tained its name, from the first English settlers, on account of their finding wild grapes growing there in great abundance.— See also Remark 15. (6.) Timber was a very requisite article both in Greenland and Iceland, which produced no wood, or at least none fit for either ship-building or for the construction of the large banquetting halls of the rich landed proprietors. A good deal of drift-wood was, and is still, occasionally found on the coasts, but generally too worm-eaten to be serviceable. Leif, therefore, took out a cargo of timber, and probably some specimens of the fine hard-grained wood of the country, and stowed his long-boat with packages of raisins. (7.) The account is too scanty to fix the localities visited by the party, but, as they were absent the whole summer, they probably sailed along the coast as far south as the Carolinas. (8.) It will appear more fully in the narrative of Thorfinn's voyage, that Kjalarnes can be no other than Cape Cod, and the opposite headland, Gurnet Point, which form the entrance of Cape Cod Bay. (9.) This locality is not so easy to determine, but it may perhaps have been the bluff head of Alderton," at the south east of Boston Bay. (10.) Disco Island, in Baffin's Bay, was called Bjarney, or Bear Island, by the Northmen, but they seem to have applied this name indifferently to several islands. The Bjarney here mentioned was probably one of the numerous islands on the coast of Labrador, from which a vessel might sail with ease in two days to Newfoundland. It is, at all events, quite obvious that Thorfinn, who knew that the country he was in search of lay to the south-west, would not have sailed due north to Disco Island. (11.) This Bjarney was probably Cape Sable Island. (12.) The Furtustrandir of the Northmen correspond exactly with the coast of the Nauset Peninsula, and the Chatham and Monomoy beaches. Hitchcock, in his " Report on the Geology of Massachusetts," p. 94, says, in speaking of this coast, "The dunes, or sand hills, which are often nearly or quite barren of vegetation, and of snowy whiteness, forcibly attract the attention on account of their peculiarity. As we approach the extremity of the Cape the sand and the barrenness increase; and, in not a few places, it would need only a T party of Bedouin Arabs to cross the traveller's path to make him feel that he was in the depths of an Arabian or Lybian desert." Mr. Rafn observes, that the name of “Marvellous Strands" may have been given, not so much on account of their dreary length, as from the Northmen having, perhaps, witnessed the phenomenon of the mirage which frequently occurs on this coast, and which they would justly have deemed most marvellous. Hitchcock, in the work above quoted, p. 97, remarks, "In crossing the sands of the Cape, I noticed a sin gular mirage, or deception. In Orleans, for instance, we seemed to be ascending at an angle of 3 or 4 degrees; nor was I convinced that such was not the case, until, turning about, I perceived that a similar ascent appeared on the road just passed over.”* (13.) Straumfjörd is supposed to be Buzzard's Bay, and Straumey, either Martha's Vineyard or the islands of Cuttyhunk and Nashawenna, which, in the eleventh century, were probably connected. The Gulf Stream will sufficiently account for the strong currents noticed in the narrative. Lyell remarks, in his Geology, vol. i. p. 384, "That it is the beach of Nantucket which turns the current of the Gulf Stream at the depth of from two to three hundred feet below the surface of the water. "Mr. Laing, who carries his scepticism somewhat too far, observes, that "The eyder duck, on our side of the world, is very rarely seen in lower latitudes than 60'. It may be different on the American coast." And that it is different we have among other authorities cited by Mr. Rafn, that of Ebeling, a German writer, who says, that "on the numerous isles on this coast there are an extraordinary quantity of wild geese and ducks, among which the eyder duck is very common." (14.) If it be admitted that Thorfinn passed the first winter at Buzzard's Bay, Hóp may possibly be the present Mount Hope Bay. This locality, in fact, perfectly corresponds to the description given in the narrative. There is a river-the Taunton River-flowing through a lake-Mount Hope Bay might almost be termed a lake-on its way to the sea-by the Pocasset River and Seaconnet Reach, which, owing to their sandy shoals, are only navigable at high water. It would appear that this Mount Hope is merely a corruption of the Indian name haup, (pronounced like the Icelandic hóp,) which the place bore when the first English settlers arrived there. Haup was the residence of the famous Metacomet, or King Philip, as he was called, the last Sachem of the Wampanoug Indians; and some of the Rhode Island antiquaries have hazarded the supposition that the name may have been transmitted to the Indians by the decendants of the Northmen who had settled in the place, and were gradually merged in the tribe of the Wampanougs. But if it were even a well established fact, instead of a mere conjecture, that the Hóp of the Northmen was the Haup of the old Indian Sachem, still this coincidence, like that of many other homonymous words belonging to different languages, which have so often led etymologists on a wild goose chase, might be quite fortuitous. (15.) Although it may be difficult to fix the precise locality of each particular place mentioned in the narrative, there can be but little doubt that Massachusetts was the country known to the Northmen under the name of Vinland. When the English settlers first arrived in this part of America they found vines growing wild on the hills, and Indian corn on the plains, the rivers teeming, with fish, and the islands covered with innumerable wild fowl, precisely as we are told the Northmen did several centuries previously. A modern writer, speaking of Massachusetts, says, "La vigne sauvage grimpe de tous cotés sur les arbres," and adds that, of some of the species, "les fruits sont très estimés à cause de leur salubrité et de leur delicatesse."