138 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



Germany, under the Othos, and under Frederic Barbarossa, in the 

 10th and 12th centuries, and even, as is related by Cornelius Nepos 

 (ed. Van Staveren, cur. Bardili, t.ii. 1820, p. 356), Pomponius Mela 

 (lib. iii. cap. 5, 8), and Pliny (Hist. Nat., t. ii. p. 67), when 

 Quintus Metellus Celer was Pro-consul in Gaul, may be explained 

 by similar effects of currents and north-west winds of long continu- 

 ance. A king of the Boii, others say of the Suevi, gave the ship- 

 wrecked dark-colored men to Metellus Celer. Gomara, in his His- 

 toria Gen. de las Indias (Saragossa, 1553, fol. vii.), refers to this 

 account, and considers the Indians spoken of in it to have been na- 

 tives of Labrador. " Si ya no fuesen de Tierra del Labrador, y los 

 tuviesen, los Romanes por Indianos enganados en el color." The 

 appearance of Esquimaux on the northern oasts of Europe may be 

 believed to have occurred more often in earlier times, because we 

 know, from the researches of Rask and Finn Magnusen, that in the 

 llth and 12th centuries this race extended in considerable numbers, 

 under the name of the Skralinges of Labrador, even as far south as 

 the "good Vinland;" i. e. the coast of Massachusetts and Connecti- 

 cut. (Cosmos, bd. ii. s. 270; English ed. p. 234; Examen Critique 

 de 1'HisL de la Geographic, t. ii. pp. 224-278.) 



As the winter cold of the most northern parts of Scandinavia is 

 softened by the influence of the Gulf Stream, by which American 

 tropical fruits (cocoa nuts, and seeds of the Mimosa scandens and 

 the Anacardium occidentale) are cast upon the shore beyond the 

 62d degree of latitude, so does Iceland also occasionally enjoy the 

 beneficial influence of the extension of the warm waters of the Gulf 

 Stream far to the northward. The coasts of Iceland as well as those 

 of the Faroe Islands, receive a great deal of driftwood, which, 

 coming formerly in greater abundance, was cut into beams and 

 planks and used for building timber. Fruits of tropical plants, col- 

 lected on the coast of Iceland, between Raufarhavn and Yapnafiord, 

 testify the movement of the waters from the southward. (Sartorius 

 von Waltershausen, physisch-geographische Skizze von Island, 1847, 

 s. 22-35.) 



C 25 ) P' 33. " Neither Lecideas nor other LicJiens." 

 In northern countries, the earth, if left bare, soon becomes 



