Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/30

 Certain travelers of the 17th century tell of white men speaking the Welsh tongue having been met with among the Indians far away in the West, lending some slight semblance of veracity to the tradition that a colony was indeed founded by the Welsh; but in the absence of all confirmatory documents, we are compelled to reserve judgment on the subject, passing on to the better authenticated story of the voyage of the brothers Zeni of Venice, who, between 1388 and 1404, are said to have visited Greenland and Nova Scotia, and to have long resided as the guest of its king in an island called Frisland, the position—indeed the very existence—of which has never been fully proved, although some authorities are of opinion that it was really only one of the Faroe Islands. However that maybe, many legends were long current in Venice of the intercourse with the unknown Frisland and islands further west, one of which, called Estotiland, is supposed to have been Newfoundland. Hints, too, are scattered up and down old chronicles, of wandering fishermen sailing southward from Estotiland having come to a country answering in the descriptions given of it to Mexico; the Chinese, Malays, and Polynesians are said to have reached the American coasts; and, to conclude our summary of lore relating to the oldest of the continents, Picigano's map, which is dated 1367, gives indications of a western continent named Antilles, and a yet older map shows an island where Newfoundland ought to be.

Whether America was or was not visited from Europe or from Asia before the time of Columbus, however, the barbarism in which European society was sunk in medieval times prevented any recognition of the true significance of the details of adventures given by returned mariners; and their voyages thus fail to form any real link between the America of the middle ages and that of the present day. If, therefore, we would point out the true precursor of the first hero of discovery in the West, we shall find him, not in the wild Northmen bent on pillage and bloodshed, nor in the brothers Zeni of legend and romance, but in that grand central figure of the scientific annals of the 13th century, Marco Polo, whose book, revealing the existence of vast empires in the East, did much to stimulate the enthusiasm, not only of Columbus, but also of Bartholomew Diaz, Vasco da Gama, and other early heroes of travel, thus indirectly leading to the discovery alike of the Cape of Good Hope and of America.

Although Columbus never set foot on the Northern half of the American continent, with which alone we have, strictly speaking, now to do, no record