The Walking Drum
Page 43
THE FLAT WORLD: The Chinese, Hindus, Arabs, and Greeks long knew it was nothing of the kind. So did many people in western Europe. The story of belief in a flat world has been endlessly repeated by those who would magnify the voyage of Columbus out of all proportion. As a matter of fact, if one studies maritime navigation before and after it will be seen that Columbus had rather an easy time of it. His ships were small by our standards, but oceans have been crossed by many much smaller craft both before and after his time.
Traveling the routes he followed in his earlier years, visiting or residing in Genoa, Lisbon, etc., Columbus would have had to be both deaf and blind not to have heard of Atlantic voyages. Columbus and his brother made their livings, for a time, copying charts.
Ancient sea voyaging was much more extensive than has been suspected, and there was probably no land on earth that had not been visited before recorded history. Evidences of man have been found on even the most remote islands. The secret of making a discovery then, as now, was to make it at the right time with proper attention to publicity.
GEESE: The discovery of land by following the flight of birds is as old as mankind. The annual migration of geese from Ireland to their nesting places in Iceland, Greenland, or Labrador would have indicated land in those directions. It is roughly but 600 miles from the west coast of Ireland to Iceland, less than 200 miles to the nearest point on Greenland, and only about 600 or a bit less to Labrador.
The distances were nowhere so great as those sailed by small craft in the South Pacific or Indian oceans. Many South Pacific islands were discovered by following the flight of birds.
GUNPOWDER INVENTION: Despite arguments for Roger Bacon, Black Berthold, and others, gunpowder had been used in China before a.d. 1000 (Science in Traditional China, by Joseph Needham). Grenades and explosive bombs hurled by catapults had been used, and it is probable that gunpowder had been used in fireworks as early as the Tang dynasty.
HIND: India
HUELGOAT, YEUN ELEZ, etc: Very much as described. A wild, beautiful setting, strangely eerie, especially on a moonlit or stormy night.
IRISH IN ICELAND: Recorded in the Norse sagas. When the first Norsemen arrived in Iceland, they found Irish priests waiting on the beach. The Irish had made many voyages into the western seas before the Vikings.
MANUEL I (Comnenus): Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople, was in the last few months of his reign at the time of this story, and died in the same year. A man of enormous physical strength, a fine soldier, and a competent ruler, he waged some wars that were wasted effort and failed to strengthen his overall position.
MEN MARZ: The Miracle Stone, probably erected in Neolithic times. About twenty-five feet high. An object of veneration for several thousand years.
MOORISH SPAIN: Arabs from North Africa, called Moors, had intermarried somewhat with the Berbers, a white people who occupied most of North Africa, and conquered Spain 710-712. They held all of Spain and a part of France for a time, and more than half of Spain for the best part of 750 years, leaving an indelible stamp upon the land. Cultural diffusion from there and from Sicily, also held for a time by the Arabs, had much to do with the beginning of the Renaissance in Europe.
MOSLEM LIBRARIES: Literally thousands of manuscripts lie untranslated and unknown in mosque libraries. Many are of religious character, but undoubtedly others could add important chapters to the histories of science and exploration.
It is possible that archives in private libraries, mosques, and monasteries in China, India, Japan, Tibet, and the Arab countries contain as many books awaiting discovery as ever have been translated into any European tongue.
PETCHENEGS: Pre-Mongol invaders from the steppes of Asia, who lived, fought, and looked much like the Mongols who were to conquer much of Asia and Russia in the century following this story.
PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES: Breton, Norman, and Basque fishermen, as well as others from Bristol and Iceland, had apparently been fishing off the banks of Newfoundland for many years before Columbus.
Settlers from Greenland came regularly to the coast of Canada to cut timber for building houses or ships, and there is some evidence of temporary settlements at various points along the coast as well as on the rivers. The Maine islands were visited and temporarily occupied at a very early time.
Alexandre Aufredi, for example, sent ten ships on a voyage into the west from La Rochelle. The ships were gone for several years, but at last when hope had been given up, they returned. The details of the voyage are lost.
There was never any need to "discover" America. The Chukchi Indians of Siberia had been crossing the Bering Strait for centuries. Vitus Bering had a chart showing the west coast of Alaska and Canada as far down as Vancouver Island before any known explorer visited the area. Magellan had a chart of the Strait before beginning his voyage. Seafaring and exploration are far older than any recorded history.
PROVINS: A walled town with a maze of catacombs, cellars, and tunnels beneath it. The tunnel from Champeaux to Melun and Provins was reported to have been built in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries.
RUE DU FOUARRE: Site of one of the first schools of Paris, this lies behind the Church of St. Julien le Pauvre on the Left Bank, not far from Notre Dame itself. It was named for the bundles of straw on which students sat for lectures. Dante visited there in 1304.
SAGNE: This Crusader castle stands in remote, rocky, and brush-covered hills not far south of the ancient city of Antioch, the modern Antakya. It is approximately opposite (but some distance inland) from the isle of Cyprus. It is still an impressive ruin, but off the beaten track and rarely visited.
TOLENTE: One does not think of lost cities when thinking of Brittany, yet there were several. Tolente was destroyed by the Norsemen in 875, and was reportedly the site of a school of necromancers. The supposed site is now occupied by the village of Plouguerneau.
TOURNEMINE: A lawless family of unknown, perhaps British, origin, known for the Castle of Hunaudaye in the forest by that name, situated a bit south of the road from Plancoet to Lamballe. It is a massive and picturesque ruin, said to have been built in 1378 by Pierre de Tournemine, possibly on the site of an earlier castle built in 1220. The last of the Tournemines is reported to have killed his father, wife, and brother, and according to legend was carried off by their ghosts. There is some suggestion that a still earlier timbered fortress occupied the site before 1220.
VENETI: The first seafaring people of western Europe, of whom we know, from whom the Irish may have received their impetus. Brittany was their home. The best description of their oak-hulled ships with leathern sails is found in Caesar's Commentaries. The ships of the Veneti were of heavier construction than necessary for coastwise voyages, and they had many such ships. Nobody knows where or with whom they traded aside from voyages for tin to the Scilly Isles or Cornwall.
About the Author
"I think of myself in the oral tradition — of a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered — as a storyteller. A good storyteller."
It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left
home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio Publishing.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties — among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.