found a land in the west where self-sown vines and corn had been found growing in perfection. And from these short notices of the traditionary fact, it is very possible that the later stories with their fanciful and minute details were afterwards elaborated. It is not necessary to examine these details minutely, unless we approach their study with the faith or credulity of a great professor, who tells us that "the party sent out in the year 1006 to explore the southern coast probably examined the shores of Connecticut, New York, Delaware, and Maryland: and their account of these coasts is quite correct.”

and built a great house. There was Denmark, that certain of his sailors had plenty of salmon in the river and in the lake, larger than any which they had seen before. This country appeared so good to them that they thought it needless to gather food for the cattle in the winter; and during the winter there was no frost, and the grass was hardly withered." One day a German, who was of their crew, found grapes growing wild in the woods, which caused the new country to be named Vineland the Fair. "And it is said that, when they returned, their boat was filled with grapes, and they cut a cargo of wood for their ship; there was also selfsown wheat in the plains, and a tree which they called Massur (supposed to be the maple): of all these they took samples, and some of the trees were so large as to be used in building houses." These latter words point rather to the small larch and spruce of Labrador, than to the Canadian forests: but some parts of the description appear to agree with the account given by the early settlers of the shores of the St. Lawrence. "The river (says a traveller of the sixteenth century) has many little islands and is amazingly full of fish: the country pleasant and indifferently fertile, especially to the south-west, where upwards from the river the ground rises into little hills, in-ers. vested most of them with vines, with which the country abounds; and in the plains it is very fruitful of corn and all kinds of grain."

There is a later manuscript which differs in many points from the story before mentioned. It is full of the most marvellous impossibilities, but its authority has been placed very high by several Danish and American writers. Its truth has been sustained by the discovery of Norse remains in America, which are found in sufficient quantities to supply the archæological demand. Mr. Longfellow immortalized in one of his ballads the windmill on Rhode Island, which the Danes have claimed as a round tower built by some of the Greenland wanderThe story of the tower and of "the Viking bold" is, as he says, sufficiently well established for the purposes of a ballad, "though doubtless many an honest citizen, who has passed his days withWithout attempting to account for all in sight of the round tower, will exclaim the fanciful details of the Icelandic story, with Sancho, God bless me! did I not which was apparently written in its pres- warn you to have a care, for that it was ent shape about four hundred years after nothing but a windmill, and nobody could the event, we may confess that there is mistake it who had not the like in his some ground for the belief that the head.'" Besides the mill, there was grapes and corn were actually seen by the found a stone in the Taunton river on Greenland sailors. Snorro Sturleson, which the fragment of a Runic inscription the great historian, speaks of a very an- was imagined to have been discovered, cient tradition that a mission was sent concerning which some passable jokes about the year 1006 to introduce Chris- may be read in the Biglow Papers. The tianity into the new settlement in Green-crew, whose adventures are recorded in land, and that the missionaries' ship was the later Saga, are said to have sailed driven from her course to a new land in from Greenland to the sandy shores prethe south. "Leif went to Greenland in viously discovered, and there to have the summer; in the sea he saved a crew sent a Scotch man and woman, "fleeter clinging to a wreck; he also found Vine- than wild beasts," to explore the inland land the Fair, and arrived about harvest-parts, who returned in three days with time in Greenland with the priest and the grapes and an ear of wheat. Then they teachers;" and there is a piece of re- found an island covered with nesting markable evidence which goes far to prove eider-ducks, which some will have to be the truth of the main point in the story. Egg Island near Newport. Here they Adam of Bremen, who wrote in the passed the winter, some of the crew parteleventh century a work upon the geogra- ing company in disgust "at not having phy of the north, cited the personal tasted a drop of wine," and being eventustatement of Sweyn the Second, King of ally wrecked on the coast of Ireland.

