CHAPTER XIV

THE VIKINGS SAIL THE NORTHERN SEAS

A more interesting force than the pilgrim travellers now claims our attention, and we turn to the frozen north, to the wild region at the back of the north wind, for new activity and discovery. Out of this land of fable and myth, legend and poetry, the fierce inhabitants of Scandinavia begin to take shape. Tacitus speaks of them as "mighty in fame," Ptolemy as "savage and clothed in the skins of wild beasts."

From time to time we have glimpses of these folk sailing about in the Baltic Sea. They were known to the Finns of the north as "sea-rovers."

"The sea is their school of war and the storm their friend; they are sea-wolves that live on the pillage of the world," sang an old Roman long years ago. The daring spirit of their race had already attracted the attention of Britons across the seas. The careless glee with which they seized either sword or oar and waged war with the stormy seas for a scanty livelihood, raiding all the neighbouring coasts, had earned them the name of Vikings or creek men. Their black-sailed ships stood high out of the water, prow and stern ending in the head and tail of some strange animal, while their long beards, their loose shirts, and battleaxe made them conspicuous. "From the fury of the Northmen save us, Lord," prayed those who had come in contact with these Vikings.

In the ninth century they spring into fame as explorers by the discovery of Iceland. It was in this wise. The chief of a band of pirates, one Naddod, during a voyage to the Faroe Islands was driven by a storm upon the eastern coast of an unknown land. Not a soul was to be seen.

He climbed a high mountain covered with snow and took a look round, but though he could see far and wide, not a human being could he detect.

So he named it Snow-land and sailed home to relate his adventures.

A few years later another Viking, Gardar, bound for the west coast of Scotland, was likewise blown by a storm on to the coast of Snow-land.

He sailed right round and found it to be an island. Considering that it was unsafe to navigate the icy northern seas in winter, he built himself a hut on the island, lived there till the spring, and returned home. His account of the island fired the enthusiasm of an old Viking called Floki, who sailed away, meaning to take possession of the newly discovered country. At the Faroe Islands he let fly three ravens. The first returned, the second came back to the ship, the third guided the navigator to the island which he sought. He met a quant.i.ty of drift ice about the northern part of the island and called it Ice-land, the name it has borne ever since. But amid the Arctic ice he spent a desolate winter; the island seemed full of lofty mountains covered with eternal snow. His companions, however, were delighted with the climate and the soil.

"Milk drops from every plant and b.u.t.ter from every twig," they said; "this was a land where men might live free from the tyranny of kings."

Free, indeed, for the island was totally uninhabited.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A VIKING SHIP. A reconstruction (from Prof.

Montelius's book on Scandinavian archaeology) of an actual Viking ship found, almost complete, at Gokstad, Norway.]

Iceland soon became a refuge for pirates and other lawless characters.

Among these was a young Viking called Erik the Red. He was too lawless even for Iceland, and, being banished for three years, he sailed away in 985 in search of new lands. At the end of his three years he returned and reported that he had discovered land with rich meadows, fine woods, and good fishing, which he had named Green-land. So glowing was his description that soon a party of men and women, with household goods and cattle, started forth in twenty-five ships to colonise the new land. Still the pa.s.sion for discovery continued, and Erik's son Lief fitted out a vessel to carry thirty-five men in quest of land already sighted to the west.

It was in the year 1000 that they reached the coast of North America.

It was a barren and rocky sh.o.r.e to which Lief gave the name of Rock-land.

Sailing farther, they found a low coast wooded to its edge, to which they gave the simple name of Woody-land. Two days later an island appeared, and on the mainland they discovered a river up which they sailed. On low bushes by the banks of the river they found sweet berries or wild grapes from which a sort of wine was made, so Lief called the land Vin-land. It is now supposed that Vinland and Woodyland are really Newfoundland and Labrador on the sh.o.r.es of North America. After this, shipload followed shipload from Iceland to colonise Vinland. But without success.

So the Viking discoveries in these cold and inhospitable regions were but transitory. The clouds lifted but for a moment to settle down again over America, till it was rediscovered some five hundred years later.

Before leaving these northern explorers let us remind ourselves of the old saga so graphic in its description of their ocean lives--

"Down the fiord sweep wind and rain; Our sails and tackle sway and strain; Wet to the skin We're sound within.

