NO. 12 THE WINELAND VOYAGES — SWANTON 45 



A whale of good size furnishes them with food (F). 



"The cattle were turned out upon the land and the males soon became 



very restless and vicious; they had brought a bull with them" (F). 

 Wood was hewed into timbers and "placed upon a cliff to dry" (F). 

 "They gathered somewhat of all of the valuable products of the land, 



grapes, and all kinds of game and fish, and other good things" (F). 

 Skrellings come from woods, are frightened by a bull, and come with 



their packs to the house. They trade "gray furs, sables, and all 



kinds of peltries" for milk. They want to obtain weapons but this 



is forbidden (F). 

 Karlsefni has a palisade constructed about the house (F). 

 Karlsefni arranges a battle between the forest and the lake (F). 

 Return to Greenland with "vines, and grapes and peltries" (F). 

 A similar load brought back next year by Freydis (F). 



Although written in a skeptical spirit, the treatment by J. P. 

 McLean (1892, pp. 38-39) of early attempts to locate points in the 

 Western World touched by the Norse makes a good introduction to 

 this subject: 



Torfaeus who awakened interest in the subject in 1705, was content to place 

 the scene in America, without even attempting to name the localities. In 1755, 

 Paul Henri Mallet, in his "Histoire de Dannemarc", locates the scene in 

 Labrador and Newfoundland. Robertson, in 1778, in his "History of America", 

 although with misgivings, thinks "that the situation of Newfoundland corre- 

 sponds best with that of the country discovered by the Norwegians." M. C. 

 Sprengel (1782), in his "Geschichte der Entdeck Ungen", thinks they went as 

 far south as Carolina. In 1793, Muuoz, in his "Historia del Nuevo Mundo", 

 puts Vinland in Greenland. Barrow, in his "Voyages to the Arctic Regions" 

 (1818), places Vinland in Labrador or Newfoundland. Hugh Murray, in his 

 "Discoveries and Travels in North America" (1829), doubts the assigning of 

 Vinland to America. Henry Wheaton (1831), in his "History of the North- 

 men", thought Vinland should be looked for in New England. Bancroft, the 

 most eminent of American Historians, in the original third edition (1840) of 

 his history, says "Scandinavians may have reached the shores of Labrador ; the 

 soil of the United States has not one vestige of their presence." Wilson (1862), 

 in his "Prehistoric Man," declares that "Markland, ... so far as the name or 

 description can guide us, might be anywhere on the American coast," and that 

 Nantucket is referred to is assumed, because they spoke of the dew upon the 

 grass, because it tasted sweet. Foster, in his "Prehistoric Races of the United 

 States" (1873), abruptly dismisses the subject, speaking of it as conjecture and 

 no memorials having been left behind. Nadaillic (1883) speaks of the Norse 

 discovery as "legends in which a little truth is mixed with much fiction." Weise, 

 in his "Discoveries of America" (1884), believes the sea-rovers did not even 

 pass Davis' Straits. 



Attempts at identification by later writers are as follows : 



