[Sidenote: Ruined cities of Central America.]

These noble ruins have excited great and increasing interest since the publication of Mr. Stephens's charming book just fifty years ago.[146] An air of profound mystery surrounded them, and many wild theories were propounded to account for their existence. They were at first accredited with a fabulous antiquity, and in at least one instance this notion was responsible for what must be called misrepresentation, if not humbug.[147] Having been placed by popular fancy at such a remote age, they were naturally supposed to have been built, not by the Mayas,—who still inhabit Yucatan and do not absolutely dazzle us with their exalted civilization,—but by some wonderful people long since vanished. Now as to this point the sculptured slabs of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza tell their own story. They are covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and these hieroglyphs are the same as those in which the Dresden Codex and other Maya manuscripts still preserved are written; though their decipherment is not yet complete, there is no sort of doubt as to their being written in the Maya characters. Careful inspection, moreover, shows that the buildings in which these inscriptions occur are not so very ancient. Mr. Stephens, who was one of their earliest as well as sanest explorers, believed them to be the work of the Mayas at a comparatively recent period.[148] The notion of their antiquity was perhaps suggested by the belief that certain colossal mahogany trees growing between and over the ruins at Palenque must be nearly 2,000 years old. But when M. de Charnay visited Palenque in 1859 he had the eastern side of the "palace" cleared of its dense vegetation in order to get a good photograph; and when he revisited the spot in 1881 he found a sturdy growth of young mahogany the age of which he knew did not exceed twenty-two years. Instead of making a ring once a year, as in our sluggish and temperate zone, these trees had made rings at the rate of about one in a month; their trunks were already more than two feet in diameter; judging from this rate of growth the biggest giant on the place need not have been more than 200 years old, if as much.[149]

[Footnote 146: Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, 2 vols., New York, 1841.]

[Footnote 147: It occurred in the drawings of the artist Frederic de Waldeck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but whose researches were published later. "His drawings," says Mr. Winsor, "are exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to improve and restore, where the conditions gave a hint, and so as we have them in the final publication they have not been accepted as wholly trustworthy." Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 194. M. de Charnay puts it more strongly. Upon his drawing of a certain panel at Palenque, M. de Waldeck "has seen fit to place three or four elephants. What end did he propose to himself in giving this fictitious representation? Presumably to give a prehistoric origin to these ruins, since it is an ascertained fact that elephants in a fossil state only have been found on the American continent. It is needless to add that neither Catherwood, who drew these inscriptions most minutely, nor myself who brought impressions of them away, nor living man, ever saw these elephants and their fine trunks. But such is the mischief engendered by preconceived opinions. With some writers it would seem that to give a recent date to these monuments would deprive them of all interest. It would have been fortunate had explorers been imbued with fewer prejudices and gifted with a little more common sense, for then we should have known the truth with regard to these ruins long since." Charnay, The Ancient Cities of the New World, London, 1887, p. 248. The gallant explorer's indignation is certainly quite pardonable.]

[Footnote 148: Some of his remarks are worth quoting in detail, especially in view of the time when they were written: "I repeat my opinion that we are not warranted in going back to any ancient nation of the Old World for the builders of these cities; that they are not the work of people who have passed away and whose history is lost, but that there are strong reasons to believe them the creations of the same races who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or some not very distant progenitors. And I would remark that we began our exploration without any theory to support.... Some are beyond doubt older than others; some are known to have been inhabited at the time of the Spanish conquest, and others, perhaps, were really in ruins before; ... but in regard to Uxmal, at least, we believe that it was an existing and inhabited city at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards." Stephens, Central America, etc., vol. ii. p. 455.]

[Footnote 149: Charnay, The Ancient Cities of the New World, p. 260.]

[Sidenote: They are probably not older than the twelfth century.]

These edifices are not so durably constructed as those which in Europe have stood for more than a thousand years. They do not indicate a high civilization on the part of their builders. They do not, as Mr. Andrew Lang says, "throw Mycenae into the shade, and rival the remains of Cambodia."[150] In pictures they may seem to do so, but M. de Charnay, after close and repeated examination of these buildings, assures us that as structures they "cannot be compared with those at Cambodia, which belong to nearly the same period, the twelfth century, and which, notwithstanding their greater and more resisting proportions, are found in the same dilapidated condition."[151] It seems to me that if Mr. Lang had spoken of the Yucatan ruins as rivalling the remains of Mycenae, instead of "throwing them into the shade," he would have come nearer the mark. The builders of Uxmal, like those of Mycenae, did not understand the principle of the arch, but were feeling their way toward it.[152] And here again we are brought back, as seems to happen whatever road we follow, to the middle status of barbarism. The Yucatan architecture shows the marks of its origin in the adobe and rubble-stone work of the New Mexico pueblos. The inside of the wall "is a rude mixture of friable mortar and small irregular stones," and under the pelting tropical rains the dislocation of the outer facing is presently effected. The large blocks, cut with flint chisels, are of a soft stone that is soon damaged by weather; and the cornices and lintels are beams of a very hard wood, yet not so hard but that insects bore into it. From such considerations it is justly inferred that the highest probable antiquity for most of the ruins in Yucatan or Central America is the twelfth or thirteenth century of our era.[153] Some, perhaps, may be no older than the ancient city of Mexico, built A. D. 1325.

[Footnote 150: Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii. p. 348.]

[Footnote 151: Charnay, op. cit. p. 209. "I may remark that [the] virgin forests [here] have no very old trees, being destroyed by insects, moisture, lianas, etc.; and old monteros tell me that mahogany and cedar trees, which are most durable, do not live above 200 years," id. p. 447.]

[Footnote 152: The reader will find it suggestive to compare portions of Schliemann's Mycenae and M. de Charnay's book, just cited, with Morgan's Houses and House-Life, chap. xi.]

[Footnote 153: Charnay, op. cit. p. 411. Copan and Palenque may be two or three centuries older, and had probably fallen into ruins before the arrival of the Spaniards.]

[Sidenote: Chronicle of Chicxulub.]

But we are no longer restricted to purely archaeological evidence. One of the most impressive of all these ruined cities is Chichen-Itza, which is regarded as older than Uxmal, but not so old as Izamal. Now in recent times sundry old Maya documents have been discovered in Yucatan, and among them is a brief history of the Spanish conquest of that country, written in the Roman character by a native chief, Nakuk Pech, about 1562. It has been edited, with an English translation, by that zealous and indefatigable scholar, to whom American philology owes such a debt of gratitude,—Dr. Daniel Brinton. This chronicle tells us several things that we did not know before, and, among others, it refers most explicitly to Chichen-Itza and Izamal as inhabited towns during the time that the Spaniards were coming, from 1519 to 1542. If there could have been any lingering doubt as to the correctness of the views of Stephens, Morgan, and Charnay, this contemporaneous documentary testimony dispels it once for all.[154]

[Footnote 154: Brinton, The Maya Chronicles, Philadelphia, 1882, "Chronicle of Chicxulub," pp. 187-259. This book is of great importance, and for the ancient history of Guatemala Brinton's Annals of the Cakchiquels, Philadelphia, 1885, is of like value and interest.

Half a century ago Mr. Stephens wrote in truly prophetic vein, "the convents are rich in manuscripts and documents written by the early fathers, caciques, and Indians, who very soon acquired the knowledge of Spanish and the art of writing. These have never been examined with the slightest reference to this subject; and I cannot help thinking that some precious memorial is now mouldering in the library of a neighbouring convent, which would determine the history of some one of these ruined cities." Vol. ii. p. 456. The italicizing, of course, is mine.]

[Sidenote: Maya culture very closely related to Mexican.]

The Mexicans and Mayas believed themselves to be akin to each other, they had several deities and a large stock of traditional lore in common, and there was an essential similarity in their modes of life; so that, since we are now assured that such cities as Izamal and Chichen-Itza were contemporary with the city of Mexico, we shall probably not go very far astray if we assume that the elaborately carved and bedizened ruins of the former may give us some hint as to how things might have looked in the latter. Indeed this complicated and grotesque carving on walls, door-posts, and lintels was one of the first things to attract the attention of the Spaniards in Mexico. They regarded it with mingled indignation and awe, for serpents, coiled or uncoiled, with gaping mouths, were most conspicuous among the objects represented. The visitors soon learned that all this had a symbolic and religious meaning, and with some show of reason they concluded that this strange people worshipped the Devil.

* * * * *

We have now passed in review the various peoples of North America, from the Arctic circle to the neighbourhood of the isthmus of Darien, and can form some sort of a mental picture of the continent at the time of its discovery by Europeans in the fifteenth century. Much more might have been said without going beyond the requirements of an outline sketch, but quite as much has been said as is consistent with the general plan of this book. I have not undertaken at present to go beyond the isthmus of Darien, because this preliminary chapter is already disproportionately long, and after this protracted discussion the reader's attention may be somewhat relieved by an entire change of scene. Enough has been set forth to explain the narrative that follows, and to justify us henceforth in taking certain things for granted. The outline description of Mexico will be completed when we come to the story of its conquest by Spaniards, and then we shall be ready to describe some principal features of Peruvian society and to understand how the Spaniards conquered that country.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The "Mound-Builders."]

[Sidenote: The notion that they were like the Aztecs;]

[Sidenote: or like the Zunis.]

