slave ran away or was obstinately lazy, he could be made to wear a
+wooden collar and sold without his consent; if it proved too troublesome
+to keep him, the collared slave could be handed over to the priests for
+sacrifice.[135] In this class of outcasts and their masters we have an
+interesting illustration of a rudimentary phase of slavery and of
+private property.
+
+         [Footnote 134: Bandelier, _op. cit._ p. 611.]
+
+         [Footnote 135: There was, however, in this extreme case, a
+         right of sanctuary. If the doomed slave could flee and hide
+         himself in the _tecpan_ before the master or one of his sons
+         could catch him, he became free and recovered his clan-rights;
+         and no third person was allowed to interfere in aid of the
+         pursuer. Torquemada, _Monarquia indiana_, ii. 564-566.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Aztec family.]
+
+At this point it is worthy of note that in the development of the family
+the Aztecs had advanced considerably beyond the point attained by
+Shawnees and Mohawks, and a little way toward the point attained in the
+patriarchal family of the ancient Romans and Hebrews. In the Aztec clan
+(which was exogamous[136]) the change to descent in the male line seems
+to have been accomplished before the time of the Discovery. Apparently
+it had been recently accomplished. Names for designating family
+relationships remained in that primitive stage in which no distinction
+is made between father and uncle, grandchildren and cousins. The family
+was still too feebly established to count for much in the structure of
+society, which still rested firmly upon the clan.[137] Nevertheless the
+marriage bonds were drawn much tighter than among Indians of the lower
+status, and penalties for incontinence were more severe. The wife became
+her husband's property and was entitled to the protection of his clan.
+All matrimonial arrangements were controlled by the clan, and no member
+of it, male or female, was allowed to remain unmarried, except for
+certain religious reasons. The penalty for contumacy was expulsion from
+the clan, and the same penalty was inflicted for such sexual
+irregularities as public opinion, still in what we should call quite a
+primitive stage, condemned. Men and women thus expelled went to swell
+the numbers of that small class of outcasts already noted. With men the
+result, as we have seen, was a kind of slavery; with women it was
+prostitution; and it is curious to see that the same penalty, entailing
+such a result, was visited alike upon unseemly frailty and upon refusal
+to marry. In either case the sin consisted in rebellion against the
+clan's standards of proper or permissible behaviour.
+
+         [Footnote 136: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_,
+         vol. ii. p. 251.]
+
+         [Footnote 137: Bandelier, _op. cit._ pp. 429, 570, 620.]
+
+[Sidenote: Aztec property.]
+
+The inheritance in the male line, the beginnings of individual property
+in slaves, the tightening of the marriage bond, accompanied by the
+condemnation of sundry irregularities heretofore tolerated, are
+phenomena which we might expect to find associated together. They are
+germs of the upper status of barbarism, as well as of the earliest
+status of civilization more remotely to follow. The common cause, of
+which they are the manifestations, is an increasing sense of the value
+and importance of personal property. In the Old World this sense grew up
+during a pastoral stage of society such as the New World never knew, and
+by the ages of Abraham and Agamemnon[138] it had produced results such
+as had not been reached in Mexico at the time of the Discovery. Still
+the tendency in the latter country was in a similar direction. Though
+there was no notion of real estate, and the house was still
+clan-property, yet the number and value of articles of personal
+ownership had no doubt greatly increased during the long interval which
+must have elapsed since the ancestral Mexicans entered upon the middle
+status. The mere existence of large and busy market-places with regular
+and frequent fairs, even though trade had scarcely begun to emerge from
+the stage of barter, is sufficient proof of this. Such fairs and markets
+do not belong to the Mohawk chapter in human progress. They imply a
+considerable number and diversity of artificial products, valued as
+articles of personal property. A legitimate inference from them is the
+existence of a certain degree of luxury, though doubtless luxury of a
+barbaric type.
+
+         [Footnote 138: I here use these world-famous names without any
+         implication as to their historical character, or their precise
+         date, which are in themselves interesting subjects for
+         discussion. I use them as best symbolizing the state of society
+         which existed about the northern and eastern shores of the
+         eastern Mediterranean, several centuries before the
+         Olympiads.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Morgan's rules.]
+
+It is at this point, I think, that a judicious critic will begin to part
+company with Mr. Morgan. As regards the outward aspect of the society
+which the Spaniards found in Mexico, that eminent scholar more than once
+used arguments that were inconsistent with principles of criticism laid
+down by himself. At the beginning of his chapter on the Aztec
+confederacy Mr. Morgan proposed the following rules:--
+
+"The histories of Spanish America may be trusted in whatever relates to
+the acts of the Spaniards, and to the acts and personal characteristics
+of the Indians; in whatever relates to their weapons, implements and
+utensils, fabrics, food and raiment, and things of a similar character.
+
+"But in whatever relates to Indian society and government, their social
+relations and plan of life, they are nearly worthless, because they
+learned nothing and knew nothing of either. We are at full liberty to
+reject them in these respects and commence anew; using any facts they
+may contain which harmonize with what is known of Indian society."[139]
+
+         [Footnote 139: Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 186, note.]
+
+Perhaps it would have been better if the second of these rules had been
+somewhat differently worded; for even with regard to the strange society
+and government, the Spanish writers have recorded an immense number of
+valuable facts, without which Mr. Bandelier's work would have been
+impossible. It is not so much the _facts_ as the _interpretations_ of
+the Spanish historians that are "nearly worthless," and even their
+misinterpretations are interesting and instructive when once we rightly
+understand them. Sometimes they really help us toward the truth.
+
+[Sidenote: Mr. Morgan sometimes disregarded his own rules: "Montezuma's
+Dinner."]
+
+The broad distinction, however, as stated in Mr. Morgan's pair of rules,
+is well taken. In regard to such a strange form of society the Spanish
+discoverers of Mexico could not help making mistakes, but in regard to
+utensils and dress their senses were not likely to deceive them, and
+their statements, according to Mr. Morgan, may be trusted. Very good.
+But as soon as Mr. Morgan had occasion to write about the social life of
+the Aztecs, he forgot his own rules and paid as little respect to the
+senses of eye-witnesses as to their judgment. This was amusingly
+illustrated in his famous essay on "Montezuma's Dinner."[140] When
+Bernal Diaz describes Montezuma as sitting on a low chair at a table
+covered with a white cloth, Mr. Morgan declares that it could not have
+been so,--there were no chairs or tables! On second thought he will
+admit that there may have been a wooden block hollowed out for a stool,
+but in the matter of a table he is relentless. So when Cortes, in his
+despatch to the emperor, speaks of the "wine-cellar" and of the presence
+of "secretaries" at dinner, Mr. Morgan observes, "Since cursive writing
+was unknown among the Aztecs, the presence of these secretaries is an
+amusing feature in the account. The wine-cellar also is remarkable for
+two reasons: firstly, because the level of the streets and courts was
+but four feet above the level of the water, which made cellars
+impossible; and, secondly, because the Aztecs had no knowledge of wine.
+An acid beer (_pulque_), made by fermenting the juice of the maguey, was
+a common beverage of the Aztecs; but it is hardly supposable that even
+this was used at dinner."[141]
+
+         [Footnote 140: _North Amer. Review_, April, 1876. The substance
+         of it was reproduced in his _Houses and House-Life_, chap. x.]
+
+         [Footnote 141: _Houses and House-Life_, p. 241.]
+
+To this I would reply that the fibre of that same useful plant from
+which the Aztecs made their "beer" supplied them also with paper, upon
+which they were in the habit of writing, not indeed in cursive
+characters, but in hieroglyphics. This kind of writing, as well as any
+other, accounts for the presence of secretaries, which seems to me, by
+the way, a very probable and characteristic feature in the narrative.
+From the moment the mysterious strangers landed, every movement of
+theirs had been recorded in hieroglyphics, and there is no reason why
+notes of what they said and did should not have been taken at dinner. As
+for the place where the _pulque_ was kept, it was a venial slip of the
+pen to call it a "wine-cellar," even if it was not below the ground. The
+language of Cortes does not imply that he visited the "cellar;" he saw a
+crowd of Indians drinking the beverage, and supposing the great house he
+was in to be Montezuma's, he expressed his sense of that person's
+hospitality by saying that "his wine-cellar was open to all." And
+really, is it not rather a captious criticism which in one breath chides
+Cortes for calling the beverage "wine," and in the next breath goes on
+to call it "beer"? The _pulque_ was neither the one nor the other; for
+want of any other name a German might have called it beer, a Spaniard
+would be more likely to call it wine. And why is it "hardly supposable"
+that _pulque_ was used at dinner? Why should Mr. Morgan, who never dined
+with Montezuma, know so much more about _such things_ than Cortes and
+Bernal Diaz, who did?[142]
+
+         [Footnote 142: Mr. Andrew Lang asks some similar questions in
+         his _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p. 349, but in a
+         tone of impatient contempt which, as applied to a man of Mr.
+         Morgan's calibre, is hardly becoming.]
+
+[Sidenote: The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated statements.]
+
+The Spanish statements of facts are, of course, not to be accepted
+uncritically. When we are told of cut slabs of porphyry inlaid in the
+walls of a room, we have a right to inquire how so hard a stone could be
+cut with flint or copper chisels,[143] and are ready to entertain the
+suggestion that some other stone might easily have been mistaken for
+porphyry. Such a critical inquiry is eminently profitable, and none the
+less so when it brings us to the conclusion that the Aztecs did succeed
+in cutting porphyry. Again, when we read about Indian armies of 200,000
+men, pertinent questions arise as to the commissariat, and we are led to
+reflect that there is nothing about which old soldiers spin such
+unconscionable yarns as about the size of the armies they have
+thrashed. In a fairy tale, of course, such suggestions are impertinent;
+things can go on anyhow. In real life it is different. The trouble with
+most historians of the conquest of Mexico has been that they have made
+it like a fairy tale, and the trouble with Mr. Morgan was that, in a
+wholesome and much-needed spirit of reaction, he was too much inclined
+to dismiss the whole story as such. He forgot the first of his pair of
+rules, and applied the second to everything alike. He felt "at full
+liberty to reject" the testimony of the discoverers as to what they saw
+and tasted, and to "commence anew," reasoning from "what is known of
+Indian society." And here Mr. Morgan's mind was so full of the kind of
+Indian society which he knew more minutely and profoundly than any other
+man, that he was apt to forget that there could be any other kind. He
+overlooked his own distinction between the lower and middle periods of
+barbarism in his attempt to ignore or minimize the points of difference
+between Aztecs and Iroquois.[144] In this way he did injustice to his
+own brilliant and useful classification of stages of culture, and in
+particular to the middle period of barbarism, the significance of which
+he was the first to detect, but failed to realize fully because his
+attention had been so intensely concentrated upon the lower period.
+
+         [Footnote 143: For an excellent account of ancient Mexican
+         knives and chisels, see Dr. Valentini's paper on "Semi-Lunar
+         and Crescent-Shaped Tools," in _Proceedings of Amer. Antiq.
+         Soc._, New Series, vol. iii. pp. 449-474. Compare the very
+         interesting Spanish observations on copper hatchets and flint
+         chisels in Clavigero, _Historia antigua_, tom. i. p. 242;
+         Mendieta, _Historia ecclesiastica indiana_, tom. iv. cap. xii.]
+
+         [Footnote 144: It often happens that the followers of a great
+         man are more likely to run to extremes than their master, as,
+         for example, when we see the queen of pueblos rashly described
+         as "a collection of mud huts, such as Cortes found and
+         dignified with the name of a city." _Smithsonian Report_, 1887,
+         part i. p. 691. This is quite inadmissible.]
+
+[Sidenote: Importance of the middle period of barbarism.]
+
+In truth, the middle period of barbarism was one of the most important
+periods in the career of the human race, and full of fascination to the
+student, as the unfading interest in ancient Mexico and the huge mass of
+literature devoted to it show. It spanned the interval between such
+society as that of Hiawatha and such as that of the Odyssey. One more
+such interval (and, I suspect, a briefer one, because the use of iron
+and the development of inheritable wealth would accelerate progress) led
+to the age that could _write_ the Odyssey, one of the most beautiful
+productions of the human mind. If Mr. Morgan had always borne in mind
+that, on his own classification, Montezuma must have been at least as
+near to Agamemnon as to Powhatan, his attitude toward the Spanish
+historians would have been less hostile. A Moqui pueblo stands near the
+lower end of the middle period of barbarism; ancient Troy stood next the
+upper end. Mr. Morgan found apt illustrations in the former; perhaps if
+he had lived long enough to profit by the work of Schliemann and
+Bandelier, he might have found equally apt ones in the latter. Mr.
+Bandelier's researches certainly show that the ancient city of Mexico,
+in point of social development, stood somewhere between the two.
+
+How that city looked may best be described when we come to tell what its
+first Spanish visitors saw. Let it suffice here to say that, upon a
+reasonable estimate of their testimony, pleasure-gardens, menageries and
+aviaries, fountains and baths, tessellated marble floors, finely wrought
+pottery, exquisite featherwork, brilliant mats and tapestries, silver
+goblets, dainty spices burning in golden censers, varieties of highly
+seasoned dishes, dramatic performances, jugglers and acrobats, ballad
+singers and dancing girls,--such things were to be seen in this city of
+snake-worshipping cannibals. It simulated civilization as a tree-fern
+simulates a tree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: Ground-plan of so-called "House of the Nuns" at Uxmal.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mexicans and Mayas.]
+
+In its general outlines the account here given of Aztec society and
+government at the time of the Discovery will probably hold true of all
+the semi-civilized communities of the Mexican peninsula and Central
+America. The pueblos of Mexico were doubtless of various grades of size,
+strength, and comfort, ranging from such structures as Zuni up to the
+city of Mexico. The cities of Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala, whose
+ruins, in those tropical forests, are so impressive, probably belong to
+the same class. The Maya-Quiche tribes, who dwelt and still dwell in
+this region, were different in stock-language from their neighbours of
+Mexico; but there are strong reasons for believing that the two great
+groups, Mexicans and Mayas, arose from the expansion and segmentation of
+one common stock, and there is no doubt as to the very close similarity
+between the two in government, religion, and social advancement. In some
+points the Mayas were superior. They possessed a considerable
+literature, written in highly developed hieroglyphic characters upon
+maguey paper and upon deerskin parchment, so that from this point of
+view they stood upon the threshold of civilization as strictly
+defined.[145] But, like the Mexicans, they were ignorant of iron, their
+society was organized upon the principle of gentilism, they were
+cannibals and sacrificed men and women to idols, some of which were
+identical with those of Mexico. The Mayas had no conception of property
+in land; their buildings were great communal houses, like pueblos; in
+some cases these so-called palaces, at first supposed to be scanty
+remnants of vast cities, were themselves the entire "cities;" in other
+cases there were doubtless large composite pueblos fit to be called
+cities.
+
+         [Footnote 145: This writing was at once recognized by learned
+         Spaniards, like Las Casas, as entirely different from anything
+         found elsewhere in America. He found in Yucatan "letreros de
+         ciertos caracteres que en otra ninguna parte," Las Casas,
+         _Historia apologetica_, cap. cxxiii. For an account of the
+         hieroglyphics, see the learned essays of Dr. Cyrus Thomas, _A
+         Study of the Manuscript Troano_, Washington, 1882; "Notes on
+         certain Maya and Mexican MSS.," _Third Report of the Bureau of
+         Ethnology_, pp. 7-153; "Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices,"
+         _Sixth Report_, pp. 259-371. (The paper last mentioned ends
+         with the weighty words, "The more I study these characters the
+         stronger becomes the conviction that they have grown out of a
+         pictographic system similar to that common among the Indians of
+         North America." Exactly so; and this is typical of every aspect
+         and every detail of ancient American culture. It is becoming
+         daily more evident that the old notion of an influence from
+         Asia has not a leg to stand on.) See also a suggestive paper by
+         the astronomer, E. S. Holden, "Studies in Central American
+         Picture-Writing," _First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_,
+         pp. 205-245; Brinton, _Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan_,
+         New York, 1870; _Essays of an Americanist_, Philadelphia, 1890,
+         pp. 193-304; Leon de Rosny, _Les ecritures figuratives_, Paris,
+         1870; _L'interpretation des anciens textes Mayas_, Paris, 1875;
+         _Essai sur le dechiffrement de l'ecriture hieratique de
+         l'Amerique Centrale_, Paris, 1876; Foerstemann, _Erlaeuterungen
+         der Maya Handschrift_, Dresden, 1886. The decipherment is as
+         yet but partially accomplished. The Mexican system of writing
+         is clearly developed from the ordinary Indian pictographs; it
+         could not have arisen from the Maya system, but the latter
+         might well have been a further development of the Mexican
+         system; the Maya system had probably developed some characters
+         with a phonetic value, i. e. was groping toward the
+         alphabetical stage; but how far this groping had gone must
+         remain very doubtful until the decipherment has proceeded
+         further. Dr. Isaac Taylor is too hasty in saying that "the
+         Mayas employed twenty-seven characters which must be admitted
+         to be alphabetic" (Taylor, _The Alphabet_, vol. i. p. 24); this
+         statement is followed by the conclusion that the Maya system of
+         writing was "superior in simplicity and convenience to that
+         employed ... by the great Assyrian nation at the epoch of its
+         greatest power and glory." Dr. Taylor has been misled by Diego
+         de Landa, whose work (_Relation des choses de l'Yucatan_, ed.
+         Brasseur, Paris, 1864) has in it some pitfalls for the unwary.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ruined cities of Central America.]
+
+These noble ruins have excited great and increasing interest since the
+publication of Mr. Stephens's charming book just fifty years ago.[146]
+An air of profound mystery surrounded them, and many wild theories were
+propounded to account for their existence. They were at first accredited
+with a fabulous antiquity, and in at least one instance this notion was
+responsible for what must be called misrepresentation, if not
+humbug.[147] Having been placed by popular fancy at such a remote age,
+they were naturally supposed to have been built, not by the Mayas,--who
+still inhabit Yucatan and do not absolutely dazzle us with their exalted
+civilization,--but by some wonderful people long since vanished. Now as
+to this point the sculptured slabs of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza tell their
+own story. They are covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and these
+hieroglyphs are the same as those in which the Dresden Codex and other
+Maya manuscripts still preserved are written; though their decipherment
+is not yet complete, there is no sort of doubt as to their being written
+in the Maya characters. Careful inspection, moreover, shows that the
+buildings in which these inscriptions occur are not so very ancient. Mr.
+Stephens, who was one of their earliest as well as sanest explorers,
+believed them to be the work of the Mayas at a comparatively recent
+period.[148] The notion of their antiquity was perhaps suggested by the
+belief that certain colossal mahogany trees growing between and over
+the ruins at Palenque must be nearly 2,000 years old. But when M. de
+Charnay visited Palenque in 1859 he had the eastern side of the "palace"
+cleared of its dense vegetation in order to get a good photograph; and
+when he revisited the spot in 1881 he found a sturdy growth of young
+mahogany the age of which he knew did not exceed twenty-two years.
+Instead of making a ring once a year, as in our sluggish and temperate
+zone, these trees had made rings at the rate of about one in a month;
+their trunks were already more than two feet in diameter; judging from
+this rate of growth the biggest giant on the place need not have been
+more than 200 years old, if as much.[149]
+
+         [Footnote 146: Stephens, _Incidents of Travel in Central
+         America, Chiapas, and Yucatan_, 2 vols., New York, 1841.]
+
+         [Footnote 147: It occurred in the drawings of the artist
+         Frederic de Waldeck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but
+         whose researches were published later. "His drawings," says Mr.
+         Winsor, "are exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to
+         improve and restore, where the conditions gave a hint, and so
+         as we have them in the final publication they have not been
+         accepted as wholly trustworthy." _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i.
+         194. M. de Charnay puts it more strongly. Upon his drawing of a
+         certain panel at Palenque, M. de Waldeck "has seen fit to place
+         three or four elephants. What end did he propose to himself in
+         giving this fictitious representation? Presumably to give a
+         prehistoric origin to these ruins, since it is an ascertained
+         fact that elephants in a fossil state only have been found on
+         the American continent. It is needless to add that neither
+         Catherwood, who drew these inscriptions most minutely, nor
+         myself who brought impressions of them away, nor living man,
+         ever saw these elephants and their fine trunks. But such is the
+         mischief engendered by preconceived opinions. With some writers
+         it would seem that to give a recent date to these monuments
+         would deprive them of all interest. It would have been
+         fortunate had explorers been imbued with fewer prejudices and
+         gifted with a little more common sense, for then we should have
+         known the truth with regard to these ruins long since."
+         Charnay, _The Ancient Cities of the New World_, London, 1887,
+         p. 248. The gallant explorer's indignation is certainly quite
+         pardonable.]
+
+         [Footnote 148: Some of his remarks are worth quoting in detail,
+         especially in view of the time when they were written: "I
+         repeat my opinion that we are not warranted in going back to
+         any ancient nation of the Old World for the builders of these
+         cities; that they are not the work of people who have passed
+         away and whose history is lost, but that there are strong
+         reasons to believe them the creations of the same races who
+         inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or
+         some not very distant progenitors. And I would remark that we
+         began our exploration without any theory to support.... Some
+         are beyond doubt older than others; some are known to have been
+         inhabited at the time of the Spanish conquest, and others,
+         perhaps, were really in ruins before; ... but in regard to
+         Uxmal, at least, we believe that it was an existing and
+         inhabited city at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards."
+         Stephens, _Central America_, etc., vol. ii. p. 455.]
+
+         [Footnote 149: Charnay, _The Ancient Cities of the New World_,
+         p. 260.]
+
+[Sidenote: They are probably not older than the twelfth century.]
+
+These edifices are not so durably constructed as those which in Europe
+have stood for more than a thousand years. They do not indicate a high
+civilization on the part of their builders. They do not, as Mr. Andrew
+Lang says, "throw Mycenae into the shade, and rival the remains of
+Cambodia."[150] In pictures they may seem to do so, but M. de Charnay,
+after close and repeated examination of these buildings, assures us that
+as structures they "cannot be compared with those at Cambodia, which
+belong to nearly the same period, the twelfth century, and which,
+notwithstanding their greater and more resisting proportions, are found
+in the same dilapidated condition."[151] It seems to me that if Mr.
+Lang had spoken of the Yucatan ruins as rivalling the remains of Mycenae,
+instead of "throwing them into the shade," he would have come nearer the
+mark. The builders of Uxmal, like those of Mycenae, did not understand
+the principle of the arch, but were feeling their way toward it.[152]
+And here again we are brought back, as seems to happen whatever road we
+follow, to the middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan architecture
+shows the marks of its origin in the adobe and rubble-stone work of the
+New Mexico pueblos. The inside of the wall "is a rude mixture of friable
+mortar and small irregular stones," and under the pelting tropical rains
+the dislocation of the outer facing is presently effected. The large
+blocks, cut with flint chisels, are of a soft stone that is soon damaged
+by weather; and the cornices and lintels are beams of a very hard wood,
+yet not so hard but that insects bore into it. From such considerations
+it is justly inferred that the highest probable antiquity for most of
+the ruins in Yucatan or Central America is the twelfth or thirteenth
+century of our era.[153] Some, perhaps, may be no older than the ancient
+city of Mexico, built A. D. 1325.
+
+         [Footnote 150: Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, vol. ii. p.
+         348.]
+
+         [Footnote 151: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 209. "I may remark that
+         [the] virgin forests [here] have no very old trees, being
+         destroyed by insects, moisture, lianas, etc.; and old monteros
+         tell me that mahogany and cedar trees, which are most durable,
+         do not live above 200 years," id. p. 447.]
+
+         [Footnote 152: The reader will find it suggestive to compare
+         portions of Schliemann's _Mycenae_ and M. de Charnay's book,
+         just cited, with Morgan's _Houses and House-Life_, chap. xi.]
+
+         [Footnote 153: Charnay, _op. cit._ p. 411. Copan and Palenque
+         may be two or three centuries older, and had probably fallen
+         into ruins before the arrival of the Spaniards.]
+
+[Sidenote: Chronicle of Chicxulub.]
+
+But we are no longer restricted to purely archaeological evidence. One of
+the most impressive of all these ruined cities is Chichen-Itza, which is
+regarded as older than Uxmal, but not so old as Izamal. Now in recent
+times sundry old Maya documents have been discovered in Yucatan, and
+among them is a brief history of the Spanish conquest of that country,
+written in the Roman character by a native chief, Nakuk Pech, about
+1562. It has been edited, with an English translation, by that zealous
+and indefatigable scholar, to whom American philology owes such a debt
+of gratitude,--Dr. Daniel Brinton. This chronicle tells us several
+things that we did not know before, and, among others, it refers most
+explicitly to Chichen-Itza and Izamal as inhabited towns during the time
+that the Spaniards were coming, from 1519 to 1542. If there could have
+been any lingering doubt as to the correctness of the views of Stephens,
+Morgan, and Charnay, this contemporaneous documentary testimony dispels
+it once for all.[154]
+
+         [Footnote 154: Brinton, _The Maya Chronicles_, Philadelphia,
+         1882, "Chronicle of Chicxulub," pp. 187-259. This book is of
+         great importance, and for the ancient history of Guatemala
+         Brinton's _Annals of the Cakchiquels_, Philadelphia, 1885, is
+         of like value and interest.
+
+         Half a century ago Mr. Stephens wrote in truly prophetic vein,
+         "the convents are rich in manuscripts and documents written by
+         the early fathers, caciques, and Indians, who very soon
+         acquired the knowledge of Spanish and the art of writing. These
+         have never been examined with the slightest reference to this
+         subject; _and I cannot help thinking that some precious
+         memorial is now mouldering in the library of a neighbouring
+         convent, which would determine the history of some one of these
+         ruined cities_." Vol. ii. p. 456. The italicizing, of course,
+         is mine.]
+
+[Sidenote: Maya culture very closely related to Mexican.]
+
+The Mexicans and Mayas believed themselves to be akin to each other,
+they had several deities and a large stock of traditional lore in
+common, and there was an essential similarity in their modes of life; so
+that, since we are now assured that such cities as Izamal and
+Chichen-Itza were contemporary with the city of Mexico, we shall
+probably not go very far astray if we assume that the elaborately carved
+and bedizened ruins of the former may give us some hint as to how things
+might have looked in the latter. Indeed this complicated and grotesque
+carving on walls, door-posts, and lintels was one of the first things to
+attract the attention of the Spaniards in Mexico. They regarded it with
+mingled indignation and awe, for serpents, coiled or uncoiled, with
+gaping mouths, were most conspicuous among the objects represented. The
+visitors soon learned that all this had a symbolic and religious
+meaning, and with some show of reason they concluded that this strange
+people worshipped the Devil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have now passed in review the various peoples of North America, from
+the Arctic circle to the neighbourhood of the isthmus of Darien, and can
+form some sort of a mental picture of the continent at the time of its
+discovery by Europeans in the fifteenth century. Much more might have
+been said without going beyond the requirements of an outline sketch,
+but quite as much has been said as is consistent with the general plan
+of this book. I have not undertaken at present to go beyond the isthmus
+of Darien, because this preliminary chapter is already disproportionately
+long, and after this protracted discussion the reader's attention may be
+somewhat relieved by an entire change of scene. Enough has been set
+forth to explain the narrative that follows, and to justify us
+henceforth in taking certain things for granted. The outline description
+of Mexico will be completed when we come to the story of its conquest by
+Spaniards, and then we shall be ready to describe some principal
+features of Peruvian society and to understand how the Spaniards
+conquered that country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The "Mound-Builders."]
+
+[Sidenote: The notion that they were like the Aztecs;]
+
+[Sidenote: or like the Zunis.]
+
+There is, however, one conspicuous feature of North American antiquity
+which has not yet received our attention, and which calls for a few
+words before we close this chapter. I refer to the mounds that are
+scattered over so large a part of the soil of the United States, and
+more particularly to those between the Mississippi river and the
+Alleghany mountains, which have been the subject of so much theorizing,
+and in late years of so much careful study.[155] Vague and wild were
+the speculations once rife about the "Mound-Builders" and their
+wonderful civilization. They were supposed to have been a race quite
+different from the red men, with a culture perhaps superior to our own,
+and more or less eloquence was wasted over the vanished "empire" of the
+mound-builders. There is no reason, however, for supposing that there
+ever was an empire of any sort in ancient North America, and no relic of
+the past has ever been seen at any spot on our planet which indicates
+the former existence of a vanished civilization even remotely
+approaching our own. The sooner the student of history gets his head
+cleared of all such rubbish, the better. As for the mounds, which are
+scattered in such profusion over the country west of the Alleghanies,
+there are some which have been built by Indians since the arrival of
+white men in America, and which contain knives and trinkets of European
+manufacture. There are many others which are much older, and in which
+the genuine remains sometimes indicate a culture like that of Shawnees
+or Senecas, and sometimes suggest something perhaps a little higher.
+With the progress of research the vast and vague notion of a distinct
+race of "Mound-Builders" became narrowed and defined. It began to seem
+probable that the builders of the more remarkable mounds were tribes of
+Indians who had advanced beyond the average level in horticulture, and
+consequently in density of population, and perhaps in political and
+priestly organization. Such a conclusion seemed to be supported by the
+size of some of the "ancient garden-beds," often covering more than a
+hundred acres, filled with the low parallel ridges in which corn was
+planted. The mound people were thus supposed to be semi-civilized red
+men, like the Aztecs, and some of their elevated earthworks were
+explained as places for human sacrifice, like the pyramids of Mexico and
+Central America. It was thought that the "civilization" of the
+Cordilleran peoples might formerly have extended northward and eastward
+into the Mississippi valley, and might after a while have been pushed
+back by powerful hordes of more barbarous invaders. A further
+modification and reduction of this theory likened the mound-builders to
+the pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Such was the opinion of Mr. Morgan,
+who offered a very ingenious explanation of the extensive earthworks at
+High Bank, in Ross county, Ohio, as the fortified site of a pueblo.[156]
+Although there is no reason for supposing that the mound-builders
+practised irrigation (which would not be required in the Mississippi
+valley) or used adobe-brick, yet Mr. Morgan was inclined to admit them
+into his middle status of barbarism because of the copper hatchets and
+chisels found in some of the mounds, and because of the apparent
+superiority in horticulture and the increased reliance upon it. He
+suggested that a people somewhat like the Zunis might have migrated
+eastward and modified their building habits to suit the altered
+conditions of the Mississippi valley, where they dwelt for several
+centuries, until at last, for some unknown reason, they retired to the
+Rocky Mountain region. It seems to me that an opinion just the reverse
+of Mr. Morgan's would be more easily defensible,--namely, that the
+ancestors of the pueblo Indians were a people of building habits
+somewhat similar to the Mandans, and that their habits became modified
+in adaptation to a country which demanded careful irrigation and
+supplied adobe-clay in abundance. If ever they built any of the mounds
+in the Mississippi valley, I should be disposed to place their
+mound-building period before their pueblo period.
+
+         [Footnote 155: For original researches in the mounds one cannot
+         do better than consult the following papers in the _Reports of
+         the Bureau of Ethnology_:--1. by W. H. Holmes, "Art in Shell of
+         the Ancient Americans," ii. 181-305; "The Ancient Pottery of
+         the Mississippi Valley," iv. 365-436; "Prehistoric Textile
+         Fabrics of the United States," iii. 397-431; followed by an
+         illustrated catalogue of objects collected chiefly from mounds,
+         iii. 433-515;--2. H. W. Henshaw, "Animal Carvings from the
+         Mounds of the Mississippi Valley," ii. 121-166;--3. Cyrus
+         Thomas, "Burial Mounds of the Northern Section of the United
+         States," v. 7-119; also three of the Bureau's "Bulletins" by
+         Dr. Thomas, "The Problem of the Ohio Mounds," "The Circular,
+         Square, and Octagonal Earthworks of Ohio," and "Work in Mound
+         Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology;" also two articles by
+         Dr. Thomas in the _Magazine of American History_:--"The Houses
+         of the Mound-Builders," xi. 110-115; "Indian Tribes in
+         Prehistoric Times," xx. 193-201. See also Horatio Hale, "Indian
+         Migrations," in _American Antiquarian_, v. 18-28, 108-124; M.
+         F. Force, _To What Race did the Mound-Builders belong?_
+         Cincinnati, 1875; Lucien Carr, _Mounds of the Mississippi
+         Valley historically considered_, 1883; Nadaillac's _Prehistoric
+         America_, ed. W. H. Dall, chaps. iii., iv. The earliest work of
+         fundamental importance on the subject was Squier's _Ancient
+         Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_, Philadelphia, 1848, being
+         the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to
+         Knowledge.--For statements of the theory which presumes either
+         a race connection or a similarity in culture between the
+         mound-builders and the pueblo Indians, see Dawson, _Fossil
+         Men_, p. 55; Foster, _Prehistoric Races of the United States_,
+         Chicago, 1873, chaps. iii., v.-x.; Sir Daniel Wilson,
+         _Prehistoric Man_, chap. x. The annual _Smithsonian Reports_
+         for thirty years past illustrate the growth of knowledge and
+         progressive changes of opinion on the subject. The
+         bibliographical account in Winsor's _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i.
+         397-412, is full of minute information.]
+
+         [Footnote 156: _Houses and House-Life_, chap. ix.]
+
+[Sidenote: The mounds were probably built by different peoples in the
+lower status of barbarism;]
+
+[Sidenote: by Cherokees;]
+
+[Sidenote: and by Shawnees, and other tribes.]
+
+Recent researches, however, make it more and more improbable that the
+mound-builders were nearly akin to such people as the Zunis or similar
+to them in grade of culture. Of late years the exploration of the
+mounds has been carried on with increasing diligence. More than 2,000
+mounds have been opened, and at least 38,000 ancient relics have been
+gathered from them: such as quartzite arrow-heads and spades, greenstone
+axes and hammers, mortars and pestles, tools for spinning and weaving,
+and cloth, made of spun thread and woven with warp and woof, somewhat
+like a coarse sail-cloth. The water-jugs, kettles, pipes, and sepulchral
+urns have been elaborately studied. The net results of all this
+investigation, up to the present time, have been concisely summed up by
+Dr. Cyrus Thomas.[157] The mounds were not all built by one people, but
+by different tribes as clearly distinguishable from one another as
+Algonquins are distinguishable from Iroquois. These mound-building
+tribes were not superior in culture to the Iroquois and many of the
+Algonquins as first seen by white men. They are not to be classified
+with Zunis, still less with Mexicans or Mayas, in point of culture, but
+with Shawnees and Cherokees. Nay more,--some of them _were_ Shawnees and
+Cherokees. The missionary Johann Heckewelder long ago published the
+Lenape tradition of the Tallegwi or Allighewi people, who have left
+their name upon the Alleghany river and mountains.[158] The Tallegwi
+have been identified with the Cherokees, who are now reckoned among the
+most intelligent and progressive of Indian peoples.[159] The Cherokees
+were formerly classed in the Muskoki group, along with the Creeks and
+Choctaws, but a closer study of their language seems to show that they
+were a somewhat remote offshoot of the Huron-Iroquois stock. For a long
+time they occupied the country between the Ohio river and the Great
+Lakes, and probably built the mounds that are still to be seen there.
+Somewhere about the thirteenth or fourteenth century they were gradually
+pushed southward into the Muskoki region by repeated attacks from the
+Lenape and Hurons. The Cherokees were probably also the builders of the
+mounds of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. They retained
+their mound-building habits some time after the white men came upon the
+scene. On the other hand the mounds and box-shaped stone graves of
+Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Georgia were probably the work of
+Shawnees, and the stone graves in the Delaware valley are to be ascribed
+to the Lenape. There are many reasons for believing that the mounds of
+northern Mississippi were constructed by Chickasaws, and the burial
+tumuli and "effigy mounds" of Wisconsin by Winnebagos. The Minnitarees
+and Mandans were also very likely at one time a mound-building people.
+
+         [Footnote 157: _Work in Mound Exploration of the Bureau of
+         Ethnology_, Washington, 1887. For a sight of the thousands of
+         objects gathered from the mounds, one should visit the Peabody
+         Museum at Cambridge and the Smithsonian Institution at
+         Washington.]
+
+         [Footnote 158: Heckewelder, _History of the Indian Nations of
+         Pennsylvania_, etc., Philadelphia, 1818; cf. Squier,
+         _Historical and Mythological Traditions of the Algonquins_, a
+         paper read before the New York Historical Society in June,
+         1848; also Brinton, _The Lenape and their Legends_,
+         Philadelphia, 1885.]
+
+         [Footnote 159: For a detailed account of their later history,
+         see C. C. Royce, "The Cherokee Nation," _Reports of Bureau of
+         Ethnology_, v. 121-378.]
+
+If this view, which is steadily gaining ground, be correct, our
+imaginary race of "Mound-Builders" is broken up and vanishes, and
+henceforth we may content ourselves with speaking of the authors of the
+ancient earthworks as "Indians." There were times in the career of
+sundry Indian tribes when circumstances induced them to erect mounds as
+sites for communal houses or council houses, medicine-lodges or
+burial-places; somewhat as there was a period in the history of our own
+forefathers in England when circumstances led them to build moated
+castles, with drawbridge and portcullis; and there is no more occasion
+for assuming a mysterious race of "Mound-Builders" in America than for
+assuming a mysterious race of "Castle-Builders" in England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Society in America at the time of the Discovery had reached
+stages similar to stages reached by eastern Mediterranean peoples fifty
+or sixty centuries earlier.]
+
+Thus, at whatever point we touch the subject of ancient America, we
+find scientific opinion tending more and more steadily toward the
+conclusion that its people and their culture were indigenous. One of the
+most important lessons impressed upon us by a long study of comparative
+mythology is that human minds in different parts of the world, but under
+the influence of similar circumstances, develop similar ideas and clothe
+them in similar forms of expression. It is just the same with political
+institutions, with the development of the arts, with social customs,
+with culture generally. To repeat the remark already quoted from Sir
+John Lubbock,--and it is well worth repeating,--"Different races in
+similar stages of development often present more features of resemblance
+to one another than the same race does to itself in different stages of
+its history." When the zealous Abbe Brasseur found things in the history
+of Mexico that reminded him of ancient Egypt, he hastened to the
+conclusion that Mexican culture was somehow "derived" from that of
+Egypt. It was natural enough for him to do so, but such methods of
+explanation are now completely antiquated. Mexican culture was no more
+Egyptian culture than a prickly-pear is a lotus. It was an outgrowth of
+peculiar American conditions acting upon the aboriginal American mind,
+and such of its features as remind us of ancient Egypt or prehistoric
+Greece show simply that it was approaching, though it had not reached,
+the standard attained in those Old World countries. From this point of
+view the resemblances become invested with surpassing interest. Ancient
+America, as we have seen, was a much more archaic world than the world
+of Europe and Asia, and presented in the time of Columbus forms of
+society that on the shores of the Mediterranean had been outgrown before
+the city of Rome was built. Hence the intense and peculiar fascination
+of American archaeology, and its profound importance to the student of
+general history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+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 assure us that, after all,
+Fusang was really Japan, 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
+Japanese junks have been driven ashore 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 Japon_, 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 noble 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 passion 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, _Beitraege 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 Joao Ramalho en 1490, et de Joao Vaz
+         Cortereal en 1464 ou 1474, le lecteur nous pardonnera de les
+         passer 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 vassals. 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, god 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 noble 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
+Massachusetts 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, butter, 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 classical
+         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 Gunnbjoern was driven by foul weather to some point on the
+coast of Greenland, where he and his crew contrived to pass 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 Oexney
+(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 Gunnbjoern 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 grassy plain may still be seen the ruins of seventeen houses
+built of rough blocks of sandstone, their chinks 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 Godthaab. The older settlement,
+which began at Igaliko fiord, was known as the East Bygd;[180] the
+younger settlement, near Godthaab, 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 historicum_, 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 _Aarboger 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 illustrious 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 Nicolo 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 shore of the fiord and the
+         small lake indicated on the map.]
+
+[Illustration: The East Bygd, or Eastern Settlement of the Northmen in
+Greenland.]
+
+This colonization of Greenland by the Northmen in the tenth century is
+as well established as any event that occurred in the Middle Ages. For
+four hundred years the fortunes of the Greenland colony formed a part,
+albeit a very humble part, of European history. Geographically speaking,
+Greenland is reckoned as a part of America, of the western
+hemisphere, and not of the eastern. The Northmen who settled in
+Greenland had, therefore, in this sense found their way to America.
+Nevertheless one rightly feels that in the history of geographical
+discovery an arrival of Europeans in Greenland is equivalent merely to
+reaching the vestibule or ante-chamber of the western hemisphere. It is
+an affair begun and ended outside of the great world of the red men.
+
+But the story does not end here. Into the world of the red men the
+voyagers from Iceland did assuredly come, as indeed, after once getting
+a foothold upon Greenland, they could hardly fail to do. Let us pursue
+the remainder of the story as we find it in our Icelandic sources of
+information, and afterwards it will be proper to inquire into the
+credibility of these sources.
+
+[Sidenote: Voyage of Bjarni Herjulfson, 986.]
+
+One of the men who accompanied Eric to Greenland was named Herjulf,
+whose son Bjarni, after roving the seas for some years, came home to
+Iceland in 986 to drink the Yuletide ale with his father. Finding him
+gone, he weighed anchor and started after him to Greenland, but
+encountered foggy weather, and sailed on for many days by guess-work
+without seeing sun or stars. When at length he sighted land it was a
+shore without mountains, showing only small heights covered with dense
+woods. It was evidently not the land of fiords and glaciers for which
+Bjarni was looking. So without stopping to make explorations he turned
+his prow to the north and kept on. The sky was now fair, and after
+scudding nine or ten days with a brisk breeze astern, Bjarni saw the
+icy crags of Greenland looming up before him, and after some further
+searching found his way to his father's new home.[181] On the route he
+more than once sighted land on the larboard.
+
+         [Footnote 181: In Herjulfsfiord, at the entrance to which the
+         modern Friedrichsthal is situated. Across the fiord from
+         Friedrichsthal a ruined church stands upon the cape formerly
+         known as Herjulfsness. See map.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conversion of the Northmen to Christianity.]
+
+This adventure of Bjarni's seems not to have excited general curiosity
+or to have awakened speculation. Indeed, in the dense geographical
+ignorance of those times there is no reason why it should have done so.
+About 994 Bjarni was in Norway, and one or two people expressed some
+surprise that he did not take more pains to learn something about the
+country he had seen; but nothing came of such talk till it reached the
+ears of Leif, the famous son of Eric the Red. This wise and stately
+man[182] spent a year or two in Norway about 998. Roman missionary
+priests were then preaching up and down the land, and had converted the
+king, Olaf Tryggvesson, great-grandson of Harold Fairhair. Leif became a
+Christian and was baptised, and when he returned to Greenland he took
+priests with him who converted many people, though old Eric, it is said,
+preferred to go in the way of his fathers, and deemed boisterous
+Valhalla, with its cups of wassail, a place of better cheer than the New
+Jerusalem, with its streets of gold.
+
+         [Footnote 182: "Leifr var mikill madhr ok sterkr, manna
+         skoeruligastr at sja, vitr madhr ok godhr hofsmadhr um alla
+         hluti," i. e. "Leif was a large man and strong, of noble
+         aspect, prudent and moderate in all things." Rafn, p. 33.]
+
+[Sidenote: Leif Ericsson's voyage, 1000.]
+
+[Sidenote: Helluland.]
+
+[Sidenote: Markland.]
+
+[Sidenote: Vinland.]
+
+Leif's zeal for the conversion of his friends in Greenland did not so
+far occupy his mind as to prevent him from undertaking a voyage of
+discovery. His curiosity had been stimulated by what he had heard about
+Bjarni's experiences, and he made up his mind to go and see what the
+coasts to the south of Greenland were like. He sailed from
+Brattahlid--probably in the summer or early autumn of the year
+1000[183]--with a crew of five and thirty men. Some distance to the
+southward they came upon a barren country covered with big flat stones,
+so that they called it Helluland, or "slate-land." There is little room
+for doubt that this was the coast opposite Greenland, either west or
+east of the strait of Belle Isle; in other words, it was either Labrador
+or the northern coast of Newfoundland. Thence, keeping generally to the
+southward, our explorers came after some days to a thickly wooded coast,
+where they landed and inspected the country. What chiefly impressed them
+was the extent of the forest, so that they called the place Markland, or
+"wood-land." Some critics have supposed that this spot was somewhere
+upon the eastern or southern coast of Newfoundland, but the more general
+opinion places it somewhere upon the coast of Cape Breton island or
+Nova Scotia. From this Markland our voyagers stood out to sea, and
+running briskly before a stiff northeaster it was more than two days
+before they came in sight of land. Then, after following the coast for a
+while, they went ashore at a place where a river, issuing from a lake,
+fell into the sea. They brought their ship up into the lake and cast
+anchor. The water abounded in excellent fish, and the country seemed so
+pleasant that Leif decided to pass the winter there, and accordingly his
+men put up some comfortable wooden huts or booths. One day one of the
+party, a "south country" man, whose name was Tyrker,[184] came in from a
+ramble in the neighbourhood making grimaces and talking to himself in
+his own language (probably German), which his comrades did not
+understand. On being interrogated as to the cause of his excitement,
+he replied that he had discovered vines loaded with grapes, and was much
+pleased at the sight inasmuch as he had been brought up in a vine
+country. Wild grapes, indeed, abounded in this autumn season, and Leif
+accordingly called the country Vinland. The winter seems to have passed
+off very comfortably. Even the weather seemed mild to these visitors
+from high latitudes, and they did not fail to comment on the unusual
+length of the winter day. Their language on this point has been so
+construed as to make the length of the shortest winter day exactly nine
+hours, which would place their Vinland in about the latitude of Boston.
+But their expressions do not admit of any such precise construction; and
+when we remember that they had no accurate instruments for measuring
+time, and that a difference of about fourteen minutes between sunrise
+and sunset on the shortest winter day would make all the difference
+between Boston and Halifax, we see how idle it is to look for the
+requisite precision in narratives of this sort, and to treat them as one
+would treat the reports of a modern scientific exploring expedition.
+
+         [Footnote 183: The year seems to have been that in which
+         Christianity was definitely established by law in Iceland,
+         viz., A. D. 1000. The chronicle _Thattr Eireks Raudha_ is
+         careful about verifying its dates by checking one against
+         another. See Rafn, p. 15. The most masterly work on the
+         conversion of the Scandinavian people is Maurer's _Die
+         Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume_, Munich,
+         1855; for an account of the missionary work in Iceland and
+         Greenland, see vol. i. pp. 191-242, 443-452.]
+
+         [Footnote 184: The name means "Turk," and has served as a
+         touchstone for the dullness of commentators. To the Northmen a
+         "Southman" would naturally be a German, and why should a German
+         be called a Turk? or how should these Northmen happen to have
+         had a Turk in their company? Mr. Laing suggests that he may
+         have been a Magyar. Yes; or he may have visited the Eastern
+         Empire and taken part in a fight _against_ Turks, and so have
+         got a soubriquet, just as Thorhall Gamlason, after returning
+         from Vinland to Iceland, was ever afterward known as "the
+         Vinlander." That did not mean that he was an American redskin.
+         See below, p. 203. From Tyrker's grimaces one commentator
+         sagely infers that he had been eating grapes and got drunk; and
+         another (even Mr. Laing!) thinks it necessary to remind us that
+         all the grape-juice in Vinland would not fuddle a man unless it
+         had been fermented,--and then goes on to ascribe the absurdity
+         to our innocent chronicle, instead of the stupid annotator. See
+         _Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 168.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyages of Thorvald and Thorstein, 1002-05.]
+
+In the spring of 1001 Leif returned to Greenland with a cargo of
+timber.[185] The voyage made much talk. Leif's brother Thorvald caught
+the inspiration,[186] and, borrowing Leif's ship, sailed in 1002, and
+succeeded in finding Vinland and Leif's huts, where his men spent two
+winters. In the intervening summer they went on an exploring expedition
+along the coast, fell in with some savages in canoes, and got into a
+fight in which Thorvald was killed by an arrow. In the spring of 1004
+the ship returned to Brattahlid. Next year the third brother, Thorstein
+Ericsson, set out in the same ship, with his wife Gudrid and a crew of
+thirty-five men; but they were sore bestead with foul weather, got
+nowhere, and accomplished nothing. Thorstein died on the voyage, and his
+widow returned to Greenland.
+
+         [Footnote 185: On the homeward voyage he rescued some
+         shipwrecked sailors near the coast of Greenland, and was
+         thenceforward called Leif the Lucky (et postea cognominatus est
+         Leivus Fortunatus). The pleasant reports from the newly found
+         country gave it the name of "Vinland the Good." In the course
+         of the winter following Leif's return his father died.]
+
+         [Footnote 186: "Jam crebri de Leivi in Vinlandiam profectione
+         sermones serebantur, Thorvaldus vero, frater ejus, nimis pauca
+         terrae loca explorata fuisse judicavit." Rafn, p. 39.]
+
+[Sidenote: Thorfinn Karlsefni, and his unsuccessful attempt to found a
+colony in Vinland, 1007-10.]
+
+In the course of the next summer, 1006, there came to Brattahlid from
+Iceland a notable personage, a man of craft and resource, wealthy withal
+and well born, with the blood of many kinglets or jarls flowing in his
+veins. This man, Thorfinn Karlsefni, straightway fell in love with the
+young and beautiful widow Gudrid, and in the course of the winter there
+was a merry wedding at Brattahlid. Persuaded by his adventurous bride,
+whose spirit had been roused by the reports from Vinland and by her
+former unsuccessful attempt to find it, Thorfinn now undertook to visit
+that country in force sufficient for founding a colony there.
+Accordingly in the spring of 1007 he started with three or four
+ships,[187] carrying one hundred and sixty men, several women, and quite
+a cargo of cattle. In the course of that year his son Snorro was born in
+Vinland,[188] and our chronicle tells us that this child was three years
+old before the disappointed company turned their backs upon that land of
+promise and were fain to make their way homeward to the fiords of
+Greenland. It was the hostility of the natives that compelled Thorfinn
+to abandon his enterprise. At first they traded with him, bartering
+valuable furs for little strips of scarlet cloth which they sought most
+eagerly; and they were as terribly frightened by his cattle as the
+Aztecs were in later days by the Spanish horses.[189] The chance
+bellowing of a bull sent them squalling to the woods, and they did not
+show themselves again for three weeks. After a while quarrels arose, the
+natives attacked in great numbers, many Northmen were killed, and in
+1010 the survivors returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber and
+peltries. On the way thither the ships seem to have separated, and one
+of them, commanded by Bjarni Grimolfsson, found itself bored by worms
+(the _teredo_) and sank, with its commander and half the crew.[190]
+
+         [Footnote 187: Three is the number usually given, but at least
+         four of their ships would be needed for so large a company; and
+         besides Thorfinn himself, three other captains are
+         mentioned,--Snorro Thorbrandsson, Bjarni Grimolfsson, and
+         Thorhall Gamlason. The narrative gives a picturesque account of
+         this Thorhall, who was a pagan and fond of deriding his
+         comrades for their belief in the new-fangled Christian notions.
+         He seems to have left his comrades and returned to Europe
+         before they had abandoned their enterprise. A further reference
+         to him will be made below, p. 203.]
+
+         [Footnote 188: To this boy Snorro many eminent men have traced
+         their ancestry,--bishops, university professors, governors of
+         Iceland, and ministers of state in Norway and Denmark. The
+         learned antiquarian Finn Magnusson and the celebrated sculptor
+         Thorwaldsen regarded themselves as thus descended from Thorfinn
+         Karlsefni.]
+
+         [Footnote 189: Compare the alarm of the Wampanoag Indians in
+         1603 at the sight of Martin Pring's mastiff. Winsor, _Narr. and
+         Crit. Hist._, iii. 174.]
+
+         [Footnote 190: The fate of Bjarni was pathetic and noble. It
+         was decided that as many as possible should save themselves in
+         the stern boat. "Then Bjarni ordered that the men should go in
+         the boat by lot, and not according to rank. As it would not
+         hold all, they accepted the saying, and when the lots were
+         drawn, the men went out of the ship into the boat. The lot was
+         that Bjarni should go down from the ship to the boat with one
+         half of the men. Then those to whom the lot fell went down from
+         the ship to the boat. When they had come into the boat, a young
+         Icelander, who was the companion of Bjarni, said: 'Now thus do
+         you intend to leave me, Bjarni?' Bjarni replied, 'That now
+         seems necessary.' He replied with these words: 'Thou art not
+         true to the promise made when I left my father's house in
+         Iceland.' Bjarni replied: 'In this thing I do not see any other
+         way'; continuing, 'What course can you suggest?' He said: 'I
+         see this, that we change places and thou come up here and I go
+         down there.' Bjarni replied: 'Let it be so, since I see that
+         you are so anxious to live, and are frightened by the prospect
+         of death.' Then they changed places, and he descended into the
+         boat with the men, and Bjarni went up into the ship. It is
+         related that Bjarni and the sailors with him in the ship
+         perished in the worm sea. Those who went in the boat went on
+         their course until they came to land, where they told all these
+         things." De Costa's version from _Saga Thorfinns Karlsefnis_,
+         Rafn, pp. 184-186.]
+
+[Sidenote: Freydis, and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1011-12.]
+
+Among Karlsefni's companions on this memorable expedition was one
+Thorvard, with his wife Freydis, a natural daughter of Eric the Red.
+About the time of their return to Greenland in the summer of 1010, a
+ship arrived from Norway, commanded by two brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi.
+During the winter a new expedition was planned, and in the summer of
+1011 two ships set sail for Vinland, one with Freydis, Thorvard, and a
+crew of 30 men, the other with Helgi and Finnbogi, and a crew of 35 men.
+There were also a number of women. The purpose was not to found a colony
+but to cut timber. The brothers arrived first at Leif's huts and had
+begun carrying in their provisions and tools, when Freydis, arriving
+soon afterward, ordered them off the premises. They had no right, she
+said, to occupy her brother's houses. So they went out and built other
+huts for their party a little farther from the shore. Before their
+business was accomplished "winter set in, and the brothers proposed to
+have some games for amusement to pass the time. So it was done for a
+time, till discord came among them, and the games were given up, and
+none went from one house to the other; and things went on so during a
+great part of the winter." At length came the catastrophe. Freydis one
+night complained to her husband that the brothers had given her evil
+words and struck her, and insisted that he should forthwith avenge the
+affront. Presently Thorvard, unable to bear her taunts, was aroused to a
+deed of blood. With his followers he made a night attack upon the huts
+of Helgi and Finnbogi, seized and bound all the occupants, and killed
+the men one after another in cold blood. Five women were left whom
+Thorvard would have spared; as none of his men would raise a hand
+against them, Freydis herself took an axe and brained them one and all.
+In the spring of 1012 the party sailed for Brattahlid in the ship of
+the murdered brothers, which was the larger and better of the two.
+Freydis pretended that they had exchanged ships and left the other party
+in Vinland. With gifts to her men, and dire threats for any who should
+dare tell what had been done, she hoped to keep them silent. Words were
+let drop, however, which came to Leif's ears, and led him to arrest
+three of the men and put them to the torture until they told the whole
+story. "'I have not the heart,' said Leif, 'to treat my wicked sister as
+she deserves; but this I will foretell them [Freydis and Thorvard] that
+their posterity will never thrive.' So it went that nobody thought
+anything of them save evil from that time."
+
+[Sidenote: The whole story is eminently probable.]
+
+With this grewsome tale ends all account of Norse attempts at exploring
+or colonizing Vinland, though references to Vinland by no means end
+here.[191] Taking the narrative as a whole, it seems to me a sober,
+straightforward, and eminently probable story. We may not be able to say
+with confidence exactly where such places as Markland and Vinland were,
+but it is clear that the coasts visited on these southerly and
+southwesterly voyages from Brattahlid must have been parts of the coast
+of North America, unless the whole story is to be dismissed as a figment
+of somebody's imagination. But for a figment of the imagination, and of
+European imagination withal, it has far too many points of
+verisimilitude, as I shall presently show.
+
+         [Footnote 191: The stories of Gudleif Gudlaugsson and Ari
+         Marsson, with the fanciful speculations about "Hvitramannaland"
+         and "Irland it Mikla," do not seem worthy of notice in this
+         connection. They may be found in De Costa, _op. cit._ pp.
+         159-177; and see Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_,
+         chap. v.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyage into Baffin's Bay, 1135.]
+
+In the first place, it is an extremely probable story from the time that
+Eric once gets settled in Brattahlid. The founding of the Greenland
+colony is the only strange or improbable part of the narrative, but that
+is corroborated in so many other ways that we know it to be true; as
+already observed, no fact in mediaeval history is better established.
+When I speak of the settlement of Greenland as strange, I do not mean
+that there is anything strange in the Northmen's accomplishing the
+voyage thither from Iceland. That island is nearer to Greenland than to
+Norway, and we know, moreover, that Norse sailors achieved more
+difficult things than penetrating the fiords of southern Greenland. Upon
+the island of Kingitorsook in Baffin's Bay (72 deg. 55' N., 56 deg. 5' W.) near
+Upernavik, in a region supposed to have been unvisited by man before the
+modern age of Arctic exploration, there were found in 1824 some small
+artificial mounds with an inscription upon stone:--"Erling Sighvatson
+and Bjarni Thordharson and Eindrid Oddson raised these marks and cleared
+ground on Saturday before Ascension Week, 1135." That is to say, they
+took symbolic possession of the land.[192]
+
+         [Footnote 192: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 152.]
+
+[Sidenote: A Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord, in Norway.]
+
+In order to appreciate how such daring voyages were practicable, we must
+bear in mind that the Viking "ships" were probably stronger and more
+seaworthy, and certainly much swifter, than the Spanish vessels of the
+time of Columbus. One was unearthed a few years ago at Sandefiord in
+Norway, and may be seen at the museum in Christiania. Its pagan owner
+had been buried in it, and his bones were found amidships, along with
+the bones of a dog and a peacock, a few iron fish-hooks and other
+articles. Bones of horses and dogs, probably sacrificed at the funeral
+according to the ancient Norse custom, lay scattered about. This craft
+has been so well described by Colonel Higginson,[193] that I may as well
+quote the passage in full:--
+
+         [Footnote 193: See his _Larger History of the United States_,
+         pp. 32-34.]
+
+[Sidenote: Description of the ship.]
+
+She "was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the greatest length, and
+sixteen feet eleven inches at the greatest width, and from the top of
+the keel to the gunwale amidships she was five feet nine inches deep.
+She had twenty ribs, and would draw less than four feet of water. She
+was clinker-built; that is, had plates slightly overlapped, like the
+shingles on the side of a house. The planks and timbers of the frame
+were fastened together with withes made of roots, but the oaken boards
+of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. The bow and
+stern were similar in shape, and must have risen high out of water, but
+were so broken that it was impossible to tell how they originally ended.
+The keel was deep and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace of
+any metallic sheathing; but an iron anchor was found almost rusted to
+pieces. There was no deck and the seats for rowers had been taken out.
+The oars were twenty feet long, and the oar-holes, sixteen on each side,
+had slits sloping towards the stern to allow the blades of the oars to
+be put through from inside. The most peculiar thing about the ship was
+the rudder, which was on the starboard or right side, this side being
+originally called 'steerboard' from this circumstance. The rudder was
+like a large oar, with long blade and short handle, and was attached,
+not to the side of the boat, but to the end of a conical piece of wood
+which projected almost a foot from the side of the vessel, and almost
+two feet from the stern. This piece of wood was bored down its length,
+and no doubt a rope passing through it secured the rudder to the ship's
+side. It was steered by a tiller attached to the handle, and perhaps
+also by a rope fastened to the blade. As a whole, this disinterred
+vessel proved to be anything but the rude and primitive craft which
+might have been expected; it was neatly built and well preserved,
+constructed on what a sailor would call beautiful lines, and eminently
+fitted for sea service. Many such vessels may be found depicted on the
+celebrated Bayeux tapestry; and the peculiar position of the rudder
+explains the treaty mentioned in the Heimskringla, giving to Norway all
+lands lying west of Scotland between which and the mainland a vessel
+could pass with her rudder shipped.... This was not one of the very
+largest ships, for some of them had thirty oars on each side, and
+vessels carrying from twenty to twenty-five were not uncommon. The
+largest of these were called Dragons, and other sizes were known as
+Serpents or Cranes. The ship itself was often so built as to represent
+the name it bore: the dragon, for instance, was a long low vessel, with
+the gilded head of a dragon at the bow, and the gilded tail at the
+stern; the moving oars at the side might represent the legs of the
+imaginary creature, the row of shining red and white shields that were
+hung over the gunwale looked like the monster's scales, and the sails
+striped with red and blue might suggest his wings. The ship preserved at
+Christiania is described as having had but a single mast, set into a
+block of wood so large that it is said no such block could now be cut in
+Norway. Probably the sail was much like those still carried by large
+open boats in that country,--a single square on a mast forty feet
+long.[194] These masts have no standing rigging, and are taken down when
+not in use; and this was probably the practice of the Vikings."
+
+         [Footnote 194: Perhaps it may have been a square-headed lug,
+         like those of the Deal galley-punts; see Leslie's _Old Sea
+         Wings, Ways, and Words, in the Days of Oak and Hemp_, London,
+         1890, p. 21.]
+
+[Sidenote: The climate of Greenland.]
+
+In such vessels, well stocked with food and weapons, the Northmen were
+accustomed to spend many weeks together on the sea, now and then
+touching land. In such vessels they made their way to Algiers and
+Constantinople, to the White Sea, to Baffin's Bay. It is not, therefore,
+their voyage to Greenland that seems strange, but it is their success in
+founding a colony which could last for more than four centuries in that
+inhospitable climate. The question is sometimes asked whether the
+climate of Greenland may not have undergone some change within the last
+thousand years.[195] If there has been any change, it must have been
+very slight; such as, perhaps, a small variation in the flow of ocean
+currents might occasion. I am inclined to believe that there may have
+been such a change, from the testimony of Ivar Bardsen, steward of the
+Gardar bishopric in the latter half of the fourteenth century, or about
+halfway between the time of Eric the Red and our own time. According to
+Bardsen there had long been a downward drifting of ice from the north
+and a consequent accumulation of bergs and floes upon the eastern coast
+of Greenland, insomuch that the customary route formerly followed by
+ships coming from Iceland was no longer safe, and a more southerly route
+had been generally adopted.[196] This slow southward extension of the
+polar ice-sheet upon the east of Greenland seems still to be going on at
+the present day.[197] It is therefore not at all improbable, but on the
+contrary quite probable, that a thousand years ago the mean annual
+temperature of the tip end of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, was a few
+degrees higher than now.[198] But a slight difference of this sort
+might have an important bearing upon the fortunes of a colony planted
+there. For example, it would directly affect the extent of the hay crop.
+Grass grows very well now in the neighbourhood of Julianeshaab. In
+summer it is still a "green land," with good pasturage for cattle, but
+there is difficulty in getting hay enough to last through the nine
+months of winter. In 1855 "there were in Greenland 30 to 40 head of
+horned cattle, about 100 goats, and 20 sheep;" but in the ancient
+colony, with a population not exceeding 6,000 persons, "herds of cattle
+were kept which even yielded produce for exportation to Europe."[199] So
+strong a contrast seems to indicate a much more plentiful grass crop
+than to-day, although some hay might perhaps have been imported from
+Iceland in exchange for Greenland exports, which were chiefly whale oil,
+eider-down, and skins of seals, foxes, and white bears.
+
+         [Footnote 195: Some people must have queer notions about the
+         lapse of past time. I have more than once had this question put
+         to me in such a way as to show that what the querist really had
+         in mind was some vague impression of the time when oaks and
+         chestnuts, vines and magnolias, grew luxuriantly over a great
+         part of Greenland! But that was in the Miocene period, probably
+         not less than a million years ago, and has no obvious bearing
+         upon the deeds of Eric the Red.]
+
+         [Footnote 196: Bardsen, _Descriptio Groenlandiae_, appended to
+         Major's _Voyages of the Venetian Brothers_, etc., pp. 40, 41;
+         and see below, p. 242.]
+
+         [Footnote 197: Zahrtmann, _Journal of Royal Geographical
+         Society_, London, 1836, vol. v. p. 102. On this general subject
+         see J. D. Whitney, "The Climate Changes of Later Geological
+         Times," in _Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zooelogy at
+         Harvard College_, Cambridge, 1882, vol. vii. According to
+         Professor Whitney there has also been a deterioration in the
+         climate of Iceland.]
+
+         [Footnote 198: One must not too hastily infer that the mean
+         temperature of points on the American coast south of Davis
+         strait would be affected in the same way. The relation between
+         the phenomena is not quite so simple. For example, a warm early
+         spring on the coast of Greenland increases the discharge of
+         icebergs from its fiords to wander down the Atlantic ocean; and
+         this increase of floating ice tends to chill and dampen the
+         summers at least as far South as Long Island, if not farther.]
+
+         [Footnote 199: Rink's _Danish Greenland_, pp. 27, 96, 97.]
+
+[Sidenote: With the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery of the
+American continent was almost inevitable.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyages for timber.]
+
+When once the Northmen had found their way to Cape Farewell, it would
+have been marvellous if such active sailors could long have avoided
+stumbling upon the continent of North America. Without compass or
+astrolabe these daring men were accustomed to traverse long stretches of
+open sea, trusting to the stars; and it needed only a stiff
+northeasterly breeze, with persistent clouds and fog, to land a westward
+bound "dragon" anywhere from Cape Race to Cape Cod. This is what appears
+to have happened to Bjarni Herjulfsson in 986, and something quite like
+it happened to Henry Hudson in 1609.[200] Curiosity is a motive quite
+sufficient to explain Leif's making the easy summer voyage to find out
+what sort of country Bjarni had seen. He found it thickly wooded, and as
+there was a dearth of good timber both in Greenland and in Iceland, it
+would naturally occur to Leif's friends that voyages for timber, to be
+used at home and also to be exported to Iceland, might turn out to be
+profitable.[201] As Laing says, "to go in quest of the wooded countries
+to the southwest, from whence driftwood came to their shores, was a
+reasonable, intelligible motive for making a voyage in search of the
+lands from whence it came, and where this valuable material could be got
+for nothing."[202]
+
+         [Footnote 200: See Read's _Historical Inquiry concerning Henry
+         Hudson_, Albany, 1866, p. 160.]
+
+         [Footnote 201: "Nu tekst umraedha at nyju um Vinlandsferdh,
+         thviat su ferdh thikir baedhi godh til fjar ok virdhingar," i.
+         e. "Now they began to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for
+         the voyage thither was both gainful and honourable." Rafn, p.
+         65.]
+
+         [Footnote 202: _Heimskringla_, i, 168.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ear-marks of truth in the narrative.]
+
+If now we look at the details of the story we shall find many ear-marks
+of truth in it. We must not look for absolute accuracy in a narrative
+which--as we have it--is not the work of Leif or Thorfinn or any of
+their comrades, but of compilers or copyists, honest and careful as it
+seems to me, but liable to misplace details and to call by wrong names
+things which they had never seen. Starting with these modest
+expectations we shall find the points of verisimilitude numerous. To
+begin with the least significant, somewhere on our northeastern coast
+the voyagers found many foxes.[203] These animals, to be sure, are found
+in a great many countries, but the point for us is that in a southerly
+and southwesterly course from Cape Farewell these sailors are said to
+have found them. If our narrators had been drawing upon their
+imaginations or dealing with semi-mythical materials, they would as
+likely as not have lugged into the story elephants from Africa or
+hippogriffs from Dreamland; mediaeval writers were blissfully ignorant of
+all canons of probability in such matters.[204] But our narrators simply
+mention an animal which has for ages abounded on our northeastern
+coasts. One such instance is enough to suggest that they were following
+reports or documents which emanated ultimately from eye-witnesses and
+told the plain truth. A dozen such instances, if not neutralized by
+counter-instances, are enough to make this view extremely probable; and
+then one or two instances which could not have originated in the
+imagination of a European writer will suffice to prove it.
+
+         [Footnote 203: "Fjoeldi var thar melrakka," i. e. "ibi vulpium
+         magnus numerus erat," Rafn, p. 138.]
+
+         [Footnote 204: It is extremely difficult for an impostor to
+         concoct a narrative without making blunders that can easily be
+         detected by a critical scholar. For example, the Book of
+         Mormon, in the passage cited (see above, p. 3), in supremely
+         blissful ignorance introduces oxen, sheep, and silk-worms, as
+         well as the knowledge of smelting iron, into pre-Columbian
+         America.]
+
+Let us observe, then, that on coming to Markland they "slew a
+bear;"[205] the river and lake (or bay) in Vinland abounded with salmon
+bigger than Leif's people had ever seen;[206] on the coast they caught
+halibut;[207] they came to an island where there were so many eider
+ducks breeding that they could hardly avoid treading on their eggs;[208]
+and, as already observed, it was because of the abundance of wild grapes
+that Leif named the southernmost country he visited Vinland.
+
+         [Footnote 205: "Thar i drapu their einn bjoern," i. e. "in qua
+         ursum interfecerunt," id. p. 138.]
+
+         [Footnote 206: "Hvorki skorti thar lax i anni ne i vatninu, ok
+         staerra lax enn their hefdhi fyrr sedh," i. e. "ibi neque in
+         fluvio neque in lacu deerat salmonum copia, et quidem majoris
+         corporis quam antea vidissent," id. p. 32.]
+
+         [Footnote 207: "Helgir fiskar," i. e. "sacri pisces," id. p.
+         148. The Danish phrase is "helleflyndre," i. e. "holy
+         flounder." The English _halibut_ is _hali_ = _holy_ + _but_ =
+         _flounder_. This word _but_ is classed as Middle English, but
+         may still be heard in the north of England. The fish may have
+         been so called "from being eaten particularly on holy days"
+         (_Century Dict._ s.v.); or possibly from a pagan superstition
+         that water abounding in flat fishes is especially safe for
+         mariners (Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ ix. 70); or possibly from some
+         lost folk-tale about St. Peter (Maurer, _Islaendische Volkssagen
+         der Gegenwart_, Leipsic, 1860, p. 195).]
+
+         [Footnote 208: "Sva var moerg aedhr i eynni, at varla matti ganga
+         fyri eggjum," i. e. "tantus in insula anatum mollissimarum
+         numerus erat, ut prae ovis transiri fere non posset," id. p.
+         141. Eider ducks breed on our northeastern coasts as far south
+         as Portland, and are sometimes in winter seen as far south as
+         Delaware. They also abound in Greenland and Iceland, and, as
+         Wilson observes, "their nests are crowded so close together
+         that a person can scarcely walk without treading on them....
+         The Icelanders have for ages known the value of eider down, and
+         have done an extensive business in it." See Wilson's _American
+         Ornithology_, vol. iii. p. 50.]
+
+[Sidenote: Northern limit of the vine.]
+
+From the profusion of grapes--such that the ship's stern boat is said on
+one occasion to have been filled with them[209]--we get a clue, though
+less decisive than could be wished, to the location of Vinland. The
+extreme northern limit of the vine in Canada is 47 deg., the parallel which
+cuts across the tops of Prince Edward and Cape Breton islands on the
+map.[210] Near this northern limit, however, wild grapes are by no means
+plenty; so that the coast upon which Leif wintered must apparently have
+been south of Cape Breton. Dr. Storm, who holds that Vinland was on the
+southern coast of Nova Scotia, has collected some interesting testimony
+as to the growth of wild grapes in that region, but on the whole the
+abundance of this fruit seems rather to point to the shores of
+Massachusetts Bay.[211]
+
+         [Footnote 209:
+            {"Sva    er sagt  at  eptirbatr theirra var  fylldr
+                                                       af vinberjurn."}
+            {  So it-is-said that afterboat their   was  filled
+                                                       of vine-berries.}
+                                             Rafn, p. 36.]
+
+         [Footnote 210: Storm, "Studies on the Vinland Voyages,"
+         _Memoires de la societe royale des antiquaires du Nord_,
+         Copenhagen, 1888, p. 351. The limit of the vine at this
+         latitude is some distance inland; near the shore the limit is a
+         little farther south, and in Newfoundland it does not grow at
+         all. Id. p. 308.]
+
+         [Footnote 211: The attempt of Dr. Kohl (_Maine Hist. Soc._, New
+         Series, vol. i.) to connect the voyage of Thorfinn with the
+         coast of Maine seems to be successfully refuted by De Costa,
+         _Northmen in Maine_, etc., Albany, 1870.]
+
+[Sidenote: Length of the winter day.]
+
+We may now observe that, while it is idle to attempt to determine
+accurately the length of the winter day, as given in our chronicles,
+nevertheless since that length attracted the attention of the voyagers,
+as something remarkable, it may fairly be supposed to indicate a
+latitude lower than they were accustomed to reach in their trading
+voyages in Europe. Such a latitude as that of Dublin, which lies
+opposite Labrador, would have presented no novelty to them, for voyages
+of Icelanders to their kinsmen in Dublin, and in Rouen as well, were
+common enough. Halifax lies about opposite Bordeaux, and Boston a little
+south of opposite Cape Finisterre, in Spain, so that either of these
+latitudes would satisfy the conditions of the case; either would show a
+longer winter day than Rouen, which was about the southern limit of
+ordinary trading voyages from Iceland. At all events, the length of day
+indicates for Vinland a latitude south of Cape Breton.
+
+[Sidenote: Indian corn.]
+
+The next point to be observed is the mention of "self-sown
+wheat-fields."[212] This is not only an important ear-mark of truth in
+the narrative, but it helps us somewhat further in determining the
+position of Vinland. The "self-sown" cereal, which these Icelanders
+called "wheat," was in all probability what the English settlers six
+hundred years afterward called "corn," in each case applying to a new
+and nameless thing the most serviceable name at hand. In England "corn"
+means either wheat, barley, rye, and oats collectively, or more
+specifically wheat; in Scotland it generally means oats; in America it
+means maize, the "Indian corn," the cereal peculiar to the western
+hemisphere. The beautiful waving plant, with its exquisitely tasselled
+ears, which was one of the first things to attract Champlain's
+attention, could not have escaped the notice of such keen observers as
+we are beginning to find Leif and Thorfinn to have been. A cereal like
+this, requiring so little cultivation that without much latitude of
+speech it might be described as growing wild, would be interesting to
+Europeans visiting the American coast; but it would hardly occur to
+European fancy to invent such a thing. The mention of it is therefore a
+very significant ear-mark of the truth of the narrative. As regards the
+position of Vinland, the presence of maize seems to indicate a somewhat
+lower latitude than Nova Scotia. Maize requires intensely hot summers,
+and even under the most careful European cultivation does not flourish
+north of the Alps. In the sixteenth century its northern-most limit on
+the American coast seems to have been at the mouth of the Kennebec
+(44 deg.), though farther inland it was found by Cartier at Hochelaga, on
+the site of Montreal (45 deg. 30'). A presumption is thus raised in favour
+of the opinion that Vinland was not farther north than Massachusetts
+Bay.[213]
+
+         [Footnote 212:
+            {"Sjalfsana hveitiakra"   }
+            {                         } Rafn, p. 147.
