or Massachusetts Bay colonies. Of most of them is there any
conceivable source other than the memories lingering among a
people whose ancestors were familiar with them? Are they, for
the most part, relics of names imposed by Northmen once residing
here?

"I have told you something of the evidence that Leif Ericson was
the first European to tread the great land southwest of
Greenland. His ancestry was of the early Pilgrims, or Puritans,
who, to escape oppression, emigrated, 50,000 of them in sixty
years, from Norway to Iceland, as the early Pilgrims came to
Plymouth. They established and maintained a republican form of
government, which exists to this day, with nominal sovereignty
in the King of Denmark, and the flag, like our own, bears an
eagle in its fold. Toward the close of the 10th century a
colony, of whom Leif's father and family were members, went out
from Iceland to Greenland. In about 999, Leif, a lad at the time
of his father's immigration, went to Norway, and King Olaf,
impressed with his grand elements of character, gave him a
commission to carry the Christianity to which, he had become a
convert to Greenland. He set out at once, and, with his soul on
fire with the grandeur of his message, within a year
accomplished the conversion and baptism of the whole colony,
including his father.

"To Leif a monument has been erected. In thus fulfilling the
duty we owe to the first European navigator who trod our shores,
we do no injustice to the mighty achievement of the Genoese
discoverer under the flags of Ferdinand and Isabella, who,
inspired by the idea of the rotundity of the earth, and with the
certainty of reaching Asia by sailing westward sufficiently
long, set out on a new and entirely distinct enterprise, having
a daring and a conception and an intellectual train of research
and deduction as its foundation quite his own. How welcome to
Boston will be the proposition to set up in 1892, a fit statue
to Columbus.

"We unveil to-day the statue in which Anne Whitney has expressed
so vividly her conception of this leader, who, almost nine
centuries ago, first trod our shores."

The statue, however, is purely fanciful, and gives no idea either of
the personal appearance or costume of the great sailor, who has waited
for this justice to his memory much longer than Br