30 Singing Valleys 



surface of the ground and about fifteen hundred feet long, in 

 the form of a writhing serpent with an egg in its mouth. Can 

 this be Kukulkan? 



There is not one of the ancient mounds or cliff dwellings, 

 whether in the southwest, south or midwest, that has not 

 given up to the archaeologists remnants of maize. There is a 

 wide difference in the size and type of the maize-cobs; many 

 of those from the caves and ruins of Nevada and Arizona are 

 almost dwarf, not more than an inch in diameter and about 

 four inches long, evidences of culture in desert country and 

 with no, or very primitive, system of irrigation. The cobs dis- 

 covered in Cherokee and Iroquois villages are twice that size. 

 There is little to choose between them and the corn grown by 

 American farmers of fifty years ago. 



In the face of these facts, can we dismiss as pure myth the 

 Saga of Eric the Red, "writ by hand by Hank Erlendson" 

 somewhere between 1305 and 1338 telling of the discovery of 

 Vinland, and its "self-sown wheat fields"? 



Hank Erlendson proclaimed himself a historian, not a teller 

 of fanciful tales spun out of his own imagination in the long 

 Icelandic winter nights. Doubtless he believed firmly in his 

 heroes Eric the Red, Thorfinn and Leif, "Eric's son/' and in 

 Lief s voyage westward in the year 986, in the course of which 

 he came to Vinland. The wonders of this new land, set down 

 by Hank, were not only the plentiful wild grapes, but the 

 fields of waving grain which seemed to the discoverers to have 

 sown themselves. 



Leif s voyage into the setting sun could only have brought 

 him to the shore of Greenland, or to some point on the coast 

 of North America. Neither Greenland nor our Atlantic sea- 

 board knows any wild wheat, rye, oats or barley. These grains 

 were brought to the new world from Europe. Were the self- 

 sown wheat fields which amazed these Icelanders fields of 

 maize? Had the creation of the Maya traveled so far? 



Accepting the theory that the fields were maize, which does 

 not flourish north of Nova Scotia, certain historians have lo- 

 cated Vinland as the country around Massachusetts Bay. The 



