Page:The Finding of Wineland the Good.djvu/227



(1) It has been claimed that the Icelandic discovery attained a practical result through the imparting of information to those to whom the discovery of America has been generally ascribed, and notably to Columbus and the Cabots. The tendency to qualify Columbus' fame as the original discoverer dates from the time of Ortelius, while the effort to show that his first voyage was influenced by information which he received from Icelandic sources was, perhaps, first formulated in extenso within the present century The theory that Columbus obtained definite information from Icelandic channels rests, after all, upon the following vague letter, which is cited by Columbus' son in the biography of his father, as follows:

'In the month of February, of the year 1477, I sailed one hundred leagues beyond the island of Tile, the southern portion of which is seventy-three degrees removed from the equinoctial, and not sixty-three, as some will have it; nor is it situated within the line which includes Ptolemy's west, but is much further to the westward; and to this island, which is as large as England, the English come with their wares, especially those from Bristol. And at the time when I went thither the sea was not frozen, although the tides there are so great that in some places they rose twenty-six fathoms, and fell as much. It is, indeed, the fact that that Tile, of which Ptolemy makes mention, is situated where he describes it, and by the moderns this is called Frislanda .'

John and Sebastian Cabot are supposed, by similar theorists, to have derived knowledge