[4] It has been conjectured by some writers that Columbus on a visit to Iceland learned something of the voyages of the Northmen to America, and was aided by this knowledge in his subsequent discoveries. There is no evidence whatever that such was the case. In writing a memoir of his father, Ferdinando Columbus found among his papers a memorandum in which Columbus states that, in February, 1477, he sailed a hundred leagues beyond Tile, that this island was as large as England, that the English from Bristol carried on a trade there, that the sea when he was there was not frozen over; and he speaks also of the high tides. In the same paragraph we are informed that the southern limit of this island is 63° from the equator, which identifies it with Iceland. Beyond these facts, the memorandum contains no information. There is no evidence that Columbus was at any time in communication with the natives of Iceland on any subject whatever. There is no probability that he sought, or obtained, any information of the voyages of the Northmen to this continent. Ferdinando Columbus's Life of his father may be found in Spanish in Barcia's Historical Collections, Vol. I. Madrid, 1749. It is a translation from the Italian, printed in Venice in 1571. An English translation appears in Churchill's Collections, in Kerr's, and in Pinkerton's, but its mistranslations and errors render it wholly untrustworthy. [5] It is somewhat remarkable that most writers who have attempted to estimate the value of the sagas as historical evidence have ignored the fact, that from a hundred and fifty to three hundred years they existed only in oral tradition, handed down from one generation to another, subject to the changes which are inevitable in oral statements. They are treated by these critics as they would treat scientific documents, a coast or geodetic survey, or an admiralty report, in which lines and distances are determined by the most accurate instruments, and measurements and records are made simultaneously. It is obvious that their premises must be defective, and consequently their deductions are sure to be erroneous. [6] If the reader will examine our coast-survey maps, he will easily verify this statement. [7] Although most antiquaries and historical students have abandoned all belief in the Scandinavian origin of this structure, yet in the March number of Scribner's Magazine, 1879, an article may be found in defence of the theory that it was erected in the eleventh century by the Northmen. The argument is founded on its architectural construction, but it is clearly refuted by Mr. George C. Mason, Jr., in the Magazine of American History, Vol. III, p. 541. [8] In Professor Putnam's Report, as Curator of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology, in 1887, will be found the following interesting account of the "Skeleton in Armor:"