excursions  from  Snowland  thither,  and  had  traced  the
continent  downward  till  they  entered  latitudes  where  i

sunshine  and  verdure   enamoured  them  with   a  land  i

which,  in  comparison  with  their  own,  they  may  well  have
imagined  to  be  the  outskirts  of  heaven, — shores  where
the  wild  vine  grew  so  abundantly  that  the  country  was
named  by  them  Vinland.*  If  the  direction  of  one  wave
may  indicate  the  course  of  a  whole  tide,  the  appearance
of  North  American  Indians  passing  over  Bhering's
Straits  into  Asia  might  perhaps  show  that  a  circulation
had  been  established  towards  the  sun-setting.  In  a
passage  quoted  by  Chateaubriand  from  the  Lettrea
Edijiantea  of  the  Jesuits,  it  is  said  that  a  missionary  of
that  order  met  in  Tartary  a  Huron  woman  whom  he
had  previously  known  in  Canada ;  and  that  he  concluded,
from  this  strange  adventure,  that  the  American  conti-
nent approached  on  its  north-west  limit  the  continent
of  Asia,  t

*  Whilst  the  Caliphate  of  Bagdad  still  flourished  under  the  Abas-
sides,  and  while  the  Samanides,  whose  reign  was  so  favourable  to
poetry,  bore  sway  in  Persia,  America  was  discovered  in  the  year  1000
by  a  Northern  route,  as  far  as  41^°  north  latitude,  by  Leif,  lie  son  of
Eric  the  Red.  The  first  but  accidental  step  towards  this  discovery  was
made  from  Norway.  In  the  second  half  of  the  ninth  century,  Naddod,
having  sailed  for  the  Faroe  Islands,  which  had  been  previously  visited
from  Ireland,  was  driven  by  storms  to  Iceland,  and  the  first  Noiman
settlement  was  established  there  by  Ingolf,  in  876.  .  .  .  The  coloniza-
tion of  Iceland,  which  had  been  first  called  by  Naddod  Snowland
(Snjoland),  now  conducted  in  a  south-westerly  direction,  passing  by
Grreenland  to  the  New  Continent.  .  .  .  The  tract  which  received  finoni
Leif  the  name  of  Vinland  it  Goda,  Vinland  the  Good,  comprised  the
coastline  between  Boston  and  New  York,  therefore  parts  of  Massachu-
sets,  Rhode  Island,  and  Connecticut.
