THE UNIVERSE. OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 237 



was recognised there by men from the Orkney Islands and 

 Iceland. ( 3 ?i) 



Some northern antiquaries are of opinion that as in the 

 oldest Icelandic documents the first inhabitants of the island 

 are called " West men who arrived by sea/' (and settled 

 themselves at Papyli on the south-east coast and on the 

 adjacent small island of Papar), Iceland must have been 

 first peopled not directly from Europe, but from Virginia 

 and Carolina, that is to say from Irland it mikla or White 

 Men's land, which had received its inhabitants from Ireland 

 at a still earlier period. The important treatise entitled " de 

 Mensura Orbis Terrse" by the Irish monk Dicuil, which was 

 written in 825, being 38 years before Iceland was discovered 

 by Northman Naddod, does not, however, confirm this opinion. 



Christian anchorites in the north of Europe, and Buddhist 

 monks in the interior of Asia, have explored and opened to 

 civilisation regions which were supposed to be inaccessible. 

 The desire of extending religious dogmas has led sometimes 

 to warlike enterprises, and sometimes has prepared the way 

 to peaceful ideas and to commercial relations. In the first 

 half of the middle ages geography was advanced by enter- 

 prises dictated by the religious zeal, strongly contrasted 

 with the indifference of the polytheist Greeks and Romans, 

 of Christians, Buddhists, and Mahometans. Letronne, in 

 his commentary on Dicuil, has with much ingenuity and 

 acuteness made it appear probable that after the Irish 

 missionaries were expelled from the Faroe Islands by the 

 Northmen, they began about the year 795 to visit Iceland. 

 When the Northmen first landed in Iceland they found 

 there Irish books, Mass bells, and other objects which had 

 been left behind by earlier visitors called Papar : these papse 



