44 THE VINLAND VOYAGES 



Presumably this is what is well known in America 

 as wild rice, also as Canadian rice, Tuscarora rice, or 

 water oats. The botanical name is Zizania aquatka^^ 

 The Indians used this as food/° It grows, as the Saga 

 relates, where the land is low and wet, even in ponds 5 

 there are wide expanses of it, having the appearance 

 of grainfields. 



A number of the early European explorers of the 

 New World mentioned grapevines that they found 

 there. In America there are many varieties of grape- 

 vines which originally grew wild but have now been 

 domesticated. Botanists recognize four wild varieties, 

 Vitis lahruscay V, aestivalisy V, cordifolia, and V. vuU 

 fina. The grapes of the first and second variety are 

 called fox grapes and doubtless are the principal 

 kinds found by Leif and Thorfinn. The wild grape- 

 vine, although still found in some places, is now 

 largely extinct. Babcock points out that the wild grape 

 is now found on knolls and hillsides and until a few 

 years ago was used quite extensively for home con- 

 sumption.^^ 



The Saga states that every stream was teeming with 

 fish in Hop, a circumstance not unnatural but worthy 



*® See F. C. Schiibeler in Forhandlinger i Videnskabs-selskabety 

 Christiania, 1858, pp. 21-30. 



5° A. E. Jenks, The Wild Rice Gatherers of the Upper Lakes, igth 

 Ann. Reft. Bur. of Amer. Ethnology for iSgy-gS, pp. 1013-1137. 



®^ Babcock, of. cit., pp. 90-94. 



