44 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



we may say the old popular belief, that Asia, Europe and 

 Africa were surrounded by water, partly on stories of Indians 

 having been driven by wind to Europe, along the north coast of 

 Asia.^ To these was added in 1539 the map of the north by the 

 Swedish bishop Olaus Magnus,^ which for the first time gave 

 to Scandinavia an approximately correct boundary towards the 

 north. Six hundred years,^ in any case, had run their course 



^ Of these much-discussed nan-atives concerning /^irf/ans— probably 

 men from North Scandinavia, Russia, or North America, certainly not 

 Japanese, Chinese, or Indians — who were driven by storms to the coasts 

 of Germany, the tirst comes down to us from the time before the birth of 

 Christ. For B.C. 62 Quintus Metellus Celer, "when as proconsul he 

 governed Gaul, received as a present from the King of the Bseti [Pliny says 

 of the Suevi] some Indians, and when he inquired how they came to those 

 countries, he was informed that they had been driven by storm from the 

 Indian Ocean to the coasts of Germany " (Pomponiiis Mela, lib. iii. cap. 5, 

 after a lost work of Cornelius Nepos. Plinius, Hist. Nat., lib. ii. cap. 67). 



Of a similar occurrence in the middle ages, the learned ^neas Sylvius, 

 afterwards Pope under the name of Pins II., gives the following account 

 of his cosmography : — " I have myself read in Otto [Bishop Otto, of 

 Freising], that in the time of the German Emperor an Indian vessel and 

 Indian merchants were driven by storm to the German coast. Certain it 

 was that, driven about by contrary winds, they came from the east, which 

 had been by no means possible, if, as many suppose, the North Sea were 

 unnavigable and frozen " (Pius II., Cosmographia in Asice et Europce eleganti 

 descriptione, etc., Parisiis, 1509, leaf 2). Probably it is the same occurrence 

 which is mentioned by the Spanish historian Gomara (Historia general de 

 las Indias, Sarago§a, 1552-53), with the addition, tliat the Indians stranded 

 at Liibeck in the time of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190). 

 Gomara also states that he met with the exiled Swedish Bishop Olaus 

 Magnus, who positively assured him that it was possible to sail from 

 Norway by the north along the coasts to China (French translation of the 

 above-quoted work, Paris, 1587, leaf 12). An exceedingly instructive 

 treatise on this subject is to be found in Aarboger for nordish Oldkyn- 

 dighed og Historie, Kjobenhavn, 1880. It is written by F. Schiern, and 

 entitled Om en etnologisk Gaadefra Oldtiden. 



'^ Olaus Magnus, Auslegung vnd Verklerung der neuen Happen von den 

 alien Goittenreich, Venedig, 15.39. Now perhaps (according to a communi- 

 cation from the Librarian-in-chief, G. E. Klemming) there is scarcely any 

 copy of this edition of the map still in existence, but it is given unaltered 

 in the 1567 Basel edition of Olaus Magnus, " De gentium septentrionalium 

 variis conditionibus," &c. The edition of the same work printed at Rome 

 in 1555, on the other hand, has a map, which differs a little from the 

 original map of 1539. 



^ To interpret Nicolo and Antonio Zeno's travels towards the end of the 

 fourteenth century, which have given rise to so much discussion, as Mr. Fr. 

 Krarup has done, in such a way as if they had visited the shores of the 

 Arctic Ocean and the White Sea, appears to me to be a very unfortunate 

 guess, opposed to innumerable particulars in the narrative of the Zenos, 

 and to the accompanying map, remarkable in more respects than one, 

 which was first published at Venice in 1558, unfortunately in a somewhat 

 "improved" form by one of Zeno's descendants. On the map there is 

 the date MCCCLXXX. (Cf. Zeniernes Fcise til Norden, et Tolknings Fors'og, 

 af Fr. Krarup, Kjobenhavn, 1878 ; R. H. Maior, The Voyages of the Venetian 

 Brothers Nicolb and Antonio ZfHO,London,1873, and other works concerning 

 these much-bewritten travels). 



