Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-10-02
American Discovery by Mortimer.

american discovery Dy NOrthmen.
There are scarcely two interpreters
who precisely agree as to the places Wis
tied by the Mortimer, and those who
are surest in their opinions are usually
those who live farthest from the points
described. Prof. Rain found Viinland
along the coast Of New England Prot.
Rask, his contemporary, found it in
dor. The latter urged, with much rea-
son, that it was far easier to 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 Newfound-
land or Prince Edward Island, and Ger
tainly not the New England Indians.
who were familiar with the moose, and
might have seen the buffalo. He might
alsohave added, what was first pointed out
by Mr.. ]. Elliot Cabot, that the re-
peated voyages from Greenland to Vim
land, and the perfect facility with which
successive explorers found the newly
discovered region. indicate some spot
much nearer Greenland than Mount
Hope bay, which would have required
600 miles Of intricate and dangerous
coast navigation, without chart or COM
pass, in order to reach It. Again, Rain
finds it easy to place the ,si0 of Leif's
booths at Bristol, Rhode Island and II.
Gravier, Frenchman, writing 80 lately
as 1874, has not doabt upon the sub
ject. But sail from Fall river to New
port, or, indeed, mere study of the
map, will show any dispassionate man
that the description given by
the sagas has hardly anything in
common with the Rhode Island locality.
The sagas describe an inland lake COM
municating with the sea by shallow
river only accessible at high tide, where
as Mount Hope bay is broad expanse
OF salt water opening into the still wider
gulf OF Narragansett bay, and communi-
eating with the sea BY a passage wide
and deep enough for the nayies of the
world to enter. Even supposing the
Mortimer to have found their wav in
through what is called the Seaconnet
passage, the description does not apply
much better to that and if it 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 instantly revealed it
self. It suffices to say that the whole
Interpretation, which seemed SO easy to
TRANSATLANTIC writer's, is utterly rejected
by, Prof. Diman, 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, I may
venture modestly to indorse his conclu
sions and they have the weightier in
dorsement of Prot. Henry Mitchell,
of the Coast Survey, in a manuscript
report which lies before me. And the
same vagueness and Indebtedness mark
all the descriptions of the Mortimer.
Nothing is more difficult than to depict
in words with any accuracy in an unset
entific age the features of low and
monotonous sea-shore and this, with
the changes undergone by the coast OF
Southern New England during nine
hundred years, I think, renders the iden-
tification of any spot visited by the
Mortimer practically impossible-Z. w.
Higgi,,son, in Harper's Magazine.