The others went on exploring to the southward till they arrived at the river and lake which the first body of settlers had discovered, and here they saw the vines and fields of corn, but were driven away by Esquimaux, who attacked them with a fleet of skin canoes. On their northward journey they met a Uniped, or One-foot-man, "of glittering appearance," who shot a Greenland captain and ran away across the sea. Avoiding the region of the One-foot-men, they proceeded north; but by a sudden turn of the legend we find them passing a third winter upon the Island of Eggs, where Snorro Thorfinnson was born, who has been claimed as an ancestor by the sculptor Thorwaldson, Professor Finn Magnussen, and other distinguished persons. To make the story short, the wanderers sailed home from Vineland the Fair with some Esquimaux children whom they had captured. From these children they learned of the Esquimaux kings Avaldamon and Valdidida, and of tribes who lived in holes underground, like the Walrussian families whom Mr. Whymper some time since described; and the same children are the authority for the processions of chaunting priests in the Great Ireland, in which, as we have said, Humboldt was inclined to believe.

who is thought to have had in his possession the ancient manuscripts of which we have given some account. The inference is, of course, that he learned the existence of America from the bishop, and artfully concealed the fact. But even if he did visit Iceland, we should remember that the natives at that time had almost forgotten the existence even of their colony in Greenland, and that it was not until long after the death of Columbus that any importance was attached to these dim traditions. Besides, Columbus was looking for a western route to India, and was not likely to search for the grapes and wheat, the white furs and Esquimaux tribes, of Vineland the Fair.

There are other legends relating to early discoveries of America which it is not now worth while to detail. The travels of Nicolo Zeno the Venetian, in which the marvels of Cuba and Mexico are mixed up with descriptions of Greenland and the Faroe Islands (and apparently of Scotland), would be curious if they had not been published half a century after the voyages of Columbus. The American portions of Zeno's voyage are probably nothing more than a clumsy interpolation into a genuine narrative of an Italian merchant's travels.

It has been a favourite amusement with one class of antiquarians to speculate upon finding the descendants of the Norsemen or other ancient settlers upon the American seaboard. Charlevoix and other more recent travellers have described a fair-skinned tribe of Indians in Labrador whom the other Indians called "Manooli Conde," or white men. These men have been held to be the descendants of the Icelandic colonists, "who, for want of ships, or perhaps of their own choice, have forgotten their native land." Other learned writers will have these Indians to be Welsh, or Faroese, or Irishmen, according to the faith which each is disposed to give to one or other of the legends of Old America.

However absurd it may seem to discuss the details of this story, there is not a rock or a bay mentioned in it which has not been identified by learned enthusiasts, and it is a remarkable thing that even the most trivial names of places mentioned in the Saga are found to have remained in use unaltered to the present day. Here (we are gravely told) is Egg Island; here is Whale Rock; and near it is Martha's Vineyard, where the original grapes were found. On the authority of these stories, which, as we have seen, have in all probability a small foundation of fact, an attempt has several times been made to deprive Columbus of the honour of his discoveries. His journal mentions a visit which he made in 1477 "to Thule or Friesland, a country with which the Bristol merchants had a thriving trade." This entry probably refers to the Faroe Islands, where the tide in one or two From The Saturday Review. WOMEN AT SCHOOL. places reaches a surprising height, which is noticed by Columbus in his account of | ARCHBISHOP WHATELY used to hold this " Friesland," which is a name that that there was one characteristic distincwas given to these islands by several tion between men and women. When early writers. But it has been insisted that the Thule of Columbus must be Iceland: and if so, it is said that he may have been entertained by a certain bishop

men, he said, were spoken of disparagingly as a whole, they were apt to coincide; but when any particular man was tacked, they usually stood up for him,

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and did their best to show that he was not the edge off these home-thrusts by sugsuch a bad sort of fellow after all. On gesting that, after all, he has in his time the other hand - this was Whately's read worse essays by men. The examiner theory, and we accept no responsibility may be a very learned man in his own for it-women were extremely sensitive way, but he clearly knows very little about as to the general character of their sex, women if he thinks to appease their while quite ready to join in cutting up natural indignation by a paltry concession the sisterhood in detail. It would be of this kind. interesting to know what feelings will be excited in the female mind by the Report which has just been issued by the Cambridge Syndicate for the Examination of Women. The Syndicate affect to report, on the whole, very favourably of the industry and intelligence of the majority of the candidates who appeared before them at the different centres, but they take upon themselves to make some remarks which, we fear, will be thought to be offensively characteristic of the arrogance and presumption of man.

