rinces became, through habitual
success, so devoted to their calling that they never extinguished it,
but rather gloried in passing their lives on board their ships. It was
their fond boast that they never reposed under an immovable roof, nor
drank their beer in peace by their fireside, and the ships in which they
had led their wild and adventurous lives formed in death their
sepulchre. Passing over the discovery of North America by Eric the Red
(about 700 B.C.), we may come at once to Harold Harfagra--Harold the
Fairhaired, or Harold Fairfax, a name so well represented to-day in our
own navy. Having made himself master of all Norway, the restless young
spirits of the realm took themselves off on one of their accustomed
expeditions. Led by a youth named Rollo, son of the celebrated sea-rover
Jarl Ragnvald, they ascended the Seine and laid siege to Paris. So
successful were these Normans that Charles the Simple ceded to Rollo
that part of Neustria since called Normandy. By the terms of the treaty,
Charles was to give his daughter Gisele in marriage to Rollo, together
with the province of Normandy, provided he would do homage, and embrace
the Christian religion. To do homage was to kiss the feet of the king.
All that the sturdy Rollo could be prevailed upon to do, however, was to
place his hand in that of the king, and to depute one of his followers
to do homage for him. The gentleman to whom this duty was assigned
raised the king's foot so high that his majesty was thrown upon his
back; whereupon the rude Normans burst out laughing, so little respect
for royalty had these wild rovers of the sea. Two hundred years later
the descendants of these same Normans achieved the Conquest of England.
They became by the heat of much and continued contest and attrition
gradually fused, with the Angles and the Saxons, already inhabitants of
the island, into the modern Englishman and his representative on the
shores of New England.

This volume not only shows the reader--the general as well as
professional reader--the large scope embraced in a proper study of
history, but it also demonstrates that naval archaeology is not a mere
idle amusement, suited to the elegant leisure of the scholar. It has a
great and practical value, enabling an officer to understand his own
profession the more thoroughly in all its branches. Commodore Parker has
conferred a material benefit on his profession by the valuable
contribution he has made to its lite