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 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028714032 
 
£>tant>arb Hibrarp Ctution 
 THE HISTORICAL WRITINGS 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN FISKE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH MANY PHOTOGRAVURES, 
 MAPS, CHARTS, FACSIMILES, ETC. 
 
 IN TWELVE VOLUMES 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
Christopher Columbus 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF 
 AMERICA 
 
 WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF 
 ANCIENT AMERICA AND 
 THE SPANISH CONQUEST 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN FISKE 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. VOLUME 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 t ivho must go there or die 
 
 Emerson 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 The present edition of the works of John 
 Fiske was planned and in part prepared be- 
 fore his lamented death in July, 1901. It was 
 his wish that it should contain his historical, 
 philosophical, religious, and scientific writings, 
 together with many of his essays, lectures, and 
 addresses. The historical writings, which com- 
 prise the first twelve volumes of this edition, 
 present in unbroken sequence the history of this 
 country from its discovery to the adoption of 
 the Constitution of the United States. The 
 only break in the continuity of Mr. Fiske's nar- 
 rative hitherto has been due to the postpone- 
 ment of his long-cherished plan for telling the 
 story of the relations of the English Colonies in 
 America to the French possessions. This want 
 is now supplied by the publication of his pro- 
 mised book, " New France and New England." 
 Death stayed the historian's hand while he was 
 giving this volume its final preparation for the 
 press. The text is presented precisely as he left 
 it, but the unfinished notes have been completed 
 by one of the most competent of American 
 vii 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 scholars, Professor Edward G. Bourne of Yale 
 University. The twelve volumes of the histori- 
 cal series are equipped with maps, charts, fac- 
 similes of documents, and other illustrations, and 
 are provided with an accurate general index. 
 
 The first four volumes of the miscellane- 
 ous writings are occupied with the " Outlines of 
 Cosmic Philosophy." Mr. Fiske repeatedly 
 expressed a desire to issue a new edition of this 
 work, in order to trace the development of his 
 thought upon the great subjects with which it 
 deals. He did not live to carry out this plan. 
 But his friend and fellow-philosopher, Professor 
 Josiah Royce of Harvard University, has sup- 
 plied for the present edition such annotations as 
 serve to indicate Mr. Fiske's later utterances, 
 in his other writings, upon the themes discussed 
 in the " Cosmic Philosophy." 
 
 It will be noted that the ninth volume of 
 the miscellaneous writings presents under a new 
 title, " Studies in Religion," the four remark- 
 able books, " The Destiny of Man," " The Idea 
 of God," " Through Nature to God," and " Life 
 Everlasting." The new title was selected by 
 Mr. Fiske himself, who was especially desirous 
 that these four discussions, already so closely 
 related in significance, should be offered to the 
 public in a single volume. It should be added 
 
 viii 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 that the miscellaneous writings, like the histori- 
 cal ones, have been carefully indexed, and that 
 all possible pains have been taken to insure 
 throughout the twenty-four volumes a scrupu- 
 lous fidelity to the author's text. 
 Boston, 1902. 
 
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 char- 
 acter as the themes for voice and piano in. Schu- 
 bert's " Friihlingsglaube," 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 com- 
 prised in the Discovery of America, one needs to 
 form a mental picture of that strange world of 
 savagery and barbarism to which civilized Euro- 
 peans were for the first time introduced in the 
 course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in 
 their voyages along the African coast, into the In- 
 dian 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 
 
 xi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 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 uninhab- 
 ited 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 ques- 
 tions 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 nat- 
 ural sequence to the study of aboriginal Amer- 
 ica. In 1 869, 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 
 xii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Myth-Makers " as a side-work, to the projected 
 book on the Aryans, and as soon as the excur- 
 sion into the field of general philosophy was 
 ended, in 1874, the work on that book was re- 
 sumed. Fortunately it was not then carried to 
 completion, for it would have been sadly anti- 
 quated 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 con- 
 vinced 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 
 xiii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 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 primi- 
 tive 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 Zufii pueblo carry us 
 much deeper into the past. Aboriginal Amer- 
 ican 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 interest- 
 ing of men ; for in studying him intelligently, 
 one gets down into the stone age of human 
 xiv 
 
PREFACE 
 
 thought. No time should be lost in gathering 
 whatever can be learned of his ideas and insti- 
 tutions, 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 in- 
 structive 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 hieroglyph- 
 ics. 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 
 xv 
 
PREFACE 
 
 archaeology for the general study of the evolu- 
 tion 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 Chris- 
 tians and Mussulmans about the shores of the 
 Mediterranean. It is also interesting as part of 
 the history of science, and furthermore as con- 
 nected with the beginnings of one of the most 
 momentous events in the career of mankind, 
 the colonization of the barbaric world by Euro- 
 peans. 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 writ- 
 ten from the original sources of information. 
 The work of modern scholars has of course 
 been freely used, but never without full acknow- 
 ledgment in text or notes, and seldom with- 
 out independent verification from the original 
 sources. Acknowledgments are chiefly due to 
 Humboldt, Morgan, Bandelier, Major, Varn- 
 xvi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 hagen, 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, re- 
 production, 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 stu- 
 dents 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 in- 
 xvii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 formation which I have not already fully con- 
 sidered, 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 pic- 
 ture 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 Co- 
 lumbus 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 fee- 
 ble, mean-spirited driveller whose portrait Mr. 
 Winsor asks us to accept as that of the Dis- 
 coverer of America ? 
 
 If, however, instead of his biographical esti- 
 mate of Columbus, we consider Mr. Winsor's 
 contributions toward a correct statement of the 
 difficult geographical questions connected with 
 xviii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 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 impor- 
 tance. 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 fif- 
 teenth 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 an- 
 cient 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 I 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 geogra- 
 phers, especially Ptolemy and Mela, as por- 
 trayed 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, 
 
 xix 
 
PREFACE 
 
 and went on reproducing themselves upon 
 newly made maps for a century or more after 
 the time of Columbus. Without constant refer- 
 ence 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 grad- 
 ually 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 Ves- 
 pucius, but because the quintessence of the 
 whole geographical problem of the discovery 
 of the New World is in one way or another in- 
 volved 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 com- 
 prehended by a single generation of men. 
 
 In the solution of the problem as to the first 
 Vespucius voyage I follow the lead of Varn- 
 hagen, 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 inhos- 
 xx 
 
PREFACE 
 
 pitably inclined toward Varnhagen's views as 
 altogether too plausible ; he seemed to settle 
 too many difficulties at once. But after becom- 
 ing convinced of the spuriousness of the Ban- 
 dini letter (see below, vol. ii. p. 320) ; and ob- 
 serving how the air at once was cleared in some 
 directions, it seemed that further work in text- 
 ual 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 Waldseemuller'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. 259). A minute study 
 of this text, with all its quaint interpolations of 
 Spanish and Portuguese idioms and seafaring 
 xxi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 phrases into the Italian groundwork of its dic- 
 tion, 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 interpreta- 
 tion 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 voy- 
 age 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 Waldseemuller to an entirely different 
 
 xxii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 region from any that was visited upon that voy- 
 age. 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 Varn- 
 hagen seems to have had a firm grasp of what 
 was in Waldseemuller's mind when he wrote 
 the passage photographed below in vol. ii. p. 
 380 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 geo- 
 grapher 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 Col- 
 lege, London, in 1879, at the Philosophical In- 
 stitution 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 
 xxiii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 for his cordial permission to make use of a 
 number of reproductions of old maps and fac- 
 similes 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 Ka- 
 kortok 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. 
 Cambridge, October 25, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The American aborigines i 
 
 Question as to their origin .... 2—4 
 
 Antiquity of man in America .... 5 
 
 Shell-mounds, or middens . . . , 5,6 
 
 The Glacial Period . . . . . 7, 8 
 
 Discoveries in the Trenton gravel ... 9 
 
 Discoveries in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota . 10, 1 1 
 
 Mr. Cresson's discovery at Claymont, Delaware . 11 
 The Calaveras skull . . . . .12—14 
 
 Pleistocene men and mammals . . . .15 
 
 Elevation and subsidence . . . . 16 
 
 Waves of migration . . . . . 17,18 
 
 The Cave men of Europe in the Glacial Period . 19 
 
 The Eskimos are probably a remnant of the Cave 
 
 men ....... 20—22 
 
 There was probably no connection or intercourse by 
 water between ancient America and the Old 
 World . . . . . . 23, 24 
 
 There is one great American red race . . . 25 
 
 Different senses in which the word "race" is used 26, 27 
 No necessary connection beween differences in culture 
 
 and differences in race . . . . .28 
 
 Mr. Lewis Morgan's classification of grades of cul- 
 ture Z9-3 8 
 
 Distinction between Savagery and Barbarism . -3° 
 
 Origin of pottery . . . . • . 30 
 
 XXV 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Lower, middle, and upper status of savagery . 3 1 ' 3 Z 
 Lower status of barbarism ; it ended differently in the 
 two hemispheres ; in ancient America there was no 
 pastoral stage of development . . . 3 2 
 Importance of Indian corn . . . . -33 
 Tillage with irrigation . . . . • 34 
 Use of adobe-brick and stone in building . . 35 
 Middle status of barbarism . . . . 35 
 Stone and copper tools . . . • -3^ 
 Working of metals ; smelting of iron . . 36 
 Upper status of barbarism . . . . -37 
 The alphabet and the beginnings of civilization . 38 
 So-called " civilizations " of Mexico and Peru 39, 40 
 Loose use of the words "savagery" and "civiliza- 
 tion" 4'»4 Z 
 
 Value and importance of the term " barbarism " 42, 43 
 
 The status of barbarism is most completely exemplified 
 
 in ancient America . . . . . 43,44 
 
 Survival of bygone epochs of culture ; work of the 
 
 Bureau of Ethnology . . . . . 45 
 
 Tribal society and multiplicity of languages in aborigi- 
 nal America ....... 46 
 
 Tribes in the upper status of savagery ; Athabaskans, 
 
 Apaches, Shoshones, etc. .... 47 
 
 Tribes in the lower status of barbarism ; the Dakota 
 
 group or family ..... 47, 48 
 
 The Minnitarees and Mandans .... 48-50 
 
 The Pawnee and Arickaree group . . . .50 
 
 The Maskoki group . . . . . 50 
 
 The Algonquin group . . . . . .51 
 
 The Huron-Iroquois group . . . . 52, 53 
 
 The Five Nations ..... 54-56 
 
 Distinction between horticulture and field agriculture 57 
 
 Perpetual intertribal warfare, with torture and canni- 
 balism ....... 58—61 
 
 Myths and folk-lore . . . . . 61,62 
 
 xxvi 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Ancient law ....... 63 
 
 The patriarchal family not primitive ... 64. 
 
 "Mother-right" 65 
 
 Primitive marriage ...... 66 
 
 The system of reckoning kinship through females only 67 
 Original reason for the system ■ . . . 68 
 
 The primeval human horde . . . 69, 70 
 
 Earliest family-group ; the clan . . . . 71 
 
 "Exogamy" ....... 72 
 
 Phratry and tribe ...... 72 
 
 Effect of pastoral life upon property and upon the 
 
 family ....... 7 3-7 5 
 
 The exogamous clan in ancient America . . .76 
 
 Intimate connection of aboriginal architecture with 
 social life ...... 77 
 
 The long houses of the Iroquois . . . 78—80 
 
 Summary divorce . . . . . . 81 
 
 Hospitality . . . . . . .81 
 
 Structure of the clan 8z, 83 
 
 Origin and structure of the phratry . . 84, 85 
 
 Structure of the tribe ..... 85, 86 
 Cross-relationships between clans and tribes ; the Iro- 
 quois Confederacy ..... 86—89 
 Structure of the confederacy . . . . 89, 90 
 
 The " Long House " 91 
 
 Symmetrical development of institutions in ancient 
 
 America 9 2 » 93 
 
 Circular houses of the Mandans . . . 94-96 
 
 The Indians of the pueblos, in the middle status of 
 
 barbarism .....•• 96-98 
 Horticulture with irrigation, and architecture with 
 
 adobe 9 8 
 
 Possible origin of adobe architecture . . .99,100 
 
 Mr. Cushing's sojourn at Zufli . . . 100, 101 
 
 Typical structure of the pueblo . . 101,102 
 
 Pueblo society 102, 103 
 
 xxvii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Wonderful ancient pueblos in the Chaco valley . 104 
 
 The Moqui pueblos 105 
 
 The cliff-dwellings 106 
 
 Pueblo of Zuni 106 
 
 Pueblo of TIascala .... 106-109 
 
 The ancient city of Mexico was a great composite 
 
 pueblo . . . . . . • no 
 
 The Spanish discoverers could not be expected to 
 
 understand the state of society which they found 
 
 there no, m 
 
 Contrast between feudalism and gentilism . . 112 
 
 Change from gentile society to political society in 
 
 Greece and Rome ..... 112— 114 
 First suspicions as to the erroneousness of the Spanish 
 
 accounts . . . . . . . 115 
 
 Detection and explanation of the errors, by Lewis 
 
 Morgan ...... 
 
 115, 116 
 
 Adolf Bandelier's researches 
 
 117 
 
 The Aztec Confederacy 
 
 1 1 8-1 2 1 
 
 Aztec clans ...... 
 
 121 
 
 Clan officers ..... 
 
 . ' 122 
 
 Rights and duties of the clan 
 
 123 
 
 Aztec phratries .... 
 
 • 123 
 
 The tlatocan, or tribal council . 
 
 124, 125 
 
 The cihuacoatl, or «* snake- woman " 
 
 126 
 
 The tlacatecuhtli, or " chief-of-men " 
 
 126, 127 
 
 Evolution of kingship in Greece and Rome . 
 
 127-129 
 
 Mediaeval kingship .... 
 
 129 
 
 Montezuma was a " priest-commander " 
 
 130 
 
 Mode of succession to the office . 
 
 131,132 
 
 Manner of collecting tribute 
 
 '33 
 
 Mexican roads ..... 
 
 • 134 
 
 Aztec and Iroquois confederacies contrasted 
 
 '35 
 
 Aztec priesthood ; human sacrifices 
 
 • i3 6 -!3 8 
 
 Aztec slaves ...... 
 
 139, 140 
 
 The Aztec family .... 
 
 140, 141 
 
 xxviii 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Aztec property ..... 142,143 
 
 Mr. Morgan's rules of criticism . . . 143, 144 
 
 He sometimes disregarded his own rules . . 145 
 
 Amusing illustrations from his remarks on " Monte- 
 zuma's Dinner " . . . . . 145—147 
 
 The reaction against uncritical and exaggerated state- 
 ments was often carried too far by Mr. Morgan 147—149 
 Great importance of the middle period of barba- 
 rism ....... 149, 150 
 
 The Mexicans compared with the Mayas . 151-153 
 
 Maya hieroglyphic writing . . . . 151,152 
 
 Ruined cities of Central America . . 154—156 
 
 They are probably not older than the twelfth century 157 
 Recent discovery of the Chronicle of Chicxulub 158, 159 
 Maya culture very closely related to Mexican . 159, 160 
 The " Mound-Builders " . . . 161-163 
 
 The notion that they were like the Aztecs . 163, 164 
 Or, perhaps, like the Zufiis . . . . 165 
 
 These notions are not well sustained . . .165 
 The mounds were probably built by different peoples 
 in the lower status of barbarism, by Cherokees, 
 Shawnees, and other tribes . . . 166-168 
 It is not likely that there was a " race of Mound-Build- 
 ers " 168 
 
 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 ...... 169, 170 
 
 II 
 
 PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 Stories of voyages to America before Columbus ; the 
 
 Chinese 17 1 
 
 The Irish 172 
 
 xxix 
 

 173 
 
 . 
 
 174 
 
 
 17s 
 
 . 
 
 176 
 
 
 177 
 
 178, 
 
 179 
 
 i8o- 
 
 -182 
 
 D. 
 
 
 I8 3 - 
 
 -185 
 
 
 186 
 
 • 
 
 187 
 
 tnd 
 
 188, 
 
 189 
 
 • 
 
 190 
 
 
 191 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Blowing and drifting ; Cousin, of Dieppe . 
 
 These stories are of small value 
 
 But the case of the Northmen is quite different 
 
 The Viking exodus from Norway . 
 
 Founding of a colony in Iceland, a. d. 874 
 
 Icelandic literature ..... 
 
 Discovery of Greenland, a. d. 876 . 
 
 Eric the Red, and his colony in Greenland, 
 986 
 
 Voyage of Bjarni Herjulfsson . 
 
 Conversion of the Northmen to Christianity . 
 
 Leif Ericsson's voyage, a. d. iooo ; Helluland and 
 Markland 
 
 LeiPs winter in Vinland 
 
 Voyages of Thorvald and Thorstein . 
 
 Thorfinn Karlsefhi, and his unsuccessful attempt to 
 
 found a colony in Vinland, a. d. 1007-10 192-194 
 
 Freydis, and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1 01 1-1 2 1 94-1 97 
 
 Voyage in Baffin's Bay, 1135 . . . .198 
 
 Description of a Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord, 
 
 in Norway ..... 198-201 
 
 To what extent the climate of Greenland may have 
 
 changed within the last thousand years . 202-204 
 
 With the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery 
 
 of the American continent was inevitable . 204, 205 
 
 Ear-marks of truth in the Icelandic narratives . 205—207 
 
 Northern limit of the vine ..... 208 
 
 Length of the winter day . . . . 209 
 
 Indian corn . . . . . . 210,211 
 
 Winter weather in Vinland . . . 211,212 
 
 Vinland was probably situated somewhere between 
 
 Cape Breton and Point Judith . . . .212 
 
 Further ear-marks of truth ; savages and barbarians 
 of the lower status were unknown to mediaeval Eu- 
 ropeans 213, 214 
 
 XXX 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The natives of Vinknd as described in the Icelandic 
 
 narratives ...... 215, 216 
 
 Meaning of the epithet " Skraelings " . 217, 218 
 
 Personal appearance of the Skreelings . . .219 
 
 The Skraelings of Vinland were Indians, — very likely 
 
 Algonquins . . . . . . 220 
 
 The "balista " or " demon's head" . . 221,222 
 
 The story of the " uniped " . . . . 223 
 
 Character of the Icelandic records ; misleading associa- 
 tions with the word " saga " . . . . 224 
 
 The comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamem- 
 non, made by a committee of the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society, was peculiarly unfortunate and 
 inappropriate . . . . . . 225 
 
 The story of the Trojan War, in the shape in which 
 
 we find it in Greek poetry, is pure folk-lore . . 226 
 
 The Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore . . 227 
 
 Mythical and historical sagas . . . .228 
 
 The western or Hauks-bok version of Eric the Red's 
 
 Saga 229 
 
 The northern or Flateyar-bok version . . . 230 
 
 Presumption against sources not contemporary . 231 
 
 Hauk Erlendsson and his manuscripts . . .232 
 
 The story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's 
 
 time by oral tradition only . . . . 233 
 
 Allusions to Vinland in other Icelandic documents . 234 
 
 Eyrbyggja Saga 235 
 
 The abbot Nikulas, etc 235 
 
 Ari Frodhi and his works . . . 235, 236 
 
 His significant allusion to Vinland . . . 237 
 
 Other references . . . . . .238 
 
 Differences between Hauks-bok and Flateyar-bok ver- 
 sions 239, 240 
 
 Adam of Bremen ..... 240, 241 
 Importance of his testimony . . . . 242 
 
 His misconception of the situation of Vinland 243, 244 
 
 xxxi 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Summary of the argument .... 245, 246 
 Absurd speculations of zealous antiquarians . Z47-249 
 
 The Dighton inscription was made by Algonquins, 
 
 and has nothing to do with the Northmen . 248, 249 
 Governor Arnold's stone windmill . . . 248 
 
 There is no reason for supposing that the Northmen 
 
 founded a colony in Vinland . . . 250 
 
 No archaeological remains of them have been found 
 
 south of Davis Strait . . . . .251 
 
 If the Northmen had founded a successful colony, they 
 
 would have introduced domestic cattle into the 
 
 North American fauna . . . 252, 253 
 
 And such animals could not have vanished and left no 
 
 trace of their existence . . . . 254, 255 
 
 Further fortunes of the Greenland colony . 256, 257 
 
 Bishop Eric's voyage in search of Vinland, 1121 257,258 
 The ship from Markland, 1347 . . . 258,259 
 
 The Greenland colony attacked by Eskimos, 1 349 . 260 
 Queen Margaret's monopoly, and its baneful ef- 
 fects . . . . . . 261, 262 
 
 Story of the Venetian brothers, Nicolo and Antonio 
 
 Zeno ....... 262, 263 
 
 Nicolo Zeno wrecked upon one of the Faeroe Islands 264 
 He enters the service of Henry Sinclair, Earl of the 
 
 Orkneys and Caithness . . . . 264 
 
 Nicolo' s voyage to Greenland, cir. 1394 . . 265 
 
 Voyage of Earl Sinclair and Antonio Zeno . 266, 267 
 
 Publication of the remains of the documents by the 
 
 younger Nicolo Zeno, 1558 . . . 268 
 
 The Zeno map ..... 268, 269 
 
 Queer transformations of names . . 270, 271 
 
 The name Far oh lander became Frisian da . . 272 
 
 The narrative nowhere makes a claim to the " discovery 
 
 of America "...... 273 
 
 The " Zichmni " of the narrative means Henry Sin- 
 clair ........ 274 
 
 xxxii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Bardsen's " Description of Greenland " . . 275 
 
 The monastery of St. Olaus and its hot spring 276, 277 
 Volcanoes of the north Atlantic ridge . . 277, 278 
 
 Fate of Gunnbjorn's Skerries, 1456 . . . 278 
 
 Volcanic phenomena in Greenland . . 279, 280 
 
 Estotiland 281,282 
 
 Drogio . . . . . . . .282 
 
 Inhabitants of Drogio and the countries beyond 283—285 
 The Fisherman's return to Frislanda . . . 285 
 
 Was the account of Drogio woven into the narrative by 
 
 the younger Nicolo ? . . . . . 286 
 
 Or does it represent actual experiences in North 
 
 America ?....... 287 
 
 The case of David Ingram, 1568 . . . 288 
 
 The case of Cabeza de Vaca, 1528-36. . 289-291 
 
 There may have been unrecorded instances of visits 
 
 to North America . . . . . 291 
 
 The pre-Columbian voyages made no real contribu- 
 tions to geographical knowledge . . . 292 
 And were in no true sense a discovery of America 293 
 Real contact between the eastern and western hemi- 
 sphere was first established by Columbus . . 294 
 
 III 
 
 EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 Why the voyages of the Northmen were not followed 
 
 up ....... . 295 
 
 Ignorance of their geographical significance » . 296 
 
 Lack of instruments for ocean navigation . . 297 
 
 Condition of Europe in the year 1000 . 297-299 
 
 It was not such as to favour colonial enterprise 2 99> 3°° 
 
 The outlook of Europe was toward" Asia . . 301 
 
 Routes of trade between Europe and Asia . . 302 
 
 Claudius Ptolemy and his knowledge of the earth 303 
 
 Early mention of China . . . . .304 
 
 xxxiii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 306 
 307, 308 
 3°9 
 3°9 
 310 
 
 3 11 
 312 
 
 3i3 
 3H 
 315 
 6, 3'7 
 318 
 
 31 
 
 The monk Cosmas Indicopleustes 
 
 Shape of the earth, according to Cosmas 
 
 His knowledge of Asia . 
 
 The Nestorians .... 
 
 Effects of the Saracen conquests 
 
 Constantinople in the twelfth century 
 
 The Crusades .... 
 
 Barbarizing character of Turkish conquest 
 
 General effects of the Crusades . 
 
 The Fourth Crusade .... 
 
 Rivalry between Venice and Genoa . 
 
 Centres and routes of mediaeval trade 
 
 Effects of the Mongol conquests 
 
 Cathay, origin of the name 
 
 Carpini and Rubruquis 
 
 First knowledge of an eastern ocean beyond Cathay 
 
 The data were thus prepared for Columbus ; but as 
 yet nobody reasoned from these data to a practical 
 conclusion ...... 
 
 The Polo brothers 
 
 Kublai Khan's message to the Pope . 
 
 Marco Polo and his travels in Asia 
 
 First recorded voyage of Europeans around the Indo- 
 Chinese peninsula ..... 
 
 Return of the Polos to Venice . . . 326, 327 
 
 Marco Polo's book, written in prison at Genoa, 1299 ; 
 
 its great contributions to geographical knowledge 3 2 7—3 29 
 
 Prester John . ..... 329,330 
 
 Griffins and Arimaspians ..... 
 
 Other visits to China . . . . 332 
 
 Overthrow of the Mongol dynasty, and shutting up 
 of China ....... 
 
 First rumours of the Molucca Islands and Japan 
 
 The accustomed routes of Oriental trade were cut off 
 in the fifteenth century by the Ottoman Turks 
 
 Necessity for finding an " outside route to the Indies " 
 
 xxxiv 
 
 319 
 320 
 320 
 321 
 
 322 
 3 Z 3 
 3 Z 4 
 325 
 
 326 
 
 33 1 
 333 
 
 334 
 335 
 
 336 
 337 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 IV 
 
 THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 Eastward or Portuguese Route 
 
 Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sail- 
 ing around Africa . . . . . 339,340 
 
 Views of Eratosthenes . . . . . 34.1 
 
 Opposing theory of Ptolemy .... 342 
 
 Story of the Phoenician voyage in the time of Necho 342—345 
 
 Voyage of Hanno . . . . . . 346 
 
 Voyages of Sataspes and Eudoxus . . .347 
 
 Wild exaggerations . . . . . . 348 
 
 Views of Pomponius Mela .... 349, 350 
 
 Ancient theory of the five zones . . 35 1-3 5 3 
 The Inhabited World, or CEcumene, and the An- 
 tipodes 353.354 
 
 Curious notions about Taprobane (Ceylon) . . 355 
 Question as to the possibility of crossing the torrid 
 
 zone . . . . . . . 356 
 
 Notions about sailing " up and down hill " . 356, 357 
 
 Superstitious fancies . . . . . 358 
 
 Clumsiness of ships in the fifteenth century . . 359 
 
 Dangers from famine and scurvy . . . 360 
 
 The mariner's compass ; an interesting letter from Bru- 
 
 netto Latini to Guido Cavalcanti . . 360-362 
 
 Calculating latitudes and longitudes . . 362, 363 
 
 Prince Henry the Navigator . . . .364 
 
 His idea of an ocean route to the Indies, and what it 
 
 might bring ...... 365, 366 
 
 The Sacred Promontory .... 367, 368 
 
 The Madeira and Canary islands . . . 369, 370 
 
 Gil Eannes passes Cape Bojador . . 37 1, 37 2 
 
 Beginning of the modern slave-trade, 1442 . 372 
 
 XXXV 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Papal grant of heathen countries to the Portuguese 
 
 crown 373 
 
 Advance to Sierra Leone . . . . . 374 
 
 Advance to the Hottentot coast . . . -375 
 
 Note upon the extent of European acquaintance with 
 savagery and the lower forms of barbarism previous 
 to the fifteenth century . . . 375 - 379 
 
 Effect of the Portuguese discoveries upon the theories 
 
 of Ptolemy and Mela .... 378, 379 
 News of Prester John ; Covilham's journey 380, 381 
 
 Bartholomew Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope 
 
 and enters the Indian Ocean . . . 381, 382 
 
 Some effects of this discovery . . . . 383 
 
 Bartholomew Columbus took part in it . . . 383 
 
 Connection between these voyages and the work of 
 
 Christopher Columbus . . . . 384 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Christopher Columbus (photogravure) Frontispiece 
 
 From the painting in the Urizzi Gallery, Florence, attributed 
 to Christofano dell' Altissimo, some time before 1568. 
 
 View of Seneca-Iroquois Long House . . . . 78 
 
 From Morgan's Houses and House-Life of the American 
 Aborigines. 
 
 Ground-Plan of Seneca-Iroquois Long House, 
 ditto 79 
 
 View, Cross-Section, and Ground-Plan of Man- 
 dan Round House, ditto 94 
 
 Ground-Plan of Pueblo Hungo Pavie, ditto . .100 
 
 Restoration of Pueblo Hungo Pavie, ditto (photo- 
 gravure) ioz 
 
 Restoration of Pueblo Bonito, ditto (photogravure) 104 
 
 Ground-Plan of Pueblo Penasca Blanca, ditto . 106 
 Representation of Spaniards in a Mexican Manu- 
 script 146 
 
 Illustrating the events of the years 1529 and 1530. From 
 the Duke de Loubat's facsimile of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 
 Paris, 1899. 
 
 Pre-Columbian Mexican Hieroglyphs . . . .152 
 From the Duke de Loubat's facsimile of the Codex Cospiano, 
 Rome, 1898. 
 
 Ground-Plan of so-called "House of the Nuns" 
 at Uxmal 153 
 
 From Morgan's Houses and House-Life of the American 
 Aborigines. 
 
 xxxvii 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Map of the East Bygd, or Eastern Settlement 
 
 of the Northmen in Greenland 1 84 
 
 Reduced from Ram's Antiquitates Americana. 
 Icelandic Manuscript 180 
 
 One quarter of a page of the Flatey book, the best manu- 
 script of the Norse discovery of America, from The Finding of 
 JVinelandthe Good, London, 1890. 
 
 Ruins of the Church at Kakortok .... 257 
 From Major's Voyages of the Zeni, published by the Halduyt 
 Society. 
 
 Zeno Map cir. 1400, ditto 268 
 
 Map of the World according to Claudius Ptol- 
 emy, cir. a. d. 1 50 304 
 
 An abridged sketch after a map in Bunbury's History of 
 Ancient Geography. 
 
 Two Sheets of the Catalan Map, 1375 . . .332 
 From Yule's Cathay, published by the Hakluyt Society 
 
 Map of the World according to Pomponius Mela, 
 cir. a. d. 50 350 
 
 After a map in Bunbury's History of Ancient Geography 
 A Caravel 360 
 
 From the Latin letter of Columbus printed at Basle in 1493, 
 in the Lenox Collection, New York Public Library. 
 
 Map illustrating Portuguese Voyages on the 
 Coast of Africa 372 
 
 After a sketch by the author. 
 
THE 
 DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 I 
 ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 WHEN the civilized people of Europe 
 first became acquainted with the con- 
 tinents 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 TheAmen- 
 is now seen to be a general physical canabori s ines 
 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 Austra- 
 lian or the negro. The most obvious character- 
 istics 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 deepset eyes, the 
 straight black hair and absence or scantiness of 
 
 I 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 beard. With regard to stature, length of limbs, 
 massiveness of frame, and shape of skull, con- 
 siderable 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-Co- 
 lumbian 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. 
 
 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 dis- 
 coveries in geology have entirely altered our 
 mental attitude towards 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 
 Question as to somewhere between two and three 
 their origin t h 0U sand years before the Christian 
 era. Hence inasmuch as European tradition 
 knows nothing of any such race as the Indians, 
 
 2 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 dis- 
 covering points of resemblance between Ameri- 
 can languages, myths, and social observances and 
 those of the Oriental world. Now the abori- 
 gines 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 dis- 
 proved, but they have all been superseded and 
 laid on the shelf." x The tendency of modern 
 
 1 See my Excursions of an Evolutionist, v. A good suc- 
 cinct 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 ponder- 
 ous tomes of Lord Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, Lon- 
 don, 1831—48, 9 vols, elephant-folio. Such a theory was 
 entertained by the author of that curious piece of literary im- 
 posture, 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 in- 
 structed 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 iniqui- 
 ties. In the reign of Zedekiah, when calamity was impend- 
 ing over Judah, two brothers, Nephi and Laman, under divine 
 guidance led a colony to America. There, says the veracious 
 
 3 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 discovery is indeed towards 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 hemi- 
 sphere than in that of the western, natural selec- 
 tion 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 
 
 chronicler, their descendants became great nations, and worked 
 in iron, and had stuffs oisilk, besides keeping plenty of oxen 
 and sheep. (Ether, ix. 18, 19 ; x. 23, 24.) Christ ap- 
 peared and wrought many wonderful works ; people spake 
 with tongues, and the dead were raised. ($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 pro- 
 phet 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 miracu- 
 lously 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 lan- 
 guage 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. 
 
 4 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 people whom the Spaniards found in America 
 came by migration from the Old World. But 
 it is by no means probable that their migra- 
 tion occurred within so short a period Antiquity of 
 as five or six thousand years. A mani n 
 
 c . . i !• > America 
 
 series or observations and discoveries 
 kept up for the last half-century seem to show 
 that North America has been continuously in- 
 habited by human beings since the earliest 
 Pleistocene times, if not earlier. 
 
 The first group of these observations and dis- 
 coveries 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 con- shdi- 
 sist almost entirely of huge oyster- mounds 
 shells often ten inches in length and sometimes 
 much longer. The shells belong to a salt-water 
 species. In some places " there is an appear- 
 ance 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 pot- 
 tery 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. 
 
 5 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Edward Morse " found the remains of an an- 
 cient fireplace, where he exhumed charcoal, 
 bones, and pottery." 1 The significant circum- 
 stance 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 distribu- 
 tion of this mollusk since the heap was aban- 
 doned, 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, 2 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 me- 
 morial, we find records of the presence of man 
 at a period undoubtedly prehistoric, but not 
 necessarily many thousands of years old. 
 
 The second group of discoveries carries us 
 back much farther, even into the earlier stages 
 of that widespread glaciation which was the most 
 
 1 Second Annual Report of the Peabody Museum of 
 American Archceology, etc., p. 1 8. 
 
 2 Visited in 1 866-74 by Professor Jeffries Wyman, and 
 described in his Fresh- Water Shell Mounds of the St. John's 
 River, Cambridge, 1875. 
 
 6 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 Phila- The Glacial 
 delphia, while glaciers descended into penod 
 North Carolina." 1 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 Pleisto- 
 cene age, which was characterized by such ex- 
 traordinary 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 physi- 
 cists 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 
 1 Excursions of an Evolutionist, i. 
 
 7 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 magnificent argument of Dr. Croll, which seems 
 to me still to hold its ground against all adverse 
 criticism, 1 and regard the Glacial epoch as coin- 
 cident with the last period of high eccentricity of 
 the earth's orbit, we obtain a result that is mod- 
 erate 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. 
 
 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 imple- 
 
 1 Croll, Climate and Time in their Geological Relations, 
 New York, 1875; Discussions on Climate and Cosmology, 
 New York, 1886; Archibald Geilde, Text Book of Geology, 
 pp. 23-29, 883-909, London, 1882 ; James Geilde, The 
 Great Ice Age, pp. 94-136, New York, 1874; Prehis- 
 toric Europe, pp. 558—562, London, 188 1; 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, ii. 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 ments found in the drift near the city of St. 
 Paul, which date from towards the close of the 
 Glacial epoch ; 1 the fragment of a human jaw 
 found in the red clay deposited in Minnesota 
 during an earlier part of that epoch ; 2 the noble 
 collection of palseoliths found by Dr. C. C. Ab- 
 bott in the Trenton gravels in New Jersey ; and 
 the more recent discoveries of Dr. Metz and 
 Mr. H. T. Cresson. 
 
 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 „. 
 
 ... . j 1 j Discoveries 
 
 in an undisturbed deposit, and could intheTren- 
 not have found their way thither in any ton gravd 
 recent time ; Dr. Abbott assigned them to the 
 
 1 See Miss F. E. Babbitt, " Vestiges of Glacial Man in 
 Minnesota," in Proceedings of the American Association, vol. 
 xxxii., 1883. 
 
 2 See N. H. Winchell, Annual Report of the State Geolo- 
 gist of Minnesota, 1877, p. 60. 
 
 9 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 1 8 8 8 
 Dr. Abbott had obtained not less than sixty 
 implements from various recorded depths in the 
 gravel, while many others were found at depths 
 not recorded or in the talus of the banks. 1 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 afterwards, 
 the prediction was verified by Dr. Metz, who 
 found a true palaeolith of black flint at Madison- 
 ville, in the Little Miami valley, eight feet below 
 1 Wright's Ice Age in North America, p. 516. 
 IO 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 Discoveries 
 man in that part of America towards JEJ^J"" 
 the close of the Glacial period may Minnesota; 
 be regarded as definitely established. The dis- 
 coveries 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. 
 
 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 andinDeia- 
 clay, Mr. Cresson obtained an un- ware 
 questionable palaeolith, and a few months after- 
 wards his diligent search was rewarded with 
 another. 1 This formation dates from far back 
 
 1 The chipped implements discovered by Messrs. Abbott, 
 Metz, and Cresson, and by Miss Babbitt, are all on exhibi- 
 tion 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 im- 
 portant collections in the world, and is worth a long journey 
 to see. Containing more than 20,000 implements, all found 
 
 II 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 in the Glacial period. If we accept Dr. Croll's 
 method of reckoning, we can hardly assign to 
 it an antiquity less than 1 50,000 years. 
 
 But according to Professor Josiah Whitney 
 there is reason for supposing that man existed 
 The caia- in California at a still more remote 
 vera* skuii p er i d. He holds that the famous 
 skull discovered in 1866, in the gold-bearing 
 gravels of Calaveras County, belongs to the 
 
 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 pro- 
 portion 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 1 88 1, 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. 
 12 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 Pliocene age. 1 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 anti- 
 quity of the Calaveras skull is still hotly dis- 
 puted 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 
 towards the evidence so ably presented by Pro- 
 fessor 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 
 
 1 J. D. Whitney, " The Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra 
 Nevada," Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 
 at Harvard College, Cambridge, 1880, vol. vi. 
 
