174 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



his immediate aim. Yet he brought the New World into the light 

 and demonstrated that the Sea of Darkness was no formidable barrier. 



Which of the three should stand foremost is debatable, depending 

 largely on the " spectacles of the judge." Perhaps we may fairly say 

 that Thorfinn was the most practical and modern ; Leif , the most 

 unselfish . and exempt from failure in what he aimed to do ; and 

 Columbus the most picturesque, the most conspicuous, and the most 

 important for the future. 



It was the ill luck of Leif the Lucky and Thorfinn the Promising to 

 discover and begin exploring America before the world was ready. 

 The Genoese came with the rising tide of modern life and it ensured 

 that his work should go on after him. But neither Columbus nor 

 Leif made any radical change in the course of the world's history. 



If he had remained in Spain, and so found nothing in 1492, Cabral, 

 rounding out too far from Africa in his East Indian voyage, would 

 quite as certainly have struck the South American coast in 1500. By 

 then, too, or not long afterward, 1 success would surely have come as 

 well to the plucky and persistent merchants of Bristol and their 

 captains, who had twice essayed before 1480 to reach that Brazil 

 which probably included Markland and had repeated 2 such attempts 

 annually or oftener for some seventeen years, until the successful 

 one landed them with Cabot on the American mainland before either 

 Vespucius or Columbus. Possibly mankind might have prospered 

 even better if sixteenth century access to the new world had been by 

 this upper gate alone. No doubt many records would be preserved 

 which went up in flames before Spanish bigotry; and it is hardly 

 imaginable that the native semi-civilization could have fared worse. 

 At any rate, toward the end of the fifteenth century the speedy 

 discovery of America was quite inevitable. 



The situation has never been paralleled. Europe, so long facing 

 eastward, had turned about the other way and was all alive on its 

 Atlantic front. Besides the swarm of Basque, Breton, and Norman 

 fishermen, continually urging their industry farther afield, there were 

 three lines of approach, making a gigantic race of most absorbing 

 interest, across the great sea. At the north, English seekers after 

 the half- forgotten memories of our race which had turned to myth ; 

 in the middle, a man who sought a certainly known goal by an 

 impossible route ; below him, the Portuguese navigators, who well 



a j. Winsor: Narr. and Crit. Hist, of America. 



2 Letter of Soncino given in original Italian and translation by G. E. Weare. 

 before cited. 



