IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

*^s

{■/

fe'x

i^.r

1.0

I.I

IM IIM

IIIU |||||22
i^ 12.0

1.25

1.4

1.6

-* 6"

►

4>;^.

e}.

'm a

///.

Photographic

Sciences
Corporation

23 WEST MAIN STFEET

WEBSTER N.Y. I4S80

(716) 872-4503

CIHM/ICMH

Microfiche

Series.

CIHM/ICMH
Collection de
microfiches.

Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions Institut canadien de microrp^roductions historiques

1980

Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notes techniques et bibliographiques

The Institute has attempted to obtain the best
original copy available for filming. Features of this
copy which may be bibliographically unique,
which may alter any of the images in the
reproduction, or which may significantly change
the usual method of filming, are checked below.

D
D
D
D
D
D
D
D
D

Coloured covers/
Couverture de couleur

Covers damaged/
Couverture endommagde

Covers restored and/or laminated/
Couverture restaur6e et/ou pelliculde

Cover title missing/

Le titre de couverture manque

Coloured maps/

Cartes gdographiques en couleur

Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/
Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire)

Coloured plates and/or illustrations/
Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur

Bound with other material/
Reli6 avec d'autres documents

Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion
along interior margin/

La reliure serree peut causer de I'ombre ou de la
distortion le long de la marge int6rieure

Blank leaves added during restoration may
appear within the text. Whenever possible, these
have been omitted from filming/
II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajoutdes
lors dune restauration apparaissent dans le texte,
mais, lorsque cela 6tait possible, ces pages n'ont
pas 6t6 filmdes.

Additional comments:/
Commentaires suppl^mentaires;

L'lnstitut a microfilm^ le meilleur exemplaire
qu'il lui a 6t6 possible de se procurer. Les details
de cet exemplaire qui sont peut-dtre uniques du
point de vue bibliographique, qui peuvent modifier
une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une
modification dans la m6thode normale de filmage
sont indiquds ci-dessous.

□ Coloured pages/
Pages de couleur

□ Pages damaged/
Pages endommagdes

□ Pages restored and/or laminated/
Pages restaurdes et/ou pelliculdes

□ Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/
Pages ddcolordes, tachet^es ou piqu^es

I — I Pages detached/

□

Pages d6tach6es

Showthrough/
Transparence

□ Quality of print varies/
Quality indgale de I'impression

□ Includes supplementary material/
Comprend du materiel supplementaire

Only edition available/
Seule Edition disponible

Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata
slips, tissues, etc., have been refilmed to
ensure the best possible image/
Les pages totalement ou partiellement
obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure,
etc., ont 6t6 film6es d nouveau de fagon d
obtenir la meilleure image possible.

10,

This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/

Ce document est film6 au taux de r6duction indiqu6 ci-dessous

14X 18X 22X

26X

30X

'iZx' 16X 20X 24X 28X 3ZA

The copy filmed here has been reproduced thanks
to the generosity of:

National Library of Canada

L'exemplaire film6 fut reproduit grdce d la
g6n6rosit6 de:

Bibliothdque nationale du Canada

The images appearing here are the best quality
possible considering the condition and legibility
of the original copy and in keeping with the
filming contract specifications.

Original copies in printed paper covers are filmed
beginning with the front cover and ending on
the last page with a printed or illustrated impres-
sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All
other original copies are filmed beginning on the
first page with a printed or illustrated impres-
sion, and ending on the last page with a printed
or illustrated impression.

The last recorded frame on each microfiche
shall contain the symbol —^{meaning "CON-
TINUED"), or the symbol V (meaning "END"),
whichever applies.

Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at
different reduction ratios. Those too large to be
entirely included m one exposure are filmed
beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to
right and top to bottom, as many frames as
required. The following diagrams illustrate the
method:

Les images suivantes ont 6t6 reproduites avec le
plus grand soin, compte tenu de la condition et
de la netteti§ de l'exemplaire filmd, et en
conformity avec les conditions du contrat de
filmage.

Les exemplaires originaux dont la couverture en
papier est imprimde sont filmds en commenpant
par le premier plat et en terminant soit par la
dernidre page qui comporte une empreinte
d'impression ou d'illustration, soit par le second
plat, selon le cas. Tous les autres exemplaires
originaux sont filmds en commenpant par la
premidre page qui comporte une empreinte
d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par
la dernidre page qui comporte une telle
empreinte.

Un des symboles suivants app&raitra sur la
dernidre image de chaque microfiche, selon le
cas: le symbole — *> signifie "A SUIVRE", le
symbole \? signifie "FIN".

Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre
filmds d des taux de reduction diffdrents.
Lorsque le document est trop granH pour §tre
reproduit en un seul clich6, il est filmd d partir
de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite,
et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre
d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants
illustrent la mdthode.

32X

1 2 3

4 5 6

DOCKS. WHAHVKS, i bOOM DAM OF THE ANCIKN T CITY OK NORUMUEGA, ON 'I'HE
CHARLES RIVER AT VVATERTOWN, MASS.

BOOM DAM ON COLD SPRING BROOK, OPPOSITE WATERTOWN.

THE DISCOVERY

OF THE

ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

a Communtcatfon

THE PRESIDENT AND COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN
GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

AT THEIR SPECIAL SESSION IN WATERTOWN,

November 21, 1889.

EBEN NORTON HORSFORD.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK :

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.

Cite Bitotrsilic Prceti, (JDambrtUfft.

1890.

( i

^nifaraits Wrm:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridgb.

PREFACE.

