ty records--naturally
somewhat perplexed and dim, as treating of remote and unknown
places--refer us to that northern Atlantic region where the ocean is
comparatively narrow, and to that northern people who, from the time of
their first appearance in history, have been as much at home upon sea as
upon land. For a thousand years past these hyperborean waters have been
furrowed in many directions by stout Scandinavian keels, and if, in
aiming at Greenland, the gallant mariners may now and then have hit upon
Labrador or Newfoundland, and have made flying visits to coasts still
farther southward, there is nothing in it all which need surprise
us.[307]

[Footnote 307: The latest pre-Columbian voyage mentioned as
having occurred in the northern seas was that of the Polish
pilot John Szkolny, who, in the service of King Christian I. of
Denmark, is said to have sailed to Greenland in 1476, and to
have touched upon the coast of Labrador. See Gomara, _Historia
de las Indias_, Saragossa, 1553, cap. xxxvii.; Wytfliet,
_Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum_, Douay, 1603, p. 102;
Pontanus, _Rerum Danicarum Historia_, Amsterdam, 1631, p. 763.
The wise Humboldt mentions the report without expressing an
opinion, _Examen critique_, tom. ii. p. 153.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The pre-Columbian voyages made no real contributions to
geographical knowledge;]

[Sidenote: and were in no true sense a Discovery of America.]

Nothing can be clearer, however, from a survey of the whole subject,
than that these pre-Columbian voyages were quite barren of results of
historic importance. In point of colonization they produced the two
ill-fated settlements on the Greenland coast, and nothing more.
Otherwise they made no real addition to the stock of geographical
knowledge, they wrought no effect whatever upon the European mind
outside of Scandinavia, and even in Iceland itself the mention of
coasts beyond Greenland awakened no definite ideas, and, except for a
brief season, excited no interest. The Zeno narrative indicates that the
Vinland voyages had practically lapsed from memory before the end of the
fourteenth century.[308] Scholars familiar with saga literature of
course knew the story; it was just at this time that Jon Thordharson
wrote out the version of it which is preserved in the Flateyar-bok. But
by the general public it