The tract of country first explored by these earliest European discoverers is supposed to extend down the coast from about where Boston is now situated to New York. According also to the antiquarians, Rask and Finn Magnusen, boundary pillars were discovered by them, in the year 1824, on the eastern shore of Baffin’s Bay, exhibiting Runic inscriptions, and the date 1135. The generally uncivilised state of the rest of Europe prevented these early Scandinavian discoveries from producing any permanent or important effect. The time when this great discovery of a second world could be availing was not yet come. The precursors of knowledge had yet to be born; society lay under a night of barbarous ignorance, and glimpses of light, coming from whatever quarter they might, were lost in the density of its shadow. The important thirteenth century arrived: Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, and Vicentius of Beauvais, lived. A breath of true life awakened the general mind, and geographical, as well as other knowledge began to be studied. In the meantime, Iceland, which must be regarded as the mother of colonisation, had lost her noble independent spirit with her republican form of government, and become a fief of the crown of Norway. In consequence, however, of her remote position, as well as her high reputation for learning, she was made the depository of the most ancient records of Europe, which was then agitated by internal convulsions, and here they were carefully preserved for ages. In this remote _Ultima Thule_ lay sealed up, as it were, the keys of a mighty knowledge, which would unlock a second world. Here, accordingly, in the month of February, 1477, came Christopher Columbus, “the sea,” says he, “not being at that time covered with ice, and being resorted to by traders from Bristol.” This is singular. Some historians doubt whether Columbus heard any tidings here of the early discovery and colonisation of America. No doubt he did; no doubt, in his conversations with Bishop Skalholt and other learned men, he would hear the extraordinary fact of a great country having been discovered by their ancestors beyond the Western Ocean. They had found land where he had believed it to exist, whether a part of Asia or not was of no consequence, and this information would not be lost on a mind like his. No doubt, also, hither came the Cabots, merchants of Bristol, who, in their process of discovery, sailed northward, as if following the guidance of Icelandic tradition, and arrived on the dreary coasts of Labrador, before Columbus discovered the mainland of America. [Illustration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.]