4 LABRADOR 



of open sea without compass or astrolabe. They went 

 everywhere. 1 In 1824 there were found on an island in 

 Baffin Bay, in a region supposed to have been unvisited 

 by man before the modern age of Arctic exploration, a 

 stone inscription: "Erling Sighvatson and Bjarni Thor- 

 harson and Eindrid Oddson raised these marks and cleared 

 ground on Saturday before Ascension week, 1135." There 

 is a strong probability that the Northmen made voyages 

 to the coast of America oftener than we imagine. Timber 

 was scarce in Greenland ; what more likely than that they 

 should have cut their timber on the shores of Newfound- 

 land or in places like Hamilton Inlet on the Labrador coast, 

 where there is still timber of the finest sort ? 



The voyages of the Northmen, however, were quite 

 barren of results of either historical or geographical im- 

 portance. The very tradition of Vinland seems to have 

 died out in Europe. There are, indeed, accounts of voy- 

 ages made to the coast of America in the fourteenth and 

 fifteenth centuries; but these are almost wholly, if not 

 entirely, mythical. Antonio Zeno, a Venetian gentle- 

 man, writing to his brother Carlo about 1400, tells of some 

 fishermen who had been blown out to sea twenty-six 

 years before, and had been thrown up on a strange coast, 

 where they were well received by the people. The land 

 was an island with a high mountain whence flowed four 

 rivers. There was a populous city surrounded by walls; 

 and the king had Latin books in his library which nobody 

 could read. All kinds of metals abounded, and especially 



1 A stone bearing a Runic inscription and the date 1362, has been 

 found in the heart of North America, at Kensington, Minnesota; but 

 very strong doubts have been cast on its genuineness. 



