The forest mingled
its murmurs with the waves, and, as the sun sank behind
the unknown hills, wafted its perfume to the anchored
ships that rode upon the placid bosom of the evening sea.
And beyond all this was mystery--the mystery of the
unknown East, the secret of the pathway that must lie
somewhere hidden in the bays and inlets of the continent
of silent beauty, and above all the mysterious sense of
a great history still to come for this new land itself--a
sense of the murmuring of many voices caught as the
undertone of the rustling of the forest leaves, but rising
at last to the mighty sound of the vast civilization that
in the centuries to come should pour into the silent
wildernesses of America.
To such a land--to such a mystery--sailed forth Jacques
Cartier, discoverer of Canada.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The Icelandic sagas contain legends of a discovery of
America before Columbus. Benjamin de Costa, in his
'Pre-Columbian Discovery of America', has given translations
of a number of these legends. Other works bearing on this
mythical period are: A. M. Reeves's 'The Finding of
Wineland the Good'; J.
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