re was a populous city with walls, and the king had Latin books
in his library which nobody could read.[299] All kinds of metals
abounded, and especially gold.[300] The woods were of immense extent.
The people traded with Greenland, importing thence pitch(?), brimstone,
and furs. They sowed grain and made "beer." They made small boats, but
were ignorant of the loadstone and the compass. For this reason, they
held the newcomers in high estimation.[301] The name of the country was
Estotiland.

[Footnote 298: They were, therefore, not Northmen.]

[Footnote 299: Pruning this sentence of its magniloquence,
might it perhaps mean that there was a large palisaded village,
and that the chief had some books in Roman characters, a relic
of some castaway, which he kept as a fetish?]

[Footnote 300: With all possible latitude of interpretation,
this could not be made to apply to any part of America north of
Mexico.]

[Footnote 301: The magnetic needle had been used by the
mariners of western and northern Europe since the end of the
thirteenth century.]

There is nothing so far in this vague description to show that
Estotiland was an American country, except its western direction and
perhaps its trading with Greenland. The points of unlikeness are at
least as numerous as the points of likeness. But in what follows there
is a much stronger suggestion of North America.

[Sidenote: Drogio.]

For some reason not specified an expedition was undertaken by people
from Estotiland to a country to the southward named Drogio, and these
Norse mariners, or some of them, because they understood the compass,
were put in charge of it.[302] But the people of Drogio were cannibals,
and the people from Estotiland on their arrival were taken prisoners and
devoured,--all save the few Northmen, who were saved because of their
marvellous skill in catching fish with nets. The barbarians seemed to
have set much store by these white men, and perhaps to have regarded
them as objects of "medicine." One of the fishermen in particular became
so famous that a neighbouring tribe made war upon the tribe which kept
him, and winning the victory took him over into its own custody. This
sort of thing happened several times. Various tribes fought to secure
the person and services of this Fisherman, so that he was passed about
among more than twenty chiefs, and "wand