OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 603 



the pilot, Bartholomeus Ferreto, conducted the expedition to 

 the 43rd degree of latitude, where Vancouver's Cape Oxford 

 is situated. The emulous enterprise of the Spaniards, English, 

 and Portuguese, directed to one and the same object, was 

 then so great, that fifty years sufficed to determine the 

 external configuration or the general direction of the coasts 

 of the countries in the western hemisphere. 



Although the acquaintance of the nations of Europe with 

 the western part of the earth is the main subject of our con- 

 sideration in this section, and that around which the nume- 

 rous relations of a more correct and a grander view of the 

 universe are grouped, we must yet draw a strong line of 

 separation between the undoubted first discovery of America, 

 in its northern portions, by the Northmen, and its subsequent 

 re-discovery in its tropical regions. Whilst the Caliphate 

 still flourished under the Abassides at Bagdad, and Persia was 

 under the dominion of the Samanides, whose age was so 

 favourable to poetry, America was discovered in the year 

 1000 by Leif, the son of Eric the Red, by the northern route, 

 and as far as 41 30' north latitude.* The first, although 

 accidental, incitement towards this event emanated from 

 Norway. Towards the close of the ninth century Naddod 

 was driven by storms to Iceland whilst attempting to reach 

 the Faroe Islands, which had already been visited by the 

 Irish. The first settlement of the Northmen was made in 

 875 by Ingolf. Greenland, the eastern peninsula of a land 

 which appears to be everywhere separated by the sea from 

 America Proper, was early seen,f although it was first 



* Parts of America were seen, although no landing was made on, 

 them, fourteen years before Leif Eiricksson, in the voyage which Bjarne 

 Herjulfsson undertook from Greenland to the southward, in 986. Leif 

 first saw the land at the island of Nantucket, 1 south of Boston; then 

 in Nova Scotia; and, lastly, in Newfoundland, which was subsequently 

 called "Litla Helluland," but never " Vinland." The gulf, which 

 divides Newfoundland from the mouth of the great River St. Lawrence, 

 was called by the Northmen, who had settled in Iceland and Greenland, 

 Markland's Gulf. See Caroli Christiani JRafn Antiquitates Ameri- 

 cana, 1845, pp. 4, 421, 423, and 463. 



t Gunnbjorn was wrecked, in 876 or 877, on the rocks subsequently 

 called by his name, which were lately re-discovered by Captain Graah. 

 Qunnbjorn saw the east coast of Greenland, but did not land upon it. 

 (Ram, Antiquit. Amer., pp. * 1, 93, and 304.) 



