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With the Compliments of 
 
 Eben Norton Horsford. 
 
» \ 
 
 Landing place of Thorium on return from seeking Thorhall, at the left of two stumps in front of excavation 
 at the right of white area. Fish pit before white area. 
 
 
 Fish pit on line of stream from the high lands of Mt. Auburn Cemetery in centre. Corner of site of 
 Thorfinn's long house in left foreground. Site of two huts on the right above the road way. Mt. Auburn 
 tower above the more distant site. 
 
THE 
 
 PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 A LETTER TO JUDGE DALY, 
 
 ftfje $rcstocnt of tfje American fficonrapbical Soctrtg, 
 
 ON THE OPINION OF JUSTIN WINSOR, THAT 
 
 "Though Scandinavians may have reached the Shores of Labrador, the soil of 
 the United States has not one vestige of their presence." 
 
 EBEN NORTON HORSFORD. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 Slnibtrsita? J3ress. 
 
 1889. 
 
u~ 
 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In the interest of the reader I have thought to add to the 
 recently published letter to the President of the American 
 Geographical Society, a few heliotypes borrowed from two 
 papers now in press, and include them in an edition for private 
 circulation. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 Judge Daly, President of the American Geographical Society. 
 
 Dear Sir, — As relating to my letter addressed to you March i, 1885, 
 on " The Landfall of John Cabot in 1497 and the site of Norumbega," and 
 published in the October Bulletin of the same year, I desire to make to 
 you the following communication. 
 
 My eye has fallen on two brief paragraphs on page 98, Vol. I., the last 
 issued of the seven volumes of the " Narrative and Critical History of 
 America." They may be found in the chapter on " Precolumbian Explora- 
 tions, by Justin Winsor," under the general division of the Discovery of 
 America by Northmen, and are as follows : — 
 
 " Nothing could be slenderer than the alleged correspondences of lan- 
 guages ; and we can see in Horsfords ' Discovery of America by Northmen ' 
 to what a fanciful extent a confident enthusiasm can carry it. 
 
 " The most incautious linguistic inferences, and the most uncritical 
 cartographical perversions, are presented by Eben Norton Horsford in his 
 ' Discovery of America by Northmen! " 
 
 These paragraphs are preceded by a fragment of history, as follows : 
 
 " The question," — to wit, the Landfall of the Northmen, and the trust- 
 worthiness of the Vinland Sagas in regard to their experiences and the 
 detailed events of their stay on any part of the coast of New England, — 
 
6 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 says Mr. Winsor, "was brought to a practical issue in Massachusetts by a 
 proposition raised, at first in Wisconsin by the well-known musician Ole 
 Bull, to erect in Boston a statue to Leif Ericson. The project, though 
 ultimately carried out, was long delayed, and was discouraged by members 
 of the Massachusetts Historical Society, on the ground that no satisfac- 
 tory evidence existed to show that any spot in New England had been 
 reached by the Northmen. The sense of the Society was fully [7] expressed 
 in the report of their committee \?\ Henry W. Haynes and Abner C. 
 Goodell, fr., hi language which seems to be the result of the best historical 
 criticism ; for it is not a question of the fact of discovery, but to decide how 
 far we can place reliance on the details of the Sagas. There is likely to 
 remain a difference on this point. The committee say : — 
 
 " ' There is the same sort of reason for believing in Leif Ericson that 
 there is for believing in the existence of Agamemnon, — they are both tradi- 
 tions accepted by the later writers ; but there is no more reason for regarding 
 as true the details related about his discoveries, than there is for accepting as 
 historical truth the narratives contained in the Homeric poems. It is ante- 
 cedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part 
 of the eleventh century ; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort 
 of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon which our 
 belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests.' " 
 
 The following on page 93, quoting from Bancroft's third edition, to the 
 intent that though " Scandinavians may have reached the shores of Labrador, 
 the soil of the United States has not one vestige of their presence, is true 
 now" says Mr. Winsor, " as when first written!' This leaves no doubt of 
 the assurance of Mr. Winsor's conviction that Mr. Bancroft was a geogra- 
 pher as well as an historian. 
 
 Happy Rafn and Kohl, Humboldt and Adam von Bremen, that they 
 were not called to listen to such judgment ! 
 
 As to the fitness of Labrador, a region of rocky desolation, ice-bound 
 for more than half the year, to be the Vinland of the Northmen, where 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 7 
 
 according to the Sagas cattle did not need to be housed in winter, where 
 grapes abounded and corn grew spontaneously, — a land of forests and 
 meadows, — there is among students of geography no difference of opinion. 
 Among historians the case seems otherwise. Let us hear an Icelandic 
 authority on Vinland, referred to and cited in " The History of the 
 United States." 
 
 " Now it is to be told what lies opposite Greenland. . . . There are such 
 hard frosts there that it is not habitable, so far as is known. South of 
 Greenland is Helluland ; next is Markland, from thence it is not far to 
 Vinland the Good." 
 
 As to what impress may have been left by Northmen on the soil of 
 the United States, that is not a matter of authority, but of what may be 
 found by examination. 
 
