705 and 1706. Later writers
have until very recently added but little that is important to
the work of Torfaeus. In the voluminous literature of the
subject the discussions chiefly worthy of mention are Forster's
_Geschichte der Entdeckungen und Schiffahrten im Norden_,
Frankfort, 1784, pp. 44-88; and Humboldt, _Examen critique_,
etc., Paris, 1837, tom. i. pp. 84-104; see, also, Major,
_Select Letters of Columbus_, London, 1847 (Hakluyt Soc.) pp.
xii.-xxi. The fifth chapter of Samuel Laing's preliminary
dissertation to the _Heimskringla_, which is devoted to this
subject, is full of good sense; for the most part the shrewd
Orkneyman gets at the core of the thing, though now and then a
little closer knowledge of America would have been useful to
him. The latest critical discussion of the sources, marking a
very decided advance since Rafn's time, is the paper by Gustav
Storm, professor of history in the University of Christiania,
"Studier over Vinlandsreiserne," in _Aarboger for Nordisk
Oldkyndighed og Historie_, Copenhagen, 1887, pp. 293-372.

Since this chapter was written I have seen an English
translation of the valuable paper just mentioned, "Studies on
the Vineland Voyages," in _Memoires de la societe royale des
antiquaires du Nord_, Copenhagen, 1888, pp. 307-370. I have
therefore in most cases altered my footnote references below,
making the page-numbers refer to the English version (in which,
by the way, some parts of the Norwegian original are, for no
very obvious reason, omitted). By an odd coincidence there
comes to me at the same time a book fresh from the press, whose
rare beauty of mechanical workmanship is fully equalled by its
intrinsic merit, _The Finding of Wineland the Good--the History
of the Icelandic Discovery of America_, edited and translated
from the earliest records by Arthur Middleton Reeves, London,
1890. This beautiful quarto contains phototype plates of the
original Icelandic vellums in the _Hauks-bok_, the MS. AM. 557,
and the _Flateyar-bok_, together with the texts carefully
edited, an admirable English translation, and several chapters
of critical discussion decidedly better than a