NO. 12 THE WINELAND VOYAGES — SWANTON 59 



had taken no thought for this during the summer. The fishing began to fail 

 and they began to fall short of food. 



Thorhall the Huntsman exerts his pagan charms and a whale is 

 found, but the colonists are made sick by eating its flesh, they throw 

 all away into the sea, and appeal to God, whereupon : 



The weather then improved, and they could now row out to fish, and thence- 

 forward they had no lack of provisions, for they could hunt game on the land, 

 gather eggs on the island, and catch fish from the sea. 



Bird islands are so common in the St. Lawrence region that it 

 would be impossible to find the one here described even though the 

 identity of Streamfirth is correctly established. One of the narratives, 

 instead of speaking of birds, mentions specifically eider ducks. 

 Steensby seeks to identify the bird island with Hare Island which lies 

 just above the mouth of the Saguenay but Dr. Lewis tells me that 

 it is too large to be a favorite resort of nesting birds. 



While the estuary of the St. Lawrence corresponds very satisfac- 

 torily with the Streamfirth of the narratives, we must assume that, if 

 the Norse were there, they did not carry their explorations far enough 

 toward the head of the Gulf to discover that a mighty river poured 

 into it. Some question may be raised as to the possibility of carrying 

 cattle over the winter in that section, but this part of the Gulf region 

 certainly has a more favorable climate than is commonly supposed. 

 The Canadian zone of vegetation succeeds the Hudsonian here and 

 extends up along the coast to Cape Whittle, while the southern forest 

 area passes beyond Pte. des Monts (Atlas of Canada, 191 5, pp. 17, 

 18). The relative mildness of the Mingan section, for instance, is 

 thus described by Stearns (1884, pp. 256-258) : 



On the mainland, or Mingan proper, contrary to what might be expected 

 from the appearance of the island opposite, an entirely different formation 

 exists. Nowhere along the coast, for a considerable distance at least, does a rock 

 of any size appear, either in place or loose as bowlder, stone, or pebble. Strange 

 to say, as will be shown further on, the rocky precipices, or rather steps of the 

 rapids in Mingan river, some three miles from its mouth, seem to be the first 

 indications of rock formation in this locality, while these are simply the eastern 

 and southeastern boundary of a tremendous mass of high rocky ground that 

 extends inland for miles, perhaps thousands of miles. 



The coast and its beach, as the whole country to the rocks inland, is every- 

 where low and sandy. On the beach itself the sand is dense and very fine. 

 Farther in shore there is a very scant, occasional streak of low vegetation 

 where are pastured a few heads of cattle and goats that graze on the lawns, 

 here and there, where they can find food. A few acres of good grass are fenced 

 in, and this supplies an excellent feed for the animals during the winter, which 

 here is neither so long nor so severe as is usually the case farther north, at 



