INTRODUCTION 5 



gold. The name of the country was Estotiland. Some 

 scholars have attempted to find grains of truth in this 

 fisherman's yarn; Estotiland has been identified as New- 

 foundland, and the populous city with walls about it has 

 been explained as an Indian encampment surrounded by a 

 palisade. But it is better to reject the story altogether; 

 there is, indeed, strong evidence that the whole of the 

 Zeno narrative is a forgery. Another supposed pre- 

 Columbian voyage to America is that of the Polish pilot, 

 John Szkolny, who is said to have sailed in 1476 to Green- 

 land, in the service of Christian I of Denmark, and to have 

 touched upon the coast of Labrador. This also has been 

 shown to be a myth; no such voyage was ever made. 



It was the opinion of the late Mr. John Fiske that there 

 were more voyages to America before 1492 than we have 

 been wont to suspect. There has been, he pointed out, a 

 great deal of blowing and drifting done at all times and on 

 all seas. "Japanese junks have been driven ashore on 

 the coasts of Oregon and California; and in 1500 Pedro 

 Alvarez de Cabral, sailing down the coast of Africa, found 

 himself on the shores of Brazil." He argued that occasional 

 visitors such as these "may have come and did come 

 before 1492 from the Old World to the New." It is a 

 pleasing fancy. Unfortunately, the voice of authentic his- 

 tory is silent and cannot be made to speak. 



The true discoverer of Labrador, for practical purposes, 

 was John Cabot. Cabot was a Genoese by birth (and so a 

 compatriot of Christopher Columbus), but in 1476 he be- 

 came a naturalized citizen of Venice. In his earlier days 

 he had traded as far east as La Tana, Alexandria, and 

 even Mecca. There he had seen the spice caravans from 



