Alexander von Humboldt in his _Examen Critique_ (Paris, 1837) gave a synopsis of the sagas, and believed the scene of the discoveries to be between Newfoundland and New York; and in his _Cosmos_ (1844) he reiterated his views, holding to “the undoubted first discovery by the Northmen as far south as 41° 30’.”[633] [Illustration: NORSE AMERICA. Opposite is a section of Rafn’s map in the _Antiquitates Americanæ_, giving his identification of the Norse localities. This and the other map by Rafn is reproduced in his _Cabinet d’Antiquités Américaines_ (Copenhagen, 1858). The map in the atlas of St. Martin’s _Hist. de la Géographie_ does not track them below Newfoundland. The map in J. T. Smith’s _Northmen in New England_ (Boston, 1839) shows eleven voyages to America from Scandinavia, A.D. 861-1285. Cf. map in Wilhelmi’s _Island_, etc. (Heidelberg, 1842).] Two books which for a while were the popular treatises on the subject were the immediate outcome of Rafn’s book. The first of these was _The Northmen in New England_, giving the stories in the form of a dialogue, by Joshua Toulmin Smith (Boston, 1839), which in a second edition (London, 1842) was called _The Discovery of America by the Northmen in the Tenth Century_. The other book was largely an English version of parts of Rafn’s book, translating the chief sagas, and reproducing the maps: Nathaniel Ludlow Beamish’s _Discovery of America by the Northmen in the Tenth Century_ (London, 1841).[634] Two German books owed almost as much to Rafn, those of K. Wilhelmi[635] and K. H. Hermes.[636] Prescott, at this time publishing the third volume of his _Mexico_ (1843), accords to Rafn the credit of taking the matter out of the category of doubt, but he hesitates to accept the Dane’s identifications of localities; but R. H. Major, in considering the question in the introduction to his _Select letters of Columbus_ (1847), finds little hesitation in accepting the views of Rafn, and thinks “no room is left for disputing the main fact of discovery.”