NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 49 



Harbor before passing on to Plymouth. Charles River impressed 

 him. for he called it " very broad," named it ineffectually the River 

 du Guast and speculated as to whether it rose toward the " Iroquois," 

 but with all his eagerness as an observer and pains as a recorder he 

 has left us no sort of indication of the existence of any Back Bay. 

 What then could there have been for Verrazano in 1523, much less for 

 Thorfinn five hundred years earlier, in view of the fact that this part 

 of the coast has been sinking for many centuries ? 



The unknown graves of Thorbrand and Thorvald, abandoned in 

 a wild land, must always be themes of poetic interest " the graves 

 that the thicket covers, the graves that the rain bedews." Miss 

 Horsford * hoped she had found the former, and if this indeed were 

 only so! 



A seaboard point near Ipswich has some stonework locally at- 

 tributed to Norseman as Dr. Fewkes informs me. 



A more positive claim has been put forward by a New Hampshire 

 judge in the latter case, in the Boston Journal, quoted by the Phila- 

 delphia Times of July 27, 1902, as follows : 



A certain field on the narrow marsh and beach on the main road up town 

 [Hampton] contains the rock on which are cut the three crosses designating 

 the grave where was buried Thorvald Ericsson 1004. The rock is a large 

 granite stone lying in the earth, its face near the top of the ground with the 

 crosses cut thereon and other marks cut by the hand of man with a stone 

 chisel and not by any owner. That field came into possession of the author's 

 ancestors 250 years ago. 



Even so, there are 650 earlier years to be accounted for, years of 

 absolute Indian dominance ; and who so likely as an Indian to use a 

 stone tool in such graving ? The cross, too, has been a favorite symbol 

 of all primitive religions from time immemorial. But, if we must give 

 it a Christian significance, how many different kinds of Latin Cath- 

 olics ranged this shore before and after the very numerous early six- 

 teenth century Basque, and Breton fishermen ! There were the expe- 

 ditions of Gomez, Fagundes, and Verrazano, the Spanish searchers 

 after the lost De Soto, the colonizing De Monts and Champlain, 

 Jesuit priests with their dusky flocks raiding or exploring, adventur- 

 ous noblemen lapsing out of French civilization after the fashion of 

 the Baron of Castine ! The list might be increased and the marking 

 of a cross would be almost automatic on the part of any of these 

 gentry. So the judge's assurance, giving it full face value, does not 

 seem to take us very far toward certainty about the interment of 

 Thorvald son of Eric so manv centuries before. 



1 Cornelia Horsford: The Graves of the Norsemen, pp. 20, 40. (Bound with 

 Leif's House in Vinland.) 



