46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



shore was low." This was therefore called " Markland," i. e., wood- 

 land. They sailed thence for two days with a northeasterly wind (the 

 opposite to that which Bjarne met with), when they sighted an island 

 to the northward of the land, and sailed into a sound between it and a 

 cape which ran out northwardly from the land. Thence they sailed 

 westwardly round the cape into a place where at ebb-tide the vessel 

 was left high and dry some distance from the shore ; and when the 

 tide rose they towed the vessel into a river, which led into a lake (or 

 inlet ?), where they landed and built booths. 



If this narrative is something more than a Norse " Odyssey " or a 

 fiction, we must infer that Leif touched at Labrador (called by him 

 Helluland), sailed thence to some more southern part of Labrador 

 (called by him Markland), and thence past the Island of Belleisle into 

 one of the many shallow inlets on the south side of the Strait of Belle- 

 isle. The " low land covered with w T ood " and its " white sands " may 

 possibly be the part of Newfoundland sighted by Bjarne, or it may be 

 Blanc Sablon, near Bradore Bay, on the south coast of Labrador. It 

 is, however, evident that Leif can not have reached the south coast of 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence, judging by the number of days expended 

 on the voyage. The Saga of Karlsefne says that the voyage from 

 Greenland to Helluland only took two days, and that from Helluland 

 to Markland three days. Now, Leif's voyage from Markland to Vin- 

 land took two days, or the number of days spent by Bjarne in going 

 from the land first sighted by him to the "flat land covered with 

 wood." Bjarne's voyage from the first land sighted by him to Green- 

 land occupied in all 2 -f- 3 + 4 = 9 days. 



From the Sagas of Eric the Red and of Karlsefne, we learn that 

 the voyages from Greenland to Vinland took six days in all. Hence, 

 Vinland, if beyond Labrador, must be sought for in Newfoundland, 

 either in one of the shallow inlets near the Island of Belleisle, or in 

 some place along the northwest coast of that island. The fact that 

 grapes are found there, according to Anspach, lends some weight to 

 this view. It is possible, too, that the Naskapi, sometimes found in 

 Newfoundland and resembling the Eskimos in many respects, may have 

 been included under the name Skraellings by the Northmen. 



It is clear that, like Greenland, Vinland the Good was a fraud on 

 emigrants ; that the stories as to ship-loads of grapes, self-sown fields 

 of wheat, genial winter weather, etc., were the productions of Eric's 

 prolific brain ; and that we must first succeed in finding Greenland's 

 verdant mountains before we can hope to discover the vine-clad hills 

 of Vinland the Good. 



II. The Colony of Terra Nova, or the " Land of the Corte 

 Reals." The history of European colonization north of Florida has 

 been hitherto supposed to have begun at the commencement of the 

 seventeenth century, except perhaps a small English settlement at St. 

 John's, Newfoundland. It has not hitherto been known to historians 



