Note 4 — Front matter

It has been conjectured by some writers that Columbus on a visit to Iceland learned something of the voyages of the Northmen to America, and was aided by this knowledge in his subsequent discoveries. There is no evidence whatever that such was the case. In writing a memoir of his father, Ferdinando Columbus found among his papers a memorandum in which Columbus states that, in February, 1477, he sailed a hundred leagues beyond Tile, that this island was as large as England, that the English from Bristol carried on a trade there, that the sea when he was there was not frozen over; and he speaks also of the high tides. In the same paragraph we are informed that the southern limit of this island is 63° from the equator, which identifies it with Iceland. Beyond these facts, the memorandum contains no information. There is no evidence that Columbus was at any time in communication with the natives of Iceland on any subject whatever. There is no probability that he sought, or obtained, any information of the voyages of the Northmen to this continent. Ferdinando Columbus's Life of his father may be found in Spanish in Barcia's Historical Collections, Vol. I. Madrid, 1749. It is a translation from the Italian, printed in Venice in 1571. An English translation appears in Churchill's Collections, in Kerr's, and in Pinkerton's, but its mistranslations and errors render it wholly untrustworthy.