 Should it turn out, after all, that the Landfall of the Northmen has been 
 found, and also the site and remains of the houses Leif and Thorfinn built 
 and occupied in Vinland, what then ? ' 
 
 It is quite true that members of the Massachusetts Historical Society 
 discouraged the efforts of the immediate friends of Ole Bull here, and the 
 two millions of Scandinavians of the West and the East who sympathized 
 with him, in his patriotic wish to recognize in a monument, to be set up in 
 
 1 Against the fly-leaf I have placed two photographs of the region of the houses of Leif and 
 Thorfinn. The upper one presents a bayou, through which the stream draining the eastern slope from 
 Mt. Auburn flows to the Charles, — just outside the limit of the picture. The extension of the 
 bayou to the roadway of the "Bank Lane" is given in the lower picture. Just above the road is one 
 of the fish-pits, at the margin of high tide and upland described in the Sagas, into which the fish found 
 their way at the time of young corn-plants, on their way to spawning-ground on the slopes of 
 Mt. Auburn, the tower of which is given at the upper right. At the lower left in the foreground are 
 the remains in the uneven surface, before the grass has started, of a corner of the large house of 
 Thorfinn's party. In the distance, in the middle of the upper picture, is the " Promontory at the 
 Southwest," as described in the Sagas, from behind which the Skraelings issued. In the wood at the 
 right is the locality of the battle with Thorfinn's men, which led him to abandon Vinland. 
 
 The landing-place of Thorfinn on his coming from the search for Thorhall, as described in the 
 Sagas, is near two stumps at the upper right of the large white space. It is the only spot where 
 solid land reaches the bayou, in width admitting the beam of the ship. LeiPs landing-place and 
 house were near the lower left of the upper picture. In the extreme distance is Corey's Hill. 
 
 At the end of the brochure will be found a survey of the site of the remains of the Northmen's 
 houses. 
 
8 THE PROBLEM OK THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 Boston, the services of Leif Ericson in the discovery of America. It is 
 also true that they virtually caused the rejection by the city government of 
 Boston of the offer by the late Mr. Thomas Appleton of $40,000 for the 
 erection of a memorial in Scollay Square to the Discovery of America by 
 Northmen. 
 
 It is also true that in the paragraphs cited there is, in carefully chosen 
 terms, and in a tone of conscious infallibility better suited to an earlier day 
 and another meridian, an intimation of the proper limit of geographical 
 research, and of who may pursue it, in New England ; and there is also 
 an undertone of recognized authority, — all of which will find adequate 
 appreciation. One may ask, Is Massachusetts a preserve? 
 
 But underneath these confessions and assumptions, the first and 
 most obvious expression of the paragraphs, taken together, is the uncon- 
 scious admission that the problem of the Northmen has been again es- 
 sayed, and the assailants have been vanquished. They have mistaken a 
 question of geography for one of bibliography — and song. 
 
 We are given an estimate of the value of comparative philology in 
 finding out the meanings or spellings of ancient and obscure geographical 
 names. To those competent to appreciate the wealth of revelation in 
 geography there may be in so small a matter as the identity of Norvega 
 and Norumbega} this view of the instrument which Champollion and 
 
 1 Norvega and Norumbega. I introduce three fragments of maps. Two are from Winsor's 
 " Narrative and Critical History of America," the outlines from Ortelius, 1570, and from Botero, 1603. 
 The third is a map for which I am indebted to the late classic geographer, J. Carson Brevoort, who as 
 a young man served as attache - to the Legation of Washington Irving at the Court of Madrid, where 
 he may have procured the map. It will be seen that they are all copies at first or second hand of 
 a common original. They are all maps of Nova Francia. On Solis's map the " river flowing through 
 a lake to the sea " flows also through Norvega, a province of Norway, — its equivalent, — as shown 
 on the maps of the period. One does not need to be told that the Norvega in smaller type against 
 the character that stands for a settlement is i n the country which Leif called Finland, and which 
 centuries later was known as Norumbega. As I have for four years been engaged on the History 
 of Norumbega, I do not propose to go into it here. This fragment is introduced merely to illus- 
 trate that this bit of comparative philology alone, to one capable of appreciating it, contains the 
 solution of the problem of the Northmen. 
 
 " The French diplomatists always remembered that Boston was built within the original limits of 
 New France '■ {Bancroft's History, 2d edition, p. 24). 
 

 j.*Ca< 
 
 ^3 CX CSV.*!. 
 
 ORTELIUS, 1570. 
 
 sojl/s. /s ag 
 
 BOTERO, 1603. 
 
 "They sailed along until they came to a river, which flowed from the land 
 through a lake and passed into the sea." Thorflnn's Saga. 
 

 
 
 lis 
 
 S\ujbB.q| 
 
 
 - 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. g 
 
 Grimm and Max Miiller and our own Whitney and Trumbull have placed 
 in our hands will give occasion for mingled pain and merriment. 
 
 There is another judgment which is somewhat more personal. It is 
 cited above, and as it is not impossible that it may be the last of its 
 type, it is entitled to particular consideration. It reads: "The most 
 incautious linguistic inferences, and the most uncritical, cartographical 
 perversions, are presented in Eben Norton Horsfords 'Discovery of 
 America by Northmen! " 
 
 I understand this to be an opinion concerning the trustworthiness of my 
 methods of studying geographical problems. They are disapproved. 
 
