Dr. B. F. De Costa’s first book on the subject was his _Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen, illustrated by Translations from the Icelandic Sagas, edited with notes and a general introduction_ (Albany, 1868). It is a convenient gathering of the essential parts of the sagas; but the introduction rather opposes than disproves some of the “feeble paragraphs, pointed with a sneer,” which he charges upon leading opponents of the faith. Professor J. L. Diman, in the _North American Review_ (July, 1869), made De Costa’s book the occasion of an essay setting forth the grounds of a disbelief in the historical value of the sagas. De Costa replied in _Notes on a Review_, etc. (Charlestown, 1869). In the same year, Dr. Kohl, following the identifications of Rafn, rehearsed the narratives in his _Discovery of Maine_ (Portland, 1869), and tracked Karlsefne through the gulf of Maine. De Costa took issue with him on this latter point in his Northmen in Maine (Albany, 1870).[640] In the introduction to his _Sailing Directions of Henry Hudson_, De Costa argues that these mariners’ guides are the same used by the Northmen, and in his _Columbus and the Geographers of the North_ (Hartford, 1872,—cf. _Amer. Church Review_, xxiv. 418) he recapitulates the sagas once more with reference to the knowledge which he supposes Columbus to have had of them. Paul Gaffarel, in his _Etudes sur les rapports de l’Amérique et de l’ancien Continent avant Colomb_ (Paris, 1869), entered more particularly into the evidence of the commerce of Vinland and its relations to Europe. Gabriel Gravier, another French author, was rather too credulous in his _Découverte de l’Amérique par les normands au X^e Siècle_ (Paris, 1874), when he assumed with as much confidence as Rafn ever did everything that the most ardent advocate had sought to prove.[641] There were two American writers soon to follow, hardly less intemperate. These were Aaron Goodrich, in _A History of the Character and Achievements of the so-called Christopher Columbus_ (N. Y., 1874), who took the full complement of Rafn’s belief with no hesitancy; and Rasmus B. Anderson in his _America not discovered by Columbus_ (Chicago, 1874; improved, 1877; again with Watson’s bibliography, 1883),[642] in which even the Skeleton in Armor is made to play a part. Excluding such vagaries, the book is not without use as displaying the excessive views entertained in some quarters on the subject. The author is, we believe, a Scandinavian, and shows the tendency of his race to a facility rather than felicity in accepting evidence on this subject. The narratives were first detailed among our leading general histories when the _Popular History of the United States_ of Bryant and Gay appeared in 1876. The claims were presented decidedly, and in the main in the directions indicated by Rafn; but the wildest pretensions of that antiquary were considerately dismissed.