Though you have, dear sir, already rendered me so many important services, I must, before concluding this letter, once more importune you with a boon, which is in the interest of my college, to procure me a copy of the following work, a most excellent one, by one of your countrymen—“Report on Education in Europe, to the Trustees of the Girard College for Orphans, by Alex. Dallas Bache, Philadelphia, 1839.” I have made several applications to my bookseller in Copenhagen, but all in vain. Then, I should feel much obliged to you, if you could procure me, by the means of your influential friends in America and Great Britain, some examination papers from some of your colleges or schools of England, especially from Eton, Harrow, or Winchester, containing the questions put to the pupils, as well as copies of the best answers to them; together with specimens of their exercises in Latin and Greek. If you could comply with this desire of mine, you would render yourself one of the benefactors of our college. I could send the expense to Mr. Younghusband, your correspondent in Liverpool.
I remain, sir,
Your faithful and obliged friend,
BJARNI JOHNSON.
To PLINY MILES, Esq.,
Washington.
A man who can write thus, who can so express himself, in the purest and most forcible English, does not belong to a community of people who are entirely ignorant of the world at large, or indifferent to the national, political, and educational movements of the powerful nations of the earth. If the Danish government should open the ports of Iceland to all nations, it would be in accordance with the advanced and progressive spirit of the age, and while conferring a great benefit on a quiet, peaceful, and isolated colony, knit more closely the ties of affection and union between the colonists and the parent country. Then we might chronicle the arrival and departure of vessels, a little oftener, between the northern isle of the ocean and our own seaports.
Last year, a ship bearing the classic name of the “SAGA,”[[43]] sailed into the harbor of New-York, direct from Iceland, being the first arrival from that country to this, in a period of more than eight hundred years! I think the maritime records of the world would be searched in vain for a parallel case. The crew of this ship were the “followers” of Eric the Red, and his compeers, who discovered the American continent, and gave it the name of Vinland; but they were certainly a long time in following him.[[44]]