52 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
expeditions were often undertaken both for trade and plunder, 
by land and sea, as far away as to the land of the Beormas. It 
is difficult to understand how with such maps of the distribution 
of land in the north the thought of the north-east passage could 
arise, if voices were not even then raised for an altogether 
opposite view, grounded partly on a survival of the old idea, 
we may say the old popular belief, that Asia, Europe and 
Africa were surrounded by water, partly on stories of Indians 
having been driven by wind to Europe, along the north coast of 
Asia.^ To these was added in 1539 the map of the north by the 
1 Of these miicli-discussed narratives concerning probably 
men from North Scandinavia, Russia, or North America, certainly not 
Japanese, Chinese, or Indians—who were driven by storms to the coasts 
of Germany, the first comes down to us from the time before the birth of 
Christ. For B.c. 62 Quintus Metellus Celer, ‘^when as proconsul he 
governed Gaul, received as a present from the Ring of the Bseti [Pliny 
says of the Suevi] some Indians, and when he inquired how they came 
to those countries, lie was informed that they had been driven by storm 
from the Indian Ocean to the coasts of Germany ” (Pomponius Mela, lib. iii. 
cap. 5, after a lost work of Cornelius Nepos. Plinius, Hist. Nat., lib. ii. 
cap. 67). 
Of a similar occurrence in the middle ages, the learned HSneas Sylvius, 
afterwards Pope under the name of Pius TI., gives the following account 
of his cosmography:—“ I have myself read in Otto [Bishop Otto, of 
Freising], that in the time of the German Emperor an Indian vessel and 
Indian merchants were driven by storm to the German coast. Certain it 
was that, driven about by contrary winds, the}^ came from the east, which 
had been by no means possible, if, as many suppose, the North Sea were 
unnavigable and frozen ” (Pius II., Cosmographia in Asice et Europce eleganti 
descriptione, etc,, Parisiis, 1509, leaf 2). Probably it is the same occurrence 
which is mentioned by the Spanish historian Gomara {Historia general de 
las Indias, Sarag 09 a, 1552-53), with the addition, that the Indians stranded 
at Llibeck in the time of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190). 
Gomara also states that he met with the exiled Swedish Bishop Olaus 
Magnus, who positively assured him that it was possible to sail from 
Norway by the north along the coasts to China (Frenoh translation of the 
above-quoted work, Paris, 1587, leaf 12). An exceedingly instructive 
treatise on this subject is to be found in Aarhoger for nordisJc Oldhjn- 
diglied og Historic, Kjobenhavn, 1880. It is written by F. Schiern, and 
entitled Oni en etnologish Gaade fra Oldtiden. 
