tacks, waking up the old spirit of a kindred
race, of elder cousins that had sunk into lethargy and forgotten their
seamanship.

But from the Peace of Wedmore (878) Alfred first of all began to build
an English navy able to meet and chase and run down the Viking keels;
then established a yearly pilgrimage and alms-giving at the Threshold of
the Apostles in Rome; then sent out various captains in his service to
explore as much of the world as was practicable for his new description
of Europe. His crowning effort in religious extension was in 883, when
Sigehelm and Athelstan bore Alfred's gifts and letters to Jerusalem and
to India, to the Christians of San Thome; the corresponding triumph of
the King's scientific exploration, the discoveries in the White Sea and
the Baltic, seem to have happened nearer the end of the reign, somewhere
before 895.

CHAPTER III.

THE CRUSADES AND LAND TRAVEL.

CIRCA 1100-1300.

The pilgrims were the pioneers of the growth of Europe and of
Christendom until Charlemagne, in one sense, in another and a broader
sense until the Crusades.

Their original work, as far as it can be called original at all, was
entirely overshadowed by the Vikings, who made real discoveries of the
first importance in hunting for new worlds to conquer; but when first
the Viking rovers themselves, and then the Northmen, settled in the
colonies and the old home, took up Christianity as the Arabs had taken
up Islam, the pilgrim spirit was translated, as it were, into new and
more powerful forms. Through the conversion of Hungary and of
Scandinavia,[22]--Europe, Christian Europe, was compacted together in a
stronger Empire than that of Constantine or of Charlemagne--a spiritual
federation, not a political unity--one and undivided not in visible
subordination, but in a common zeal for a common faith. This was the
state of the Latin world, and in a measure of the Greek and Russian
world as well, by the middle of the eleventh century, when the Byzantine
Emperors had broken the strength of the Eastern Caliphate, and recovered
most of the realm of Heraclius; when the Roman Papacy under Leo IX.,
Hildebrand, and Urban began its political stage, aiming, and in great
part successfully aiming, at an Imperial Federation of Europe under
religion; when on every side, in Spain, in France, in England, in
Germany, and in Italy, the nations that had been slowly built into that
_Domus Dei_ were filled with fresh life and pu