a famous
old sea captain called Othere, who had navigated the unknown seas to
the north of Europe.

"Othere told his lord, King Alfred, that he dwelt northmost of all
Northmen, on the land by the western sea. He said that the land is
very long thence to the north; but it is all waste save that in a few
places here and there Finns reside. He said that he wished to find
out how far the land lay right north, or whether any man dwelt to the
north of the waste. Then he went right north near the land, and he
left all the way the waste land on the right and the wide sea on the
left for three days. There was he as far north as the whale-hunters
ever go. He then went yet right north, as far as he could sail in the
next three days. After sailing for another nine days he came to a great
river; they turned up into the river, but they durst not sail beyond
it on account of hostility, for the land was all inhabited on the other
side. He had not before met with any inhabited land since he came from
his own home, for the land was uninhabited all the way on his right
save by fishermen, hunters, and fowlers, and they were all Finns, and
there was always a wide sea on his left."

And as a trophy of distant lands and a proof of his having reached
farthest north, Othere presented the King with a "snow-white walrus
tooth."

But King Alfred wanted his subjects to know more of the world around
them, and even in the midst of his busy life he managed to write a
book in Anglo-Saxon, which sums up for us the world's knowledge some
nine hundred years after Ptolemy--nine hundred barren years as far
as much geographical progress was concerned. Alfred does not even
allude to Iceland, Greenland, or Vinland. The news of these
discoveries had evidently not reached him. He repeats the old legend
of Thule to the north-west of Ireland, "which is known to few, on
account of its very great distance."

So ends the brief but thrilling discoveries of the Northmen, who knew
not fear, and we turn again to landsmen and the east.

CHAPTER XV

ARAB WAYFARERS

And now we leave the fierce energy of the Northmen westwards and turn
to another energy, which was leading men toward the east, to the lands
beyond the Euphrates, to India, across central Asia, even into far
Cathay.

These early travellers to the east were for the most part Arabs.
Mohammed had bidden his followers to spread his teaching far and wide;
this teaching had always appealed more to