There is, however, one conspicuous feature of North American antiquity which has not yet received our attention, and which calls for a few words before we close this chapter. I refer to the mounds that are scattered over so large a part of the soil of the United States, and more particularly to those between the Mississippi river and the Alleghany mountains, which have been the subject of so much theorizing, and in late years of so much careful study.[155] Vague and wild were the speculations once rife about the "Mound-Builders" and their wonderful civilization. They were supposed to have been a race quite different from the red men, with a culture perhaps superior to our own, and more or less eloquence was wasted over the vanished "empire" of the mound-builders. There is no reason, however, for supposing that there ever was an empire of any sort in ancient North America, and no relic of the past has ever been seen at any spot on our planet which indicates the former existence of a vanished civilization even remotely approaching our own. The sooner the student of history gets his head cleared of all such rubbish, the better. As for the mounds, which are scattered in such profusion over the country west of the Alleghanies, there are some which have been built by Indians since the arrival of white men in America, and which contain knives and trinkets of European manufacture. There are many others which are much older, and in which the genuine remains sometimes indicate a culture like that of Shawnees or Senecas, and sometimes suggest something perhaps a little higher. With the progress of research the vast and vague notion of a distinct race of "Mound-Builders" became narrowed and defined. It began to seem probable that the builders of the more remarkable mounds were tribes of Indians who had advanced beyond the average level in horticulture, and consequently in density of population, and perhaps in political and priestly organization. Such a conclusion seemed to be supported by the size of some of the "ancient garden-beds," often covering more than a hundred acres, filled with the low parallel ridges in which corn was planted. The mound people were thus supposed to be semi-civilized red men, like the Aztecs, and some of their elevated earthworks were explained as places for human sacrifice, like the pyramids of Mexico and Central America. It was thought that the "civilization" of the Cordilleran peoples might formerly have extended northward and eastward into the Mississippi valley, and might after a while have been pushed back by powerful hordes of more barbarous invaders. A further modification and reduction of this theory likened the mound-builders to the pueblo Indians of New Mexico. Such was the opinion of Mr. Morgan, who offered a very ingenious explanation of the extensive earthworks at High Bank, in Ross county, Ohio, as the fortified site of a pueblo.[156] Although there is no reason for supposing that the mound-builders practised irrigation (which would not be required in the Mississippi valley) or used adobe-brick, yet Mr. Morgan was inclined to admit them into his middle status of barbarism because of the copper hatchets and chisels found in some of the mounds, and because of the apparent superiority in horticulture and the increased reliance upon it. He suggested that a people somewhat like the Zunis might have migrated eastward and modified their building habits to suit the altered conditions of the Mississippi valley, where they dwelt for several centuries, until at last, for some unknown reason, they retired to the Rocky Mountain region. It seems to me that an opinion just the reverse of Mr. Morgan's would be more easily defensible,—namely, that the ancestors of the pueblo Indians were a people of building habits somewhat similar to the Mandans, and that their habits became modified in adaptation to a country which demanded careful irrigation and supplied adobe-clay in abundance. If ever they built any of the mounds in the Mississippi valley, I should be disposed to place their mound-building period before their pueblo period.

[Footnote 155: For original researches in the mounds one cannot do better than consult the following papers in the Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology:—1. by W. H. Holmes, "Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans," ii. 181-305; "The Ancient Pottery of the Mississippi Valley," iv. 365-436; "Prehistoric Textile Fabrics of the United States," iii. 397-431; followed by an illustrated catalogue of objects collected chiefly from mounds, iii. 433-515;—2. H. W. Henshaw, "Animal Carvings from the Mounds of the Mississippi Valley," ii. 121-166;—3. Cyrus Thomas, "Burial Mounds of the Northern Section of the United States," v. 7-119; also three of the Bureau's "Bulletins" by Dr. Thomas, "The Problem of the Ohio Mounds," "The Circular, Square, and Octagonal Earthworks of Ohio," and "Work in Mound Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology;" also two articles by Dr. Thomas in the Magazine of American History:—"The Houses of the Mound-Builders," xi. 110-115; "Indian Tribes in Prehistoric Times," xx. 193-201. See also Horatio Hale, "Indian Migrations," in American Antiquarian, v. 18-28, 108-124; M. F. Force, To What Race did the Mound-Builders belong? Cincinnati, 1875; Lucien Carr, Mounds of the Mississippi Valley historically considered, 1883; Nadaillac's Prehistoric America, ed. W. H. Dall, chaps. iii., iv. The earliest work of fundamental importance on the subject was Squier's Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, Philadelphia, 1848, being the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.—For statements of the theory which presumes either a race connection or a similarity in culture between the mound-builders and the pueblo Indians, see Dawson, Fossil Men, p. 55; Foster, Prehistoric Races of the United States, Chicago, 1873, chaps. iii., v.-x.; Sir Daniel Wilson, Prehistoric Man, chap. x. The annual Smithsonian Reports for thirty years past illustrate the growth of knowledge and progressive changes of opinion on the subject. The bibliographical account in Winsor's Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 397-412, is full of minute information.]

[Footnote 156: Houses and House-Life, chap. ix.]

[Sidenote: The mounds were probably built by different peoples in the lower status of barbarism;]

[Sidenote: by Cherokees;]

[Sidenote: and by Shawnees, and other tribes.]

Recent researches, however, make it more and more improbable that the mound-builders were nearly akin to such people as the Zunis or similar to them in grade of culture. Of late years the exploration of the mounds has been carried on with increasing diligence. More than 2,000 mounds have been opened, and at least 38,000 ancient relics have been gathered from them: such as quartzite arrow-heads and spades, greenstone axes and hammers, mortars and pestles, tools for spinning and weaving, and cloth, made of spun thread and woven with warp and woof, somewhat like a coarse sail-cloth. The water-jugs, kettles, pipes, and sepulchral urns have been elaborately studied. The net results of all this investigation, up to the present time, have been concisely summed up by Dr. Cyrus Thomas.[157] The mounds were not all built by one people, but by different tribes as clearly distinguishable from one another as Algonquins are distinguishable from Iroquois. These mound-building tribes were not superior in culture to the Iroquois and many of the Algonquins as first seen by white men. They are not to be classified with Zunis, still less with Mexicans or Mayas, in point of culture, but with Shawnees and Cherokees. Nay more,—some of them were Shawnees and Cherokees. The missionary Johann Heckewelder long ago published the Lenape tradition of the Tallegwi or Allighewi people, who have left their name upon the Alleghany river and mountains.[158] The Tallegwi have been identified with the Cherokees, who are now reckoned among the most intelligent and progressive of Indian peoples.[159] The Cherokees were formerly classed in the Muskoki group, along with the Creeks and Choctaws, but a closer study of their language seems to show that they were a somewhat remote offshoot of the Huron-Iroquois stock. For a long time they occupied the country between the Ohio river and the Great Lakes, and probably built the mounds that are still to be seen there. Somewhere about the thirteenth or fourteenth century they were gradually pushed southward into the Muskoki region by repeated attacks from the Lenape and Hurons. The Cherokees were probably also the builders of the mounds of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. They retained their mound-building habits some time after the white men came upon the scene. On the other hand the mounds and box-shaped stone graves of Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Georgia were probably the work of Shawnees, and the stone graves in the Delaware valley are to be ascribed to the Lenape. There are many reasons for believing that the mounds of northern Mississippi were constructed by Chickasaws, and the burial tumuli and "effigy mounds" of Wisconsin by Winnebagos. The Minnitarees and Mandans were also very likely at one time a mound-building people.

[Footnote 157: Work in Mound Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1887. For a sight of the thousands of objects gathered from the mounds, one should visit the Peabody Museum at Cambridge and the Smithsonian Institution at Washington.]

[Footnote 158: Heckewelder, History of the Indian Nations of Pennsylvania, etc., Philadelphia, 1818; cf. Squier, Historical and Mythological Traditions of the Algonquins, a paper read before the New York Historical Society in June, 1848; also Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends, Philadelphia, 1885.]

[Footnote 159: For a detailed account of their later history, see C. C. Royce, "The Cherokee Nation," Reports of Bureau of Ethnology, v. 121-378.]

If this view, which is steadily gaining ground, be correct, our imaginary race of "Mound-Builders" is broken up and vanishes, and henceforth we may content ourselves with speaking of the authors of the ancient earthworks as "Indians." There were times in the career of sundry Indian tribes when circumstances induced them to erect mounds as sites for communal houses or council houses, medicine-lodges or burial-places; somewhat as there was a period in the history of our own forefathers in England when circumstances led them to build moated castles, with drawbridge and portcullis; and there is no more occasion for assuming a mysterious race of "Mound-Builders" in America than for assuming a mysterious race of "Castle-Builders" in England.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Society in America at the time of the Discovery had reached stages similar to stages reached by eastern Mediterranean peoples fifty or sixty centuries earlier.]

Thus, at whatever point we touch the subject of ancient America, we find scientific opinion tending more and more steadily toward the conclusion that its people and their culture were indigenous. One of the most important lessons impressed upon us by a long study of comparative mythology is that human minds in different parts of the world, but under the influence of similar circumstances, develop similar ideas and clothe them in similar forms of expression. It is just the same with political institutions, with the development of the arts, with social customs, with culture generally. To repeat the remark already quoted from Sir John Lubbock,—and it is well worth repeating,—"Different races in similar stages of development often present more features of resemblance to one another than the same race does to itself in different stages of its history." When the zealous Abbe Brasseur found things in the history of Mexico that reminded him of ancient Egypt, he hastened to the conclusion that Mexican culture was somehow "derived" from that of Egypt. It was natural enough for him to do so, but such methods of explanation are now completely antiquated. Mexican culture was no more Egyptian culture than a prickly-pear is a lotus. It was an outgrowth of peculiar American conditions acting upon the aboriginal American mind, and such of its features as remind us of ancient Egypt or prehistoric Greece show simply that it was approaching, though it had not reached, the standard attained in those Old World countries. From this point of view the resemblances become invested with surpassing interest. Ancient America, as we have seen, was a much more archaic world than the world of Europe and Asia, and presented in the time of Columbus forms of society that on the shores of the Mediterranean had been outgrown before the city of Rome was built. Hence the intense and peculiar fascination of American archaeology, and its profound importance to the student of general history.



