﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I33 



wheat, or " strand oats ") has had many names. It is a botanical 

 curiosity in northern New England and the Maritime Provinces ; 

 rather plentiful along the sea shore of Labrador ; and perhaps even 

 yet used a little in Iceland. But why should these northern people 

 announce as a novelty and a godsend what they already had at home? 

 Besides, it will not go with the grapes at all. And to make Labrador 

 do duty for Wineland as well as Helluland and Markland is really 

 asking too much of a poor and distressful region. 



Maize, or our Indian corn, originated — according to Dr. Harsh - 

 berger's very careful and valuable investigations 3 — in the uplands of 

 central Mexico ; whence it has been carried north and south a long 

 way, everywhere calling for the care of man. Dr. Rafn supposed that 

 it might have been found wild in Rhode Island, but that is out of the 

 question. Leon, Mexico, would be the nearest possible point. A 

 grain accidentally dropped by us may spring up, and if it be early in 

 the season, may produce grain, but that, if it falls again, will die dur- 

 ing the winter. This is true from Maryland northward, at the least ; 

 for Zea mays is an upland tropical exotic and helpless among us while 

 untended. 



It may have reached and passed the Bay of Fundy, for Lescarbot 2 

 speaks of agriculture as formerly practised by the Micmac. It was 

 doubtless receding when found by Champlain 3 at Saco in 1605, for 

 on the Kennebec the Indians had told him of its cultivation along that 

 part of the coast a little earlier. There is the same story to tell 

 of Hochelaga 4 (Montreal), where Cartier found it plentifully in 

 1535, yet whence it was driven, before the next European visit, with 

 its Huron planters. The predatory habits of idler savages counted 

 for more than the rigor of the climate in fixing boundaries. Yet there 

 is no doubt that it needs a hot and rather long summer to really 

 thrive and yield well. 



One would hardly expect it to be called " wheat," but men often 

 name by analogy, not by supposed identity; as in the familiar in- 

 stances of the tulip-tree " poplar," our robin, which is a migratory 

 thrush, the ruffed grouse, which is a partridge in some States and a 

 pheasant in others, and the " bobwhite," which is called a quail wher- 



1 J. W. Harshberger : Maize. A Botanical and Economical Study. University 

 of Pennsylvania Publications, 1893. 



2 Nova Francia : Erondelle's transl. 



3 Voyages of Champlain, Orig. Narr. of Early Amer. Hist., p. 60. 



4 He had previously seen the grain, as food, near the mouth of the St. Law- 

 rence and called it "millet as large as peas." A little earlier he had met the 

 wild rice on the Southern Shore of the Gulf, noting that it was 'like rye." 



