All this time the Goths and Scandinavians were either learning ideas of navigation from the Romans of the Mediterranean or the Greeks of the Black Sea, or they were inventing for themselves better ways of constructing ships; and although they propelled them mainly by oars, they used masts and sails as well.[2] Having got over the fear of the sea sufficiently to reach the coasts of England and Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, they became still more venturesome in their voyages from Norway, until they discovered the Faroe Archipelago (which tradition says they found inhabited by wild sheep), and then the large island of Iceland, which had, however, already been reached and settled by the northern Irish.

[Footnote 1:  This is a convenient name for the race formerly called “American Indian”.  They are not Indians (i.e. natives of India), and they are not the only Americans, since there are now about 110,000,000 white Americans of European origin and 24,000,000 negroes and negroids.  The total approximate “Amerindian” or aboriginal population of the New World at the present day is 16,000,000, of whom about 111,000 live in the Canadian Dominion, and 300,000 in the United States, the remainder in Central and South America.]

[Footnote 2:  It is doubtful whether actual masts and sails were known in America till the coming of Europeans, though the ancient Peruvians are said to have used mat sails in their canoes.  But the northern Amerindians had got as far as placing bushes or branches of fir trees upright in their canoes to catch the force of the wind.]

Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite habitable.  It is not almost entirely covered with ice, as Greenland is; in fact, Iceland should be called Greenland (from the large extent of its grassy pastures), and Greenland should be called Iceland.  Instead of this, however, the early Norwegian explorers called these countries by the names they still bear.

The Norse rovers from Norway and the Hebrides colonized Iceland from the year 850; and about a hundred and thirty-six years afterwards, in their venturesome journeys in search of new lands, they reached the south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland.  Owing to the glacial conditions and elevated character of this vast continental island (more than 500,000 sq. miles in area)—­for the whole interior of Greenland rises abruptly from the sea-coast to altitudes of from 5000 to 11,000 ft.—­this discovery was of small use to the early Norwegians or their Iceland colony.  After it was governed by the kingdom of Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, until it ceased completely in the fifteenth century.  When Denmark united herself with the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler of Iceland.  In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish settlements were re-established along the south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland, mainly on account of the value of the whale, seal, and cod fisheries in the seas around this enormous frozen island; and all Greenland is now regarded as a Danish possession.