+            { Self-sown wheat-acres   }]
+
+         [Footnote 213: Dr. Storm makes perhaps too much of this
+         presumption. He treats it as decisive against his own opinion
+         that Vinland was the southern coast of Nova Scotia, and
+         accordingly he tries to prove that the self-sown corn was not
+         maize, but "wild rice" (_Zizania aquatica_). _Memoires_, etc.,
+         p. 356. But his argument is weakened by excess of ingenuity.]
+
+[Sidenote: Winter weather in Vinland.]
+
+This presumption is supported by what is said about the climate of
+Vinland, though it must be borne in mind that general statements about
+climate are apt to be very loose and misleading. We are told that it
+seemed to Leif's people that cattle would be able to pass the winter out
+of doors there, for there was no frost and the grass was not much
+withered.[214] On the other hand, Thorfinn's people found the winter
+severe, and suffered from cold and hunger.[215] Taken in connection with
+each other, these two statements would apply very well to-day to our
+variable winters on the coast southward from Cape Ann. The winter of
+1889-90 in Cambridge, for example, might very naturally have been
+described by visitors from higher latitudes as a winter without frost
+and with grass scarcely withered. Indeed, we might have described it so
+ourselves. On Narragansett and Buzzard's bays such soft winter weather
+is still more common; north of Cape Ann it is much less common. The
+severe winter (_magna hiems_) is of course familiar enough anywhere
+along the northeastern coast of America.
+
+         [Footnote 214: "Thar var sva godhr landskostr at thvi er theim
+         syndist, at thar mundi eingi fenadhr fodhr thurfa a vetrum;
+         thar kvomu eingi frost a vetrum, ok litt renudhu thar groes," i.
+         e. "tanta autem erat terrae bonitas, ut inde intelligere esset,
+         pecora hieme pabulo non indigere posse, nullis incidentibus
+         algoribus hiemalibus, et graminibus parum flaccescentibus."
+         Rafn, p. 32.]
+
+         [Footnote 215: "Thar voru their um vetrinn; ok gjoerdhist vetr
+         mikill, en ekki fyri unnit ok gjoerdhist illt til matarins, ok
+         tokust af veidhirnar," i. e. "hic hiemarunt; cum vero magna
+         incideret hiems, nullumque provisum esset alimentum, cibus
+         coepit deficere capturaque cessabat," Id. p. 174.]
+
+[Sidenote: Probable situation of Vinland.]
+
+On the whole, we may say with some confidence that the place described
+by our chroniclers as Vinland was situated somewhere between Point
+Judith and Cape Breton; possibly we may narrow our limits and say that
+it was somewhere between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. But the latter
+conclusion is much less secure than the former. In such a case as this,
+the more we narrow our limits the greater our liability to error.[216]
+While by such narrowing, moreover, the question may acquire more
+interest as a bone of contention among local antiquarians, its value for
+the general historian is not increased.
+
+         [Footnote 216: A favourite method of determining the exact
+         spots visited by the Northmen has been to compare their
+         statements regarding the shape and trend of the coasts, their
+         bays, headlands, etc., with various well-known points on the
+         New England coast. It is a tempting method, but unfortunately
+         treacherous, because the same general description will often
+         apply well enough to several different places. It is like
+         summer boarders in the country struggling to tell one another
+         where they have been to drive,--past a school-house, down a
+         steep hill, through some woods, and by a saw-mill, etc.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Savages" unknown to mediaeval Europeans.]
+
+[Sidenote: The natives of Vinland.]
+
+But we have not yet done with the points of verisimilitude in our story.
+We have now to cite two or three details that are far more striking than
+any as yet mentioned,--details that could never have been conjured up by
+the fancy of any mediaeval European. We must bear in mind that "savages,"
+whether true savages or people in the lower status of barbarism, were
+practically unknown to Europeans before the fifteenth century. There
+were no such people in Europe or in any part of Asia or Africa visited
+by Europeans before the great voyages of the Portuguese. Mediaeval
+Europeans knew nothing whatever about people who would show surprise at
+the sight of an iron tool[217] or frantic terror at the voice of a
+bull, or who would eagerly trade off valuable property for worthless
+trinkets. Their imagination might be up to inventing hobgoblins and
+people with heads under their shoulders,[218] but it was not up to
+inventing such simple touches of nature as these. Bearing this in mind,
+let us observe that Thorfinn found the natives of Vinland eager to give
+valuable furs[219] in exchange for little strips of scarlet cloth to
+bind about their heads. When the Northmen found the cloth growing scarce
+they cut it into extremely narrow strips, but the desire of the natives
+was so great that they would still give a whole skin for the smallest
+strip. They wanted also to buy weapons, but Thorfinn forbade his men to
+sell them. One of the natives picked up an iron hatchet and cut wood
+with it; one after another tried and admired it; at length one tried it
+on a stone and broke its edge, and then they scornfully threw it
+down.[220] One day while they were trading, Thorfinn's bull ran out
+before them and bellowed, whereupon the whole company was instantly
+scattered in headlong flight. After this, when threatened with an attack
+by the natives, Thorfinn drew up his men for a fight and put the bull in
+front, very much as Pyrrhus used elephants--at first with success--to
+frighten the Romans and their horses.[221]
+
+         [Footnote 217: It is not meant that stone implements did not
+         continue to be used in some parts of Europe far into the Middle
+         Ages. But this was not because iron was not perfectly well
+         known, but because in many backward regions it was difficult to
+         obtain or to work, so that stone continued in use. As my
+         friend, Mr. T. S. Perry, reminds me, Helbig says that
+         stone-pointed spears were used by some of the English at the
+         battle of Hastings, and stone battle-axes by some of the Scots
+         under William Wallace at the end of the thirteenth century.
+         _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, Leipsic, 1879, p. 42. Helbig's
+         statement as to Hastings is confirmed by Freeman, _Norman
+         Conquest of England_, vol. iii. p. 473.]
+
+         [Footnote 218: My use of the word "inventing" is, in this
+         connection, a slip of the pen. Of course the tales of "men
+         whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," the Sciopedae,
+         etc., as told by Sir John Mandeville, were not invented by the
+         mediaeval imagination, but copied from ancient authors. They may
+         be found in Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, lib. vii., and were mentioned
+         before his time by Ktesias, as well as by Hecataeus, according
+         to Stephanus of Byzantium. Cf. Aristophanes, _Aves_, 1553;
+         Julius Solinus, _Polyhistor_, ed. Salmasius, cap. 240. Just as
+         these sheets are going to press there comes to me Mr. Perry's
+         acute and learned _History of Greek Literature_, New York,
+         1890, in which this subject is mentioned in connection with the
+         mendacious and medical Ktesias:--These stories have probably
+         acquired a literary currency "by exercise of the habit, not
+         unknown even to students of science, of indiscriminate copying
+         from one's predecessors, so that in reading Mandeville we have
+         the ghosts of the lies of Ktesias, almost sanctified by the
+         authority of Pliny, who quoted them and thereby made them a
+         part of mediaeval folk-lore--and from folk-lore, probably, they
+         took their remote start" (p. 522).]
+
+         [Footnote 219: "En that var gravara ok safvali ok allskonar
+         skinnavara" (Rafn, p. 59),--i. e. gray fur and sable and all
+         sorts of skinwares; in another account, "skinnavoeru ok algra
+         skinn," which in the Danish version is "skindvarer og aegte
+         graaskind" (id. p. 150),--i. e. skinwares and genuine gray
+         furs. Cartier in Canada and the Puritans in Massachusetts were
+         not long in finding that the natives had good furs to sell.]
+
+         [Footnote 220: Rafn, p. 156.]
+
+         [Footnote 221: Much curious information respecting the use of
+         elephants in war may be found in the learned work of the
+         Chevalier Armandi, _Histoire militaire des elephants_, Paris,
+         1843. As regards Thorfinn's bull, Mr. Laing makes the kind of
+         blunder that our British cousins are sometimes known to make
+         when they get the Rocky Mountains within sight of Bunker Hill
+         monument. "A continental people in that part of America," says
+         Mr. Laing, "could not be strangers to the much more formidable
+         bison." _Heimskringla_, p. 169. Bisons on the Atlantic coast,
+         Mr. Laing?! And then his comparison quite misses the point; a
+         bison, if the natives had been familiar with him, would not
+         have been at all formidable as compared to the bull which they
+         had never before seen. A horse is much less formidable than a
+         cougar, but Aztec warriors who did not mind a cougar were
+         paralyzed with terror at the sight of men on horseback. It is
+         the unknown that frightens in such cases. Thorfinn's natives
+         were probably familiar with such large animals as moose and
+         deer, but a deer isn't a bull.]
+
+[Sidenote: Meaning of the epithet "Skraelings."]
+
+These incidents are of surpassing interest, for they were attendant upon
+the first meeting (in all probability) that ever took place between
+civilized Europeans and any people below the upper status of
+barbarism.[222] Who were these natives encountered by Thorfinn? The
+Northmen called them "Skraelings," a name which one is at first sight
+strongly tempted to derive from the Icelandic verb _skraekja_, identical
+with the English _screech_. A crowd of excited Indians might most
+appropriately be termed Screechers.[223] This derivation, however, is
+not correct. The word _skraeling_ survives in modern Norwegian, and means
+a feeble or puny or _insignificant_ person. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in
+all probability correct, that the name "Skraelings," as applied to the
+natives of America, had no ethnological significance, but simply meant
+"inferior people;" it gave concise expression to the white man's opinion
+that they were "a bad lot." In Icelandic literature the name is usually
+applied to the Eskimos, and hence it has been rashly inferred that
+Thorfinn found Eskimos in Vinland. Such was Rafn's opinion, and since
+his time the commentators have gone off upon a wrong trail and much
+ingenuity has been wasted.[224] It would be well to remember, however,
+that the Europeans of the eleventh century were not ethnologists; in
+meeting these inferior peoples for the first time they were more likely
+to be impressed with the broad fact of their inferiority than to be nice
+in making distinctions. When we call both Australians and Fuegians
+"savages," we do not assert identity or relationship between them; and
+so when the Northmen called Eskimos and Indians by the same disparaging
+epithet, they doubtless simply meant to call them savages.
+
+         [Footnote 222: The Phoenicians, however (who in this connection
+         may be classed with Europeans), must have met with some such
+         people in the course of their voyages upon the coasts of
+         Africa. I shall treat of this more fully below, p. 327.]
+
+         [Footnote 223: As for Indians, says Cieza de Leon, they are all
+         noisy (alharaquientos). _Segunda Parte de la Cronica del Peru_,
+         cap. xxiii.]
+
+         [Footnote 224: For example, Dr. De Costa refers to Dr. Abbott's
+         discoveries as indicating "that the Indian was preceded by a
+         people like the Eskimos, whose stone implements are found in
+         the Trenton gravel." _Pre-Columbian Discovery_, p. 132. Quite
+         so; but that was in the Glacial Period (!!), and when the edge
+         of the ice-sheet slowly retreated northward, the Eskimo, who is
+         emphatically an Arctic creature, doubtless retreated with it,
+         just as he retreated from Europe. See above, p. 18. There is
+         not the slightest reason for supposing that there were any
+         Eskimos south of Labrador so lately as nine hundred years ago.]
+
+[Sidenote: Personal appearance of the Skraelings.]
+
+Our chronicle describes the Skraelings of Vinland as swarthy in hue,
+ferocious in aspect, with ugly hair, big eyes, and broad cheeks.[225]
+This will do very well for Indians, except as to the eyes. We are
+accustomed to think of Indian eyes as small; but in this connection it
+is worthy of note that a very keen observer, Marc Lescarbot, in his
+minute and elaborate description of the physical appearance of the
+Micmacs of Acadia, speaks with some emphasis of their large eyes.[226]
+Dr. Storm quite reasonably suggests that the Norse expression may refer
+to the size not of the eye-ball, but of the eye-socket, which in the
+Indian face is apt to be large; and very likely this is what the
+Frenchman also had in mind.
+
+         [Footnote 225: "Their voru svartir menn ok illiligir, ok havdhu
+         illt har a hoefdhi. Their voru mjoek eygdhir ok breidhir i
+         kinnum," i. e. "Hi homines erant nigri, truculenti specie,
+         foedam in capite comam habentes, oculis magnis et genis latis."
+         Rafn, p. 149. The Icelandic _svartr_ is more precisely rendered
+         by the identical English _swarthy_ than by the Latin _niger_.]
+
+         [Footnote 226: "Mais quat a noz Sauvages, pour ce qui regarde
+         les ieux ilz ne les ont ni bleuz, ni verds, mais noirs pour la
+         pluspart, ainsi que les cheveux; & neantmoins ne sont petits,
+         come ceux des anciens Scythes, mais d'une grandeur bien
+         agreable." Lescarbot, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, Paris,
+         1612, tom. ii. p. 714.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Skraelings of Vinland were Indians,--very likely
+Algonquins.]
+
+These Skraelings were clad in skins, and their weapons were bows and
+arrows, slings, and stone hatchets. In the latter we may now, I think,
+be allowed to recognize the familiar tomahawk; and when we read that, in
+a sharp fight with the natives, Thorbrand, son of the commander Snorro,
+was slain, and the woman Freydis afterward found his corpse in the
+woods, with a flat stone sticking in the head, and his naked sword lying
+on the ground beside him, we seem to see how it all happened.[227] We
+seem to see the stealthy Indian suddenly dealing the death-blow, and
+then obliged for his own safety to dart away among the trees without
+recovering his tomahawk or seizing the sword. The Skraelings came up the
+river or lake in a swarm of canoes, all yelling at the top of their
+voices (_et illi omnes valde acutum ululabant_), and, leaping ashore,
+began a formidable attack with slings and arrows. The narrative calls
+these canoes "skin-boats" (_hudhkeipar_), whence it has been inferred
+that the writer had in mind the _kayaks_ and _umiaks_ of the
+Eskimos.[228] I suspect that the writer did have such boats in mind, and
+accordingly used a word not strictly accurate. Very likely his
+authorities failed to specify a distinction between bark-boats and
+skin-boats, and simply used the handiest word for designating canoes as
+contrasted with their own keeled boats.[229]
+
+         [Footnote 227: "Hun fann fyrir ser mann daudhan, thar var
+         Thorbrandr Snorrason, ok stodh hellusteinn i hoefdhi honum;
+         sverdhit la bert i hja honum," i. e. "Illa incidit in mortuum
+         hominem, Thorbrandum Snorrii filium, cujus capiti lapis planus
+         impactus stetit; nudus juxta eum gladius jacuit." Rafn, p.
+         154.]
+
+         [Footnote 228: These Eskimo skin-boats are described in Rink's
+         _Danish Greenland_, pp. 113, 179.]
+
+         [Footnote 229: Cf. Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 366, 367.]
+
+One other point which must be noticed here in connection with the
+Skraelings is a singular manoeuvre which they are said to have practised
+in the course of the fight. They raised upon the end of a pole a big
+ball, not unlike a sheep's paunch, and of a bluish colour; this ball
+they swung from the pole over the heads of the white men, and it fell to
+the ground with a horrid noise.[230] Now, according to Mr. Schoolcraft,
+this was a mode of fighting formerly common among the Algonquins, in New
+England and elsewhere. This big ball was what Mr. Schoolcraft calls the
+"balista," or what the Indians themselves call the "demon's head." It
+was a large round boulder, sewed up in a new skin and attached to a
+pole. As the skin dried it enwrapped the stone tightly; and then it was
+daubed with grotesque devices in various colours. "It was borne by
+several warriors who acted as balisteers. Plunged upon a boat or canoe,
+it was capable of sinking it. Brought down upon a group of men on a
+sudden, it produced consternation and death."[231] This is a most
+remarkable feature in the narrative, for it shows us the Icelandic
+writer (here manifestly controlled by some authoritative source of
+information) describing a very strange mode of fighting, which we know
+to have been characteristic of the Algonquins. Karlsefni's men do not
+seem to have relished this outlandish style of fighting; they retreated
+along the river bank until they came to a favourable situation among
+some rocks, where they made a stand and beat off their swarming
+assailants. The latter, as soon as they found themselves losing many
+warriors without gaining their point, suddenly turned and fled to their
+canoes, and paddled away with astonishing celerity. Throughout the
+account it seems to me perfectly clear that we are dealing with Indians.
+
+         [Footnote 230: "That sa their Karlsefni at Skraelingar faerdhu
+         upp a stoeng knoett stundar mykinn thvi naer til at jafna sem
+         saudharvoemb, ok helzt blan at lit, ok fleygdhu af stoenginni upp
+         a landit yfir lidh theirra Karlsefnis, ok let illilega vidhr,
+         thar sem nidhr kom. Vidh thetta slo otta myklum a Karlsefni ok
+         allt lidh hans, sva at tha fysti engis annars enn flyja, ok
+         halda undan upp medh anni, thviat theim thotti lidh Skraelinga
+         drifa at ser allum megin, ok letta eigi, fyrr enn their koma
+         til hamra nokkurra, ok veittu thar vidhrtoeku hardha," i. e.
+         "Viderunt Karlsefniani quod Skraelingi longurio sustulerunt
+         globum ingentem, ventri ovillo haud absimilem, colore fere
+         caeruleo; hune ex longurio in terram super manum Karlsefnianorum
+         contorserunt, qui ut decidit, dirum sonuit. Hac re terrore
+         perculsus est Karlsefnius suique omnes, ut nihil aliud cuperent
+         quam fugere et gradum referre sursum secundum fluvium:
+         credebant enim se ab Skraelingis undique circumveniri. Hinc non
+         gradum stitere, priusquam ad rupes quasdam pervenissent, ubi
+         acriter resistebant." Rafn, p. 153.]
+
+         [Footnote 231: Schoolcraft, _Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge_,
+         Philadelphia, 1860, 6 vols. 4to, vol. i. p. 89; a figure of
+         this weapon is given in the same volume, plate xv. fig. 2, from
+         a careful description by Chingwauk, an Algonquin chief.]
+
+[Sidenote: The uniped.]
+
+The coexistence of so many unmistakable marks of truth in our narratives
+may fairly be said to amount to a demonstration that they must be
+derived, through some eminently trustworthy channel, from the statements
+of intelligent eye-witnesses who took part in the events related. Here
+and there, no doubt, we come upon some improbable incident or a touch of
+superstition, such as we need not go back to the eleventh century to
+find very common among seamen's narratives; but the remarkable thing in
+the present case is that there are so few such features. One fabulous
+creature is mentioned. Thorfinn and his men saw from their vessel a
+glittering speck upon the shore at an opening in the woods. They hailed
+it, whereupon the creature proceeded to perform the quite human act of
+shooting an arrow, which killed the man at the helm. The narrator calls
+it a "uniped," or some sort of one-footed goblin,[232] but that is
+hardly reasonable, for after the shooting it went on to perform the
+further quite human and eminently Indian-like act of running away.[233]
+Evidently this discreet "uniped" was impressed with the desirableness of
+living to fight another day. In a narrative otherwise characterized by
+sobriety, such an instance of fancy, even supposing it to have come down
+from the original sources, counts for as much or as little as Henry
+Hudson's description of a mermaid.[234]
+
+         [Footnote 232: Rafn, p. 160; De Costa, p. 134; Storm, p. 330.]
+
+         [Footnote 233: Here the narrator seems determined to give us a
+         genuine smack of the marvellous, for when the fleeing uniped
+         comes to a place where his retreat seems cut off by an arm of
+         the sea, he runs (glides, or hops?) across the water without
+         sinking. In Vigfusson's version, however, the marvellous is
+         eliminated, and the creature simply runs over the stubble and
+         disappears. The incident is evidently an instance where the
+         narrative has been "embellished" by introducing a feature from
+         ancient classical writers. The "Monocoli," or one-legged
+         people, are mentioned by Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 2: "Item
+         hominum genus qui Monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, mirae
+         pernicitatis ad saltum." Cf. Aulus Gellius, _Noctes Atticae_,
+         viii. 4.]
+
+         [Footnote 234: Between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, June 15,
+         1608. For the description, with its droll details, see _Purchas
+         his Pilgrimes_, iii. 575.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Misleading associations with the word "saga."]
+
+[Sidenote: Unfortunate comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon.]
+
+[Sidenote: The story of the Trojan War, as we have it, is pure
+folk-lore.]
+
+It is now time for a few words upon the character of the records upon
+which our story is based. And first, let us remark upon a possible
+source of misapprehension due to the associations with which a certain
+Norse word has been clothed. The old Norse narrative-writings are called
+"sagas," a word which we are in the habit of using in English as
+equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives. To cite a "saga" as
+authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as
+inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale; and I cannot help suspecting that
+to some such misleading association of ideas is due the particular form
+of the opinion expressed some time ago by a committee of the
+Massachusetts Historical Society,--"that there is the same sort of
+reason for believing in the existence of Leif Ericsson that there is for
+believing in the existence of Agamemnon. They are both traditions
+accepted by later writers, and there is no more reason for regarding as
+true the details related about the discoveries of the former than there
+is for accepting as historic truth the narrative contained in the
+Homeric poems." The report goes on to observe that "it is antecedently
+probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part of the
+eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort of
+historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon
+which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests."[235]
+The second of these statements is characterized by critical moderation,
+and expresses the inevitable and wholesome reaction against the rash
+enthusiasm of Professor Rafn half a century ago, and the vagaries of
+many an uninstructed or uncritical writer since his time. But the first
+statement is singularly unfortunate. It would be difficult to find a
+comparison more inappropriate than that between Agamemnon and Leif,
+between the Iliad and the Saga of Eric the Red. The story of the Trojan
+War and its heroes, as we have it in Homer and the Athenian dramatists,
+is pure folk-lore as regards form, and chiefly folk-lore as regards
+contents. It is in a high degree probable that this mass of folk-lore
+surrounds a kernel of plain fact, that in times long before the first
+Olympiad an actual "king of men" at Mycenae conducted an expedition
+against the great city by the Simois, that the Agamemnon of the poet
+stands in some such relation toward this chieftain as that in which the
+Charlemagne of mediaeval romance stands toward the mighty Emperor of the
+West.[236] Nevertheless the story, as we have it, is simply folk-lore.
+If the Iliad and Odyssey contain faint reminiscences of actual events,
+these events are so inextricably wrapped up with mythical phraseology
+that by no cunning of the scholar can they be construed into history.
+The motives and capabilities of the actors and the conditions under
+which they accomplish their destinies are such as exist only in
+fairy-tales. Their world is as remote from that in which we live as the
+world of Sindbad and Camaralzaman; and this is not essentially altered
+by the fact that Homer introduces us to definite localities and familiar
+customs as often as the Irish legends of Finn M'Cumhail.[237]
+
+         [Footnote 235: _Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc._, December, 1887.]
+
+         [Footnote 236: I used this argument twenty years ago in
+         qualification of the over-zealous solarizing views of Sir G. W.
+         Cox and others. See my _Myths and Mythmakers_, pp. 191-202; and
+         cf. Freeman on "The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early
+         English History," in his _Historical Essays_, i. 1-39.]
+
+         [Footnote 237: Curtin, _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, pp.
+         12, 204, 303; Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts_,
+         pp. 203-311.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore.]
+
+It would be hard to find anything more unlike such writings than the
+class of Icelandic sagas to which that of Eric the Red belongs. Here we
+have quiet and sober narrative, not in the least like a fairy-tale, but
+often much like a ship's log. Whatever such narrative may be, it is not
+folk-lore. In act and motive, in its conditions and laws, its world is
+the every-day world in which we live. If now and then a "uniped" happens
+to stray into it, the incongruity is as conspicuous as in the case of
+Hudson's mermaid, or a ghost in a modern country inn; whereas in the
+Homeric fabric the supernatural is warp and woof. To assert a likeness
+between two kinds of literature so utterly different is to go very far
+astray.
+
+[Sidenote: Mythical and historical sagas.]
+
+As already observed, I suspect that misleading associations with the
+word "saga" may have exerted an unconscious influence in producing this
+particular kind of blunder,--for it is nothing less than a blunder.
+Resemblance is tacitly assumed between the Iliad and an Icelandic saga.
+Well, between the Iliad and _some_ Icelandic sagas there is a real and
+strong resemblance. In truth these sagas are divisible into two well
+marked and sharply contrasted classes. In the one class belong the Eddic
+Lays, and the _mythical sagas_, such as the Volsunga, the stories of
+Ragnar, Frithiof, and others; and along with these, though totally
+different in source, we may for our present purpose group the _romantic
+sagas_, such as Parceval, Remund, Karlamagnus, and others brought from
+southern Europe. These are alike in being composed of legendary and
+mythical materials; they belong essentially to the literature of
+folk-lore. In the other class come the _historical sagas_, such as those
+of Njal and Egil, the Sturlunga, and many others, with the numerous
+biographies and annals.[238] These writings give us history, and often
+very good history indeed. "Saga" meant simply any kind of literature in
+narrative form; the good people of Iceland did not happen to have such a
+handy word as "history," which they could keep entire when they meant it
+in sober earnest and chop down into "story" when they meant it
+otherwise. It is very much as if we were to apply the same word to the
+Arthur legends and to William of Malmesbury's judicious and accurate
+chronicles, and call them alike "stories."
+
+         [Footnote 238: Nowhere can you find a more masterly critical
+         account of Icelandic literature than in Vigfusson's
+         "Prolegomena" to his edition of _Sturlunga Saga_, Oxford, 1878,
+         vol. i. pp. ix.-ccxiv. There is a good but very brief account
+         in Horn's _History of the Literature of the Scandinavian
+         North_, transl. by R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1884, pp. 50-70.]
+
+[Sidenote: The western or Hauks-bok version of Eric the Red's Saga.]
+
+The narrative upon which our account of the Vinland voyages is chiefly
+based belongs to the class of historical sagas. It is the Saga of Eric
+the Red, and it exists in two different versions, of which one seems to
+have been made in the north, the other in the west, of Iceland. The
+western version is the earlier and in some respects the better. It is
+found in two vellums, that of the great collection known as _Hauks-bok_
+(AM. 544), and that which is simply known as AM. 557 from its catalogue
+number in Arni Magnusson's collection. Of these the former, which is the
+best preserved, was written in a beautiful hand by Hauk Erlendsson,
+between 1305 and 1334, the year of his death. This western version is
+the one which has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of
+Thorfinn Karlsefni." It is the one to which I have most frequently
+referred in the present chapter.[239]
+
+         [Footnote 239: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 84-187, and in
+         _Groenlands historiske Mindesmaerker_, i. 352-443. The most
+         essential part of it may now be found, under its own name, in
+         Vigfusson's _Icelandic Prose Reader_, pp. 123-140.]
+
+[Sidenote: The northern or Flateyar-bok version.]
+
+The northern version is that which was made about the year 1387 by the
+priest Jon Thordharson, and contained in the famous compilation known as
+the _Flateyar-bok_, or "Flat Island Book."[240] This priest was editing
+the saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson, which is contained in that
+compilation, and inasmuch as Leif Ericsson's presence at King Olaf's
+court was connected both with the introduction of Christianity into
+Greenland and with the discovery of Vinland, Jon paused, after the
+manner of mediaeval chroniclers, and inserted then and there what he knew
+about Eric and Leif and Thorfinn. In doing this, he used parts of the
+original saga of Eric the Red (as we find it reproduced in the western
+version), and added thereunto a considerable amount of material
+concerning the Vinland voyages derived from other sources. Jon's version
+thus made has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of Eric the
+Red."[241]
+
+         [Footnote 240: It belonged to a man who lived on Flat Island,
+         in one of the Iceland fiords.]
+
+         [Footnote 241: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 1-76, under the title
+         "Thaettir af Eireki Rauda ok Graenlendingum." For a critical
+         account of these versions, see Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 319-325; I
+         do not, in all respects, follow him in his depreciation of the
+         Flateyar-bok version.]
+
+[Sidenote: Presumption against sources not contemporary.]
+
+Now the older version, written at the beginning of the fourteenth
+century, gives an account of things which happened three centuries
+before it was written. A cautious scholar will, as a rule, be slow to
+consider any historical narrative as quite satisfactory authority, even
+when it contains no improbable statements, unless it is nearly
+contemporary with the events which it records. Such was the rule laid
+down by the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and it is a very good rule;
+the proper application of it has disencumbered history of much rubbish.
+At the same time, like all rules, it should be used with judicious
+caution and not allowed to run away with us. As applied by Lewis to
+Roman history it would have swept away in one great cataclysm not only
+kings and decemvirs, but Brennus and his Gauls to boot, and left us with
+nothing to swear by until the invasion of Pyrrhus.[242] Subsequent
+research has shown that this was going altogether too far. The mere fact
+of distance in time between a document and the events which it records
+is only negative testimony against its value, for it may be a faithful
+transcript of some earlier document or documents since lost. It is so
+difficult to prove a negative that the mere lapse of time simply raises
+a presumption the weight of which should be estimated by a careful
+survey of all the probabilities in the case. Among the many Icelandic
+vellums that are known to have perished[243] there may well have been
+earlier copies of Eric the Red's Saga.
+
+         [Footnote 242: Lewis's _Inquiry into the Credibility of the
+         Early Roman History_, 2 vols., London, 1855.]
+
+         [Footnote 243: And notably in that terrible fire of October,
+         1728, which consumed the University Library at Copenhagen, and
+         broke the heart of the noble collector of manuscripts, Arni
+         Magnusson. The great eruption of Hecla in 1390 overwhelmed two
+         famous homesteads in the immediate neighbourhood. From the
+         local history of these homesteads and their inmates, Vigfusson
+         thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be there
+         "awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann."
+         _Sturlunga Saga_, p. cliv.]
+
+[Sidenote: Hauk Erlendsson and his manuscripts.]
+
+Hauk Erlendsson reckoned himself a direct descendant, in the eighth
+generation, from Snorro, son of Thorfinn and Gudrid, born in Vinland. He
+was an important personage in Iceland, a man of erudition, author of a
+brief book of contemporary annals and a treatise on arithmetic in which
+he introduced the Arabic numerals into Iceland. In those days the lover
+of books, if he would add them to his library, might now and then obtain
+an original manuscript, but usually he had to copy them or have them
+copied by hand. The Hauks-bok, with its 200 skins, one of the most
+extensive Icelandic vellums now in existence, is really Hauk's private
+library, or what there is left of it, and it shows that he was a man who
+knew how to make a good choice of books. He did a good deal of his
+copying himself, and also employed two clerks in the same kind of
+work.[244]
+
+         [Footnote 244: An excellent facsimile of Hauk's handwriting is
+         given in Rafn, tab. iii., lower part; tab. iv. and the upper
+         part of tab. iii. are in the hands of his two amanuenses. See
+         Vigfusson, _op. cit._ p. clxi.]
+
+[Sidenote: The story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's time
+by oral tradition only.]
+
+Now I do not suppose it will occur to any rational being to suggest that
+Hauk may have written down his version of Eric the Red's Saga from an
+oral tradition nearly three centuries old. The narrative could not have
+been so long preserved in its integrity, with so little extravagance of
+statement and so many marks of truthfulness in details foreign to
+ordinary Icelandic experience, if it had been entrusted to oral
+tradition alone. One might as well try to imagine Drake's "World
+Encompassed" handed down by oral tradition from the days of Queen
+Elizabeth to the days of Queen Victoria. Such transmission is possible
+enough with heroic poems and folk-tales, which deal with a few dramatic
+situations and a stock of mythical conceptions familiar at every
+fireside; but in a simple matter-of-fact record of sailors' observations
+and experiences on a strange coast, oral tradition would not be long in
+distorting and jumbling the details into a result quite undecipherable.
+The story of the Zeno brothers, presently to be cited, shows what
+strange perversions occur, even in written tradition, when the copyist,
+instead of faithfully copying records of unfamiliar events, tries to
+edit and amend them. One cannot reasonably doubt that Hauk's vellum of
+Eric the Red's Saga, with its many ear-marks of truth above mentioned,
+was copied by him--and quite carefully and faithfully withal--from some
+older vellum not now forthcoming.
+
+[Sidenote: Allusions to Vinland in other documents.]
+
+As we have no clue, however, beyond the internal evidence, to the age or
+character of the sources from which Hauk copied, there is nothing left
+for us to do but to look into other Icelandic documents, to see if
+anywhere they betray a knowledge of Vinland and the voyages thither.
+Incidental references to Vinland, in narratives concerned with other
+matters, are of great significance in this connection; for they imply on
+the part of the narrator a presumption that his readers understand such
+references, and that it is not necessary to interrupt his story in order
+to explain them. Such incidental references imply the existence, during
+the interval between the Vinland voyages and Hauk's manuscript, of many
+intermediate links of sound testimony that have since dropped out of
+sight; and therefore they go far toward removing whatever presumption
+may be alleged against Hauk's manuscript because of its distance from
+the events.
+
+[Sidenote: Eyrbyggja Saga.]
+
+Now the Eyrbyggja Saga, written between 1230 and 1260, is largely
+devoted to the settlement of Iceland, and is full of valuable notices of
+the heathen institutions and customs of the tenth century. The
+Eyrbyggja, having occasion to speak of Thorbrand Snorrason, observes
+incidentally that he went from Greenland to Vinland with Karlsefni and
+was killed in a battle with the Skraelings.[245] We have already
+mentioned the death of this Thorbrand, and how Freydis found his body in
+the woods.
+
+         [Footnote 245: Vigfusson, _Eyrbyggja Saga_, pp. 91, 92. Another
+         of Karlsefni's comrades, Thorhall Gamlason, is mentioned in
+         _Grettis Saga_, Copenhagen, 1859, pp. 22, 70; he went back to
+         Iceland, settled on a farm there, and was known for the rest of
+         his life as "the Vinlander." See above, pp. 165, 168.]
+
+[Sidenote: The abbot Nikulas, etc.]
+
+Three Icelandic tracts on geography, between the twelfth and fourteenth
+centuries, mention Helluland and Vinland, and in two of these accounts
+Markland is interposed between Helluland and Vinland.[246] One of these
+tracts mentions the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn. It forms part of an
+essay called "Guide to the Holy Land," by Nikulas Saemundsson, abbot of
+Thvera, in the north of Iceland, who died 1159. This Nikulas was curious
+in matters of geography, and had travelled extensively.
+
+         [Footnote 246: Werlauf, _Symbolae ad Geogr. Medii AEvi_,
+         Copenhagen, 1820.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ari Frodhi.]
+
+With the celebrated Ari Thorgilsson, usually known as Frodhi, "the
+learned," we come to testimony nearly contemporaneous in time and
+extremely valuable in character. This erudite priest, born in 1067, was
+the founder of historical writing in Iceland. He was the principal
+author of the "Landnama-bok," already mentioned as a work of thorough
+and painstaking research unequalled in mediaeval literature. His other
+principal works were the "Konunga-bok," or chronicle of the kings of
+Norway, and the "Islendinga-bok," or description of Iceland.[247] Ari's
+books, written not in monkish Latin, but in a good vigorous vernacular,
+were a mine of information from which all subsequent Icelandic
+historians were accustomed to draw such treasures as they needed. To his
+diligence and acumen they were all, from Snorro Sturlason down, very
+much indebted. He may be said to have given the tone to history-writing
+in Iceland, and it was a high tone.
+
+         [Footnote 247: For a critical estimate of Ari's literary
+         activity and the extent of his work, the reader is referred to
+         Moebius, _Are's Islaenderbuch_, Leipsic, 1869; Maurer, "Ueber Ari
+         Thorgilsson und sein Islaenderbuch," in _Germania_, xv.; Olsen,
+         _Ari Thorgilsson hinn Frodhi_, Reykjavik, 1889, pp. 214-240.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ari's significant allusion to Vinland.]
+
+Unfortunately Ari's Islendinga-bok has perished. One cannot help
+suspecting that it may have contained the contemporary materials from
+which Eric the Red's Saga in the Hauks-bok was ultimately drawn. For
+Ari made an abridgment or epitome of his great book, and this epitome,
+commonly known as "Libellus Islandorum," still survives. In it Ari makes
+brief mention of Greenland, and refers to his paternal uncle, Thorkell
+Gellison, as authority for his statements. This Thorkell Gellison, of
+Helgafell, a man of high consideration who flourished about the middle
+of the eleventh century, had visited Greenland and talked with one of
+the men who accompanied Eric when he went to settle in Brattahlid in
+986. From this source Ari gives us the interesting information that
+Eric's party found in Greenland "traces of human habitations, fragments
+of boats, and stone implements; so from this one might conclude that
+people of the kind who inhabited Vinland and were known by the (Norse)
+Greenlanders as Skraelings must have roamed about there."[248] Observe
+the force of this allusion. The settlers in Greenland did not at first
+(nor for a long time) meet with barbarous or savage natives there, but
+only with the vestiges of their former presence. But when Ari wrote the
+above passage, the memory of Vinland and its fierce Skraelings was still
+fresh, and Ari very properly inferred from the archaeological remains in
+Greenland that a people similar (in point of barbarism) to the
+Skraelings must have been there. Unless Ari and his readers had a
+distinct recollection of the accounts of Vinland, such a reference would
+have been only an attempt to explain the less obscure by the more
+obscure. It is to be regretted that we have in this book no more
+allusions to Vinland; but if Ari could only leave us one such allusion,
+he surely could not have made that one more pointed.
+
+         [Footnote 248: Their "fundo thar manna vister baethi austr ok
+         vestr a landi ok kaeiplabrot ok steinsmithi, that es af thvi ma
+         scilja, at thar hafdhi thessconar thjoth farith es Vinland
+         hefer bygt, ok Graenlendinger calla Skrelinga," i. e.
+         "invenerunt ibi, tam in orientali quam occidentali terrae parte,
+         humanae habitationis vestigia, navicularum fragmenta et opera
+         fabrilia ex lapide, ex quo intelligi potest, ibi versatum esse
+         nationem quae Vinlandiam incoluit quamque Graenlandi Skraelingos
+         appellant." Rafn, p. 207.]
+
+[Sidenote: Other references.]
+
+But this is not quite the only reference that Ari makes to Vinland.
+There are three others that must in all probability be assigned to him.
+Two occur in the Landnama-bok, the first in a passage where mention is
+made of Ari Marsson's voyage to a place in the western ocean near
+Vinland;[249] the only point in this allusion which need here concern us
+is that Vinland is tacitly assumed to be a known geographical situation
+to which others may be referred. The second reference occurs in one of
+those elaborate and minutely specific genealogies in the Landnama-bok:
+"Their son was Thordhr Hest-hoefdhi, father of Karlsefni, who found
+Vinland the Good, Snorri's father," etc.[250] The third reference occurs
+in the Kristni Saga, a kind of supplement to the Landnama-bok, giving an
+account of the introduction of Christianity into Iceland; here it is
+related how Leif Ericsson came to be called "Leif the Lucky," 1. from
+having rescued a shipwrecked crew off the coast of Greenland, 2. from
+having discovered "Vinland the Good."[251] From these brief allusions,
+and from the general relation in which Ari Frodhi stood to later
+writers, I suspect that if the greater Islendinga-bok had survived to
+our time we should have found in it more about Vinland and its
+discoverers. At any rate, as to the existence of a definite and
+continuous tradition all the way from Ari down to Hauk Erlendsson, there
+can be no question whatever.[252]
+
+         [Footnote 249: _Landnama-bok_, part ii. chap. xxii.]
+
+         [Footnote 250: Id. part iii. chap. x.]
+
+         [Footnote 251: _Kristni Saga_, apud _Biskupa Soegur_,
+         Copenhagen, 1858, vol. i. p. 20.]
+
+         [Footnote 252: Indeed, the parallel existence of the
+         Flateyar-bok version of Eric the Red's Saga, alongside of the
+         Hauks-bok version, is pretty good proof of the existence of a
+         written account older than Hauk's time. The discrepancies
+         between the two versions are such as to show that Jon
+         Thordharson did not copy from Hauk, but followed some other
+         version not now forthcoming. Jon mentions six voyages in
+         connection with Vinland: 1. Bjarni Herjulfsson; 2. Leif; 3.
+         Thorvald; 4. Thorstein and Gudrid; 5. Thorfinn Karlsefni; 6.
+         Freydis. Hauk, on the other hand, mentions only the two
+         principal voyages, those of Leif and Thorfinn; ignoring Bjarni,
+         he accredits his adventures to Leif on his return voyage from
+         Norway in 999, and he makes Thorvald a comrade of Thorfinn, and
+         mixes his adventures with the events of Thorfinn's voyage. Dr.
+         Storm considers Hauk's account intrinsically the more probable,
+         and thinks that in the Flateyar-bok we have a later
+         amplification of the tradition. But while I agree with Dr.
+         Storm as to the general superiority of the Hauk version, I am
+         not convinced by his arguments on this point. It seems to me
+         likely that the Flateyar-bok here preserves more faithfully the
+         details of an older tradition too summarily epitomized in the
+         Hauks-bok. As the point in no way affects the general
+         conclusions of the present chapter, it is hardly worth arguing
+         here. The main thing for us is that the divergencies between
+         the two versions, when coupled with their agreement in the most
+         important features, indicate that both writers were working
+         upon the basis of an antecedent written tradition, like the
+         authors of the first and third synoptic gospels. Only here, of
+         course, there are in the divergencies no symptoms of what the
+         Tuebingen school would call "_tendenz_," impairing and obscuring
+         to an indeterminate extent the general trustworthiness of the
+         narratives. On the whole, it is pretty clear that Hauks-bok and
+         Flateyar-bok were independent of each other, and collated, each
+         in its own way, earlier documents that have probably since
+         perished.]
+
+[Sidenote: Adam of Bremen.]
+
+The testimony of Adam of Bremen brings us yet one generation nearer to
+the Vinland voyages, and is very significant. Adam was much interested
+in the missionary work in the north of Europe, and in 1073, the same
+year that Hildebrand was elected to the papacy, he published his famous
+"Historia Ecclesiastica" in which he gave an account of the conversion
+of the northern nations from the time of Leo III. to that of
+Hildebrand's predecessor. In prosecuting his studies, Adam made a visit
+to the court of Swend Estridhsen, king of Denmark, nephew of Cnut the
+Great, king of Denmark and England. Swend's reign began in 1047, so that
+Adam's visit must have occurred between that date and 1073. The voyage
+of Leif and Thorfinn would at that time have been within the memory of
+living men, and would be likely to be known in Denmark, because the
+intercourse between the several parts of the Scandinavian world was
+incessant; there was continual coming and going. Adam learned what he
+could of Scandinavian geography, and when he published his history, he
+did just what a modern writer would do under similar circumstances; he
+appended to his book some notes on the geography of those remote
+countries, then so little known to his readers in central and southern
+Europe. After giving some account of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, he
+describes the colony in Iceland, and then the further colony in
+Greenland, and concludes by saying that out in that ocean there is
+another country, or island, which has been visited by many persons, and
+is called Vinland because of wild grapes that grow there, out of which a
+very good wine can be made. Either rumour had exaggerated the virtues of
+fox-grape juice, or the Northmen were not such good judges of wine as of
+ale. Adam goes on to say that corn, likewise, grows in Vinland without
+cultivation; and as such a statement to European readers must needs have
+a smack of falsehood, he adds that it is based not upon fable and
+guess-work, but upon "trustworthy reports (_certa relatione_) of the
+Danes."
+
+[Sidenote: Adam's misconception of the situation.]
+
+Scanty as it is, this single item of strictly contemporary testimony is
+very important, because quite incidentally it gives to the later
+accounts such confirmation as to show that they rest upon a solid basis
+of continuous tradition and not upon mere unintelligent hearsay.[253]
+The unvarying character of the tradition, in its essential details,
+indicates that it must have been committed to writing at a very early
+period, probably not later than the time of Ari's uncle Thorkell, who
+was contemporary with Adam of Bremen. If, however, we read the whole
+passage in which Adam's mention of Vinland occurs, it is clear from the
+context that his own information was not derived from an inspection of
+Icelandic documents. He got it, as he tells us, by talking with King
+Swend; and all that he got, or all that he thought worth telling, was
+this curious fact about vines and self-sown corn growing so near to
+Greenland; for Adam quite misconceived the situation of Vinland, and
+imagined it far up in the frozen North. After his mention of Vinland,
+the continental character of which he evidently did not suspect, he goes
+on immediately to say, "After this island nothing inhabitable is to be
+found in that ocean, all being covered with unendurable ice and
+boundless darkness." That most accomplished king, Harold Hardrada, says
+Adam, tried not long since to ascertain how far the northern ocean
+extended, and plunged along through this darkness until he actually
+reached the end of the world, and came near tumbling off![254] Thus the
+worthy Adam, while telling the truth about fox-grapes and maize as well
+as he knew how, spoiled the effect of his story by putting Vinland in
+the Arctic regions. The juxtaposition of icebergs and vines was a little
+too close even for the mediaeval mind so hospitable to strange yarns.
+Adam's readers generally disbelieved the "trustworthy reports of the
+Danes," and when they thought of Vinland at all, doubtless thought of it
+as somewhere near the North Pole.[255] We shall do well to bear this in
+mind when we come to consider the possibility of Columbus having
+obtained from Adam of Bremen any hint in the least likely to be of use
+in his own enterprise.[256]
+
+         [Footnote 253: It is further interesting as the only undoubted
+         reference to Vinland in a mediaeval book written beyond the
+         limits of the Scandinavian world. There is also, however, a
+         passage in Ordericus Vitalis (_Historia Ecclesiastica_, iv.
+         29), in which _Finland_ and the Orkneys, along with Greenland
+         and Iceland, are loosely described as forming part of the
+         dominions of the kings of Norway. This Finland does not appear
+         to refer to the country of the Finns, east of the Baltic, and
+         it has been supposed that it may have been meant for Vinland.
+         The book of Ordericus was written about 1140.]
+
+         [Footnote 254: The passage from Adam of Bremen deserves to be
+         quoted in full: "Praeterea unam adhuc insulam [regionam]
+         recitavit [i. e. Svendus rex] a multis in eo repertam oceano,
+         quae dicitur Vinland, eo quod ibi vites sponte nascantur, vinum
+         bonum gerentes [ferentes]; nam et fruges ibi non seminatas
+         abundare, non fabulosa opinione, sed certa comperimus relatione
+         Danorum. Post quam insulam terra nulla invenitur habitabilis in
+         illo oceano, sed omnia quae ultra sunt glacie intolerabili ac
+         caligine immensa plena sunt; cujus rei Marcianus ita meminit:
+         ultra Thyle, inquiens, navigare unius diei mare concretum est.
+         Tentavit hoc nuper experientissimus Nordmannorum princeps
+         Haroldus, qui latitudinem septentrionalis oceani perscrutatus
+         navibus, tandem caligantibus ante ora deficientis mundi
+         finibus, immane abyssi baratrum, retroactis vestigiis, vix
+         salvus evasit." _Descriptio insularum aquilonis_, cap. 38, apud
+         _Hist. Ecclesiastica_, iv. ed. Lindenbrog, Leyden, 1595. No
+         such voyage is known to have been undertaken by Harold of
+         Norway, nor is it likely. Adam was probably thinking of an
+         Arctic voyage undertaken by one Thorir under the auspices of
+         King Harold; one of the company brought back a polar bear and
+         gave it to King Swend, who was much pleased with it. See Rafn,
+         339. "Regionam" and "ferentes" in the above extract are variant
+         readings found in some editions.]
+
+         [Footnote 255: "Det har imidlertid ikke forhindret de senere
+         forfattere, der benyttede Adam, fra at blive mistaenksomme, og
+         saalaenge Adams beretning stod alene, har man i regelen vaegret
+         sig for at tro den. Endog den norske forfatter, der skrev
+         'Historia Norvegiae' og som foruden Adam vel ogsaa bar kjendt de
+         hjemlige sagn om Vinland, maa have anseet beretningen for
+         fabelagtig og derfor forbigaaet den; han kjendte altfor godt
+         Gronland som et nordligt isfyldt Polarland til at ville tro
+         paa, at i naerheden fandtes et Vinland." Storm, in _Aarboger for
+         Nordisk Oldkyndighed_, etc., Copenhagen, 1887, p. 300.]
+
+         [Footnote 256: See below, p. 386.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Summary of the argument.]
+
+To sum up the argument:--we have in Eric the Red's Saga, as copied by
+Hauk Erlendsson, a document for the existence of which we are required
+to account. That document contains unmistakable knowledge of some
+things which mediaeval Europeans could by no human possibility have
+learned, except through a visit to some part of the coast of North
+America further south than Labrador or Newfoundland. It tells an
+eminently probable story in a simple, straightforward way, agreeing in
+its details with what we know of the North American coast between Point
+Judith and Cape Breton. Its general accuracy in the statement and
+grouping of so many remote details is proof that its statements were
+controlled by an exceedingly strong and steady tradition,--altogether
+too strong and steady, in my opinion, to have been maintained simply by
+word of mouth. These Icelanders were people so much given to writing
+that their historic records during the Middle Ages were, as the late Sir
+Richard Burton truly observed, more complete than those of any other
+country in Europe.[257] It is probable that the facts mentioned in
+Hauk's document rested upon some kind of a written basis as early as the
+eleventh century; and it seems quite clear that the constant tradition,
+by which all the allusions to Vinland and the Skraelings are controlled,
+had become established by that time. The data are more scanty than we
+could wish, but they all point in the same direction as surely as straws
+blown by a steady wind, and their cumulative force is so great as to
+fall but little short of demonstration. For these reasons it seems to me
+that the Saga of Eric the Red should be accepted as history; and there
+is another reason which might not have counted for much at the
+beginning of this discussion, but at the end seems quite solid and
+worthy of respect. The narrative begins with the colonization of
+Greenland and goes on with the visits to Vinland. It is unquestionably
+sound history for the first part; why should it be anything else for the
+second part? What shall be said of a style of criticism which, in
+dealing with one and the same document, arbitrarily cuts it in two in
+the middle and calls the first half history and the last half legend?
+which accepts its statements as serious so long as they keep to the
+north of the sixtieth parallel, and dismisses them as idle as soon as
+they pass to the south of it? Quite contrary to common sense, I should
+say.
+
+         [Footnote 257: Burton, _Ultima Thule_, London, 1875, i. 237.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Absurd speculations of zealous antiquarians.]
+
+[Sidenote: There is no reason for supposing that the Northmen founded a
+colony in Vinland.]
+
+[Sidenote: No archaeological remains of the Northmen have been found
+south of Davis strait.]
+
+The only discredit which has been thrown upon the story of the Vinland
+voyages, in the eyes either of scholars or of the general public, has
+arisen from the eager credulity with which ingenious antiquarians have
+now and then tried to prove more than facts will warrant. It is
+peculiarly a case in which the judicious historian has had frequent
+occasion to exclaim, Save me from my friends! The only fit criticism
+upon the wonderful argument from the Dighton inscription is a reference
+to the equally wonderful discovery made by Mr. Pickwick at Cobham;[258]
+and when it was attempted, some sixty years ago, to prove that Governor
+Arnold's old stone windmill at Newport[259] was a tower built by the
+Northmen, no wonder if the exposure of this rather laughable notion
+should have led many people to suppose that the story of Leif and
+Thorfinn had thereby been deprived of some part of its support. But the
+story never rested upon any such evidence, and does not call for
+evidence of such sort. There is nothing in the story to indicate that
+the Northmen ever founded a colony in Vinland, or built durable
+buildings there. The distinction implicitly drawn by Adam of Bremen, who
+narrates the colonization of Iceland and Greenland, and then goes on to
+speak of Vinland, not as colonized, but simply as discovered, is a
+distinction amply borne out by our chronicles. Nowhere is there the
+slightest hint of a colony or settlement established in Vinland. On the
+contrary, our plain, business-like narrative tells us that Thorfinn
+Karlsefni tried to found a colony and failed; and it tells us why he
+failed. The Indians were too many for him. The Northmen of the eleventh
+century, without firearms, were in much less favourable condition for
+withstanding the Indians than the Englishmen of the seventeenth; and at
+the former period there existed no cause for emigration from Norway and
+Iceland at all comparable to the economic, political, and religious
+circumstances which, in a later age, sent thousands of Englishmen to
+Virginia and New England. The founding of colonies in America in the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was no pastime; it was a tale of
+drudgery, starvation, and bloodshed, that curdles one's blood to read;
+more attempts failed than succeeded. Assuredly Thorfinn gave proof of
+the good sense ascribed to him when he turned his back upon Vinland. But
+if he or any other Northman had ever succeeded in establishing a colony
+there, can anybody explain why it should not have stamped the fact of
+its existence either upon the soil, or upon history, or both, as
+unmistakably as the colony of Greenland? Archaeological remains of the
+Northmen abound in Greenland, all the way from Immartinek to near Cape
+Farewell; the existence of one such relic on the North American
+continent has never yet been proved. Not a single vestige of the
+Northmen's presence here, at all worthy of credence, has ever been
+found. The writers who have, from time to time, mistaken other things
+for such vestiges, have been led astray because they have failed to
+distinguish between the different conditions of proof in Greenland and
+in Vinland. As Mr. Laing forcibly put the case, nearly half a century
+ago, "Greenland was a colony with communications, trade, civil and
+ecclesiastical establishments, and a considerable population," for more
+than four centuries. "Vinland was only visited by flying parties of
+woodcutters, remaining at the utmost two or three winters, but never
+settling there permanently.... To expect here, as in Greenland, material
+proofs to corroborate the documentary proofs, is weakening the latter by
+linking them to a sort of evidence which, from the very nature of the
+case,--the temporary visits of a ship's crew,--cannot exist in Vinland,
+and, as in the case of Greenland, come in to support them."[260]
+
+         [Footnote 258: See _Pickwick Papers_, chap. xi. I am indebted
+         to Mr. Tillinghast, of Harvard University Library, for calling
+         my attention to a letter from Rev. John Lathrop, of Boston, to
+         Hon. John Davis, August 10, 1809, containing George
+         Washington's opinion of the Dighton inscription. When President
+         Washington visited Cambridge in the fall of 1789, he was shown
+         about the college buildings by the president and fellows of the
+         university. While in the museum he was observed to "fix his
+         eye" upon a full-size copy of the Dighton inscription made by
+         the librarian, James Winthrop. Dr. Lathrop, who happened to be
+         standing near Washington, "ventured to give the opinion which
+         several learned men had entertained with respect to the origin
+         of the inscription." Inasmuch as some of the characters were
+         thought to resemble "oriental" characters, and inasmuch as the
+         ancient Phoenicians had sailed outside of the Pillars of
+         Hercules, it was "conjectured" that some Phoenician vessels had
+         sailed into Narragansett bay and up the Taunton river. "While
+         detained by winds, or other causes now unknown, the people, it
+         has been conjectured, made the inscription, now to be seen on
+         the face of the rock, and which we may suppose to be a record
+         of their fortunes or of their fate."
+
+         "After I had given the above account, the President smiled and
+         said he believed the learned gentlemen whom I had mentioned
+         were mistaken; and added that in the younger part of his life
+         his business called him to be very much in the wilderness of
+         Virginia, which gave him an opportunity to become acquainted
+         with many of the customs and practices of the Indians. The
+         Indians, he said, had a way of writing and recording their
+         transactions, either in war or hunting. When they wished to
+         make any such record, or leave an account of their exploits to
+         any who might come after them, they scraped off the outer bark
+         of a tree, and with a vegetable ink, or a little paint which
+         they carried with them, on the smooth surface they wrote in a
+         way that was generally understood by the people of their
+         respective tribes. As he had so often examined the rude way of
+         writing practised by the Indians of Virginia, and observed many
+         of the characters on the inscription then before him so nearly
+         resembled the characters used by the Indians, he had no doubt
+         the inscription was made long ago by some natives of America."
+         _Proceedings of Massachusetts Historical Society_, vol. x. p.
+         115. This pleasant anecdote shows in a new light Washington's
+         accuracy of observation and unfailing common-sense. Such
+         inscriptions have been found by the thousand, scattered over
+         all parts of the United States; for a learned study of them see
+         Garrick Mallery, "Pictographs of the North American Indians,"
+         _Reports of Bureau of Ethnology_, iv. 13-256. "The voluminous
+         discussion upon the Dighton rock inscription," says Colonel
+         Mallery, "renders it impossible wholly to neglect it.... It is
+         merely a type of Algonquin rock-carving, not so interesting as
+         many others.... It is of purely Indian origin, and is executed
+         in the peculiar symbolic character of the Kekeewin," p. 20. The
+         characters observed by Washington in the Virginia forests would
+         very probably have been of the same type. Judge Davis, to whom
+         Dr. Lathrop's letter was addressed, published in 1809 a paper
+         maintaining the Indian origin of the Dighton inscription.
+
+         A popular error, once started on its career, is as hard to kill
+         as a cat. Otherwise it would be surprising to find, in so
+         meritorious a book as Oscar Peschel's _Geschichte des
+         Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, Stuttgart, 1877, p. 82, an
+         unsuspecting reliance upon Rafn's ridiculous interpretation of
+         this Algonquin pictograph. In an American writer as well
+         equipped as Peschel, this particular kind of blunder would of
+         course be impossible; and one is reminded of Humboldt's remark,
+         "Il est des recherches qui ne peuvent s'executer que pres des
+         sources memes." _Examen critique_, etc., tom. ii. p. 102.
+
+         In old times, I may add, such vagaries were usually saddled
+         upon the Phoenicians, until since Rafn's time the Northmen have
+         taken their place as the pack-horses for all sorts of
+         antiquarian "conjecture."]
+
+         [Footnote 259: See Palfrey's _History of New England_, vol. i.
+         pp. 57-59; Mason's _Reminiscences of Newport_, pp. 392-407.
+         Laing (_Heimskringla_, pp. 182-185) thinks the Yankees must
+         have intended to fool Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of
+         Antiquaries at Copenhagen; "Those sly rogues of Americans,"
+         says he, "dearly love a quiet hoax;" and he can almost hear
+         them chuckling over their joke in their club-room at Newport. I
+         am afraid these Yankees were less rogues and more fools than
+         Mr. Laing makes out.]
+
+         [Footnote 260: Laing, _Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 181.]
+
+[Sidenote: If the Northmen had founded a successful colony, they would
+have introduced domestic cattle into the North American fauna;]
+
+[Sidenote: and such animals could not have vanished and left no trace of
+their existence.]
+
+The most convincing proof that the Northmen never founded a colony in
+America, south of Davis strait, is furnished by the total absence of
+horses, cattle, and other domestic animals from the soil of North
+America until they were brought hither by the Spanish, French, and
+English settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If the
+Northmen had ever settled in Vinland, they would have brought cattle
+with them, and if their colony had been successful, it would have
+introduced such cattle permanently into the fauna of the country.
+Indeed, our narrative tells us that Karlsefni's people "had with them
+all kinds of cattle, having the intention to settle in the land if they
+could."[261] Naturally the two things are coupled in the narrator's
+mind. So the Portuguese carried livestock in their earliest expeditions
+to the Atlantic islands;[262] Columbus brought horses and cows, with
+vines and all kinds of grain, on his second voyage to the West
+Indies;[263] when the French, under Baron Lery, made a disastrous
+attempt to found a colony on or about Cape Breton in 1518, they left
+behind them, upon Sable island, a goodly stock of cows and pigs, which
+throve and multiplied long after their owners had gone;[264] the
+Pilgrims at Plymouth had cattle, goats, and swine as early as 1623.[265]
+In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a community of Europeans
+subsisting anywhere for any length of time without domestic animals. We
+have seen that the Northmen took pains to raise cattle in Greenland, and
+were quick to comment upon the climate of Vinland as favourable for
+pasturage. To suppose that these men ever founded a colony in North
+America, but did not bring domestic animals thither, would be absurd.
+But it would be scarcely less absurd to suppose that such animals,
+having been once fairly introduced into the fauna of North America,
+would afterward have vanished without leaving a vestige of their
+presence. As for the few cattle for which Thorfinn could find room in
+his three or four dragon-ships, we may easily believe that his people
+ate them up before leaving the country, especially since we are told
+they were threatened with famine. But that domestic cattle, after being
+supported on American soil during the length of time involved in the
+establishment of a successful colony (say, for fifty or a hundred
+years), should have disappeared without leaving abundant traces of
+themselves, is simply incredible. Horses and kine are not dependent upon
+man for their existence; when left to themselves, in almost any part of
+the world, they run wild and flourish in what naturalists call a "feral"
+state. Thus we find feral horned cattle in the Falkland and in the
+Ladrone islands, as well as in the ancient Chillingham Park, in
+Northumberland; we find feral pigs in Jamaica; feral European dogs in La
+Plata; feral horses in Turkestan, and also in Mexico, descended from
+Spanish horses.[266] If the Northmen had ever founded a colony in
+Vinland, how did it happen that the English and French in the
+seventeenth century, and from that day to this, have never set eyes upon
+a wild horse, or wild cattle, pigs, or hounds, or any such indication
+whatever of the former presence of civilized Europeans? I do not
+recollect ever seeing this argument used before, but it seems to me
+conclusive. It raises against the hypothesis of a Norse colonization in
+Vinland a presumption extremely difficult if not impossible to
+overcome.[267]
+
+         [Footnote 261: "Their hoefdhu medh ser allskonar fenadh, thviat
+         their aetloedhu at byggja landit, ef their maetti that," i. e.,
+         "illi omne pecudum genus secum habuerunt, nam terram, si
+         liceret, coloniis frequentare cogitarunt." Rafn, p. 57.]
+
+         [Footnote 262: Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, p. 241.]
+
+         [Footnote 263: Irving's _Life of Columbus_, New York, 1828,
+         vol. i. p. 293.]
+
+         [Footnote 264: _Histoire chronologique de la Nouvelle France_,
+         pp. 40, 58; this work, written in 1689 by the Recollet friar
+         Sixte le Tac, has at length been published (Paris, 1888) with
+         notes and other original documents by Eugene Reveillaud. See,
+         also, Laet, _Novus Orbis_, 39.]
+
+         [Footnote 265: John Smith, _Generall Historie_, 247.]
+
+         [Footnote 266: Darwin, _Animals and Plants under
+         Domestication_, London, 1868, vol. i pp. 27, 77, 84.]
+
+         [Footnote 267: The views of Professor Horsford as to the
+         geographical situation of Vinland and its supposed colonization
+         by Northmen are set forth in his four monographs, _Discovery of
+         America by Northmen--address at the unveiling of the statue of
+         Leif Eriksen_, etc., Boston, 1888; _The Problem of the
+         Northmen_, Cambridge, 1889; _The Discovery of the Ancient City
+         of Norumbega_, Boston, 1890; _The Defences of Norumbega_,
+         Boston, 1891. Among Professor Horsford's conclusions the two
+         principal are: 1. that the "river flowing through a lake into
+         the sea" (Rafn, p. 147) is Charles river, and that Leif's
+         booths were erected near the site of the present Cambridge
+         hospital; 2. that "Norumbega"--a word loosely applied by some
+         early explorers to some region or regions somewhere between the
+         New Jersey coast and the Bay of Fundy--was the Indian utterance
+         of "Norbega" or "Norway;" and that certain stone walls and dams
+         at and near Watertown are vestiges of an ancient "city of
+         Norumbega," which was founded and peopled by Northmen and
+         carried on a more or less extensive trade with Europe for more
+         than three centuries.
+
+         With regard to the first of these conclusions, it is perhaps as
+         likely that Leif's booths were within the present limits of
+         Cambridge as in any of the numerous places which different
+         writers have confidently assigned for them, all the way from
+         Point Judith to Cape Breton. A judicious scholar will object
+         not so much to the conclusion as to the character of the
+         arguments by which it is reached. Too much weight is attached
+         to hypothetical etymologies.
+
+         With regard to the Norse colony alleged to have flourished for
+         three centuries, it is pertinent to ask, what became of its
+         cattle and horses? Why do we find no vestiges of the
+         burial-places of these Europeans? or of iron tools and weapons
+         of mediaeval workmanship? Why is there no documentary mention,
+         in Scandinavia or elsewhere in Europe, of this transatlantic
+         trade? etc., etc. Until such points as these are disposed of,
+         any further consideration of the hypothesis may properly be
+         postponed.]
+
+[Illustration: Ruins of the church at Kakortok.]
+
+[Sidenote: Further fortunes of the Greenland colony.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bishop Eric's voyage in search of Vinland, 1121.]
+
+[Sidenote: The ship from Markland, 1347.]
+
+As for the colony in Greenland, while its population seems never to have
+exceeded 5,000 or 6,000 souls, it maintained its existence and its
+intercourse with Europe uninterruptedly from its settlement in 986, by
+Eric the Red, for more than four hundred years. Early in the fourteenth
+century the West Bygd, or western settlement, near Godthaab, seems to
+have contained ninety farmsteads and four churches; while the East Bygd,
+or eastern settlement, near Julianeshaab, contained one hundred and
+ninety farmsteads, with one cathedral and eleven smaller churches, two
+villages, and three or four monasteries.[268] Between Tunnudliorbik and
+Igaliko fiords, and about thirty miles from the ruined stone houses of
+Brattahlid, there now stands, imposing in its decay, the simple but
+massive structure of Kakortok church, once the "cathedral" church of the
+Gardar bishopric, where the Credo was intoned and censers swung, while
+not less than ten generations lived and died. About the beginning of the
+twelfth century there was a movement at Rome for establishing new
+dioceses in "the islands of the ocean;" in 1106 a bishop's see was
+erected in the north of Iceland, and one at about the same time in the
+Faeroes. In 1112, Eric Gnupsson,[269] having been appointed by Pope
+Paschal II. "bishop of Greenland and Vinland _in partibus infidelium_,"
+went from Iceland to organize his new diocese in Greenland. It is
+mentioned in at least six different vellums that in 1121 Bishop Eric
+"went in search of Vinland."[270] It is nowhere mentioned that he found
+it, and Dr. Storm thinks it probable that he perished in the enterprise,
+for, within the next year or next but one, the Greenlanders asked for a
+new bishop, and Eric's successor, Bishop Arnold, was consecrated in
+1124.[271] After Eric there was a regular succession of bishops
+appointed by the papal court, down at least to 1409, and seventeen of
+these bishops are mentioned by name. We do not learn that any of them
+ever repeated Eric's experiment of searching for Vinland. So far as
+existing Icelandic vellums know, there was no voyage to Vinland after
+1121. Very likely, however, there may have been occasional voyages for
+timber from Greenland to the coast of the American continent, which did
+not attract attention or call for comment in Iceland. This is rendered
+somewhat probable from an entry in the "Elder Skalholt Annals," a vellum
+written about 1362. This informs us that in 1347 "there came a ship from
+Greenland, less in size than small Icelandic trading-vessels. It was
+without an anchor. There were seventeen men on board, and they had
+sailed to Markland, but had afterwards been driven hither by storms at
+sea."[272] This is the latest mention of any voyage to or from the
+countries beyond Greenland.
+
+         [Footnote 268: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 141. A description of
+         the ruins may be found in two papers in _Meddelelser om
+         Gronland_, Copenhagen, 1883 and 1889.]
+
+         [Footnote 269: Sometimes called Eric Uppsi; he is mentioned in
+         the Landnama-bok as a native of Iceland.]
+
+         [Footnote 270: Storm, _Islandske Annaler_, Christiania, 1888;
+         Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_, London, 1890, pp.
+         79-81.]
+
+         [Footnote 271: Storm, in _Aarboger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed_,
+         1887, p. 319.]
+
+         [Footnote 272: Reeves, _op. cit._ p. 83. In another vellum it
+         is mentioned that in 1347 "a ship came from Greenland, which
+         had sailed to Markland, and there were eighteen men on board."
+         As Mr. Reeves well observes: "The nature of the information
+         indicates that the knowledge of the discovery had not
+         altogether faded from the memories of the Icelanders settled in
+         Greenland. It seems further to lend a measure of plausibility
+         to a theory that people from the Greenland colony may from time
+         to time have visited the coast to the southwest of their home
+         for supplies of wood, or for some kindred purpose. The visitors
+         in this case had evidently intended to return directly from
+         Markland to Greenland, and had they not been driven out of
+         their course to Iceland, the probability is that this voyage
+         would never have found mention in Icelandic chronicles, and all
+         knowledge of it must have vanished as completely as did the
+         colony to which the Markland visitors belonged."]
+
+[Sidenote: The Greenland colony attacked by Eskimos.]
+
+If the reader is inclined to wonder why a colony could be maintained in
+southern Greenland more easily than on the coasts of Nova Scotia or
+Massachusetts, or even why the Northmen did not at once abandon their
+fiords at Brattahlid and come in a flock to these pleasanter places, he
+must call to mind two important circumstances. First, the settlers in
+southern Greenland did not meet with barbarous natives, but only with
+vestiges of their former presence. It was not until the twelfth century
+that, in roaming the icy deserts of the far north in quest of seals and
+bearskins, the Norse hunters encountered tribes of Eskimo using stone
+knives and whalebone arrow-heads;[273] and it was not until the
+fourteenth century that we hear of their getting into a war with these
+people. In 1349 the West Bygd was attacked and destroyed by Eskimos; in
+1379 they invaded the East Bygd and wrought sad havoc; and it is
+generally believed that some time after 1409 they completed the
+destruction of the colony.
+
+         [Footnote 273: Storm, _Monumenta historica Norvegiae_, p. 77.]
+
+[Sidenote: Queen Margaret's monopoly, and its baneful effects.]
+
+Secondly, the relative proximity of Greenland to the mother country,
+Iceland, made it much easier to sustain a colony there than in the more
+distant Vinland. In colonizing, as in campaigning, distance from one's
+base is sometimes the supreme circumstance. This is illustrated by the
+fact that the very existence of the Greenland colony itself depended
+upon perpetual and untrammelled exchange of commodities with Iceland;
+and when once the source of supply was cut off, the colony soon
+languished. In 1380 and 1387 the crowns of Norway and Denmark descended
+upon Queen Margaret, and soon she made her precious contribution to the
+innumerable swarm of instances that show with how little wisdom the
+world is ruled. She made the trade to Greenland, Iceland, and the Faeroe
+isles "a royal monopoly which could only be carried on in ships
+belonging to, or licensed by, the sovereign.... Under the monopoly of
+trade the Icelanders could have no vessels, and no object for sailing to
+Greenland; and the vessels fitted out by government, or its lessees,
+would only be ready to leave Denmark or Bergen for Iceland at the season
+they ought to have been ready to leave Iceland to go to Greenland. The
+colony gradually fell into oblivion."[274] When this prohibitory
+management was abandoned after 1534 by Christian III., it was altogether
+too late. Starved by the miserable policy of governmental interference
+with freedom of trade, the little Greenland colony soon became too weak
+to sustain itself against the natives whose hostility had, for half a
+century, been growing more and more dangerous. Precisely when or how it
+perished we do not know. The latest notice we have of the colony is of a
+marriage ceremony performed (probably in the Kakortok church), in 1409,
+by Endrede Andreasson, the last bishop.[275] When, after three
+centuries, the great missionary, Hans Egede, visited Greenland, in 1721,
+he found the ruins of farmsteads and villages, the population of which
+had vanished.
+
+         [Footnote 274: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 147. It has been
+         supposed that the Black Death, by which all Europe was ravaged
+         in the middle part of the fourteenth century, may have crossed
+         to Greenland, and fatally weakened the colony there; but
+         Vigfusson says that the Black Death never touched Iceland
+         (_Sturlunga Saga_, vol. i. p. cxxix.), so that it is not so
+         likely to have reached Greenland.]
+
+         [Footnote 275: Laing, _op. cit._ i. 142.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The story of the Venetian brothers.]
+
+Our account of pre-Columbian voyages to America would be very incomplete
+without some mention of the latest voyage said to have been made by
+European vessels to the ancient settlement of the East Bygd. I refer to
+the famous narrative of the Zeno brothers, which has furnished so many
+subjects of contention for geographers that a hundred years ago John
+Pinkerton called it "one of the most puzzling in the whole circle of
+literature."[276] Nevertheless a great deal has been done, chiefly
+through the acute researches of Mr. Richard Henry Major and Baron
+Nordenskjoeld, toward clearing up this mystery, so that certain points in
+the Zeno narrative may now be regarded as established;[277] and from
+these essential points we may form an opinion as to the character of
+sundry questionable details.
+
+         [Footnote 276: Yet this learned historian was quite correct in
+         his own interpretation of Zeno's story, for in the same place
+         he says, "If real, his Frisland is the Ferro islands, and his
+         Zichmni is Sinclair." Pinkerton's _History of Scotland_,
+         London, 1797, vol. i. p. 261.]
+
+         [Footnote 277: Major, _The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers,
+         Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, to the Northern Seas in the XIVth
+         Century_, London, 1873 (Hakluyt Society); cf. Nordenskjoeld, _Om
+         broederna Zenos resor och de aeldsta kartor oefner Norden_,
+         Stockholm, 1883.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Zeno family.]
+
+[Sidenote: Nicolo Zeno wrecked upon one of the Faeroe islands, 1390.]
+
+[Sidenote: Nicolo's voyage to Greenland, cir. 1394.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyage of Earl Sinclair and Antonio Zeno.]
+
+The Zeno family was one of the oldest and most distinguished in Venice.
+Among its members in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we find a
+doge, several senators and members of the Council of Ten, and military
+commanders of high repute. Of these, Pietro Dracone Zeno, about 1350,
+was captain-general of the Christian league for withstanding the Turks;
+and his son Carlo achieved such success in the war against Genoa that he
+was called the Lion of St. Mark, and his services to Venice were
+compared with those of Camillus to Rome. Now this Carlo had two
+brothers,--Nicolo, known as "the Chevalier," and Antonio. After the
+close of the Genoese war the Chevalier Nicolo was seized with a desire
+to see the world,[278] and more particularly England and Flanders. So
+about 1390 he fitted up a ship at his own expense, and, passing out from
+the strait of Gibraltar, sailed northward upon the Atlantic. After some
+days of fair weather, he was caught in a storm and blown along for many
+days more, until at length the ship was cast ashore on one of the Faeroe
+islands and wrecked, though most of the crew and goods were rescued.
