V INLAND AND ITS RUINS. 



163 



yond, '' there are three small harbors, too intricate and rocky in 

 their entrances to admit vessels of any burden," and Cape Breton 

 itself is " low and rocky and covered with grassy moors." This is 

 unlike the open, harborless coast with long strands and sand banks 

 of the Sagas. Within the Gulf of St. Lawrence the capes which 

 jut to the north are Cape St. George,* with rocky, precipitous 

 cliffs six hundred feet above the sea; North Point,f on Prince Ed- 

 ward Island, which is broken about five miles down the coast by 

 Tignish River, and beyond that by the red sandstone cliff of Cape 

 Kildare; Escuminiac Point,:]: at the entrance to Miramichi Bay, 

 a broken coast with low sandstone cliffs; and Birch Point,* on 

 Miscou Island, with a steep cliff of sandstone ten feet high. 



Campobello is a rocky island, and Cape Ann is rocky and has 

 no long, harborless coast. 



Cape Cod || juts to the north with open water west of it, and 

 beyond that again land. It has also a long, harborless coast on 

 the east, with strands and sand banks, and is scored with bays 

 toward the south. 



Cape Cod, then, is the only cape north of Sandy Hook which 

 corresponds to the description in the Saga, and near here we should 

 look for Vinland, leaving the southern shores until later. 



Vinland, which was discovered by Leif Erikson, is only de- 

 scribed as Vinland in the Flat Island Book. This account states 



10 Meters 



Plan of supposed Norse Ruin in Massachusetts. 



that Leif Erikson's party " came to a certain island which lay north 

 of the land." That Leif Erikson should have thought that Cape 

 Cod was an island is obvious, because it is impossible from the cape 

 to see the southern shore of Massachusetts Bay twenty miles away. 



* United States Hydrographic Office Report, No. 100, 1897, p. 70. 



f Ibid., pp. 130, 152, X Ibid.; p. 157. * Ibid., p. 173. 



II United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, General Chart of the Coast, No. VII. 



