store
the study of science, especially in geography, chronology, and optics.
In his Opus Majus, the elder Bacon wrote:

More than the fourth part of the earth which we inhabit is still
unknown to us.... It is evident therefore that between the extreme
West and the confines of India, there must be a surface which
comprises more than half the earth.

Though Roger Bacon, to use his own words, died "unheard, forgotten,
buried," our recent historians place his name first in the great roll of
modern science.

There now remains only one quotation to make from the ancients. We have
been reserving it for two reasons--first, because it is a singularly
happy anticipation of the discovery of the New World, so happy that it
became a favorite stanza with the discoverer himself. This we learn from
the life of the "Great Admiral," written by his son Ferdinand.

Secondly, because it adorns our title-page and has been characterized as
"a lucky prophecy"--written in the first century A. D. The author,
Seneca, was a dramatist as well as a philosopher, the lines occurring at
the end of one of his choruses--Medea, 376. We may thus translate the
prophetic stanza:

For at a distant date this ancient world
Will westward stretch its bounds, and then disclose
Beyond the Main a vast new Continent,
With realms of wealth and might.

CHAPTER I

PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA

1 _Norse Discovery._--By glancing at a map of the north Atlantic, the
reader will at once see that the natural approach from Europe to the
Western Continent was by Iceland and Greenland--especially in those
early days when ocean navigation was unknown. Iceland is nearer to
Greenland than to Norway; and Greenland is part of America. But in
Iceland there were Celtic settlers in the early centuries; and even King
Arthur, according to the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, sailed north
to that "Ultima Thule." During the ninth century a Christian community
had been established there under certain Irish monks. This early
civilization, however, was destined to become presently extinct.

It was in A. D. 875, i. e., during the reign of Alfred the Great in
England, that the Norse earl, Ingolf, led a colony to Iceland. More
strenuous and savage than the Christian Celts whom they found there, the
latter with their preaching monks soon sailed to the south, and left the
Northmen masters of the island. The Norse colony under Ingolf was
stron