 2 In an essay published in 1882 on " Europe before the 
 Arrival of Man " {Excursions of an Evolutionist, i.), Iargued 
 that if we are to find traces of the " missing link," or pri- 
 mordial stock of primates from which man has been derived, 
 we must undoubtedly look for it in the Miocene. 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 
 
 13 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Whatever may be the final outcome of the 
 Calaveras controversy, there can be no doubt as 
 
 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 sepa- 
 rate 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, dryopi- 
 thecus, nearly as large as a man, and believed by M. Lartet 
 to have approached man in its dentition more than the exist- 
 ing 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 varia- 
 tions in his intelligence were seized upon more and more ex- 
 clusively 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 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 Eu- 
 rope during the milder intervals of the Glacial 
 period, but seem to have become extinct towards 
 the end of it, are well known to palaeontologists 
 through their bones and their rude tools. Con- 
 temporaneously 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. piek t0( . ene 
 Along with these ancient Americans men ani 
 
 • ■ i • i ii mammals 
 
 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 mylo- 
 don, megatherium, megalonyx, mastodon, Si- 
 berian elephant, mammoth, at least six or seven 
 species of ancestral horse, a huge bear similar 
 to the cave bear of ancient Europe, a lion simi- 
 lar to the European cave lion, and a tiger as 
 large as the modern tiger of Bengal. 
 
 Now while the general relative positions of 
 
 Anthropological Review, May, 1864; restated in his Con- 
 tributions 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 1 87 1, and worked out in Cosmic Philosophy, 
 part ii., chapters xvi., xxi., xxii. 
 
 *5 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 those stupendous abysses that hold the oceans 
 do not appear to have undergone any consider- 
 able change since an extremely remote geo- 
 logical period, their shallow marginal portions 
 have been repeatedly raised so as to add ex- 
 tensive 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 every- 
 where 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 Compara- 
 tive Zoology in Cambridge, showing the results 
 Elevation and of a vast number of soundings in all 
 subsidence p ar ts 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 north- 
 ern Atlantic there is a lofty ridge running from 
 France to Greenland. The British islands, the 
 Orkney, Shetland, and Faeroe groups, and Ice- 
 land 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 
 16 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 dropped into the red gravel from which Mr. 
 Cresson took them the other day, the north- 
 western part of Europe has been solid conti- 
 nent for more than a hundred miles to the west 
 of the French and Irish coasts, the Thames and 
 H umber 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 dryshod. 1 In similar wise the 
 northwestern corner of America has repeatedly 
 been joined to Siberia through the elevation of 
 Bering Sea. 
 
 There have therefore been abundant oppor- 
 tunities for men to get into America from the 
 Old World without crossing salt water. Prob- 
 ably this was the case with the ancient in- 
 habitants 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. 
 
 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 sup- waves of 
 planted by stronger races. There may Ba s ntum 
 have been several successive waves of migration, 
 
 1 See, for example, the map of Europe in early post- 
 glacial times, in James Geikie's Prehistoric Europe. 
 
 17 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 of which the Indians were the latest. 1 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. 2 
 
 1 " 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 im- 
 portance. 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. 
 
 2 An excellent example of this is the expansion and modifi- 
 cation 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 Mensch- 
 heit, 1 87 1 ; Cuno, Forschungen im Gebiete der alten Foe I- 
 kerkunde, 1871 ; Schmidt, Die Verwandtschaftsverhaltnisse 
 der Indogermanischen Sprachen, 1872 ; Poesche, Die Arier, 
 1878 ; Lindenschmit, Handbuch der deutschen Alterthums- 
 kunde, 1880; Penka, Origines Ariaca, 1883; and Die 
 Herkunft der Arier, 1886; Spiegel, Die arische Periode 
 
 18 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 In this connection the history of the Eski- 
 mos introduces us to some interesting problems. 
 Mention has been made of the River-drift men 
 who lived in Europe during the milder inter- 
 vals of the Glacial period. At such times they 
 made their way into Germany and Britain, 
 along with leopards, hyaenas, and African ele- 
 phants. 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 The _ 
 race of men known as the Cave men, men of 
 along with the reindeer and arctic fox GkcEd'" 
 and musk-sheep. More than once P eriod 
 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 hos- 
 tile climate. At length all traces of the River- 
 
 und ihre Zustande, 1887 ; Rendal, Cradle of the Aryans, 
 1889 ; Schrader, Sprachvergleichung und Vrgeschichte, 
 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 Muller, Bio- 
 graphies of Words and the Home of the Aryas, i8>88 ; 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. 
 
 19 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 Pyre- 
 nees 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 Pleis- 
 tocene caves of France and England they 
 would be indistinguishable in appearance from 
 the remains of the Cave men which are now 
 found there. 1 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 char- 
 acter as pronounced and unmistakable in its 
 way as the much higher art of the Japanese. 
 1 See Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, pp. 233-245. 
 20 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 Now among the European remains of the Cave 
 men are many sketches of mammoths, cave 
 bears, and other animals now extinct, and hunt- 
 ing scenes so artfully and vividly portrayed as 
 to bring distinctly before us many details of 
 daily life in an antiquity so vast that in com- 
 parison with it the interval between the pyra- 
 mids of Egypt and the Eiffel tower 
 shrinks into a point. Such a talent mo s are 
 is unique among savage peoples. It P"*aMya 
 
 * ° o , r •; remnant of 
 
 exists only among the living Eskimos the Cave 
 and the ancient Cave men ; and when men 
 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. 1 
 
 1 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 palasoliths 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. 
 21 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 If we have always been accustomed to think 
 of races of men only as they are placed on 
 
 I would suggest that during the Glacial period the ancestral 
 Eskimos may have gradually become adapted to arctic con- 
 ditions 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 south- 
 ward 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 re- 
 treat, 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, 1 890. 
 11 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 zoology and 
 botany. The camel is found to-day only in 
 Arabia and Bactria ; yet in all probability the 
 camel originated in America, 1 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 Amer- 
 ica. 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 2 as maple-trees to-day in a New Eng- 
 land village. 
 
 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 suf- 
 ficient 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 
 
 1 Wallace, Geographical Distribution of Animals, vol. ii. 
 p. 155. 
 
 2 Asa Gray, " Sequoia and its History," in his Darwin- 
 iana, pp. 205-235. 
 
 23 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 abo- 
 riginal American, as we know him, with his lan- 
 guage and legends, his physical and mental 
 peculiarities, his social observances and cus- 
 toms, is most emphatically a native and not an 
 imported article. He belongs to the American 
 continent as strictly as its opossums and arma- 
 dillos, its maize and its golden-rod, or any 
 There was members of its aboriginal fauna and 
 connection flora belong to it. In all probability 
 or intercourse h e came f rorr i tne Old World at some 
 
 between an- ancient period, whether pre-glacial or 
 icsTand thT post-glacial, when it was possible to 
 oh World come by land ; and here in all prob- 
 ability, until the arrival of white men from 
 Europe, he remained undisturbed by later com- 
 ers, unless the Eskimos may have been such. 
 There is not a particle of evidence to suggest 
 any connection or intercourse between aborigi- 
 nal 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. 
 
 The Indians must surely be regarded as an 
 24 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 indi- 
 cate 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 There is one 
 at any rate must have been intro- ^""red"'" 
 duced within the historic period from race 
 the Old World. 1 This feeling was caused partly 
 by the fact that, owing to crude and loosely 
 framed conceptions of the real points of differ- 
 ence between civilization and barbarism, this 
 Central American culture was absurdly exag- 
 gerated. 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 
 
 1 Illustrations may be found in plenty in the learned works 
 of Brasseur de Bourbourg : Histoire des nations civilisees du 
 Mexique et de /' ' Am'erique centrak, 4 vols., Paris, 1857-58 ; 
 Popol Vuh, Paris, 1861 ; Quatre lettres sur le Mexique, 
 Paris, 1 868 ; Le manuscrit Troano, Paris, 1870, etc. 
 
 2 5 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 To prevent any possible misconception of 
 
 my meaning, a further word of explanation may 
 
 be needed at this point. The word 
 
 senses in " race " is used in such widely differ- 
 whichthe en( . senses t h at t h ere ; s a p t t0 be 
 
 "race" is 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 Eng- 
 lishman, 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 cor- 
 rectly say that a Shawnee, an Ojibwa, and a 
 Kickapoo belong to one and the same Algon- 
 quin race ; that a Mohawk and a Tuscarora be- 
 long to one and the same Iroquois race; but that 
 an Algonquin differs from an Iroquois somewhat 
 
 26 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 Iro- 
 quois belong to the same great red race. 
 
 In some parts of the world two strongly con- 
 trasted races have become mingled together, or 
 have existed side by side for centuries with- 
 out intermingling. In Europe the big blond 
 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. 1 Now in America south of 
 Hudson's Bay the case seems to have been 
 quite otherwise, and more as it would have been 
 
 1 See Werner, "The African Pygmies," Popular Science 
 Monthly, September, 1890, — a thoughtful and interesting 
 article. 
 
 27 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 in Europe if there had been only Aryans, or in 
 Africa if there had been only blacks. 1 
 
 The belief that the people of the Cordilleras 
 must be of radically different race from other 
 Indians was based upon the vague notion that 
 gradesof culture have some necessary connection 
 No necessary with likenesses and differences of race. 
 connection There is no such necessary connec- 
 
 between au- a . 
 
 ferencesin tion. 2 Between the highly civilized 
 
 difference Japanese and their barbarous Mand- 
 
 m race shu cousins the difference in culture 
 
 is much greater than the difference between 
 
 1 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 rela- 
 tively 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 de- 
 veloped upon American soil, a differentiation within the Emits 
 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, Anthro- 
 pology, p. 89. 
 
 2 As Sir John Lubbock well says, " Different races in sim- 
 ilar stages of development often present more features of re- 
 semblance to one another than the same race does to itself in 
 different stages of its history." {Origin of Civilization, 
 p. 1 1 . ) If every student of history and ethnology would be- 
 gin by learning this lesson, the world would be spared a vast 
 amount of unprofitable theorizing. 
 
 28 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 Teu- 
 tonic kinsmen as described by Tacitus. 
 
 At this point, in order to prepare ourselves 
 the more clearly to understand sundry facts with 
 which we shall hereafter be obliged to deal, es- 
 pecially the wonderful experiences of the Span- 
 ish conquerors, it will be well to pause for a 
 moment and do something towards defining the 
 different grades of culture through Grades 
 which men have passed in attaining to of culture 
 the grade which can properly be called civiliza- 
 tion. Unless we begin with clear ideas upon 
 this head we cannot go far towards understand- 
 ing the ancient America that was first visited 
 and described for us by Spaniards. The vari- 
 ous grades of culture need to be classified, and 
 that most original and suggestive scholar, the 
 late Lewis Morgan, of Rochester, made a bril- 
 liant attempt in this direction, to which the 
 reader's attention is now invited. 
 
 Below Civilization Mr. Morgan 1 distin- 
 guishes 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 
 
 1 See his great work on Ancient Society, New York, 1877-. 
 29 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 a fruitful source of misapprehension in the case 
 of any statement involving either of them. 
 Distinction When popular usage discriminates 
 between sav- between them it discriminates in the 
 
 agery and 
 
 Barbarism right direction ; there is a vague but 
 not uncertain feeling that savagery is a lower 
 stage than barbarism. But ordinarily the dis- 
 crimination is not made and the two terms are 
 carelessly employed as if interchangeable. Sci- 
 entific 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 
 origin of putting it into baskets coated with clay 
 pottery t0 b e su pp 0rr .ed 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. 1 Whoever first 
 
 1 See the evidence in Tylor, Researches into the Early 
 History of Mankind, pp. 269-272 ; cf. Lubbock, Prehis- 
 
 3° 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 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, mid- 
 dle, and later periods. The lower status of 
 savagery was that wholly prehistoric Lower status 
 stage when men lived in their original of Bava 8 e 'y 
 restricted habitat and subsisted on fruit and 
 nuts. To this period must be assigned the be- 
 ginning of articulate speech. All existing races 
 of men had passed beyond it at an unknown 
 antiquity. 
 
 Men began to pass beyond it when they dis- 
 covered how to catch fish and how to use fire. 
 They could then begin (following coasts and 
 rivers) to spread over the earth. The M j dd i e status 
 middle status of savagery, thus intro- ° fsava g ei 7 
 duced, ends with the invention of that com- 
 pound weapon, the bow and arrow. The na- 
 tives of Australia, who do not know this weapon, 
 are still in the middle status of savagery. 1 
 
 toric Times, p. 573 ; and see Cushing's masterly " Study of 
 Pueblo Pottery," etc., Reports of Bureau of Ethnology, iv., 
 
 473-5 21 - 
 
 1 Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, London, 1889, gives a 
 
 vivid picture of aboriginal life in Australia. 
 
 3 1 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 
 upper status vastly increased men's supply of food 
 of savagery by increasing their power of killing 
 wild game. The lowest tribes in America, such 
 as those upon the Columbia River, the Athabas- 
 kans of Hudson's Bay, the Fuegians and some 
 other South American tribes, are in the upper 
 status of savagery. 
 
 The transition from this status to the lower 
 status of barbarism was marked, as before ob- 
 served, 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 domes- 
 ticated at a much earlier period as an aid to the 
 hunter. The domestication of horses and asses, 
 oxen and sheep, goats and pigs, marks 
 
 Lower status . r ° » 
 
 of barbarism •. of course an immense advance. Along 
 ferentiy fa" wlt ^ ^ g oes considerable development 
 the two of agriculture, thus enabling a small 
 
 hemispheres . . T 
 
 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 Span- 
 iards. In ancient American society there was no 
 32 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 such thing as a pastoral stage of development, 1 
 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. 
 
 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 plough- 
 ing 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 with- T 
 
 r ° , . r Importance 
 
 out meddling with the stalk ; there of Indian 
 was no need of threshing and win- 
 nowing. None of the Old World cereals can be 
 cultivated without much more industry and in- 
 telligence. At the same time, when Indian corn 
 is sown in tilled land it yields with little labour 
 
 1 The case of Peru, which forms an apparent but not real 
 exception to this general statement, will be considered below 
 in chap. ix. 
 
 33 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 Eng- 
 land, 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. 1 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 to- 
 bacco ; but their cultivation was of the rudest 
 sort, 2 and population was too sparse for much 
 progress towards 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 
 
 1 See Shaler, "Physiography of North America," in 
 Winsor's Narr. and Crit. Hist., vol. iv. p. xiii. 
 
 2 " 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. 
 
 34 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 Algon- 
 quins and Iroquois, the Creeks, the Dakotas, 
 etc., when first seen by white men, were within 
 this period; but some had made much fur- 
 ther progress within it than others. For exam- 
 ple, the Algonquin tribe of Ojibwas had little 
 more than emerged from savagery, while the 
 Creeks and Cherokees had made considerable 
 advance towards the middle status of barba- 
 rism. 
 
 Let us now observe some characteristics of 
 this extremely interesting middle period. It 
 began, we see, in the eastern hemi- Middle status 
 sphere with the domestication of other of ^^^ m 
 animals than the dog, and in the western hemi- 
 sphere 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 bar- 
 barism the chipping became more and more 
 
 35 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 Amer- 
 ica 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. 
 
 Towards the close of the middle period of 
 barbarism the working of metals became the 
 Working of most important element of progress, 
 metais anc [ (-jjg 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 
 36 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 Zunis, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Peru- 
 vians. 
 
 The upper status of barbarism, in so far as it 
 implies a knowledge of smelting iron, was never 
 reached in aboriginal America. In „ 
 
 /"vi ■ • • Upper 
 
 the Old World it is the stage which status of 
 had been reached by the Greeks of ar ansm 
 the Homeric poems 1 and the Germans in the 
 
 1 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 ob- 
 jects 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 workman- 
 ship 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 Mycenee, pp. 75, 364; Tiryns, 
 p. 1 7 1 . ) 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 Ro- 
 mans 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 allow- 
 ances have to be made for it. It is curious that both Greeks 
 
 37 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 
 
 Beginning / 
 
 of civffiza- the exodus, the ruling classes at Nine- 
 veh and Babylon, the Aryans of Per- 
 sia and India, and the Japanese. But clearly it 
 will not do to insist too narrowly upon the 
 phonetic character of the alphabet. Where peo- 
 ple acquainted with iron have enshrined in hie- 
 roglyphics 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. 
 
 and Romans seem to have preserved some tradition of the 
 Bronze Age : — 
 
 TOts 5' fy \d\Kea fiev rev^ea, x<xA*eoi fie Te oTieot, 
 XaAxeu 6' eipyagovTO ' juc'Aas 8' ovk efftce aC&r}po$. 
 
 Hesiod, Off. 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, gerisque 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 compara- 
 tively recent, and sundry religious observances tended to per- 
 petuate the memory of it. 
 
 38 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 gen- 
 eralizations of this sort the case is liable to be 
 somewhat unduly simplified. The story of hu- 
 man progress is really not quite so easy to de- 
 cipher 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 lit- 
 tle 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 speak- 
 ing and thinking. That exception is the case 
 of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. We 
 have so long been accustomed to gorgeous ac- 
 counts 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 Mo- 
 hawks, and one stage lower than the warriors 
 of the Iliad. This does indeed mark a change 
 39 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 since Dr. Draper expressed the opinion that 
 the Mexicans and Peruvians were morally and 
 "civiUza- intellectually superior to the Euro- 
 Meidcofnd P eans of the sixteenth century. 1 The 
 Peru reaction from the state of opinion 
 
 in which such an extravagant remark was even 
 possible has been attended with some contro- 
 versy ; 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 ex- 
 tremely archaic type, considerably more archaic 
 than that of Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. 
 A " civilization " like that of the Aztecs, with- 
 out 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 splen- 
 dour such as we are wont to associate with civ- 
 ilization. The Aztecs, moreover, though doubt- 
 less a full ethnical period behind the ancient 
 Egyptians in general advancement, had worked 
 out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had 
 
 1 See his Intellectual Development of Europe, New York, 
 1863, pp. 448, 464. 
 
 40 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 pot- 
 tery, 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. 
 
 The difficulty which people usually find in 
 realizing the true position of the ancient Mexi- 
 can culture arises partly from the misconcep- 
 tions which have until recently distorted the 
 facts, and partly from the loose employment of 
 terms above noticed. It is quite cor- Loose use of 
 rect to speak of the Australian black- ^ words „ 
 fellows as " savages," but nothing is and « civiii- 
 more common than to hear the same zatlon " 
 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 " barba- 
 rism." One does not look for scientific precision 
 in newspapers, but they are apt to reflect popu- 
 lar 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 re- 
 cent discoveries of buried towns, works of irri- 
 4i 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 gation, 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 cul- 
 ture which they have reached is not "civiliza- 
 tion." 
 
 With " savagery " thus encroaching upon its 
 area of meaning on the one side, and " civiliza- 
 tion " encroaching on the other, the word "bar- 
 barism," 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 
 value and to De charged with calling them " sav- 
 importance ages." Yet the term " barbarism " is 
 
 of the terHi r . • i • i 1 
 
 «< barba- a very useful one ; indispensable, m- 
 nsm " deed, in the history of human pro- 
 
 gress. There is no other word which can serve 
 in its stead as a designation of the enormous in- 
 terval which begins with the invention of pottery 
 and ends with the invention of the alphabet. 
 The popular usage of the word is likely to be- 
 42 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 come more definite as it comes to be more gen- 
 erally realized how prodigious that interval has 
 been. When we think what a considerable por- 
 tion 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 respect- 
 able. 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. 
 
 It is worth while to observe that Mr. Mor- 
 gan'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 mid- 
 dle periods of barbarism, — so that the process 
 of development may be most sys- The status of 
 tematically and instructively studied. j^™ S 
 Until we have become familiar with pkteiy exem- 
 
 - . _, * plified in 
 
 ancient American society, and so long anc ; ent 
 as our view is confined to the phases America 
 of progress in the Old World, the demarcation 
 43 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 1 The middle and lower periods have 
 lapsed into utter oblivion, and it is only modern 
 archaeological research that is beginning to re- 
 cover the traces of them. But among the red 
 men of America the social life of ages more re- 
 mote than that of the lake villages of Switzer- 
 land 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 devel- 
 opment, 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 
 
 1 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. 
 
 44 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 may still be found among the wilder tribes, even 
 after all the contact they have had with white 
 men. These survivals from antiquity Survivals of 
 will not permanently outlive that con- S of 
 tact, and it is important that no time culture 
 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. 
 
 A brief enumeration of the principal groups 
 of Indians will be helpful in enabling us to com- 
 prehend the social condition of ancient America. 
 The groups are in great part defined by differ- 
 ences 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 com- 
 plete 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 
 
 45 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 adopting that of a confederacy of tribes in La- 
 
 tium. Except in the case of Peru there is no 
 
 indication that anything of this sort went on, 
 
 or that there was anything even su- 
 
 Tribal society . . ., . ,, . 
 
 and muitipii- perficially analogous to empire, in 
 city of lan- anc i ent America. What strikes one 
 
 guages in ab- 
 original most forcibly at first is the vast num- 
 ber of American languages. Adelung, 
 in his " Mithridates," put the number at 1264, 
 and Ludewig, in his " Literature of the Ameri- 
 can Languages," put it roundly at 1100. 
 Squier, on the other hand, was content with 
 400. 1 The discrepancy arises from the fact that 
 where one scholar sees two or three distinct lan- 
 guages 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. 2 
 
 The lowest tribes in North America were 
 those that are still to be found in California, in 
 
 1 Winsor, " Bibliographical Notes on American Linguis- 
 tics," in his Narr. and Crit. Hist., vol. i. pp. 420-428, 
 gives an admirable survey of the subjects. See also Pilling' s 
 bibliographical bulletins of Iroquoian, Siouan, and Muskho- 
 gean languages, published by the Bureau of Ethnology. 
 
 3 Excursions of an Evolutionist, v. 
 
 46 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 no- 
 thing of horticulture, depended for „., . , 
 , ? . ii Tnbes ln the 
 
 subsistence entirely upon bread-roots, upper status 
 
 fish, and game, and thus had no vil- ofsava s er Y 
 lage life. They were mere prowlers in the upper 
 status of savagery. 1 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. 
 
 Between the Rocky Mountains and the At- 
 lantic 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, 
 
 . rr - . The Dakota 
 
 the others mainly to the west of it. family of 
 All were in the lower period of barba- tnbes 
 rism. Of the western groups, by far the most 
 
 1 For a good account of Indians in the upper status of sav- 
 agery until modified by contact with civilization, see Myron 
 Eells, " The Twana, Chemakum, and Klallam Indians of 
 Washington Territory," Smithsonian Report, 1887, pp. 605— 
 681. 
 
 47 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 A second group, very small in numbers but 
 extremely interesting to the student of ethno- 
 logy, comprises the Minnitarees and Mandans 
 on the upper Missouri. 1 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 
 „, w . . discovery, by the brothers La Veren- 
 
 TheMinni- . J ] . , , „ .. , 
 
 tareesand drye in 1 742, down to Mr. Catlin s 
 Mandans v j g j t near jy a cen tury later, there was 
 
 no change in their condition, 2 but shortly after- 
 
 1 An excellent description of them, profusely illustrated 
 with coloured pictures, may be found in Catlin's North 
 American Indians, vol. i. pp. 66-207, 7^ e ^-> 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 lan- 
 guage ; but these are probably borrowed words, like the 
 numerous French words in English. 
 
 2 See Francis Parkman's paper, "The Discovery of the 
 Rocky Mountains," Atlantic Monthly, June, 1888. [Mr. 
 Parkman's paper was later included, though with considerable 
 
 48 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 wards, in 1838, the greater part of them were 
 swept away by smallpox. 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 1 1 70. He thought that 
 Madoc's party might have sailed to the Mis- 
 sissippi 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. 1 To this speculation was ap- 
 pended the inevitable list of words which hap- 
 pen 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 11 70 is quite possible, but as 
 shrewd old John Smith said about it, " where 
 this place was no history can show." 2 But one 
 
 revision and amplification, in A Half- Century of Conflict, 
 where it appears in this new form as chapter xvi. Mr. Park- 
 man, when putting his material into final shape, modified 
 somewhat his statement that there had been no change in the 
 condition of the Mandans.] 
 
 1 North American Indians, vol. ii., Appendix A. 
 
 2 Smith's Generall Historic of Virginia, New England 
 and the Summer Isles, p. 1, London, 1626. 
 
 49 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 The third group in this western region con- 
 sists of the Pawnees and Arickarees, 1 of the 
 Pawnees Platte valley in Nebraska, with a few 
 «c. kindred tribes farther to the south. 
 
 Of the three groups eastward of the Missis- 
 sippi we may first mention the Maskoki, or 
 Maskoki Muskhogees, consisting of the Choc- 
 fcmiiy taws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and 
 
 others, with the Creek confederacy. 2 These 
 tribes were intelligent and powerful, with a cul- 
 ture well advanced towards the • end of the 
 lower period of barbarism. 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 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 confeder- 
 acy. For a full account of these tribes, see Gatschet, A Mi- 
 gration Legend of the Creek Indians, vol. i., Philadelphia, 
 1884. 
 
 50 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 north- 
 westerly through the region of the Great Lakes 
 and as far as the Churchill River 1 to the west 
 of Hudson's Bay. In other words, the Algon- 
 quins were bounded on the south by the Mas- 
 koki, 2 on the west by the Dakotas, on 
 the northwest by the Athabaskans, on family of 
 the northeast by Eskimos, and on the trlbea 
 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, Chey- 
 ennes, and Arrapahos, roamed as far west as 
 the Rocky Mountains. The great triangle be- 
 tween 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 Mun- 
 sees or Minisinks of the mountains about the 
 Susquehanna, the Mohegans on the Hudson, 
 
 1 Howse, Grammar of the Cree Language, London, 1865, 
 p. vii. 
 
 2 Except in so far as the Cherokees and Tuscaroras, pre- 
 sently to be mentioned, were interposed. 
 
 5 1 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 the Adirondacks between that river and the St. 
 Lawrence, the Narragansetts and their congen- 
 ers 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, 1 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 Algon- 
 quin 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Huron-Iro- ^ ° r 
 
 quois family was a more remote orrshoot trom the 
 of tribes Dakotas. This is very doubtful ; but 
 
 in the thirteenth or fourteenth century the gen- 
 eral trend of the Huron-Iroquois movement 
 seems to have been eastward, either in succes- 
 sive swarms, or in a single swarm, which be- 
 came 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. 
 1 Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends, p. 30. 
 52 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 Their line of invasion seems to have run east- 
 ward to Niagara, and thereabouts to have bifur- 
 cated, one line following the valley of the St. 
 Lawrence, and the other that of the Susque- 
 hanna. 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 set- 
 tled their kindred, afterwards called the " Neu- 
 tral Nation." l 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 17 15. These 
 invasions resulted in some displacement of Al- 
 gonquin tribes, and began to sap the strength 
 of the confederacy or alliance in which the Del- 
 awares had held a foremost place. 
 
 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 re- 
 
 1 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. 
 
 S3 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 taining a foothold in the country for a long 
 time; for in 1535 Jacques Carrier found on the 
 site which he named Montreal an Iroquois vil- 
 lage 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 estab- 
 lished 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. 1 About 1450 the five 
 The Five tribes — afterwards known as the Five 
 Nations Nations — were joined in a confeder- 
 
 acy in pursuance of the wise counsel which 
 Hayowentha, or Hiawatha, 2 according to the 
 
 1 Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 125. 
 
 2 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, Vira- 
 cocha, 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 whis- 
 pering advice to Daganoweda, his meaning is probably the 
 same as that of the ancient Greek when he attributed the wis- 
 dom 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, 
 
 54 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 legend, whispered into the ears of the Onon- 
 daga 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 1 609 their name had become a terror in 
 New England, insomuch that as soon as a sin- 
 gle 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. 1 
 
 After the Five Nations had been supplied 
 with firearms by the Dutch their power increased 
 with portentous rapidity. 2 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 
 
 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. 
 
 1 Cadwallader Colden, History of the Five Nations, New 
 York, 1727. 
 
 2 Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 12. 
 
 55 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 war and exterminated them. 1 Then they over- 
 threw 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 spo- 
 ken of the empire of the Iroquois, and it has 
 been surmised that, if they had not been inter- 
 fered 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 similar- 
 ity between the two cases. The Romans ac- 
 quired their mighty strength by incorporating 
 vanquished peoples into their own body politic. 2 
 No American aborigines ever had a glimmer- 
 ing 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 exter- 
 mination, 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 : 
 
 1 All except the distant Tuscaroras, who in 1 7 1 5 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 Hu- 
 rons since known as Wyandots. 
 
 2 See my Beginnings of New England, chap. i. 
 
 56 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 "They were the scourge of God upon the 
 aborigines of the continent." 1 
 
 The six groups here enumerated — Dakota, 
 Mandan, Pawnee, Maskoki, Algonquin, Iro- 
 quois — made up the great body of the abo- 
 rigines of North America who at the time of 
 the Discovery lived in the lower status of bar- 
 barism. All made pottery of various degrees 
 of rudeness. Their tools and weapons were of 
 the Neolithic type, — stone either Horticulture 
 polished or accurately and artistically must be dis- 
 chipped. For the most part they ftom'fieid 
 lived in stockaded villages, and culti- a e nculture 
 vated maize, beans, pumpkins, squashes, sun- 
 flowers, and tobacco. They depended for sub- 
 sistence 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 care- 
 fully distinguished from the field agriculture in 
 which extensive pieces of land are subdued by 
 the plough. The assistance of domestic ani- 
 mals 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- 
 
 1 F. A. Walker, " The Indian Question," North Ameri- 
 can Review, April, 1873, p. 370. 
 
 57 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Columbian America except Peru, where men 
 were harnessed to the plough, and perhaps 
 occasionally llamas were used in the same way. 1 
 Where subsistence depended upon rude horti- 
 culture 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 
 Perpetual massacre. As many prisoners as could 
 warfare ^e m anaged 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. 2 There was 
 
 1 See Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, 3d ed., Stuttgart, 
 
 1849, vo '- i- P* 2 °3- 
 
 2 " Women and children joined in these fiendish atroci- 
 ties, 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. 
 
 58 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 nothing which afforded the red men such ex- 
 quisite 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. 1 Cannibalism was quite com- 
 
 U. 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. 
 
 1 One often hears it said that the cruelty of the Indians 
 was not greater than that of mediaeval Europeans, as exempli- 
 fied 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. 
 iii. p. 267. 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," 
 
 59 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 monly practised. 1 The scalps of slain enemies 
 were always taken, and until they had attained 
 
 /*, 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 en- 
 dures, 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 Eng- 
 land, chap. v. 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 task- 
 masters 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 per- 
 fection except under the influence of Christianity. 
 
 1 See the evidence collected by Jeffries Wyman, in Seventh 
 Report of Peabody Museum, pp. 27—37 ; cf. Wake, Evo- 
 lution of Morality, vol. i. p. 243. Many illustrations are 
 given by Mr. Parkman. In this connection it may be ob- 
 60 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 aggre- 
 gate. Murder without the tribe was meritorious 
 unless it entailed risk of war at an obvious dis- 
 advantage ; 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 per- 
 sonal ornament, mnemonic record, and finally 
 money. Religious thought was in the fetich- 
 istic or animistic stage, 1 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 
 
 served 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 Hud- 
 son. The name by which the Mohawks called themselves 
 was " Caniengas," or " People-at-the-Flint." See Hale, 
 The Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 173. 
 
 1 For accounts and explanations of animism, see Tylor's 
 Primitive Culture, London, 1871, 2 vols. ; Caspari, Urge- 
 schichte der Menschheit, Leipsic, 1877, 2 vols. ; Spencer's 
 Principles of Sociology, part i. ; and my Myths and Myth- 
 Makers, chap. vii. 
 
 6l 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 instructive. 1 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. 
 
 But none of the characteristics of barbarous 
 society above specified will carry us so far 
 towards 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. 
 
 Thirty years ago, when Sir Henry Maine 
 
 1 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, pub- 
 lished for the society by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 nine numbers have appeared [1891], and the reader will find 
 them full of valuable information. One may also profitably 
 consult Knortz's Mahrchen und Sagen der nordamerikanischen 
 Indianer, Jena, 1871 ; Brin ton'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 abo- 
 riginal American folk-lore, may be found in Curtin's Myths 
 and Folk-Lore of Ireland, pp. 12-27. 
 
 62 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 towards 
 placing the study of history upon a scientific 
 basis, he began by showing that in 
 
 . . ....... Ancient Law 
 
 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 or- 
 ganizations 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 indi- 
 vidual 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 Hin- 
 dustan, delineated the slow growth of individual 
 
 63 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 ownership of property and individual responsi- 
 bility for delict and crime out of an earlier stage 
 in which ownership and responsibility belonged 
 only to family-groups or clans. 
 
 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 
 The am- Aryan and Semitic speech, — the pa- 
 archai family triarchal family of the ancient Roman 
 
 not pmnirue ^^ ^ anc J ent J eWj ^g f am ily J n 
 
 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 barba- 
 rism when we first know them. 1 Their patri- 
 
 1 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 natu- 
 ral, 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 
 
 64 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 archal family was perfected in shape during the 
 later period of barbarism, and it was preceded 
 by a much ruder and less definite form of fam- 
 ily-group in which kinship was reckoned only 
 through the mother, and the headship never de- 
 scended 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 .. M other- 
 which his co-discoverer and rival, after "z ht " 
 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 
 
 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 stu- 
 pendous 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. 
 
 6 S 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 history, cannot be overestimated, must without 
 stint or qualification be assigned to him." 1 Such 
 are the generous words of the late John Fer- 
 guson 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 
 Primitive characterized by greater sagacity, goes 
 marriage more directly to the mark, and is less 
 encumbered by visionary speculations of doubt- 
 ful value. 2 Mr. McLennan proved, from evi- 
 dence 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 unmis- 
 takable 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 
 
 1 McLennan's Studies in Ancient History, comprising a 
 reprint of Primitive Marriage, etc. London, 1876, p. 421. 
 
 2 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. 
 
 66 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 of a sporadic and exceptional character. But 
 when the evidence from this vast archaic world 
 of America began to be gathered in and inter- 
 preted by Mr. Morgan, this argument fell to 
 the ground, and as to the point chiefly in con- 
 tention, Mr. McLennan was proved to be right. 
 Throughout aboriginal America, with The tem 
 one or two exceptions, kinship was of reckoning 
 reckoned through females only, and through 
 in the exceptional instances the ves- femalesonl y 
 tiges 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. 1 
 
 1 A general view of the subject may be obtained from the 
 following works : Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 
 1 871, and Die Sage von Tanaqu.il, 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 
 Mire chez certains peuples de P 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, 
 
 67 ' 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 Aus- 
 tralia and some parts of Polynesia, and of bar- 
 barism as best exemplified in America. The 
 subject is, moreover, one of great and compli- 
 cated difficulty, and leads incidentally to many 
 questions for solving which the data at our com- 
 mand 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 preva- 
 lent. 
 
 If now we ask the reason for such a system of 
 reckoning kinship and inheritance, so strange ac- 
 cording to all our modern notions, the true an- 
 originai rea- swer doubtless is that which was given 
 son for the by prudent (irenvviAevo<;) Telemachus 
 to the goddess Athene when she asked 
 him to tell her truly if he was the son of Odys- 
 seus : " My mother says I am his son, for my 
 part, I don't know ; one never knows of one's 
 
 1875, an d 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. 
 
 68 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 self who one's father is." 1 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 sacred- 
 ness of the family based upon indissoluble mar- 
 riage is a thing of comparatively modern growth. 
 If the sexual relations of the Australians, as ob- 
 served to-day, 2 are an improvement upon an 
 antecedent state of things, that antece- The primeval 
 dent state must have been sheer pro- human horde 
 miscuity. There is ample warrant for supposing, 
 with Mr. McLennan, that at the beginning of 
 the lower status of savagery, long since every- 
 
 1 "AM' aye fioi r6Se elirh Kal arpeKeus Kard\el-ov, 
 ei Si/ 4£ abroio r6<ros irajj eh 'OSuaTJoj. 
 alvus yap KetpaXfy re Kal 6fJ.fia.ra Ka\a eoiKas 
 Keivtf, 4itel 6apa roiov 4/j.t<ry6fieS' aWfaouriv, 
 irplv ye rbv 4s Tpolr/v avap-fifievai, ev8a izep akAm 
 'Apyeiiov ol apioroi e$av KoiKys 4irl vtfvalv • 
 4k rov S 1 oUr 'Otivajja 4yi>v tSov oW e/ie Ketvos. 
 TV S' ai Tijkefiaxos ireirvvfieiios avriov -rjiSa 
 roiyap 4yd rot, letve, /ii\' hrpexews ayopeiaa. 
 I>i\ri\p v-ev r' 4/xe <pn<Ti rov e'n/j.evai, alirap iywye 
 ovk off- oi yip ltd rts ebv y6vov abrbs avcyeco. 
 