CHAPTER II.

PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.

There is something solemn and impressive in the spectacle of human life thus going on for countless ages in the Eastern and Western halves of our planet, each all unknown to the other and uninfluenced by it. The contact between the two worlds practically begins in 1492.

[Sidenote: The Chinese.]

[Sidenote: The Irish.]

[Sidenote: Cousin, of Dieppe.]

By this statement it is not meant to deny that occasional visitors may have come and did come before that famous date from the Old World to the New. On the contrary I am inclined to suspect that there may have been more such occasional visits than we have been wont to suppose. For the most part, however, the subject is shrouded in the mists of obscure narrative and fantastic conjecture. When it is argued that in the fifth century of the Christian era certain Buddhist missionary priests came from China by way of Kamtchatka and the Aleutian islands, and kept on till they got to a country which they called Fusang, and which was really Mexico, one cannot reply that such a thing was necessarily and absolutely impossible; but when other critics assure us that, after all, Fusang was really Japan, perhaps one feels a slight sense of relief.[160] So of the dim whispers of voyages to America undertaken by the Irish, in the days when the cloisters of sweet Innisfallen were a centre of piety and culture for northwestern Europe,[161] we may say that this sort of thing has not much to do with history, or history with it. Irish anchorites certainly went to Iceland in the seventh century,[162] and in the course of this book we shall have frequent occasion to observe that first and last there has been on all seas a good deal of blowing and drifting done. It is credibly reported that Japanese junks have been driven ashore on the coasts of Oregon and California;[163] and there is a story that in 1488 a certain Jean Cousin, of Dieppe, while sailing down the west coast of Africa, was caught in a storm and blown across to Brazil.[164] This was certainly quite possible, for it was not so very unlike what happened in 1500 to Pedro Alvarez de Cabral, as we shall hereafter see;[165] nevertheless, the evidence adduced in support of the story will hardly bear a critical examination.[166]

[Footnote 160: This notion of the Chinese visiting Mexico was set forth by the celebrated Deguignes in 1761, in the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. pp. 506-525. Its absurdity was shown by Klaproth, "Recherches sur le pays de Fou Sang," Nouvelles annales des voyages, Paris, 1831, 2e serie, tom. xxi. pp. 58-68; see also Klaproth's introduction to Annales des empereurs du Japon, Paris, 1834, pp. iv.-ix.; Humboldt, Examen critique de l'histoire de la geographie du nouveau continent, Paris, 1837, tom. ii. pp. 62-84. The fancy was revived by C. G. Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), in his Fusang, London, 1875, and was again demolished by the missionary, S. W. Williams, in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xi., New Haven, 1881.]

[Footnote 161: On the noble work of the Irish church and its missionaries in the sixth and seventh centuries, see Montalembert, Les moines d'Occident, tom. ii. pp. 465-661; tom. iii. pp. 79-332; Burton's History of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 234-277; and the instructive map in Miss Sophie Bryant's Celtic Ireland, London, 1889, p. 60. The notice of the subject in Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 236-247, is entirely inadequate.]

[Footnote 162: The passion for solitude led some of the disciples of St. Columba to make their way from Iona to the Hebrides, and thence to the Orkneys, Shetlands, Faeroes, and Iceland, where a colony of them remained until the arrival of the Northmen in 874. See Dicuil, Liber de mensura Orbis Terrae (A. D. 825), Paris, 1807; Innes, Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 101; Lanigan, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, chap. iii.; Maurer, Beitraege zur Rechtsgeschichte des Germanischen Nordens, i. 35. For the legend of St. Brandan, see Gaffarel, Les voyages de St. Brandan, Paris, 1881.]

[Footnote 163: C. W. Brooks, of San Francisco, cited in Higginson, Larger History of the United States, p. 24.]

[Footnote 164: Desmarquets, Memoires chronologiques pour servir a l'histoire de Dieppe, Paris, 1785, tom. i. pp. 91-98; Estancelin, Recherches sur les voyages et decouvertes des navigateurs normands, etc., Paris, 1832, pp. 332-361.]

[Footnote 165: See below, vol. ii. p. 96.]

[Footnote 166: As Harrisse says, concerning the alleged voyages of Cousin and others, "Quant aux voyages du Dieppois Jean Cousin en 1488, de Joao Ramalho en 1490, et de Joao Vaz Cortereal en 1464 ou 1474, le lecteur nous pardonnera de les passer sous silence." Christophe Colomb, Paris, 1884, tom. i. p. 307.]

[Sidenote: Those stories are of little value;]

It is not my purpose to weary the reader with a general discussion of these and some other legends or rumours of pre-Columbian visitors to America. We may admit, at once, that "there is no good reason why any one of them may not have done" what is claimed, but at the same time the proof that any one of them did do it is very far from satisfactory.[167] Moreover the questions raised are often of small importance, and belong not so much to the serious workshop of history as to its limbo prepared for learned trifles, whither we will hereby relegate them.[168]

[Footnote 167: Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 59.]

[Footnote 168: Sufficiently full references may be found in Watson's Bibliography of the Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America, appended to Anderson's America not discovered by Columbus, 3d ed., Chicago, 1883, pp. 121-164; and see the learned chapters by W. H. Tillinghast on "The Geographical Knowledge of the Ancients considered in relation to the Discovery of America," and by Justin Winsor on "Pre-Columbian Explorations," in Narr. and Crit. Hist., vol. i.]

[Sidenote: but the case of the Northmen is entirely different.]

[Sidenote: The Viking exodus from Norway.]

[Sidenote: Founding of Iceland, A. D. 874.]

But when we come to the voyages of the Northmen in the tenth and eleventh centuries, it is quite a different affair. Not only is this a subject of much historic interest, but in dealing with it we stand for a great part of the time upon firm historic ground. The narratives which tell us of Vinland and of Leif Ericsson are closely intertwined with the authentic history of Norway and Iceland. In the ninth century of our era there was a process of political consolidation going on in Norway, somewhat as in England under Egbert and his successors. After a war of twelve years, King Harold Fairhair overthrew the combined forces of the Jarls, or small independent princes, in the decisive naval battle of Hafursfiord in the year 872. This resulted in making Harold the feudal landlord of Norway. Allodial tenures were abolished, and the Jarls were required to become his vassals. This consolidation of the kingdom was probably beneficial in its main consequences, but to many a proud spirit and crafty brain it made life in Norway unendurable. These bold Jarls and their Viking[169] followers, to whom, as to the ancient Greeks, the sea was not a barrier, but a highway,[170] had no mind to stay at home and submit to unwonted thraldom. So they manned their dragon-prowed keels, invoked the blessing of Wodan, god of storms, upon their enterprise, and sailed away. Some went to reinforce their kinsmen who were making it so hot for Alfred in England[171] and for Charles the Bald in Gaul; some had already visited Ireland and were establishing themselves at Dublin and Limerick; others now followed and found homes for themselves in the Hebrides and all over Scotland north of glorious Loch Linnhe and the Murray frith; some made their way through the blue Mediterranean to "Micklegard," the Great City of the Byzantine Emperor, and in his service wielded their stout axes against Magyar and Saracen;[172] some found their amphibious natures better satisfied upon the islands of the Atlantic ridge,—the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Faeroes, and especially noble Iceland. There an aristocratic republic soon grew up, owning slight and indefinite allegiance to the kings of Norway.[173] The settlement of Iceland was such a wholesale colonization of communities of picked men as had not been seen since ancient Greek times, and was not to be seen again until Winthrop sailed into Massachusetts Bay. It was not long before the population of Iceland exceeded 50,000 souls. Their sheep and cattle flourished, hay crops were heavy, a lively trade—with fish, oil, butter, skins, and wool, in exchange for meal and malt—was kept up with Norway, Denmark, and the British islands, political freedom was unimpaired,[174] justice was (for the Middle Ages) fairly well administered, naval superiority kept all foes at a distance; and under such conditions the growth of the new community in wealth[175] and culture was surprisingly rapid. In the twelfth century, before literature had begun to blossom in the modern speech of France or Spain or Italy, there was a flourishing literature in prose and verse in Iceland. Especial attention was paid to history, and the "Landnama-bok," or statistical and genealogical account of the early settlers, was the most complete and careful work of the kind which had ever been undertaken by any people down to quite recent times. Few persons in our day adequately realize the extent of the early Icelandic literature or its richness. The poems, legends, and histories earlier than the date when Dante walked and mused in the streets of Florence survive for us now in some hundreds of works, for the most part of rare and absorbing interest. The "Heimskringla," or chronicle of Snorro Sturleson, written about 1215, is one of the greatest history books in the world.[176]

[Footnote 169: The proper division of this Old Norse word is not into vī-king, but into vĭk-ing. The first syllable means a "bay" or "fiord," the second is a patronymic termination, so that "vikings" are "sons of the fiord,"—an eminently appropriate and descriptive name.]

[Footnote 170: Curtius (Griechische Etymologie, p. 237) connects [Greek: pontos] with [Greek: patos]; compare the Homeric expressions [Greek: hygra keleutha, ichthyoenta keleutha], etc.]

[Footnote 171: The descendants of these Northmen formed a very large proportion of the population of the East Anglian counties, and consequently of the men who founded New England. The East Anglian counties have been conspicuous for resistance to tyranny and for freedom of thought. See my Beginnings of New England, p. 62.]

