INTERNATIONAL DISCOVERIES 5 



Cape Breton, and Stream-fjord the Gut of Canso ? Is H6pi 

 on the south-east, and Cross-ness on the north-west coast of 

 Nova Scotia ^ ? Or are we on still more historic ground, and 

 is Keel-ness Cape Cod ? Is the island on the frith Nantucket? 

 Is Hopi Rhode Island, and is Crossness near Boston'^? 

 Whichever view we take, it is quite clear that Labrador, 

 Newfoundland, and some parts of the American continent 

 were visited by a party of colonists between a.d. iooo and 

 A.D. 1006, and were described with unerring fidelity. The 

 visit was not repeated, and even Greenland, from whose 

 shores the visitors had come, was abandoned because trade, 

 ambition, lust, and religion drew the builders of greater 

 Norway elsewhere. It was ever the Norse instinct to seek 

 and adorn lands more civilized than their own ; so Norway 

 ceased to send lowly settlers to the lonely wilds of Greenland 

 and America, and began to scatter broadcast up and down 

 the crowded capital cities of Europe counts and dukes and 

 kings. The Norse discovery of Newfoundland and America 

 was the false dawn, and many events were destined to happen 

 before the real dawn appeared. 



At the very moment when Eric's sons and sons-in-law and while 

 daughters-in-law and their husbands opened a side-door in ^i^nlhsed 

 America for fellow Europeans to enter in, Hakem the Mad Western 

 slammed the main door of Asia in the face of European ^J^^^jj^,^^ 

 merchants and pilgrims. The Crusades followed ; the depths thereby 

 of fanaticism were stirred ; there was an era of stress and ^crusadet^ 

 storm ; as men go mad or are inspired, so the nations of 

 Europe went mad or were inspired ; but at last there was peace, and the 

 and the borderland between Asia and Europe was occupied y-^^/^;-2>j 

 by a chain of Italian factories in alien cities, which formed between 

 the connecting link between Europe and 'the wealth oi ^^^^^p^. 



1 Sic Dr. Gustav Storm, Studier over Vinlands Reiserne, Vinlands 

 Geografi og Ethnografi^ Christiania, 1888. 



" Sic C. C. Rafn, Antiquitates Americanae, Copenhagen, 1837; 

 C. C. Rafh and F. Magnusson, Gronlands historiske Mindesmcerker, 

 1838, et seq. 



