wing to the threats
of the natives and the scarcity of supplies, and all the colonists
sailed from Massachusetts, just as the Norse settlers had done many
generations previously.

The expedition of Gosnold to Vinland, however, bore good fruit, from the
favorable report of the new country which he made at home. The merchants
of Bristol fitted out two ships under Martin Pring, and in the first
voyage a great part of Maine (lying north of Massachusetts) was
explored, and the coast south to Martha's Vineyard, where Gosnold had
been. This led to profitable traffic with the natives, and three years
later Pring made a more complete survey of Maine.

Vinland was also the scene of the famous landing of the Mayflower,
bringing its Puritans from England. It was in Cape Cod Bay that she was
first moored. After exploring the new country, just as Leif Erikson had
done so many generations previously, they chose a place on the west side
of the bay and named the little settlement "Plymouth," after the last
English port from which they had sailed. Farther north, still in
Vinland, they soon founded two other towns, "Salem" and "Boston." Those
three settlements have ever since been important centers of energy and
intelligence in Massachusetts, as well as memorials of the Norse
occupation of Vinland.

On the occasion of a public statue being erected in Boston, Mass., to
the memory of Leif Erikson, a committee of the Massachusetts Historical
Society formally decided thus: "It is antecedently probable that the
Northmen discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century."

Prof. Daniel Wilson, in his learned work Prehistoric Man (ii, 83, 85),
thus gives his opinion as to the Norse colony:

With all reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of details, there is
the strongest probability in favor of the authenticity of the
American Vinland.

[Illustration: The Dighton Stone in the Taunton River, Massachusetts.]

Of the Norse colonies in Greenland there are some undoubted remains, one
being a stone inscription in _runes_, proving that it was made before
the Reformation, when that mode of writing was forbidden by law. The
stone is four miles beyond Upernavik. The inscription, according to
Professor Rask, runs thus:

Erling the son of Sigvat, and Enride Oddsoen,
Had cleared the place and raised a mound
On the Friday after Rogation-day;

--date either 1135 or 1170.

Rafn, the celebrated Danish archeologist