Norsemen’s route from Greenland to Wineland. 171 
a question of rivers such as we — at all events popularly — understand 
them. If later on, Jaques Cartier on his second journey realized all along 
that the Gulf of St. Lawrence led into a big river, it was not due to his 
own observations but to information given him by the Indians he had 
-taken with him to France on his first journey, and whom he then had 
on board. 
It is a well known fact in geography, and need not be specially 
pointed out, that both the St. Lawrence’s and the Saguenay’s estuaries 
have the character of fjords, that is to say they are submerged glacial 
valleys. It is beyond the Isle d’Orleans, towards Quebec, that the 
character of a fjord first ceases, and one gets the impression of a river. 
The Saguenay is considerably narrower than the St. Lawrence, but on 
account of its high, steep rocks of granite and syenite it has as far as 
Chicoutimi a character similar to the narrow West Norwegian fjords. 
“The Saguenay for seventy miles is a cleft filled with deep water 
between gneiss and granite walls.” ! The St. Lawrence, with its great 
breadth, naturally has not such an inclosed character. The shores them- 
selves are of a somewhat different character, as the southern shore is 
flat, whilst the northern shore is formed of 500—700 m. high mountains, 
with the waters rushing down their flanks of laurential gneiss, and not 
unfrequently forming waterfalls. 
The fjord-character, however, goes further than the concernment of 
the terrain of the shores. The hydrographic conditions also show some- 
thing corresponding. The depth, the salinity, and the tides all remind 
one of a fjord or an arm of the sea. The tidal movement in and out of 
the St. Lawrence estuary prevents any possibility of an impression that 
the estuary forms an outlet to a big river. Even near Quebec the tidal- 
difference is 3,35 m, and it can rise to 5,6m. In any case the tidal-move- 
ment is traced to the Three Rivers between Quebec and Montreal. Only 
above the Isle d’Orleans does the water’s freshwater character predo- 
minate. Below the island the water begins to become salt, and near 
Kamouraska, which lies only 64 km below Quebec and a good way above 
the mouth of the Saguenay, we have pure sea-water, so that even in 
the time of the French, salt-works were here, where salt was made by 
evaporation ?. 
Consequently there can never be any question of the Norsemen 
having been able to get the impression that there was a question of rivers 
when they came to the mouths of the Saguenay and the St. Lawrence, 
even if they went a good way up these waters. They necessarily were 
obliged to class these indentations with the type of fjord which they 
already knew especially from Norway and from Greenland. Moreover 
1 C.P. Lucas, A Historical Geography of the British Colonies; Vol. V; Canada 
[Oxford 1911] р. 104—5. 
2 cf. Vivien de Saint Martin and Г. RoussELet, Nouveau Dictionnaire de 
Géographie Universelle; tome 4; [Paris 1890] the article “Quebec” p. 525 f. 
