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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing these conditions, and as he learns 

 it is not to be doubted that " evil " 

 will lessen. If we affirm acquisition 

 of knowledge by man, we must postu- 

 late a precedent or " necessary " con- 

 dition of ignorance. Hence it may be 

 truthfully said that evil is a necessary 

 correlative, and in a manner the neces- 

 sary condition of good; and also, I 

 think, that a broad view of the world- 

 wide struggle for life shows not an ab- 

 sence of moral elements, but rather that 

 the ethical is inherent in the very na- 

 ture of animate things. 



We may not all share Mr. Fiske's 

 exuberant optimism, and many can not 

 accept his teleological implications, but 

 of the ultimate triumph of good over 

 evil, of knowledge over ignorance, we 

 may not doubt. Frank M. Loomis, 

 Buffalo, November 10, 1899. 



THE LOCATION OF VINLAND. 



Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



SiK: I beg to take exception to the 

 exploded Boston theory again revived 

 by Miss Cornelia Horsford in the last 

 number of your valuable magazine. It 

 is astonishing to notice how little Prof. 

 G. Storm's excellent prize essay and Mr. 

 Reeve's careful edition of the text of 

 sagas seem to have availed against the 

 misplaced patriotism that persists in 

 carrying those Norse explorers down to 

 New England in the face of the numer- 

 ous difficulties with which this feat is 

 associated. If I am not mistaken, not a 

 single historian or antiquarian of note 

 has taken Professor Horsford's extreme- 

 ly unscientific treatment of the sagas or 

 his Norse discoveries seriously, and the 

 sober verdict of Mr. Thorsteinn Erlings- 

 son and Dr. V. Gudmundsson on the 

 alleged Norse ruins seems to show that 

 Miss Cornelia Horsford has met with no 

 better success. To refute all the philo- 

 logical curiosities and illogical conclu- 

 sions drawn by Professor Horsford in 

 his ten treatises on the subject would, 

 however, require a book of at least five 

 hundred pages, and nobody seems to 

 think the question important enough to 

 warrant such an output. The fact that 

 Mr. A. H. Keane, in his recent work, 

 Man, Past and Present, takes it for 

 pranted that the Norsemen met with 

 I'skimos in New England in the year 

 1(X)0 seems to prove, however, that this 



persistence in defending a baseless sup- 

 position is not merely a matter of inno- 

 cent patriotism. Fortunately, the cur- 

 rent year, which marks the nine hun- 

 dredth anniversary of the discovery, will 

 be sure to see some valuable new trea- 

 tises on the subject, and those who are 

 sufficiently interested furthermore need 

 only consult the above-mentioned books 

 to discover how many serious objections 

 the New England theory really has to 

 contend with. Permit me to mention 

 one of them. Cape Cod has, it is true, 

 one singular feature that suggests the 

 Keel Cape of the best version of the Vin- 

 land manuscripts — viz., sandy shores. 

 As everybody can see for himself, how- 

 ever, by consulting Mr. Eeeve's book, 

 the explorers sailed south from Keel 

 Cape on the eastern shore till the coun- 

 try became indented with bays. At the 

 mouth of one of these they established 

 their first winter quarters (the so-called 

 ytreamfirth), and the next fall proceeded 

 still farther south for a considerable 

 time till they came to " Hop," the true 

 Wineland. The extraordinary ease with 

 which Professor Horsford, in his book 

 Landfall of Leif Ericson, undertakes to 

 chop up this version, in order to make 

 the explorers return to Boston from 

 Cape Cod instead of continuing on their 

 course, is something remarkable in the 

 annals of historical research. But even 

 then his theory fails utterly to satisfy 

 the critical reader. The trouble with 

 most of the writers on this subject, not 

 excluding a professional historian like 

 Prof. John Fiske, is that they have failed 

 to sift the material or see the force of 

 Professor Storm's criticism of the Flat 

 Island version. This being done, every- 

 thing falls into line for the Nova Scotia 

 theory, due consideration being given to 

 the fact that an oral tradition of at 

 least one hundred years intervened be- 

 tween the events narrated and the first 

 somewhat extended written record. 



While, therefore, owing to the last- 

 mentioned fact, it is not altogether im- 

 I)ossible that the Norsemen reached New 

 England, it should be distinctly under- 

 stood that such a conclusion can only 

 be drawn on archaeological lines, the 

 test of the sagas pointing clearly in the 

 opposite direction. 



JUUL DlESERtTD. 

 Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, 

 December 7, 1S99. 



