THE GLACIAL MAN IN AMERICA. 35 



The notion that man in that remote age could not navigate great seas 

 is simply a notion, and likewise it is a notion that more than anything 

 else prevents the advance of scientific inquiry respecting the early 

 colonization of America. Two men in a skiff to-day navigate the en- 

 tire breadth of the Atlantic, but such a feat forms no new thing under 

 the sun. In the glacial age communication between Europe and Amer- 

 ica may have been more easy than is now suspected, while a large por- 

 tion of the journey may have been made over fields of ice. The 

 passage of the glacial man from Europe possibly presented no greater 

 difliculties than the migration of the Esquimaux from Labrador to Green- 

 land. But, however man may have reached America, the theory that 

 the Indian peoples sprang from any glacial stock seems untenable. 

 This, then, necessitates the inquiry respecting the subsequent history 

 of the primitive inhabitant ; otherwise, what became of him ? 



That a people corresponding in the main to the supposed glacial 

 man once dwelt as far south as New Jersey has been agreed by vari- 

 ous writers, without any reference to the contents of the glacial de- 

 posits, of whose existence they did not dream. When, for instance, 

 we turn to the Icelandic Sagas relating to America, it becomes appar- 

 ent that the Esquimaux once flourished low down upon the Atlantic 

 coast. 



At the present time historians agree, with great unanimity, that the 

 continent of America was visited during the tenth and eleventh cen- 

 turies by Icelanders resident in Greenland. That country was colo- 

 nized by the Icelanders in the year 985, and when Eric the Red entered 

 Greenland he found no inhabitants. The third Greenland " Narrative," 

 however, says : " They found there, both east and west, ruins of houses 

 and pieces of boats and stone-work begun. From which it is to be 

 seen what kind of people lived in Vinland, and which the Greenland- 

 ers call Skrsellings, and who have been there." * Thus at that early 

 period the remains in Greenland were identified as works peculiar to 

 the people of Vinland, a region, according to the Sagas, lying south- 

 ward toward the forty-first parallel. 



The account of what the Icelanders saw in Vinland is found in the 

 narratives of Leif and others. In 986 one Biarne, when sailing for 

 Greenland, was blown upon the American coast, and upon his return 

 carried the report of the country to Greenland. In the year 1000, 

 Leif Erickson resolved to visit the region seen by Biarne, and, sailing 

 southward from Greenland, reached the place. The narrative says : 

 " The country appeared to them of so good a kind that it would not 

 be necessary for them to gather fodder for the cattle in winter. There 

 was no frost in winter, and the grass was not much withered." The 

 observation that there was no frost was simply an exaggeration nat- 

 ural to an Icelander coming into a country with a climate so unlike 

 that to which he had been accustomed. Morton wrote home to Eng- 



* " Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen," p. 20. 



