Greenland, discovered by Günnbjorn in the year 876 or 877, was indeed not colonised by the Icelanders before 983; a delay excusable enough when we consider the uninviting climate of that dreary peninsula or island, but three years after the latter date, we already find Bjorne Herjulfson undertaking a cruise from the new settlement to the south-west, and successively discovering Nantucket, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, though without making any attempts to land. Bjorne was followed about the year 1000 by Leif, a son of Erick the Red, the founder of the Greenland colony; who, sailing along the American coast as far as 41-1/2° north lat. discovered the good Winland, which received its name from the wild vines which Tyrker, a German who accompanied the expedition, found growing there in abundance. The fertility and mild climate of this coast, when compared with that of Labrador and Greenland, induced the discoverers to settle, and to found the first European colony on the American continent. Frequent wars with the Eskimos or Skrelingers (dwarfs), who at that time, as I have already mentioned in the fourth chapter, extended far more to the south than at present, soon however destroyed the colony; and the last account of Norman America we find in the old Scandinavian records is the mention of a ship which, in the year 1347, had sailed from Greenland to Markland (Nova Scotia) to gather wood, and was driven by a storm to Stamfjord on the west coast of Iceland. About this time also the colonies in Greenland, which until then had enjoyed a tolerable state of prosperity, decayed and ultimately perished under the blighting influence of commercial monopolies, of wars with the aborigines, and above all of the black death (1347-1351), that horrible plague of the fourteenth century, which, after having depopulated Europe, vented its fury even upon those remote wilds. Thus the knowledge of the Norman discovery of America gradually faded from the memory of man, and thus also it happened that the names and deeds of Leif and Bjorne Herjulfson remained totally unknown to the southern navigators, who at that time moreover, had little intercourse with the nations of Northern Europe.
Besides his well-authenticated Norman predecessors, Columbus may possibly have had others. Traces of early Irish and Welsh discoveries are pointed out by the Northern historians, and John Vaz Cortereal, a Portuguese navigator, is said to have visited the coasts of Newfoundland some time previous to the voyages of Columbus and Cabot.
If before the first voyage of the great Genoese navigator a mighty longing to penetrate to distant countries pervaded the public mind of Europe, it may be imagined to what a feverish glow this reigning idea of the century was excited, when the wonderful accounts of the gold and enchanting beauty of Haiti spread from land to land. As in former times, half Europe had thrown itself upon the Orient to liberate the tomb of our Saviour from the tyranny of the Moslem; so now one flood of adventurers followed another to the new land of promise, which held out such glittering prospects of wealth and enjoyment. Obeying the mighty impulse, England and France now entered upon the path on which Portugal and Spain had so gloriously preceded them, and, as the fruit of this general emulation, we see after a few years the whole western shore of the great Atlantic basin drawn into the circle of the known earth.
If Columbus was undoubtedly the first discoverer of the West Indian islands (the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, 1492; Lesser Antilles, 1493; Jamaica, 1494), the honour of having preceded him on the American continent belongs to John Cabot, a Venetian merchant settled in Bristol, and to the youthful energy of his son Sebastian, since they landed on the coast of Labrador (24th June, 1497) seventeen months before the continent of Tropical America, in the delta of the Orinoco, was discovered by Columbus on his third voyage.
Thus Genoa and Venice, the great Mediterranean rivals, divide the glory of having revealed a new world to mankind, but it was ordained that the laurels of their sons should bloom under a foreign flag, and the fruits of their endeavours be reaped by other nations. For as Columbus steered into the western ocean in the service of the Spanish monarch, the Cabots were sent by Henry the Seventh of England across the Atlantic to discover a north-western passage to India. This, of course, they did not accomplish, but the discovery of Newfoundland and of the coast of America from Labrador to Virginia rewarded their efforts, and laid the foundation of Britain's colonial greatness. Their voyage is also remarkable as having been the first expedition of the kind that ever left the shores of England, which at that time held a very inferior rank among the maritime nations, and gave but taint indications of her future naval supremacy. On this occasion it may not be uninteresting to cast a retrospective glance on the modest beginnings of British navigation. In the year 1217 the first treaty of commerce was concluded with Norway, and in the beginning of the fourteenth century Bergen was the most distant port to which English vessels resorted. Soon afterwards they ventured into the Baltic, and it was not before the middle of the following century that they began to frequent some of the Castilian and Portuguese ports. Towards the end of the fifteenth century the English flag was still a stranger to the Mediterranean, and direct intercourse with the Levant only began with the sixteenth. Edward the Second, preparing for his great Scottish war, was obliged to hire five galleys from Genoa, the same town whence a few years back our giant steamers transported a whole Sardinian army to the shores of the Crimea, where centuries before the Genoese had been established as lords and masters. Such are the changes in the relative position of nations that have been brought about by the power of time!
After this short digression I return to America, where, in 1499, Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci were the first to sail along the coast of Paria. The following year was uncommonly rich in voyages of discovery, as well in the south as in the north. In the western ocean the line was first crossed by Vincent Yañez Pinson, who doubled Cape Saint Augustin, discovered the mouths of the Amazon river, and thence sailed northwards along the coast as far as the island of Trinidad, which Columbus had discovered two years before. About the same time a Portuguese fleet, sailing under the command of Pedro Alvarez Cabral to the Indian Ocean, was driven by adverse winds to the coast of the Brazils; so that, if the genius of Columbus had not evoked, as it were, America out of the waves, chance would have effected her discovery a few years later.
A third voyage, which renders the year 1500 remarkable in maritime annals, is that of Gaspar Cortereal, a son of John Vaz Cortereal whom I have already mentioned as one of the doubtful precursors of Columbus.
Hoping to realise the dream of a north-west passage to the riches of India, Gaspar appeared on the inhospitable shores of Labrador, and penetrated into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Storms and ice-drifts forced him to retreat, but firmly resolved to prosecute his design, he again set sail in the following year with two small vessels. It is supposed that on this second voyage he penetrated into Frobisher Bay, but here floating ice-masses and violent gales separated him from his companion ship, which returned alone to Portugal.
As in our times the uncertain fate of Franklin has called forth a series of heroic deeds, so the doubtful destiny of the Portuguese explorer allowed his brother Miguel no rest, whom in the following spring we find hastening with three ships on the traces of the lost Gaspar. But Miguel also disappeared for ever among the ice-fields of the north. A third brother of this high-minded family yet remained, who earnestly implored the king that he also might be allowed to go forth and seek for his missing kindred. But Emanuel steadfastly refused permission, saying that these deplorable enterprises had already cost him two of his most valuable servants, and he could afford to lose no more.
In the year 1501 Rodrigo de Bastidas sailed to the coast of Paria, and discovered the whole shore-line from Cape de Vela to the Gulf of Darien. In the year 1502 the aged Columbus, entering with youthful ardour upon his fourth and last voyage, set sail with four wretched vessels, the largest of which was only seventy tons burthen, and discovered the coast of the American continent from Cape Gracias á Dios to Porto-Bello. The east coast of Yucatan was explored in the year 1508 by Juan Diaz de Solis and Vincent Yañez Pinson, and the island of Cuba circumnavigated for the first time by Sebastian de Ocampo.