﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 1 23 



But at the best it would be a disappointing winter, without any store 

 of grain such as they might have had in a country where wild rice was 

 plentiful and without the wine which Thorhall angrily celebrates 

 between lamentation and satire. It is impossible not to sympathize 

 with his disillusion in the matter of this Wineland. We can readily 

 understand his disbelief that this could be the real region or even 

 the right course for reaching it. Thorfinn was right, and matters 

 would not have been mended by turning into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 as he afterwards found ; but it was all experimental at first, opinion 

 against opinion, the chief trouble being that Leif had given them a 

 standard which was true for a more southern part of the coast, but 

 very misleading and disappointing when they applied it to northeast- 

 ern Maine and the neighboring corner of New Brunswick. 



These occurrences bring out saliently the fact that they found no 

 "unsown wheat " nor grapevines at Straumfiord or on Straumey. 

 They do not profess to have done so. There is not the least entry 

 indicating either plant, or its grain or fruit, except the interpolated 

 story of Haki and Hsekia who ran " to the south," we do* not know 

 how far (but they were " fleeter than deer "), and brought back single 

 specimens only. If there be any truth in this episode, and if it belongs 

 to the narrative not of Leif but of Thorfinn, we must place it with the 

 explorations of that first summer or early autumn. Their bunch might 

 probably have been obtained from the Penobscot in the three half 

 days allowed them. Champlain found a few large grapes and grape- 

 vines on the lower Maine coast, but none anywhere above Portland 

 nor inland in Nova Scotia. According to Lescarbot, 1 the apothecary 

 of their expedition desired to transplant Cape Cod grape vines to the 

 lovely Annapolis valley of the latter province, which had none, though 

 one would expect them to spring up there spontaneously, if anywhere 

 in all that province. 



The general result of inquiries among Maine people is that wild 

 grapes of proper size and quality for table use or wine-making do 

 not ripen in that State, owing to the shortness of the summer and 

 the severity of the frosts, so as to benefit anybody appreciably except 

 the botanists. But if some far ranging runners brought even two 

 or three back to Thorfinn from the southward these might confirm 

 his resolution to seek in that direction a country where such things 

 abounded. When he had compromised with Thorhall and seen him 

 " prepare for his voyage below the island " — no doubt in one of the 

 southeastern harbors or among the outlying islets — Thorfinn must 

 have wished that he had kept on at first, like Leif, into warmer 



Lescarbot: Nova Francia. Erondelle's transl., pp. 101, 102. 



