OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 235 



The important work, De Mejisiira Orbis Terrce, composed 

 by the Irish monk Dicuil about the year 825, and, therefore, 

 thirty-eight years before the Northmen acquired their knowl- 

 edge of Iceland from Naddod, does not, however, confirm this 

 opinion. 



Christian anchorites in the north of Europe, and pious - 

 Buddhist monks in the interior of Asia, explored and opened 

 to civilization regions that had previously been inaccessible. 

 The eager striving to diffuse religious opinions has sometimes 

 paved the way for warlike expeditions, and sometimes for the 

 introduction of peaceful ideas and the establishment of rela- 

 tions of commerce. Heligious zeal, which so strongly charac- 

 terizes the doctrines promulgated in the systems of India, 

 Palestine, and Arabia, and which is so widely opposed to the 

 indifference of the ancient polytheistic Greeks and Romans, 

 was the means of furthering the advance of geographical 

 knowledge in the earlier portions of the Middle Ages. Le- 

 tronne, the commentator on Dicuil, has shown much ingenu 

 ity in his attempts to prove that after the Irish missionaries 

 had been driven from the Faroe Islands by the Northmen, 

 they began, about the year 795, to visit Iceland. The North- 

 men, when they first reached Iceland, found Irish books, mass 

 bells, and other objects, which had been left by the earlier 

 settlers, called Papar. These Papce, fathers, are the Clerici 

 of Dicuil.* If, as his testimony would lead us to conclude, 

 these objects had belonged to Irish monks, who had come 

 from the Faroe Islands, the question naturally arises, why 

 these monks [PajM?') should be termed in the native sagas 

 Westmen (Vestmenn), who had " come from the West across 

 the sea? [Koimnir til vesian um haf).'' The deepest ob- 

 scurity still shrouds every thing connected with the voyage 

 of the Gaelic chief Madoc, son of Owen Guinetb, to a great 

 western land in the year 1170, and the connection of this 

 event with the Great Ireland of the Icelandic Saga. In like 

 manner, the race of Celto- Americans, whom credulous trav- 

 elers have professed t J discover in many parts of the United 

 States, have also disappeared since the establishment of an earn- 

 est and scientific ethnology, based, not on accidental similari- 

 ties of sounds, but on grammatical forms and organic structure."! 



* Letronne, RecJierches Giogr. et Crit. sur le Livrc ^^ de Mensura Or 

 bis TerrcE,''^ compose en Irlande, par Dicuil, 1814, p. 129-116. Con> 

 pare my Examen Crit. de VHist. de la Giogr., t. ii., p. 87-91. 



•♦• The statements which have been advanced from the time of Raleigh 

 iTf natives of Virginia speaking pm^e Celtic of the supposition of th*' 



