Some Cranks and their Crotchets 441 



There is Miss Marie Brown's book, " The Icelandic 

 Discoverers of America ; or, Honour to whom 

 Honour is Due." In maintaining that Columbus 

 knew all about the voyages of the Northmen to 

 Vinland, and was helped thereby in finding his 

 way to the Bahamas, there is nothing necessarily 

 eccentric. Professor Rasmus Anderson has de- 

 fended that thesis in a book which is able and 

 scholarly, a book which every reader must treat 

 with respect, even though he may not find its 

 arguments convincing. But when Miss Brown 

 declares that the papacy has been partner in a 

 conspiracy for depriving the Scandinavians of the 

 credit due them as discoverers of America, and 

 assures us that this is a matter in which the in- 

 terests of civil and religious liberty are at stake, 

 one begins to taste the queer flavour ; and, taking 

 this in connection with the atmosphere of rage which 

 pervades the book, one feels inclined to place it in 

 the limbo. For example : " What but Catholic 

 genius, the genius for deceit, for trickery, for se- 

 crecy, for wicked and diabolical machinations, could 

 have pursued such a system of fraud for centuries 

 as the one now being exposed ! What but Catho- 

 lic genius, a prolific genius for evil, would have at- 

 tempted to rob the Norsemen of their fame, . . . 

 and to foist a miserable Italian adventurer and 



