ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 163 



distance. The great discoverer even heard from the lips of 

 settlers near the Cape de la Yerga in the Azores, of some, 

 " who, in sailing westward, had met decked or covered boats, 

 manned by persons of strange and foreign appearance, 

 and built apparently in such a manner that they could not 

 founder, almadias con casa movediza que nunca se hunden." 

 There is highly credible and well-confirmed testimony to 

 the fact, much as it has long been doubted, of natives of 

 America, (probably Esquimaux from Greenland or Labra- 

 dor), carried by currents or driven by storms from the North 

 West, having actually crossed the Atlantic in their canoes 

 and reached our shores. James Wallace, in his "Account of 

 the Islands of Orkney, (1700, p. 60)," relates, that in 1682 

 a Greenlander was seen in his boat off the South Point of 

 the Island of Eda by several persons, who did not succeed 

 in bringing him to shore. In 1 684, a Greenland fisherman 

 appeared in his boat off the Island of Westram. In the 

 church at Barra there was suspended an Esquimaux boat, 

 driven thither by currents and tempests. The inhabitants of 

 the Orkneys call Greenlanders so appearing among them 

 Finns or " Ehmmen." 



In Cardinal Bembo's History of Venice, I find a narra- 

 tive to the effect that in 1508 a French ship captured near 

 the English coast a small boat, with seven persons of a 

 strange and foreign appearance. The description suits ex- 

 tremely well with Esquimaux, (homines erant septem medi- 

 ocri statura, colore subobscuro, lato et patente vultu, 

 cicatriceque una violacea signato.) No one understood 

 their language. Their clothing was composed of fish sJdus 