 Odyssey, i. zo6. 
 2 Lumholtz, Among Cannibals,?. ay, Lubbock, Origin of 
 Civilization,?. 107 -Mor^-a, Ancient Society, ^tm.,ch..m.. 
 " 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 con- 
 queror." Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. i. p. 632. 
 69 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 where extinct, the family had not made itself 
 distinctly visible, but men lived in a horde very 
 much like gregarious brutes. 1 I have shown 
 that the essential difference between this prime- 
 val 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. 2 In these two 
 
 1 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 ori- 
 ginated 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 ori- 
 gin 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 dual- 
 ity 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 unorgan- 
 ized multitude called ''horde" (in the singular), the state- 
 ment for Man would have been correct. Such views were 
 hardly within the reach of science thirty years ago. 
 
 2 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, part ii., chaps, xvi., 
 
 70 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 ex- 
 planation of the moral and intellectual superior- 
 ity of men over dumb animals. But in each case 
 the change was very gradual. 1 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, in- 
 stances of exclusive pairing, of at least a tempo- 
 rary character, are to be found among the lowest 
 existing savages, and there are reasons Ear]lest fem . 
 for supposing that such may have been ty-group : 
 
 . rr ° . . . J . -r, the clan 
 
 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 prime- 
 val horde was not at all like what civilized people 
 would recognize as a family. It was the gens or 
 
 xxi., xxii.; Excursions of an Evolutionist, xii. ; Darwinism, 
 and other Essays, iii. ; The Destiny of Man, §§ iii.-ix. 
 
 1 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 ? 
 
 71 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 clan, as we find it exemplified in all stages from 
 the middle period of savagery to the middle pe- 
 riod 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 
 
 "Exogamy . 
 
 stage or 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 promis- 
 cuity seems to be about the only one. 
 
 Throughout all the earlier stages of culture, 
 and even into the civilized period, we find so- 
 ciety 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 segmenta- 
 Phratry and tion 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 consti- 
 tuted a tribe. This threefold grouping is found 
 so commonly in all parts of the world as to af- 
 ford 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 
 72 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 Teutonic forefathers, 1 but it also existed gener- 
 ally in ancient America, and many obscure points 
 connected with the history of the Greek and Ro- 
 man 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. 
 
 This change, as it occurred among Aryan and 
 Semitic peoples, marked one of the most mo- 
 mentous 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 pro- 
 perty (pecus,peculium, pecunid) in large amounts 
 by individuals. In primitive society 
 there was very little personal property pastoral life 
 except in weapons, clothing (such as p^and" 
 it was), and trinkets. Real estate was u ? 0! } Ae 
 unknown. Land was simply occu- 
 pied by the tribe. There was general commu- 
 nism and social equality. In the Old World the 
 earliest instance of extensive " adverse posses- 
 sion " on the part of individuals, as against other 
 individuals in the clan-community, was the 
 possession of flocks and herds. Distinctions in 
 
 1 The Teutonic hundred and Roman curia answered to 
 the Greek phratry. 
 
 73 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 wealth and rank were thus inaugurated ; slavery- 
 began to be profitable and personal retainers 
 and adherents useful in new ways. As in ear- 
 lier stages the community in marital relations 
 had been part of the general community in pos- 
 sessions, 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 subor- 
 dinates 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 pre- 
 valent, fell into disfavour. A natural result of 
 the growth of private wealth and the permanence 
 of the marital relation was the change in reck- 
 oning 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 reckon- 
 ing the kinship through the father. Thus, we 
 may suppose, originated the patriarchal family. 
 74 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 Even in its rudest form it was an immense im- 
 provement 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. 1 
 
 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. 2 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. 3 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. Sym- 
 
 1 Fenton's Early Hebrew Life, London, 1880, is an in- 
 teresting study of the upper period of barbarism ; see also 
 Spencer, Princip. of Socio/., i. 724—737. 
 
 2 See below, p. 140. 
 
 8 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. 
 
 75 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 metrical regularity in the development of human 
 institutions has by no means been the rule, and 
 there is often much difficulty in explaining par- 
 ticular cases, even when the direction of the 
 general drift can be discerned. 
 
 In aboriginal America, as already observed, 
 kinship through females only was the rule, and 
 The exoga- exogamy was strictly enforced, — the 
 
 Tancie^ wife must be taken from a different 
 America clan. Indissoluble marriage, whether 
 monogamous or polygamous, seems to have 
 been unknown. The marriage relation was ter- 
 minable at the will of either party. 1 The abid- 
 ing unit upon which the social structure was 
 
 1 " There is no embarrassment growing out of problems 
 respecting the woman's future support, the division of pro- 
 perty, 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 pro- 
 perty, 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 In- 
 dians 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 Arra- 
 pahos, see Dodge, Our Wild Indians, pp. 204—220. 
 
 76 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 founded was not the family but the exogamous 
 clan. 
 
 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 unmis- 
 takably characteristic architecture, and while it 
 exhibits manifold unlikenesses in detail, due to 
 differences in intelligence as well as to 
 
 , , ° . Intimate 
 
 the presence or absence or sundry ma- connection 
 terials, there is one underlying princi- £££ 
 pie always manifest. That underlying Y ith social 
 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 grada- 
 tions, 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 Colum- 
 bia 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 
 
 77 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 traversed, we feel that the progress of the abori- 
 gines in crossing that interval was made along 
 similar lines. 1 
 
 The principle was first studied and explained 
 by Mr. Morgan in the case of the famous " long 
 houses " of the Iroquois. " The long house . . . 
 
 Seneca- Iroquois 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 around roof. It was cov- 
 ered 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 
 
 The long 
 houses of 
 the Iroquois 
 
 1 See Morgan's Houses and House-Life of the American 
 Aborigines, Washington, 1 88 l, an epoch-making book of rare 
 
 and absorbing interest. 
 
 78 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 bark shingles between them, the two frames 
 being tied together. The interior of the house 
 was comparted 1 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 apart- 
 ments were reserved for storage. They were 
 
 L I I I I I I I I I I I I 
 
 **• « • • ■ • • 
 
 r i n i i i i i i i i i 
 
 96 ft. 
 Ground-plan of long house 
 
 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 
 
 1 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. 
 
 79 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 rule, was occupied by related families, the mo- 
 thers and their children belonging to the same 
 gens, while their husbands and the fathers of 
 these children belonged to other gentes ; con- 
 sequently 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 com- 
 mon stock within the household." 1 
 
 " Over every such household a matron pre- 
 sided, whose duty it was to supervise its domes- 
 tic 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 accord- 
 ing to their respective needs. What remained 
 was placed in the custody of another person 
 until she again required it." 2 
 
 Not only the food was common property, 
 but many chattels, including the children, be- 
 longed to the gens or clan. When a young 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 Lucien Carr, " On the Social and Political Position of 
 Woman among the Huron-Iroquois Tribes," Reports of Pea- 
 body Museum, vol. iii. p. 215. 
 
 80 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 woman got married she brought her husband 
 home with her. Though thenceforth an in- 
 mate 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 summary 
 budge ; and after such orders it would dlvorce 
 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 grand- 
 mother [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." 1 
 
 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. Hospital- 
 ity 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 imme- 
 diately ofFer him food, and it was a osplt 
 breach of etiquette to decline to eat it. This cus- 
 
 1 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. 
 
 81 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 torn 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 no- 
 tions that were afterwards 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 com- 
 munism in living. 
 
 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 sub- 
 structure of cession could and often did tend to 
 the dan become established. The clan also 
 elected its " chiefs," whose functions were mili- 
 tary ; the number of chiefs was proportionate 
 to that of the people composing the clan, usu- 
 ally 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 re- 
 
 82 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 ciprocally 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 ab- 
 original 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 em- 
 blem. The clan had its own common religious 
 rites and common burial place. There was a 
 clan-council, of which women might be mem- 
 bers ; 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. 1 
 
 1 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 Gov- 
 ernment : 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. 
 
 83 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 
 on in and * nto two or ^ree phratries. The 
 structure of phratry seems to have originated in 
 e p the segmentation of the overgrown 
 
 clan, for in some cases exogamy was originally 
 practised as between the phratries and afterwards 
 the custom died out while it was retained as be- 
 tween their constituent clans. 1 The system of 
 naming often indicates this origin of the phra- 
 try, though seldom quite so forcibly as in the 
 case of the Mohegan tribe, which was thus com- 
 posed : 2 — 
 
 I. Wolf Phratry. 
 Clans: i. 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 
 
 1 H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. 
 i. p. 109. 
 
 2 Morgan, Houses and House-Life, p. 16. 
 
 84 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 im- 
 portant function seems to have been supple- 
 menting 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 fore- 
 fathers the " hundred " (the equivalent of the 
 phratry) became charged with the duty of 
 prosecuting criminals. The Greek phratry had 
 a precisely analogous function. 1 
 
 The Indian tribe was a group of people dis- 
 tinguished by the exclusive possession of a dia- 
 lect in common. It possessed a tribal name and 
 occupied a more or less clearly defined structure of 
 territory ; there were also tribal reli- ^ tribe 
 gious rites. Its supreme government was vested 
 in the council of its clan-chiefs and sachems ; 
 
 1 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. 
 
 85 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 appro- 
 priate 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 ori- 
 gin 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. 
 
 Among the greater part of the aborigines no 
 higher form of social structure was attained than 
 the tribe. There were, however, several in- 
 stances of permanent confederation, 
 
 Cross-rela- /• i • 1 i 
 
 tionships be- or which the two most interesting 
 
 Sri£T and most hi g hl y developed were the 
 the Iroquois League of the Iroquois, mentioned 
 
 confederacy 
 
 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. 1 It originated in a union of five 
 
 1 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 
 
 86 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 tribes composed of clans in common, and speak- 
 ing five dialects of a common language. These 
 tribes had themselves arisen through the seg- 
 mentation 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 Mo- 
 hawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, or Sen- 
 ecas, 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 con- 
 sanguinity, the relationship in which they stood 
 to each other. . . . This cross-relationship be- 
 tween 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." 1 Acknow- 
 
 Seneca tribe, and his life work was begun by a profound and 
 exhaustive study of this interesting people. 
 
 i 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 
 
 87 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 ledged consanguinity is to the barbarian a sound 
 reason, and the only one conceivable, for per- 
 manent political union ; and the very existence 
 of such a confederacy as that of the Five Na- 
 tions was rendered possible only through the 
 permanence of the clans or communal house- 
 holds which were its ultimate units. We have 
 here a clue to the policy of these Indians 
 towards 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 hun- 
 dred years the Wyandots have still five of their 
 eight clans in common with the Iroquois. When 
 
 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, 3043 
 Senecas, and 448 Tuscaroras, — in all 4057. Besides 
 these there were 1279 Oneidas on a reservation in Wiscon- 
 sin, and 207 Senecas in the Indian Territory. The Mo- 
 hawks are not mentioned in the list. During the Revolution- 
 ary War, and just afterwards, 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 Chris- 
 tianity 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. 
 
 88 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 Each of the Five Tribes retained its local 
 self-government. The supreme government of 
 the confederacy was vested in a General Coun- 
 cil of fifty sachems, " equal in rank and au- 
 thority." 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 Structure of 
 sachems of the confederacy were the corfed- 
 likewise sachems in their respective eracy 
 tribes, " and with the chiefs of these tribes 
 formed the council of each, which was supreme 
 over all matters pertaining to the tribe exclu- 
 sively." The General Council could not con- 
 vene 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 
 
 89 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 elabo- 
 rate. 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 Eng- 
 lish 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 experi- 
 ence 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. 1 The chiefs were 
 elected by the clan, and inducted into office by 
 
 1 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+graff = 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. 
 
 90 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 the General Council ; their tenure was during 
 life or good behaviour. This office never en- 
 croached upon the others in its powers, but an 
 able warrior in this position could wield great 
 influence. 
 
 Such was the famous confederacy of the Iro- 
 quois. They called it the Long House, and by 
 this name as commonly as any other The "Long 
 it is known in history. The name by House " 
 which they called themselves was Hodeno- 
 saunee, or " People of the Long House." The 
 name was picturesquely descriptive of the long 
 and narrow strip of villages with its western 
 outlook towards the Niagara, and its eastern 
 towards the Hudson, three hundred miles dis- 
 tant. 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 con- 
 federacy 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 hypo- 
 thetical 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 
 
 9i 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 1 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 adop- 
 tion of its remnants into, the similarly con- 
 stituted 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. 
 
 1 For instance, the whole discussion in Gomme's Village 
 Community, London, 1 890, an excellent book, abounds 
 with instances of this crumpling. 
 
 92 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 The symmetry of the structure and the relation 
 of one institution to another is thus distinctly 
 apparent. < 
 
 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 gen- 
 eral direction. Among the tribes above enumer- 
 ated 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 equal- 
 ity, the community in goods (with exceptions 
 already noted), and the wigwam or house adapted 
 to communal living. 
 
 The extreme of variation consistent with ad- 
 herence 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 circu- 
 
 93 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 lar frame houses of the Mandans. 1 These 
 
 houses were from forty to sixty feet in diameter. 
 
 A dozen or more posts, each about 
 
 Circular ....... r 
 
 houses of the eight inches in diameter, were set in 
 Mandans ^ g rounc j 5 « at e q u al 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 string- 
 ers ; and outside each post a slanting wooden 
 brace sunk in the ground about four feet dis- 
 tant 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 frame- 
 work of the outer wall was completed. To sup- 
 port 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 strin- 
 gers 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 
 
 1 Morgan, Houses and House-Life, pp. 1 7,6— 1 29 ; Catlin's 
 North Amer. Indians, i. 8 1 ff. 
 
 94 
 
VIEW, CROSS-SECTION, AND GROUND-PLAN OF 
 MANDAN ROUND HOUSE 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 at the summit, so as to leave a circular open- 
 ing 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 under- 
 neath 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 pas- 
 sage 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 or- 
 namented with quill-work and pictographs. 1 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 pur- 
 poses. Indeed, it was virtually impregnable to 
 Indian methods of attack, for the earth-covered 
 houses could not be set on fire by blazing ar- 
 rows, 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 
 
 1 Catlin, i. 83. 
 
 9S 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 was further secured by rude bastions, and con- 
 sidering the structure as a whole one cannot 
 help admiring the ingenuity which it exhibits. 
 It shows a marked superiority over the concep- 
 tions of military defence attained by the Iroquois 
 or any other Indians north of New Mexico. 
 Besides the communal houses the village con- 
 tained 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. 1 
 
 We are now prepared to understand some es- 
 sential 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 
 
 The Indian g rou P s are tne Moquis and ZufHs of 
 
 ofthepueb- Arizona and New Mexico, the Na- 
 the noddle huas or Nahuatlac tribes of Mexico, 
 status of the Mayas, Quiches, and kindred 
 peoples of Central America ; and be- 
 yond the isthmus, the Chibchas of New Gra- 
 nada, and sundry peoples comprised within the 
 1 Catlin, i. 90. 
 96 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 neces- 
 sary 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 aver- 
 age Indian level which we have thus far been 
 describing. 
 
 This divergence increases as we go from Zuni 
 towards 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 civi- 
 lization than the Iroquois, — and a vast amount 
 of change and improvement is involved in the 
 conception of an entire ethnical period. Accord- 
 ing to Mr. Morgan, one more such period would 
 have brought the average level of these Cordil- 
 leran 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 con- 
 siderable 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 
 
 97 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 can be regarded as securely established, it was 
 preceded by a long series of generations of mi- 
 gration and warfare, the confused and fragmen- 
 tary 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. 
 It will be remembered that the most con- 
 spicuous distinctive marks of the grade of cul- 
 ture attained by the Cordilleran peoples were 
 Horticulture two, — the cultivation of maize in 
 withirriga- large quantities by irrigation, and the 
 chit'ecture use of adobe-brick or stone in build- 
 with adobe ing> p ro bably there was at first, to 
 some extent, a causal connection between the 
 former and the latter. The region of the 
 Moqui-Zufii 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 what- 
 ever grade. The change of occupation involved 
 in raising large crops of corn by the aid of sluices 
 would facilitate an increase in density of popula- 
 tion, and would encourage a preference for agri- 
 cultural over predatory life. Such changes would 
 be likely to favour the development of defensive 
 military art. The Mohawk's surest defence lay 
 
 98 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 in the terror which his prowess created hundreds 
 of miles away. One can easily see how the fore- 
 fathers of our Moquis and Zufiis may have come 
 to prefer the security gained by living more 
 closely together and building impregnable for- 
 tresses. 
 
 The earthen wall of the Mandan, supported 
 on a framework of posts and slabs, seems to me 
 curiously and strikingly suggestive of the incip- 
 ient pottery made by surrounding a basket with 
 a coating of clay. 1 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 housebuilders without the need of a perma- 
 nent 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 por- 
 tion of our continent, the Mississippi p ossibIeori . 
 and Missouri valleys, to have been oc- § in of adobe 
 
 , . M r ... architecture 
 
 cupied at some time by tribes familiar 
 with the Mandan style of building; and if we 
 further suppose a gradual extension or migra- 
 tion of this population, or some part of it, west- 
 ward into the mountain region ; that would be a 
 movement into a region in which timber was 
 scarce, while adobe clay was abundant. Under 
 1 See above, p. 30. 
 
 99 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 be- 
 come 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 archi- 
 tecture, 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 embed- 
 ded in adobe. The final stage was reached in 
 Mexico and Yucatan, when soft coralline lime- 
 stone was shaped into blocks with a flint chisel 
 and laid in courses with adobe-mortar. 
 
 The pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona are 
 among the most interesting structures in the 
 world. Several are still inhabited by the de- 
 scendants of the people who were living in them 
 at the time of the Spanish Discovery, and their 
 primitive customs and habits of thought have 
 Mr. cashing been preserved to the present day with 
 at Zufvi ]3 Ut litti e change. The long sojourn 
 of Mr. Cushing, of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
 ioo 
 
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 SB 
 
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 CL 
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 D 
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 o 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 in the Zufii pueblo, has already thrown a flood 
 of light upon many points in American archae- 
 ology. 1 As in the case of American aborigines 
 generally, the social life of these people is closely 
 connected with their architecture, and the pueb- 
 los 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. 
 
 In the architecture of the pueblos one typical 
 form is reproduced with sundry variations in 
 detail. The typical form is that of a T i . 
 solid block of buildings making three structure of 
 sides of an extensive rectangular en- epue 
 closure 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, 
 
 1 See his articles in the Century Magazine, Dec, 1882, 
 Feb. , 1883, May, 1883; and his papers on ' ' Zufii Fetiches, ' ' 
 Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, ii. 9-45 ; "A Study of 
 Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zufii Culture Growth," id. 
 iv. 473—521 ; see also Mrs. Stevenson's paper, "Religious 
 Life of a Zufii Child," id. v. S39-55S ; Sylvester Baxter, 
 "An Aboriginal Pilgrimage," Century Magazine, Aug., 
 1882. 
 
 IOI 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 over- 
 looked 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 fore- 
 fathers would have naturally called a " burgh," 
 or fortress ; it is in one sense a house, yet in 
 another sense a town ; * 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. 
 
 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. 2 The ideas of property seem still 
 
 1 Cf. Greek ot/cos, "house," with Latin vicus, "street" 
 or " village," Sanskrit vesa, " dwelling-place," English wick, 
 "mansion" or "village." 
 
 2 " 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 
 
 I02 
 
Restoration of Pueblo Hungo Pavie 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 limited to that of possessory right, with the 
 ultimate title in the clan, except that portable 
 articles subject to individual owner- p ue bio SO - 
 ship have become more numerous. ciety 
 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. Usu- 
 ally 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 bar- 
 barism, after making due allowances for such 
 things as the people of the pueblos have learned 
 from white men. 1 
 
 From the pueblos still existing, whether in- 
 
 afterwards he tells us, " To her belong all the children ; and 
 descent, including inheritance, is on her side. ' ' Century Mag- 
 azine, May, 1883, p. 35. 
 
 1 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 I 581 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. 
 103 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 habited or in ruins, we may eventually get some 
 sort of clue to the populations of ancient towns 
 Wonderfbi visited by the Spanish discoverers. 1 
 io n s 1r*r b ~ The pueblo of Zufli seems to have had 
 ctaco valley at one time a population of 5000, but 
 it has dwindled to less than 2000. Of the 
 ruined pueblos, built of stone with adobe-mor- 
 tar, 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 1000 Indians. 
 In the same valley Pueblo Bonito, with four 
 stories, contained not less than 640 apartments, 
 with room enough for a population of 3000 ; 
 within a third of a mile from this huge structure 
 stood Pueblo Chettro Kettle, with 506 apart- 
 ments. 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 rectan- 
 gular 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. 2 The smallness 
 
 1 At least a better one than Mr. Prescott had when he 
 naively reckoned five persons to a household. Conquest of 
 Mexico, ii. 97. 
 
 a Morgan, Houses and House-Life, chap. vii. 
 104 
 
Restoration of Pueblo Bonito 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 of the distances between those in the Chaco val- 
 ley 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 ac- 
 cessible to sluices from neighbouring cliffs or 
 mesas. But in some cases, as the Wolpi The Moqui 
 pueblo of the Moquis, the whole P ueblos 
 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 else- 
 where, — veritable human eyries perched in 
 crevices or clefts of the perpendic- Theciiff 
 ular rock, accessible only by dint of a pueblos 
 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. 1 
 
 1 For careful descriptions of the ruined pueblos and cliff- 
 houses, see Nadaillac's Prehistoric America, chap, v., and 
 105 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 enor- 
 mous communal house as a smajl town formed 
 of a number of such houses crowded together, 
 Pueblo of with access from one to another along 
 Zufl! their roof-terraces. Some of the struc- 
 
 tures are of adobe-brick, others of stone embed- 
 ded in adobe-mortar and covered with plaster. 
 There are two open plazas or squares in the 
 town, and several streets, some of which are cov- 
 ered ways passing beneath the upper stories of 
 houses. The effect, though not splendid, must 
 be very picturesque, and would doubtless aston- 
 ish and bewilder visitors unprepared for such a 
 sight. When Coronado's men discovered Zufii 
 in 1 540, although that style of building was no 
 longer a novelty to them, they compared the 
 place to Granada. 
 
 Now it is worthy of note that Cortes made 
 the same comparison in the case of Tlascala, one 
 Pueblo of of the famous towns at which he 
 Tiascak stopped on his march from Vera Cruz 
 to the city of Mexico. In his letter to the Em- 
 peror Charles V., he compared Tlascala to Gra- 
 
 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 scourge- 
 ing sands and roaming savage Bedouin — the Apaches." 
 I06 
 
GROUND-PLAN OF PUEBLO PENASCA BLANCA 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 nada, " affirming that it was larger, stronger, and 
 more populous than the Moorish capital at the 
 time of the conquest, and quite as well built." l 
 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 descrip- 
 tions, including those of Cortes himself, it is 
 evident that there could not have been much 
 difference in size between Tlascala and its neigh- 
 bour Cholula. The population of the latter town 
 has often been given as from 1 50,000 to 200,000 ; 
 
 1 "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, 
 Relation segunda al Emperador, ap. Lorenzana, p. 58, cited 
 in Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, vol. i. p. 401 (7th ed„ 
 London, 1855). 
 
 107 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 but, from elaborate archaeological investigations 
 made on the spot in 1881, Mr. Bandelier con- 
 cludes that it cannot have greatly exceeded 
 30,000, and this number really agrees with the 
 estimates of two very important Spanish authori- 
 ties, Las Casas and Torquemada, when correctly 
 understood. 1 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 2 to 
 have been about 200,000. It would thus appear 
 
 1 See Bandelier* s Archao logical Tour in Mexico, Boston, 
 1885, pp. 160—164. Torquemada's words, cited by Bande- 
 lier, are " Quando entraron los Espafioles, dicen que tenia 
 mas de quarenta mil vecinos esta ciudad." Monarquia Indiana, 
 lib. iii. cap. xix. p. 28 1 . A prolific source of error is the ambi- 
 guity in the word vecinos, which may mean either "inhabit- 
 ants " 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 (Euvres de Las Casas, torn. i. 
 p. 38) translates the statement correctly. I shall recur to this 
 point below, vol. iii. p. 57. 
 
 2 Mariana, Historia de Espana, Valencia, 1795, torn. viii. 
 P- 3'7- 
 
 108 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 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 Puri- 
 tans who smashed the " idolatrous " statues in 
 English cathedrals. When Cortes looked at 
 Tlascala, and Coronado looked at Zufii, 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. 
 
 In the description of Tlascala by the Span- 
 iards 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 
 109 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 such a pueblo as Zufii. Tlascala was a town 
 of a type probably common in Mexico. In 
 some respects, as will hereafter appear, the city 
 The ancient of Mexico showed striking variations 
 city of f rom the common type. Yet there 
 
 Mexico was J * . . 
 
 a great com- too were to be seen the huge houses, 
 
 posite pueblo ^ terraced roofgj buik aroU nd 3. 
 
 square courtyard ; in one of them 450 Spaniards, 
 with more than 1000 Tlascalan allies, were ac- 
 commodated ; 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. 1 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. 
 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 
 
 1 " 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, Navigation! et Viaggi, 
 Venice, 1556, torn. iii. fol. 309. 
 IIO 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 society than feudal monarchy, and if they made 
 such mistakes as to call the head war-chief a 
 " king " (i. e. feudal king) or " em- Natural mis- 
 peror," and the clan-chiefs "lords" sj^ot 
 ' or " noblemen," if they supposed that coverers 
 these huge fortresses were like feudal castles and 
 palaces in Europe, they were quite excusable. 
 Such misconceptions were common enough be- 
 fore barbarous societies had been much studied ; 
 and many a dusky warrior, without a tithe of 
 the pomp and splendour about him that sur- 
 rounded Montezuma, has figured in the pages 
 of history as a mighty potentate girt with many 
 of the trappings of feudalism. 1 Initial miscon- 
 ceptions 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 
 
 1 When Pocahontas visited London in 1616 she was re- 
 ceived 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. "be- 
 came jealous, and was highly offended at Mr. Rolfe for marry- 
 ing 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 (/. e. Wahunsun- 
 akok, 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 [ma- 
 ternal] brothers, even though he had sons living. It was 
 thought that this could not be true. 
 Ill 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 one cannot properly call a theory but rather an 
 incoherent medley of notions about barbaric 
 society. Nothing could be further from feudal- 
 ism, in which the relation of landlord and ten- 
 ant is a fundamental element, than the society 
 of the American aborigines, in which that rela- 
 Contrast be- tion was utterly unknown and incon- 
 £Tand eudal ~ ceivable. This more primitive form 
 gentiiism f 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 pro- 
 perty undeveloped. It was gentilism that every- 
 where prevailed throughout the myriads of 
 unrecorded centuries during which the foremost 
 races of mankind struggled up through sav- 
 agery and barbarism into civilization, while 
 weaker and duller races lagged behind at various 
 change from stages on the way. The change from 
 to poUd c °u ety " g entiIe " society to political society 
 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 denned as the change from 
 personal to territorial organization. It was ac- 
 complished when the stationary clan became 
 converted into the township, and the stationary 
 tribe into the small state ; * when the concep- 
 
 1 The small states into which tribes were at first trans- 
 formed have in many cases survived to the present time as 
 112 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 tion of individual property in land was fully 
 acquired; when the tie of physical kinship 
 ceased to be indispensable as a bond for hold- 
 ing a society together ; when the clansman be- 
 came a citizen. This momentous change was 
 accomplished among the Greeks during a period 
 beginning shordy 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 per- 
 fected by the time of the first Punic War (b. c. 
 264-241). In each case about three centuries 
 was required to work the change. 1 If now the 
 
 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 Ande- 
 cavi, Beam from the Bigerrones, etc. 
 
 1 "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 
 
 113 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 reader, familiar with European history, will re- 
 flect 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 Ro- 
 mans under the rule of the Tarquins. 
 
 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. 1 The illustri- 
 ous statesman and philologist, Albert Gallatin, 
 founder of the American Ethnological Society, 
 
 formed and set in practical operation." Morgan, Ancient 
 Society, p. 218. 
 
 1 Robertson's History of America, 9th ed. vol. iii. pp. 
 274, 281. 
 
 114 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 published in the first volume of its " Transac- 
 tions " an essay which recognized the danger of 
 trusting the Spanish narratives with- suspicions u 
 out very careful and critical scrutiny. 1 t0 the erro ; 
 
 ki_ i ii ; , neousness of 
 
 is to be observed that Mr. Gallatin the Spanish 
 
 approached the subject with some- accounts 
 what more knowledge of aboriginal life in Amer- 
 ica than had been possessed by previous writers. 
 A similar scepticism was expressed by Lewis 
 Cass, who also knew a great deal about In- 
 dians. 2 Next came Mr. Morgan, 3 the man of 
 path-breaking ideas, whose minute and pro- 
 found acquaintance with Indian life was joined 
 with a power of penetrating the hidden impli- 
 
 1 " Notes on the Semi-civilized Nations of Mexico, Yu- 
 catan, and Central America," American Ethnological Society 1 s 
 Transactions, vol. L, 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— 
 
 39 6 - 
 
 2 Cass, "Aboriginal Structures," North Amer. Review, 
 
 Oct., 1840. 
 
 8 Mr. R. A. Wilson's New History of the Conquest of 
 Mexico, Philadelphia, 1859, denounced the Spanish con- 
 querors as wholesale liars, but as his book was ignorant, un- 
 critical, 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. 
 
 "5 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 cations 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 inhab- 
 Detectionand ited by dependent retainers, were 
 explanation of re ally huge communal houses, owned 
 
 tlic errors 
 
 by Lewis' and inhabited by clans, or rather by 
 Morgan 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 in- 
 vestigation. 
 
 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 peo- 
 ple are still there. Tlascalans and Aztecs, de- 
 scendants in the eleventh or twelfth genera- 
 tion 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 
 116 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 fol- 
 lowing the conquest, and the devoted mission- 
 aries and painstaking administrators, who wrote 
 books about the country in which they were 
 working, were not engaged in a wholesale con- 
 spiracy for deceiving mankind. From a really 
 critical study of this literature, combined with 
 archaeological investigation, much may be ex- 
 pected ; and a noble beginning has already been 
 made. A more extensive acquaintance with 
 Mexican literature would at times have mate- 
 rially modified Mr. Morgan's conclusions, 
 though without altering their general drift. At 
 this point the work has been taken up 
 
 i » i r i i • r -r x • i i 1 Adolf Ban- 
 
 by Mr. Adolf Bandeher, of Highland, ddier's re- 
 Illinois, to whose rare sagacity and 8earc es 
 untiring industry as a field archaeologist is joined 
 such a thorough knowledge of Mexican litera- 
 ture 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 Chris- 
 tianity. 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 gen- 
 117 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 ius of critical scholarship will sooner or later 
 drag it forth into the light of day. 1 
 
 At this point in our exposition a very con- 
 cise 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, andTlaco- 
 pans, 2 dwelling in three large composite pueblos 
 situated very near together in one of the strong- 
 The Aztec est defensive positions ever occupied 
 confederacy by Indians. This Aztec confederacy 
 extended its "sway " over a considerable por- 
 tion of the Mexican peninsula, but that " sway " 
 could not correctly be described as " empire," 
 
 1 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- 
 
 2 In the Iroquois confederacy the Mohawks enjoyed a 
 certain precedence or seniority, the Onondagas had the cen- 
 tral 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 Tez- 
 cuco each took two, and Tlacopan one. 
 
 Il8 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 bene- 
 fit of the domineering confederacy. If a pueblo 
 proved delinquent or recalcitrant, Aztec war- 
 riors swooped down upon it in stealthy mid- 
 night assault, butchered its inhabitants and 
 emptied its granaries, and when the paroxysm 
 of rage had spent itself, went exulting home- 
 ward, carrying away women for concubines, men 
 to be sacrificed, and such miscellaneous booty 
 as could be conveyed without wagons or beasts 
 to draw them. 1 If the sudden assault, with scal- 
 ing 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. 
 
 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 
 
 1 The wretched prisoners were ordinarily compelled to 
 carry the booty. 
 
 119 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 common for the confederacy to issue a peremp- 
 tory 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 submis- 
 sion ; 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 naught behind 
 them but ruined houses belching from loop-hole 
 and doorway lurid clouds of smoke and flame 
 upon narrow silent streets heaped up with man- 
 gled 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 part- 
 nership 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 subsist- 
 ence." 1 There was none of that coalescence and 
 incorporation of peoples which occurs after the 
 1 Bandelier, op. cit. p. 563. 
 I20 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 The Aztec tribe was organized in clans and 
 phratries, and the number of clans 
 would indicate that the tribe was a 
 very large one. 1 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 
 
 1 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 state- 
 ments. Mr. Morgan is right in throwing the burden of proof 
 upon those who maintain that a people without domestic ani- 
 mals or field agriculture could have been so numerous (^Anc. 
 Soc, p. 19S). On the other hand, I believe Mr. Morgan 
 makes a grave mistake in the opposite direction, in under- 
 estimating 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 re- 
 productive power of maize in Mexico may be found in Hum- 
 boldt, Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, Paris, 1 8 1 1 , 
 torn. 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. 
 121 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 in the lower status. Each Aztec clan seems to 
 have occupied a number of adjacent communal 
 houses, forming a kind of precinct, with its spe- 
 cial house or houses for official purposes, corre- 
 sponding to the estufas in the New Mexican 
 pueblos. The houses were the common pro- 
 perty 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 es- 
 tate " 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 par- 
 ticular garden-plots. 
 
 The clan was governed by a clan-council, con- 
 sisting of chiefs (tecuhtlt) 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 depart- 
 
 Clan officers i , j • q- ._■ ^ J 
 
 ment 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 pre- 
 cinct occupied by the clan, and carried about 
 with him a staff of office ; a tuft of white feath- 
 ers attached to this staff betokened that his er- 
 
 122 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 rand was one of death. The clan elected its 
 calpullec and ahcacautin, and could depose them 
 for cause. 1 
 
 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 exer- 
 cised the right of naming its members. Such 
 names were invariably significant (as Nezahual- 
 coyotl, " Hungry Coyote," Axayacatl, " Face- 
 in-the- Water," etc.), and more or less „. . 
 
 .. . „ ' . . . Rights and 
 
 " medicine, or superstitious associa- duties of the 
 tion, was attached to the name. The dan 
 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 Mex- 
 ican tribes practised cremation ; there was, 
 therefore, no common cemetery, but the funeral 
 ceremonies were conducted by the clan. 
 
 The clans of the Aztecs, like those of many 
 other Mexican tribes, were organized into four 
 phra tries ; and this divided the city of Mexico, 
 as the Spaniards at once remarked, Aztec phra . 
 into four quarters. The phratry had bie * 
 acquired more functions than it possessed in the 
 lower status. Besides certain religious and social 
 
 1 Compare this description with that of the institutions of 
 Indians in the lower status, above, p. 82. 
 123 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 duties, and besides its connection with the pun- 
 ishment of criminals, the Mexican phratry was 
 an organization for military purposes. 1 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 weap- 
 ons were stored, and from which they were 
 handed out to war-parties about to start on an 
 expedition. 
 
 The supreme government of the Aztecs was 
 vested in the tribal-council composed of twenty 
 The tribal- members, one for each clan. The 
 council 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-coun- 
 cil, thus composed of twenty speakers, was 
 called the tlatocan, or " place of speech." 2 At 
 
 1 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 Aga- 
 memnon that a similar organization existed : — 
 
 Kpiv avSpas Kara c/>wAa, Kara 4>pqrpa?, 'Ayafl€/j.vov t 
 
 Iliad, ii. 362. 
 But the phratry seems never to have reached so high a devel- 
 opment among the Greeks as among the Romans and the early 
 English. 
 
 2 Compare parliament from parkr. 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 
 
 124 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 least as often as once in ten days the council as- 
 sembled at the tec-pan, or official house of the 
 tribe, but it could be convened whenever oc- 
 casion required, and in cases of emergency was 
 continually in session. Its powers and duties 
 were similar to those of an ancient English shire- 
 mote, in so far as they were partly directive and 
 partly judicial. A large part of its business was 
 settling disputes between the clans. It superin- 
 tended 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, at- 
 tended 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 unpopu- 
 lar decision might be urged ; but the authority 
 of the tlatocan was supreme, and from its final 
 decision there could be no appeal. 1 
 
 The executive chiefs of the tribe were two in 
 number, as was commonly the case in ancient 
 America. The tribal sachem, or civil executive, 
 
 senores y consejeros y capitanes," etc. Historia verdadera, 
 ii. 95. See Bandelier, op. cit. p. 646. 
 
 1 Mr. Bandelier's note on this point gives an especially apt 
 illustration of the cqnfusion of ideas and inconsistencies of 
 statement amid which the early Spanish writers struggled to 
 understand and describe this strange society : op. cit. p. 
 651. 
 
 125 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 bore the grotesque title of cihuacoatl, or " snake- 
 woman." 1 His relation to the tribe was in gen- 
 The" snake- eral like that of the calpullec to the 
 woman" c ] an _ He executed the decrees of the 
 tribal-council, of which he was ex officio a mem- 
 ber, and was responsible for the housing of trib- 
 ute 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. 2 He was elected for life by the tribal-coun- 
 cil, which could depose him for misconduct. 
 
 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." 3 He was pri- 
 
 1 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 Ser- 
 pent Worship, pp. 3-5, 38—41. Much evidence as to 
 American serpent worship is collected in J. G. Miiller's 
 Geschichte der amerikanischen Vrreligionen, Basel, 1855. 
 The hieroglyphic emblem of the Aztec tribal sachem was a 
 female head surmounted by a snake. 
 
 3 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 Zuiii heretofore 
 mentioned ; see above p. 103. 
 