The demand for the communication regarding the site of the ancient
city of NoRUMDEGA, made on the 21st of November last to the American
Geographical Society at its special session in Watertown, has led me to
anticipate, in some degree, the publication long promised of the results
which the study of the interesting problem of the lost city and country
has yielded. That paper is in press, but must wait for a time. Mean-
while I have thought to attach a few of its illustrations to the story
recently presented, and place the publication where it may be found by
persons interested; and further, to produce the paper, without the illus-
trations, in a less expensive form.

E. N. H.

Cambridok, Jan. 1, 1890.

iTw»i>»i^CH5;'";r!-scs

THE DISCOYERY

OF THE

ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

JuDGK Dalt, President of the American Geographical Soeicti/ :

It is now nearly five years since I discovered on the banks of Charles
River the site of Fort Norumbega, occupied for a time by the Bretons some
four hundred years ago, and as many years earlier still built and occu-
pied as the seat of extensive fisheries and a settlement by the Northmen.
It is nearly as long since that discovery was the subject of a communica-
tion which I had the honor to address to you, in your official capacity, on
the first of March, 1885, which coirnnunication was published in the October
Bulletin of the American Geographical Society of the same year.

I have to-day the honor of announcing to you the discovery of Vinland,
including the Landfall of Leif Erikson and the Site of his Houses. I have
also tc announce to you the discovery of the site of the ancient City of
Norumbega.

To perpetuate the date of these accessions to geography, a Tower has
been set up at the site of Fort Norumbega, where I first found remains
of the work of the Northmen.

It had been proposed to accompany the unveiling of the Tablet on
the Tower just completed with a summary account of the way by which

G DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUUMUEGA.

I had been conducted to my later discovery, tc^rctlicr with other exer-
cises appropriate to tlie occasion, — inehiding a Poem rehearsing the story
of the Vinhind Sagas, and music contributed by our Scandinavian friends
and by a party of ladies from Norutnbega Hall of VVellesley College, so
called in honor of the discovery which was counnunicated to the public
at about the time the corner-stone of the Hall was laid. But the lateness
of the season has made the outdoor gathering impracticable, and an
invitation has been accepted to meet in this hall.

As the Geographical Society has consented to give the occasion the
honor of its ofhcial presence as at a special meeting convened to receive the
announcement of the discoveries, I ask permission to lay before you copies
of the maps, ancient and modern, charts, sketches, photographs, drawings,
manuscripts, original plans and surveys, which I have gathered for the study
of the problems of Vinland and Norumbega and for the purpose of illus-
trating the detailed papers now in press, with iha request that they be
regarded as an earnest of the later presentation of the results of my work,
in print, to the Society.

I have to ask your further permission to present here and now a sum-
mary of the course of my more recent investigation, which has resulted in
the discovery of the site of the City of Norumbega.

JUDGE DALY'S REPLY.

Professor Horsford, — Allow me to say, on behalf of myself and
colleagues, that it affords us great pleasure to congratulate you on your
discovery. When you made your communication five years ago to the
American Geographical Society, I was inclined to think that the facts
then presented created a strong probability that the locality indicated

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBKGA.

by you was in the region where the Northmen settled in this country ;
and tlio furtlicr and more extensive researches you have since made con-
firm that concluHion. It is especially interesting at this period, when
wo are preparing to celebrate the lour hundredth anniversary of the
discovery of this continent by Columbus, that the facts you have ascer-
tained should be brought to light in connection with this earlier discovery
of America. We have hitherto but inadequately appreciated the North-
men as a race, — their adventurous spirit, their capacity, and the degree of
civilization to which they had attained in an age when Europe was but
emerging from the darkness that had enveloped it for many centuries.
Trof. A. II. Siiyce, the learned Assyrian scholar, in a recent paper has
declared, and given his reasons for, his belief that the primitive home
of the Aryans — the central point of the departure or migration of that
great civilizing race that at a very early period spread over the whole
of Persia and India, and to the westward over the whole of Europe and
America — was not, as has hitherto been supposed, the country lying on
the slopes of the mountains of the Hindoo Kush, between the head-waters
of the rivers Saxartes and the Oxus, but was some place in the south-
eastern part of Scandinavia; which would make the Northmen itte pro-
genitors of the Greeks, the Romans, and, with the exception of one or
two races, of all the nations of modern Europe; which, if further re-
searches should establish to be the fact, would make tLem the greatest
race in the history of mankind.

Du Chaillu, in his recent work on the Viking Age and the Ancestors
of the English-speaking People, — a people now so widely distributed over
the surface of the glol)0, — refers to those countries in the north of Europe
from which the Northmen came as the birthplace of a new epoch in the
history of mankind. All this is very interesting in connection with what
is now generally admitted, — that America was discovered by the Northmen

i'JLk^i

-;>i«!g&-;

DISCOVEUY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUUMHEOA.

five centuries before the arrival of Columbiis, and that for a considerable
period thereafter they maintuined a aettlenient upon our northeastern
coast, and V nt up during that time an intercourse with the niotlier
country.

It remains only in conclusion, Sir, that I should express my high
appreciation of your labors and of the result that has followed them, and
of your liberality in the lofty, characteristic, and imposing Tower that you
have caused to be erected, to mark one of the places where the Northmen
dwelt, and to commemorate these discoveries.

STORY OF TnE DISCOVERY OF NORUMBEGA.

