ition classique firent naitre sur
le merite de Christophe Colomb, parmi ses contemporains, personne n'a
pense aux navigations des Normands comme precurseurs des Genois. Cette
idee ne se presenta que soixante quatre ans apres la mort du grand
homme. On savait par ces propres recits 'qu'il etoit alle a Thule' mais
alors ce voyage vers le nord ne fit naitre aucun soupcon sur la
priorite, de la decouverte.... Le merite d'avoir reconnu la premiere
decouverte de l'Amerique septentrionale par les Normands appartient
indubitablement au geographe Ortelius, qui annonca cette opinion des
l'annee 1570. 'Christophe Colomb, dit Ortelius, a seulement mis le
Nouveau Monde en rapport durable de commerce et d'utilite avec l'Europe'
(_Theatr. Orbis Terr._, on p. 5, 6). Ce jugement est beaucoup trop
severe."--Humboldt's _Geog. du Nouveau Continent_.]

[Footnote 16: "Biorn first saw land in the Island of Nantucket, one
degree south of Boston, then in New Scotland, and lastly in
Newfoundland."--Carl Christian Rafn, _Antiquitates Americanae_, 1845, p.
4, 421; Humboldt's _Cosmos_.

"The country called 'the good Vinland' (Vinland it goda) by Leif,
included the shore between Boston and New York, and therefore parts of
the present states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut,
between the parallels of latitude of Civita, Vecchia and Terracina,
where, however, the average temperature of the year is between 46 deg. and
52 deg. (Fahr.). This was the chief settlement of the Normans. Their active
and enterprising spirit is proved by the circumstance that, after they
had settled in the south as far as 41 deg. 30' north latitude, they erected
three pillars to mark out the boundaries near the eastern coast of
Baffin's Bay, in the latitude of 72 deg. 55', upon one of the Women Islands
northwest of the present most northern Danish colony of Upernavik. The
Runic inscription upon the stone, discovered in the autumn of 1824,
contains, according to Rask and Finn Magnusen, the date of the year
1135. From this eastern coast of Baffin's Bay, the colonists visited,
with great regularity, on account of the fishery, Lancaster Sound and a
part of Barrow's Straits, and this occurred more than six centuries
before the bold undertakings of Parry and Ross. The locality of the
fishery is very accurately described; and Greenland priests, from the
diocese of Gardar, conducted the first voyage of discovery in 1266.
These northwestern summer stations were called the