d measure the width of the ocean at the twenty-eighth
parallel. But it is not the mediaeval document, but our modern map that
guides us to this knowledge. And yet it is innocently assumed that
Columbus, without any knowledge or suspicion of the existence of
America, and from such vague data concerning voyages made five hundred
years before his time, by men who had no means of reckoning latitude and
longitude, could have obtained his figure of 2,500 miles for the voyage
from the Canaries to Japan![476] The fallacy here is that which
underlies the whole Scandinavian hypothesis and many other fanciful
geographical speculations. It is the fallacy of projecting our present
knowledge into the past.

[Footnote 476: The source of such a confusion of ideas is
probably the ridiculous map in Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanae_,
upon which North America is represented in all the accuracy of
outline attainable by modern maps, and then the Icelandic names
are put on where Rafn thought they ought to go, i. e. Markland
upon Nova Scotia, Vinland upon New England, etc. Any person
using such a map is liable to forget that it cannot possibly
represent the crude notions of locality to which the reports of
the Norse voyages must have given rise in an ignorant age. (The
reader will find the map reproduced in Winsor, _Narr. and Crit.
Hist._, i. 95.) Rafn's fault was, however, no greater than that
committed by the modern makers of so-called "ancient
atlases"--still current and in use in schools--when, for
example, they take a correct modern map of Europe, with parts
of Africa and Asia, and upon countries so dimly known to the
ancients as Scandinavia and Hindustan, but now drawn with
perfect accuracy, they simply print the ancient names!! Nothing
but confusion can come from using such wretched maps. The only
safe way to study the history of geography is to reproduce the
ancient maps themselves, as I have done in the present work.
Many of the maps given below in the second volume will
illustrate the slow and painful growth of the knowledge of the
North American coast during the two centuries after Columbus.]

[Sidenote: If he had known and understood the Vinland story, he had the
strongest motives for proclaiming it and no motive for concealing i