Icelandic rovers also reached America in the latter years of the tenth century.[320] The _Landnámabók_, compiled from an original version written about 1200, tells how, about the year 983, Ari Marsson “was driven out of his course at sea to White-men’s-land (_Hvitramanna-land_), which is called by some persons Ireland the Great (_Irland-it-mikla_); it lies westward in the sea near Wineland the Good; it is said to be a sail of six _doegr_ west of Ireland” (Reeves’s translation).[321] Though we may not be certain whether this brief passage is rightly to be interpreted as referring to America, it is undeniable that soon after Ari Marsson’s discovery the northeastern shores of our continent were visited by Biarni, the son of Heriulf, and by Leif, the son of Eric the Red, and that the latter were followed by Thorfinn Karlsefni and others.[322] Sailing southwestward, these adventurers came to the shores of a barren country of flat stones which they called Helluland; thence they coasted southward past the forested Markland and past long beaches and sand reefs, until they reached Wineland, with grapevines, a mild climate, and savage inhabitants (or Skraellings). From some of the latter, captured by Karlsefni in Markland, the Icelanders learned that “kings governed the Skraellings” and that “there was a land on the other side over against their country which was inhabited by people who wore white garments and yelled loudly and carried poles before them to which rags were attached” (Reeves’s translation). This land they identified with White-men’s-land, or Ireland the Great. CHAPTER III THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MOSLEMS There is no necessity here of giving a general review of the very broad field of Arabic geography. The works of the foremost Mohammedan geographers, Al-Masʿūdī, Ibn Ḥauqal, Al-Iṣṭakhrī, were unknown in Europe during the Middle Ages, and formal Arabic geography certainly contributed next to nothing to the knowledge of the earth possessed by the Occidentals of the Crusading age. _SOURCES_ Other branches of Arabic science, however, profoundly influenced the development of European thought at this time. As transmitters of classical learning to the West, the Saracens reintroduced fragments of the geographical lore of the Greeks. The two classical authors in whom they had taken the deepest interest were Aristotle and Ptolemy. Their most important contribution to Western geographical knowledge was to make known to the West geographical speculations in the works of these men and in the various treatises which the Moslem writers themselves had composed under Peripatetic and Ptolemaic influences. INFLUENCE OF ARISTOTLE