The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1878-02-14
A Thousand Years Ago.

A thousand years ago (says DR.. Robert
Brown, in his new work, 1.-THE Countries
of the World" and for long after) the
world was not all the geologized, botan-
lied, zoologized, and mapped out earthly
ball it is now. There it lay, according
to the imagination of the men and wom-
en- of those days-or rather, according
to the ideas of the monks; for the men.
and far less the women, of those distant
times troubled themselves very little
about matters of this kind, but left it to
the churchmen to NEEDLE with such dan
gerous booklearning-a flat plain, full of
things mysterious and unknown; and out
of the four corners, through the gaps of
four mountain ranges, which were placed
there to keep it steady, blew the four
winds of Heaven! Of course, the centre
of it all was the little town, and county,
parish, manor, barony, or kingdom where
they dwelt; but outside of that was no
mans land. 1t was looked upon by our
remote fOretathers in much the same light
as it is by the Chinese, who, while max
ing maps Of the Flowery Land on scale
so large as to show the ground plan of
every town and village, mark all the coun-
tries outside that magic boundary of
theirs as ''inhahited by barbarians." at
was the land of the infdel," the people
said, rs they piously crossed themselves
at the thought. All was mysterious to
the travellers of that age. The unknown
lands were full of dragons and giants,
rocs, ores, witchwales, griffins, chimeras,
enchanters, Paynims, Saracens, Emirs and Z,
Sultan's Kaisers Of Constaninople, of
Ind, and Cathay, and Cipango. What a
choice was there then for IA young traveller,
good knight, and proper man withal.
If he had a mind he could steer his way
to Lapland, where Gas all the world knew
dwarts forged chain armor of magic
links, and where witch-whales and ice
mountains roamed about the chilly sea;
or, to go south, and join the Varaugers
guard IN Constantinople; or, beard the
Turk in Palestine; or, into Egypt, and
win the Kings daughter by killing a
great dragon, as did ST. George; or, down
to Cordova, where there We're dire ma
gcians; or, into the forests of Brittany,
where beauteous fairies sported-kindly
immortals, who loved to be welded to
mortality-who emptied his water jars
at night and filled them with good Rhine
wine ere dawn of day. He might even
marry one, as did ST. Lancelot, and pass
few years in Fairyland! Even in our
own dull old prosaic land, the geogra-
pliers of thousand years ago reported
wonders to be seen for the travelling.
Dragons were in the land, and giants
storked all over Cornwall; so that, like
Hereward, you could go into the land of
Tin, kill an ogre and save kings daugh-
ter. In these days there were lands to
discover and take possession of, and
wonders and strange things to be seen
wherever you turned. The fairies have
now hidden farewell to all accessible
places, and if you wish to win them you
must go very far atield to places where
there are no books and no schools-for
these elf-maidens like not letters, and flee
before them like ghosts before the cock
crow; if you wish wine now, you may
gather the grapes-aye, and tread them
out, too. Then think how easy it was to
travel in those barbarous times; no philo-
sophical instruments were in demand,
only big OK horn to engrave your map
on, and if you were a very learned trav-
eler, and ink horn and parchment to
write your notes on; though, generally
speaking, travellers in those days did not
trouble themselves much with writing,
but drew freely on their imaginations.