The Extent and Character of Our Country: Iceland and Madoc

All positive traces of that colony in America, after the departure of Freydisa, are lost. Icelandic histories called Sagas, and poems called Eddas, give us glimpses of it for a few years, when it fades into utter forgetfulness. These histories and poems tell us that a navigator named Gudlief made a trading voyage from Iceland to Ireland at about the year of our Lord 1030. Whilst he was sailing along the western shores of Iceland, a strong wind blew his ship far into the Atlantic Ocean toward the southwest. After many days he and his crew saw land, anchored their ship in a safe harbor, and were made prisoners by dark-colored people who came from the woods in great numbers. Their captors took them into the forest, where they were met by a white chieftain who spoke to them in Icelandic, and procuring their release, advised them to depart immediately, for the dark people were cruel to strangers. He refused to tell them his name, but inquired after Snorre and other well-known persons in Iceland. Taking a gold ring from his finger, he asked Gudlief to present it to Thurida, Snorre's sister. Gudlief bore the jewel to the daughter of Gudrida. It was believed that the white chief was Bjorn, a famous Icelandic bard, who had been a lover of Gudrida and a rival of Thorfin, and who left his country in the year 998. If this story be true, Bjorn the bard and Lief the navigator, may fairly contend in the halls of Odin for the honor of having been the first of all Europeans to discover America.

It is also related that thirty years after the event just mentioned, a Saxon priest from Ireland, who had been laboring among the pagans of Iceland, went to Vineland, and was murdered there; and that a bishop of Greenland undertook the same voyage, and was never heard of afterwards.

From that time, for more than four hundred years, America lay hidden from the knowledge of Europeans, a wild, uncultivated waste. There are some traditions, that seem to have facts for their substance, that tell us of other voyages to this Western world, during that period. The most reasonable of these stories, is that of Prince Madoc of Wales, said to have been drawn from the chronicles of that country. It is believed by some historical students that Madoc, who was a son of Owen Gwynneth, disgusted with the domestic contentions about the rightful successor to his father, went on a voyage of discovery, with ships well manned, in the reign of King Henry the Second, of England; that he went westward from Ireland and found a most fruitful country, in the year 1170; that he returned home, and with a squadron of ten ships sailed for the same lands with a colony of men, women and children, to settle there, and that he was never heard of afterwards. It has been asserted by more than one traveller in this country, that lightcolored Indians have been met by them who had many Welsh words in their language. Humboldt refers to this tradition; and Southey, the English poet, made it the theme of one of his finest productions. Until the translation of the Icelandic Chronicles revealed the story of the Norwegian voyagers, the Chronicles of Wales claimed for Madoc the honor of being the discoverer of America. There are traditions of voyages to this country in the fourteenth century, but they are so vague and improbable that I will not weary you with a recital of them.

During the centuries whilst America again lay hidden from Europe, great changes had taken place among the nations of the Eastern hemisphere. The wild tribes of this portion of our continent had evidently been subjects of great changes, too. Stronger bands of warriors and women had displaced the weaker ones; and when the Europeans again appeared on our shores, the dwarfed Esquimaux, whom the Northmen encountered, had been annihilated by a nobler race or driven toward the frozen regions of the Arctic Circle. There had evidently been great migrations from one part of the continent to the other, during which half-civilized barbarians had been expelled from fertile territories by savages, whilst once savage regions seem to have been colonized by sun-worshippers from Central and South America. They have left remains of art, in buildings and pottery, which tell of a rude civilization.

We know that in South America there existed a native empire that compared favorably with any one in the Eastern hemisphere at that time. We know that between the Rio Grande, or Grand River, which divides our country from Mexico, to the Isthmus of Darien, there was an Empire whose rulers and people displayed many of the nobler virtues and some of the arts and sciences of civilized life, and whose laws evinced as profound respect for the great principles of morality as is to be found in the most civilized nation. We know, too, that the softening influences of that empire were beginning to spread among the ruder tribes of the North, when Cortez and his followers--civilized ruffians from Spain--overturned that empire. They extinguished the light that was beginning to shine in the darker regions within the present domain of our Republic. With professed Christian zeal they barred the way to the advance of a civilization more practically Christian than that which the Spanish conquerors displayed