2 DISCOVERIES OF A7l.S6l. 



banks of the Rhine, as far as Mentz. They pe- 

 netrated into the heart of France, having long 

 before ravaged the coasts : they every where 

 found their way up the Somme, tlie Seine, the 

 Loire, the Garonne, and the Rhone. Within the 

 space of thirty years, they frequently pillaged and 

 burnt Paris, Amiens, Orleans, Poitiers, Bour- 

 deaux, Toulouse, Saintes, Angouleme, Nantes, 

 and Tours. They settled themselves in Cam argue, 

 at the mouth of the Rhone, from whence they 

 wasted Provence and Dauphiny, as far as Va- 

 lence. In short, they ruined France, levied im- 

 mense tribute on its monarchs, bnrnt the palace 

 of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, and, in con- 

 clusion, caused one of the finest provinces of the 

 kingdom to be ceded to them." And he adds, 

 what one would wish to be true, that these daring 

 robbers, " sometimes animated by a more pacific 

 spirit, transported colonies to unknown or unin- 

 habited countries, as if they were willing to repair 

 in one place the horrid destruction of human kind 

 occasioned by their furious ravages in others."* 



One of these pirates, in proceeding to the Faroe 

 islands, in the year 861, was driven, by an eas- 

 terly gale of many days continuance, so far to 

 the westward, that he fell in with an island utterly 

 unknown to him, and to which, from the great 

 -quantity of snow on the mountains, he gave the 



* Mallet's. Northern Antiquities, vol. i. p. 245* 



