up. ¹ Prior to the invention of the mariner's compass,
geographical discovery did not advance beyond the
range of land travel and of coasting voyages. The
nearest approach to the unlocking of the secrets
of the sea of darkness that was made without the
guiding needle was accomplished by the fearless
sailors of the North, who found Iceland in 867,
colonized Greenland in 985,2 and reached the shores
later to be known as America, at a time when
western Europe had hardly begun to recover what
had been lost by the collapse of the Roman Empire
and the decay of ancient knowledge.

Yet the distance was so great, the voyage so
precarious, and the returns so slight that these
ventures were discontinued; and northern enter-
prise remained content with the establishment of
scattered settlements on the western shores of
Greenland, which for three centuries were the re-
mote outposts of Christendom in the west, obscure
precursors of the future expansion of Europe and of
Christianity. ³

Of more consequence were the later ventures in the
south, which, beginning with the isolated attempt
of the Vivaldi brothers, of Genoa, in 1291, ⁴ to reach

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