[Footnote 172: They were the Varangian guard at Constantinople, described by Sir Walter Scott in Count Robert of Paris. About this same time their kinsmen, the Russ, moving eastward from Sweden, were subjecting Slavic tribes as far as Novgorod and Kief, and laying the foundations of the power that has since, through many and strange vicissitudes, developed into Russia. See Thomsen, The Relations between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia, Oxford, 1877.]

[Footnote 173: Fealty to Norway was not formally declared until 1262.]

[Footnote 174: The settlement of Iceland is celebrated by Robert Lowe in verses which show that, whatever his opinion may have been in later years as to the use of a classical education, his own early studies must always have been a source of comfort to him:—

[Greek: Chaire kai en nephelaisi kai en niphadessi bareiais Kai pyri kai seismois nese saleuomene Enthade gar basileos hyperbion hybrin alyxas Demos Hyperboreon, kosmou ep' eschatie, Autarke bioton theion t' erethismata Mouson Kai thesmous hagnes heuren eleutherias.]

These verses are thus rendered by Sir Edmund Head (Viga Glums Saga, p. v.):—

"Hail, Isle! with mist and snowstorms girt around, Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,— Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath: Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free, And held unscathed their laws and liberty."

Laing (Heimskringla, vol. i. p. 57) couples Iceland and New England as the two modern colonies most distinctly "founded on principle and peopled at first from higher motives than want or gain."]

[Footnote 175: Just what was then considered wealth, for an individual, may best be understood by a concrete instance. The historian Snorro Sturleson, born in 1178, was called a rich man. "In one year, in which fodder was scarce, he lost 120 head of oxen without being seriously affected by it." The fortune which he got with his first wife Herdisa, in 1199, was equivalent nominally to $4,000, or, according to the standard of to-day, about $80,000. Laing, Heimskringla, vol. i. pp. 191, 193.]

[Footnote 176: Laing's excellent English translation of it was published in London in 1844. The preliminary dissertation, in five chapters, is of great value. A new edition, revised by Prof. Rasmus Anderson, was published in London in 1889. Another charming book is Sir George Dasent's Story of Burnt Njal, Edinburgh, 1861, 2 vols., translated from the Njals Saga. Both the saga itself and the translator's learned introduction give an admirable description of life in Iceland at the end of the tenth century, the time when the voyages to America were made. It is a very instructive chapter in history.

The Icelanders of the present day retain the Old Norse language, while on the Continent it has been modified into Swedish and Norwegian-Danish. They are a well-educated people, and, in proportion to their numbers, publish many books.]

[Sidenote: Discovery of Greenland, 876.]

[Sidenote: Eric's Colony in Greenland, 986.]

Now from various Icelandic chronicles[177] we learn that in 876, only two years after the island commonwealth was founded, one of the settlers named Gunnbjoern was driven by foul weather to some point on the coast of Greenland, where he and his crew contrived to pass the winter, their ship being locked in ice; when the spring set them free, they returned to Iceland. In the year 983 Eric the Red, a settler upon Oexney (Ox-island) near the mouth of Breidafiord, was outlawed for killing a man in a brawl. Eric then determined to search for the western land which Gunnbjoern had discovered. He set out with a few followers, and in the next three years these bold sailors explored the coasts of Greenland pretty thoroughly for a considerable distance on each side of Cape Farewell. At length they found a suitable place for a home, at the head of Igaliko fiord, not far from the site of the modern Julianeshaab.[178] It was fit work for Vikings to penetrate so deep a fiord and find out such a spot, hidden as it is by miles upon miles of craggy and ice-covered headlands. They proved their sagacity by pitching upon one of the pleasantest spots on the gaunt Greenland coast; and there upon a smooth grassy plain may still be seen the ruins of seventeen houses built of rough blocks of sandstone, their chinks caulked up with clay and gravel. In contrast with most of its bleak surroundings the place might well be called Greenland, and so Eric named it, for, said he, it is well to have a pleasant name if we would induce people to come hither. The name thus given by Eric to this chosen spot has been extended in modern usage to the whole of the vast continental region north of Davis strait, for the greater part of which it is a flagrant misnomer.[179] In 986 Eric ventured back to Iceland, and was so successful in enlisting settlers for Greenland that on his return voyage he started with five and twenty ships. The loss from foul weather and icebergs was cruel. Eleven vessels were lost; the remaining fourteen, carrying probably from four to five hundred souls, arrived safely at the head of Igaliko fiord, and began building their houses at the place called Brattahlid. Their settlement presently extended over the head of Tunnudliorbik fiord, the next deep inlet to the northwest; they called it Ericsfiord. After a while it extended westward as far as Immartinek, and eastward as far as the site of Friedrichsthal; and another distinct settlement of less extent was also made about four hundred miles to the northwest, near the present site of Godthaab. The older settlement, which began at Igaliko fiord, was known as the East Bygd;[180] the younger settlement, near Godthaab, was called the West Bygd.

[Footnote 177: A full collection of these chronicles is given in Rafn's Antiquitates Americanae, Copenhagen, 1837, in the original Icelandic, with Danish and Latin translations. This book is of great value for its full and careful reproduction of original texts; although the rash speculations and the want of critical discernment shown in the editor's efforts to determine the precise situation of Vinland have done much to discredit the whole subject in the eyes of many scholars. That is, however, very apt to be the case with first attempts, like Rafn's, and the obvious defects of his work should not be allowed to blind us to its merits. In the footnotes to the present chapter I shall cite it simply as "Rafn;" as the exact phraseology is often important, I shall usually cite the original Icelandic, and (for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with that language) shall also give the Latin version, which has been well made, and quite happily reflects the fresh and pithy vigour of the original. An English translation of all the essential parts may be found in De Costa, Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen, 2d ed., Albany, 1890; see also Slafter, Voyages of the Northmen to America, Boston, 1877 (Prince Society). An Icelandic version, interpolated in Peringskiold's edition of the Heimskringla, 1697, is translated in Laing, vol. iii. pp. 344-361.

The first modern writer to call attention to the Icelandic voyages to Greenland and Vinland was Arngrim Jonsson, in his Crymogoea, Hamburg, 1610, and more explicitly in his Specimen Islandiae historicum, Amsterdam, 1643. The voyages are also mentioned by Campanius, in his Kort beskrifning om provincien Nya Swerige uti America, Stockholm, 1702. The first, however, to bring the subject prominently before European readers was that judicious scholar Thormodus Torfaeus, in his two books Historia Vinlandiae antiquae, and Historia Gronlandiae antiquae, Copenhagen, 1705 and 1706. Later writers have until very recently added but little that is important to the work of Torfaeus. In the voluminous literature of the subject the discussions chiefly worthy of mention are Forster's Geschichte der Entdeckungen und Schiffahrten im Norden, Frankfort, 1784, pp. 44-88; and Humboldt, Examen critique, etc., Paris, 1837, tom. i. pp. 84-104; see, also, Major, Select Letters of Columbus, London, 1847 (Hakluyt Soc.) pp. xii.-xxi. The fifth chapter of Samuel Laing's preliminary dissertation to the Heimskringla, which is devoted to this subject, is full of good sense; for the most part the shrewd Orkneyman gets at the core of the thing, though now and then a little closer knowledge of America would have been useful to him. The latest critical discussion of the sources, marking a very decided advance since Rafn's time, is the paper by Gustav Storm, professor of history in the University of Christiania, "Studier over Vinlandsreiserne," in Aarboger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, Copenhagen, 1887, pp. 293-372.

Since this chapter was written I have seen an English translation of the valuable paper just mentioned, "Studies on the Vineland Voyages," in Memoires de la societe royale des antiquaires du Nord, Copenhagen, 1888, pp. 307-370. I have therefore in most cases altered my footnote references below, making the page-numbers refer to the English version (in which, by the way, some parts of the Norwegian original are, for no very obvious reason, omitted). By an odd coincidence there comes to me at the same time a book fresh from the press, whose rare beauty of mechanical workmanship is fully equalled by its intrinsic merit, The Finding of Wineland the Good—the History of the Icelandic Discovery of America, edited and translated from the earliest records by Arthur Middleton Reeves, London, 1890. This beautiful quarto contains phototype plates of the original Icelandic vellums in the Hauks-bok, the MS. AM. 557, and the Flateyar-bok, together with the texts carefully edited, an admirable English translation, and several chapters of critical discussion decidedly better than anything that has gone before it. On reading it carefully through, it seems to me the best book we have on the subject in English, or perhaps in any language.

Since the above was written, the news has come of the sudden and dreadful death of Mr. Reeves, in the railroad disaster at Hagerstown, Indiana, February 25, 1891. Mr. Reeves was an American scholar of most brilliant promise, only in his thirty-fifth year.]

[Footnote 178: Rink, Danish Greenland, p. 6.]

[Footnote 179: We thus see the treacherousness of one of the arguments cited by the illustrious Arago to prove that the Greenland coast must be colder now than in the tenth century. The Icelanders, he thinks, called it "a green land" because of its verdure, and therefore it must have been warmer than at present. But the land which Eric called green was evidently nothing more than the region about Julianeshaab, which still has plenty of verdure; and so the argument falls to the ground. See Arago, Sur l'etat thermometrique du globe terrestre, in his Oeuvres, tom. v. p. 243. There are reasons, however, for believing that Greenland was warmer in the tenth century than at present. See below, p. 176.]