+According to the barbarous custom of the Middle Ages, some of the
+natives of the island (Scandinavians) came swarming about the
+unfortunate strangers to kill and rob them, but a great chieftain, with
+a force of knights and men-at-arms, arrived upon the spot in time to
+prevent such an outrage. This chief was Henry Sinclair of Roslyn, who in
+1379 had been invested by King Hacon VI., of Norway, with the earldom of
+the Orkneys and Caithness. On learning Zeno's rank and importance,
+Sinclair treated him with much courtesy, and presently a friendship
+sprang up between the two. Sinclair was then engaged with a fleet of
+thirteen vessels in conquering and annexing to his earldom the Faeroe
+islands, and on several occasions profited by the military and nautical
+skill of the Venetian captain. Nicolo seems to have enjoyed this
+stirring life, for he presently sent to his brother Antonio in Venice an
+account of it, which induced the latter to come and join him in the
+Faeroe islands. Antonio arrived in the course of 1391, and remained in
+the service of Sinclair fourteen years, returning to Venice in time to
+die there in 1406. After Antonio's arrival, his brother Nicolo was
+appointed to the chief command of Sinclair's little fleet, and assisted
+him in taking possession of the Shetland islands, which were properly
+comprised within his earldom. In the course of these adventures, Nicolo
+seems to have had his interest aroused in reports about Greenland. It
+was not more than four or five years since Queen Margaret had undertaken
+to make a royal monopoly of the Greenland trade in furs and whale oil,
+and this would be a natural topic of conversation in the Faeroes. In
+July, 1393, or 1394, Nicolo Zeno sailed to Greenland with three ships,
+and visited the East Bygd. After spending some time there, not being
+accustomed to such a climate, he caught cold, and died soon after his
+return to the Faeroes, probably in 1395. His brother Antonio succeeded to
+his office and such emoluments as pertained to it; and after a while, at
+Earl Sinclair's instigation, he undertook a voyage of discovery in the
+Atlantic ocean, in order to verify some fishermen's reports of the
+existence of land a thousand miles or more to the west. One of these
+fishermen was to serve as guide to the expedition, but unfortunately he
+died three days before the ships were ready to sail. Nevertheless, the
+expedition started, with Sinclair himself on board, and encountered
+vicissitudes of weather and fortune. In fog and storm they lost all
+reckoning of position, and found themselves at length on the western
+coast of a country which, in the Italian narrative, is called "Icaria,"
+but which has been supposed, with some probability, to have been Kerry,
+in Ireland. Here, as they went ashore for fresh water, they were
+attacked by the natives and several of their number were slain. From
+this point they sailed out into the broad Atlantic again, and reached a
+place supposed to be Greenland, but which is so vaguely described that
+the identification is very difficult.[279] Our narrative here ends
+somewhat confusedly. We are told that Sinclair remained in this place,
+"and explored the whole of the country with great diligence, as well as
+the coasts on both sides of Greenland." Antonio Zeno, on the other hand,
+returned with part of the fleet to the Faeroe islands, where he arrived
+after sailing eastward for about a month, during five and twenty days of
+which he saw no land. After relating these things and paying a word of
+affectionate tribute to the virtues of Earl Sinclair, "a prince as
+worthy of immortal memory as any that ever lived for his great bravery
+and remarkable goodness," Antonio closes his letter abruptly: "But of
+this I will say no more in this letter, and hope to be with you very
+shortly, and to satisfy your curiosity on other subjects by word of
+mouth."[280]
+
+         [Footnote 278: "Or M. Nicolo il Caualiere ... entro in
+         grandissimo desiderio di ueder il mondo, e peregrinare, e farsi
+         capace di varij costumi e di lingue de gli huomini, accio che
+         con le occasioni poi potesse meglio far seruigio alla sua
+         patria ed a se acquistar fama e onore." The narrative gives
+         1380 as the date of the voyage, but Mr. Major has shown that it
+         must have been a mistake for 1390 (_op. cit._ xlii.-xlviii.).]
+
+         [Footnote 279: It appears on the Zeno map as "Trin
+         p[-p]montor," about the site of Cape Farewell; but how could
+         six days' sail W. from Kerry, followed by four days' sail N.
+         E., reach any such point? and how does this short outward sail
+         consist with the return voyage, twenty days E. and eight days
+         S. E., to the Faeroes? The place is also said to have had "a
+         fertile soil" and "good rivers," a description in nowise
+         answering to Greenland.]
+
+         [Footnote 280: "Pero non ni diro altro in questa lettera,
+         sperando tosto di essere con uoi, e di sodisfarui di molte
+         altre cose con la uiua uoce." Major, p. 34.]
+
+[Sidenote: Publication of the remains of the documents by the younger
+Nicolo Zeno.]
+
+The person thus addressed by Antonio was his brother, the illustrious
+Carlo Zeno. Soon after reaching home, after this long and eventful
+absence, Antonio died. Besides his letters he had written a more
+detailed account of the affairs in the northern seas. These papers
+remained for more than a century in the palace of the family at Venice,
+until one of the children, in his mischievous play, got hold of them and
+tore them up. This child was Antonio's great-great-great-grandson,
+Nicolo, born in 1515. When this young Nicolo had come to middle age, and
+was a member of the Council of Ten, he happened to come across some
+remnants of these documents, and then all at once he remembered with
+grief how he had, in his boyhood, pulled them to pieces.[281] In the
+light of the rapid progress in geographical discovery since 1492, this
+story of distant voyages had now for Nicolo an interest such as it could
+not have had for his immediate ancestors. Searching the palace he found
+a few grimy old letters and a map or sailing chart, rotten with age,
+which had been made or at any rate brought home by his ancestor Antonio.
+Nicolo drew a fresh copy of this map, and pieced together the letters as
+best he could, with more or less explanatory text of his own, and the
+result was the little book which he published in 1558.[282]
+
+         [Footnote 281: "All these letters were written by Messire
+         Antonio to Messire Carlo, his brother; and I am grieved that
+         the book and many other writings on these subjects have, I
+         don't know how, come sadly to ruin; for, being but a child when
+         they fell into my hands, I, not knowing what they were, tore
+         them in pieces, as children will do, and sent them all to ruin:
+         a circumstance which I cannot now recall without the greatest
+         sorrow. Nevertheless, in order that such an important memorial
+         should not be lost, I have put the whole in order, as well as I
+         could, in the above narrative." Major, p. 35.]
+
+         [Footnote 282: Nicolo Zeno, _Dello scoprimento dell' isole
+         Frislanda, Eslanda, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto
+         per due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolo it Caualiere, & M. Antonio.
+         Libro Vno, col disegno di dette Isole._ Venice, 1558. Mr.
+         Major's book contains the entire text, with an English
+         translation.]
+
+[Illustration: Zeno Map, cir. 1400--western half.]
+
+[Illustration: Zeno Map, cir. 1400--eastern half.]
+
+[Sidenote: Queer transformations of names.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Frislanda."]
+
+Unfortunately young Nicolo, with the laudable purpose of making it all
+as clear as he could, thought it necessary not simply to reproduce
+the old weather-beaten map, but to amend it by putting on here and there
+such places and names as his diligent perusal of the manuscript led him
+to deem wanting to its completeness.[283] Under the most favourable
+circumstances that is a very difficult sort of thing to do, but in this
+case the circumstances were far from favourable. Of course Nicolo got
+these names and places into absurd positions, thus perplexing the map
+and damaging its reputation. With regard to names, there was obscurity
+enough, to begin with. In the first place, they were Icelandic names
+falling upon the Italian ears of old Nicolo and Antonio, and spelled by
+them according to their own notions; in the second place, these
+outlandish names, blurred and defaced withal in the weather-stained
+manuscript, were a puzzle to the eye of young Nicolo, who could but
+decipher them according to _his_ notions. The havoc that can be wrought
+upon winged words, subjected to such processes, is sometimes
+marvellous.[284] Perhaps the slightest sufferer, in this case, was the
+name of the group of islands upon one of which the shipwrecked Nicolo
+was rescued by Sinclair. The name _Faeroislander_ sounded to Italian
+ears as _Frislanda_, and was uniformly so written.[285] Then the
+pronunciation of _Shetland_ was helped by prefixing a vowel sound, as is
+common in Italian, and so it came to be _Estland_ and _Esland_. This led
+young Nicolo's eye in two or three places to confound it with _Islanda_,
+or _Iceland_, and probably in one place with _Irlanda_, or _Ireland_.
+Where old Nicolo meant to say that the island upon which he was living
+with Earl Sinclair was somewhat larger than Shetland, young Nicolo
+understood him as saying that it was somewhat larger than Ireland; and
+so upon the amended map "Frislanda" appears as one great island
+surrounded by tiny islands.[286] After the publication of this map, in
+1558, sundry details were copied from it by the new maps of that day, so
+that even far down into the seventeenth century it was common to depict
+a big "Frislanda" somewhere in mid-ocean. When at length it was proved
+that no such island exists, the reputation of the Zeno narrative was
+seriously damaged. The nadir of reaction against it was reached when it
+was declared to be a tissue of lies invented by the younger Nicolo,[287]
+apparently for the purpose of setting up a Venetian claim to the
+discovery of America.
+
+         [Footnote 283: The map is taken from Winsor's _Narr. and Crit.
+         Hist._, i. 127, where it is reduced from Nordenskjoeld's
+         _Studien ok Forskningar_. A better because larger copy may be
+         found in Major's _Voyages of the Venetian Brothers_. The
+         original map measures 12 x 15-1/2 inches. In the legend at the
+         top the date is given as M CCC LXXX. but evidently one X has
+         been omitted, for it should be 1390, and is correctly so given
+         by Marco Barbaro, in his _Genealogie dei nobili Veneti_; of
+         Antonio Zeno he says, "Scrisse con il fratello Nicolo Kav. li
+         viaggi dell' Isole sotto il polo artico, e di quei scoprimente
+         del 1390, e che per ordine di Zieno, re di Frislanda, si porto
+         nel continente d'Estotilanda nell' America settentrionale e che
+         si fermo 14 anni in Frislanda, cioe 4 con suo fratello Nicolo e
+         10 solo." (This valuable work has never been published. The
+         original MS., in Barbaro's own handwriting, is preserved in the
+         Biblioteca di San Marco at Venice. There is a seventeenth
+         century copy of it among the Egerton MSS. in the British
+         Museum.)--Nicolo did not leave Italy until after December 14,
+         1388 (Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, tom. xxii. p.
+         779). The map can hardly have been made before Antonio's
+         voyage, about 1400. The places on the map are wildly out of
+         position, as was common enough in old maps. Greenland is
+         attached to Norway according to the general belief in the
+         Middle Ages. In his confusion between the names "Estland" and
+         "Islanda," young Nicolo has tried to reproduce the Shetland
+         group, or something like it, and attach it to Iceland.
+         "Icaria," probably Kerry, in Ireland, has been made into an
+         island and carried far out into the Atlantic. The queerest of
+         young Nicolo's mistakes was in placing the monastery of St.
+         Olaus ("St. Thomas"). He should have placed it on the southwest
+         coast of Greenland, near his "Af [-p]montor;" but he has got it
+         on the extreme northeast, just about where Greenland is joined
+         to Europe.]
+
+         [Footnote 284: "Combien de coquilles typographiques ou de
+         lectures defectueuses ont cree de noms boiteux, qu'il est
+         ensuite bien difficile, quelquefois impossible de redresser!
+         L'histoire et la geographie en sont pleines." Avezac, _Martin
+         Waltzemueller_, p. 9.
+
+         It is interesting to see how thoroughly words can be disguised
+         by an unfamiliar phonetic spelling. I have seen people
+         hopelessly puzzled by the following bill, supposed to have been
+         made out by an illiterate stable-keeper somewhere in England:--
+
+            Osafada        7s  6d
+            Takinonimome       4d
+                           ------
+                           7s 10d
+
+         Some years ago Professor Huxley told me of a letter from France
+         which came to the London post-office thus addressed:--
+
+            Sromfredevi,
+               Pique du lait,
+                     Londres,
+                         Angleterre.
+
+         This letter, after exciting at first helpless bewilderment and
+         then busy speculation, was at length delivered to the right
+         person, _Sir Humphry Davy_, in his rooms at the Royal
+         Institution on Albemarle street, just off from _Piccadilly_!]
+
+         [Footnote 285: Columbus, on his journey to Iceland in 1477,
+         also heard the name _Faeroislander_ as _Frislanda_, and so wrote
+         it in the letter preserved for us in his biography by his son
+         Ferdinand, hereafter to be especially noticed. See Major's
+         remarks on this, _op. cit._ p. xix.]
+
+         [Footnote 286: Perhaps in the old worn-out map the archipelago
+         may have been blurred so as to be mistaken for one island. This
+         would aid in misleading young Nicolo.]
+
+         [Footnote 287: See the elaborate paper by Admiral Zahrtmann, in
+         _Nordisk Tidsskrift for Oldkyndighed_, Copenhagen, 1834, vol.
+         i., and the English translation of it in _Journal of Royal
+         Geographical Society_, London, 1836, vol. v. All that human
+         ingenuity is ever likely to devise against the honesty of
+         Zeno's narrative is presented in this erudite essay, which has
+         been so completely demolished under Mr. Major's heavy strokes
+         that there is not enough of it left to pick up. As to this part
+         of the question, we may now safely cry, "finis, laus Deo!"]
+
+[Sidenote: The narrative nowhere makes a claim to the "discovery of
+America."]
+
+The narrative, however, not only sets up no such claim, but nowhere
+betrays a consciousness that its incidents entitle it to make such a
+claim. It had evidently not occurred to young Nicolo to institute any
+comparison between his ancestors' voyages to Greenland and the voyages
+of Columbus to the western hemisphere, of which _we now know_ Greenland
+to be a part. The knowledge of the North American coast, and of the
+bearing of one fact upon another fact in relation to it, was still, in
+1558, in an extremely vague and rudimentary condition. In the mind of
+the Zeno brothers, as the map shows, Greenland was a European peninsula;
+such was the idea common among mediaeval Northmen, as is nowhere better
+illustrated than in this map. Neither in his references to Greenland,
+nor to Estotiland and Drogio, presently to be considered, does young
+Nicolo appear in the light of a man urging or suggesting a "claim." He
+appears simply as a modest and conscientious editor, interested in the
+deeds of his ancestors and impressed with the fact that he has got hold
+of important documents, but intent only upon giving his material as
+correctly as possible, and refraining from all sort of comment except
+such as now and then seems needful to explain the text as he himself
+understands it.
+
+[Sidenote: Earl Sinclair.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bardsen's "Description of Greenland."]
+
+The identification of "Frislanda" with the Faeroe islands was put beyond
+doubt by the discovery that the "Zichmni" of the narrative means Henry
+Sinclair; and, in order to make this discovery, it was only necessary to
+know something about the history of the Orkneys; hence old Pinkerton, as
+above remarked, got it right. The name "Zichmni" is, no doubt, a fearful
+and wonderful bejugglement; but Henry Sinclair is a personage well known
+to history in that corner of the world, and the deeds of "Zichmni," as
+recounted in the narrative, are neither more nor less than the deeds of
+Sinclair. Doubtless Antonio spelled the name in some queer way of his
+own, and then young Nicolo, unable to read his ancestor's pot-hooks
+where--as in the case of proper names--there was no clue to guide him,
+contrived to make it still queerer. Here we have strong proof of the
+genuineness of the narrative. If Nicolo had been concocting a story in
+which Earl Sinclair was made to figure, he would have obtained his
+knowledge from literary sources, and thus would have got his names
+right; the earl might have appeared as Enrico de Santo Claro, but not as
+"Zichmni." It is not at all likely, however, that any literary knowledge
+of Sinclair and his doings was obtainable in Italy in the sixteenth
+century. The Zeno narrative, moreover, in its references to Greenland in
+connection with the Chevalier Nicolo's visit to the East Bygd, shows a
+topographical knowledge that was otherwise quite inaccessible to the
+younger Nicolo. Late in the fourteenth century Ivar Bardsen, steward to
+the Gardar bishopric, wrote a description of Greenland, with sailing
+directions for reaching it, which modern research has proved to have
+been accurate in every particular. Bardsen's details and those of the
+Zeno narrative mutually corroborate each other. But Bardsen's book did
+not make its way down into Europe until the very end of the sixteenth
+century,[288] and then amid the dense ignorance prevalent concerning
+Greenland its details were not understood until actual exploration
+within the last seventy years has at length revealed their meaning. The
+genuineness of the Zeno narrative is thus conclusively proved by its
+knowledge of Arctic geography, such as could have been obtained only by
+a visit to the far North at a time before the Greenland colony had
+finally lost touch with its mother country.
+
+         [Footnote 288: It was translated into Dutch by the famous
+         Arctic explorer, William Barentz, whose voyages are so
+         graphically described in Motley's _United Netherlands_, vol.
+         iii. pp. 552-576. An English translation was made for Henry
+         Hudson. A very old Danish version may be found in Rafn's
+         _Antiquitates Americanae_, pp. 300-318; Danish, Latin, and
+         English versions in Major's _Voyages of the Venetian Brothers_,
+         etc., pp. 39-54; and an English version in De Costa's _Sailing
+         Directions of Henry Hudson_, Albany, 1869, pp. 61-96.]
+
+[Sidenote: The monastery of St. Olaus and its hot spring.]
+
+The visit of the Chevalier Nicolo, therefore, about 1394, has a peculiar
+interest as the last distinct glimpse afforded us of the colony founded
+by Eric the Red before its melancholy disappearance from history.
+Already the West Bygd had ceased to exist. Five and forty years before
+that time it had been laid waste and its people massacred by Eskimos,
+and trusty Ivar Bardsen, tardily sent with a small force to the rescue,
+found nothing left alive but a few cattle and sheep running wild.[289]
+Nicolo Zeno, arriving in the East Bygd, found there a monastery
+dedicated to St. Olaus, a name which in the narrative has become St.
+Thomas. To this monastery came friars from Norway and other countries,
+but for the most part from Iceland.[290] It stood "hard by a hill which
+vomited fire like Vesuvius and Etna." There was also in the
+neighbourhood a spring of hot water which the ingenious friars conducted
+in pipes into their monastery and church, thereby keeping themselves
+comfortable in the coldest weather. This water, as it came into the
+kitchen, was hot enough to boil meats and vegetables. The monks even
+made use of it in warming covered gardens or hot-beds in which they
+raised sundry fruits and herbs that in milder climates grow out of
+doors.[291] "Hither in summertime come many vessels from ... the Cape
+above Norway, and from Trondheim, and bring the friars all sorts of
+comforts, taking in exchange fish ... and skins of different kinds of
+animals.... There are continually in the harbour a number of vessels
+detained by the sea being frozen, and waiting for the next season to
+melt the ice."[292]
+
+         [Footnote 289: So he tells us himself: "Quo cum 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 Nicolo 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 Gunnbjoern'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 principal 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 Gunnbjoern who first went to
+Greenland. It was known as Gunnbjoern'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 assumed 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 Nicolo 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 ashore 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 nobody 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 compass. 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 latitude 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 compass,
+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 passed 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
+         calamita ne intendeno col bossolo la tramontana. Per ilche
+         questi pescatori furono in gran pregio, si che il re li spedi
+         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 passage. 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 God'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 passing 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 Nicolo?]
+
+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
+Nicolo 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 Nicolo 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 Nicolo, 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 Nicolo must have reproduced the ancestral
+documents 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 ashore 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,
+         _Principal 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 _Documents 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 analogy 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 Nicolo 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. xxxvii.; Wytfliet,
+         _Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum_, Douay, 1603, p. 102;
+         Pontanus, _Rerum Danicarum Historia_, Amsterdam, 1631, p. 763.
+         The wise Humboldt mentions the report without expressing an
+         opinion, _Examen critique_, tom. ii. p. 153.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The pre-Columbian voyages made no real contributions to
+geographical knowledge;]
+
+[Sidenote: and were in no true sense a Discovery of America.]
+
+Nothing can be clearer, however, from a survey of the whole subject,
+than that these pre-Columbian voyages were quite barren of results of
+historic importance. In point of colonization they produced the two
+ill-fated settlements on the Greenland coast, and nothing more.
+Otherwise they made no real addition to the stock of geographical
+knowledge, they wrought no effect whatever upon the European mind
+outside of Scandinavia, and even in Iceland itself the mention of
+coasts beyond Greenland awakened no definite ideas, and, except for a
+brief season, excited no interest. The Zeno narrative indicates that the
+Vinland voyages had practically lapsed from memory before the end of the
+fourteenth century.[308] Scholars familiar with saga literature of
+course knew the story; it was just at this time that Jon Thordharson
+wrote out the version of it which is preserved in the Flateyar-bok. But
+by the general public it must have been forgotten, or else the
+Fisherman's tale of Estotiland and Drogio would surely have awakened
+reminiscences of Markland and Vinland, and some traces of this would
+have appeared in Antonio's narrative or upon his map. The principal
+naval officer of the Faeroes, and personal friend of the sovereign, after
+dwelling several years among these Northmen, whose intercourse with
+their brethren in Iceland was frequent, apparently knew nothing of Leif
+or Thorfinn, or the mere names of the coasts which they had visited.
+Nothing had been accomplished by those voyages which could properly be
+called a contribution to geographical knowledge. To speak of them as
+constituting, in any legitimate sense of the phrase, a Discovery of
+America is simply absurd. Except for Greenland, which was supposed to be
+a part of the European world, America remained as much undiscovered
+after the eleventh century as before. In the midsummer of 1492 it
+needed to be discovered as much as if Leif Ericsson or the whole race of
+Northmen had never existed.
+
+         [Footnote 308: Practically, but not entirely, for we have seen
+         Markland mentioned in the "Elder Skalholt Annals," about 1362.
+         See above, p. 223.]
+
+As these pre-Columbian voyages produced no effect in the eastern
+hemisphere, except to leave in Icelandic literature a scanty but
+interesting record, so in the western hemisphere they seem to have
+produced no effect beyond cutting down a few trees and killing a few
+Indians. In the outlying world of Greenland it is not improbable that
+the blood of the Eskimos may have received some slight Scandinavian
+infusion. But upon the aboriginal world of the red men, from Davis
+strait to Cape Horn, it is not likely that any impression of any sort
+was ever made. It is in the highest degree probable that Leif Ericsson
+and his friends made a few voyages to _what we now know to have been_
+the coast of America; but it is an abuse of language to say that they
+"discovered" America. In no sense was any real contact established
+between the eastern and the western halves of our planet until the great
+voyage of Columbus in 1492.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EUROPE AND CATHAY.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Why the voyages of the Northmen were not followed up.]
+
+The question has sometimes been asked, Why did the knowledge of the
+voyages to Vinland so long remain confined to the Scandinavian people or
+a portion of them, and then lapse into oblivion, insomuch that it did
+not become a matter of notoriety in Europe until after the publication
+of the celebrated book of Thormodus Torfaeus in 1705? Why did not the
+news of the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn spread rapidly over Europe,
+like the news of the voyage of Columbus? and why was it not presently
+followed, like the latter, by a rush of conquerors and colonizers across
+the Atlantic?
+
+Such questions arise from a failure to see historical events in their
+true perspective, and to make the proper allowances for the manifold
+differences in knowledge and in social and economic conditions which
+characterize different periods of history. In the present case, the
+answer is to be found, first, in the geographical ignorance which
+prevented the Northmen from realizing in the smallest degree what such
+voyages really signified or were going to signify to posterity; and,
+secondly, in the political and commercial condition of Europe at the
+close of the tenth century.
+
+[Sidenote: Ignorance of geography.]
+
+In the first place the route which the Norse voyagers pursued, from
+Iceland to Greenland and thence to Vinland, was not such as to give
+them, in their ignorance of the shape of the earth, and with their
+imperfect knowledge of latitude and longitude, any adequate gauge
+wherewith to measure their achievement. The modern reader, who has in
+his mind a general picture of the shape of the northern Atlantic ocean
+with its coasts, must carefully expel that picture before he can begin
+to realize how things must have seemed to the Northmen. None of the
+Icelandic references to Markland and Vinland betray a consciousness that
+these countries belong to a geographical world outside of Europe. There
+was not enough organized geographical knowledge for that. They were
+simply conceived as remote places beyond Greenland, inhabited by
+inferior but dangerous people. The accidental finding of such places
+served neither to solve any great commercial problem nor to gratify and
+provoke scientific curiosity. It was, therefore, not at all strange that
+it bore no fruit.
+
+[Sidenote: Lack of instruments for ocean navigation.]
+
+Secondly, even if it had been realized, and could have been duly
+proclaimed throughout Europe, that across the broad Atlantic a new world
+lay open for colonization, Europe could not have taken advantage of the
+fact. Now and then a ship might make its way, or be blown, across the
+waste of waters without compass or astrolabe; but until these
+instruments were at hand anything like systematic ocean navigation was
+out of the question; and from a colonization which could only begin by
+creeping up into the Arctic seas and taking Greenland on the way, not
+much was to be expected, after all.
+
+[Sidenote: Europe in the year 1000.]
+
+But even if the compass and other facilities for oceanic navigation had
+been at hand, the state of Europe in the days of Eric the Red was not
+such as to afford surplus energy for distant enterprise of this sort.
+Let us for a moment recall what was going on in Europe in the year of
+grace 1000, just enough to get a suggestive picture of the time. In
+England the Danish invader, fork-bearded Swend, father of the great
+Cnut, was wresting the kingship from the feeble grasp of Ethelred the
+Redeless. In Gaul the little duchy of France, between the Somme and the
+Loire, had lately become the kingdom of France, and its sovereign, Hugh
+Capet, had succeeded to feudal rights of lordship over the great dukes
+and counts whose territories surrounded him on every side; and now
+Hugh's son, Robert the Debonair, better hymn-writer than warrior, was
+waging a doubtful struggle with these unruly vassals. It was not yet in
+any wise apparent what the kingdoms of England and France were going to
+be. In Germany the youthful Otto III., the "wonder of the world," had
+just made his weird visit to the tomb of his mighty predecessor at
+Aachen, before starting on that last journey to Rome which was so soon
+to cost him his life. Otto's teacher, Gerbert, most erudite of
+popes,--too learned not to have had dealings with the Devil,--was
+beginning to raise the papacy out of the abyss of infamy into which the
+preceding age had seen it sink, and so to prepare the way for the
+far-reaching reforms of Hildebrand. The boundaries of Christendom were
+as yet narrow and insecure. With the overthrow of Olaf Tryggvesson in
+this year 1000, and the temporary partition of Norway between Swedes and
+Danes, the work of Christianizing the North seemed, for the moment, to
+languish. Upon the eastern frontier the wild Hungarians had scarcely
+ceased to be a terror to Europe, and in this year Stephen, their first
+Christian king, began to reign. At the same time the power of heretical
+Bulgaria, which had threatened to overwhelm the Eastern Empire, was
+broken down by the sturdy blows of the Macedonian emperor Basil. In this
+year the Christians of Spain met woful defeat at the hands of Almansor,
+and there seemed no reason why the Mussulman rule over the greater part
+of that peninsula should not endure forever.
+
+Thus, from end to end, Europe was a scene of direst confusion, and
+though, as we now look back upon it, the time seems by no means devoid
+of promise, there was no such cheering outlook then. Nowhere were the
+outlines of kingdoms or the ownership of crowns definitely settled.
+Private war was both incessant and universal; the Truce of God had not
+yet been proclaimed.[309] As for the common people, their hardships
+were well-nigh incredible. Amid all this anarchy and misery, at the
+close of the thousandth year from the birth of Christ, the belief was
+quite common throughout Europe that the Day of Judgment was at hand for
+a world grown old in wickedness and ripe for its doom.
+
+         [Footnote 309: The "Truce of God" (_Treuga Dei_) was introduced
+         by the clergy in Guienne about 1032; it was adopted in Spain
+         before 1050, and in England by 1080. See Datt, _De pace imperii
+         publica_, lib. i. cap. ii. A cessation of all violent quarrels
+         was enjoined, under ecclesiastical penalties, during church
+         festivals, and from every Wednesday evening until the following
+         Monday morning. This left only about eighty days in the year
+         available for shooting and stabbing one's neighbours. The truce
+         seems to have accomplished much good, though it was very
+         imperfectly observed.]
+
+[Sidenote: The condition of things was not such as to favour colonial
+enterprise.]
+
+It hardly need be argued that a period like this, in which all the vital
+energy in Europe was consumed in the adjustment of affairs at home, was
+not fitted for colonial enterprises. Before a people can send forth
+colonies it must have solved the problem of political life so far as to
+ensure stability of trade. It is the mercantile spirit that has
+supported modern colonization, aided by the spirit of intellectual
+curiosity and the thirst for romantic adventure. In the eleventh century
+there was no intellectual curiosity outside the monastery walls, nor had
+such a feeling become enlisted in the service of commerce. Of trade
+there was indeed, even in western Europe, a considerable amount, but the
+commercial marine was in its infancy, and on land the trader suffered
+sorely at the hands of the robber baron. In those days the fashionable
+method of compounding with your creditors was, not to offer them fifty
+cents on the dollar, but to inveigle them into your castle and broil
+them over a slow fire.
+
+[Sidenote: The outlook of Europe was toward Asia.]
+
+In so far as the attention of people in Europe was called to any
+quarter of the globe outside of the seething turbulence in which they
+dwelt, it was directed toward Asia. Until after 1492, Europe stood with
+her back toward the Atlantic. What there might be out beyond that "Sea
+of Darkness" (_Mare Tenebrosum_), as it used commonly to be called, was
+a question of little interest and seems to have excited no speculation.
+In the view of mediaeval Europe the inhabited world was cut off on the
+west by this mysterious ocean, and on the south by the burning sands of
+Sahara; but eastward it stretched out no one knew how far, and in that
+direction dwelt tribes and nations which Europe, from time immemorial,
+had reason to fear. As early as the time of Herodotus, the secular
+antagonism between Europe and Asia had become a topic of reflection
+among the Greeks, and was wrought with dramatic effect by that great
+writer into the structure of his history, culminating in the grand and
+stirring scenes of the Persian war. A century and a half later the
+conquests of Alexander the Great added a still more impressive climax to
+the story. The struggle was afterward long maintained between Roman and
+Parthian, but from the fifth century after Christ onward through the
+Middle Ages, it seemed as if the Oriental world would never rest until
+it had inflicted the extremities of retaliation upon Europe. Whether it
+was the heathen of the steppes who were in question, from Attila in the
+fifth century to Batu Khan in the thirteenth, or the followers of the
+Prophet, who tore away from Christendom the southern shores of the
+Mediterranean, and held Spain in their iron grasp, while from age to age
+they exhausted their strength in vain against the Eastern Empire, the
+threatening danger was always coming with the morning sun; whatever
+might be the shock that took the attention of Europe away from herself,
+it directed it upon Asia. This is a fact of cardinal importance for us,
+inasmuch as it was directly through the interest, more and more
+absorbing, which Europe felt in Asia that the discovery of the western
+hemisphere was at last effected.
+
+[Sidenote: Routes of trade between Europe and Asia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Claudius Ptolemy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Early mention of China.]
+
+It was not only in war, but in commerce, that the fortunes of Europe
+were dependent upon her relations with Asia. Since prehistoric times
+there has always been some commercial intercourse between the eastern
+shores of the Mediterranean and the peninsula of Hindustan. Tyre and
+Sidon carried on such trade by way of the Red Sea.[310] After Alexander
+had led his army to Samarcand and to the river Hyphasis, the
+acquaintance of the Greeks with Asia was very considerably increased,
+and important routes of trade were established. One was practically the
+old Phoenician route, with its western terminus moved from Tyre to
+Alexandria. Another was by way of the Caspian sea, up the river Oxus,
+and thence with camels to the banks of the Indus.[311] An intermediate
+route was through Syria and by way of the Euphrates and the Persian
+gulf; the route which at one time made the greatness of Palmyra. After
+the extension of Roman sway to the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Euxine,
+these same routes continued to be used. The European commodities carried
+to India were light woollen cloths, linens, coral, black lead, various
+kinds of glass vessels, and wine. In exchange for these the traders
+brought back to Europe divers aromatic spices, black pepper, ivory,
+cotton fabrics, diamonds, sapphires, and pearls, silk thread and silk
+stuffs.[312] Detailed accounts of these commercial transactions, and of
+the wealth of personal experiences that must have been connected with
+them, are excessively scant. Of the Europeans who, during all the
+centuries between Alexander and Justinian, made their way to Hindustan
+or beyond, we know very few by name. The amount of geographical
+information that was gathered during the first half of this period is
+shown in the map representing Claudius Ptolemy's knowledge of the earth,
+about the middle of the second century after Christ. Except for the
+Scandinavian world, and some very important additions made to the
+knowledge of Asia by Marco Polo, this map fairly represents the maximum
+of acquaintance with the earth's surface possessed by Europeans previous
+to the great voyages of the fifteenth century. It shows a dim knowledge
+of the mouths of the Ganges, of the island of Ceylon, and of what we
+sometimes call Farther India. A very dim knowledge, indeed; for the huge
+peninsula of Hindustan is shrunk into insignificance, while Taprobane,
+or Ceylon, unduly magnified, usurps the place belonging to the Deccan.
+At the same time we see that some hearsay knowledge of China had made
+its way into the Roman world before the days of Ptolemy. The two names
+by which China was first known to Europeans were "Seres" or "Serica,"
+and "Sinae" or "Thin." These two differing names are the records of two
+different methods of approach to different parts of a vast country, very
+much as the Northmen called their part of eastern North America
+"Vinland," while the Spaniards called their part "Florida." The name
+"Seres" was given to northwestern China by traders who approached it
+through the highlands of central Asia from Samarcand, while "Sinae" was
+the name given to southeastern China by traders who approached it by way
+of the Indian ocean, and heard of it in India, but never reached it.
+Apparently no European ships ever reached China before the Portuguese,
+in 1517.[313] The name "Sinae" or "Thin" seems to mean the country of the
+"Tchin" dynasty, which ruled over the whole of China in the second
+century before Christ, and over a portion of it for a much longer time.
+The name "Seres," on the other hand, was always associated with the
+trade in silks, and was known to the Romans in the time of the Emperor
+Claudius,[314] and somewhat earlier. The Romans in Virgil's time set a
+high value upon silk, and every scrap of it they had came from China.
+They knew nothing about the silk-worm, and supposed that the fibres or
+threads of this beautiful stuff grew upon trees. Of actual intercourse
+between the Roman and Chinese empires there was no more than is implied
+in this current of trade, passing through many hands. But that each
+knew, in a vague way, of the existence of the other, there is no
+doubt.[315]
+
+         [Footnote 310: Diodorus Siculus, i. 70.]
+
+         [Footnote 311: Strabo, xi. 7, Sec. 3.]
+
+         [Footnote 312: Robertson, _Historical Disquisition concerning
+         the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India_, Dublin, 1791,
+         p. 55. I never have occasion to consult Dr. Robertson without
+         being impressed anew with his scientific habit of thought and
+         the solidity of his scholarship; and in none of his works are
+         these qualities better illustrated than in this noble essay.]
+
+         [Footnote 313: The Polos sailed back from China to the Persian
+         gulf in 1292-94; see below, p. 282.]
+
+         [Footnote 314: The name "Seres" appears on the map of Pomponius
+         Mela (cir. A. D. 50), while "Sinae" does not. See below, p. 304.
+
+            Jam Tartessiaco quos solverat aequore Titan
+            In noctem diffusus equos, jungebat Eois
+            Littoribus, primique novo Phaethonte retecti
+            Seres lanigeris repetebant vellera lucis.
+                                   Silius Italicus, lib. vi. _ad init._]
+
+         [Footnote 315: For this whole subject see Colonel Sir Henry
+         Yule's _Cathay and the Way Thither_, London, 1866, 2 vols.,--a
+         work of profound learning and more delightful than a novel.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cosmas Indicopleustes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Shape of the earth, according to Cosmas.]
+
+In the course of the reign of Justinian, we get references at first hand
+to India, and coupled withal to a general theory of cosmography. This
+curious information we have in the book of the monk Cosmas
+Indicopleustes, written somewhere between A. D. 530 and 550. A pleasant
+book it is, after its kind. In his younger days Cosmas had been a
+merchant, and in divers voyages had become familiar with the coasts of
+Ethiopia and the Persian gulf, and had visited India and Ceylon. After
+becoming a monk at Alexandria, Cosmas wrote his book of Christian
+geography,[316] maintaining, in opposition to Ptolemy, that the earth
+is not a sphere, but a rectangular plane forming the floor of the
+universe; the heavens rise on all four sides about this rectangle, like
+the four walls of a room, and, at an indefinite height above the floor,
+these blue walls support a vaulted roof or firmament, in which God
+dwells with the angels. In the centre of the floor are the inhabited
+lands of the earth, surrounded on all sides by a great ocean, beyond
+which, somewhere out in a corner, is the Paradise from which Adam and
+Eve were expelled. In its general shape, therefore, the universe
+somewhat resembles the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, or a modern
+"Saratoga trunk." On the northern part of the floor, under the
+firmament, is a lofty conical mountain, around which the sun, moon, and
+planets perform their daily revolutions. In the summer the sun takes a
+turn around the apex of the cone, and is, therefore, hidden only for a
+short night; but in the winter he travels around the base, which takes
+longer, and, accordingly, the nights are long. Such is the doctrine
+drawn from Holy Scripture, says Cosmas, and as for the vain blasphemers
+who pretend that the earth is a round ball, the Lord hath stultified
+them for their sins until they impudently prate of Antipodes, where
+trees grow downward and rain falls upward. As for such nonsense, the
+worthy Cosmas cannot abide it.
+
+         [Footnote 316: Its title is [Greek: Christianon biblos,
+         hermeneia eis ten Oktateuchon], i. e. against Ptolemy's
+         Geography in eight books. The name Cosmas Indicopleustes seems
+         merely to mean "the cosmographer who has sailed to India." He
+         begins his book in a tone of extreme and somewhat unsavory
+         humility: [Greek: Anoigo ta mogilala kai bradyglossa cheile ho
+         hamartolos kai talas ego]--"I, the sinner and wretch, open my
+         stammering, stuttering lips," etc.--The book has been the
+         occasion of some injudicious excitement within the last half
+         century. Cosmas gave a description of some comparatively recent
+         inscriptions on the peninsula of Sinai, and because he could
+         not find anybody able to read them, he inferred that they must
+         be records of the Israelites on their passage through the
+         desert. (Compare the Dighton rock, above, p. 214.) Whether in
+         the sixth century of grace or in the nineteenth, your
+         unregenerate and unchastened antiquary snaps at conclusions as
+         a drowsy dog does at flies. Some years ago an English
+         clergyman, Charles Forster, started up the nonsense again, and
+         argued that these inscriptions might afford a clue to man's
+         primeval speech! Cf. Bunsen, _Christianity and Mankind_, vol.
+         iii. p. 231; Mueller and Donaldson, _History of Greek
+         Literature_, vol. iii. p. 353; Bury, _History of the Later
+         Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene_, vol. ii. p. 177.]
+
+I cite these views of Cosmas because there can be no doubt that they
+represent beliefs current among the general public until after the time
+of Columbus,[317] in spite of the deference paid to Ptolemy's views by
+the learned. Along with these cosmographical speculations, Cosmas shows
+a wider geographical knowledge of Asia than any earlier writer. He gives
+a good deal of interesting information about India and Ceylon, and has a
+fairly correct idea of the position of China, which he calls Tzinista or
+Chinistan. This land of silk is the remotest of all the Indies, and
+beyond it "there is neither navigation nor inhabited country.... And the
+Indian philosophers, called Brachmans, tell you that if you were to
+stretch a straight cord from Tzinista through Persia to the Roman
+territory, you would just divide the world in halves. And mayhap they
+are right."[318]
+
+         [Footnote 317: Such views have their advocates even now. There
+         still lives, I believe, in England, a certain John Hampden, who
+         with dauntless breast maintains that the earth is a circular
+         plane with centre at the north pole and a circumference of
+         nearly 30,000 miles where poor misguided astronomers suppose
+         the south pole to be. The sun moves across the sky at a
+         distance of about 800 miles. From the boundless abyss beyond
+         the southern circumference, with its barrier of icy mountains,
+         came the waters which drowned the antediluvian world; for, as
+         this author quite reasonably observes, "on a globular earth
+         such a deluge would have been physically Impossible." Hampden's
+         title is somewhat like that of Cosmas,--_The New Manual of
+         Biblical Cosmography_, London, 1877; and he began in 1876 to
+         publish a periodical called _The Truth-Seeker's Oracle and
+         Scriptural Science Review_. Similar views have been set forth
+         by one Samuel Rowbotham, under the pseudonym of "Parallax,"
+         _Zetetic Astronomy. Earth not a Globe. An experimental inquiry
+         into the true figure of the earth, proving it a plane without
+         orbital or axial motion_, etc., London, 1873; and by a William
+         Carpenter, _One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is not a Globe_,
+         Baltimore, 1885. There is a very considerable quantity of such
+         literature afloat, the product of a kind of mental aberration
+         that thrives upon paradox. When I was superintendent of the
+         catalogue of Harvard University library, I made the class
+         "Eccentric Literature" under which to group such books,--the
+         lucubrations of circle-squarers, angle-trisectors, inventors of
+         perpetual motion, devisers of recipes for living forever
+         without dying, crazy interpreters of Daniel and the Apocalypse,
+         upsetters of the undulatory theory of light, the
+         Bacon-Shakespeare lunatics, etc.; a dismal procession of
+         long-eared bipeds, with very raucous bray. The late Professor
+         De Morgan devoted a bulky and instructive volume to an account
+         of such people and their crotchets. See his _Budget of
+         Paradoxes_, London, 1872.]
+
+         [Footnote 318: Cosmas, ii. 138. Further mention of China was
+         made early in the seventh century by Theophylactus Samocatta,
+         vii. 7. See Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. pp. xlix., clxviii.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Nestorians.]
+
+In the fourth and following centuries, Nestorian missionaries were very
+active in Asia, and not only made multitudes of converts and established
+metropolitan sees in such places as Kashgar and Herat, but even found
+their way into China. Their work forms an interesting though melancholy
+chapter in history, but it does not seem to have done much toward making
+Asia better known to Europe. As declared heretics, the Nestorians were
+themselves almost entirely cut off from intercourse with European
+Christians.
+
+[Sidenote: Effects of the Saracen conquests.]
+
+[Sidenote: Constantinople in the twelfth century.]
+
+The immediate effect of the sudden rise of the vast Saracen empire, in
+the seventh and eighth centuries, was to interpose a barrier to the
+extension of intercourse between Europe and the Far East. Trade between
+the eastern and western extremities of Asia went on more briskly than
+ever, but it was for a long time exclusively in Mussulman hands. The
+mediaeval Arabs were bold sailors, and not only visited Sumatra and Java,
+but made their way to Canton. Upon the southern and middle routes the
+Arab cities of Cairo and Bagdad became thriving centres of trade; but as
+Spain and the whole of northern Africa were now Arab countries, most of
+the trade between east and west was conducted within Mussulman
+boundaries. Saracen cruisers prowled in the Mediterranean and sorely
+harassed the Christian coasts. During the eighth, ninth, and tenth
+centuries, Europe was more shut in upon herself than ever before or
+since. In many respects these were especially the dark ages of
+Europe,--the period of least comfort and least enlightenment since the
+days of pre-Roman barbarism. But from this general statement
+Constantinople should be in great measure excepted. The current of
+mediaeval trade through the noble highway of the Dardanelles and the
+Bosphorus was subject to fluctuations, but it was always great. The
+city of the Byzantine emperors was before all things a commercial city,
+like Venice in later days. Until the time of the Crusades Constantinople
+was the centre of the Levant trade. The great northern route from Asia
+remained available for commercial intercourse in this direction. Persian
+and Armenian merchants sent their goods to Batoum, whence they were
+shipped to Constantinople; and silk was brought from northwestern China
+by caravan to the Oxus, and forwarded thence by the Caspian sea, the
+rivers Cyrus and Phasis, and the Euxine sea.[319] When it was visited by
+Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century, Constantinople was
+undoubtedly the richest and most magnificent city, and the seat of the
+highest civilization, to be found anywhere upon the globe.
+
+         [Footnote 319: Robertson, _Historical Disquisition_, p. 93;
+         Pears, _The Fall of Constantinople_, p. 177,--a book of great
+         merit.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Crusades.]
+
+[Sidenote: Barbarizing character of Turkish conquest.]
+
+[Sidenote: General effects of the Crusades.]
+
+In the days of its strength the Eastern Empire was the staunch bulwark
+of Christendom against the dangerous assaults of Persian, Saracen, and
+Turk; alike in prosperity and in calamity, it proved to be the teacher
+and civilizer of the western world. The events which, at the close of
+the eleventh century, brought thousands upon thousands of adventurous,
+keen-witted people from western Europe into this home of wealth and
+refinement, were the occasion of the most remarkable intellectual
+awakening that the world had ever witnessed up to that time. The
+Crusades, in their beginning, were a symptom of the growing energy of
+western Europe under the ecclesiastical reformation effected by the
+mighty Hildebrand. They were the military response of Europe to the most
+threatening, and, as time has proved, the most deadly of all the blows
+that have ever been aimed at her from Asia. Down to this time the
+Mahometanism with which Christendom had so long been in conflict was a
+Mahometanism of civilized peoples. The Arabs and Moors were industrious
+merchants, agriculturists, and craftsmen; in their society one might
+meet with learned scholars, refined poets, and profound philosophers.
+But at the end of the tenth century, Islam happened to make converts of
+the Turks, a nomad race in the upper status of barbarism, with flocks
+and herds and patriarchal families. Inspired with the sudden zeal for
+conquest which has always characterized new converts to Islam, the Turks
+began to pour down from the plains of central Asia like a deluge upon
+the Eastern Empire. In 1016 they overwhelmed Armenia, and presently
+advanced into Asia Minor. Their mode of conquest was peculiarly baleful,
+for at first they deliberately annihilated the works of civilization in
+order to prepare the country for their nomadic life; they pulled down
+cities to put up tents. Though they long ago ceased to be nomads, they
+have to this day never learned to comprehend civilized life, and they
+have been simply a blight upon every part of the earth's surface which
+they have touched. At the beginning of the eleventh century, Asia Minor
+was one of the most prosperous and highly civilized parts of the
+world;[320] and the tale of its devastation by the terrible Alp Arslan
+and the robber chiefs that came after him is one of the most mournful
+chapters in history. At the end of that century, when the Turks were
+holding Nicaea and actually had their outposts on the Marmora, it was
+high time for Christendom to rise _en masse_ in self-defence. The idea
+was worthy of the greatest of popes. Imperfectly and spasmodically as it
+was carried out, it undoubtedly did more than anything that had ever
+gone before toward strengthening the wholesome sentiment of a common
+Christendom among the peoples of western Europe. The Crusades increased
+the power of the Church, which was equivalent to putting a curb upon the
+propensities of the robber baron and making labour and traffic more
+secure. In another way they aided this good work by carrying off the
+robber baron in large numbers to Egypt and Syria, and killing him there.
+In this way they did much toward ridding European society of its most
+turbulent elements; while at the same time they gave fresh development
+to the spirit of romantic adventure, and connected it with something
+better than vagrant freebooting.[321] By renewing the long-suspended
+intercourse between the minds of western Europe and the Greek culture
+of Constantinople, they served as a mighty stimulus to intellectual
+curiosity, and had a large share in bringing about that great thirteenth
+century renaissance which is forever associated with the names of Giotto
+and Dante and Roger Bacon.
+
+         [Footnote 320: "It is difficult for the modern traveller who
+         ventures into the heart of Asia Minor, and finds nothing but
+         rude Kurds and Turkish peasants living among mountains and wild
+         pastures, not connected even by ordinary roads, to imagine the
+         splendour and rich cultivation of this vast country, with its
+         brilliant cities and its teeming population." Mahaffy, _The
+         Greek World under Roman Sway_, London, 1890, p. 229.]
+
+         [Footnote 321: The general effects of the Crusades are
+         discussed, with much learning and sagacity, by
+         Choiseul-Daillecourt, _De l'Influence des Croisades sur l'etat
+         des peuples de l'Europe_, Paris, 1809.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Fourth Crusade.]
+
+There can be no doubt that in these ways the Crusades were for our
+forefathers in Europe the most bracing and stimulating events that
+occurred in the whole millennium between the complicated disorders of
+the fifth century and the outburst of maritime discovery in the
+fifteenth. How far they justified themselves from the military point of
+view, it is not so easy to say. On the one hand, they had much to do
+with retarding the progress of the enemy for two hundred years; they
+overwhelmed the Seljukian Turks so effectually that their successors,
+the Ottomans, did not become formidable until about 1300, after the last
+crusading wave had spent its force. On the other hand, the Fourth
+Crusade, with better opportunities than any of the others for striking a
+crushing blow at the Moslem, played false to Christendom, and in 1204
+captured and despoiled Constantinople in order to gratify Venice's
+hatred of her commercial rival and superior. It was a sorry piece of
+business, and one cannot look with unmixed pleasure at the four superb
+horses that now adorn the front of the church of St. Mark as a trophy of
+this unhallowed exploit.[322] One cannot help feeling that but for this
+colossal treachery, the great city of Constantine, to which our own
+civilization owes more than can ever be adequately told, might, perhaps,
+have retained enough strength to withstand the barbarian in 1453, and
+thus have averted one of the most lamentable catastrophes in the history
+of mankind.
+
+         [Footnote 322: They were taken from Chios in the fourth century
+         by the emperor Theodosius, and placed in the hippodrome at
+         Constantinople, whence they were taken by the Venetians in
+         1204. The opinion that "the results of the Fourth Crusade upon
+         European civilization were altogether disastrous" is ably set
+         forth by Mr. Pears, _The Fall of Constantinople_, London, 1885,
+         and would be difficult to refute. Voltaire might well say in
+         this case, "Ainsi le seul fruit des chretiens dans leurs
+         barbares croisades fut d'exterminer d'autres chretiens. Ces
+         croises, qui ruinaient l'empire auraient pu, bien plus aisement
+         que tous leurs predecesseurs, chasser les Turcs de l'Asie."
+         _Essai sur les Moeurs_, tom. ii. p. 158. Voltaire's general
+         view of the Crusades is, however, very superficial.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rivalry between Venice and Genoa.]
+
+The general effect of the Crusades upon Oriental commerce was to
+increase the amount of traffic through Egypt and Syria. Of this
+lucrative trade Venice got the lion's share, and while she helped
+support the short-lived Latin dynasty upon the throne at Constantinople,
+she monopolized a great part of the business of the Black Sea also. But
+in 1261 Venice's rival, Genoa, allied herself with the Greek emperor,
+Michael Palaeologus, at Nicaea, placed him upon the Byzantine throne, and
+again cut off Venice from the trade that came through the Bosphorus.
+From this time forth the mutual hatred between Venice and Genoa "waxed
+fiercer than ever; no merchant fleet of either state could go to sea
+without convoy, and wherever their ships met they fought. It was
+something like the state of things between Spain and England in the
+days of Drake."[323] In the one case as in the other, it was a strife
+for the mastery of the sea and its commerce. Genoa obtained full control
+of the Euxine, took possession of the Crimea, and thus acquired a
+monopoly of the trade from central Asia along the northern route. With
+the fall of Acre in 1291, and the consequent expulsion of Christians
+from Syria, Venice lost her hold upon the middle route. But with the
+pope's leave[324] she succeeded in making a series of advantageous
+commercial treaties with the new Mameluke sovereigns of Egypt, and the
+dealings between the Red Sea and the Adriatic soon came to be
+prodigious. The Venetians gained control of part of the Peloponnesus,
+with many islands of the AEgean and eastern Mediterranean. During the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries their city was the most splendid and
+luxurious in all Christendom.
+
+         [Footnote 323: Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p. lxxi.]
+
+         [Footnote 324: A papal dispensation was necessary before a
+         commercial treaty could be made with Mahometans. See Leibnitz,
+         _Codex Jur. Gent. Diplomat._, i. 489.]
+
+[Sidenote: Centres and routes of mediaeval trade.]
+
+Such a development of wealth in Venice and Genoa implies a large
+producing and consuming area behind them, able to take and pay for the
+costly products of India and China. Before the end of the thirteenth
+century the volume of European trade had swelled to great proportions.
+How full of historic and literary interest are the very names of the
+centres and leading routes of this trade as it was established in those
+days, with its outlook upon the Mediterranean and the distant East! Far
+up in the North we see Wisby, on the little isle of Gothland in the
+Baltic, giving its name to new rules of international law; and the
+merchants of the famous Hansa towns extending their operations as far as
+Novgorod in one direction, and in another to the Steelyard in London,
+where the pound of these honest "Easterlings" was adopted as the
+"sterling" unit of sound money. Fats and tallows, furs and wax from
+Russia, iron and copper from Sweden, strong hides and unrivalled wools
+from England, salt cod and herring (much needed on meagre church
+fast-days) from the North and Baltic seas, appropriately followed by
+generous casks of beer from Hamburg, were sent southward in exchange for
+fine cloths and tapestries, the products of the loom in Ghent and
+Bruges, in Ulm and Augsburg, with delicious vintages of the Rhine,
+supple chain armour from Milan, Austrian yew-wood for English long-bows,
+ivory and spices, pearls and silks from Italy and the Orient. Along the
+routes from Venice and Florence to Antwerp and Rotterdam we see the
+progress in wealth and refinement, in artistic and literary
+productiveness. We see the early schools of music and painting in Italy
+meet with prompt response in Flanders; in the many-gabled streets of
+Nuremberg we hear the voice of the Meistersinger, and under the low
+oaken roof of a Canterbury inn we listen to joyous if sometimes naughty
+tales erst told in pleasant groves outside of fever-stricken Florence.
+
+[Sidenote: Effects of the Mongol conquests.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cathay.]
+
+[Sidenote: Carpini and Rubruquis.]
+
+[Sidenote: First knowledge of an eastern ocean beyond Cathay.]
+
+With this increase of wealth and culture in central Europe there came a
+considerable extension of knowledge and a powerful stimulus to
+curiosity concerning the remote parts of Asia. The conquering career of
+Jenghis Khan (1206-1227) had shaken the world to its foundations. In the
+middle of that century, to adopt Colonel Yule's lively expression,
+"throughout Asia and eastern Europe, scarcely a dog might bark without
+Mongol leave, from the borders of Poland and the coast of Cilicia to the
+Amur and the Yellow Sea." About these portentous Mongols, who had thus
+in a twinkling overwhelmed China and Russia, and destroyed the Caliphate
+of Bagdad, there was a refreshing touch of open-minded heathenism. They
+were barbarians willing to learn. From end to end of Asia the barriers
+were thrown down. It was a time when Alan chiefs from the Volga served
+as police in Tunking, and Chinese physicians could be consulted at
+Tabriz. For about a hundred years China was more accessible than at any
+period before or since,--more even than to-day; and that country now for
+the first time became really known to a few Europeans. In the northern
+provinces of China, shortly before the Mongol deluge, there had reigned
+a dynasty known as the _Khitai_, and hence China was (and still is)
+commonly spoken of in central Asia as the country of the Khitai. When
+this name reached European ears it became _Cathay_, the name by which
+China was best known in Europe during the next four centuries.[325] In
+1245, Friar John of Plano Carpini, a friend and disciple of St. Francis,
+was sent by Pope Innocent IV. on a missionary errand to the Great Khan,
+and visited him in his camp at Karakorum in the very depths of Mongolia.
+In 1253 the king of France, St. Louis, sent another Franciscan monk,
+Willem de Rubruquis, to Karakorum, on a mission of which the purpose is
+now not clearly understood. Both these Franciscans were men of shrewd
+and cultivated minds, especially Rubruquis, whose narrative, "in its
+rich detail, its vivid pictures, its acuteness of observation and strong
+good sense ... has few superiors in the whole library of travel."[326]
+Neither Rubruquis nor Friar John visited China, but they fell in with
+Chinese folk at Karakorum, and obtained information concerning the
+geography of eastern Asia far more definite than had ever before been
+possessed by Europeans. They both describe Cathay as bordering upon an
+eastern ocean, and this piece of information constituted the first
+important leap of geographical knowledge to the eastward since the days
+of Ptolemy, who supposed that beyond the "Seres and Sinae" lay an unknown
+land of vast extent, "full of reedy and impenetrable swamps."[327] The
+information gathered by Rubruquis and Friar John indicated that there
+was an end to the continent of Asia; that, not as a matter of vague
+speculation, but of positive knowledge, Asia was bounded on the east,
+just as Europe was bounded on the west, by an ocean.
+
+         [Footnote 325: Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. p. cxvi.; _Marco Polo_,
+         vol. i. p. xlii.]
+
+         [Footnote 326: Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p. cxxx.; cf.
+         Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. i. p. 71. The complete
+         original texts of the reports of both monks, with learned
+         notes, may be found in the _Recueil de Voyages et de Memoires,
+         publie par la Societe de Geographie_, Paris, 1839, tom. iv.,
+         viz.: _Johannis de Plano Carpini Historia Mongolorum quos nos
+         Tartaros appellamus_, ed. M. d'Avezac; _Itinerarium Willelmi de
+         Rubruk_, ed. F. Michel et T. Wright.]
+
+         [Footnote 327: Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. p. xxxix.; Ptolemy, i.
+         17. Cf. Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, London, 1883,
+         vol. ii. p. 606.]
+
+[Sidenote: The data were thus prepared for Columbus;]
+
+[Sidenote: but as yet nobody reasoned from these data to a practical
+conclusion.]
+
+Here we arrive at a notable landmark in the history of the Discovery of
+America. Here from the camp of bustling heathen at Karakorum there is
+brought to Europe the first announcement of a geographical fact from
+which the poetic mind of Christopher Columbus will hereafter reap a
+wonderful harvest. This is one among many instances of the way in which,
+throughout all departments of human thought and action, the glorious
+thirteenth century was beginning to give shape to the problems of which
+the happy solution has since made the modern world so different from the
+ancient.[328] Since there is an ocean east of Cathay and an ocean west
+of Spain, how natural the inference--and albeit quite wrong, how
+amazingly fruitful--that these oceans are one and the same, so that by
+sailing westward from Spain one might go straight to Cathay! The data
+for such an inference were now all at hand, but it does not appear that
+any one as yet reasoned from the data to the conclusion, although we
+find Roger Bacon, in 1267, citing the opinions of Aristotle and other
+ancient writers to the effect that the distance by sea from the western
+shores of Spain to the eastern shores of Asia cannot be so very
+great.[329] In those days it took a long time for such ideas to get from
+the heads of philosophers into the heads of men of action; and in the
+thirteenth century, when Cathay was more accessible by land than at any
+time before or since, there was no practical necessity felt for a water
+route thither. Europe still turned her back upon the Atlantic and gazed
+more intently than ever upon Asia. Stronger and more general grew the
+interest in Cathay.
+
+         [Footnote 328: See my _Beginnings of New England_, chap. i. How
+         richly suggestive to an American is the contemporaneity of
+         Rubruquis and Earl Simon of Leicester!]
+
+         [Footnote 329: Roger Bacon, _Opus Majus_, ed. Jebb, London,
+         1733, p. 183.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Polo brothers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Kublai Khan's message to the Pope.]
+
+In the middle of the thirteenth century, some members of the Polo
+family, one of the aristocratic families of Venice, had a commercial
+house at Constantinople. Thence, in 1260, the brothers Nicolo and Maffeo
+Polo started on a trading journey to the Crimea, whence one opportunity
+after another for making money and gratifying their curiosity with new
+sights led them northward and eastward to the Volga, thence into
+Bokhara, and so on until they reached the court of the Great Khan, in
+one of the northwestern provinces of Cathay. The reigning sovereign was
+the famous Kublai Khan, grandson of the all-conquering Jenghis. Kublai
+was an able and benevolent despot, earnest in the wish to improve the
+condition of his Mongol kinsmen. He had never before met European
+gentlemen, and was charmed with the cultivated and polished Venetians.
+He seemed quite ready to enlist the Roman Church in aid of his
+civilizing schemes, and entrusted the Polos with a message to the Pope,
+asking him for a hundred missionary teachers. The brothers reached
+Venice in 1269, and found that Pope Clement IV. was dead and there was
+an interregnum. After two years Gregory X. was elected and received the
+Khan's message, but could furnish only a couple of Dominican friars, and
+these men were seized with the dread not uncommonly felt for
+"Tartareans," and at the last moment refused to go. Nicolo and his
+brother then set out in the autumn of 1271 to return to China, taking
+with them Nicolo's son Marco, a lad of seventeen years. From Acre they
+went by way of Bagdad to Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian gulf,
+apparently with the intention of proceeding thence by sea, but for some
+reason changed their course, and travelled through Kerman, Khorassan,
+and Balkh, to Kashgar, and thence by way of Yarkand and Khotan, and
+across the desert of Gobi into northwestern China, where they arrived in
+the summer of 1275, and found the Khan at Kaipingfu, not far from the
+northern end of the Great Wall.
+
+[Sidenote: Marco Polo and his travels in Asia.]
+
+[Sidenote: First recorded voyage of Europeans around the Indo-Chinese
+peninsula, 1292-94.]
+
+[Sidenote: Return of the Polos to Venice.]
+
+It has been said that the failure of Kublai's mission to the Pope led
+him to apply to the Grand Lama, at Thibet, who responded more
+efficiently and successfully than Gregory X., so that Buddhism seized
+the chance which Catholicism failed to grasp. The Venetians, however,
+lost nothing in the good Khan's esteem. Young Marco began to make
+himself proficient in speaking and writing several Asiatic languages,
+and was presently taken into the Khan's service. His name is mentioned
+in the Chinese Annals of 1277 as a newly-appointed commissioner of the
+privy council.[330] He remained in Kublai's service until 1292, while
+his father and uncle were gathering wealth in various ways. Marco made
+many official journeys up and down the Khan's vast dominions, not only
+in civilized China, but in regions of the heart of Asia seldom visited
+by Europeans to this day,--"a vast ethnological garden," says Colonel
+Yule, "of tribes of various race and in every stage of uncivilization."
+In 1292 a royal bride for the Khan of Persia was to be sent all the way
+from Peking to Tabriz, and as war that year made some parts of the
+overland route very unsafe, it was decided to send her by sea. The three
+Polos had for some time been looking for an opportunity to return to
+Venice, but Kublai was unwilling to have them go. Now, however, as every
+Venetian of that day was deemed to be from his very cradle a seasoned
+seadog, and as the kindly old Mongol sovereign had an inveterate
+land-lubber's misgivings about ocean voyages, he consented to part with
+his dear friends, so that he might entrust the precious princess to
+their care. They sailed from the port of Zaiton (Chinchow) early in
+1292, and after long delays on the coasts of Sumatra and Hindustan, in
+order to avoid unfavourable monsoons, they reached the Persian gulf in
+1294. They found that the royal bridegroom, somewhat advanced in years,
+had died before they started from China; so the young princess became
+the bride of his son. After tarrying awhile in Tabriz, the Polos
+returned, by way of Trebizond and the Bosphorus, to Venice, arriving in
+1295. When they got there, says Ramusio, after their absence of four and
+twenty years, "the same fate befel them as befel Ulysses, who, when he
+returned to his native Ithaca, was recognized by nobody." Their kinsfolk
+had long since given them up for dead; and when the three wayworn
+travellers arrived at the door of their own palace, the middle-aged men
+now wrinkled graybeards, the stripling now a portly man, all three
+attired in rather shabby clothes of Tartar cut, and "with a certain
+indescribable smack of the Tartar about them, both in air and accent,"
+some words of explanation were needed to prove their identity. After a
+few days they invited a party of old friends to dinner, and bringing
+forth three shabby coats, ripped open the seams and welts, and began
+pulling out and tumbling upon the table such treasures of diamonds and
+emeralds, rubies and sapphires, as could never have been imagined,
+"which had all been stitched up in those dresses in so artful a fashion
+that nobody could have suspected the fact." In such wise had they
+brought home from Cathay their ample earnings; and when it became known
+about Venice that the three long-lost citizens had come back,
+"straightway the whole city, gentle and simple, flocked to the house to
+embrace them, and to make much of them, with every conceivable
+demonstration of affection and respect."[331]
+
+         [Footnote 330: Pauthier's _Marco Polo_, p. 361; Yule's _Marco
+         Polo_, p. li.]
+
+         [Footnote 331: Ramusio, _apud_ Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p.
+         xxxvii.]
+
+[Sidenote: Marco Polo's book written in prison at Genoa, 1299.]
+
+Three years afterward, in 1298, Marco commanded a galley in the great
+naval battle with the Genoese near Curzola. The Venetians were totally
+defeated, and Marco was one of the 7,000 prisoners taken to Genoa, where
+he was kept in durance for about a year. One of his companions in
+captivity was a certain Rusticiano, of Pisa, who was glad to listen to
+his descriptions of Asia, and to act as his amanuensis. French was then,
+at the close of the Crusades, a language as generally understood
+throughout Europe as later, in the age of Louis XIV.; and Marco's
+narrative was duly taken down by the worthy Rusticiano in rather lame
+and shaky French. In the summer of 1299 Marco was set free and returned
+to Venice, where he seems to have led a quiet life until his death in
+1324.
+
+[Sidenote: Its great contributions to geographical knowledge.]
+
+"The Book of Ser Marco Polo concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the
+East" is one of the most famous and important books of the Middle Ages.
+It contributed more new facts toward a knowledge of the earth's surface
+than any book that had ever been written before. Its author was "the
+first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia;"
+the first to describe China in its vastness, with its immense cities,
+its manufactures and wealth, and to tell, whether from personal
+experience or direct hearsay, of Thibet and Burmah, of Siam and Cochin
+China, of the Indian archipelago, with its islands of spices, of Java
+and Sumatra, and of the savages of Andaman. He knew of Japan and the
+woful defeat of the Mongols there, when they tried to invade the island
+kingdom in 1281. He gave a description of Hindustan far more complete
+and characteristic than had ever before been published. From Arab
+sailors, accustomed to the Indian ocean, he learned something about
+Zanzibar and Madagascar and the semi-Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. To
+the northward from Persia he described the country of the Golden Horde,
+whose khans were then holding Russia in subjection; and he had gathered
+some accurate information concerning Siberia as far as the country of
+the Samoyeds, with their dog-sledges and polar bears.[332]
+
+         [Footnote 332: Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p. cxxxi.]
+
+[Sidenote: Prester John.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "Arimaspians."]
+
+Here was altogether too much geographical knowledge for European
+ignorance in those days to digest. While Marco's book attracted much
+attention, its influence upon the progress of geography was slighter
+than it would have been if addressed to a more enlightened public. Many
+of its sober statements of fact were received with incredulity. Many of
+the places described were indistinguishable, in European imagination,
+from the general multitude of fictitious countries mentioned in
+fairy-tales or in romances of chivalry. Perhaps no part of Marco's story
+was so likely to interest his readers as his references to Prester John.
+In the course of the twelfth century the notion had somehow gained
+possession of the European mind that somewhere out in the dim vastness
+of the Orient there dwelt a mighty Christian potentate, known as John
+the Presbyter or "Prester."[333] At different times he was identified
+with various known Asiatic sovereigns. Marco Polo identified him with
+one Togrul Wang, who was overcome and slain by the mighty Jenghis; but
+he would not stay dead, any more than the grewsome warlock in Russian
+nursery lore. The notion of Prester John and his wealthy kingdom could
+no more be expelled from the European mind in the fourteenth and
+fifteenth centuries than the kindred notion of El Dorado in the
+sixteenth. The position of this kingdom was shifted about here and
+there, as far as from Chinese Tartary to Abyssinia and back again, but
+somewhere or other in people's vague mental picture of the East it was
+sure to occur. Other remote regions in Asia were peopled with elves and
+griffins and "one-eyed Arimaspians,"[334] and we may be sure that to
+Marco's readers these beings were quite as real as the polished
+citizens of Cambaluc (Peking) or the cannibals of the Andaman islands.
+From such a chaos of ideas sound geographical knowledge must needs be a
+slow evolution, and Marco Polo's acquisitions were altogether too far in
+advance of his age to be readily assimilated.
+
+         [Footnote 333:
+            "But for to speake of riches and of stones,
+            And men and horse, I trow the large wones
+            Of Prestir John, ne all his tresorie,
+            Might not unneth have boght the tenth partie."
+                              Chaucer, _The Flower and the Leaf_, 200.
+
+         The fabulous kingdom of Prester John is ably treated in Yule's
+         _Cathay_, vol. i. pp. 174-182; _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p.
+         204-216. Colonel Yule suspects that its prototype may have been
+         the semi-Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. This is very likely.
+         As for its range, shifted hither and thither as it was, all the
+         way from the upper Nile to the Thian-Shan mountains, we can
+         easily understand this if we remember how an ignorant mind
+         conceives all points distant from its own position as near to
+         one another; i. e. if you are about to start from New York for
+         Arizona, your housemaid will perhaps ask you to deliver a
+         message to her brother in Manitoba. Nowhere more than in the
+         history of geography do we need to keep before us, at every
+         step, the limitations of the untutored mind and its feebleness
+         in grasping the space-relations of remote regions.]
+
+         [Footnote 334: These Arimaspians afford an interesting example
+         of the uncritical statements of travellers at an early time, as
+         well as of their tenacious vitality. The first mention of these
+         mythical people seems to have been made by Greek travellers in
+         Scythia as early as the seventh century before Christ; and they
+         furnished Aristeas of Proconnesus, somewhat later, with the
+         theme of his poem "Arimaspeia," which has perished, all except
+         six verses quoted by Longinus. See Mure's _Literature of
+         Antient Greece_, vol. iv. p. 68. Thence the notion of the
+         Arimaspians seems to have passed to Herodotus (iii. 116; iv.
+         27) and to AEschylus:--
+
+            [Greek: oxystomous gar Zenos akrageis kynas
+            grypas phylaxai, ton te mounopa straton
+            Arimaspon hippobamon', hoi chrysorrhyton
+            oikousin amphi nama Ploutonos porou;
+            toutois sy me pelaze.]
+                              _Prometheus_, 802.
+
+         Thence it passed on to Pausanias, i. 24; Pomponius Mela, ii. 1;
+         Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 2; Lucan, _Pharsalia_, iii. 280; and
+         so on to Milton:--
+
+            "As when a gryphon through the wilderness,
+            With winged course o'er hill or moory dale,
+            Pursues the Arimaspian who by stealth
+            Had from his wakeful custody purloined
+            The guarded gold."
+                              _Paradise Lost_, ii. 944.]
+
+[Illustration: Two sheets of the Catalan Map, 1375.]
+
+[Sidenote: Other visits to China.]
+
+[Sidenote: Overthrow of the Mongol dynasty, and shutting up of China.]
+
+Nevertheless, in the Catalan map, made in 1375, and now to be seen in
+the National Library at Paris, there is a thorough-going and not
+unsuccessful attempt to embody the results of Polo's travels. In the
+interval of three quarters of a century since the publication of Marco's
+narrative, several adventurous travellers had found their way to Cathay.
+There was Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, who, during the years 1316-30
+visited Hindustan, Sumatra, Java, Cochin China, the Chinese Empire, and
+Thibet.[335] It was from this worthy monk that the arrant old impostor,
+"Sir John Mandeville," stole his descriptions of India and Cathay,
+seasoning them with yarns from Pliny and Ktesias, and grotesque conceits
+of his own.[336] Several other missionary friars visited China between
+1302 and 1330, and about ten years after the latter date the Florentine
+merchant, Francesco Pegolotti, wrote a very useful handbook for
+commercial travellers on the overland route to that country.[337]
+Between 1338 and 1353 Giovanni Marignolli spent some years at Peking, as
+papal legate from Benedict XI. to the Great Khan, and also travelled in
+Ceylon and Hindustan.[338] That seems to have been the last of these
+journeys to the Far East. In 1368, the people of China rose against the
+Mongol dynasty and overthrew it. The first emperor of the native Ming
+dynasty was placed upon the throne, and the Chinese retorted upon their
+late conquerors by overrunning vast Mongolia and making it Chinese
+Tartary. The barriers thrown down by the liberal policy of the Mongol
+sovereigns were now put up again, and no more foreigners were allowed to
+set foot upon the sacred soil of the Flowery Kingdom.
+
+         [Footnote 335: Odoric mentions Juggernaut processions and the
+         burning of widows; in Sumatra he observed cannibalism and
+         community of wives; he found the kingdom of Prester John in
+         Chinese Tartary; "but as regards him," says wise Odoric, "not
+         one hundredth part is true of what is told of him as if it were
+         undeniable." Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. pp. 79, 85, 146.]
+
+         [Footnote 336: Colonel Yule gives a list of fourteen important
+         passages taken bodily from Odoric by Mandeville. _Op. cit._ i.
+         28. It is very doubtful if that famous book, "Sir John
+         Mandeville's Travels," was written by a Mandeville, or by a
+         knight, or even by an Englishman. It seems to have been
+         originally written in French by Jean de Bourgogne, a physician
+         who lived for some years at Liege, and died there somewhere
+         about 1370. He may possibly have been an Englishman named John
+         Burgoyne, who was obliged some years before that date to flee
+         his country for homicide or for some political offence. He had
+         travelled as far as Egypt and Palestine, but no farther. His
+         book is almost entirely cribbed from others, among which may be
+         mentioned the works of Jacques de Vitry, Plano Carpini, Hayton
+         the Armenian, Boldensele's Itinerary, Albert of Aix's chronicle
+         of the first crusade, Brunetto Latini's _Tresor_, Petrus
+         Comestor's _Historia scholastica_, the _Speculum_ of Vincent de
+         Beauvais, etc., etc. It is one of the most wholesale and
+         successful instances of plagiarism and imposture on record. See
+         _The Buke of John Mandevill, from the unique copy (Egerton MS.
+         1982) in the British Museum. Edited by G. F. Warner._
+         Westminster, 1889. (Roxburghe Club.)]
+
+         [Footnote 337: One piece of Pegolotti's advice is still useful
+         for travellers in the nineteenth century who visit benighted
+         heathen countries afflicted with robber tariffs: "And don't
+         forget that if you treat the custom-house officers with
+         respect, and make them something of a present in goods or
+         money, they will behave with great civility and always be ready
+         to appraise your wares below their real value." _Op. cit._ ii.
+         307.]
+
+         [Footnote 338: The works of all the writers mentioned in this
+         paragraph, or copious extracts from them, may be found in
+         Yule's _Cathay_, which comprises also the book of the
+         celebrated Ibn Batuta, of Tangier, whose travels, between 1325
+         and 1355, covered pretty much the whole of Asia except Siberia,
+         besides a journey across Sahara to the river Niger. His book
+         does not seem to have attracted attention in Europe until early
+         in the present century.]
+
+[Sidenote: First rumours of the Molucca islands and Japan.]
+
+Thus, for just a century,--from Carpini and Rubruquis to
+Marignolli,--while China was open to strangers as never before or since,
+a few Europeans had availed themselves of the opportunity in such wise
+as to mark the beginning of a new era in the history of geographical
+knowledge. Though the discoveries of Marco Polo were as yet but
+imperfectly appreciated, one point, and that the most significant of
+all, was thoroughly established. It was shown that the continent of Asia
+did not extend indefinitely eastward, nor was it bounded and barricaded
+on that side, as Ptolemy had imagined, by vast impenetrable swamps. On
+the contrary, its eastern shores were perfectly accessible through an
+open sea, and half a dozen Europeans in Chinese ships had now actually
+made the voyage between the coast of China and the Persian gulf.
+Moreover, some hearsay knowledge--enough to provoke curiosity and
+greed--had been gained of the existence of numerous islands in that
+far-off eastern ocean, rich in the spices which from time immemorial had
+formed such an important element in Mediterranean commerce. News, also,
+had been brought to Europe of the wonderful island kingdom of Japan
+(Cipango or Zipangu) lying out in that ocean some hundreds of miles
+beyond the coast of Cathay. These were rich countries, abounding in
+objects of lucrative traffic. Under the liberal Mongol rule the Oriental
+trade had increased enough for Europe to feel in many ways its
+beneficial effects. Now this trade began to be suddenly and severely
+checked, and while access to the interior of Asia was cut off, European
+merchants might begin to reflect upon the value of what they were
+losing, and to consider if there were any feasible method of recovering
+it.