 The author of this paragraph has just completed the editing of the 
 " Narrative and Critical History of America," — one of the monumental 
 works of the time. The papers of a large number of specialists, includ- 
 ing the editor himself, have been gathered, and the authorities bearing 
 upon the subjects discussed have been sought out, referred to, and com- 
 mented on, and the whole illustrated on a generous scale. This work 
 had been preceded by a "Memorial History of Boston," on the same 
 general plan. Naturally enough, weight attaches to the editor's opinions ; 
 and if it were to be estimated by the volume of work he has performed, 
 it would deservedly be very considerable, and there might be some diffi- 
 culty in fairly measuring it. But he has taken the trouble to make the 
 task a light one. He has adopted and practised a method of geographical 
 research somewhat in vogue, but which, possibly, will be hereafter regarded 
 as peculiarly his own ; and its value in science can be estimated by look- 
 ing at its fruit. The weight which should be accredited to his judgment 
 of my method will be seen by a comparison of the fruit of my method 
 with the fruit of the method the critic approves and practises. 
 
 This comparison may be easily made. I cannot avoid it; and under 
 the circumstances it will not be unseemly in me to allude to some fruits, 
 already published (and others in press, or in preparation for it), of the 
 methods I have pursued. They include — 
 
IO THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 i. Geographical names, of Norse derivation, on numerous maps, ancient 
 and modern, in Icelandic, Algonquin, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, 
 Italian, or English garb, strewn from Vineyard Sound, in latitude 41 , 
 throughout the territory reaching to and including the St. Lawrence. 
 
 2. The rinding of the Land of the Bretons (French) of the 15th and 
 16th centuries, in the 43d degree. 
 
 3. The Landfall of John Cabot, 1497, in 42 38', — the great event 
 of the 15th century, — on which, with all the glory that belongs to it, 
 rests the earliest claim of the sovereignty of England to the American 
 Continent. 
 
 4. The Landfall of Cortereal in 1500. 
 
 5. The Landfall of Verrazano on Cape Cod in 1524, and the identity 
 of Cape Cod with the Florida of Verrazano and Thevet. 
 
 6. The Canal of St. Julian (St. Johan), the Bay of the Bretons, the 
 Archipelago, and the Land — of Gomez, explored in 1525. 
 
 7. The Landfall of John Rut in 1527, and the identity of the St. John's 
 of John Rut with Gloucester Harbor, from which he addressed his letter 
 to Henry VIII. 
 
 8. The identity of the Cape Breton of Allefonsce, in the 43d degree, 
 with the Cape Ann of Prince Charles. 
 
 9. The identity of the Kjolr-nes (Kjalarnes is the genitive) of the 
 Northmen in 1003, with the Coaranes of Merriam, the Carenas of Lok, 
 the C. de Arenas of Mercator, the Cap des Sablons of the Dauphin map 
 °f J 543> tne Cap Blanc of Champlain in 1605, the Insel Baccalaurus of 
 Ruysch, 1507, and its equivalent, the Cape Cod of Gosnold, 1602. 
 
 10. The meaning of the Indian names of Boston, the identity of Cabel- 
 yau with Baccalieu, — Bacca-loo, Algonquin for Bay food, Cod, — and the 
 identity of the Juuide of Thevet with the modern Point Judy of Rhode 
 Island. 
 
 11. That the Isthmus of Verrazano separating the Atlantic from the 
 western ocean — the Mare Indicum, the Mare Verrazana, the Pacific — 
 was simply the neck of the Peninsula of Cape Cod near Barnstable. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. M 
 
 12. That Sebastian Cabot, in his map of 1544, mistook the Penobscot 
 and the group of islands (the discovery and cartography of others) off the 
 coast of Maine for the St. Lawrence and Newfoundland at its mouth. 
 That the part of the map of 1544 including New England and New France 
 was an attempt to produce a work that should have the air of original 
 discoveries made prior to Verrazano and Jacques Cartier, clumsily dis- 
 guising some of the names Cartier gave, replacing those on the Dauphin 
 map with others in duplicate to occupy the space, stretching out the 
 coast from Plymouth (the Bay of St. Christopher) at the Panther's tail, 
 on his map, to Cape Ann (the prima tierra vista), at the best not 
 sixty miles to the immediate north, in latitude 42 38', until the coast 
 line comprised thirty degrees of longitude, and ended at Cape North in 
 latitude 47 , — the mouth of the St. Lawrence. 
 
 13. That the original New-found-land of John Cabot, 1497, including 
 the (supposed) two islands passed on his return voyage and shown on 
 Cosa's map, faced Massachusetts Bay. 
 
 14. That Terra Corterealis and the Land of Gomez overlaid the New- 
 found-land and Islands of Cabot. The original New France, — Francesca 
 of Verrazano of 1524, — embracing the same region, was subsequently ex- 
 tended by Jacques Cartier in 1534-35 over the shores of the St. Lawrence. 
 
 15. The Fort of Norumbega of Wytfliet (Ptolemy, 1597), occupied by, 
 but not the work of, the Bretons, as Thevet supposed. 
 
 16. The explanation of why the coast between Cape Cod and the 
 neighborhood of St. Augustine so long remained practically undiscovered. 
 
 17. That the north end of Cape Cod was an island down to some 
 time in the 17th century, as shown on the maps of Ruysch, Cosa, Alle- 
 fonsce, and others, and as observed by Leif and Gosnold. 
 
