landia; but the names of the places given in this country have no correspondence with those which occur in the Scandinavian topography of Greenland; so that there is good reason to doubt the accuracy of the Zeni.

But in this country, which he calls Grolandia, Nicolo Zeno found a monastery of friar preachers, and a church dedicated to St. Thomas, not far from a mountain which threw out flames like Etna and Vesuvius. In the same place there was a spring of boiling water with which the monks warmed the church, the monastery, and their own apartments. They irrigated their gardens from these hot sources, and thus contrived to preserve a perpetual verdure, while all the country round was frozen to a great depth. Their monastery was built with lava, and roofed with a vault constructed of the light scoria, cemented with pozzuolana, or decayed basalt.

During the summer-time, as the Zeni relate, a great number of vessels arrived at Grolandia from Norway and the islands to trade with the friars, who, in exchange for their furs and fish, received corn, woollen cloth, wood for fuel, and utensils of every description. With some of these articles the friars maintained a trade with the people of the country. Monks from Sweden, Norway, and principally from Iceland, resorted to this monastery; and during the winter season there was always a number of vessels in the harbour shut up by the ice, and waiting for the return of spring.

The boats used by the fishermen of Grolandia had the shape of a weaver's shuttle, and were made of the bones of marine animals, covered with the skins of fish, sewed one over the other. These boats were so strong and so water-tight, that the fishermen ventured fearlessly to launch with them into the roughest seas, satisfied that even if they were thrown upon a rock they would sustain no injury.

In all these particulars there is evidently a good deal of truth, incorrectly and fantastically combined. The volcanoes and boiling springs of Iceland, the fertile valley of Reikiavik watered from tepid fountains, the well-endowed clergy of that island, are all transferred to a country in the West, where they are joined with the whale-skin canoes of the Esquimaux. The situation which the Zeni assign to Grolandia in their map does not correspond with the actual position of the colony in Greenland, which was on the southern and not on the eastern coast of that country. We must, therefore, suppose, either that the map of the Zeni was ill constructed, or that their narrative is but a confused medley of hearsay accounts; or, finally, which is most probable, that the descendant of Nicolo Zeno, who published the manuscript at Venice in 1558, attempted to embellish the original, and thus destroyed its circumstantial simplicity.

But the most remarkable part of the map of the Zeni still remains to be examined. More than a thousand miles to the west of Friesland, or the Feroe islands, and to the south of Greenland, the Venetian voyagers place two lines of coast, the one named Estotiland, the other Droceo. These countries are said to have been discovered in the following manner. A fishing vessel from the Feroe islands, driven by a tempest far to the west, at length ran aground on the island called Estotiland. The inhabitants conducted the shipwrecked fishermen into a town well built and peopled, in which the chief or king resided. An interpreter who spoke Latin, and who, it appears, had also been shipwrecked on the island, was the first to communicate with them: they soon, however, learnt the language of the country. The country appeared to them of less extent than Iceland, but infinitely more fertile: in the centre was a high mountain, from which four rivers descended. The inhabitants wrote in a character which the Northmen did not understand. Some Latin books were in the library of the king.

The people of Estotiland carried on some trade with Grolandia, whence they procured pitch, furs, and sulphur. They sowed corn, made beer, dwelt in houses built of stone, and were good seamen, although still unacquainted with the use of the compass. The Frieslanders being provided with this instrument, were intrusted by the king with the conduct of an expedition directed towards a country situated further to the south, and called Droceo. They had the misfortune, however, to fall into the hands of a nation of cannibals. The Frieslanders were all eaten save one, whose life was spared on account of his dexterity in the art of fishing: the savages contended for the possession of so valuable a slave. Being handed over continually from one master to another, he had an opportunity of seeing the whole country. He affirmed that it was of unbounded extent, and, in fact, a new world. The savage natives wore no covering. They were engaged in continual contests among themselves, the conqueror always feasting on his vanquished foe. Further to the south-west were a people much more civilized, who were acquainted with the use of the precious metals, built large cities and temples, but nevertheless offered up human victims to their idols.

Such was the account given by the fisherman of the Feroe islands, when after a lapse of many years he returned to his country. An attempt was immediately made by the prince who reigned there at the time to reach these countries of Drogeo and Estotiland, but storms drove his fleet into the seas of Greenand. Whether he repeated his efforts, and with what success,

VOL. I.

15

are alike unknown to us, the history of those voyages remaining incomplete.

The narrative of the Zeni has been regarded by many as a mere fabrication; and the occurrence in it of such names as Dædalus and Icarus, which are evidently fabulous, seems to countenance that opinion. Yet the proportion of the miraculous and of palpable fable which is mingled with their relation does not exceed, perhaps, that which is found in the most authentic narratives of the middle ages. If the accounts of Estotiland and Droceo be merely fictions, they are fictions of a very plain and unattractive character: but, in reality, fictions of this kind are extremely rare; for there are few persons who are capable of doing more than adding the adornments of fancy to a ground-work furnished by experience. But there is reason to believe that the Scandinavians never remitted their navigations in the northern seas; and if the inhabitants of the Feroe islands had written histories like those of Iceland, we might from them also have received authentic accounts of lands discovered in the West, and lost again in the course of ages.

