﻿IIO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



no opposing names that should carry equal weight. Also, the facts 

 uphold them. 



The words of the saga from their third start are : " When two 

 doegr had elapsed they descried land." Then they must have been 

 without sight of it, at least ahead. Presumably, having rounded 

 Biarney, they kept along, nearly parallel to the lower face of New- 

 foundland, in " the sea flowing in between Wineland and Markland," 

 which we know as the Strait of Cabot. They may even have gone 

 farther, before turning to the opposite northern promontory of 

 Wineland (now Cape Breton Island west of the Bras d'Or inland sea), 

 for we know that Thorhall, an experienced explorer, afterward loudly 

 complained that they had neglected this better course to Wineland, 

 and insisted on going back to try it ; and this theory of his, with 

 other expressions like sailing " around Keelness," imply some notion 

 of the great Gulf beyond the long promontory's tip. The Saga of 

 Thorfinn Karlsefni does not specify the time consumed before making 

 the new landfall and is not so clear in its indication of crossing the 

 intervening water. Furthermore, it mentions sailing south along the 

 land ; but we must not be too literal about directions. We find 

 Champlain saying south, when he clearly means southeast, and repeat- 

 edly parting company with the map in such details, though he had a 

 compass to guide him and was unusually careful. With Thorfinn it 

 was guess-work and sun-piloting or star-piloting ; and they have many 

 fogs in those regions. The two parallel versions agree substantially, 

 here as elsewhere, and help out each other's details; but that of 

 Eric the Red is, I think, a little the clearer. 



Whether they used up 48 hours or not in the passage, they had to 

 " beat back " a rather long way into the wind, or we should hardly 

 have heard of the disadvantage; so they must have been well on 

 toward the tip of Keelness before turning to tack eastward through 

 the strait, with, of course, the land on their right. This shore was 

 that on which they are said to have found the keel of a ship, washed 

 down presumably by the Labrador current, perhaps a relic of Eric's 

 broken fleet. Those investigators who have tried to pick out a par- 

 ticular point as Keelness are clearly wrong ; for Stefansson's equiva- 

 lent " promontorium Winelandium " is a great though upwardly 

 tapering body of land, and the suffix " ness " is to be understood, as in 

 Snaefelsness and generally in Iceland, to include the whole jutting 

 area of western Cape Breton Island. We have indeed a similar use of 

 " Neck " along Chesapeake Bay, for it means in common parlance not 

 the connecting isthmus nor any spot or tooth of land, but always the 



