AMERICAN LITERARY FORGERIES. 139 



discovered, and visited repeatedly by tlie Irish. " This is a most im- 

 portant statement," adds the narrator : who, forgetting at the moment 

 that he is masquerading in the guise of a learned Dane, assures his 

 readers that all the glory which the Copenhagen antiquaries have been 

 apportioning to their Norse ancestry, is, by their own showing, due to 

 an Irish Columbus. For '' there are numerous allusions in the Sagas, 

 and even in the Landnamaboc, of unimpeachable veracity, of this earliest 

 discovery of America by the Irish." 



But this is by the way. The main narrative runs to the effect that 

 a voyage was undertaken, under command of Hervardur, along the 

 coast of Huitramann aland in a southerly direction. They explored the 

 coast ; ascended various rivers, and at length getting into what must 

 have been the Potomac, they pushed up it, until their progress was finally 

 barred by a succession of falls, " to which, from their general shape and 

 foamy appearance, they gave the name of Huidoerk, or White-Shirt :" 

 both the Norse and Irish rovers of the eleventh century being, no 

 doubt, very particular about the clear-starching of their linen. The 

 narrative now becomes a little more graphic. These White-Shirt falls 

 receive a special notice in the old saga, " for it is stated that, in their 

 neighborhood, the illegitimate daughter of Snorri, who was born in Yin- 

 land, and was a son of Karlsefne," — already celebrated in the genuine 

 narrative of Professor Kafn, — " was killed with a small spear or arrow, 

 and buried near the spot where she fell." Now Sir Thomas Murray, — 

 to whom the Skalholt Saga was referred by its discoverer, Mr. Philip 

 Marsh, and by whom it has recently been translated into English, — 

 has conjectured that the sea, here spoken of as receiving the waters o^ 

 several large rivers on its western shores, and up which the adventurers 

 seem to have sailed, is the Chesapeake Bay; and from some observa- 

 tions as to the length of the days and nights by which the latitude was 

 determined, he supposed that the White-Shirt Falls were the great falls 

 in the Potomac River above Washington. This, indeed, we are told he 

 mentioned as the merest fancy, to which no importance could be 

 attached. But the learned Danish traveller, Mr. Raffinnson, is able to 

 confute such diffident modesty, and indeed to turn the results of such 

 conclusions to account for robbing his own Norse ancestry of their highly 

 prized honours as the first discoverers of America ; for he says : " It is 

 now permitted me to say that the authenticity of the Skalholt Saga 

 being indisputably established by the recent discovery of the very grave 

 of the daughter of Snorri, the speculations of this learned gentleman 



