250 THREE CEUISES OF THE " BLAKE." 



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- 

 less 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 



^ See Kohl, J. G., Geschiehte des Golfstroms und seiner Erforschung, 1868. 