Our sea-steed through the foam goes prancing, While shields and spears and helms are glancing From fiord to sea, Our ships ride free, And down the wind with swelling sail We scud before the gathering gale."

Now, while these fierce old Vikings were navigating unknown seas, Alfred the Great was reigning over England. Among his many and varied interests he was deeply thrilled in the geography of the world. He was always ready to listen to those who had been on voyages of discovery, and in his account of the geography of Europe he tells us of a famous old sea captain called Othere, who had navigated the unknown seas to the north of Europe.

"Othere told his lord, King Alfred, that he dwelt northmost of all Northmen, on the land by the western sea. He said that the land is very long thence to the north; but it is all waste save that in a few places here and there Finns reside. He said that he wished to find out how far the land lay right north, or whether any man dwelt to the north of the waste. Then he went right north near the land, and he left all the way the waste land on the right and the wide sea on the left for three days. There was he as far north as the whale-hunters ever go. He then went yet right north, as far as he could sail in the next three days. After sailing for another nine days he came to a great river; they turned up into the river, but they durst not sail beyond it on account of hostility, for the land was all inhabited on the other side. He had not before met with any inhabited land since he came from his own home, for the land was uninhabited all the way on his right save by fishermen, hunters, and fowlers, and they were all Finns, and there was always a wide sea on his left."

And as a trophy of distant lands and a proof of his having reached farthest north, Othere presented the King with a "snow-white walrus tooth."

But King Alfred wanted his subjects to know more of the world around them, and even in the midst of his busy life he managed to write a book in Anglo-Saxon, which sums up for us the world's knowledge some nine hundred years after Ptolemy--nine hundred barren years as far as much geographical progress was concerned. Alfred does not even allude to Iceland, Greenland, or Vinland. The news of these discoveries had evidently not reached him. He repeats the old legend of Thule to the north-west of Ireland, "which is known to few, on account of its very great distance."

So ends the brief but thrilling discoveries of the Northmen, who knew not fear, and we turn again to landsmen and the east.

CHAPTER XV

ARAB WAYFARERS

And now we leave the fierce energy of the Northmen westwards and turn to another energy, which was leading men toward the east, to the lands beyond the Euphrates, to India, across central Asia, even into far Cathay.

These early travellers to the east were for the most part Arabs.

Mohammed had bidden his followers to spread his teaching far and wide; this teaching had always appealed more to the eastern than to the western mind. So farther and farther to the east travelled the Arabs, converting the uncivilised tribes that Christianity had not reached.

What a contrast are these Arabs to the explorers of the vigorous north.

They always travelled by land and not by that sea which was life to the Viking folk. To the Arabs the encircling ocean was a very "Sea of Darkness"; indeed, the unknown ocean beyond China was called the "Sea of Pitchy Darkness." Their creed taught that the ocean was boundless, so that ships dared not venture out of sight of land, for there was no inhabited country beyond, and mariners would a.s.suredly be lost in mists and fogs. So, while the Vikings tossed fearlessly about the wild northern seas, the Arab wayfarers rode eastward by well-known caravan tracks, trading and teaching the ways of Mohammed.

Arabic enterprise had pushed on far beyond Ptolemy's world. The Arab centre lay in the city of Bagdad, the headquarters of the ruler or Khalif of the Mohammedan world. They had already opened up a considerable trade with the rapidly rising Mongol Empire, which no European had yet reached.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A KHALIF ON HIS THRONE. From the Ancona map, 1497.]

But as this country was to play a large part in the travels of the near future, it will be interesting to hear the account given by two Mohammedan friends who journeyed thither in the year 831, just four hundred years before Marco Polo's famous account. The early part of their story is missing, and we raise the curtain when they have arrived in the land of China itself, then a very small empire compared with what it is now.

"The Emperor of China reckons himself next after the King of the Arabs, who they all allow to be the first and beyond all dispute the most powerful of kings, because he is the head of a great religion. In this great kingdom of China they tell us there are over two hundred cities; each city has four gates, at each of which are five trumpets, which the Chinese sound at certain hours of the day and of the night. There are also within each city ten drums, which they beat at the same time as a public token of their obedience to the Emperor, as also to signify the hour of the day and of the night, to which end they also have dials and clocks with weights.