+
+[Sidenote: The accustomed routes of Oriental trade cut off by the
+Ottoman Turks.]
+
+[Sidenote: Necessity for finding an "outside route to the Indies."]
+
+It was not merely the shutting up of China by the first Ming emperor,
+in 1368, that checked the intercourse between Europe and Asia. A still
+more baleful obstacle to all such intercourse had lately come upon the
+scene. In Asia Minor the beastly Turk, whose career had been for two
+centuries arrested by the Crusades, now reared his head again. The
+Seljukian had been only scotched, not killed; and now he sprang to life
+as the Ottoman, with sharper fangs than before. In 1365 the Turks
+established themselves in the Balkan peninsula, with Adrianople as their
+capital, and began tightening their coils about the doomed city of
+Constantine. Each point that they gained meant the strangling of just so
+much Oriental trade; for, as we have seen, the alliance of
+Constantinople with Genoa since 1261 had secured to the latter city, and
+to western Europe, the advantages of the overland routes from Asia,
+whether through the Volga country or across Armenia. When at length, in
+1453, the Turks took Constantinople, the splendid commercial career of
+Genoa was cut with the shears of Atropos. At the same time, as their
+power was rapidly extending over Syria and down toward Egypt,
+threatening the overthrow of the liberal Mameluke dynasty there, the
+commercial prosperity of Venice also was seriously imperilled. Moreover,
+as Turkish corsairs began to swarm in the eastern waters of the
+Mediterranean, the voyage became more and more unsafe for Christian
+vessels. It was thus, while the volume of trade with Asia was, in the
+natural course of things, swelling year by year, that its accustomed
+routes were being ruthlessly cut off. It was fast becoming necessary to
+consider whether there might not be other practicable routes to "the
+Indies" than those which had from time immemorial been followed. Could
+there be such a thing as an "outside route" to that land of promise? A
+more startling question has seldom been propounded; for it involved a
+radical departure from the grooves in which the human mind had been
+running ever since the days of Solomon. Two generations of men lived and
+died while this question was taking shape, and all that time Cathay and
+India and the islands of Spices were objects of increasing desire,
+clothed by eager fancy with all manner of charms and riches. The more
+effectually the eastern Mediterranean was closed, the stronger grew the
+impulse to venture upon unknown paths in order to realize the vague but
+glorious hopes that began to cluster about these remote countries. Such
+an era of romantic enterprise as was thus ushered in, the world has
+never seen before or since. It was equally remarkable as an era of
+discipline in scientific thinking. In the maritime ventures of
+unparalleled boldness now to be described, the human mind was groping
+toward the era of enormous extensions of knowledge in space and time
+represented by the names of Newton and Darwin. It was learning the right
+way of putting its trust in the Unseen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.
+
+_EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing
+around Africa.]
+
+As it dawned upon men's minds that to find some oceanic route from
+Europe to the remote shores of Asia was eminently desirable, the first
+attempt would naturally be to see what could be done by sailing down the
+western coast of Africa, and ascertaining whether that continent could
+be circumnavigated. It was also quite in the natural order of things
+that this first attempt should be made by the Portuguese.
+
+In the general history of the Middle Ages the Spanish peninsula had been
+to some extent cut off from the main currents of thought and feeling
+which actuated the rest of Europe. Its people had never joined the other
+Christian nations in the Crusades, for the good reason that they always
+had quite enough to occupy them in their own domestic struggle with the
+Moors. From the throes of this prolonged warfare Portugal emerged
+somewhat sooner than the Spanish kingdoms, and thus had somewhat earlier
+a surplus of energy released for work of another sort. It was not
+strange that the Portuguese should be the first people since the old
+Northmen to engage in distant maritime adventure upon a grand scale.
+Nor was it strange that Portuguese seamanship should at first have
+thriven upon naval warfare with Mussulmans. It was in attempting to
+suppress the intolerable nuisance of Moorish piracy that Portuguese
+ships became accustomed to sail a little way down the west coast of
+Africa; and such voyages, begun for military purposes, were kept up in
+the interests of commerce, and presently served as a mighty stimulus to
+geographical curiosity. We have now to consider at some length how grave
+was the problem that came up for immediate solution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Views of Eratosthenes, B. C. 276-196.]
+
+[Sidenote: Opposing theory of Ptolemy, cir. A. D. 150.]
+
+With regard to the circumnavigability of Africa two opposite opinions
+were maintained by the ancient Greek and Latin writers whose authority
+the men of the Middle Ages were wont to quote as decisive of every vexed
+question. The old Homeric notion of an ocean encompassing the
+terrestrial world, although mentioned with doubt by Herodotus,[339]
+continued to survive after the globular form of the earth had come to be
+generally maintained by ancient geographers. The greatest of these
+geographers, Eratosthenes, correctly assumed that the Indian ocean was
+continuous with the Atlantic,[340] and that Africa could be
+circumnavigated, just as he incorrectly assumed that the Caspian sea
+was a huge gulf communicating with a northern ocean, by which it would
+be possible to sail around the continent of Asia as he imagined it.[341]
+A similar opinion as to Africa was held by Posidonius and by
+Strabo.[342] It was called in question, however, by Polybius,[343] and
+was flatly denied by the great astronomer Hipparchus, who thought that
+certain observations on the tides, reported by Seleucus of Babylon,
+proved that there could be no connection between the Atlantic and Indian
+oceans.[344] Claudius Ptolemy, writing in the second century after
+Christ, followed the opinion of Hipparchus, and carried to an extreme
+the reaction against Eratosthenes. By Ptolemy's time the Caspian had
+been proved to be an inland sea, and it was evident that Asia extended
+much farther to the north and east than had once been supposed. This
+seems to have discredited in his mind the whole conception of outside
+oceans, and he not only gave an indefinite northward and eastward
+extension to Asia and an indefinite southern extension to Africa, but
+brought these two continents together far to the southeast, thus making
+the Indian ocean a land-locked sea.[345]
+
+         [Footnote 339: [Greek: Ton de Okeanon logo men legousi ap'
+         heliou anatoleon arxamenon gen peri pasan rheein, ergo de ouk
+         apodeiknysi.] Herodotus, iv. 8.]
+
+         [Footnote 340: [Greek: Kai gar kat' auton Eratosthene ten ektos
+         thalattan hapasan syrroun einai, hoste kai ten Hesperion kai
+         ten Erythran thalattan mian einai.] Strabo, i. 3, Sec. 13.]
+
+         [Footnote 341: Bunbury, _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i.
+         p. 644.]
+
+         [Footnote 342: Strabo, ii. 3, Sec. 4; xvii. 3, Sec. 1.]
+
+         [Footnote 343: [Greek: Kathaper de kai tes Asias kai tes
+         Libyes, katho synaptousin allelais peri ten Aithiopian, oudeis
+         echei legein atrekos heos ton kath' hemas kairon, poteron
+         epeiros esti kata to syneches ta pros ten mesembrian, e
+         thalatte periechetai.] Polybius, iii. 38.]
+
+         [Footnote 344: Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 15.]
+
+         [Footnote 345: See the map of Ptolemy's world, above, p. 264.]
+
+[Sidenote: Story of the Phoenician voyage, in the time of Necho.]
+
+These views of Hipparchus and Ptolemy took no heed of the story told to
+Herodotus of the circumnavigation of Africa by a Phoenician squadron at
+some time during the reign of Necho in Egypt (610-595 B. C.).[346] The
+Phoenician ships were said to have sailed from the Red Sea and to have
+returned through the Mediterranean in the third year after starting. In
+each of the two autumn seasons they stopped and sowed grain and waited
+for it to ripen, which in southern Africa would require ten or twelve
+weeks.[347] On their return to Egypt they declared ("I for my part do
+not believe them," says Herodotus, "but perhaps others may") that in
+thus sailing from east to west around Africa they had the sun upon their
+right hand. About this alleged voyage there has been a good deal of
+controversy.[348] No other expedition in any wise comparable to it for
+length and difficulty can be cited from ancient history, and a critical
+scholar is inclined to look with suspicion upon all such accounts of
+unique and isolated events. As we have not the details of the story, it
+is impossible to give it a satisfactory critical examination. The
+circumstance most likely to convince us of its truth is precisely that
+which dear old Herodotus deemed incredible. The position of the sun, to
+the north of the mariners, is something that could hardly have been
+imagined by people familiar only with the northern hemisphere. It is
+therefore almost certain that Necho's expedition sailed beyond the
+equator.[349] But that is as far as inference can properly carry us; for
+our experience of the uncritical temper of ancient narrators is enough
+to suggest that such an achievement might easily be magnified by rumour
+into the story told, more than a century after the event, to Herodotus.
+The data are too slight to justify us in any dogmatic opinion. One
+thing, however, is clear. Even if the circumnavigation was
+effected,--which, on the whole, seems improbable,--it remained quite
+barren of results. It produced no abiding impression upon men's
+minds[350] and added nothing to geographical knowledge. The veil of
+mystery was not lifted from southern Africa. The story was doubted by
+Strabo and Posidonius, and passed unheeded, as we have seen, by
+Hipparchus and Ptolemy.
+
+         [Footnote 346: Ptolemy expressly declares that the equatorial
+         regions had never been visited by people from the northern
+         hemisphere: [Greek: Tines de eisin hai oikeseis ouk an echoimen
+         pepeismenos eipein. Atriptoi gar eisi mechri tou deuro tois apo
+         tes kath' hemas oikoumenes, kai eikasian mallon an tis e
+         historian hegesaito ta legomena peri auton.] _Syntaxis_, ii.
+         6.]
+
+         [Footnote 347: Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, vol. iii. p. 29, note
+         8.]
+
+         [Footnote 348: The story is discredited by Mannert, _Geographie
+         der Griechen und Roemer_, bd. i. pp. 19-26; Gossellin,
+         _Recherches sur la geographie des Anciens_, tom. i. p. 149;
+         Lewis, _Astronomy of the Ancients_, pp. 508-515; Vincent,
+         _Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean_,
+         vol. i. pp. 303-311, vol. ii. pp. 13-15; Leake, _Disputed
+         Questions of Ancient Geography_, pp. 1-8. It is defended by
+         Heeren, _Ideen ueber die Politik, den Verkehr_, etc., 3e aufl.,
+         Goettingen, 1815, bd. i. abth. ii. pp. 87-93; Rennell,
+         _Geography of Herodotus_, pp. 672-714; Grote, _History of
+         Greece_, vol. iii. pp. 377-385. The case is ably presented in
+         Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. i. pp. 289-296,
+         where it is concluded that the story "cannot be disproved or
+         pronounced to be absolutely impossible; but the difficulties
+         and improbabilities attending it are so great that they cannot
+         reasonably be set aside without better evidence than the mere
+         statement of Herodotus, upon the authority of unknown
+         informants." Mr. Bunbury (vol. i. p. 317) says that he has
+         reasons for believing that Mr. Grote afterwards changed his
+         opinion and came to agree with Sir George Lewis.]
+
+         [Footnote 349: In reading the learned works of Sir George
+         Cornewall Lewis, one is often reminded of what Sainte-Beuve
+         somewhere says of the great scholar Letronne, when he had spent
+         the hour of his lecture in demolishing some pretty or popular
+         belief: "Il se frotta les mains et s'en alla bien content."
+         When it came to ancient history, Sir George was undeniably fond
+         of "the everlasting No." In the present case his skepticism
+         seems on the whole well-judged, but some of his arguments
+         savour of undue haste toward a negative conclusion. He thus
+         strangely forgets that what we call autumn is springtime in the
+         southern hemisphere (_Astronomy of the Ancients_, p. 511). His
+         argument that the time alleged was insufficient for the voyage
+         is fully met by Major Rennell, who has shown that the time was
+         amply sufficient, and that the direction of winds and ocean
+         currents would make the voyage around southern Africa from east
+         to west much easier than from west to east.]
+
+         [Footnote 350: "No trace of it could be found in the
+         Alexandrian library, either by Eratosthenes in the third, or by
+         Marinus of Tyre in the second, century before Christ, although
+         both of them were diligent examiners of ancient records."
+         Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, p. 90.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyage of Hanno.]
+
+Of Phoenician and other voyages along the Atlantic coast of Africa we
+have much more detailed and trustworthy information. As early as the
+twelfth century before Christ traders from Tyre had founded Cadiz
+(Gades),[351] and at a later date the same hardy people seem to have
+made the beginnings of Lisbon (Olisipo). From such advanced stations
+Tyrian and Carthaginian ships sometimes found their way northward as far
+as Cornwall, and in the opposite direction fishing voyages were made
+along the African coast. The most remarkable undertaking in this quarter
+was the famous voyage of the Carthaginian commander Hanno, whose own
+brief but interesting account of it has been preserved.[352] This
+expedition consisted of sixty penteconters (fifty-oared ships), and its
+chief purpose was colonization. Upon the Mauritanian coast seven small
+trading stations were founded, one of which--Kerne, at the mouth of the
+Rio d' Ouro[353]--existed for a long time. From this point Hanno made
+two voyages of exploration, the second of which carried him as far as
+Sierra Leone and the neighbouring Sherboro island, where he found "wild
+men and women covered with hair," called by the interpreters
+"gorillas."[354] At that point the ships turned back, apparently for
+want of provisions.
+
+         [Footnote 351: Rawlinson's _History of Phoenicia_, pp. 105,
+         418; Pseudo-Aristotle, _Mirab. Auscult._, 146; Velleius
+         Paterculus, i. 2, Sec. 6.]
+
+         [Footnote 352: Hanno, _Periplus_, in Mueller, _Geographi Graeci
+         Minores_, tom. i. pp. 1-14. Of two or three commanders named
+         Hanno it is uncertain which was the one who led this
+         expedition, and thus its date has been variously assigned from
+         570 to 470 B. C.]
+
+         [Footnote 353: For the determination of these localities see
+         Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. i. pp. 318-335. There is an
+         interesting Spanish description of Hanno's expedition in
+         Mariana, _Historia de Espana_, Madrid, 1783, tom. i. pp.
+         89-93.]
+
+         [Footnote 354: The sailors pursued them, but did not capture
+         any of the males, who scrambled up the cliffs out of their
+         reach. They captured three females, who bit and scratched so
+         fiercely that it was useless to try to take them away. So they
+         killed them and took their skins home to Carthage. _Periplus_,
+         xviii. According to Pliny (_Hist. Nat._, vi. 36) these skins
+         were hung up as a votive offering in the temple of Juno (i. e.
+         Astarte or Ashtoreth: see Apuleius, _Metamorph._, xi. 257;
+         Gesenius, _Monumenta Phoenic._, p. 168), where they might have
+         been seen at any time before the Romans destroyed the city.]
+
+[Sidenote: Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus.]
+
+No other expedition in ancient times is known to have proceeded so far
+south as Sierra Leone. Two other voyages upon this Atlantic coast are
+mentioned, but without definite details. The one was that of Sataspes
+(about 470 B. C.), narrated by Herodotus, who merely tells us that a
+coast was reached where undersized men, clad in palm-leaf garments, fled
+to the hills at sight of the strange visitors.[355] The other was that
+of Eudoxus (about 85 B. C.), related by Posidonius, the friend and
+teacher of Cicero. The story is that this Eudoxus, in a voyage upon the
+east coast of Africa, having a philological turn of mind, wrote down the
+words of some of the natives whom he met here and there along the shore.
+He also picked up a ship's prow in the form of a horse's head, and upon
+his return to Alexandria some merchants professed to recognize it as
+belonging to a ship of Cadiz. Eudoxus thereupon concluded that Africa
+was circumnavigable, and presently sailed through the Mediterranean and
+out upon the Atlantic. Somewhere upon the coast of Mauritania he found
+natives who used some words of similar sound to those which he had
+written down when visiting the eastern coast, whence he concluded that
+they were people of the same race. At this point he turned back, and the
+sequel of the story was unknown to Posidonius.[356]
+
+         [Footnote 355: Herodotus, iv. 43.]
+
+         [Footnote 356: The story is preserved by Strabo, ii. 3, Sec.Sec. 4,
+         5, who rejects it with a vehemence for which no adequate reason
+         is assigned.]
+
+[Sidenote: Wild exaggerations.]
+
+It is worthy of note that both Pliny and Pomponius Mela, quoting
+Cornelius Nepos as their authority, speak of Eudoxus as having
+circumnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to Cadiz; and Pliny, moreover,
+tells us that Hanno sailed around that continent as far as
+Arabia,[357]--a statement which is clearly false. These examples show
+how stories grow when carelessly and uncritically repeated, and they
+strongly tend to confirm the doubt with which one is inclined to regard
+the tale of Necho's sailors above mentioned. In truth, the island of
+Gorillas, discovered by Hanno, was doubtless the most southerly point on
+that coast reached by navigators in ancient times. Of the islands in the
+western ocean the Carthaginians certainly knew the Canaries (where they
+have left undoubted inscriptions), probably also the Madeiras, and
+possibly the Cape Verde group.[358]
+
+         [Footnote 357: Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, ii. 67; Mela, _De Situ
+         Orbis_, iii. 9.]
+
+         [Footnote 358: After the civil war of Sertorius (B. C. 80-72),
+         the Romans became acquainted with the Canaries, which, because
+         of their luxuriant vegetation and soft climate, were identified
+         with the Elysium described by Homer, and were commonly known as
+         the Fortunate islands. "Contra Fortunatae Insulae abundant sua
+         sponte genitis, et subinde aliis super aliis innascentibus
+         nihil sollicitos alunt, beatius quam aliae urbes excultae." Mela,
+         iii. 10.
+
+            [Greek: Alla s' es Elysion pedion kai peirata gaies
+            athanatoi pempsousin, hothi xanthos Rhadamanthys,
+            teper rheiste biote pelei anthropoisin;
+            ou niphetos, out' ar cheimon polys oute pot' ombros,
+            all' aiei Zephyroio ligy pneiontas aetas
+            Okeanos aniesin anapsychein anthropous.]
+                                        _Odyssey_, iv. 563.
+
+         Since Horace's time (_Epod._ vi. 41-66) the Canary islands have
+         been a favourite theme for poets. It was here that Tasso placed
+         the loves of Rinaldo and Armida, in the delicious garden where
+
+            Vezzosi augelli infra le verde fronde
+            Temprano a prova lascivette note.
+            Mormora l' aura, e fa le foglie e l' onde
+            Garrir, che variamente ella percote.
+                                        _Gerusalemme Liberata_, xvi. 12.]
+
+[Illustration: Pomponius Mela's World, cir. A. D. 50.]
+
+[Sidenote: Views of Pomponius Mela, cir. A. D. 50.]
+
+The extent of the knowledge which the ancients thus had of western
+Africa is well illustrated in the map representing the geographical
+theories of Pomponius Mela, whose book was written about A. D. 50. Of
+the eastern coast and the interior Mela knew less than Ptolemy a
+century later, but of the Atlantic coast he knew more than Ptolemy. The
+fact that the former geographer was a native of Spain and the latter a
+native of Egypt no doubt had something to do with this. Mela had
+profited by the Carthaginian discoveries. His general conception of the
+earth was substantially that of Eratosthenes. It was what has been
+styled the "oceanic" theory, in contrast with the "continental" theory
+of Ptolemy. In the unvisited regions on all sides of the known world
+Eratosthenes imagined vast oceans, Ptolemy imagined vast deserts or
+impenetrable swamps. The former doctrine was of course much more
+favourable to maritime enterprise than the latter. The works of Ptolemy
+exercised over the mediaeval mind an almost despotic sway, which, in
+spite of their many merits, was in some respects a hindrance to
+progress; so that, inasmuch as the splendid work of Strabo, the most
+eminent follower of Eratosthenes, was unknown to mediaeval Europe until
+about 1450, it was fortunate that the Latin treatise of Mela was
+generally read and highly esteemed. People in those days were such
+uncritical readers that very likely the antagonism between Ptolemy and
+Mela may have failed to excite comment,[359] especially in view of the
+lack of suitable maps such as emphasize that antagonism to our modern
+minds. But in the fifteenth century, when men were getting their first
+inklings of critical scholarship, and when the practical question of an
+ocean voyage to Asia was pressing for solution, such a point could no
+longer fail to attract attention; and it happened fortunately that the
+wet theory, no less than the dry theory, had a popular advocate among
+those classical authors to whose authority so much deference was paid.
+
+         [Footnote 359: Just as our grandfathers used to read the Bible
+         without noticing such points as the divergences between the
+         books of Kings and Chronicles, the contradictions between the
+         genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, the radically
+         different theories of Christ's personality and career in the
+         Fourth Gospel as compared with the three Synoptics, etc.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ancient theory of the five zones.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Inhabited World and the Antipodes.]
+
+If the Portuguese mariners of the generation before Columbus had
+acquiesced in Ptolemy's views as final, they surely would not have
+devoted their energies to the task of circumnavigating Africa. But there
+were yet other theoretical or fanciful obstacles in the way. When you
+look at a modern map of the world, the "five zones" may seem like a mere
+graphic device for marking conveniently the relations of different
+regions to the solar source of heat; but before the great Portuguese
+voyages and the epoch-making third voyage of Vespucius, to be described
+hereafter, a discouraging doctrine was entertained with regard to these
+zones. Ancient travellers in Scythia and voyagers to "Thule"--which in
+Ptolemy's scheme perhaps meant the Shetland isles[360]--had learned
+something of Arctic phenomena. The long winter nights,[361] the snow and
+ice, and the bitter winds, made a deep impression upon visitors from the
+Mediterranean;[362] and when such facts were contrasted with the
+scorching blasts that came from Sahara, the resulting theory was
+undeniably plausible. In the extreme north the ocean must be frozen and
+the country uninhabitable by reason of the cold; contrariwise, in the
+far south the ocean must be boiling hot and the country inhabitable only
+by gnomes and salamanders. Applying these ideas to the conception of the
+earth as a sphere, Pomponius Mela tells us that the surface of the
+sphere is divided into five zones, of which only two are fit to support
+human life. About each pole stretches a dead and frozen zone; the
+southern and northern hemispheres have each a temperate zone, with the
+same changes of seasons, but not occurring at the same (but opposite)
+times; the north temperate zone is the seat of the Oecumene ([Greek:
+oikoumene]), or Inhabited World; the south temperate zone is also
+inhabited by the Antichthones or Antipodes, but about these people we
+know nothing, because between us and them there intervenes the burning
+zone, which it is impossible to cross.[363]
+
+         [Footnote 360: Bunbury, _op. cit._ vol. ii. pp. 492, 527. The
+         name is used in different geographical senses by various
+         ancient writers, as is well shown in Lewis's _Astronomy of the
+         Ancients_, pp. 467-481.]
+
+         [Footnote 361: The Romans, at least by the first century A. D.,
+         knew also of the shortness of northern nights in summer.
+
+                                Arma quidem ultra
+            Littora Invernae promovimus, et modo captas
+            Orcadas, ac minima contentos nocte Britannos.
+                                        Juvenal, ii. 159.
+
+         See also Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, iv. 30; Martianus Capella, vi.
+         595; Achilles Tatius, XXXV.]
+
+         [Footnote 362: The reader will remember Virgil's magnificent
+         description of a Scythian winter (_Georg._, iii. 352):--
+
+            Illic clausa tenent stabulis armenta; neque ullae
+            Aut herbae campo apparent, aut arbore frondes:
+            Sed jacet aggeribus niveis informis, et alto
+            Terra gelu late, septemque assurgit in ulnas;
+            Semper hiems, semper spirantes frigora Cauri.
+            Tum Sol pallentes haud unquam discutit umbras;
+            Nec cum invectus equis altum petit aethera, nec cum
+            Praecipitem Oceani rubro lavit aequore currum.
+            Concrescunt subitae currenti in flumine crustae;
+            Undaque jam tergo ferratos sustinet orbes,
+            Puppibus illa prius patulis, nunc hospita plaustris,
+            AEraque dissiliunt vulgo, vestesque rigescunt
+            Indutae, caeduntque securibus humida vina
+            Et totae solidam in glaciem vertere lacunae,
+            Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis.
+            Interea toto non secius aere ningit;
+            Intereunt pecudes; stant circumfusa pruinis
+            Corpora magna boum; confertoque agmine cervi
+            Torpent mole nova, et summis vix cornibus exstant.
+            .................................................
+            Ipsi in defossis specubus, secura sub alta
+            Otia agunt terra, congestaque robora, totasque
+            Advolvere focis ulmos, ignique dedere.
+            Hic noctem ludo ducunt, et pocula laeti
+            Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis.
+            Talis Hyperboreo Septem subjecta trioni
+            Gens effraena virum Rhipaeo tunditur Euro,
+            Et pecudum fulvis velantur corpora saetis.
+
+         The Roman conception of the situation of these "Hyperboreans"
+         and of the Rhipaean mountains may be seen in the map of Mela's
+         world.]
+
+         [Footnote 363: "Huic medio terra sublimis cingitur undique
+         mari: eodemque in duo latera, quae hemisphaeria nominantur, ab
+         oriente divisa ad occasum, zonis quinque distinguitur. Mediam
+         aestus infestat, frigus ultimas: reliquae habitabiles paria agunt
+         anni tempora, verum non pariter. Antichthones alteram, nos
+         alteram incolimus. Illius situ ab ardorem intercedentis plagae
+         incognito, hujus dicendus est," etc. _De Situ Orbis_, i. 1. A
+         similar theory is set forth by Ovid (_Metamorph._, i. 45), and
+         by Virgil (_Georg._, i. 233):--
+
+            Quinque tenent coelum zonae; quarum una corusco
+            Semper Sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni;
+            Quam circum extremae dextra laevaque trahuntur,
+            Caerulea glacie concretae atque imbribus atris.
+            Has inter mediamque, duae mortalibus aegris
+            Munere concessae Divum; et via secta per ambas,
+            Obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo.]
+
+[Sidenote: Curious notions about Ceylon.]
+
+This notion of an antipodal world in the southern hemisphere will have
+especial interest for us when we come to deal with the voyages of
+Vespucius. The idea seems to have originated in a guess of Hipparchus
+that Taprobane--the island of Ceylon, about which the most absurd
+reports were brought to Europe--might be the beginning of another world.
+This is very probable, says Mela, with delightful _naivete_, because
+Taprobane is inhabited, and still we do not know of anybody who has ever
+made the tour of it.[364] Mela's contemporary, the elder Pliny,
+declares that Taprobane "has long been regarded" as part of another
+world, the name of which is Antichthon, or Opposite-Earth;[365] at the
+same time Pliny vouchsafes three closely-printed pages of information
+about this mysterious country. Throughout the Middle Ages the conception
+of some sort of an antipodal inhabited world was vaguely entertained by
+writers here and there, but many of the clergy condemned it as implying
+the existence of people cut off from the knowledge of the gospel and not
+included in the plan of salvation.
+
+         [Footnote 364: "Taprobane aut grandis admodum insula aut prima
+         pars orbis alterius Hipparcho dicitur; sed quia habitata, nec
+         quisquam circummeasse traditur, prope verum est." _De Situ
+         Orbis_, iii. 7.]
+
+         [Footnote 365: "Taprobanen alterum orbem terrarum esse, diu
+         existimatum est, Antichthonum appellatione." _Hist. Nat._, vi.
+         24.]
+
+[Sidenote: The fiery zone.]
+
+As to the possibility of crossing the torrid zone, opinion was not
+unanimous. Greek explorers from Alexandria (cir. B. C. 100) seem to have
+gone far up the Nile toward the equator, and the astronomer Geminus
+quotes their testimony in proof of his opinion that the torrid zone is
+inhabitable.[366] Panaetius, the friend of the younger Scipio Africanus,
+had already expressed a similar opinion. But the flaming theory
+prevailed. Macrobius, writing about six hundred years later, maintained
+that the southernmost limit of the habitable earth was 850 miles south
+of Syene, which lies just under the tropic of Cancer.[367] Beyond this
+point no man could go without danger from the fiery atmosphere. Beyond
+some such latitude on the ocean no ship could venture without risk of
+being engulfed in some steaming whirlpool.[368] Such was the common
+belief before the great voyages of the Portuguese.
+
+         [Footnote 366: Geminus, _Isagoge_, cap. 13.]
+
+         [Footnote 367: Macrobius, _Somnium Scipionis_, ii. 8. Strabo
+         (ii. 5, Sec.Sec. 7, 8) sets the southern boundary of the Inhabited
+         World 800 miles south of Syene, and the northern boundary at
+         the north of Ireland.]
+
+         [Footnote 368: Another notion, less easily explicable and less
+         commonly entertained, but interesting for its literary
+         associations, was the notion of a mountain of loadstone in the
+         Indian ocean, which prevented access to the torrid zone by
+         drawing the nails from ships and thus wrecking them. This
+         imaginary mountain, with some variations in the description, is
+         made to carry a serious geographical argument by the astrologer
+         Pietro d' Abano, in his book _Conciliator Differentiarum_,
+         written about 1312. (See Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_,
+         p. 100.) It plays an important part in one of the finest tales
+         in the _Arabian Nights_,--the story of the "Third Royal
+         Mendicant."]
+
+[Sidenote: Going downhill.]
+
+Besides this dread of the burning zone, another fanciful obstacle beset
+the mariner who proposed to undertake a long voyage upon the outer
+ocean. It had been observed that a ship which disappears in the offing
+seems to be going downhill; and many people feared that if they should
+happen thus to descend too far away from the land they could never get
+back again. Men accustomed to inland sea travel did not feel this dread
+within the regions of which they had experience, but it assailed them
+whenever they thought of braving the mighty waters outside.[369] Thus
+the master mariner, in the Middle Ages, might contemplate the possible
+chance of being drawn by force of gravity into the fiery gulf, should he
+rashly approach too near; and in such misgivings he would be confirmed
+by Virgil, who was as much read then as he is to-day and esteemed an
+authority, withal, on scientific questions; for according to Virgil the
+Inhabited World descends toward the equator and has its apex in the
+extreme north.[370]
+
+         [Footnote 369: Ferdinand Columbus tells us that this objection
+         was urged against the Portuguese captains and afterwards
+         against his father: "E altri di cio quasi cosi disputavano,
+         come gia i Portoghesi intorno al navigare in Guinea; dicendo
+         che, se si allargasse alcuno a far cammino diritto al
+         occidente, come l' Ammiraglio diceva, non potrebbe poi tornare
+         in Ispagna per la rotondita della sfera; tenendo per
+         certissime, che qualunque uscisse del emisperio conosciuto da
+         Tolomeo, anderebbe in giu, e poi gli sarebbe impossibile dar la
+         volta; e affermando che cio sarebbe quasi uno ascendere all'
+         insu di un monte. Il che non potrebbono fare i navigli con
+         grandissimo vento." _Vita deli' Ammiraglio_, Venice, 1571, cap.
+         xii. The same thing is told, in almost the same words, by Las
+         Casas, since both writers followed the same original documents:
+         "Anidian mas, que quien navegase por via derecha la vuelta del
+         poniente, como el Cristobal Colon proferia, no podria despues
+         volver, suponiendo que el mundo era redondo y yendo hacia el
+         occidente iban cuesta abajo, y saliendo del hemisferio que
+         Ptolomeo escribio, a la vuelta erales necesario subir cuesta
+         arriba, lo que los navios era imposible hacer." The gentle but
+         keen sarcasm that follows is very characteristic of Las Casas:
+         "Esta era gentil y profunda razon, y senal de haber bien el
+         negocio entendido!" _Historia de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 230.]
+
+         [Footnote 370:
+            Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces
+            Consurgit, premitur Libyae devexus in austros.
+            Hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum
+            Sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi.
+                                        _Georg._, i. 240.
+
+         For an account of the deference paid to Virgil in the Middle
+         Ages, as well as the grotesque fancies about him, see Tunison's
+         _Master Virgil_, 2d ed., Cincinnati, 1890.]
+
+[Sidenote: Superstitious fancies.]
+
+To such notions as these, which were supposed to have some sort of
+scientific basis, we must add the wild superstitious fancies that
+clustered about all remote and unvisited corners of the world. In maps
+made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in such places as we
+should label "Unexplored Region," there were commonly depicted uncouth
+shapes of "Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras dire," furnishing eloquent
+testimony to the feelings with which the unknown was regarded. The
+barren wastes of the Sea of Darkness awakened a shuddering dread like
+that with which children shrink from the gloom of a cellar. When we
+remember all these things, and consider how the intelligent purpose
+which urged the commanders onward was scarcely within the comprehension
+of their ignorant and refractory crews, we can begin to form some idea
+of the difficulties that confronted the brave mariners who first sought
+an ocean route to the far-off shores of Cathay.
+
+[Sidenote: Clumsiness of the caravels.]
+
+[Sidenote: Famine and scurvy.]
+
+Less formidable than these obstacles based on fallacious reasoning or
+superstitious whim were those that were furnished by the clumsiness of
+the ships and the crudeness of the appliances for navigation. As already
+observed, the Spanish and Portuguese caravels of the fifteenth century
+were less swift and manageable craft than the Norwegian "dragons" of the
+tenth. Mere yachts in size we should call them, but far from yachtlike
+in shape or nimbleness. With their length seldom more than thrice their
+width of beam, with narrow tower-like poops, with broad-shouldered bows
+and bowsprit weighed down with spritsail yards, and with no canvas
+higher than a topsail, these clumsy caravels could make but little
+progress against head-winds, and the amount of tacking and beating to
+and fro was sometimes enough to quadruple the length of the voyage. For
+want of metallic sheathing below the waterline the ship was liable to be
+sunk by the terrible worm which, in Hakluyt's phrase, "many times
+pearceth and eateth through the strongest oake." For want of vegetable
+food in the larder, or anything save the driest of bread and beef
+stiffened with brine, the sailors were sure to be attacked by scurvy,
+and in a very long voyage the crew was deemed fortunate that did not
+lose half its number from that foul disease. Often in traversing unknown
+seas the sturdy men who survived all other perils were brought face to
+face with starvation when they had ventured too far without turning
+back.[371] We need not wonder that the first steps in oceanic discovery
+were slow and painful.
+
+         [Footnote 371: Or simply because a wrong course happened to be
+         taken, through ignorance of atmospheric conditions, as in the
+         second homeward and third outward voyages of Columbus. See
+         below, pp. 485, 490.]
+
+[Sidenote: The mariner's compass.]
+
+First among the instruments without which systematic ocean navigation
+would have been impossible, the magnetic compass had been introduced
+into southern Europe and was used by Biscayan and Catalan sailors before
+the end of the twelfth century.[372] Parties of Crusaders had learned
+the virtues of the suspended needle from the Arabs, who are said to have
+got their knowledge indirectly from China in the course of their eastern
+voyages.[373] It seems to have been at Amalfi that the needle was first
+enclosed in a box and connected with a graduated compass-card.
+Apparently it had not come into general use in the middle of the
+thirteenth century, for in 1258 the famous Brunetto Latini, afterwards
+tutor of Dante, made a visit to Roger Bacon, of which he gives a
+description in a letter to his friend the poet Guido Cavalcanti: "The
+Parliament being summoned to assemble at Oxford, I did not fail to see
+Friar Bacon as soon as I arrived, and (among other things) he showed me
+a black ugly stone called a magnet, which has the surprising property of
+drawing iron to it; and upon which, if a needle be rubbed, and
+afterwards fastened to a straw so that it shall swim upon water, the
+needle will instantly turn toward the Pole-star: therefore, be the night
+ever so dark, so that neither moon nor star be visible, yet shall the
+mariner be able, by the help of this needle, to steer his vessel aright.
+This discovery, which appears useful in so great a degree to all who
+travel by sea, must remain concealed until other times; because no
+master mariner dares to use it lest he should fall under the imputation
+of being a magician; nor would the sailors venture themselves out to sea
+under his command, if he took with him an instrument which carries so
+great an appearance of being constructed under the influence of some
+infernal spirit.[374] A time may arrive when these prejudices, which
+are of such great hindrance to researches into the secrets of nature,
+will be overcome; and it will be then that mankind shall reap the
+benefit of the labours of such learned men as Friar Bacon, and do
+justice to that industry and intelligence for which he and they now meet
+with no other return than obloquy and reproach."[375]
+
+         [Footnote 372: Navarrete, _Discurso historico sobre los
+         progresos del arte de navegar en Espana_, p. 28; see also
+         Raymond Lully's treatise, _Libro felix, o Maravillas del mundo_
+         (A. D. 1286).]
+
+         [Footnote 373: See Humboldt's _Kosmos_, bd. i. p. 294;
+         Klaproth, _Lettre a M. de Humboldt sur l'invention de la
+         boussole_, pp. 41, 45, 50, 66, 79, 90. But some of Klaproth's
+         conclusions have been doubted: "Pour la boussole, rien ne
+         prouve que les Chinois l'aient employee pour la navigation,
+         tandis que nous la trouvons des le xi^{e} siecle chez les
+         Arabes qui s'en servent non seulement dans leurs traversees
+         maritimes, mais dans les voyages de caravanes au milieu des
+         deserts," etc. Sedillot, _Histoire des Arabes_, tom. ii. p.
+         130.]
+
+         [Footnote 374: Is it not a curious instance of human perversity
+         that while customary usage from time immemorial has
+         characterized as "acts of God" such horrible events as famines,
+         pestilences, and earthquakes, on the other hand when some
+         purely beneficent invention has appeared, such as the mariner's
+         compass or the printing press, it has commonly been accredited
+         to the Devil? The case of Dr. Faustus is the most familiar
+         example.]
+
+         [Footnote 375: This version is cited from Major's _Prince Henry
+         the Navigator_, p. 58.]
+
+[Sidenote: Latitude and longitude.]
+
+That time was after all not so long in arriving, for by the end of the
+thirteenth century the compass had come to be quite generally used,[376]
+and the direction of a ship's course could be watched continuously in
+foul and fair weather alike. For taking the sun's altitude rude
+astrolabes and jack-staffs were in use, very crazy affairs as compared
+with the modern quadrant, but sufficiently accurate to enable a
+well-trained observer, in calculating his latitude, to get somewhere
+within two or three degrees of the truth. In calculating longitude the
+error was apt to be much greater, for in the absence of chronometers
+there were no accurate means for marking differences in time. It was
+necessary to depend upon the dead-reckoning, and the custom was first to
+sail due north or south to the parallel of the place of destination and
+then to turn at right angles and sail due east or west. Errors of eight
+or even ten degrees were not uncommon. Thus at the end of a long outward
+voyage the ship might find itself a hundred miles or more to the north
+or south, and six or seven hundred miles to the east or west, of the
+point at which it had been aimed. Under all these difficulties, the
+approximations made to correct sailing by the most skilful mariners were
+sometimes wonderful. Doubtless this very poverty of resources served to
+sharpen their watchful sagacity.[377] To sail the seas was in those days
+a task requiring high mental equipment; it was no work for your
+commonplace skipper. Human faculty was taxed to its utmost, and human
+courage has never been more grandly displayed than by the glorious
+sailors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
+
+         [Footnote 376: Huellmann, _Staedtewesen des Mittelalters_, bd. i.
+         pp. 125-137.]
+
+         [Footnote 377: Compare the remarks of Mr. Clark Russell on the
+         mariners of the seventeenth century, in his _William Dampier_,
+         p. 12.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Prince Henry the Navigator, 1394-1463.]
+
+[Sidenote: His idea of an ocean route to the Indies, and what it might
+bring.]
+
+We are now prepared to appreciate the character of the work that was
+done in the course of the first attempts to find an oceanic route from
+Europe to Asia. Then, as in other great epochs of history, men of genius
+arose to meet the occasion. In 1394 was born Prince Henry of Portugal,
+since known as Henry the Navigator.[378] He was fourth son of King John
+I., the valiant and prudent king under whom began the golden age of
+Portugal, which lasted until the conquest of that country in 1580 by
+Philip II. of Spain. Henry's mother was Philippa, daughter of John of
+Gaunt. He was therefore cousin to our own Henry V. of England, whom he
+quite equalled in genius, while the laurels that he won were more
+glorious than those of Agincourt. In 1415, being then in his
+twenty-first year, Prince Henry played a distinguished part in the
+expedition which captured Ceuta from the Moors. While in Morocco he
+gathered such information as he could concerning the interior of the
+continent; he learned something about the oases of Sahara, the distant
+river Gambia, and the caravan trade between Tunis and Timbuctoo, whereby
+gold was carried from the Guinea coast to Mussulman ports on the
+Mediterranean. If this coast could be reached by sea, its gold might be
+brought to Lisbon as well. To divert such treasure from the infidel and
+secure it for a Christian nation was an enterprise fitted to kindle a
+prince's enthusiasm. While Henry felt the full force of these
+considerations, his thoughts took a wider range. The views of Pomponius
+Mela had always been held in high esteem by scholars of the Spanish
+peninsula,[379] and down past that Gold Coast Prince Henry saw the
+ocean route to the Indies, the road whereby a vast empire might be won
+for Portugal and millions of wandering heathen souls might be gathered
+into the fold of Christ. To doubt the sincerity of the latter motive, or
+to belittle its influence, would be to do injustice to Prince
+Henry,--such cynical injustice as our hard-headed age is only too apt to
+mete out to that romantic time and the fresh enthusiasm which inspired
+its heroic performances. Prince Henry was earnest, conscientious,
+large-minded, and in the best sense devout; and there can be no question
+that in his mind, as in that of Columbus, and (with somewhat more alloy)
+in the minds of Cortes and others, the desire of converting the heathen
+and strengthening the Church served as a most powerful incentive to the
+actions which in the course of little more than a century quite changed
+the face of the world.
+
+         [Footnote 378: My chief authorities for the achievements of
+         Prince Henry and his successors are the Portuguese historians,
+         Barros and Azurara. The best edition of the former is a modern
+         one, Barros y Couto, _Decadas da Asia, nova edicao con Indice
+         geral_, Lisbon, 1778-88, 24 vols. 12mo. I also refer sometimes
+         to the Lisbon, 1752, edition of the _Decada primeira_, in
+         folio. The priceless contemporary work of Azurara, written in
+         1453 under Prince Henry's direction, was not printed until the
+         present century; Azurara, _Chronica do Descobrimento e
+         Conquista de Guine_, Paris, 1841, a superb edition in royal
+         quarto, edited by the Viscount da Carreira, with introduction
+         and notes by the Viscount de Santarem.]
+
+         [Footnote 379: Partly, perhaps, because Mela was himself a
+         Spaniard, and partly because his opinions had been shared and
+         supported by St. Isidore, of Seville (A. D. 570-636), whose
+         learned works exercised immense authority throughout the Middle
+         Ages. It is in one of St. Isidore's books (_Etymologiarum_,
+         xiii. 16, apud Migne, _Patrologia_, tom. lxxxii. col. 484) that
+         we first find the word "Mediterranean" used as a proper name
+         for that great land-locked sea.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Sacred Promontory.]
+
+Filled with such lofty and generous thoughts, Prince Henry, on his
+return from Morocco, in 1418, chose for himself a secluded place of
+abode where he could devote himself to his purposes undisturbed by the
+court life at Lisbon or by political solicitations of whatever sort. In
+the Morocco campaign he had won such military renown that he was now
+invited by Pope Martin V. to take chief command of the papal army; and
+presently he received similar flattering offers from his own cousin,
+Henry V. of England, from John II. of Castile, and from the Emperor
+Sigismund, who, for shamefully violating his imperial word and
+permitting the burning of John Huss, was now sorely pressed by the
+enraged and rebellious Bohemians. Such invitations had no charm for
+Henry. Refusing them one and all, he retired to the promontory of
+Sagres, in the southernmost province of Portugal, the ancient kingdom of
+Algarve, of which his father now appointed him governor. That lonely and
+barren rock, protruding into the ocean, had long ago impressed the
+imagination of Greek and Roman writers; they called it the Sacred
+Promontory, and supposed it to be the westernmost limit of the habitable
+earth.[380] There the young prince proceeded to build an astronomical
+observatory, the first that his country had ever seen, and to gather
+about him a school of men competent to teach and men eager to learn the
+mysteries of map-making and the art of navigation. There he spent the
+greater part of his life; thence he sent forth his captains to plough
+the southern seas; and as year after year the weather-beaten ships
+returned from their venturesome pilgrimage, the first glimpse of home
+that greeted them was likely to be the beacon-light in the tower where
+the master sat poring over problems of Archimedes or watching the stars.
+For Henry, whose motto was "Talent de bien faire," or (in the old French
+usage) "Desire[381] to do well," was wont to throw himself
+whole-hearted into whatever he undertook, and the study of astronomy and
+mathematics he pursued so zealously as to reach a foremost place among
+the experts of his time. With such tastes and such ambition, he was
+singularly fortunate in wielding ample pecuniary resources; if such a
+combination could be more often realized, the welfare of mankind would
+be notably enhanced. Prince Henry was Grand Master of the Order of
+Christ, an organization half military, half religious, and out of its
+abundant revenues he made the appropriations needful for the worthy
+purpose of advancing the interests of science, converting the heathen,
+and winning a commercial empire for Portugal. At first he had to
+encounter the usual opposition to lavish expenditure for a distant
+object without hope of immediate returns; but after a while his dogged
+perseverance began to be rewarded with such successes as to silence all
+adverse comment.
+
+         [Footnote 380: [Greek: Homoios de kai peri tes exo stelon
+         legetai; dysmikotaton men gar semeion tes oikoumenes, to ton
+         Iberon akroterion, ho kalousin Ieron.] Strabo, ii. 5, Sec. 14; cf.
+         Dionysius Periegetes, v. 161. In reality it lies not quite so
+         far west as the country around Lisbon.]
+
+         [Footnote 381: See Littre, _Dictionnaire_, s. v. "Talent;" Du
+         Cange, _Glossarium_, "talentum, animi decretum, voluntas,
+         desiderium, cupiditas," etc.; cf. Raynouard, _Glossaire
+         Provencale_, tom. v. p. 296. French was then fashionable at
+         court, in Lisbon as well as in London.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Madeira and Canary islands.]
+
+The first work in hand was the rediscovery of coasts and islands that
+had ceased to be visited even before the breaking up of the Roman
+Empire. For more than a thousand years the Madeiras and Canaries had
+been well-nigh forgotten, and upon the coast of the African continent no
+ship ventured beyond Cape Non, the headland so named because it said
+"No!" to the wistful mariner.[382] There had been some re-awakening of
+maritime activity in the course of the fourteenth century, chiefly due,
+no doubt, to the use of the compass. Between 1317 and 1351 certain
+Portuguese ships, with Genoese pilots, had visited not only the Madeiras
+and Canaries, but even the Azores, a thousand miles out in the Atlantic;
+and these groups of islands are duly laid down upon the so-called Medici
+map of 1351, preserved in the Laurentian library at Florence.[383] The
+voyage to the Azores was probably the greatest feat of ocean navigation
+that had been performed down to that time, but it was not followed by
+colonization. Again, somewhere about 1377 Madeira seems to have been
+visited by Robert Machin, an Englishman, whose adventures make a most
+romantic story; and in 1402 the Norman knight, Jean de Bethencourt, had
+begun to found a colony in the Canaries, for which, in return for aid
+and supplies, he did homage to the King of Castile.[384] As for the
+African coast, Cape Non had also been passed at some time during the
+fourteenth century, for Cape Bojador is laid down on the Catalan map of
+1375; but beyond that point no one had dared take the risks of the
+unknown sea.
+
+         [Footnote 382: The Portuguese proverb was "Quem passar o Cabo
+         de Nao ou voltara ou _nao_," i. e. "Whoever passes Cape _Non_
+         will return or _not_." See Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_,
+         tom. i. p. 173; Mariana, _Hist. de Espana_, tom. i. p. 91;
+         Barros, tom. i. p. 36.]
+
+         [Footnote 383: An engraved copy of this map may be found in
+         Major's _Prince Henry the Navigator_, London, 1868, facing p.
+         107. I need hardly say that in all that relates to the
+         Portuguese voyages I am under great obligation to Mr. Major's
+         profoundly learned and critical researches. He has fairly
+         conquered this subject and made it his own, and whoever touches
+         it after him, however lightly, must always owe him a tribute of
+         acknowledgment.]
+
+         [Footnote 384: See Bontier and Le Verrier, _The Canarian, or,
+         Book of the Conquest and Conversion of the Canaries_,
+         translated and edited by R. H. Major, London, 1872 (Hakluyt
+         Soc). In 1414, Bethencourt's nephew, left in charge of these
+         islands, sold them to Prince Henry, but Castile persisted in
+         claiming them, and at length in 1479 her claim was recognized
+         by treaty with Portugal. Of all the African islands, therefore,
+         the Canaries alone came to belong, and still belong, to Spain.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gil Eannes passes Cape Bojador.]
+
+The first achievement under Prince Henry's guidance was the final
+rediscovery and colonization of Porto Santo and Madeira in 1418-25 by
+Gonsalvez Zarco, Tristam Vaz, and Bartholomew Perestrelo.[385] This work
+occupied the prince's attention for some years, and then came up the
+problem of Cape Bojador. The difficulty was twofold; the waves about
+that headland were apt to be boisterous, and wild sailor's fancies were
+apt to enkindle a mutinous spirit in the crews. It was not until 1433-35
+that Gil Eannes, a commander of unusually clear head and steady nerves,
+made three attempts and fairly passed the dreaded spot. In the first
+attempt he failed, as his predecessors had done, to double the cape; in
+the second attempt he doubled it; in the third he sailed nearly two
+hundred miles beyond.
+
+         [Footnote 385: Perestrelo had with him a female rabbit which
+         littered on the voyage, and being landed, with her young, at
+         Porto Santo, forthwith illustrated the fearful rate of
+         multiplication of which organisms are capable in the absence of
+         enemies or other adverse circumstances to check it. (Darwin,
+         _Origin of Species_, chap. iii.) These rabbits swarmed all over
+         the island and devoured every green and succulent thing,
+         insomuch that they came near converting it into a desert.
+         Prince Henry's enemies, who were vexed at the expenditure of
+         money in such colonizing enterprises, were thus furnished with
+         a wonderful argument. They maintained that God had evidently
+         created those islands for beasts alone, not for men! "En este
+         tiempo habia en todo Portugal grandisimas murmuraciones del
+         Infante, viendolo tan cudicioso y poner tanta diligencia en el
+         descubrir de la tierra y costa de Africa, diciendo que destruia
+         el reino en los gastos que hacia, y consumia los vecinos del en
+         poner en tanto peligro y dano la gente portoguesa, donde muchos
+         morian, enviandolos en demanda de tierras que nunca los reyes
+         de Espana pasados se atrevieron a emprender, donde habia de
+         hacer muchas viudas y huerfanos con esta su porfia. Tomaban por
+         argumento, que Dios no habia criado aquellas tierras sino para
+         bestias, pues en tan poco tiempo en aquella isla tantos conejos
+         habia multiplicado, que no dejaban cosa que para sustentacion
+         de los hombres fuese menester." Las Casas, _Hist. de las
+         Indias_, tom. i. p. 180. See also Azurara, _Chronica do
+         descobrimento e conquista de Guine_, cap. lxxxiii.]
+
+[Illustration: Portuguese voyages on the coast of Africa.]
+
+[Sidenote: Beginning of the modern slave-trade, 1442.]
+
+[Sidenote: Papal grant of heathen countries to the Portuguese crown.]
+
+[Sidenote: Advance to Sierra Leone.]
+
+This achievement of Gil Eannes (_anglice_, plain Giles Jones) marks an
+era. It was the beginning of great things. When we think of the
+hesitation with which this step was taken, and the vociferous applause
+that greeted the successful captain, it is strange to reflect that babes
+were already born in 1435 who were to live to hear of the prodigious
+voyages of Columbus and Gama, Vespucius and Magellan. After seven years
+a further step was taken in advance; in 1442 Antonio Goncalves brought
+gold and negro slaves from the Rio d' Ouro, or Rio del Oro, four hundred
+miles beyond Cape Bojador. Of this beginning of the modern slave-trade I
+shall treat in a future chapter.[386] Let it suffice here to observe
+that Prince Henry did not discourage but sanctioned it. The first aspect
+which this baleful traffic assumed in his mind was that of a means for
+converting the heathen, by bringing black men and women to Portugal to
+be taught the true faith and the ways of civilized people, that they
+might in due season be sent back to their native land to instruct their
+heathen brethren. The kings of Portugal should have a Christian empire
+in Africa, and in course of time the good work might be extended to the
+Indies. Accordingly a special message was sent to Pope Eugenius IV.,
+informing him of the discovery of the country of these barbarous people
+beyond the limits of the Mussulman world, and asking for a grant in
+perpetuity to Portugal of all heathen lands that might be discovered in
+further voyages beyond Cape Bojador, even so far as to include the
+Indies.[387] The request found favour in the eyes of Eugenius, and the
+grant was solemnly confirmed by succeeding popes. To these proceedings
+we shall again have occasion to refer. We have here to observe that the
+discovery of gold and the profits of the slave-trade--though it was as
+yet conducted upon a very small scale--served to increase the interest
+of the Portuguese people in Prince Henry's work and to diminish the
+obstacles in his way. A succession of gallant captains, whose names make
+a glorious roll of honour, carried on the work of exploration, reaching
+the farthest point that had been attained by the ancients. In 1445 Dinis
+Fernandez passed Cape Verde, and two years later Lancarote found the
+mouth of the Gambia. In 1456 Luigi Cadamosto--a Venetian captain in the
+service of Portugal--went as far as the Rio Grande; in 1460 Diego Gomez
+discovered the Cape Verde islands; and in 1462 Piedro de Cintra reached
+Sierra Leone.[388] At the same time, in various expeditions between 1431
+and 1466, the Azores (i. e. "Hawk" islands) were rediscovered and
+colonized, and voyages out into the Sea of Darkness began to lose
+something of their manifold terrors.
+
+         [Footnote 386: See below, vol. ii. pp. 429-431.]
+
+         [Footnote 387: "En el ano de 1442, viendo el Infante que se
+         habia pasado el cabo del Boxador y que la tierra iba muy
+         adelante, y que todos los navios que inviaba traian muchos
+         esclavos moros, con que pagaba los gastos que hacia y que cada
+         dia crecia mas el provecho y se prosperaba su amada
+         negociacion, determino de inviar a suplicar al Papa Martino V.,
+         ... que hiciese gracia a la Corona real de Portogal de los
+         reinos y senorios que habia y hobiese desde el cabo del Boxador
+         adelante, hacia el Oriente y la India inclusive; y ansi se las
+         concedio, ... con todas las tierras, puertos, islas, tratos,
+         rescates, pesquerias y cosas a esto pertenecientes, poniendo
+         censuras y penas a todos los reyes cristianos, principes, y
+         senores y comunidades que a esto le perturbasen; despues,
+         dicen, que los sumos pontifices, sucesores de Martino, como
+         Eugenio IV. y Nicolas V. y Calixto IV. lo confirmaron." Las
+         Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 185. The name of
+         Martin V. is a slip of the memory on the part of Las Casas.
+         That pope had died of apoplexy eleven years before. It was
+         Eugenius IV. who made this memorable grant to the crown of
+         Portugal. The error is repeated in Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i.
+         p. 339.]
+
+         [Footnote 388: The first published account of the voyages of
+         Cadamosto and Cintra was in the _Paesi nouamente retrouati_,
+         Vicenza, 1507, a small quarto which can now sometimes be bought
+         for from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars. See also Grynaeus,
+         _Novus Orbis_, Basel, 1532.]
+
+[Sidenote: Advance to the Hottentot coast.]
+
+Prince Henry did not live to see Africa circumnavigated. At the time of
+his death, in 1468, his ships had not gone farther than the spot where
+Hanno found his gorillas two thousand years before. But the work of this
+excellent prince did not end with his death. His adventurous spirit
+lived on in the school of accomplished navigators he had trained. Many
+voyages were made after 1462, of which we need mention only those that
+marked new stages of discovery. In 1471 two knights of the royal
+household, Joao de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar, sailed down the Gold
+Coast and crossed the equator; three years later the line was again
+crossed by Fernando Po, discoverer of the island that bears his name. In
+1484 Diego Cam went on as far as the mouth of the Congo, and entered
+into very friendly relations with the negroes there. In a second voyage
+in 1485 this enterprising captain pushed on a thousand miles farther,
+and set up a cross in 22 deg. south latitude on the coast of the Hottentot
+country. Brisk trading went on along the Gold Coast, and missionaries
+were sent to the Congo.[389]
+
+         [Footnote 389: It was in the course of these voyages upon the
+         African coast that civilized Europeans first became familiar
+         with people below the upper status of barbarism. Savagery and
+         barbarism of the lower types were practically unknown in the
+         Middle Ages, and almost, though probably not quite unknown, to
+         the civilized peoples of the Mediterranean in ancient times.
+         The history of the two words is interesting. The Greek word
+         [Greek: barbaros], whence Eng. _barbarian_ (=Sanskrit
+         _barbara_, Latin _balbus_), means "a stammerer," or one who
+         talks gibberish, i. e. in a language we do not understand.
+         Aristophanes (_Aves_, 199) very prettily applies the epithet to
+         the inarticulate singing of birds. The names _Welsh_,
+         _Walloon_, _Wallachian_, and _Belooch_, given to these peoples
+         by their neighbours, have precisely the same meaning (Kuhn's
+         _Zeitschrift_, ii. 252); and in like manner the Russians call
+         the Germans _Nyemetch_, or people who cannot talk (Schafarik,
+         _Slawische Alterthumer_, i. 443; Pott, _Etym. Forsch._, ii.
+         521). The Greeks called all men but themselves barbarians,
+         including such civilized people as the Persians. The Romans
+         applied the name to all tribes and nations outside the limits
+         of the Empire, and the Italians of the later Middle Ages
+         bestowed it upon all nations outside of Italy. Upon its lax use
+         in recent times I have already commented (above, pp. 25-35).
+         The tendency to apply the epithet to savages is modern. The
+         word _savage_, on the other hand, which came to us as the Old
+         French _sauvage_ or _salvage_ (Ital. _selvaggio_, _salvatico_),
+         is the Latin _silvaticus_, _sylvaticus_, _salvaticus_, that
+         which pertains to a forest and is sylvan or wild. In its
+         earliest usage it had reference to plants and beasts rather
+         than to men. Wild apples, pears, or laurels are characterized
+         by the epithet _sylvaticus_ in Varro, _De re rustica_, i. 40;
+         and either this adjective, or its equivalent _silvestris_, was
+         used of wild animals as contrasted with domesticated beasts, as
+         wild sheep and wild fowl, in Columella, vii. 2; viii. 12, or
+         wolves, in Propertius, iii. 7, or mice, in Pliny, xxx. 22.
+         (Occasionally it is used of men, as in Pliny, viii. 79.) The
+         meaning was the same in mediaeval Latin (Du Cange, _Glossarium_,
+         Niort, 1886, tom. vii. p. 686) and in Old French, as "La douce
+         voiz du loussignol sauvage" (Michel, _Chansons de chatelain de
+         Coucy_, xix.). In the romance of _Robert le Diable_, in the
+         verses
+
+            Sire, se vos fustes Sauvages
+            Viers moi, je n'i pris mie garde, etc.,
+
+         the reference is plainly to degenerate civilized men
+         frequenting the forests, such as bandits or outlaws, not to
+         what we call savages.
+
+         Mediaeval writers certainly had some idea of savages, but it was
+         not based upon any actual acquaintance with such people, but
+         upon imperfectly apprehended statements of ancient writers. At
+         the famous ball at the Hotel de Saint Pol in Paris, in 1393,
+         King Charles VI. and five noblemen were dressed in
+         close-fitting suits of linen, thickly covered from head to foot
+         with tow or flax, the colour of hair, so as to look like
+         "savages." In this attire nobody recognized them, and the Duke
+         of Orleans, in his eagerness to make out who they were, brought
+         a torch too near, so that the flax took fire, and four of the
+         noblemen were burned to death. See Froissart's _Chronicles_,
+         tr. Johnes, London, 1806, vol. xi. pp. 69-76. The point of the
+         story is that savages were supposed to be men covered with
+         hair, like beasts, and Froissart, in relating it, evidently
+         knew no better. Whence came this notion of hairy men? Probably
+         from Hanno's gorillas (see above, p. 301), through Pliny, whose
+         huge farrago of facts and fancies was a sort of household Peter
+         Parley in mediaeval monasteries. Pliny speaks repeatedly of men
+         covered with hair from head to foot, and scatters them about
+         according to his fancy, in Carmania and other distant places
+         (_Hist. Nat._, vi. 28, 36, vii. 2).
+
+         Greek and Roman writers seem to have had some slight knowledge
+         of savagery and the lower status of barbarism as prevailing in
+         remote places ("Ptolomee dit que es extremites de la terre
+         habitable sont gens sauvages," Oresme, _Les Ethiques
+         d'Aristote_, Paris, 1488), but their remarks are usually vague.
+         Seldom do we get such a clean-cut statement as that of Tacitus
+         about the Finns, that they have neither horses nor houses,
+         sleep on the ground, are clothed in skins, live by the chase,
+         and for want of iron use bone-tipped arrows (_Germania_, cap.
+         46). More often we have unconscionable yarns about men without
+         noses, or with only one eye, tailed men, solid-hoofed men,
+         Amazons, and parthenogenesis. The Troglodytes, or
+         Cave-dwellers, on the Nubian coast of the Red Sea seem to have
+         been in the middle status of barbarism (Diodorus, iii. 32;
+         Agatharchides, 61-63), and the Ichthyophagi, or Fish-eaters,
+         whom Nearchus found on the shores of Gedrosia (Arrian,
+         _Indica_, cap. 29), were probably in a lower stage, perhaps
+         true savages. It is exceedingly curious that Mela puts a race
+         of pygmies at the headwaters of the Nile (see map above, p.
+         304). Is this only an echo from _Iliad_, iii. 6, or can any
+         ancient traveller have penetrated far enough inland toward the
+         equator to have heard reports of the dwarfish race lately
+         visited by Stanley (_In Darkest Africa_, vol. ii. pp. 100-104,
+         164)? Strabo had no real knowledge of savagery in Africa (cf.
+         Bunbury, _Hist. Ancient Geog._, ii. 331). Sataspes may have
+         seen barbarians of low type, possibly on one of the Canary
+         isles (see description of Canarians in Major's _Prince Henry_,
+         p. 212). Ptolemy had heard of an island of cannibals in the
+         Indian ocean, perhaps one of the Andaman group, visited A. D.
+         1293 by Marco Polo. The people of these islands rank among the
+         lowest savages on the earth, and Marco was disgusted and
+         horrified; their beastly faces, with huge prognathous jaws and
+         projecting canine teeth, he tried to describe by calling them a
+         dog-headed people. Sir Henry Yule suggests that the mention of
+         Cynocephali, or Dog-heads, in ancient writers may have had an
+         analogous origin (_Marco Polo_, vol. ii. p. 252). This visit of
+         the Venetian traveller to Andaman was one of very few real
+         glimpses of savagery vouchsafed to Europeans before the
+         fifteenth century; and a general review of the subject brings
+         out in a strong light the truthfulness and authenticity of the
+         description of American Indians in Eric the Red's Saga, as
+         shown above, pp. 185-192.]
+
+[Sidenote: Effect of these discoveries upon the theories of Ptolemy and
+Mela.]
+
+These voyages into the southern hemisphere dealt a damaging blow to the
+theory of an impassable fiery zone; but as to the circumnavigability of
+the African continent, the long stretch of coast beyond the equator
+seemed more in harmony with Ptolemy's views than with those of Mela. The
+eastward trend of the Guinea coast was at first in favour of the latter
+geographer, but when Santarem and Escobar found it turning southward to
+the equator the facts began to refute him. According to Mela they
+should have found it possible at once to sail eastward to the gulf of
+Aden. What if it should turn out after all that there was no connection
+between the Atlantic and Indian oceans? Every added league of voyaging
+toward the tropic of Capricorn must have been fraught with added
+discouragement, for it went to prove that, even if Ptolemy's theory was
+wrong, at any rate the ocean route to Asia was indefinitely longer than
+had been supposed. But was it possible to imagine any other route that
+should be more direct? To a trained mariner of original and imaginative
+mind, sojourning in Portugal and keenly watching the progress of African
+discovery, the years just following the voyage of Santarem and Escobar
+would be a period eminently fit for suggesting such a question. Let us
+not forget this date of 1471 while we follow Prince Henry's work to its
+first grand climax.
+
+[Sidenote: News of Prester John.]
+
+About the time that Diego Cam was visiting the tribes on the Congo, the
+negro king of Benin, a country by the mouth of the Niger, sent an
+embassy to John II. of Portugal (Prince Henry's nephew), with a request
+that missionary priests might be sent to Benin. It has been thought that
+the woolly-haired chieftain was really courting an alliance with the
+Portuguese, or perhaps he thought their "medicine men" might have the
+knack of confounding his foes. The negro envoy told King John that a
+thousand miles or so east of Benin there was an august sovereign who
+ruled over many subject peoples, and at whose court there was an order
+of chivalry whose badge or emblem was a brazen cross. Such, at least,
+was the king's interpretation of the negro's words, and forthwith he
+jumped to the conclusion that this African potentate must be Prester
+John, whose name was redolent of all the marvels of the mysterious East.
+To find Prester John would be a long step toward golden Cathay and the
+isles of spice. So the king of Portugal rose to the occasion, and
+attacked the problem on both flanks at once. He sent Pedro de Covilham
+by way of Egypt to Aden, and he sent Bartholomew Dias, with three
+fifty-ton caravels, to make one more attempt to find an end to the
+Atlantic coast of Africa.
+
+[Sidenote: Covilham's journey.]
+
+Covilham's journey was full of interesting experiences. He sailed from
+Aden to Hindustan, and on his return visited Abyssinia, where the
+semi-Christian king took such a liking to him that he would never let
+him go. So Covilham spent the rest of his life, more than thirty years,
+in Abyssinia, whence he was able now and then to send to Portugal items
+of information concerning eastern Africa that were afterwards quite
+serviceable in voyages upon the Indian ocean.[390]
+
+         [Footnote 390: See Major's _India in the Fifteenth Century_,
+         pp. lxxxv.-xc.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bartholomew Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope and enters the
+Indian ocean.]
+
+The daring captain, Bartholomew Dias, started in August, 1486, and after
+passing nearly four hundred miles beyond the tropic of Capricorn, was
+driven due south before heavy winds for thirteen days without seeing
+land. At the end of this stress of weather he turned his prows eastward,
+expecting soon to reach the coast. But as he had passed the southernmost
+point of Africa and no land appeared before him, after a while he
+steered northward and landed near the mouth of Gauritz river, more than
+two hundred miles east of the Cape of Good Hope. Thence he pushed on
+about four hundred miles farther eastward as far as the Great Fish river
+(about 33 deg. 30' S., 27 deg. 10' E.), where the coast begins to have a steady
+trend to the northeast. Dias was now fairly in the Indian ocean, and
+could look out with wistful triumph upon that waste of waters, but his
+worn-out crews refused to go any farther and he was compelled
+reluctantly to turn back. On the way homeward the ships passed in full
+sight of the famous headland which Dias called the Stormy Cape; but
+after arriving at Lisbon, in December, 1487, when the report of this
+noble voyage was laid before King John II., his majesty said, Nay, let
+it rather be called the Cape of Good Hope, since there was now much
+reason to believe that they had found the long-sought ocean route to the
+Indies.[391] Though this opinion turned out to be correct, it is well
+for us to remember that the proof was not yet complete. No one could
+yet say with certainty that the African coast, if followed a few miles
+east of Great Fish river, would not again trend southward and run all
+the way to the pole. The completed proof was not obtained until Vasco da
+Gama crossed the Indian ocean ten years later.
+
+         [Footnote 391: The greatest of Portuguese poets represents the
+         Genius of the Cape as appearing to the storm-tossed mariners in
+         cloud-like shape, like the Jinni that the fisherman of the
+         Arabian tale released from a casket. He expresses indignation
+         at their audacity in discovering his secret, hitherto hidden
+         from mankind:--
+
+            Eu sou aquelle occulto e grande Cabo,
+            A quem chamais vos outros Tormentorio,
+            Que nunca a Ptolomeo, Pomponio, Estrabo,
+            Plinio, e quantos passaram, fui notorio:
+            Aqui toda a Africana costa acabo
+            Neste meu nunca vista promontorio,
+            Que para o polo Antarctico se estende,
+            A quem vossa ousadia tanto offende.
+                                        Camoens, _Os Lusiadas_, v. 50.]
+
+[Sidenote: Some effects of the discovery.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus.]
+
+This voyage of Bartholomew Dias was longer and in many respects more
+remarkable than any that is known to have been made before that time.
+From Lisbon back to Lisbon, reckoning the sinuosities of the coast, but
+making no allowance for tacking, the distance run by those tiny craft
+was not less than thirteen thousand miles. This voyage completed the
+overthrow of the fiery-zone doctrine, so far as Africa was concerned; it
+penetrated far into the southern temperate zone where Mela had placed
+his antipodal world; it dealt a staggering blow to the continental
+theory of Ptolemy; and its success made men's minds readier for yet more
+daring enterprises. Among the shipmates of Dias on this ever memorable
+voyage was a well-trained and enthusiastic Italian mariner, none other
+than Bartholomew, the younger brother of Christopher Columbus. There was
+true dramatic propriety in the presence of that man at just this time;
+for not only did all these later African voyages stand in a direct
+causal relation to the discovery of America, but as an immediate
+consequence of the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope we shall presently
+find Bartholomew Columbus in the very next year on his way to England,
+to enlist the aid of King Henry VII. in behalf of a scheme of
+unprecedented boldness for which his elder brother had for some years
+been seeking to obtain the needful funds. Not long after that
+disappointing voyage of Santarem and Escobar in 1471, this original and
+imaginative sailor, Christopher Columbus, had conceived (or adopted and
+made his own) a new method of solving the problem of an ocean route to
+Cathay. We have now to sketch the early career of this epoch-making man,
+and to see how he came to be brought into close relations with the work
+of the Portuguese explorers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.
+
+_WESTWARD OR SPANISH ROUTE._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Sources of information concerning the life of Columbus: Las
+Casas and Ferdinand Columbus.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Biblioteca Colombina at Seville.]
+
+Our information concerning the life of Columbus before 1492 is far from
+being as satisfactory as one could wish. Unquestionably he is to be
+deemed fortunate in having had for his biographers two such men as his
+friend Las Casas, one of the noblest characters and most faithful
+historians of that or any age, and his own son Ferdinand Columbus, a
+most accomplished scholar and bibliographer. The later years of
+Ferdinand's life were devoted, with loving care, to the preparation of a
+biography of his father; and his book--which unfortunately survives only
+in the Italian translation of Alfonso Ulloa,[392] published in Venice in
+1571--is of priceless value. As Washington Irving long ago wrote, it is
+"an invaluable document, entitled to great faith, and is the cornerstone
+of the history of the American continent."[393] After Ferdinand's
+death, in 1539, his papers seem to have passed into the hands of Las
+Casas, who, from 1552 to 1561, in the seclusion of the college of San
+Gregorio at Valladolid, was engaged in writing his great "History of the
+Indies."[394] Ferdinand's superb library, one of the finest in Europe,
+was bequeathed to the cathedral at Seville.[395] It contained some
+twenty thousand volumes in print and manuscript, four fifths of which,
+through shameful neglect or vandalism, have perished or been scattered.
+Four thousand volumes, however, are still preserved, and this library
+(known as the "Biblioteca Colombina") is full of interest for the
+historian. Book-buying was to Ferdinand Columbus one of the most
+important occupations in life. His books were not only carefully
+numbered, but on the last leaf of each one he wrote a memorandum of the
+time and place of its purchase and the sum of money paid for it.[396]
+This habit of Ferdinand's has furnished us with clues to the solution
+of some interesting questions. Besides this, he was much given to making
+marginal notes and comments, which are sometimes of immense value, and,
+more than all, there are still to be seen in this library a few books
+that belonged to Christopher Columbus himself, with very important notes
+in his own handwriting and in that of his brother Bartholomew. Las Casas
+was familiar with this grand collection in the days of its completeness,
+he was well acquainted with all the members of the Columbus family, and
+he had evidently read the manuscript sources of Ferdinand's book; for a
+comparison with Ulloa's version shows that considerable portions of the
+original Spanish text--or of the documents upon which it rested--are
+preserved in the work of Las Casas.[397] The citation and adoption of
+Ferdinand's statements by the latter writer, who was able independently
+to verify them, is therefore in most cases equivalent to corroboration,
+and the two writers together form an authority of the weightiest kind,
+and not lightly to be questioned or set aside.
+
+         [Footnote 392: _Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo; Nelle
+         quali s' ha particolare, & vera relatione della vita, & de'
+         fatti dell' Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo, suo padre: Et
+         dello scoprimento, ch' egli fece dell' Indie Occidentali, dette
+         Monde-Nuovo, hora possedute dal Sereniss. Re Catolico:
+         Nuouamente di lingua Spagnuola tradotte nell' Italiana dal S.
+         Alfonso Vlloa. Con. privilegio._ IN VENETIA, M D LXXI.
+         _Appresso Francesco de' Franceschi Sanese._ The principal
+         reprints are those of Milan, 1614; Venice, 1676 and 1678;
+         London, 1867. I always cite it as _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_.]
+
+         [Footnote 393: Irving's _Life of Columbus_, New York, 1868,
+         vol. iii. p. 375. My references, unless otherwise specified,
+         are to this, the "Geoffrey Crayon," edition.]
+
+         [Footnote 394: Las Casas, _Historia de las Indias, ahora por
+         primera vez dada a luz por el Marques de la Fuensanta del Valle
+         y D. Jose Sancho Rayon_, Madrid, 1875, 5 vols. 8vo.]
+
+         [Footnote 395: "Fu questo D. Ernando di non minor valore del
+         padre, ma di molte piu lettere et scienze dotato che quelle non
+         fu; et il quale lascio alla Chiesa maggiore di Siviglia, dove
+         hoggi si vede honorevolmente sepolto, una, non sola
+         numerosissima, ma richissima libraria, et piena di molti libri
+         in ogni facolta et scienza rarissimi: laquale da coloro che l'
+         han veduta, vien stimata delle piu rare cose di tutta Europa."
+         Moleto's prefatory letter to _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, April 25,
+         1571.]
+
+         [Footnote 396: For example, "_Manuel de la Sancta Fe catolica_,
+         Sevilla, 1495, in-4. Costo en Toledo 34 maravedis, ano 1511, 9
+         de Octubre, No. 3004." "_Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea_,
+         Sevilla, 1502, in-4. Muchas figuras. Costo en Roma 25
+         cuatrines, por Junio de 1515. No. 2417," etc. See Harrisse,
+         _Fernand Colomb_, Paris, 1872, p. 13.]