 18. That it was on this island that Leif made his Landfall before he 
 turned away to Boston Harbor and the shores of Charles River to set up 
 his dwellings. 
 
 I will ask attention to only one more. 
 
12 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 In my letter of March i, 1885, already referred to, I recorded that the 
 site of Fort Norumbega was first found in the literature of the subject, and 
 that when I had eliminated every doubt of the locality that I could find, 
 I drove with a friend through a region I had never before visited, of the 
 topography of which I knew nothing, nine miles away, directly to the 
 remains of the Fort. These remains, and the region immediately about, 
 were at once surveyed and mapped for me by the City Engineer. 
 
 In a certain sense there was, in this discovery, the fulfilment of a 
 prophecy. On the basis of the literature of the subject I had predicted 
 the finding of Fort Nortimbega at a particular spot. I went to the spot 
 and fotind it. No test of the genuineness of scientific deduction is re- 
 garded as superior to this. Professor Henry used to say, " Science can 
 predict." I had not guessed, — though any one may guess, of course. But 
 if one does, to test the guess or the hypothesis by the touchstones of physi- 
 cal fact, sequence, mutual relation, harmony of all parts with each, and 
 the utter absence of an element of opposing evidence, is what the scientific 
 method requires. Moreover, the scientific man does not hesitate for an 
 instant to abandon his hypothesis if it fails in a single particular to sus- 
 tain this test. The Fort of Norumbega had passed through the ordeal. 
 Prediction and fulfilment of course involve time. Thevet's record waited 
 nearly three hundred and fifty years. 1 
 
 19. The remaining discovery to which I have alluded is of the kind 
 just presented, — prediction and fulfilment. 
 
 The letter of four years ago, on the Landfall of John Cabot and the 
 site of Norumbega, indicated, as distinctly as at the time to me seemed 
 fit, my conviction of the identity of the Kjalarnes of Thorwald and Thor- 
 finn with the Carenas of Lok, — the great primary fact in determining 
 
 1 This discoverer has been greatly wronged, in ignorance of course, — even charged with forgery 
 of Indian phrases, the writer not recognizing in Thevet's records the ancient Iroquois spoken at the 
 time at Montreal, as well as in the neighborhood of Boston (Champlain). Some of Thevet's words, 
 naturally slightly modified in spelling, are introduced into Lescarbot ; and lists of parallel phrases, 
 Including many of the words Thevet took down, may be found in De Laet and others. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 13 
 
 the Landfall of Leif on Cape Cod and the site of the Northmen's houses 
 in Vinland. It was of the character of recorded prophecy. This is what 
 I said: "The map of Lok presents Carenas [enough recalling Kjalarnes 
 of the Norsemen to suggest heirship], the C. de Arenas in various forms 
 of so many maps of the sixteenth century, the Cape Cod of Gosnold, and, 
 as seems to be determined by the flags of Cosa's map of 1 500, the southern 
 limit of Cabot's explorations of 1497." 
 
 At my address in Faneuil Hall, now more than a year and a half ao-o, 
 on the occasion of the unveiling of the Statue to Leif, I placed on record, 
 more definitely, another prediction. 
 
 I spoke of Leif's Landfall and the site of his houses in the follow- 
 ing terms : " He came, so we conceive, upon the northern extremity of 
 Cape Cod, and set up his dwellings somewhere on an indentation of the 
 shore of Massachusetts Bay, the site of which may yet be indicated? 
 
 I added still another prediction. Speaking of Gudrid, the wife of Thor- 
 finn, I said: "I may not fail to mention that this Gudrid was the lady 
 who, after the death of her husband, made a pious pilgrimage to Rome 
 [from Iceland], where she was received with much distinction, and where 
 she told the Pope of the beautiful new country in the far west, of ' Vinland 
 the Good,' and about the Christian settlements made there by Scandinavians. 
 Nor may I forget to mention that her son, Snorre, born in America at the 
 site of Leifs houses, — and perhaps it may some day be possible to indicate 
 the neighborhood of his birthplace with greater precision, — has been claimed 
 to be the ancestor of Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor." 
 
 I had traced the course of Leif in the Sagas, from his touching at Cape 
 Cod, past the Gurnet and Cohasset, to his grounding on soft bottom, on 
 an ebb tide, between the site of Faneuil Hall and Noddle's Island (East 
 Boston), and his ascent of the Charles on the flood tide into and through 
 the Back Bay to the first practicable landing-place, the neighborhood of 
 which it was not difficult to indicate in general terms, on tide-water. So 
 clear was the language of the Sagas and my conviction, that I veiled the 
 prophecies and gave them place in print. 
 
14 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 Half a year later, at a scientific gathering, I announced the discovery of 
 the landing-place of Leif between two points scarcely a quarter of a mile 
 apart, and mapped and photographed the stage of my conviction. 1 Later, I 
 determined the spot within a few square yards of where Thorfinn went on 
 shore on his return after the search for Thorhall, and again mapped and 
 photographed the result of my studies. 
 
 But it is only since the ist of January, 1889, that I have looked for 
 memorials, the finding of which I had with purpose vaguely predicted. 
 It was not necessary that they should be found, to complete the demon- 
 stration. They might utterly have perished ; but happily they have re- 
 sisted the corrosions and the accidents of time, and the encroachments 
 of increasing population. The terms of the Sagas were to the student as 
 descriptive as a chart. 
 