 8 This title seems precisely equivalent to ava£ avSpZv, com- 
 126 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 marily head war-chief of the Aztec tribe, but 
 about 1430 became supreme military com- 
 mander of the three confederate tribes, The » chief- 
 so that his office was one of peculiar of - men " 
 dignity and importance. When the Spaniards 
 arrived upon the scene Montezuma was tlaca- 
 tecuhtli, 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 Evolution of 
 in Rome and in Greece the king had ^J 
 at least three great functions, and pos- Rome 
 sibly four. 1 He was, primarily, chief com- 
 mander, 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 
 
 monly applied to Agamemnon, and sometimes to other chief- 
 tains, in the Iliad. 
 
 1 Ramsay's Roman Antiquities, p. 64 ; Hermann's Polit- 
 ical Antiquities of Greece, p. 105 ; Morgan, Anc. Soc, 
 p. 248. 
 
 127 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 to settle. But in all probability the office grew 
 up through the successive acquisition of ritual, 
 judicial, and civil functions by the military com- 
 mander. The paramount necessity of consulting 
 the tutelar deities before fighting resulted in 
 making the general a priest competent to per- 
 form sacrifices and interpret omens ; 1 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, involv- 
 ing 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 di- 
 
 1 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 Syra- 
 cuse, 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 Cit'e antique, pp. Z05— 210, makes the priestly func- 
 tion of the king primitive, and the military function secondary ; 
 which is entirely inconsistent with what we know of barba- 
 rous races. 
 
 128 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 minish its functions, but put them into commis- 
 sion, 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. 1 
 
 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 Mid- Medieval 
 die Ages all priestly functions had ^^p 
 passed into the hands of the Church. 2 A king 
 like Charles VII. of France, or Edward III. of 
 England, was military commander, civil magis- 
 trate, chief judge, and supreme landlord; the peo- 
 ple were his tenants. That was the kind of king 
 
 1 It is worthy of note that the archon who retained the 
 priestly function was called basikus, 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 re- 
 formers 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, — rjv Ovcras o ficunXevs, koto, Ta^os chreicn 
 <j>euywv i£ ayopas (!) Plutarch, Quast. Rom. 63. 
 
 2 Something of the priestly quality of "sanctity," how- 
 ever, surrounded the king's person ; and the ceremony of 
 anointing the king at his coronation was a survival of the an- 
 cient rite which invested the head war-chief with priestly at- 
 tributes. 
 
 129 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 with which the Spanish discoverers of Mexico 
 were familiar. 
 
 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 mag- 
 istrate ; those functions belonged to the " snake- 
 woman." Mr. Bandelier regards the " chief-of- 
 men " as simply a military commander ; but for 
 Montezuma reasons which I shall state hereafter, 1 
 was a "priest- it seems quite clear that he exercised 
 
 commander " . . . r 
 
 certain very important priestly func- 
 tions, although beside him there was a kind of 
 high-priest or medicine-chief. If I am right in 
 holding that Montezuma was a "priest-com- 
 mander," 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. 
 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 
 
 1 They can be most conveniently stated in connection with 
 the story of the conquest of Mexico ; see below, vol. ill. p. 
 72. When Mr. Bandelier completes his long-promised pa- 
 per on the ancient Mexican religion, perhaps it will appear 
 that he has taken these facts into the account. 
 130 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 have been practically limited to a particular clan, 
 and in the eleven chiefs who were chosen from 
 1375 to 1520 a certain principle or Modeofsuc . 
 custom of succession seems to be cession to the 
 plainly indicated. 1 There was a further 
 limit to the order of succession. Allusion has 
 been made to the four phratry-captains com- 
 manding the quarters of the city. Their cheer- 
 ful 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 magis- 
 trates charged with the duty of maintaining or- 
 der 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-cap- 
 tains 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 privi- 
 leged four must succeed to the office of " chief- 
 of-men." 
 
 The eligibility of the " man of the dark house " 
 
 1 I cannot follow Mr. Bandelier in discrediting Clavigero's 
 statement that the office of tlacatecuhtli " should always re- 
 main 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. " 
 
 l 3 l 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 may be cited here as positive proof that some- 
 times 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 pyra- 
 mid 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. 1 
 
 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 ex- 
 tended 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 
 
 1 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 overcol- 
 oured, 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. 
 132 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 outside of the confederacy the " chief-of-men " 
 exercised administrative functions. He superin- 
 tended the collection of tribute. Each of the 
 three confederate tribes appointed, Mannerof 
 through its tribal-council, agents to collecting 
 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. 1 The tiger-like con- 
 federacy 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 vic- 
 tims for sacrifice. 
 
 Once appointed, the tax-gatherers were di- 
 rected by the " chief-of-men." The tribute was 
 chiefly maize, but might be anything the con- 
 querors chose to demand, — weapons, fine pot- 
 tery or feather-work, gold ornaments, or female 
 
 1 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 
 die savage council at Onondaga." Beginnings of New Eng- 
 land, p. 148. 
 
 *33 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 un- 
 happy 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 infor- 
 mation by word of mouth and by picture-writ- 
 ing 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 opera- 
 tions, but trade, which had already made some 
 progress albeit of a simple sort. These " roads " 
 might perhaps more properly be called Indian 
 trails, 1 but they served their purpose. 
 
 1 See Salmeron's letter of August 13, 1 531, to the Coun- 
 cil 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 nar- 
 row ravines upon heavy stone culverts. 
 
 *34 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 The general similarity of the Aztec confed- 
 eracy to that of the Iroquois, in point of social 
 structure, is thus clearly manifest. Aztec and 
 Along with this general similarity we 2E. C0Dr 
 have observed some points of higher contrasted 
 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 frame-work, we have pueblos of adobe- 
 brick or stone, in various stages of evolution, 
 the most advanced of which present the appear- 
 ance of castellated cities. Along with the syste- 
 matic irrigation and increased dependence upon 
 horticulture, we find evidences of greater den- 
 sity of population ; and we see in the victorious 
 confederacy a more highly developed organiza- 
 tion for adding to its stock of food and other 
 desirable possessions by the systematic plunder 
 of neighbouring weaker communities. Natu- 
 rally 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 
 13S 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 No feature of the advance is more notewor- 
 thy than the development of the medicine-men 
 Aztec priest- into an organized priesthood. 1 The 
 m°Msacri-~ presence of this priesthood and its 
 fices 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 character- 
 istic 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. 2 But 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 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 
 forYoung People, i. 30, 189—193 ; ii. 102, 2zo ; iii. 21, 
 170, 316, 393, 395 ; iv. 85, 226. Ghillany, Die Men- 
 
 136 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 canni- 
 balism in which it probably originated. 1 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. 
 
 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 tor- 
 ments. There were occasions on which the 
 Aztecs tortured their prisoners before sending 
 them to the altar, 2 but in general the prisoner 
 was well treated and highly fed, — fatted, in 
 short, for the final banquet in which the wor- 
 
 schenopfer der alt en Hebraer, Nuremberg, 1842, treats the 
 subject with much learning. 
 
 1 Spencer, Princip. Socio/., i. 287 ; Tylor, op. cit. ii. 
 
 345- . J 
 
 2 Mr. Prescott, to avoid shocking the reader with details, 
 
 refers him to the twenty -first canto of Dante's Inferno, Con- 
 quest of Mexico, vol. i. p. 64. 
 137 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 shippers participated with their savage deity. 1 
 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. 2 
 
 1 See below, vol. iii. p. 80. 
 
 2 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 gener- 
 ally considered unfit for sacrifice." (Mackay, op. cit. ii. 
 398.) Among the Aztecs (Prescott, he. 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 fa- 
 vour was to some extent a substitute for the use of the clan's 
 own members, and at a later stage the use of domestic ani- 
 mals 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 : — 
 Ovovtk yap T(3 Oew Trpo^Gr/crav ttotc virb fitOrjs « vfipiv, 
 
 &<TT€ KCU TOV AlOVVCTOV TOV lepio. airOKTtLVOVCTLV ' airoKTiivav- 
 
 ras Se avriKa £7re\aj8e vocros Xoi/AtoSiys " Kai cr<f>icriv a<j>iKeTO 
 afna Ik Ae\(j>!ov, T(S Atovvcro) Oveiv Tralha &p<uov • ertcri Sc ov 
 iroWois v(TT€pov tov 6eov <j>acriv atya lepeiov inraXXd^aL (rcpio-iv 
 avTi tov 7raiSos. Pausanias, ix. 8. A further stage of progress 
 
 138 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 The ancient Mexicans had not arrived at this 
 stage, which in the Old World characterized the 
 upper period of barbarism. Slavery had, how- 
 ever, made a beginning among the 
 Aztecs. The nucleus of the small 
 slave-population of Mexico consisted of out- 
 casts, 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. 1 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 occu- 
 
 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 gott- 
 licher Gnade und Versohnbarkeit sind hier ununterscheidbar 
 gemischt mit der frommen Schlauigkeit, welche es versucht 
 den gefahrlichen Herrn durch scheinhafte Befriedigung zu be- 
 riicken und abzufinden." Romische Geschichte, 4 e 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. 
 
 1 Bandelier, op. cit. p. 611. 
 
 139 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 pant 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 exclu- 
 sive 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 col- 
 lared slave could be handed over to the priests 
 for sacrifice. 1 In this class of outcasts and their 
 masters we have an interesting illustration of a 
 rudimentary phase of slavery and of private 
 property. 
 
 At this point it is worthy of note that in the 
 development of the family the Aztecs had ad- 
 vanced 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. 
 The Aztec In the Aztec clan (which was exoga- 
 famUy mous 2 ) the change to descent in the 
 
 male line seems to have been accomplished be- 
 
 1 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. 
 
 a Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. ii. 
 p. 251. 
 
 140 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 fore 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 estab- 
 lished to count for much in the structure of 
 society, which still rested firmly upon the clan. 1 
 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 pro- 
 perty and was entitled to the protection of his 
 clan. All matrimonial arrangements were con- 
 trolled by the clan, and no member of it, male 
 or female, was allowed to remain unmarried, 
 except for certain religious reasons. The pen- 
 alty for contumacy was expulsion from the clan, 
 and the same penalty was inflicted for such sex- 
 ual irregularities as public opinion, still in what 
 we should call quite a primitive stage, con- 
 demned. Men and women thus expelled went 
 to swell the numbers of that small class of out- 
 casts 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 
 1 Bandelier, op. cit. pp. 429, 570, 620. 
 141 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 sin consisted in rebellion against the clan's 
 standards of proper or permissible behaviour. 
 
 The inheritance in the male line, the begin- 
 nings of individual property in slaves, the tight- 
 ening of the marriage bond, accompanied by the 
 condemnation of sundry irregularities heretofore 
 tolerated, are phenomena which we might ex- 
 pect 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 
 Aztec pro- value and importance of personal pro- 
 perty perty. 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 * 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 num- 
 ber and value of articles of personal ownership 
 
 1 I here use these world-famous names without any impli- 
 cation 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 ex- 
 isted about the northern and eastern shores of the eastern 
 Mediterranean, several centuries before the Olympiads. 
 
 142 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 had no doubt greatly increased during the long 
 interval which must have elapsed since the an- 
 cestral 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 im- 
 ply a considerable number and diversity of ar- 
 tificial 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. 
 
 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 Mr . M or- 
 Mexico, that eminent scholar more g 311 ' 8 " 11 ^ 
 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 charac- 
 teristics of the Indians ; in whatever relates to 
 their weapons, implements and utensils, fabrics, 
 
 H3 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 food and raiment, and things of a similar char- 
 acter. 
 
 " 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 re- 
 spects and commence anew ; using any facts 
 they may contain which harmonize with what is 
 known of Indian society." 1 
 
 Perhaps it would have been better if the sec- 
 ond of these rules had been somewhat differently 
 worded ; for even with regard to the strange so- 
 ciety 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 misinter- 
 pretations are interesting and instructive when 
 once we rightly understand them. Sometimes 
 they really help us toward the truth. 
 
 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. 
 1 Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 186, note. 
 144 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 Morgan, may be trusted. Very good. But 
 as soon as Mr. Morgan had occasion to write 
 about the social life of the Aztecs, he Mr. Morgan 
 forgot his own rules and paid as little s ? metiir > es 
 
 ° £ disregarded 
 
 respect to the senses of eye-witnesses his own rules: 
 as to their judgment. This was amus- ma .,™t.°' 
 ingly illustrated in his famous essay on ner " 
 " Montezuma's Dinner." * When Bernal Diaz 
 describes Montezuma as sitting on a low chair 
 at a table covered with a white cloth, Mr. Mor- 
 gan 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 Az- 
 
 1 North. Amer. Review, April, 1876. The substance of 
 i. was reproduced in his Houses and House-Life, chap. x. 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 tecs ; but it is hardly supposable that even this 
 was used at dinner." 1 
 
 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 hiero- 
 glyphics. 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 be- 
 low 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 Mon- 
 tezuma'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 
 1 Houses and House-Life, p. 241. 
 146 
 

 REPRESENTATION OF SPANIARDS IN A MEXICAN 
 MANUSCRIPT, 1529 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 suppos- 
 able " 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 ? * 
 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 The reaction 
 how so hard a stone could be cut with a g. a . inst ™- 
 
 a . 1-19 1 i critical and 
 
 nint or copper chisels, and are ready exaggerated 
 to entertain the suggestion that some statements 
 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 suc- 
 ceed in cutting porphyry. Again, when we read 
 about Indian armies of 200,000 men, pertinent 
 
 1 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. Mor- 
 gan's calibre, is hardly becoming. 
 
 2 For an excellent account of ancient Mexican knives and 
 chisels, see Dr. Valentini's paper on " Semi-Lunar and Cres- 
 cent-Shaped Tools," in Proceedings of Amer. Antiq. Soc, 
 New Series, vol. iii. pp. 449-474. Compare the very in- 
 teresting Spanish observations on copper hatchets and flint 
 chisels in Clavigero, Historia antigua, torn. i. p. 242 ; Men- 
 dieta, Historia ecclesiastica indiana, torn. iv. cap. xii. 
 
 H7 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 sug- 
 gestions are impertinent ; things can go on any- 
 how. 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," reason- 
 ing 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 bar- 
 barism in his attempt to ignore or minimize the 
 points of difference between Aztecs and Iro- 
 quois. 1 In this way he did injustice to his own 
 
 1 It often happens that the followers of a great man are 
 more likely to run to extremes than their master, as, for ex- 
 ample, when we see the queen of pueblos rashly described as 
 148 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 brilliant and useful classification of stages of cul- 
 ture, 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. 
 
 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 importance 
 ancient Mexico and the huge mass ^"b^! 
 of literature devoted to it show. It barism 
 spanned the interval between such society as 
 that of Hiawatha and such as that of the Odys- 
 sey. One more such interval (and, I suspect, 
 a briefer one, because the use of iron and the 
 development of inheritable wealth would ac- 
 celerate progress) led to the age that could 
 write the Odyssey, one of the most beautiful 
 productions of the human mind. If Mr. Mor- 
 gan 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 bar- 
 barism ; ancient Troy stood next the upper end. 
 
 "a. collection of mud huts, such as Cortes found and dignified 
 with the name of a city." Smithsonian Report, 1887, part 
 j. p. 691. This is quite inadmissible. 
 149 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Mr. Morgan found apt illustrations in the for- 
 mer ; 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 so- 
 cial development, stood somewhere between the 
 two. 
 
 How that city looked may best be described 
 when we come to tell what its first Spanish visi- 
 tors saw. Let it suffice here to say that, upon 
 a reasonable estimate of their testimony, plea- 
 sure-gardens, menageries and aviaries, foun- 
 tains and baths, tessellated marble floors, finely 
 wrought pottery, exquisite feather-work, bril- 
 liant 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. 
 
 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 pen- 
 insula and Central America. The pueblos of 
 Mexico were doubtless of various grades of 
 size, strength, and comfort, ranging from such 
 150 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 structures as Zufii up to the city of Mexico. 
 The cities of Chiapas, Yucatan, and Guatemala, 
 whose ruins, in those tropical forests, Mexicans and 
 are so impressive, probably belong Ma ? as 
 to the same class. The Maya-Quiche tribes, 
 who dwelt and still dwell in this region, were 
 different in stock-language from their neigh- 
 bours of Mexico ; but there are strong reasons 
 for believing that the two great groups, Mexi- 
 cans and Mayas, arose from the expansion and 
 segmentation of one common stock, and there 
 is no doubt as to the very close similarity be- 
 tween the two in government, religion, and 
 social advancement. In some points the Mayas 
 were superior. They possessed a considerable 
 literature, written in highly developed hiero- 
 glyphic characters upon maguey paper and upon 
 deerskin parchment, so that from this point of 
 view they stood upon the threshold of civiliza- 
 tion as strictly defined. 1 But, like the Mexi- 
 
 1 This writing was at once recognized by learned Span- 
 iards, 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 hie- 
 roglyphics, see the learned essays of Dr. Cyrus Thomas, 
 A Study of the Manuscript Troano, Washington, 1882 ; 
 "Notes on certain Maya and Mexican MSS.," Third Re- 
 port 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, 
 
 151 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 cans, they were ignorant of iron, their society 
 was organized upon the principle of gentilism, 
 they were cannibals and sacrificed men and 
 
 " 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 Amer- 
 ica. ' ' 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 astrono- 
 mer, E. S. Holden, " Studies in Central American Picture- 
 Writing," First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 
 205—245 ; Brinton, Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Tucatan, 
 New York, 1870 ; Essays of an Americanist, Philadelphia, 
 1890, pp. 193-304 ; Leon de Rosny, Les ecritures figura- 
 tives, Paris, 1870 ; V interpretation des anciens textes Mayas, 
 Paris, 1875 ; Essai sur le d'echiffrement de /' ecriture hi'era- 
 tique de P Am'erique Centrale, Paris, 1876 ; Forstemann, 
 Erlauterungen der Maya Handschrift, Dresden, 1886. The 
 decipherment is as yet but partially accomplished. The Mexi- 
 can 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 develop- 
 ment of the Mexican system ; the Maya system had prob- 
 ably developed some characters with a phonetic value, ;'. e. 
 was groping toward the alphabetical stage ; but how far this 
 groping had gone must remain very doubtful until the de- 
 cipherment has proceeded further. Dr. Isaac Taylor is too 
 hasty in saying that " the Mayas employed twenty-seven char- 
 acters 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 " supe- 
 rior in simplicity and convenience to that employed ... by 
 the great Assyrian nation at the epoch of its greatest power 
 152 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN MEXICAN HIEROGLYPHS 
 
 From the Codice Cospiano 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 women to idols, some of which were identical 
 with those of Mexico. The Mayas had no con- 
 ception of property in land ; their buildings 
 were great communal houses, like pueblos ; in 
 
 HiiiHHU 
 
 Ground-plan of so-called " House of the Nuns" at Uxmal 
 
 some cases these so-called palaces, at first sup- 
 posed to be scanty remnants of vast cities, were 
 themselves the entire " cities ; " in other cases 
 
 and glory." Dr. Taylor has been misled by Diego de 
 Landa, whose work {Relation des choses de V Yucatan, ed. 
 Brasseur, Paris, 1864) has in it some pitfalls for the unwary. 
 
 153 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 there were doubtless large composite pueblos 
 fit to be called cities. 
 
 These noble ruins have excited great and in- 
 creasing interest since the publication of Mr. 
 Stephens's charming book just fifty years ago. 1 
 An air of profound mystery surrounded them, 
 and many wild theories were propounded to ac- 
 „ . , . . count for their existence. They were 
 
 Ruined cities . , . . 
 
 of central at first accredited with a fabulous anti- 
 quity, and in at least one instance this 
 notion was responsible for what must be called 
 misrepresentation, if not humbug. 2 Having been 
 
 1 Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, 
 Chiapas, and Yucatan, z vols., New York, 1841. 
 
 2 It occurred in the drawings of the artist Frederic de Wal- 
 deck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but whose re- 
 searches 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 draw- 
 ing 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 Cather- 
 wood, who drew these inscriptions most minutely, nor my- 
 self 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 monu- 
 
 154 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 ex- 
 alted civilization, — but by some wonderful peo- 
 ple 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 pre- 
 served 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. 1 The notion of 
 
 ments 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, 
 1 887, p. 248. The gallant explorer's indignation is certainly 
 quite pardonable. 
 
 1 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 
 
 l S5 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 their antiquity was perhaps suggested by the 
 belief that certain colossal mahogany-trees grow- 
 ing between and over the ruins at Palenque 
 must be nearly 2000 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 1 88 1 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. 1 
 
 These edifices are not so durably constructed 
 
 they are not the work of people who have passed away and 
 whose history is lost, but that there are strong reasons to be- 
 lieve 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, per- 
 haps, were really in ruins before ; . . . but in regard to 
 Uxmal, at least, we believe that it was an existing and inhab- 
 ited city at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards." Stephens, 
 Central America, etc., vol. ii. p. 455. 
 
 1 Charnay, The Ancient Cities of the New World, p. 
 z6o. 
 
 156 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 They are 
 remains of Cambodia." 1 In pictures probably not 
 
 i i 1 ■» it i older than the 
 
 they may seem to do so, but M. de twelfth cen- 
 Charnay, after close and repeated ex- tury 
 amination 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, notwith- 
 standing their greater and more resisting propor- 
 tions, are found in the same dilapidated condi- 
 tion." 2 It seems to me that if Mr. Lang had 
 spoken of the Yucatan ruins as rivalling the re- 
 mains 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. 3 
 And here again we are brought back, as seems 
 
 1 Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii. p. 348. 
 
 a 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. 
 
 8 The reader will find it suggestive to compare portions of 
 Schliemann's Mycena and M. de Charnay 's book, just cited, 
 with Morgan's Houses and House-Life, chap. xi. 
 
 *57 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 to happen whatever road we follow, to the 
 middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan archi- 
 tecture 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 mix- 
 ture of friable mortar and small irregular stones," 
 and under the pelting tropical rains the dislo- 
 cation 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 in- 
 ferred that the highest probable antiquity for 
 most of the ruins in Yucatan or Central Amer- 
 ica is the twelfth or thirteenth century of our 
 era. 1 Some, perhaps, may be no older than the 
 ancient city of Mexico, built A. d. 1325. 
 
 But we are no longer restricted to purely ar- 
 chaeological evidence. One of the most impres- 
 sive 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 
 chronicle of old Maya documents have been dis- 
 chicxuiub covered in Yucatan, and among them 
 is a brief history of the Spanish conquest of that 
 country, written in the Roman character by a 
 
 1 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. 
 158 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 grati- 
 tude, — Dr. Daniel Brinton. This chronicle 
 tells us several things that we did not know be- 
 fore, and, among others, it refers most explicitly 
 to Chichen-Itza and Izamal as inhabited towns 
 during the time that the Spaniards were coming, 
 from 1 5 19 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 dis- 
 pels it once for all. 1 
 
 The Mexicans and Mayas believed them- 
 selves to be akin to each other, they had sev- 
 eral deities and a large stock of traditional lore 
 
 1 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, 
 
 [ S9 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 in common, and there was an essential similarity 
 in their modes of life ; so that, since we are 
 Maya culture now assured that such cities as Iza- 
 rdatedto ely ma ^ an d Chichen-Itza were contem- 
 Mexkan porary 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 indig- 
 nation 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 rea- 
 son 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 dis- 
 covery 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 
 1 60 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 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 hence- 
 forth 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. 
 
 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 The 
 so large a part of the soil of the "Mound- 
 
 tt • T r. J -11 Builders" 
 
 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. 1 Vague and wild were 
 
 1 For original researches in the mounds one cannot do bet- 
 ter than consult the following papers in the Reports of the 
 Bureau of Ethnology: — i. by W. H. Holmes, "Art in 
 
 161 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 the speculations once rife about the " Mound- 
 Builders " and their wonderful civilization. 
 
 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. 
 7-1 19 ; 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 
 " Workin 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 5 M. F. Force, 
 To What Race did the Mound-Builders belong ? Cincinnati, 
 1875 ; Lucien Carr, Mounds of the Mississippi Valley histor- 
 ically considered, 1883 ; Nadaillac's Prehistoric America, 
 ed. W. H. Dall, chaps, iii., iv. The earliest work of fun- 
 damental 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. 5 5 ; Foster, Prehistoric Races of the United States, 
 Chicago, 1873, chaps, iii., v.-x. ; Sir Daniel Wilson, Pre- 
 historic 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 biblio- 
 162 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 They were supposed to have been a race quite 
 different from the red men, with a culture per- 
 haps superior to our own, and more or less 
 eloquence was wasted over the vanished " em- 
 pire " of the mound-builders. There is no rea- 
 son, 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 ar- 
 rival of white men in America, and which con- 
 tain knives and trinkets of European manufac- 
 ture. There are many others which are much 
 older, and in which the genuine remains some- 
 times 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 The notion 
 narrowed and defined. It began to ^.^e 
 seem probable that the builders of the Aztecs > 
 the more remarkable mounds were tribes of 
 graphical account in Winsor's Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 397- 
 4.12, is full of minute information. 
 163 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Indians who had advanced beyond the average 
 level in horticulture, and consequently in den- 
 sity 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 par- 
 allel 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 peo- 
 ples 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 invad- 
 ers. 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 in- 
 genious explanation of the extensive earthworks 
 at High Bank, in Ross County, Ohio, as the 
 fortified site of a pueblo. 1 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 
 1 Houses and House-Life, chap. ix. 
 164 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 into his middle status of barbarism because of 
 the copper hatchets and chisels found in some 
 of the mounds, and because of the r like the 
 apparent superiority in horticulture Zuflls 
 and the increased reliance upon it. He sug- 
 gested that a people somewhat like the Zufiis 
 might have migrated eastward and modified 
 their building habits to suit the altered condi- 
 tions of the Mississippi valley, where they dwelt 
 for several centuries, until at last, for some un- 
 known reason, they retired to the Rocky Moun- 
 tain region. It seems to me that an opinion 
 just the reverse of Mr. Morgan's would be 
 more easily defensible, — namely, that the an- 
 cestors of the pueblo Indians were a people of 
 building habits somewhat similar to the Man- 
 dans, and that their habits became modified in 
 adaptation to a country which demanded care- 
 ful irrigation and supplied adobe-clay in abun- 
 dance. 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. 
 
 Recent researches, however, make it more and 
 more improbable that the mound-builders were 
 nearly akin to such people as the Zunis or simi- 
 lar to them in grade of culture. Of late years 
 the exploration of the mounds has been carried 
 on with increasing diligence. More than aooo 
 mounds have been opened, and at least 38,000 
 165 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 ancient relics have been gathered from them: 
 such as quartzite arrow-heads and spades, green- 
 stone 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 
 The mounds been concisely summed up by Dr. 
 Mtby dif- Iy C y rus Thomas. 1 The mounds were 
 foent peoples not all built by one people, but by dif- 
 stat^on^r- ferent tribes as clearly distinguishable 
 barism; 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 
 
 1 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 Mu- 
 seum at Cambridge and the Smithsonian Institution at Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 166 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 Alleghany river and mountains. 1 The Tallegwi 
 have been identified with the Cherokees, who 
 are now reckoned among the most intelligent 
 and progressive of Indian peoples. 2 The Cher- 
 okees were formerly classed in the Muskoki 
 group, along with the Creeks and byCW 
 Choctaws, but a closer study of their kees ; 
 language seems to show that they were a some- 
 what remote offshoot of the Huron-Iroquois 
 stock. For a long time they occupied the coun- 
 try 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 Ken- 
 tucky, Tennessee, and northern Georgia were 
 
 1 Heckewelder, History of the Indian Nations of Pennsylva- 
 nia, etc., Philadelphia, l8l8;cf. Squier, Historical and Myth- 
 ological 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. 
 
 2 For a detailed account of their later history, see C. C. 
 Royce, " The Cherokee Nation," Reports of Bureau of Eth- 
 nology, v. iz 1-378. 
 
 167 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 probably the work of Shawnees, and the stone 
 graves in the Delaware valley are to be ascribed 
 to the Lenape. There are many rea- 
 nees, and sons for believing that the mounds 
 other tribes Q f nortnern Mississippi were con- 
 structed by Chickasaws, and the burial tumuli 
 and " effigy mounds " of Wisconsin by Winne- 
 bagos. The Minnitarees and Mandans were 
 also very likely at one time a mound-building 
 people. 
 
 If this view, which is steadily gaining ground, 
 be correct, our imaginary race of " Mound- 
 Builders " is broken up and vanishes, and hence- 
 forth 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 in- 
 duced them to erect mounds as sites for com- 
 munal 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 mys- 
 terious race of " Mound-Builders " in America 
 than for assuming a mysterious race of " Castle- 
 Builders " in England. 
 
 Thus, at whatever point we touch the subject 
 of ancient America, we find scientific opinion 
 168 
 
ANCIENT AMERICA 
 
 tending more and more steadily toward the con- 
 clusion that its people and their culture were 
 indigenous. One of the most important lessons 
 impressed upon us by a long study of Society k 
 comparative mythology is that human America at 
 
 . . •!• rr r t i i the time of 
 
 minds in different parts or the world, the Discovery 
 but under the influence of similar cir- h * d rea . ch f. d 
 
 stages similar 
 
 cumstances, develop similar ideas and to stages 
 clothe them in similar forms of expres- ^ m M ed _ 
 sion. It is iust the same with politi- iterranea ,n 
 
 , . . . -11 i i peoples fifty 
 
 cal institutions, with the development or sixty cen- 
 of the arts, with social customs, with turies earXier 
 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 fea- 
 tures 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 re- 
 minded him of ancient Egypt, he hastened to 
 the conclusion that Mexican culture was some- 
 how " derived " from that of Egypt. It was 
 natural enough for him to do so, but such meth- 
 ods of explanation are now completely anti- 
 quated. Mexican culture was no more Egyptian 
 culture than a prickly-pear is a lotus. It was an 
 outgrowth of peculiar American conditions act- 
 ing upon the aboriginal American mind, and 
 such of its features as remind us of ancient Egypt 
 169 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 be- 
 come 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 Med- 
 iterranean had been outgrown before the city of 
 Rome was built. Hence the intense and pecul- 
 iar fascination of American archaeology, and its 
 profound importance to the student of general 
 history. 
 
 170 
 
II 
 
 PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 THERE is something solemn and im- 
 pressive 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 practi- 
 cally begins in 1492. 
 
 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 sus- 
 pect that there may have been more such occa- 
 sional 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 impossi- 
 171 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 ble ; but when other critics assure us that, after 
 all, Fusang was really Japan, perhaps one feels 
 a slight sense of relief. 1 So of the dim whispers 
 of voyages to America undertaken by the Irish, 
 in the days when the cloisters of sweet Innis- 
 fallen were a centre of piety and culture for 
 northwestern Europe, 2 we may say 
 that this sort of thing has not much to 
 do with history, or history with it. Irish ancho- 
 rites certainly went to Iceland in the seventh 
 
 1 This notion of the Chinese visiting Mexico was set forth 
 by the celebrated Deguignes in 1 761, in the Memoir es de 
 I' Academie des Inscriptions, torn, xxviii. pp. 506-525. Its 
 absurdity was shown by Klaproth, " Recherches sur le pays 
 de Fou Sang," Nouvelks annates des voyages, Paris, 183 1, 
 ze serie, torn. xxi. pp. 53-68 ; see also Klaproth's introduc- 
 tion to Annates des empereurs du Japan, Paris, 1834, pp. 
 iv— ix ; Humboldt, Ex amen critique de V histoire de la geo- 
 graphie du nouveau continent, Paris, 1837, torn. 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. 
 
 2 On the noble work of the Irish church and its mission- 
 aries in the sixth and seventh centuries, see Montalembert, 
 Let moines d' Occident, torn. ii. pp. 465-661 ; torn. 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, 1 889, p. 60. The notice of the subject in Milman's 
 Latin Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 236-247, is entirely inade- 
 quate. 
 
 172 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 century, 1 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 re- 
 ported that Japanese junks have been driven 
 ashore on the coasts of Oregon and California ; 2 
 and there is a story that in 1488 a cer- cousin, of 
 tain Jean Cousin, of Dieppe, while Die PP e 
 sailing down the west coast of Africa, was caught 
 in a storm and blown across to Brazil. 3 This 
 was certainly quite possible, for it was not so 
 very unlike what happened in 1 500 to Pedro 
 Alvarez de CabraL as we shall hereafter see ; * 
 nevertheless, the evidence adduced in support 
 
 1 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 Terra (a. d. 
 825), Paris, 1807 ; Innes, Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 
 10 1 ; Lanigan, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, chap. iii. ; 
 Maurer, Beitrage zur Rechtsgeschichte des Germanischen Nor- 
 dens, i. 35. For the legend of St. Brandan, see Gaffarel, 
 Les voyages de St. Brandan, Paris, 1881. 
 
 2 C. W. Brooks, of San Francisco, cited in Higginson, 
 Larger History of the United States, p. 24. 
 
 8 Desmarquets, Memoires chronologiques pour servir a 
 I'histoire de Dieppe, Paris, 1785, torn. i. pp. 91-98 ; 
 Estancelin, Recherches sur les voyages et d'ecouvertes des navi- 
 gateurs normands, etc., Paris, 1832, pp. 332—361. 
 
 1 See below, vol. ii. p. 323. 
 
 173 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 of the story will hardly bear a critical examina- 
 tion. 1 
 
 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 
 These stories not have done " what is claimed, but 
 are of little a t the same time the proof that arty 
 one of them did do it is very far from 
 satisfactory. 2 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. 3 
 
 But when we come to the voyages of the 
 Northmen in the tenth and eleventh centuries, 
 
 1 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." Chris tophe Colomb, Paris, 1884, 
 torn. i. p. 307. 
 
 2 Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 59. 
 
 8 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 Dis- 
 covery of America," and by Justin Winsor on " Pre-Colum- 
 bian Explorations," in Narr. and Crit. Hist., vol. i. 
 
 174 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 it is quite a different affair. Not only is this a 
 subject of much historic interest, but in deal- 
 ing with it we stand for a great part but the case 
 of the time upon firm historic ground. ^h^' 
 The narratives which tell us of Vin- tireiydifferent 
 land and of Leif Ericsson are closely intertwined 
 with the authentic history of Norway and Ice- 
 land. 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 ten- 
 ures 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 unendura- 
 ble. These bold Jarls and their Viking * fol- 
 lowers, to whom, as to the ancient Greeks, the 
 sea was not a barrier, but a highway, 2 had no 
 
 1 The proper division of this Old Norse word is not into 
 vi-Hng, but into vik-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 appro- 
 priate and descriptive name. 
 
 2 Curtius {Griechischen Etymologie, p. 237) connects 
 
 175 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 mind to stay at home and submit to unwonted 
 thraldom. So they manned their dragon-prowed 
 keels, invoked the blessing of Wodan, god of 
 The viking storms, upon their enterprise, and 
 exodus from sailed away. Some went to reinforce 
 their kinsmen who were making it so 
 hot for Alfred in England x 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 " Mickle- 
 gard," the Great City of the Byzantine Em- 
 peror, and in his service wielded their stout axes 
 against Magyar and Saracen ; 2 some found their 
 
 TTovTos with 57-ai-os ; compare the Homeric expressions vypa. 
 Ke\tv0a, l^avoevra K&Xevda., etc. 
 
 1 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, chap. ii. 
 
 2 They were the Varangian guard at Constantinople, de- 
 scribed 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 
 
 176 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 amphibious natures better satisfied upon the 
 islands of the Atlantic ridge, — the Orkneys, 
 Shetlands, and Faeroes, and especially • noble 
 Iceland. There an aristocratic re- Foun&ngo { 
 public soon grew up, owning slight Iceland, a. D . 
 and indefinite allegiance to the kings 
 of Norway. 1 The settlement of Iceland was 
 such a wholesale colonization of communities 
 of picked men as had not been seen since an- 
 cient Greek times, and was not to be seen again 
 until Winthrop sailed into Massachusetts Bay. 
 It was not long before the population of Ice- 
 land 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, 2 justice was 
 
 Russia. See Thomsen, The Relations between Ancient Russia 
 and Scandinavia, Oxford, 1877. 
 
 1 Fealty to Norway was not formally declared until 1262. 
 
 2 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 : — 
 
 Xalpe Kal ev V€<l>eAaia< teal iv vtcftaSecrcn fiapctait 
 
 Kal irvp\ Kal ffcto-j^ols vijere crakevofiew] ■ 
 'Ev0a.Be yap fla<Ti\yjos vrrepfSiov ilflpiv aAlifas 
 
 Atj/aoi 'Yn-ep/SopeoH/, KO<rftov en-' ecrxaTijj, 
 KvrapKT] piorov Beitnv r epedicrfiaTa Movawl/ 
 
 Kal 6etrp.ovs ayi/rjs etipev e\ev9eplas. 
 
 These verses are thus rendered by Sir Edmund Head ( Viga 
 Glums Saga, p. v) : — 
 
 177 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 (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 * and culture was 
 surprisingly rapid. In the twelfth century, be- 
 fore 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 his- 
 tory, 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 
 
 " 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." 
 
 1 Just what was then considered wealth, for an individual, 
 may best be understood by a concrete instance. The his- 
 torian Snorro Sturleson, born in 11 78, 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 
 1 1 99, was equivalent nominally to $4000, or, according to 
 the standard of to-day, about $80,000. Laing, Heimskringla, 
 vol. i. pp. 191, 193. 
 
