﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK III 



entire mass which is nearly insulated. In this sense it is also an 

 accepted geographic term, to be found plentifully on Maryland maps. 1 

 Some of these " necks " are of considerable area. 



That this Keelness is in fact an island goes for nothing. Many 

 after their time were slow in finding it out, as in the more remarkable 

 case of the Strait of Belle Isle. Wytfliet's map of 1597 shows Cape 

 Breton Island as a solid horn, integral with the mainland of Nova 

 Scotia, and so, on a smaller scale, does the map attributed to Sebastian 

 Cabot; though they multiply outlying islands. Mercator, 1587, goes 

 to the other extreme, however, by setting it well out from shore with 

 the significant inscription " Drogio dit Cornu du Gallia." Thus some 

 geographers knew Cape Breton's insularity and some did not, after 

 a century's opportunity to ascertain. 



A different explanation of the name Keelness is offered by the 

 Flateybook Saga, namely, that it has the form of a ship's keel ; and this 

 records an observed resemblance as old as the fourteenth century. 

 A great part of the island is hollow now. When the lowlying south- 

 eastern side was under water, the resemblance of the remaining horn 

 on the western side to a keel would be more obvious. But since there 

 was a Kjalarness in Iceland, probably well known to some of these 

 explorers, we may safely assume a simple transfer of the name. The 

 saga laid stress on this northern horn of Wineland, for no navigator 

 who might follow could miss finding a feature so conspicuous. 



The course of the ships is explained by it at every turn, as though 

 it were a main pivot of proceedings in that quarter. It is on the 

 starboard in the saga as the ships go south along the coast; on the 

 larboard as Thorfinn long afterward reverses the course to pass round 

 it into the Gulf after the missing Thorhall ; he anchors on its western 

 side in a westward flowing river (the Margarie or the Mabou) and 

 passes northward along it in leaving that region. Each point is made 

 with precision almost as if dictating items for a map. The original 

 narrator evidently intended that there should be no misunderstanding 

 of this great peninsula; but every one is at the mercy of mankind 

 and the centuries. 



There is a further argument for Cape Breton Island as Keelness 

 in the corresponding position of the tip of the former and that of 

 Stefansson's Promontorium Winelandium as compared with the lati- 

 tude of Britain and Ireland. Also, the Stefansson map has a range 

 of elevations running up into it, quite inconsistent with Cape Cod, 



*For example Lake, Griffingand Stevenson. Atlas of Kent and Queen Anne 

 Counties, Maryland, p. 30 and elsewhere. 