"China is a pleasant and fruitful country; the air is much better than the Indian provinces: much rain falls in both these countries. In India are many desert tracts, but China is inhabited and peopled throughout its whole extent. The Chinese are handsomer than the Indians, and come nearer the Arabs, not only in countenance, but in dress, in their way of riding, in their manners, and in their ceremonies. They wear long garments and girdles in form of belts. The Chinese are dressed in silk both winter and summer, and this kind of dress is common to the prince and the peasant. Their food is rice, which they often eat with a broth which they pour upon the rice. They have several sorts of fruits, apples, lemons, quinces, figs, grapes, cuc.u.mbers, walnuts, almonds, plums, apricots, and cocoanuts."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CHINESE EMPEROR GIVING AUDIENCE, NINTH CENTURY. From an old Chinese MS. at Paris, showing an Emperor of the dynasty that was ruling when the two Mohammedans visited China in 831.]

Here, too, we get the first mention of tea, which was not introduced into Europe for another seven hundred years, but which formed a Chinese drink in the ninth century. This Chinese drink "is a herb or shrub, more bushy than the pomegranate tree an of a more pleasant scent, but somewhat bitter to the taste. The Chinese boil water and pour it in scalding hot upon this leaf, and this infusion keeps them from all distempers."

Here, too, we get the first mention of china ware. "They have an excellent kind of earth, wherewith they make a ware of equal fineness with gla.s.s and equally transparent."

There is no time here to tell of all the curious manners and customs related by these two Mohammedans. One thing struck them as indeed it must strike us to-day. "The Chinese, poor and rich, great and small, learn to read and write. There are schools in every town for teaching the poor children, and the masters are maintained at public charge....

The Chinese have a stone ten cubits high erected in the public squares of their cities, and on this stone are engraved the names of all the medicines, with the exact price of each; and when the poor stand in need of physic they go to the treasury where they receive the price each medicine is rated at."

It was out of such travels as these that the famous romance of "Sindbad the Sailor" took shape--a true story of Arab adventures of the ninth and tenth centuries in a romantic setting. As in the case of Ulysses, the adventures of many voyages are ascribed to one man and related in a collection of tales which bears the t.i.tle of _The Arabian Nights_.

Of course, Sindbad was a native of Bagdad, the Arab centre of everything at this time, and of course he journeyed eastwards as did most Mohammedans.

"It occurred to my mind," says Sindbad, "to travel to the countries of other people; then I arose and collected what I had of effects and apparel and sold them, after which I sold my buildings and all that my hand possessed and ama.s.sed three thousand pieces of silver. So I embarked in a ship, and with a company of merchants we traversed the sea for many days and nights. We had pa.s.sed by island after island and from sea to sea and land to land, and in every place we sold and bought and exchanged merchandise. We continued our voyage until we arrived at an island like one of the gardens of Paradise."

Here they anch.o.r.ed and lit fires, when suddenly the master of the ship cried aloud in great distress: "Oh, ye pa.s.sengers, come up quickly into the ship, leave your merchandise and flee for your lives, for this apparent island, upon which ye are, is not really an island, but it is a great fish that hath become stationary in the midst of the sea, and the sand hath acc.u.mulated upon it and trees have grown upon it, and when ye lighted a fire it felt the heat, and now it will descend with you into the sea and ye will all be drowned." As he spoke the island moved and "descended to the bottom of the sea with all that were upon it, and the roaring sea, agitated with waves, closed over it."

Let Sindbad continue his own story: "I sank in the sea with the rest.

But G.o.d delivered me and saved me from drowning and supplied me with a great wooden bowl, and I laid hold upon it and gat into it and beat the water with my feet as with oars, while the waves sported with me.

I remained so a day and a night, until the bowl came to a stoppage under a high island whereupon were trees overhanging the sea. So I laid hold upon the branch of a lofty tree and clung to it until I landed on the island. Then I threw myself upon the island like one dead."

After wandering about he found servants of the King of Borneo, and all sailed together to an island beyond the Malay Peninsula. And the King of Borneo sent for Sindbad and heaped him with honours. He gave him costly dress and made him superintendent of the seaport and adviser of affairs of state. And Sindbad saw many wonders in this far-distant sea. At last "one day I stood upon the sh.o.r.e of the sea, with a staff in my hand, as was my custom, and lo! a great vessel approached wherein were many merchants." They unloaded their wares, telling Sindbad that the owner of their goods, a man from Bagdad, had been drowned and they were selling his things.

"What was the name of the owner of the goods?" asked Sindbad.