﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 1 55 



and they were used by Eskimo near Godthaab in 1586. Davis 1 

 narrates : " They with slings threw stones very fiercely into the moon- 

 light and strake one of the men, then boatswain, that he overthrew." 

 Thorbrand may have been overthrown more fatally by one at Hop, for 

 a " flat stone " killed him. This, of course, might be a tomahawk ; 

 but, the " war-slings " are distinctly mentioned by the saga, leaving 

 no room for doubt. Thus far the eleventh century Skrellings and 

 sixteenth century Eskimo agree very well. 



But it appears that some of the northeastern Indians of the late 

 fifteenth century were slingers too. The map attributed to Sebastian 

 Cabot and now in the National Library at Paris is provided with notes 

 in Spanish and Latin, which Harrisse 2 attributes to Grajales, an early 

 Spanish editor. Note 8 is in both languages, and includes a list of 

 weapons used by the inhabitants of the Isle of St. John. Harrisse's 

 English translation is : " This land was discovered by John Cabot a 

 Venetian and Sebastian his son the year of the redemption of the 

 world 1494 on the 24th of July at the fifth hour of daybreak, which 

 land they called the first land seen and a large island opposite the same 

 St. John, because it was discovered on the solemn festival of St. 

 John. The inhabitants 3 of that country are dressed in the skins of 

 animals. They use in war bows, arrows, darts, lances, wooden clubs 

 and slings/' Note 17 declares that the map was delineated in 1544. 



Hakluyt appears to have known of an extract from a map which 

 was " hung up in the privy gallery at Whitehall. " His copy in Latin 

 repeats the words sagittis, hastis spiculis, clavis ligneris et fundis. 



A German work in Latin, brought to light by Dr. Major, copies 

 nineteen inscriptions from a map which the author had seen in 

 Oxford in 1556, containing the same entry. Its seventeenth note 

 avers that " Sebastian Cabot, Captain and Pilot, of his Sacred, etc., 

 Majesty put upon me the finishing hand in a plane figure in the year 

 1549." The map at Paris * was obtained from a Bavarian clergyman, 

 and its earlier history seems unknown. But it seems reasonably well 

 established that a map was made about the middle of the sixteenth 

 century by or under the direction of Sebastian Cabot which attributed 

 slings to the Indians of St. John Island on the American coast in 



1 Hakluyt's Principal Voyages, vol. 7, p. 400. Also Markham's Voyages, and 

 Works of John Davis. 



2 Trans. Royal Soc. Canada, 1898, p. 105. 



'Quoted also in Packard: The Coast of Labrador, and in several other 

 works before cited. 

 4 G. E. Weare : Cabot's Discovery of North America, vol. 1, p. 261. 