As we all know, there have been before the world for many Bcores of
years, in some instances for as many centuries, certain grand geographical
problems, challenging the spirit of research, the love of adventure, or the
passion for discovery or conquest. They are such as these: Where was
Atalautis? Where was the Ultima Thule ? What is there at the North
Pole ? Was there a Northwest Passage ? Where were the Seven Cities ?
Where were the El Dorado of Raleigh, and the Landfalls of Leif Erik-
eon, of Columbus, of John Cabot, of Verrazano ? And where were
Vinland and Norumbega ?

The number of unsolved problems is steadily lessening. The last two
mentioned are soon, with your consent, Mr. President, to be withdrawn from
the colunm. I might, perhaps, say something concerning the other themes
that have been named, which inight interest you, and properly claim
recognition at the outset of a story of geographical discovery. But you
will, I am sure, prefer to anything else I might say here and to-day, a
plain statement of the reasons for the faith that moved mo to set up a Tower
in Weston, at the junction of Stony Brook with the Charles. A wish that
falls in so wholly with my sense of the requirements of the occasion leaves
me no alternative. I will attempt to comply with it as best I may,
asking yoiu' indulgence for the repetitions I cannot escape in telling the
story of how I found the seat of the earliest European colony in the
New World.

Most who hear me will doubtless connect their first conception of
Norumbega with the well-known poem of Whittier. You will not have

-ii«^__ *,

'■j^f.'H, ;.•►-'

10 DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

forgotten how, as you read the poem, your sympathies went out to tlie
Christian Knight, faint with his fruitless quest for a marvellous city of

which he had heard, — a city of towers and spires and gilded domes,

and a fine people, rich in furs and pearls and precious stones ; nor how,
as the pomp and splendor of a dying October day fiidcd from his sight, and
with it, in his rapt vision, the possible goal of his hopes, he exclaimed,
almost in his latest breatli, —

" I fain would look, before I die.
On Norumbega's walls." '

I have recently received the following letter from Mr. Whittier :

Amesbury, Oct. 30, 1889.

Dear Friend, — That adventurous Scandinavians visited New England
and attempted a settlement here hundreds of years before Columbus, is no
longer a matter of doubt. I had supposed that the filmed city of Norura-
bega was on the Penobscot, when I wrote my poem some years ago ; but I
am glad to think of it as on the Charles, in our own Massachusetts. Thy
discovery of traces of that early settlement at the mouth of Stony Brook and
at "Watertown is a matter of great archjBological interest, and the memorial
Tower and Tablet may well emphasize the importance of that discovery.

Regretting that I am unable to witness the unveiling of the Tablet,
I am

Very truly thy friend, John G. Whittier.

You may have heard of Roberval, a French admiral, as the Lord of
Norumbega ; or you may remember Milton's reference in " Paradise Lost "
to the "icy blasts from the north of Norumbega;" or you may have

1 Tlio poem as published was preceded by a paragraph which read as follows : " Norumbega is
the name given by early French explorers to a fabulous countrj- south of Capo Rreton, first discovered
by Verrazano in l'y2l. It was supposed to have a magnificent city of the same name on a great river,
probably the Penobccot. The site of this barbaric city is laid down on a map published at Antwerp
in 1570. In 1G04 Champlain sailed in search of the northern Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the
Penobscot from the Isle Haute. lie snpixised thq river to be that of Norumbega, but wisely came to
the conclusion that those travellers who told of the great city had never seen it. He s.iw no eridences
of anything like civilization, but mentions the finding of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods."

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMHEGA.

read of Norumbega, the "Lost City of New England," by the Rev. Dr.
De Costa; or you may recall that about four years ago there was some-
thing in the local papers about the Landfall of John Cabot in 1497, and
the site of Norumbega.

Much of what I have recalled to you referred to the region not re-
mote from our own. The old fort at the foot of the Tower concealed
within its walls the entrance to the pathway that led to the desert's secret,
which the Norman Knight sought for in vain. The secret was won only
after protracted siege. It was a most fascinating bit of conquest ; it had
the charm that gathers about the finding of long-lost treasure, something
of the rapture that comes with the witnessed fulfilment of prophecy.

The story of Norumbega was old, — very old for Massachusetts. Its

antiquity may have furnished reason for believing the story to have had

some foundation in truth. It had at least this : An Englishman had left a

record of having seen a city bearing the name Norumbega, and the city

was three quarters of a mile long. This man — David Ingram, a sailor —

had been set on shore by Sir John Hawkins, in 1568, at Tampico, on the

Gulf of Mexico, with some hundred and twenty others, in stress for lack

of provisions. He had wandered all the way across the country, visiting

many large Indian towns, and coming at length, in 1509, to the banks of

Norumbega. He sailed in a French ship from the Harbor of St. Mary's

(one of the earlier names of Boston Bay), a few hours distant from the

Norumbega he visited, and ultimately got back to England, where he

again met and was kindly received by Sir John Hawkins. He told a

story that surpassed belief. He had seen monarchs borne on golden

chairs, and houses with pillars of crystal and silver. He had visited the

dwelling of an Indian chief, where he saw a quart of pcarh ; and when

his listeners jnurmured, he capped the relation with the statement that

in one cMef's house he had seen a peck of pcnrk. He was brought in

audience before Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the kinsman of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Thevet, who had been at Norumbega, on the banks of what he pronounced

