Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/186

 men had no motive for such a butchery of their comrades, in a country in which they needed all their strength for their safety, and for the objects of their voyage. All the details seem merely the filling up of imagination, to make a story of a main fact, the discovery of Vinland by certain personages, whose names, and the fact of their discovering unknown lands south-west of Greenland, are alone to be depended upon.

But two facts are stated by our modern antiquaries, which are held to be quite conclusive as to the locality in America discovered by the Icelanders. One is, that in the details of Leif's voyage and residence in Yinland, it is stated that on the shortest day the sun was above the horizon from half-past seven o'clock in the morning to half-past four o'clock in the afternoon, or nine hours, which gives the latitude of the place 41° 24' 10", and which brings it to between Seaconnet Point in 41° 26', and Judith Point in 41° 23', and which two points form the entrance into Mount Hope Bay; which corresponds, even to the name Hop or Hope, with the description of a river, now called the Taunton, running from a lake into the sea, and with all the other landmarks or accounts of the appearance of the coast given in the saga. The other fact, not less striking, is, that in this very neighbourhood,—viz. at Assonet Point, on the shore of the river Taunton, in latitude 41° 44', near the town of Berkley in the district of Massachusetts,—a stone covered with Runic inscriptions is still to be seen, and is known by the name of the Leighton Writing (written) Rock, and was an object of curiosity to the early English settlers as far back as 1680. These two happy coincidences are so happy—so like finding a box, and, 800 years afterwards, finding the key that of all the keys in the world can alone open it—that people almost doubt, at the first hearing of it, whether the news be not too