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 THE NORSEMEN 5 Britain and a great continent beyond the sea where Saturn slept. Other almost prophetic utterances of the kind have been culled from classical authors, but they have mostly the air of specula- tion. It cannot be said that the Greeks or Romans devoted much energy to the remoter reaches of the ocean. IRISH SEA-ROVING Ireland was never subjectjto J^me^tjiQUgh. influenced by Roman tracfeTand culture. From prehistoric times the Irish had done some sea rovmg71isl:heir Imrama, or sea sagas, attest; and this roving was greatly stimulated in the first few centuries of conversion to Christianity by an abounding access of religious zeal. Irish jnonjcs_seem^toj^y^settledm the end (rf the^elghth century_and even to have sailed well beyoncflE "There are good reasons~fo!T5eTteving that they had visited most of the islands of the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes. We cannot suppose that this rather reckless persistency ended there in such a period of expansion. It is quite possible that we owe to this trait the Island of Brazil, in the latitude of southern Ireland, as an American souvenir on so many medieval maps (Ch. IV). It is certain that the "Navigatio" of St. Brendan scattered St. Brandianjslands, real or fanciful, over t!ie~bcean wastes of a cred- ulous cartography (Ch. III). THE NORSEMEN A little later Scandinavians followed along the northern route, finding convenient stopping points in the Faroes and Iceland, discovered Greenland, and planted two settlements on its south- western shore in the last quarter of the tenth century (Ch. VII). Some of their ruins, a less number of inscriptions, and many frag- mentary relics and residua are found, so that we can form a good idea of their manner of life. Such as it was, it endured more than four hundred years. To contemporary and slightly later geog- raphy Greenland appeared most often as a far-flung promontory of Europe, jutting down on the western side of the great water;