﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 35 



still. If Greenland be America, he was the first explorer of any part 

 of America, so far as we know. He may have been the first white 

 man to view the more immediate American shores. At any rate he 

 gave to the world, and sent forth upon his ventures, the historic 

 Leif who is first of record as making that discovery. He also aided 

 in sending forth the expedition which bore Thorfinn Karlsefni and 

 Gudrid to these shores, giving Gudrid in marriage from his house 

 and seeing his son Thorvald sail off to death in their company. 



6.— THE VOYAGES OF MADOC AND THE ZENO 

 BROTHERS 



A few early westward voyages on the Atlantic offer at first glance 

 the hope of throwing light upon Wineland problems, but they really 

 supply very little information. Nicholas of Lynn, whose work has 

 been traced as far as possible by De Costa 1 and others, has left on 

 various maps indications of theories derived from his northern 

 explorations about the year 1360. He seems to have reached Ice- 

 land, making a quick passage and presumably going farther ; but un- 

 til his lost narrative " Inventio Fortunata " shall be found, who can 

 tell where he went? 



Madoc of Wales has been put forward intermittently for centuries 

 with zeal as the first colonizer of America. Welsh Indians, by blood 

 or language, were formerly (as was supposed) discovered by his 

 advocates in Florida, Mexico, the Carolina mountains, the Hopi 

 pueblos, and the Mandan villages on the Missouri. One man 

 declared that he was greeted in Welsh in the lobby of a Washington 

 hotel by an " Asquaw " chieftain of Virginia " wearing ostrich 

 feathers." 2 Stephens's newly republished " Madoc " is a veritable 

 museum of these futile oddities. There is no room for Welsh, 

 recent or archaic, on our Indian linguistic map, and the world, 

 has grown incredulous about it. Welsh people might, however, 

 have come and lost their language ; and they might blend with the red 

 men so as to be indistinguishable in their descendants. We suppose 

 such a result, or extermination, to have occurred in the case of Sir 

 Walter Raleigh's colony, 3 the Norse Greenlanders and the Spanish 

 expedition, going eastward, which vanished in the Llano Estacado. 

 We know it was so in the case of the Spanish Chilians, overwhelmed 



1 B. F. De Costa : Arctic Exploration. Amer. Geogr. Soc. Bull., 1880, p. 163. 

 2 Th. Stephens: Madoc (ed. 1893). 



3 W. Strachey : The Historic of Travaile into Virginia. (See Powhatan's 

 statement.) 



