I suppose it was much the same with the Vikings. But with this exception: that, being unfettered by book-learning, they possessed the instinctive faculty more thoroughly. They knew the Scandinavian coast-line thoroughly well; and long coasting voyages had taught them the configuration of other nations’ shores. The rising and setting of the sun would assist them in clear weather, and the Pole-star at night. They were wont to carry in their ships a number of ravens, and when they were expecting soon to make a landfall and it was useless to climb the mast, they released these birds, which, flying high, spotted the distant shore and flew towards it. The Viking mariner could thus set his course to follow their direction of flight. Of course, with such rough-and-ready methods they made egregious mistakes and sometimes found themselves sailing in exactly the opposite direction to that desired, like some amateur yachtsmen who have sailed through the night by the wind and not known that the wind had veered several points. Dr. Nansen gives as an instance of a Viking’s mistake that of Thorstein Ericson, who in starting from Greenland arrived off Iceland instead of America. And, be it added, there are plenty of well-found ships to-day, both sail and steam, which, in spite of all their sextants, their patent logs, and deep-sea sounding leads, have made landfalls miles off their course. Their sense of time, too, was another instinct which few of us possess to-day. “Several accounts show,” says the same Scandinavian authority, “that on land the Scandinavians knew how to observe the sun accurately, in what quarter and at what time it set, how long the day or the night lasted at the summer or winter solstice, etc. From this they formed an idea of their northern latitude.” It is just possible that they may even have understood how to take primitive measurements of the sun’s altitude at noon with a species of quadrant. But it is not likely that during those long, early voyages they could have been able to take observations of this kind from their ships. Nor can they have understood how to reckon the latitude from such measurements except at the equinoxes and solstices. From the narrative of a voyage north of Baffin’s Bay, about the year 1267, it appears that they endeavoured at sea to get an idea of the sun’s altitude by observing where the shadow of the gunwale, on the side nearest the sun, fell on a man lying athwartships when the sun was in the south. This shows, at any rate, that the Norsemen did at least observe the sun’s altitude. Even in thick weather they could get along satisfactorily provided that the wind did not shift and send them off their course. But if the breeze veered or backed a few points they would be heading unconsciously in the wrong direction.