 I 7 8 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 
 121 5, is one of the greatest history books in 
 the world. 1 
 
 Now from various Icelandic chronicles 2 we 
 
 1 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. An- 
 other 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 intro- 
 duction 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. 
 
 2 A full collection of these chronicles is given in Rafn's 
 Antiquitates Americana, 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 pre- 
 cise situation of Vinland have done much to discredit the 
 
 179 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 learn that in 876, only two years after the island 
 commonwealth was founded, one of the set- 
 whole subject in the eyes of many scholars. That is, how- 
 ever, very apt to be the case with first attempts, like Ram'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 " Ram ; " 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 
 Crymogcea, Hamburg, 1610, and more explicitly in his Speci- 
 men Islandiiz 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 Tor- 
 feus, in his two books Historia Vinlandite antiqua, and His- 
 toria Gronlandice antique, Copenhagen, 1705 and 1706. 
 Later writers have until very recently added but little that is 
 important to the work of Torfeus. In the voluminous litera- 
 ture 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, Exa- 
 men critique, etc., Paris, 1837, torn. i. pp. 84-104; see, 
 also, Major, Select Letters of Columbus, London, 1847 
 180 
 

 
 ■ 2 pi 
 
 
 ? 
 
 
 «i 
 
 
 i 
 
 ... „ a. . , x .. ^ 
 
 ; v_^ 
 
 _._^_ 
 
 aS^k^ 
 
 
^S2^ 
 
 
 CL, 
 
 2 
 o 
 
 iz 
 
 < 
 
 3 
 
 Q 
 !Z 
 
 < 
 
 w 
 
 o 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 tiers named Gunnbjorn was driven by foul 
 weather to some point on the coast of Green- 
 land, where he and his crew contrived „. , 
 
 . . Discovery or 
 
 to pass the winter, their ship being Greenland, 
 locked in ice ; when the spring set them 8?6 
 free, they returned to Iceland. In the year 983 
 
 (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 Aarb<f>ger for Nor disk Oldkyndighed og His tor ie, Copen- 
 hagen, 1887, pp. 293-372. 
 
 Since this chapter was written I have seen an English trans- 
 lation of the valuable paper just mentioned, " Studies on the 
 Vineland Voyages," in Memoir es de la societe royak des anti- 
 quaires 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 Mid- 
 dleton Reeves, London, 1890. This beautiful quarto con- 
 tains phototype plates of the original Icelandic vellums in the 
 Hauh-bok, the MS. AM. 557, and the Flateyar-bok, to- 
 gether with the texts carefully edited, an admirable English 
 l8l 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Eric the Red, a settler upon Oxney (Ox-island) 
 near the mouth of Breidafiord, was outlawed for 
 killing a man in a brawl. Eric then determined 
 to search for the western land which Gunnbjorn 
 had discovered. He set out with a few fol- 
 lowers, 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 Juli- 
 aneshaab. 1 It was fit work for Vikings to pene- 
 trate 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 
 
 translation, and several chapters of critical discussion decid- 
 edly better than anything that has gone before it. On read- 
 ing 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 dis- 
 aster at Hagerstown, Indiana, February 25, 1891. Mr. 
 Reeves was an American scholar of most brilliant promise, 
 only in his thirty-fifth year. 
 
 1 Rink, Danish Greenland, p. 6. 
 182 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 surroundings the place might well be called 
 Greenland, and so Eric named it, for, said he, 
 it is well to have a pleasant name _ . , , 
 
 , r Eric s colony 
 
 if We Would induce people tO COme in Greenland, 
 
 hither. The name thus given by Eric 9 
 to this chosen spot has been extended in mod- 
 ern usage to the whole of the vast continental 
 region north of Davis Strait, for the greater part 
 of which it is a flagrant misnomer. 1 In 986 
 Eric ventured back to Iceland, and was so suc- 
 cessful 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 
 
 1 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 Iceland- 
 ers, he thinks, called it "a green land" because of its ver- 
 dure, 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 P Hat thermom'etrique du globe terrestre, in his 
 (Euvres, torn. v. p. 243. There are reasons, however, for 
 believing that Greenland was warmer in the tenth century 
 than at present. See below, p. 203. 
 183 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Tunnudliorbik fiord, the next deep inlet to the 
 northwest; they called it Ericsfiord. After a 
 while it extended westward as far as immarti- 
 nek, and eastward as far as the site of Friedrich- 
 sthal ; and another distinct settlement of less 
 extent was also made about four hundred miles 
 to the northwest, near the present site of God- 
 thaab. The older settlement, which began at 
 Igaliko fiord, was known as the East Bygd ; x 
 1 The map is reduced from Rafn's Antiquitates Americana, 
 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 expedi- 
 tion sent out by the Danish government, under the very able 
 and intelligent Captain Graah, demonstrated that both settle- 
 ments 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 ex- 
 tremely 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 " ca- 
 184 
 
60 
 
 Mwijvs a 
 
 Ruined* Churches a 
 
 P 
 
 
 
 THE EAST BYGD, OR EASTERN SETTL! 
 
gST OF THE NORTHMEN IN GREENLAND 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 the younger settlement, near Godthaab, was 
 called the West Bygd. 
 
 This colonization of Greenland by the North- 
 men 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. Geographi- 
 cally 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 discov- 
 ery 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. 
 
 thedral" (a view of which is given below, p. 257), was 
 at Kakortok. The village of Gardar, which gave its name to 
 the bishopric, was at Kaksiarsuk, at the northeastern extrem- 
 ity 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 Ni- 
 colo Zeno (see below, p. 276), is supposed by Mr. Major 
 to have been situated near the Iisblink at the bottom of Tes- 
 sermiut fiord, between the east shore of the fiord and the 
 small lake indicated on the map. 
 I8 5 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 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 an- 
 chor and started after him to Greenland, but 
 encountered foggy weather, and sailed on for 
 voyage of many days by guesswork without see- 
 Bjami Her- ; n g s u n Q r 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 explora- 
 tions 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 be- 
 fore him, and after some further searching found 
 his way to his father's new home. 1 On the route 
 
 1 In Herjulfsfiord, at the entrance to which the modern 
 Friedrichsthal is situated. Across the fiord from Friedrichsthal 
 186 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 he more than once sighted land on the lar- 
 board. 
 
 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 1 spent a year or two in 
 Norway about 998. Roman missionary priests 
 were then preaching up and down the Conversion 
 land, and had converted the king, Olaf £££%£. 
 Tryggvesson, great-grandson of Har- tianit y 
 old Fairhair. Leif became a Christian and was 
 baptized, 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 
 
 a ruined church stands upon the cape formerly known as Her- 
 julfsness. See map. 
 
 1 "Leifrvar mikill madhr ok sterkr, manna skoruligastr at 
 sja, vitr madhr ok godhr hofsmadhr um alia hluti," i. e. 
 " Leif was a large man and strong, of noble aspect, prudent 
 and moderate in all things." Ram, p. 33. 
 
 187 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 cheer than the New Jerusalem, with its streets of 
 gold. 
 
 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 dis- 
 covery. 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. 
 Leif Erics- ^ e sane d fr° m Brattahlid — prob- 
 son's voyage, ably in the summer or early autumn 
 
 of the year iooo 1 — with a crew of 
 five and thirty men. Some distance to the south- 
 ward they came upon a barren country covered 
 with big flat stones, so that they called it Hellu- 
 
 land, or " slate-land." There is little 
 
 Heliuland - , , , , . , 
 
 room tor 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 Newfound- 
 land. Thence, keeping generally to the south- 
 ward, our explorers came after some days to 
 
 1 The year seems to have been that in which Christianity 
 was definitely established by law in Iceland, viz., a. d. iooo. 
 The chronicle Thattr Eireks Raudha is careful about verify- 
 ing its dates by checking one against another. See Rafh, 
 p. 15. The most masterly work on the conversion of the Scan- 
 dinavian 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. 
 
 188 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 ■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 
 
 , rr . Markland 
 
 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 ac- 
 cordingly his men put up some comfortable 
 wooden huts or booths. One day one of the 
 party, a " south country " man, whose name 
 was Tyrker, 1 came in from a ramble in the neigh- 
 
 1 The name means "Turk," and has served as a touch- 
 stone for the dulness 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 
 189 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 bourhood making grimaces and talking to him- 
 self in his own language (probably German), 
 viniand which his comrades did not under- 
 stand. 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 Viniand. 
 The winter seems to have passed off very com- 
 fortably. 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 Viniand in about the latitude 
 of Boston. But their expressions do not admit 
 of any such precise construction ; and when we 
 
 against Turks, and so have got a sobriquet, just as Thorhall 
 Gamlason, after returning from Viniand to Iceland, was ever 
 afterward known as "the Vinlander." That did not mean 
 that he was an American redskin. See below, p. 235. 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 Viniand 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 Heims- 
 kringla, vol. i. p. 168. 
 
 190 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 scien- 
 tific exploring expedition. 
 
 In the spring of iooi Leif returned to Green- 
 land with a cargo of timber. 1 The voyage made 
 much talk. Leif s brother Thorvald caught the 
 inspiration, 2 and, borrowing Leif 's ship, sailed 
 in iooa, and succeeded in finding Vinland and 
 Leif 's huts, where his men spent two winters. 
 In the intervening summer they went Voyages of 
 on an exploring expedition along the xwdn 3 "' 1 
 coast, fell in with some savages in ca- 1002-05 
 noes, 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 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 " Jam crebri de Leivi in Vinlandiam profectione sermones 
 serebantur, Thorvaldus vero, frater ejus, nimis pauca terras 
 loca explorata fuisse judicavit. " Rafh, p. 39. 
 
 I 9 I 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 In the course of the next summer, 1006, there 
 came to Brattahlid from Iceland a notable per- 
 sonage, 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 wed- 
 ding at Brattahlid. Persuaded by his adventurous 
 Thorfinn bride, whose spirit had been roused 
 andhisun- by the reports from Vinland and by 
 successfiii at- ner former unsuccessful attempt to 
 
 tempt to _ . . _„ r - x 
 
 found a coi- find it, i horfinn now undertook to 
 
 hnd inVin ~ VlSit tllat countI 7 m force sufficient 
 1007-10 for founding a colony there. Accord- 
 ingly in the spring of 1007 he started with 
 three or four ships, 1 carrying one hundred and 
 
 1 Three is the number usually given, but at least four of 
 their ships would be needed for so large a company ; and be- 
 sides 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 
 192 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 sixty men, several women, and quite a cargo 
 of cattle. In the course of that year his son 
 Snorro was born in Vinland, 1 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 fright- 
 ened by his cattle as the Aztecs were in later 
 days by the Spanish horses. 2 The chance bel- 
 lowing 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 ioio the surviv- 
 ors returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber 
 
 had abandoned their enterprise. A further reference to him 
 will be made below, p. 235. 
 
 1 To this boy Snorro many eminent men have traced their 
 ancestry, — bishops, university professors, governors of Ice- 
 land, 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. 
 
 2 Compare the alarm of the Wampanoag Indians in 1603 
 at the sight of Martin Pring's mastiff. Winsor, Narr. and 
 Crit. Hist., iii. 174. 
 
 m 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 1 
 
 Among Karlsefni's companions on this me- 
 morable expedition was one Thorvard, with his 
 wife Freydis, a natural daughter of Eric the Red. 
 
 1 The fate of Bjarni was pathetic and noble. It was de- 
 cided 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, Rafh, pp. 184-186. 
 194 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 About the time of their return to Greenland in 
 the summer of ioio, a ship arrived from Nor- 
 way, commanded by two brothers, Helgi and 
 Finnbogi. During the winter a new expedition 
 was planned, and in the summer of Freydis, and 
 i on two ships set sail for Vinland, ^J^f 3 
 one with Freydis, Thorvard, and a wu-u 
 crew of 30 men, the other with Helgi and Finn- 
 bogi, and a crew of 3 5 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 carry- 
 ing in their provisions and tools, when Freydis, 
 arriving soon afterward, ordered them off the 
 premises. They had no right, she said, to oc- 
 cupy her brother's houses. So they went out 
 and built other huts for their party a little far- 
 ther 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 
 
 IQ 5 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 blood. With his followers he made a night at- 
 tack 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 Thor- 
 vard] that their posterity will never thrive.' So 
 it went that nobody thought anything of them 
 save evil from that time." 
 
 With this gruesome tale ends all account of 
 Norse attempts at exploring or colonizing Vin- 
 land, though references to Vinland by no means 
 end here. 1 Taking the narrative as a whole, it 
 
 1 The stories of Gudleif Gudkugsson and Ari Marsson, 
 with the fanciful speculations about " Hvitramannaland " 
 196 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 seems to me a sober, straightforward, and emi- 
 nently probable story. We may not be able 
 to say with confidence exactly where The whole 
 such places as Markland and Vin- st <"T ise ™- 
 
 r , nently prob- 
 
 land were, but it is clear that the able 
 coasts visited on these southerly and southwest- 
 erly 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 verisimili- 
 tude, as I shall presently show. 
 
 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 col- 
 ony 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 accom- 
 plishing the voyage thither from Iceland. That 
 island is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, 
 and we know, moreover, that Norse sailors 
 
 and " Irland it Mikla," do not seem worthy of notice in 
 this connection. They may be found in De Costa, op. cit. 
 pp. 1 59-1 77 ; and see Reeves, The Finding of Wineland the 
 Good, chap. v. 
 
 197 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 achieved more difficult things than penetrating 
 
 the fiords of southern Greenland. Upon the 
 
 island of Kingitorsook in Baffin's Bay (7a 55' 
 
 N., c6° c' W.) near Upernavik, in a 
 
 Voyage into . J J ' r * . 
 
 Baffin's Bay, region supposed to have been unvis- 
 1135 ited 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. 1 
 
 In order to appreciate how such daring voy- 
 ages 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 Sande- 
 a viking fiord in Norway, and may be seen at 
 shipdiscov- the museum in Christiania. Its pagan 
 
 ered at Sande- 111 1 • 1 • • 1 1 • 
 
 fiord, in Nor- owner had been buried in it, and his 
 way 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 fu- 
 neral according to the ancient Norse custom, 
 lay scattered about. This craft has been so well 
 1 Laing, Heimskringla, i. 152. 
 
 198 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 described by Colonel Higginson, 1 that I may as 
 well quote the passage in full : — 
 
 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 Description 
 of thick oak beams, and there was no of the ^p 
 trace of any metallic sheathing ; but an iron an- 
 chor 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 toward the stern to allow the blades of 
 the oars to be put through from inside. The 
 most peculiar thing about the ship was the rud- 
 der, which was on the starboard or right side, 
 
 1 See his Larger History of the United States, pp. 32-34. 
 
 199 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 this side being originally called c 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 pro- 
 jected 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 c Heimskringla,' giv- 
 ing 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 Ser- 
 pents or Cranes. The ship itself was often so 
 200 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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. 1 These masts have no 
 standing rigging, and are taken down when not 
 in use ; and this was probably the practice of 
 the Vikings." 
 
 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, 
 
 1 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. 
 
 20I 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 but it is their success in founding a colony which 
 could last for more than four centuries in that 
 inhospitable climate. The question is some- 
 The climate times asked whether the climate of 
 of Greenland Greenland may not have undergone 
 some change within the last thousand years. 1 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 I var Bard- 
 sen, 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. 2 This slow southward 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 Bardsen, Descriptio Grcenlandia, appended to Major's 
 
 202 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 extension of the polar ice-sheet upon the east 
 of Greenland seems still to be going on at the 
 present day. 1 It is therefore not at all improb- 
 able, but on the contrary quite probable, that a 
 thousand years ago the mean annual tempera- 
 ture of the tip end of Greenland, at Cape Fare- 
 well, was a few degrees higher than now. 2 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 Julianes- 
 haab. 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 
 
 Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, etc., pp. 40, 41 ; and see 
 below, p. 278. 
 
 1 Zahrtmann, Journal 'of Royal Geographical Society, Lon- 
 don, 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 Zoology 
 at Harvard College, Cambridge, 1882, vol. vii. According 
 to Professor Whitney there has also been a deterioration in 
 the climate of Iceland. 
 
 2 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 phe- 
 nomena 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. 
 
 203 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 6000 
 persons, " herds of cattle were kept which even 
 yielded produce for exportation to Europe." l 
 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 ex- 
 ports, which were chiefly whale oil, eider down, 
 and skins of seals, foxes, and white bears. 
 
 When once the Northmen had found their 
 way to Cape Farewell, it would have been mar- 
 vellous 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 
 with the it needed only a stiff northeasterly 
 once in™" breeze, with persistent clouds and fog, 
 Greenland, to i anc j a wes tward bound " dragon " 
 
 the discovery ^ 
 
 oftheAmeri- anywhere from Cape Race to Cape 
 Z7?oT Cod. This is what appears to have 
 inevitable happened to Bjarni Herjulfsson in 
 986, and something quite like it happened to 
 Henry Hudson in 1609. 2 Curiosity is a motive 
 
 1 Rink's Danish Greenland, pp. 27, 96, 97. 
 
 2 See Read's Historical Inquiry concerning Henry Hudson, 
 Albany, 1866, p. 160. 
 
 204 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 tim- 
 ber 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 pro- 
 fitable. 1 As Laing says, "to go in voyages for 
 quest of the wooded countries to the timber 
 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." 2 
 
 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 narra- 
 tive 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 ex- 
 pectations we shall find the points of verisimili- 
 
 1 " Nu tekst umrsdha at nyju um Vinlandsferdh, thviat su 
 ferdh thikir basdhi godh til fjar ok virdhingar," ;'. e. " Now 
 they began to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for the 
 voyage thither was both gainful and honourable." Rafh, p. 65. 
 
 2 Heimskringla, i. 168. 
 
 205 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 tude numerous. To begin with the least sig- 
 nificant, somewhere on our northeastern coast 
 Ear-marks the voyagers found many foxes. 1 
 of truth in These animals, to be sure, are found 
 
 the narrative . . , , 
 
 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 ; medi- 
 aeval writers were blissfully ignorant of all canons 
 of probability in such matters. 2 But our narra- 
 tors 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 origi- 
 
 1 " Fjoldi var thar melrakka," i. e. " ibi vulpium magnus 
 numerus erat." Rafh, p. 138. 
 
 5 It is extremely difficult for an impostor to concoct a nar- 
 rative 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. 4), in supremely blissful igno- 
 rance introduces oxen, sheep, and silk-worms, as well as the 
 knowledge of smelting iron, into pre-Columbian America. 
 
 206 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 nated in the imagination of a European writer 
 will suffice to prove it. 
 
 Let us observe, then, that on coming to 
 Markland they " slew a bear ; " * the river and 
 lake (or bay) in Vinland abounded with salmon 
 bigger than LeiPs people had ever seen ; 2 on 
 the coast they caught halibut ; 3 they came to 
 an island where there were so many eider ducks 
 breeding that they could hardly avoid treading 
 on their eggs ; 4 and, as already observed, it was 
 
 1 "Thar i drapu their einn bjorn," /. e. "in qua ursum 
 interfecerunt," id. p. 138. 
 
 a " Hvorki skorti thar lax i anni ne i vatninu, ok staerr'a 
 lax enn their hefdhi fyrr sedh," i. e. "ibi neque in fluvio 
 neque in lacu deerat salmonum copia, et quidem majoris cor- 
 poris quam antea vidissent," id. p. 32. 
 
 8 " Helgir fiskar," i. e. " sacri pisces," id. p. 148. The 
 Danish phrase is " helleflyndre," *. e. "holy flounder." 
 The English halibut is halt = 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 Diet. 
 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, Islindische Volkssagen der Gegenwart, 
 Leipsic, i860, p. 195). 
 
 4 " Sva var morg a;dhr i eynni, at varla matti ganga fyri 
 eggjum," /. e. "tantus in insula anatum mollissimarum nu- 
 merus 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, 
 207 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 because of the abundance of wild grapes that 
 Leif named the southernmost country he visited 
 Vinland. 
 
 From the profusion of grapes — such that the 
 ship's stern boat is said on one occasion to have 
 been filled with them x — we get a clue, though 
 less decisive than could be wished, to the loca- 
 „ , tion of Vinland. The extreme north- 
 
 Nortnem . . . 
 
 limit of the ern 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. 2 Near this northern limit, however, 
 wild grapes are by no means plenty ; so that 
 the coast upon which Leif wintered must appar- 
 ently have been south of Cape Breton. Dr. 
 Storm, who holds that Vinland was on the 
 southern coast of Nova Scotia, has collected 
 
 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. 
 
 ' Sva er sagt at eptirbatr theirra var fylldr af vin- 
 So it-is-said that afterboat their was filled of vine- 
 berjum." j 
 berries. } Rafe > P- 3 6 - 
 
 2 Storm, "Studies on the Vinland Voyages," Memoir es 
 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. 
 
 208 
 
 1 r «< 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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. 1 
 
 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, Length of the 
 nevertheless since that length attracted wblter ^ 
 the attention of the voyagers, as something re- 
 markable, 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 kins- 
 men in Dublin, and in Rouen as well, were 
 common enough. Halifax lies about opposite 
 Bordeaux, and Boston a litde 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 Vin- 
 land a latitude south of Cape Breton. 
 
 The next point to be observed is the mention 
 
 1 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. 
 209 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 of " self-sown wheat-fields." * 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 
 
 Indian corn ,, . , , . 
 
 "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 gen- 
 erally 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 re- 
 gards the position of Vinland, the presence of 
 
 1 J " Sjalfsana hveitiakra." ") 
 ( Self-sown wheat-acres. ) ' *' **'' 
 
 2IO 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 maize seems to indicate a somewhat lower lati- 
 tude 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 Carrier at Hoche- 
 laga, on the site of Montreal (45 30'). A pre- 
 sumption is thus raised in favour of the opinion 
 that Vinland was not farther north than Massa- 
 chusetts Bay. 1 
 
 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 mis- 
 leading. We are told that it seemed to Leif 's 
 people that cattle would be able to winter 
 pass the winter out of doors there, for weather in 
 there was no frost and the grass was 
 not much withered. 2 On the other hand, Thor- 
 
 1 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" {Xizania aquatica). Memoires, etc., p. 356. 
 But his argument is weakened by excess of ingenuity. 
 
 2 " 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 gros," i. e. " tanta 
 autem erat terra bonitas, ut inde intelligere esset, pecora hieme 
 
 211 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Ann's people found the winter severe, and suf- 
 fered from cold and hunger. 1 Taken in connec- 
 tion 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 with- 
 out frost and with grass scarcely withered. In- 
 deed, 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 se- 
 vere winter {magna hiems) is of course familiar 
 enough anywhere along the northeastern coast 
 of America. 
 
 On the whole, we may say with some confi- 
 dence that the place described by our chroniclers 
 „ . , , . as Vinland was situated somewhere 
 
 Probable situ- 
 ation of Vin- between Point Judith and Cape Bre- 
 ton ; possibly we may narrow our lim- 
 its and say that it was somewhere between Cape 
 Cod and Cape Ann. But the latter conclusion 
 
 pabulo non indigere posse, nullis incidentibus algoribus hie- 
 malibus, et graminibus parum flaccescentibus." Rafh, p. 
 32. 
 
 1 " Thar voru their urn vetrinn ; ok gjordhist vetr mikill, 
 en ekki fyri unnit ok gjordhist illt til matarins, ok tokust af 
 veidhirnar," i. e. "hie hiemarunt ; cum vero magna inci- 
 deret hiems, nullumque provisum esset alimentum, cibus ccepit 
 deficere capturaque cessabat." Id. p. 174. 
 212 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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. 1 While by such 
 narrowing, moreover, the question may acquire 
 more interest as a bone of contention among 
 local antiquarians, its value for the general his- 
 torian is not increased. 
 
 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 medi- 
 aeval European. We must bear in mind that 
 "savages," whether true savages or "Savages" 
 people in the lower status of barba- ™^™ to 
 rism, were practically unknown to Eu- Europeans 
 ropeans 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 
 
 1 A favourite method of determining the exact spots visited 
 by the Northmen has been to compare their statements re- 
 garding the shape and trend of the coasts, their bays, head- 
 lands, 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 sum- 
 mer 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. 
 
 213 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Europeans knew nothing whatever about peo- 
 ple who would show surprise at the sight of an 
 iron tool 1 or frantic terror at the voice of a bull, 
 or who would eagerly trade off valuable pro- 
 perty for worthless trinkets. Their imagination 
 might be up to inventing hobgoblins and peo- 
 ple with heads under their shoulders, 2 but it 
 
 1 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 ob- 
 tain 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 Hast- 
 ings, and stone battle-axes by some of the Scots under Wil- 
 liam Wallace at the end of the thirteenth century. Die 
 Italiker in der Poebene, Leipsic, 1879, p. \z. Helbig's 
 statement as to Hastings is confirmed by Freeman, Norman 
 Conquest of England, vol. iii. p. 473. 
 
 a My use of the word "inventing" is, in this connec- 
 tion, 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 
 mediasval imagination, but copied from ancient authors. They 
 may be found in Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. vii., and were men- 
 tioned before his time by Ktesias, as well as by Hecatasus, 
 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 Litera- 
 ture, New York, 1 890, in which this subject is mentioned 
 in connection with the mendacious and medical Ktesias : 
 These stories have probably acquired a literary currency " by 
 214 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 Vin- 
 land eager to give valuable furs 1 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 The natives 
 also to buy weapons, but Thorfinn ofvinIand 
 forbade his men to sell them. One of the na- 
 tives 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. 2 
 
 exercise of the habit, not unknown even to students of sci- 
 ence, 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). 
 
 1 " En that var gravara ok safvali ok allskonar sldnnavara " 
 (Rafh, p. 59), — i. e. gray fur and sable and all sorts of 
 skin wares; in another account, " skinnavdru ok algraskinn," 
 which in the Danish version is " skindvarer og segte graas- 
 kind" (id. p. 150), — /. e. skinwares and genuine gray 
 furs. Carrier in Canada and the Puritans in Massachusetts 
 were not long in finding that the natives had good furs to 
 sell. 
 
 2 Rafh, p. 1 56. 
 
 215 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 One day while they were trading, Thorfinn's 
 bull ran out before them and bellowed, where- 
 upon 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. 1 
 
 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 
 
 1 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 blun- 
 der 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 Amer- 
 ica," 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 fa- 
 miliar 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. 
 
 2l6 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 upper status of barbarism. 1 Who were these 
 natives encountered by Thorfinn ? The North- 
 men called them " Skraelings," a name which 
 one is at first sight strongly tempted to derive 
 from the Icelandic verb skrakja, identical with 
 the English screech. A crowd of excited Indians 
 might most appropriately be termed Screechers. 2 
 This derivation, however, is not correct. The 
 word skrtsling survives in modern Norwegian, 
 and means a feeble or puny or insignificant per- 
 son. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in all Meaning of 
 probability correct, that the name the e P ithet 
 
 . . "Skrselings" 
 
 " Skraelings," as applied to the na- 
 tives of America, had no ethnological signifi- 
 cance, but simply meant " inferior people ; " it 
 gave concise expression to the white man's 
 opinion that they were " a bad lot." In Ice- 
 landic literature the name is usually applied to 
 the Eskimos, and hence it has been rashly in- 
 ferred that Thorfinn found Eskimos in Vin- 
 land. Such was Rafn's opinion, and since his 
 time the commentators have gone off upon a 
 wrong trail and much ingenuity has been 
 
 1 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. 375. 
 
 2 As for Indians, says Cieza de Leon, they are all noisy 
 (alharaquientos). Segunda Parte de la Cronica del Peru, 
 cap. xxiii. 
 
 217 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 wasted. 1 It would be well to remember, how- 
 ever, that the Europeans of the eleventh cen- 
 tury 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 dis- 
 tinctions. 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. 
 
 Our chronicle describes the Skraelings of Vin- 
 land as swarthy in hue, ferocious in aspect, with 
 ugly hair, big eyes, and broad cheeks. 2 This 
 
 1 For example, Dr. De Costa refers to Dr. Abbott's dis- 
 coveries 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 re- 
 treated with it, just as he retreated from Europe. See above, 
 p. 2 1 . There is not the slightest reason for supposing that 
 there were any Eskimos south of Labrador so lately as nine 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 2 " Their voru svartir menn ok illiligir, ok havdhu illt har 
 a hofdhi. Their voru mjok eygdhir ok breidhir i kinnum," 
 ;'. 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. 
 
 2l8 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 Persona i 
 is worthy of note that a very keen ob- appearance of 
 server, Marc Lescarbot, in his minute 
 and elaborate description of the physical ap- 
 pearance of the Micmacs of Acadia, speaks with 
 some emphasis of their large eyes. 1 Dr. Storm 
 quite reasonably suggests that the Norse ex- 
 pression 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. 
 
 These Skraslings 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 after- 
 ward 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 
 
 1 " 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, c5me 
 ceux des anciens Scythes, mais d'une grandeur bien agreable." 
 Lescarbot, Hist aire de la Nouvelle France, Paris, 1 6 1 2, torn, 
 ii. p. 714. 
 
 219 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 how it all happened. 1 We seem to see the 
 stealthy Indian suddenly dealing the death-blow, 
 and then obliged for his own safety to 
 lings of vb- dart away among the trees without re- 
 d£nsT— 'very covering his tomahawk or seizing the 
 ukeiy Aigon- sword. The Skrselings came up the 
 
 quins 11- c 
 
 river or lake in a swarm or canoes, 
 all yelling at the top of their voices {et Mi omnes 
 valde acutum ululabant), and, leaping ashore, 
 began a formidable attack with slings and ar- 
 rows. 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. 2 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 con- 
 trasted with their own keeled boats. 3 
 
 One other point which must be noticed here 
 in connection with the Skraelings is a singular 
 manoeuvre which they are said to have practised 
 
 1 " Hun fann fyrir sermann daudhan, thar var Thorbrandr 
 Snorrason, ok stodh hellusteinn i hofdhi honum ; sverdhit la 
 bert i hja honum," i. e. "Illaincidit in mortuum hominem, 
 Thorbrandum Snorrii filium, cujus capiti lapis planus impactus 
 stetit ; nudus juxta eum gladius jacuit. " Rafe, p. 154. 
 
 2 These Eskimo skin-boats are described in Rink's Danish 
 Greenland, pp. 113, 179. 
 
 8 Cf. Storm, op. cit. pp. 366, 367. 
 220 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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. 1 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 boul- 
 der, 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 
 
 1 " That sa their Karlsefni at Skraelingar ferdhu upp a stong 
 knott stundar mykinn thvi naer til at jafha sem saudharvomb, 
 ok helzt blan at lit, ok fleygdhu af stonginni 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 Skralinga drifa at ser allum me- 
 gin, ok letta eigi, fyrr enn their koma til hamra nokkurra, ok 
 veittu thar vidhrtoku hardha," /. e. " Viderunt Karlsefniani 
 quod Skraelingi longurio sustulerunt globum ingentem, ventri 
 ovillo haud absimilem, colore fere caeruleo ; hunc ex longurio in 
 terram super manum Karlsefhianorum contorserunt, qui ut 
 decidit, dirum sonuit. Hac re terrore perculsus est Karlsefnius 
 suique omnes, ut nihi] aliud cuperent quam fugere et gradum 
 referre sursum secundum fluvium : credebant enim se ab Skrs- 
 lingis undique circumveniri. Hinc non gradum stitere, prius- 
 quam ad rupes quasdam pervenissent, ubi acriter resistebant.'.' 
 Rafh, p. 153. 
 
 221 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 devices in various colours. "It was borne by sev- 
 eral 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 sud- 
 den, it produced consternation and death." 1 
 This is a most remarkable feature in the narra- 
 tive, 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 outland- 
 ish style of fighting ; they retreated along the 
 river bank until they came to a favourable sit- 
 uation 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 per- 
 fectly-clear that we are dealing with Indians. 
 
 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 trust- 
 
 1 Schoolcraft, Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge, Phila- 
 delphia, i860, 6 vols. 4-to, 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. 
 222 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 worthy channel, from the statements of intelli- 
 gent 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 
 
 11 11 i ci The uniped 
 
 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, 1 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. 2 Evidently this discreet 
 
 1 Rafe, p. 160 ; De Costa, p. 134 ; Storm, p. 330. 
 
 2 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. z : "Item homi- 
 
 223 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 " uniped " was impressed with the desirableness 
 of living to fight another day. In a narrative 
 otherwise characterized by sobriety, such an in- 
 stance of fancy, even supposing it to have come 
 down from the original sources, counts for as 
 much or as little as Henry Hudson's descrip- 
 tion of a mermaid. 1 
 
 It is now time for a few words upon the char- 
 acter of the records upon which our story is 
 based. And first, let us remark upon a possible 
 source of misapprehension due to the associa- 
 tions 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 leg- 
 Misleading endary or semi-mythical narratives. 
 7*£:Za To cite a «saga" as authority for a 
 "saga" 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 par- 
 ticular form of the opinion expressed some time 
 ago by a committee of the Massachusetts His- 
 
 num genus qui Monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, mirae 
 pernicitatis ad saltum." Cf. Aulus Gellius, Nodes Attica, 
 viii. 4. 
 
 1 Between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, June 15, 1608. 
 For the description, with its droll details, see Purchas his 
 Pi/grimes, iii. 575. 
 
 224 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 torical Society, — " that there is the same sort 
 of reason for believing in the existence of Leif 
 Ericsson that there is for believing in the ex- 
 istence of Agamemnon. They are both tra- 
 ditions accepted by later writers, and there is 
 no more reason for regarding as true unfortunate 
 the details related about the disco v- ' om P aris ° n ., 
 
 t between Leu 
 
 eries of the former than there is for Ericsson and 
 accepting as historic truth the narra- e amemnon 
 tive contained in the Homeric poems." The 
 report goes on to observe that " it is antece- 
 dently probable that the Northmen discovered 
 America in the early part of the eleventh cen- 
 tury ; 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." 1 The second of these statements is char- 
 acterized 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 unin- 
 structed or uncritical writer since his time. But 
 the first statement is singularly unfortunate. It 
 would be difficult to find a comparison more in- 
 appropriate than that between Agamemnon and 
 Leif, between the Iliad and the Saga of Eric the 
 Red. The story of the Trojan War and its he- 
 roes, as we have it in Homer and the Athenian 
 
 i Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc, December, 1887. 
 225 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 dramatists, is pure folk-lore as regards form, 
 and chiefly folk-lore as regards contents. It 
 The story of is in a high degree probable that this 
 the Trojan mass of folk-lore surrounds a kernel 
 have\, is of plain fact, that in times long before 
 purefoik-iore 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. 1 
 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 phra- 
 seology 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 
 
 1 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 Myth-Makers, vii., and cf. Freeman on 
 " The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early English 
 History," in his Historical Essays, i. 1-39. 
 226 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 customs as often as the Irish legends of Finn 
 M'Cumhail. 1 
 
 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, TheSagaof 
 not in the least like a fairy-tale, but |^ f^! d 
 often much like a ship's log. What- lore 
 ever 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 Ho- 
 meric fabric the supernatural is warp and woof. 
 To assert a likeness between two kinds of lit- 
 erature so utterly different is to go very far 
 astray. 
 
 As already observed, I suspect that mislead- 
 ing associations with the word " saga " may 
 have exerted an unconscious influence in pro- 
 ducing this particular kind of blunder, — for it 
 is nothing less than a blunder. Resemblance is 
 tacitly assumed between the Iliad and an Ice- 
 landic saga. Well, between the Iliad and some 
 Icelandic sagas there is a real and strong resem- 
 
 1 Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, pp. 1 2, 204, 
 303 ; Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 
 203-311. 
 
 227 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 blance. In truth these sagas are divisible into 
 two well-marked and sharply contrasted classes. 
 In the one class belong the Eddie Lays, and the 
 m thkai and mythical sagas, such as the Volsunga, 
 historical the stories of Ragnar, Frithiof, and 
 others; and along with these, though 
 totally different in source, we may for our pre- 
 sent 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 litera- 
 ture 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 nu- 
 merous biographies and annals. 1 These writings 
 give us history, and often very good history in- 
 deed. " Saga " meant simply any kind of litera- 
 ture in narrative form ; the good people of Ice- 
 land 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 
 
 1 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. 
 228 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 word to the Arthur legends and to William of 
 Malmesbury's judicious and accurate chronicles, 
 and call them alike " stories." 
 
 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 re- 
 spects the better. It is found in two The west ern 
 vellums, that of the great collection °\ Hauk . s - 
 
 / A TV X \ 1 °°' C VerS10n 
 
 known as Hauks-bok (AM. 544), and of Eric the 
 that which is simply known as AM. Red ' s Saga 
 557 from its catalogue number in Ami Mag- 
 nusson'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 ver- 
 sion 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. 1 
 
 The northern version is that which was made 
 about the year 1387 by the priest Jon Thordhar- 
 son, and contained in the famous compilation 
 
 1 It is printed in Rafh, pp. 84—187, and in Gronlands his- 
 toriske Mindesmarker, 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. 
 229 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 known as the Flateyar-bok, or " Flat Island 
 Book." 1 This priest was editing the saga of 
 The northern K j n g 9 laf Tryggvesson, which is Con- 
 or Fiateyar- tained in that compilation, and inas- 
 
 bok version . T . r _ . , 
 
 much as Eeif 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 in- 
 serted 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." 2 
 
 Now the older version, written at the begin- 
 ning 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 con- 
 
 1 It belonged to a man who lived on Flat Island, in one of 
 the Iceland fiords. 
 
 2 It is printed in Rafh, pp. 1—76, under the title " Thsttir 
 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. 
 
 23O 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 tains no improbable statements, unless it is 
 nearly contemporary with the events which it re- 
 cords. Such was the rule laid down by Presumption 
 the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, s a our« snot 
 and it is a very good rule ; the proper contemporary 
 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. 1 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 docu- 
 ment 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 per- 
 ished 2 there may well have been earlier copies 
 of Eric the Red's Saga. 
 
