o,
Adamo Bremensi quondam persuaserat insulam esse in ultimo
septentrione sitam, mari glaciali vicinam, vini feracem, & ea
propter fide tamen Danorum, _Vinlandiam_ dictam prout ipse ...
fateri non dubitat. Sed deceptum eum hae sive Danorum fide,
sive credulitate sua planum facit affine isti vocabulum
_Finlandiae_ provinciae ad Regnum nostrum pertinentis, pro quo
apud Snorronem & in Hist. Regum non semel occurrit _Vinlandiae_
nomen, cujus promontorium ad ultimum septentrionem & usque ad
mare glaciale sese extendit." Rudbeck, _Atland eller Manheim_,
Upsala, cir. 1689, p. 291.]

[Sidenote: If he had heard it, he would probably have classed it with
such tales as that of St. Brandan's isle.]

But to hear about Vinland was one thing, to be guided by it to Japan was
quite another affair. It was not the mention of timber and peltries and
Skraelings that would fire the imagination of Columbus; his dreams were
of stately cities with busy wharves where ships were laden with silks
and jewels, and of Oriental magnates decked out with "barbaric pearl and
gold," dwelling in pavilions of marble and jasper amid flowery gardens
in "a summer fanned with spice." The mention of Vinland was no more
likely to excite Columbus's attention than that of St. Brandan's isle or
other places supposed to lie in the western ocean. He was after higher
game.

[Sidenote: He could not have obtained from such a source his opinion of
the width of the ocean.]

To suppose that Columbus, even had he got hold of the Saga of Eric the
Red and conned it from beginning to end, with a learned interpreter at
his elbow, could have gained from it a knowledge of the width of the
Atlantic ocean, is simply preposterous. It would be impossible to
extract any such knowledge from that document to-day without the aid of
our modern maps. The most diligent critical study of all the Icelandic
sources of information, with all the resources of modern scholarship,
enables us with some confidence to place Vinland somewhere between Cape
Breton and Point Judith, that is to say, somewhere between two points
distant from each other more than four degrees in latitude and more than
eleven degrees in longitude! When we have got thus far, knowing as we do
that the coast in question belongs to the same continental system as
the West Indies, we can look at our map and pick up our pair of
compasses an