Copenhagen. They were subsequently carefully read, and classified by the most competent and erudite scholars. Among them two sagas were found relating to discoveries far to the southwest of Greenland, the outlines of which I have given you in the preceding pages. The earliest of these two sagas is supposed to have been written by Hauk Erlendsson, who died in 1334. Whether he copied it from a previous manuscript, or took the narrative from oral tradition, cannot be determined. The other was written out in its present form somewhere between 1387 and 1395. It was probably copied from a previous saga not known to be now in existence, but which is conjectured to have been originally written out in the twelfth century. These documents are pronounced by scholars qualified to judge of the character of ancient writings to be authentic, and were undoubtedly believed by the writers to be narratives of historical truth.

They describe with great distinctness the outlines of our eastern coast, including soil, products, and climate, beginning in the cold, sterile regions of the north and extending down to the warm and fruitful shores of the south. It is to be observed that there is no improbability that these alleged voyages should have been made. That a vessel, sailing from Iceland and bound for Greenland, should be blown from its course and drifted to the coast of Nova Scotia or of New England, is an occurrence that might well be expected; and to believe that such an accidental voyage should be followed by other voyages of discovery, demands no extraordinary credulity.

The sagas, or narratives, in which the alleged voyages are described, were written out as we have them to-day, more than a hundred years before the discoveries of Columbus were made in the West Indies,[4] or those of John Cabot on our northern Atlantic shores. The writers of these sagas had no information derived from other sources on which to build up the fabric of their story. To believe that the agreement of the narratives in their general outlines with the facts as we now know them was accidental, a mere matter of chance, is impossible. The coincidences are so many, and the events so far removed from anything that the authors had themselves ever seen, or of which they had any knowledge, that it becomes easier and more reasonable to accept the narratives in their general features than to deny the authenticity of the records. If we reject them, we must on the same principle reject the early history of all the civilized peoples of the earth, since that history has been obtained in all cases more or less directly from oral tradition.

In their general scope, therefore, the narrative of the sagas has been accepted by the most judicious and dispassionate historical students, who have given to the subject careful and conscientious study.

But when we descend to minor particulars, unimportant to the general drift and import of the narratives, we find it difficult, nay, I may say impossible, to accept them fully and with an unhesitating confidence. Narratives that have come down to us on the current of oral tradition are sure to be warped and twisted from their original form and meaning. Consciously or unconsciously they are shaped and colored more or less by the several minds through which they have passed. No one can fail to have witnessed the changes that have grown up in the same story, as repeated by one and another in numerous instances within his own observation. The careful historian exercises, therefore, great caution in receiving what comes to him merely in oral tradition.[5]

We must not, however, forget that the sagamen in whose memories alone these narratives were preserved at least a hundred and fifty years, and not unlikely for more than three hundred, were professional narrators of events. It was their office and duty to transmit to others what they had themselves received. Their professional character was in some degree a guarantee for the preservation of the truth. But nevertheless it was impossible through a long series of oral narrations, that errors should not creep in; that the memory of some of them should not fail at times; and if it did fail there was no authority or standard by which their errors could be corrected. Moreover it is probable that variations were purposely introduced here and there, in obedience to the sagaman's conceptions of an improved style and a better taste. What variations took place through the failure of the memory or the conceit of the sagamen, whether few or many, whether trivial or important, can never be determined. It is therefore obvious that our interpretation of minor particulars in the sagas cannot be critical, and any nicely exact meaning, any absolute certainty, cannot be successfully maintained, since an inevitable doubt, never to be removed, overshadows these minor particulars. We may state, therefore, without hesitation, that the narratives of the sagas are to be accepted only in their general outlines and prominent features. So far we find solid ground. If we advance farther we tread upon quicksands, and are not sure of our foothold.

The question here naturally arises, viz., If in minor particulars the sagas cannot be fully relied upon, to what extent can we identify the countries discovered, and the places visited by the Northmen?

In answer to this very proper inquiry, I observe that, according to the narrative of the sagas, and the interpretation of Scandinavian scholars, the first country that the explorers discovered after leaving Greenland answers in its general features to Newfoundland, with its sterile soil, its rocky surface, and its mountains in the back-ground. The second answers to Nova Scotia, with its heavy forests, its low, level coast, and its white, sandy cliffs and beaches. The third answers to New England in temperature, climate, productions of the soil, the flat, undulating surface of the country, and its apparent distance from Greenland, the base or starting-point from which these voyages of discovery were made.

The statements of the sagas coincide with so many of the general features of our Atlantic coast that there is a strong probability, not indeed rising to a demonstration, but to as much certainty as belongs to anything in the period of unwritten history, that the Vineland of the Northmen was somewhere on our American Atlantic coast. Of this there is little room for doubt. But when we go beyond this there is absolutely no certainty whatever. The local descriptions of the sagas are all general and indefinite. They identify nothing. When they speak of an island, a cape, a river, or a bay, they do not give us any clue to the locality where the said island, or cape, or river, or bay is situated. The whole coast of New England and of the English Provinces farther east is serrated with capes and bays and river-inlets, and is likewise studded with some hundreds of islands. It would be exceedingly interesting, indeed a great achievement, if we could clearly fix or identify the land-fall of Leif, the Scandinavian explorer, and point out the exact spot where he erected his houses and passed the winter.

The key to this identification, if any exists, is plainly the description of the place as given in the sagas. If we find in the sagas the land-fall of Leif, the place where the Scandinavians landed, so fully described that it can be clearly distinguished from every other place on our coast, we shall then have accomplished this important historical