The morning call., 1893-05-29
WHO DISCOVERED AMERICA?

Professor Boyesen of Columbia College.
New York. has received dispatch stating
that the Viking ship, which is on its way
TO the Columbian Worlds Fair, sighted
Cape Spear, ewfoundland, on Friday.
all well on board. Her arrival may there
fore be looked for within week. The ex-
pectaton is that she will work her way
through the canals to the foot of Lake
Michigan.
Her arrival will revive the controversy
about the pre- Columbian discovery OF
America. The popular belief which was
long ago adopted by Humboldt and Matte
Brun is that a part OF New England, sup
posed to be Rhode Island, was discovered
by an expedition from Iceland to Green
land in or about 1901, their vessel having
been driven out of its course by north
winds. Longfeilow clothed the tradition
with poetic color in his skeleton in Ar
NOR" and the Norwegian legends COM
piemorated the discovery with romantic
tales of the landing of Vikings on Vim
land. Still the discovery has not COM
manded the unanimous assent of
geographers. Some have gone SO far as
to class Vinland with Atlantis, and his
torians of America have generally referred
TO the discovery of the former with
cautious reservation.
The subject has lately been taken up by
Professor Charles Sprague Smith of New
York, whose researches have exhausted
early Scandinavian literature on the voy-
nges Of the Vikings. In the year 1910 a
Brennan geographer wrote that the King
OF Denmark gave his court an account of
the discovery of Vinland, mentioning that
Wild grain grew there and wild vines from
which THE best of wine was made" He
could not have referred either to Iceland
or Green and, which indeed were both at
that time we'll known in Copenhagen.
The next writer on the subject was Ari,
who composed work called the Book of
Iceland" about 1854. In many passages
of this book he refers to Vinland as land
which was well known and whose dis
covery did not require TO be related at
length. He merely stated that Left Erick-
son. who went to Greenland to plant
Christianity there, "found Vinland the
good; he also found men on a wreck at
sea. on which account lie was known as
Left the Lucky" Professor Smith Justly
remarks that either these writers were
imposed upon or the archaologists at
Copenhagen internolated in their works
the passages referring to Vinland, or
Rhode Island or some part of the
United States which will grow grapes was
discovered by the Vikings four or pos
sibly FIVE hundred years before Columbus.
To maintain the claim of the Spanish
navigator to the glory of being the first
white man who set foot on the North
American continent it will be necessary
to disproVe this Scandinavian record. and
it is not easy to prove negative. The
evidence OF the Runic landing in New
England is not as complete or as irrefrag-
able as might be wished, but it is pausi BILE
and is easily reconcied with what We
know of the daring enterprise of the sea
royers who. in the tenth and eleventh CEN
turtles, proved the scourge of the European
coasts.
No serious attempt has been made to
collate the records of an Asiatic discovery
of the Pacific Coast Of North America.
There is in an Interior town Of China a
written chronicle of an alleged voyage by
Chinese sea rover who lived before the
Christian era, and made landings and set
Elements on this coast, and similar though
imperfect histories of the trans-Pacific
enterprises by Chinese, at the period when
China attained its greatest extension and
spread from the Caspian to Corea, have
have been noticed by travellers. No one
has deemed these narratives worthy of at
tention. But in the archaeology of the
coast, from Puget Sound to Chile, frequent
mention is made of fragments of moDu-
ments which betray an Asiat!c origin, and
ethnologists are beginning to trace an an
alogy between some of the Pacific tribes
with Asiatic tribes, hose absorb tion into
the MCngol and Tartar races has not
wholly effaeed their original Characters
tics. Considering the skill which the Chi
nese have shown in navigation and the
peacefulness of the ocean which separates
North America from Asia, il seems prob
able that communication between the two
shores must have occurred long before the
landing Of Columbus or the discovery of
Vinland-poss ibly couple of thousand
years before, or even at the time when
Moses was watching the erection of the
great obslisk. OF such possibit es the
world has taken no trouble to inform it.
self. partly because the ancient Aslatic
records are obscure. and partly from the
reason that until lately the current tales
OF the extreme antiquity of the Chinese a
ton have been derided as fables. But
now that Americans are in search of their
ancestors, like Japhet who spent his life
in looking for father. perha S it might
be worth while to try TO read the records
OF the past, and to ascertain whether both
the Vikings and Columbus did not dis
cover country which had been thoroughly
discovered before.