must have been forgotten, or else the
Fisherman's tale of Estotiland and Drogio would surely have awakened
reminiscences of Markland and Vinland, and some traces of this would
have appeared in Antonio's narrative or upon his map. The principal
naval officer of the Faeroes, and personal friend of the sovereign, after
dwelling several years among these Northmen, whose intercourse with
their brethren in Iceland was frequent, apparently knew nothing of Leif
or Thorfinn, or the mere names of the coasts which they had visited.
Nothing had been accomplished by those voyages which could properly be
called a contribution to geographical knowledge. To speak of them as
constituting, in any legitimate sense of the phrase, a Discovery of
America is simply absurd. Except for Greenland, which was supposed to be
a part of the European world, America remained as much undiscovered
after the eleventh century as before. In the midsummer of 1492 it
needed to be discovered as much as if Leif Ericsson or the whole race of
Northmen had never existed.

[Footnote 308: Practically, but not entirely, for we have seen
Markland mentioned in the "Elder Skalholt Annals," about 1362.
See above, p. 223.]

As these pre-Columbian voyages produced no effect in the eastern
hemisphere, except to leave in Icelandic literature a scanty but
interesting record, so in the western hemisphere they seem to have
produced no effect beyond cutting down a few trees and killing a few
Indians. In the outlying world of Greenland it is not improbable that
the blood of the Eskimos may have received some slight Scandinavian
infusion. But upon the aboriginal world of the red men, from Davis
strait to Cape Horn, it is not likely that any impression of any sort
was ever made. It is in the highest degree probable that Leif Ericsson
and his friends made a few voyages to _what we now know to have been_
the coast of America; but it is an abuse of language to say that they
"discovered" America. In no sense was any real contact established
between the eastern and the western halves of our planet until the great
voyage of Columbus in 1492.

CHAPTER III.

EUROPE AND CATHAY.

[Sidenote: Why the voyages of the Northmen were not followed up.]

The question has sometimes been asked, Why did the knowledge of the
voyages to Vinland so long remain confined to the Scandinavian people or
a portion of them, and then lapse into oblivion, insomuch that it