Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/196

 does lead them into laughable discoveries—quite as ridiculous as that of the Runic inscription on the Deighton Writing Stone, or as Oldbuck's Roman Prsetorium on the Kaim of Kinprunes. Here is another specimen of the development of the imaginative faculty among antiquaries.

In the town of Newport, near to the south end of Rhode Island, stands the circular stone-work of an old windmill, of about 18 feet in diameter within walls, and raised upon eight pillars of about 7 feet high and 5 to 6 feet apart, arched over so as to admit carts to come under the floor of the mill, and the corn-sacks to be hoisted up or lowered down through a hatch in the wooden floor above. This is the ordinary plan in large well-arranged windmills, as it takes the horses and carts out of the way of the wings of the mill, and of the lever on the ground by which the moveable wooden superstructure or head of the mill was formerly turned to the wind. The pillars supported the beams of the floor; and windows and a fireplace, corresponding to the floor or platform of the mill, are in the wall, which is about 24 feet high, built of rough stone very substantially, and with lime-mortar, and has been harled or roughcast with lime. The situation is at the summit, or nearly so, of the principal eminence in the neighbourhood, open to the sea breezes, and with no out-walls or any thing near it to intercept the wind. It is universally called by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood "the old stone mill." These are pretty good proofs that the building has been a mill; but there is also documentary proof of it. Rhode Island was first settled by the English in 1636, and two years afterwards (1638) Newport and the south end were occupied. In 1678, that is forty years afterwards, Benedict Arnold, who appears to have been governor of the settlement at one time, in his last will and testament calls this very building his