﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK II9 



bay than now remains, then opening rather freely to the strait. With 

 regard to the precise farther extension of Straumfiord, as they under- 

 stood it, we need not concern ourselves ; and probably they did not 

 define this, any more than the average man of lower Manhattan who 

 mentions and sees " the North River " has any clear idea whether its 

 utmost north is in the Adirondacks, Vermont, or Canada. They 

 cared mainly, though not quite wholly, for what directly affected their 

 welfare. The eggs of the island, ducks' eggs according to the saga 

 of Eric, birds' eggs according to that of Thorfinn Karlsefni, which 

 is a little the better in this instance, are a case in point. They were 

 probably gulls' eggs, cormorants' eggs, and those of the eider-duck, 

 black duck, and other water fowl. The numerous gulls still lay some 

 eggs in the most nearly inaccessible niches of the cliffs near South 

 Head. Above it there is a fine level table land, which may well have 

 been fully occupied by nesting sea-fowl in the times before the 

 advent of men (and boys), aided in destruction, as I am told, by a 

 great recent multiplication of hungry foxes. It is not surprising that 

 most of the egg-laying is now done on the outlying islets, where per- 

 secution is less constant. 



Denys, 1 about 1645, after defining Passamaquoddy Bay as " a cove 

 of great circuit," says " Opposite the last cove and some distance out 

 at sea, occur some islands, the largest of which is called the island of 

 Menane. It can be seen from afar as one comes from the sea .... 

 On all these islands .... there is a great number of all kinds of 

 birds which go there in the spring to produce their young." 



It was the proper locality for such finds. Champlain tells us of 

 filling a cask with cormorant eggs on Hope Island, and of an almost 

 unbelievable number of birds, including ducks of three different 

 kinds, on the Tusket Islands, all about the mouth of Fundy Bay. Also 

 a little later, when the eggs had become young birds, he collected 

 many of the latter on the Wolves, only a short distance up Fundy 

 Bay from Grand Manan. It is not certain that he landed on the latter, 

 though he sailed near it three times at least and anchored once 

 in Seal Cove, a harbor of its more accessible side, with almost a 

 shipwreck. 



Dr. Nansen doubts the plentiful nesting of birds, thinks them a 

 Norwegian reminiscence, and in particular excludes gulls and auks. 

 But a local ornithologist of North Head, Grand Manan, who is as well 

 informed on the subject as anybody in the world, gives me by letter 



*N. Denys: Description of the Coast of North America. Ganong's transl., 

 pp. no, III. 



