the voyage was supposed to have been made, and we cannot take so late
a verdict as convincing proof of any fact. But it at least exhibits
the current interpretation of the written narrative among geographers
and mariners, the people best able to judge; and here the interval
was much less. The story itself seems to corroborate them in a
general way, if read naturally. One would say that it tells of a
voyage to the Canaries, of which one is unmistakably "the island
under Mount Atlas", and that this was undertaken by way of the Azores
and Madeira, with inevitable experience of great beauty in some
islands and volcanic terrors in others. Madeira may well have been
pitched upon by the interpreters as the suitable scene of a
particularly long tarrying by the way. Of course magic filled out all
gaps of real knowledge, and wonders grew with each new rewriting.

Whatever Brendan did, there is no doubt that Irish mariner-monks,
incited by the great awakening which followed St. Patrick's mission,
covered many seas in their frail vessels during the next three or
four centuries. They set up a flourishing religious establishment in
Orkney, made stepping stones of the intervening islands, and reached
Iceland some time in the eighth century, if not earlier. The
Norsemen, following in their tracks as always, found them there, and
the earliest Icelandic writings record their departure, leaving
behind them books, bells, and other souvenirs on an islet off shore
which still bears their name.

Did they keep before the Norsemen to America too? At least the
Norsemen thought so. For centuries the name Great Ireland or
Whitemen's Land was accepted in Norse geography as meaning a region
far west of Ireland, a parallel to Great Sweden (Russia), which lay
far east of Sweden. The saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni, first to attempt