We have very little doubt that women will see through the flimsy pretence of courtesy and conciliation under which the examiners endeavour to disguise this attack upon the general character of the sex, and especially on those very points on which women are known to be most sensitive. A woman will stand a good deal, but no woman with the least spirit ever submitted without an explosion to an insinuation that she was not a person of a logical turn of mind. Even the patient Griselda, who allowed her children It is stated that only a few candidates, to be taken from her one by one, would when examined in the Hora Paulina, no doubt have startled her spouse by the showed a knowledge of the book and a sudden energy of her character if he had real hold on the argument, while most of chanced to say, "My dear, it is really no them, although acquainted more or less use trying to argue with you, for women with Paley's facts, exhibited great weak- are always so illogical." All women are ness in applying them conclusively. logical; and whether they are logical or Most of the candidates had evidently not doesn't matter, for all the same they studied the Scriptures very carefully, but have a right to be considered so this is "the answers to a question which asked the first great principle blazoned on the for a careful summary of 1 Cor. xv. banner of the sex. Yet here we find a seemed to show that not more than two sneering examiner pointing out that only or three candidates had read the chapter one candidate in logic showed a thorough so as to master its method and connec- grasp of the subject, and that he found it tion." The ladies came out strongly in exceedingly "difficult to obtain a clear arithmetic; but in English history they statement and ready application of imare sarcastically advised to "avoid mere portant definitions and theorems." All fluency of expression"; and in English this is quite of a piece with the malicious literature "the besetting error was irrele- and impertinent suggestions of the exvance." Thus, when a brief summary of aminers, that women are discursive and the Hydriotaphia was asked for, the re- rambling, and that when they sit down to sult was that a great many accounts, the try to write a short account of one subreverse of brief, were presented, not of ject, they generally write a long account the work, but of Sir Thomas Browne, of something else. The difficulty of the writer of it. It is remarked that it obtaining "a clear statement" from a was observable that several candidates lady is also a very stale bit of satire. who complained of want of time, had The examiner in Latin remarks that the signally misspent the time allowed them. general impression produced on his mind The examiner further noticed great "good by the work done was "that the knowlwill," but "a very prevalent inaccuracy." edge shown was in most cases rather due In English composition the examiner to a retentive memory than actually asdiscovered a weakness for slang and a tendency to flippancy, and "too many of the writers did not sufficiently consider the meaning of the subject which they selected." One of the subjects which were set was to fix the place of the novel in modern literature; but many of the candidates started off at a tangent, and expatiated on the bad effects of reading novels. The examiner endeavours to take

similated with the mind and thought of the candidates." This is put in a very fine way, and perhaps the examiner may have flattered himself that there was something clever in the sonorous turn of his malignant epigram; but we can fancy we hear a female chorus crying, "So women are parrots, are they?" And it must be confessed that this is really what it comes to. The French examiner of

