The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1882-09-01
American Discovery
Mortimer.

There are scarcely two inter-
prefers who precisely agree as to
the places visited by the northmen.
and those who are surest in their
opinion are usually those who live
farthest from the points described.
Professor Rain found Vinland
along the coast of New England !;
Professor RaSk, his contemporary,
found it In Nova Scotia, NeWfound-
land, or Labrador. The latter
urged, with much reason, that it
was far easier 10 discover wild
grapes in Nova Scotia than Eskimo
in what is now Rhode Island, and
that the whole story of the terror
of the Skraelings before the bull
indicates an island people like those
of Newfoundland or Prince Edward
Island, and were certainly not
the New England Indians,
who were familiar with
the moose, and might have seen the
buffalo. He might also have added,
what was FIRST pointed out by Mr..
j. Elliot Cabot, that the repeated
voyages from Greenland to Vim
land, and the perfect facility with
which successive explorers found
the newly discovered region, indi-
cate some spot much nearer Green
land than Mount Hope bay, which
would have required 600 miles of
intricate and dangerous coast navi-
cation, without chart or compass, in
order to reach it. Again, Rain finds
it easy TO place the site of Leif's
booths at Bristol, Rhode Island {;
and M. GraVier, a Frenchman, writ
ing so lately as 1874, has not a doubt
upon the subject. But a sail from
Fall River to Newport, or indeed
a mere study OF the map, will show
any dispassionate man that the de-
scription given by the sagas has
hardly anything in common with
the Rhode Islan1 locality. The
sagas describe an inland lake COM
municating with the sea by shall
low river, only accessible at high
tide, whereas Mount Hope Bay is a
broad eXpanse of salt water opening
into the still wider gulf Of Nara
gansett Bay, and communicating
with the sea by a passage wide and
deep enough for the naVies of the
world to enter. Even suppOs-
ing the Mortimer TO have found
their way in through what is called
the SeacOnnet passage, the deScrip-
ton does not apply much better to
that; and if 1t did, these hardy
sailors must have recognized, the
moment they reached the bay itself,
that they had come in at the back
door, not at the front and the main
access to the ocean must have in
Stantly revealed itself. 1t slfices
to say that the.whOle Interpretation,
which seemed so easy to transat-
lantic writers, is utterly rejected by
Professor Dyman, who was born
and bred in Bristol, and lived all his
life within easy reach of it. Having
myself lived for fourteen years
in that region, may venture
modestly to endorse his conclusions
and they have the Weightier In
dorsement of Professor Henry
Mitchell, of the Coast survey, in a
manuscript report which lies before
me. And the same vaguenesS and
indefniteness marx all the descrip-
tions of the Northpan. Nothing is
more difficult than to depict in
words with any accuracy in an un-
scientific age the features of a low
and mOnotOnOus sea-shore; and this,
with the changes undergone by the
coast ofsouthern New England dur
ing 900 years, / think, renders the
Identification of any spot visited by
! the Mortimer practically impOs-
sible.-T. W. Higginson, in HGrper'S
Magazine.