[Footnote 180: The map is reduced from Rafn's Antiquitates Americanae, tab. xv. The ruins dotted here and there upon it have been known ever since the last rediscovery of Greenland in 1721, but until after 1831 they were generally supposed to be the ruins of the West Bygd. After the fifteenth century, when the old colony had perished, and its existence had become a mere literary tradition, there grew up a notion that the names East Bygd and West Bygd indicated that the two settlements must have been respectively eastward and westward of Cape Farewell; and after 1721 much time was wasted in looking for vestiges of human habitations on the barren and ice-bound eastern coast. At length, in 1828-31, the exploring expedition sent out by the Danish government, under the very able and intelligent Captain Graah, demonstrated that both settlements were west of Cape Farewell, and that the ruins here indicated upon the map are the ruins of the East Bygd. It now became apparent that a certain description of Greenland by Ivar Bardsen—written in Greenland in the fourteenth century, and generally accessible to European scholars since the end of the sixteenth, but not held in much esteem before Captain Graah's expedition—was quite accurate and extremely valuable. From Bardsen's description, about which we shall have more to say hereafter, we can point out upon the map the ancient sites with much confidence. Of those mentioned in the present work, the bishop's church, or "cathedral" (a view of which is given below, p. 222), was at Kakortok. The village of Gardar, which gave its name to the bishopric, was at Kaksiarsuk, at the northeastern extremity of Igaliko fiord. Opposite Kaksiarsuk, on the western fork of the fiord, the reader will observe a ruined church; that marks the site of Brattahlid. The fiord of Igaliko was called by the Northmen Einarsfiord; and that of Tunnudliorbik was their Ericsfiord. The monastery of St. Olaus, visited by Nicolo Zeno (see below, p. 240), is supposed by Mr. Major to have been situated near the Iisblink at the bottom of Tessermiut fiord, between the east shore of the fiord and the small lake indicated on the map.]



This colonization of Greenland by the Northmen in the tenth century is as well established as any event that occurred in the Middle Ages. For four hundred years the fortunes of the Greenland colony formed a part, albeit a very humble part, of European history. Geographically speaking, Greenland is reckoned as a part of America, of the western hemisphere, and not of the eastern. The Northmen who settled in Greenland had, therefore, in this sense found their way to America. Nevertheless one rightly feels that in the history of geographical discovery an arrival of Europeans in Greenland is equivalent merely to reaching the vestibule or ante-chamber of the western hemisphere. It is an affair begun and ended outside of the great world of the red men.

But the story does not end here. Into the world of the red men the voyagers from Iceland did assuredly come, as indeed, after once getting a foothold upon Greenland, they could hardly fail to do. Let us pursue the remainder of the story as we find it in our Icelandic sources of information, and afterwards it will be proper to inquire into the credibility of these sources.

[Sidenote: Voyage of Bjarni Herjulfson, 986.]

One of the men who accompanied Eric to Greenland was named Herjulf, whose son Bjarni, after roving the seas for some years, came home to Iceland in 986 to drink the Yuletide ale with his father. Finding him gone, he weighed anchor and started after him to Greenland, but encountered foggy weather, and sailed on for many days by guess-work without seeing sun or stars. When at length he sighted land it was a shore without mountains, showing only small heights covered with dense woods. It was evidently not the land of fiords and glaciers for which Bjarni was looking. So without stopping to make explorations he turned his prow to the north and kept on. The sky was now fair, and after scudding nine or ten days with a brisk breeze astern, Bjarni saw the icy crags of Greenland looming up before him, and after some further searching found his way to his father's new home.[181] On the route he more than once sighted land on the larboard.

[Footnote 181: In Herjulfsfiord, at the entrance to which the modern Friedrichsthal is situated. Across the fiord from Friedrichsthal a ruined church stands upon the cape formerly known as Herjulfsness. See map.]

[Sidenote: Conversion of the Northmen to Christianity.]

This adventure of Bjarni's seems not to have excited general curiosity or to have awakened speculation. Indeed, in the dense geographical ignorance of those times there is no reason why it should have done so. About 994 Bjarni was in Norway, and one or two people expressed some surprise that he did not take more pains to learn something about the country he had seen; but nothing came of such talk till it reached the ears of Leif, the famous son of Eric the Red. This wise and stately man[182] spent a year or two in Norway about 998. Roman missionary priests were then preaching up and down the land, and had converted the king, Olaf Tryggvesson, great-grandson of Harold Fairhair. Leif became a Christian and was baptised, and when he returned to Greenland he took priests with him who converted many people, though old Eric, it is said, preferred to go in the way of his fathers, and deemed boisterous Valhalla, with its cups of wassail, a place of better cheer than the New Jerusalem, with its streets of gold.

[Footnote 182: "Leifr var mikill madhr ok sterkr, manna skoeruligastr at sja, vitr madhr ok godhr hofsmadhr um alla hluti," i. e. "Leif was a large man and strong, of noble aspect, prudent and moderate in all things." Rafn, p. 33.]

[Sidenote: Leif Ericsson's voyage, 1000.]

[Sidenote: Helluland.]

[Sidenote: Markland.]

[Sidenote: Vinland.]

Leif's zeal for the conversion of his friends in Greenland did not so far occupy his mind as to prevent him from undertaking a voyage of discovery. His curiosity had been stimulated by what he had heard about Bjarni's experiences, and he made up his mind to go and see what the coasts to the south of Greenland were like. He sailed from Brattahlid—probably in the summer or early autumn of the year 1000[183]—with a crew of five and thirty men. Some distance to the southward they came upon a barren country covered with big flat stones, so that they called it Helluland, or "slate-land." There is little room for doubt that this was the coast opposite Greenland, either west or east of the strait of Belle Isle; in other words, it was either Labrador or the northern coast of Newfoundland. Thence, keeping generally to the southward, our explorers came after some days to a thickly wooded coast, where they landed and inspected the country. What chiefly impressed them was the extent of the forest, so that they called the place Markland, or "wood-land." Some critics have supposed that this spot was somewhere upon the eastern or southern coast of Newfoundland, but the more general opinion places it somewhere upon the coast of Cape Breton island or Nova Scotia. From this Markland our voyagers stood out to sea, and running briskly before a stiff northeaster it was more than two days before they came in sight of land. Then, after following the coast for a while, they went ashore at a place where a river, issuing from a lake, fell into the sea. They brought their ship up into the lake and cast anchor. The water abounded in excellent fish, and the country seemed so pleasant that Leif decided to pass the winter there, and accordingly his men put up some comfortable wooden huts or booths. One day one of the party, a "south country" man, whose name was Tyrker,[184] came in from a ramble in the neighbourhood making grimaces and talking to himself in his own language (probably German), which his comrades did not understand. On being interrogated as to the cause of his excitement, he replied that he had discovered vines loaded with grapes, and was much pleased at the sight inasmuch as he had been brought up in a vine country. Wild grapes, indeed, abounded in this autumn season, and Leif accordingly called the country Vinland. The winter seems to have passed off very comfortably. Even the weather seemed mild to these visitors from high latitudes, and they did not fail to comment on the unusual length of the winter day. Their language on this point has been so construed as to make the length of the shortest winter day exactly nine hours, which would place their Vinland in about the latitude of Boston. But their expressions do not admit of any such precise construction; and when we remember that they had no accurate instruments for measuring time, and that a difference of about fourteen minutes between sunrise and sunset on the shortest winter day would make all the difference between Boston and Halifax, we see how idle it is to look for the requisite precision in narratives of this sort, and to treat them as one would treat the reports of a modern scientific exploring expedition.

[Footnote 183: The year seems to have been that in which Christianity was definitely established by law in Iceland, viz., A. D. 1000. The chronicle Thattr Eireks Raudha is careful about verifying its dates by checking one against another. See Rafn, p. 15. The most masterly work on the conversion of the Scandinavian people is Maurer's Die Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume, Munich, 1855; for an account of the missionary work in Iceland and Greenland, see vol. i. pp. 191-242, 443-452.]

[Footnote 184: The name means "Turk," and has served as a touchstone for the dullness of commentators. To the Northmen a "Southman" would naturally be a German, and why should a German be called a Turk? or how should these Northmen happen to have had a Turk in their company? Mr. Laing suggests that he may have been a Magyar. Yes; or he may have visited the Eastern Empire and taken part in a fight against Turks, and so have got a soubriquet, just as Thorhall Gamlason, after returning from Vinland to Iceland, was ever afterward known as "the Vinlander." That did not mean that he was an American redskin. See below, p. 203. From Tyrker's grimaces one commentator sagely infers that he had been eating grapes and got drunk; and another (even Mr. Laing!) thinks it necessary to remind us that all the grape-juice in Vinland would not fuddle a man unless it had been fermented,—and then goes on to ascribe the absurdity to our innocent chronicle, instead of the stupid annotator. See Heimskringla, vol. i. p. 168.]

[Sidenote: Voyages of Thorvald and Thorstein, 1002-05.]

In the spring of 1001 Leif returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber.[185] The voyage made much talk. Leif's brother Thorvald caught the inspiration,[186] and, borrowing Leif's ship, sailed in 1002, and succeeded in finding Vinland and Leif's huts, where his men spent two winters. In the intervening summer they went on an exploring expedition along the coast, fell in with some savages in canoes, and got into a fight in which Thorvald was killed by an arrow. In the spring of 1004 the ship returned to Brattahlid. Next year the third brother, Thorstein Ericsson, set out in the same ship, with his wife Gudrid and a crew of thirty-five men; but they were sore bestead with foul weather, got nowhere, and accomplished nothing. Thorstein died on the voyage, and his widow returned to Greenland.

[Footnote 185: On the homeward voyage he rescued some shipwrecked sailors near the coast of Greenland, and was thenceforward called Leif the Lucky (et postea cognominatus est Leivus Fortunatus). The pleasant reports from the newly found country gave it the name of "Vinland the Good." In the course of the winter following Leif's return his father died.]

