The
explorer might wander for days in the depths of the
American forest without encountering any trace of human
life. The continent was, in truth, one vast silence,
broken only by the roar of the waterfall or the cry of
the beasts and birds of the forest.
CHAPTER IV
THE LEGEND OF THE NORSEMEN
There are many stories of the coming of white men to the
coasts of America and of their settlements in America
long before the voyage of Christopher Columbus. Even in
the time of the Greeks and Romans there were traditions
and legends of sailors who had gone out into the 'Sea of
Darkness' beyond the Pillars of Hercules--the ancient
name for the Strait of Gibraltar--and far to the west
had found inhabited lands. Aristotle thought that there
must be land out beyond the Atlantic, and Plato tells us
that once upon a time a vast island lay off the coasts
of Africa; he calls it Atlantis, and it was, he says,
sunk below the sea by an earthquake. The Phoenicians were
wonderful sailors; their ships had gone out of the
Mediterranean into the other sea, and had reached the
British Isles, and in all probability they sailed as far
west as the Canaries.
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