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course has his hit with the rest. He your facts, but you show great weakness thinks it may not be amiss to warn candi- in applying them," or "I do wish you dates against rendering into verse pas- would avoid fluency of expression," or sages which they are expected to render "When you begin to say just a single into prose. Here again is one of the old word on one subject, why on earth do you sarcasms on women, that they think the start off into a thousand words upon anhard, plain prose of life not good enough other subject which has no possible confor them, and are always wanting to soar nection with it?" into the region of poetry. spirit animates the whole of these reports. really hopeless trying to get a clear stateThe same how I hate flippancy and slang," or "It's "You know, dearest, They are full of jeering allusions to all ment from a lady or expecting her to be those little weaknesses reference to which logical" is known to be peculiarly offensive to the the Reports have certainly a strong fla- these and other expressions in gentler sex. It may be true that women your of conjugal controversy, and perhave a relish for racy language, and there haps the examiners may feel relieved in are no doubt rumours that in the highest having at last found an opportunity of circles this passion for colour, or perhaps speaking their minds freely. But after we should say for something else than all it is surely rather hard on the innoprose, in conversation has led to the use cent victims, and it is a pity they cannot of a very astonishing vocabulary; but have their revenge. In the old fable the only a Cambridge examiner is capable of lion observed that, if the picture of one telling a lady to her face that she is of his species lying in the toils of the flippant and talks slang. The passage, hunter had been painted by a lion, the however, in these reports which will man would have been on the ground and probably be most bitterly resented is that the lion on the top of him. Now that the in which proficiency in arithmetic is women have been photographed by the ascribed to women. It will be understood examiners, it would be interesting to have at once that this is only another way of a sketch of the examiners as representing saying that, if women are fit for nothing the male sex generally, from the point of else, at least they can keep a correct ac- view of the ladies who were examined. count of housekeeping expenses. revives at least one part of the old impu- as hard, pedantic, and unimaginative; alIt We should probably find man described tation that their natural mission is "to ways in a fuss and hurry, and disposed suckle fools and chronicle small beer," to cry that time is up, although there is although it is well known that no greater plenty of time to spare; and given over insult can nowadays be paid to a young to a superstitious worship of mere rules lady than to suggest that she possesses, and technical formalities. It would also even in the most trifling degree and be pointed out that man, with all his proshadowy form, any of the qualities of a fessed anxiety to make the most of time, competent housewife. reasons when no reasons were necessary, often wasted it shamefully in asking for and in carping at particular expressions, although all the while he knew very well what people meant; and that, with all his boasted logic, he has never mastered that elementary and most useful proposition, "It is because it is." It might further be remarked that, according to the ancient saying, Minerva had no sooner started on a journey than she arrived at her destination, and that women had no reason to be ashamed of resembling so respectable a goddess in the rapidity of their mental flight. If women are sometimes too quick, men are dreadfully slow and plodding, and women often attain by intuition to what men, with all their laborious logic, fail to reach. This would certainly be a good subject for the next exercises in English composition which are required. to be written by ladies for the Cambridge Syndicate.

Altogether this seems to us a very scandalous production. It has been printed by the Times as a genuine document, and names are appended to it which are certainly the names of gentlemen who are known in Cambridge. So we suppose it must be accepted as authentic. It will no doubt be taken up by the sex against which it is directed, and we shall hear what is thought of it. The object of the authors of this academical lampoon appears to have been to throw into an official form a consensus of the traditional foibles of women, under pretence of giving the results of recent examinations. Some of them are, perhaps, married men, and they may have enjoyed a malicious but shabby satisfaction in giving vent to remarks which had occurred to them in the course of domestic conversation, but which they deemed it more prudent to suppress." My darling, I do not dispute

