hatchets. In the latter we may now, I think,
be allowed to recognize the familiar tomahawk; and when we read that, in
a sharp fight with the natives, Thorbrand, son of the commander Snorro,
was slain, and the woman Freydis afterward found his corpse in the
woods, with a flat stone sticking in the head, and his naked sword lying
on the ground beside him, we seem to see how it all happened.[227] We
seem to see the stealthy Indian suddenly dealing the death-blow, and
then obliged for his own safety to dart away among the trees without
recovering his tomahawk or seizing the sword. The Skraelings came up the
river or lake in a swarm of canoes, all yelling at the top of their
voices (_et illi omnes valde acutum ululabant_), and, leaping ashore,
began a formidable attack with slings and arrows. The narrative calls
these canoes "skin-boats" (_hudhkeipar_), whence it has been inferred
that the writer had in mind the _kayaks_ and _umiaks_ of the
Eskimos.[228] I suspect that the writer did have such boats in mind, and
accordingly used a word not strictly accurate. Very likely his
authorities failed to specify a distinction between bark-boats and
skin-boats, and simply used the handiest word for designating canoes as
contrasted with their own keeled boats.[229]

[Footnote 227: "Hun fann fyrir ser mann daudhan, thar var
Thorbrandr Snorrason, ok stodh hellusteinn i hoefdhi honum;
sverdhit la bert i hja honum," i. e. "Illa incidit in mortuum
hominem, Thorbrandum Snorrii filium, cujus capiti lapis planus
impactus stetit; nudus juxta eum gladius jacuit." Rafn, p.
154.]

[Footnote 228: These Eskimo skin-boats are described in Rink's
_Danish Greenland_, pp. 113, 179.]

[Footnote 229: Cf. Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 366, 367.]

One other point which must be noticed here in connection with the
Skraelings is a singular manoeuvre which they are said to have practised
in the course of the fight. They raised upon the end of a pole a big
ball, not unlike a sheep's paunch, and of a bluish colour; this ball
they swung from the pole over the heads of the white men, and it fell to
the ground with a horrid noise.[230] Now, according to Mr. Schoolcraft,
this was a mode of fighting formerly common among the Algonquins, in New
England and elsewhere. This big ball was what Mr. Schoolcraft calls the
"balista," or what the Indians themselves call the "demon's head." It
was a la