210 THE FLETCHER STONE — WEBSTER. 



of the cleanino- out with spikes and the painting's it is said to liave 

 received at the hands of eager photographers, it is still the same. 



The theory which ascribes these glyphs to the Northmen is 

 less improbable than this, and particularly tempting. Soon after 

 it was known beyond reasonable doubt that the Northmen dis- 

 covered America live centuries before Columbus, which may be 

 said to have been established by the Society of Northern Antiqua- 

 ries in 1837, this inscription was affirmed by many to be their 

 work. Mr. Henry Philips, in a paper read before the American 

 Philosophical Society in 1884, completed this Norse hypothesis 

 by giving a translation of the inscription, which he pronounced 

 to be genuine Runic. Mr. Philips made it — Harkusson men 

 vara, " Haka's son addressed the men." He found the name, or 

 one very like it, in the account of Thortinn Karlsefne's expedition 

 (1007), in which very expedition they came to a place where a 

 frith "penetrated far into the lavd. Of the inoutJi luaa an island 

 past which, ran strong cwr rents ; which was also the case farther 

 up the frith. Now Yarmouth Harbour answei"s in some degree 

 to this description : and if no serious objections could be made to 

 Mr. Philips' translation, one could hardly help accepting the 

 Norse hypothesis as something more, as fact ; and certainly this 

 would be an eminently satisfactory explanation. But unfortu- 

 nately most serious objections are taken to this translation — in- 

 deed I do not know if it is endorsed by any Norse scholars of 

 repute. On the contrary, Sir Daniel Wilson says of this inscrip- 

 tion — " it neither accords with the style or usual formulas of 

 Runic inscriptions, nor is it graven in any variation of the familiar 

 characters of the Scandinavian futhork." And if the translation 

 does not hold, the identification of Yarmouth as the place men- 

 tioned goes for nothing, for it re(|uires considerable straining, as 

 we shall see, to make Yarmouth Harbour agree with the descrip- 

 tion ; and there are scores of places both north and south of it 

 which would answer far better. 



Mr. Geo. S. Brown in his history of Yarmouth,* supporting Mr. 

 Philips' hypothesis, attempts to show in greater detail from the 

 narratives of the Northmen's voyages, the probability of their 



♦Yarmouth, N. S. A Se(]uel to Campbell's Hittory, Boston. Rand Avery Co , 1889, pp. 17-24. 