" one of the most beautiful rivers in all the world," and who had not

fct^Lv'' •►"^■■'"■•'. .V*

ii^^m^&ama^imimism^

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

improbably been at the mouth of Stony Brook, was present, and confirmed
Ingram in part. Coronado's experiences in New Mexico, 1540, enable us
to confirm him in more ; and the brilliant researches of Mr. Gushing of
Zuui memory and achievement, and the collections of Professor Putnam
of the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, enable us to comprehend most of
the remainder of his relation. There were pearls; they were found in
fresh-water clams (Unios). They are gathered by the peck at the West
to-day; the Peabody Museum has half a bushel of them taken from an
Ohio mound by Professor Putnam. And there were furs. French mer-
chants (I have it from the historian of New France) in one year burned
two hundred thousand beaver skins to keep the price np. These furs came
from the land of the Bretons, — from here. And there were precious
stones, — turquoise and onyx and garnet : I have samples of them. And
there were ornaments of copper and silver and gold : they are found in
Ohio mounds to-day. The pillars of quartz crystal and columns of wood
wrapped with thin sheets of silver and even of gold, I can credit, from
what I have personally seen in some parts of Mexico. On festive occa-
sions such sheets were displayed, so Mr. Gushing tells us, as flags are with
us in honor of a day or of an event. Much of what Ingram related was
what he had seen. Of some things related by him he had evidently only
heard : the stories of the Incas of Peru and of the Montezumas of Mexico
weie among them. Ilis hardships had brought confusion to his memory.

Hakluyt wrote a book (carefully edited by the late Dr. Gharlcs Deane,
and published by the Maine Historical Society) to induce England to under-
take the colonization of the country of Norumbega. Its discovery entered
into some of the plans for penetrating the Northwest Passage. Sir Hum-
phrey Gilbert lost his life in an expedition undertaken in part to find
Norumbega. I have many ancient maps on which Norumbega as a coun-
try is as prominent as New Spain or New France or Virginia, as well
as many others having devices indicating a city against the name of
Norumbega, subordinate to the name of Norumbega as a province.

All these belong to the class of old recorded stories ; mobt of them

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

were in print before the landing of the Pilgrims. One could not help
thinking that they must have some foundation in truth; the alternative
involved too many conspirators, of different nationalities.

Champlain at the opening of the seventeenth century came, under
Admiral Dc Monts, to our coast, and spent a good portion of three years
exploring the bays and headlands and islands from Cape Cod to the Bay
of Fundy, and studying the people and the products of the soil. The
literature of geography was familiar to him. He tried to find Norumbega.
He felt that somewhere there might be found the remains of a city. He
went many leagues up the Penobscot from its mouth, but found nothing.
He left the name on his map in the region where he sought for the city,
about the mouth of the great river, but recorded his conviction that those
who described it had not seen it. This learned and conscientious explorer
justly commanded confidence wherever his publications were read. His
readers felt his doubts. Lescarbot became merry over what he thought the
delusion. Still, Cupt. John Smith hoped to find the city or country ; and
for a long time, down nearly to the end of the seventeenth century, the
name of Norumbega appeared on Dutch maps. It appeared even on occa-
sional maps of the eighteenth century. But at length it was to be found
only in ancient history or geography, and in the name of a noble Hall
set up by the public-spirited citizens of Bangor.

Let us look a little further at the foundation of the old story; we shall,
after all, find it quite substantial.

Verrazano, in 1524, came up to the angle of the Charles at Cambridge
City Cemetery, near the remains of the then still standing Norman Villa,
on Maiollo's map, which seems to have occupied the site of Leifs houses.
He found and left us the name Norumbega in oranbeja, — the initial N
accidentally obliterated from the map, and the m of the second syllable
replaced by Ji, as given on his brother's map, — near the ancient St. John's
Harbor, our modern Gloucester. Not far from Cape Ann, on the local
map of Essex County of to-day, we have Norman's 0, uniformly called
Norman's Woe, and also Norman's Cove, of palpable Norse derivation.

V._-, -..

^^/.^r'i^L

DISCOVEUY OP THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

Thus we have from an early date evidences that Northmen have been on
our coast.^

A little later Parmentier, in 1539, found the name Norurabega applied
to a land lying southvvest-a-quarterwest from Cape Breton. Allefousce
under Kobervul, in 1543, determined the fact of there being two Cape
Bretons (the source and the explanation of any number of mistakes in
cartography), of which the more southern, referred to by Parmentier, was
in the forty-third degree, and identical with Cape Ann. Within the limits
of this forty-third degree was a river, at the moutli of which, according
to AUefonsce, were many rocks and islands (Minofs Lodge, Cohasset rocks,
the Lizard, the Roaring Bulls, the Graves, etc.), up which river, as AUefonsce
estimated, Jlfteen leagues from the mouth, was a city ivhich is called Norum-
Icgue. " Tliere was," he said, " a Jine people " at Ihe city; " and they had
furs of many animals, and loore mantles of marten skins."

AUefonsce, a pilot by profession, has never been doubted. On him,
more than on any one else, rest the identity of one of the Cape Bretons
witli Cape Ann, and the fact of there being a river, with a city on its
banks, both bearing the name Norumboga, between Cape Ann and Cape
Cod. I procured from the Bibllothfique Nationale a photographic coi)y of
the original pen-made map, and of manuscripts of AUefonsce, that I might
consult the original. There is no room whatever for question that a few
leagues up a river having many rocks and islands at its mouth, in the forty-
third degree, there was in 1543 a fine city called Norumbegue. In proof
of this I might quote many authorities, if time permitted.^

Wytflict, in 1597, in an augment to Ptolemy, says: " Noromboga, a
beautiful city, and a grand river are well known." He gives on his map
a picaire of a settlement, or villa, at the junction of two streams, one of
which is the Rio Grande. Here, as we shall see later, was a great fishery,
and of course dwellings and appurtenances to domestic life for persons

' Weliavc other names of Norse deriv.ition in Massachusetts; as for example, Nanset, Naumkeacr
Naumlx'.ik, Namskaket, and Amoskcag.

