The Description is the king’s own account of Europe in his time, and the only authentic record of the Germanic nations, written by a contemporary, so early as the ninth century. Ohthere was a man of great wealth and influence in Norway, as wealth was there reckoned; for he had 600 reindeer, including six decoy-deer; but though accounted one of the first men in the land, he had only twenty horned cattle, twenty sheep, and twenty swine. The little that he ploughed he ploughed with horses, and his chief revenue was in tribute of skin and bone from the Finns. The fame of his voyages attracted to him the attention of King Alfred. He said that he dwelt “Northmost of all northmen,” in Halgoland; and wishing to find out how far the land lay due north, and whether any man dwelt north of him—for the sake also of taking the walruses, “which have very good bone in their teeth; of these teeth they brought some to the king; and their hides are very good for ship-ropes”—he sailed northward. Ohthere may have obtained some of his wealth by whale-fishing. He says that “in his own country is the best whale-hunting; they are eight-and-forty ells long, and the largest fifty ells long;” of these he said “that he was one of six who killed sixty in two days;” meaning, no doubt, that his vessel was one of six. He relates only what he saw. “The Biarmians,” he says, “told him many stories both about their own land and about the countries which were around them, but he knew not what was true, because he did not see it himself.” Wulfstan was perhaps a Jutlander, and his voyage was confined to the Baltic. Neither his account nor that of Ohthere contradicts the opinion then held, that Scandinavia was a large island, and the Gulf of Bothnia or Cwæner Sea flowed into the North Sea. THE GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE BY KING ALFRED, ETC. _Translated in_ 1807 _by the Rev. James Ingram_, _M.A._, _Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford_. NOW will we describe the geography of Europe, so far, at least, as our knowledge of it extends. From the river Tanais, westward to the river Rine (which takes its rise from the Alps and runs directly north thenceforward on to the arm of the ocean that surrounds Bryttania), then southward to the river Danube (whose source is near the river Rine, running afterwards in its course along the confines of Northern Greece, till it empties itself into the Mediterranean), and northward even unto the ocean, which men call Cwen-sea; within these boundaries are many nations; but the whole of this tract of country is called Germany.