"Thus, seamed with many scars My soul ascended! There from the flowing bowl Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!" Thus the tale ended. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. HELPS TO STUDY Six hundred years before Columbus, the brave sailors of Norway and Iceland made discoveries and settlements in Greenland and on other parts of the coast of North America. A skeleton in metal armor, dug up near Fall River in 1835, and an old round stone tower near Newport, built like the stone-work of the early Normans, suggested the story of this poem to Longfellow. But neither the skeleton nor the tower is now believed to be Norman. The poem is in what we call ballad form, and represents the spirit of the dead warrior as telling the story of his life. 1. Who asks the questions in the first stanza? begin? 2. What had the warrior been? his boyhood? Where does the answer 3. What were the sports of 4. Why did he leave The occupations of his manhood? the Northland? the 6. Where does he refer to For Study with the Glossary: cavernous, Viking, manifold, skald, saga, gerfalcon, lair, were-wolf, corsair, marauders, Berserk, plighted, minstrel, sea-mew, flaw, cormorant, leeward, Skoal, wassail-bout, drinking-horn, Skaw, stagnant fen. For Oral and Written Composition: 1. Recent discoveries. 2. Lands yet to be explored. 3. Hardships and dangers. C 5 DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE You already know that the statues, the buildings, and the poetry of Ancient Greece are still the admiration of the world. On the map Ancient Greece looks like a tiny country, and so it was. But the Greeks were a nation of 5 sailors who loved adventure and new sights, and their ships went sailing away all along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Soon there were Greek villages on the islands, on the coast of Asia Minor, and along the shores of Italy. Marseilles was a Greek town for hundreds of years. 10 In this way Greek learning and culture taught their wonderful lessons to the southern parts of Europe. Some of the Greeks believed that if their ships should sail westward out beyond the Pillars of Hercules, as they named the Straits of Gibraltar, they would find new and strange islands. 15 About a thousand years later, the nations of Western Europe, in their turn, became eager explorers. First, the Norsemen, hardy and bold, pushed out over the northwestern seas, and found Greenland and Labrador. Later on, while Columbus was growing up, little Portugal was 20 sending out her ships to find a sea route to India. Then Spain became interested, and later England, France, and even Holland. You will find it very interesting to point out on a map of the United States, names that remind us of these four exploring nations. Most of them will be 25 English, but you will find Spanish names in California and the states south of California. There are Dutch names in New York, and French names are scattered from Lake Champlain to Detroit and Eau Claire and then southward to New Orleans and Mobile. There are still some regions of the earth that we know 5 very little about. Africa was long called the Dark Continent, and some parts of it are still "dark"; but to-day it is the polar regions that most attract the daring of explorers and the interest of scientific men. Think how much easier it has become in the last hundred 10 years to explore the unknown parts of the earth. Huge and powerful steamships can force their way into the polar icefields. Improved firearms lessen the danger from savages and wild beasts. Scientific knowledge of geography takes away the terror of unknown places, and medical science 15 helps to keep away disease. So it happens that there are only a few portions of the earth that remain unexplored. The great work that the civilized nations now face is to bring the uncivilized and undeveloped lands to a higher state of civilization. The next selection tells us the most wonderful story in our history, the story of Columbus in the last part of the voyage on which America was discovered. Italy and Spain were the countries that gave Christopher Columbus to us, for he was born in Genoa and he learned the art of sailing in his own country, and later it was the Spanish rulers, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who supplied him with ships, money, and men. In doing this, they went against the opinions of the learned men of the day, who thought the ideas of Columbus were foolish and impossible. 20 COLUMBUS DISCOVERS LAND The situation of Columbus was daily becoming more and more critical. In proportion as he approached the regions where he expected to find land, the impatience of his crews augmented. The favorable signs which increased his 5 confidence, were derided by them as delusive; and there was danger of their rebelling, and obliging him to turn back, when on the point of realizing the object of all his labors. They beheld themselves with dismay still wafted onward, over the boundless wastes of what appeared to them a mere 10 watery desert, surrounding the inhabitable world. What was to become of them should their provisions fail? Their ships were too weak and defective even for the great voyage they had already made, but if they were still to press forward, adding at every moment to the immense expanse behind 15 them, how should they ever be able to return, having no intervening port where they might victual and refit? In this way they fed each other's discontents, gathering together in little knots, and fomenting a spirit of mutinous opposition; and when we consider the natural fire of the 20 Spanish temperament and its impatience of control, and that a great part of these men were sailing on compulsion, we cannot wonder that there was imminent danger of their breaking forth into open rebellion and compelling Columbus to turn back. In their secret conferences they exclaimed 25 against him as a desperado, bent, in a mad fantasy, upon |