IV

OTHER PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES[1]

BY HENRY WHEATON


No subsequent traces of the Norman colony in America are to be found
until the year 1059, when it is said that an Irish or Saxon priest,
named Jon or John, who had preached for some time as a missionary in
Iceland, went to Vinland, for the purpose of converting the colonists
to Christianity, where he was murdered by the heathens. A bishop of
Greenland, named Erik, afterward (A.D. 1121) undertook the same
voyage, for the same purpose, but with what success is uncertain. The
authenticity of the Icelandic accounts of the discovery and settlement
of Vinland were recognized in Denmark shortly after this period by
King Svend Estrithson, or Sweno II, in a conversation which Adam of
Bremen had with this monarch. But no further mention is made of them
in the national annals, and it may appear doubtful what degree of
credit is due to the relations of the Venetian navigators, the two
brothers Zeni, who are said to have sailed in the latter part of the
fourteenth century, in the service of a Norman prince of the Orcades,
to the coasts of New England, Carolina, and even Mexico, or at least
to have collected authentic accounts of voyages as far west and south
as these countries. The land diseovered and peopled by the Norwegians
is called by Antonio Zeni, Estotoland, and he states, among other
particulars, that the princes of the country still had in their
possession Latin books, which they did not understand, and which were
probably those left by the bishop Erik during his mission.