such a slime upon the
surface that no ship was able to navigate the sea in that place. This is
the story which the priests of Sais told to Solon, and which was embodied
in the sacred inscriptions in their temples. It is strange that any one
should think of this theory of the slime who had not seen or heard of the
Sargasso Sea--that great bank of floating seaweed that the ocean currents
collect and retain in the middle of the basin of the North Atlantic.

The Egyptians, the Tartars, the Canaanites, the Chinese, the Arabians,
the Welsh, and the Scandinavians have all been credited with the
colonisation of America; but the only race from the Old World which had
almost certainly been there were the Scandinavians. In the year 983 the
coast of Greenland was visited by Eric the Red, the son of a Norwegian
noble, who was banished for the crime of murder. Some fifteen years
later Eric's son Lief made an expedition with thirty-five men and a ship
in the direction of the new land. They came to a coast where there were
nothing but ice mountains having the appearance of slate; this country
they named Helluland--that is, Land of Slate. This country is our
Newfoundland. Standing out to sea again, they reached a level wooded
country with white sandy cliffs, which they called Markland, or Land of
Wood, which is our Nova Scotia. Next they reached an island east of
Markland, where they passed the winter, and as one of their number who
had wandered some distance inland had found vines and grapes, Lief named
the country Vinland or Vine Land, which is the country we call New
England. The Scandinavians continued to make voyages to the West and
South; and finally Thorfinn Karlsefne, an Icelander, made a great
expedition in the spring of 1007 with ships and material for
colonisation. He made much progress to the southwards, and the Icelandic
accounts of the climate and soil and characteristics of the country leave
no doubt that Greenland and Nova Scotia were discovered and colonised at
this time.

It must be remembered, however, that then and in the lifetime of Columbus
Greenland was supposed to--be a promontory of the coast of Europe, and
was not connected in men's minds with a western continent. Its early
discovery has no bearing on the significance of Columbus's achievement,
the greatness of which depends not on his having been the first man from
the Old World to set foot upon the shores of the New, but on the fact
that by pure