294 HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 



Later explorations, however, sliew that the sites of early colonisation 

 had been more to t£e west, within Davis Strait ; and there at length, 

 in 1824, and subsequent years, well defined runic inscriptions and 

 sepulchral records in the old Norse, or Icelandic language, have been 

 brought to light ; and are now for the most part deposited in the 

 Christiansborg Palace at Copenhagen. 



The result of such discoveries not unnaturally led to an eager desire 

 to recover, if possible, similar traces of the early Norse Voyagers' 

 visits to Vinland and other real or imaginary sites on the main- 

 land of the American continent. In this there was nothing impro- 

 bable ; and should a runic inscription, analogous to those already 

 brought to light at Kingiktorsoak, Igalikko, and other Greenland 

 sites, reward the zealous researches of New England antiquaries, it 

 would only confirm allusions to ante-Columbian voyages to the 

 continent, already generally accepted as resting on good historical 

 evidence. The search, however, has hitherto been attended with very 

 ambiguous success, as shown in the well-known history of the Assonet 

 or Dighton Rock inscription. Assuming that the voyages of Leif 

 Ericson, Thorfinn Karlsefne, and other old Norse explorers, are 

 authentic and indisputable, their visits to the American mainland 

 were of no permanent character ; and it may serve to illustrate the 

 probabilities in favour of the recovery of any memorials of ante- 

 Columbian voyagers, if we review such traces as are still discoverable, 

 apart from direct written and historical evidence, of the actual presence 

 of European settlers on the Continent of iVmerica, in the sixteenth, 

 and even in the seventeenth century. 



Among the remains of the ancient Norse colonists of Greenland, 

 architectural memorials of a substantial character attest their perpe- 

 tuation of European arts in their arctic settlements. The ruins of 

 more than one ancient Christian edifice still mark the sites consecrated 

 to religious services by the Norsemen who, while still pagans, sought 

 a home in that strange region of the icy north. One of these primi- 

 tive ecclesiastical ruins is a plain but tastefully constructed church 

 of squared hewn stone, at Kakortok, in the district of Brattahlid. 

 Though unroofed, the walls are nearly entire ; and numerous objects 

 of early European art, including fragments of church bells found 

 in the same vicinity, confirm the evidence of the civilisation estab- 

 lished and cultivated there by early colonists. Only a few miles 

 distant from this ruined church the Igalikko runic inscription wa 