 THE REMAINS OF LEIF'S HOUSES. 
 
 If any one interested will walk from the junction of Elmwood Avenue 
 with Mt. Auburn Street, — the residence of Professor Lowell in Cambridge, 
 — a few rods down the street to Gerry's Landing, and then follow the an- 
 cient Bank Lane to the point of crossing the rivulet draining the eastern 
 slope of Mt. Auburn into the Charles, he will be at the site of the objects 
 of interest which had once been there, and which I had predicted might 
 there be found. 
 
 There are in the inequalities of the surface the remains of two long log 
 houses, and huts or cots, — possibly not less than five huts, — along a 
 declivity of moderate grade, " some nearer, some farther from the water," 
 as the Sagas say. They have all been photographed. 
 
 To help the eye, it may be mentioned that throughout rural Norway 
 and Iceland generally there prevails now, as there did, as a general thing, 
 
 1 I insert two charts only to illustrate the method which I have pursued. They present two 
 stages of my research. In one I had seen the first possible landing-place above the Back Bay; in 
 the second I had not gone far enough to individualize between the landing-places. They seemed to 
 be worth preserving, that others might follow up the subject, should I for any reason be unable to 
 complete the research. 
 
CouAJ*x.<ty 
 

 [ttAMhitef 
 
 ^ 1 
 
or t\\e United States iiq 1861 . 
 ide . Loia/ Water s^oWrj by doited lir/e- 
 Landing Place. 
 ^s by L.Jvl.fUstirjgs, Civil Eqgiijeer. 
 

THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 15 
 
 nine hundred years ago, wherever a leader and his company established 
 themselves, a principal larger house, and near it, if needed, a number of 
 smaller houses, or cots, or huts, for servants and laborers (see Bjornsen's 
 article in " Harper's Monthly " of February, 1889, page 426). The founda- 
 tions of the Norse houses observed by Nordenskiold in Greenland were 
 long and narrow, as these are, and Leif's house presented its length to the 
 south ; such has been the immemorial usage of Icelanders in building their 
 houses (Saga Time). 
 
 To have an idea of how long the remains of such structures continue 
 to be distinguishable, dependent as they are on the artificial unevenness of 
 surface, one may read Lanciani's description, in his chapter on the ruins of 
 the Campagna, of terraces preserved, and outlines of gardens that had been 
 abandoned on account of the malaria before the seventh century, to be 
 found on every hand within twenty miles of Rome ; or he may recall, 
 possibly, his own recognition of the remains of corn-hills planted half a 
 century ago and left undisturbed by cultivation ; or he may have seen the 
 palpable Indian paths traversed by Indians hundred of years ago. 
 
 There are also to be seen near Thorfinn's Landing the remains of at 
 least three fish-pits described in the Sagas, all at the margin of extreme 
 high tide, where at the time the Indian corn had just appeared above the 
 ground (new sown, Beamish), as mentioned by Thorfinn. The fish were 
 ascending the river then, as generally they are at the season of young corn- 
 plants, to find in every tributary rivulet their spawning-ground. 
 
 According to the Sagas, the landing of Thorfinn on his return from 
 seeking Thorhall was on the southwest bank ; on which bank, viewed from 
 Leif's house (afterwards occupied by Thorwald, Thorfinn, and Freydis), 
 there is, by reason of the mud of the marsh, but one place where, with a 
 promontory at the southwest, such landing is possible. It was from behind 
 this promontory that the Skraelings (the Indian mob) repeatedly issued 
 in their canoes, and behind which they as repeatedly retired, — of which 
 promontories there is but one, the eastern bluff of the Cambridge Cemetery, 
 on the Charles. Verrazano gives it as C. St. Margarita, and to-day it 
 
l6 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 abounds in daisies {Chrysanthemum leucanlhemum). Thorfinn saw the 
 Skraelings from the narrow, long house Leif had lent him, — its side 
 fronting south. The site of Leif's house was near the south end of the 
 ancient bluff of Symond's Hill, and immediately behind the point known 
 as Gerry's Landing. 
 
 It was on the shore of a Hdp, " a small land-locked bay, salt at flood 
 tide and fresh at ebb" (Vigfusson), that Leif's houses — the Norman 
 Villa on Maiollo's map (Verrazano's, 1524) and the Ulpius globe, 1542 — 
 were set up nine hundred years ago. Verrazano mentions the "lake three 
 leagues around " in his letter to the king, 1524. It was " tlie lake through 
 which a river flowed to the sea" — Leif's guide to his houses, given to 
 Thorfinn and the others. 1 
 
 These are among the geographical treasures that my methods of re- 
 search have enabled me to gain for the History of Massachusetts. 
 
 THE FRUIT OF MR. WINSOR'S METHOD. 
 
 We now come to the method which Mr. Winsor approves. We have 
 not far to go for an illustration. I shall present but one. 
 
 In the latter part of the year 1885, Mr. Winsor discovered in the town 
 of Weston, at the mouth of Stony Brook, a tributary to the Charles, — one 
 of the branches of the Rio Grande on so many maps of the 16th century, — 
 the remains of an early effort, under the direction of Winthrop, to lay out 
 and fortify the future town of Boston. 
 