» Among them are I'tolcmy, Uamusio, Mercator, Lok, Maginn, Plancio, and Solis.

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

eno-ao-ed in the industry. I have framed into the Tower the stone mortar
in use at the settlement. Wytfliet on his map had confounded the hum-
bler settlement with the city. There had been some misapprehension.

Thevet in his text places " Fort Norombegue " at the point where stands
the Tower, and where Wytfliet placed the city,— at the junction of two
streams ; and so the two together led me into temporary misapprehension.
The fort was occupied in Thevet's time as a trading-post by the Breton
French. To them was ascribed the construction of the fort. Thevet says
further : " To the north of Virginia is Norumbega, which is well known as
a beautiful city, and a great river ; still one cannot find whence its name
is derived, for the natives call it Agguncia.^ At the entrance of the river
there is an island very convenient for the fishery." lie describes the fort
as surrounded by fresh water and at the junction of two streams. The
City of Nonnnheija on his map was lower down the river.^ Tlie French
who occupied the fort called it Fort Norombegue. It was surrounded both
by a ditch and a stockade. The ditch remains.

It was largely what Allcfonsce (1543) and Thevet (1556), who were on
our coast as explorers, wrote, and what was pictured on Wytfiiet's map,
that led to my finding the fort. When 1 had deduced from the literature
of geography that the fort was at the mouth of Stony Brook, I drove directly
there, and found it on my first visit.

But I early found, besides the fort, the evidences, long unintelligible to
me, of a great industry (to which I have alluded), involving, among other
things, graded areas some four acres in extent, paved with field bowlders.
It was a most extraordinary display, to which I may refer later.

As already remarked, after Champlain, — known, as he was, as a most
competent explorer and conscientious man, whose itinerary was most full and
clear and painstaking, and whose maps were without precedent for palpable
evidences of care, — after Champlain and the publication of his unsuccessful

> Iroquois for " head," — which applies to a great rock in tlie margin of tlie pavement of the
fisheries), and now at one end of the reservoir d.im.

a The settlement at the junction o£ tliu two streams, and the site of tlie city lower down are given
on the maps of both Thevet and Mercator

: ^^m

M"i

^ fc »^

<*'rf-

iVte/4

DISCOVERY OF THE AXCIENT CITY OF NOUUMBECrA.

exploration of the Penobscot, belief in the existence of the City of No-
rumbeg'a came to be generally less confident, and finally, as Dr. Palfrey's
" History " shows, to be practically abandoned.

To one modern writer more than to any other we are indebted for keep-
ing the story of Norumbega alive. Rev. Dr. De Costa, at that time editor of
the " American Magazine of History," wrote and published a few years ago
the most fascinating story of the " Lost City of New England." lie wrote
and printed several papers, gathering together for preservation the scattered
fragments of legends and history bearing on the subject. His conviction,
however, like that of Champlain and all other personal explorers, except
Allefonsce and Thevet, was that if the ruins of the city were ever to be
anywhere found, they would be on the Penobscot, where our grand old
Poet placed it.

Yet every rood of the Penobscot to its extreme source has been scoured
in the search, and no trace of the remains of a city has been found. There
still exist on that noble river evidences of what the story grew fiom which
was told to Champlain, — among them the name of Nolambeghe, preserved
or known to the Indians of to-day (Votromille), and the name Baya del
Loreme on many ancient maps, as well as other names of Norse derivation
on local maps of Maine ; but time will not permit us to pursue them.

As the lost city was not on the Penobscot, and as it was not thought pos-
sible that it could exist elsewhere, the search was at last given up. So
Norumbega was lost. In view of the great interests involved, one might
almost wish — say you? — that it could have remained lost for a few
years longer.

In my judgment, however, if it were possible to-day to prove that the
Phoenicians visited and long occupied parts of this country, or that this
country was the Atalantis of Pliny and Solon, — either or both of them
would dim, by the measure of the faintest Indian-summer haze only, the
transcendent glory of the life-work of Columbus.

But there was another country lost, — lost from a still earlier period.
This was Vinland. Or it may perhaps more correctly be said that it is only

u /

1 ^

-4

RIVER FLOWING THROUGH A LAKE
INTO THE SEA'

VINLAND OP THE NORTHMEN

(•^ijiiecl tlj^flftr Ii^sl.riicTliorji fey

Geo. DaVis, Civil Er^^iijeer.

» /■> n

Scale of fviiies.

* = Jiyt Of Lrif'6 floJsE^.

CI 51 <

-^
#

^-'^'^

)>■•:

#;> '^^

«1 /<)

H 7 >l

( I f /

(.() HV >* « i: v

rJ A\/

,,ttlMil.lt,ii . .i'.«.'L8BO"'»'

T .1

M A L DEN

ifitaMMMi

Humyrt Pr'h tinoCo Boarw

■NMB

^n*> CI Y II

Itl

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUUMUEOA.

recently tlmt it hnn been diHCOvcrod un.l dotnonstr.ite.l that there had ccr-
tainly been a country hereabout to which the Northmen came, nine hundred

^'"doT'ou anticipate me by exdaiming that Vinland and Norumbcga are

identical? „ , ,. . ^. „

But between such conclusion and the date of the earlier conviction of
what miKht bo found by research lay four years of almost constant study
nnd norsonal exploration, with the co-operation of the engineer and
drau.ditsman an<l photographer at almost every Btep. I only felt that I
saw the end ahnost from the beginning, and lodged a caveat four years ago
in connection with the Norse name of Cape Cod,-Kjalarnes, -and waited
I repeated my conviction more than once in my mldress at the unveiling of
the statue to Leif in Boston two years ago. And if I tell you now that
I have found the ancient city of Nonunboga, as well as the /.•/ and the n.cr
and the country of Norumboga, and learned somewhat of their marvellous

history, -it will, 1 hope, ''^^Ip ^<^ «'^° -^'"" ^"^"''^"'^ '" ^^'"'' ''''^' '"' '"
unfoUiin.' of a relation which I cannot much shorten, much less omit.

