In his history of King Henry VII, Bacon refers to the 'memorable accident' of the Cabots' great discovery, in the following passage:—'There was one Sebastian Gabato, a Venetian living in Bristow, a man seen and expert in cosmography and navigation. This man, seeing the success and emulating perhaps the enterprise of Christopherus Columbus in that fortunate discovery towards the south-west, which had been by him made some six years before, conceited with himself that lands might likewise be discovered towards the north-west. And surely it may be he had more firm and pregnant conjectures of it than Columbus had of his at the first. For the two great islands of the Old and New World, being in the shape and making of them broad towards the north and pointed towards the south, it is likely that the discovery first began where the lands did nearest meet. And there had been before that time a discovery of some lands which they took to be islands, and were indeed the continent of America towards the north-west.'2 Bacon goes on to surmise that Columbus had knowledge of this prior discovery, and was guided by it in forming his own conjectures as to the existence of land in the far west; and it is at least not unlikely that, when he visited Iceland in 1477, he would have heard tales of the Norsemen's voyages to America.3
2 Spedding's edition of Bacon's works, 1870, vol. vi, p. 196.
3 For this visit, see Washington Irving's Life and Voyages of Columbus, bk. i, ch. vi.
| Pre-Columbian explorations. |
It would be out of place in this book to make more than a passing reference to the much-vexed question, how far the New World was known to Europeans before the days of Columbus and the Cabots. Indeed, if all the stories on the subject were proved, the fact would yet remain that, for all practical purposes, America was first revealed to the nations of Europe, when Columbus took his way across the Atlantic. It was likely that, when his discovery had been made, men would rise up to assert that it was not so great and not so new as had been at first imagined. The French claimed priority for a countryman of their own;4 stories of Welsh and Irish settlement in America passed into circulation; the romance of the brothers Zeni was published, a tale of supposed Venetian adventure in the fourteenth century to the islands of the far north; and it was contended, more prosaically and with greater show of reason, that Basque fishermen had frequented the banks of Newfoundland, before that island was discovered for England and thereby earned its present name.
4 Cousin of Dieppe, who claimed to have discovered America in 1488, four years before Columbus reached the West Indies.
| Voyages of the Norsemen. |
The story of the Norsemen's voyages has a sounder foundation than any other of these early traditions and tales. Iceland is nearer to Greenland than to Norway: it has been abundantly proved that colonies were established and fully organized in Greenland in the Middle Ages; and it seems on the face of it unlikely that the enterprise and adventure of the seafaring sons of the north would have stopped short at this point, instead of carrying them on to the mainland of America.
| Their alleged discovery of North America. |
The Norse are said to have come to Iceland about 875 A.D., where Christian Irish had already preceded them; and, in the following year, rocks far to the west were sighted by Gunnbiorn. A century later, in 984, Eric the Red came back from a visit to Gunnbiorn's land, calling it by the attractive name of Greenland. About 986, Bjarni Herjulfson, sailing from Iceland to Greenland, sighted land to the south-west; and, a few years later, about the year 1000, Leif, the son of Eric, who had brought the Christian religion to Greenland, sailed in search of the south-western land which Bjarni had seen. The record of his voyage claims to be the record of the discovery of America. He found the rocky barren shores of Labrador and Newfoundland, and called them from their appearance Helluland, or 'slateland.' He passed on to the mouth of the St. Lawrence and to Nova Scotia, calling it Markland, or the 'land of woods.' Then sailing still further south, he came to a land where vines grew wild, and which he called Vinland. This last was, it would seem, the New England coast, between Boston and New York; and here in after times, for a like reason, English settlers gave the name of Martha's or Martin's Vineyard to an island, which lies close to the shore south of Cape Cod.5 In Vinland, it is stated, a Norse colony was founded a few years after Leif's visit; and trade—mainly a timber trade—was carried on with Greenland down to the year 1347, after which all is a blank.