[Footnote 161: On the noble work of the Irish church and its missionaries in the sixth and seventh centuries, see Montalembert, _Les moines d'Occident_, tom. ii. pp. 465-661; tom. iii. pp. 79-332; Burton's _History of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 234-277; and the instructive map in Miss Sophie Bryant's _Celtic Ireland_, London, 1889, p. 60. The notice of the subject in Milman's _Latin Christianity_, vol. ii. pp. 236-247, is entirely inadequate.] [Footnote 162: The passion for solitude led some of the disciples of St. Columba to make their way from Iona to the Hebrides, and thence to the Orkneys, Shetlands, Faeroes, and Iceland, where a colony of them remained until the arrival of the Northmen in 874. See Dicuil, _Liber de mensura Orbis Terrae_ (A. D. 825), Paris, 1807; Innes, _Scotland in the Middle Ages_, p. 101; Lanigan, _Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, chap. iii.; Maurer, _Beitraege zur Rechtsgeschichte des Germanischen Nordens_, i. 35. For the legend of St. Brandan, see Gaffarel, _Les voyages de St. Brandan_, Paris, 1881.] [Footnote 163: C. W. Brooks, of San Francisco, cited in Higginson, _Larger History of the United States_, p. 24.] [Footnote 164: Desmarquets, _Memoires chronologiques pour servir a l'histoire de Dieppe_, Paris, 1785, tom. i. pp. 91-98; Estancelin, _Recherches sur les voyages et decouvertes des navigateurs normands_, etc., Paris, 1832, pp. 332-361.] [Footnote 165: See below, vol. ii. p. 96.] [Footnote 166: As Harrisse says, concerning the alleged voyages of Cousin and others, "Quant aux voyages du Dieppois Jean Cousin en 1488, de Joao Ramalho en 1490, et de Joao Vaz Cortereal en 1464 ou 1474, le lecteur nous pardonnera de les passer sous silence." _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884, tom. i. p. 307.] [Sidenote: Those stories are of little value;] It is not my purpose to weary the reader with a general discussion of these and some other legends or rumours of pre-Columbian visitors to America. We may admit, at once, that "there is no good reason why any one of them may not have done" what is claimed, but at the same time the proof that any one of them _did_ do it is very far from satisfactory.[167] Moreover the questions raised are often of small importance, and belong not so much to the serious workshop of history as to its limbo prepared for learned trifles, whither we will hereby relegate them.[168] [Footnote 167: Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i. 59.]