* A number of other passages from recent works might be quoted in corroboration of the descriptions given in the sagas and the old Icelandic geographical treatises of Vinland the Good; but we think no impartial person who takes the trouble to examine the evidence brought forward by Mr. Rafn will hesitate a moment in placing it, in what Mr. Warden, in the work above quoted, terms "le paradis de l'Amérique." The supposition that such a country could have been situated on the bleak and barren coast of Labrador is too absurd to merit a refutation. (16.) From this description, and their being called Skrællings, they were manifestly Esquimaux. Some recent writers, there* Warden's Description des Etats Unis. Paris, 1820.-See also Antiq. Am. p. 439 and 441. fore, contend that we ought to place the Vinland of the Northmen on the coast of Labrador, and they treat the supposition of the Northern Antiquaries, that the Esquimaux race formerly extended much farther south than at present, as perfectly gratuitous. It requires, however, but a very superficial knowledge of ethnological history to be aware of the fact that whenever two races of men have come into contact, the one that was the inferior in physical or intellectual endowments has necessarily given way to the other. It was thus that the Finns retired before the Scandinavian and Slavonic races; the Slavonians of ancient Pannonia before the Magyars; the Celtic race of the British Isles before the Teutonic; the Britons before the Germanic (Anglo-Saxon); the Gaels before the Scandinavian branch: and we have in our own times seen how the Red men of the New World have gradually been obliged to recede before the Spaniards and Anglo-Americans. Though unsupported by historical evidence, we may therefore reasonably conclude that the Esquimaux were driven, in like manner, to the Polar regions by the superior race of Red Indians. CHAPTER II. ON THE LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE ICELANDIC COMMON WEALTH. THE preceding chapters will have made the reader acquainted with the religious doctrines, manners and customs of the ancient Scandinavians. It will remain for us to give a succinct account of their literature; but as almost all the old Norse poems and sagas that have been handed down to us were either collected or written by Icelanders, we shall previously enter into a few details respecting the social institutions of these Norwegian colonists, in order to show what peculiar circumstances enabled them to acquire such a literary pre-eminence over their fellow-countrymen in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, who, it must be borne in mind, spoke, at that period, precisely the same language. We have elsewhere observed that Scandinavian history does not reach beyond the middle of the ninth century. The person * See page 84. ages who figure in the legendary accounts of events that happened, or that are said to have happened, before that period, belong to the heroic age, in which, among all nations, it is next to impossible to draw a line of demarcation between facts and fiction. Events that may have taken place, and which probably actually did take place-as Ragnar Lodbrok's famous expedition to Northumbria, for instance,- -are so blended with what is purely imaginative, that any arguments founded on them must necessarily be inconclusive. It is, therefore, a fortunate circumstance that the colonization of Iceland falls within the historical period, which, for Norway, may be said to begin with Halfdan the Black, and more especially with his son Harald Hárfagra. At this period Norway was divided into a number of independent states, each under its chieftain or king, whose authority, however, was far from being unlimited, all public affairs being discussed and decided at the Things, or general assemblies of the freemen, who gave their assent to a measure by striking their shields with their drawn swords. These freemen, or thingsmen, as they were called, were the landed proprietors of the country, and their sons and kindred. The tenure of land in Norway was then, as we believe it still continues to be, strictly allodial. The odalsman (ódalsmaðr) or dominus allodialis, whether he held extensive domains or only a few acres, could not alienate the land. At his death it was equally divided amongst his children, or next of kin, and at a later and more civilized period, when legal right became better defined, any one who could establish his relationship with the original proprietor, might evict a person who had acquired an estate once belonging to the family, without having any allodial claim to it. It would lead us too far to point out the advantages and evils resulting from this kind of tenure, which also prevails in Hungary, where it is regarded at the present day as one of the greatest obstacles to social improvement. Its obvious tendency is to to fritter away * Some of the Hungarian domains, those of Prince Esterházy, for instance, are entailed and inherited according to the law of primogeniture, but the tenure that generally prevails is such as we have described. Every manor in Hungary was originally bestowed by the crown, and, at the death of the last legitimate descendant of the person to whom it was granted, becomes again crown property. According to the strict letter of the law, a manor |