Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/195

 by a similar kind of material evidence to be discovered in America, without considering that the cases are totally distinct and different. Greenland was a colony with communications, trade, civil and ecclesiastical establishments, and a considerable population, for 300 years at least before it was lost sight of. Vinland was only visited by flying parties of wood-cutters, remaining at the utmost two or three winters, but never settling there permanently as colonists, nor as far as can be seen from the sagas, with any intention of settling. No division and occupation of the land, no agricultural preparations are mentioned. Cattle they would have taken for milk, or food probably, at any rate, as salt to preserve meat must have been scarce in Greenland, where it could only be obtained by evaporating sea-water. Cattle taken with them, if the circumstance be true, are the only indication of any intention to settle; and a settlement or colony was not established. Three winters are the longest period any of these wood-cutting parties staid in Vinland. To expect here, as in Greenland, material proofs to corroborate the documentary proofs, is weakening the latter by linking them to a sort of evidence which, from the very nature of the case, —the temporary visits of a ship's crew,—cannot exist in Vinland, and, as in the case of Greenland, come in to support them. It would be quite as judicious and consistent with sound principle of investigation to go to New Zealand, or the Sandwich Isles, to search for material proofs (old shoes, cocked hats, or pen-knives) of Captain Cook's having visited those places, and to link the documentary proofs of his discoveries to the authenticity of the material proofs—of the old shoes, cocked hats, and pen-knives—left by him on those shores. This is precisely the kind of investigation and reasoning, with regard to the discovery of Vinland by the Northmen, which antiquaries are pursuing; and to be sure it