LOST COLONIES OF NORTHMEN AND PORTUGUESE. 41 



The probable dates of those that are the subject of this paper are : 

 1. Vinland the Good, discovered a. d. 994 ; 2. Fagundes's settlement 

 in Cape Breton, a. d. 1521 ; 3. A second Portuguese settlement in 

 Cape Breton, a. d. 1567 ; 4. A Spanish settlement in Cape Breton, 

 between 1580 and 1597. 



I. Vinland the Good. It is unfortunate that the early settlers 

 ever thought of calling a place near Rhode Island Martha's Vine- 

 yard, for its resemblance to Vinland has led Danish and American 

 archaeologists to identify them as the same locality. They seem not 

 to have remembered, that wild grapes are found on the south shore 

 of the gulf and river St. Lawrence, from Cape North to Quebec, 

 the Island of Orleans having for this reason been called the Island 

 of Bacchus. Wild grapes, too, are found on the west coast of New- 

 foundland, according to Anspach ; and in 1521 the Portuguese colo- 

 nists in Cape Breton sent word home that among the products of 

 that country were grapes. The writer of this paper has tasted some 

 excellent wine made by a relative living at Fredericton, New Bruns- 

 wick, from the wild grapes that are to be seen hanging in clusters from 

 the elm-trees on the intervale lands along the St. John River. 



But as Vinland and Martha's Vineyard were assumed to be the 

 same, a voyage by the Northmen from Greenland, not exceeding seven 

 or eight days, has been extended to Rhode Island, and the circumnavi- 

 gation of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia has been assumed, although 

 the Saga of Eric the Red is silent as to it, and though such a voyage, 

 still a perilous one, was at that time a most difficult and dangerous 

 undertaking. 



The Saga of Eric the Red was written in Greenland by, or in 

 honor of, Eric and his family, Avho were the discoverers, explorers, 

 and chroniclers of Vinland the Good. 



The later Saga of his son-in-law, Karlsefne, which, like the geo- 

 graphical notices quoted by Rafn, was written in Iceland, was evi- 

 dently based, not on information derived from people who had been in 

 Vinland, but on an imperfect version of the Greenland Saga, for al- 

 most all the courses described by them differ 90 from those given 

 in the Saga of Eric the Red, a uniformity of error which must have 

 arisen from the use of a sketch-map of the voyage to Vinland, in which 

 the points of the compass were omitted or incorrectly placed. What 

 is north in the one is generally east in the other. 



We have therefore to depend on the Greenland Saga, and what are 

 its claims to be considered a credible authority ? It was written in 

 glorification of Eric and his family, and describes the discoveries made 

 by his sons or sons-in-law, and testified to by no one outside of his 

 family circle. 



Two persons, father and son, the latter of whom was named Eric 

 the Red, having been guilty of murder in Norway, took refuge in Ice- 

 land, where Eric committed one if not two more murders, and in con- 



