, states as the result of many
years' research, that America was repeatedly visited by the Icelanders
in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries; that the estuary of
the St. Lawrence was their chief station; that they had coasted
southward to Carolina, everywhere introducing some Christian
civilization among the natives.

[Illustration: The Dighton Stone. Fig. 2.]

A supposed rock memorial of the Norsemen is the Dighton Stone in the
Taunton River, Massachusetts; one of its sentences, according to
Professor Rafn, being:

"Thorfinn with 151 Norse seafaring men took possession of this land."

The figures and letters (whether runic or merely Indian) inscribed on
the Dighton Rock have been copied by antiquaries at the following dates:
1680, 1712, 1730, 1768, 1788, 1807, 1812. The above illustration (Fig.
2) shows the last mentioned.

There have been many probable traces of ancient Norsemen found in
America, besides those already given. At Cape Cod, in the last
generation, a number of hearth-stones were found under a layer of peat.
A more famous relic was the skeleton dug up in Fall River, Mass., with
an ornamental belt of metal tubes made from fragments of flat brass;
there were also some arrow-heads of the same material. Longfellow, the
New England poet, naturally had his attention directed to this discovery
(made, 1831), and founded on it his ballad The Skeleton in Armor,
connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport. The latter, according to
Professor Rafn, "was erected decidedly not later than the twelfth
century."

I was a Viking old,
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told
No Saga taught thee!...
Far in the Northern Land
By the wild Baltic's strand
I with my childish hand
Tamed the ger-falcon.
Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked I the grisly bear,
While from my path the hare
Fled like a shadow.

* * * * *

Scarce had I put to sea
Bearing the maid with me--
Fairest of all was she
Among the Norsemen!
Three weeks we westward bore,
And when the storm was o'er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore
Stretching to leeward;
There for my lady's bower,
Built I this lofty tower
Which to this very hour
Stands looking seaward!

Sir Clements Markham, of the Royal Geographical Society, believes that
the Norse settlers in Greenland were driven from their settlements there
by Eskimos coming, not from the inte