Part 2

Their ship was anchored in what they call a _sound_, between the island and a promontory or tongue of land which ran out to the eastward. The breadth or extent of the sound at high water, or at low water, is not given. It may have been broad, covering a vast expanse, or it may have been very small, embraced within a few square rods. It was simply a sound, a shallow piece of water, where their ship was stranded at low tide. Of its character we know nothing more whatever.

Then we have a _river_. Whether it was a large river or a small one, long or short, wide or narrow, deep or shallow, a fresh water or tidal stream, we are not informed. All we know of the river is that their ship could be floated up its current at least at high tide.

The river flowed out of a _lake_. No further description of the lake is given. It may have been a large body of water, or it may have been a very small one. It may have been only an enlargement or expansion of the river, or it may have been a bay receiving its waters from the ocean, rising and falling with the tides, and the river only the channel of its incoming and receding waters.

On the borders of this lake, or bay, or enlargement of the river, as the case may have been, they built their _houses_; whether on the right or left shore, whether near the outlet, or miles away, we know not.

It is easy to see how difficult, how impossible, it is to identify the landing-place and temporary abode of the Northmen on our coast from this loose and indefinite description of the sagas.

In the nearly nine hundred years which have passed since the discovery of this continent by these northern explorers, it would be unreasonable not to suppose that very great changes have taken place at the mouth of the rivers and tidal bays along our Atlantic coast. There is probably not a river's mouth or a tidal inlet on our whole eastern frontier, which has not been transformed in many and important features during this long lapse of time. Islands have been formed, and islands have ceased to exist. Sands have been drifting, shores have been crumbling, new inlets have been formed, and old ones have been closed up. Nothing is more unfixed and changeable than the shores of estuaries, and of rivers where they flow into the ocean.

But even if we suppose that no changes have taken place in this long lapse of time, there are, doubtless, between Long Island Sound and the eastern limit of Nova Scotia, a great number of rivers with all the characteristics of that described by the sagas. Precisely the same characteristics belong to the Taunton, the Charles, the Merrimack, the Piscataqua, the Kennebec, the Penobscot, the Saint Croix, and the St. John. All these rivers have one or more islands at their mouth, and there are abundant places near by where a ship might be stranded at low tide, and in each of these rivers there are expansions or bays from which they flow into the ocean.[6] And there are, probably, twenty other less important rivers on our coast, where the same conditions may likewise be found. What sagacious student of history, what experienced navigator, or what learned geographer has the audacity to say that he is able to tell us near which of these rivers the Northmen constructed their habitations, and made their temporary abode! The identification is plainly impossible. Nothing is more certain than the uncertainty that enters into all the local descriptions contained in the Icelandic sagas. In the numerous explorations of those early navigators, there is not a bay, a cape, a promontory, or a river, so clearly described, or so distinctly defined, that it can be identified with any bay, cape, promontory, or river on our coast. The verdict of history on this point is plain, and must stand. Imagination and fancy have their appropriate sphere, but their domain is fiction, and not fact; romance, and not history; and it is the duty of the historical student to hold them within the limits of their proper field.

But there is yet another question which demands an answer. Did the Northmen leave on this continent any monuments or works which may serve as memorials of their abode here in the early part of the eleventh century?

The sources of evidence on this point must be looked for in the sagas, or in remains which can be clearly traced to the Northmen as their undoubted authors.

In the sagas, we are compelled to say, as much as we could desire it otherwise, that we have looked in vain for any such testimony. They contain no evidence, not an intimation, that the Northmen constructed any mason work, or even laid one stone upon another for any purpose whatever. Their dwellings, such as they were, were hastily thrown together, to serve only for a brief occupation. The rest of their time, according to the general tenor of the narrative, was exclusively devoted to exploration, and to the preparation and laying in of a cargo for their return voyage. This possible source of evidence yields therefore no testimony that the Scandinavians left any structures which have survived down to the present time, and can therefore be regarded as memorials of their abode in this country.

But, if there is no evidence on this point in the sagas, are there to be found to-day on any part of our Atlantic coast remains which can be plainly traced to the work of the Northmen?

