Learned writers like Moosmuller of Germany, Gravier of France, Palfry and De Costa of America, not to speak of Irish scholars, have written much on St. Brendan and prehistoric America. Cardinal Moran of Australia has recently written a very able work on St. Brendan. O’Donoghue’s Brendaniana and Webb’s Compendium of Irish Biography make mighty interesting reading. There are several ancient maps in the European Libraries which mention St. Brendan’s Land or “Great Ireland” and those maps are being closely examined by historical students interested in pre-Columbian discoveries. Columbus himself, while he was endeavoring to fit out his first expedition, wrote these words: “The land of St. Brendan is the land of the Blessed, towards the West, which no one can reach except by the power of God.” It is not too much to claim that the Irish chapter in American history began with St. Brendan. It is to be hoped and expected that the future historians of this Western Hemisphere will recognize Brendan, the Irish monk and famous navigator, as America’s first discoverer and give credit to whom credit is due. There is still extant in the Monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland, an ancient MS. containing the prayer of St. Brendan for the safety of himself and his companions in his trans-Atlantic voyage. “Judging by the ancient documents,” says the learned Dane, Professor Rafn, “we can have no doubt that Great Ireland was settled long before the year 1000 by a Christian Colony from Ireland.” What Rafn calls Great Ireland, we now call the United States of America. Rafn also claims that a people speaking the Irish language were found in Florida as far back as the eighth century. The latest book on this subject is by Mrs. Marion Mulhall, the wife of the famous statistician, entitled “Explorers in the New World Before Columbus,” recently published by Longmans, Green & Co. Every student of pre-Columbian discoveries ought to read that splendid work, which deals with a mighty interesting theme in the field of historical research. In the sixteenth century, traces of Gaelic speech and a knowledge of the poems of Ossian were discovered among the Indians of Florida. Ossian was an Irish poet who flourished two centuries before St. Brendan was born. Both Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon considered him the greatest poet that ever lived.