_Editor Popular Science Monthly_:
SIR: I beg to take exception to the exploded Boston theory again
revived by Miss Cornelia Horsford in the last number of your valuable
magazine. It is astonishing to notice how little Prof. G. Storm’s
excellent prize essay and Mr. Reeve’s careful edition of the text
of sagas seem to have availed against the misplaced patriotism that
persists in carrying those Norse explorers down to New England in the
face of the numerous difficulties with which this feat is associated.
If I am not mistaken, not a single historian or antiquarian of note
has taken Professor Horsford’s extremely unscientific treatment of the
sagas or his Norse discoveries seriously, and the sober verdict of
Mr. Thorsteinn Erlingsson and Dr. V. Gudmundsson on the alleged Norse
ruins seems to show that Miss Cornelia Horsford has met with no better
success. To refute all the philological curiosities and illogical
conclusions drawn by Professor Horsford in his ten treatises on the
subject would, however, require a book of at least five hundred pages,
and nobody seems to think the question important enough to warrant such
an output. The fact that Mr. A. H. Keane, in his recent work, Man, Past
and Present, takes it for granted that the Norsemen met with Eskimos
in New England in the year 1000 seems to prove, however, that this
persistence in defending a baseless supposition is not merely a matter
of innocent patriotism. Fortunately, the current year, which marks the
nine hundredth anniversary of the discovery, will be sure to see some
valuable new treatises on the subject, and those who are sufficiently
interested furthermore need only consult the above-mentioned books to
discover how many serious objections the New England theory really has
to contend with. Permit me to mention one of them. Cape Cod has, it
is true, one singular feature that suggests the Keel Cape of the best
version of the Vinland manuscripts--viz., sandy shores. As everybody
can see for himself, however, by consulting Mr. Reeve’s book, the
explorers sailed south from Keel Cape on the eastern shore till the
country became indented with bays. At the mouth of one of these they
established their first winter quarters (the so-called Streamfirth),
and the next fall proceeded still farther south for a considerable time
till they came to “Hop,” the true Wineland. The extraordinary ease
with which Professor Horsford, in his book Landfall of Leif Ericson,
undertakes to chop up this version, in order to make the explorers
return to Boston from Cape Cod instead of continuing on their course,
is something remarkable in the annals of historical research. But
even then his theory fails utterly to satisfy the critical reader.
The trouble with most of the writers on this subject, not excluding a
professional historian like Prof. John Fiske, is that they have failed
to sift the material or see the force of Professor Storm’s criticism of
the Flat Island version. This being done, everything falls into line
for the Nova Scotia theory, due consideration being given to the fact
that an oral tradition of at least one hundred years intervened between
the events narrated and the first somewhat extended written record.
While, therefore, owing to the last-mentioned fact, it is not
altogether impossible that the Norsemen reached New England, it should
be distinctly understood that such a conclusion can only be drawn on
archæological lines, the test of the sagas pointing clearly in the
opposite direction.