The name Estotiland appears to be Scandinavian, and to mean the East Out-land, as Newfoundland might be justly called with respect to the American continent. Those who are willing to believe the Zeni, may suppose the inhabitants of Estotiland to have been descended from the Scandinavian settlers in Vinland; nor will their total disappearance at a later period seem surprising to those who reflect on the fate of the ancient colony of Greenland. The country called Droceo, according to the same course of reasoning, will be the coast of Nova Scotia, or of New England, and the more civilized people to the south, who possessed the precious metals, and offered up human sacrifices in magnificent temples, can be no other than the inhabitants of Florida, or, perhaps, the Mexicans, with whose wealth and power the hunter savages of the North were probably well acquainted.

However this may be, it is certain that the Zeni, in the fourteenth century, recalled to notice the well authenticated discoveries made by the Scandinavians in the tenth; and added a relation which, whether true or false, contained the positive assertion of a continent existing to the west of the Atlantic Ocean. This relation was unquestionably known to Columbus, who may thus have derived not a little encouragement and instruction from the hardy navigations of the Northmen.

General

CHAP. II.

MAPS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

Ignorance.-Missionaries.-Pilgrims.-Adam of Bremen.-Giraldus Cambrensis.-Love of the Marvellous.-Icelandic Sagas.---Surveys.-Old Maps of the British Islands.-Effects of the Feudal System.-Doomsday Book. -Maps of the Middle Ages.-Tables of Charlemagne.-Map preserved in Tu rin. The Geographer of Ravenna.-Sanudo's Map.---Genoese Navigators.Isle of Infierno.-The Madeira Islands and the Azores.---Bianco's Map. Islands of Stokafixa, Antilia, and Man.-Satanaxio.-The Seven Cities.Benjamin of Tudela.-Caravan Routes through Armenia and Bokhara.

THE discoveries of the Arabians and Scandinavians in those parts of the earth which were unknown to the ancients remained long concealed from the learned of Europe. Nevertheless the geographical ignorance of the middle ages was not so great as might be concluded from the well-known anecdote of the abbot of Clugny in Burgundy: to him the neighbourhood of Paris seemed a country so remote, and so little known, that he refused to comply with the request of the count de Bourcard, who wished to establish a monastery of his order at St. Maur, near that city.* In like manner some monks of Tournai, about the close of the twelfth century, sought in vain to discover the abbey of Ferrières. Thus it appears that the knowledge of the monks sometimes did not extend far beyond the walls of their monasteries.

Yet the monks were almost the only historians of the middle ages; and geography, on the whole, is not a little indebted to their labours. The darkest times and the most barbarous nations of Europe had their treatises of geography, or their chroncles, in which were inserted the descriptions of some countries whether neighbouring or remote. The chronicle of Emon, abbot of Werum, in Groningen, contains on the subject of a crusade (A. D. 1217) a detailed account of the whole march, with a description of all the countries between Palestine and Holland.

But still greater benefits resulted from the labours of the missionaries, who carried the faith to pagan nations, and travelled through countries but little known. Saint Boniface preached to the Sclavonians, and obeyed the injunctions of the pope in giving a written description of those barbarous nations. It was probably from his accounts that king Alfred derived his know

It is surprising that Wieland, in his celebrated poem of Oberon (Ges. ix. 46.), should place Montmartre on the road to Marseilles, or to the south of Paris. Under all the circumstances of their respective ages, the fault of Wieland is per. haps quite as inexcusable as that of the abbot of Clugny,

ledge of that part of Europe. Saint Otho, bishop of Bamberg, preached to the pagans on the coasts of Stettin, Belgard, and Colberg, and tried even to instruct them in the cultivation of the vine: those savages used at that time to drive away strangers from their shores, just as the inhabitants of New Zealand would do at the present day.

Before he made this journey, Otho, the bishop of Bamberg, had never heard of the Baltic Sea! He was surprised beyond measure at finding it so broad, that from the middle of it the opposite shores seemed just like clouds in the horizon. In the reign of Louis de Debonnaire, a monk of Corvay, named Anscaire, filled with the same pious resolution, ventured even into the country of the formidable Northmen, and travelled over the kingdoms of Sweden and Denmark, at that time but little known. The journal of this monk, which during the middle ages was the chief source of information respecting the northern nations, is not at present known to exist.

The pilgrimages also of the Christians began already in the seventh century to awaken a spirit of observation. Adaman, abbot of Iona, wrote a description of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the oral narrative of Saint Arculf. Willibald, the first bishop of Eichstadt, has left us a detailed account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 730: his route lay through Italy and the island of Cyprus. These pilgrims, who frequently had commercial speculations in view as well as the atonement of their sins, generally brought back with them from Palestine some account of India and the other countries of the infidels. Adam of Bremen, who lived two centuries later than Anscaire, drew from his work, and followed his example in giving a detailed description of the kingdoms of the North. He treats of Jutland with great minuteness, and names many islands in the Baltic which had escaped the notice of his predecessors. He is also the first to describe the interior of Sweden as well as Russia, of which nothing was as yet known beside the name.

When Adam of Bremen speaks of the British islands, which he had never visited, he adopts, without hesitation, all the fables of antiquity. But the propensity to relate the marvellous, which characterises the writers of the middle ages, ought not, perhaps, to be ascribed so much to the credulity of the writer as to a want of a cultivated taste. As the marvellous generally gives pleasure, it easily comes to be looked upon as a rhetorical ornament in a rude age; and this vein was often indulged in by authors who possessed the soundest and most piercing understandings. Giraldus Cambrensis was one of those whose writings furnish an illustration of the above remark. In his accounts of Ireland and Wales, there are abundant proofs of an