A Botanical and Economic Study. 129 



arranged in geographical sequence, starting with New England 

 and concluding with South America, and where possible the 

 facts have been arranged chronologically. 



Division i. History Proper. — About 1002 A.D .,' Thor- 

 wald, brother of Lief, wintered in Vinland. The following 

 summer, in proceeding "occidentale latus circumire," Thor- 

 wald found the sea " valde insulosum" (Mingan Islands), 

 and on an island far westward saw a wooden crib for corn 

 (kornjhalmer). 2 Karlsefn, in 1006, in coasting along our 

 northern coast, brought back to the ship a bunch of grapes 

 and a new-sown ear of wheat (corn). At Hop they found 

 self-sown fields of wheat where the ground was low, and 

 vines where the ground was high. "While lying against the 

 peninsula of Cape Cod — Furderstrand, Nausett Beach — Thor- 

 fin, that he might know the quality of the neighboring land, 

 sent out his fleet-footed servants to run for three days over 

 the region and return and report what they had seen, the 

 ship lying at anchor during their absence. They brought 

 back, one a bunch of grapes, the other an ' ear of corn.' They 

 had two months earlier seen the ' new-sown ' (Beamish) young 

 corn at Hop. Ear of corn is the translation of the Icelandic 

 word hveiti-ax (J. Tomlinson Smith). Beamish and Rev. Dr. 

 Slafter 3 translated the same expression 'ear of wheat.' ' Was 

 it Indian corn ? Ax, by itself, in Icelandic, is ear of korn 

 (Vigfusson), hveiti is wheat. Skeat, in his Etymological 

 Dictionary, states that the word wheat is Teutonic, and sig- 

 nifies white, and hveiti, no doubt, refers to the color of the 

 crrain or kernel of corn of whatever kind. Hviti, is white, as 

 applied to the White River, in Icelandic (Henderson's map), 

 and hviti-ax would be white ear of seed. 1 It is doubtful if 

 this seed was maize. 5 



1 Pickering, Chronological History of Plants, 665. 



-Trans. New York Agric Soc, 1S78, 46. 

 Slafter, Prince's Society. 



* H'orsford, E. A., Discovery of America by Northmen, 188S. 



■ We are told in a tradition of the Tuscarora Indians, who claim they arrived on the 

 Virginian coast about the year 1300. that they found there a race who knew nothing of 

 maize and were eaters of raw flesh. The Northmen, in the ye; r 1000, found the natives 

 of Vinland. probably near Rhode Island, of the same race as those they were familiar with 

 jn Labrador. Eskimo is from the Algonquin word Eskimantic— eaters of raw flesh —The 

 Archaeologist, I, 13 



