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Page 4
BY JUSTIN WINSOR
There is not a race of eastern Asia--Siberian, Tatar, Chinese,
Japanese, Malay, with the Polynesians--which has not been claimed as
discoverers, intending or accidental, of American shores, or as
progenitors, more or less perfect or remote, of American peoples; and
there is no good reason why any one of them may not have done all that
is claimed. The historical evidence, however, is not such as is based
on documentary proofs of indisputable character, and the recitals
advanced are often far from precise enough to be convincing in
details, if their general authenticity is allowed.
Nevertheless, it is much more than barely probable that the ice of
Bering Straits or the line of the Aleutian Islands was the pathway of
successive immigrations, on occasions perhaps far apart, or maybe near
together; and there is hardly a stronger demonstration of such a
connection between the two continents than the physical resemblances
of the peoples now living on the opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean
in these upper latitudes, with the similarity of the flora which
environs them on either shore.
It is quite as conceivable that the great northern current, setting
east athwart the Pacific, should from time to time have carried along
disabled vessels, and stranded them on the shores of California and
farther north leading to the infusion of Asiatic blood among whatever
there may have been antecedent or autochthonous in the coast peoples.
It is certainly in this way possible that the Chinese or Japanese may
have helped populate the western slopes of the American continent.
There is no improbability even of the Malays of southeastern Asia
extending step by step to the Polynesian Islands, and among them and
beyond them, till the shores of a new world finally received the
impress of their footsteps and of their ethnic characteristics. We may
very likely recognize not proofs, but indications, along the shores of
South America, that its original people constituted such a stock or
were increased by it.
As respects the possible early connections of America on the side of
Europe, there is an equally extensive array of claims, and they have
been set forth, first and last, with more persistency than effect....
Leaving the old world by the northern passage, Iceland lies at the
threshold of America. It is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, and
Greenland is but one of the large islands into which the arctic
currents divide the North American continent. Thither, to Iceland, if
we identify the localities in Geoffrey of Monmouth, King Arthur sailed
as early as the beginning of the sixth century, and overcame whatever
inhabitants he may have found there. Here, too, an occasional
wandering pirate or adventurous Dane had glimpsed the coast. Thither,
among others, came the Irish, and in the ninth century we find Irish
monks and a small colony of their countrymen in possession. Thither
the Gulf Stream carries the southern driftwood, suggesting sunnier
lands to whatever race had been allured or driven to its shelter. Here
Columbus, when, as he tells us, he visited the island in 1477, found
no ice. So that, if we may place reliance on the appreciable change of
climate by the precession of the equinoxes, a thousand years ago and
more, when the Norwegians crossed from Scandinavia and found these
Christian Irish there, the island was not the forbidding spot that it
seems with the lapse of centuries to be becoming.
It was in A.D. 875 that Ingolf, a jarl of Norway, came to Iceland with
Norse settlers. They built their habitation at first where a pleasant
headland seemed attractive, the present Ingolfshofdi, and later
founded Reikjavik, where the signs directed them; for certain carved
posts, which they had thrown overboard as they approached the island,
were found to have drifted to that spot. The Christian Irish preferred
to leave their asylum rather than consort with the newcomers, and so
the island was left to be occupied by successive immigrations of the
Norse, which their king could not prevent. In the end, and within half
a century, a hardy little republic--as for a while it was--of near
70,000 inhabitants, was established almost under the arctic circle.
The very next year (A.D. 876) after Ingolf had come to Iceland, a
sea-rover, Gunnbiorn, driven in his ship westerly, sighted a strange
land, and the report that he made was not forgotten. Fifty years
later, more or less, for we must treat the dates of the Icelandic
sagas with some reservation, we learn that a wind-tossed vessel was
thrown upon a coast far away, which was called Iceland the Great.
Then, again, we read of a young Norwegian, Eric the Red, not
apparently averse to a brawl, who killed his man in Norway and fled to
Iceland, where he kept his dubious character; and again outraging the
laws, he was sent into temporary banishment--this time in a ship which
he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of
Gunnbiorn's land, and found it. He whiled away three years on its
coast, and as soon as he was allowed, ventured back with the tidings.
While, to propitiate intending settlers, he said he had been to
Greenland, and so the land got a sunny name.
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