﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I27 



such numbers in such a place. At the mouth of the Bay of Fundy on 

 one of the Tusket Islands Champlain in 1604 " found the shore 

 completely covered with sea wolves," his name for the queer creatures, 

 which still are fairly common in the region. It is not surprising that 

 Thorfinn should find a little below Grand Manan what the Frenchman 

 afterward found a little above. But this would be a much more 

 likely spectacle in the cold waters of the upper Maine coast than 

 farther southward. Any one of the jutting rock-islands or pro- 

 montories north of Casco Bay might probably answer. 



The three Skrellings were found before finding the seal as the party 

 came northward, so they must have been farther south. " Lying 

 asleep near the sea " gives the idea of a smooth beach, and would 

 belong rather to southern or middle Maine or some lower point, 

 though not inevitably. Their " food " was perhaps rather a relish, 

 for Strachey tells us : " Nottowene groweth as our bents do in 

 meadows, the seed of which is not unlike to rye though somewhat 

 smaller ; these they use for a dainty bread buttered with deer suet," 3 

 This may be the earliest record of buttered rice cakes. 



Their costume is more to the present purpose, buckskin jackets 

 being Indian attire wherever not discarded for coolness. Champlain 

 observed in this matter an interesting distinction between the regions 

 above and below Cape Ann — the former being chilled by the northern 

 current, the latter warmed by the Gulf Stream, so that the waters of 

 the two shores of the projecting land are still recognized by residents 

 as of different temperatures. Writing of Nauset and other more 

 southern points visited in 1605, 2 he says; " All these people from the 

 Island Cape (Cape Ann) wear neither robes nor furs except very 

 rarely, moreover their robes are made of grasses and hemp, scarcely 

 covering the body and coming down only to their thighs." Ordinarily, 

 he reports, they wore only " a small piece of leather, so likewise the 

 women, with whom it comes down a little lower behind than the men, 

 all the rest of the body being naked." The next year at Chatham 

 Harbor in this region " some five or six hundred savages " came to 

 see him, " all naked except " that " small piece of doe or sealskin. 

 The women are also naked. They wear their hair carefully combed 

 and twisted. Their bodies are well proportioned, both men and 

 women, and their skin olive-colored." He has already told of the 

 robes worn in July at Saco near the least chilly corner of Maine, but 



1 W. Strachey: The Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 118. 



2 Voyages of Champlain. Original Narratives of Early American History, 

 p. 73. 



