The statements of the sagas coincide with so many of the general features of our Atlantic coast that there is a strong probability, not indeed rising to a demonstration, but to as much certainty as belongs to anything in the period of unwritten history, that the Vineland of the Northmen was somewhere on our American Atlantic coast. Of this there is little room for doubt. But when we go beyond this there is absolutely no certainty whatever. The local descriptions of the sagas are all general and indefinite. They identify nothing. When they speak of an island, a cape, a river, or a bay, they do not give us any clue to the locality where the said island, or cape, or river, or bay is situated. The whole coast of New England and of the English Provinces farther east is serrated with capes and bays and river-inlets, and is likewise studded with some hundreds of islands. It would be exceedingly interesting, indeed a great achievement, if we could clearly fix or identify the land-fall of Leif, the Scandinavian explorer, and point out the exact spot where he erected his houses and passed the winter.
The key to this identification, if any exists, is plainly the description of the place as given in the sagas. If we find in the sagas the land-fall of Leif, the place where the Scandinavians landed, so fully described that it can be clearly distinguished from every other place on our coast, we shall then have accomplished this important historical achievement. Let us examine this description as it stands in these ancient documents.
Leaving Markland, they were, says the saga, "two days at sea before they saw land, and they sailed thither and came to an island which lay to the eastward of the land." Here they landed and made observations as to the grass and the sweetness of the dew. "After that," continues the saga, "they went to the ship, and sailed into a sound, which lay between the island and a ness (promontory), which ran out to the eastward of the land; and then steered westwards past the ness. It was very shallow at ebb tide, and their ship stood up, so that it was far to see from the ship to the water.
"But so much did they desire to land, that they did not give themselves time to wait until the water again rose under their ship, but ran at once on shore, at a place where a river flows out of a lake; but so soon as the waters rose up under the ship, then took they boats, and rowed to the ship, and floated it up to the river, and thence into the lake, and there cast anchor, and brought up from the ship their skin cots, and made there booths. After this they took council, and formed the resolution of remaining there for the winter, and built there large houses."