52 THE VINLAND VOYAGES 



attacked Thorfinn and his men. There was a great 

 multitude of them and a heavy shower of missiles, 

 for the Skrselings had war slings. Thorfinn and 

 Snorri noticed that the Skraslings raised a pole and at 

 the end of it fastened a great ball shaped like a sheep's 

 belly, blue in color; and this they hurled from the 

 pole up on the land above Thorfinn's followers, and 

 it made a terrifying noise where it fell. 



It is not likely that the Skraslings knew iron or 

 other metals, although such, including gold and 

 copper, were known to the more civilized tribes to 

 the south. Their war missiles were therefore natural 

 weapons, like stones, which they slung.^'' They slew 

 two of Thorfinn's men, Thorbrand Snorri's son^^ and 

 another man not named. Many have thought that 

 the North American Indians did not have war mis- 

 siles. But Babcock shows that the Indians in New- 

 foundland had them in 1494. These he considers 

 not unlikely to be the descendants of the Micmac 

 tribe. Another writer was convinced that the Micmac 



^^ These were doubtless hand slings, not the type of war slings com- 

 mon in the northern countries in the thirteenth century. See H. Falk, 

 Altnordhche Waffenkunde, Christiania, 1914, pp. 193-194. 



^^ An error early crept into some manuscripts of the Eyrbyggja 

 Saga, that Snorri himself was slain, not his son. Two of the copies 

 of the best vellum manuscript (the Vatnshyrna), which was burnt in 

 Copenhagen in 1728, state, however, that Thorbrand Snorri's son was 

 slain there. 