This question, we regret to say, after thorough examination and study, the most competent, careful, and learned antiquaries have been obliged to answer in the negative. Credulity has seized upon several comparatively antique works, whose origin half a century ago was not clearly understood, and has blindly referred them to the Northmen. Foremost among them were, first, the stone structure of arched mason-work in Newport, Rhode Island; second, a famous rock, bearing inscriptions, lying in the tide-water near the town of Dighton, in Massachusetts; and, third, the "skeleton in armor" found at Fall River, in the same state. No others have been put forward on any evidence that challenges a critical examination.

The old mill at Newport, situated on the farm of Benedict Arnold, an early governor of Rhode Island, was called in his will "my stone built wind mill," and had there been in his mind any mystery about its origin, he could hardly have failed to indicate it as a part of his description. Roger Williams, the pioneer settler of Rhode Island, educated at the University of Cambridge, England, a voluminous author, was himself an antiquary, and deeply interested in everything that pertained to our aboriginal history. Had any building of arched mason-work, with some pretensions to architecture, existed at the time when he first took up his abode in Rhode Island, and before any English settlements had been made there, he could not have failed to mention it: a phenomenon so singular, unexpected, and mysterious must have attracted his attention. His silence on the subject renders it morally certain that no such structure could have been there at that time.[7]

The inscriptions on the Dighton rock present rude cuttings, intermingled with outline figures of men and animals. The whole, or any part of them, baffles and defies all skill in interpretation. Different scholars have thought they discerned in the shapeless traceries Phoenician, Hebrew, Scythian, and Runic characters or letters. Doubtless some similitude to them may here and there be seen. They are probably accidental resemblances. But no rational interpretation has ever been given, and it seems now to be generally conceded by those best qualified to judge, that they are the work of our native Indians, of very trivial import, if, indeed, they had any meaning whatever.

The "skeleton in armor," found at Fall River, has no better claim than the rest to a Scandinavian origin. What appeared to be human bones were found in a sand-bank, encased in metallic bands of brass. Its antecedents are wholly unknown. It may possibly have been the relics of some early navigator, cast upon our shore, who was either killed by the natives or died a natural death, and was buried in the armor in which he was clad. Or, what is far more probable, it may have been the remains of one of our early Indians, overlaid even in his grave, according to their custom, with the ornaments of brass, which he had moulded and shaped with his own hands while living.[8]

Could the veil be lifted, some such stories as these would doubtless spring up from the lifeless bones. But oblivion has for many generations brooded over these voiceless remains. Their story belongs to the domain of fancy and imagination. Poetry has woven it into an enchanting ballad. Its rhythm and its polished numbers may always please the ear and gratify the taste. But history, the stern and uncompromising arbiter of past events, will, we may be sure, never own the creations of the poet or the dreams of the enthusiast to be her legitimate offspring.

Half a century has now elapsed since the sagas have been accessible to the English reader in his own language. No labor has been spared by the most careful, painstaking, and conscientious historians in seeking for remains which can be reasonably identified as the work of the Northmen. None whatever have been found, and we may safely predict that none will be discovered, that can bear any better test of their genuineness than those to which we have just alluded.[9]

It is the office and duty of the historian to seek out facts, to distinguish the true from the false, to sift the wheat from the chaff, to preserve the one and to relegate the other to the oblivion to which it belongs.

Tested by the canons that the most judicious scholars have adopted in the investigation of all early history, we cannot doubt that the Northmen made four or five voyages to the coast of America in the last part of the tenth and the first part of the eleventh centuries; that they returned to Greenland with cargoes of grapes and timber, the latter a very valuable commodity in the markets both of Greenland and Iceland; that their abode on our shores was temporary; that they were mostly occupied in explorations, and made no preparations for establishing any permanent colony; except their temporary dwellings they erected no structures whatever, either of wood or of stone. We have intimations that other voyages were made to this continent, but no detailed account of them has survived to the present time.

These few facts constitute the substance of what we know of these Scandinavian discoveries. Of the details we know little: they are involved in indefiniteness, uncertainty, and doubt. The place of their first landing, the location of their dwellings, the parts of the country which they explored, are so indefinitely described that they are utterly beyond the power of identification.

