service of Alfred the Great one, Othere, rounded the North Cape, sailed into the White Sea, and reached the site of the Archangel of our day, which he found occupied by Russians whose manners he describes. The other, Wulfstan, explored the coasts of the Baltic and sailed into the Gulfs of Riga and Bothnia. Their reports of these voyages were copied by the King into that "Description of Europe" which he wrote for the enlightenment of his people.

Crusades, pilgrimages, and the expansion of trade gradually opened up more of the world to Englishmen, but there was no continuous exploration until the time of the Cabots, and the glory of geographical discovery in the early Middle Ages belongs chiefly to the Northmen. The one original English discovery was a mere episode in a love tragedy: Robert Macham, escaping from Bristol with Anne d'Arfet about the year 1360, was driven by storms off the French coast to the island of Madeira, where both the lovers perished of exhaustion and despair.

The viking discovery of America, afterward so strangely forgotten, was due to a certain Eric the Red, a Norwegian settler in Iceland. Having been banished for three years for manslaughter, he sailed on an exploring voyage westward, discovered Greenland, and settled there at a place now called Eric's Fiord. He called the new land Greenland, with the idea of attracting other Icelanders to the colony. This took place fourteen or fifteen years before the official adoption of Christianity in Iceland, which gives us as the date of settlement A.D. 985 or 986. Leif the Lucky, a son of Eric the Red, being sent in 1000 by King Olaf of Norway to preach the gospel in Greenland, was driven out of his course by storms, sailed for many days on unknown

seas, and at last came to a country where he found grapes growing wild, corn, and timber suitable for building. This country he called Wineland the Good. Sailing away on a north-easterly course, he came to Greenland, rescuing some shipwrecked mariners on his way, and told the story of his discovery.

Then an elder brother of Leif's led an expedition which failed, but success fell to Thorfinn Karlsefni. First he came to a long, flat,

NORSE RUINS IN GREENLAND
From "Heroes of the Middle
Ages," Tappan (Harrap)

he called Helluland, the stony land. Two days later he came to a land of great forests. This he named Markland-forest land. After a longer sailing Thorfinn came to a spot where corn and grapes were growing wild. This he thought

must be Wineland the Good. Attacked by natives, the expedition had to settle farther north, but quarrels broke out among the colonists, and the settlement was abandoned in 1006. Thorfinn Karlsefni returned home with his wife Gudrid and his little son Snorri, the first child, as far as we know, born of European parents on the mainland of America.

The history of Wineland ends with the probably illfated voyage thither of Bishop Eric in 1121. We know little of the Norse colonies on the continent of America, but at Eric's Fiord in Greenland there are many ruined buildings, and some in fair preservation at the present day.

The religious motive for travelling was succeeded in course of time by the desire to extend trade. It is a

curious fact that the greater part of medieval exploration both by sea and land was due to the European demand for spices, which, once known, were almost essential in times when hardly any vegetables were grown and fresh meat in winter was generally unattainable. It was in quest of spices far more than of silks and precious stones

that the Italians made known the overland routes to India and China. It was the blocking of these routes by the Turks that set the Italians and Portuguese to the problem of finding new routes by sea to those countries, southward by Africa or westward across

MARCO POLO'S RETURN

the Atlantic, and led to the rounding of the Cape by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486 and to the discovery of a new continent by Columbus in 1492.

The greatest overland traveller of medieval times, the Venetian Marco Polo, was born in 1254. His father Nicolo and his uncle Maffeo had already gone on a trading expedition through Asia to China. In 1271 they started again, taking young Marco with them, and in 1275 reached the Court of Kublai Khan, by whom Marco was made envoy to various neighbouring rulers. Much against the will of the Great Khan, who had treated them with the highest consideration, the Polos left at last in 1292 in the suite of a young Mongol

princess travelling to marry the Khan of Persia. The journey took two years, and when Persia was reached two of the three envoys were dead, as well as most of the attendants. The princess and the three Polos survived, and though the intended bridegroom had died too his place was taken by his brother and successor. The Polos, carrying with them much wealth in precious stones, reached Venice about 1295, changed so much by their long absence that their kinsfolk did not recognize them and drove them from the door. Marco wrote afterward an account of his travels and of the customs of the different states of Asia.

Before the end of the fifteenth century Portugal had made many settlements along the west coast of Africa. When Vasco da Gama in 1497 made the passage to India round the Cape of Good Hope these Portuguese settlements were carried on along the east coast of Africa and along the coast of the Persian Gulf into Southern India and the peninsulas and islands beyond.

In 1492 Columbus, a Genoese in the service of Spain, sailing westward in the belief that on the other side of the Atlantic he would find India and Cathay, discovered a number of islands which he believed to be part of Asia, and which are still known as the West Indies―i.e. the Indies reached by the western route. It was not till his fourth voyage that he reached and coasted along part of the mainland of Central America, and in 1506 he died still ignorant of the fact that he had opened up a new continent, destined to receive its name from a later traveller, Amerigo Vespucci.

However, this success in finding land across the Atlantic stimulated the search for westward routes to Asia, and it was with this aim that the Cabots, sailing from Bristol in 1496 under royal letters patent giving

them authority to set up the banner of the English king in “any village, town, castle, island, or mainland by them newly found," also discovered land on the other side.

In spite of the fact that the continent of America was

AN OLD MAP OF THE NEW WORLD, 1523

discovered thus accidentally, some dim tradition of the Norse settlement had caused an expedition to be sent out from Bristol as early as 1480 in search of the legendary "Isle of Brazil and the Seven Cities." In 1498 the Spanish ambassador wrote: "The people of Bristol have for the last seven years every year sent out two, three, or four light ships in search of the island of Brazil and the Seven Cities, according to the fancy of these