890.] CHRONOLOGICAL HLSTORY. i) 



occasion of the apparent inconsistency. Turner, in 

 his " History of the Anglo-Saxons," gives a copy in 

 the original language of this part of Alfred's Orosius, 

 taken from the principal manuscript preserved in the 

 Cotton Library. In reference to this passage, where 

 the remarkable exploit of Ohthere is recorded, he ob- 

 serves, that the Saxon words of tliis sentence haAe 

 perplexed the translators. He has ventured to give 

 it Si/me meaning, by supposing, that si/xa is an er- 

 ror in the manuscript, and should be / .va ; by 

 which alteration the passage reads, " On his own 

 " land are the best whales hunted ; they are 48 ells 

 " long, and the largest 50 ells. There, he said, 

 " that of (fijcca) some fish, he slew sixty in two 

 " days *." Thus, the whale here referred to, might, 



* The words of the original are, " Ac on his agnum lande 

 " is se bets'ta hwoel huntath tha booth eahta and feowertiges 

 " elna lange, tha ma?stan fiftiges ehia lange, thai'a he saede 

 " thaet he syxa (or fyxa) sum of sloge syxtig on twani dag- 

 " num." Turner's Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii. p. 292. note. 



The Honourable Daines Barrington, in the account of 

 Ohthere's Voyage, published in his " Miscellanies," translates 

 the passage, containing his exploit in the whale-fisherj^, in the 

 words, " That he had killed some six ; and sixty in two days ;" 

 but, conscious of the unintelligibleness of the sentence, he ob- 

 serves in a note, that " Syxa," he conceives, " should be a se- 

 " cond time repeated here, instead of syxtig or sixty ; it would 

 " then only be asserted, that six had been taken in two daySj 

 " which is much more probable than sixty." (p. 462.) 



