Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/64

 54 EAELY KINGS OF NORWAY. the discovery of America took place (985). Actual discovery, it appears, by Eric the Eed, an Icelander ; concerning which there has been abundant investiga- tion and discussion in our time. Ginnungagap (Roar- ing Abyss) is thought to be the mouth of Behring's Straits in Baffin's Bay ; Big Helloland, the coast from Cape Walsingham to near Newfoundland; Little Hellolandy Newfoundland itself. Markland was Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. South- ward thence to Chesapeak Bay was called Wine Land (wild grapes still grow in Rhode Island, and more luxuriantly further south). White Man*s Land, called also Great Ireland, is supposed to mean the two Carolinas, down to the Southern Cape of Florida. In Dahlmann's opinion, the Irish themselves might even pretend to have probably been the first discoverers of America ; they had evidently got to Iceland itself before the Norse exiles found it out. It appears to be certain that, from the end of the tenth century to the early part of the fourteenth, there was a dim know- ledge of those distant shores extant in the Norse miad, and even some straggling series of visits thither by roving Norsemen ; though, as only danger, diffi-