fxviii] COSMOS. 



than the Arabs, and that they were acquainted, under the name of. th* 



system of the Abacus, with the employment of nine ciphers according 

 to their position-value. The value of position was known in the 

 Suanpan, derived from the interior of Asia, as well as in the Tuscan 

 Abacus. Would a permanent dominion of the Arabs, taking into 

 account their almost exclusive predilection for the scientific (natural, 

 descriptive, physical, and astronomical,) results of Greek investigation 

 have been beneficial to a general and free mental cultivation, and to the 

 creative power of art? pp. 590-600. 



VI. Period of the great Oceanic Discoveries America and the Pacific. 

 Events and extension of scientific knowledge which prepared the way 

 for great geographical discoveries. As the acquaintance of the nations 

 of Europe with the western portion of the globe constitutes the main 

 object of this section, it is absolutely necessary to divide in an incontes- 

 tible manner the first discovery of America in its northern and temperate 

 zone by the Northmen, from the rediscovery of the same continent in its 

 tropical regions. While the Caliphate of Bagdad nourished under the 

 Abbassides, America was discovered and investigated to the 414 north 

 latitude by Leif, the son of Erik the Red. The Faroe Islands and Ice- 

 land, accidentally discovered by Naddod. must be regarded as intcrme 

 diate stations, and as starting points for the expeditions to the Scan- 

 dinavian portions of America. The eastern coasts of Greenland in 

 Scoresby's Land (Svalbord), the eastern coasts of Baffin's Bay to 72 55', 

 and the entrance of Lancaster Sound and Barrow's Straits, were all 

 visited Earlier (?) Irish discoveries. The White Men's Land between 

 Virginia and Florida. Whether previously to Naddod and Ingolfs 

 colonisation of Iceland, this island was inhabited by Irish (west-men 

 from American Great Ireland), or by Irish missionaries (Papar, the 

 Clerici of Dicuil), driven by the Northmen from the Faroe Islands 1 

 The national treasures of the most ancient records of Northern Europe, 

 endangered by disturbances at home, were transferred to Iceland, which 

 three and a half centuries earlier enjoyed a free social constitution, 

 and were there preserved to future ages. We are acquainted with 

 the commercial relations existing between Greenland and New Scot- 

 land (the American Markland) up to 1347; but as Greenland had lost 

 its republican constitution as early as 1261, and, as a crown-fief of 

 Norway, had been interdicted from holding intercourse with strangers, 

 and therefor^ also with Iceland, it is not surprising that Columbus, 

 when he visited Iceland in 1477, should have obtained no tidings of 

 the new continent situated to the west. Commercial relations existed 

 however as late as 1484 between the Norwegian port of Bergen and 

 Greenland pp. 601-612. 



Widely different in a cosmical point of view from the isolated and 

 barren event of the first discovery of the new continent by the North- 

 men, was its re-discovery in its tropical regions by Christopher Colum- 

 bus, although that navigator seeking a shorter route to Eastern Asia 

 had not the object of discovering a new continent, and like Amerigo 

 Vespucci, believed to the time of his death that he had simply reached 

 the eastern shores of Asia. The influence exercised by the nautical 