THE barbers of Chelsea stand at the present the Palatinate and of the Metz-Strasburg railmoment in a perilous and unenviable position. way. New Breisach, which was built by Vau For some reason or other the vestry of that ban at the desire of Louis XIV., as a counterparish has decided that, as a preliminary step fort to old Breisach, “the cushion and key of to the enforcement of a better observance of the German Empire," is also being rebuilt. the Sabbath among the trading classes of It is regarded as an outpost of Strasburg Chelsea, it is advisable to sacrifice the barbers. against an attack from the south, and as a At a meeting of the committee of works of the protection for the bridge across the Rhine. vestry last week a resolution was moved that "A comparison," concludes the writer, "of proceedings under the Act of Sunday trading the old with the new line of fortresses in be first taken against the barbers. The in- Alsace-Lorraine shows very accurately the spector, it was suggested, should go round the fundamental differences between French and parish to obtain the names of all barbers keep- German ideas as to the laying down of lines of ing their shops open on Sundays. Some mem- fortifications. The first line of fortresses on bers of the committee appeared to have a the French system, consisting of Thionville, difficulty in understanding why the holy seal of Metz, Marsal, Bitsch, Lützelstein, Pfalzburg, the vestry should be directed solely against Strasburg, Schlettstadt, and New Breisach, hairdressers, and one memher suggested that has been reduced under the German system to "moral persuasion" should be tried in the Metz with Thionville, sixteen miles (English) first instance, "before putting a comparatively off, and Strasburg with Breisach, thirty-two obsolete Act of Parliament into force." In miles off. The French line represented the the end, however, after a long discussion, the old cordon system of the last century-the motion was carried by a small majority, and it principle on which the French army was disis probable that henceforward the removal of tributed at the beginning of the war in 1870–71. beards on Sunday in Chelsea will be strictly The German line, on the other hand, repreforbidden. As many poor men have no time sents the idea of concentration of forces, with to get shaved on week days they will either only a slight protection of the flanks. This have to shave themselves as best they can, or divergence of views seems to increase as time suffer their beards to grow in wild luxuriance. goes on. While the Germans are abolishing Let us hope that they will share the feelings of a great many small fortresses which absorb the Rev. John More, of Norwich, who in the troops that would be much more usefully emreign of Queen Elizabeth was said to have the ployed elsewhere, the French talk of establishlongest and largest beard of any Englishmaning at intervals of from 80 to 120 miles (Engof his time, and gave as his reason for wearing lish) entrenched camps with from 100,000 to it "that no act of his life might be unworthy 200,000 men." of the gravity of his appearance." Pall Mall.

THE MOSCOW Gazette publishes an abstract of the stipulations of the treaty of peace concluded between Russia and Khiva. All the possessions of the latter country on the right bank of the Oxus and the delta of that river as far as the branch stream Tadyk, are to be incorporated with the Russian Empire. The frontier will extend from the mouth of the Tadyk as far as the Urgu Mountain, and then along the southern slope of the Ust-Urt to Usboi (the old bed of the Oxus). Khiva is to pay to Russia a war contribution of 2,200,000 roubles; but, in view of the poverty of the Khivan treasury, a period of twenty years will be allowed for the payment of the contribu tion on condition that Khiva shall pay five per cent. of the amount yearly. The Russians are to have the right of trading in Khiva, and the khan is to be treated as the vassal of the czar.

THE Allgemeine Militarische Zeitung prints an article on the fortresses of Alsace-Lorraine. Two of these fortresses, Pfalzburg and Schlettstadt, are to be dismantled; the rest are to be strengthened, and a sum of 28,000,000 thalers has been reserved for this purpose out of the French indemnity. The improvements at Strasburg and Metz have been going on since 1871. Thionville is important as being the only place between Metz and Trèves where an army can cross the Moselle, the bridge at Remich being on the neutral territory of Luxembu.g. A railway is now being planned for connecting Thionville with Berlin by way of Wetzlar, Coblenz, and Trèves. As the town is surrounded by hills, it would be difficult to secure it against a hostile attack, but every precaution will be taken, by means of bombproof barracks, traverses, &c., to protect the garrison. A fort is also to be erected on one of the heights which command the town. Bitsch the old fortifications are to be de- MESQUITE gum is the name under which a stroyed but the castle has been rebuilt at substance obtained from the Prosopis glandu great cost after the bombardment, and a small losa is known in Texas. Attention has lately garrison, consisting of 100 men in time of been directed to this gum from the fact that it peace, is to be kept in it. Though valueless seems to be identical with gum Arabic, and as a fortress, Bitsch occupies an important consequently admits of application to many position as the central point of the roads to | medicínal and technical purposes.

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