 I say Mr. Winsor discovered the remains. This is not quite correct. 
 What he discovered was that in the remains of an excavation for a ditch, 
 estimated by him to be scarcely more than six hundred feet long, in some 
 
 1 If one may illustrate lesser by greater instances of prophecy and fulfilment, I may, without un- 
 worthy pride, refer to the study of the Vinland Sagas and the predictions resting upon them, which 
 I made, and my finding the places and the remains described in the stories of Leif, Thorwald, and 
 Thorfinn, as having their parallel in the work of Dr. Milchofer and Professor Merriam, of Columbia 
 College, the director for 1887-88 of the American Classical School at Athens, in the discovery of the 
 ancient /carta. (See Seventh Annual Reports.) 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. l? 
 
 places twelve feet deep, and through much of tlie distance carefully graded, 
 and paved with stone on the bottom and sides, there were only evidences of 
 an early effort on the part of Winthrop and a detachment of his company 
 to lay out and fortify the future capital of Massachusetts. 
 
 As a matter of history, within a few weeks after I had discovered the 
 site of Fort Norumbega, described with much precision in the early litera- 
 ture of the subject, and figured in Ptolemy (Wytfliet, 1597), I invited Mr. 
 Winsor to drive with me to the mouth of Stony Brook, some nine miles 
 from Cambridge, where I pointed out the details of a ditch, as far as I had 
 studied them. I subsequently gave him a map of the spot, prepared by 
 the Engineer of the Cambridge Water-works, and my paper containing the 
 demonstration that the work was Fort Norumbega, described by Thevet, 
 and, less definitely, by others. 
 
 He regarded it as a piece of guess-work. Why should he not guess ? 
 He guessed it was an early Boston, planned by Winthrop, and the work 
 performed by a part of his invalid company. 
 
 Now, while a guess may be evidence of the fertility of the imagination, 
 and has its proper place in research, it is, at the best, only the extempo- 
 raneous chalk-sketch, that may vanish with the first brush that tests the 
 substance of its foundation, — the last thing to be given to the world, till 
 it has been tested. 
 
 What followed the guess ? Let us see. 
 
 He presented it to the Massachusetts Historical Society, and sent an 
 outline of his communication to the " Evening Transcript," of which the 
 following is an extract : — 
 
 " Mr. Winsor made a communication in reference to a ditch and em- 
 bankment found in Weston, at the confluence of Stony Brook with the 
 Charles, which indicate, as has been lately said, that a trading-post and 
 fort were erected there by the French in the early part of the 16th cen- 
 tury. He gave reasons for the opinion that these relics may mark the site 
 of an early attempt to found the town of Boston there, since, soon after the 
 
IS THE PROliLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 arrival of Winthrop at Salem, he set out for Charleslown, whence, with 
 a party, he explored the neighboring rivers for a convenient spot to foitnd 
 their town, and discovered such a place ' three leagues up Charles River? " 
 
 To this, as published, I replied on the day of its appearance, and my 
 reply appeared in the " Transcript " of January 9. I did not dwell on 
 the circumstance that my paper, and its demonstration that the earth-and- 
 stone works at the mouth of Stony Brook had been described and occupied 
 by the Bretons (French) nearly three hundred and fifty years before, had 
 been treated as a mere guess. I tried to place the mistake of the discov- 
 ery of the early Boston at Stony Brook in what seemed to me clear light, 
 calling attention to the magnitude of the work required to be done by a 
 few feeble men in a very short time, — a graded ditch, some of it origi- 
 nally ten to twelve feet deep, and much of it paved on the bottom and 
 sides (and therefore, as any one might see, impossible to be regarded as 
 awaiting posts for a permanent stockade). I alluded to the adverse testi- 
 mony of Winthrop 's own map of 1634 ; his diary of his first visit to Stony 
 Brook, a year and a half after he had determined that the present Boston 
 should be the seat of government, and an almost equal time since the first 
 session of the Assistants had been held at his house in Boston ; the ab- 
 sence of any supporting contemporaneous or subsequent history ; the 
 impossibility of getting ordnance, baggage, and stores up the shallow 
 Charles, falling in a distance of five miles, as it did, in alternating rapids 
 and pools, thirty-five feet from Stony Brook to tide-water at Watertown ; 
 the jealous Dudley's conclusive letter to the Countess of Lincoln ; and 
 much more. 
 
 At length Mr. Winsor's full paper appeared. To my surprise, the whole 
 of what I had said of the earth-and-stone work as being the remains of an 
 ancient fort, the story of which was embedded in the literature of geogra- 
 phy, was practically ignored. To an elaborate defence of his guess, includ- 
 ing abundant citations from early records, he gave the following additional 
 reasons for his first conviction : — 
 
Stoue wall and canal or ditch near Norse dam. 
 
 Stone wall and canal near the Norse Dam and Sibley's Station. Fitchtmrg R. R. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. Ig 
 
 " The fact that the embankment is continued three hundred feet both 
 north and south from the enclosed portion [the fort] in a way to afford no 
 protection against attack, seems to indicate that the whole is but a seg- 
 ment of a line of circumvallation which was left unfinished, the stockade 
 not being planted in the portions already excavated." It will be borne 
 in mind that just such an extensive circumvallation as may have been 
 here intended was, some months later, established at Cambridge." 
 
