So, between the idea of mere revival after death and the idea of immortality, the difference is no less than infinite; yet nothing is more common than to deal with them as if they were equivalent. The practice of burying with a man his arms and apparel was not an unnatural expression of the thought that his course was finished, and that the separation from him was complete. It seemed fit that along with his breathless body the other familiar appendages of his life-his weapons, his ornaments, his utensils, his clothes, the mat which had been his couch— should be put out of the way and out of sight. We may further ascribe something of sentiment to the proceeding, as, if we leave the marriage ring on the cold finger, it is not because we expect it will ever again be worn, but because of an aimless reluctance to break so dear an association. If, especially in the particular of the deposit of provisions in graves, the custom imports an intention to furnish the departed with supplies for the wants of another life, still it neither appears that the practice was uniform, nor that, when observed, it was indicative of anything beyond the indulgence of a fond hope or imagination. The natural difficulty of subsiding into the conviction that acts and experiences long blended with our own are at an end, easily slides into a dreamy thought, poorly entitled to the rank of a tenet of religion, that the vanished existence is not extinct.1 But as to any belief in an interminable

1 "One day we asked a mandarin, a friend of ours who had just offered a sumptuous repast at the tomb of a deceased colleague, whether in his opinion the dead stood in need of food. How could you possibly suppose I had such an idea?' he replied, with the utmost astonishment; 'we intend to do honor to the memory of our relations and friends, to show that they still live in our remembrance, and that we like to serve them as if they were yet with us. Who could be absurd enough to believe that the dead need to eat?'" (Huc,

Journey through the Chinese Empire, II. 213.) A learned friend, who lately made extensive examinations in the large Indian burying-place at Nantasket, informs me that he did not find remains of arms in any grave. In some there was with the skeleton a single utensil, as a stone pestle. Many contained a quantity of fragments of pottery, but in no instance did a careful excavation discover a whole vessel of any sort, nor did it seem possible that any one should have been entire when deposited in the ground. What use could it have been imagined that the

existence or in a universal retribution on the other side of the grave, the authorities, partial as at best they must be considered, are profoundly silent. The New-England savage was not the person to have discovered what the vast reach of thought of Plato and Cicero could not attain.

Their stoi

cism.

With the Indian, the social attraction was feeble. At the fishing season, he would meet his fellows of the same tribe by the shores of ponds and at the falls of rivers, and enjoy the most that he knew of companionship and festivity. But much of his life was passed in the seclusion of his wigwam and the solitude of the chase. The habit of loneliness and of self-protection made him independent and proud. His pride created an aptitude for the virtue which constituted his point of honor, and which he cultivated with assiduous attention. This was fortitude under suffering. In war, craft rather than valor stood high in his esteem. Stealth and swiftness composed his strategy. He showed no daring and no constancy in the field; but it was great glory to him to bear the most horrible tortures without complaint or a sign of anguish.

His brave endurance, however studied and scenic, or in whatever degree the symptom of a ruder nervous organization, presented the bright side of his character.1 He

revivified dead could have for broken dishes? Not only has the imagination been at work in this matter, but at work on materials partly of its own creation. “The fanciful historians have said much respecting the savage's hope of felicity in fine fields beyond the gates of death, where he should meet his ancestors, and be happy in a state of immortality. But from any conversations had with the Indians here, or from anything which can be gathered from those who have been most with them, there is no reason to believe that the Northern savages ever had ideas of that nature." (Sullivan, History of Maine, 105.)

1 De Maistre (Soirées de Saint Pétersbourg, I. 77), after quoting Robertson's admission, which Robertson often forgot, that it is necessary to distrust the representations of all ecclesiastics respecting the red men, as being generally too favorable, proceeds: "C'est un enfant difforme, robuste, et féroce, en qui la flamme de l'intelligence ne jette plus qu'une lueur pâle et intermittente. Une main redoutable appésantie sur ces races dévouées efface en elles les deux charactères distinctifs de notre grandeur, la prévoyance et la perfectibilité. Le sauvage coupe l'arbre pour cueillir le fruit, il dételle le bœuf que les missionaires viennent de lui confier, et le

was without tenderness, and very few instances are recorded of his appearing capable of gratitude. Cunning and falsehood, the vices of the undisciplined, the weapons of the imbecile, were eminently his. His word was no security. He could play the spy with a perfect selfpossession; and a treaty could not bind him, when he supposed it might be broken without danger. Exceptions Their infe- are to be allowed for in every portraiture of a rior capacity class of men. Everywhere and in all times there tion. are happy natures that rise above the moral standard of their place. But it remains true of the normal representative of this peculiar race, that his temper was sullen, jealous, passionate, intensely vindictive, and ferociously cruel. Good faith and good offices can never be wholly unavailing; but, if it was possible that the red men of New England should ever have become other than bad neighbors, certain it is that all their history shows them to have been a race singularly unsusceptible of the influences of a humane civilization.