But I should do injustice to the subject to which I have ventured to call your attention, if I did not add that writers are not wanting who claim to know vastly more of the details than I can see my way clear to admit. They belong to that select class of historians who are distinguished for an exuberance of imagination and a redundancy of faith. It is a very easy and simple thing for them to point out the land-fall of Leif, the river which he entered, the island at its mouth, the bay where they cast anchor, the shore where they built their temporary houses, the spot where Thorvald was buried, and where they set up crosses at his head and at his feet. They tell us what headlands were explored on the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and what inlets and bays were entered along the shores of Maine. The narratives which they weave from a fertile brain are ingenious and entertaining: they give to the sagas more freshness and greater personality, but when we look for the facts on which their allegations rest, for anything that may be called evidence, we find only the creations of an undisciplined imagination and an agile fancy.

It is, indeed, true that it would be highly gratifying to believe that the Northmen made more permanent settlements on our shores, that they reared spacious buildings and strong fortresses of stone and mason-work, that they gathered about them more of the accessories of a national, or even of a colonial existence; but history does not offer us any choice: we must take what she gives us, and under the limitations which she imposes. The truth, unadorned and without exaggeration, has a beauty and a nobility of its own. It needs no additions to commend it to the historical student. If he be a true and conscientious investigator, he will take it just as he finds it: he will add nothing to it: he will take nothing from it.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] If it be admitted, as it is almost universally, that the Scandinavians came to this continent in the last part of the tenth or the early part of the eleventh century, it is eminently fitting that a suitable monument should mark and emphasize the event. And it seems equally fitting that it should be placed in Boston, the metropolis of New England, since it simply commemorates the event of their coming, but is not intended to indicate their land-fall, or the place of their temporary abode.

[2] The mariner's compass was not discovered till the twelfth or thirteenth century.

[3] This statement rests on the interpretation of Professor Finn Magnusen, for which see "The Voyages of the Northmen to America," Prince Socely's ed., pp. 34, 126. Boston, 1877. The general description of the climate and the products of the soil are in harmony with this interpretation, but it has nevertheless been questioned. Other Icelandic writers differ from him, and make the latitude of the land-fall of Leif at 49 deg. 55', instead of 41 deg. 43' 10", as computed by Magnusen.

This later interpretation is by Professor Gustav Storm. Vide _The Finding of Wineland the Good_, by Arthur Middleton Reeves, pp. 181-185. London, 1890. These interpretations are wide apart. Both writers are represented to be able and thorough scholars. When doctors disagree, who shall decide? The sciolists will doubtless range themselves on different sides, and fight it out to the bitter end.

The truth is, the chronology of that period in its major and minor applications was exceedingly indefinite. The year when events occurred is settled, when settled at all, with great difficulty; and it is plain that the divisions of the day were loose and indefinite. At least, they could only be approximately determined. In the absence of clocks, watches, and chronometers, there could not be anything like scientific accuracy, and the attempt to apply scientific principles to Scandinavian chronology only renders confusion still more confused. The terms which they used to express the divisions of the day were all indefinite. One of them, for example, was _hirdis rismal_, which means the time when the herdsmen took their breakfast. This was sufficiently definite for the practical purposes of a simple, primitive people; but as the breakfast hour of a people is always more or less various, _hirdis rismal_ probably covered a period from one to three hours, and therefore did not furnish the proper data for calculating latitude. Any meaning given by translators touching exact hours of the day must, therefore, be taken _cum grano salis_, or for only what it is worth.