Lot me tell you of a little prediction that I made at a certam early stage
of my research, which, if my reasoning from data discovere.l were correct,
must be realized, and which may help to give you patience as well as cour-
acre It was the test of the trustworthiness of my method of research. 1
said' to myself and to my household : " If T am correct, every tributary
to the Charles will be found to have, or to have had, a dam and a pond,
or their equivalent, at or near its mouth or along its course." That was
,ny prophecy. One may study its fulfilment on either side of the river
from its mouth to its source, at one's leisure. It was long after this pre-
diction that I found its verification at every point I examined, even as iar
as fiftv miles from its mouth along the Charles, in MiUis; and, f\irther still
in Ilolliston. The reasoning that led up to necessary dams and ponds at
or near the mouths of the tributaries led with like force to a great dam on
the Charles itself; and that is also open to your study.

On the Tablet of the Tower one may read that Norumbega was the name

mmi0''t* s^.

iiMn

DISCOVEUY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUUMnEGA.

of a fort nt the hnno of the Tower, of tlio river llowinp past im, of a city
on it« banks, and of a country that rcachus from Lon;^ Ishiml Si>uii<l to tlio
St. Lawrence ; and that unuiiHtakablo renuuns of tlio peoplu who oecupicd
the country are strewn throughout this vast region. And to bo still more
specific, I niny say there is not a scpiare mile of the bosin of the Charles
that does not contain incontestable meiiiorialH of these people, that will pres-
eiitly be as obvious to others a.s they now are to me.

Shall I tell you at the outset why this has not boon known before ? It
was a secret that, among other things, lay hidden in the signification of two
or three Algonquin roots.

You are all familiar with the fact that the organs of speech of different
peoples differ more or less. The German has ditliculty with our pronuncia-
tion, and we with the German ; the Hawaiian language, like the Italian, is
marked by the frequent recurrence of vowels ; some persons lisp ; vi and
n are sometimes confounded with each other, as b and ]) are, and, as the
Chinese illustrate to us, I and r; so too h and v, u and iv, arc intercliange-
able.' The early settlers said Marvill Head where we say Marble Head."
The Dutch have difTiculty with the English h. v, and to.

Lonf ago — he has been dead a hundred years — a Moravian mission-
ary, Zeisberger, a German, came to this country, and noted a peculiarity in
Algonquin speech. Heckewelder, another German, remarked the same
thing. Du Ponceau, a Frenchman, observed it. This peculiarity was that
the Indians of the tribes of the Algonquin family, which prevailed through-
out New England, could not, — I bog you specially to remark it,— could
not utter tlio sound of h without prefixing to it the sound of m ; so that
in uttering hi, the word that means " water," the Indians said vihi, — ]mt
as the Latins, possibly preserving the same root rnhi (autochthonous of
old), said imhibn, "to imbibe or drink ;" jast as the Greek sailors who
come to our capital city speak of coming to rtiBoston ; just as in Central

» Rog( r WilH.ims imticrd among the tritms of Indians, even in i lacps within forty miles square of
area, that /, n, and r were dialeotic equivalents in the Indian name o£ " dog."
' See Wood's New England's Prospect.

DI8C0VKUV OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOHl'MnEOA.

and South Atncrica and in great portionH of Africa ono may find to-day
in niiiDcs of purHons and phiooH b precuilod by m. (Suo Stanley's naincH,
und r)ii (Jliaillit's and ISrintun'M, and naniCH in niiHHionary rccurdH.)

Many lanidred years ago the country we call Norway was called Nor-
begia' and Norboga," which are the Hanie philologically — om we have just
seen — as Noruega, or Norvega, or Norwega ; the b is the equivalent of u,
or V, or ir.

The people of Norway settling in a newly diHcovcrcd country claimed
the sovereignty of that country. Vinland belonged to Norway, — that
is, Norbega. But the Indians among whom the Norwegians came, could
not, as we have seen, utter the sound of li without putting the sound of m
before it. They could not readily say Norbcya, but said, because it was
easier of utterance, Nor' inhega. This was the name later given by the
natives wherever along the coast, from Cape Cod to the St. Lawrence,
explorcM-s asked the name of the country occupied l)y the Norwegians.
In answer to such questions the natives gave the name that hud so long
before been conferred, — Normhcga. This name seems to have been u.sed in
the sense of " l)elonging to Norway." Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French,
Dutch, and Pjiiglish navigators coming to our .shores spelled the name Xur' inbign
variously. So we had Xnnnuhcga ; we had the « in it replaced by o, a, e,
and /; and wo had fxya replaced by bcffiic and dec and Ixtfffi, etc. Chauiplain
left the name of the country about the Penobscot Xarunhcrt/ue. On one
map only have I found Xiiriiibct/a. On three maps, obviously copies of
a common original, I have found at the same point, respectively, Norvega,
Noruega, and Norumbega.^ These three names on the separate maps were
all alike in Nova Francia (New France).

