Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/276

 268 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April aptly, the description of Hudson River ' by its first recognized discoverer Verezzano ' ' we passed up this river about half a league, when we found it formed a most beautiful lake, three leagues in circuit.' Thus according to Mr. Gathorne-Hardy, the discoverers knew both Long Island Sound [ = Straumsfj6r(5r], the south coast of Long Island, and the estuary of the Hudson [ = Hop, a very familiar name ; disguised as c Oban f, they say, in the Sound of Kerrara]. After this southern exploration Karlsefni went north to discover what he could : he rounded a cape, steering west : if Hop is the Hudson mouth the cape will be Cape Cod. Here comes a passage which Mr. Gathorne- Hardy thinks corrupt ; which on the contrary might be taken as a guarantee of good faith. It is wrongly translated and badly spelt by Mr. Gathorne- Hardy. In Hauk's book, which alone gives the passage in full, it is thus : peir setluSu oil ein fjoll pau, ei i Hopi varu ok pau er nu funnu peir, ok pat stse<5iz mjok sva a, ok vseri jamlangt or Straumsfirol beggja vegna. This means, ' They reckoned that the mountains at Hope and those they now had found were all one, and that this fitted well enough, and either way was the same distance from Straumsfjord '. Mr. Gathorne-Hardy trans- lates ' ok pat stsetfiz mjok sva a ', ' were therefore close opposite one another', which is harder to understand : ' standast a ' means to corre- spond, to fit, and ' mjok ' here has its frequent sense of ' pretty nearly '. Now this, it might be maintained, is too good not to be true : it must, at any rate, be part of a tradition which kept as close as possible to an original report. Otherwise, it is Swift or Defoe ; the ordinary yarn-spinner does not think of this close geographical study. It is not much against Mr. Gathorne-Hardy's identifications that his Hop or Hudson is too far away from the Massachusetts coast in the neighbourhood of Boston. For it is clear that those Greenland navigators expected a large opening west- ward round their cape, and were from the first inclined to make things fit. It seems clear, too, that they did not think of those mountains as a narrow range. Take an example from Norwegian history : the same Flatey book that preserves the other version of the Greenland voyages also contains the Life of King Hacon. Hacon we are there told went by Ilarsund, the Sound of Islay, round Satirismuli, the Mull of Kintyre, and so to Bute and the adjacent islands. Now from Islay he ought to have seen the mountains of Herey (= Arran) over Kintyre, and rounding the Mull he comes in sight of Arran again from the inner sea. The view from outside corresponds with the view from inside. But the landscape in Wineland is not an easy thing like this ; one makes out from the language that there is a large mass of mountains, and ' mjok ' = ' well enough ' shows that after all there might be room for doubt. Storm's theory, and his map of Nova Scotia, show a much closer correspondence and a much shorter. distance between the two views : but this possibly is not so much in his favour as might appear ; the identification is perhaps too easy. Mr. Gathorne-Hardy has argued in favour of a narrative w r hich is generally despised ; which Professor Finnur Jonsson in a recent paper (1915) rejects : the story of Bjarni Herjulfsson. This captain is said to have been driven south in bad weather sailing from Iceland to Greenland and to have come in sight of various unknown lands before he came at