Footnote 194: Perhaps it may have been a square-headed lug, like those of the Deal galley-punts; see Leslie's Old Sea Wings, Ways, and Words, in the Days of Oak and Hemp, London, 1890, p. 21.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 195: Some people must have queer notions about the lapse of past time. I have more than once had this question put to me in such a way as to show that what the querist really had in mind was some vague impression of the time when oaks and chestnuts, vines and magnolias, grew luxuriantly over a great part of Greenland! But that was in the Miocene period, probably not less than a million years ago, and has no obvious bearing upon the deeds of Eric the Red.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 196: Bardsen, Descriptio Grœnlandiæ, appended to Major's Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, etc., pp. 40, 41; and see below, p. [242].[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 197: Zahrtmann, Journal of Royal Geographical Society, London, 1836, vol. v. p. 102. On this general subject see J. D. Whitney, "The Climate Changes of Later Geological Times," in Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard College, Cambridge, 1882, vol. vii. According to Professor Whitney there has also been a deterioration in the climate of Iceland.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 198: One must not too hastily infer that the mean temperature of points on the American coast south of Davis strait would be affected in the same way. The relation between the phenomena is not quite so simple. For example, a warm early spring on the coast of Greenland increases the discharge of icebergs from its fiords to wander down the Atlantic ocean; and this increase of floating ice tends to chill and dampen the summers at least as far South as Long Island, if not farther.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 199: Rink's Danish Greenland, pp. 27, 96, 97.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 200: See Read's Historical Inquiry concerning Henry Hudson, Albany, 1866, p. 160.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 201: "Nú tekst umrædha at nýju um Vínlandsferdh, thviat sú ferdh thikir bædhi gódh til fjár ok virdhíngar," i. e. "Now they began to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for the voyage thither was both gainful and honourable." Rafn, p. 65.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 202: Heimskringla, i, 168.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 203: "Fjöldi var thar melrakka," i. e. "ibi vulpium magnus numerus erat," Rafn, p. 138.[Back to Main Text]