Now, in 1524, after the Northmen in the basin of the Charles had moved
northward, pursuing their industries along the coast, some naturally becom-
ing merged in the Indian people, Verrazano, the Italian explorer under

' Socs Hordono. " .See Mac;iiin.

• Norvoga wa.s Norl)i'gi\, as Sovastoiwl \v,is Scbnatnpol. or as Ilibero w.%s Uivoro ; iviid Norlioffa
bccamo Nor'mbega, as Hoston tn-cotnes 'mUoston. Urotius and Forster recognized the iwssible
identity of Norwega witli Noruinboga.

Vw..'

[fy^

DISCOVEUY OF THE ANCIEN'T CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

Francis I. and Madame the Regent of France, came here and saw traces of
tho fortncr presence of the Northmen. There is recorded on his maps
(Maiollo'.s and that of his brother Ilieronynuis Verrazano) Norman's Villa,'
and Anorobagea, and Oranbega.^ Allefonsce's visit was later, in 1543; and he
found the city and river of Noronibeguc in the forty-third degree. Thevet
came later still, and found in the same degree — possibly, it may be suggested,
in part by relation of others — the river and city, and also ihe fort, of No-
rumbega. These navigators and discoverers were all Frenchmen." Breton
French traders occupied the fort when Thevet was in this neighborhood.
This portion of Massacliusetts liad been called Francesca and Gallia hy Ver-
razano, and Terra de la Franciscane by Allefon.sce. This was the earliest New
France, — Nova Franoia, — the name which Jacques Cartier in 15.31-1535
extended over the shores of the St. Lawrence, the story of which we have
in the works of Dr. Parkman. The Dauphin map (1542-1543) confounded, as
Sebastian Cabot's of 1544 did, the southern with tlie northern Cape Dreton,
or rather fused the two in one. It was Allefonsce, the pilot of Roberval,
who in 1543 left, in the manuscript to which I have referred, the record
of his discovery that there were (lco Caj)e Bretons. It is this original manu-
script — of which I have with its pen-made maps the absolute copy — that
has determined the site of the treasures of the forty-third degree.

This Allefonsce mnnnscript determined our Cape Ann to he the southern Cape
Breton. It determined the river Charles to be tho Norumbega. That is, the
river Norumbega was in the forty-third degree ; it was a tidal river ( Ver-
razano and Thorfinn). '-It is at its mouth full of islands which stretch out
ten or twelve leagues to the sea." * Of such a tidal river there is hut one in
the fortv-third degree.

1 Xorm.iii Villa Ls also on the Ulpius Globe in the same latitude.

^ XornKin's Woe occupies the site of, or is ne.ir to, the ( )r!inbec;.'V of Verraziino. Not f,ar away
wa.s the ilialectic equivalent Naamhoak nf .lolin Smith, and its near fellow of Xaunikeag, in use to-day,
and Namskakct and \moskeag, already mentioned ; of close kinship, and in another direction, wcro
Bogasto and .Tar. Verrazano records the luiu/d villa — such were tho houses of the Northmen —
and the sweathouse, or sli, as it is preserved in Hoga-stf>, in the town of Millis.

* Verrazano wa.s an Italian in the employ of the French Government.

* Allefonsce's month of tlio Charles had for its two promontories Cape Ann aud CajK) CoJ. He
estimates its width at " above forty leagues."

mmmmmmmm

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

On the niivps of which I spoke, where, at the same point and given aa the
alternative names of this city, Norumbocja, Norveya, and Norm<ja are found,
and where Norvega as a jxrovince occurs, there is also, and in the same pre-
cise latitude, the Norumbega Rkcr. This was the llio Grande of the Portu-
guese, the Anguileine of Verrazano, the Misliaum (Big Eel) of the Massachu-
setts Indians, and the Charles of Capt. John Smith. Over all, in larger print,
on these maps, is the historic name of

Nova Fr.\.ncia.

Of this New France Mr. Bancroft, our great historian, say.=i: "The French

DIPLOMATS NEVER FAILED TO ItEMEMBER THAT BoSTON WAS WITUIN THE
LIMITS OF THE ORIGINAL NeW FrANCE."

Here was the original New Fr.\.nce.

If Boston was in New France ; and if the river Norumbega ^ihc Charies),
and the city of Norumbega and the fort of Norumbega, on the banks of the
diaries, were all in New France as well as in the country of Norumbega,
and in the forty-third degree, — then we cannot be in doubt as to where
the Northmen came nine hundred years ago. As I have demonstrated else-
whore that Leif's houses were farther down the Charles, we cannot doubt
that the Vinland of Leif was near the city of the Norumbega of history,
tradition, and song. So eastern Massachusetts held both Yinland and the
ancient city and seaport and river and fort of Norumbega.

It is, as the French tell us, the unexpected that happens. I found my
guide to the city in a single paragraph in one of the Sagas of Tliorfinu
Karisefni, which appears, by an oversight of the .scribe or copyist possibly,
attaclied to the story of Froydis. Let me give the substance of it.

Leif had built houses near Gerry's Landing, and called the country Vin-
land, and returned to Greenland. Thorwald had come to Leif's houses, had
explored the Charies, had found in it many shallows and islands, and a corn-
shed on an i.sland far to the west ; had consumed a summer in his discoveries,
and returned to Leif's houses in the autumn. In attempting exploration at
sea he had been wrecked on Cape Cod, had repaired his ship and set up the

ORTELIUS, 1570.

SOI./S. /s at

••Si>

rrtsUKt.

