﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I35 



century, and perhaps even in 1500; but this leaves a margin of five 

 centuries for its advent. Even if it were plentiful in 1000 a little 

 beyond the Allegheny Mountains, it might not have crossed them. 

 We do not know how fast it was carried, nor what conditions favored 

 and what opposed it. 



The wild rice naturally grows in wet " hollows," a very significant 

 word in the saga. There are square miles of it along almost every one 

 of the Maryland rivers. In the northwest it is equally plentiful and 

 put to better use. Indian wars have been waged for the best gather- 

 ing grounds. Many thousands of Indians depend in some degree on 

 it for subsistence. The tending and gathering of it runs close to 

 agriculture, so elaborate a system has developed — very fully set forth 

 in the memoir of Dr. Jenks. 1 



In its later stages it does not greatly resemble wheat, but when 

 young there is a decided resemblance to the ordinary unbotanic eye, 

 though its tint is softer and more luxuriant, making its great low 

 fields a conspicuous feature of our spring landscapes. There is 

 plenty of it in Texas, and thence all the way north as far as the low 

 sandy typically American coast line extends ; also farther north, 

 where proper surface conditions obtain, even to a high latitude. 

 It is equally at home, equally abundant, in Maryland and Manitoba. 

 In " The Backwoods of Canada " Mrs. Traill reports " When seen 

 from a distance they (the wild rice beds) appear like low green islands 

 on the lakes." But they do not need continually even partial submer- 

 gence, being only a little more nearly aquatic than cultivated rice, 

 which must have the water let in now and then. I have tramped 

 often about and upon the wild rice roots, after the birds that fatten 

 almost absurdly on this grain, which is " like rye " as to height and 

 some other characteristics in full plant-growth as Cartier says. 



Climate and other conditions exclude perhaps all the territory north 

 of Cape Ann, but hardly any place below it, near the coast. We must 

 look next to the requirements of Hop's topography as set forth in the 

 saga. 



The general meaning of the word is a loch or small bay. The 

 map of Iceland 2 shows the particular Hop which Thorfinn most likely 

 had in mind and thus illustrates the description. It is a lake not 

 very far from his home, connected by a strait to the broad bay Huna- 



] A. E. Jenks: The Wild Rice Gatherers of the Upper Lakes. Nineteenth 

 Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., part 2, p. 1013 et seq. 



2 W. G. Collingwood and J. Stefansson : A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads 

 of Iceland. But this does not show the sea connection made plain by larger 

 maps. 



