Norsemen’s route: from Greenland to Wineland. 167 
however, that also the regions farthest out along the sea-coast are as a 
rule woodless, not alone by the Strait of Belle Isle but also further west 
on the southern coast of Labrador. 
We now come to the next name in the saga which should be geo- 
graphically decided. It is Furdustrands, the remarkably long shores 
where there was sand, and the coasting of which took a long time. With 
these definitions the statement about sand must be regarded in conjunc- 
tion with the shores of sand-free gneiss and granite rocks which the 
Norsemen were accustomed incessantly to travel, partly at home in 
Greenland and partly along the north-eastern fjord-coast of Labrador 
where they had just come from. The statement bears witness to their 
having come to a long tract of coast, which in its spontaneous character 
deviated from the typical northern fjord-coast?. 
I cannot see otherwise than that the name as well as the added 
descriptive words agree excellently with Labrador’s south coast from 
the Strait of Belle Isle towards the south-west, past the island Anticosti, 
and far into the estuary of the St. Lawrence river. 
It is a long, monotonous stretch of coast enticing to none — not 
even to an easily contented Norseman — and is as good as uninhabited 
to this very day. In its origin it must be characterised as a low, formerly 
ice-covered, granite coast without fjords, but with a belt of skerries. 
This belt, however, is only strongly pronounced in the regions near Cape 
Whittle (about 60° N. lat.) and eastwards. There are not so many islands 
and rocks to the west of Cape Whittle, but on the other hand another 
circumstance becomes more prominent and characterizes the coast. It 
is this, that the many streams which have their source in Labrador’s 
swampy and lake-abounding plateau and make for the coast in imma- 
ture, rapid and generally parallel channels, have deposited the sand at 
their mouths, and have sometimes changed the coast to a sand coast 
over extensive stretches. 
As the stretches of coast are poor in the way of harbours, and as 
its interior is of no value to colonists, very little attention has been paid 
to Labrador’s south coast, and our knowledge of it, beyond the leading 
features, is in reality slight. The sandy stretches have, however, attracted 
attention, as several of them are so rich in magnetic-iron that there has 
been thought of turning them technically to account?. 
1 The difference is not exclusively a matter of scenery. Those who have tra- 
velled in an “Umiak” or in a wooden boat, both along Greenland’s usual 
gneiss-coasts and along the southern coast of the Vaigat, where on account 
of the basalt territory sand coasts are found, have got the impression that 
for coasting — for navigation and for landing — a fjord coast and a coast with 
sandy stretches, whether a purely sand coast or one with sandy shores here 
and there, present very varied conditions. 
2 Gro. С. MACKENSIE Sables ferrugineux magnétiques de Natashkwan; Ministère 
de Mines de Canada No 149 [Ottawa 1913]. Cf. Perermann’s Mitteilungen 
1868 р. 188, reported by W. Wacner from 6ter Jahresbericht des Vereins von 
Freunden der Erdkunde zu Leipzig 1866. 
LVI. 12 
