HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 295 



found with its simple memorial of, parental affection : VIGDIS 

 M[AGNVS] D[OTTIR] HVILIR HER GLEDE GVTH SAL 

 HENAR, i.e., Vigdis, Magnus' daughter, rests here ; may God glad- 

 den her soul. 



With such literate and architectural remains of the Greenland 

 colonists of the tgnth century still extant, it was not unnatural for 

 New England antiquaries to turn with renewed vigour to the search 

 for corresponding remains in the supposed Vinland of the same early 

 voyagers, when the ancient manuscripts edited for the Antiquitates 

 AmericauiB had established the discovery of the continent of America 

 hy Norsemen of the tenth century. Among those, the members of 

 the Rhode Island Society took a foremost part. They had already 

 furnished materials for illustrating the venerable manuscripts edited 

 iu that imposing quarto, which seemed to its sanguine editors to place 

 their dreams of a Norse Columbus of the Tenth Century beyond all 

 dispute. The Assonet, or Dighton Rock, on the east bank of the 

 Taunton river, which yielded to its antiquarian transcribers the long 

 desiderated traces of runic epigraphy, has attracted the attention of 

 New England scholars for nearly two centuries. Its history is alike 

 curious and amusing, but need not be detailed here.* It is a detached 

 reck, partly covered at high water, the exposed surface of which is 

 covered with Indian devices rudely graven, aud greatly defaced by 

 time. So early as 1680 Dr. Dan forth executed a careful copy of it ; 

 and since then it has been again and again retraced, engraved, and 

 made the theme of learned commentaries by New England, British, 

 French, and Danish scholars ; each striving in turn to enlist it in proof 

 of the favoured theory of the hour ; and to make out from its rude 

 scratchings : Phoenician, Punic, Siberian, or Old Norse characters, gra- 

 ven by ante-Columbian voyagers in the infancy of the world. The 

 triumphs of the antiquarian seers culminated in the year 1837, when 

 the Antiquitates Americance issued from the Danish press, with elab- 

 orate engravings of this Dighton rock, from one of which — contributed 

 by a Commission appointed by the Rhode Island Historical Society — 

 its ingenious editor was able to furnish the interpretation of a " runic 

 inscription " suddenly brought to light among the rude devices of the 

 Wabenakies' picture-writing. The inscription was only too apt a re- 

 echo of the Saga manuscripts ; and indeed is now affirmed to have been 

 the deliberate imposition of a foreigner resident at the time in New- 



* Vide Prehistoric Man, Vol. II. p. 1 72. 



