Note 82 — CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

B. Ireland the Great, or White Man’s Land.—The claims of the Irish to have preceded the Norse in Iceland, and to have discovered America, rest on an Icelandic saga, which represents that in the tenth century Are Marson, driven off his course by a gale, found a land which became known as Huitramannaland, or white man’s land, or otherwise as Irland it Mikla.[569] This region was supposed by the colonists of Vinland to lie farther south, which Rafn[570] interprets as being along the Carolina coast,[571] and others have put it elsewhere, as Beauvois in Canada above the Great Lakes; and still others see no more in it than the pressing of some storm-driven vessel to the Azores[572] or some other Atlantic island. The story is also coupled, from another source, with the romance of Bjarni Asbrandson, who sailed away from Iceland and from a woman he loved, because the husband and relatives of the woman made it desirable that he should. Thirty years later, the crew of another ship, wrecked on a distant coast,[573] found that the people who took them prisoners spoke Irish,[574] and that their chieftain was this same renegade, who let them go apparently for the purpose of conveying some token by which he would be remembered to the Thurid of his dreams. Of course all theorists who have to deal with these supposed early discoveries by Europeans connect, each with his own pet scheme, the prevailing legendary belief among the American Indians that white men at an early period made their appearance on the coasts all the way from Central America to Labrador.[575] Whether these strange comers be St. Patrick,[576] St. Brandan even, or some other Hibernian hero, with his followers, is easily to be adduced, if the disposing mind is inclined.