 1 Lewis's Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman 
 History, 2 vols., London, 1855. 
 
 a And notably in that terrible fire of October, 1728, which 
 231 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 
 Hauk Er- numerals into Iceland. In those days 
 w"taT- nd the !over of books, if he would add 
 scripts 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 him- 
 self, and also employed two clerks in the same 
 kind of work. 1 
 
 consumed the University Library at Copenhagen, and broke 
 the heart of the noble collector of manuscripts, Ami Magnus- 
 son. 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, Vig- 
 fusson thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be 
 there " awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann." 
 Sturlunga Saga, p. cliv. 
 
 1 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 Vigfus- 
 son, op. cit. p. clxi. 
 
 232 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 pre- 
 served in its integrity, with so little extravagance 
 of statement and so many marks of truthfulness 
 in details foreign to ordinary Icelandic experi- 
 ence, if it had been entrusted to oral tradition 
 alone. One might as well try to imag- The story is 
 ine Drake's " World Encompassed " " ot ^ t0 
 
 i nave been 
 
 handed down by oral tradition from preserved to 
 the days of Queen Elizabeth to the b/ond to- 
 days of Queen Victoria. Such trans- tiononl > r 
 mission 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 mat- 
 ter 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, in- 
 stead 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 
 
 *33 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 — and quite carefully and faithfully withal — 
 from some older vellum not now forthcom- 
 ing. 
 
 As we have no clue, however, beyond the 
 internal evidence, to the age or character of the 
 sources from which Hauk copied, there is no- 
 Aiiusions to thing left for us to do but to look into 
 odMsdocu- other Icelandic documents, to see if 
 ments 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 un- 
 derstand such references, and that it is not 
 necessary to interrupt his story in order to ex- 
 plain them. Such incidental references imply 
 the existence, during the interval between the 
 Vinland voyages and H auk's manuscript, of 
 many intermediate links of sound testimony 
 that have since dropped out of sight ; and there- 
 fore they go far toward removing whatever 
 presumption may be alleged against Hauk's 
 manuscript because of its distance from the 
 events. 
 
 Now the Eyrbyggja Saga, written between 
 1230 and 1260, is largely devoted to the settle- 
 ment of Iceland, and is full of valuable notices 
 of the heathen institutions and customs of the 
 tenth century. The Eyrbyggja, having occa- 
 234 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 sion to speak of Thorbrand Snorrason, ob- 
 serves incidentally that he went from Green- 
 land to Vinland with Karlsefni and Eyrbyggja 
 was killed in a battle with the Skrae- Sa s a 
 lings. 1 We have already mentioned the death 
 of this Thorbrand, and how Freydis found his 
 body in the woods. 
 
 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 Hel- 
 luland and Vinland. 2 One of these tracts men- 
 tions the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn. It forms 
 part of an essay called " Guide to the Holy 
 Land," by Nikulas Ssemundsson, ab- The abbot 
 bot of Thvera, in the north of Ice- Nikula6 ' etc - 
 land, who died 1159. This Nikulas was curi- 
 ous in matters of geography, and had travelled 
 extensively. 
 
 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 
 
 1 Vigfiisson, 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 Vinkuder. " See above, pp. 190, 
 192. 
 
 3 Werlauf, Symbolts ad Geogr. Medii jEvi, Copenhagen, 
 1820. 
 
 235 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 priest, born in 1067, was the founder of histori- 
 cal writing in Iceland. He was the principal 
 author of the " Landnama-bok," already men- 
 tioned as a work of thorough and 
 
 Ari Frodhi . . Ti i • 
 
 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. 1 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. 
 
 Unfortunately Ari's Islendinga-bok has per- 
 ished. 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 abridg- 
 ment or epitome of his great book, and this 
 epitome, commonly known as " Libellus Islan- 
 
 1 For a critical estimate of Ari's literary activity and the 
 extent of his work, the reader is referred to Mobius, Are's 
 Islanderbuch, Leipsic, 1869 ; Maurer, " Uber Ari Thorgils- 
 son und sein Islanderbuch," in Germania, xv.; Olsen, Ari 
 Thorgilsson hinn Frodhi, Reykjavik, 1889, pp. 214-240. 
 236 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 dorum," still survives. In it Ari makes brief 
 mention of Greenland, and refers to his pater- 
 nal 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 Ar i' S signifi- 
 eleventh century, had visited Green- cant allusion 
 land 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 im- 
 plements ; so from this one might conclude that 
 people of the kind who inhabited Vinland and 
 were known by the (Norse) Greenlanders as 
 Skrselings must have roamed about there." * Ob- 
 serve 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 pre- 
 sence. But when Ari wrote the above passage, 
 
 1 " Their fiindo thar manna vister bsethi 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 
 Grasnlendinger calla Skrelinga," i. e. "invenerunt ibi, tarn 
 in orientali quam occidentali terras parte, humanas habitationis 
 vestigia, navicularum fragmenta et opera fabrilia ex lapide, ex 
 quo intelligi potest, ibi versatum esse nationem quje Vinlan- 
 diam incoluit quamque Graenlandi Skraelingos appellant." 
 Rafn, p. 20 7 » 
 
 237 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 the memory of Vinland and its fierce Skrselings 
 was still fresh, and Ari very properly inferred 
 from the archaeological remains in Greenland 
 that a people similar (in point of barbarism) to 
 the Skrselings 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. 
 
 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 Mars- 
 son's voyage to a place in the western ocean 
 near Vinland ; * the only point in this allusion 
 which need here concern us is that Vinland is 
 tacitly assumed to be a known geographical sit- 
 other refer- uation to which others may be re- 
 ences ferred. The second reference occurs 
 
 in one of those elaborate and minutely specific 
 genealogies in the Landnama-bok : " Their son 
 was Thordhr Hest-hofdhi, father of Karlsefni, 
 who found Vinland the Good, Snorri's father," 
 etc. 2 The third reference occurs in the Kristni 
 
 1 Landnama-bok, pt. ii. ch. xxii. s Id. pt. iii. ch. x. 
 2 3 8 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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," i. from having rescued a shipwrecked 
 crew off the coast of Greenland, a. from having 
 discovered " Vinland the Good." 1 From these 
 brief allusions, and from the general relation in 
 which Ari Frodhi stood to later writers, I sus- 
 pect that if the greater Islendinga-bok had sur- 
 vived 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. 2 
 
 1 Kristni Saga, apud Biskupa Sogur, Copenhagen, 1858, 
 vol. i. p. 20. 
 
 s 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 ver- 
 sions are such as to show that Jon Th6rdharson did not copy 
 from Hauk, but followed some other version not now forth- 
 coming. Jon mentions six voyages in connection with 
 Vinland: 1. Bjarni Herjulfsson ; z. Leif; 3. Thorvald ; 
 4. Thorstein and Gudrid ; 5. Thorfinn Karlsefhi ; 6. Frey- 
 dis. Hauk, on the other hand, mentions only the two princi- 
 pal 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 Thor- 
 finn, and mixes his adventures with the events of Thorfinn' s 
 
 139 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 The testimony of Adam of Bremen brings us 
 yet one generation nearer to the Vinland voy- 
 Adamof ages, and is very significant. Adam 
 Bremen was mucn 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 pre- 
 decessor. In prosecuting his studies, Adam 
 
 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 faith- 
 fully 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 work- 
 ing 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 
 Tubingen school would call " tendenz,'" impairing and ob- 
 scuring 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. 
 
 24O 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 voy- 
 age 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 circum- 
 stances ; 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 ac- 
 count 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 ex- 
 aggerated 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, like- 
 
 241 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 wise, 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 guesswork, but 
 upon " trustworthy reports {certa relatione) of 
 the Danes." 
 
 Scanty as it is, this single item of strictly con- 
 temporary 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. 1 The unvary- 
 ing character of the tradition, in its essential de- 
 tails, 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 
 
 1 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 Eccksiastica, iv. Z9), 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 1 140. 
 
 242 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 not derived from an inspection of Icelandic doc- 
 uments. 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 ... . 
 
 ' ^ Adam s mis- 
 
 misconceived the situation of Vinland, conception of 
 and imagined it far up in the frozen e s,tuatlon 
 North. After his mention of Vinland, the con- 
 tinental 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 accom- 
 plished 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 ! 1 Thus the worthy Adam, while telling the 
 
 1 The passage from Adam of Bremen deserves to be quoted 
 in full : " Przeterea unam adhuc insulam [regionam] recitavit 
 p. e. Svendus rex] a multis in eo repertam oceano, qua? dici- 
 tur Vinland, eo quod ibi vites sponte nascantur, vinum bonum 
 gerentes [ferentes] ; nam et fruges ibi non seminatas abun- 
 dare, non fabulosa opinione, sed certa comperimus relatione 
 Danorum. Post quam insulam terra nulla invenitur habitabilis 
 in illo oceano, sed omnia quas ultra sunt glacie intolerabili ac 
 caligine immensa plena sunt ; cujus rei Marcianus ita meminit : 
 ultra Thyle, inquiens, navigare unius diei mare concretum est. 
 
 243 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 hospi- 
 table to strange yarns. Adam's readers gener- 
 ally 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. 1 We shall do well to bear 
 
 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. Ecclesi- 
 astica, 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 Ram, p. 339. 
 " Regionam " and " ferentes " in the above extract are vari- 
 ant readings found in some editions. 
 
 1 " Det har imidlertid ikke forhindret de senere fbrfattere, 
 der benyttede Adam, fra at blive mistamksomme, og saalasnge 
 Adams beretning stod alene, har man i regelen vasgret sig for 
 at tro den. Endog den norske forfatter, der skrev * Historia 
 Norvegiae ' og som foruden Adam vel ogsaa har kjendt de 
 hjemlige sagn om Vinland, maa have anseet beretningen for 
 fabelagtig og derfor forbigaaet den ; han kjendte altfor godt 
 Grjjnland som et nordligt isfyldt Po^arland til at ville tro 
 paa, at i naerheden fandtes et Vinland." Storm, in Aarbfger 
 
 244 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 this in mind when we come to consider the pos- 
 sibility of Columbus having obtained from 
 Adam of Bremen any hint in the least likely to 
 be of use in his own enterprise. 1 
 
 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 summary of 
 we are required to account. That i^ ar e ument 
 document contains unmistakable knowledge of 
 some things which medijeval 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 New- 
 foundland. It tells an eminently probable story 
 in a simple, straightforward way, agreeing in its 
 details with what we know of the North Ameri- 
 can coast between Point Judith and Cape Breton. 
 Its general accuracy in the statement and group- 
 ing 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 writ- 
 ing that their historic records during the Middle 
 Ages were, as the late Sir Richard Burton truly 
 
 for Nor disk Oldkyndighed, etc., Copenhagen, 1887, p. 
 300. 
 
 1 See below, vol. ii. p. 61. 
 245 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 observed, more complete than those of any other 
 country in Europe. 1 It is probable that the facts 
 mentioned in Hauk's document rested upon 
 some kind of a written basis as early as the elev- 
 enth 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 de- 
 monstration. 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 begin- 
 ning of this discussion, but at the end seems 
 quite solid and worthy of respect. The narra- 
 tive 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 docu- 
 ment, 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 
 1 Burton, Ultima Thule, London, 1875, i. 237. 
 246 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 to the south of it ? Quite contrary to common 
 sense, I should say. 
 
 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 ingen- 
 ious antiquarians have now and then Absurd spec- 
 tried to prove more than facts will war- "^Tafti- 
 rant. It is peculiarly a case in which quarians 
 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. Pick- 
 wick at Cobham ; 1 and when it was attempted, 
 
 1 See Pickwick Papers, chap. xi. I am indebted to Mr. 
 Tillinghast, of Harvard University Library, for calling my at- 
 tention 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 Presi- 
 dent Washington visited Cambridge in the fall of 1 789, 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 inscrip- 
 tion 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 
 247 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 some sixty years ago, to prove that Governor 
 Arnold's old stone windmill at Newport was a 
 
 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 men- 
 tioned 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 trans- 
 actions, 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 car- 
 ried with them, on the smooth surface they wrote in a way that 
 was generallyunderstood 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 char- 
 acters 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 ob- 
 servation 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 discus- 
 sion upon the Dighton rock inscription," says Colonel Mallery, 
 248 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 tower built by the Northmen, 1 no wonder if the 
 exposure of this rather laughable notion should 
 have led many people to suppose that the story 
 
 " 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 1 809 
 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 Ram'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, " II 
 est des recherches qui ne peuvent s'executer que pres des 
 sources memes." Examen critique, etc., torn. ii. p. 102. 
 
 In old times, I may add, such vagaries were usually saddled 
 upon the Phoenicians, until since Ram's time the Northmen 
 have taken their place as the pack-horses for all sorts of anti- 
 quarian " conjecture." 
 
 1 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 Rafh and the Royal Society of An- 
 tiquaries 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. 
 249 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 
 There is no buildings there. The distinction im- 
 reason for plicitly drawn by Adam of Bremen, 
 that the who narrates the colonization of Ice- 
 fountd 7 land and Greenland, and then goes on 
 colony in to speak of Vinland, not as colonized, 
 but simply as discovered, is a distinc- 
 tion amply borne out by our chronicles. No- 
 where is there the slightest hint of a colony or 
 settlement established in Vinland. On the con- 
 trary, 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 withstand- 
 ing the Indians than the Englishmen of the 
 seventeenth ; and at the former period there ex- 
 isted no cause for emigration from Norway and 
 Iceland at all comparable to the economic, po- 
 litical, and religious circumstances which, in a 
 later age, sent thousands of Englishmen to Vir- 
 ginia and New England. The founding of col- 
 onies in America in the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries was no pastime ; it was a tale of 
 250 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 un- 
 mistakably as the colony of Greenland ? Ar- 
 chaeological 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 Noarchaoio- 
 of the Northmen's presence here, at ^ e "^X 
 all worthy of credence, has ever been men have 
 
 r j *-r»i • . 11 c been found 
 
 found. The writers who have, from soutn of 
 time to time, mistaken other things Davis Stra!t 
 for such vestiges, have been led astray because 
 they have failed to distinguish between the dif- 
 ferent 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 perma- 
 251 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 nently. . . . 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." * 
 The most convincing proof that the North- 
 men 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 
 
 If the North- 
 men had settled in Vinland, they would have 
 
 Netful brought cattle with them, and if their 
 colony, they colony had been successful, it would 
 
 would have i • 1 i 1 1 
 
 introduced have introduced such cattle perma- 
 deTnto tbf" nentl Y into the fauna of the country. 
 North Amer- Indeed, our narrative tells us that 
 ican auna , Karlsefni's people " had with them all 
 kinds of cattle, having the intention to settle in 
 the land if they could." 2 Naturally the two 
 things are coupled in the narrator's mind. So 
 
 1 Laing, Heimskringla, vol. i. p. 181. 
 
 J " Their hofdhu medh ser allskonar fenadh, thviat their 
 jetlodhu at byggja landit, ef their mjetti that," /'. e. " illi 
 omne pecudum genus secum habuerunt, nam terram, si liceret, 
 coloniis frequentare cogitarunt." Rafn, p. 57. 
 252 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 the Portuguese carried livestock in their earliest 
 expeditions to the Atlantic islands ; 1 Columbus 
 brought horses and cows, with vines and all 
 kinds of grain, on his second voyage to the 
 West Indies ; 2 when the French, under Baron 
 Lery, made a disastrous attempt to found a col- 
 ony on or about Cape Breton in 151 8, they 
 left behind them, upon Sable Island, a goodly 
 stock of cows and pigs, which throve and mul- 
 tiplied long after their owners had gone : 3 the 
 Pilgrims at Plymouth had cattle, goats, and 
 swine as early as 1623. 4 In fact, it would be 
 difficult to imagine a community of Europeans 
 subsisting anywhere for any length of time with- 
 out domestic animals. We have seen that the 
 Northmen took pains to raise cattle in Green- 
 land, and were quick to comment upon the 
 climate of Vinland as favourable for pasturage. 
 To suppose that these men ever founded a col- 
 ony in North America, but did not bring do- 
 mestic animals thither, would be absurd. But it 
 would be scarcely less absurd to suppose that such 
 animals, having been once fairly introduced into 
 
 1 Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, p. 241. 
 
 2 Irving's Life of Columbus, New York, 1828, i. 293. 
 
 8 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, Last, Nov us Or bis, 39. 
 
 4 John Smith, General! Historic, 247. 
 
 2 53 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 the fauna of North America, would afterward 
 have vanished without leaving a vestige of their 
 and such ani- presence. As for the few cattle for 
 mat could which Thorfinn could find room in 
 
 not have van- 
 ished and left his three or four dragonships, we may 
 
 thei/edst- easily believe that his people ate them 
 
 ence 
 
 up before leaving the country, espe- 
 cially 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 hun- 
 dred 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 is- 
 lands, 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. 1 If the North- 
 men 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 
 
 1 Darwin, Animals and Plants under Domestication, Lon- 
 don, 1868, vol. i. pp. 27, 77, 84. 
 254 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 this, have never set eyes upon a wild horse, or 
 wild cattle, pigs, or hounds, or any such indi- 
 cation whatever of the former presence of civi- 
 lized 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 over- 
 come. 1 
 
 1 The views of Professor Horsford as to the geographical 
 situation of Vinland and its supposed colonization by North- 
 men are set forth in his four monographs, Discovery of Amer- 
 ica by Northmen — address at the unveiling of the statue of 
 Leif Eriksen, etc., Boston, 1888 ; The Problem of the North- 
 men, Cambridge, 1889 ; The Discovery of the Ancient City 
 of Norumbega, Boston, 1 890 ; The Defences of Norumbega, 
 Boston, 1 89 1. Among Professor Horsford's conclusions the 
 two principal are : 1. that the " river flowing through a lake 
 into the sea " (Ram, p. 147) is Charles River, and that LeiPs 
 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 LeiPs 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 
 
 *55 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 As for the colony in Greenland, while its pop- 
 ulation seems never to have exceeded 5000 or 
 Further for- 6000 souls, it maintained its exist- 
 GretniLd" 5 ence an d lts intercourse with Europe 
 colony uninterruptedly from its settlement in 
 
 986, by Eric the Red, for more than four hun- 
 dred years. Early in the fourteenth century the 
 West Bygd, or western settlement, near God- 
 thaab, 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 vil- 
 lages, and three or four monasteries. 1 Between 
 Tunnudliorbik and Igaliko fiords, and about 
 thirty miles from the ruined stone houses of 
 Brattahlid, there now stands, imposing in its de- 
 
 not so much to the conclusion as to the character of the argu- 
 ments 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 trans- 
 atlantic trade? etc., etc. Until such points as these are dis- 
 posed of, any further consideration of the hypothesis may 
 properly be postponed. 
 
 1 Laing, Heimskringla, i. 1 41 . A description of the ruins 
 may be found in two papers in Meddeleher om Grtinland, Co- 
 penhagen, 1883 and 1889. 
 
 256 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 cay, the simple but massive structure of Kakor- 
 tok church, once the « cathedral " church of the 
 Gardar bishopric, where the Credo was intoned 
 and censers swung, while not less than ten gen- 
 erations lived and died. About the beginning 
 
 Ruins of the church at Kakortok 
 
 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 111a, 
 Eric Gnupsson, 1 having been appointed by Pope 
 Paschal II. "bishop of Greenland and Vinland 
 
 1 Sometimes called Eric Uppsi ; he is mentioned in the 
 Landnama-bok as a native of Iceland. 
 
 257 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 in partibus infidelium," went from Iceland to 
 organize his new diocese in Greenland. It is 
 Bishop Eric's mentioned in at least six different 
 voyage in vellums that in 1 121 Bishop Eric 
 viniand, " went in search of Vinland." * It is 
 1121 nowhere mentioned that he found it, 
 
 and Dr. Storm thinks it probable that he per- 
 ished in the enterprise, for, within the next year 
 or next but one, the Greenlanders asked for a 
 new bishop, and Eric's successor, Bishop Ar- 
 nold, was consecrated in 1124. 2 After Eric 
 there was a regular succession of bishops ap- 
 pointed by the papal court, down at least to 
 1409, and seventeen of these bishops are men- 
 tioned by name. We do not learn that any of 
 them ever repeated Eric's experiment of search- 
 ing for Vinland. So far as existing Icelandic vel- 
 lums 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 conti- 
 m , , , nent, which did not attract attention 
 
 The ship 
 
 from Mark- or call for comment in Iceland. This 
 
 d ' I347 is rendered somewhat probable from 
 
 an entry in the " Elder Skalholt Annals," a 
 
 1 Storm, Islandske Annaler, Christiania, 1888 ; Reeves, 
 The Finding of ' Wine land the Good, London, 1890, pp. 79- 
 81. 
 
 2 Storm, in Aarbfger for Nor dish Oldkyndighed, 1887, p. 
 3I9- 
 
 258 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 vellum written about 136a. This informs us 
 that in 1347 "there came a ship from Green- 
 land, 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." 1 This is the latest 
 mention of any voyage to or from the coun- 
 tries beyond Greenland. 
 
 If the reader is inclined to wonder why a col- 
 ony 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 Brattah- 
 lid and come in a flock to these pleasanter places, 
 he must call to mind two important circum- 
 
 1 Reeves, op. at. 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 alto- 
 gether 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 voy- 
 age 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." 
 
 259 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 stances. First, the settlers in southern Green- 
 land 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 whale- 
 bone arrow-heads ; 1 and it was not until the 
 The Green- fourteenth century that we hear of 
 Ittatkedby t heir getting into a war with these 
 Eskimos 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. 
 
 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 campaign- 
 ing, 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 un- 
 trammelled exchange of commodities with Ice- 
 land ; 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 
 1 Storm, Monumenta historic a Norvegia, p. 77. 
 260 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 made her precious contribution to the innumer- 
 able swarm of instances that show with how lit- 
 tle wisdom the world is ruled. She made the 
 trade to Greenland, Iceland, and the Faeroe Isles 
 " a royal monopoly which could only 2ueen Mar . 
 be carried on in ships belonging to, e aret ' s m °- 
 
 I- j | . . nopoly, and 
 
 or licensed by, the sovereign. . . . j U banefoi ef- 
 Under the monopoly of trade the Ice- fects 
 landers 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." * When this pro- 
 hibitory management was abandoned after 1 534 
 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 sus- 
 tain 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 
 
 1 Laing, Heimskringla, i. 147. It has been supposed that 
 the Black Death, by which all Europe was ravaged in the mid- 
 dle part of the fourteenth century, may have crossed to Green- 
 land, and fatally weakened the colony there ; but Vigfusson 
 says that the Black Death never touched Iceland (Jiturlunga 
 Saga, vol. i. p. cxxix), so that it is not so likely to have 
 reached Greenland. 
 
 261 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 the colony is of a marriage ceremony performed 
 (probably in the Kakortok church), in 1409, by 
 Endrede Andreasson, the last bishop. 1 When, 
 after three centuries, the great missionary, Hans 
 Egede, visited Greenland, in 1 721, he found the 
 ruins of farmsteads and villages, the population 
 of which had vanished. 
 
 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 settle- 
 ment of the East Bygd. I refer to the famous 
 _. , narrative of the Zeno brothers, which 
 
 The story of . ' 
 
 the Venetian has rurnished so many subjects or con- 
 b , kis tention for geographers that a hundred 
 years ago John Pinkerton called it " one of the 
 most puzzling in the whole circle of literature." 2 
 Nevertheless a great deal has been done, chiefly 
 through the acute researches of Mr. Richard 
 Henry Major and Baron Nordenskjold, toward 
 clearing up this mystery, so that certain points 
 in the Zeno narrative may now be regarded as 
 established ; 3 and from these essential points we 
 
 1 Laing, of. cit. i. 142. 
 
 a 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, 1 797, 
 vol. i. p. 261. 
 
 8 Major, The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, Nicolb 
 262 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 may form an opinion as to the character of sun- 
 dry questionable details. 
 
 The Zeno family was one of the oldest and 
 most distinguished in Venice. Among its mem- 
 bers in the thirteenth and fourteenth T i, e zeno 
 centuries we find a doge, several sen- famU y 
 ators 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, 1 
 and more particularly England and Flanders. 
 So about 1390 he fitted up a ship at his own 
 
 and Antonio Zeno, to the Northern Seas in the XlVth Century, 
 London, 1873 (Hakluyt Society) ; cf. Nordenskjold, Om 
 brbderna Zenos resor oeh de aids t a kartor ofner Nor den, Stock- 
 holm, 1883. 
 
 1 " 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, accid che con le oc- 
 casioni poi potesse meglio far seruigio alia 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.). 
 263 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 expense, and, passing out from the Strait of 
 Gibraltar, sailed northward upon the Atlantic. 
 Nicoio zeno After some days of fair weather, he 
 wrecked was caug ht in a storm and blown 
 
 upon one of ° 
 
 the F^oe along for many days more, until at 
 islands, 1390 jgjjgjjj ^ e gj^p was cast as hore on 
 
 one of the Faeroe Islands and wrecked, though 
 most of the crew and goods were rescued. Ac- 
 cording to the barbarous custom of the Middle 
 Ages, some of the natives of the island (Scandi- 
 navians) came swarming about the unfortunate 
 strangers to kill and rob them, but a great chief- 
 tain, 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 mili- 
 tary and nautical skill of the Venetian captain. 
 Nicoio 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 139 1, and re- 
 264 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 mained 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. Nicoio's voy- 
 After spending some time there, not j L ^ e d t ) ( £ reen " 
 being accustomed to such a climate, J 394 
 he caught cold, and died soon after his return 
 to the Faeroes, probably in 1395. His brother 
 Antonio succeeded to his office and such emol- 
 uments as pertained to it ; and after a while, at 
 Earl Sinclair's instigation, he undertook a voy- 
 age 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. Never- 
 theless, the expedition started, with Sinclair him- 
 265 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 self on board, and encountered vicissitudes of 
 weather and fortune. In fog and storm they lost 
 voyage of all reckoning of position, and found 
 L" 1 Antonio themselves at length on the western 
 Zeno 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 Green- 
 land, but which is so vaguely described that the 
 identification is very difficult. 1 Our narrative 
 here ends somewhat confusedly. We are told 
 that Sinclair remained in this place, " and ex- 
 plored the whole of the country with great dili- 
 gence, 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 Is- 
 lands, where he arrived after sailing eastward 
 for about a month, during five and twenty days 
 of which he saw no land. After relating these 
 
 1 It appears on the Zeno map as " Trin pmontor," 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. 
 
 266 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 good- 
 ness," 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." 1 
 
 The person thus addressed by Antonio was 
 his brother, the illustrious Carlo Zeno. Soon 
 after reaching home, after this long and event- 
 ful absence, Antonio died. Besides his letters 
 he had written a more detailed account of the 
 affairs in the northern seas. These papers re- 
 mained for more than a century in the palace 
 of the family at Venice, until one of the chil- 
 dren, in his mischievous play, got hold of them 
 and tore them up. This child was Antonio's 
 great - great -great - grandson, Nicolo, born in 
 151 5. When this young Nicolo had come to 
 middle age, and was a member of the Council 
 of Ten, he happened to come across some rem- 
 nants of these documents, and then all at once 
 he remembered with grief how he had, in his 
 boyhood, pulled them to pieces. 2 In the light 
 
 1 " Pero non ui diro altro in questa lettera, sperando tosto 
 di essere con uoi, e di sodisfarui di moke altre cose con la 
 uiua uoce." Major, p. 34. 
 
 1 " All these letters were written by Messire Antonio to 
 267 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 of the rapid progress in geographical discovery 
 since 1492, this story of distant voyages had 
 Publication now for Nicolo an interest such as it 
 of the re- CO uld not have had for his immediate 
 
 mains or the . 
 
 documents ancestors. Searching the palace he 
 younger Ni- found a few grimy old letters and a 
 coio zeno ma p 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 ex- 
 planatory text of his own, and the result was 
 the little book which he published in 1558. 1 
 
 Unfortunately young Nicolo, with the laud- 
 able purpose of making it all as clear as he 
 could, thought it necessary not simply to repro- 
 duce the old weather-beaten map, but to amend 
 it by putting on here and there such places and 
 
 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 me- 
 morial should not be lost, I have put the whole in order, as 
 well as I could, in the above narrative." Major, p. 35. 
 
 1 Nicolo Zeno, Dello scoprimento dell' isole Frislanda, Es- 
 landa, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto per due 
 fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolo il Caualiere, & M. Antonio. Libro 
 Vno, col disegno di dette Isole. Venice, 1558. Mr. Major's 
 book contains the entire text, with an English translation. 
 268 
 
ZENO MAP 
 
TVRONO I1T T HA-MONTAN A. XA>J -TVE-C G C'IKXX' 
 
 CIR. 1400 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 names as his diligent perusal of the manuscript 
 led him to deem wanting to its completeness. 1 
 
 1 The map is taken from Winsor's Narr. and Crit. Hist., 
 i. 127, where it is reduced from Nordenskj old'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^ 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 Barbara, in his Genealogie dei nobili Veneti ; of An- 
 tonio 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 Zicno, re di Frislanda, siporto 
 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 Barbara's own handwrit- 
 ing, 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, torn. 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 be- 
 tween the names " Esdand" 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 Green- 
 land, near his " Af pmontor ; " but he has got it on the 
 269 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 Nicold 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 Ni- 
 colo and Antonio, and spelled by 
 
 Queer trans- _ • - ■ • 
 
 formations of them according to their own notions ; 
 in the second place, these outlandish 
 names, blurred and defaced withal in the wea- 
 ther-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. 1 
 Perhaps the slightest sufferer, in this case, was 
 the name of the group of islands upon one of 
 
 extreme northeast, just above where Greenland is joined to 
 Europe. 
 
 1 " 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 Waltzemulhr, 
 p. 9. 
 
 It is interesting to see how thoroughly words can be dis- 
 guised by an unfamiliar phonetic spelling. I have seen people 
 hopelessly puzzled by the following bill, supposed to have 
 
 270 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 which the shipwrecked Nicolo was rescued by 
 Sinclair. The name F <eroislander sounded to 
 Italian ears as Frislanda, and was uniformly so 
 written. 1 Then the pronunciation of Shetland 
 was helped by prefixing a vowel sound, as is 
 common in Italian, and so it came to be Est- 
 land and Esland. This led young Nicolo's eye 
 in two or three places to confound it with Is- 
 landa, or Iceland, and probably in one place 
 with Irlanda, or Ireland. Where old Nicolo 
 
 been made out by an illiterate stable-keeper somewhere in 
 
 England : — 
 
 Osafada . . . . . . 7s 6d 
 
 Takinonimome .... 4d 
 
 7s iod 
 Some years ago Professor Huxley told me of a letter from 
 France which came to the London post-office thus ad- 
 dressed : — 
 
 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 Insti- 
 tution on Albemarle Street, just off from Piccadilly ! 
 
 1 Columbus, on his journey to Iceland in 1477, also heard 
 the name Faroislander 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. 
 
 271 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 Ire- 
 land ; and so upon the amended map 
 
 " Frislanda " 
 
 " Frislanda " appears as one great 
 island surrounded by tiny islands. 1 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 " Fris- 
 landa " somewhere in mid-ocean. When at 
 length it was proved that no such island exists, 
 the reputation of the Zeno narrative was seri- 
 ously damaged. The nadir of reaction against 
 it was reached when it was declared to be a 
 tissue of lies invented by the younger Nicolo, 2 
 apparently for the purpose of setting up a Vene- 
 tian claim to the discovery of America. 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 See the elaborate paper by Admiral Zahrtmann, in Nor- 
 ilsk Tidsskrift for Oldkyndighed, Copenhagen, 1834, vol. i., 
 and the English translation of it in Journal of Royal Geo- 
 graphical 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 ! " 
 
 272 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 mi 
 
 - T . ^ . . Thenarra- 
 
 young Nicolo to institute any com- tive nowhere 
 parison between his ancestors' voyages ^nf to th e 
 to Greenland and the voyages of Co- " ^overy 
 
 , , . i • i of America " 
 
 lumbus 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 1 558, in an extremely 
 vague and rudimentary condition. In the mind 
 of the Zeno brothers, as the map shows, Green- 
 land 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 con- 
 sidered, 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. 
 
 The identification of " Frislanda " with the 
 
 2 73 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Faroe Islands was put beyond doubt by the 
 
 discovery that the " Zichmni " of the narrative 
 
 means Henry Sinclair ; and, in order 
 
 Earl Sinclair , , . ,. . , 
 
 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 bejuggle- 
 ment ; 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 Sin- 
 clair was made to figure, he would have ob- 
 tained 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, more- 
 over, in its references to Greenland in connec- 
 tion with the Chevalier Nicolo's visit to the 
 274 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 East Bygd, shows a topographical knowledge 
 that was otherwise quite inaccessible to the 
 younger Nicold. Late in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury Ivar Bardsen, steward to the Gardar bish- 
 opric, wrote a description of Greenland, with 
 sailing directions for reaching it, which 
 modern research has proved to have «Desmp- 
 been accurate in every particular. ^, on °f , „ 
 
 11 r Greenland 
 
 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, 1 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. 
 
 1 It was translated into Dutch by the famous Arctic ex- 
 plorer, 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 Rafh's Antiqui- 
 tates Americana, pp. 300—318 ; Danish, Latin, and Eng- 
 lish 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. 
 275 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 1 Nicolo Zeno, arriving 
 The monas- in the East Bygd, found there a mon- 
 oilufand its astery dedicated to St. Olaus, a name 
 hot spring 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. 2 It stood " hard by a hill 
 which vomited fire like Vesuvius and Etna." 
 There was also in the neighbourhood a spring 
 
 • 
 
 1 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 re- 
 dierunt." Descriptio Grcenlandia, apud Major, p. 53. The 
 glacial men had done their work of slaughter and vanished. 
 
 2 " 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 Ice- 
 land with the Shetland group. But in this place Iceland is 
 evidently meant. 
 
 276 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 vege- 
 tables. 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. 1 " Hither 
 in summer-time 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 sea- 
 son to melt the ice." 2 
 
 This mention of the volcano and the hot 
 spring is very interesting. In the Miocene 
 period the Atlantic ridge was one of „ , 
 
 , ... r , . . Volcanoes 
 
 the principal seats of volcanic activity of the North 
 upon the globe ; the line of volcanoes Adantic ridse 
 extended all the way from Greenland down into 
 central France. But for several hundred thou- 
 
 1 This application of the hot water to purposes of gardening 
 reminds us of the similar covered gardens or hot-beds con- 
 structed by Albertus Magnus in the Dominican monastery at 
 Cologne in the thirteenth century. See Humboldt's Kosmos, 
 ii. 130. 
 
 2 Major, op. cit. p. 16. The narrative goes on to give a 
 description of the skin-boats of the Eskimo fishermen. 
 
 277 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 sand 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 vol- 
 canoes, 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 sub- 
 merged 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. 1 Midway between Iceland and 
 Greenland there appears to have stood, in the 
 Fate of Middle Ages, a small volcanic island 
 
 "J" 1 ' 8 discovered by that Gunnbjorn who 
 '45° first went to Greenland. It was known 
 
 as Gunnbjorn's Skerries, and was described by 
 Ivar Bardsen. 2 This island is no longer above 
 
 1 Daubeny, Description of Active and Extinct Volcanoes, 
 London, 1848, pp. 307 ; cf. Judd, Volcanoes, London, 
 1881, p. 234. 
 
 2 " Ab Snefelsneso Islandiae, qua brevissimus in Gron- 
 landiam trajectus est, duorum dierum et duanim noctium spado 
 navigandum est recto cursu versus occidentem ; ibique Gunn- 
 bjoernis scopulos invenies, inter Gronlandiam et Islandiam 
 medio situ interjacentes. Hie cursus antiquitus frequentabatur, 
 nunc vero glacies ex recessu oceani euroaquilonari delata sco- 
 pulos ante memoratos tarn prope attigit, ut nemo sine vitae 
 
 278 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 the surface, and its fate is recorded upon 
 Ruysch's map of the world in the 1 508 edition 
 of Ptolemy : " Insula haec anno Domini 1456 
 fuit totaliter combusta," — this island was en- 
 tirely 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. 1 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 con- 
 gregate to drink or to bathe. 2 Now in Volcanic 
 Greenland, at the present day, hot phenomena 
 
 r 1 r 1 - 1 1 in Greenland 
 
 springs are round, or 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 
 
 discrimine antiquum cursum tenere possit, quemadmodum in- 
 fra dicetur." Descriptio Grcenlandiee, apud Major, op. cit. 
 p. 40. 
 
 1 Op. cit. p. lxxvi. See below, vol. ii. p. 346, note B. 
 
 2 Judd, op. cit. pp. 217— zzo. 
 
 279 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 means that eruptions have not been recorded. 1 
 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. 
 
 Thus far, in dealing with the places actually 
 visited by Nicolo or Antonio, or by both bro- 
 thers, we have found the story consistent and 
 intelligible. But in what relates to countries be- 
 yond Greenland, countries which were not vis- 
 ited by either of the brothers, but about which 
 Antonio heard reports, it is quite a different 
 thing. We are introduced to a jumble very un- 
 like 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 remem- 
 bered that Antonio's voyage with Sinclair (some- 
 where about 1400) was undertaken in order to 
 verify certain reports of the existence of land 
 
 1 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. 
 280 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 more than a thousand miles west of the Faeroe 
 Islands. 
 
