Page:Van Loon--The Story of Mankind.djvu/287

Rh which had just killed half the people of Norway. However that might be, the tradition of a "vast land in the distant west" still survived among the people of the Faröe and Iceland, and

THE GREAT DISCOVERIES, WESTERN HEMISPHERE

Colombo must have heard of it. He gathered further information among the fishermen of the northern Scottish islands and then went to Portugal where he married the daughter of one