Robert Grant Haliburton

“ This colony, embracing Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, and, under the grant to Fagundes, probably a large portion on the east coast of the present United States, was far the earliest European colony (excepting perhaps Vinland) not only in North America, but also in the New World, for the commissions of the Corte Reals date in regular succession from 1500 (i. e., two years after America had been discovered by Columbus, and six years after its discovery by Cabot) until 1579, soon after which Portugal and its possessions were annexed to Spain. ”

“ It is possible, too, that the Naskapi, sometimes found in Newfoundland and resembling the Eskimos in many respects, may have been included under the name Skraellings by the Northmen.
It is clear that, like Greenland, Vinland the Good was a fraud on emigrants; that the stories as to ship-loads of grapes, self-sown fields of wheat, genial winter weather, etc., were the productions of Eric's prolific brain; and that we must first succeed in finding Greenland's verdant mountains before we can hope to discover the vine-clad hills of Vinland the Good. ”

“ NO one can find a "message from the sea," telling of the fate of some long-missing vessel, without a feeling of emotion; but the stray waifs that throw light on the history of lost colonies are of a deeper interest, for they supply missing chapters in the annals of colonization and early maritime enterprise.
The probable dates of those that are the subject of this paper are: 1. Vinland the Good, discovered a. d. 994; 2. Fagundes's settlement in Cape Breton, a. d. 1521; 3. A second Portuguese settlement in Cape Breton, a. d. 1567; 4. A Spanish settlement in Cape Breton, between 1580 and 1597. ”

“ They were the remains of Spanish vessels which had sailed to settle Cape Breton." Any one who has seen the wreck-strewed coast of Sable Island must remember it as suggesting a graveyard of vessels. Those that have been there a few years are soon covered by the drifting sands, and the half-buried skeletons of later wrecks are to be counted by the dozen, in different stages of sepulture and decay. ”

“ Two persons, father and son, the latter of whom was named Eric the Red, having been guilty of murder in Norway, took refuge in Iceland, where Eric committed one if not two more murders, and in consequence of them, and of his constant broils and feuds with his neighbors, was banished and outlawed. As the world was too small for him, he was tempted to try to discover and explore the new land in the West, of the existence of which there were rumors. ”

“ Thence they sailed with the same favorable southwesterly wind (which grew into a gale) for four days, when they sighted a "fourth land, which was Greenland."
Leif's voyage to Vinland seems, as nearly as possible, a version of Bjarne's reversed. Neither time nor bearings are given, and we are merely told that Leif "found the land first which Bjarne had found last." [3] They saw no grass there. "Great icebergs were over all up the country, but like a plain of flat stones was all from the sea to the mountains." This they called Helluland. ”

“ Wild grapes, too, are found on the west coast of Newfoundland, according to Anspach; and in 1521 the Portuguese colonists in Cape Breton sent word home that among the products of that country were grapes. The writer of this paper has tasted some excellent wine made by a relative living at Fredericton, New Brunswick, from the wild grapes that are to be seen hanging in clusters from the elm-trees on the intervale lands along the St. ”

“ Assuming such to be the case, the accounts quoted by Rafn will at once become intelligible and consistent, though totally at variance with his theory, which identifies Great Helluland with Labrador, Little Helluland with Newfoundland, and Markland with Nova Scotia.
Rafn quotes the following notice of Vinland from a fragment of the "Vellum Codex," No. 192, supposed to have been written about the end of the fourteenth century: "From Bjarmeland [in Europe] extends uninhabited land toward the north, until Greenland begins; south of Greenland is Helluland ”