without leaving a vestige of their
presence. As for the few cattle for which Thorfinn could find room in
his three or four dragon-ships, we may easily believe that his people
ate them up before leaving the country, especially since we are told
they were threatened with famine. But that domestic cattle, after being
supported on American soil during the length of time involved in the
establishment of a successful colony (say, for fifty or a hundred
years), should have disappeared without leaving abundant traces of
themselves, is simply incredible. Horses and kine are not dependent upon
man for their existence; when left to themselves, in almost any part of
the world, they run wild and flourish in what naturalists call a "feral"
state. Thus we find feral horned cattle in the Falkland and in the
Ladrone islands, as well as in the ancient Chillingham Park, in
Northumberland; we find feral pigs in Jamaica; feral European dogs in La
Plata; feral horses in Turkestan, and also in Mexico, descended from
Spanish horses.[266] If the Northmen had ever founded a colony in
Vinland, how did it happen that the English and French in the
seventeenth century, and from that day to this, have never set eyes upon
a wild horse, or wild cattle, pigs, or hounds, or any such indication
whatever of the former presence of civilized Europeans? I do not
recollect ever seeing this argument used before, but it seems to me
conclusive. It raises against the hypothesis of a Norse colonization in
Vinland a presumption extremely difficult if not impossible to
overcome.[267]

[Footnote 261: "Their hoefdhu medh ser allskonar fenadh, thviat
their aetloedhu at byggja landit, ef their maetti that," i. e.,
"illi omne pecudum genus secum habuerunt, nam terram, si
liceret, coloniis frequentare cogitarunt." Rafn, p. 57.]

[Footnote 262: Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, p. 241.]

[Footnote 263: Irving's _Life of Columbus_, New York, 1828,
vol. i. p. 293.]

[Footnote 264: _Histoire chronologique de la Nouvelle France_,
pp. 40, 58; this work, written in 1689 by the Recollet friar
Sixte le Tac, has at length been published (Paris, 1888) with
notes and other original documents by Eugene Reveillaud. See,
also, Laet, _Novus Orbis_, 39.]

[Footnote 265: John Smith, _Generall Historie_, 247.]

[Footnote 266: Darwin, _Animals and Plants under