i66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



There is one event described in all three versions of the Vinland 

 story — the battle with the natives. According to the Flat Island 

 Book, this battle took place in Vinland; according to the other 

 two Sagas, Vinland was supposed to be north of Keel Cape. But 

 in these Sagas it is said that this battle took place south of Keel 

 Cape, where Karsefni had found a river flowing througli a lake 

 into the sea. 



It was this word south which led the Danish archaeologist Carl 

 Christian Rafn to think that Vinland was in Rhode Island. Al- 

 though there is no land south of Cape Cod (with the exception of 

 Nantucket Island) between Cape Cod and Santo Domingo, it is only 

 fair to look once more at Mount Hope Bay * (Rafn's Vinland) to 

 see whether it really corresponds to the description before us. The 

 Taunton River flows through Mount Hope Bay to the sea, but there 

 are no shallows here, and the mouth of the river looks directly out, 

 southward and not eastward, to the open ocean. In Boston Harbor, 

 m.oreover, are great tongues of land and islands such as are de- 

 scribed in Eric the Red's Saga. There is perhaps cause for com- 

 ment in the use of the word " f joll," fells or mountains (accord- 

 ing to Vigfusson f ), applied to the hills about Boston, of which 

 the highest, " Blue Hill," is seven hundred and ten feet high. If 

 " fells " is a correct translation, it would be unobjectionable. 



One morning Karlsefni saw the natives in their skin boats row- 

 ing toward his house, from the south, past a promontory. It is 

 not difficult to find the only promontory past which canoes could 

 have come from the south between the mouth of the river and 

 Watertown, the head of navigation. Here, then, Leif Erikson and 

 Thorfinn Karlsefni should have built their houses, if this history 

 be true, because this place corresponds with the description of 

 Vinland, and also because Ave can find no o\\\vy j)hic(:' on the coast 

 like it. 



Having found what appears to be the site of Thorfinn Karl- 

 sefni's houses, it is well to inquire next what the characteristic 

 features of the Norse houses of the Saga-time were, and what traces 

 one might hope to find after nearly nine hundred years. 



Icelandic homesteads of that period usually consisted of a main 

 house, composed of three or four apartments and one or two out- 

 houses, built on the surface of the ground. 



The walls were one and a half metres thick, and from one to 

 one and a half metres high, built of alternate layers of turf and 

 stones on the inside and on the (uitside, the space between being 



* United States Coast anrl Geodetic Survey Chart, No. 1.*!. Cuttyhunk to Block Island. 



f Icelandic- Kntrlisli Dictionaiv. !{. ("Icashy. Knlarjicd and coiiiplctcil hy (Jiidlirand 

 Viirfiissoii. 



