V INLAND AND ITS RUINS. 161 



consisted of one hundred and sixty men and their live stock in 

 three vessels, after sailing southwest from Greenland for a number 

 of days and seeing two new countries, came to a certain cape. 

 " They cruised along the land and the land lay on the starboard. . . . 

 There were there an open, harborless coast and long strands and 



An Indian Fireplace in Massachusetts!. 



sand banks. And they went in boats to the land and found there 

 the keel of a ship, and they named it Keel Cape. And they gave 

 a name to the strands and called them Wonder Strands, because 

 they were long to sail by. Then the land became scored with bays, 

 and they steered the ships to the bays." * They remained here for 

 some time, but they had not yet seen the Vinland which Leif Erik- 

 son had found a few years before. 



Thorhall started to seek for it " northward round Wonder- 

 strand and westward off Keel Cape." Therefore we must first 

 look for a cape, the trend of whose shore is north and south, with 

 open water west of it, and beyond that again land. This cape must 

 have a long, sandy, harborless coast, with sand banks on the east, 

 and it must be broken up into bays farther to the south, and one 

 of these bays must be large enough and deep enough for three 

 vessels, one of which could carry at least fifty men across the 

 Atlantic. The icelandic word " oroefi " which is used in this text 

 means " harborless," and is the descriptive local name of the con- 

 vex, sandy, unsheltered coast of southern Iceland (Oroefa), the 

 present Skaptafells district, from Stokksnes to Dyrholaey, This 

 gives a clear idea of wdiat we ought to look for along the coast 

 of Xorth America. 



The eastern coast of Xorth America f shows us that, south of 

 rock-bound Labrador, the only places north of New York where 



* The translations are from the Icelandic texts in The Finding of Wineland the Good 

 by Arthur Middleton Reeves. Henry Frowde, London. 



t Chart of North Atlantic, No. 98. -Norie & Wilson, London. 

 VOL LVI. — 13 



