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The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 by Various
page 62 of 584 (10%)
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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