The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 by Various
page 62 of 584 (10%)
page 62 of 584 (10%)
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seems to be placed upon "traders."
[36-1] Note the word "hollows" with reference to the contention that "wild wheat" is "wild rice." See p. 25, note 3. [36-2] "Skin-canoes," or kayaks, lead one to think of Eskimos. Both Storm and Fiske think that the authorities of the saga-writer may have failed to distinguish between bark-canoes and skin-canoes. [36-3] The vellum AM. 557 says "small men" instead of "swarthy men." The explorers called them _Skrælingar_, a disparaging epithet, meaning inferior people, _i.e._, savages. The name is applied, in saga literature, to the natives of Greenland as well as to the natives of Vinland. Storm thinks the latter were the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia. [36-4] "Lescarbot, in his minute and elaborate description of the Micmacs of Acadia, speaks with some emphasis of their large eyes. Dr. Storm quite reasonably suggests that the Norse expression may refer to the size not of the eyeball but of the eye-socket, which in the Indian face is apt to be large." Fiske, _The Discovery of America_, p. 190. [37-1] This would seem to place Vinland farther south than Nova Scotia, but not necessarily. Storm cites the Frenchman Denys, who as colonist and governor of Nova Scotia passed a number of years there, and in a work published in 1672 says of the inner tracts of the land east of Port Royal that "there is very little snow in the country, and very little winter." He adds: "It is certain that the country produces the vine naturally,--that it bears a grape that ripens perfectly, the berry as large as the muscat." |
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