II.


THE ERA OF DISCOVERY.

[Sidenote: Historic Myths.]

We live in times when the researches of scholars are minute, pitiless,
and exhaustive, and when no hitherto received historical fact is
permitted to escape the ordeal of the most critical scrutiny. Many are
the cherished historical beliefs which have latterly been assailed
with every resource of logical argument and formidably arrayed proofs,
unearthed by tireless diligence and pursuit. Thus we are told that the
story of William Tell is a romantic myth; that Lucretia Borgia, far from
being a poisoner and murderess, was really a very estimable person; and
that the siege of Troy was a very insignificant struggle, between armies
counted, not by thousands, but by hundreds.

In the same way the old familiar question, "Who discovered America?"
which every school-boy was formerly as prompt to answer as to his age
and name, has in recent years become a perplexing problem of historical
disputation; and at least can no longer be accurately answered by the
name of the gallant and courageous Genoese who set forth across the
Atlantic in 1492.

[Sidenote: Icelandic Discoverers.]

Bancroft, on the first page of his history, pronounces the story of
the discovery of our country by the Icelandic Northmen, a narrative
"mythological in form and obscure in meaning"; and adds that "no clear