[Footnote 186: "Jam crebri de Leivi in Vinlandiam profectione sermones serebantur, Thorvaldus vero, frater ejus, nimis pauca terrae loca explorata fuisse judicavit." Rafn, p. 39.]

[Sidenote: Thorfinn Karlsefni, and his unsuccessful attempt to found a colony in Vinland, 1007-10.]

In the course of the next summer, 1006, there came to Brattahlid from Iceland a notable personage, a man of craft and resource, wealthy withal and well born, with the blood of many kinglets or jarls flowing in his veins. This man, Thorfinn Karlsefni, straightway fell in love with the young and beautiful widow Gudrid, and in the course of the winter there was a merry wedding at Brattahlid. Persuaded by his adventurous bride, whose spirit had been roused by the reports from Vinland and by her former unsuccessful attempt to find it, Thorfinn now undertook to visit that country in force sufficient for founding a colony there. Accordingly in the spring of 1007 he started with three or four ships,[187] carrying one hundred and sixty men, several women, and quite a cargo of cattle. In the course of that year his son Snorro was born in Vinland,[188] and our chronicle tells us that this child was three years old before the disappointed company turned their backs upon that land of promise and were fain to make their way homeward to the fiords of Greenland. It was the hostility of the natives that compelled Thorfinn to abandon his enterprise. At first they traded with him, bartering valuable furs for little strips of scarlet cloth which they sought most eagerly; and they were as terribly frightened by his cattle as the Aztecs were in later days by the Spanish horses.[189] The chance bellowing of a bull sent them squalling to the woods, and they did not show themselves again for three weeks. After a while quarrels arose, the natives attacked in great numbers, many Northmen were killed, and in 1010 the survivors returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber and peltries. On the way thither the ships seem to have separated, and one of them, commanded by Bjarni Grimolfsson, found itself bored by worms (the teredo) and sank, with its commander and half the crew.[190]

[Footnote 187: Three is the number usually given, but at least four of their ships would be needed for so large a company; and besides Thorfinn himself, three other captains are mentioned,—Snorro Thorbrandsson, Bjarni Grimolfsson, and Thorhall Gamlason. The narrative gives a picturesque account of this Thorhall, who was a pagan and fond of deriding his comrades for their belief in the new-fangled Christian notions. He seems to have left his comrades and returned to Europe before they had abandoned their enterprise. A further reference to him will be made below, p. 203.]

[Footnote 188: To this boy Snorro many eminent men have traced their ancestry,—bishops, university professors, governors of Iceland, and ministers of state in Norway and Denmark. The learned antiquarian Finn Magnusson and the celebrated sculptor Thorwaldsen regarded themselves as thus descended from Thorfinn Karlsefni.]

[Footnote 189: Compare the alarm of the Wampanoag Indians in 1603 at the sight of Martin Pring's mastiff. Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., iii. 174.]

[Footnote 190: The fate of Bjarni was pathetic and noble. It was decided that as many as possible should save themselves in the stern boat. "Then Bjarni ordered that the men should go in the boat by lot, and not according to rank. As it would not hold all, they accepted the saying, and when the lots were drawn, the men went out of the ship into the boat. The lot was that Bjarni should go down from the ship to the boat with one half of the men. Then those to whom the lot fell went down from the ship to the boat. When they had come into the boat, a young Icelander, who was the companion of Bjarni, said: 'Now thus do you intend to leave me, Bjarni?' Bjarni replied, 'That now seems necessary.' He replied with these words: 'Thou art not true to the promise made when I left my father's house in Iceland.' Bjarni replied: 'In this thing I do not see any other way'; continuing, 'What course can you suggest?' He said: 'I see this, that we change places and thou come up here and I go down there.' Bjarni replied: 'Let it be so, since I see that you are so anxious to live, and are frightened by the prospect of death.' Then they changed places, and he descended into the boat with the men, and Bjarni went up into the ship. It is related that Bjarni and the sailors with him in the ship perished in the worm sea. Those who went in the boat went on their course until they came to land, where they told all these things." De Costa's version from Saga Thorfinns Karlsefnis, Rafn, pp. 184-186.]

[Sidenote: Freydis, and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1011-12.]

Among Karlsefni's companions on this memorable expedition was one Thorvard, with his wife Freydis, a natural daughter of Eric the Red. About the time of their return to Greenland in the summer of 1010, a ship arrived from Norway, commanded by two brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi. During the winter a new expedition was planned, and in the summer of 1011 two ships set sail for Vinland, one with Freydis, Thorvard, and a crew of 30 men, the other with Helgi and Finnbogi, and a crew of 35 men. There were also a number of women. The purpose was not to found a colony but to cut timber. The brothers arrived first at Leif's huts and had begun carrying in their provisions and tools, when Freydis, arriving soon afterward, ordered them off the premises. They had no right, she said, to occupy her brother's houses. So they went out and built other huts for their party a little farther from the shore. Before their business was accomplished "winter set in, and the brothers proposed to have some games for amusement to pass the time. So it was done for a time, till discord came among them, and the games were given up, and none went from one house to the other; and things went on so during a great part of the winter." At length came the catastrophe. Freydis one night complained to her husband that the brothers had given her evil words and struck her, and insisted that he should forthwith avenge the affront. Presently Thorvard, unable to bear her taunts, was aroused to a deed of blood. With his followers he made a night attack upon the huts of Helgi and Finnbogi, seized and bound all the occupants, and killed the men one after another in cold blood. Five women were left whom Thorvard would have spared; as none of his men would raise a hand against them, Freydis herself took an axe and brained them one and all. In the spring of 1012 the party sailed for Brattahlid in the ship of the murdered brothers, which was the larger and better of the two. Freydis pretended that they had exchanged ships and left the other party in Vinland. With gifts to her men, and dire threats for any who should dare tell what had been done, she hoped to keep them silent. Words were let drop, however, which came to Leif's ears, and led him to arrest three of the men and put them to the torture until they told the whole story. "'I have not the heart,' said Leif, 'to treat my wicked sister as she deserves; but this I will foretell them [Freydis and Thorvard] that their posterity will never thrive.' So it went that nobody thought anything of them save evil from that time."

[Sidenote: The whole story is eminently probable.]

With this grewsome tale ends all account of Norse attempts at exploring or colonizing Vinland, though references to Vinland by no means end here.[191] Taking the narrative as a whole, it seems to me a sober, straightforward, and eminently probable story. We may not be able to say with confidence exactly where such places as Markland and Vinland were, but it is clear that the coasts visited on these southerly and southwesterly voyages from Brattahlid must have been parts of the coast of North America, unless the whole story is to be dismissed as a figment of somebody's imagination. But for a figment of the imagination, and of European imagination withal, it has far too many points of verisimilitude, as I shall presently show.

[Footnote 191: The stories of Gudleif Gudlaugsson and Ari Marsson, with the fanciful speculations about "Hvitramannaland" and "Irland it Mikla," do not seem worthy of notice in this connection. They may be found in De Costa, op. cit. pp. 159-177; and see Reeves, The Finding of Wineland the Good, chap. v.]

[Sidenote: Voyage into Baffin's Bay, 1135.]

In the first place, it is an extremely probable story from the time that Eric once gets settled in Brattahlid. The founding of the Greenland colony is the only strange or improbable part of the narrative, but that is corroborated in so many other ways that we know it to be true; as already observed, no fact in mediaeval history is better established. When I speak of the settlement of Greenland as strange, I do not mean that there is anything strange in the Northmen's accomplishing the voyage thither from Iceland. That island is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, and we know, moreover, that Norse sailors achieved more difficult things than penetrating the fiords of southern Greenland. Upon the island of Kingitorsook in Baffin's Bay (72 deg. 55' N., 56 deg. 5' W.) near Upernavik, in a region supposed to have been unvisited by man before the modern age of Arctic exploration, there were found in 1824 some small artificial mounds with an inscription upon stone:—"Erling Sighvatson and Bjarni Thordharson and Eindrid Oddson raised these marks and cleared ground on Saturday before Ascension Week, 1135." That is to say, they took symbolic possession of the land.[192]

[Footnote 192: Laing, Heimskringla, i. 152.]

[Sidenote: A Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord, in Norway.]

In order to appreciate how such daring voyages were practicable, we must bear in mind that the Viking "ships" were probably stronger and more seaworthy, and certainly much swifter, than the Spanish vessels of the time of Columbus. One was unearthed a few years ago at Sandefiord in Norway, and may be seen at the museum in Christiania. Its pagan owner had been buried in it, and his bones were found amidships, along with the bones of a dog and a peacock, a few iron fish-hooks and other articles. Bones of horses and dogs, probably sacrificed at the funeral according to the ancient Norse custom, lay scattered about. This craft has been so well described by Colonel Higginson,[193] that I may as well quote the passage in full:—

[Footnote 193: See his Larger History of the United States, pp. 32-34.]

[Sidenote: Description of the ship.]