+
+         [Footnote 397: "L' autorita di Las Casas e d' una suprema e
+         vitale importanza tanto nella storia di Cristoforo Colombo,
+         come nell' esame delle _Historie_ di Fernando suo figlio.... E
+         dal confronto tra questi due scrittori emergera una omogeneita
+         si perfetta, che si potrebbe coi termini del frate domenicano
+         ritrovare o rifare per due terzi il testo originale spagnuolo
+         delle _Historie_ di Fernando Colombo." Peragallo, _L'
+         autenticita delle Historie di Fernando Colombo_, Genoa, 1884,
+         p. 23.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bernaldez and Peter Martyr.]
+
+[Sidenote: Letters of Columbus.]
+
+Besides these books of most fundamental importance, we have valuable
+accounts of some parts of the life of Columbus by his friend Andres
+Bernaldez, the curate of Los Palacios near Seville.[398] Peter Martyr,
+of Anghiera, by Lago Maggiore, was an intimate friend of Columbus, and
+gives a good account of his voyages, besides mentioning him in sundry
+epistles.[399] Columbus himself, moreover, was such a voluminous writer
+that his contemporaries laughed about it. "God grant," says Zuniga in a
+letter to the Marquis de Pescara, "God grant that Gutierrez may never
+come short for paper, for he writes more than Ptolemy, more than
+Columbus, the man who discovered the Indies."[400] These writings are in
+great part lost, though doubtless a good many things will yet be brought
+to light in Spain by persistent rummaging. We have, however, from sixty
+to seventy letters and reports by Columbus, of which twenty-three at
+least are in his own handwriting; and all these have been
+published.[401]
+
+         [Footnote 398: _Historia de los Reyes Catolicos D. Fernando y
+         D^a Isabel. Cronica inedita del siglo XV, escrita por el
+         Bachiller Andres Bernaldez, cura que fue de Los Palacios_,
+         Granada, 1856, 2 vols. small 4to. It is a book of very high
+         authority.]
+
+         [Footnote 399: _De orbe novo Decades_, Alcala, 1516; _Opus
+         epistolarum_, Compluti (Alcala), 1530; Harrisse, _Bibliotheca
+         Americana Vetustissima_, Nos. 88, 160.]
+
+         [Footnote 400: "A Gutierrez vuestro solicitador, ruego a Dios
+         que nunca le falte papel, porque escribe mas que Tolomeo y que
+         Colon, el que hallo las Indias." Rivadeneyra, _Curiosidades
+         bibliograficas_, p. 59, apud Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_,
+         tom. i. p. 1.]
+
+         [Footnote 401: Harrisse, _loc. cit._, in 1884, gives the number
+         at sixty-four.]
+
+[Sidenote: Defects in Ferdinand's information.]
+
+Nevertheless, while these contemporary materials give us abundant
+information concerning the great discoverer, from the year 1492 until
+his death, it is quite otherwise with his earlier years, especially
+before his arrival in Spain in 1484. His own allusions to these earlier
+years are sometimes hard to interpret;[402] and as for his son
+Ferdinand, that writer confesses, with characteristic and winning
+frankness, that his information is imperfect, inasmuch as filial respect
+had deterred him from closely interrogating his father on such points,
+or, to tell the plain truth, being still very young when his father
+died, he had not then come to recognize their importance.[403] This does
+not seem strange when we reflect that Ferdinand must have seen very
+little of his father until in 1502, at the age of fourteen, he
+accompanied him on that last difficult and disastrous voyage, in which
+the sick and harassed old man could have had but little time or strength
+for aught but the work in hand. It is not strange that when, a quarter
+of a century later, the son set about his literary task, he should now
+and then have got a date wrong, or have narrated some incidents in a
+confused manner, or have admitted some gossiping stories, the falsehood
+of which can now plainly be detected. Such blemishes, which occur
+chiefly in the earlier part of Ferdinand's book, do not essentially
+detract from its high authority.[404] The limits which bounded the son's
+accurate knowledge seem also to have bounded that of such friends as
+Bernaldez, who did not become acquainted with Columbus until after his
+arrival in Spain.
+
+         [Footnote 402: Sometimes from a slip of memory or carelessness
+         of phrasing, on Columbus's part, sometimes from our lacking the
+         clue, sometimes from an error in numerals, common enough at all
+         times.]
+
+         [Footnote 403: "Ora, l' Ammiraglio avendo cognizione delle
+         dette scienze, comincio ad attendere al mare, e a fare alcuni
+         viaggi in levante e in ponente; de' quali, e di molte altre
+         cose di quei primi di io non ho piena notizia; perciocche egli
+         venne a morte a tempo che io non aveva tanto ardire, o pratica,
+         per la riverenza filiale, che io ardissi di richiederlo di
+         cotali cose; o, per parlare piu veramente, allora mi ritrovava
+         io, come giovane, molto lontano da cotal pensiero." _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.]
+
+         [Footnote 404: Twenty years ago M. Harrisse published in
+         Spanish and French a critical essay maintaining that the _Vita
+         dell' Ammiraglio_ was not written by Ferdinand Columbus, but
+         probably by the famous scholar Perez de Oliva, professor in the
+         university of Salamanca, who died in 1530 (_D. Fernando Colon,
+         historiador de su padre_, Seville, 1871; _Fernand Colomb: sa
+         vie, ses oeuvres_, Paris, 1872). The Spanish manuscript of the
+         book had quite a career. As already observed, it is clear that
+         Las Casas used it, probably between 1552 and 1561. From
+         Ferdinand's nephew, Luis Columbus, it seems to have passed in
+         1568 into the hands of Baliano di Fornari, a prominent citizen
+         of Genoa, who sent it to Venice with the intention of having it
+         edited and published with Latin and Italian versions. All that
+         ever appeared, however, was the Italian version made by Ulloa
+         and published in 1571. Harrisse supposes that the Spanish
+         manuscript, written by Oliva, was taken to Genoa by some
+         adventurer and palmed off upon Baliano di Fornari as the work
+         of Ferdinand Columbus. But inasmuch as Harrisse also supposes
+         that Oliva probably wrote the book (about 1525) at Seville,
+         under Ferdinand's eyes and with documents furnished by him, it
+         becomes a question, in such case, how far was Oliva anything
+         more than an amanuensis to Ferdinand? and there seems really to
+         be precious little wool after so much loud crying. If the
+         manuscript was actually written "sous les yeux de Fernand et
+         avec documents fournis par lui," most of the arguments alleged
+         to prove that it could not have emanated from the son of
+         Columbus fall to the ground. It becomes simply a question
+         whether Ulloa may have here and there tampered with the text,
+         or made additions of his own. To some extent he seems to have
+         done so, but wherever the Italian version is corroborated by
+         the Spanish extracts in Las Casas, we are on solid ground, for
+         Las Casas died five years before the Italian version was
+         published. M. Harrisse does not seem as yet to have convinced
+         many scholars. His arguments have been justly, if somewhat
+         severely, characterized by my old friend, the lamented Henry
+         Stevens (_Historical Collections_, London, 1881, vol. i. No.
+         1379), and have been elaborately refuted by M. d'Avezac, _Le
+         livre de Ferdinand Colomb: revue critique des allegations
+         proposees contre son authenticite_, Paris, 1873; and by
+         Prospero Peragallo, _L' autenticita delle Historie di Fernando
+         Colombo_, Genoa, 1884. See also Fabie, _Vida de Fray Bartolome
+         de Las Casas_, Madrid, 1869, tom. i. pp. 360-372.]
+
+[Sidenote: Researches of Henry Harrisse.]
+
+In recent years elaborate researches have been made, by Henry Harrisse
+and others, in the archives of Genoa, Savona, Seville, and other places
+with which Columbus was connected, in the hope of supplementing this
+imperfect information concerning his earlier years.[405] A number of
+data have thus been obtained, which, while clearing up the subject most
+remarkably in some directions, have been made to mystify and embroil it
+in others. There is scarcely a date or a fact relating to Columbus
+before 1492 but has been made the subject of hot dispute; and some
+pretty wholesale reconstructions of his biography have been
+attempted.[406] The general impression, however, which the discussions
+of the past twenty years have left upon my mind, is that the more
+violent hypotheses are not likely to be sustained, and that the
+newly-ascertained facts do not call for any very radical interference
+with the traditional lines upon which the life of Columbus has
+heretofore been written.[407] At any rate there seems to be no
+likelihood of such interference as to modify our views of the causal
+sequence of events that led to the westward search for the Indies; and
+it is this relation of cause and effect that chiefly concerns us in a
+history of the Discovery of America.
+
+         [Footnote 405: See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884,
+         2 vols., a work of immense research, absolutely indispensable
+         to every student of the subject, though here and there somewhat
+         over-ingenious and hypercritical, and in general unduly biased
+         by the author's private crotchet about the work of Ferdinand.]
+
+         [Footnote 406: One of the most radical of these reconstructions
+         may be found in the essay by M. d'Avezac, "Canevas
+         chronologique de la vie de Christophe Colomb," in _Bulletin de
+         la Societe de Geographie_, Paris, 1872, 6e serie, tom. iv. pp.
+         5-59.]
+
+         [Footnote 407: Washington Irving's _Life of Columbus_, says
+         Harrisse, "is a history written with judgment and impartiality,
+         which leaves far behind it all descriptions of the discovery of
+         the New World published before or since." _Christophe Colomb_,
+         tom. i. p. 136. Irving was the first to make use of the superb
+         work of Navarrete, _Coleccion de los viages y descubrimientos
+         que hicieron por mar los Espanoles desde fines del siglo XV._,
+         Madrid, 1825-37, 5 vols. 4to. Next followed Alexander von
+         Humboldt, with his _Examen critique de l'histoire de la
+         geographie de Nouveau Continent_, Paris, 1836-39, 5 vols. 8vo.
+         This monument of gigantic erudition (which, unfortunately, was
+         never completed) will always remain indispensable to the
+         historian.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Date of the birth of Columbus: archives of Savona.]
+
+[Sidenote: Statement of Bernaldez.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus's letter of September, 1501.]
+
+[Sidenote: The balance of probability is in favour of 1436.]
+
+The date of the birth of Columbus is easy to determine approximately,
+but hard to determine with precision. In the voluminous discussion upon
+this subject the extreme limits assigned have been 1430 and 1456, but
+neither of these extremes is admissible, and our choice really lies
+somewhere between 1436 and 1446. Among the town archives of Savona is a
+deed of sale executed August 7, 1473, by the father of Christopher
+Columbus, and ratified by Christopher and his next brother
+Giovanni.[408] Both brothers must then have attained their majority,
+which in the republic of Genoa was fixed at the age of twenty-five.
+Christopher, therefore, can hardly have been less than seven and twenty,
+so that the latest probable date for his birth is 1446, and this is the
+date accepted by Munoz, Major, Harrisse, and Avezac. There is no
+documentary proof, however, to prevent our taking an earlier date; and
+the curate of Los Palacios--strong authority on such a point--says
+expressly that at the time of his death, in 1506, Columbus was "in a
+good old age, seventy years a little more or less."[409] Upon this
+statement Navarrete and Humboldt have accepted 1436 as the probable date
+of birth.[410] The most plausible objection to this is a statement made
+by Columbus himself in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, written in
+1501. In this letter, as first given in the biography by his son,
+Columbus says that he was of "very tender age" when he began to sail the
+seas, an occupation which he has kept up until the present moment; and
+in the next sentence but one he adds that "now for forty years I have
+been in this business and have gone to every place where there is any
+navigation up to the present time."[411] The expression "very tender
+age" agrees with Ferdinand's statement that his father was fourteen
+years old when he first took to the sea.[412] Since 1446 + 14-40 = 1500,
+it is argued that Columbus was probably born about 1446; some sticklers
+for extreme precision say 1447. But now there were eight years spent by
+Columbus in Spain, from 1484 to 1492, without any voyages at all; they
+were years, as he forcibly says, "dragged out in disputations."[413] Did
+he mean to include those eight years in his forty spent upon the sea?
+Navarrete thinks he did not. When he wrote under excitement, as in this
+letter, his language was apt to be loose, and it is fair to construe it
+according to the general probabilities of the case. This addition of
+eight years brings his statement substantially into harmony with that of
+Bernaldez, which it really will not do to set aside lightly. Moreover,
+in the original text of the letter, since published by Navarrete,
+Columbus appears to say, "now for _more than_ forty years," so that the
+agreement with Bernaldez becomes practically complete.[414] The good
+curate spoke from direct personal acquaintance, and his phrases
+"seventy years" and "a good old age" are borne out by the royal decree
+of February 23, 1505, permitting Columbus to ride on a mule, instead of
+a horse, by reason of his old age (_ancianidad_) and infirmities.[415]
+Such a phrase applies much better to a man of sixty-nine than to a man
+of fifty-nine. On the whole, I think that Washington Irving showed good
+sense in accepting the statement of the curate of Los Palacios as
+decisive, dating as it does the birth of Columbus at 1436, "a little
+more or less."
+
+         [Footnote 408: Harrisse, _op. cit._ tom. i. p. 196.]
+
+         [Footnote 409: "In _senectute bona_, de edad de setenta anos
+         poco mas o menos." Bernaldez, _Reyes Catolicos_, tom. i. p.
+         334.]
+
+         [Footnote 410: M. d'Avezac (_Canevas chronologique_, etc.)
+         objects to this date that we have positive documentary evidence
+         of the birth of Christopher's youngest brother Giacomo
+         (afterwards spanished into Diego) in 1468, which makes an
+         interval of 32 years; so that if the mother were (say) 18 in
+         1436 she must have borne a child at the age of 50. That would
+         be unusual, but not unprecedented. But M. Harrisse (tom. ii. p.
+         214), from a more thorough sifting of this documentary
+         evidence, seems to have proved that while Giacomo cannot have
+         been born later than 1468 he may have been born as early as
+         1460; so that whatever is left of M. d'Avezac's objection falls
+         to the ground.]
+
+         [Footnote 411: "Serenissimi principi, di eta molto tenera io
+         entrai in mare navigando, et vi ho continovato fin' hoggi: ...
+         et hoggimai passano quaranta anni che io uso per tutte quelle
+         parti che fin hoggi si navigano." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap.
+         iv.]
+
+         [Footnote 412: _Op. cit._ cap. iv. _ad fin_.]
+
+         [Footnote 413: "Traido en disputas," Navarrete, _Coleccion_,
+         tom. ii. p. 254.]
+
+         [Footnote 414: "Muy altos Reyes, de muy pequena edad entre en
+         la mar navegando, e lo he continuado fasta hoy.... Ya pasan de
+         cuarenta anos que yo voy en este uso: todo lo que hoy se
+         navega, todo lo he andado." Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p.
+         262. Observe the lame phrase "pasan de cuarenta;" what business
+         has that "de" in such a place without "mas" before it? "Pasan
+         mas de cuarenta," i. e. "more than forty;" writing in haste and
+         excitement, Columbus left out a little word; or shall we blame
+         the proof-reader? Avezac himself translates it "il y a plus de
+         quarante ans," and so does Eugene Mueller, in his French version
+         of Ferdinand's book, _Histoire de la vie de Christophe Colomb_,
+         Paris, 1879, p. 15.]
+
+         [Footnote 415: That was the golden age of sumptuary laws.
+         Because Alfonso XI. of Castile (1312-1350), when he tried to
+         impress horses for the army, found it hard to get as many as he
+         wanted, he took it into his head that his subjects were raising
+         too many mules and not enough horses. So he tried to remedy the
+         evil by a wholesale decree prohibiting all Castilians from
+         riding upon mules! In practice this precious decree, like other
+         villainous prohibitory laws that try to prevent honest people
+         from doing what they have a perfect right to do, proved so
+         vexatious and ineffective withal that it had to be perpetually
+         fussed with and tinkered. One year you could ride a mule and
+         the next year you couldn't. In 1492, as we shall see, Columbus
+         immortalized one of these patient beasts by riding it a few
+         miles from Granada. But in 1494 Ferdinand and Isabella decreed
+         that nobody except women, children, and clergymen could ride on
+         mules,--"dont la marche est beaucoup plus douce que celle des
+         chevaux" (Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. iii. p. 338). This
+         edict remained in force in 1505, so that the Discoverer of the
+         New World, the inaugurator of the greatest historic event since
+         the birth of Christ, could not choose an easygoing animal for
+         the comfort of his weary old weather-shaken bones without the
+         bother of getting a special edict to fit his case. _Eheu, quam
+         parva sapientia regitur mundus!_]
+
+[Sidenote: The family of Domenico Colombo, and its changes of
+residence.]
+
+With regard to the place where the great discoverer was born there ought
+to be no dispute, since we have his own most explicit and unmistakable
+word for it, as I shall presently show. Nevertheless there has been no
+end of dispute. He has been claimed by as many places as Homer,[416] but
+the only real question is whether he was born in the city of Genoa or in
+some neighbouring village within the boundaries of the Genoese republic.
+It is easy to understand how doubt has arisen on this point, if we trace
+the changes of residence of his family. The grandfather of Columbus
+seems to have been Giovanni Colombo, of Terrarossa, an inland hamlet
+some twenty miles east by north from Genoa. Giovanni's son, Domenico
+Colombo, was probably born at Terrarossa, and moved thence with his
+father, somewhere between 1430 and 1445, to Quinto al Mare, four miles
+east of Genoa on the coast. All the family seem to have been weavers.
+Before 1445, but how many years before is not known, Domenico married
+Susanna Fontanarossa, who belonged to a family of weavers, probably of
+Quezzi, four miles northeast of Genoa. Between 1448 and 1451 Domenico,
+with his wife and three children, moved into the city of Genoa, where he
+became the owner of a house and was duly qualified as a citizen. In 1471
+Domenico moved to Savona, thirty miles west on the Corniche road, where
+he set up a weaving establishment and also kept a tavern. He had then
+five children, Cristoforo, Giovanni, Bartolommeo, Giacomo, and a
+daughter. Domenico lived in Savona till 1484. At that time his wife and
+his son Giovanni were dead, Giacomo was an apprentice, learning the
+weaver's trade, Christopher and Bartholomew had long been domiciled in
+Portugal, the daughter had married a cheese merchant in Genoa, and to
+that city Domenico returned in the autumn of 1484, and lived there until
+his death, at a great age, in 1499 or 1500. He was always in pecuniary
+difficulties, and died poor and in debt, though his sons seem to have
+sent him from Portugal and Spain such money as they could spare.[417]
+
+         [Footnote 416: "Nous avons demontre l'inanite des theories qui
+         le font naitre a Pradello, a Cuccaro, a Cogoleto, a Savona, a
+         Nervi, a Albissola, a Bogliasco, a Cosseria, a Finale, a
+         Oneglia, voire meme en Angleterre ou dans l'isle de Corse."
+         Harrisse, tom. i. p. 217. In Cogoleto, about sixteen miles west
+         of Genoa on the Corniche road, the visitor is shown a house
+         where Columbus is said first to have seen the light. Upon its
+         front is a quaint inscription in which the discoverer is
+         compared to the dove (_Colomba_) which, when sent by Noah from
+         the ark, discovered dry land amid the waters:--
+
+            Con generoso ardir dall' Arca all' onde
+            Ubbidiente il vol Colomba prende,
+            Corre, s' aggira, terren scopre, e fronde
+            D' olivo in segno, al gran Noe ne rende.
+            L' imita in cio Colombo, ne' s' asconde,
+            E da sua patria il mar solcando fende;
+            Terreno al fin scoprendo diede fondo,
+            Offerendo all' Ispano un Nuovo Mondo.
+
+         This house is or has been mentioned in Baedeker's _Northern
+         Italy_ as the probable birthplace, along with Peschel's absurd
+         date 1456. It is pretty certain that Columbus was _not_ born in
+         that house or in Cogoleto. See Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 148-155.]
+
+         [Footnote 417: Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 166-216.]
+
+[Sidenote: Christopher tells us that he was born in the city of Genoa.]
+
+The reader will observe that Christopher and his two next brothers were
+born before the family went to live in the city of Genoa. It has hence
+been plausibly inferred that they were born either in Quinto or in
+Terrarossa; more likely the latter, since both Christopher and
+Bartholomew, as well as their father, were called, and sometimes signed
+themselves, Columbus of Terrarossa.[418] In this opinion the most
+indefatigable modern investigator, Harrisse, agrees with Las Casas.[419]
+Nevertheless, in a solemn legal instrument executed February 22, 1498,
+establishing a _mayorazgo_, or right of succession to his estates and
+emoluments in the Indies, Columbus expressly declares that he was born
+in the city of Genoa: "I enjoin it upon my son, the said Don Diego, or
+whoever may inherit the said _mayorazgo_, always to keep and maintain in
+the City of Genoa one person of our lineage, because from thence I came
+and in it I was born."[420] I do not see how such a definite and
+positive statement, occurring in such a document, can be doubted or
+explained away. It seems clear that the son was born while the parents
+were dwelling either at Terrarossa or at Quinto, but what is to hinder
+our supposing that the event might have happened when the mother was in
+the city on some errand or visit? The fact that Christopher and his
+brother were often styled "of Terrarossa" does not prove that they were
+born in that hamlet. A family moving thence to Quinto and to Genoa would
+stand in much need of some such distinctive epithet, because the name
+Colombo was extremely common in that part of Italy; insomuch that the
+modern historian, who prowls among the archives of those towns, must
+have a care lest he get hold of the wrong person, and thus open a fresh
+and prolific source of confusion. This has happened more than once.
+
+         [Footnote 418: Harrisse, tom. i. p. 188; _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. xi.]
+
+         [Footnote 419: "Fue este varon escogido de nacion genoves, de
+         algun lugar de la provincia de Genova; cual fuese, donde nacio
+         o que nombre tuvo el tal lugar, no consta la verdad dello mas
+         de que se solia llamar antes que llegase al estado que llego,
+         Cristobal Colombo de Terra-rubia y lo mismo su hermano
+         Bartolome Colon." Las Casas, _Historia de las Indias_, tom. i.
+         p. 42; cf. Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 217-222.]
+
+         [Footnote 420: "Mando al dicho D. Diego, mi hijo, o a la
+         persona que heredare el dicho mayorazgo, que tenga y sostenga
+         siempre en la _Ciudad de Genova_ una persona de nuestro linage
+         ... pues que della sali _y en ella naci_" [italics mine].
+         Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p. 232.]
+
+[Sidenote: Christopher's early years.]
+
+[Sidenote: Christopher and Bartholomew at Lisbon.]
+
+On the whole, then, it seems most probable that the Discoverer of
+America was born in the city of Genoa in 1436, or not much later. Of his
+childhood we know next to nothing. Las Casas tells us that he studied at
+the University of Pavia and acquired a good knowledge of Latin.[421]
+This has been doubted, as incompatible with the statement of Columbus
+that he began a seafaring life at the age of fourteen. It is clear,
+however, that the earlier years of Columbus, before his departure for
+Portugal, were not all spent in seafaring. Somewhere, if not at Pavia,
+he not only learned Latin, but found time to study geography, with a
+little astronomy and mathematics, and to become an expert draughtsman.
+He seems to have gone to and fro upon the Mediterranean in merchant
+voyages, now and then taking a hand in sharp scrimmages with Mussulman
+pirates.[422] In the intervals of this adventurous life he was probably
+to be found in Genoa, earning his bread by making maps and charts, for
+which there was a great and growing demand. About 1470, having become
+noted for his skill in such work, he followed his younger brother
+Bartholomew to Lisbon,[423] whither Prince Henry's undertakings had
+attracted able navigators and learned geographers until that city had
+come to be the chief centre of nautical science in Europe. Las Casas
+assures us that Bartholomew was quite equal to Christopher as a sailor,
+and surpassed him in the art of making maps and globes, as well as in
+the beauty of his handwriting.[424] In Portugal, as before in Italy, the
+work of the brothers Columbus was an alternation of map-making on land
+and adventure on the sea. We have Christopher's own word for it that he
+sailed with more than one of those Portuguese expeditions down the
+African coast;[425] and I think it not altogether unlikely that he may
+have been with Santarem and Escobar in their famous voyage of 1471.
+
+         [Footnote 421: Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 46.]
+
+         [Footnote 422: The reader must beware, however, of some of the
+         stories of adventure attaching to this part of his life, even
+         where they are confirmed by Las Casas. They evidently rest upon
+         hearsay, and the incidents are so confused that it is almost
+         impossible to extract the kernel of truth.]
+
+         [Footnote 423: The date 1470 rests upon a letter of Columbus to
+         King Ferdinand of Aragon in May, 1505. He says that God must
+         have directed him into the service of Spain by a kind of
+         miracle, since he had already been in Portugal, whose king was
+         more interested than any other sovereign in making discoveries,
+         and yet God closed his eyes, his ears, and all his senses to
+         such a degree that _in fourteen years_ Columbus could not
+         prevail upon him to lend aid to his scheme. "Dije
+         milagrosamente porque fui a aportar a Portugal, adonde el Rey
+         de alli entendia en el descubrir mas que otro: el le atajo la
+         vista, oido y todos los sentidos, que en catorce anos no le
+         pude hacer entender lo que yo dije." Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom.
+         iii. p. 187; Navarrete, tom. iii. p. 528. Now it is known that
+         Columbus finally left Portugal late in 1484, or very early in
+         1485, so that fourteen years would carry us back to before 1471
+         for the first arrival of Columbus in that country. M. Harrisse
+         (_op. cit._ tom. i. p. 263) is unnecessarily troubled by the
+         fact that the same person was not king of Portugal during the
+         whole of that period. Alfonso V. (brother of Henry the
+         Navigator) died in 1481, and was succeeded by his son John II.;
+         but during a considerable part of the time between 1475 and
+         1481 the royal authority was exercised by the latter. Both
+         kings were more interested in making discoveries than any other
+         European sovereigns. Which king did Columbus mean? Obviously
+         his words were used loosely; he was too much preoccupied to be
+         careful about trifles; he probably had John in his mind, and
+         did not bother himself about Alfonso; King Ferdinand, to whom
+         he was writing, did not need to have such points minutely
+         specified, and could understand an elliptical statement; and
+         the fact stated by Columbus was simply that during a residence
+         of fourteen years in Portugal he had not been able to enlist
+         even that enterprising government in behalf of his novel
+         scheme.
+
+         In the town archives of Savona we find Christopher Columbus
+         witnessing a document March 20, 1472, endorsing a kind of
+         promissory note for his father August 26, 1472, and joining
+         with his mother and his next brother Giovanni, August 7, 1473,
+         in relinquishing all claims to the house in Genoa sold by his
+         father Domenico by deed of that date. It will be remembered
+         that Domenico had moved from Genoa to Savona in 1471. From
+         these documents (which are all printed in his _Christophe
+         Colomb_, tom. ii. pp. 419, 420, 424-426) M. Harrisse concludes
+         that Christopher cannot have gone to Portugal until after
+         August 7, 1473. Probably not, so far as to be domiciled there;
+         but inasmuch as he had long been a sailor, why should he not
+         have been in Portugal, or upon the African coast in a
+         Portuguese ship, in 1470 and 1471, and nevertheless have been
+         with his parents in Savona in 1472 and part of 1473? His own
+         statement "fourteen years" is not to be set aside on such
+         slight grounds as this. Furthermore, from the fact that
+         Bartholomew's name is not signed to the deed of August 7, 1473,
+         M. Harrisse infers that he was then a minor; i. e. under five
+         and twenty. But it seems to me more likely that Bartholomew was
+         already domiciled at Lisbon, since we are expressly told by two
+         good contemporary authorities--both of them Genoese writers
+         withal--that he moved to Lisbon and began making maps there at
+         an earlier date than Christopher. See Antonio Gallo, _De
+         navigatione Columbi per inaccessum antea Oceanum
+         Commentariolus_, apud Muratori, tom. xxiii. col. 301-304;
+         Giustiniani, _Psalterium_, Milan, 1516 (annotation to Psalm
+         xix.); Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, No. 88.
+         To these statements M. Harrisse objects that he finds (in
+         Belloro, _Notizie_, p. 8) mention of a document dated Savona,
+         June 16, 1480, in which Domenico Colombo gives a power of
+         attorney to his son Bartholomew to act for him in some matter.
+         The document itself, however, is not forthcoming, and the
+         notice cited by M. Harrisse really affords no ground for the
+         assumption that Bartholomew was in 1480 domiciled at Savona or
+         at Genoa.]
+
+         [Footnote 424: Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom. i. p. 224; tom. ii.
+         p. 80. He possessed many maps and documents by both the
+         brothers.]
+
+         [Footnote 425: "Spesse volte navigando da Lisbona a Guinea,"
+         etc. _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv. The original authority
+         is Columbus's marginal note in his copy of the _Imago Mundi_ of
+         Alliacus, now preserved in the Colombina at Seville: "Nota quod
+         sepius navigando ex Ulixbona ad austrum in Guineam, notavi cum
+         diligentia viam, etc." Compare the allusions to Guinea in his
+         letters, Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. i. pp. 55, 71, 101.]
+
+[Sidenote: Philippa Moniz de Perestrelo.]
+
+[Sidenote: Personal appearance of Columbus.]
+
+He had not been long in Portugal before he found a wife. We have already
+met the able Italian navigator, Bartholomew Perestrelo, who was sent by
+Prince Henry to the island of Porto Santo with Zarco and Vaz, about
+1425. In recognition of eminent services Prince Henry afterwards, in
+1446, appointed him governor of Porto Santo. Perestrelo died in 1457,
+leaving a widow (his second wife, Isabella Moniz) and a charming
+daughter Philippa,[426] whom Columbus is said to have first met at a
+religious service in the chapel of the convent of All Saints at Lisbon.
+From the accounts of his personal appearance, given by Las Casas and
+others who knew him, we can well understand how Columbus should have won
+the heart of this lady, so far above him at that time in social
+position. He was a man of noble and commanding presence, tall and
+powerfully built, with fair ruddy complexion and keen blue-gray eyes
+that easily kindled; while his waving white hair must have been quite
+picturesque. His manner was at once courteous and cordial and his
+conversation charming, so that strangers were quickly won, and in
+friends who knew him well he inspired strong affection and respect.[427]
+There was an indefinable air of authority about him, as befitted a man
+of great heart and lofty thoughts.[428] Out of those kindling eyes
+looked a grand and poetic soul, touched with that divine spark of
+religious enthusiasm which makes true genius.
+
+         [Footnote 426: There are some vexed questions concerning this
+         lady and the connections between the Moniz and Perestrelo
+         families, for which see Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 267-292.]
+
+         [Footnote 427: Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 43. He
+         describes Bartholomew as not unlike his brother, but not so
+         tall, less affable in manner, and more stern in disposition,
+         _id._ tom. ii. p. 80.]
+
+         [Footnote 428: "Christoval Colon ... persona de gran corazon y
+         altos pensamientos." Mariana, _Historia de Espana_, tom. viii.
+         p. 341.]
+
+[Sidenote: His marriage, and life upon the island of Porto Santo.]
+
+The acquaintance between Columbus and Philippa Moniz de Perestrelo was
+not long in ripening into affection, for they were married in 1473. As
+there was a small estate at Porto Santo, Columbus went home thither with
+his bride to live for a while in quiet and seclusion. Such repose we may
+believe to have been favourable to meditation, and on that little
+island, three hundred miles out on the mysterious ocean, we are told
+that the great scheme of sailing westward to the Indies first took shape
+in the mind of Columbus.[429] His father-in-law Perestrelo had left a
+quantity of sailing charts and nautical notes, and these Columbus
+diligently studied, while ships on their way to and from Guinea every
+now and then stopped at the island, and one can easily imagine the eager
+discussions that must have been held over the great commercial problem
+of the age,--how far south that African coast extended and whether there
+was any likelihood of ever finding an end to it.
+
+         [Footnote 429: Upon that island his eldest son Diego was born.
+         This whole story of the life upon Porto Santo and its relation
+         to the genesis of Columbus's scheme is told very explicitly by
+         Las Casas, who says that it was told to him by Diego Columbus
+         at Barcelona in 1519, when they were waiting upon Charles V.,
+         just elected Emperor and about to start for Aachen to be
+         crowned. And yet there are modern critics who are disposed to
+         deny the whole story. (See Harrisse, tom. i. p. 298.) The
+         grounds for doubt are, however, extremely trivial when
+         confronted with Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 54.]
+
+[Sidenote: Alfonso V. asks advice of the great astronomer Toscanelli.]
+
+How long Columbus lived upon Porto Santo is not known, but he seems to
+have gone from time to time back to Lisbon, and at length to have made
+his home--or in the case of such a rover we might better say his
+headquarters--in that city. We come now to a document of supreme
+importance for our narrative. Paolo del Pozzo dei Toscanelli, born at
+Florence in 1397, was one of the most famous astronomers and
+cosmographers of his time, a man to whom it was natural that questions
+involving the size and shape of the earth should be referred. To him
+Alfonso V. of Portugal made application, through a gentleman of the
+royal household, Fernando Martinez, who happened to be an old friend of
+Toscanelli. What Alfonso wanted to know was whether there could be a
+shorter oceanic route to the Indies than that which his captains were
+seeking by following the African coast; if so, he begged that Toscanelli
+would explain the nature and direction of such a route. The Florentine
+astronomer replied with the letter presently to be quoted in full, dated
+June 25, 1474; and along with the letter he sent to the king a sailing
+chart, exhibiting his conception of the Atlantic ocean, with Europe on
+the east and Cathay on the west. The date of this letter is eloquent. It
+was early in 1472 that Santarem and Escobar brought back to Lisbon the
+news that beyond the Gold Coast the African shore turned southwards and
+stretched away in that direction beyond the equator. As I have already
+observed, this was the moment when the question as to the possibility of
+a shorter route was likely to arise;[430] and this is precisely the
+question we find the king of Portugal putting to Toscanelli some time
+before the middle of 1474. Now about this same time, or not long
+afterwards, we find Columbus himself appealing to Toscanelli. An aged
+Florentine merchant, Lorenzo Giraldi, then settled in Lisbon, was going
+back to his native city for a visit, and to him Columbus entrusted a
+letter for the eminent astronomer. He received the following answer:
+
+[Sidenote: Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus.]
+
+"Paul, the physicist, to Christopher Columbus greeting.[431] I perceive
+your great and noble desire to go to the place where the spices grow;
+wherefore in reply to a letter of yours, I send you a copy of another
+letter, which I wrote a few days ago [or some time ago] to a friend of
+mine, a gentleman of the household of the most gracious king of Portugal
+before the wars of Castile,[432] in reply to another, which by command
+of His Highness he wrote me concerning that matter: and I send you
+another sailing chart, similar to the one I sent him, by which your
+demands will be satisfied. The copy of that letter of mine is as
+follows:--
+
+[Sidenote: Toscanelli's copy of his former letter to Martinez--enclosed
+in his first letter to Columbus.]
+
+"'Paul, the physicist, to Fernando Martinez, canon, at Lisbon,
+greeting.[433] I was glad to hear of your intimacy and favour with your
+most noble and illustrious king. I have formerly spoken with you about a
+shorter route to the places of Spices by ocean navigation than that
+which you are pursuing by Guinea. The most gracious king now desires
+from me some statement, or rather an exhibition to the eye, so that even
+slightly educated persons can grasp and comprehend that route. Although
+I am well aware that this can be proved from the spherical shape of the
+earth, nevertheless, in order to make the point clearer and to
+facilitate the enterprise, I have decided to exhibit that route by means
+of a sailing chart. I therefore send to his majesty a chart made by my
+own hands,[434] upon which are laid down your coasts, and the islands
+from which you must begin to shape your course steadily westward, and
+the places at which you are bound to arrive, and how far from the pole
+or from the equator you ought to keep away, and through how much space
+or through how many miles you are to arrive at places most fertile in
+all sorts of spices and gems; and do not wonder at my calling _west_ the
+parts where the spices are, whereas they are commonly called _east_,
+because to persons sailing persistently westward those parts will be
+found by courses on the under side of the earth. For if [you go] by land
+and by routes on this upper side, they will always be found in the east.
+The straight lines drawn lengthwise upon the map indicate distance from
+east to west, while the transverse lines show distances from south to
+north. I have drawn upon the map various places upon which you may come,
+for the better information of the navigators in case of their arriving,
+whether through accident of wind or what not, at some different place
+from what they had expected; but partly in order that they may show the
+inhabitants that they have some knowledge of their country, which is
+sure to be a pleasant thing. It is said that none but merchants dwell in
+the islands.[435] For so great there is the number of navigators with
+their merchandise that in all the rest of the world there are not so
+many as in one very splendid port called Zaiton.[436] For they say that
+a hundred great ships of pepper unload in that port every year, besides
+other ships bringing other spices. That country is very populous and
+very rich, with a multitude of provinces and kingdoms and cities without
+number, under one sovereign who is called the Great Khan, which name
+signifies King of Kings, whose residence is for the most part in the
+province of Cathay. His predecessors two hundred years ago desired an
+alliance with Christendom; they sent to the pope and asked for a number
+of persons learned in the faith, that they might be enlightened; but
+those who were sent, having encountered obstacles on the way,
+returned.[437] Even in the time of Eugenius[438] there came one to
+Eugenius and made a declaration concerning their great goodwill toward
+Christians, and I had a long talk with him about many things, about the
+great size of their royal palaces and the remarkable length and breadth
+of their rivers, and the multitude of cities on the banks of the rivers,
+such that on one river there are about two hundred cities, with marble
+bridges very long and wide and everywhere adorned with columns. This
+country is worth seeking by the Latins, not only because great treasures
+may be obtained from it,--gold, silver, and all sorts of jewels and
+spices,--but on account of its learned men, philosophers, and skilled
+astrologers, and [in order that we may see] with what arts and devices
+so powerful and splendid a province is governed, and also [how] they
+conduct their wars. This for some sort of answer to his request, so far
+as haste and my occupations have allowed, ready in future to make
+further response to his royal majesty as much as he may wish. Given at
+Florence 25th June, 1474.'
+
+         [Footnote 430: See above, p. 330.]
+
+         [Footnote 431: I translate this prologue from the Italian text
+         of the _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. viii. The original Latin
+         has nowhere been found. A Spanish version of the whole may be
+         found in Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. pp. 92-96. Las Casas,
+         by a mere slip of the pen, calls "Paul, the physicist," _Marco
+         Paulo_, and fifty years later Mariana calls him _Marco Polo,
+         physician_: "por aviso que le dio un cierto Marco Polo medico
+         Florentin," etc. _Historia de Espana_, tom. viii. p. 343. Thus
+         step by step doth error grow.]
+
+         [Footnote 432: He means that his friend Martinez has been a
+         member of King Alfonso's household ever since the time before
+         the civil wars that began with the attempted deposition of
+         Henry IV. in 1465 and can hardly be said to have come to an end
+         before the death of that prince in December, 1474. See
+         Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. i. p. 225.]
+
+         [Footnote 433: I translate this enclosed letter from the
+         original Latin text, as found, a few years ago, in the
+         handwriting of Columbus upon the fly-leaves of his copy of the
+         _Historia rerum ubique gestarum_ of AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini
+         (Pope Pius II.), published at Venice in 1477, in folio, and now
+         preserved in the Colombina at Seville. This Latin text is given
+         by Harrisse, in his _Fernand Colomb_, pp. 178-180, and also
+         (with more strict regard to the abbreviations of the original)
+         in his _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima--Additions_, Paris,
+         1872, pp. xvi.-xviii. Very likely Columbus had occasion to let
+         the original MS. go out of his hands, and so preserved a copy
+         of it upon the fly-leaves of one of his books. These same
+         fly-leaves contain extracts from Josephus and Saint Augustine.
+         The reader will rightly infer from my translation that the
+         astronomer's Latin was somewhat rugged and lacking in literary
+         grace. Apparently he was anxious to jot down quickly what he
+         had to say, and get back to his work.]
+
+         [Footnote 434: A sketch of this most memorable of maps is given
+         opposite. Columbus carried it with him upon his first voyage,
+         and shaped his course in accordance with it. Las Casas
+         afterwards had it in his possession (_Hist. de las Indias_,
+         tom. i. pp. 96, 279). It has since been lost, that is to say,
+         it may still be in existence, but nobody knows where. But it
+         has been so well described that the work of restoring its
+         general outlines is not difficult and has several times been
+         done. The sketch here given is taken from Winsor (_Narr. and
+         Crit. Hist._, ii. 103), who takes it from _Das Ausland_, 1867,
+         p. 5. Another restoration may be found in St. Martin's _Atlas_,
+         pl. ix. This map was the source of the western part of Martin
+         Behaim's globe, as given below, p. 422.]
+
+         [Footnote 435: All the description that follows is taken by
+         Toscanelli from the book of Marco Polo.]
+
+         [Footnote 436: On modern maps usually called Chang-chow, about
+         100 miles S. W. from Fou-chow.]
+
+         [Footnote 437: I have given an account of this mission, above,
+         p. 281.]
+
+         [Footnote 438: Eugenius IV., pope from 1431 to 1447.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conclusion of Toscanelli's first letter to Columbus.]
+
+"From[439] the city of Lisbon due west there are 26 spaces marked on the
+map, each of which contains 250 miles, as far as the very great and
+splendid city of Quinsay.[440] For it is a hundred miles in
+circumference and has ten bridges, and its name means City of Heaven,
+and many wonderful things are told about it and about the multitude of
+its arts and revenues. This space is almost a third part of the whole
+sphere. That city is in the province of Mangi, or near the province of
+Cathay in which land is the royal residence. But from the island of
+Antilia, which you know, to the very splendid island of Cipango[441]
+there are ten spaces. For that island abounds in gold, pearls, and
+precious stones, and they cover the temples and palaces with solid gold.
+So through the unknown parts of the route the stretches of sea to be
+traversed are not great. Many things might perhaps have been stated more
+clearly, but one who duly considers what I have said will be able to
+work out the rest for himself. Farewell, most esteemed one."
+
+         [Footnote 439: This paragraph is evidently the conclusion of
+         the letter to Columbus, and not a part of the letter to
+         Martinez, which has just ended with the date. In _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_ the two letters are mixed together.]
+
+         [Footnote 440: On modern maps Hang-chow. After 1127 that city
+         was for some time the capital of China, and Marco Polo's name
+         _Quinsay_ represents the Chinese word _King-sse_ or "capital,"
+         now generally applied to Peking. Marco Polo calls it the finest
+         and noblest city in the world. It appears that he does not
+         overstate the circumference of its walls at 100 Chinese miles
+         or _li_, equivalent to about 30 English miles. It has greatly
+         diminished since Polo's time, while other cities have grown.
+         Toscanelli was perhaps afraid to repeat Polo's figure as to the
+         number of stone bridges; Polo says there were 12,000 of them,
+         high enough for ships to pass under! We thus see how his
+         Venetian fellow-citizens came to nickname him "Messer Marco
+         Milione." As Colonel Yule says, "I believe we must not bring
+         Marco to book for the literal accuracy of his statements as to
+         the bridges; but all travellers have noticed the number and
+         elegance of the bridges of cut stone in this part of China."
+         _Marco Polo_, vol. ii, p. 144.]
+
+         [Footnote 441: For Cipango, or Japan, see Yule's _Marco Polo_,
+         vol. ii. pp. 195-207. The venerable astronomer's style of
+         composition is amusing. He sets out to demonstrate to Columbus
+         that the part of the voyage to be accomplished through new and
+         unfamiliar stretches of the Atlantic is not great; but he is so
+         full of the glories of Cathay and Cipango that he keeps
+         reverting to that subject, to the manifest detriment of his
+         exposition. His argument, however, is perfectly clear.]
+
+Some time after the receipt of this letter Columbus wrote again to
+Toscanelli, apparently sending him either some charts of his own, or
+some notes, or something bearing upon the subject in hand. No such
+letter is preserved, but Toscanelli replied as follows:--
+
+[Sidenote: Toscanelli's second letter to Columbus.]
+
+"Paul, the physicist, to Christopher Columbus greeting.[442] I have
+received your letters, with the things which you sent me, for which I
+thank you very much. I regard as noble and grand your project of sailing
+from east to west according to the indications furnished by the map
+which I sent you, and which would appear still more plainly upon a
+sphere. I am much pleased to see that I have been well understood, and
+that the voyage has become not only possible but certain,[443] fraught
+with honour as it must be, and inestimable gain, and most lofty fame
+among all Christian people. You cannot take in all that it means except
+by actual experience, or without such copious and accurate information
+as I have had from eminent and learned men who have come from those
+places to the Roman court, and from merchants who have traded a long
+time in those parts, persons whose word is to be believed (_persone di
+grande autorita_). When that voyage shall be accomplished, it will be a
+voyage to powerful kingdoms, and to cities and provinces most wealthy
+and noble, abounding in all sorts of things most desired by us; I mean,
+with all kinds of spices and jewels in great abundance. It will also be
+advantageous for those kings and princes who are eager to have dealings
+and make alliances with the Christians of our countries, and to learn
+from the erudite men of these parts,[444] as well in religion as in all
+other branches of knowledge. For these reasons, and many others that
+might be mentioned, I do not wonder that you, who are of great courage,
+and the whole Portuguese nation, which has always had men distinguished
+in all such enterprises, are now inflamed with desire[445] to execute
+the said voyage."
+
+         [Footnote 442: The original of this letter is not forthcoming.
+         I translate from _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. viii.]
+
+         [Footnote 443: Yet poor old Toscanelli did not live to see it
+         accomplished; he died in 1482, before Columbus left Portugal.]
+
+         [Footnote 444: That is, of Europe, and especially of Italy.
+         Toscanelli again refers to Kublai Khan's message to the pope
+         which--more or less mixed up with the vague notions about
+         Prester John--had evidently left a deep impression upon the
+         European mind. In translating the above sentence I have
+         somewhat retrenched its excessive verbiage without affecting
+         the meaning.]
+
+         [Footnote 445: In including the "whole Portuguese nation" as
+         feeling this desire, the good astronomer's enthusiasm again
+         runs away with him.]
+
+[Sidenote: Who first suggested the feasibleness of a westward route? Was
+it Columbus?]
+
+These letters are intensely interesting, especially the one to Martinez,
+which reveals the fact that as early as 1474 the notion that a westward
+route to the Indies would be shorter than the southward route had
+somehow been suggested to Alfonso V.; and had, moreover, sufficiently
+arrested his attention to lead him to make inquiries of the most eminent
+astronomer within reach. Who could have suggested this notion to the
+king of Portugal? Was it Columbus, the trained mariner and map-maker,
+who might lately have been pondering the theories of Ptolemy and Mela as
+affected by the voyage of Santarem and Escobar, and whose connection
+with the Moniz and Perestrelo families would now doubtless facilitate
+his access to the court? On some accounts this may seem probable,
+especially if we bear in mind Columbus's own statement implying that his
+appeals to the crown dated almost from the beginning of his fourteen
+years in Portugal.
+
+[Sidenote: Perhaps it was Toscanelli.]
+
+All the circumstances, however, seem to be equally consistent with the
+hypothesis that the first suggestion of the westward route may have come
+from Toscanelli himself, through the medium of the canon Martinez, who
+had for so many years been a member of King Alfonso's household. The
+words at the beginning of the letter lend some probability to this view:
+"I have formerly spoken with you about a shorter route to the places of
+Spices by ocean navigation than that which you are pursuing by Guinea."
+It was accordingly earlier than 1474--how much earlier does not
+appear--that such discussions between Toscanelli and Martinez must
+probably have come to the ears of King Alfonso; and now, very likely
+owing to the voyage of Santarem and Escobar, that monarch began to think
+it worth while to seek for further information, "an exhibition to the
+eye," so that mariners not learned in astronomy like Toscanelli might
+"grasp and comprehend" the shorter route suggested. It is altogether
+probable that the Florentine astronomer, who was seventy-seven years old
+when he wrote this letter, had already for a long time entertained the
+idea of a westward route; and a man in whom the subject aroused so much
+enthusiasm could hardly have been reticent about it. It is not likely
+that Martinez was the only person to whom he descanted[446] upon the
+glory and riches to be found by sailing "straight to Cathay," and there
+were many channels through which Columbus might have got some inkling of
+his views, even before going to Portugal.
+
+         [Footnote 446: Luigi Pulci, in his famous romantic poem
+         published in 1481, has a couple of striking stanzas in which
+         Astarotte says to Rinaldo that the time is at hand when
+         Hercules shall blush to see how far beyond his Pillars the
+         ships shall soon go forth to find another hemisphere, for
+         although the earth is as round as a wheel, yet the water at any
+         given point is a plane, and inasmuch as all things tend to a
+         common centre so that by a divine mystery the earth is
+         suspended in equilibrium among the stars, just so there is an
+         antipodal world with cities and castles unknown to men of olden
+         time, and the sun in hastening westwards descends to shine upon
+         those peoples who are awaiting him below the horizon:--
+
+            Sappi che questa opinione e vana
+            Perche piu oltre navicar si puote,
+            Pero che l' acqua in ogni parte e piana,
+            Benche la terra abbi forma di ruote;
+            Era piu grossa allor la gente umana,
+            Tal che potrebbe arrossirne le gote
+            Ercule ancor, d' aver posti que' segni,
+            Perche piu oltre passeranno i legni.
+            E puossi andar giu nell' altro emisperio,
+            Pero che al centro ogni cosa reprime:
+            Sicche la terra per divin misterio
+            Sospesa sta fra le stelle sublime,
+            E laggiu son citta, castella, e imperio;
+            Ma nol cognobbon quelle gente prime.
+            Vedi che il sol di camminar s' affretta,
+            Dove io dico che laggiu s' aspetta.
+                              Pulci, _Morgante Maggiore_, xxv. 229, 230.
+
+         This prophecy of western discovery combines with the
+         astronomical knowledge here shown, to remind us that the
+         Florentine Pulci was a fellow-townsman and most likely an
+         acquaintance of Toscanelli.]
+
+[Sidenote: The idea was suggested by the globular form of the earth;]
+
+[Sidenote: and was as old as Aristotle.]
+
+[Sidenote: Opinions of ancient writers.]
+
+However this may have been, the letter clearly proves that at that most
+interesting period, in or about 1474, Columbus was already meditating
+upon the westward route.[447] Whether he owed the idea to Toscanelli,
+or not, is a question of no great importance so far as concerns his own
+originality; for the idea was already in the air. The originality of
+Columbus did not consist in his conceiving the possibility of reaching
+the shores of Cathay by sailing west, but in his conceiving it in such
+distinct and practical shape as to be ready to make the adventure in
+his own person. As a matter of theory the possibility of such a voyage
+could not fail to be suggested by the globular form of the earth; and
+ever since the days of Aristotle that had been generally admitted by men
+learned in physical science. Aristotle proved, from the different
+altitudes of the pole-star in different places, that the earth must
+necessarily be a globe. Moreover, says Aristotle, "some stars are seen
+in Egypt or at Cyprus, but are not seen in the countries to the north of
+these; and the stars that in the north are visible while they make a
+complete circuit, there undergo a setting. So that from this it is
+manifest, not only that the form of the earth is round, but also that it
+is part of not a very large sphere; for otherwise the difference would
+not be so obvious to persons making so small a change of place.
+Wherefore we may judge that _those persons who connect the region in the
+neighbourhood of the Pillars of Hercules with that towards India, and
+who assert that in this way the sea is_ ONE, do not assert things very
+improbable."[448] It thus appears that more than eighteen centuries
+before Columbus took counsel of Toscanelli, "those persons" to whom
+Aristotle alludes were discussing, as a matter of theory, this same
+subject. Eratosthenes held that it would be easy enough to sail from
+Spain to India on the same parallel were it not for the vast extent of
+the Atlantic ocean.[449] On the other hand, Seneca maintained that the
+distance was probably not so very great, and that with favouring winds a
+ship might make the voyage in a few days.[450] In one of his tragedies
+Seneca has a striking passage[451] which has been repeatedly quoted as
+referring to the discovery of America, and is certainly one of the most
+notable instances of prophecy on record. There will come a time, he
+says, in the later years, when Ocean shall loosen the bonds by which we
+have been confined, when an immense land shall lie revealed, and Tethys
+shall disclose new worlds, and Thule will no longer be the most remote
+of countries. In Strabo there is a passage, less commonly noticed, which
+hits the truth--as we know it to-day--even more closely. Having argued
+that the total length of the Inhabited World is only about a third part
+of the circumference of the earth in the temperate zone, he suggests it
+as possible, or even probable, that within this space there may be
+another Inhabited World, or even more than one; but such places would be
+inhabited by different races of men, with whom the geographer, whose
+task it is to describe the _known_ world, has no concern.[452] Nothing
+could better illustrate the philosophical character of Strabo's mind. In
+such speculations, so far as his means of verification went, he was
+situated somewhat as we are to-day with regard to the probable
+inhabitants of Venus or Mars.
+
+         [Footnote 447: It was formerly assumed, without hesitation,
+         that the letter from Toscanelli to Columbus was written and
+         sent in 1474. The reader will observe, however, that while the
+         enclosed letter to Martinez is dated June 25, 1474, the letter
+         to Columbus, in which it was enclosed, has no date. But
+         according to the text as given in _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap.
+         viii., this would make no difference, for the letter to
+         Columbus was sent only a few days later than the original
+         letter to Martinez: "I send you a copy of another letter, which
+         I wrote a few days ago (_alquanti giorni fa_) to a friend of
+         mine, a gentleman of the household of the king of Portugal
+         before the wars of Castile, in reply to another," etc. This
+         friend, Martinez, had evidently been a gentleman of the
+         household of Alfonso V. since before the civil wars of Castile,
+         which in 1474 had been going on intermittently for nine years
+         under the feeble Henry IV., who did not die until December 12,
+         1474. Toscanelli apparently means to say "a friend of mine who
+         has for ten years or more been a gentleman of the royal
+         household," etc.; only instead of mentioning the number of
+         years, he alludes less precisely (as most people, and perhaps
+         especially old people, are apt to do) to the most notable,
+         mentionable, and glaring fact in the history of the Peninsula
+         for that decade,--namely, the civil wars of Castile. As if an
+         American writer in 1864 had said, "a friend of mine, who has
+         been secretary to A. B. since before the war," instead of
+         saying "for four years or more." This is the only reasonable
+         interpretation of the phrase as it stands above, and it was
+         long ago suggested by Humboldt (_Examen critique_, tom. i. p.
+         225). Italian and Spanish writers of that day, however, were
+         lavish with their commas and sprinkled them in pretty much at
+         haphazard. In this case Ferdinand's translator, Ulloa,
+         sprinkled in one comma too many, and it fell just in front of
+         the clause "before the wars of Castile;" so that Toscanelli's
+         sentence was made to read as follows: "I send you a copy of
+         another letter, which I wrote a few days ago to a friend of
+         mine, a gentleman of the household of the king of Portugal,
+         before the wars of Castile, in reply to another," etc. Now this
+         unhappy comma, coming after the word "Portugal," has caused
+         ream after ream of good paper to be inked up in discussion, for
+         it has led some critics to understand the sentence as follows:
+         "I send you a copy of another letter, which I wrote a few days
+         ago, before the wars of Castile, to a friend of mine," etc.
+         This reading brought things to a pretty pass. Evidently a
+         letter dated June 25, 1474, could not have been written before
+         the civil wars of Castile, which began in 1465. It was
+         therefore assumed that the phrase must refer to the "War of
+         Succession" between Castile and Portugal (in some ways an
+         outgrowth from the civil wars of Castile) which began in May,
+         1475, and ended in September, 1479. M. d'Avezac thinks that the
+         letter to Columbus must have been written after the latter
+         date, or more than five years later than the enclosed letter.
+         M. Harrisse is somewhat less exacting, and is willing to admit
+         that it may have been written at any time after this war had
+         fairly begun,--say in the summer of 1475, not more than a year
+         or so later than the enclosed letter. Still he is disposed on
+         some accounts to put the date as late as 1482. The phrase
+         _alquanti giorni fa_ will not allow either of these
+         interpretations. It means "a few days ago," and cannot possibly
+         mean a year ago, still less five years ago. The Spanish
+         retranslator from Ulloa renders it exactly _algunos dias ha_
+         (Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. p. 7), and Humboldt (_loc.
+         cit._) has it _il y a quelques jours_. If we could be sure that
+         the expression is a correct rendering of the lost Latin
+         original, we might feel sure that the letter to Columbus must
+         have been written as early as the beginning of August, 1474.
+         But now the great work of Las Casas, after lying in manuscript
+         for 314 years, has at length been published in 1875. Las Casas
+         gives a Spanish version of the Toscanelli letters (_Historia de
+         las Indias_, tom. i. pp. 92-97), which is unquestionably older
+         than Ulloa's Italian version, though perhaps not necessarily
+         more accurate. The phrase in Las Casas is not _algunos dias
+         ha_, but _ha dias_, i. e. not "a few days ago," but "some time
+         ago." Just which expression Toscanelli used cannot be
+         determined unless somebody is fortunate enough to discover the
+         lost Latin original. The phrase in Las Casas admits much more
+         latitude of meaning than the other. I should suppose that _ha
+         dias_ might refer to an event a year or two old, which would
+         admit of the interpretation considered admissible by M.
+         Harrisse. I should hardly suppose that it could refer to an
+         event five or six years old; if Toscanelli had been referring
+         in 1479 or 1480 to a letter written in 1474, his phrase would
+         probably have appeared in Spanish as _algunos anos ha_, i. e.
+         "a few years ago," not as _ha dias_. M. d'Avezac's hypothesis
+         seems to me not only inconsistent with the phrase _ha dias_,
+         but otherwise improbable. The frightful anarchy in Castile,
+         which began in 1465 with the attempt to depose Henry IV. and
+         alter the succession, was in great measure a series of ravaging
+         campaigns and raids, now more general, now more local, and can
+         hardly be said to have come to an end before Henry's death in
+         1474. The war which began with the invasion of Castile by
+         Alfonso V. of Portugal, in May, 1475, was simply a later phase
+         of the same series of conflicts, growing out of disputed claims
+         to the crown and rivalries among great barons, in many respects
+         similar to the contemporary anarchy in England called the Wars
+         of the Roses. It is not likely that Toscanelli, writing at any
+         time between 1475 and 1480, and speaking of the "wars of
+         Castile" in the plural, could have had 1474 in his mind as a
+         date previous to those wars; to his mind it would have rightly
+         appeared as a date in the midst of them. In any case,
+         therefore, his reference must be to a time before 1465, and
+         Humboldt's interpretation is in all probability correct. The
+         letter from Toscanelli to Columbus was probably written within
+         a year or two after June 25, 1474.
+
+         On account of the vast importance of the Toscanelli letters,
+         and because the early texts are found in books which the reader
+         is not likely to have at hand, I have given them entire in the
+         Appendix at the end of this work.]
+
+         [Footnote 448: [Greek: Hoste ta hyper tes kephales astra
+         megalen echein ten metabolen, kai me tauta phainesthai pros
+         arkton te kai mesembrian metabainousin; enioi gar en Aigypto
+         men asteres horontai, kai peri Kypron; en tois pros arkton de
+         chorious ouch horontai kai ta dia pantos en tois pros arkton
+         phainomena ton astron, en ekeinois tois topois poieitai dysin.
+         Host' ou monon ek touton delon peripheres on to schema tes ges,
+         alla kai sphairas ou megales. Ou gar an houto tachy epidelon
+         epoiei methistemenois houto brachy. Dio tous hypolambanontas
+         synaptein ton peri tas Herakleious stelas topon to peri ten
+         Indiken, kai touton ton tropon einai ten Thalattan mian, me
+         lian hypolambanein apista dokein.] Aristotle, _De Coelo_, ii.
+         14. He goes on to say that "those persons" allege the existence
+         of elephants alike in Mauretania and in India in proof of their
+         theory.]
+
+         [Footnote 449: [Greek: Host' ei me to megethos tou Atlantikou
+         pelagous ekolye, kan plein hemas ek tes Iberias eis ten Indiken
+         dia tou autou parallelou.] Strabo, i. 4, Sec. 6.]
+
+         [Footnote 450: "Quantum enim est, quod ab ultimis litoribus
+         Hispaniae usque ad Indos jacet? Paucissimorum dierum spatium, si
+         navem suus ventus implevit." Seneca, _Nat. Quaest._, i. praef. Sec.
+         11.]
+
+         [Footnote 451:
+
+            Venient annis saecula seris,
+            Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
+            Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
+            Tethysque novos detegat orbes,
+            Nec sit terris ultima Thule.
+                              Seneca, _Medea_, 376.
+
+         In the copy of Seneca's tragedies, published at Venice in
+         1510, bought at Valladolid by Ferdinand Columbus in March,
+         1518, for 4 reals (plus 2 reals for binding), and now to be
+         seen at the Biblioteca Colombina, there is a marginal note
+         attached to these verses: "haec prophetia expleta [=e] per
+         patr[=e] meuz[=z] cristofor[=u] col[=o] almir[=a]t[=e] anno
+         1492."]
+
+         [Footnote 452: [Greek: Kaloumen gar oikoumenen hen oikoumen kai
+         gnorizomen; endeketai de kai en te aute eukrato zone kai dyo
+         oikoumenas einai e kai pleious.] Strabo, i. 4, Sec. 6; [Greek: kai
+         gar ei houtos echei, ouch hypo touton ge oikeitai ton par'
+         hemin; all' ekeinen allen oikoumenen theteon. hoper esti
+         pithanon. Hemin de ta en aute tauta lekteon.] Id. ii. 5, Sec. 13.
+         This has always seemed to me one of the most remarkable
+         anticipations of modern truth in all ancient literature. Mr.
+         Bunbury thinks it may have suggested the famous verses of
+         Seneca just quoted. _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. ii. p.
+         224.]
+
+[Sidenote: Opinions of Christian writers.]
+
+[Sidenote: Roger Bacon.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "Imago Mundi" of Petrus Alliacus.]
+
+Early in the Christian era we are told by an eminent Greek astronomer
+that the doctrine of the earth's sphericity was accepted by all
+competent persons except the Epicureans.[453] Among the Fathers of the
+Church there was some difference of opinion; while in general they
+denied the existence of human beings beyond the limits of their
+Oecumene, or Inhabited World, this denial did not necessarily involve
+disbelief in the globular figure of the earth.[454] The views of the
+great mass of people, and of the more ignorant of the clergy, down to
+the time of Columbus, were probably well represented in the book of
+Cosmas Indicopleustes already cited.[455] Nevertheless among the more
+enlightened clergy the views of the ancient astronomers were never quite
+forgotten, and in the great revival of intellectual life in the
+thirteenth century the doctrine of the earth's sphericity was again
+brought prominently into the foreground. We find Dante basing upon it
+the cosmical theory elaborated in his immortal poem.[456] In 1267 Roger
+Bacon--stimulated, no doubt, by the reports of the ocean east of
+Cathay--collected passages from ancient writers to prove that the
+distance from Spain to the eastern shores of Asia could not be very
+great. Bacon's argument and citations were copied in an extremely
+curious book, the "Imago Mundi," published in 1410 by the Cardinal
+Pierre d'Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai, better known by the Latinized form of
+his name as Petrus Alliacus. This treatise, which throughout the
+fifteenth century enjoyed a great reputation, was a favourite book with
+Columbus, and his copy of it, covered with marginal annotations in his
+own handwriting, is still preserved among the priceless treasures of the
+Biblioteca Colombina.[457] He found in it strong confirmation of his
+views, and it is not impossible that the reading of it may have first
+put such ideas into his head. Such a point, however, can hardly be
+determined. As I have already observed, these ideas were in the air.
+What Columbus did was not to originate them, but to incarnate them in
+facts and breathe into them the breath of life. It was one thing to
+suggest, as a theoretical possibility, that Cathay might be reached by
+sailing westward; and it was quite another thing to prove that the
+enterprise was feasible with the ships and instruments then at command.
+
+         [Footnote 453: [Greek: Hoi de hemeteroi] [i. e. the Stoics]
+         [Greek: kai apo mathematon pantes, kai hoi pleious ton apo tou
+         Sokratikou didaskaleiou sphairikon einai to schema tes ges
+         diebebaiosanto.] Cleomedes, i. 8; cf. Lucretius, _De Rerum
+         Nat._, i. 1052-1082; Stobaeus, _Eclog._ i. 19; Plutarch, _De
+         facie in Orbe Luna_, cap. vii.]
+
+         [Footnote 454: See Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, xvi. 9;
+         Lactantius, _Inst. Div._, iii. 23; Jerome, _Comm. in Ezechiel_,
+         i. 6; Whewell's _History of the Inductive Sciences_, vol i. p.
+         196.]
+
+         [Footnote 455: See above, p. 266.]
+
+         [Footnote 456: For an account of the cosmography of the Divine
+         Comedy, illustrated with interesting diagrams, see Artaud de
+         Montor, _Histoire de Dante Alighieri_, Paris, 1841.]
+
+         [Footnote 457: It was first printed without indication of place
+         or date, but probably the place was Paris and the date
+         somewhere from 1483 to 1490. Manuscript copies were very
+         common, and Columbus probably knew the book long before that
+         time. There is a good account of it in Humboldt's _Examen
+         critique_, tom. i. pp. 61-76, 96-108. Humboldt thinks that such
+         knowledge as Columbus had of the opinions of ancient writers
+         was chiefly if not wholly obtained from Alliacus. It is
+         doubtful if Columbus had any direct acquaintance with the works
+         of Roger Bacon, but he knew the _Liber Cosmographicus_ of
+         Albertus Magnus and the _Speculum Naturale_ of Vincent de
+         Beauvais (both about 1250), and drew encouragement from them.
+         He also knew the book of Mandeville, first printed in French at
+         Lyons in 1480, and a Latin translation of Marco Polo, published
+         in 1485, a copy of which, with marginal MS. notes, is now in
+         the Colombina.]
+
+[Illustration: Annotations by Columbus.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ancient estimates of the size of the globe and the length of
+the Oecumene.]
+
+The principal consideration, of course, was the distance to be
+traversed; and here Columbus was helped by an error which he shared with
+many geographers of his day. He somewhat underestimated the size of the
+earth, and at the same time greatly overestimated the length of Asia.
+The first astronomer to calculate, by scientific methods, the
+circumference of our planet at the equator was Eratosthenes (B. C.
+276-196), and he came--all things considered--fairly near the truth; he
+made it 25,200 geographical miles (of ten stadia), or about one seventh
+too great. The true figure is 21,600 geographical miles, equivalent to
+24,899 English statute miles.[458] Curiously enough, Posidonius, in
+revising this calculation a century later, reduced the figure to 18,000
+miles, or about one seventh too small. The circumference in the latitude
+of Gibraltar he estimated at 14,000 miles; the length of the Oecumene,
+or Inhabited World, he called 7,000; the distance across the Atlantic
+from the Spanish strand to the eastern shores of Asia was the other
+7,000. The error of Posidonius was partially rectified by Ptolemy, who
+made the equatorial circumference 20,400 geographical miles, and the
+length of a degree 56.6 miles.[459] This estimate, in which the error
+was less than one sixteenth, prevailed until modern times. Ptolemy also
+supposed the Inhabited World to extend over about half the circumference
+of the temperate zone, but the other half he imagined as consisting
+largely of bad lands, quagmires, and land-locked seas, instead of a vast
+and open ocean.[460]
+
+         [Footnote 458: See Herschel's _Outlines of Astronomy_, p. 140.
+         For an account of the method employed by Eratosthenes, see
+         Delambre, _Histoire de l'astronomie ancienne_, tom. i. pp.
+         86-91; Lewis, _Astronomy of the Ancients_, p. 198.]
+
+         [Footnote 459: See Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_,
+         vol. ii. pp. 95-97, 546-579; Mueller and Donaldson, _History of
+         Greek Literature_, vol. iii. p. 268.]
+
+         [Footnote 460: Strabo, in arguing against this theory of bad
+         lands, etc., as obstacles to ocean navigation--a theory which
+         seems to be at least as old as Hipparchus--has a passage which
+         finely expresses the loneliness of the sea:--[Greek: Hoite gar
+         periplein epicheiresantes, eita anastrepsantes, ouch hypo
+         epeirou tinos antipiptouses kai kolyouses, ton epekeina ploun
+         anakrousthenai phasin, alla hypo aporias kai eremias, ouden
+         hetton tes thalattes echouses ton poron] (lib. i. cap. i. Sec. 8).
+         When one thinks of this [Greek: aporia] and [Greek: eremia],
+         one fancies oneself far out on the Atlantic, alone in an open
+         boat on a cloudy night, bewildered and hopeless.]
+
+[Sidenote: Toscanelli's calculation of the size of the earth,]
+
+[Sidenote: and of the position of Cipango.]
+
+Ptolemy's opinion as to the length of the Inhabited World was
+considerably modified in the minds of those writers who toward the end
+of the Middle Ages had been strongly impressed by the book of Marco
+Polo. Among these persons was Toscanelli. This excellent astronomer
+calculated the earth's equatorial circumference at almost exactly the
+true figure; his error was less than 124 English miles in excess. The
+circumference in the latitude of Lisbon he made 26 x 250 x 3 = 19,500
+miles.[461] Two thirds of this figure, or 13,000 miles, he allowed for
+the length of the Oecumene, from Lisbon eastward to Quinsay (i. e.
+Hang-chow), leaving 6,500 for the westward voyage from Lisbon to
+Quinsay. Thus Toscanelli elongated Asia by nearly the whole width of the
+Pacific ocean. His Quinsay would come about 130 deg. W., a few hundred miles
+west of the mouth of the Columbia river. Zaiton (i. e. Chang-chow), the
+easternmost city in Toscanelli's China, would come not far from the tip
+end of Lower California. Thus the eastern coast of Cipango, about a
+thousand miles east from Zaiton, would fall in the Gulf of Mexico
+somewhere near the ninety-third meridian, and that island, being over a
+thousand miles in length north and south, would fill up the space
+between the parallel of New Orleans and that of the city of Guatemala.
+The westward voyage from the Canaries to Cipango, according to
+Toscanelli, would be rather more than 3,250 miles, but at a third of the
+distance out he placed the imaginary island of "Antilia," with which he
+seems to have supposed Portuguese sailors to be familiar.[462] "So
+through the unknown parts of the route," said the venerable astronomer,
+"the stretches of sea to be traversed are not great,"--not much more
+than 2,000 English miles, not so long as the voyage from Lisbon to the
+Guinea coast.
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus's opinion of the size of the globe, the length of
+the Oecumene, and the width of the Atlantic ocean.]
+
+[Sidenote: The fourth book of Esdras.]
+
+While Columbus attached great importance to these calculations and
+carried Toscanelli's map with him upon his first voyage, he improved
+somewhat upon the estimates of distance, and thus made his case still
+more hopeful. Columbus was not enough of an astronomer to adopt
+Toscanelli's improved measurement of the size of the earth. He accepted
+Ptolemy's figure of 20,400 geographical miles for the equatorial
+girth,[463] which would make the circumference in the latitude of the
+Canaries about 18,000; and Columbus, on the strength of sundry passages
+from ancient authors which he found in Alliacus (cribbed from Roger
+Bacon), concluded that six sevenths of this circumference must be
+occupied by the Oecumene, including Cipango, so that in order to reach
+that wonderful island he would only have to sail over one seventh, or
+not much more than 2,500 miles from the Canaries.[464] An authority upon
+which he placed great reliance in this connection was the fourth book
+of Esdras, which although not a canonical part of the Bible was approved
+by holy men, and which expressly asserted that six parts of the earth
+(i. e. of the length of the Oecumene, or north temperate zone) are
+inhabited and only the seventh part covered with water. From the general
+habit of Columbus's mind it may be inferred that it was chiefly upon
+this scriptural authority that he based his confident expectation of
+finding land soon after accomplishing seven hundred leagues from the
+Canaries. Was it not as good as written in the Bible that land was to be
+found there?
+
+         [Footnote 461: See above, p. 360. Toscanelli's mile was nearly
+         equivalent to the English statute mile. See the very important
+         note in Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 51.]
+
+         [Footnote 462: The reader will also notice upon Toscanelli's
+         map the islands of Brazil and St. Brandan. For an account of
+         all these fabulous islands see Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._,
+         vol. i. pp. 46-51. The name of "Antilia" survives in the name
+         "Antilles," applied since about 1502 to the West India islands.
+         All the islands west of Toscanelli's ninetieth meridian belong
+         in the Pacific. He drew them from his understanding of the
+         descriptions of Marco Polo, Friar Odoric, and other travellers.
+         These were the islands supposed, rightly, though vaguely, to
+         abound in spices.]
+
+         [Footnote 463: Columbus was confirmed in this opinion by the
+         book of the Arabian astronomer Alfragan, written about A. D.
+         950, a Latin translation of which appeared in 1447. There is a
+         concise summary of it in Delambre, _Histoire de l'astronomie du
+         Moyen Age_, pp. 63-73. Columbus proceeded throughout on the
+         assumption that the length of a degree at the equator is 56.6
+         geographical miles, instead of the correct figure 60. This
+         would oblige him to reduce all Toscanelli's figures by about
+         six per cent., to begin with. Upon this point we have the
+         highest authority, that of Columbus himself, in an autograph
+         marginal note in his copy of the _Imago Mundi_, where he
+         expresses himself most explicitly: "Nota quod sepius navigando
+         ex Ulixbona ad Austrum in Guineam, notavi cum diligentia viam,
+         ut solitum naucleris et malineriis, et preteria accepi
+         altitudinem solis cum quadrante et aliis instrumentis plures
+         vices, et inveni concordare cum Alfragano, videlicet respondere
+         quemlibet gradum milliariis 56-2/3. Quare ad hanc mensuram
+         fidem adhibendam. Tunc igitur possumus dicere quod circuitus
+         Terrae sub arae equinoctiali est 20,400 milliariorum. Similiter
+         que id invenit magister Josephus phisicus et astrologus et alii
+         plures missi specialiter ad hoc per serenissimum regem
+         Portugaliae," etc.; _anglice_, "Observe that in sailing often
+         from Lisbon southward to Guinea, I carefully marked the course,
+         according to the custom of skippers and mariners, and moreover
+         I took the sun's altitude several times with a quadrant and
+         other instruments, and in agreement with Alfragan I found that
+         each degree [i. e. of longitude, measured on a great circle]
+         answers to 56-2/3 miles. So that one may rely upon this
+         measure. We may therefore say that the equatorial circumference
+         of the earth is 20,400 miles. A similar result was obtained by
+         Master Joseph, the physicist [or, perhaps, physician] and
+         astronomer, and several others sent for this special purpose by
+         the most gracious king of Portugal."--Master Joseph was
+         physician to John II. of Portugal, and was associated with
+         Martin Behaim in the invention of an improved astrolabe which
+         greatly facilitated ocean navigation.--The exact agreement with
+         Ptolemy's figures shows that by a mile Columbus meant a
+         geographical mile, equivalent to ten Greek stadia.]
+
+         [Footnote 464: One seventh of 18,000 is 2,571 geographical
+         miles, equivalent to 2,963 English miles. The actual length of
+         Columbus's first voyage, from last sight of land in the
+         Canaries to first sight of land in the Bahamas, was according
+         to his own dead reckoning about 3,230 geographical miles. See
+         his journal in Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. i. pp. 6-20.