 About six and twenty years ago, said Antonio 
 in a letter to Carlo, four small fishing craft, ven- 
 turing 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 „ ., , 
 
 i t i i / mi i ■ i Estobland 
 
 than Iceland (or Shetland r), with a 
 high mountain whence flowed four rivers. The 
 inhabitants were intelligent people, possessed 
 of all the arts, but did not understand the lan- 
 guage of these Norse fishermen. 1 There hap- 
 pened, 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 no- 
 body could read. 2 All kinds of metals abounded, 
 and especially gold. 3 The woods were of im- 
 mense extent. The people traded with Green- 
 
 1 They were, therefore, not Northmen. 
 
 3 Pruning this sentence of its magniloquence, might it per- 
 haps 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 fetich ? 
 
 8 With all possible latitude of interpretation, this could not 
 be made to apply to any part of America north of Mexico. 
 28l 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 land, 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. 1 
 The name of the country was Estotiland. 
 
 There is nothing so far in this vague descrip- 
 tion to show that Estotiland was an American 
 country, except its western direction and per- 
 haps 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. 
 
 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. 2 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 
 
 1 The magnetic needle had been used by the mariners of 
 western and northern Europe since the end of the thirteenth 
 century. 
 
 8 " Fanno nauigli e nauigano, ma non hanno la calami ta 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. 
 
 28a 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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." 
 
 And now comes quite an interesting passage. 
 The Fisherman " says that it is a very great 
 country, and, as it were, a new world ; inhabitants 
 the people are very rude and unculti- °^j° oun _ 
 vated, for they all go naked, and suf- «™ ^yond 
 fer 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 them- 
 283 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 selves, 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 know- 
 ledge 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 ar- 
 rived 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 forth- 
 with requested that they would take him with 
 them, which they did very willingly, and as he 
 284 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 knew the language of the country, which none 
 of them could speak, they employed him as 
 their interpreter." x 
 
 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 The Ksher- 
 twenty years of strange adventures. ^"Fri^ 
 It was apparently the Fisherman's <* a " 
 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 Fisher- 
 man died just before the ships were ready to 
 start, and to whatever land they succeeded in 
 reaching after they sailed without him, the nar- 
 rative 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 New- 
 foundland, 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. 
 
 1 Major, op. cit. pp. zo-22. 
 285 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 "With Drogio, however, it is otherwise. The 
 description of Drogio and the vast country 
 Was the ac- stretching beyond it, which was like a 
 count of Dro- « new world," is the merest sketch, 
 
 gio woven - . - . 
 
 into the nar- but it seems to contain enough char- 
 rativebythe acter i st i c details to stamp it as a de- 
 
 younger Ni- r _ 
 
 coio ? scription of North America, and of 
 
 no other country accessible by an Atlantic voy- 
 age. 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 Car- 
 tier, to say nothing of other explorers, had al- 
 ready been done. May we suppose that Nicolo 
 had thus obtained some idea of North America, 
 and wove it into his reproduction of his ances- 
 tors' 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 
 286 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 what Antonio heard and did, becomes valueless ; 
 though the earlier part, relating to the elder 
 Nicold, still remains valid and trustworthy. 
 
 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 lat- 
 ter part also he added nothing of him- 0r does it re _ 
 self, but was simply a faithful editor. P"*™' actu . al 
 It will then follow that the Fisher- North Amer- 
 man's account of Drogio, reduced to lcaf 
 writing by Antonio Zeno about 1400, must 
 probably represent personal experiences in 
 North America ; for no such happy combina- 
 tion of details characteristic only of North 
 America is likely at that date to have been in- 
 vented 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 Sco- 
 tia 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 ? 
 
 Yes : something of the sort appears to have 
 been done about ten years after the Zeno nar- 
 rative was published. In October, 1568, that 
 287 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 great sailor, Sir John Hawkins, by reason of 
 
 scarcity of food, was compelled to set about a 
 
 hundred men ashore near the Rio de 
 
 The case of , 
 
 David in- Minas, on the Mexican coast, and 
 gram, 1 568 i eave them to their fate. The conti- 
 nent 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 
 southwesterly 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 disbe- 
 lieved his whole story, but he was subjected to 
 a searching examination before Sir Francis Wal- 
 singham, and as to the main fact of his journey 
 through the wilderness there seems to be no 
 doubt. 1 
 
 1 Ingram's narrative was first published in Hakluyt's folio 
 288 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 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 The case 
 1528-36, from the Mississippi River deVacT* 
 to their friends in Mexico. This re- i s**-i 6 
 markable journey will receive further considera- 
 tion in another place. 1 In the course of it Ca- 
 beza de Vaca was for eight years held captive by 
 sundry Indian tribes, and at last his escape in- 
 
 of 1 589, pp. 557-562, but in his larger work, Principal Nav- 
 igations, 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 Pil- 
 grimes, London, 1625, vol. iv. p. n 79. The examination 
 before Walsingham had reference to the projected voyage of 
 Sir Humphrey Gilbert, which was made in 1583. Ingram's 
 relation, " w oh he reported vnto S r Frauncys Walsinghm, 
 Knight, and diuers others of good judgment and creditt, in 
 August and Septembar, Ao 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 con- 
 nected 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 West erne Plant- 
 ing, Cambridge, 1877, p. 229 (^Collections of Maine Hist. 
 Soc, 2d series, vol. ii. ) ; see, also, Winsor Narr. and Crit. 
 Hist., iii. 186. 
 
 1 See below, vol. iii. p. 331. 
 289 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 volved ten months of arduous travel. On one 
 occasion he and his friends treated some sick In- 
 dians, among other things breathing upon them 
 and making the sign of the cross. As the In- 
 dians 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 be- 
 come 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. 1 The Indians set so much store by Ca- 
 beza de Vaca that he found it hard to tear him- 
 self away ; but at length he used his influence 
 over them in such wise as to facilitate his mov- 
 ing in a direction by which he ultimately suc- 
 ceeded in escaping to his friends. There seems 
 to be a real analogy between his strange experi- 
 ences 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 appre- 
 ciate. 
 
 Now if the younger Nicolo had been in the 
 mood for adorning his ancestor's narrative by 
 inserting a few picturesque incidents out of his 
 own hearsay knowledge of North America, it 
 
 1 In the first reception of the Spaniards in Peru, we shall 
 see a similar idea at work, vol. iii. pp. 214, 224. 
 290 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 does not seem likely that he would have known 
 enough to hit so deftly upon one of the pecul- 
 iarities 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. 
 
 It was this and other unrecorded but possible 
 instances that I had in mind at the beginning 
 of this chapter, in saying that occa- There may 
 sional visits of Europeans to America Recorded 
 in pre-Columbian times may have instances 
 
 , r , of visits to 
 
 occurred ortener than we are wont to North Amer- 
 suppose. Observe that our scanty !ca 
 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 Green- 
 land, the gallant mariners may now and then 
 have hit upon Labrador or Newfoundland, and 
 291 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 have made flying visits to coasts still farther 
 southward, there is nothing in it all which need 
 surprise us. 1 
 
 Nothing can be clearer, however, from a sur- 
 vey of the whole subject, than that these pre- 
 The pre-co- Columbian voyages were quite barren 
 lumbian Q £ resu its of historic importance. In 
 
 voyages made ... 
 
 no real con- point of colonization they produced 
 geographic the two ill-fated settlements on the 
 knowledge; Greenland coast, and nothing more. 
 Otherwise they made no real addition to the stock 
 of geographical knowledge, they wrought no ef- 
 fect 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 indi- 
 cates that the Vinland voyages had practically 
 lapsed from memory before the end of the four- 
 
 1 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 Den- 
 mark, is said to have sailed to Greenland in 1476, and to 
 have touched upon the coast of Labrador. See Gomara, His- 
 toria de las Indias, Saragossa, 1553, cap. xxxvii. ; Wytfliet, 
 Descriptionis Ptolemaica Augmentum, Douay, 1603, p. 
 102 ; Pontanus, Rerum Danicarum Historia, Amsterdam, 
 1 63 1, p. 763. The wise Humboldt mentions the report 
 without expressing an opinion, Examen critique, torn. ii. 
 P- 153- 
 
 292 
 
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES 
 
 teenth century. 1 Scholars familiar with saga lit- 
 erature 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 awak- 
 ened reminiscences of Markland and Vinland, 
 and some traces of this would have appeared in 
 Antonio's narrative or upon his map. The prin- 
 cipal 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 know- and were in 
 ledge. To speak of them as consti- Tm^^ 
 tuting, in any legitimate sense of the of America 
 phrase, a Discovery of America is simply ab- 
 surd. Except for Greenland, which was sup- 
 posed to be a part of the European world, 
 America remained as much undiscovered after 
 the eleventh century as before. In the mid- 
 summer of 1492 it needed to be discovered as 
 
 1 Practically, but not entirely, for we have seen Markland 
 mentioned in the "Elder Skalholt Annals," about 1362. 
 See above, p. 259. 
 
 *93 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 much as if Leif Ericsson or the whole race of 
 Northmen had never existed. 
 
 As these pre-Columbian voyages produced 
 no effect in the eastern hemisphere, except to 
 leave in Icelandic literature a scanty but inter- 
 esting 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 im- 
 probable that the blood of the Eskimos may 
 have received some slight Scandinavian infu- 
 sion. 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 voy- 
 ages 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. 
 
 294 
 
Ill 
 
 EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 THE question has sometimes been asked, 
 Why did the knowledge of the voy- 
 ages 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 Torfseus in 1 705 ? why ^ 
 "Why did not the news of the voyages JJ^Jjf 
 of Leif and Thorfinn spread rapidly men were not 
 over Europe, like the news of the foUowedu P 
 voyage of Columbus ? and why was it not pre- 
 sently followed, like the latter, by a rush of 
 conquerors and colonizers across the Atlantic ? 
 Such questions arise from a failure to see his- 
 torical events in their true perspective, and to 
 make the proper allowances for the manifold 
 differences in knowledge and in social and eco- 
 nomic conditions which characterize different 
 periods of history. In the present case, the an- 
 swer is to be found, first, in the geographical 
 ignorance which prevented the Northmen from 
 realizing in the smallest degree what such voy- 
 
 295 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 ages 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. 
 
 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 
 ignorance of to measure their achievement. The 
 geography mo dern 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 North- 
 men. None of the Icelandic references to Mark- 
 land and Vinland betray a consciousness that 
 these countries belong to a geographical world 
 outside of Europe. There was not enough or- 
 ganized 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. 
 
 Secondly, even if it had been realized, and 
 could have been duly proclaimed throughout 
 296 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 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 com- Lack of in- 
 pass or astrolabe ; but until these in- ocTanMviga- 
 struments were at hand anything like t!on 
 systematic ocean navigation was out of the ques- 
 tion ; 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. 
 
 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 iooo, just enough to get a suggestive 
 picture of the time. In England the Danish 
 invader, fork-bearded Swend, father of the great 
 Cnut, was wrestling the kingship from the fee- 
 ble grasp of Ethelred the Redeless. Europe in the 
 In Gaul the little duchy of France, be- J*" ,O0 ° 
 tween the Somme and the Loire, had lately be- 
 come 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 
 297 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 people can send forth colonies it must have 
 
 solved the problem of political life so far as to 
 
 insure stability of trade. It is the mercantile 
 
 spirit that has supported modern col- 
 
 The condi- *\ . • , , i i •■ r • , 
 
 tion of things onrzation, aided by the spirit or mtel- 
 r s a to n &vo U ur h lectual curiosity and the thirst for ro- 
 coioniaien- mantic adventure. In the eleventh 
 
 terprise , • n i 
 
 century there was no intellectual cu- 
 riosity outside the monastery walls, nor had such 
 a feeling become enlisted in the service of com- 
 merce. Of trade there was indeed, even in west- 
 ern Europe, a considerable amount, but the com- 
 mercial 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 in- 
 veigle them into your castle and broil them over 
 a slow fire. 
 
 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 Atlan- 
 tic. 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 specula- 
 tion. In the view of mediaeval Europe the in- 
 habited world was cut off on the west by this 
 300 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 mysterious ocean, and on the south by the burn- 
 ing sands of Sahara ; but eastward it stretched 
 out no one knew how far, and in that The outloo k 
 direction dwelt tribes and nations which of Europe was 
 
 , , - . . - i i j toward Asia 
 
 Europe, from time immemorial, had 
 reason to fear. As early as the time of Herodo- 
 tus, 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 re- 
 taliation upon Europe. Whether it was the hea- 
 then 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 Em- 
 pire, the threatening danger was always coming 
 with the morning sun ; whatever might be the 
 shock that took the attention of Europe away 
 301 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 It was not only in war, but in commerce, that 
 the fortunes of Europe were dependent upon 
 her relations with Asia. Since prehistoric times 
 Routes of there has always been some commer- 
 SroMMd en " a l intercourse between the eastern 
 Asia shores of the Mediterranean and the 
 
 peninsula of Hindustan. Tyre and Sidon car- 
 ried on such trade by way of the Red Sea. 1 
 After Alexander had led his army to Samarcand 
 and to the river Hyphasis, the acquaintance of 
 the Greeks with Asia was very considerably in- 
 creased, and important routes of trade were es- 
 tablished. One was practically the old Phoeni- 
 cian 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. 2 An in- 
 termediate 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 
 1 Diodorus Siculus, i. 70. a Strabo, xi. 7, § 3. 
 
 302 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 European commodities carried to India were 
 light woollen cloths, linens, coral, black lead, va- 
 rious kinds of glass vessels, and wine. In ex- 
 change 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. 1 Detailed ac- 
 counts 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 geo- 
 graphical information that was gathered during 
 the first half of this period is shown in the 
 map representing Claudius Ptolemy's ciaudim 
 knowledge of the earth, about the Ptokm y 
 middle of the second century after Christ. Ex- 
 cept 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 
 
 1 Robertson, Historical Disquisition concerning the Know- 
 ledge 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. 
 
 303 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 
 Early men- " Seres " or " Serica," and " Sinae " or 
 tion of china « Thin." These two differing names 
 are the records of two different methods of ap- 
 proach to different parts of a vast country, very 
 much as the Northmen called their part of east- 
 ern North America " Vinland," while the Span- 
 iards 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. 1 The 
 name " Sinae " or " Thin " seems to mean the 
 
 1 The Polos sailed back from China to the Persian Gulf in 
 1292-94 ; see below, p. 326. 
 
 3°4 
 

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 V 'J^/" 
 
 
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 Prasiu? 
 
 1 
 
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 *°<n m 
 
 L* i_j 
 
 CLAUDIUS PTOLEMY 
 
EWORLD, CIR. A. D. 150. 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 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, 1 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 im- 
 plied 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. 2 
 
 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. 
 
 1 The name " Seres " appears on the map of Pomponius 
 Mela (cir. a. d. 50), while " Sinae " does not. See below, 
 
 P- 35°- 
 
 Jam Tartessiaco quos solverat lequore Titan 
 In noctem diffusus equos, jungebat Eoia 
 Littoribus, primique novo Phaethonte retecti 
 Seres lanigeris repetebant vellera lucis. 
 
 Silius Italicus, lib. vi. ad init. 
 3 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. 
 
 3°5 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 This curious information we have in the book 
 of the monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, written 
 Cosmas indi- somewhere between A. d. 530 and 
 copieustes ^ Q# j± pi easant 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, 1 main- 
 
 1 Its title is ILpuTTiavSiV y3i/3A,os, ep/irjvtia eis ttjv 'O/cTaTtu- 
 yov, /'. e. against Ptolemy's Geography in eight books. The 
 name Cosmas Indicopleustes seems merely to mean " the cos- 
 mographer who has sailed to India." He begins his book in 
 a tone of extreme and somewhat unsavoury humility : 'Avoiyw 
 to. /xoyiXaXa kcu /SpaSvyXmcrcra X 61 ^ 1 ? ° a.p.a.pTu>kbs Kai TaXas 
 eyai — "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 in- 
 scriptions 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. 247.) Whether in 
 the sixth century of grace or in the nineteenth, your unre- 
 generate and unchastened antiquary snaps at conclusions as 
 a drowsy dog does at flies. Some years ago an English clergy- 
 man, 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; Miiller and Donaldson, History of Greek Lit- 
 erature, vol. iii. p. 353 ; Bury, History of the Later Roman 
 Empire from Arcadius to Irene, vol. ii. p. 177. 
 306 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 taining, 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 shape of the 
 with the angels. In the centre of the "f^l*' 
 floor are the inhabited lands of the mas 
 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 ex- 
 pelled. In its general shape, therefore, the uni- 
 verse 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, there- 
 fore, 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 Scrip- 
 ture, says Cosmas, and as for the vain blas- 
 phemers 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 
 
 3°7 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 for such nonsense, the worthy Cosmas cannot 
 abide it. 
 
 I cite these views of Cosmas because there 
 can be no doubt that they represent beliefs cur- 
 rent among the general public until after the 
 time of Columbus, 1 in spite of the deference 
 
 1 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. ' ' Hamp- 
 den'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 lucu- 
 brations of circle-squarers, angle-trisectors, inventors of perpet- 
 ual motion, devisers of recipes for living forever without dying, 
 308 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 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 Cey- 
 lon, 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 In- 
 dies, 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 Tzin- 
 ista through Persia to the Roman territory, you 
 would just divide the world in halves. And 
 mayhap they are right." * 
 
 In the fourth and following centuries, Nes- 
 torian missionaries were very active in Asia, and 
 not only made multitudes of converts The 
 and established metropolitan sees in Nestonans 
 such places as Kashgar and Herat, but even 
 found their way into China. Their work forms 
 
 crazy interpreters of Daniel and the Apocalypse, upsetters 
 of the undulatory theory of light, the Bacon-Shakespeare lu- 
 natics, 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. 
 
 1 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. 
 
 3°9 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 them- 
 selves almost entirely cut off from intercourse 
 with European Christians. 
 
 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 
 
 Effects of the . . 
 
 Saracen eastern and western extremities of 
 
 conquests Asia went on more briskly than ever, 
 but it was for a long time exclusively in Mus- 
 sulman 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 har- 
 assed 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- 
 310 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 Roman barbarism. But from this general state- 
 ment 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 Byzan- 
 tine 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 north- constantino- 
 ern route from Asia remained avail- Jj^Ja,'^. 
 able for commercial intercourse in this ^y 
 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. 1 When it was visited by Benjamin of 
 Tudela in the twelfth century, Constantinople 
 was undoubtedly the richest and most magnifi- 
 cent city, and the seat of the highest civilization, 
 to be found anywhere upon the globe. 
 
 In the days of its strength the Eastern Em- 
 pire was the staunch bulwark of Christendom 
 against the dangerous assaults of Persian, Sara- 
 cen, and Turk ; alike in prosperity and in calam- 
 ity, it proved to be the teacher and civilizer of 
 
 1 See Robertson, Historical Disquisition, p. 93 ; Pears, 
 The Fall of Constantinople, p. 177, — a book of great merit. 
 
 5 1 ' 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 
 
 The Crusades 
 
 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 begin- 
 ning, were a symptom of the growing energy of 
 western Europe under the ecclesiastical reforma- 
 tion 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 crafts- 
 men ; in their society one might meet with 
 learned scholars, refined poets, and profound 
 philosophers. But at the end of the tenth cen- 
 tury, 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 con- 
 quest which has always characterized new con- 
 verts to Islam, the Turks began to pour down 
 from the plains of central Asia like a deluge 
 upon the Eastern Empire. In 1016 they over- 
 312 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 whelmed Armenia, and presently advanced into 
 Asia Minor. Their mode of conquest was pe- 
 culiarly baleful, for at first they delib- Barbarizing 
 erately annihilated the works of civili- TurkST ° f 
 zation in order to prepare the country conquest 
 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 be- 
 ginning of the eleventh century, Asia Minor 
 was one of the most prosperous and highly 
 civilized parts of the world ; 1 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 
 Nicsea 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 un- 
 
 1 " 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. 
 
 Z l 3 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 doubtedly did more than anything that had ever 
 gone before toward strengthening the wholesome 
 sentiment of a common Christendom among 
 General ef- tne peoples of western Europe. The 
 fects of the Crusades increased the power of the 
 church, which was equivalent to put- 
 ting 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 freeboot- 
 ing. 1 By renewing the long-suspended inter- 
 course between the minds of western Europe 
 and the Greek culture of Constantinople, they 
 served as a mighty stimulus to intellectual curi- 
 osity, 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. 
 
 There can be no doubt that in these ways the 
 Crusades were for our forefathers in Europe the 
 
 1 The general effects of the Crusades are discussed, with 
 much learning and sagacity, by Choiseul-Daillecourt, De 
 l' Influence des Croisades sur I'etatdes peuples de I' Europe, 
 Paris, 1 809. 
 
 3H 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 most bracing and stimulating events that occurred 
 in the whole millennium between the compli- 
 cated disorders of the fifth century and the out- 
 burst 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 re- 
 tarding the progress of the enemy for two hun- 
 dred 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 The Fourth 
 than any of the others for striking a Crusade 
 crushing blow at the Moslem, played false to 
 Christendom, and in 1204 captured and de- 
 spoiled Constantinople in order to gratify Ven- 
 ice's hatred of her commercial rival and supe- 
 rior. 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 unhal- 
 lowed exploit. 1 One cannot help feeling that 
 
 1 They were taken from Chios in the fourth century by the 
 Emperor Theodosius, and placed in the hippodrome at Con- 
 stantinople, whence they were .taken by the Venetians in 
 1 204. 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, 
 
 315 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 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 126 1 Venice's 
 
 Rivalry be- 
 tween Venice rival, Genoa, allied herself with the 
 
 Greek emperor, Michael Palseologus, 
 
 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 con- 
 
 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 1' empire auraient pu, bien plus aisement 
 que tous leurs predecesseurs, chasser les Turcs de l'Asie." 
 Essai sur les Moeurs, torn. ii. p. 158. Voltaire's general 
 view of the Crusades is, however, very superficial. 
 316 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 voy, and wherever their ships met they fought. 
 It was something like the state of things be- 
 tween Spain and England in the days of Drake." * 
 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 pos- 
 session of the Crimea, and thus acquired a 
 monopoly of the trade from central Asia along 
 the northern route. With the fall of Acre in 
 1 29 1, and the consequent expulsion of Chris- 
 tians from Syria, Venice lost her hold upon the 
 middle route. But with the Pope's leave 2 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 iEgean and eastern Mediterranean. During 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries their city 
 was the most splendid and luxurious in all 
 Christendom. 
 
 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 
 
 1 Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. lxxi. 
 
 2 A papal dispensation was necessary before a commercial 
 treaty could be made with Mahometans. See Leibnitz, Codex 
 Jur. Gent. Diplomat., i. 489. , 
 
 3*7 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 end of the thirteenth century the volume of Eu- 
 ropean trade had swelled to great proportions. 
 How full of historic and literary in- 
 
 Centres and J 
 
 routes of me- terest are the very names of the cen- 
 tres 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 mer- 
 chants of the famous Hansa towns extending 
 their operations as far as Novgorod in one di- 
 rection, and in another to the Steelyard in Lon- 
 don, where the pound of these honest " Easter- 
 lings " 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 pro- 
 ducts of the loom in Ghent and Bruges, in Ulm 
 and Augsburg, with delicious vintages of the 
 Rhine, supple chain armour from Milan, Aus- 
 trian 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 
 3i8 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 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. 
 
 With this increase of wealth and culture in 
 central Europe there came a considerable exten- 
 sion 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 Effectsofthe 
 bark without Mongol leave, from the Mongol con- 
 borders of Poland and the coast of quests 
 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 
 3*9 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 
 
 Cathay . J 
 
 known in Europe during the next 
 four centuries. 1 In 1245, Friar John of Piano 
 Carpini, a friend and disciple of St. Francis, was 
 sent by Pope Innocent IV. on a missionary er- 
 carpiniand rand to the Great Khan, and visited 
 Rubmquis him j n 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." 2 Neither Ru- 
 
 1 Yule's Cathay, vol. i. p. cxvi ; Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 
 xlii. 
 
 2 Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. cxxx ; Humboldt, Examen 
 
 320 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 bruquis 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 in- Fi rst know- 
 formation constituted the first impor- Wgeofan 
 
 . - i ■ i , ,i eastern ocean 
 
 tant leap of geographical knowledge to beyond Ca- 
 the eastward since the days of Ptolem y, ay 
 who supposed that beyond the " Seres and 
 Sinas " lay an unknown land of vast extent, 
 " full of reedy and impenetrable swamps." 1 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. 
 
 Here we arrive at a notable landmark in the 
 history of the Discovery of America. Here 
 
 critique, torn. i. p. 71. The complete original texts of the 
 reports of both monks, with learned notes, may be found in 
 the Recueilde Voyages et de M'emoires,publie par la Societe de 
 Geographic, Paris, 1839, torn, iv., viz. : Johannis de Piano 
 Carpini Historia Mongolorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus, 
 ed. M. d'Avezac ; Itinerarium Willelmi de Rubruk, ed. F. 
 Michel et T. Wright. 
 
 1 Yule's Cathay, vol. i. p. xxxix ; Ptolemy, i. 17. Cf. 
 Bunbury's History of Ancient Geography, London, 1883, vol. 
 ii. p. 606. 
 
 321 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 from the camp of bustling heathen at Karako- 
 rum there is brought to Europe the first an- 
 nouncement of a geographical fact from which 
 The data the poetic mind of Christopher Co- 
 W rcpared U for lumbus will hereafter reap a wonder- 
 Coiumbus ; f u l 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. 1 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 in- 
 . „ ference were now all at hand, but it 
 
 but as yet 7 
 
 nobody rea- does not appear that any one as yet 
 thJe data to reasoned from the data to the conclu- 
 a practical s ion, although we find Roger Bacon, 
 
 conclusion . . P , . ° . 
 
 in 1267, citing the opinions of Aris- 
 totle 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 
 
 1 See my Beginnings of New England, chap. i. How 
 richly suggestive to an American is the contemporaneity of 
 Rubruquis and Earl Simon of Leicester ! 
 
 322 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 so very great. 1 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 gen- 
 eral grew the interest in Cathay. 
 
 In the middle of the thirteenth century, some 
 members of the Polo family, one of the aris- 
 tocratic families of Venice, had a The Polo 
 commercial house at Constantinople. brothers 
 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 east- 
 ward 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 
 
 1 Roger Bacon, Opus Majus, ed. Jebb, London, 1733, 
 p. 183. 
 
 3*3 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 never before met European gentlemen, and was 
 charmed with the cultivated and polished Vene- 
 tians. 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 
 Kubiai teachers. The brothers reached Ven- 
 
 S^'tiT" ^e in 1269, and found that Pope 
 Pops 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 127 1 to 
 return to China, taking with them Nicold'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 trav- 
 elled 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 Kai- 
 pingfu, not far from the northern end of the 
 Great Wall. 
 
 It has been said that the failure of Kublai's 
 3 2 4 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 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 Catholi- 
 cism failed to grasp. The Venetians, however, 
 lost nothing in the good Khan's es- Marco Polo 
 teem. Young Marco began to make and his travels 
 
 . . in Asia 
 
 himself proficient in speaking and 
 writing several Asiatic languages, and was pre- 
 sently 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. 1 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 vari- 
 ous 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 Ta- 
 briz, 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 Vene- 
 1 Pauthier's Marco Polo, p. 361 ; Yule's Marco Polo, p. li. 
 325 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 tian of that day was deemed to be from his very- 
 cradle a seasoned sea-dog, and as the kindly old 
 Mongol sovereign had an inveterate land-lub- 
 ber's misgivings about ocean voyages, he con- 
 sented to part with his dear friends, so that he 
 might entrust the precious princess to their care, 
 nm recorded They sailed from the port of Zaiton 
 voyage ofEu- (Chinchow) early in 1292, and after 
 
 ropeans ^ y * - _, 
 
 around the long delays on the coasts of Sumatra 
 Jentsu!T Se and Hindustan, in order to avoid 
 1292-94 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 re- 
 Retumofthe turned by way of Trebizond and the 
 PoiostoVen- Bosphorus to Venice, arriving in 1295. 
 When they got there, says Ramusio, 
 after their absence of four and twenty years, 
 "the same fate befell them as befell 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," 
 326 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY ■ 
 
 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." * 
 
 Three years afterward, in 1298, Marco com- 
 manded a galley in the great naval battle with 
 the Genoese near Curzola. The Venetians were 
 totally defeated, and Marco was one of the 
 7000 prisoners taken to Genoa, where he was 
 kept in durance for about a year. One of his 
 companions in captivity was a certain Marco Polo's 
 Rusticiano, of Pisa, who was glad to £*£T 
 listen to his descriptions of Asia, and Genoa > I2 99 
 to act as his amanuensis. French was then, at 
 the close of the Crusades, a language as generally 
 
 1 Ramusio apud Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. xxxvii. 
 
 3 2 7 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 " 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 
 its great con- toward a knowledge of the earth's sur- 
 
 geogScd faCe than a °y b °° k that had eVer been 
 
 knowledge 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 manu- 
 factures 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 Anda- 
 man. He knew of Japan and the woeful defeat 
 of the Mongols there, when they tried to invade 
 the island kingdom in 1281. He gave a de- 
 scription of Hindustan far more complete and 
 characteristic than had ever before been pub- 
 lished. From Arab sailors, accustomed to the 
 Indian Ocean, he learned something about 
 Zanzibar and Madagascar and the semi-Chris- 
 328 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 tian kingdom of Abyssinia. To the northward 
 from Persia he described the country of the 
 Golden Horde, whose khans were then hold- 
 ing 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. 1 
 
 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 ge- 
 ography 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 chiv- 
 alry. Perhaps no part of Marco's story was so 
 likely to interest his readers as his 
 references to Prester John. In the ter J° " 
 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." 2 At different times he was identi- 
 
 1 Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. cxxxi. 
 
 2 "But for to speake of riches and of stones, 
 And men and horse, I trow the large wones 
 
 3*9 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 fied 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 gruesome warlock in Rus- 
 sian nursery lore. The notion of Prester John 
 and his wealthy kingdom could no more be ex- 
 pelled from the European mind in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries than the kindred 
 notion of El Dorado in the sixteenth. The po- 
 sition of this kingdom was shifted about here and 
 there, as far as from Chinese Tartary to Abys- 
 sinia 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 
 
 Of Prestir John, ne all his tresorie, 
 
 Might not unneth have boght the tenth partie." 
 
 Chaucer, The Flotver 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. pp. 
 204—2 1 6. 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 igno- 
 rant 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 de- 
 liver 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. 
 
 330 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 Asia were peopled with elves and griffins and 
 " one-eyed Arimaspians," 1 and we may be sure 
 that to Marco's readers these beings The<<Ari- 
 were quite as real as the polished citi- mas P lans " 
 zens 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 acquisi- 
 tions were altogether too far in advance of his 
 age to be readily assimilated. 
 
 1 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 mythi- 
 cal people seems to have been made by Greek travellers in 
 Scythia as early as the seventh century before Christ ; and 
 they furnished Afisteas of Proconnesus, somewhat later, with 
 the theme of his poem " Arimaspeia," which has perished, 
 all except six verses quoted by Longinus. See Mure's Liter- 
 ature of Ancient Greece, vol. iv. p. 68. Thence the notion 
 of the Arimaspians seems to have passed to Herodotus (iii. 
 1 1 6 ; iv. 27) and to ^Eschylus : — 
 
 6£v<7TO/jU)V? yap Zijvbs axpayet^ kvvos 
 ypviras i/wAa£ei, roe re fiovvSnra. arparbv 
 'ApLfiatrirbv imroPafiov' , oi! \pv<r6ppvrov 
 oucovffLV a/upi vai±a nAovTbiPO? nopov • 
 toutois <ri> fiyj 7reA<xfe. 
 
 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. 
 
 331 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Nevertheless, in the Catalan map, made in 
 1375, and now to be seen in the National Li- 
 brary at Paris, there is a thorough-going and 
 other visits not unsuccessful attempt to embody- 
 to china the results of Polo's travels. In the 
 interval of three quarters of a century since the 
 publication of Marco's narrative, several adven- 
 turous 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 Em- 
 pire, and Thibet. 1 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. 2 
 
 1 Odoric mentions Juggernaut processions and the burning 
 of widows ; in Sumatra he observed cannibalism and commu- 
 nity of wives ; he found the kingdom of Prester John in Chi- 
 nese 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. 
 
 2 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 
 
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 jlIiCATALAN MAP, 1375 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 Several other missionary friars visited China be- 
 tween 1302 and 1330, and about ten years after 
 the latter date the Florentine merchant, Fran- 
 cesco Pegolotti, wrote a very useful handbook 
 for commercial travellers on the overland route 
 to that country. 1 Between 1338 and 1353 Gio- 
 vanni Marignolli spent some years at Peking, 
 as papal legate from Benedict XI. to the Great 
 Khan, and also travelled in Ceylon and Hindu- 
 stan. 2 That seems to have been the last of these 
 
 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, 
 Piano Carpini, Hay ton the Armenian, Boldensele's Itinerary, 
 Albert of Aix's chronicle of the first crusade, Brunetto La- 
 tini's Tr'esor, 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 im- 
 posture 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.) 
 
 1 One piece of Pegolotti' s advice is still useful for travellers 
 in the nineteenth century who visit benighted heathen countries 
 afHicted 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. 
 
 2 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, 
 
 333 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 journeys to the far East. In 1368, the people 
 of China rose against the Mongol dynasty and 
 overthrow overthrew it. The first emperor of 
 oftheMon- the native Ming dynasty was placed 
 and Sing upon the throne, and the Chinese 
 up of china re torted 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. 
 
 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 oppor- 
 tunity in such wise as to mark the beginning of 
 a new era in the history of geographical know- 
 ledge. 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 im- 
 
 of Tangier, whose travels, between 1325 and 1355, covered 
 pretty much the whole of Asia except Siberia, besides a jour- 
 ney across Sahara to the river Niger. His book does not seem 
 to have attracted attention in Europe until early in the present 
 century. 
 
 334 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 penetrable 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 First rumours 
 from time immemorial had formed °4* e isian~ds 
 such an important element in Med- and japan 
 iterranean 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 be- 
 yond the coast of Cathay. These were rich 
 countries, abounding in objects of lucrative 
 traffic. Under the liberal Mongol rule the Ori- 
 ental 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 los- 
 ing, and to consider if there were any feasible 
 method of recovering it. 
 
 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 
 
 335 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 had lately come upon the scene. In Asia Minor 
 the beastly Turk, whose career had been for two 
 centuries arrested by the Crusades, 
 tomed routes now reared his head again. The Sel- 
 bade n ran!ff j u kian had been only scotched, not 
 by the otto- killed ; and now he sprang to life 
 
 man Turks . ~ . , , ~ 
 
 as the Ottoman, with sharper fangs 
 than before. In 1365 the Turks established 
 themselves in the Balkan peninsula, with Adri- 
 anople as their capital, and began tightening 
 their coils about the doomed city of Constan- 
 tine. 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 Constanti- 
 nople, 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 Turk- 
 ish corsairs began to swarm in the eastern waters 
 of the Mediterranean, the voyage became more 
 and more unsafe for Christian vessels. It was 
 
 336 
 
EUROPE AND CATHAY 
 
 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 ruth- 
 lessly cut off. It was fast becoming necessary to 
 consider whether there might not be other prac- 
 ticable routes to "the Indies" than Necessity for 
 those which had from time immemo- ^'"f , an 
 
 * outside 
 
 rial been followed. Could there be route to the 
 such a thing as an " outside route " Indles 
 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 genera- 
 tions 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 effect- 
 ually the eastern Mediterranean was closed, the 
 stronger grew the impulse to venture upon un- 
 known paths in order to realize the vague but 
 glorious hopes that began to cluster about those 
 remote countries. Such an era of romantic enter- 
 prise 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 grop- 
 
 337 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 ing 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 Un- 
 seen. 
 
 33* 
 
IV 
 THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE 
 
 A S it dawned upon men's minds that to 
 r-\ find some oceanic route from Europe 
 ■*--*- to the remote shores of Asia was emi- 
 nently desirable, the first attempt would natu- 
 rally be to see what could be done by 
 
 ; •* Question as 
 
 sailing down the western coast of to whether 
 Africa, and ascertaining whether that ^ch°dby be 
 continent could be circumnavigated, sailing around 
 
 Africa 
 
 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 war- 
 fare Portugal emerged somewhat sooner than 
 
 339 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 the Spanish kingdoms, and thus had somewhat 
 earlier a surplus of energy released for work of 
 another sort. It was not strange that the Portu- 
 guese should be the first people since the old 
 Northmen to engage in distant maritime adven- 
 ture 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 voy- 
 ages, 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. 
 
 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 ques- 
 tion. The old Homeric notion of an ocean en- 
 compassing the terrestrial world, although men- 
 tioned with doubt by Herodotus, 1 continued to 
 
 1 Tbv 8e 'QKeavbv Aoyo) jjh> Xiyovai air' fjXiau dvaroAeW 
 apgd/xtvov yfjv irepl irSxrav peav, epyco 3« ovk airoSawva-i. 
 Herodotus, iv. 8. 
 