[4] It has been conjectured by some writers that Columbus on a visit to Iceland learned something of the voyages of the Northmen to America, and was aided by this knowledge in his subsequent discoveries. There is no evidence whatever that such was the case. In writing a memoir of his father, Ferdinando Columbus found among his papers a memorandum in which Columbus states that, in February, 1477, he sailed a hundred leagues beyond Tile, that this island was as large as England, that the English from Bristol carried on a trade there, that the sea when he was there was not frozen over; and he speaks also of the high tides. In the same paragraph we are informed that the southern limit of this island is 63 deg. from the equator, which identifies it with Iceland. Beyond these facts, the memorandum contains no information. There is no evidence that Columbus was at any time in communication with the natives of Iceland on any subject whatever. There is no probability that he sought, or obtained, any information of the voyages of the Northmen to this continent. Ferdinando Columbus's Life of his father may be found in Spanish in Barcia's Historical Collections, Vol. I. Madrid, 1749. It is a translation from the Italian, printed in Venice in 1571. An English translation appears in Churchill's Collections, in Kerr's, and in Pinkerton's, but its mistranslations and errors render it wholly untrustworthy.

[5] It is somewhat remarkable that most writers who have attempted to estimate the value of the sagas as historical evidence have ignored the fact, that from a hundred and fifty to three hundred years they existed only in oral tradition, handed down from one generation to another, subject to the changes which are inevitable in oral statements. They are treated by these critics as they would treat scientific documents, a coast or geodetic survey, or an admiralty report, in which lines and distances are determined by the most accurate instruments, and measurements and records are made simultaneously. It is obvious that their premises must be defective, and consequently their deductions are sure to be erroneous.

[6] If the reader will examine our coast-survey maps, he will easily verify this statement.

[7] Although most antiquaries and historical students have abandoned all belief in the Scandinavian origin of this structure, yet in the March number of Scribner's Magazine, 1879, an article may be found in defence of the theory that it was erected in the eleventh century by the Northmen. The argument is founded on its architectural construction, but it is clearly refuted by Mr. George C. Mason, Jr., in the Magazine of American History, Vol. III, p. 541.

[8] In Professor Putnam's Report, as Curator of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, in 1887, will be found the following interesting account of the "Skeleton in Armor:"

"I must, however, mention as of particular interest relating to the early period of contact between the Indians and Europeans on this continent, the presentation, by Dr. Samuel Kneeland, of two of the brass tubes found with the skeleton of an Indian near Fall River, about which so much has been written, including the well known verses by Longfellow, entitled 'The Skeleton in Armor.' That two of the 'links of the armor' should find their final resting place in this Museum is interesting in itself, and calls up in imagination the history of the bits of metal of which they are made. Probably some early emigrant brought from Europe a brass kettle, which by barter, or through the vicissitudes of those early days, came into the possession of an Indian of one of the New England tribes and was by him cut up for ornaments, arrow points, and knives. One kind of ornament he made by rolling little strips of the brass into the form of long, slender cylinders, in imitation of those he had, probably, before made of copper. These were fastened side by side so as to form an ornamental belt, in which he was buried. Long afterwards, his skeleton was discovered and the brass beads were taken to be portions of the armor of a Norseman. They were sent, with other things found with them, to Copenhagen, and the learned men of the old and new world wrote and sung their supposed history. Chemists made analyses and the truth came out; they were brass, not bronze nor iron. After nearly half a century had elapsed these two little tubes were separated from their fellows, and again crossed the Atlantic to rest by the side of similar tubes of brass and of copper, which have been found with other Indian braves; and their story shows how much can be made out of a little thing when fancy has full play, and imagination is not controlled by scientific reasoning, and conclusions are drawn without comparative study." Vide _Twentieth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum_, Vol. III, p. 543.

In an article on "Agricultural Implements of the New England Indians," Professor Henry W. Haynes, of Boston, shows that the Dutch were not allowed to barter with the Pequots, because they sold them "kettles" and the like with which they made arrow-heads. Vide _Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History_, Vol. XXII, p. 439. In later times brass was in frequent, not to say common, use among the Indians.

[9] There are in many parts of New England old walls and such like structures, apparently of very little importance when they were originally built, never made the subject of record, disused now for many generations, and consequently their origin and purpose have passed entirely from the memory of man. Such remains are not uncommon: they may be found all along our coast. But there are few writers bold enough to assert that they are the work of the Northmen simply because their history is not known, and especially since it is very clear that the Northmen erected no stone structures whatever. Those who accept such palpable absurdities would doubtless easily believe that the "Tenterden steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands."

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.

Punctuation has been corrected without note.