+
+         I give here in parallel columns the passage from Bacon and the
+         one from Alliacus upon which Columbus placed so much reliance.
+         In the Middle Ages there was a generous tolerance of much that
+         we have since learned to stigmatize as plagiarism.
+
+   From Roger Bacon, _Opus                From Petrus Alliacus, _De
+   Majus_ (A. D. 1267), London,           imagine Mundi_ (A. D. 1410),
+   1733, ed. Jebb, p. 183:--"Sed          Paris, cir. 1490, cap. viii. fol.
+   Aristoteles vult in fine secundi       13 b:--"Summus Aristoteles
+   Coeli et Mundi quod plus [terrae]       dicit quod mare parvum est inter
+   habitetur quam quarta pars. Et         finem Hispaniae a parte occidentis
+   Averroes hoc confirmat. Dicit          et inter principium Indiae
+   Aristoteles quod mare parvum           a parte orientis, et vult quod
+   est inter finem Hispaniae a parte       plus habitetur quam quarta
+   occidentis et inter principium         pars, et Averroes hoc confirmat.
+   Indiae a parte orientis. Et Seneca,     Insuper Seneca libro
+   libro quinto Naturalium,               quinto Naturalium, dicit quod
+   dicit quod mare hoc est navigabile     mare est navigabile in paucis
+   in paucissimis diebus si               diebus si ventus sit conveniens.
+   ventus sit conveniens. Et Plinius      Et Plinius docet in Naturalibus,
+   docet in Naturalibus quod              libro secundo, quod navigatum
+   navigatum est a sinu Arabico           est a sinu Arabico usque ad
+   usque ad Gades: unde refert            Gades Herculis non multum
+   quendam fugisse a rego suo             magno tempore,
+   prae timore et intravit sinum
+   Maris Rubri ... qui circiter
+   spatium navigationis annualis
+   distat a Mari Indico: ... ex
+   quo patet principium Indiae in
+   oriente multum a nobis distare
+   et ab Hispania, postquam tantum
+   distat a principio Arabiae
+   versus Indiam. A fine Hispaniae                      unde concludunt
+   sub terra tam parvum mare est          aliqui, quod mare non est
+   quod non potest cooperire tres         tantum quod possit cooperire
+   quartas terrae. Et hoc per              tres quartas terrae. Accedit ad
+   auctoritatem alterius considerationis  hoc auctoritas Esdrae libro suo
+   probatur. Nam Esdras                   quarto, dicentis quod sex partes
+   dicit quarto libro, quod sex
+   partes terrae sunt habitatae et          terrae sunt habitatae et septima
+   septima est cooperta aquis. Et         est cooperta aquis,
+   ne aliquis impediat hanc auctoritatem,
+   dicens quod liber ille
+   est apocryphus et ignotae auctoritatis,
+   dicendum est quod                      cujus libri auctoritatem sancti
+   sancti habuerunt illum librum          habuerunt in reverentia."
+   in usu et confirmant veritates
+   sacras per illum librum."
+
+         Columbus must either have carried the book of Alliacus with him
+         on his voyages, or else have read his favourite passages until
+         he knew them by heart, as may be seen from the following
+         passage of a letter, written from Hispaniola in 1498 to
+         Ferdinand and Isabella (Navarrete, tom i. p. 261):--"El
+         Aristotel dice que este mundo es pequeno y es el agua muy poca,
+         y que facilmente se puede pasar de Espana a las Indias, y esto
+         confirma el Avenryz [Averroes], y le alega el cardenal Pedro de
+         Aliaco, autorizando este decir y aquel de Seneca, el qual
+         conforma con estos.... A esto trac una autoridad de Esdras del
+         tercero libro suyo, adonde dice que de siete partes del mundo
+         las seis son descubiertas y la una es cubierta de agua, la cual
+         autoridad es aprobada por Santos, los cuales dan autoridad al
+         3^o e 4^o libro de Esdras, ansi come es S. Agustin e S.
+         Ambrosio en su _exameron_," etc.--"Singular period," exclaims
+         Humboldt, "when a mixture of testimonies from Aristotle and
+         Averroes, Esdras and Seneca, on the small extent of the ocean
+         compared with the magnitude of continental land, afforded to
+         monarchs guarantees for the safety and expediency of costly
+         enterprises!" _Cosmos_, tr. Sabine, vol. ii. p. 250. The
+         passages cited in this note may be found in Humboldt, _Examen
+         critique_, tom. i. pp. 65-69. Another interesting passage from
+         _Imago Mundi_, cap. xv., is quoted on p. 78 of the same work.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fortunate mixture of truth and error.]
+
+[Sidenote: The whole point and purport of Columbus's scheme.]
+
+Thus did Columbus arrive at his decisive conclusion, estimating the
+distance across the Sea of Darkness to Japan at something less than the
+figure which actually expresses the distance to the West Indies. Many a
+hopeful enterprise has been ruined by errors in figuring, but this wrong
+calculation was certainly a great help to Columbus. When we consider
+how difficult he found it to obtain men and ships for a voyage supposed
+to be not more than 2,500 miles in this new and untried direction, we
+must admit that his chances would have been poor indeed if he had
+proposed to sail westward on the Sea of Darkness for nearly 12,000
+miles, the real distance from the Canaries to Japan. It was a case where
+the littleness of the knowledge was not a dangerous but a helpful thing.
+If instead of the somewhat faulty astronomy of Ptolemy and the very hazy
+notions prevalent about "the Indies," the correct astronomy of
+Toscanelli had prevailed and had been joined to an accurate knowledge of
+eastern Asia, Columbus would surely never have conceived his great
+scheme, and the discovery of America would probably have waited to be
+made by accident.[465] The whole point of his scheme lay in its promise
+of a shorter route to the Indies than that which the Portuguese were
+seeking by way of Guinea. Unless it was probable that it could furnish
+such a shorter route, there was no reason for such an extraordinary
+enterprise.
+
+         [Footnote 465: See below, vol. ii. p. 96.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus's speculations on climate.]
+
+[Sidenote: His voyage to Guinea.]
+
+[Sidenote: His voyage into the Arctic ocean, 1477.]
+
+The years between 1474 and 1480 were not favourable for new maritime
+ventures on the part of the Portuguese government. The war with Castile
+absorbed the energies of Alfonso V. as well as his money, and he was
+badly beaten into the bargain. About this time Columbus was writing a
+treatise on "the five habitable zones," intended to refute the old
+notions about regions so fiery or so frozen as to be inaccessible to
+man. As this book is lost we know little or nothing of its views and
+speculations, but it appears that in writing it Columbus utilized sundry
+observations made by himself in long voyages into the torrid and arctic
+zones. He spent some time at the fortress of San Jorge de la Mina, on
+the Gold Coast, and made a study of that equinoctial climate.[466] This
+could not have been earlier than 1482, the year in which the fortress
+was built. Five years before this he seems to have gone far in the
+opposite direction. In a fragment of a letter or diary, preserved by his
+son and by Las Casas, he says:--"In the month of February, 1477, I
+sailed a hundred leagues beyond the island of Thule, [to?] an island of
+which the south part is in latitude 73 deg., not 63 deg., as some say; and it
+[i. e. Thule] does not lie within Ptolemy's western boundary, but much
+farther west. And to this island, which is as big as England, the
+English go with their wares, especially from Bristol. When I was there
+the sea was not frozen. In some places the tide rose and fell twenty-six
+fathoms. It is true that the Thule mentioned by Ptolemy lies where he
+says it does, and this by the moderns is called Frislanda."[467]
+
+         [Footnote 466: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.; Las Casas,
+         _Historia_, tom. i. p. 49.]
+
+         [Footnote 467: "Io navigai l' anno M CCCC LXXVII nel mese di
+         Febraio oltra Tile isola cento leghe, la cui parte Australe e
+         lontana dall' Equinottiale settantatre gradi, e non
+         sessantatre, come alcuni vogliono; ne giace dentro della linea,
+         che include l' Occidente di Tolomeo, ma e molto piu
+         Occidentale. Et a questa isola, che e tanto grande, come
+         l'Inghilterra, vanno gl' Inglesi con le loro mercatantie,
+         specialmente quelli di Bristol. Et al tempo che io vi andai,
+         non era congelato il mare, quantunque vi fossero si grosse
+         maree, che in alcuni luoghi ascendeva ventisei braccia, e
+         discendeva altretanti in altezza. E bene il vero, che Tile,
+         quella, di cui Tolomeo fa mentione, giace dove egli dice; &
+         questa da' moderni e chiamata Frislanda." _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. iv. In the original edition of 1571, there
+         are no quotation-marks; and in some modern editions, where
+         these are supplied, the quotation is wrongly made to end just
+         before the last sentence, so as to make it appear like a gloss
+         of Ferdinand's. This is, however, impossible. Ferdinand died in
+         1539, and the Zeno narrative of Frislanda was not published
+         till 1558, so that the only source from which that name could
+         have come into his book was his father's document. The
+         genuineness of the passage is proved by its recurrence, almost
+         word for word, in Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. i. p. 48.]
+
+[Sidenote: He may have reached Jan Mayen island,]
+
+[Sidenote: and stopped at Iceland.]
+
+Taken as it stands this passage is so bewildering that we can hardly
+suppose it to have come in just this shape from the pen of Columbus. It
+looks as if it had been abridged from some diary of his by some person
+unfamiliar with the Arctic seas; and I have ventured to insert in
+brackets a little preposition which may perhaps help to straighten out
+the meaning. By Thule Columbus doubtless means Iceland, which lies
+between latitudes 64 deg. and 67 deg., and it looks as if he meant to say that
+he ran beyond it as far as the little island, just a hundred leagues
+from Iceland and in latitude 71 deg., since discovered by Jan Mayen in 1611.
+The rest of the paragraph is more intelligible. It is true that Iceland
+lies thirty degrees farther west than Ptolemy placed Thule; and that for
+a century before the discovery of the Newfoundland fisheries the English
+did much fishing in the waters about Iceland, and carried wares
+thither, especially from Bristol.[468] There can be no doubt that by
+Frislanda Columbus means the Faeroe islands,[469] which do lie in the
+latitude though not in the longitude mentioned by Ptolemy. As for the
+voyage into the Jan Mayen waters in February, it would be dangerous but
+by no means impossible.[470] In another letter Columbus mentions
+visiting England, apparently in connection with this voyage,[471] and it
+is highly probable that he went in an English ship from Bristol.
+
+         [Footnote 468: See Thorold Rogers, _The Economic Interpretation
+         of History_, London, 1888, pp. 103, 319.]
+
+         [Footnote 469: See above, p. 236.]
+
+         [Footnote 470: See the graphic description of a voyage in these
+         waters in March, 1882, in Nansen's _The First Crossing of
+         Greenland_, London, 1890, vol. i. pp. 149-152.]
+
+         [Footnote 471: "E vidi tutto il Levante, e tutto il Ponente,
+         che si dice per andare verso il Settentrione, cioe
+         l'Inghilterra, e ho camminato per la Guinea." _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. iv.]
+
+[Sidenote: The hypothesis that Columbus "must have" heard and understood
+the story of the Vinland voyages.]
+
+The object of Columbus in making these long voyages to the equator and
+into the polar circle was, as he tells us, to gather observations upon
+climate. From the circumstance of his having made a stop at some point
+in Iceland, it was conjectured by Finn Magnusson that Columbus might
+have learned something about Vinland which served to guide him to his
+own enterprise or to encourage him in it. Starting from this suggestion,
+it has been argued[472] that Columbus must have read the geographical
+appendix to Adam of Bremen's "Ecclesiastical History;" that he must
+have understood, as we now do, the reference therein made to Vinland;
+that he made his voyage to Iceland in order to obtain further
+information; that he there not only heard about Vinland and other
+localities mentioned in the sagas, but also mentally placed them about
+where they were placed in 1837 by Professor Rafn; that, among other
+things, he thus obtained a correct knowledge of the width of the
+Atlantic ocean in latitude 28 deg. N.; and that during fifteen subsequent
+years of weary endeavour to obtain ships and men for his westward
+voyage, he sedulously refrained from using the most convincing argument
+at his command,--namely that land of continental dimensions had actually
+been found (though by a very different route) in the direction which he
+indicated.
+
+         [Footnote 472: See Anderson's _America not discovered by
+         Columbus_, Chicago, 1874; 3d ed. enlarged, Chicago, 1883.]
+
+[Sidenote: That hypothesis has no evidence in its favour.]
+
+I have already given an explanation of the process by which Columbus
+arrived at the firm belief that by sailing not more than about 2,500
+geographical miles due west from the Canaries he should reach the coast
+of Japan. Every step of that explanation is sustained by documentary
+evidence, and as his belief is thus completely accounted for, the
+hypothesis that he may have based it upon information obtained in
+Iceland is, to say the least, superfluous. We do not need it in order to
+explain his actions, and accordingly his actions do not afford a
+presumption in favour of it. There is otherwise no reason, of course,
+for refusing to admit that he might have obtained information in
+Iceland, were there any evidence that he did. But not a scrap of such
+evidence has ever been produced. Every step in the Scandinavian
+hypothesis is a pure assumption.
+
+[Sidenote: It is not probable that Columbus knew of Adam of Bremen's
+allusion to Vinland,]
+
+[Sidenote: or that he would have understood it if he had read it.]
+
+First it is assumed that Columbus _must_ have read the appendix to Adam
+of Bremen's history. But really, while it is not impossible that he
+should have read that document, it is, on the whole, improbable. The
+appendix was first printed in Lindenbrog's edition, published at Leyden,
+in 1595. The eminent Norwegian historian, Gustav Storm, finds that in
+the sixteenth century just six MSS. of Adam's works can now be traced.
+Of these, two were preserved in Denmark, two in Hamburg, one had
+_perhaps_ already wandered southward to Leyden, and one as far as
+Vienna. Dr. Storm, therefore, feels sure that Columbus never saw Adam's
+mention of Vinland, and pithily adds that "had Columbus known it, it
+would not have been able to show him the way to the West Indies, but
+perhaps to the North Pole."[473] From the account of this mention and
+its context, which I have already given,[474] it is in the highest
+degree improbable that if Columbus had read the passage he could have
+understood it as bearing upon his own problem. There is, therefore, no
+ground for the assumption that Columbus went to Iceland in order to
+make inquiries about Vinland.
+
+         [Footnote 473: "Det er derfor sikkert, at Columbus ikke, som
+         nogle har formodet, kan have kjendt Adam af Bremens Beretning
+         on Vinland; vi kan gjerne tilfoie, at havde Columbus kjendt
+         den, vilde den ikke have kunnet vise ham Vei til Vesten
+         (Indien), men kanske til Nordpolen." _Aarboger for Nordisk
+         Oldkyndighed_, 1887, ii. 2, p. 301.]
+
+         [Footnote 474: See above, p. 210.]
+
+[Sidenote: It is doubtful if Columbus would have stumbled upon the story
+in Iceland.]
+
+It may be argued that even if he did not go for such a purpose,
+nevertheless when once there he could hardly have failed incidentally to
+get the information. This, however, is not at all clear. Observe that
+our sole authority for the journey to Iceland is the passage above
+quoted at second-hand from Columbus himself; and there is nothing in it
+to show whether he staid a few hours or several weeks ashore, or met
+with any one likely to be possessed of the knowledge in question. The
+absence of any reference to Vinland in the Zeno narrative is an
+indication that the memory of it had faded away before 1400, and it was
+not distinctly and generally revived until the time of Torfaeus in
+1705.[475]
+
+         [Footnote 475: In 1689 the Swedish writer, Ole Rudbeck, could
+         not understand Adam of Bremen's allusion to Vinland. The
+         passage is instructive. Rudbeck declares that in speaking of a
+         wine-growing country near to the Arctic ocean, Adam must have
+         been misled by some poetical or figurative phrase; he was
+         deceived either by his trust in the Danes, or by his own
+         credulity, for he manifestly refers to _Finland_, for which the
+         form _Vinland_ does not once occur in Sturleson, etc.:--"Ne
+         tamen poetis solis hoc loquendi genus in suis regionum
+         laudationibus familiare fuisse quis existimet, sacras adeat
+         literas quae Palaestinae faecunditatem appellatione _fluentorum
+         lactis & mellis_ designant. Tale aliquid, sine omne dubio,
+         Adamo Bremensi quondam persuaserat insulam esse in ultimo
+         septentrione sitam, mari glaciali vicinam, vini feracem, & ea
+         propter fide tamen Danorum, _Vinlandiam_ dictam prout ipse ...
+         fateri non dubitat. Sed deceptum eum hae sive Danorum fide,
+         sive credulitate sua planum facit affine isti vocabulum
+         _Finlandiae_ provinciae ad Regnum nostrum pertinentis, pro quo
+         apud Snorronem & in Hist. Regum non semel occurrit _Vinlandiae_
+         nomen, cujus promontorium ad ultimum septentrionem & usque ad
+         mare glaciale sese extendit." Rudbeck, _Atland eller Manheim_,
+         Upsala, cir. 1689, p. 291.]
+
+[Sidenote: If he had heard it, he would probably have classed it with
+such tales as that of St. Brandan's isle.]
+
+But to hear about Vinland was one thing, to be guided by it to Japan was
+quite another affair. It was not the mention of timber and peltries and
+Skraelings that would fire the imagination of Columbus; his dreams were
+of stately cities with busy wharves where ships were laden with silks
+and jewels, and of Oriental magnates decked out with "barbaric pearl and
+gold," dwelling in pavilions of marble and jasper amid flowery gardens
+in "a summer fanned with spice." The mention of Vinland was no more
+likely to excite Columbus's attention than that of St. Brandan's isle or
+other places supposed to lie in the western ocean. He was after higher
+game.
+
+[Sidenote: He could not have obtained from such a source his opinion of
+the width of the ocean.]
+
+To suppose that Columbus, even had he got hold of the Saga of Eric the
+Red and conned it from beginning to end, with a learned interpreter at
+his elbow, could have gained from it a knowledge of the width of the
+Atlantic ocean, is simply preposterous. It would be impossible to
+extract any such knowledge from that document to-day without the aid of
+our modern maps. The most diligent critical study of all the Icelandic
+sources of information, with all the resources of modern scholarship,
+enables us with some confidence to place Vinland somewhere between Cape
+Breton and Point Judith, that is to say, somewhere between two points
+distant from each other more than four degrees in latitude and more than
+eleven degrees in longitude! When we have got thus far, knowing as we do
+that the coast in question belongs to the same continental system as
+the West Indies, we can look at our map and pick up our pair of
+compasses and measure the width of the ocean at the twenty-eighth
+parallel. But it is not the mediaeval document, but our modern map that
+guides us to this knowledge. And yet it is innocently assumed that
+Columbus, without any knowledge or suspicion of the existence of
+America, and from such vague data concerning voyages made five hundred
+years before his time, by men who had no means of reckoning latitude and
+longitude, could have obtained his figure of 2,500 miles for the voyage
+from the Canaries to Japan![476] The fallacy here is that which
+underlies the whole Scandinavian hypothesis and many other fanciful
+geographical speculations. It is the fallacy of projecting our present
+knowledge into the past.
+
+         [Footnote 476: The source of such a confusion of ideas is
+         probably the ridiculous map in Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanae_,
+         upon which North America is represented in all the accuracy of
+         outline attainable by modern maps, and then the Icelandic names
+         are put on where Rafn thought they ought to go, i. e. Markland
+         upon Nova Scotia, Vinland upon New England, etc. Any person
+         using such a map is liable to forget that it cannot possibly
+         represent the crude notions of locality to which the reports of
+         the Norse voyages must have given rise in an ignorant age. (The
+         reader will find the map reproduced in Winsor, _Narr. and Crit.
+         Hist._, i. 95.) Rafn's fault was, however, no greater than that
+         committed by the modern makers of so-called "ancient
+         atlases"--still current and in use in schools--when, for
+         example, they take a correct modern map of Europe, with parts
+         of Africa and Asia, and upon countries so dimly known to the
+         ancients as Scandinavia and Hindustan, but now drawn with
+         perfect accuracy, they simply print the ancient names!! Nothing
+         but confusion can come from using such wretched maps. The only
+         safe way to study the history of geography is to reproduce the
+         ancient maps themselves, as I have done in the present work.
+         Many of the maps given below in the second volume will
+         illustrate the slow and painful growth of the knowledge of the
+         North American coast during the two centuries after Columbus.]
+
+[Sidenote: If he had known and understood the Vinland story, he had the
+strongest motives for proclaiming it and no motive for concealing it.]
+
+We have next to inquire, if Columbus had heard of Vinland and
+comprehended its relation to his own theory about land at the west, why
+in the world should he have concealed this valuable knowledge? The
+notion seems to be that he must have kept it secret through an unworthy
+desire to claim a priority in discovery to which he knew that he was not
+entitled.[477] This is projecting our present knowledge into the past
+with a vengeance. Columbus never professed to have discovered America;
+he died in the belief that what he had done was to reach the eastern
+shores of Asia by a shorter route than the Portuguese. If he had reason
+to suppose that the Northmen had once come down from the Arctic seas to
+some unknown part of the Asiatic coast, he had no motive for concealing
+such a fact, but the strongest of motives for proclaiming it, inasmuch
+as it would have given him the kind of inductive argument which he
+sorely needed. The chief obstacle for Columbus was that for want of
+tangible evidence he was obliged to appeal to men's reason with
+scientific arguments. When you show things to young children they are
+not content with looking; they crave a more intimate acquaintance than
+the eyes alone can give, and so they reach out and handle the things.
+So when ideas are presented to grown-up men, they are apt to be
+unwilling to trust to the eye of reason until it has been supplemented
+by the eye of sense; and indeed in most affairs of life such caution is
+wholesome. The difference between Columbus and many of the "practical"
+men whom he sought to convince was that he could see with his mind's eye
+solid land beyond the Sea of Darkness while they could not. To them the
+ocean, like the sky, had nothing beyond, unless it might be the
+supernatural world.[478] For while the argument from the earth's
+rotundity was intelligible enough, there were few to whom, as to
+Toscanelli, it was a living truth. Even of those who admitted, in
+theory, that Cathay lay to the west of Europe, most deemed the distance
+untraversable. Inductive proof of the existence of accessible land to
+the west was thus what Columbus chiefly needed, and what he sought every
+opportunity to find and produce; but it was not easy to find anything
+more substantial than sailors' vague mention of driftwood of foreign
+aspect or other outlandish jetsam washed up on the Portuguese
+strand.[479] What a godsend it would have been for Columbus if he could
+have had the Vinland business to hurl at the heads of his adversaries!
+If he could have said, "Five hundred years ago some Icelanders coasted
+westward in the polar regions, and then coasted southward until they
+reached a country beyond the ocean and about opposite to France or
+Portugal; therefore that country must be Asia, and I can reach it by
+striking boldly across the ocean, which will obviously be shorter than
+going down by Guinea,"--if he could have said this, he would have had
+precisely the unanswerable argument for lack of which his case was
+waiting and suffering. In persuading men to furnish hard cash, for his
+commercial enterprise, as Colonel Higginson so neatly says, "an ounce of
+Vinland would have been worth a pound of cosmography."[480] We may be
+sure that the silence of Columbus about the Norse voyages proves that he
+knew nothing about them or quite failed to see their bearings upon his
+own undertaking. It seems to me absolutely decisive.
+
+         [Footnote 477: "The fault that we find with Columbus is, that
+         he was not honest and frank enough to tell where and how he had
+         obtained his previous information about the lands which he
+         pretended to discover." Anderson, _America not discovered by
+         Columbus_, p. 90.]
+
+         [Footnote 478: See below, p. 398, note.]
+
+         [Footnote 479: For example, the pilot Martin Vicenti told
+         Columbus that 1,200 miles west of Cape St. Vincent he had
+         picked up from the sea a piece of carved wood evidently not
+         carved with iron tools. Pedro Correa, who had married
+         Columbus's wife's sister, had seen upon Porto Santo a similar
+         piece of carving that had drifted from the west. Huge reeds
+         sometimes floated ashore upon those islands, and had not
+         Ptolemy mentioned enormous reeds as growing in eastern Asia?
+         Pine-trees of strange species were driven by west winds upon
+         the coast of Fayal, and two corpses of men of an unknown race
+         had been washed ashore upon the neighbouring island of Flores.
+         Certain sailors, on a voyage from the Azores to Ireland, had
+         caught glimpses of land on the west, and believed it to be the
+         coast of "Tartary;" etc., etc. See _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_,
+         cap. ix. Since he cited these sailors, why did he not cite the
+         Northmen also, if he knew what they had done?]
+
+         [Footnote 480: _Larger History of the United States_, p. 54.]
+
+[Sidenote: No trace of a thought of Vinland appears in the voyages of
+Columbus.]
+
+Furthermore, this silence is in harmony with the fact that in none of
+his four voyages across the Atlantic did Columbus betray any
+consciousness that there was anything for him to gain by steering toward
+the northwest. If he could correctly have conceived the position of
+Vinland he surely would not have conceived it as south of the fortieth
+parallel. On his first voyage he steered due west in latitude 28 deg.
+because Toscanelli placed Japan opposite the Canaries. When at length
+some doubts began to arise and he altered his course, as we shall
+hereafter see, the change was toward the southwest. His first two
+voyages did not reveal to him the golden cities for which he was
+looking, and when on his third and fourth voyages he tried a different
+course it was farther toward the equator, not farther away from it, that
+he turned his prows. Not the slightest trace of a thought of Vinland
+appears in anything that he did.
+
+[Sidenote: Why did not Norway or Iceland utter a protest in 1493?]
+
+Finally it may be asked, if the memory of Vinland was such a living
+thing in Iceland in 1477 that a visitor would be likely to be told about
+it, why was it not sufficiently alive in 1493 to call forth a protest
+from the North? When the pope, as we shall presently see, was
+proclaiming to the world that the Spanish crown was entitled to all
+heathen lands and islands already discovered or to be discovered in the
+ocean west of the Azores, why did not some zealous Scandinavian at once
+jump up and cry out, "Look here, old Columbus, _we_ discovered that
+western route, you know! Stop thief!" Why was it necessary to wait more
+than a hundred years longer before the affair of Vinland was mentioned
+in this connection?
+
+[Sidenote: The idea of Vinland was not associated with the idea of
+America until the seventeenth century.]
+
+Simply because it was not until the seventeenth century that the
+knowledge of North American geography had reached such a stage of
+completeness as to suggest to anybody the true significance of the old
+voyages from Greenland. That significance could not have been understood
+by Leif and Thorfinn themselves, or by the compilers of Hauks-bok and
+Flateyar-bok, or by any human being, until about the time of Henry
+Hudson. Not earlier than that time should we expect to find it
+mentioned, and it is just then, in 1610, that we do find it mentioned by
+Arngrim Jonsson, who calls Vinland "an island of _America_, in the
+region of Greenland, perhaps the modern Estotilandia."[481] This is the
+earliest glimmering of an association of the idea of Vinland with that
+of America.
+
+         [Footnote 481: "Terram vero Landa Rolfoni quaesitam existimarem
+         esse Vinlandiam olim Islandis sic dictam; de qua alibi insulam
+         nempe Americae e regione Gronlandiae, quae forte hodie
+         Estotilandia," etc. _Crymogoea_, Hamburg, 1610, p. 120.
+
+         Abraham Ortelius in 1606 speaks of the Northmen coming to
+         America, but bases his opinion upon the Zeno narrative
+         (published in 1558) and upon the sound of the name _Norumbega_,
+         and apparently knows nothing of Vinland:--"Iosephus Acosta in
+         his book _De Natura noui orbis_ indeuors by many reasons to
+         proue, that this part of _America_ was originally inhabited by
+         certaine Indians, forced thither by tempestuous weather ouer
+         the South sea which now they call Mare del Zur. But to me it
+         seemes more probable, out of the historie of the two Zeni,
+         gentlemen of Venice, ... that this New World many ages past was
+         entred upon by some islanders of _Europe_, as namely of
+         _Groenland_, Island, and Frisland; being much neerer thereunto
+         than the Indians, nor disioyned thence ... by an Ocean so huge,
+         and to the Indians so vnnauigable. Also, what else may we
+         coniecture to be signified by this _Norumbega_ [the name of a
+         North region of _America_] but that from _Norway_, signifying a
+         North land, some Colonie in times past hath hither beene
+         transplanted?" _Theatre of the Whole World_, London, 1606, p.
+         5. These passages are quoted and discussed by Reeves, _The
+         Finding of Wineland the Good_, pp. 95, 96. The supposed
+         connection of _Norumbega_ with _Norway_ is very doubtful.
+         Possibly Stephanius, in his map of 1570 (Torfaeus, _Gronlandia
+         antiqua_, 1706), may have had reference to Labrador or the
+         north of Newfoundland.]
+
+[Sidenote: Resume of the genesis of Columbus's scheme.]
+
+[Sidenote: Martin Behaim's improved astrolabe.]
+
+[Sidenote: Negotiations of Columbus with John II. of Portugal.]
+
+[Sidenote: A shabby trick.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus leaves Portugal,]
+
+[Sidenote: and enters the service of the Spanish sovereigns, 1486.]
+
+[Sidenote: The junto at Salamanca.]
+
+The genesis of the grand scheme of Columbus has now been set forth, I
+believe, with sufficient fulness. The cardinal facts are 1, that the
+need for some such scheme was suggested in 1471, by the discovery that
+the Guinea coast extended south of the equator; 2, that by 1474 advice
+had been sought from Toscanelli by the king of Portugal, and not very
+long after 1474 by Columbus; 3, that upon Toscanelli's letters and map,
+amended by the Ptolemaic estimate of the earth's size and by the
+authority of passages quoted in the book of Alliacus (one of which was a
+verse from the Apocrypha), Columbus based his firm conviction of the
+feasibleness of the western route. How or by whom the suggestion of that
+route was first made--whether by Columbus himself or by Toscanelli or by
+Fernando Martinez or, as Antonio Gallo declares, by Bartholomew
+Columbus,[482] or by some person in Portugal whose name we know not--it
+would be difficult to decide. Neither can we fix the date when Columbus
+first sought aid for his scheme from the Portuguese government. There
+seems to be no good reason why he should not have been talking about it
+before 1474; but the affair did not come to any kind of a climax until
+after his return from Guinea, some time after 1482 and certainly not
+later than 1484. It was on some accounts a favourable time. The war with
+Castile was out of the way, and Martin Behaim had just invented an
+improved astrolabe which made it ever so much easier to find and keep
+one's latitude at sea. It was in 1484 that Portuguese discoveries took a
+fresh start after a ten years' lull, and Diego Cam, with the learned
+Behaim and his bran-new astrolabe on board, was about to sail a thousand
+miles farther south than white men had ever gone before. About this time
+the scheme of Columbus was formally referred by King John II. to the
+junto of learned cosmographers from whom the crown had been wont to seek
+advice. The project was condemned as "visionary,"[483] as indeed it
+was,--the outcome of vision that saw farther than those men could see.
+But the king, who had some of his uncle Prince Henry's love for bold
+enterprises, was more hospitably inclined toward the ideas of Columbus,
+and he summoned a council of the most learned men in the kingdom to
+discuss the question.[484] In this council the new scheme found some
+defenders, while others correctly urged that Columbus must be wrong in
+supposing Asia to extend so far to the east, and it must be a much
+longer voyage than he supposed to Cipango and Cathay,[485] Others
+argued that the late war had impoverished the country, and that the
+enterprises on the African coast were all that the treasury could
+afford. Here the demands of Columbus were of themselves an obstacle to
+his success. He never at any time held himself cheap,[486] and the
+rewards and honours for which he insisted on stipulating were greater
+than the king of Portugal felt inclined to bestow upon a plain Genoese
+mariner. It was felt that if the enterprise should prove a failure, as
+very likely it would, the less heartily the government should have
+committed itself to it beforehand, the less it would expose itself to
+ridicule. King John was not in general disposed toward unfair and
+dishonest dealings, but on this occasion, after much parley, he was
+persuaded to sanction a proceeding quite unworthy of him. Having
+obtained Columbus's sailing plans, he sent out a ship secretly, to carry
+some goods to the Cape Verde islands, and then to try the experiment of
+the westward voyage. If there should turn out to be anything profitable
+in the scheme, this would be safer and more frugal than to meet the
+exorbitant demands of this ambitious foreigner. So it was done; but the
+pilots, having no grand idea to urge them forward, lost heart before the
+stupendous expanse of waters that confronted them, and beat an
+ignominious retreat to Lisbon; whereupon Columbus, having been informed
+of the trick,[487] departed in high dudgeon, to lay his proposals before
+the crown of Castile. He seems to have gone rather suddenly, leaving
+his wife, who died shortly after, and one or two children who must also
+have died, for he tells us that he never saw them again. But his son
+Diego, aged perhaps four or five years, he took with him as far as the
+town of Huelva, near the little port of Palos in Andalusia, where he
+left him with one of his wife's sisters, who had married a man of that
+town named Muliar.[488] This arrival in Spain was probably late in the
+autumn of 1484, and Columbus seems to have entered into the service of
+Ferdinand and Isabella January 20, 1486. What he was doing in the
+interval of rather more than a year is not known. There is a very
+doubtful tradition that he tried to interest the republic of Genoa in
+his enterprise,[489] and a still more doubtful rumour that he afterwards
+made proposals to the Venetian senate.[490] If these things ever
+happened, there was time enough for them in this year, and they can
+hardly be assigned to any later period. In 1486 we find Columbus at
+Cordova, where the sovereigns were holding court. He was unable to
+effect anything until he had gained the ear of Isabella's finance
+minister Alonso de Quintanilla, who had a mind hospitable to large
+ideas. The two sovereigns had scarcely time to attend to such things,
+for there was a third king in Spain, the Moor at Granada, whom there now
+seemed a fair prospect of driving to Africa, and thus ending the
+struggle that had lasted with few intermissions for nearly eight
+centuries. The final war with Granada had been going on since the end of
+1481, and considering how it weighed upon the minds of Ferdinand and
+Isabella it is rather remarkable that cosmography got any hearing at
+all. The affair was referred to the queen's confessor Fernando de
+Talavera, whose first impression was that if what Columbus said was
+true, it was very strange that other geographers should have failed to
+know all about it long ago. Ideas of evolution had not yet begun to
+exist in those days, and it was thought that what the ancients did not
+know was not worth knowing. Toward the end of 1486 the Spanish
+sovereigns were at Salamanca, and Talavera referred the question to a
+junto of learned men, including professors of the famous
+university.[491] There was no lack of taunt and ridicule, and a whole
+arsenal of texts from Scripture and the Fathers were discharged at
+Columbus, but it is noticeable that quite a number were inclined to
+think that his scheme might be worth trying, and that some of his most
+firmly convinced supporters were priests. No decision had been reached
+when the sovereigns started on the Malaga campaign in the spring of
+1487.
+
+         [Footnote 482: Gallo, _De navigatione Columbi_, apud Muratori,
+         _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, tom. xxiii. col. 302.]
+
+         [Footnote 483: Lafuente, _Historia de Espana_, tom. ix, p.
+         428.]
+
+         [Footnote 484: Vasconcellos, _Vida del rey Don Juan II._, lib.
+         iv.; La Clede, _Histoire de Portugal_, lib. xiii.]
+
+         [Footnote 485: The Portuguese have never been able to forgive
+         Columbus for discovering a new world for Spain, and their
+         chagrin sometimes vents itself in amusing ways. After all, says
+         Cordeiro, Columbus was no such great man as some people think,
+         for he did not discover what he promised to discover; and,
+         moreover, the Portuguese geographers were right in condemning
+         his scheme, because it really is not so far by sea from Lisbon
+         around Africa to Hindustan as from Lisbon by any practicable
+         route westward to Japan! See Luciano Cordeiro, _De la part
+         prise par les Portugais dans la decouverte d'Amerique_, Lisbon,
+         1876, pp. 23, 24, 29, 30. Well, I don't know that there is any
+         answer to be made to this argument. Logic is logic, says the
+         wise Autocrat:--
+
+            "End of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
+            Logic is logic, that's all I say."
+
+         Cordeiro's book is elaborately criticised in the learned work
+         of Prospero Peragallo, _Cristoforo Colombo in Portogallo: studi
+         critici_, Genoa, 1882.]
+
+         [Footnote 486: "Perciocche essendo l' Ammiraglio di generosi ed
+         alti pensieri, volle capitolare con suo grande onore e
+         vantaggio, per lasciar la memoria sua, e la grandezza della sua
+         casa, conforme alla grandezza delle sue opere e de' suoi
+         meriti." _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi. The jealous
+         Portuguese historian speaks in a somewhat different tone from
+         the affectionate son:--"Veo requerer a el rey Dom Joao que le
+         desse algums navios pera ir a descobrir a ilha de Gypango
+         [_sic_] per esta mar occidental.... El rey, porque via ser este
+         Christovao Colom homem falador e glorioso em mostrar suas
+         habilidades, e mas fantastico et de imaginacao com sua ilha de
+         Cypango, que certo no que dezia: davalhe pouco credito."
+         Barros, _Decada primeira da Asia_, Lisbon, 1752, liv. iii. cap.
+         xi. fol. 56.]
+
+         [Footnote 487: It has been urged in the king's defence that
+         "such a proceeding was not an instance of bad faith or perfidy
+         (!) but rather of the policy customary at that time, which
+         consisted in distrusting everything that was foreign, and in
+         promoting by whatever means the national glory." Yes, indeed,
+         whether the means were fair or foul. Of course it was a common
+         enough policy, but it was lying and cheating all the same. "Nao
+         foi sem duvida por ma fe ou perfidia que tacitamente se mandon
+         armar hum navio a cujo capitao se confiou o plano que Colombo
+         havia proposto, e cuja execucao se lhe encarregou; mas sim por
+         seguir a politica naquelle tempo usada, que toda consistia em
+         olhar com desconfianca para tudo o que era estrangeiro, e en
+         promover por todos os modos a gloria nacional. O capitao
+         nomeado para a empreza, como nao tivesse nem o espirito, nem a
+         conviccao de Colombo, depois de huma curta viagem nos mares do
+         Oeste, fez-se na volta da terra: e arribou a Lisboa descontente
+         e desanimado." Campe, _Historia do descobrimento da America_,
+         Paris, 1836, tom. i. p. 13. The frightened sailors protested
+         that YOU MIGHT AS WELL EXPECT TO FIND LAND IN THE SKY AS IN
+         THAT WASTE OF WATERS! See Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_,
+         tom. i. p. 221. Las Casas calls the king's conduct by its right
+         name, _dobladura_, "trickery."]
+
+         [Footnote 488: It has generally been supposed, on the authority
+         of _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xi., that his wife had lately
+         died; but an autograph letter of Columbus, in the possession of
+         his lineal descendant and representative the present Duke of
+         Veraguas, proves that this is a mistake. In this letter
+         Columbus says expressly that when he left Portugal he left wife
+         and children, and never saw them again. (Navarrete,
+         _Coleccion_, tom. ii. doc. cxxxvii. p. 255.) As Las Casas, who
+         knew Diego so well, also supposed his mother to have died
+         before his father left Portugal, it is most likely that she
+         died soon afterwards. Ferdinand Columbus says that Diego was
+         left in charge of some friars at the convent of La Rabida near
+         Palos (_loc. cit._); Las Casas is not quite so sure; he thinks
+         Diego was left with some friend of his father at Palos, or
+         perhaps (_por ventura_) at La Rabida. (_Historia_, tom. i. p.
+         227.) These mistakes were easy to make, for both La Rabida and
+         Huelva were close by Palos, and we know that Diego's aunt
+         Muliar was living at Huelva. (Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom. i. p.
+         241; Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 279, 356, 391; tom. ii. p. 229.) It
+         is pretty clear that Columbus never visited La Rabida before
+         the autumn of 1491 (see below, p. 412). My own notion is that
+         Columbus may have left his wife with an infant and perhaps one
+         older child, relieving her of the care of Diego by taking him
+         to his aunt, and intending as soon as practicable to reunite
+         the family. He clearly did not know at the outset whether he
+         should stay in Spain or not.]
+
+         [Footnote 489: It rests upon an improbable statement of
+         Ramusio, who places the event as early as 1470. The first
+         Genoese writer to allude to it is Casoni, _Annali della
+         Republica di Genova_, Genoa, 1708, pp. 26-31. Such testimony is
+         of small value.]
+
+         [Footnote 490: First mentioned in 1800 by Marin, _Storia del
+         commercio de Veneziani_, Venice, 1798-1808, tom. vii. p. 236.]
+
+         [Footnote 491: The description usually given of this conference
+         rests upon the authority of Remesal, _Historia de la prouincia
+         de Chyapa_, Madrid, 1619, lib. ii. cap. vii. p. 52. Las Casas
+         merely says that the question was referred to certain persons
+         at the court, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 228. It is
+         probably not true that the project of Columbus was officially
+         condemned by the university of Salamanca as a corporate body.
+         See Camara, _Religion y Ciencia_, Valladolid, 1880, p. 261.]
+
+[Sidenote: Birth of Ferdinand Columbus, Aug. 15, 1488.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bartholomew Columbus returns from the Cape of Good Hope, Dec,
+1487.]
+
+[Sidenote: Christopher visits Bartholomew at Lisbon, cir. Sept., 1488;]
+
+[Sidenote: and sends him to England.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bartholomew, after mishaps, reaches England cir. Feb., 1490;]
+
+[Sidenote: and goes thence to France before 1492.]
+
+After the surrender of Malaga in August, 1487, Columbus visited the
+court in that city. For a year or more after that time silken chains
+seem to have bound him to Cordova. He had formed a connection with a
+lady of noble family, Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, who gave birth to his
+son Ferdinand on the 15th of August, 1488.[492] Shortly after this
+event, Columbus made a visit to Lisbon, in all probability for the
+purpose of meeting his brother Bartholomew, who had returned in the last
+week of December, 1487, in the Dias expedition, with the proud news of
+the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope,[493] which was rightly
+believed to be the extremity of Africa; and we can well understand how
+Christopher, on seeing the success of Prince Henry's method of reaching
+the Indies so nearly vindicated, must have become more impatient than
+ever to prove the superiority of his own method. It was probably not
+long after Bartholomew's return that Christopher determined to go and
+see him, for he applied to King John II. for a kind of safe-conduct,
+which was duly granted March 20, 1488. This document[494] guarantees
+Christopher against arrest or arraignment or detention on any charge
+civil or criminal whatever, during his stay in Portugal, and commands
+all magistrates in that kingdom to respect it. From this it would seem
+probable that in the eagerness of his geographical speculations he had
+neglected his business affairs and left debts behind him in Portugal for
+which he was liable to be arrested. The king's readiness to grant the
+desired privilege seems to indicate that he may have cherished a hope of
+regaining the services of this accomplished chart-maker and mariner.
+Christopher did not avail himself of the privilege until late in the
+summer,[495] and it is only fair to suppose that he waited for the birth
+of his child and some assurance of its mother's safety. On meeting
+Bartholomew he evidently set him to work forthwith in making overtures
+to the courts of England and France. It was natural enough that
+Bartholomew should first set out for Bristol, where old shipmates and
+acquaintances were sure to be found. It appears that on the way he was
+captured by pirates, and thus some delay was occasioned before he
+arrived in London and showed the king a map, probably similar to
+Toscanelli's and embellished with quaint Latin verses. An entry on this
+map informs us that it was made by Bartholomew Columbus in London,
+February 10, 1488, which I think should be read 1489 or even 1490, so we
+may suppose it to have been about that time or perhaps later that he
+approached the throne.[496] Henry VII. was intelligent enough to see
+the bearings of Bartholomew's arguments, and at the same time, as a good
+man of business, he was likely to be cautious about investing money in
+remote or doubtful enterprises. What arguments were used we do not know,
+but the spring of 1492 had arrived before any decisive answer had been
+given. Meanwhile Bartholomew had made his way to France, and found a
+powerful protector in a certain Madame de Bourbon,[497] while he made
+maps for people at the court and waited to see if there were any
+chances of getting help from Charles VIII.
+
+         [Footnote 492: Some historians, unwilling to admit any
+         blemishes in the character of Columbus, have supposed that this
+         union was sanctioned by marriage, but this is not probable. He
+         seems to have been tenderly attached to Beatriz, who survived
+         him many years. See Harrisse, tom. ii. pp. 353-357.]
+
+         [Footnote 493: The authority for Bartholomew Columbus having
+         sailed to the Cape of Good Hope with Dias is a manuscript note
+         of his own in Christopher's copy of the _Imago Mundi_: "Nota
+         quod hoc anno de 88 [it should be 87] in mense decembri appulit
+         in Ulixbona Bartholomeus Didacus capitaneus trium carabelarum
+         quem miserat serenissimus rex Portugalie in Guineam ad
+         tentandum terrain. Et renunciavit ipse serenissimo regi prout
+         navigaverat ultra jam navigata leuchas 600, videlicet 450 ad
+         austrum et 150 ad aquilonem usque montem per ipsum nominatum
+         _Cabo de boa esperanca_ quem in Agesimba estimamus. Qui quidem
+         in eo loco invenit se distare per astrolabium ultra lineam
+         equinoctialem gradus 35. Quem viagium pictavit et scripsit de
+         leucha in leucham in una carta navigationis ut oculi visum
+         ostenderet ipso serenissimo regi. In quibus omnibus interfui."
+         M. Varnhagen has examined this note and thinks it is in the
+         handwriting of Christopher Columbus (_Bulletin de Geographie_,
+         janvier, 1858, tom. xv. p. 71); and M. d'Avezac (_Canevas
+         chronologique_, p. 58), accepting this opinion, thinks that the
+         words _in quibus omnibus interfui_, "in all of which I took
+         part," only mean that Christopher was present in Lisbon when
+         the expedition returned, and heard the whole story! With all
+         possible respect for such great scholars as MM. d'Avezac and
+         Varnhagen, I submit that the opinion of Las Casas, who first
+         called attention to this note, must be much better than theirs
+         on such a point as the handwriting of the two brothers. When
+         Las Casas found the note he wondered whether it was meant for
+         Bartholomew or Christopher, i. e. wondered which of the two was
+         meant to be described as having "taken part;" but at all
+         events, says Las Casas, the handwriting is
+         Bartholomew's:--"Estas son palabras escritas de la mano de
+         Bartolome Colon, no se si las escribio de si o de su letra por
+         su hermano Cristobal Colon." Under these circumstances it seems
+         idle to suppose that Las Casas could have been mistaken about
+         the handwriting; he evidently put his mind on that point, and
+         in the next breath he goes on to say, "la letra yo conozco ser
+         de Bartolome Colon, porque tuve muchas suyas," i. e. "I know it
+         is Bartholomew's writing, for I have had many letters of his;"
+         and again "estas palabras ... de la misma letra y mano de
+         Bartolome Colon, la cual muy bien conoci y agora tengo hartas
+         cartas y letras suyas, tratando deste viaje," i. e. "these
+         words ... from the very writing and hand of Bartholomew
+         Columbus, which I knew very well, and I have to-day many charts
+         and letters of his, treating of this voyage." (_Hist. de las
+         Indias_, tom. i. pp. 213, 214.) This last sentence makes Las
+         Casas an independent witness to Bartholomew's presence in the
+         expedition, a matter about which he was not likely to be
+         mistaken. What puzzled him was the question, not whether
+         Bartholomew went, but whether Christopher could have gone also,
+         "pudo ser tambien que se hallase Cristobal Colon." Now
+         Christopher certainly did not go on that voyage. The expedition
+         started in August, 1486, and returned to Lisbon in December,
+         1487, after an absence of sixteen months and seventeen days,
+         "anendo dezaseis meses et dezasete dias que erao partidos
+         delle." (Barros, _Decada primeira da Asia_, Lisbon, 1752, tom.
+         i. fol. 42, 44.) The account-book of the treasury of Castile
+         shows that sums of money were paid to Christopher at Seville,
+         May 5, July 3, August 27, and October 15, 1487; so that he
+         could not have gone with Dias (see Harrisse, tom. ii. p. 191).
+         Neither could Christopher have been in Lisbon in December,
+         1487, when the little fleet returned, for his safe-conduct from
+         King John is dated March 20, 1488. It was not until the autumn
+         of 1488 that Columbus made this visit to Portugal, and M.
+         d'Avezac has got the return of the fleet a year too late.
+         Bartholomew's note followed a custom which made 1488 begin at
+         Christmas, 1487.
+
+         In reading a later chapter of Las Casas for another purpose
+         (tom. i. p. 227), I come again upon this point. He rightly
+         concludes that Christopher could not have gone with Dias, and
+         again declares most positively that the handwriting of the note
+         was Bartholomew's and not Christopher's.
+
+         This footnote affords a good illustration of the kind of
+         difficulties that surround such a subject as the life of
+         Columbus, and the ease with which an excess of ingenuity may
+         discover mare's nests.]
+
+         [Footnote 494: It may be found in Navarrete, _Coleccion de
+         viages_, tom. ii. pp. 5, 6.]
+
+         [Footnote 495: The account-book of the treasury shows that on
+         June 16 he was still in Spain. See Harrisse, tom. i. p. 355.]
+
+         [Footnote 496: The entry, as given by Las Casas, is "Pro
+         authore, seu pictore, || Gennua cui patria est, nomen cui
+         Bartolomeus || Columbus de terra rubea, opus edidit istud ||
+         Londonije: anno domini millesimo quatercentessimo octiesque uno
+         || Atque insuper anno octavo: decimaque die mensis Februarii.
+         || Laudes Christo cantentur abunde." _Historia_, tom. i. p.
+         225. Now since Bartholomew Columbus was a fairly educated man,
+         writing this note in England on a map made for the eyes of the
+         king of England, I suppose he used the old English style which
+         made the year begin at the vernal equinox instead of Christmas,
+         so that his February, 1488, means the next month but one after
+         December, 1488, i. e. what in our new style becomes February,
+         1489. Bartholomew returned to Lisbon from Africa in the last
+         week of December, 1487, and it is not likely that his plans
+         could have been matured and himself settled down in London in
+         less than seven weeks. The logical relation of the events, too,
+         shows plainly that Christopher's visit to Lisbon was for the
+         purpose of consulting his brother and getting first-hand
+         information about the greatest voyage the world had ever seen.
+         In the early weeks of 1488 Christopher sends his request for a
+         safe-conduct, gets it March 20, waits till his child is born,
+         August 15, and then presently goes. Bartholomew may have sailed
+         by the first of October for England, where (according to this
+         reading of his date) we actually find him four months later.
+         What happened to him in this interval? Here we come to the
+         story of the pirates. M. Harrisse, who never loses an
+         opportunity for throwing discredit upon the _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, has failed to make the correction of date which I
+         have here suggested. He puts Bartholomew in London in February,
+         1488, and is thus unable to assign any reason for Christopher's
+         visit to Lisbon. He also finds that in the forty-six days
+         between Christmas, 1487, and February, 10, 1488, there is
+         hardly room enough for any delay due to so grave a cause as
+         capture by pirates. (_Christophe Colomb_, vol. ii. p. 192.) He
+         therefore concludes that the statement in the _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. xi., is unworthy of credit, and it is upon an
+         accumulation of small difficulties like this that he bases his
+         opinion that Ferdinand Columbus cannot have written that book.
+         But Las Casas also gives the story of the pirates, and adds the
+         information that they were "Easterlings," though he cannot say
+         of what nation, i. e. whether Dutch, German, or perhaps Danes.
+         He says that Bartholomew was stripped of his money and fell
+         sick, and after his recovery was obliged to earn money by
+         map-making before he could get to England. (_Historia_, tom. i.
+         p. 225.) Could all this have happened within the four months
+         which I have allowed between October, 1488, and February, 1489?
+         Voyages before the invention of steamboats were of very
+         uncertain duration. John Adams in 1784 was fifty-four days in
+         getting from London to Amsterdam (see my _Critical Period of
+         American History_, p. 156). But with favourable weather a
+         Portuguese caravel in 1488 ought to have run from Lisbon to
+         Bristol in fourteen days or less, so that in four months there
+         would be time enough for quite a chapter of accidents. Las
+         Casas, however, says it was _a long time_ before Bartholomew
+         was able to reach England:--"Esto fue causa que enfermase y
+         viniese a mucha pobreza, y estuviese mucho tempo sin poder
+         llegar a Inglaterra, hasta tanto que quiso Dies sanarle; y
+         reformado algo, por su industria y trabajos de sus manos,
+         haciendo cartas de marear, llego a Inglaterra, y, pasados un
+         dia y otros, hobo de alcanzar que le oyese Enrique VII." It is
+         impossible, I think, to read this passage without feeling that
+         at least a year must have been consumed; and I do not think we
+         are entitled to disregard the words of Las Casas in such a
+         matter. But how shall we get the time?
+
+         Is it possible that Las Casas made a slight mistake in
+         deciphering the date on Bartholomew's map? Either that mariner
+         did not give the map to Henry VII., or the king gave it back,
+         or more likely it was made in duplicate. At any rate Las Casas
+         had it, along with his many other Columbus documents, and for
+         aught we know it may still be tumbling about somewhere in the
+         Spanish archives. It was so badly written (_de muy mala e
+         corrupta letra_), apparently in abbreviations (_sin
+         ortografia_), that Las Casas says he found extreme difficulty
+         in making it out. Now let us observe that date, which is given
+         in fantastic style, apparently because the inscription is in a
+         rude doggerel, and the writer seems to have wished to keep his
+         "verses" tolerably even. (They don't scan much better than Walt
+         Whitman's.) As it stands, the date reads _anno domini millesimo
+         quatercentessimo octiesque uno atque insuper anno octavo_, i.
+         e. "in the year of our Lord the thousandth, four hundredth, AND
+         EIGHT-TIMES-ONE, and thereafter the eighth year." What business
+         has this cardinal number _octiesque uno_ in a row of ordinals?
+         If it were translatable, which it is not, it would give us
+         1,000 + 400 + 8 + 8 = 1416, an absurd date. The most obvious
+         way to make the passage readable is to insert the ordinal
+         _octogesimo primo_ instead of the incongruous _octiesque uno_;
+         then it will read "in the year of our Lord the
+         one-thousand-four-hundred-and-eighty-first, and thereafter the
+         eighth year," that is to say 1489. Now translate old style into
+         new style, and February, 1489, becomes February, 1490, which I
+         believe to be the correct date. This allows sixteen months for
+         Bartholomew's mishaps; it justifies the statement in which Las
+         Casas confirms Ferdinand Columbus; and it harmonizes with the
+         statement of Lord Bacon: "For Christopherus Columbus, refused
+         by the king of Portugal (who would not embrace at once both
+         east and west), employed his brother Bartholomew Columbus unto
+         King Henry to negotiate for his discovery. And it so fortuned
+         that he was taken by pirates at sea; by which accidental
+         impediment he was long ere he came to the king; so long that
+         before he had obtained a capitulation with the king for his
+         brother the enterprise was achieved, and so the West Indies by
+         Providence were then reserved for the crown of Castilia."
+         _Historie of the Raygne of K. Henry the Seventh_, Bacon's
+         _Works_, Boston, 1860, vol. xi. p. 296. Lord Bacon may have
+         taken the statement from Ferdinand's biography; but it probably
+         agreed with English traditions, and ought not to be slighted in
+         this connection.]
+
+         [Footnote 497: One of the sisters of Charles VIII. See
+         Harrisse, tom. ii. p. 194.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Duke of Medina-Celi proposes to furnish the ships for
+Columbus,]
+
+[Sidenote: but Isabella withholds her consent.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus makes up his mind to get his family together and go
+to France, Oct., 1491.]
+
+As for Christopher Columbus, we find him back in Spain again, in May,
+1489, attending court at Cordova. In the following autumn there was much
+suffering in Spain from floods and famine,[498] and the sovereigns were
+too busy with the Moorish war to give ear to Columbus. It was no time
+for new undertakings, and the weary suitor began to think seriously of
+going in person to the French court. First, however, he thought it worth
+while to make an attempt to get private capital enlisted in his
+enterprise, and in the Spain of that day such private capital meant a
+largess from some wealthy grandee. Accordingly about Christmas of 1489,
+after the Beza campaign in which Columbus is said to have fought with
+distinguished valour,[499] he seems to have applied to the most powerful
+nobleman in Spain, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, but without success. But
+at the hands of Luis de la Cerda, Duke of Medina-Celi, he met with more
+encouragement than he had as yet found in any quarter. That nobleman
+entertained Columbus most hospitably at his castle at Puerto de Santa
+Maria for nearly two years, until the autumn of 1491. He became
+convinced that the scheme of Columbus was feasible, and decided to fit
+up two or three caravels at his own expense, if necessary, but first he
+thought it proper to ask the queen's consent, and to offer her another
+chance to take part in the enterprise.[500] Isabella was probably
+unwilling to have the duke come in for a large share of the profits in
+case the venture should prove successful. She refused the royal license,
+saying that she had not quite made up her mind whether to take up the
+affair or not, but if she should decide to do so she would be glad to
+have the duke take part in it.[501] Meanwhile she referred the question
+to Alonso de Quintanilla, comptroller of the treasury of Castile. This
+was in the spring of 1491, when the whole country was in a buzz of
+excitement with the preparations for the siege of Granada. The baffled
+Columbus visited the sovereigns in camp, but could not get them to
+attend to him, and early in the autumn, thoroughly disgusted and sick at
+heart, he made up his mind to shake the dust of Castile from his feet
+and see what could be done in France. In October or November he went to
+Huelva, apparently to get his son Diego, who had been left there, in
+charge of his aunt. It was probably his intention to take all the family
+he had--Beatriz and her infant son Ferdinand, of whom he was extremely
+fond, as well as Diego--and find a new home in either France or England,
+besides ascertaining what had become of his brother Bartholomew, from
+whom he had not heard a word since the latter left Portugal for
+England.[502]
+
+         [Footnote 498: Bernaldez, _Reyes Catolicos_, cap. xci.]
+
+         [Footnote 499: Zuniga, _Anales de Sevilla_, lib. xii. p. 404.]
+
+         [Footnote 500: See the letter of March 19, 1493, from the Duke
+         of Medina-Celi to the Grand Cardinal of Spain (from the
+         archives of Simancas) in Navarrete _Coleccion de viages_, tom.
+         ii. p. 20.]
+
+         [Footnote 501: This promise was never fulfilled. When Columbus
+         returned in triumph, arriving March 6, 1493, at Lisbon, and
+         March 15 at Palos, the Duke of Medina-Celi wrote the letter
+         just cited, recalling the queen's promise and asking to be
+         allowed to send to the Indies once each year an expedition on
+         his own account; for, he says, if he had not kept Columbus with
+         him in 1490 and 1491 he would have gone to France, and Castile
+         would have lost the prize. There was some force in this, but
+         Isabella does not appear to have heeded the request.]
+
+         [Footnote 502: This theory of the situation is fully sustained
+         by Las Casas, tom. i. p. 241.]
+
+[Sidenote: He stops at La Rabida, and meets the prior Juan Perez.]
+
+[Sidenote: Perez writes to the queen,]
+
+[Sidenote: and Columbus is summoned back to court.]
+
+But now at length events took a favourable turn. Fate had grown tired of
+fighting against such indomitable perseverance. For some years now the
+stately figure of Columbus had been a familiar sight in the streets of
+Seville and Cordova, and as he passed along, with his white hair
+streaming in the breeze, and countenance aglow with intensity of purpose
+or haggard with disappointment at some fresh rebuff, the ragged urchins
+of the pavement tapped their foreheads and smiled with mingled wonder
+and amusement at this madman. Seventeen years had elapsed since the
+letter from Toscanelli to Martinez, and all that was mortal of the
+Florentine astronomer had long since been laid in the grave. For
+Columbus himself old age was not far away, yet he seemed no nearer the
+fulfilment of his grand purpose than when he had first set it forth to
+the king of Portugal. We can well imagine that when he started from
+Huelva, with his little son Diego, now some eleven or twelve years old,
+again to begin renewing his suit in a strange country, his thoughts must
+have been sombre enough. For some reason or other--tradition says to ask
+for some bread and water for his boy--he stopped at the Franciscan
+monastery of La Rabida, about half a league from Palos. The prior, Juan
+Perez, who had never seen Columbus before, became greatly interested in
+him and listened with earnest attention to his story. This worthy monk,
+who before 1478 had been Isabella's father-confessor, had a mind
+hospitable to new ideas. He sent for Garcia Fernandez, a physician of
+Palos, who was somewhat versed in cosmography, and for Martin Alonso
+Pinzon, a well-to-do ship-owner and trained mariner of that town, and in
+the quiet of the monastery a conference was held in which Columbus
+carried conviction to the minds of these new friends. Pinzon declared
+himself ready to embark in the enterprise in person. The venerable prior
+forthwith sent a letter to the queen, and received a very prompt reply
+summoning him to attend her in the camp before Granada. The result of
+the interview was that within a few days Perez returned to the convent
+with a purse of 20,000 maravedis (equivalent to about 1,180 dollars of
+the present day), out of which Columbus bought a new suit of clothes and
+a mule; and about the first of December he set out for the camp in
+company with Juan Perez, leaving the boy Diego in charge of the priest
+Martin Sanchez and a certain Rodriguez Cabejudo, upon whose sworn
+testimony, together with that of the physician Garcia Fernandez, some
+years afterward, several of these facts are related.[503]
+
+         [Footnote 503: My account of these proceedings at La Rabida
+         differs in some particulars from any heretofore given, and I
+         think gets the events into an order of sequence that is at once
+         more logical and more in harmony with the sources of
+         information than any other. The error of Ferdinand Columbus--a
+         very easy one to commit, and not in the least damaging to his
+         general character as biographer--lay in confusing his father's
+         two real visits (in 1484 and 1491) to Huelva with two visits
+         (one imaginary in 1484 and one real in 1491) to La Rabida,
+         which was close by, between Huelva and Palos. The visits were
+         all the more likely to get mixed up in recollection because in
+         each case their object was little Diego and in each case he was
+         left in charge of somebody in that neighbourhood. The confusion
+         has been helped by another for which Ferdinand is not
+         responsible, viz.: the friar Juan Perez has been confounded
+         with another friar Antonio de Marchena, who Columbus says was
+         the only person who from the time of his first arrival in Spain
+         had always befriended him and never mocked at him. These worthy
+         friars twain have been made into one (e. g. "the prior of the
+         convent, Juan Perez de Marchena," Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i.
+         p. 128), and it has often been supposed that Marchena's
+         acquaintance began with Columbus at La Rabida in 1484, and that
+         Diego was left at the convent at that time. But some modern
+         sources of information have served at first to bemuddle, and
+         then when more carefully sifted, to clear up the story. In 1508
+         Diego Columbus brought suit against the Spanish crown to
+         vindicate his claim to certain territories discovered by his
+         father, and there was a long investigation in which many
+         witnesses were summoned and past events were busily raked over
+         the coals. Among these witnesses were Rodriguez Cabejudo and
+         the physician Garcia Fernandez, who gave from personal
+         recollection a very lucid account of the affairs at La Rabida.
+         These proceedings are printed in Navarrete, _Coleccion de
+         viages_, tom. iii. pp. 238-591. More recently the publication
+         of the great book of Las Casas has furnished some very
+         significant clues, and the elaborate researches of M. Harrisse
+         have furnished others. (See Las Casas, lib. i. cap. xxix.,
+         xxxi.; Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 341-372; tom. ii. pp. 237-231; cf.
+         Peragallo, _L' autenticita_, etc., pp. 117-134.)--It now seems
+         clear that Marchena, whom Columbus knew from his first arrival
+         in Spain, was not associated with La Rabida. At that time
+         Columbus left Diego, a mere infant, with his wife's sister at
+         Huelva. Seven years later, intending to leave Spain forever, he
+         went to Huelva and took Diego, then a small boy. On his way
+         from Huelva to the Seville road, and thence to Cordova (where
+         he would have been joined by Beatriz and Ferdinand), he
+         happened to pass by La Rabida, where up to that time he was
+         evidently unknown, and to attract the attention of the prior
+         Juan Perez, and the wheel of fortune suddenly and unexpectedly
+         turned. As Columbus's next start was not for France, but for
+         Granada, his boy was left in charge of two trustworthy persons.
+         On May 8, 1492, the little Diego was appointed page to Don
+         John, heir-apparent to the thrones of Castile and Aragon, with
+         a stipend of 9,400 maravedis. On February 19, 1498, after the
+         death of that young prince, Diego became page to Queen
+         Isabella.]
+
+[Sidenote: The junto before Granada, Dec, 1491.]
+
+At once upon the arrival of Columbus in the camp before Granada, his
+case was argued then and there before an assembly of learned men and
+was received more hospitably than formerly, at Salamanca. Several
+eminent prelates had come to think favourably of his project or to deem
+it at least worth a trial. Among these were the royal confessors, Deza
+and Talavera, the latter having changed his mind, and especially
+Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo, who now threw his vast influence
+decisively in favour of Columbus.[504] The treasurers of the two
+kingdoms, moreover, Quintanilla for Castile and Luis de Santangel for
+Aragon, were among his most enthusiastic supporters; and the result of
+the conference was the queen's promise to take up the matter in earnest
+as soon as the Moor should have surrendered Granada.
+
+         [Footnote 504: In popular allusions to Columbus it is quite
+         common to assume or imply that he encountered nothing but
+         opposition from the clergy. For example the account in Draper's
+         _Conflict between Science and Religion_, p. 161, can hardly be
+         otherwise understood by the reader. But observe that Marchena
+         who never mocked at Columbus, Juan Perez who gave the
+         favourable turn to his affairs, the great prelates Deza and
+         Mendoza, and the two treasurers Santangel and Quintanilla, were
+         every one of them priests! Without cordial support from the
+         clergy no such enterprise as that of Columbus could have been
+         undertaken, in Spain at least. It is quite right that we should
+         be free-thinkers; and it is also desirable that we should have
+         some respect for facts.]
+
+[Sidenote: Surrender of Granada, Jan. 2, 1492.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus negotiates with the queen.]
+
+[Sidenote: His terms are considered exorbitant.]
+
+Columbus had not long to wait for that great event, which came on the 2d
+of January, 1492, and was hailed with rejoicings throughout Europe as in
+some sort a compensation for the loss of Constantinople. It must have
+been with a manifold sense of triumph that Columbus saw the banner of
+Spain unfurled to the breeze from the highest tower of the Alhambra. But
+at this critical moment in his fortunes the same obstacle was
+encountered that long before had broken off his negotiations with the
+king of Portugal. With pride and self-confidence not an inch abated by
+all these years of trial, he demanded such honours and substantial
+rewards as seemed extravagant to the queen, and Talavera advised her not
+to grant them. Columbus insisted upon being appointed admiral of the
+ocean and viceroy of such heathen countries as he might discover,
+besides having for his own use and behoof one eighth part of such
+revenues and profits as might accrue from the expedition. In principle
+this sort of remuneration did not differ from that which the crown of
+Portugal had been wont to award to its eminent discoverers;[505] but in
+amount it was liable to prove indefinitely great, enough perhaps to
+raise to princely power and rank this foreign adventurer. Could he not
+be satisfied with something less? But Columbus was as inexorable as the
+Sibyl with her books, and would hear of no abatement in his price. For
+this "great constancy and loftiness of soul,"[506] Las Casas warmly
+commends his friend Columbus. A querulous critic might call it
+unreasonable obstinacy. But in truth the good man seems to have
+entertained another grand scheme of his own, to which he wished to make
+his maritime venture contribute. It was natural that his feelings toward
+Turks should have been no more amiable than those of Hannibal toward the
+Romans. It was the Turks who had ruined the commerce of his native
+Genoa, in his youth he had more than once crossed swords with their
+corsairs, and now he looked forward to the time when he might play the
+part of a second Godfrey de Bouillon and deliver Jerusalem from the
+miscreant followers of Mahound.[507] Vast resources would be needed for
+such work, and from Cipango with its gold-roofed temples, and the
+nameless and numberless isles of spices that crowded the Cathayan seas,
+he hoped to obtain them. Long brooding over his cherished projects, in
+which chimeras were thus mixed with anticipations of scientific truth,
+had imparted to his character a tinge of religious fanaticism. He had
+come to regard himself as a man with a mission to fulfil, as God's
+chosen instrument for enlarging the bounds of Christendom and achieving
+triumphs of untold magnificence for its banners. In this mood he was apt
+to address kings with an air of equality that ill comported with his
+humble origin and slender means; and on the present occasion, if
+Talavera felt his old doubts and suspicions reviving, and was more than
+half inclined to set Columbus down as a mere vendor of crotchets, one
+can hardly wonder.
+
+         [Footnote 505: Our Scandinavian friends are fond of pointing to
+         this demand of Columbus as an indication that he secretly
+         expected to "discover America," and not merely to find the way
+         to Asia. But how about Ferdinand and Isabella, who finally
+         granted what was demanded, and their ministers who drew up the
+         agreement, to say nothing of the clerks who engrossed it? What
+         did they all understand by "discovering islands and continents
+         in the ocean"? Were they all in this precious Vinland secret?
+         If so, it was pretty well kept. But in truth there was nothing
+         singular in these stipulations. Portugal paid for discovery in
+         just this way by granting governorships over islands like the
+         Azores, or long stretches of continent like Guinea, along with
+         a share of the revenues yielded by such places. See for example
+         the cases of Gonzalo Cabral, Fernando Gomez, and others in
+         Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, pp. 238, 321, and
+         elsewhere. In their search for the Indies the Portuguese were
+         continually finding new lands, and it was likely to be the same
+         with the western route, which was supposed (see Catalan,
+         Toscanelli, and Behaim maps) to lead among spice islands
+         innumerable, and to Asiatic kingdoms whose heathen people had
+         no rights of sovereignty that Christian monarchs felt bound to
+         respect.]
+
+         [Footnote 506: Las Casas, _op. cit._ tom i. p. 243.]
+
+         [Footnote 507: See his letter of February, 1502, to Pope
+         Alexander VI. in Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 280; and cf. Helps,
+         _Spanish Conquest in America_, vol. i. p. 96; Roselly de
+         Lorgues, _Christophe Colomb_, p. 394.]
+
+[Sidenote: Interposition of Luis de Santangel.]
+
+The negotiations were broken off, and the indomitable enthusiast once
+more prepared to go to France. He had actually started on his mule one
+fine winter day, when Luis de Santangel rushed into the queen's room and
+spoke to her with all the passionate and somewhat reproachful energy of
+one who felt that a golden opportunity was slipping away forever. His
+arguments were warmly seconded by Quintanilla, who had followed him into
+the room, as well as by the queen's bosom friend Beatriz de Bobadilla,
+Marchioness of Moya, who happened to be sitting on the sofa and was a
+devoted admirer of Columbus. An impulse seized Isabella. A courier was
+sent on a fleet horse, and overtook Columbus as he was jogging quietly
+over the bridge of Pinos, about six miles out from Granada. The matter
+was reconsidered and an arrangement was soon made. It was agreed:--
+
+[Sidenote: Agreement between Columbus and the sovereigns.]
+
+"1. That Columbus should have, for himself, during his life, and for his
+heirs and successors forever, the office of admiral in all the islands
+and continents which he might discover or acquire in the ocean, with
+similar honours and prerogatives to those enjoyed by the high admiral of
+Castile in his district.
+
+"2. That he should be viceroy and governor-general over all the said
+lands and continents; with the privilege of nominating three candidates
+for the government of each island or province, one of whom should be
+selected by the sovereigns.
+
+"3. That he should be entitled to reserve for himself one tenth of all
+pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and all other articles
+and merchandises, in whatever manner found, bought, bartered, or gained
+within his admiralty, the costs being first deducted.
+
+"4. That he, or his lieutenant, should be the sole judge in all causes
+and disputes arising out of traffic between those countries and Spain,
+provided the high admiral of Castile had similar jurisdiction in his
+district.
+
+"5. That he might then, and at all after times, contribute an eighth
+part of the expense in fitting out vessels to sail on this enterprise,
+and receive an eighth part of the profits."[508]
+
+         [Footnote 508: I cite this version from Irving's _Columbus_,
+         vol. i. p. 142, making a slight amendment in the rendering; the
+         original text is in Navarrete, tom. ii. p. 7. A few days later
+         the title of "Don" was granted to Columbus and made hereditary
+         in his family along with the offices of viceroy and
+         governor-general.]
+
+Columbus was not long in finding friends to advance or promise on his
+account an eighth part of the sum immediately required. A considerable
+amount was assessed upon the town of Palos in punishment for certain
+misdeeds or delinquencies on the part of its people or some of them.
+Castile assumed the rest of the burden, though Santangel may have
+advanced a million maravedis out of the treasury of Aragon, or out of
+the funds of the _Hermandad_,[509] or perhaps more likely on his own
+account.[510] In any case it was a loan to the treasury of Castile
+simply. It was always distinctly understood that Ferdinand as king of
+Aragon had no share in the enterprise, and that the Spanish Indies were
+an appurtenance to the crown of Castile. The agreement was signed April
+17, 1492, and with tears of joy Columbus vowed to devote every maravedi
+that should come to him to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre.
+
+         [Footnote 509: A police organization formed in 1476 for
+         suppressing highway robbery.]
+
+         [Footnote 510: It is not easy to give an accurate account of
+         the cost of this most epoch-making voyage in all history.
+         Conflicting statements by different authorities combine with
+         the fluctuating values of different kinds of money to puzzle
+         and mislead us. According to M. Harrisse 1,000,000 maravedis
+         would be equivalent to 295,175 francs, or about 59,000 gold
+         dollars of United States money at present values. Las Casas
+         (tom. i. p. 256) says that the eighth part, raised by Columbus,
+         was 500,000 maravedis (29,500 dollars). Account-books preserved
+         in the archives of Simancas show that the sums paid from the
+         treasury of Castile amounted to 1,140,000 maravedis (67,500
+         dollars). Assuming the statement of Las Casas to be correct,
+         the amounts contributed would perhaps have been as follows:--
+
+            Queen Isabella, from Castile treasury        $67,500
+                 "          loan from Santangel           59,000
+            Columbus                                      29,500
+            Other sources, including contribution levied
+            upon the town of Palos                        80,000
+                                                         --------
+            Total                                       $236,000
+
+         This total seems to me altogether too large for probability,
+         and so does the last item, which is simply put at the figure
+         necessary to make the total eight times 29,500. I am inclined
+         to suspect that Las Casas (with whom arithmetic was not always
+         a strong point) may have got his figures wrong. The amount of
+         Santangel's loan also depends upon the statement of Las Casas,
+         and we do not know whether he took it from a document or from
+         hearsay. Nor do we know whether it should be added to, or
+         included in, the first item. More likely, I think, the latter.
+         The only item that we know with documentary certainty is the
+         first, so that our statement becomes modified as follows:--
+
+            Queen Isabella, from Castile treasury       $67,500
+                   "        loan from Santangel            ?
+            Columbus                                       ?
+                                                  { rent of two fully
+            Town of Palos                         { equipped caravels
+                                                  { for two months, etc.
+                                                  ----------------------
+            Total                                          ?
