case among the seafaring nations of the same race, who were constantly coming into contact with foreign nations in a more advanced stage of civilisation than themselves. As regards the case in point, it will be perceived that the discoverers of America may be supposed to have possessed even an unusual amount of knowledge on these subjects; for Leif Ericson was educated by the Southern German Tyrker, and Thorfin Karlsefne was not only a descendant of an illustrious house, but had, moreover, long traded with England, Scotland, and Ireland, the inhabitants of which countries in the eleventh century were by no means barbarians. An old Norwegian manuscript, called the 'Konung's Skuggsio' ('King's Mirror'), written in the twelfth century, gives a favourable idea of the education of the Scandinavian merchant-mariners of the middle ages. In this book the merchant is exhorted to make himself acquainted with the commercial and maritime laws of all countries, as also with foreign languages, but more particularly the Latin and the Italian, which were then most generally diffused. He is further recommended to study the phases and motions of the celestial bodies, and to make himself acquainted with the art of determining the hours of the day, with the divisions of the horizon, the ebb and flood tides and currents of the sea, the climates, and the distinguishing features of the countries thence arising, the seasons of the year most favourable to navigation in the different seas, the equipping and rigging of ships, the judicious investment of capital, arithmetical calculations, &c. The merchant was, besides, expected to distinguish himself by polished and decorous behaviour, and in every way to do honour to a calling which was held in high esteem. If such were the acquirements expected from a merchant and mariner in the twelfth century, there is reason to presume that he may have possessed some of these qualifications in the eleventh century, and that his scientific attainments may, at the last-mentioned period, also have greatly surpassed those of the generality of his countrymen.

Having now examined how far the astronomical evidence of the Scandinavian discoverers of America having reached latitude 41 degrees, is deserving of credit, we will now follow Professor Raffn from point to point in the different localities which he designates as those visited by the early northern voyagers, and observe how far the modern descriptions of these countries coincide with those given in the Sagas. From information contained in the Landnamabok,' and various ancient geographical works of Iceland, it is inferred that a day's sailing among the ancient Scandinavians was equivalent to twenty-seven or thirty geographical miles of fifteen to a degree. From the last land seen by Biarne, and the first subsequently visited by Leif, the former arrived at Herjulfsness-now Ikigeit in Greenland-in four days, sailing with a strong south-west wind. As the island of Newfoundland is situated in the direction indicated, and at a distance. of about one hundred and fifty miles from the promontory of Ikigeit, and this distance, it is supposed, might, with a very high wind, be traversed in the time mentioned, and, as moreover, the modern voyagers describe the island as presenting to the eye of the mariner the same flat and barren rocks, unrelieved by any trace of verdure, which are mentioned in the Saga as forming the characteristic features of the land discovered, and as having obtained for it the name of Helluland, the identity of Newfoundland and Helluland is considered established beyond a doubt.

Subsequently, it seems, the name of Little Helluland was given to this island; and Labrador, which is probably the Helluland of Karlsefne's Saga, was denominated Helluland it Mikla, or the Great Helluland. This country is described by a writer in the fourth volume of the 'Philosophical Transactions' as follows:-'This vast tract of land is extremely barren, and altogether incapable of cultivation. The surface is everywhere uneven, and covered with large stones, some of which are of amazing dimensions. There is no such thing as level land. It is a country formed of frightful mountains and unfruitful valleys. The mountains are almost devoid of every sort of herbage. A blighted shrub and a little moss are sometimes to be seen, but in general the bare rock is all you behold. In a word, the country is nothing more than a heap of barren rocks.' Even the minute feature of the foxes is not wanting to complete the resemblance between Labrador and the land discovered by Karlsefne, for the same author mentions that these animals are there very numerous.

The land in the south-west, to which was given the name of Markland, and which the Northmen describe as 'flat and covered with wood; and wherever they went there were large tracts of white sand, and the coast was low,' is supposed to have been Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Lower Canada. The first-mentioned country is indeed described by modern geographers in terms almost similar to those used by the Icelanders, it being represented as level and low to the seaward, the coasts being lined with cliffs of exceedingly white sand, which particularly strike the eye of the mariner; and all three countries are even to the present day covered with extensive forests. The island which Karlsefne's Saga mentions as lying' outside the land in north-east,' and to which the Northmen gave the name of Biarney, in consequence of their having killed a bear there, is by the northern antiquaries determined to be Cape Sable; while the island where Leif and his followers first landed, after leaving Markland, and having sailed a day and a night with a north-west wind, and where they observed the sweetness of the dew on the grass, is supposed to be a small island off Cape Cod, where honey-dew still abounds. The distance between Cape Sable and Cape Cod is in nautical works set down as fiftytwo geographical miles west by south, and this agrees well with the amount of time which the Northmen spent in traversing it a day and a night's sailing; being, in accordance with what is stated above, equivalent to from fifty-four to sixty miles. The land and the island between which ran the sound into which Leif next entered, holding to the west past the promontory, are laid down on the maps of the northern antiquary as the peninsula of Barnstaple and the island of Nantucket, round which island, according to modern navigators, there are dangerous shoals and numberless sandbanks, the whole sound bearing the appearance of drowned land— features which strikingly coincide with the facts mentioned in the Saga. Still more remarkable, however, are the points of resemblance between the description of Kialarnas and Fudurstrandir-the first land reached by Karlsefne after leaving Markland-and the description of Cape Cod, together with Nauset Beach, Chatham Beach, and Monomoy Beach, which form the western shores of the promontory, given a few years ago by Mr Hitchcock in his Report on the Geology of Massachusetts. The dunes or sandhills,' says this author, 'are either entirely or in a great measure devoid of vegetation,

