164 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



sewn together. On their heads they wore " coronam e cul- 

 mo pictam, septem quasi auriculis intextam." They ate raw 

 flesh, and drank blood as we would wine. Six of the men 

 died during the passage of the vessel, on board which they 

 had been taken ; but the seventh, a youth, was presented 

 to the king of France, who was then at Orleans. (Bembo, 

 Historia Yenetse, ed. 1718, lib. vii. p. 257). 



The appearance of men called Indians on the western 

 coasts of 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 continuance. A king of the Boii, 

 others say of the Suevi, gave the shipwrecked dark-coloured 

 men to Metellus Celer. Gomara, in his Historia Gen. de 

 las Indias, (Saragossa, 1553, fol. vii.), refers to this account, 

 and considers the Indians spoken of in it to have been 

 natives of Labrador. " Si ya no fuesen de Tierra del La- 

 brador, y los tuviesen, los Eomanos por Indianos enganados 

 eii el color." The appearance of Esquimaux on the north- 

 ern coasts 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 Massa- 



