Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/184

 from an unknown land. In the former case, Karlsefne must be supposed to have gone to Honduras to cut his broomstick. The maple, or whatever wood for furniture grows more to the north in America, is not more beautiful than birch wood or other European wood. If it had been logwood, fustic, mahogany, that was meant by massur-wood, it would be a proof that the saga-writer was drawing upon his own imagination in the details of his account of Ivarlsefne; for vines and wheat growing spontaneously, mahogany trees or dye-woods, and Esquimaux in skin-canoes trading with sable skins and grey skins, and furs described to be white or all grey— " gravara ok salvali ok allskonar skinnavara," and " algra skinn "—never met in one locality: for the former are products of a very southern latitude, and the people and animals described belong to a northern climate. The account of the time from land to land in the voyages of Biorne, Leif, or Karlsefne, leads to no satisfactory result as to the land they came to; because we neither know their rate of sailing in a day, nor whether by a day's sailing they meant sailing day and night, or that they took down and stowed their great squaresail at night, and lay-to with a little try-sail aft till daylight, as similarly rigged vessels on the fishing banks do at the present day. The lying-to all night, as they were in an unknown sea, was the better seamanship, and we may suppose it was their way of sailing. In their ordinary voyages they appear always to have put up their tent-cloths at night, brought their vessel to the land or to an anchor, and to have gone to rest, leaving only a watch on deck. It is usually mentioned in the saga when they sail night and day, as a special circumstance. It does not appear probable they would run with all sail in the night through an unknown sea; and if they look down sail at night, and lay-to in the gulf stream, all