﻿Il8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



" Hole-in-the-wall," the seated " Bishop," now losing his outline, and 

 the progressively defaced but still recognizable " Southern Cross " — 

 no one who has ever crossed in slightly roughened weather the dis- 

 turbing inflow of the western strait, or stood on Todd's Point in East- 

 port, the most easterly bit of land of the United States, and tossed 

 pebbles into the hurry of the twenty-five feet of tide that chafes the 

 rocky little promontory — will be likely to question Osgood's descrip- 

 tion, or the propriety of the names Norsemen-given. Thus Dr. 

 Fewkes 1 reports " sometimes the moving water is irresistible, carry- 

 ing everything along with it under the brow of the high land." 



It is not well to be blindly confident in such matters, and any 

 further light on the subject will be most welcome ; but with the infor- 

 mation at hand, after much endeavor, this identification seems to me 

 most likely. The Flateybook's account is badly blurred in the tell- 

 ing, and too confusingly blends the characteristics of Hop and 

 Straumfiord (without mentioning the former) to be very helpful ; but 

 even in it we have the outlying island, which must have especially 

 impressed all the party; and the description of the wide shallows 

 left by the ebbing tide belongs peculiarly to the lateral branches and 

 upper arms of the Bay of Fundy. It could not well be otherwise, 

 with sixty-feet daily change of level at Monkton, and thirty-two feet 

 even at the reversing falls of St. John. The Bay of Fundy is simply 

 unique in these respects on our coast and Straumey and Straumfiord 

 can belong nowhere else (see note 10, p. 178). 



Nearly all the statements of the trustworthy and little defaced 

 narrative of the two parallel sagas are exactly borne out by present 

 facts. They came to " a fiord-cut shore " of mountain valleys filled 

 with water, forming bays, and these in due succession are there still. 

 They sailed into one of these bays or fiords, a statement twice made, 

 curiously marking as already stated where a later hand has interpo- 

 lated the apocryphal episode of the Gaelic runners Haki and Haekia. 

 " They sailed through the firth " to reach this bay, which was included 

 under the same name, for we read later that " in the spring they went 

 into Straumfiord and obtained provisions from both regions." Of 

 course the same passage has to be made still, and of course the strait 

 and bay are connected ; though their union was no doubt more obvious 

 then, a good part of the narrow Campobello island and Lubec headland 

 being under water. These, with Eastport island and other neigh- 

 boring territory would appear as minor islets in a somewhat larger 



] J. W. Fewkes: A Zoological Reconnoissance in Grand Manan. American 

 Naturalist, May, 1890, p. 424. 



