228 NATURAL HISTORY of NORWAY. 



and is very advantageous to them, becaufe of their great fiflieries 

 there, to the lofs of the Norwegians. This country, by the right 

 of prior poffeffion, might have, ex jure primi occupantis, (till 

 belonged to the latter, if their anceftors had exercifed more lenity 

 towards the natives : and it is not improbable that .feme of the 

 defcendants of the Norwegian colony, are to be found there at 

 this day. 



Upon inquiry, it feems plain to me (tho' it might appear 

 improbable at firft view) that the Norwegians had failed to Ame- 

 rica, many centuries before the Spaniards, and that this voyage 

 was performed by thofe Norwegians who were fettled in Iceland 

 and Greenland. It may, in feme meafure, fatisfy the curiofity of 

 thofe that have been long enquiring into the pofiibility and man- 

 ner of peopling that part of the world, by the defcendants of 

 Noah % to mew how pra&icable it was for thefe northern nations. 

 This may be feen by the following account, of the Norwegians 

 failing to the fouth-weft from Greenland to Vinland, which could 

 have been no other than America. I mail here infert the words 

 Arngrim. jo- G f that ingenious Icelander Arngrimius Tona, in his hiftorv of 



na s account '-' P . J f J 



of ^ Greenland, chap, ix and x. from page 43 to 52, " Herjolf an 



Icelander, and his fon Biorn, ufed annually to travel from place 

 to place, trading with various forts of merchandize. But while 

 Herjolf was once in Norway, he formed a fcheme of going to 

 live in Greenland, which he accordingly put in execution, and 

 fettled at Herjolfnaes, which lies on the eaft-fide of that country. 

 When Biron returned to Norway, and heard that his father was 

 gone to Greenland, he would not fo much as cart anchor there, 

 but rather chofe to go in queft of his father in the ftrange and 

 remote parts of Greenland. Though he had nobody on board 

 that knew any thing of the courfe they were to freer, nor had 

 ever been that voyage himfelf, he fet iail without compafs or 

 pilot, which appears plainly by this hiftory. It is faid that he 

 judged of the points of the compafs by the courfe of the fun, and 



* The pofiibility of this difputed point might be proved, by fuppofing that the 

 American continent was anciently joined to Europe and Africa ; for Plato relates 

 in his Timaeus, that the Egyptian priefts told Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, whc* 

 lived about 600 years before Chrift, that in old time, beyond the Straits of Gi- 

 braltar, there was a very extenfive country called Atlantis, larger than all Europe 

 and Africa, which was fwallowed up by a great earthquake, and only left its name 

 to the Atlantic ocean. 



i by 



