Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/113

Rh advanced in years. With this purpose he caused a stout bark to be constructed and provisioned for a long voyage, a portion of his supplies consisting of live swine. Taking with him some trusty companions, he sailed from Trawlee Bay, at the foot of Brendan Mountain, in a southwesterly direction. The voyage lasted many weeks, during several of which the vessel was carried along by a strong current without need of help from oars or sails. In the land which he ultimately reached the saint spent seven years in instructing the people in the truths of Christianity. He then left them, promising to return at some future time. He arrived safely in Ireland, and in after-years (mindful of the promise he had made to his transatlantic converts) he embarked on a second voyage. This, however, was frustrated by contrary winds and currents, and he returned to Ireland, where he died in 578, at the ripe age of ninety-four, and in "the odor of sanctity."

It would be idle to expect a plain, matter-of-fact account of St. Brendan's voyage from the chroniclers of the sixth century. The narrative is, in fact, interwoven with several supernatural occurrences. But, eliminating these, there remains enough of apparently real incident worthy of serious attention. The whole story, as already suggested, may be a mere pious fable promulgated and accepted in a non-critical and ignorant and credulous age. If substantially true, the fact could not be verified in such an age; if a pure invention, its falsity can not now be demonstrated. All that can be said about it is that it is in wonderful agreement with what is known, or may be inferred, from the Mexican legend. The story of St. Brendan's voyage was written long before Mexico was heard of, and, if forged, it could not have been with a view to offering a plausible explanation of a singular Mexican tradition. And yet the solution which it offers of that tradition is so complete and apropos on all material points as almost to preclude the idea of accidental coincidence. In respect to epoch, personal characteristics, race, religion, direction of coming and going, the Mexican Quetzatcoatl might well have been the Irish saint. Both were white men, both were advanced in years, both crossed the Atlantic from the same direction of Europe, both preached Christianity and Christian practices, both returned across the Atlantic to an insular home or Holy Island, both promised to come back, and failed in doing so. These are certainly remarkable coincidences, if accidental.

The date of St. Brendan's voyage—the middle of the sixth century is conveniently within the limits which probability would assign to the period of Quetzatcoatl's sojourn in Mexico, namely, from about the fifth to the eighth centuries. The possibility of making a voyage in such an age from the western shores of Europe to Mexico is proved by the fact that the voyage was made