nd and goes on with the visits to Vinland. It is unquestionably
sound history for the first part; why should it be anything else for the
second part? What shall be said of a style of criticism which, in
dealing with one and the same document, arbitrarily cuts it in two in
the middle and calls the first half history and the last half legend?
which accepts its statements as serious so long as they keep to the
north of the sixtieth parallel, and dismisses them as idle as soon as
they pass to the south of it? Quite contrary to common sense, I should
say.

[Footnote 257: Burton, _Ultima Thule_, London, 1875, i. 237.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Absurd speculations of zealous antiquarians.]

[Sidenote: There is no reason for supposing that the Northmen founded a
colony in Vinland.]

[Sidenote: No archaeological remains of the Northmen have been found
south of Davis strait.]

The only discredit which has been thrown upon the story of the Vinland
voyages, in the eyes either of scholars or of the general public, has
arisen from the eager credulity with which ingenious antiquarians have
now and then tried to prove more than facts will warrant. It is
peculiarly a case in which the judicious historian has had frequent
occasion to exclaim, Save me from my friends! The only fit criticism
upon the wonderful argument from the Dighton inscription is a reference
to the equally wonderful discovery made by Mr. Pickwick at Cobham;[258]
and when it was attempted, some sixty years ago, to prove that Governor
Arnold's old stone windmill at Newport[259] was a tower built by the
Northmen, no wonder if the exposure of this rather laughable notion
should have led many people to suppose that the story of Leif and
Thorfinn had thereby been deprived of some part of its support. But the
story never rested upon any such evidence, and does not call for
evidence of such sort. There is nothing in the story to indicate that
the Northmen ever founded a colony in Vinland, or built durable
buildings there. The distinction implicitly drawn by Adam of Bremen, who
narrates the colonization of Iceland and Greenland, and then goes on to
speak of Vinland, not as colonized, but simply as discovered, is a
distinction amply borne out by our chronicles. Nowhere is there the
slightest hint of a colony or settlement established in Vinland. On the
contrary, our plain, business-like narrative tells us that Thorfinn
Karlsefni tried