The appearance of men called _Indians_ on the western coasts of Germany, under the Othos, and under Frederic Barbarossa, in the 10th and 12th centuries, and even, as is related by Cornelius Nepos, (ed. Van Staveren, cur. Bardili, T. ii., 1820, p. 356), Pomponius Mela, (lib. iii. cap. 5, § 8), and Pliny, (Hist. Nat., T. ii. p. 67), when Quintus Metellus Celer was Pro-consul in Gaul, may be explained by similar effects of currents and north-west winds of long continuance. A king of the Boii, others say of the Suevi, gave the shipwrecked dark-coloured men to Metellus Celer. Gomara, in his Historia Gen. de las Indias, (Saragossa, 1553, fol. vii.), refers to this account, and considers the Indians spoken of in it to have been natives of Labrador. “Si ya no fuesen de Tierra del Labrador, y los tuviesen, los Romanos por Indianos engañados en el color.” The appearance of Esquimaux on the northern coasts of Europe may be believed to have occurred more often in earlier times, because we know, from the researches of Rask and Finn Magnusen, that in the 11th and 12th centuries this race extended in considerable numbers, under the name of the Skrälinges of Labrador, even as far south as the “good Vinland;” _i. e._, the coast of Massachusets and Connecticut. (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 270; English ed. p. 234; Examen critique de l’Hist. de la Géographie, T. ii. p. 247-278.) As the winter cold of the most northern parts of Scandinavia is softened by the influence of the Gulf Stream, by which American tropical fruits (cocoa nuts, and seeds of the Mimosa scandens and the Anacardium occidentale) are cast upon the shore beyond the 62nd degree of latitude, so does Iceland also occasionally enjoy the beneficial influence of the extension of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream far to the northward. The coasts of Iceland as well as those of the Färoe Islands, receive a great deal of drift-wood, which, coming formerly in greater abundance, was cut into beams and planks and used for building timber. Fruits of tropical plants, collected on the coast of Iceland, between Raufarhavn and Vapnafiord, testify the movement of the waters from the southward. (Sartorius von Waltershausen, physisch-geographische Skizze von Island, 1847, S. 22-35.) [25] p. 12.--“_Neither Lecideas nor other Lichens._” In northern countries, the earth, if left bare, soon becomes covered with Bæomyces roseus, Cenomyce rangiferinus, Lecidea muscorum, L. icmadophila, and similar Cryptogameæ, which prepare the way for the growth of grasses and herbaceous plants. In the tropics, where mosses and lichens only abound in shady places, some species of succulent plants take their place. [26] p. 13.--“_The care of animals yielding milk_, ... ... _The ruins of the Aztec fortress._” The two kinds of cattle alluded to, and subsequently spoken of,--the Bos americanus and Bos moschatus,--are peculiar to the American continent. But the natives-- Queis neque mos, neque cultus erat, nec jungere tauros.