s, not as they were in reality, but as they appear
in the eager, sea-born suggestions of the Iliad and the Odyssey--long,
sharp, swift, well-timbered, hollow, with many thwarts, and ends curved
high like horns.

[Illustration: SHIPS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY From Winsor's America]

Three Viking vessels discovered in a Danish peat-bog probably belong to
the fifth century, thus being fifteen hundred years of age. Yet their
counterparts can still be seen along the Norwegian coast. Such
wonderful persistence, even of such an excellently serviceable type, is
quite unparalleled; and it proves, if proof were needed, that the
Norsemen who are said to have discovered Newfoundland and Nova Scotia
were the finest seamen of their own and many a later time. The way
they planned and built {45} their vessels was the glory of their homes.
The way they manned and armed and fought them was the terror of every
foreign shore. War craft and crew together were the very soul and body
of strength and speed and daring skill, as, with defiant figurehead and
glittering, shield-hung sides, they rode to battle joyously on the wild
white horses of the mediaeval sea.

Five centuries more, and the English, another great seafaring people,
first arrived in Canada. Then came increasing swarms of the most
adventurous fishermen of Europe. After these came many competing
explorers and colonizers, all of whose fortunes directly depended on
the sea.

Cabot's English crew of eighteen hands is a century nearer to our own
time than Leif Ericson the Norseman was to Cabot's. Yet Cabot himself
preceded Columbus in setting foot on what may fairly be called the
mainland of America when he discovered Canada's eastern coast in 1497.
He cleared from Bristol in May, reached the new regions on June 24, and
returned safe home at the end of July. It was an age of awakening
surmise. The universal question was, which is the way to the golden
{46} East? America was looked upon as a rather annoying obstruction to
proper navigation, though it was allowed to have some incidental
interest of its own. Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope in
the same year that Cabot raised St George's Cross over what afterwards
became British territory. Twenty-five years later Magellan found the
back way through behind Cape Horn, and his ship, though not himself,
went round the world. Then, twelve years later still, the French
sailed into the Canadian scene on which they w