Prof. Edward S. Morse, in his very curious study of Ancient and Modern Methods of Arrow Release (Salem, 1885,—Bull. Essex Inst., xvii.) p. 52, notes that the Eskimo are the only North American tribe practising what he calls the “Mediterranean release,” common to all civilized Europe, and he ventures to accept a surmise that it may have been derived from the Scandinavians.
[529] Given by Schlegel, Egede (citing Pontanus), and Rafn; and a French version is in the Bull. de la Soc. de Géog., 2d series, iii. 348. It is said to be preserved in a copy in the Vatican. M. F. Howley, Ecclesiastical Hist. of Newfoundland (Boston, 1888), p. 43, however, says “Abbé Garnier mentions a bull of Pope Nicholas V, of date about 1447, concerning the church of Greenland; but on searching the Bullarium in the Propaganda library, Rome, in 1885, I could not find it.”
[530] Laing’s Heimskringla, i. 146.
[531] E. B. Tylor on “Old Scandinavian Civilization among the modern Esquimaux,” in the Journal of the Anthropological Inst. (1884), xiii. 348, shows that the Greenlanders still preserve some of the Norse customs, arising in part, as he thinks, from some of the lost Scandinavian survivors being merged in the savage tribes. Their recollection of the Northmen seems evident from the traditions collected among them by Dr. Rink in his Eskimoiske Eventyr og Sagn (Copenhagen, 1866); and their dress, and some of their utensils and games, as it existed in the days of Egede and Crantz, seem to indicate the survival of customs.
[532] Cosmos, Bohn’s ed., ii. 610; Examen Crit., ii. 148.
[533] Cf. Geographie de Edrisi, traduite de l’arabe en français d’après deux manuscrits de la bibliothèque du Roi, et accompagnée de notes, par G. Amédée Jaubert (Paris, 1836-40), vol. i. 200; ii. 26. Cf. Recueil des Voyages et Mémoires de la Société de Géographie de Paris, vols. v., vi. The world-map by Edrisi does not indicate any knowledge of this unknown world. Cf. copies of it in St. Martin’s Atlas, pl. vi; Lelewel, Atlas, pl. x-xii; Peschel’s Gesch. der Erdkunde, ed. by Ruge, 1877, p. 144; Amer. Geog. Soc. Journal, xii. 181; Allg. Geog. Ephemeriden, ix. 292; Gerard Stein’s Die Entdeckungsreisen in alter und neuer Zeit (1883).
Guignes (Mém. Acad. des Inscriptions, 1761, xxviii. 524) limits the Arab voyage to the Canaries, and in Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la bibliothèque du Roi, ii. 24, he describes a MS. which makes him believe the Arabs reached America; and he is followed by Munoz (Hist. del Nuevo Mondo, Madrid, 1793). Hugh Murray (Discoveries and Travels in No. Amer., Lond., 1829, i. p. II) and W. D. Cooley (Maritime Discovery, 1830, i. 172) limit the explorations respectively to the Azores and the Canaries. Humboldt (Examen Crit., 1837, ii. 137) thinks they may possibly have reached the Canaries; but Malte Brun (Géog. Universelle, 1841, i. 186) is more positive. Major (Select Letters of Columbus, 1847) discredits the American theory, and in his Prince Henry agrees with D’Avezac that they reached Madeira. Lelewel (Géog. du Moyen Age, ii. 78) seems likewise incredulous. S. F. Haven (Archæol. U. S.) gives the theory and enumerates some of its supporters. Peschel (Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, 1858) is very sceptical. Gaffarel (Etudes, etc., p. 209) fails to find proof of the American theory. Gay (Pop. History U. S., i. 64) limits their voyage to the Azores.
[534] Given as a.d. 1380; but Major says, 1390. Journal Royal Geog. Soc., 1873, p. 180.
[535] De Costa, Verrazano the Explorer (N. Y., 1880), pp. 47, 63, contends that Benedetto Bordone, writing his Isole del Monde in 1521, and printing it in 1528, had access to the Zeno map thirty years and more earlier than its publication. This, he thinks, is evident from the way in which he made and filled in his outline, and from his drawing of “Islanda,” even to a like way of engraving the name, which is in a style of letter used by Bordone nowhere else. Humboldt (Cosmos, Bohn’s ed., ii. 611) has also remarked it as singular that the name Frislanda, which, as he supposed, was not known on the maps before the Zeni publication in 1538, should have been applied by Columbus to an island southerly from Iceland, in his Tratado de las cinco zonas habitables. Cf. De Costa’s Columbus and the Geographers of the North (1872), p. 19. Of course, Columbus might have used the name simply descriptively,—cold land; but it is now known that in a sea chart of perhaps the fifteenth century, preserved in the Ambrosian library at Milan, the name “Fixlanda” is applied to an island in the position of Frislanda in the Zeno chart, while in a Catalan chart of the end of the fifteenth century the same island is apparently called “Frixlanda” (Studi biog. e bibliog. della soc. geog. ital., ii. nos. 400, 404). “Frixanda” is also on a chart, a.d. 1471-83, given in fac-simile to accompany Wuttke’s “Geschichte der Erdkunde” in the Jahrbuch des Vereins für Erdkunde (Dresden, 1870, tab. vi.).
[536] Irving’s Columbus takes this view.