﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 120, 



The choice of routes has always existed, and was promptly made 

 known to every explorer. Hudson seems to have cut across from the 

 Penobscot to Nantucket. Champlain tells us of the expedition in 

 1606 : " It was decided to continue the voyage along the coast," ' 

 but " it would have been much better to cross from where we were 

 directly to Mallebarre (Nauset), the route being already known, and 

 then use our time in exploring as far as the fortieth degree or farther 

 south." How they learned that route is not clear, for their previous 

 voyage to and from the same point had been strictly along shore or 

 from headland to headland. But they had at least the same means of 

 information as Thorfinn, and the course suggested by Champlain is 

 almost exactly one which we have conjectured for the earlier navi- 

 gator, though a change of angle would have taken him to Boston 

 instead, or even to Portsmouth. 



There is another consideration which perhaps has never before 

 been presented. The natives who fought with them at Hop did not 

 attack them at Straumfiord after their return. There is no indication 

 that they were followed at all. Doubtless they could not be, if they 

 sailed out of sight at the start, afterward passing only from one 

 headland to another. But if the voyage had been for a hundred miles 

 only, the savages would have found them out and tried to take 

 revenge — a matter of imperative duty and personal enjoyment for 

 most wild Indians. 



There is another clue. The saga, as already quoted, relates a 

 subsequent expedition of Thorfinn with one ship, around Cape Breton 

 Island to a river flowing from east to west, where Thorvald, the helms- 

 man was slain by a " one footer " or " Uniped." We are told " They 

 concluded that the mountains of Hop and those which they had now 

 found formed one chain (or were the same)," and this appeared to 

 be so, because they were about an equal distance removed from 

 Straumfiord in either direction. They intended to explore all the 

 mountains, those which were at Hop, and those which they discovered. 

 They sailed back and passed the third winter at Straumfiord." The 

 intention to " explore all the mountains " is not in the Saga of 

 Thorfinn Karlsefni, but in the parallel Saga of Eric the Red (A. M. 

 557) , as given by Mr. Reeves's notes, and the estimate of equal dis- 

 tance is in the former only. It sounds authentic, but merely as a sailor's 

 guess. 



It must mean sailing distance, for they were not given to guessing' 

 at overland air-lines, which they would never follow ; but measured 

 by " doegr " of water travel. Without knowing which river is meant, 



1 Voyages of Champlain, Orig. Narr. of Early Amer. Hist., p. 81. 



