historical evidence establishes the natural probability that they
accomplished the passage." But the first volume of Bancroft was
published in 1852. Since then, the proofs of the discovery of the
continent by the Icelanders, very nearly five hundred years before
Columbus was thrilled with the delight of beholding the Bahamas, have
multiplied and grown to positive demonstration. They no longer rest upon
vague traditions; they have assumed the authority of explicit and well
attested records.

[Sidenote: Discoverers of America.]

The discovery of the New England coast by the Icelanders is the earliest
which, down to the present, can be positively asserted. But it has been
recently urged that there are some evidences of American discovery by
Europeans or Asiatics long prior to Leif Erikson. There are certain
indications that the Pacific coast was reached by Chinese adventurers in
the remote past; and it is stated that proofs exist in Brazil tending to
show that South America was discovered by Phoenicians five hundred years
before Christ. The story is said to be recorded on some brass tablets
found in northern Brazil, which give the number of the vessels and
crews, state Sidon as the port to which the voyagers belonged, and even
describe their route around the Cape of Good Hope and along the west
coast of Africa, whence the trade-winds drifted them across the
Atlantic.

[Sidenote: Icelandic Voyagers.]

Confining ourselves to credible history, it appears that in the year 986
(eighty years before the conquest of England by William of Normandy), an
Icelandic mariner named Bjarne Herrjulson, making for Greenland in his