92 Dr Elton on the 



whereabout was on some part of the new world, between the 

 Chesapeak and Florida. 



These early voyages seem to us very surprising ; but they 

 do not seem at all foreign to the habits and enterprise of the 

 bold Icelanders of those ages ; who not only traded to every 

 part of the west of Europe, but to the Mediterranean, and 

 explored Baffin! s Bay, as high as Lancaster Sound. We have 

 now a certain proof, that they were at least as high in it as 

 at 72° 55' ; for in 1825, a memorial stone with a Runic in- 

 scription, and the date 1131, was found on the island of Kin- 

 giktersoak. 



Several Runic inscriptions are said to have been found in 

 America ; but the most remarkable of these is the mass of 

 greyroacke on the shores of the river at Dighton, in the town- 

 ship of Berkley, in Massachusetts, not far from the supposed 

 site of the settlement of Thorfinn Karlsefne. This has been 

 lately carefully figured and engraved in the Antiquitates 

 Americance of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries of 

 Copenhagen, and repeated in Jacob Aafs translation of the 

 Chronicles of Snorre Sturleson. Dr Elton, who has examined 

 the original, assures us, that this engraving is a faithful 

 transcript. On this rock, antiquaries read, amid figures 

 supposed to represent Thorfinn, his wife and child, and his 

 companions, the letters — ?r//^ and cxxxi, the number of his 

 companions. 



Dr Elton next adverted to the voyage of the Welsh Prince, 

 Madoc, son of the greatest of the princes of North Wales, 

 Owen Grcenedd, about the year 1170. This voyage, though 

 doubted by many, is fully believed in by Dr Elton, and it is 

 noticed by Hakluyt, Purchas, Broughton, &c. Dr Elton 

 quotes the singular story given by the Rev. Morgan Jones, 

 chaplain to the British commander of the forces of Virginia, 

 in 1669. Jones was taken prisoner by the Tusscarora Indians, 

 who intended to torture him in their usual way, when he 

 began to lament his cruel fate in Welsh, which was under- 

 stood by the Indians, and he was suffered to depart in peace. 

 These, Dr E. thinks, may have been descendants of Madoc" s 

 followers; and he seems inclined to ascribe to them also 

 those very remarkable mounds, fortifications, and enclosures 