and forcibly attract the attention on account of their peculiarity. As the traveller approaches the extremity of the cape, the sandhills increase to such an extent that in several places nothing is wanting to make him believe himself in the deserts of Arabia or Libya but that a troop of Bedouins should cross his path.'

A remarkable phenomenon observed in this American desert, and which perhaps obtained for it the name of Fudurstrandir (the Wonderful Strand), by which the Northmen designated it, is described as follows by the same author:-'While traversing the deserts of the cape, I remarked a singular effect of mirage. At Orleans, for instance, it seemed to me that we were ascending at an angle of three or four degrees, and I was not convinced of my error until, turning round, I observed that the road which we had just traversed seemed to ascend in like manner. I cannot undertake to explain this optical illusion; I will only observe, that it is probably a phenomenon of the same nature as that which struck Humboldt in the pampas of Venezuela, and relative to which he says, "all around us the plains seemed ascending towards the skies."

If the previous points be accepted as correctly laid down, our readers will probably not refuse to recognise the identity of the Straumey of Karlsefne's Saga, 'round which went strong currents,' and the island now called Martha's Vineyard, and situated to the south of Barnstaple, or another small island at the entrance of Vineyard Sound, called Egg Island, on account of the great number of eggs of aquatic birds found there-a circumstance which further coincides with the description in the Saga. Straumfiord is supposed to be Buzzard's Bay, in which strong currents are created by the great gulf-stream, which, issuing from the Gulf of Mexico,, and passing between Florida and Cuba and the Bahama isles, runs northward parallel with the coasts of the United States, until it finds, as it were, its passage barred by the peninsula of Barnstaple. The Wineland Proper of the Northmen-the locality in which Leif erected his wooden houses, and whence he explored the country, and which, it will be remembered, was reached through a river that communicated with a lake-is believed to have been the northern extremity of the beautiful Rhode Island, commonly called the Eden of America, and the adjacent portions of Massachusetts. It will be seen by the map of these localities, that on the one side the narrow, yet navigable Pocasset river, connects Mount Hope Bay, into which the Taunton river flows from the north, with the Straits of Seaconnet which communicate with the ocean; and on the other side the waters of Mount Hope Bay flow into Naraganset Bay, which opens into the Atlantic. Granting that the Northmen mistook Mount Hope Bay for a lake, to which, indeed, its landlocked character gives it a strong resemblance, this locality in every respect answers to the descriptions contained in both the Sagas. The land in those parts of Massachusetts which border on Mount Hope Bay is somewhat hilly, but not mountainous, and was formerly covered with large forests, which, being inhabited by many wild animals, formed favourite hunting-grounds of the Indians. The gray fox-the fur of which was so much prized by the ancient Scandinavians, and which it is said in the Saga the Northmen purchased from the natives-was, according to American accounts, found in these regions at a later date also. In Rhode Island, wild grape vines still fling their graceful tendrils from tree to tree; maize, if not

wheat, grows there, sown by nature's hand alone; and among the forest trees the maple, the tulip-tree, and several others are remarkable for the beauty of their wood. The mæsur-wood, of which the broomstick was made for which the German bade Karlsefne a price apparently so far above its value, may, it is suggested, have been the wood of the birds'-eye, or curled maple, which grows in this vicinity, and is particularly beautiful. The rivers and bays still abound in fish of various kinds, and among these the flounders or flat-fish, and the salmon mentioned in the Sagas. Even whales still from time to time find their way into these waters. The climate of Rhode Island is, as the Northmen described that of Wineland, so mild that the herbage rarely suffers from the frost in winter; and upon the whole, the country is such as fully warrants the name of Vinland it Goda (Wineland the Good), under which it is frequently mentioned in the ancient Icelandic manuscripts.

