[Footnote 2: It is doubtful whether actual masts and sails were known
in America till the coming of Europeans, though the ancient Peruvians
are said to have used mat sails in their canoes. But the northern
Amerindians had got as far as placing bushes or branches of fir trees
upright in their canoes to catch the force of the wind.]

Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within
the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by
the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite
habitable. It is not almost entirely covered with ice, as Greenland
is; in fact, Iceland should be called Greenland (from the large extent
of its grassy pastures), and Greenland should be called Iceland.
Instead of this, however, the early Norwegian explorers called these
countries by the names they still bear.

The Norse rovers from Norway and the Hebrides colonized Iceland from
the year 850; and about a hundred and thirty-six years afterwards, in
their venturesome journeys in search of new lands, they reached the
south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland. Owing to the glacial
conditions and elevated character of this vast continental island
(more than 500,000 sq. miles in area)--for the whole interior of
Greenland rises abruptly from the sea-coast to altitudes of from 5000
to 11,000 ft.--this discovery was of small use to the early Norwegians
or their Iceland colony. After it was governed by the kingdom of
Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west
Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, until it ceased
completely in the fifteenth century. When Denmark united herself with
the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler
of Iceland. In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish
settlements were re-established along the south-east and south-west