She "was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the greatest length, and sixteen feet eleven inches at the greatest width, and from the top of the keel to the gunwale amidships she was five feet nine inches deep. She had twenty ribs, and would draw less than four feet of water. She was clinker-built; that is, had plates slightly overlapped, like the shingles on the side of a house. The planks and timbers of the frame were fastened together with withes made of roots, but the oaken boards of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. The bow and stern were similar in shape, and must have risen high out of water, but were so broken that it was impossible to tell how they originally ended. The keel was deep and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace of any metallic sheathing; but an iron anchor was found almost rusted to pieces. There was no deck and the seats for rowers had been taken out. The oars were twenty feet long, and the oar-holes, sixteen on each side, had slits sloping towards the stern to allow the blades of the oars to be put through from inside. The most peculiar thing about the ship was the rudder, which was on the starboard or right side, this side being originally called 'steerboard' from this circumstance. The rudder was like a large oar, with long blade and short handle, and was attached, not to the side of the boat, but to the end of a conical piece of wood which projected almost a foot from the side of the vessel, and almost two feet from the stern. This piece of wood was bored down its length, and no doubt a rope passing through it secured the rudder to the ship's side. It was steered by a tiller attached to the handle, and perhaps also by a rope fastened to the blade. As a whole, this disinterred vessel proved to be anything but the rude and primitive craft which might have been expected; it was neatly built and well preserved, constructed on what a sailor would call beautiful lines, and eminently fitted for sea service. Many such vessels may be found depicted on the celebrated Bayeux tapestry; and the peculiar position of the rudder explains the treaty mentioned in the Heimskringla, giving to Norway all lands lying west of Scotland between which and the mainland a vessel could pass with her rudder shipped.... This was not one of the very largest ships, for some of them had thirty oars on each side, and vessels carrying from twenty to twenty-five were not uncommon. The largest of these were called Dragons, and other sizes were known as Serpents or Cranes. The ship itself was often so built as to represent the name it bore: the dragon, for instance, was a long low vessel, with the gilded head of a dragon at the bow, and the gilded tail at the stern; the moving oars at the side might represent the legs of the imaginary creature, the row of shining red and white shields that were hung over the gunwale looked like the monster's scales, and the sails striped with red and blue might suggest his wings. The ship preserved at Christiania is described as having had but a single mast, set into a block of wood so large that it is said no such block could now be cut in Norway. Probably the sail was much like those still carried by large open boats in that country,—a single square on a mast forty feet long.[194] These masts have no standing rigging, and are taken down when not in use; and this was probably the practice of the Vikings."

[Footnote 194: Perhaps it may have been a square-headed lug, like those of the Deal galley-punts; see Leslie's Old Sea Wings, Ways, and Words, in the Days of Oak and Hemp, London, 1890, p. 21.]

[Sidenote: The climate of Greenland.]

In such vessels, well stocked with food and weapons, the Northmen were accustomed to spend many weeks together on the sea, now and then touching land. In such vessels they made their way to Algiers and Constantinople, to the White Sea, to Baffin's Bay. It is not, therefore, their voyage to Greenland that seems strange, but it is their success in founding a colony which could last for more than four centuries in that inhospitable climate. The question is sometimes asked whether the climate of Greenland may not have undergone some change within the last thousand years.[195] If there has been any change, it must have been very slight; such as, perhaps, a small variation in the flow of ocean currents might occasion. I am inclined to believe that there may have been such a change, from the testimony of Ivar Bardsen, steward of the Gardar bishopric in the latter half of the fourteenth century, or about halfway between the time of Eric the Red and our own time. According to Bardsen there had long been a downward drifting of ice from the north and a consequent accumulation of bergs and floes upon the eastern coast of Greenland, insomuch that the customary route formerly followed by ships coming from Iceland was no longer safe, and a more southerly route had been generally adopted.[196] This slow southward extension of the polar ice-sheet upon the east of Greenland seems still to be going on at the present day.[197] It is therefore not at all improbable, but on the contrary quite probable, that a thousand years ago the mean annual temperature of the tip end of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, was a few degrees higher than now.[198] But a slight difference of this sort might have an important bearing upon the fortunes of a colony planted there. For example, it would directly affect the extent of the hay crop. Grass grows very well now in the neighbourhood of Julianeshaab. In summer it is still a "green land," with good pasturage for cattle, but there is difficulty in getting hay enough to last through the nine months of winter. In 1855 "there were in Greenland 30 to 40 head of horned cattle, about 100 goats, and 20 sheep;" but in the ancient colony, with a population not exceeding 6,000 persons, "herds of cattle were kept which even yielded produce for exportation to Europe."[199] So strong a contrast seems to indicate a much more plentiful grass crop than to-day, although some hay might perhaps have been imported from Iceland in exchange for Greenland exports, which were chiefly whale oil, eider-down, and skins of seals, foxes, and white bears.

[Footnote 195: Some people must have queer notions about the lapse of past time. I have more than once had this question put to me in such a way as to show that what the querist really had in mind was some vague impression of the time when oaks and chestnuts, vines and magnolias, grew luxuriantly over a great part of Greenland! But that was in the Miocene period, probably not less than a million years ago, and has no obvious bearing upon the deeds of Eric the Red.]

[Footnote 196: Bardsen, Descriptio Groenlandiae, appended to Major's Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, etc., pp. 40, 41; and see below, p. 242.]

[Footnote 197: Zahrtmann, Journal of Royal Geographical Society, London, 1836, vol. v. p. 102. On this general subject see J. D. Whitney, "The Climate Changes of Later Geological Times," in Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zooelogy at Harvard College, Cambridge, 1882, vol. vii. According to Professor Whitney there has also been a deterioration in the climate of Iceland.]

[Footnote 198: One must not too hastily infer that the mean temperature of points on the American coast south of Davis strait would be affected in the same way. The relation between the phenomena is not quite so simple. For example, a warm early spring on the coast of Greenland increases the discharge of icebergs from its fiords to wander down the Atlantic ocean; and this increase of floating ice tends to chill and dampen the summers at least as far South as Long Island, if not farther.]

[Footnote 199: Rink's Danish Greenland, pp. 27, 96, 97.]

[Sidenote: With the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery of the American continent was almost inevitable.]

[Sidenote: Voyages for timber.]

When once the Northmen had found their way to Cape Farewell, it would have been marvellous if such active sailors could long have avoided stumbling upon the continent of North America. Without compass or astrolabe these daring men were accustomed to traverse long stretches of open sea, trusting to the stars; and it needed only a stiff northeasterly breeze, with persistent clouds and fog, to land a westward bound "dragon" anywhere from Cape Race to Cape Cod. This is what appears to have happened to Bjarni Herjulfsson in 986, and something quite like it happened to Henry Hudson in 1609.[200] Curiosity is a motive quite sufficient to explain Leif's making the easy summer voyage to find out what sort of country Bjarni had seen. He found it thickly wooded, and as there was a dearth of good timber both in Greenland and in Iceland, it would naturally occur to Leif's friends that voyages for timber, to be used at home and also to be exported to Iceland, might turn out to be profitable.[201] As Laing says, "to go in quest of the wooded countries to the southwest, from whence driftwood came to their shores, was a reasonable, intelligible motive for making a voyage in search of the lands from whence it came, and where this valuable material could be got for nothing."[202]

[Footnote 200: See Read's Historical Inquiry concerning Henry Hudson, Albany, 1866, p. 160.]

[Footnote 201: "Nu tekst umraedha at nyju um Vinlandsferdh, thviat su ferdh thikir baedhi godh til fjar ok virdhingar," i. e. "Now they began to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for the voyage thither was both gainful and honourable." Rafn, p. 65.]

[Footnote 202: Heimskringla, i, 168.]

[Sidenote: Ear-marks of truth in the narrative.]

If now we look at the details of the story we shall find many ear-marks of truth in it. We must not look for absolute accuracy in a narrative which—as we have it—is not the work of Leif or Thorfinn or any of their comrades, but of compilers or copyists, honest and careful as it seems to me, but liable to misplace details and to call by wrong names things which they had never seen. Starting with these modest expectations we shall find the points of verisimilitude numerous. To begin with the least significant, somewhere on our northeastern coast the voyagers found many foxes.[203] These animals, to be sure, are found in a great many countries, but the point for us is that in a southerly and southwesterly course from Cape Farewell these sailors are said to have found them. If our narrators had been drawing upon their imaginations or dealing with semi-mythical materials, they would as likely as not have lugged into the story elephants from Africa or hippogriffs from Dreamland; mediaeval writers were blissfully ignorant of all canons of probability in such matters.[204] But our narrators simply mention an animal which has for ages abounded on our northeastern coasts. One such instance is enough to suggest that they were following reports or documents which emanated ultimately from eye-witnesses and told the plain truth. A dozen such instances, if not neutralized by counter-instances, are enough to make this view extremely probable; and then one or two instances which could not have originated in the imagination of a European writer will suffice to prove it.

[Footnote 203: "Fjoeldi var thar melrakka," i. e. "ibi vulpium magnus numerus erat," Rafn, p. 138.]

[Footnote 204: It is extremely difficult for an impostor to concoct a narrative without making blunders that can easily be detected by a critical scholar. For example, the Book of Mormon, in the passage cited (see above, p. 3), in supremely blissful ignorance introduces oxen, sheep, and silk-worms, as well as the knowledge of smelting iron, into pre-Columbian America.]

Let us observe, then, that on coming to Markland they "slew a bear;"[205] the river and lake (or bay) in Vinland abounded with salmon bigger than Leif's people had ever seen;[206] on the coast they caught halibut;[207] they came to an island where there were so many eider ducks breeding that they could hardly avoid treading on their eggs;[208] and, as already observed, it was because of the abundance of wild grapes that Leif named the southernmost country he visited Vinland.

[Footnote 205: "Thar i drapu their einn bjoern," i. e. "in qua ursum interfecerunt," id. p. 138.]

[Footnote 206: "Hvorki skorti thar lax i anni ne i vatninu, ok staerra lax enn their hefdhi fyrr sedh," i. e. "ibi neque in fluvio neque in lacu deerat salmonum copia, et quidem majoris corporis quam antea vidissent," id. p. 32.]