for civiliza

fait cuire avec le bois de la charrue. Depuis plus de trois siècles il nous contemple sans avoir rien voulu recevoir de nous, excepté la poudre pour tuer ses semblables, et l'eau-de-vie pour se tuer lui-même. Encore n'a-t-il jamais imaginé de fabriquer ces choses; il s'en repose sur notre avarice." And more follows, of still greater strength. If this is not, as it certainly is not, the language of a calm philosophy, it is that of a writer of vast study and reflection. "They that speak most favorably give but an indifferent idea of the qualities of their minds. Mr. Wilson speaks of them but with compassion, as the most sordid and contemptible part of the human species. Mr. Hooker says they are the veriest ruins of mankind

upon the face of the earth. Perhaps the Indians about the Massachusetts Bay were some of the lowest among the American nations." (Hutchinson, I. 414.) If, on the one hand, we are remote from the passions of that day, on the other hand we are remote from its knowledge. Hutchinson's portrait of the natives is certainly dark. His invaluable materials for the formation of a judgment are in great part lost. The resentments which might have biassed it could hardly have been transmitted to his time. Callender (Historical Discourse, in R. I. Hist. Coll., IV. 140) quotes a manuscript of Roger Williams, of the date of 1658, to show that Williams thought more unfavorably of the natives as he knew them better.

CHAPTER II.

1492.

FOR an unknown length of time the country and people that have been described had been hidden behind the ocean from the knowledge of civilized man. It is doubtful whether they were ever seen by European eyes till nearly five years had passed after Columbus found his way to the West India Islands. But Oct. 12. the existence in the North of Europe of a traditional account of visits to the northeasterly parts of North America by Scandinavian voyagers, in the eleventh century and in the three centuries next following, has long been known to geographers; and original documents relating to this interesting problem have recently been placed in the possession of the reading world.

1

It is no wise unlikely that eight or nine hundred years ago the Norwegian navigators extended Alleged their voyages as far as the American continent. voyages of Possessing the best nautical skill of their age,

1 "La mérite,” says Humboldt (Examen Critique, II. 120), “d'avoir reconnu la première découverte de l'Amérique continentale par les Normands, appartient indubitablement au géographe Ortélius, qui annonça cette opinion dès l'année 1570"; and then he quotes words of Ortelius which, however, are not found in the edition either of 1575 or of 1584. Indeed, it is clear from his language (Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, edit. 1584, p. 5) that as late as the latter date he had heard nothing of an ante-Columbian discovery. In the edition of 1592 (p. 6) he refers to reports of such a discovery as "quædam haud vulgo no

Northmen to America.

ta," and uses the words quoted by Humboldt; but he explains himself as having in view the fisherman's adventures reported by Antonio Zeno in the fifteenth century. (See below, p. 60.)—Belknap (American Biography, I. 52) credited his information of the discovery by the Northmen to Pontoppidan (History of Norway), Crantz (History of Greenland), and John Reinhold Forster (History of the Voyages and Discoveries made in the North), all writers of the last century. - Malte-Brun (Précis de la Géographie, I. 395) referred to the spurious chapters (see below, p. 52, note) in the Heimskringla.

they put to sea in substantial ships, having decks and wellcontrived rigging. Iceland they had undoubtedly reached and colonized; and from Iceland, Greenland. From Cape Farewell, the southern extremity of Greenland, to the nearest point on the American continent in Labrador, the distance is no greater than the distance to Iceland from the point of departure in Norway. It is altogether credi ble, that the rovers who explored every sea from the Baltic to the Ægean should, by stress of bad weather or by favor of good, have been conveyed a distance of only three or four days' sail from land to land. When they had often prosperously made the passage from their homes to Iceland, they might well have had confidence for another like adventure, which would have brought them from Greenland to Labrador. And from Labrador, the exploration of as much more of the coast of North America as they might be disposed to visit would require only a coasting voyage.

The historical evidence upon this subject, which has been published from the manuscripts by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen,' is found

chapters appear in full in a manuscript called, from the place of its preservation, the Codex Flateyensis, and have been ascertained on good evidence to be a work composed within the last fifteen years of the fourteenth century. A translation of them is published by Laing in the Appendix to his version of the Heimskringla. Of the discovery of America, Sturleson had himself said no more than that "he [Leif] also found Vinland the good." (Laing's Heimskringla, I. 465.)

The Codex Flateyensis furnishes the first of the narratives lately published by the Danish antiquaries, the same which was interpolated into Sturleson's text by Peringskiold, and from which the sketch in the text is abridged. The second narrative in the Danish collec