“Return, therefore, to the land of thy nativity, carrying with you of the fruits and gems of all that your ship will carry, for the days of your journey are near to a close, and you shall sleep with your fathers. But after the lapse of many years this land shall be made known to your descendants, when Christianity shall overcome Pagan persecution. Now, this river which you see divides the land, as it now appears to you rich in fruits, so shall it always appear without any shadow of night, for its light is Christ.” If the foregoing is not positive proof, it is at least pretty good circumstantial evidence of St. Brendan’s discovery of this western hemisphere. Nearly all writers on Columbus bear witness to the traditional value of the voyage of St. Brendan in guiding and inspiring Lief Erickson in the tenth century, and Columbus in the fifteenth, to the discovery of the New World. The legend of St. Brendan is treated in the general histories of American discovery. In Winsor’s “Narrative and Critical History of America,” volume I, page 48, there is a list of some of the different texts of the legend. Payne’s “History of America” gives a brief summary of the legend. He says: “No story was more popular in the end of the fifteenth century. The critic who does not absolutely reject it, as the Bollandists have done, may take his choice of original versions of it in eight different languages: and St. Brandan occupies ten dense pages in William Caxton’s version of the Golden Legend.” An English version of the legend was published by the Percy Society in 1844 under the title, “St. Brandan, a mediæval legend of the sea, in English prose and verse (London, 1844).” Gaffarel’s “Histoire de la dècouverte de l’Amerique,” volume I, contains a chapter entitled “Les Irlandais en Amerique avant Colomb,” in which he gives an extended account of the story of St. Brendan, with references to authorities. [Illustration: HON. THOMAS B. FITZPATRICK, Of Boston, Mass. Vice-President-General of the Society. ] De Roo, in his “History of America Before Columbus,” published in 1900, says: “The story of St. Brendan was one of the most remarkable and widely spread of the middle ages. The number of its ancient copies, carefully preserved to the present day, its various translations and its learned commentaries, published of late, sufficiently testify to the living interest which the ‘Navigatio’ of St. Brendan excited. There is scarcely a MSS. Collection in Europe, of any account, where it cannot be found.” There is a copy of the “Navigatio” in the Vatican Library since the Ninth Century. De Roo gives full credence to the St. Brendan narrative.