Footnote 291: This application of the hot water to purposes of gardening reminds us of the similar covered gardens or hot-beds constructed by Albertus Magnus in the Dominican monastery at Cologne in the thirteenth century. See Humboldt's Kosmos, ii. 130.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 292: Major, op. cit. p. 16. The narrative goes on to give a description of the skin-boats of the Eskimo fishermen.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 293: Daubeny, Description of Active and Extinct Volcanoes, London, 1848, pp. 307; cf. Judd, Volcanoes, London, 1881, p. 234.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 294: "Ab Snefelsneso Islandiæ, quâ brevissimus in Gronlandiam trajectus est, duorum dierum et duarum noctium spatio navigandum est recto cursu versus occidentem; ibique Gunnbjœrnis scopulos invenies, inter Gronlandiam et Islandiam medio situ interjacentes. Hic cursus antiquitûs frequentabatur, nunc vero glacies ex recessu oceani euroaquilonari delata scopulos ante memoratos tam prope attigit, ut nemo sine vitæ discrimine antiquum cursum tenere possit, quemadmodum infra dicetur." Descriptio Grœnlandiæ, apud Major, op. cit. p. 40.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 295: Op. cit. p. lxxvi. See below, vol. ii. p. 115, note B.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 296: Judd, op. cit. pp. 217-220.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 297: My friend, Professor Shaler, tells me that "a volcano during eruption might shed its ice mantle and afterward don it again in such a manner as to hide its true character even on a near view;" and, on the other hand, "a voyager not familiar with volcanoes might easily mistake the cloud-bonnet of a peak for the smoke of a volcano." This, however, will not account for Zeno's "hill that vomited fire," for he goes on to describe the use which the monks made of the pumice and calcareous tufa for building purposes.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 298: They were, therefore, not Northmen.[Back to Main Text]
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?[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 300: With all possible latitude of interpretation, this could not be made to apply to any part of America north of Mexico.[Back to Main Text]