reference to Vinland by the Norwegian bards. Sidenote: It is shadowy, but not improbable. An enormous mass of literature has been the outgrowth of these geographical puzzles in the sagas, and many writers have ventured to identify every headland and other natural object mentioned in them. The common theory among the advocates of the Scandinavian claim is, that Vinland was somewhere on the coast south of Labrador; but as to the exact locality, there is much diversity of opinion. There may easily have been early voyages to the American mainland south of Davis Straits by the hardy Norse seamen colonized in Iceland and Greenland, and it is probable that there were numerous adventures of that sort. The sagas, like the Homeric tales, were oral narrations for centuries before they were committed to writing, and as such were subject to distortion and patriotic and romantic embellishment. It is now difficult to separate in them the true from the false; yet we have other contemporaneous evidence (Adam of Bremen, 1076) that the Danes regarded Vinland as a reality. Pretended monuments of the early visits of Northmen to our shores have been exhibited,--notably the old mill at Newport and the Dighton Rock; but modern scholarship has determined that these are not relics of the vikings, and had a much less romantic origin. It is now safe to say that nowhere in America, south of undisputed traces in Greenland, are there any convincing archæological proofs of these alleged centuries of Norse occupation in America. 8. Early European Discoveries (1492-1512). Sidenotes: American development begun with Columbus. The race for India. The idea of sailing westward to reach India not original with Columbus.