+
+         (Cf. Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 391-404.) Unsatisfactory, but
+         certain as far as it goes. Alas, how often historical
+         statements are thus reduced to meagreness, after the
+         hypothetical or ill-supported part has been sifted out! The
+         story that the Pinzon brothers advanced to Columbus his portion
+         is told by Las Casas, but he very shrewdly doubts it. The
+         famous story that Isabella pledged her crown jewels (_Vita
+         dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xiv.) has also been doubted, but
+         perhaps on insufficient grounds, by M. Harrisse. It is
+         confirmed by Las Casas (tom. i. p. 249). According to one
+         account she pledged them to Santangel in security for his
+         loan,--which seems not altogether improbable. See Pizarro y
+         Orellana, _Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo_, Madrid, 1639, p.
+         16.]
+
+[Sidenote: Dismay at Palos.]
+
+[Sidenote: The three famous caravels; the Santa Maria.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Pinta.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Nina.]
+
+When he reached Palos in May, with royal orders for ships and men, there
+had like to have been a riot. Terrible dismay was felt at the prospect
+of launching out for such a voyage upon the Sea of Darkness. Groans and
+curses greeted the announcement of the forced contribution. But Martin
+Pinzon and his brothers were active in supporting the crown officials,
+and the work went on. To induce men to enlist, debts were forgiven and
+civil actions suspended. Criminals were released from jail on condition
+of serving. Three caravels were impressed into the service of the crown
+for a time unlimited; and the rent and maintenance of two of these
+vessels for two months was to be paid by the town. The largest caravel,
+called the Santa Maria or Capitana, belonged to Juan de La Cosa, a
+Biscayan mariner whose name was soon to become famous.[511] He now
+commanded her, with another consummate sailor, Sancho Ruiz, for his
+pilot. This single-decked craft, about ninety feet in length by twenty
+feet breadth of beam, was the Admiral's flag-ship. The second caravel,
+called the Pinta, a much swifter vessel, was commanded by Martin Pinzon.
+She belonged to two citizens of Palos, Gomez Rascon and Cristobal
+Quintero, who were now in her crew, sulky and ready for mischief. The
+third and smallest caravel, the Nina ("Baby"), had for her commander
+Vicente Yanez Pinzon, the youngest of the brothers, now about thirty
+years of age. Neither the Pinta nor the Nina were decked amidships. On
+board the three caravels were just ninety persons.[512] And so they set
+sail from Palos on Friday, August 3, 1492, half an hour before sunrise,
+and by sunset had run due south five and forty geographical miles, when
+they shifted their course a couple of points to starboard and stood for
+the Canaries.
+
+         [Footnote 511: Navarrete, _Biblioteca maritima_, tom. ii. pp.
+         208, 209.]
+
+         [Footnote 512: The accounts of the armament are well summed up
+         and discussed in Harrisse, tom. i. pp. 405-408. Eighty-seven
+         names, out of the ninety, have been recovered, and the list is
+         given below, Appendix C.]
+
+[Sidenote: They go to the Canaries and are delayed there.]
+
+No thought of Vinland is betrayed in these proceedings. Columbus was
+aiming at the northern end of Cipango (Japan). Upon Toscanelli's map,
+which he carried with him, the great island of Cipango extends from 5 deg.
+to about 28 deg. north latitude. He evidently aimed at the northern end of
+Cipango as being directly on the route to Zaiton (Chang-chow) and other
+Chinese cities mentioned by Marco Polo. Accordingly he began by running
+down to the Canaries, in order that he might sail thence due west on the
+28th parallel without shifting his course by a single point until he
+should see the coast of Japan looming up before him.[513] On this
+preliminary run signs of mischief began already to show themselves. The
+Pinta's rudder was broken and unshipped, and Columbus suspected her two
+angry and chafing owners of having done it on purpose, in order that
+they and their vessel might be left behind. The Canaries at this
+juncture merited the name of Fortunate Islands; fortunately they, alone
+among African islands, were Spanish, so that Columbus could stop there
+and make repairs. While this was going on the sailors were scared out
+of their wits by an eruption of Teneriffe, which they deemed an omen of
+evil, and it was also reported that some Portuguese caravels were
+hovering in those waters, with intent to capture Columbus and carry him
+off to Lisbon.
+
+         [Footnote 513: "Para de alli tomar mi derrota, y navegar tanto
+         que yo llegase a las Indias," he says in his journal,
+         Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. i.p. 3.]
+
+[Illustration: Martin Behaim's Globe, 1492,]
+
+[Illustration: reduced to Mercator's projection.][514]
+
+         [Footnote 514: Martin Behaim was born at Nuremberg in 1436, and
+         is said to have been a pupil of the celebrated astronomer,
+         Regiomontanus, author of the first almanac published in Europe,
+         and of Ephemerides, of priceless value to navigators. He
+         visited Portugal about 1480, invented a new kind of astrolabe,
+         and sailed with it in 1484 as cosmographer in Diego Cam's
+         voyage to the Congo. On his return to Lisbon he was knighted,
+         and presently went to live on the island of Fayal, of which his
+         wife's father was governor. He was a friend of Columbus. Toward
+         1492 he visited Nuremberg, to look after some family affairs,
+         and while there "he gratified some of his townspeople by
+         embodying in a globe the geographical views which prevailed in
+         the maritime countries; and the globe was finished before
+         Columbus had yet accomplished his voyage. The next year (1493)
+         Behaim returned to Portugal; and after having been sent to the
+         Low Countries on a diplomatic mission, he was captured by
+         English cruisers and carried to England. Escaping finally, and
+         reaching the Continent, he passes from our view in 1494, and is
+         scarcely heard of again." (Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, ii.
+         104.) He died in May, 1506. A ridiculous story that he
+         anticipated Columbus in the discovery of America originated in
+         the misunderstanding of an interpolated passage in the Latin
+         text of Schedel's _Registrum_, Nuremberg, 1498, p. 290 (the
+         so-called _Nuremberg Chronicle_). See Winsor, _op. cit._ ii.
+         34; Major's _Prince Henry_, p. 326; Humboldt, _Examen
+         critique_, tom. i.p. 256; Murr, _Diplomatische Geschichte des
+         Ritters Behaim_, Nuremberg, 1778; Cladera, _Investigaciones
+         historicas_, Madrid, 1794; Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana
+         Vetustissima_, pp. 37-43.--The globe made by Behaim may now be
+         seen in the city hall at Nuremberg. It "is made of
+         _papier-mache_, covered with gypsum, and over this a parchment
+         surface received the drawing; it is twenty inches in diameter."
+         (Winsor, _op. cit._ ii. 105.) The portion west of the 330th
+         meridian is evidently copied from Toscanelli's map. I give
+         below (p. 429) a sketch (from Winsor, after Ruge's _Geschichte
+         des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 230) of Behaim's ocean,
+         with the outline of the American continent superimposed in the
+         proper place.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus starts for Japan, Sept. 6, 1492.]
+
+At length, on the 6th of September, they set sail from Gomera, but were
+becalmed and had made only thirty miles by the night of the 8th. The
+breeze then freshened, and when next day the shores of Ferro, the last
+of the Canaries, sank from sight on the eastern horizon, many of the
+sailors loudly lamented their unseemly fate, and cried and sobbed like
+children. Columbus well understood the difficulty of dealing with these
+men. He provided against one chief source of discontent by keeping two
+different reckonings, a true one for himself and a false one for his
+officers and crews. He was shrewd enough not to overdo it and awaken
+distrust. Thus after a twenty-four hours' run of 180 miles on September
+10, he reported it as 144 miles; next day the run was 120 miles and he
+announced it as 108, and so on. But for this prudent if somewhat
+questionable device, it is not unlikely that the first week of October
+would have witnessed a mutiny in which Columbus would have been either
+thrown overboard or forced to turn back.
+
+[Sidenote: Deflection of the needle.]
+
+The weather was delicious, and but for the bug-a-boos that worried those
+poor sailors it would have been a most pleasant voyage. Chief among the
+imaginary terrors were three which deserve especial mention. At
+nightfall on September 13 the ships had crossed the magnetic line of no
+variation, and Columbus was astonished to see that the compass-needle,
+instead of pointing a little to the right of the pole-star, began to
+sway toward the left, and next day this deviation increased. It was
+impossible to hide such a fact from the sharp eyes of the pilots, and
+all were seized with alarm at the suspicion that this witch instrument
+was beginning to play them some foul trick in punishment of their
+temerity; but Columbus was ready with an ingenious astronomical
+explanation, and their faith in the profundity of his knowledge
+prevailed over their terrors.
+
+[Sidenote: The Sargasso Sea.]
+
+The second alarm came on September 16, when they struck into vast
+meadows of floating seaweeds and grasses, abounding in tunny fish and
+crabs. They had now come more than 800 miles from Ferro and were
+entering the wonderful Sargasso Sea, that region of the Atlantic six
+times as large as France, where vast tangles of vegetation grow upon the
+surface of water that is more than 2,000 fathoms deep, and furnish
+sustenance for an untold wealth of fishy life.[515] To the eye of the
+mariner the Sargasso Sea presents somewhat the appearance of an endless
+green prairie, but modern ships plough through it with ease and so did
+the caravels of Columbus at first. After two or three days, however, the
+wind being light, their progress was somewhat impeded. It was not
+strange that the crews were frightened at such a sight. It seemed
+uncanny and weird, and revived ancient fancies about mysterious
+impassable seas and overbold mariners whose ships had been stuck fast in
+them. The more practical spirits were afraid of running aground upon
+submerged shoals, but all were somewhat reassured on this point when it
+was found that their longest plummet-lines failed to find bottom.
+
+         [Footnote 515: The situation of this Sargasso region in
+         mid-ocean seems to be determined by its character as a quiet
+         neutral ground between the great ocean-currents that flow past
+         it on every side. Sargasso plants are found elsewhere upon the
+         surface of the waves, but nowhere else do they congregate as
+         here. There are reasons for supposing that in ancient times
+         this region extended nearer to the African coast. Skylax
+         (_Periplus_, cap. 109) says that beyond Kerne, at the mouth of
+         Rio d' Ouro the sea cannot be navigated on account of the mud
+         and seaweed. Sataspes, on his return to Persia, B. C. 470, told
+         King Xerxes that his voyage failed because his ship stopped or
+         was stuck fast. (Herodotus, iv. 43.) Festus Avienus mentions
+         vast quantities of seaweed in the ocean west of the Pillars of
+         Hercules:--
+
+            Exsuperat autem gurgitem fucus frequens
+            Atque impeditur aestus ex uligine....
+            Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem,
+            Sic segnis humor aequoris pigri stupet.
+            Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites
+            Exstare fucum, et saepe virgulti vice
+            Retinere puppim, etc.
+                              Avienus, _Ora Maritima_, 108, 117.
+
+         See also Aristotle, _Meteorol._, ii. 1, 14; Pseudo-Aristotle,
+         _De Mirab. Auscult._, p. 106; Theophrastus, _Historia
+         plantarum_, iv. 7 Jornandes, _De rebus Geticis_, apud Muratori,
+         tom. i.p. 191; according to Strabo (iii. 2, Sec. 7) tunny fish
+         were caught in abundance in the ocean west of Spain, and were
+         highly valued for the table on account of their fatness which
+         was due to submarine vegetables on which they fed. Possibly the
+         reports of these Sargasso meadows may have had some share in
+         suggesting to Plato his notion of a huge submerged island
+         Atlantis (_Timaeus_, 25; _Kritias_, 108; cf. the notion of a
+         viscous sea in Plutarch, _De facie in Orbe Luna_, 26), Plato's
+         fancy has furnished a theme for much wild speculation. See, for
+         example, Bailly, _Lettres sur l'Atlantide de Platon_, Paris,
+         1779. The belief that there can ever have been such an island
+         in that part of the Atlantic is disposed of by the fact that
+         the ocean there is nowhere less than two miles in depth. See
+         the beautiful map of the Atlantic sea-bottom in Alexander
+         Agassiz's _Three Cruises of the Blake_, Boston, 1888, vol. i.p.
+         108, and compare chap. vi. of that noble work, on "The
+         Permanence of Continents and of Oceanic Basins;" see also
+         Wallace's _Island Life_, chap. vi. It was formerly supposed
+         that the Sargasso plants grow on the sea-bottom, and becoming
+         detached rise to the surface (Peter Martyr, _De rebus
+         oceanicis_, dec. iii. lib. v. p. 53; Humboldt, _Personal
+         Narrative_, book i. chap, i.); but it is now known that they
+         are simply rooted in the surface water itself. "L'accumulation
+         de ces plantes marines est l'exemple le plus frappant de
+         plantes congeneres reunies sur le meme point. Ni les forets
+         colossales de l'Himalaya, ni les graminees qui s'etendent a
+         perte de vue dans les savanes americaines ou les steppes
+         siberiens ne rivalisent avec ces prairies oceaniques. Jamais
+         sur un espace aussi etendu, ne se rencontrent de telles masses
+         de plantes semblables. Quand on a vu la mer des Sargasses, on
+         n'oublie point un pareil spectacle." Paul Gaffarel, "La Mer des
+         Sargasses," _Bulletin de Geographie_, Paris, 1872, 6e serie,
+         tom. iv. p. 622.]
+
+[Sidenote: The trade wind.]
+
+On September 22 the journal reports "no more grass." They were in clear
+water again, and more than 1,400 geographical miles from the Canaries.
+A third source of alarm had already begun to disturb the sailors. They
+were discovering much more than they had bargained for. They were in the
+belt of the trade winds, and as the gentle but unfailing breeze wafted
+them steadily westward, doubts began to arise as to whether it would
+ever be possible to return. Fortunately soon after this question began
+to be discussed, the wind, jealous of its character for capriciousness
+even there, veered into the southwest.
+
+[Sidenote: Impatience of the crews.]
+
+By September 25 the Admiral's chief difficulty had come to be the
+impatience of his crews at not finding land. On that day there was a
+mirage, or some such illusion, which Columbus and all hands supposed to
+be a coast in front of them, and hymns of praise were sung, but at dawn
+next day they were cruelly undeceived. Flights of strange birds and
+other signs of land kept raising hopes which were presently dashed
+again, and the men passed through alternately hot and cold fits of
+exultation and dejection. Such mockery seemed to show that they were
+entering a realm of enchantment. Somebody, perhaps one of the released
+jail-birds, hinted that if a stealthy thrust should happen some night to
+push the Admiral overboard, it could be plausibly said that he had
+slipped and fallen while star-gazing. His situation grew daily more
+perilous, and the fact that he was an Italian commanding Spaniards did
+not help him. Perhaps what saved him was their vague belief in his
+superior knowledge; they may have felt that they should need him in
+going back.
+
+[Illustration: Martin Behaim's Atlantic Ocean (with outline of American
+continent superimposed).]
+
+[Sidenote: Change of course from W. to W. S. W.]
+
+[Sidenote: Land ahead! Oct. 12 (N. S. 21), 1492.]
+
+By October 4 there were ominous symptoms of mutiny, and the anxiety of
+Columbus was evinced in the extent of his bold understatement of that
+day's run,--138 miles instead of the true figure 189. For some days his
+pilots had been begging him to change his course; perhaps they had
+passed between islands. Anything for a change! On the 7th at sunrise,
+they had come 2,724 geographical miles from the Canaries, which was
+farther than the Admiral's estimate of the distance to Cipango; but
+according to his false statement of the runs, it appeared that they had
+come scarcely 2,200 miles. This leads one to suspect that in stating the
+length of the voyage, as he had so often done, at 700 leagues, he may
+have purposely made it out somewhat shorter than he really believed it
+to be. But now after coming more than 2,500 miles he began to fear that
+he might be sailing past Cipango on the north, and so he shifted his
+course two points to larboard, or west-southwest. If a secret knowledge
+of Vinland had been his guiding-star he surely would not have turned his
+helm that way; but a glance at the Toscanelli map shows what was in his
+mind. Numerous flights of small birds confirmed his belief that land at
+the southwest was not far off. The change of direction was probably
+fortunate. If he had persisted in keeping on the parallel, 720 miles
+would have brought him to the coast of Florida, a little south of Cape
+Malabar. After the change he had but 505 miles of water before him, and
+the temper of the sailors was growing more dangerous with every
+mile,[516]--until October 11, when the signs of land became
+unmistakable, and the wildest excitement prevailed. A reward of 10,000
+maravedis had been promised to the person who should first discover
+land, and ninety pair of eyes were strained that night with looking.
+About ten o'clock the Admiral, standing on the tower-like poop of his
+vessel, saw a distant light moving as if somebody were running along
+the shore with a torch. This interpretation was doubted, but a few
+hours later a sailor on the Pinta saw land distinctly, and soon it was
+visible to all, a long low coast about five miles distant. This was at
+two in the morning of Friday, October 12,[517]--just ten weeks since
+they had sailed from Palos, just thirty-three days since they had lost
+sight of the coast of Ferro. The sails were now taken in, and the ships
+lay to, awaiting the dawn.
+
+         [Footnote 516: The often-repeated story that a day or two
+         before the end of the voyage Columbus capitulated with his
+         crew, promising to turn back if land were not seen within three
+         days, rests upon the single and relatively inferior authority
+         of Oviedo. It is not mentioned by Las Casas or Bernaldez or
+         Peter Martyr or Ferdinand Columbus, and it is discredited by
+         the tone of the Admiral's journal, which shows as unconquerable
+         determination on the last day of the voyage as on any previous
+         day. Cf. Irving, vol. i. p. 187.]
+
+         [Footnote 517: Applying the Gregorian Calendar, or "new style,"
+         it becomes the 21st. The four hundredth anniversary will
+         properly fall on October 21, 1892.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The crews go ashore.]
+
+At daybreak the boats were lowered and Columbus, with a large part of
+his company, went ashore. Upon every side were trees of unknown kinds,
+and the landscape seemed exceedingly beautiful. Confident that they must
+have attained the object for which they had set sail, the crews were
+wild with exultation. Their heads were dazed with fancies of princely
+fortunes close at hand. The officers embraced Columbus or kissed his
+hands, while the sailors threw themselves at his feet, craving pardon
+and favour.
+
+[Sidenote: The astonished natives.]
+
+[Sidenote: Guanahani: where was it?]
+
+These proceedings were watched with unutterable amazement and awe by a
+multitude of men, women, and children of cinnamon hue, different from
+any kind of people the Spaniards had ever seen. All were stark naked and
+most of them were more or less greased and painted. They thought that
+the ships were sea-monsters and the white men supernatural creatures
+descended from the sky.[518] At first they fled in terror as these
+formidable beings came ashore, but presently, as they found themselves
+unmolested, curiosity began to overcome fear, and they slowly approached
+the Spaniards, stopping at every few paces to prostrate themselves in
+adoration. After a time, as the Spaniards received them with encouraging
+nods and smiles, they waxed bold enough to come close to the visitors
+and pass their hands over them, doubtless to make sure that all this
+marvel was a reality and not a mere vision. Experiences in Africa had
+revealed the eagerness of barbarians to trade off their possessions for
+trinkets, and now the Spaniards began exchanging glass beads and hawks'
+bells for cotton yarn, tame parrots, and small gold ornaments. Some sort
+of conversation in dumb show went on, and Columbus naturally interpreted
+everything in such wise as to fit his theories. Whether the natives
+understood him or not when he asked them where they got their gold, at
+any rate they pointed to the south, and thus confirmed Columbus in his
+suspicion that he had come to some island a little to the north of the
+opulent Cipango. He soon found that it was a small island, and he
+understood the name of it to be Guanahani. He took formal possession of
+it for Castile, just as the discoverers of the Cape Verde islands and
+the Guinea coasts had taken possession of those places for Portugal;
+and he gave it a Christian name, San Salvador. That name has since the
+seventeenth century been given to Cat island, but perhaps in pursuance
+of a false theory of map-makers; it is not proved that Cat island is the
+Guanahani of Columbus. All that can positively be asserted of Guanahani
+is that it was one of the Bahamas: there has been endless discussion as
+to which one, and the question is not easy to settle. Perhaps the theory
+of Captain Gustavus Fox, of the United States navy, is on the whole best
+supported. Captain Fox maintains that the true Guanahani was the little
+island now known as Samana or Atwood's Cay.[519] The problem well
+illustrates the difficulty in identifying any route from even a good
+description of landmarks, without the help of persistent proper names,
+especially after the lapse of time has somewhat altered the landmarks.
+From this point of view it is a very interesting problem and has its
+lessons for us; otherwise it is of no importance.
+
+         [Footnote 518: This is a common notion among barbarians. "The
+         Polynesians imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and
+         encloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners _papalangi_, or
+         'heaven-bursters,' as having broken in from another world
+         outside." Max Mueller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. ii.
+         p. 268.]
+
+         [Footnote 519: "An Attempt to solve the Problem of the First
+         Landing Place of Columbus in the New World," in _United States
+         Coast and Geodetic Survey--Report for 1880--Appendix 18_,
+         Washington, 1882.]
+
+[Sidenote: Groping for Cipango and the route to Quinsay.]
+
+A cruise of ten days among the Bahamas, with visits to four of the
+islands, satisfied Columbus that he was in the ocean just east of
+Cathay, for Marco Polo had described it as studded with thousands of
+spice-bearing islands, and the Catalan map shows that some of these were
+supposed to be inhabited by naked savages. To be sure, he could not find
+any spices or valuable drugs, but the air was full of fragrance and the
+trees and herbs were strange in aspect and might mean anything; so for a
+while he was ready to take the spices on trust. Upon inquiries about
+gold the natives always pointed to the south, apparently meaning
+Cipango; and in that direction Columbus steered on the 25th of October,
+intending to stay in that wealthy island long enough to obtain all
+needful information concerning its arts and commerce. Thence a sail of
+less than ten days would bring him to the Chinese coast, along which he
+might comfortably cruise northwesterly as far as Quinsay and deliver to
+the Great Khan a friendly letter with which Ferdinand and Isabella had
+provided him. Alas, poor Columbus--unconscious prince of
+discoverers--groping here in Cuban waters for the way to a city on the
+other side of the globe and to a sovereign whose race had more than a
+century since been driven from the throne and expelled from the very
+soil of Cathay! Could anything be more pathetic, or better illustrate
+the profound irony with which our universe seems to be governed?
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus reaches Cuba, and sends envoys to find a certain
+Asiatic prince.]
+
+On reaching Cuba the Admiral was charmed with the marvellous beauty of
+the landscape,--a point in which he seems to have been unusually
+sensitive. He found pearl oysters along the shore, and although no
+splendid cities as yet appeared, he did not doubt that he had reached
+Cipango. But his attempts at talking with the amazed natives only served
+to darken counsel. He understood them to say that Cuba was part of the
+Asiatic continent, and that there was a king in the neighbourhood who
+was at war with the Great Khan! So he sent two messengers to seek this
+refractory potentate,--one of them a converted Jew acquainted with
+Arabic, a language sometimes heard far eastward in Asia, as Columbus
+must have known. These envoys found pleasant villages, with large
+houses, surrounded with fields of such unknown vegetables as maize,
+potatoes, and tobacco; they saw men and women smoking cigars,[520] and
+little dreamed that in that fragrant and soothing herb there was a
+richer source of revenue than the spices of the East. They passed acres
+of growing cotton and saw in the houses piles of yarn waiting to be
+woven into rude cloth or twisted into nets for hammocks. But they found
+neither cities nor kings, neither gold nor spices, and after a tedious
+quest returned, somewhat disappointed, to the coast.
+
+         [Footnote 520: The first recorded mention of tobacco is in
+         Columbus's diary for November 20, 1492:--"Hallaron los dos
+         cristianos por el camino mucha gente que atravesaba a sus
+         pueblos, mugeres y hombres con un tizon en la mano, yerbas para
+         tomar sus sahumerios que acostumbraban," i. e. "the two
+         Christians met on the road a great many people going to their
+         villages, men and women with brands in their hands, made of
+         herbs for taking their customary smoke." Navarrete, tom. i. p.
+         51.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus turns eastward; Pinzon deserts him.]
+
+Columbus seems now to have become perplexed, and to have vacillated
+somewhat in his purposes. If this was the continent of Asia it was
+nearer than he had supposed, and how far mistaken he had been in his
+calculations no one could tell. But where was Cipango? He gathered from
+the natives that there was a great island to the southeast, abounding
+in gold, and so he turned his prows in that direction. On the 20th of
+November he was deserted by Martin Pinzon, whose ship could always
+outsail the others. It seems to have been Pinzon's design to get home in
+advance with such a story as would enable him to claim for himself an
+undue share of credit for the discovery of the Indies. This was the
+earliest instance of a kind of treachery such as too often marred the
+story of Spanish exploration and conquest in the New World.
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus arrives at Hayti and thinks it must be Japan.]
+
+[Sidenote: Wreck of the Santa Maria, Dec. 25, 1492.]
+
+For a fortnight after Pinzon's desertion Columbus crept slowly eastward
+along the coast of Cuba, now and then landing to examine the country and
+its products; and it seemed to him that besides pearls and mastic and
+aloes he found in the rivers indications of gold. When he reached the
+cape at the end of the island he named it Alpha and Omega, as being the
+extremity of Asia,--Omega from the Portuguese point of view, Alpha from
+his own. On the 6th of December he landed upon the northwestern coast of
+the island of Hayti, which he called Espanola, Hispaniola, or "Spanish
+land."[521] Here, as the natives seemed to tell him of a region to the
+southward and quite inland which abounded in gold, and which they called
+Cibao, the Admiral at once caught upon the apparent similarity of sounds
+and fancied that Cibao must be Cipango, and that at length he had
+arrived upon that island of marvels. It was much nearer the Asiatic
+mainland (i. e. Cuba) than he had supposed, but then, it was beginning
+to appear that in any case somebody's geography must be wrong. Columbus
+was enchanted with the scenery. "The land is elevated," he says, "with
+many mountains and peaks ... most beautiful, of a thousand varied forms,
+accessible, and full of trees of endless varieties, so tall that they
+seem to touch the sky; and I have been told that they never lose their
+foliage. The nightingale [i. e. some kind of thrush] and other small
+birds of a thousand kinds were singing in the month of November
+[December] when I was there."[522] Before he had done much toward
+exploring this paradise, a sudden and grave mishap quite altered his
+plans. On Christmas morning, between midnight and dawn, owing to
+careless disobedience of orders on the part of the helmsman, the
+flag-ship struck upon a sand-bank near the present site of Port au Paix.
+All attempts to get her afloat were unavailing, and the waves soon beat
+her to pieces.
+
+         [Footnote 521: Not "Little Spain," as the form of the word, so
+         much like a diminutive, might seem to indicate. It is simply
+         the feminine of _Espanol_, "Spanish," sc. _tierra_ or _isla_.
+         Columbus believed that the island was larger than Spain. See
+         his letter to Gabriel Sanchez, in Harrisse, tom. i. p. 428.]
+
+         [Footnote 522: Columbus to Santangel, February 15, 1493
+         (Navarrete, tom. i. p. 168).]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus decides to go back to Spain.]
+
+This catastrophe brought home, with startling force, to the mind of
+Columbus, the fact that the news of his discovery of land was not yet
+known in Europe. As for the Pinta and her insubordinate commander, none
+could say whether they would ever be seen again or whether their speedy
+arrival in Spain might not portend more harm than good to Columbus. His
+armament was now reduced to the little undecked Nina alone, such a craft
+as we should deem about fit for a summer excursion on Long Island Sound.
+What if his party should all perish, or be stranded helpless on these
+strange coasts, before any news of their success should reach the ears
+of friends in Europe! Then the name of Columbus would serve as a by-word
+for foolhardiness, and his mysterious fate would simply deter other
+expeditions from following in the same course. Obviously the first
+necessity of the situation was to return to Spain immediately and report
+what had already been done. Then it would be easy enough to get ships
+and men for a second voyage.
+
+[Sidenote: Building of the blockhouse, La Navidad.]
+
+[Sidenote: Meeting with Pinzon.]
+
+This decision led to the founding of an embryo colony upon Hispaniola.
+There was not room enough for all the party to go in the Nina, and quite
+a number begged to be left behind, because they found life upon the
+island lazy and the natives, especially the women, seemed well-disposed
+toward them. So a blockhouse was built out of the wrecked ship's timbers
+and armed with her guns, and in commemoration of that eventful Christmas
+it was called Fort Nativity (_La Navidad_). Here forty men were left
+behind, with provisions enough for a whole year, and on January 4, 1493,
+the rest of the party went on board the Nina and set sail for Spain. Two
+days later in following the northern coast of Hispaniola they
+encountered the Pinta, whose commander had been delayed by trading with
+the natives and by finding some gold. Pinzon tried to explain his sudden
+disappearance by alleging that stress of weather had parted him from
+his comrades, but his excuses were felt to be lame and improbable.
+However it may have been with his excuses, there was no doubt as to the
+lameness of his foremast; it had been too badly sprung to carry much
+sail, so that the Pinta could not again run away from her consort.
+
+[Sidenote: Terrible storm in mid-ocean, Feb., 1493.]
+
+On this return voyage the Admiral, finding the trade winds dead against
+him, took a northeasterly course until he had passed the thirty-seventh
+parallel and then headed straight toward Spain. On the 12th of February
+a storm was brewing, and during the next four days it raged with such
+terrific violence that it is a wonder how those two frail caravels ever
+came out of it. They were separated this time not to meet again upon the
+sea. Expecting in all likelihood to be engulfed in the waves with his
+tiny craft, Columbus sealed and directed to Ferdinand and Isabella two
+brief reports of his discovery, written upon parchment. Each of these he
+wrapped in a cloth and inclosed in the middle of a large cake of wax,
+which was then securely shut up in a barrel. One of the barrels was
+flung into the sea, the other remained standing on the little
+quarter-deck to await the fate of the caravel. The anxiety was not
+lessened by the sight of land on the 15th, for it was impossible to
+approach it so as to go ashore, and there was much danger of being
+dashed to pieces.
+
+[Sidenote: Cold reception at the Azores.]
+
+At length on the 18th, the storm having abated, the ship's boat went
+ashore and found that it was the island of St. Mary, one of the Azores.
+It is worthy of note that such skilful sailors as the Nina's captain,
+Vicente Yanez Pinzon, and the pilot Ruiz were so confused in their
+reckoning as to suppose themselves near the Madeiras, whereas Columbus
+had correctly maintained that they were approaching the Azores,--a good
+instance of his consummate judgment in nautical questions.[523] From the
+Portuguese governor of the island this Spanish company met with a very
+ungracious reception. A party of sailors whom Columbus sent ashore to a
+small chapel of the Virgin, to give thanks for their deliverance from
+shipwreck, were seized and held as prisoners for five days. It
+afterwards appeared that this was done in pursuance of general
+instructions from the king of Portugal to the governors of his various
+islands. If Columbus had gone ashore he would probably have been
+arrested himself. As it was, he took such a high tone and threatened to
+such good purpose that the governor of St. Mary was fain to give up his
+prisoners for fear of bringing on another war between Portugal and
+Castile.
+
+         [Footnote 523: Las Casas, tom. i. pp. 443, 449.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus is driven ashore in Portugal, where the king is
+advised to have him assassinated;]
+
+[Sidenote: but to offend Spain so grossly would be dangerous.]
+
+Having at length got away from this unfriendly island, as the Nina was
+making her way toward Cape St. Vincent and within 400 miles of it, she
+was seized by another fierce tempest and driven upon the coast of
+Portugal, where Columbus and his crew were glad of a chance to run into
+the river Tagus for shelter. The news of his voyage and his discoveries
+aroused intense excitement in Lisbon. Astonishment was mingled with
+chagrin at the thought that the opportunity for all this glory and
+profit had first been offered to Portugal and foolishly lost. The king
+even now tried to persuade himself that Columbus had somehow or other
+been trespassing upon the vast and vague undiscovered dominions granted
+to the Crown of Portugal by Pope Eugenius IV. Some of the king's
+counsellors are said to have urged him to have Columbus assassinated; it
+would be easy enough to provoke such a high-spirited man into a quarrel
+and then run him through the body.[524] To clearer heads, however, the
+imprudence of such a course was manifest. It was already impossible to
+keep the news of the discovery from reaching Spain, and Portugal could
+not afford to go to war with her stronger neighbour. In fact even had
+John II. been base enough to resort to assassination, which seems quite
+incompatible with the general character of Lope de Vega's "perfect
+prince," Columbus was now too important a personage to be safely
+interfered with. So he was invited to court and made much of. On the
+13th of March he set sail again and arrived in the harbour of Palos at
+noon of the 15th. His little caravel was promptly recognized by the
+people, and as her story flew from mouth to mouth all the business of
+the town was at an end for that day.[525]
+
+         [Footnote 524: This story rests upon the explicit statement of
+         a contemporary Portuguese historian of high authority, Garcia
+         de Resende, _Chronica del Rey Dom Joao II._, Lisbon, 1622, cap.
+         clxiv. (written about 1516); see also Vasconcellos, _Vida del
+         Rey Don Juan II._, Madrid, 1639, lib. vi.]
+
+         [Footnote 525: "When they learnt that she returned in triumph
+         from the discovery of a world, the whole community broke forth
+         into transports of joy." Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i. p. 318.
+         This is projecting our present knowledge into the past. We now
+         know that Columbus had discovered a new world. He did not so
+         much as suspect that he had done anything of the sort; neither
+         did the people of Palos.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus and Pinzon at Palos; death of Pinzon.]
+
+Towards evening, while the bells were ringing and the streets brilliant
+with torches, another vessel entered the harbour and dropped anchor. She
+was none other than the Pinta! The storm had driven her to Bayonne,
+whence Martin Pinzon instantly despatched a message to Ferdinand and
+Isabella, making great claims for himself and asking permission to wait
+upon them with a full account of the discovery. As soon as practicable
+he made his way to Palos, but when on arriving he saw the Nina already
+anchored in the harbour his guilty heart failed him. He took advantage
+of the general hub-bub to slink ashore as quickly and quietly as
+possible, and did not dare to show himself until after the Admiral had
+left for Seville. The news from Columbus reached the sovereigns before
+they had time to reply to the message of Pinzon; so when their answer
+came to him it was cold and stern and forbade him to appear in their
+presence. Pinzon was worn out with the hardships of the homeward voyage,
+and this crushing reproof was more than he could bear. His sudden death,
+a few days afterward, was generally attributed to chagrin.[526]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus is received by the sovereigns at Barcelona, April,
+1493.]
+
+[Sidenote: General excitement at the news that a way to the Indies had
+been found.]
+
+From Seville the Admiral was summoned to attend court at Barcelona,
+where he was received with triumphal honours. He was directed to seat
+himself in the presence of the sovereigns, a courtesy usually reserved
+for royal personages.[527] Intense interest was felt in his specimens of
+stuffed birds and small mammals, his live parrots, his collection of
+herbs which he supposed to have medicinal virtues, his few pearls and
+trinkets of gold, and especially his six painted and bedizened
+barbarians, the survivors of ten with whom he had started from
+Hispaniola. Since in the vague terminology of that time the remote and
+scarcely known parts of Asia were called the Indies, and since the
+islands and coasts just discovered were Indies, of course these red men
+must be Indians. So Columbus had already named them in his first letter
+written from the Nina, off the Azores, sent by special messenger from
+Palos, and now in April, 1493, printed at Barcelona, containing the
+particulars of his discovery,--a letter appropriately addressed to the
+worthy Santangel but for whose timely intervention he might have ridden
+many a weary league on that mule of his to no good purpose.[528] It was
+generally assumed without question that the Admiral's theory of his
+discovery must be correct, that the coast of Cuba must be the eastern
+extremity of China, that the coast of Hispaniola must be the northern
+extremity of Cipango, and that a direct route--much shorter than that
+which Portugal had so long been seeking--had now been found to those
+lands of illimitable wealth described by Marco Polo.[529] To be sure
+Columbus had not as yet seen the evidences of this Oriental splendour,
+and had been puzzled at not finding them, but he felt confident that he
+had come very near them and would come full upon them in a second
+voyage. There was nobody who knew enough to refute these opinions,[530]
+and really why should not this great geographer, who had accomplished so
+much already which people had scouted as impossible,--why should he not
+know what he was about? It was easy enough now to get men and money for
+the second voyage. When the Admiral sailed from Cadiz on September 25,
+1493, it was with seventeen ships carrying 1,500 men. Their dreams were
+of the marble palaces of Quinsay, of isles of spices, and the treasures
+of Prester John. The sovereigns wept for joy as they thought that such
+untold riches were vouchsafed them by the special decree of Heaven, as a
+reward for having overcome the Moor at Granada and banished the Jews
+from Spain.[531] Columbus shared these views and regarded himself as a
+special instrument for executing the divine decrees. He renewed his vow
+to rescue the Holy Sepulchre, promising within the next seven years to
+equip at his own expense a crusading army of 50,000 foot and 4,000
+horse; within five years thereafter he would follow this with a second
+army of like dimensions.
+
+         [Footnote 526: Charlevoix, _Histoire de l'isle Espagnole, ou de
+         St. Domingue_, Paris, 1730, liv. ii.; Munoz, _Historia de las
+         Indias o Nuevo Mundo_, Madrid, 1793, lib. iv. Sec. 14.]
+
+         [Footnote 527: He was also allowed to quarter the royal arms
+         with his own, "which consisted of a group of golden islands
+         amid azure billows. To these were afterwards added five
+         anchors, with the celebrated motto, well known as being carved
+         on his sepulchre." Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_, pt. i.
+         chap. vii. This statement about the motto is erroneous. See
+         below, p. 514. Considering the splendour of the reception given
+         to Columbus, and the great interest felt in his achievement,
+         Mr. Prescott is surprised at finding no mention of this
+         occasion in the local annals of Barcelona, or in the royal
+         archives of Aragon. He conjectures, with some probability, that
+         the cause of the omission may have been what an American would
+         call "sectional" jealousy. This Cathay and Cipango business was
+         an affair of Castile's, and, as such, quite beneath the notice
+         of patriotic Aragonese archivists! That is the way history has
+         too often been treated. With most people it is only a kind of
+         ancestor worship.]
+
+         [Footnote 528: The unique copy of this first edition of this
+         Spanish letter is a small folio of two leaves, or four pages.
+         It was announced for sale in Quaritch's Catalogue, April 16,
+         1891, No. 111, p. 47, for L1,750. Evidently most book-lovers
+         will have to content themselves with the facsimile published in
+         London, 1891, price two guineas. A unique copy of a Spanish
+         reprint in small quarto, made in 1493, is preserved in the
+         Ambrosian library at Milan. In 1889 Messrs. Ellis & Elvey, of
+         London, published a facsimile _alleged_ to have been made from
+         an edition of about the same date as the Ambrosian quarto; but
+         there are good reasons for believing that these highly
+         respectable publishers have been imposed upon. It is a time
+         just now when fictitious literary discoveries of this sort may
+         command a high price, and the dealer in early Americana must
+         keep his eyes open. See Quaritch's note, _op. cit._ p. 49; and
+         Justin Winsor's letter in _The Nation_, April 9, 1891, vol.
+         lii. p. 298.]
+
+         [Footnote 529: "The lands, therefore, which Columbus had
+         visited were called the West Indies; and as he seemed to have
+         entered upon a vast region of unexplored countries, existing in
+         a state of nature, the whole received the comprehensive
+         appellation of the New World." Irving's _Columbus_, vol. i. p.
+         333. These are very grave errors, again involving the
+         projection of our modern knowledge into the past. The lands
+         which Columbus had visited were called simply the Indies; it
+         was not until long after his death, and after the crossing of
+         the Pacific ocean, that they were distinguished from the East
+         Indies. The _New World_ was not at first a "comprehensive
+         appellation" for the countries discovered by Columbus; it was
+         at first applied to one particular region never visited by him,
+         viz. to that portion of the southeastern coast of South America
+         first explored by Vespucius. See vol. ii. pp. 129, 130.]
+
+         [Footnote 530: Peter Martyr, however, seems to have entertained
+         some vague doubts, inasmuch as this assumed nearness of the
+         China coast on the west implied a greater eastward extension of
+         the Asiatic continent than seemed to him probable:--"Insulas
+         reperit plures; has esse, de quibus fit apud cosmographos
+         mentio extra oceanum orientalem, adjacentes Indiae arbitrantur.
+         Nec inficior ego penitus, _quamvis sphaerae magnitudo aliter
+         sentire videatur_; neque enim desunt qui parvo tractu a finibus
+         Hispaniae distare littus Indicum putent." _Opus Epist._, No.
+         135. The italicizing is mine.]
+
+         [Footnote 531: This abominable piece of wickedness, driving
+         200,000 of Spain's best citizens from their homes and their
+         native land, was accomplished in pursuance of an edict signed
+         March 30, 1492. There is a brief account of it in Prescott's
+         _Ferdinand and Isabella_, pt. i. chap. vi.]
+
+[Sidenote: This voyage was an event without any parallel in history.]
+
+Thus nobody had the faintest suspicion of what had been done. In the
+famous letter to Santangel there is of course not a word about a New
+World. The grandeur of the achievement was quite beyond the ken of the
+generation that witnessed it. For we have since come to learn that in
+1492 the contact between the eastern and the western halves of our
+planet was first really begun, and the two streams of human life which
+had flowed on for countless ages apart were thenceforth to mingle
+together. The first voyage of Columbus is thus a unique event in the
+history of mankind. Nothing like it was ever done before, and nothing
+like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for a future Columbus
+to conquer. The era of which this great Italian mariner was the most
+illustrious representative has closed forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Discovery of America was a gradual process.]
+
+But that era did not close with Columbus, nor did he live long enough to
+complete the Discovery of America. Our practice of affixing specific
+dates to great events is on many accounts indispensable, but it is
+sometimes misleading. Such an event as the discovery of a pair of vast
+continents does not take place within a single year. When we speak of
+America as discovered in 1492, we do not mean that the moment Columbus
+landed on two or three islands of the West Indies, a full outline map of
+the western hemisphere from Labrador and Alaska to Cape Horn suddenly
+sprang into existence--like Pallas from the forehead of Zeus--in the
+minds of European men. Yet people are perpetually using arguments which
+have neither force nor meaning save upon the tacit assumption that
+somehow or other some such sort of thing must have happened. This
+grotesque fallacy lies at the bottom of the tradition which has caused
+so many foolish things to be said about that gallant mariner, Americus
+Vespucius. In geographical discussions the tendency to overlook the fact
+that Columbus and his immediate successors did not sail with the latest
+edition of Black's General Atlas in their cabins is almost inveterate;
+it keeps revealing itself in all sorts of queer statements, and probably
+there is no cure for it except in familiarity with the long series of
+perplexed and struggling maps made in the sixteenth century. Properly
+regarded, the Discovery of America was not a single event, but a very
+gradual process. It was not like a case of special creation, for it was
+a case of evolution, and the voyage of 1492 was simply the most decisive
+and epoch-marking incident in that evolution. Columbus himself, after
+all his four eventful voyages across the Sea of Darkness, died in the
+belief that he had simply discovered the best and straightest route to
+the eastern shores of Asia. Yet from his first experiences in Cuba down
+to his latest voyage upon the coasts of Honduras and Veragua, he was
+more or less puzzled at finding things so different from what he had
+anticipated. If he had really known anything with accuracy about the
+eastern coast of Asia, he would doubtless soon have detected his
+fundamental error, but no European in his day had any such knowledge. In
+his four voyages Columbus was finding what he supposed to be parts of
+Asia, what we now know to have been parts of America, but what were
+really to him and his contemporaries neither more nor less than Strange
+Coasts. We have now to consider briefly his further experiences upon
+these strange coasts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The second voyage of Columbus was begun in a very different mood and
+under very different auspices from either his former or his two
+subsequent voyages. On his first departure from Palos, in 1492, all
+save a few devoted friends regarded him as a madman rushing upon his
+doom; and outside the Spanish peninsula the expedition seems to have
+attracted no notice. But on the second start, in 1493, all hands
+supposed that they were going straight to golden Cathay and to boundless
+riches. It was not now with groans but with paeans that they flocked on
+board the ships; and the occasion was observed, with more or less
+interest, by some people in other countries of Europe,--as in Italy, and
+for the moment in France and England.
+
+[Sidenote: The letter to Sanchez.]
+
+At the same time with his letter to Santangel, the Admiral had
+despatched another account, substantially the same,[532] to Gabriel
+Sanchez,[533] another officer of the royal treasury. Several copies of a
+Latin translation of this letter were published at Rome, at Paris, and
+elsewhere, in the course of the year 1493.[534] The story which it
+contained was at once paraphrased in Italian verse by Giuliano Dati, one
+of the most popular poets of the age, and perhaps in the autumn of 1493
+the amazing news that the Indies had been found by sailing west[535] was
+sung by street urchins in Florence. We are also informed, in an
+ill-vouched but not improbable clause in Ramusio, that not far from that
+same time the news was heard with admiration in London, where it was
+pronounced "a thing more divine than human to sail by the West unto the
+East, where spices grow, by a way that was never known before;"[536] and
+it seems altogether likely that it was this news that prompted the
+expedition of John Cabot hereafter to be mentioned.[537]
+
+         [Footnote 532: "Un duplicata de cette relation," Harrisse,
+         _Christophe Colomb_, tom i. p. 419.]
+
+         [Footnote 533: Often called Raphael Sanchez.]
+
+         [Footnote 534: The following epigram was added to the first
+         Latin edition of the latter by Corbaria, Bishop of
+         Monte-Peloso:--
+
+            _Ad Invictissimum Regem Hispaniarum_:
+
+            Iam nulla Hispanis tellus addenda triumphis,
+              Atque parum tantis viribus orbis erat.
+            Nunc longe eois regio deprensa sub undis,
+              Auctura est titulos Betice magne tuos.
+            Unde repertori inerita referenda Columbo
+              Gratia, sed summo est maior habenda deo,
+            Qui vincenda parat noua regna tibique sibique
+              Teque simul fortem prestat et esse pium.
+
+         These lines are thus paraphrased by M. Harrisse:--
+
+            _To the Invincible King of the Spains_:
+
+            Less wide the world than the renown of Spain,
+            To swell her triumphs no new lands remain.
+            Rejoice, Iberia! see thy fame increased!
+            Another world Columbus from the East
+            And the mid-ocean summons to thy sway!
+            Give thanks to him--but loftier homage pay
+            To God Supreme, who gives its realms to thee!
+            Greatest of monarchs, first of servants be!
+                         _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, p. 13.
+
+         The following is a literal version:--"Already there is no land
+         to be added to the triumphs of Spain, and the earth was too
+         small for such great deeds. Now a far country under the eastern
+         waves has been discovered, and will be an addition to thy
+         titles, O great Baetica! wherefore thanks are due to the
+         illustrious discover Columbus; but greater thanks to the
+         supreme God, who is making ready new realms to be conquered for
+         thee and for Himself, and vouchsafes to thee to be at once
+         strong and pious." It will be observed that nothing is said
+         about "another world."
+
+         An elaborate account of these earliest and excessively rare
+         editions is given by M. Harrisse, _loc. cit._]
+
+         [Footnote 535: Or, as Mr. Major carelessly puts it, "the
+         astounding news of the discovery of a new world." (_Select
+         Letters of Columbus_, p. vi.) Mr. Major knows very well that no
+         such "news" was possible for many a year after 1493; his remark
+         is, of course, a mere slip of the pen, but if we are ever going
+         to straighten out the tangle of misconceptions with which this
+         subject is commonly surrounded, we must be careful in our
+         choice of words.--As a fair specimen, of the chap-book style of
+         Dati's stanzas, we may cite the fourteenth:--
+
+            Hor vo tornar almio primo tractato
+            dellisole trovate incognite a te
+            in [~q]sto anno presente [~q]sto e stato
+            nel millequatrocento nov[=a]tatre,
+            uno che x[~p]ofan col[=o]bo chiamato,
+            che e stato in corte der prefecto Re
+            ha molte volte questa stimolato,
+            el Re ch'cerchi acrescere il suo stato.
+
+         M. Harrisse gives the following version:--
+
+            Back to my theme, O Listener, turn with me
+            And hear of islands all unknown to thee!
+            Islands whereof the grand discovery
+            Chanced in this year of fourteen ninety-three.
+            One Christopher Colombo, whose resort
+            Was ever in the King Fernando's court,
+            Bent himself still to rouse and stimulate
+            The King to swell the borders of his State.
+                         _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, p. 29.
+
+         The entire poem of sixty-eight stanzas is given in Major, _op.
+         cit._ pp. lxxiii.-xc. It was published at Florence, Oct. 26,
+         1493, and was called "the story of the discovery [not of a new
+         world, but] of the new Indian islands of Canary!" (_Storia
+         della inventione delle nuove isole dicanaria indiane._)]
+
+         [Footnote 536: _Raccolta di Navigazioni_, etc., Venice, 1550,
+         tom. i. fol. 414.]
+
+         [Footnote 537: See below, vol. ii. pp. 2-15.]
+
+[Sidenote: Earliest references to the discovery.]
+
+[Sidenote: Earliest reference in English.]
+
+The references to the discovery are very scanty, however, until after
+the year 1500, and extremely vague withal. For example, Bernardino de
+Carvajal, the Spanish ambassador at the papal court, delivered an
+oration in Rome on June 19, 1493, in which he said: "And Christ placed
+under their [Ferdinand and Isabella's] rule the Fortunate [Canary]
+islands, the fertility of which has been ascertained to be wonderful.
+And he has lately disclosed some other unknown ones towards the Indies
+which may be considered among the most precious things on earth; and it
+is believed that they will be gained over to Christ by the emissaries
+of the king."[538] Outside of the Romance countries we find one German
+version of the first letter of Columbus, published at Strasburg, in
+1497,[539] and a brief allusion to the discovery in Sebastian Brandt's
+famous allegorical poem, "Das Narrenschiff," the first edition of which
+appeared in 1494.[540] The earliest distinct reference to Columbus in
+the English language is to be found in a translation of this poem, "The
+Shyppe of Fooles," by Henry Watson, published in London by Wynkyn de
+Worde in 1509. The purpose of Brandt's allegory was to satirize the
+follies committed by all sorts and conditions of men. In the chapter,
+"Of hym that wyll wryte and enquere of all regyons," it is said: "There
+was one that knewe that in y^{e} ysles of Spayne was enhabitantes.
+Wherefore he asked men of Kynge Ferdynandus & wente & founde them, the
+whiche lyved as beestes."[541] Until after the middle of the sixteenth
+century no English chronicler mentions either Columbus or the Cabots,
+nor is there anywhere an indication that the significance of the
+discoveries in the western ocean was at all understood.[542]
+
+         [Footnote 538: Harrisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_,
+         p. 35.]
+
+         [Footnote 539: Id. p. 50.]
+
+         [Footnote 540:
+            Auch hat man sydt in Portigall
+            Und in Hyspanyen uberall
+            Golt-inseln funden, und nacket l[ deg.u]t
+            Von den man vor wust sagen n[ deg.u]t.
+                    Harrisse, _Bibl. Amer. Vet._; _Additions_, p. 4.
+
+         Or, in more modern German:--
+
+            Wie man auch juengst von Portugal
+            Und Hispanien aus schier ueberall
+            Goldinseln fand und nakte Leute,
+            Von denen man erst weiss seit heute.
+                    _Das Narrenschiff_, ed. Simrock, Berlin, 1872, p. 161.
+
+         In the Latin version of 1497, now in the National Library at
+         Paris, it goes somewhat differently:--
+
+            Antea que fuerat priscis incognita tellus:
+              Exposita est oculis & manifesta patet.
+            Hesperie occidue rex Ferdinandus: in alto
+            Aequore nunc gentes repperit innumeras.
+                    Harrisse, _op. cit._; _Additions_, p. 7.
+
+         It will be observed that these foreign references are so
+         ungallant, and so incorrect, as to give all the credit to
+         Ferdinand, while poor Isabella is not mentioned!]
+
+         [Footnote 541: Harrisse, _op. cit._; _Additions_, p. 45.]
+
+         [Footnote 542: Harrisse, _Jean et Sebastien Cabot_, Paris,
+         1882, p. 15.]
+
+[Sidenote: Portuguese claim to the Indies.]
+
+North of the Alps and Pyrenees the interest in what was going on at the
+Spanish court in 1493 was probably confined to very few people. As for
+Venice and Genoa we have no adequate means of knowing how they felt
+about the matter,--a fact which in itself is significant. The interest
+was centred in Spain and Portugal. There it was intense and awakened
+fierce heart-burnings. Though John II. had not given his consent to the
+proposal for murdering Columbus, he appears to have seriously
+entertained the thought of sending a small fleet across the Atlantic as
+soon as possible, to take possession of some point in Cathay or Cipango
+and then dispute the claims of the Spaniards.[543] Such a summary
+proceeding might perhaps be defended on the ground that the grant from
+Pope Eugenius V. to the crown of Portugal expressly included "the
+Indies." In the treaty of 1479, moreover, Spain had promised not to
+interfere with the discoveries and possessions of the Portuguese.
+
+         [Footnote 543: Vasconcellos, _Vida del Rey Don Juan II._,
+         Madrid, 1639, lib. vi.]
+
+[Sidenote: Bulls of Pope Alexander VI.]
+
+But whatever King John may have intended, Ferdinand and Isabella were
+too quick for him. No sooner had Columbus arrived at Barcelona than an
+embassy was despatched to Rome, asking for a grant of the Indies just
+discovered by that navigator in the service of Castile. The notorious
+Rodrigo Borgia, who had lately been placed in the apostolic chair as
+Alexander VI., was a native of Valencia in the kingdom of Aragon, and
+would not be likely to refuse such a request through any excess of
+regard for Portugal. As between the two rival powers the pontiff's
+arrangement was made in a spirit of even-handed justice. On the 3d of
+May, 1493, he issued a bull conferring upon the Spanish sovereigns all
+lands already discovered or thereafter to be discovered in the western
+ocean, with jurisdiction and privileges in all respects similar to those
+formerly bestowed upon the crown of Portugal. This grant was made by the
+pope "out of our pure liberality, certain knowledge, and plenitude of
+apostolic power," and by virtue of "the authority of omnipotent God
+granted to us in St. Peter, and of the Vicarship of Jesus Christ which
+we administer upon the earth."[544] It was a substantial reward for the
+monarchs who had completed the overthrow of Mahometan rule in Spain, and
+it afforded them opportunities for further good work in converting the
+heathen inhabitants of the islands and mainland of Asia.[545]
+
+         [Footnote 544: "De nostra mera liberalitate, et ex certa
+         scientia, ac de apostolicae potestatis plenitudine." ...
+         "auctoritate omnipotentis Dei nobis in beato Petro concessa, ac
+         vicariatus Jesu Christi qua fungimur in terris." The same
+         language is used in the second bull. Mr. Prescott (_Ferdinand
+         and Isabella_, part i. chap, vii.) translates _certa scientia_
+         "infallible knowledge," but in order to avoid any complications
+         with modern theories concerning papal infallibility, I prefer
+         to use a less technical word.]
+
+         [Footnote 545: A year or two later the sovereigns were further
+         rewarded with the decorative title of "Most Catholic." See
+         Zurita, _Historia del Rey Hernando_, Saragossa, 1580, lib. ii.
+         cap. xl.; Peter Martyr, _Epist._ clvii.]
+
+[Sidenote: Treaty of Tordesillas.]
+
+On the following day Alexander issued a second bull in order to prevent
+any occasion for quarrel between Spain and Portugal.[546] He decreed
+that all lands discovered or to be discovered to the west of a meridian
+one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde islands should
+belong to the Spaniards. Inasmuch as between the westernmost of the
+Azores and the easternmost of the Cape Verde group the difference in
+longitude is not far from ten degrees, this description must be allowed
+to be somewhat vague, especially in a document emanating from "certain
+knowledge;"[547] and it left open a source of future disputes which one
+would suppose the "plenitude of apostolic power" might have been
+worthily employed in closing. The meridian 25 deg. W., however, would have
+satisfied the conditions, and the equitable intent of the arrangement is
+manifest. The Portuguese were left free to pursue their course of
+discovery and conquest along the routes which they had always preferred.
+King John, however, was not satisfied. He entertained vague hopes of
+finding spice islands, or something worth having, in the western waters;
+and he wished to have the Line of Demarcation carried farther to the
+west. After a year of diplomatic wrangling a treaty was signed at
+Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, in which Spain consented to the moving of the
+line to a distance of 370 leagues west from the Cape Verde islands.[548]
+It would thus on a modern map fall somewhere between the 41st and 44th
+meridians west of Greenwich. This amendment had important and curious
+consequences. It presently gave the Brazilian coast to the Portuguese,
+and thereupon played a leading part in the singular and complicated
+series of events that ended in giving the name of Americus Vespucius to
+that region, whence it was afterwards gradually extended to the whole
+western hemisphere.[549]
+
+         [Footnote 546: The complete text of this bull, with Richard
+         Eden's translation, is given at the end of this work; see
+         below, Appendix B. The official text is in _Magnum Bullarium
+         Romanum_, ed. Cherubini, Lyons, 1655, tom. i. p. 466. The
+         original document received by Ferdinand and Isabella is
+         preserved in the Archives of the Indies at Seville; it is
+         printed entire in Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. ii.
+         No. 18. Another copy, less complete, may be found in Raynaldus,
+         _Annales ecclesiastici_, Lucca, 1754, tom. xi. p. 214, No.
+         19-22; and another in Leibnitz, _Codex Diplomaticus_, tom. i.
+         pt. i. p. 471. It is often called the Bull "Inter Cetera," from
+         its opening words.
+
+         The origin of the pope's claim to apostolic authority for
+         giving away kingdoms is closely connected with the fictitious
+         "Donation of Constantine," an edict probably fabricated in Rome
+         about the middle of the eighth century. The title of the old
+         Latin text is _Edictum domini Constantini Imp._, apud
+         Pseudo-Isidorus, _Decretalia_. Constantine's transfer of the
+         seat of empire from the Tiber to the Bosphorus tended greatly
+         to increase the dignity and power of the papacy, and I presume
+         that the fabrication of this edict, four centuries afterward,
+         was the expression of a sincere belief that the first Christian
+         emperor _meant_ to leave the temporal supremacy over Italy in
+         the hands of the Roman see. The edict purported to be such a
+         donation from Constantine to Pope Sylvester I., but the extent
+         and character of the donation was stated with such vagueness as
+         to allow a wide latitude of interpretation. Its genuineness was
+         repeatedly called in question, but belief in it seems to have
+         grown in strength until after the thirteenth century. Leo IX.,
+         who was a strong believer in its genuineness, granted in 1054
+         to the Normans their conquests in Sicily and Calabria, to be
+         held as a fief of the Roman see. (Muratori, _Annali d' Italia_,
+         tom. vi. pt. ii. p. 245.) It was next used to sustain the papal
+         claim to suzerainty over the island of Corsica. A century later
+         John of Salisbury maintained the right of the pope to dispose
+         "of all _islands_ on which Christ, the Sun of righteousness,
+         hath shined," and in conformity with this opinion Pope Adrian
+         IV. (Nicholas Breakspeare, an Englishman) authorized in 1164
+         King Henry II. of England to invade and conquer Ireland. (See
+         Adrian IV., _Epist._ 76, apud Migne, _Patrologia_, tom.
+         clxxxviii.) Dr. Lanigan, in treating of this matter, is more an
+         Irishman than a papist, and derides "this nonsense of the
+         pope's being the head-owner of all Christian islands."
+         (_Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, vol. iv. p.
+         159.)--Gregory VII., in working up to the doctrine that all
+         Christian kingdoms should be held as fiefs under St. Peter
+         (Baronius, _Annales_, tom. xvii. p. 430; cf. Villemain,
+         _Histoire de Gregoire VII._, Paris, 1873, tom. ii. pp. 59-61),
+         does not seem to have appealed to the Donation. Perhaps he was
+         shrewd enough to foresee the kind of objection afterwards
+         raised by the Albigensians, who pithily declared that if the
+         suzerainty of the popes was derived from the Donation, then
+         they were successors of Constantine and not of St. Peter.
+         (Moneta Cremonensis, _Adversus Catharos et Waldenses_, ed.
+         Ricchini, Rome, 1743, v. 2.) But Innocent IV. summarily
+         disposed of this argument at the Council of Lyons in 1245, when
+         he deposed the Emperor Frederick II. and King Sancho II. of
+         Portugal,--saying that Christ himself had bestowed temporal as
+         well as spiritual headship upon St. Peter and his successors,
+         so that Constantine only gave up to the Church what belonged to
+         it already. The opposite or Ghibelline theory was eloquently
+         set forth by Dante, in his treatise _De Monarchia_; he held
+         that inasmuch as the Empire existed before the Church, it could
+         not be derived from it. Dante elsewhere expressed his
+         abhorrence of the Donation:--
+
+            Ahi Constantin, di quanto mal fu matre,
+              Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
+              Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!
+                                   _Inferno_, xix. 115.
+
+         Similar sentiments were expressed by many of the most popular
+         poets from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. Walther von
+         der Vogelweide was sure that if the first Christian emperor
+         could have foreseen the evils destined to flow from his
+         Donation, he would have withheld it:--
+
+            Solte ich den pfaffen raten an den triuwen min,
+            So spraeche ir haut den armen zuo: se, daz ist din,
+            Ir zunge suenge, unde lieze mengem man daz sin,
+            Gedaehten daz ouch si dur Got waeren almuosenaere.
+            Do gab ir erste teil der Kuenik Konstantin,
+            Het er gewest, daz da von uebel kuenftik waere,
+            So het er wol underkomen des riches swaere,
+            Wan daz si do waren kiusche, und uebermuete laere.
+                         Hagen, _Minnesinger-Sammlung_, Leipsic, 1838,
+                         bd. i. p. 270.
+
+         Ariosto, in a passage rollicking with satire, makes his
+         itinerant paladin find the "stinking" Donation in the course of
+         his journey upon the moon:--
+
+            Di varii fiori ad un gran monte passa,
+            Ch' ebber gia buono odore, or puzzan forte,
+            Questo era il dono, se pero dir lece,
+            Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece.
+                         _Orlando Furioso_, xxxiv. 80.
+
+         The Donation was finally proved to be a forgery by Laurentius
+         Valla in 1440, in his _De falso credita et ementita Constantini
+         donatione declamatio_ (afterward spread far and wide by Ulrich
+         von Hutten), and independently by the noble Reginald Pecock,
+         bishop of Chichester, in his _Repressor_, written about
+         1447.--During the preceding century the theory of Gregory VII.
+         and Innocent IV. had been carried to its uttermost extreme by
+         the Franciscan monk Alvaro Pelayo, in his _De Planctu
+         Ecclesiae_, written at Avignon during the "Babylonish
+         Captivity," about 1350 (printed at Venice in 1560), and by
+         Agostino Trionfi, in his _Summa de potestate ecclesiastica_,
+         Augsburg, 1473, an excessively rare book, of which there is a
+         copy in the British Museum. These writers maintained that the
+         popes were suzerains of the whole earth and had absolute power
+         to dispose not only of all Christian kingdoms, but also of all
+         heathen lands and powers. It was upon this theory that Eugenius
+         IV. seems to have acted with reference to Portugal and
+         Alexander VI. with reference to Spain. Of course there was
+         never a time when such claims for the papacy were not denied by
+         a large party within the Church. The Spanish sovereigns in
+         appealing to Alexander VI. took care to hint that some of their
+         advisers regarded them as already entitled to enjoy the fruits
+         of their discoveries, even before obtaining the papal
+         permission, but they did not choose to act upon that opinion
+         (Herrera, decad. i. lib. ii. cap. 4). The kings of Portugal
+         were less reserved in their submission. In _Valasci Ferdinandi
+         ad Innocentium octauum de obedientia oratio_, a small quarto
+         printed at Rome about 1488, John II. did homage to the pope for
+         the countries just discovered by Bartholomew Dias. His
+         successor Emanuel did the same after the voyages of Gama and
+         Vespucius. In a small quarto, _Obedientia potentissimi
+         Emanuelis Lusitaniae regis &c. per clarissimum juris consultum
+         Dieghum Pacett[=u] oratorem ad Iuli[=u] Pont. Max._, Rome,
+         1505, all the newly found lands are laid at the feet of Julius
+         II. in a passage that ends with words worth noting: "Accipe
+         tandem orbem ipsum terrarum, Deus enim noster es," i. e.
+         "Accept in fine the earth itself, for thou art our God."
+         Similar homage was rendered to Leo X. in 1513, on account of
+         Albuquerque's conquests in Asia.--We may suspect that if the
+         papacy had retained, at the end of the fifteenth century,
+         anything like the overshadowing power which it possessed at the
+         end of the twelfth, the kings of Portugal would not have been
+         quite so unstinted in their homage. As it came to be less of a
+         reality and more of a flourish of words, it cost less to offer
+         it. Among some modern Catholics I have observed a disposition
+         to imagine that in the famous bull of partition Alexander VI.
+         acted not as supreme pontiff but merely as an arbiter, in the
+         modern sense, between the crowns of Spain and Portugal; but
+         such an interpretation is hardly compatible with Alexander's
+         own words. An arbiter, as such, does not make awards by virtue
+         of "the authority of Omnipotent God granted to us in St. Peter,
+         and of the Vicarship of Jesus Christ which we administer upon
+         the earth."
+
+         Since writing this note my attention has been called to Dr.
+         Ignaz von Doellinger's _Fables respecting the Popes of the
+         Middle Ages_, London, 1871; and I find in it a chapter on the
+         Donation of Constantine, in which the subject is treated with a
+         wealth of learning. Some of my brief references are there
+         discussed at considerable length. To the references to Dante
+         there is added a still more striking passage, where Constantine
+         is admitted into Heaven _in spite of_ his Donation (_Paradiso_,
+         xx. 55).]
+
+         [Footnote 547: The language of the bull is even more vague than
+         my version in the text. His Holiness describes the lands to be
+         given to the Spaniards as lying "to the west and south" (versus
+         occidentem et meridiem) of his dividing meridian. Land to the
+         south of a meridian would be in a queer position! Probably it
+         was meant to say that the Spaniards, once west of the papal
+         meridian, might go south as well as north. For the king of
+         Portugal had suggested that they ought to confine themselves to
+         northern waters.]
+
+         [Footnote 548: For the original Spanish text of the treaty of
+         Tordesillas, see Navarrete, tom. ii. pp. 116-130.]
+
+         [Footnote 549: See below, vol. ii. pp. 98-154.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca.]
+
+Already in April, 1493, without waiting for the papal sanction,
+Ferdinand and Isabella bent all their energies to the work of fitting
+out an expedition for taking possession of "the Indies." First, a
+department of Indian affairs was created, and at its head was placed
+Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, archdeacon of Seville: in Spain a man in high
+office was apt to be a clergyman. This Fonseca was all-powerful in
+Indian affairs for the next thirty years. He won and retained the
+confidence of the sovereigns by virtue of his executive ability. He was
+a man of coarse fibre, ambitious and domineering, cold-hearted and
+perfidious, with a cynical contempt--such as low-minded people are apt
+to call "smart"--for the higher human feelings. He was one of those ugly
+customers who crush, without a twinge of compunction, whatever comes in
+their way. The slightest opposition made him furious, and his
+vindictiveness was insatiable. This dexterous and pushing Fonseca held
+one after another the bishoprics of Badajoz, Cordova, Palencia, and
+Conde, the archbishopric of Rosano in Italy, together with the bishopric
+of Burgos, and he was also principal chaplain to Isabella and afterwards
+to Ferdinand. As Sir Arthur Helps observes, "the student of early
+American history will have a bad opinion of many Spanish bishops, if he
+does not discover that it is Bishop Fonseca who reappears under
+various designations."[550] Sir Arthur fitly calls him "the ungodly
+bishop."
+
+         [Footnote 550: _History of the Spanish Conquest_, vol. i. p.
+         487.]
+
+[Sidenote: Friar Boyle.]
+
+The headquarters of Fonseca and of the Indian department were
+established at Seville, and a special Indian custom-house was set up at
+Cadiz. There was to be another custom-house upon the island of
+Hispaniola (supposed to be Japan), and a minute registry was to be kept
+of all ships and their crews and cargoes, going out or coming in. Nobody
+was to be allowed to go to the Indies for any purpose whatever without a
+license formally obtained. Careful regulations were made for hampering
+trade and making everything as vexatious as possible for traders,
+according to the ordinary wisdom of governments in such matters. All
+expenses were to be borne and all profits received by the crown of
+Castile, saving the rights formerly guaranteed to Columbus. The cost of
+the present expedition was partly defrayed with stolen money, the
+plunder wrung from the worthy and industrious Jews who had been driven
+from their homes by the infernal edict of the year before. Extensive
+"requisitions" were also made; in other words, when the sovereigns
+wanted a ship or a barrel of gunpowder they seized it, and impressed it
+into the good work of converting the heathen. To superintend this
+missionary work, a Franciscan monk[551] was selected who had lately
+distinguished himself as a diplomatist in the dispute with France over
+the border province of Rousillon. This person was a native of Catalonia,
+and his name was Bernardo Boyle, which strongly suggests an Irish
+origin. Alexander VI. appointed him his apostolic vicar for the
+Indies,[552] and he seems to have been the first clergyman to perform
+mass on the western shores of the Atlantic. To assist the vicar, the six
+Indians brought over by Columbus were baptized at Barcelona, with the
+king and queen for their godfather and godmother. It was hoped that they
+would prove useful as missionaries, and when one of them presently died
+he was said to be the first Indian ever admitted to heaven.[553]
+
+         [Footnote 551: Irving calls him a Benedictine, but he is
+         addressed as "fratri ordinis Minorum" in the bull clothing him
+         with apostolic authority in the Indies, June 25, 1493. See
+         Raynaldus, _Annales ecclesiastici_, tom. xi. p. 216. I cannot
+         imagine what M. Harrisse means by calling him "religieux de
+         Saint-Vincent de Paule" (_Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. p. 55).
+         Vincent de Paul was not born till 1576.]
+
+         [Footnote 552: Not for "the New World," as Irving carelessly
+         has it in his _Columbus_, vol. i. p. 346. No such phrase had
+         been thought of in 1493, or until long afterward.]
+
+         [Footnote 553: Herrera, _Hist. de las Indias_, decad. i. lib.
+         ii. cap. 5.]
+
+The three summer months were occupied in fitting out the little fleet.
+There were fourteen caravels, and three larger store-ships known as
+carracks. Horses, mules, and other cattle were put on board,[554] as
+well as vines and sugar-canes, and the seeds of several European
+cereals, for it was intended to establish a permanent colony upon
+Hispaniola. In the course of this work some slight matters of
+disagreement came up between Columbus and Fonseca, and the question
+having been referred to the sovereigns, Fonseca was mildly snubbed and
+told that he must in all respects be guided by the Admiral's wishes.
+From that time forth this ungodly prelate nourished a deadly hatred
+toward Columbus, and never lost an opportunity for whispering evil
+things about him. The worst of the grievous afflictions that afterward
+beset the great discoverer must be ascribed to the secret machinations
+of this wretch.
+
+         [Footnote 554: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xliv.]
+
+[Sidenote: Notable persons who embarked on the second voyage.]
+
+At last the armament was ready. People were so eager to embark that it
+was felt necessary to restrain them. It was not intended to have more
+than 1,200, but about 1,500 in all contrived to go, so that some of the
+caravels must have been overcrowded. The character of the company was
+very different from that of the year before. Those who went in the first
+voyage were chiefly common sailors. Now there were many aristocratic
+young men, hot-blooded and feather-headed hidalgos whom the surrender of
+Granada had left without an occupation. Most distinguished among these
+was Alonso de Ojeda, a dare-devil of unrivalled muscular strength, full
+of energy and fanfaronade, and not without generous qualities, but with
+very little soundness of judgment or character. Other notable personages
+in this expedition were Columbus's youngest brother Giacomo (henceforth
+called Diego), who had come from Genoa at the first news of the
+Admiral's triumphant return; the monk Antonio de Marchena,[555] whom
+historians have so long confounded with the prior Juan Perez; an
+Aragonese gentleman named Pedro Margarite, a favourite of the king and
+destined to work sad mischief; Juan Ponce de Leon, who afterwards gave
+its name to Florida; Francisco de Las Casas, father of the great apostle
+and historian of the Indies; and, last but not least, the pilot Juan de
+La Cosa, now charged with the work of chart-making, in which he was an
+acknowledged master.[556]
+
+         [Footnote 555: He went as astronomer, from which we may perhaps
+         suppose that scientific considerations had made him one of the
+         earliest and most steadfast upholders of Columbus's views.]
+
+         [Footnote 556: See Harrisse, _Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. pp.
+         55, 56; Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 498;
+         Fabie, _Vida de Las Casas_, Madrid, 1879, tom. i. p. 11;
+         Oviedo, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. i. p. 467; Navarrete,
+         _Coleccion de viages_, tom. ii. pp. 143-149.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cruise among the cannibal islands.]
+
+The pomp and bustle of the departure from Cadiz, September 25, 1493, at
+which the Admiral's two sons, Diego and Ferdinand, were present, must
+have been one of the earliest recollections of the younger boy, then
+just five years of age.[557] Again Columbus stopped at the Canary
+islands, this time to take on board goats and sheep, pigs and fowls, for
+he had been struck by the absence of all such animals on the coasts
+which he had visited.[558] Seeds of melons, oranges, and lemons were
+also taken. On the 7th of October the ships weighed anchor, heading a
+trifle to the south of west, and after a pleasant and uneventful voyage
+they sighted land on the 3d of November.[559] It turned out to be a
+small mountainous island, and as it was discovered on Sunday they called
+it Dominica. In a fortnight's cruise in these Caribbean waters they
+discovered and named several islands, such as Marigalante, Guadaloupe,
+Antigua, and others, and at length reached Porto Rico. The inhabitants
+of these islands were ferocious cannibals, very different from the
+natives encountered on the former voyage. There were skirmishes in which
+a few Spaniards were killed with poisoned arrows. On Guadaloupe the
+natives lived in square houses made of saplings intertwined with reeds,
+and on the rude porticoes attached to these houses some of the wooden
+pieces were carved so as to look like serpents. In some of these houses
+human limbs were hanging from the roof, cured with smoke, like ham; and
+fresh pieces of human flesh were found stewing in earthen kettles, along
+with the flesh of parrots. Now at length, said Peter Martyr, was proved
+the truth of the stories of Polyphemus and the Laestrygonians, and the
+reader must look out lest his hair stand on end.[560] These western
+Laestrygonians were known as Caribbees, Caribales, or Canibales, and have
+thus furnished an epithet which we have since learned to apply to
+man-eaters the world over.
+
+         [Footnote 557: "E con questo preparamento il mercolede ai 25
+         del mese di settembre dell' anno 1493 un' ora avanti il levar
+         del sole, essendovi io e mio fratel presenti, l' Ammiraglio
+         levo le ancore," etc. _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. xliv.]
+
+         [Footnote 558: Eight sows were bought for 70 maravedis apiece,
+         and "destas ocho puercas se han multiplicado todos los puercos
+         que, hasta hoy, ha habido y hay en todas estas Indias," etc.
+         Las Casas, _Historia_, tom. ii. p. 3.]
