DISCOVERY OF ICELAND 139 



always done his duty when sent out by Apollo, his 

 patron god ; and Odin was always anxious lest his 

 messengers should fail to return. So proverbial, 

 indeed, did the raven, afterwards, become as a 

 "bad messenger, " that when one of the chieftains, 

 in the first Crusade, was sent back to Paris on an 

 important mission, and slunk off home, instead of 

 coming back to the army, he was held up to scorn, 

 by one of the historians of the Crusade, as an 

 " ambassador of the raven type " : " Corvini generis 

 legatus postea non rediit" 



But ravens were more than the messengers of 

 the god, they were the pilots, the pioneers, the 

 discoverers of the race. A pair of them were 

 generally taken by a sea-king in his vessel, and 

 when the stars quite failed to show where he was, 

 they acted the part of a compass for him. He let 

 them loose and, marking the direction which they 

 took, followed, as best he could, in their wake, sure 

 that they were taking the shortest way to land. 

 On one occasion, they made a great geographical 

 discovery. Flokki, a famous sea-rover, fitted out 

 an expedition to test the truth of reports brought 

 by other sea-rovers, that there was a large island 

 somewhere, an " ultima Thule," far beyond even 

 the Faroes, He took three ravens with him which 