 He did not omit to leave a hint of his consciousness that he might have 
 overtasked the credulity of his readers as well as of himself. The paper 
 was printed for permanent preservation in the Records of the Massachu- 
 setts Historical Society. It was also published, as seemed to me due, in a 
 second letter from myself, in the " Boston Evening Transcript " of Feb. 
 24, 1 886, in which I dismissed the discussion, so far as I was concerned, 
 in what was intended as the briefest record of Mr. Winsor's preferred 
 views, in his own words. 
 
 It was only then that I fully appreciated the situation. The consider- 
 ations that I had presented, the charts, the measurements, the historic 
 records, had failed to remove the conviction that the guess had founded. 
 His method required that the guess should be defended, in the face of what 
 seemed to me the plainest common-sense. He still presented records in 
 its support, and still failed to see that there had been a demonstration that 
 the works at Stony Brook were described some centuries ago. 
 
 His method permitted all this, and it did not, in his judgment, require 
 a more careful examination of the spot, — a second visit to the locality. Had 
 he made it, he would have found, a little later, the water of the pond above 
 drawn down, displaying a fresh section of the ditch paved throughout, 
 making all together, with the circuit of the fort, a length for the " stock- 
 ade "(!) of 2,350 feet; he would have found paved ditches on both sides of 
 the brook ; and had he followed the brook toward its source, he would have 
 
 1 The length of ditch already explored as indicated on Mr. Davis's chart of Norumbega, by the 
 scale which he gives, is on one side of the fort 600 feet, and on the other 500 feet. 
 
20 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 found ditches, at intervals, far away, — at least to a point beyond the cross- 
 ing of the Massachusetts Central Railroad some three miles above. Much of 
 the lower part of the valley is now submerged by the new reservoir for the 
 Cambridge Water-works. But had his method required it, he could have 
 consulted the records of the Engineer's office. Had he done so he would 
 have found that his unfinished palisade, designed to surround the future 
 Boston, was scattered along the valley on both sides of Stony Brook on 
 a tolerably straight line for three miles or more. 1 But the argument by 
 which he supported his discovery would have had its substance but slightly 
 impaired. 
 
 With a brief reference to the criticisms of some others, I left the episode 
 to be forgotten. It had not occurred to me that the memory of the excur- 
 sion to Stony Brook was to take unhappy form and be so lasting, until I 
 was stung with the charge of "perversions" 2 in a work to be sent as authori- 
 tative over the world; and so I have been compelled to defend and justify 
 myself. I may, at the same time, try in a few words to relieve the reputa- 
 tion of Winthrop for common-sense from the shadow that has unwittingly 
 been put upon it. 
 
 1 I borrow from a paper in press two photographs of a ditch, with a stone wall on one side a 
 thousand feet in length, along the valley of Stony Brook and three miles from its mouth, of which the 
 preliminary excavations at Fort Norumbega for a palisade for the future Boston, according to Mr. 
 Winsor's guess and argument, were a part. 
 
 2 In the " Nation " of May 3, 1888, p. 368, is an article, among notices of books, in which there are 
 several phrases that now seem almost familiar. For example : speaking of two books, one of them 
 having been disposed of, the critic says, "The other in its wealth of cartographical adornment and 
 sumptuousness of page will carry the name of Eben Norton Horsford as the author of the ' Dis- 
 covery of America by Northmen ' wherever these adventitious aids can find for it acceptance," 
 etc. (a). "The American Scholar has nothing to do with this manifestation in his behalf" (b). 
 '■It is those who make no hesitation at perversion and ignore everything that does not serve 
 their purpose," etc. (c). " If historical (?) problems are to be settled thus, there is no need of 
 training the judgment " (d). " The resulting books are more significant at present in the study 
 of psychology than in the elucidation of the problem to which they are addressed" (e). 
 
 (a) There are some persons so constituted as to be willing to accept, without murmur, costly 
 photographs of rare and ancient maps, if numerous and on suitable paper, even though to prevent 
 repeated foldings the gift should have the quarto form. 
 
 (b) Is there danger of invasion to be apprehended ? 
 
 (c) Perversion is rather a strong word. 
 
 (d) Training for research might not be harmful. 
 (e~) Vanquished again ! But why proclaim it ? 
 
? 
 
 "RIVER FLOWING THROUGH A LAKE 
 INTO THE SEA' 
 
 VINLAND OP THE NORTHMEN 
 
 GopieH Cither Ir^slriictiorj toy 
 
 Geo. Davis, Civn Engineer. 
 
 Scale of (viiie , 
 
 x - £rj-E Of Uif's ^OliSEJ. 
 T.C. THOBFiNtfs Cliff. 
 
 C«H^«.ej *oel* 
 
 \ C O HA S S E T <T* 
 
 ' H I N G H A M V 
 
 S C I T XJ 
 
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 4 J 
 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 2 I 
 
 Of course, a new exhibition of this turning to ashes of the fruit which 
 Mr. Winsor's method bears, cannot prevent the publication that took place 
 three years ago. 
 
 Still another distinct demonstration may be due to those who have a 
 right to know the weight of the critic's judgment on kindred geographical 
 questions. 
 
 How much did Winthrop do about settlement on the Charles ? 
 