[Footnote 207: "Helgir fiskar," i. e. "sacri pisces," id. p. 148. The Danish phrase is "helleflyndre," i. e. "holy flounder." The English halibut is hali = holy + but = flounder. This word but is classed as Middle English, but may still be heard in the north of England. The fish may have been so called "from being eaten particularly on holy days" (Century Dict. s.v.); or possibly from a pagan superstition that water abounding in flat fishes is especially safe for mariners (Pliny, Hist. Nat. ix. 70); or possibly from some lost folk-tale about St. Peter (Maurer, Islaendische Volkssagen der Gegenwart, Leipsic, 1860, p. 195).]

[Footnote 208: "Sva var moerg aedhr i eynni, at varla matti ganga fyri eggjum," i. e. "tantus in insula anatum mollissimarum numerus erat, ut prae ovis transiri fere non posset," id. p. 141. Eider ducks breed on our northeastern coasts as far south as Portland, and are sometimes in winter seen as far south as Delaware. They also abound in Greenland and Iceland, and, as Wilson observes, "their nests are crowded so close together that a person can scarcely walk without treading on them.... The Icelanders have for ages known the value of eider down, and have done an extensive business in it." See Wilson's American Ornithology, vol. iii. p. 50.]

[Sidenote: Northern limit of the vine.]

From the profusion of grapes—such that the ship's stern boat is said on one occasion to have been filled with them[209]—we get a clue, though less decisive than could be wished, to the location of Vinland. The extreme northern limit of the vine in Canada is 47 deg., the parallel which cuts across the tops of Prince Edward and Cape Breton islands on the map.[210] Near this northern limit, however, wild grapes are by no means plenty; so that the coast upon which Leif wintered must apparently have been south of Cape Breton. Dr. Storm, who holds that Vinland was on the southern coast of Nova Scotia, has collected some interesting testimony as to the growth of wild grapes in that region, but on the whole the abundance of this fruit seems rather to point to the shores of Massachusetts Bay.[211]

[Footnote 209: {"Sva er sagt at eptirbatr theirra var fylldr af vinberjurn."} { So it-is-said that afterboat their was filled of vine-berries.} Rafn, p. 36.]

[Footnote 210: Storm, "Studies on the Vinland Voyages," Memoires de la societe royale des antiquaires du Nord, Copenhagen, 1888, p. 351. The limit of the vine at this latitude is some distance inland; near the shore the limit is a little farther south, and in Newfoundland it does not grow at all. Id. p. 308.]

[Footnote 211: The attempt of Dr. Kohl (Maine Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. i.) to connect the voyage of Thorfinn with the coast of Maine seems to be successfully refuted by De Costa, Northmen in Maine, etc., Albany, 1870.]

[Sidenote: Length of the winter day.]

We may now observe that, while it is idle to attempt to determine accurately the length of the winter day, as given in our chronicles, nevertheless since that length attracted the attention of the voyagers, as something remarkable, it may fairly be supposed to indicate a latitude lower than they were accustomed to reach in their trading voyages in Europe. Such a latitude as that of Dublin, which lies opposite Labrador, would have presented no novelty to them, for voyages of Icelanders to their kinsmen in Dublin, and in Rouen as well, were common enough. Halifax lies about opposite Bordeaux, and Boston a little south of opposite Cape Finisterre, in Spain, so that either of these latitudes would satisfy the conditions of the case; either would show a longer winter day than Rouen, which was about the southern limit of ordinary trading voyages from Iceland. At all events, the length of day indicates for Vinland a latitude south of Cape Breton.

[Sidenote: Indian corn.]

The next point to be observed is the mention of "self-sown wheat-fields."[212] This is not only an important ear-mark of truth in the narrative, but it helps us somewhat further in determining the position of Vinland. The "self-sown" cereal, which these Icelanders called "wheat," was in all probability what the English settlers six hundred years afterward called "corn," in each case applying to a new and nameless thing the most serviceable name at hand. In England "corn" means either wheat, barley, rye, and oats collectively, or more specifically wheat; in Scotland it generally means oats; in America it means maize, the "Indian corn," the cereal peculiar to the western hemisphere. The beautiful waving plant, with its exquisitely tasselled ears, which was one of the first things to attract Champlain's attention, could not have escaped the notice of such keen observers as we are beginning to find Leif and Thorfinn to have been. A cereal like this, requiring so little cultivation that without much latitude of speech it might be described as growing wild, would be interesting to Europeans visiting the American coast; but it would hardly occur to European fancy to invent such a thing. The mention of it is therefore a very significant ear-mark of the truth of the narrative. As regards the position of Vinland, the presence of maize seems to indicate a somewhat lower latitude than Nova Scotia. Maize requires intensely hot summers, and even under the most careful European cultivation does not flourish north of the Alps. In the sixteenth century its northern-most limit on the American coast seems to have been at the mouth of the Kennebec (44 deg.), though farther inland it was found by Cartier at Hochelaga, on the site of Montreal (45 deg. 30'). A presumption is thus raised in favour of the opinion that Vinland was not farther north than Massachusetts Bay.[213]

[Footnote 212: {"Sjalfsana hveitiakra" } { } Rafn, p. 147. { Self-sown wheat-acres }]

[Footnote 213: Dr. Storm makes perhaps too much of this presumption. He treats it as decisive against his own opinion that Vinland was the southern coast of Nova Scotia, and accordingly he tries to prove that the self-sown corn was not maize, but "wild rice" (Zizania aquatica). Memoires, etc., p. 356. But his argument is weakened by excess of ingenuity.]

[Sidenote: Winter weather in Vinland.]

This presumption is supported by what is said about the climate of Vinland, though it must be borne in mind that general statements about climate are apt to be very loose and misleading. We are told that it seemed to Leif's people that cattle would be able to pass the winter out of doors there, for there was no frost and the grass was not much withered.[214] On the other hand, Thorfinn's people found the winter severe, and suffered from cold and hunger.[215] Taken in connection with each other, these two statements would apply very well to-day to our variable winters on the coast southward from Cape Ann. The winter of 1889-90 in Cambridge, for example, might very naturally have been described by visitors from higher latitudes as a winter without frost and with grass scarcely withered. Indeed, we might have described it so ourselves. On Narragansett and Buzzard's bays such soft winter weather is still more common; north of Cape Ann it is much less common. The severe winter (magna hiems) is of course familiar enough anywhere along the northeastern coast of America.

[Footnote 214: "Thar var sva godhr landskostr at thvi er theim syndist, at thar mundi eingi fenadhr fodhr thurfa a vetrum; thar kvomu eingi frost a vetrum, ok litt renudhu thar groes," i. e. "tanta autem erat terrae bonitas, ut inde intelligere esset, pecora hieme pabulo non indigere posse, nullis incidentibus algoribus hiemalibus, et graminibus parum flaccescentibus." Rafn, p. 32.]

[Footnote 215: "Thar voru their um vetrinn; ok gjoerdhist vetr mikill, en ekki fyri unnit ok gjoerdhist illt til matarins, ok tokust af veidhirnar," i. e. "hic hiemarunt; cum vero magna incideret hiems, nullumque provisum esset alimentum, cibus coepit deficere capturaque cessabat," Id. p. 174.]

[Sidenote: Probable situation of Vinland.]

On the whole, we may say with some confidence that the place described by our chroniclers as Vinland was situated somewhere between Point Judith and Cape Breton; possibly we may narrow our limits and say that it was somewhere between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. But the latter conclusion is much less secure than the former. In such a case as this, the more we narrow our limits the greater our liability to error.[216] While by such narrowing, moreover, the question may acquire more interest as a bone of contention among local antiquarians, its value for the general historian is not increased.

[Footnote 216: A favourite method of determining the exact spots visited by the Northmen has been to compare their statements regarding the shape and trend of the coasts, their bays, headlands, etc., with various well-known points on the New England coast. It is a tempting method, but unfortunately treacherous, because the same general description will often apply well enough to several different places. It is like summer boarders in the country struggling to tell one another where they have been to drive,—past a school-house, down a steep hill, through some woods, and by a saw-mill, etc.]

[Sidenote: "Savages" unknown to mediaeval Europeans.]

[Sidenote: The natives of Vinland.]

But we have not yet done with the points of verisimilitude in our story. We have now to cite two or three details that are far more striking than any as yet mentioned,—details that could never have been conjured up by the fancy of any mediaeval European. We must bear in mind that "savages," whether true savages or people in the lower status of barbarism, were practically unknown to Europeans before the fifteenth century. There were no such people in Europe or in any part of Asia or Africa visited by Europeans before the great voyages of the Portuguese. Mediaeval Europeans knew nothing whatever about people who would show surprise at the sight of an iron tool[217] or frantic terror at the voice of a bull, or who would eagerly trade off valuable property for worthless trinkets. Their imagination might be up to inventing hobgoblins and people with heads under their shoulders,[218] but it was not up to inventing such simple touches of nature as these. Bearing this in mind, let us observe that Thorfinn found the natives of Vinland eager to give valuable furs[219] in exchange for little strips of scarlet cloth to bind about their heads. When the Northmen found the cloth growing scarce they cut it into extremely narrow strips, but the desire of the natives was so great that they would still give a whole skin for the smallest strip. They wanted also to buy weapons, but Thorfinn forbade his men to sell them. One of the natives picked up an iron hatchet and cut wood with it; one after another tried and admired it; at length one tried it on a stone and broke its edge, and then they scornfully threw it down.[220] One day while they were trading, Thorfinn's bull ran out before them and bellowed, whereupon the whole company was instantly scattered in headlong flight. After this, when threatened with an attack by the natives, Thorfinn drew up his men for a fight and put the bull in front, very much as Pyrrhus used elephants—at first with success—to frighten the Romans and their horses.[221]