the Arctic Continent, and just as all intercourse between Vinland,
Greenland, Iceland, and Norway entirely ceases--at any rate to record
itself--the Portuguese sailors, taking up the work of Eric and Leif and
Thorfinn, on another side, were rounding Cape Verde and nearing the
southern point of Africa, and so providing for the mind of Columbus
suggestions which resulted in the lasting discovery of the world that
the Vikings had sighted and colonised, but were not able to hold.

The Venetian, Welsh, and Arabic claims to have followed the Norsemen in
visits to America earlier than the voyage of 1492, belong rather to the
minute history of geographical controversy. It is a fairly certain fact
that the north-west line of Scandinavian migration reached about A.D.
1000 to Cape Cod and the coasts of Labrador. It is equally certain that
on this side the Norsemen never made any further advance, lasting or
recorded. Against all other mediaeval discoveries of a Western Continent,
one only verdict can stand:--Not Proven.

The other lines of Northern advance, though marked by equal daring and
far greater military exploits, have less of original discovery. There
was fighting in plenty, the giving and taking of hard knocks with every
nation from Archangel to Cordova and from Limerick to Constantinople;
and the Vikings, as they reached fresh ground, re-named most of the
capes and coasts, the rivers and islands and countries of Europe, of
North Africa, of Western Asia. Iberia became "Spanland"; Gallicia,
"Jacobsland"[18]; Gallia, "Frankland"; Britannia, "England," "Scotland,"
"Bretland"; Hibernia, "Irland"; Islam, outside "Spanland," passed into
"Serkland" or Saracenland. Greece was "Grikland"; Russia, "Gardariki";
the Pillars of Hercules, the Straits of Gibraltar, were "Norva's Sound,"
which later days derived from the first Northman who passed through
them. The city of Constantine was the Great Town--"Miklagard"; Novgorod
was "Holmgard," the town of all others that most touched and influenced
the earlier, the Viking age, of Northern expansion. For was it not their
own proudest and strongest city-state, and "Who can stand before God, or
the Great Novgorod?" except the men who had built it, and would rush to
sack it if it turned against them?

[Footnote 18: From St. James of Compostella.]

But all this was only the passing of a more active race over ground
which had once been well known to Rome and to Christendom, even if much
of thi