 Winthrop arrived at Salem in the "Arbella" on the 12th of June. On 
 the 17th, with others of the principal men, he made an excursion to Charles- 
 town and a few miles up the Mystic, seeking a more desirable place for 
 settlement than Salem, returning by way of Nantasket on the 19th. He 
 saw and appreciated the beautiful Ten Hills Farm, and caught a glimpse of 
 the natural advantages of Boston for the seat of government. 
 
 On the 30th of May, almost three weeks before Winthrop made his first 
 hurried visit to Charlestown, the " Mary and John," another ship of Win- 
 throp's fleet, had arrived at Nantasket. Immediately after landing, Roger 
 Clap and some eight or ten more of the passengers, of their own accord, 
 seeking a place to settle, went with their baggage, arms, and supplies in 
 a boat up the Charles till they reached a point three leagues from its 
 mouth, where the river was narrow and shallow. (It had not been re- 
 marked as either before. The Charles is a tidal river for nine miles. 
 Shallow does not apply to water the level of which regularly fluctuates 
 from six to ten feet.) The place they reached was the head of tide-water, 
 not far from and below the Watertown of to-day, 1 five miles below the mouth 
 of Stony Brook. They found in the neighborhood an encampment of three 
 hundred Indians, some of whom were taking fish in the shallow water above 
 the head of tide-water. It was called by Josslyn, a few years later (1638), a 
 
 1 The map of the " river flowing through a lake into the sea " sufficiently explains itself, so far 
 as this paper is concerned. The spot where Clap and his family landed is against the shallows, — 
 perhaps at the entrance to the narrow part between the Arsenal and Watertown bridge, above which 
 the fall occurs. Fort Norumbega is at the mouth of Stony Brook. The ditches conceived by Mr. 
 Winsor to have been the preliminary work for a stockade for the protection of the future Boston 
 may be found on both sides of Stony Brook for a distance of at least three miles from its mouth. 
 
22 THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 
 
 "fall of fresh waters which conveigh themselves into the ocean through 
 Charles River, a little below the fall of which they [the inhabitants] have 
 a weir to catch fish." Clap's party went no farther. No other party of 
 which there is any record went so far, though visiting messengers passed up 
 and down. 1 
 
 I have been able to find evidence that Winthrop and his party went up 
 the Mystic River, but no evidence that he, with or without a party, went up 
 any other river in the neighborhood, or that he directed the party that 
 discovered the convenient spot on which to found their town, inasmuch as 
 they started on their expedition a fortnight before Winthrop arrived in the 
 country, and nearly three weeks before he came to Charlestown. 
 
 The first order that Clap and his party, the " westerne men," received 
 from Winthrop, or any representative of the government, so far as I have 
 been able to find, was to abandon Watertown and go to Dorchester. 
 
 How do we know that Clap's party did not go above Watertown ? 
 
 The record is that they went " three leagues up Charles River " to where 
 the river was " narrow and shallow" The mouth of the river was between 
 Copp's Hill and Noddle's Island (East Boston). Watertown is nine miles 
 above, along the Charles. At this point they unloaded their baggage and 
 supplies, and sheltered themselves as best they could till their embarkation 
 for Dorchester, to which, in view of the war news from France, they were 
 peremptorily ordered about tlie 1 2th of July. 
 
 They could not have gone farther by water if they had desired to, be- 
 cause, as they observed, their boat with the baggage and supplies could 
 not ascend the shallow rapids and fall at the head of tide-water. 
 
 But why could they not have gone by land? 
 
 Because they discovered a great body of Indians in their path, of whom 
 they — only eight or ten in number — were naturally afraid, and against 
 whom they maintained a guard at night. 
 
 1 The Watertown of Saltonstall was in the region of the present Norwood Park and the ceme- 
 tery at the corner of Arlington Street on the high road from Cambridge, west, about the sources of the 
 numerous springs and rivulets that unite to make a stream emptying into the Charles below the bridge 
 against the Brighton Abattoir. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE NORTHMEN. 33 
 
 In conclusion : Mr. Winsor, pursuing his method of geographical re- 
 search, including the examination of the historical records, and a single 
 visit of an hour to the locality to which I personally introduced him, finds 
 the remains of what he prefers to regard the foundations of a fortified 
 early Boston, the future capital of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, the 
 work of Winthrop's men, at the mouth of Stony Brook on the Charles, 
 fourteen miles from its mouth. 
 
 By my method, with the same materials, I fail to find any evidence 
 that any of Winthrop's company were nearer to Stony Brook than Water- 
 town, some five miles away, till long after the seat of government had been 
 established on the present site of Boston. 
 
 As I have demonstrated that the works at the mouth of Stony Brook 
 were known and had been described some three hundred and fifty years 
 ago, and as I had placed the printed copy of my demonstration in the 
 hands of Mr. Winsor long before his communication on the site of the 
 abandoned Boston was given to the public, and as I have now, upon his 
 challenge, pointed out how one may estimate the value of his method of 
 investigating a geographical question where he had before him everything 
 needed for forming a just judgment, — I think I may feel that I have vin- 
 dicated the honor of your publication of my letter of four years ago in the 
 " Bulletin of the American Geographical Society." 
 
 You will, I think, agree with me, that Massachusetts is still open to 
 students of its geography and early history. 
 
 I am very respectfully yours, 
 
 EBEN NORTON HORSFORD. 
 Cambridge, June 1, 18S9. 
 

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