+
+         [Footnote 559: The relation of this second voyage by Dr. Chanca
+         may be found in Navarrete, tom. i. pp. 198-241; an interesting
+         relation in Italian by Simone Verde, a Florentine merchant then
+         living in Valladolid, is published in Harrisse, _Christophe
+         Colomb_, tom. ii. pp. 68-78. The narrative of the curate of Los
+         Palacios is of especial value for this voyage.]
+
+         [Footnote 560: Martyr, _Epist._ cxlvii. _ad Pomponium Laetum_;
+         cf. _Odyssey_, x. 119; Thucyd. vi. 2.--Irving (vol. i. p. 385)
+         finds it hard to believe these stories, but the prevalence of
+         cannibalism, not only in these islands, but throughout a very
+         large part of aboriginal America, has been superabundantly
+         proved.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fate of the colony at La Navidad.]
+
+It was late at night on the 27th of November that Columbus arrived in
+the harbour of La Navidad and fired a salute to arouse the attention of
+the party that had been left there the year before. There was no reply
+and the silence seemed fraught with evil omen. On going ashore next
+morning and exploring the neighbourhood, the Spaniards came upon sights
+of dismal significance. The fortress was pulled to pieces and partly
+burnt, the chests of provisions were broken open and emptied, tools and
+fragments of European clothing were found in the houses of the natives,
+and finally eleven corpses, identifiable as those of white men, were
+found buried near the fort. Not one of the forty men who had been left
+behind in that place ever turned up to tell the tale. The little colony
+of La Navidad had been wiped out of existence. From the Indians,
+however, Columbus gathered bits of information that made a sufficiently
+probable story. It was a typical instance of the beginnings of
+colonization in wild countries. In such instances human nature has shown
+considerable uniformity. Insubordination and deadly feuds among
+themselves had combined with reckless outrages upon the natives to
+imperil the existence of this little party of rough sailors. The cause
+to which Horace ascribes so many direful wars, both before and since the
+days of fairest Helen, seems to have been the principal cause on this
+occasion. At length a fierce chieftain named Caonabo, from the region of
+Xaragua, had attacked the Spaniards in overwhelming force, knocked their
+blockhouse about their heads, and butchered all that were left of them.
+
+[Sidenote: Building of Isabella.]
+
+[Sidenote: Exploration of Cibao.]
+
+This was a gloomy welcome to the land of promise. There was nothing to
+be done but to build new fortifications and found a town. The site
+chosen for this new settlement, which was named Isabella, was at a good
+harbour about thirty miles east of Monte Christi. It was chosen because
+Columbus understood from the natives that it was not far from there to
+the gold-bearing mountains of Cibao, a name which still seemed to
+signify Cipango. Quite a neat little town was presently built, with
+church, marketplace, public granary, and dwelling-houses, the whole
+encompassed with a stone wall. An exploring party led by Ojeda into the
+mountains of Cibao found gold dust and pieces of gold ore in the beds of
+the brooks, and returned elated with this discovery. Twelve of the ships
+were now sent back to Spain for further supplies and reinforcements, and
+specimens of the gold were sent as an earnest of what was likely to be
+found. At length, in March, 1494, Columbus set forth, with 400 armed
+men, to explore the Cibao country. The march was full of interest. It is
+upon this occasion that we first find mention of the frantic terror
+manifested by Indians at the sight of horses. At first they supposed the
+horse and his rider to be a kind of centaur, and when the rider
+dismounted this separation of one creature into two overwhelmed them
+with supernatural terror. Even when they had begun to get over this
+notion they were in dread of being eaten by the horses.[561] These
+natives lived in houses grouped into villages, and had carved wooden
+idols and rude estufas for their tutelar divinities. It was ascertained
+that different tribes tried to steal each other's idols and even fought
+for the possession of valuable objects of "medicine."[562] Columbus
+observed and reported the customs of these people with some minuteness.
+There was nothing that agreed with Marco Polo's descriptions of Cipango,
+but so far as concerned the discovery of gold mines, the indications
+were such as to leave little doubt of the success of this
+reconnaissance. The Admiral now arranged his forces so as to hold the
+inland regions just visited and gave the general command to Margarite,
+who was to continue the work of exploration. He left his brother, Diego
+Columbus, in charge of the colony, and taking three caravels set sail
+from Isabella on the 24th of April, on a cruise of discovery in these
+Asiatic waters.
+
+         [Footnote 561: For an instance of 400 hostile Indians fleeing
+         before a single armed horseman, see _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_,
+         cap. lii.; Las Casas, _Hist._ tom. ii. p. 46.]
+
+         [Footnote 562: Compare the Fisherman's story of Drogio, above,
+         pp. 246, 252.]
+
+[Illustration: Discoveries made by Columbus in his first and second
+voyages.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cape Alpha and Omega.]
+
+A brief westward sail brought the little squadron into the Windward
+Passage and in sight of Cape Mayzi, which Columbus on his first voyage
+had named Cape Alpha and Omega as being the easternmost point on the
+Chinese coast. He believed that if he were to sail to the right of this
+cape he should have the continent on his port side for a thousand miles
+and more, as far as Quinsay and Cambaluc (Peking). If he had sailed
+in this direction and had succeeded in keeping to the east of Florida,
+he would have kept a continent on his port side, and a thousand miles
+would have taken him a long way toward that Vinland which our
+Scandinavian friends would fondly have us believe was his secret
+guiding-star, and the geographical position of which they suppose him to
+have known with such astounding accuracy. But on this as on other
+occasions, if the Admiral had ever received any information about
+Vinland, it must be owned that he treated it very cavalierly, for he
+chose the course to the left of Cape Mayzi. His decision is intelligible
+if we bear in mind that he had not yet circumnavigated Hayti and was not
+yet cured of his belief that its northern shore was the shore of the
+great Cipango. At the same time he had seen enough on his first voyage
+to convince him that the relative positions of Cipango and the mainland
+of Cathay were not correctly laid down upon the Toscanelli map. He had
+already inspected two or three hundred miles of the coast to the right
+of Cape Mayzi without finding traces of civilization; and whenever
+inquiries were made about gold or powerful kingdoms the natives
+invariably pointed to the south or southwest. Columbus, therefore,
+decided to try his luck in this direction. He passed to the left of Cape
+Mayzi and followed the southern coast of Cuba.
+
+[Sidenote: Discovery of Jamaica.]
+
+By the 3d of May the natives were pointing so persistently to the south
+and off to sea that he changed his course in that direction and soon
+came upon the northern coast of the island which we still know by its
+native name Jamaica. Here he found Indians more intelligent and more
+warlike than any he had as yet seen. He was especially struck with the
+elegance of their canoes, some of them nearly a hundred feet in length,
+carved and hollowed from the trunks of tall trees. We may already
+observe that different tribes of Indians comported themselves very
+differently at the first sight of white men. While the natives of some
+of the islands prostrated themselves in adoration of these
+sky-creatures, or behaved with a timorous politeness which the Spaniards
+mistook for gentleness of disposition, in other places the red men
+showed fight at once, acting upon the brute impulse to drive away
+strangers. In both cases, of course, dread of the unknown was the
+prompting impulse, though so differently manifested. As the Spaniards
+went ashore upon Jamaica, the Indians greeted them with a shower of
+javelins and for a few moments stood up against the deadly fire of the
+cross-bows, but when they turned to flee, a single bloodhound, let loose
+upon them, scattered them in wildest panic.[563]
+
+         [Footnote 563: Bernaldez, _Reyes Catolicos_, cap. cxxv.
+         Domesticated dogs were found generally in aboriginal America,
+         but they were very paltry curs compared to these fierce hounds,
+         one of which could handle an unarmed man as easily as a terrier
+         handles a rat.]
+
+[Sidenote: Coasting the south side of Cuba.]
+
+Finding no evidences of civilization upon this beautiful island,
+Columbus turned northward and struck the Cuban coast again at the point
+which still bears the name he gave it, Cape Cruz. Between the general
+contour of this end of Cuba and that of the eastern extremity of Cathay
+upon the Toscanelli map there is a curious resemblance, save that the
+direction is in the one case more east and west and in the other more
+north and south. Columbus passed no cities like Zaiton, nor cities of
+any sort, but when he struck into the smiling archipelago which he
+called the Queen's Gardens, now known as Cayos de las Doce Leguas, he
+felt sure that he was among Marco Polo's seven thousand spice islands.
+On the 3d of June, at some point on the Cuban coast, probably near
+Trinidad, the crops of several doves were opened and spices found in
+them. None of the natives here had ever heard of an end to Cuba, and
+they believed it was endless.[564] The next country to the west of
+themselves was named Mangon, and it was inhabited by people with tails
+which they carefully hid by wearing loose robes of cloth. This
+information seemed decisive to Columbus. Evidently this Mangon was
+Mangi, the province in which was the city of Zaiton, the province just
+south of Cathay. And as for the tailed men, the book of Mandeville had a
+story of some naked savages in eastern Asia who spoke of their more
+civilized neighbours as wearing clothes in order to cover up some bodily
+peculiarity or defect. Could there be any doubt that the Spanish
+caravels had come at length to the coast of opulent Mangi?[565]
+
+         [Footnote 564: As a Greek would have said, [Greek: epeiros], a
+         continent.]
+
+         [Footnote 565: Bernaldez, _Reyes Catolicos_, cap. cxxvii, Mr.
+         Irving, in citing these same incidents from Bernaldez, could
+         not quite rid himself of the feeling that there was something
+         strange or peculiar in the Admiral's method of interpreting
+         such information: "Animated by one of the pleasing illusions of
+         his ardent imagination, Columbus pursued his voyage, with a
+         prosperous breeze, along the supposed continent of Asia."
+         (_Life of Columbus_, vol. i. p. 493.) This lends a false colour
+         to the picture, which the general reader is pretty sure to make
+         still falser. To suppose the southern coast of Cuba to be the
+         southern coast of Toscanelli's Mangi required no illusion of an
+         "ardent imagination." It was simply a plain common-sense
+         conclusion reached by sober reasoning from such data as were
+         then accessible (i. e. the Toscanelli map, amended by
+         information such as was understood to be given by the natives);
+         it was more probable than any other theory of the situation
+         likely to be devised from those data; and it seems fanciful to
+         us to-day only because knowledge acquired since the time of
+         Columbus has shown us how far from correct it was. Modern
+         historians abound in unconscious turns of expression--as in
+         this quotation from Irving--which project modern knowledge back
+         into the past, and thus destroy the historical perspective. I
+         shall mention several other instances from Irving, and the
+         reader must not suppose that this is any indication of
+         captiousness on my part toward a writer for whom my only
+         feeling is that of sincerest love and veneration.]
+
+[Sidenote: The "people of Mangon."]
+
+[Sidenote: The Golden Chersonese.]
+
+Under the influence of this belief, when a few days later they landed in
+search of fresh water, and a certain archer, on the lookout for game,
+caught distant glimpses of a flock of tall white cranes feeding in an
+everglade, he fled to his comrades with the story that he had seen a
+party of men clad in long white tunics, and all agreed that these must
+be the people of Mangon.[566] Columbus sent a small company ashore to
+find them. It is needless to add that the search was fruitless, but
+footprints of alligators, interpreted as footprints of griffins guarding
+hoarded gold,[567] frightened the men back to their ships. From the
+natives, with whom the Spaniards could converse only by signs, they
+seemed to learn that they were going toward the realm of Prester
+John;[568] and in such wise did they creep along the coast to the point,
+some fifty miles west of Broa Bay, where it begins to trend decidedly to
+the southwest. Before they had reached Point Mangles, a hundred miles
+farther on, inasmuch as they found this southwesterly trend persistent,
+the proof that they were upon the coast of the Asiatic continent began
+to seem complete. Columbus thought that they had passed the point (lat.
+23 deg., long. 145 deg. on Toscanelli's map) where the coast of Asia began to
+trend steadily toward the southwest.[569] By pursuing this coast he felt
+sure that he would eventually reach the peninsula (Malacca) which
+Ptolemy, who knew of it only by vague hearsay, called the Golden
+Chersonese.[570] An immense idea now flitted through the mind of
+Columbus. If he could reach and double that peninsula he could then find
+his way to the mouth of the Ganges river; thence he might cross the
+Indian ocean, pass the Cape of Good Hope (for Dias had surely shown that
+the way was open), and return that way to Spain after circumnavigating
+the globe! But fate had reserved this achievement for another man of
+great heart and lofty thoughts, a quarter of a century later, who should
+indeed accomplish what Columbus dreamed, but only after crossing another
+Sea of Darkness, the most stupendous body of water on our globe, the
+mere existence of which until after Columbus had died no European ever
+suspected.[571] If Columbus had now sailed about a hundred miles
+farther, he would have found the end of Cuba, and might perhaps have
+skirted the northern shore of Yucatan and come upon the barbaric
+splendours of Uxmal and Campeche. The excitement which such news would
+have caused in Spain might perhaps have changed all the rest of his life
+and saved him from the worst of his troubles. But the crews were now
+unwilling to go farther, and the Admiral realized that it would be
+impossible to undertake such a voyage as he had in mind with no more
+than their present outfit. So it was decided to return to Hispaniola.
+
+         [Footnote 566: These tropical birds are called _soldados_, or
+         "soldiers," because their stately attitudes remind one of
+         sentinels on duty. The whole town of Angostura, in Venezuela,
+         was one day frightened out of its wits by the sudden appearance
+         of a flock of these cranes on the summit of a neighbouring
+         hill. They were mistaken for a war-party of Indians. Humboldt,
+         _Voyage aux regions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent_, tom.
+         ii. p. 314.]
+
+         [Footnote 567: See above, p. 287, note.]
+
+         [Footnote 568: For these events, see Bernaldez, _Reyes
+         Catolicos_, cap. cxxiii.; F. Columbus, _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_,
+         cap. lvi.; Munoz, _Historia del Nuevo Mundo_, lib. v. Sec. 16;
+         Humboldt, _Examen critique_, tom. iv. pp. 237-263; Irving's
+         _Columbus_, vol. i. pp. 491-504.]
+
+         [Footnote 569: That is to say, he thought he had passed the
+         coast of Mangi (southern China) and reached the beginning of
+         the coast of Champa (Cochin China; see Yule's _Marco Polo_,
+         vol. ii. p. 213). The name Champa, coming to European writers
+         through an Italian source, was written Ciampa and Ciamba. See
+         its position on the Behaim and Toscanelli maps, and also on
+         Ruysch's map, 1508, below, vol. ii. p. 114. Peter Martyr says
+         that Columbus was sure that he had reached the coast of
+         Gangetic (i. e. what we call Farther) India: "Indiae Gangetidis
+         continentem eam (Cubae) plagam esse contendit Colonus." _Epist._
+         xciii. _ad Bernardinum_. Of course Columbus understood that
+         this region, while agreeing well enough with Toscanelli's
+         latitude, was far from agreeing with his longitude. But from
+         the moment when he turned eastward on his first voyage he seems
+         to have made up his mind that Toscanelli's longitudes needed
+         serious amendment. Indeed he had always used different
+         measurements from Toscanelli.]
+
+         [Footnote 570: For an account of Ptolemy's almost purely
+         hypothetical and curiously distorted notions about southeastern
+         Asia, see Bunbury's _History of Ancient Geography_, vol. ii.
+         pp. 604-608.]
+
+         [Footnote 571: See below, vol. ii. pp. 200-210.]
+
+Upon consultation with La Cosa and others, it was unanimously agreed
+that they were upon the coast of the continent of Asia. The evidence
+seemed conclusive. From Cape Mayzi (Alpha and Omega) they had observed,
+upon their own reckoning, 335 leagues, or about 1,000 geographical
+miles, of continuous coast running steadily in nearly the same
+direction.[572] Clearly it was too long for the coast of an island; and
+then there was the name Mangon = Mangi. The only puzzling circumstance
+was that they did not find any of Marco Polo's cities. They kept getting
+scraps of information which seemed to refer to gorgeous kingdoms, but
+these were always in the dim distance. Still there was no doubt that
+they had discovered the coast of a continent, and of course such a
+continent could be nothing else but Asia!
+
+         [Footnote 572: The length of Cuba from Cape Mayzi to Cape San
+         Antonio is about 700 English miles. But in following the
+         sinuosities of the coast, and including tacks, the estimate of
+         these pilots was probably not far from correct.]
+
+[Sidenote: A solemn expression of opinion.]
+
+Such unanimity of opinion might seem to leave nothing to be desired. But
+Columbus had already met with cavillers. Before he started on this
+cruise from Isabella, some impatient hidalgos, disgusted at finding much
+to do and little to get, had begun to hint that the Admiral was a
+humbug, and that his "Indies" were no such great affair after all. In
+order to silence these ill-natured critics, he sent his notary,
+accompanied by four witnesses, to every person in those three caravels,
+to get a sworn statement. If anybody had a grain of doubt about this
+coast being the coast of Asia, so that you could go ashore there and
+walk on dry land all the way to Spain if so disposed, let him declare
+his doubts once for all, so that they might now be duly considered. No
+one expressed any doubts. All declared, under oath, their firm belief.
+It was then agreed that if any of the number should thereafter deny or
+contradict this sworn statement, he should have his tongue slit;[573]
+and if an officer, he should be further punished with a fine of 10,000
+maravedis, or if a sailor, with a hundred lashes. These proceedings were
+embodied in a formal document, dated June 12, 1494, which is still to be
+seen in the Archives of the Indies at Seville.[574]
+
+         [Footnote 573: "E cortada la lengua;" "y le cortarian la
+         lengua." Irving understands it to mean cutting off the tongue.
+         But in those days of symbolism slitting the tip of that unruly
+         member was a recognized punishment for serious lying.]
+
+         [Footnote 574: It is printed in full in Navarrete, torn. ii.
+         pp. 143-149.]
+
+Having disposed of this solemn matter, the three caravels turned
+eastward, touching at the Isle of Pines and coasting back along the
+south side of Cuba. The headland where the Admiral first became
+convinced of the significance of the curvature of the coast, he named
+Cape of Good Hope,[575] believing it to be much nearer the goal which
+all were seeking than the other cape of that name, discovered by Dias
+seven years before.
+
+         [Footnote 575: It is given upon La Cosa's map; see below, vol.
+         ii., frontispiece.]
+
+[Sidenote: Vicissitudes of theory.]
+
+It will be remembered that the Admiral, upon his first voyage, had
+carried home with him two theories,--first, that in the Cuban coast he
+had already discovered that of the continent of Asia, secondly that
+Hispaniola was Cipango. The first theory seemed to be confirmed by
+further experience; the second was now to receive a serious shock.
+Leaving Cape Cruz the caravels stood over to Jamaica, leisurely explored
+the southern side of that island, and as soon as adverse winds would let
+them, kept on eastward till land appeared on the port bow. Nobody
+recognized it until an Indian chief who had learned some Spanish hailed
+them from the shore and told them it was Hispaniola. They then followed
+that southern coast its whole length, discovering the tiny islands,
+Beata, Saona, and Mona. Here Columbus, overcome by long-sustained
+fatigue and excitement, suddenly fell into a death-like lethargy, and in
+this sad condition was carried all the way to Isabella, and to his own
+house, where he was put to bed. Hispaniola had thus been
+circumnavigated, and either it was not Cipango or else that wonderland
+must be a much smaller affair than Toscanelli and Martin Behaim had
+depicted it.[576] There was something truly mysterious about these
+Strange Coasts!
+
+         [Footnote 576: Hispaniola continued, however, for many years to
+         be commonly identified with Cipango. See note D on Ruysch's
+         map, 1508, below, vol. ii. p. 114.]
+
+[Sidenote: Arrival of Bartholomew Columbus.]
+
+When Columbus, after many days, recovered consciousness, he found his
+brother Bartholomew standing by his bedside. It was six years since they
+had last parted company at Lisbon, whence the younger brother started
+for England, while the elder returned to Spain. The news of
+Christopher's return from his first voyage found Bartholomew in Paris,
+whence he started as soon as he could for Seville, but did not arrive
+there until just after the second expedition had started. Presently the
+sovereigns sent him with three ships to Hispaniola, to carry supplies to
+the colony; and there he arrived while the Admiral was exploring the
+coast of Cuba. The meeting of the two brothers was a great relief to
+both. The affection between them was very strong, and each was a support
+for the other. The Admiral at once proceeded to appoint Bartholomew to
+the office of Adelantado, which in this instance was equivalent to
+making him governor of Hispaniola under himself, the Viceroy of the
+Indies. In making this appointment Columbus seems to have exceeded the
+authority granted him by the second article of his agreement of April,
+1492, with the sovereigns;[577] but they mended the matter in 1497 by
+themselves investing Bartholomew with the office and dignity of
+Adelantado.[578]
+
+         [Footnote 577: See above, p. 417.]
+
+         [Footnote 578: Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. ii. p.
+         80.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mutiny in Hispaniola; desertion of Boyle and Margarite.]
+
+Columbus was in need of all the aid he could summon, for, during his
+absence, the island had become a pandemonium. His brother Diego, a man
+of refined and studious habits, who afterwards became a priest, was too
+mild in disposition to govern the hot-heads who had come to Hispaniola
+to get rich without labour. They would not submit to the rule of this
+foreigner. Instead of doing honest work they roamed about the island,
+abusing the Indians and slaying one another in silly quarrels. Chief
+among the offenders was King Ferdinand's favourite, the commander
+Margarite; and he was aided and abetted by Friar Boyle. Some time after
+Bartholomew's arrival, these two men of Aragon gathered about them a
+party of malcontents and, seizing the ships which had brought that
+mariner, sailed away to Spain. Making their way to court, they sought
+pardon for thus deserting the colony, saying that duty to their
+sovereigns demanded that they should bring home a report of what was
+going on in the Indies. They decried the value of Columbus's
+discoveries, and reminded the king that Hispaniola was taking money out
+of the treasury much faster than it was putting it in; an argument well
+calculated to influence Ferdinand that summer, for he was getting ready
+to go to war with France over the Naples affair. Then the two recreants
+poured forth a stream of accusations against the brothers Columbus, the
+general purport of which was that they were gross tyrants not fit to be
+trusted with the command of Spaniards.
+
+[Sidenote: The government of Columbus was not tyrannical.]
+
+No marked effect seems to have been produced by these first complaints,
+but when Margarite and Boyle were once within reach of Fonseca, we need
+not wonder that mischief was soon brewing. It was unfortunate for
+Columbus that his work of exploration was hampered by the necessity of
+founding a colony and governing a parcel of unruly men let loose in the
+wilderness, far away from the powerful restraints of civilized society.
+Such work required undivided attention and extraordinary talent for
+command. It does not appear that Columbus was lacking in such talent. On
+the contrary both he and his brother Bartholomew seem to have possessed
+it in a high degree. But the situation was desperately bad when the
+spirit of mutiny was fomented by deadly enemies at court. I do not find
+adequate justification for the charges of tyranny brought against
+Columbus. The veracity and fairness of the history of Las Casas are
+beyond question; in his divinely beautiful spirit one sees now and then
+a trace of tenderness even for Fonseca, whose conduct toward him was
+always as mean and malignant as toward Columbus. One gets from Las Casas
+the impression that the Admiral's high temper was usually kept under
+firm control, and that he showed far less severity than most men would
+have done under similar provocation. Bartholomew was made of sterner
+stuff, but his whole career presents no instance of wanton cruelty;
+toward both white men and Indians his conduct was distinguished by
+clemency and moderation. Under the government of these brothers a few
+scoundrels were hanged in Hispaniola. Many more ought to have been.
+
+[Sidenote: Troubles with the Indians.]
+
+Of the attempt of Columbus to collect tribute from the native
+population, and its consequences in developing the system of
+_repartimientos_ out of which grew Indian slavery, I shall treat in a
+future chapter.[579] That attempt, which was ill-advised and
+ill-managed, was part of a plan for checking wanton depredations and
+regulating the relations between the Spaniards and the Indians. The
+colonists behaved so badly toward the red men that the chieftain
+Caonabo, who had destroyed La Navidad the year before, now formed a
+scheme[580] for a general alliance among the native tribes, hoping with
+sufficient numbers to overwhelm and exterminate the strangers, in spite
+of their solid-hoofed monsters and death-dealing thunderbolts. This
+scheme was revealed to Columbus, soon after his return from the coast of
+Cuba, by the chieftain Guacanagari, who was an enemy to Caonabo and
+courted the friendship of the Spaniards. Alonso de Ojeda, by a daring
+stratagem, captured Caonabo and brought him to Columbus, who treated him
+kindly but kept him a prisoner until it should be convenient to send him
+to Spain. But this chieftain's scheme was nevertheless put in operation
+through the influence of his principal wife Anacaona. An Indian war
+broke out; roaming bands of Spaniards were ambushed and massacred; and
+there was fighting in the field, where the natives--assailed by firearms
+and cross-bows, horses and bloodhounds--were wofully defeated.
+
+         [Footnote 579: See below, vol. ii. pp. 433, 434.]
+
+         [Footnote 580: The first of a series of such schemes in
+         American history, including those of Sassacus, Philip, Pontiac,
+         and to some extent Tecumseh.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mission of Aguado.]
+
+[Sidenote: Discovery of gold mines.]
+
+[Sidenote: Speculations about Ophir.]
+
+Thus in the difficult task of controlling mutinous white men and
+defending the colony against infuriated red men Columbus spent the first
+twelvemonth after his return from Cuba. In October, 1495, there arrived
+in the harbour of Isabella four caravels laden with welcome supplies. In
+one of these ships came Juan Aguado, sent by the sovereigns to gather
+information respecting the troubles of the colony. This appointment
+was doubtless made in a friendly spirit, for Columbus had formerly
+recommended Aguado to favour. But the arrival of such a person created a
+hope, which quickly grew into a belief, that the sovereigns were
+preparing to deprive Columbus of the government of the island; and, as
+Irving neatly says, "it was a time of jubilee for offenders; every
+culprit started up into an accuser." All the ills of the colony, many of
+them inevitable in such an enterprise, many of them due to the
+shiftlessness and folly, the cruelty and lust of idle swash-bucklers,
+were now laid at the door of Columbus. Aguado was presently won over by
+the malcontents, so that by the time he was ready to return to Spain,
+early in 1496, Columbus felt it desirable to go along with him and make
+his own explanations to the sovereigns. Fortunately for his purposes,
+just before he started, some rich gold mines were discovered on the
+south side of the island, in the neighbourhood of the Hayna and Ozema
+rivers. Moreover there were sundry pits in these mines, which looked
+like excavations and seemed to indicate that in former times there had
+been digging done.[581] This discovery confirmed the Admiral in a new
+theory, which he was beginning to form. If it should turn out that
+Hispaniola was not Cipango, as the last voyage seemed to suggest,
+perhaps it might prove to be Ophir![582] Probably these ancient
+excavations were made by King Solomon's men when they came here to get
+gold for the temple at Jerusalem! If so, one might expect to find
+silver, ivory, red sandal-wood, apes, and peacocks at no great distance.
+Just where Ophir was situated no one could exactly tell,[583] but the
+things that were carried thence to Jerusalem certainly came from "the
+Indies." Columbus conceived it as probably lying northeastward of the
+Golden Chersonese (Malacca) and as identical with the island of
+Hispaniola.
+
+         [Footnote 581: The Indians then living upon the island did not
+         dig, but scraped up the small pieces of gold that were more or
+         less abundant in the beds of shallow streams.]
+
+         [Footnote 582: Peter Martyr, _De Rebus Oceanicis_, dec. i. lib.
+         iv.]
+
+         [Footnote 583: The original Ophir may be inferred, from
+         _Genesis_ x. 29, to have been situated where, as Milton says,
+
+                    "northeast winds blow
+            Sabaean odours from the spicy shore
+            Of Araby the Blest,"
+
+         but the name seems to have become applied indiscriminately to
+         the remote countries reached by ships that sailed past that
+         coast; chiefly no doubt, to Hindustan. See Lassen, _Indische
+         Alterthumskunde_, bd. i. p. 538.]
+
+[Sidenote: Founding of San Domingo, 1496.]
+
+[Sidenote: The return voyage.]
+
+The discovery of these mines led to the transfer of the headquarters of
+the colony to the mouth of the Ozema river, where, in the summer of
+1496, Bartholomew Columbus made a settlement which became the city of
+San Domingo.[584] Meanwhile Aguado and the Admiral sailed for Spain
+early in March, in two caravels overloaded with more than two hundred
+homesick passengers. In choosing his course Columbus did not show so
+much sagacity as on his first return voyage. Instead of working
+northward till clear of the belt of trade-winds, he kept straight to the
+east, and so spent a month in beating and tacking before getting out of
+the Caribbean Sea. Scarcity of food was imminent, and it became
+necessary to stop at Guadaloupe and make a quantity of cassava
+bread.[585] It was well that this was done, for as the ships worked
+slowly across the Atlantic, struggling against perpetual head-winds, the
+provisions were at length exhausted, and by the first week in June the
+famine was such that Columbus had some difficulty in preventing the
+crews from eating their Indian captives, of whom there were thirty or
+more on board.[586]
+
+         [Footnote 584: Bartholomew's town was built on the left side of
+         the river, and was called New Isabella. In 1504 it was
+         destroyed by a hurricane, and rebuilt on the right bank in its
+         present situation. It was then named San Domingo after the
+         patron saint of Domenico, the father of Columbus.]
+
+         [Footnote 585: While the Spaniards were on this island they
+         encountered a party of tall and powerful women armed with bows
+         and arrows; so that Columbus supposed it must be the Asiatic
+         island of Amazons mentioned by Marco Polo. See Yule's _Marco
+         Polo_, vol. ii. pp. 338-340.]
+
+         [Footnote 586: Among them was Caonabo, who died on the voyage.]
+
+[Sidenote: Edicts of 1495 and 1497.]
+
+At length, on the 11th of June, the haggard and starving company arrived
+at Cadiz, and Columbus, while awaiting orders from the sovereigns,
+stayed at the house of his good friend Bernaldez, the curate of Los
+Palacios.[587] After a month he attended court at Burgos, and was kindly
+received. No allusion was made to the complaints against him, and the
+sovereigns promised to furnish ships for a third voyage of discovery.
+For the moment, however, other things interfered with this enterprise.
+One was the marriage of the son and daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella
+to the daughter and son of the Emperor Maximilian. The war with France
+was at the same time fast draining the treasury. Indeed, for more than
+twenty years, Castile had been at war nearly all the time, first with
+Portugal, next with Granada, then with France; and the crown never found
+it easy to provide money for maritime enterprises. Accordingly, at the
+earnest solicitation of Vicente Yanez Pinzon and other enterprising
+mariners, the sovereigns had issued a proclamation, April 10, 1495,
+granting to all native Spaniards the privilege of making, at their own
+risk and expense, voyages of discovery or traffic to the newly found
+coasts. As the crown was to take a pretty heavy tariff out of the
+profits of these expeditions, while all losses were to be borne by the
+adventurers, a fairly certain source of revenue, be it great or small,
+seemed likely to be opened.[588] Columbus protested against this edict,
+inasmuch as he deemed himself entitled to a patent or monopoly in the
+work of conducting expeditions to Cathay. The sovereigns evaded the
+difficulty by an edict of June 2, 1497, declaring that it was never
+their intention "in any way to affect the rights of the said Don
+Christopher Columbus." This declaration was, doubtless, intended simply
+to pacify the Admiral. It did not prevent the authorization of voyages
+conducted by other persons a couple of years later; and, as I shall show
+in the next chapter, there are strong reasons for believing that on May
+10, 1497, three weeks before this edict, an expedition sailed from Cadiz
+under the especial auspices of King Ferdinand, with Vicente Yanez Pinzon
+for its chief commander and Americus Vespucius for one of its pilots.
+
+         [Footnote 587: The curate thus heard the story of the second
+         voyage from Columbus himself while it was fresh in his mind.
+         Columbus also left with him written memoranda, so that for the
+         events of this expedition the _Historia de los Reyes Catolicos_
+         is of the highest authority.]
+
+         [Footnote 588: "All vessels were to sail exclusively from the
+         port of Cadiz, and under the inspection of officers appointed
+         by the crown. Those who embarked for Hispaniola without pay,
+         and at their own expense, were to have lands assigned to them,
+         and to be provisioned for one year, with a right to retain such
+         lands and all houses they might erect upon them. Of all gold
+         which they might collect, they were to retain one third for
+         themselves, and pay two thirds to the crown. Of all other
+         articles of merchandise, the produce of the island, they were
+         to pay merely one tenth to the crown. Their purchases were to
+         be made in the presence of officers appointed by the
+         sovereigns, and the royal duties paid into the hands of the
+         king's receiver. Each ship sailing on private enterprise was to
+         take one or two persons named by the royal officers at Cadiz.
+         One tenth of the tonnage of the ship was to be at the service
+         of the crown, free of charge. One tenth of whatever such ships
+         should procure in the newly-discovered countries was to be paid
+         to the crown on their return. These regulations included
+         private ships trading to Hispaniola with provisions. For every
+         vessel thus fitted out on private adventure, Columbus, in
+         consideration of his privilege of an eighth of tonnage, was to
+         have the right to freight one on his own account." Irving's
+         _Columbus_, vol. ii. p. 76.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus loses his temper.]
+
+It was not until late in the spring of 1498 that the ships were ready
+for Columbus. Everything that Fonseca could do to vex and delay him was
+done. One of the bishop's minions, a converted Moor or Jew named Ximeno
+Breviesca, behaved with such outrageous insolence that on the day of
+sailing the Admiral's indignation, so long restrained, at last broke
+out, and he drove away the fellow with kicks and cuffs.[589] This
+imprudent act gave Fonseca the opportunity to maintain that what the
+Admiral's accusers said about his tyrannical disposition must be true.
+
+         [Footnote 589: "Parece que uno debiera de, en estos reveses, y,
+         por ventura, en palabras contra el y contra la negociacion
+         destas Indias, mas que otro senalarse, y segun entendi, no
+         debiera ser cristiano viejo, y creo que se llamaba Ximeno,
+         contra el cual debio el Almirante gravemente sentirse y
+         enojarse, y aguardo el dia que se hizo a la vela, y, o en la
+         nao que entro, por ventura, el dicho oficial, o en tierra
+         quando queria desembarcarse, arrebatolo el Almirante, y dale
+         muchas coces o remesones, por manera que lo trato mal; y a mi
+         parecer, por esta causa principalmente, sobre otras quejas que
+         fueron de aca, y cosas que murmuraron del y contra el los que
+         bien con el no estaban y le acumularon; los Reyes indignados
+         proveyeron de quitarle la gobernacion." Las Casas, _Historia de
+         las Indias_, tom. ii. p. 199.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: The third voyage.]
+
+The expedition started on May 30, 1498, from the little port of San
+Lucar de Barrameda. There were six ships, carrying about 200 men besides
+the sailors. On June 21, at the Isle of Ferro, the Admiral divided his
+fleet, sending three ships directly to Hispaniola, while with the other
+three he kept on to the Cape Verde islands, whence he steered southwest
+on the 4th of July. A week later, after a run of about 900 miles, his
+astrolabe seemed to show that he was within five degrees of the
+equator.[590] There were three reasons for going so far to the
+south:--1, the natives of the islands already visited always pointed
+in that direction when gold was mentioned; 2, a learned jeweller, who
+had travelled in the East, had assured Columbus that gold and gems, as
+well as spices and rare drugs, were to be found for the most part among
+black people near the equator; 3, if he should not find any rich islands
+on the way, a sufficiently long voyage would bring him to the coast of
+Champa (Cochin China) at a lower point than he had reached on the
+preceding voyage, and nearer to the Golden Chersonese (Malacca), by
+doubling which he could enter the Indian ocean. It will be remembered
+that he supposed the southwesterly curve in the Cuban coast, the
+farthest point reached in his second voyage, to be the beginning of the
+coast of Cochin China according to Marco Polo.
+
+         [Footnote 590: The figure given by Columbus is equivalent only
+         to 360 geographical miles (Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. i. p.
+         246), but as Las Casas (_Hist._ tom. ii. p. 226) already
+         noticed, there must be some mistake here, for on a S. W. course
+         from the Cape Verde islands it would require a distance of 900
+         geographical miles to cut the fifth parallel. From the weather
+         that followed, it is clear that Columbus stated his latitude
+         pretty correctly; he had come into the belt of calms. Therefore
+         his error must be in the distance run.]
+
+[Sidenote: The belt of calms.]
+
+Once more through ignorance of the atmospheric conditions of the regions
+within the tropics Columbus encountered needless perils and hardships.
+If he had steered from Ferro straight across the ocean a trifle south of
+west-southwest, he might have made a quick and comfortable voyage, with
+the trade-wind filling his sails, to the spot where he actually struck
+land.[591] As it was, however, he naturally followed the custom then so
+common, of first running to the parallel upon which he intended to sail.
+This long southerly run brought him into the belt of calms or neutral
+zone between the northern and southern trade-winds, a little north of
+the equator.[592] No words can describe what followed so well as those
+of Irving: "The wind suddenly fell, and a dead sultry calm commenced,
+which lasted for eight days. The air was like a furnace; the tar melted,
+the seams of the ship yawned; the salt meat became putrid; the wheat was
+parched as if with fire; the hoops shrank from the wine and water casks,
+some of which leaked and others burst, while the heat in the holds of
+the vessels was so suffocating that no one could remain below a
+sufficient time to prevent the damage that was taking place. The
+mariners lost all strength and spirits, and sank under the oppressive
+heat. It seemed as if the old fable of the torrid zone was about to be
+realized; and that they were approaching a fiery region where it would
+be impossible to exist."[593]
+
+         [Footnote 591: Humboldt in 1799 did just this thing, starting
+         from Teneriffe and reaching Trinidad in nineteen days. See
+         Bruhn's _Life of Humboldt_, vol. i. p. 263.]
+
+         [Footnote 592: "The strength of the trade-winds depends
+         entirely upon the difference in temperature between the equator
+         and the pole; the greater the difference, the stronger the
+         wind. Now, at the present time, the south pole is much colder
+         than the north pole, and the southern trades are consequently
+         much stronger than the northern, so that the neutral zone in
+         which they meet lies some five degrees north of the equator."
+         _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, p. 64.]
+
+         [Footnote 593: Irving's _Columbus_, vol. ii. p. 137. One is
+         reminded of a scene in the _Rime of the Ancient Mariner_:--
+
+            "All in a hot and copper sky
+            The bloody sun, at noon,
+            Right up above the mast did stand,
+            No bigger than the moon.
+
+            "Day after day, day after day,
+            We stuck,--nor breath nor motion;
+            As idle as a painted ship
+            Upon a painted ocean."]
+
+Fortunately, they were in a region where the ocean is comparatively
+narrow. The longitude reached by Columbus on July 13, when the wind died
+away, must have been about 36 deg. or 37 deg. W., and a run of only 800 miles
+west from that point would have brought him to Cayenne. His course
+between the 13th and 21st of July must have intersected the thermal
+equator, or line of greatest mean annual heat on the globe,--an
+irregular curve which is here deflected as much as five degrees north of
+the equinoctial line. But although there was not a breath of wind, the
+powerful equatorial current was quietly driving the ships, much faster
+than the Admiral could have suspected, to the northwest and toward land.
+By the end of that stifling week they were in latitude 7 deg. N., and caught
+the trade-wind on the starboard quarter. Thence after a brisk run of ten
+days, in sorry plight, with ugly leaks and scarcely a cask of fresh
+water left, they arrived within sight of land. Three mountain peaks
+loomed up in the offing before them, and as they drew nearer it appeared
+that those peaks belonged to one great mountain; wherefore the pious
+Admiral named the island Trinidad.
+
+[Sidenote: Trinidad and the Orinoco.]
+
+Here some surprises were in store for Columbus. Instead of finding black
+and woolly-haired natives, he found men of cinnamon hue, like those in
+Hispaniola, only--strange to say--lighter in colour. Then in coasting
+Trinidad he caught a glimpse of land at the delta of the Orinoco, and
+called it Isla Santa, or Holy Island.[594] But, on passing into the
+gulf of Paria, through the strait which he named Serpent's Mouth, his
+ships were in sore danger of being swamped by the raging surge that
+poured from three or four of the lesser mouths of that stupendous river.
+Presently, finding that the water in the gulf was fresh to the taste, he
+gradually reasoned his way to the correct conclusion, that the billows
+which had so nearly overwhelmed him must have come out from a river
+greater than any he had ever known or dreamed of, and that so vast a
+stream of running water could be produced only upon land of continental
+dimensions.[595] This coast to the south of him was, therefore, the
+coast of a continent, with indefinite extension toward the south, a land
+not laid down upon Toscanelli's or any other map, and of which no one
+had until that time known anything.[596]
+
+         [Footnote 594: He "gave it the name of Isla Santa," says Irving
+         (vol. ii. p. 140), "little imagining that he now, for the first
+         time, beheld that continent, that Terra Firma, which had been
+         the object of his earnest search." The reader of this passage
+         should bear in mind that the continent of South America, which
+         nobody had ever heard of, was _not_ the object of Columbus's
+         search. The Terra Firma which was the object of his search was
+         the mainland of Asia, and that he never beheld, though he felt
+         positively sure that he had already set foot upon it in 1492
+         and 1494.]
+
+         [Footnote 595: A modern traveller thus describes this river:
+         "Right and left of us lay, at some distance off, the low banks
+         of the Apure, at this point quite a broad stream. But before us
+         the waters spread out like a wide dark flood, limited on the
+         horizon only by a low black streak, and here and there showing
+         a few distant hills. This was the Orinoco, rolling with
+         irrepressible power and majesty sea-wards, and often upheaving
+         its billows like the ocean when lashed to fury by the wind....
+         The Orinoco sends a current of fresh water far into the ocean,
+         its waters--generally green, but in the shallows
+         milk-white--contrasting sharply with the indigo blue of the
+         surrounding sea." Bates, _Central America, the West Indies, and
+         South America_, 2d ed., London, 1882, pp. 234, 235. The island
+         of Trinidad forms an obstacle to the escape of this huge volume
+         of fresh water, and hence the furious commotion at the two
+         outlets, the Serpent's Mouth and Dragon's Mouth, especially in
+         July and August, when the Orinoco is swollen with tropical
+         rains.]
+
+         [Footnote 596: In Columbus's own words, in his letter to the
+         sovereigns describing this third voyage, "Y digo que ... viene
+         este rio y procede de tierra infinita, pues al austro, de la
+         cual fasta agora no se ha habido noticia." Navarrete,
+         _Coleccion_, tom. i. p. 262.]
+
+[Illustration: Discoveries made by Columbus in his third and fourth
+voyages.]
+
+[Sidenote: Speculations as to the earth's shape.]
+
+[Sidenote: The mountain of Paradise.]
+
+In spite of the correctness of this surmise, Columbus was still as far
+from a true interpretation of the whole situation as when he supposed
+Hispaniola to be Ophir. He entered upon a series of speculations which
+forcibly remind us how empirical was the notion of the earth's rotundity
+before the inauguration of physical astronomy by Galileo, Kepler, and
+Newton. We now know that our planet has the only shape possible for such
+a rotating mass that once was fluid or nebulous, the shape of a spheroid
+slightly protuberant at the equator and flattened at the poles; but this
+knowledge is the outcome of mechanical principles utterly unknown and
+unsuspected in the days of Columbus. He understood that the earth is a
+round body, but saw no necessity for its being strictly spherical or
+spheroidal. He now suggested that it was probably shaped like a pear,
+rather a blunt and corpulent pear, nearly spherical in its lower part,
+but with a short, stubby apex in the equatorial region somewhere beyond
+the point which he had just reached. He fancied he had been sailing up a
+gentle slope from the burning glassy sea where his ships had been
+becalmed to this strange and beautiful coast where he found the climate
+enchanting. If he were to follow up the mighty river just now revealed,
+it might lead him to the summit of this apex of the world, the place
+where the terrestrial paradise, the Garden which the Lord planted
+eastward in Eden, was in all probability situated![597]
+
+         [Footnote 597: Thus would be explained the astounding force
+         with which the water was poured down. It was common in the
+         Middle Ages to imagine the terrestrial paradise at the top of a
+         mountain. See Dante, _Purgatorio_, canto xxviii. Columbus
+         quotes many authorities in favour of his opinion. The whole
+         letter is worth reading. See Navarrete, tom. i. pp. 242-264.]
+
+[Sidenote: Relation of the "Eden continent" to "Cochin China."]
+
+As Columbus still held to the opinion that by keeping to the west from
+that point he should soon reach the coast of Cochin China, his
+conception of the position of Eden is thus pretty clearly indicated. He
+imagined it as situated about on the equator, upon a continental mass
+till then unknown, but evidently closely connected with the continent of
+Asia if not a part of it. If he had lived long enough to hear of Quito
+and its immense elevation, I should suppose that might very well have
+suited his idea of the position of Eden. The coast of this continent,
+upon which he had now arrived, was either continuous with the coast of
+Cochin China (Cuba) and Malacca, or would be found to be divided from it
+by a strait through which one might pass directly into the Indian ocean.
+
+[Sidenote: The Pearl Coast.]
+
+[Sidenote: Arrival at San Domingo.]
+
+It took some little time for this theory to come to maturity in the mind
+of Columbus. Not expecting to find any mainland in that quarter, he
+began by calling different points of the coast different islands. Coming
+out through the passage which he named Dragon's Mouth, he caught distant
+glimpses of Tobago and Grenada to starboard, and turning westward
+followed the Pearl Coast as far as the islands of Margarita and Cubagua.
+The fine pearls which he found there in abundance confirmed him in the
+good opinion he had formed of that country. By this time, the 15th of
+August, he had so far put facts together as to become convinced of the
+continental character of that coast, and would have been glad to pursue
+it westward. But now his strength gave out. During most of the voyage he
+had suffered acute torments with gout, his temperature had been very
+feverish, and his eyes were at length so exhausted with perpetual
+watching that he could no longer make observations. So he left the coast
+a little beyond Cubagua, and steered straight for Hispaniola, aiming at
+San Domingo, but hitting the island of Beata because he did not make
+allowance for the westerly flow of the currents. He arrived at San
+Domingo on the 30th of August, and found his brother Bartholomew, whom
+he intended to send at once on a further cruise along the Pearl Coast,
+while he himself should be resting and recovering strength.
+
+[Sidenote: Roldan's rebellion.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fonseca's machinations.]
+
+But alas! there was to be no cruising now for the younger brother nor
+rest for the elder. It was a sad story that Bartholomew had to tell. War
+with the Indians had broken out afresh, and while the Adelantado was
+engaged in this business a scoundrel named Roldan had taken advantage of
+his absence to stir up civil strife. Roldan's rebellion was a result of
+the ill-advised mission of Aguado. The malcontents in the colony
+interpreted the Admiral's long stay in Spain as an indication that he
+had lost favour with the sovereigns and was not coming back to the
+island. Gathering together a strong body of rebels, Roldan retired to
+Xaragua and formed an alliance with the brother of the late chieftain
+Caonabo. By the time the Admiral arrived the combination of mutiny with
+barbaric warfare had brought about a frightful state of things. A party
+of soldiers, sent by him to suppress Roldan, straightway deserted and
+joined that rebel. It thus became necessary to come to terms with
+Roldan, and this revelation of the weakness of the government only made
+matters worse. Two wretched years were passed in attempts to restore
+order in Hispaniola, while the work of discovery and exploration was
+postponed. Meanwhile the items of information that found their way to
+Spain were skilfully employed by Fonseca in poisoning the minds of the
+sovereigns, until at last they decided to send out a judge to the
+island, armed with plenary authority to make investigations and settle
+disputes. The glory which Columbus had won by the first news of the
+discovery of the Indies had now to some extent faded away. The
+enterprise yielded as yet no revenue and entailed great expense; and
+whenever some reprobate found his way back to Spain, the malicious
+Fonseca prompted him to go to the treasury with a claim for pay alleged
+to have been wrongfully withheld by the Admiral. Ferdinand Columbus
+tells how some fifty such scamps were gathered one day in the courtyard
+of the Alhambra, cursing his father and catching hold of the king's
+robe, crying, "Pay us! pay us!" and as he and his brother Diego, who
+were pages in the queen's service, happened to pass by, they were
+greeted with hoots:--"There go the sons of the Admiral of Mosquito-land,
+the man who has discovered a land of vanity and deceit, the grave of
+Spanish gentlemen!"[598]
+
+         [Footnote 598: "Ecco i figliuoli dell' Ammiraglio de'
+         Mosciolini, di colui che ha trovate terre di vanita e d'
+         inganno, per sepoltura e miseria de' gentiluomini castigliani."
+         _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxiv.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gama's voyage to Hindustan, 1497.]
+
+An added sting was given to such taunts by a great event that happened
+about this time. In the summer of 1497, Vasco da Gama started from
+Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope, and in the summer of 1499 he returned,
+after having doubled the cape and crossed the Indian ocean to Calicut on
+the Malabar coast of Hindustan. His voyage was the next Portuguese step
+sequent upon that of Bartholomew Dias. There was nothing questionable or
+dubious about Gama's triumph. He had seen splendid cities, talked with a
+powerful Rajah, and met with Arab vessels, their crews madly jealous at
+the unprecedented sight of Christian ships in those waters; and he
+brought back with him to Lisbon nutmegs and cloves, pepper and ginger,
+rubies and emeralds, damask robes with satin linings, bronze chairs with
+cushions, trumpets of carved ivory, a sunshade of crimson satin, a sword
+in a silver scabbard, and no end of such gear.[599] An old civilization
+had been found and a route of commerce discovered, and a factory was to
+be set up at once on that Indian coast. What a contrast to the miserable
+performance of Columbus, who had started with the flower of Spain's
+chivalry for rich Cipango, and had only led them to a land where they
+must either starve or do work fit for peasants, while he spent his time
+in cruising among wild islands! The king of Portugal could now snap his
+fingers at Ferdinand and Isabella, and if a doubt should have sometimes
+crossed the minds of those chagrined sovereigns, as to whether this
+plausible Genoese mariner might not, after all, be a humbug or a crazy
+enthusiast, we can hardly wonder at it.
+
+         [Footnote 599: Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, pp.
+         398-401.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fonseca's creature, Bobadilla.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus in chains.]
+
+The person sent to investigate the affairs of Hispaniola was Francisco
+de Bobadilla, a knight commander of the order of Calatrava. He carried
+several documents, one of them directing him to make inquiries and
+punish offenders, another containing his appointment as governor, a
+third commanding Columbus and his brothers to surrender to him all
+fortresses and other public property.[600] The two latter papers were to
+be used only in case of such grave misconduct proved against Columbus as
+to justify his removal from the government. These papers were made out
+in the spring of 1499, but Bobadilla was not sent out until July, 1500.
+When he arrived at San Domingo on the 23d of August, the insurrection
+had been suppressed; the Admiral and Bartholomew were bringing things
+into order in distant parts of the island, while Diego was left in
+command at San Domingo. Seven ringleaders had just been hanged, and five
+more were in prison under sentence of death. If Bobadilla had not come
+upon the scene this wholesome lesson might have worked some improvement
+in affairs.[601] He destroyed its moral in a twinkling. The first day
+after landing, he read aloud, at the church door, the paper directing
+him to make inquiries and punish offenders; and forthwith demanded of
+Diego Columbus that the condemned prisoners should be delivered up to
+him. Diego declined to take so important a step until he could get
+orders from the Admiral. Next day Bobadilla read his second and third
+papers, proclaimed himself governor, called on Diego to surrender the
+fortress and public buildings, and renewed his demand for the prisoners.
+As Diego still hesitated to act before news of these proceedings could
+be sent to his brother, Bobadilla broke into the fortress, took the
+prisoners out, and presently set them free. All the rebellious spirits
+in the colony were thus drawn to the side of Bobadilla, whose royal
+commission, under such circumstances, gave him irresistible power. He
+threw Diego into prison and loaded him with fetters. He seized the
+Admiral's house, and confiscated all his personal property, even
+including his business papers and private letters. When the Admiral
+arrived in San Domingo, Bobadilla, without even waiting to see him, sent
+an officer to put him in irons and take him to prison. When Bartholomew
+arrived, he received the same treatment. The three brothers were
+confined in different places, nobody was allowed to visit them, and
+they were not informed of the offences with which they were charged.
+While they lay in prison, Bobadilla busied himself with inventing an
+excuse for this violent behaviour. Finally he hit upon one at which
+Satan from the depths of his bottomless pit must have grimly smiled. He
+said that he had arrested and imprisoned the brothers only because he
+had reason to believe they were inciting the Indians to aid them in
+resisting the commands of Ferdinand and Isabella!! In short, from the
+day of his landing Bobadilla made common cause with the insurgent
+rabble, and when they had furnished him with a ream or so of charges
+against the Admiral and his brothers, it seemed safe to send these
+gentlemen to Spain. They were put on board ship, with their fetters upon
+them, and the officer in charge was instructed by Bobadilla to deliver
+them into the hands of Bishop Fonseca, who was thus to have the
+privilege of glutting to the full his revengeful spite.
+
+         [Footnote 600: The documents are given in Navarrete, _Coleccion
+         de viages_, tom. ii. pp. 235-240; and, with accompanying
+         narrative, in Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. ii. pp.
+         472-487.]
+
+         [Footnote 601: No better justification for the government of
+         the brothers Columbus can be found than to contrast it with the
+         infinitely worse state of affairs that ensued under the
+         administrations of Bobadilla and Ovando. See below, vol. ii.
+         pp. 442-446.]
+
+[Sidenote: Return to Spain.]
+
+[Sidenote: Release of Columbus.]
+
+The master of the ship, shocked at the sight of fetters upon such a man
+as the Admiral, would have taken them off, but Columbus would not let it
+be done. No, indeed! they should never come off except by order of the
+sovereigns, and then he would keep them for the rest of his life, to
+show how his labours had been rewarded.[602] The event--which always
+justifies true manliness--proved the sagacity of this proud demeanour.
+Fonseca was baulked of his gratification. The clumsy Bobadilla had
+overdone the business. The sight of the Admiral's stately and venerable
+figure in chains, as he passed through the streets of Cadiz, on a
+December day of that year 1500, awakened a popular outburst of sympathy
+for him and indignation at his persecutors. While on the ship he had
+written or dictated a beautiful and touching letter[603] to a lady of
+whom the queen was fond, the former nurse of the Infante, whose untimely
+death, three years since, his mother was still mourning. This letter
+reached the court at Granada, and was read to the queen before she had
+heard of Bobadilla's performances from any other quarter. A courier was
+sent in all haste to Cadiz, with orders that the brothers should at once
+be released, and with a letter to the Admiral, inviting him to court and
+enclosing an order for money to cover his expenses. The scene in the
+Alhambra, when Columbus arrived, is one of the most touching in history.
+Isabella received him with tears in her eyes, and then this
+much-enduring old man, whose proud and masterful spirit had so long been
+proof against all wrongs and insults, broke down. He threw himself at
+the feet of the sovereigns in an agony of tears and sobs.[604]
+
+         [Footnote 602: Las Casas, _Hist. de las Indias_, tom. ii. p.
+         501; F. Columbus, _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxv.
+         Ferdinand adds that he had often seen these fetters hanging in
+         his father's room.]
+
+         [Footnote 603: It is given in full in Las Casas, _op. cit._
+         tom. ii. pp. 502-510.]
+
+         [Footnote 604: Herrera, _Historia_, dec. i. lib. iv. cap. 10.]
+
+[Sidenote: How far were the sovereigns responsible for Bobadilla?]
+
+How far the sovereigns should be held responsible for the behaviour of
+their agent is not altogether easy to determine. The appointment of such
+a creature as Bobadilla was a sad blunder, but one such as is liable to
+be made under any government. Fonseca was very powerful at court, and
+Bobadilla never would have dared to proceed as he did if he had not
+known that the bishop would support him. Indeed, from the indecent haste
+with which he went about his work, without even the pretence of a
+judicial inquiry, it is probable that he started with private
+instructions from that quarter. But, while Fonseca had some of the
+wisdom along with the venom of the serpent, Bobadilla was simply a
+jackass, and behaved so that in common decency the sovereigns were
+obliged to disown him. They took no formal or public notice of his
+written charges against the Admiral, and they assured the latter that he
+should be reimbursed for his losses and restored to his viceroyalty and
+other dignities.
+
+[Sidenote: Ovando, another creature of Fonseca, appointed governor of
+Hispaniola.]
+
+This last promise, however, was not fulfilled; partly, perhaps, because
+Fonseca's influence was still strong enough to prevent it, partly
+because the sovereigns may have come to the sound and reasonable
+conclusion that for the present there was no use in committing the
+government of that disorderly rabble in Hispaniola to a foreigner. What
+was wanted was a Spanish priest, and a military priest withal, of the
+sort that Spain then had in plenty. Obedience to priests came natural to
+Spaniards. The man now selected was Nicolas de Ovando, a knight
+commander of the order of Alcantara, of whom we shall have more to say
+hereafter.[605] Suffice it now to observe that he proved himself a
+famous disciplinarian, and that he was a great favourite with Fonseca,
+to whom he seems to have owed his appointment. He went out in February,
+1502, with a fleet of thirty ships carrying 2,500 persons, for the
+pendulum of public opinion had taken another swing, and faith in the
+Indies was renewed. Some great discoveries, to be related in the next
+chapter, had been made since 1498; and, moreover, the gold mines of
+Hispaniola were beginning to yield rich treasures.
+
+         [Footnote 605: See below, vol. ii. pp. 435-446.]
+
+[Sidenote: Purpose of Columbus's fourth voyage.]
+
+But, while the sovereigns were not disposed to restore Columbus to his
+viceroyalty, they were quite ready to send him on another voyage of
+discovery which was directly suggested by the recent Portuguese voyage
+of Gama. Since nothing was yet known about the discovery of a New World,
+the achievement of Gama seemed to have eclipsed that of Columbus. Spain
+must make a response to Portugal. As already observed, the Admiral
+supposed the coast of his "Eden continent" (South America) either to be
+continuous with the coast of Cochin China (Cuba) and Malacca, or else to
+be divided from that coast by a strait. The latter opinion was the more
+probable, since Marco Polo and a few other Europeans had sailed from
+China into the Indian ocean without encountering any great continent
+that had to be circumnavigated. The recent expedition of Vespucius and
+Ojeda (1499-1500) had followed the northern coast of South America for a
+long distance to the west of Cubagua, as far as the gulf of Maracaibo.
+Columbus now decided to return to the coast of Cochin China (Cuba) and
+follow the coast southwestward until he should find the passage between
+his Eden continent and the Golden Chersonese (Malacca) into the Indian
+ocean. He would thus be able to reach by this western route the same
+shores of Hindustan which Gama had lately reached by sailing eastward.
+So confident did he feel of the success of this enterprise, that he
+wrote a letter to Pope Alexander VI., renewing his vow to furnish troops
+for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre.[606] It was no doubt the symptom
+of a reaction against his misfortunes that he grew more and more
+mystical in these days, consoling himself with the belief that he was a
+chosen instrument in the hands of Providence for enlarging the bounds of
+Christendom. In this mood he made some studies on the prophecies, after
+the fantastic fashion of his time,[607] and a habit grew upon him of
+attributing his discoveries to miraculous inspiration rather than to the
+good use to which his poetical and scientific mind had put the data
+furnished by Marco Polo and the ancient geographers.
+
+         [Footnote 606: Navarrete, _Coleccion_, tom. ii. pp. 280-282.]
+
+         [Footnote 607: The MS. volume of notes on the prophecies is in
+         the Colombina. There is a description of it in Navarrete, tom.
+         ii. pp. 260-273.]
+
+[Sidenote: Crossing the Atlantic.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus not allowed to stop at San Domingo.]
+
+The armament for the Admiral's fourth and last voyage consisted of four
+small caravels, of from fifty to seventy tons burthen, with crews
+numbering, all told, 150 men. His brother Bartholomew, and his younger
+son Ferdinand, then a boy of fourteen, accompanied him. They sailed from
+Cadiz on the 11th of May, 1502, and finally left the Canaries behind on
+the 26th of the same month. The course chosen was the same as on the
+second voyage, and the unfailing trade-winds brought the ships on the
+15th of June to an island called Mantinino, probably Martinique, not
+more than ten leagues distant from Dominica. The Admiral had been
+instructed not to touch at Hispaniola upon his way out, probably for
+fear of further commotions there until Ovando should have succeeded in
+bringing order out of the confusion ten times worse confounded into
+which Bobadilla's misgovernment had thrown that island. Columbus might
+stop there on his return, but not on his outward voyage. His intention
+had, therefore, been, on reaching the cannibal islands, to steer for
+Jamaica, thence make the short run to "Cochin China," and then turn
+southwards. But as one of his caravels threatened soon to become
+unmanageable, he thought himself justified in touching at San Domingo
+long enough to hire a sound vessel in place of her. Ovando had assumed
+the government there in April, and a squadron of 26 or 28 ships,
+containing Roldan and Bobadilla, with huge quantities of gold wrung from
+the enslaved Indians, was ready to start for Spain about the end of
+June. In one of these ships were 4,000 pieces of gold destined for
+Columbus, probably a part of the reimbursement that had been promised
+him. On the 29th of June the Admiral arrived in the harbour and stated
+the nature of his errand. At the same time, as his practised eye had
+detected the symptoms of an approaching hurricane, he requested
+permission to stay in the harbour until it should be over, and he
+furthermore sent to the commander of the fleet a friendly warning not to
+venture out to sea at present. His requests and his warnings were alike
+treated with contumely. He was ordered to leave the harbour, and did so
+in great indignation. As his first care was for the approaching tempest,
+he did not go far but found safe anchorage in a sheltered and secluded
+cove, where his vessels rode the storm with difficulty but without
+serious damage. Meanwhile the governor's great fleet had rashly put out
+to sea, and was struck with fatal fury by wind and wave. Twenty or more
+ships went to the bottom, with Bobadilla, Roldan, and most of the
+Admiral's principal enemies, besides all the ill-gotten treasure; five
+or six shattered caravels, unable to proceed, found their way back to
+San Domingo; of all the fleet, only one ship arrived safe and sound in
+Spain, and that, says Ferdinand, was the one that had on board his
+father's gold. Truly it was such an instance of poetical justice as one
+does not often witness in this world. "We will not inquire now," says
+Las Casas, who witnessed the affair, "into this remarkable divine
+judgment, for at the last day of the world it will be made quite clear
+to us."[608] If such judgments were more often visited upon the right
+persons, perhaps the ways of Providence would not have so generally come
+to be regarded as inscrutable.
+
+         [Footnote 608: "Aqueste tan gran juicio de Dios no curemos de
+         escudrinallo, pues en el dia final deste mundo nos sera bien
+         claro." _Hist. do las Indias_, tom. iii. p. 32; cf. _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxvii. As Las Casas was then in San
+         Domingo, having come out in Ovando's fleet, and as Ferdinand
+         Columbus was with his father, the testimony is very direct.]
+
+[Sidenote: Arrival at Cape Honduras.]
+
+The hurricane was followed by a dead calm, during which the Admiral's
+ships were carried by the currents into the group of tiny islands called
+the Queen's Gardens, on the south side of Cuba. With the first
+favourable breeze he took a southwesterly course, in order to strike
+that Cochin-Chinese coast farther down toward the Malay peninsula. This
+brought him directly to the island of Guanaja and to Cape Honduras,
+which he thus reached without approaching the Yucatan channel.[609]
+
+         [Footnote 609: In the next chapter I shall give some reasons
+         for supposing that the Admiral had learned the existence of the
+         Yucatan channel from the pilot Ledesma, coupled with
+         information which made it unlikely that a passage into the
+         Indian ocean would be found that way. See below, vol. ii. p.
+         92.]
+
+[Sidenote: Cape Gracias a Dios.]
+
+Upon the Honduras coast the Admiral found evidences of semi-civilization
+with which he was much elated,--such as copper knives and hatchets,
+pottery of skilled and artistic workmanship, and cotton garments finely
+woven and beautifully dyed. Here the Spaniards first tasted the
+_chicha_, or maize beer, and marvelled at the heavy clubs, armed with
+sharp blades of obsidian, with which the soldiers of Cortes were by and
+by to become unpleasantly acquainted. The people here wore cotton
+clothes, and, according to Ferdinand, the women covered themselves as
+carefully as the Moorish women of Granada.[610] On inquiring as to the
+sources of gold and other wealth, the Admiral was now referred to the
+west, evidently to Yucatan and Guatemala, or, as he supposed, to the
+neighbourhood of the Ganges. Evidently the way to reach these countries
+was to keep the land on the starboard and search for the passage
+between the Eden continent and the Malay peninsula.[611] This course at
+first led Columbus eastward for a greater number of leagues than he
+could have relished. Wind and current were dead against him, too; and
+when, after forty days of wretched weather, he succeeded in doubling the
+cape which marks on that coast the end of Honduras and the beginning of
+Nicaragua, and found it turning square to the south, it was doubtless
+joy at this auspicious change of direction, as well as the sudden relief
+from head-winds, that prompted him to name that bold prominence Cape
+Gracias a Dios, or Thanks to God.
+
+         [Footnote 610: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxviii.]
+
+         [Footnote 611: Irving (vol. ii. pp. 386, 387) seems to think it
+         strange that Columbus did not at once turn westward and
+         circumnavigate Yucatan. But if--as Irving supposed--Columbus
+         had not seen the Yucatan channel, and regarded the Honduras
+         coast as continuous with that of Cuba, he could only expect by
+         turning westward to be carried back to Cape Alpha and Omega,
+         where he had already been twice before! In the next chapter,
+         however, I shall show that Columbus may have shaped his course
+         in accordance with the advice of the pilot Ledesma.]
+
+[Sidenote: The coast of Veragua.]
+
+[Sidenote: Fruitless search for the Strait of Malacca.]
+
+[Sidenote: Futile attempt to make a settlement.]
+
+[Sidenote: Columbus shipwrecked.]
+
+As the ships proceeded southward in the direction of Veragua, evidences
+of the kind of semi-civilization which we recognize as characteristic of
+that part of aboriginal America grew more and more numerous. Great
+houses were seen, built of "stone and lime," or perhaps of rubble stone
+with adobe mortar. Walls were adorned with carvings and pictographs.
+Mummies were found in a good state of preservation. There were signs of
+abundant gold; the natives wore plates of it hung by cotton cords about
+their necks, and were ready to exchange pieces worth a hundred ducats
+for tawdry European trinkets. From these people Columbus heard what we
+should call the first "news of the Pacific Ocean," though it had no such
+meaning to his mind. From what he heard he understood that he was on the
+east side of a peninsula, and that there was another sea on the other
+side, by gaining which he might in ten days reach the mouth of the
+Ganges.[612] By proceeding on his present course he would soon come to a
+"narrow place" between the two seas. There was a curious equivocation
+here. No doubt the Indians were honest and correct in what they tried to
+tell Columbus. But by the "narrow place" they meant narrow land, not
+narrow water; not a strait which connected but an isthmus which divided
+the two seas, not the Strait of Malacca, but the Isthmus of Darien![613]
+Columbus, of course, understood them to mean the strait for which he was
+looking, and in his excitement at approaching the long-expected goal he
+pressed on without waiting to verify the reports of gold mines in the
+neighbourhood, a thing that could be done at any time.[614] By the 5th
+of December, however, having reached a point on the isthmus, a few
+leagues east of Puerto Bello, without finding the strait, he yielded to
+the remonstrances of the crews, and retraced his course to Veragua. If
+the strait could not be found, the next best tidings to carry home to
+Spain would be the certain information of the discovery of gold mines,
+and it was decided to make a settlement here which might serve as a base
+for future operations. Three months of misery followed. Many of the
+party were massacred by the Indians, the stock of food was nearly
+exhausted, and the ships were pierced by worms until it was feared there
+would be no means left for going home. Accordingly, it was decided to
+abandon the enterprise and return to Hispaniola.[615] In order to allow
+for the strong westerly currents in the Caribbean sea, the Admiral first
+sailed eastward almost to the gulf of Darien, and then turned to the
+north. The allowance was not enough, however. The ships were again
+carried into the Queen's Gardens, where they were caught in a storm and
+nearly beaten to pieces. At length, on St. John's eve, June 23, 1503,
+the crazy wrecks--now full of water and unable to sail another
+league--were beached on the coast of Jamaica and converted into a sort
+of rude fortress; and while two trusty men were sent over to San Domingo
+in a canoe, to obtain relief, Columbus and his party remained
+shipwrecked in Jamaica. They waited there a whole year before it proved
+possible to get any relief from Ovando. He was a slippery knave, who
+knew how to deal out promises without taking the first step toward
+fulfilment.
+
+         [Footnote 612: Navarrete, _Coleccion de viages_, tom. i. p.
+         299.]
+
+         [Footnote 613: _Vita dell' Ammiraglio_, cap. lxxxix.; Humboldt,
+         _Examen Critique_, tom. i. p. 350.]
+
+         [Footnote 614: "Nothing could evince more clearly his generous
+         ambition than hurrying in this brief manner along a coast where
+         wealth was to be gathered at every step, for the purpose of
+         seeking a strait which, however it might produce vast benefit
+         to mankind, could yield little else to himself than the glory
+         of the discovery." Irving's _Columbus_, vol. ii. p. 406. In
+         this voyage, however, the express purpose from the start was to
+         find the strait of Malacca as a passage to the very same
+         regions which had been visited by Gama, and Columbus expected
+         thus to get wealth enough to equip an army of Crusaders.
+         Irving's statement does not correctly describe the Admiral's
+         purpose, and as savouring of misplaced eulogy, is sure to
+         provoke a reaction on the part of captious critics.]
+
+         [Footnote 615: A graphic account of these scenes, in which he
+         took part, is given by Ferdinand Columbus, _Vita dell'
+         Ammiraglio_, cap. xciii.-cvi.]
+
+[Sidenote: A year of misery.]
+
+[Sidenote: Last return to Spain.]
+
+It was a terrible year that Columbus spent upon the wild coast of
+Jamaica. To all the horrors inseparable from such a situation there was
+added the horror of mutiny. The year did not end until there had been a
+pitched battle, in which the doughty Bartholomew was, as usual,
+victorious. The ringleader was captured, and of the other mutineers such
+as were not slain in the fight were humbled and pardoned. At length
+Ovando's conduct began to arouse indignation in San Domingo, and was
+openly condemned from the pulpit; so that, late in June, 1504, he sent
+over to Jamaica a couple of ships which brought away the Admiral and his
+starving party. Ovando greeted the brothers Columbus with his customary
+hypocritical courtesy, which they well understood. During the past year
+the island of Hispaniola had been the scene of atrocities such as have
+scarcely been surpassed in history. I shall give a brief account of them
+in a future chapter. Columbus was not cheered by what he saw and heard,
+and lost no time in starting for Spain. On the 7th of November, 1504,
+after a tempestuous voyage and narrow escape from shipwreck, he landed
+at San Lucar de Barrameda and made his way to Seville. Queen Isabella
+was then on her death-bed, and breathed her last just nineteen days
+later.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Columbus.]
+
+The death of the queen deprived Columbus of the only protector who could
+stand between him and Fonseca. The reimbursement for the wrongs which he
+had suffered at that man's hands was never made. The last eighteen
+months of the Admiral's life were spent in sickness and poverty.
+Accumulated hardship and disappointment had broken him down, and he died
+on Ascension day, May 20, 1506, at Valladolid. So little heed was taken
+of his passing away that the local annals of that city, "which give
+almost every insignificant event from 1333 to 1539, day by day, do not
+mention it."[616] His remains were buried in the Franciscan monastery at
+Valladolid, whence they were removed in 1513 to the monastery of Las
+Cuevas, at Seville, where the body of his son Diego, second Admiral and
+Viceroy of the Indies, was buried in 1526. Ten years after this date,
+the bones of father and son were removed to Hispaniola, to the cathedral
+of San Domingo; whence they have since been transferred to Havana. The
+result of so many removals has been to raise doubts as to whether the
+ashes now reposing at Havana are really those of Columbus and his son;
+and over this question there has been much critical discussion, of a
+sort that we may cheerfully leave to those who like to spend their time
+over such trivialities.
+
+         [Footnote 616: Harrisse, _Notes on Columbus_, New York, 1866,
+         p. 73.]
+
+[Sidenote: "Nuevo Mundo."]
+
+There is a tradition that Ferdinand and Isabella, at some date
+unspecified, had granted to Columbus, as a legend for his coat-of-arms,
+the noble motto:--
+
+  A Castilla y a Leon
+  Nuevo mundo dio Colon,
+
+_i. e._ "To Castile-and-Leon Columbus gave a New World;" and we are
+further told that, when the Admiral's bones were removed to Seville,
+this motto was, by order of King Ferdinand, inscribed upon his
+tomb.[617] This tradition crumbles under the touch of historical
+criticism. The Admiral's coat-of-arms, as finally emblazoned under his
+own inspection at Seville in 1502, quarters the royal Castle-and-Lion of
+the kingdom of Castile with his own devices of five anchors, and a group
+of golden islands with a bit of Terra Firma, upon a blue sea. But there
+is no legend of any sort, nor is anything of the kind mentioned by Las
+Casas or Bernaldez or Peter Martyr. The first allusion to such a motto
+is by Oviedo, in 1535, who gives it a somewhat different turn:--
+
+  Por Castilla y por Leon
+  Nuevo mundo hallo Colon,
+
+_i. e._ "For Castile-and-Leon Columbus found a New World." But the other
+form is no doubt the better, for Ferdinand Columbus, at some time not
+later than 1537, had adopted it, and it may be read to-day upon his tomb
+in the cathedral at Seville. The time-honoured tradition has evidently
+transferred to the father the legend adopted, if not originally
+devised, by his son.
+
+         [Footnote 617: _Vita del Ammiraglio_, cap. cvii. This is
+         unquestionably a gloss of the translator Ulloa. Cf. Harrisse,
+         _Christophe Colomb_, tom. ii. pp. 177-179.]
+
+[Illustration: Arms.]
+
+But why is this mere question of heraldry a matter of importance for the
+historian? Simply because it furnishes one of the most striking among
+many illustrations of the fact that at no time during the life of
+Columbus, nor for some years after his death, did anybody use the phrase
+"New World" with conscious reference to _his_ discoveries. At the time
+of his death their true significance had not yet begun to dawn upon the
+mind of any voyager or any writer. It was supposed that he had found a
+new route to the Indies by sailing west, and that in the course of this
+achievement he had discovered some new islands and a bit or bits of
+Terra Firma of more or less doubtful commercial value. To group these
+items of discovery into an organic whole, and to ascertain that they
+belonged to a whole quite distinct from the Old World, required the work
+of many other discoverers, companions and successors to Columbus. In the
+following chapter I shall endeavour to show how the conception of the
+New World was thus originated and at length became developed into the
+form with which we are now familiar.
+
+[Illustration: Sketch of Toscanelli's map, sent to Portugal in 1474, and
+used by Columbus in his first voyage across the Atlantic.]
+
+[Illustration: Claudius Ptolemy's world, cir. A. D. 150.]
+
+[Illustration: John Fiske.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2), by
+John Fiske
+
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