Thus as far as we have hitherto gone, the evidence adduced seems fully to warrant the assumption of Rhode Island and Massachusetts being the Wineland of the northern discoverers; but Professor Raffn, not content with following the enterprising voyagers from coast to coast, until at last he lands them in the happy spot denominated the Eden of America, endeavours, moreover, to connect the archæological monuments in these regions which modern research has brought to light, with the supposed presence of the Northmen in the country. By proving too much, he has in a great measure invalidated the rest of his conclusions, for several of his positions having been found untenable on these points, discredit has by some critics been thrown on the whole of his theory, though we do not see that in justice it ought to be so.

Rocks, with rude tracings of men and animals, together with other less definable figures, having been discovered in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, some of the learned bodies in these states forwarded to the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries in Copenhagen drawings of the rocks, suggesting that the supposed inscriptions on them might contain a record of the Northmen's presence in these localities; and observing that this surmise was strengthened by the fact, that the tracings were evidently made with a metallic instrument, which rendered it improbable that they were the work of the Indians, who were unacquainted with the use of metals at the period of the arrival of the first European settlers. Acting upon this suggestion, Professor Raffn has, with marvellous ingenuity, traced in the disjointed and unconnected lines and figures cut, or rather picked, in one of these rocks situated in Berkley County, Massachusetts, and called the Deighton Rock, Runic characters and Roman numerals, which he interprets as representing the name of Thorfin Karlsefne, and the number of his company. We confess, however, that the examination of an engraving of the Deighton Rock leaves us quite unconvinced on this point; and as the tracings bear a strong resemblance to similar pictorial attempts on rocks in various other parts of America, whither the Northmen never could have penetrated, as also to the Indian paintings on buffalo hides, we deem it more reasonable to conclude that their origin is the same. This opinion is further confirmed by the wonderful discoveries made in America subsequent to the publication of Raffn's work, proving beyond a doubt that the various mounds and other earthworks which the Danish antiquary also connects with the

presence of the Northmen in these regions, and some of which in reality bear a great affinity to the ancient tumuli in Scandinavian countries, owe their origin to a very different race, whose history is still a mystery, but the centre of whose civilisation seems to have been the region now known as Central America.*

Another archæological monument, which may be represented as dating from the visits of the Northmen to America, is a ruin near Newport in Rhode Island, known to the inhabitants of the locality, and to the numerous strangers who flock to this lovely spot in summer, where it forms a picturesque feature in the landscape, as the Old Stone-Mill. The building measures within the walls about eighteen feet in diameter, and is formed of eight stone pillars about seven feet high, and placed at a distance of from five to six feet from each other, so as to form a circle; the intermediate spaces being arched over, and the whole supporting walls twentyfour feet high, built of rough stones, held together with lime-mortar. Though supposed by antiquaries, on account of the peculiarities of its architecture, to have been originally a baptismal chapel, such as they were built in Scandinavia during the middle ages, this building is, in its character of windmill, not without its history among the people of Anglo-Saxon descent who now dwell around it; for it was mentioned in 1678, in the last will and testament of a certain Benedict Arnold, who seems at one time to have been governor of the settlement. In the year 1663, moreover, twenty-five years after the first settlement of the English in the south of Rhode Island, a memorandum to the effect that in this year the first windmill was built, was made by a Mr Peter Easton, who was in the habit of noting in his pocket-book all the remarkable events occurring in the township. Now those who refuse to believe in any of the evidences of the Northmen having attained a point of the American continent so far south as the locality in question, think the entry in Mr Peter Easton's pocket-book very significant, and conclude from it that the mill therein mentioned and the Old Stone Mill bequeathed by Governor Arnold to his inheritors, must have been one and the same building. This is, however, but an arbitrary assumption, and it is not evident why the epithet 'old' should in 1678 be attached to a mill built in 1663; whereas the name of mill may have been given to the structure because it does in reality bear much resemblance to the fundamental portions and outer walls of a windmill, and is placed on an eminence fully exposed to the winds from all quarters. On the other hand, we confess that it does seem passing strange that so remarkable a fact as the existence of a stone edifice in a locality supposed never before to have been inhabited by civilised people, should have been left unnoticed by the intelligent settlers. Be this as it may, the northern antiquaries are backed by the opinion of such authorities in matters of art and archæology as Boisseree, Klenze, Thiersch, and Kallenbach, who, judging from drawings of the Old Stone-Mill sent from America, have all declared in favour of the ruin being the remains of a baptismal chapel in the early style of the middle ages. It must be further observed, with reference to this monument, that though the voyages to Wineland, of which we have authentic and detailed accounts, are not of later date than the year

* See 'Ruined Cities of Central America,' forming No. 13 of this series.