 340 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 survive after the globular form of the earth had 
 come to be generally maintained by ancient 
 geographers. The greatest of these ge- views of 
 ographers, Eratosthenes, correctly as- f^° s ^^' 
 sumed that the Indian Ocean was con- Io6 
 tinuous with the Atlantic, 1 and that Africa could 
 be circumnavigated, just as he incorrectly as- 
 sumed 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. 2 A similar opinion 
 as to Africa was held by Posidonius and by 
 Strabo. 3 It was called in question, however, by 
 Polybius,* and was flatly denied by the great 
 astronomer Hipparchus, who thought that cer- 
 tain observations on the tides, recorded by Se- 
 leucus of Babylon, proved that there could be 
 no connection between the Atlantic and Indian 
 oceans. 5 Claudius Ptolemy, writing in the sec- 
 ond century after Christ, followed the opinion of 
 
 1 Kal yap kclt' avrbv 'EparocrOivrj Trjv «ktos OaXarrav dira- 
 <rav crvppow elvai, Stare koX rrjv 'Ecnrepiov icai tt]v 1Epv6pav 
 OaXarrav pxav etvai. Strabo, i. 3, § 13. 
 
 2 Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, vol. i. p. 644. 
 8 Strabo, ii. 3, § 4 ; xvii. 3, § 1. 
 
 4 KaOdirep 8c koI rrjs 'Ao-ias koi ri)s Aifivrjs, Ka66 <rvvd- 
 "ittovitiv aX\r)\ai<s irepl rrjv AlOicnrlav, ovSels e^ci Ac-yeip arpt- 
 kios «os t<Sv Ka6' ij/x,as Kaipurv, irorepov rpreipos cart Kara, 
 to cruve^es ret wpos ttjv //.ccn^/Spiay, y 8a\a.TTy jrepie^eTai. 
 Polybius, iii. 38. 
 
 6 Bunbury, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 15. 
 
 341 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Hipparchus, and carried to an extreme the re- 
 action against Eratosthenes. By Ptolemy's time 
 opposing the Caspian had been proved to be 
 Ptokniy f cir an inland sea, and it was evident that 
 A . d. 150 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 con- 
 tinents together far to the southeast, thus mak- 
 ing the Indian Ocean a land-locked sea. 1 
 
 These views of Hipparchus and Ptolemy 
 took no heed of the story told to Herodotus 
 of the circumnavigation of Africa by a Phceni- 
 storyofthe c i an squadron at some time during 
 Phoenician the reign of Necho in Egypt (610— 
 
 voyage, in \ o t<i tii • • i • 
 
 the time of 595 b. c). 1 he rncenician ships 
 Necho were g^j to have sailed from the Red 
 
 Sea and to have returned through the Mediter- 
 ranean in the third year after starting. In each 
 of the two autumn seasons they stopped and 
 
 1 See the map of Ptolemy's world, above, p. 304. 
 
 2 Ptolemy expressly declares that the equatorial regions had 
 never been visited by people from the northern hemisphere : 
 TtVes Be eltriv ai otK^crcis ovk av e^oi/xev TreireuTixevwi ehriiv. 
 "ArpiTTTOi. yap ehri /J-exP 1 - T0 ^ Bevpo rots airo rijs Ka.8' tyuas 
 oLKovjjLevrj'S, kou etKacriav /xaXXov av tis ^ 'urropLav ijyijtraiTo 
 ra \ey6/X€va irepl airSi'. Syntaxis, ii. 6. 
 
 342 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 sowed grain and waited for it to ripen, which 
 in southern Africa would require ten or twelve 
 weeks. 1 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. 2 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 
 
 1 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii. p. 29, note 8. 
 
 2 The story is discredited by Mannert, Geographic der 
 Griechen und Rbmer, bd. i. pp. 19—26 ; Gossellin, Re- 
 cherches sur la geographic des Anciens, torn. i. p. 1 49 ; Lewis, 
 Astronomy of the Ancients, pp. 508—5 1 5 ; Vincent, Com- 
 merce 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 uber die Politik, den Ferkehr, etc., 3e aufl., 
 Gottingen, 1815, bd. i. abth. ii. pp. 87-93 > Rennell, Ge- 
 ography 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 dis- 
 proved 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. 
 
 343 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 ex- 
 amination. 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 mari- 
 ners, is something that could hardly have been 
 imagined by people familiar only with the north- 
 ern hemisphere. It is therefore almost certain 
 that Necho's expedition sailed beyond the 
 equator. 1 But that is as far as inference can 
 properly carry us ; for our experience of the un- 
 critical temper of ancient narrators is enough to 
 suggest that such an achievement might easily 
 be magnified by rumour into the story told, 
 
 1 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 be- 
 lief: "II se frotta les mains et s'en alia bien content." 
 When it came to ancient history, Sir George was undeniably 
 fond of " the everlasting No." In the present case his scep- 
 ticism seems on the whole well judged, but some of his argu- 
 ments savour of undue haste toward a negative conclusion. 
 He thus strangely forgets that what we call autumn is spring- 
 time 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. 
 
 344 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 more than a century after the event, to Hero- 
 dotus. 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 1 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. 
 
 Of Phoenician and other voyages along the 
 Atlantic coast of Africa we have much more de- 
 tailed and trustworthy information. As early as 
 the twelfth century before Christ traders from 
 Tyre had founded Cadiz (Gades), 2 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. 
 
 1 " 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. 
 
 2 Rawlinson's History of Phcenicia, pp. 105,418; Pseu- 
 do-Aristotle, Mirab. Auscult., 146 ; Velleius Paterculus, i. 2, 
 §6. 
 
 345 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 The most remarkable undertaking in this quar- 
 ter was the famous voyage of the Carthaginian 
 voyage of commander Hanno, whose own brief 
 Hanno b u t. interesting account of it has been 
 
 preserved. 1 This expedition consisted of sixty 
 penteconters (fifty-oared ships), and its chief 
 purpose was colonization. Upon the Mauri- 
 tanian coast seven small trading stations were 
 founded, one of which — Kerne, at the mouth 
 of the Rio d'Ouro 2 — 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 Sher- 
 boro Island, where he found " wild men and 
 women covered with hair," called by the inter- 
 preters " gorillas." 3 At that point the ships 
 turned back, apparently for want of provisions. 
 
 1 Hanno, Peri-plus, in Miiller, Geographi Grceci Minores, 
 torn. i. pp. I— 14. Of two or three commanders named 
 Hanno it is uncertain which was the one who led this expedi- 
 tion, and thus its date has been variously assigned from 570 
 to 470 b. c. 
 
 2 For the determination of these localities see Bunbury, op. 
 cit. vol. i. pp. 318—335. There is an interesting Spanish 
 descripdon of Hanno' s expedition in Mariana, Historia de Es- 
 pana, Madrid, 1783, torn. i. pp. 89-93. 
 
 3 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. Ac- 
 cording to Pliny {Hist. Nat., vi. 36) these skins were hung 
 
 346 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 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. a), nar- 
 rated by Herodotus, who merely tells us that a 
 coast was reached where undersized men, clad in 
 palm-leaf garments, fled to the hills „ c 
 
 r ^ o ■» Voyages or 
 
 at sight of the strange visitors. 1 The Sataspes and 
 other was that of Eudoxus (about 85 
 B. a), related by Posidonius, the friend and 
 teacher of Cicero. The story is that this Eu- 
 doxus, 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 mer- 
 chants 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 
 
 up as a votive offering in the temple of Juno (/. e. Astarte 
 or Ashtoreth : see Apuleius, Metamorph., xi. 257 ; Gese- 
 nius, Monumenta Phtznic, p. 168), where they might have 
 been seen at any time before the Romans destroyed the 
 city. 
 
 1 Herodotus, iv. 43. 
 
 347 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 1 
 
 It is worthy of note that both Pliny and 
 Pomponius Mela, quoting Cornelius Nepos as 
 their authority, speak of Eudoxus as having cir- 
 cumnavigated Africa from the Red Sea to Ca- 
 diz ; and Pliny, moreover, tells us that Hanno 
 sailed around that continent as far as Arabia, 2 — 
 a statement which is clearly false. These exam- 
 ples show how stories grow when carelessly and 
 uncritically repeated, and they strongly tend to 
 wild exag- confirm the doubt with which one is 
 gerations 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 un- 
 doubted inscriptions), probably also the Ma- 
 deiras, and possibly the Cape Verde group. 3 
 
 1 The story is preserved by Strabo, ii. 3> §§ 4, 5, who 
 rejects it with a vehemence for which no adequate reason is 
 assigned. 
 
 a Pliny, Hist. Nat., ii. 67 ; Mela, De Situ Or bis, iii. 9. 
 
 8 After the civil war of Sertorius (b. c. 80-72), the Ro- 
 
 348 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 The extent of the knowledge which the an- 
 cients thus had of western Africa is well illus- 
 trated 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 views of 
 Ptolemy a century later, but of the Jg *"* 
 Atlantic coast he knew more than •*■ D - s° 
 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 discov- 
 
 mans 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 alias urbes excultas." Mela, iii. 
 10. 
 
 'AAAa o*' cs 'HAvfftor ireSwp KaX ireCpara yai'ijs 
 
 aOdvaroi Tve.jj.tyov<?LV, 001 £ ai/06? 'Pafiajuai'dv?, 
 ijprep pijumt JSiottj ire'Aet avBptaTrourtv ' 
 ait vi^teTos, ovt' ap x* i/xtov iroKils ovTe jtot' o/x/3po?, 
 aAA" alei Ze^vpoto Aiyv irveCovras aijras 
 'flxeocoy avirjatf avatyvx €iv a.v0pt*tirmis, 
 
 Odyssey, iv. 563. 
 Since Horace's time {Epod.,v\. 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 gar- 
 den where 
 
 Vezzosi augelli infra le vcrde fronde 
 Temprano a prova lascivette note. 
 Marmora 1' aura, e fa le foglie e 1' onde 
 Garrir, che variamente ella percote. 
 
 Gerusakmme Liber at a, xvi. 12. 
 
 349 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 eries. His general conception of the earth was 
 substantially that of Eratosthenes. It was what 
 has been styled the " oceanic " theory, in con- 
 trast 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 exer- 
 cised over the mediaeval mind an almost de- 
 spotic 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 Eratos- 
 thenes, 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 an- 
 tagonism between Ptolemy and Mela may have 
 failed to excite comment, 1 especially in view of 
 the lack of suitable maps such as emphasize 
 that antagonism to our modern minds. But in 
 
 1 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 gene- 
 alogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, the radically different 
 theories of Christ's personality and career in the Fourth Gos- 
 pel as compared with the three Synoptics, etc. 
 
 35° 
 
c 
 
 e a 
 
 n u s 
 ^P 7 
 
 POMPONIUS MELA'S 11 
 
lc y * * / c 
 
 brum 
 
 M Solis I. 
 
 N 
 
 H 
 
 jUiWORLD, CIR. A. D. 50 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 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 advo- 
 cate among those classical authors to whose 
 authority so much deference was paid. 
 
 If the Portuguese mariners of the generation 
 before Columbus had acquiesced in Ptolomy's 
 views as final, they surely would not have 
 devoted their energies to the task of circum- 
 navigating 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 Ancient ^ 
 mere graphic device for marking con- ory of the 
 veniently the relations of different re- 
 gions to the solar source of heat ; but before the 
 great Portuguese voyages and the epoch-mak- 
 ing third voyage of Vespucius, to be described 
 hereafter, a discouraging doctrine was enter- 
 tained with regard to these zones. Ancient 
 travellers in Scythia and voyagers to " Thule " 
 — which in Ptolemy's scheme perhaps meant 
 the Shetland Isles 1 — had learned something of 
 
 1 Bunbury, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 492, 527. The name is 
 used in different geographical senses by various ancient writers, 
 
 35* 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Arctic phenomena. The long winter nights, 1 
 the snow and ice, and the bitter winds, made a 
 deep impression upon visitors from the Medi- 
 terranean ; 2 and when such facts were con- 
 as is well shown in Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, pp. 
 467-48 1 . 
 
 1 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. 
 
 2 The reader will remember Virgil's magnificent descrip- 
 tion 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. 
 Turn Sol pallentes haud unquam discurit umbras ; 
 Nee cum invectus equis altum petit aethera, nee cum 
 Praecipitem Oceani rubrb lavit aequore currum. 
 Concrescunt subitae currenti in flumine crustae ; 
 Undaque jam tergo ferratos sustinet orbes, 
 Puppibus ilia prius patulis, nunc hospita plaustris, 
 ^raque dissiliunt vulgo, vestesque rigescunt 
 Indutae, caeduntque securibus humida Tina 
 Et totae solidam in glaciem vertere lacunas, 
 Stiriaque impexis induruit borrida barbis. 
 Interea toto non secius aere ningit ; 
 Intereunt pecudes j stant circumfusa pruinis 
 Corpora magna bourn j confertoque agmine cervi 
 Torpent mole nova, et summis vix comibus exstant. 
 
 Ipsi in defossis specubus, secura sub alta 
 
 Otia agunt terra, congestaque robora, totasque 
 
 35* 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 trasted 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 CEcumene 
 (olKovfievrf), or Inhabited World ; Theinhab- 
 the south temperate zone is also in- g^^.^. 
 habited by the Antichthones or Anti- ti P odes 
 podes, but about these people we know nothing, 
 because between us and them there intervenes 
 
 Advolvere focis ulmos, ignique dedere. 
 Hie noctem ludo ducunt, et pocula laeti 
 Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis. 
 Talis Hyperboreo Septem subjecta trioni 
 Gens effrana virum Rhipaeo tunditur Euro, 
 Et pecudum fulvis velantur corpora saetis. 
 
 The Roman conception of the situation of these " Hyperbo- 
 reans" and of the Rhipaean mountains may be seen in the 
 map of Mela's world. 
 
 353 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 the burning zone, which it is impossible to 
 
 cross. 1 
 
 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 prob- 
 able, says Mela, with delightful nalvet'e, be- 
 cause Taprobane is inhabited, and still we do 
 not know of anybody who has ever made the 
 tour of it. 2 Mela's contemporary, the elder 
 
 1 " Huic medio terra sublimis cingitur undique man : 
 eodemque in duo latera, quae hemisphaeria nominantur, ab 
 oriente divisa ad occasum, zonis quinque distinguitur. Me- 
 diam asstus infestat, frigus ultimas : reliquae habitabiles paria 
 agunt anni tempora, verum non pariter. Antichthones alte- 
 ram, nos alteram incolimus. Illius situ ab ardorem interce- 
 dentis plagaa incognito, hujus dicendus est," etc. De Situ 
 Or bis, i. I . A similar theory is set forth by Ovid ( Meta- 
 morph., i. 45), and by Virgil {Georg., i. 233) : — 
 
 Quinque tenent cerium zonae ; quarum una corusco 
 Semper Sole rubens, et torrida semper ab igni ; 
 Quam circum extremse dextra laevaque trahuntur, 
 Cserulea glacie concretae atque imbribusatris. 
 Has inter mediamque, duae mortalibus aegris 
 Munere concessae Divum ; et via secta per ambas, 
 Obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo. 
 
 2 " Taprobane aut grandis admodum insula aut prima pars 
 orbis alterius Hipparcho dicitur ; sed quia habitata, nee quis- 
 quam circummeasse traditur, prope verum est." De Situ 
 Orbis, iii. 7. 
 
 354 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 Pliny, declares that Taprobane " has long been 
 regarded" as part of another world, the name 
 of which is Antichthon, or Opposite- curious no- 
 Earth ; 1 at the same time Pliny tions about 
 vouchsafes three closely printed pages y 
 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 imply- 
 ing the existence of people cut off from the 
 knowledge of the gospel and not included in 
 the plan of salvation. 
 
 As to the possibility of crossing the torrid 
 zone, opinion was not unanimous. Greek ex- 
 plorers from Alexandria (cir. b. c. ioo) seem to 
 have gone far up the Nile toward the equator, 
 and the astronomer Geminus quotes their testi- 
 mony in proof of his opinion that the torrid 
 zone is inhabitable. 2 Panaetius, the friend of 
 the younger Scipio Africanus, had already ex- 
 pressed a similar opinion. But the flaming 
 theory prevailed. Macrobius, writing about six 
 hundred years later, maintained that the south- 
 ernmost limit of the habitable earth was 850 
 miles south of Syene, which lies just under the 
 
 1 "Taprobanen alteram orbem terrarum esse, diu exist- 
 imatum est, Antichthonum appellatione." Hist. Nat., vi. 
 24. 
 
 2 Geminus, Isagoge, cap. 13. 
 
 355 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 tropic of Cancer. 1 Beyond this point no man 
 could go without danger from the fiery atmos- 
 phere. Beyond some such latitude on the 
 The fiery ocean no ship could venture without 
 zone risk of being engulfed in some steam- 
 
 ing whirlpool. 2 Such was the common belief 
 before the great voyages of the Portuguese. 
 
 Besides this dread of the burning zone, an- 
 other 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 
 Going down- from the land they could never get 
 hm back again. Men accustomed to in- 
 
 land sea travel did not feel this dread within the 
 
 1 Macrobius, Somnium Scipionis, ii. 8. Strabo (ii. 5, §§ 7, 
 8) sets the southern boundary of the Inhabited World eight 
 hundred miles south of Syene, and the northern boundary at 
 the north of Ireland. 
 
 2 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 Differ entiarum, 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." 
 
 356 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 regions of which they had experience, but it 
 assailed them whenever they thought of braving 
 the mighty waters outside. 1 Thus the master 
 mariner, in the Middle Ages, might contem- 
 plate 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 au- 
 thority, withal, on scientific questions ; for ac- 
 
 1 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 1' 
 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. II 
 che non potrebbono fare i navigli con grandissimo vento." 
 Vita dell' 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 occi- 
 dente 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 sar- 
 casm that follows is very characteristic of Las Casas : " Esta 
 era gentil y profunda razpn, y senal de haber bien el negocio 
 entendido !" Historia de las Indias, torn. i. p. 230. 
 
 357 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 cording to Virgil the Inhabited World descends 
 toward the equator and has its apex in the ex- 
 treme north. 1 
 
 To such notions as these, which were sup- 
 posed 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 " Gor- 
 gons and Hydras and Chimaeras dire," furnish- 
 ing eloquent testimony to the feelings with 
 which the unknown was regarded. The barren 
 Superstitious wastes of the Sea of Darkness awak- 
 fanaes ene( j a shuddering dread like that with 
 
 which children shrink from the gloom of a cellar. 
 When we remember all these things, and con- 
 sider 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 
 
 1 Mundus, ut ad Scythiam Rhipxasque arduus arces 
 Consurgit, premitur Libya devexus in austros. 
 Hie vertex nobis semper sublimis j at ilium 
 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. 
 
 358 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 who first sought an ocean route to the far-off 
 shores of Cathay. 
 
 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 clumsiness of 
 than the Norwegian " dragons " of ^ caravels 
 the tenth. Mere yachts in size we should call 
 them, but far from yacht-like in shape or nimble- 
 ness. With their length seldom more than thrice 
 their width of beam, with narrow tower-like 
 poops, with broad-shouldered bows and bow- 
 sprit weighed down with spritsail yards, and with 
 no canvas higher than a topsail, these clumsy 
 caravels could make but little progress against 
 headwinds, 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 water-line the 
 ship was liable to be sunk by the terrible worm 
 which, in Hakluyt's phrase, " many times pear- 
 ceth and eateth through the strongest oake." 
 For want of vegetable food in the larder, or 
 anything save the driest of bread and beef stif- 
 fened 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 
 359 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 half its number from that foul disease. Often 
 in traversing unknown seas the sturdy men who 
 Famine and survived all other perils were brought 
 scurvy f ace to f ace ^fa s t arv - a tion when they 
 
 had ventured too far without turning back. 1 
 We need not wonder that the first steps in 
 oceanic discovery were slow and painful. 
 
 First among the instruments without which 
 systematic ocean navigation would have been im- 
 possible, the magnetic compass had been intro- 
 Themari- duced into southern Europe and was 
 ner's compass used by Biscayan and Catalan sailors 
 before the end of the twelfth century. 2 Parties 
 of Crusaders had learned the virtues of the sus- 
 pended needle from the Arabs, who are said to 
 have got their knowledge indirecdy from China 
 in the course of their eastern voyages. 3 It seems 
 
 1 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, vol. ii. pp. 177, 182. 
 
 3 Navarrete, Discurso historico sobre los progresos del arte 
 de navegar en Espana, p. 28 ; see also Raymond Lully's trea- 
 tise, Libra felix, 6 Maravillas del mundo (a. d. 1286). 
 
 8 See Humboldt's Kosmos, bd. i. p. 294 ; Klaproth, Let- 
 tre a M. de Humboldt sur P 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 traversers maritimes, mais dans les 
 360 
 
CARAVEL OF THE TIME OF COLUMBUS 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 to have been at Amalfi that the needle was first 
 enclosed in a box and connected with a gradu- 
 ated compass-card. Apparently it had not come 
 into general use in the middle of the thirteenth 
 century, for in 1258 the famous Brunetto La- 
 tini, 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 Caval- 
 canti : " 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 in- 
 stantly 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 
 
 voyages de cara vanes au milieu des deserts," etc. Sedillot, 
 Histoire des Arabes, torn. ii. p. 130. 
 361 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 constructed under the influence of some infer- 
 nal spirit. 1 A time may arrive when these pre- 
 judices, which are of such great hindrance to 
 researches into the secrets of nature, will be over- 
 come ; 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 in- 
 dustry and intelligence for which he and they 
 now meet with no other return than obloquy 
 and reproach." 2 
 
 That time was after all not so long in arriving, 
 for by the end of the thirteenth century the com- 
 pass had come to be quite generally used, 3 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 
 jackstaffs were in use, very crazy affairs as corn- 
 Latitude and pared with the modern quadrant, but 
 longitude sufficiently accurate to enable a well- 
 trained observer, in calculating his latitude, to 
 
 1 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. 
 
 3 This version is cited from Major's Prince Henry the Nav- 
 igator, p. 58. 
 
 8 Hiillmann, Stadtewesen des Mittelalters, bd. i. op. 
 125-137. 
 
 362 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 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 cus- 
 tom 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 un- 
 common. 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 some- 
 times wonderful. Doubtless this very poverty 
 of resources served to sharpen their watchful 
 sagacity. 1 To sail the seas was in those days a 
 task requiring high mental equipment ; it was 
 no work for your commonplace skipper. Hu- 
 man 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. 
 
 1 Compare the remarks of Mr. Clark Russell on the mar- 
 iners of the seventeenth century, in his William Dampier, 
 
 p. 12. 
 
 3^3 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 We are now prepared to appreciate the char- 
 acter of the work that was done in the course of 
 the first attempts to find an oceanic route from 
 prince Henry Europe to Asia. Then, as in other 
 tor.^o'l-" great epochs of history, men of genius 
 1463 arose to meet the occasion. In 1394 
 
 was born Prince Henry of Portugal, since known 
 as Henry the Navigator. 1 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 glori- 
 ous than those of Agincourt. In 141 5, being 
 then in his twenty-first year, Prince Henry 
 played a distinguished part in the expedition 
 
 1 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, Bar- 
 ros y Couto, Decadas da Asia, nova edicao con Indice geral, 
 Lisbon, 1778-88, 24 vols. izmo. 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 pre- 
 sent century : Azurara, Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista 
 de Guin'e, Paris, 1841, a superb edition in royal quarto, ed- 
 ited by the Viscount da Carreira, with introduction and notes 
 by the Viscount de Santarem. 
 
 364 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 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 Mussul- 
 man 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 en- 
 thusiasm. 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, 1 and down past that 
 Gold Coast Prince Henry saw the ocean route 
 to the Indies, the road whereby a vast His ;deaofan 
 empire might be won for Portugal and ocean rout « 
 
 ..,. r i"ii i to the Indies, 
 
 millions of wandering heathen souls and what it 
 might be gathered into the fold of mi s htb ™s 
 Christ. To doubt the sincerity of the latter mo- 
 
 1 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, torn, lxxxii. col. 484) that we 
 first find the word " Mediterranean " used as a proper name 
 for that great land-locked sea. 
 
 3&S 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 tive, or to belittle its influence, would be to do 
 injustice to Prince Henry, — such cynical injus- 
 tice as our hard-headed age is only too apt to 
 mete out to that romantic time and the fresh 
 enthusiasm which inspired its heroic perform- 
 ances. 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 strength- 
 ening the church served as a most powerful in- 
 centive to the actions which in the course of little 
 more than a century quite changed the face of 
 the world. 
 
 Filled with such lofty and generous thoughts, 
 Prince Henry, on his return from Morocco, in 
 141 8, chose for himself a secluded place of 
 abode where he could devote himself to his 
 purposes undisturbed by the court life at Lis- 
 bon 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 flatter- 
 ing 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 
 366 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 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 The Sacre<1 
 of Portugal, the ancient kingdom of Promontory 
 Algarve, of which his father now appointed him 
 governor. That lonely and barren rock, pro- 
 truding into the ocean, had long ago impressed 
 the imagination of Greek and Roman writers ; 
 they called it the Sacred Promontory, and sup- 
 posed it to be the westernmost limit of the 
 habitable earth. 1 There the young prince pro- 
 ceeded 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 pilgrim- 
 age, the first glimpse of home that greeted 
 them was likely to be the beacon-light in the 
 tower where the master sat poring over prob- 
 lems of Archimedes or watching the stars. For 
 
 1 'O/xowos 8e koI irepl rr/g 2fa> orrjX&v AeyeTCU. ■ 8uoyuK<0Ta- 
 rov pkv yap <rqp.aov Trjs oiKOv/Aef^s, to ru>v I/Sijptov aKpoyrr/piov, 
 o koAovctiv 'IepoV. Strabo, ii. 5, § 14; cf. Dionysius Perie- 
 getes, v. 161. In reality it lies not quite so far west as the 
 country around Lisbon. 
 
 367 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Henry, whose motto was " Talent de bien faire," 
 or (in the old French usage) " Desire * to do well," 
 was wont to throw himself whole-hearted into 
 whatever he undertook, and the study of astron- 
 omy 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 abun- 
 dant revenues he made the appropriations need- 
 ful for the worthy purpose of advancing the in- 
 terests 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 with- 
 out hope of immediate returns ; but after a while 
 his dogged perseverance began to be rewarded 
 with such successes as to silence all adverse 
 comment. 
 
 The first work in hand was the rediscovery of 
 coasts and islands that had ceased to be visited 
 
 1 See Littre, Dictionnaire, s. v. " Talent ; " Du Cange, 
 Glossarium, " talentum, animi decretum, voluntas, deside- 
 rium, cupiditas," etc. ; cf. Raynouard, Glossaire Provengale, 
 torn. v. p. 296. French was then fashionable at court, in 
 Lisbon as well as in London. 
 
 368 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 even before the breaking up of the Roman Em- 
 pire. For more than a thousand years the Ma- 
 deiras and Canaries had been well- 
 
 . . - , , The Madeira 
 
 nigh forgotten, and upon the coast of and canary 
 the African continent no ship ven- !sIands 
 tured beyond Cape Non, the headland so named 
 because it said " No ! " to the wistful mariner. 1 
 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 com- 
 pass. Between 13 17 and 13 51 certain Portu- 
 guese 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 13 51, pre- 
 served in the Laurentian Library at Florence. 2 
 The voyage to the Azores was probably the 
 
 1 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, torn, 
 i. p. 173; Mariana, Hist, de Espana, torn. i. p. 91; Barros, 
 torn. i. p. 36. 
 
 2 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 pro- 
 foundly learned and critical researches. He has fairly con- 
 quered this subject and made it his own, and whoever touches 
 it after him, however lightly, must always owe him a tribute 
 of acknowledgment. 
 
 369 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 ad- 
 ventures 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. 1 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. 
 
 The first achievement under Prince Henry's 
 guidance was the final rediscovery and coloniza- 
 tion of Porto Santo and Madeira in 1418-25 
 by Gonsalvez Zarco, Tristam Vaz, and Bar- 
 tholomew Perestrelo. 2 This work occupied the 
 
 1 See Bonder 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 
 141 4, 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. 
 
 2 Perestrelo had with him a female rabbit which littered on 
 the voyage, and being landed, with her young, at Porto Santo, 
 
 37° 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 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 fan- 
 cies were apt to enkindle a mutinous 
 
 .... T . Gil Eannes 
 
 spirit in the crews. It was not until passes cape 
 1 433-3 5 that Gil Eannes, a com- Bojador 
 mander of unusually clear head and steady 
 nerves, made three attempts and fairly passed 
 
 forthwith illustrated the fearful rate of multiplication of which 
 organisms are capable in the absence of enemies or other ad- 
 verse 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, viendole 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 dafio 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 viu- 
 das 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 multi- 
 plicado, que no dejaban cosa que para sustentacion de los 
 hombres fuese menester." Las Casas, Hist, de las Indias, 
 torn. i. p. 180. See also Azurara, Chronica do descobrimento 
 e conquista de Guine, cap. lxxxiii. 
 
 37 1 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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. 
 
 This achievement of Gil Eannes (anglice, plain 
 Giles Jones) marks an era. It was the beginning 
 of great things. When we think of the hesita- 
 tion 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 wno were to uve 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 
 Beginning of negro slaves from the Rio d' Ouro, 
 the modern or R j Q del Qro, four hundred miles 
 
 slave-trade, _ 
 
 1442 beyond Cape Bojador. Of this begin- 
 
 ning of the modern slave-trade I shall treat in 
 a future chapter. 1 Let it suffice here to observe 
 that Prince Henry did not discourage but sanc- 
 tioned 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 
 1 See below, vol. iii. pp. 249—252. 
 
 37 2 
 
PORTUGUESE VOYAGES ON THE COAST OF AFRICA 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 empire in Africa, and in course of time the 
 good work might be extended to the Indies. 
 Accordingly a special message was PapaIgrant 
 sent to Pope Eugenius IV., informing of heathen 
 
 . . r i j- r i countries to 
 
 him or the discovery or the country the Portu- 
 of these barbarous people beyond the guese Crown 
 limits of the Mussulman world, and asking for 
 a grant in perpetuity to Portugal of all heathen 
 lands that might be discovered in further voy- 
 ages beyond Cape Bojador, even so far as to 
 include the Indies. 1 The request found favour 
 
 1 " En el afio 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 Marrino V., . . . 
 que hiciese gracia a la Corona real de Portogal de los reinos 
 y sefiorios 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. 
 
 373 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 dis- 
 covery 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 Vene- 
 tian captain in the service of Portugal — went 
 as far as the Rio Grande ; in 1460 Diego Gomez 
 discovered the Cape Verde Islands; and in 
 Advance to 1 46 2 Piedro de Cintra reached Sierra 
 sierra Leone L eone- i At the same time, in various 
 expeditions between 143 1 and 1466, the Azores 
 (/. e. " Hawk " Islands) were rediscovered and 
 colonized, and voyages out into the Sea of 
 
 1 The first published account of the voyages of Cadamosto 
 and Cintra was in the Paesi nouamente retrouati, Vicenza, 
 1 507, a small quarto which can now sometimes be bought for 
 from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars. See also Grynsus, 
 Novvs Or&is, Basel, 1532. 
 
 374 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 Darkness began to lose something of their 
 manifold terrors. 
 
 Prince Henry did not live to see Africa cir- 
 cumnavigated. At the time of his death, in 
 1463, his ships had not gone farther than the 
 spot where Hanno found his gorillas two thou- 
 sand years before. But the work of this excel- 
 lent prince did not end with his death. His 
 adventurous spirit lived on in the school of ac- 
 complished navigators he had trained. Many 
 voyages were made after 1462, of which we 
 need mention only those that marked new stages 
 of discovery. .In 147 1 two knights of the royal 
 household, Joao de Santarem and Pedro de Es- 
 cobar, sailed down the Gold Coast and crossed 
 the equator ; three years later the line was again 
 crossed by Fernando Po, discoverer Advance 
 of the island that bears his name. In the Hottentot 
 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 11° south latitude on the coast of the 
 Hottentot country. Brisk trading went on along 
 the Gold Coast, and missionaries were sent to 
 the Congo. 1 
 
 1 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 
 
 375 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 These voyages into the southern hemisphere 
 dealt a damaging blow to the theory of an im- 
 
 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 
 /Sdp/8apos, whence Eng. barbarian ( = Sanskrit barbara, 
 Latin balbus), means " a stammerer," or one who talks gib- 
 berish, *. e. in a language we do not understand. Aristophanes 
 {Aves, 199) very prettily applies the epithet to the inarticu- 
 late 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 com- 
 mented (above, pp. 30—42). 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 sal- 
 vage (Ital. selvaggio, salvatico~), is the Latin silvatkus, sylva- 
 ticus, 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.) 
 
 376 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 passable fiery zone ; but as to the circumnavi- 
 gability of the African continent, the long stretch 
 
 The meaning was the same in medieval Latin (Du Cange, 
 Glossarium, Niort, 1886, torn. 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 fustcs Sauvages 
 
 Viers moi, je n'i pris mie garde, etc., 
 
 the reference is plainly to degenerate civilized men frequent- 
 ing 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 wri- 
 ters. 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 " sav- 
 ages." 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 Chron- 
 icles, 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. 346), 
 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. z8, 36 ; vii. z). 
 
 Greek and Roman writers seem to have had some slight 
 
 377 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 of coast beyond the equator seemed more in 
 Effectofthese harmony with Ptolemy's views than 
 discoveries w i t h those of Mela. The eastward 
 ories of Ptoi- trend of the Guinea coast was at first 
 
 emyandMela ; n f ayour Q f fa latter geographer, but 
 
 when Santarem and Escobar found it turning 
 
 knowledge of savagery and the lower status of barbarism as pre- 
 vailing in remote places (" Ptolomee dit que es extremites de 
 la terre habitable sontgens sauvages," Oresme, Les fithiques 
 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 (Ger- 
 mania, 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 Trog- 
 lodytes, or Cave-dwellers, on the Nubian coast of the Red 
 Sea seem to have been in the middle status of barbarism (Dio- 
 dorus, iii. 32 ; Agatharchides, 61-63), and the Ichthyophagi, 
 or Fish-eaters, whom Nearchus found on the shores of Ge- 
 drosia (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. 350). 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 (/» 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 canni- 
 bals in the Indian Ocean, perhaps one of the Andaman group, 
 
 378 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 southward to the equator, the facts began to re- 
 fute 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 Capri- 
 corn must have been fraught with added dis- 
 couragement, 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 dis- 
 covery, the years just following the voyage of 
 Santarem and Escobar would be a period emi- 
 
 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 de- 
 scribe 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. 213—221. 
 
 379 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 nently fit for suggesting such a question. Let 
 us not forget this date of 147 1 while we follow 
 Prince Henry's work to its first grand climax. 
 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 mission- 
 ary 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 thou- 
 sand 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 interpreta- 
 tion of the negro's words, and forthwith he 
 News of jumped to the conclusion that this 
 Presterjohn African potentate must be Prester 
 John, whose name was redolent of all the mar- 
 vels 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 Covil- 
 ham by way of Egypt to Aden, and he sent Bar- 
 tholomew Dias, with three fifty-ton caravels, 
 380 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 to make one more attempt to find an end to the 
 Atlantic coast of Africa. 
 
 Covilham's journey was full of interesting 
 experiences. He sailed from Aden to Hindu- 
 stan, and on his .return visited Abys- oviiham's 
 sinia, where the semi-Christian king J° ume J r 
 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 voy- 
 ages upon the Indian Ocean. 1 
 
 The daring captain, Bartholomew Dias, 
 started in August, i486, and after passing nearly 
 four hundred miles beyond the tropic of Capri- 
 corn, 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 „ , , 
 
 . Bartholomew 
 
 landed near the mouth of Gauntz Dias passes 
 River, more than two hundred miles G o dHope 
 east of the Cape of Good Hope, and enters the 
 Thence he pushed on about four hun- 
 dred miles farther eastward as far as the Great 
 
 1 See Major's India in the Fifteenth Century, pp. lxxxv- 
 xc. 
 
 381 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 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 com- 
 pelled 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 Decem- 
 ber, 1487, when the report of this noble voy- 
 age 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 rea- 
 son to believe that they had found the long- 
 sought ocean route to the Indies. 1 Though this 
 opinion turned out to be correct, it is well for 
 us to remember that the proof was not yet com- 
 
 1 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 au- 
 dacity in discovering his secret, hitherto hidden from man- 
 kind : — 
 
 Eu sou aquelle occulto e grande Cabo, 
 A quern chamais vos outros Tormentorio, 
 Que minca 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 LusiaJas, v. 50. 
 382 
 
THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES 
 
 plete. 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 south- 
 ward and run all the way to the pole. The com- 
 pleted proof was not obtained until Vasco da 
 Gama crossed the Indian Ocean ten years later. 
 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 al- 
 lowance for tacking, the distance run by those 
 tiny craft was not less than thirteen Some effects 
 thousand miles. This voyage com- ofthediscov- 
 pleted the overthrow of the fiery-zone 
 doctrine, so far as Africa was concerned ; it pen- 
 etrated 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 Bartholo- Bartholomew 
 mew, the younger brother of Christo- Columbu8 
 pher Columbus. There was true dramatic pro- 
 priety 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 con- 
 
 3*3 
 
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 sequence 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 147 1, this original and imagi- 
 native sailor, Christopher Columbus, had con- 
 ceived (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. 
 
 END OF VOLUME I 
 
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