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turn on the discovery of America and its settlement. The 
hardy Norse navigators, nearly five hundred years before Co- 
lumbus, sailed along the eastern shores of Greenland and 
America, and extended their voyages possibly as far south as 
Narragansett Bay, following the Labrador current, which swept 
them along our eastern shores. It was well known to naviga- 
tors that upon the western shores of Norway and the northern 
coast of Great Britain, driftwood of unknown timber and seeds 
of plants foreign to the temperate zone were occasionally 
stranded, coming from shores where probably no European had 
as yet set foot. 
The Portuguese navigators, sailing west, came beyond the 
Canaries to an ocean covered with seaweed (the gulf-weed of 
the Sargasso Sea), through which none dared to push their way, 
and the problem of the “Sea of Darkness” remained unsolved 
until the time of Columbus. He possibly was familiar with the 
traditions of the voyages of the Norsemen, and undoubtedly 
had access to more or less accurate information regarding the 
Atlantic, accumulated previous to his time in the archives of 
Portugal and Spain, or circulated among the sea-folk of that 
day, and this information included legends of lands to the west. 
Columbus started under the full persuasion that he could reach 
the lands from which the remarkable products brought by the 
currents had originated. When he came into the region of the 
northeast trades, and found himself swiftly carried westward, 
not only by the winds, but also by a current moving in the 
direction of the trades, his return seemed very hazardous, un- 
Jess he could strike upon that opposite current, which had 
borne the trees and seeds to the northern coasts of Europe. 
Obliged by the trades to take a northerly course on his way 
home from Hispaniola in 1493, he came upon the region of 
variable and westerly winds, with a current setting in the same 
direction. Columbus was thus the first to introduce the circular 
sailing course which, up to the present day, vessels sailing from 
the West Indies to Europe are compelled to take. They come 
before the wind with the trades, make the Windward. Islands, 
and, sailing northward, find their way through the Windward 
THREE CRUISES OF THE “ BLAKE.” 
1 See Kohl, J. G., Geschichte des Golfstroms und seiner Erforschung, 1868. 