\.ad.CAJUas.

BOTERO, 1603.

"They sailed long until they came to a river, which flowed from the land

through a lalce and passed into the sea."

Thorflun's Saga.

New pi! lT!n •^""7""^*^ "'^^-^y ''-"'e-nbered that Boston was built within the original limits of
New France" (Bancrofts MUCvry, 2d edition, p. 24).

MMl

DISCOVERY OF TIIK ANXIENT CITY OF XOUUMIJEGA.

old keel in the sand, and called the cape Kjalarnes(Kecl cape) ; he had boon
killed in battle with the Indians, and buried on the Gurnet. Ills crew had
returned to Greenland to be succeeded by Thorfmn, who remained three
years in Vinland, and because of Indian distrust and opposition gave up the
attempt to settle the country.

Thorfmn in his ricldy laden ship had returned with his wife Gudrid and
his little boy Snorri to Greenland and to Norway ; had passed the winter in
the society of the Court at Nidaros, the residence of the king, not far from
the modern Thronheim. As he was ready to take his departure for Iceland,
his future home, waiting at the wharf for a favoring wind, there came to
the ship a Bremen merchant who wished to buy his hum-snotra. TluM-finn
did not care to part with it. " I will not sell," said he. « / offer you a pound
of gold [Beamish says, a half-mark of guhiy said the Southerner. '• Knrl-
sefni [Thorfinn Karlsofnil thoinjht tJiis a good offer, and closed the hartjaln.
lite German then went away with the htsa-snotra. But Karlsefni knew not
what WOOD icas in it ! It icas mosurr from Vinland ! "

Beamish estimated a half-mark of gold at £1G sterling, or about $80 of
our money (and much more, expressed by modern values of service or pro-
ducts of labor). What a sum for an article of household use, the chief value
of wliioh was in its wood ! What could mosurr wood be? And what was a

husa-snotra ?

About the latter there has been endless speculation. Hum obviously was
relatc<l to hmsc ; Init what did snotra mean? One writer thought it a
l)osoin ; another, a broom-handle ; another, a bar to fasten the door from
within. It might be a weathercock, a crown, a piece of decorative carving
in wood. None were satisfactory. Professor Vigfusson — the late Icelandic
Professor at Oxford — came to the conviction that, it was an ancient Fin-
nish word, now obsolete.

The '•' Antiquitates Americanoe " had been translated into Danish and
Latin by Rafn, and most Vinland students had seen the Vinland Sagas either
in the original or in one or the other of these two translations. I had not met
a reference, in connection with the discussion of husa-snotra, to the sununary

DISCOVERY OF TlIK ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA. 23

of the Vinland Sagas in Peringskjold's translation of the Heimskringla of
Snorro Sturleson into Swedish and Latin. Might there not be anotlier ren-
dering in Swedisli ? I learned of a copy of the first edition of Peringskjold's
Heimskringla of 1G97 in Stockholm, and was fortnnately able to obtain it.
In this, husa-smtm was translated icwj in Swedish ; into Latin by statera, or
statcra %nca, " wooden scales" (scale-pans). The husa-snotm had possibly
(probably) been wrought, or repaired (at least the scale-pans), by a sailor on
his home voyage from Vinland, and presented to Thorfinn. It was a pair of
house-scales, the scale-pans of which were of mosutr wood} The husa-snotm
was the equivalent of the house steelyard for weif/hlng.

Here is the significant sentence in the Saga : —

" Thorfinn had wood felled and hewn and Irouffht to the ship, and the wood
piled on the cliff to dry." (See Cabot's translation.)
Let us study it.

It vni!^ felled. It was part of a ffrown tree.

UxL'P" hntnn in rpiTinvp useless woitrht.

It was piled on the cliff to dr>/. Why ? Because it teas wet. It had been in
the water. It had been cast into the river, or a tributary to it, above the ship.

It had been Jloated to the ship. It had been fished out and carried to the
clij^ by hand.

It was in blocks that men could carry.

It had been piled so as to be convenient for sliding to the ship, at
the base of the bluff, when ready to receive its cargo.

In these terms of analysis I found what led to the discovery of the
desert's secret, — the ancient City of Norumbega. I saw — afar off, to be
sure — what the Norman Knight almost saw in a mirage among the gor-
geous clouds that sometimes gather about the setting sun.

My study was at last rewarded. I had delved to the heart of the

> Scale pans of bronze are found in Sweden, of the bronze age. (Montelius, p. 114.)
» Leif also ' ' hewed the cargo of wood for his vessel."

I> .

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMHEGA.

problem. As I look back upon the experience, I think it may not have
been altogether a playful fiction that I uttered to myself, when glancing
down the viata before me I said, " I have not only reached the heart
of the problem, but I can feel its boat."

Miisur wood, as I will presently explain to you, was the burrs or large
warts that occasionally grow on certain trees, more frequently Ibund in
primitive forests, — as oak (one variety is called burr oak), l)irch, hickory,
maple, ash. (Mcisur wood = Knorrujc Ausxvuchs, Old German.)

I have alreiidy said that there were monuments of the presence of
the Northmen on every square mile of the basin of the Charles. I find
I must at once tell you what these monuments are.

We have no account of transportation by the Northmen except by water.
The miJsur wood gathered liy Thorfinn, we have just seen, was Jloatcd to the
ship, which lay in the Charles, and then taken from the water to be piled on
a clljj', a bliijr, a bank, out of the reach of high tide, to dry. "We will assume
what I cannot stop now to dwell on, — I have discussed it elsewhere at
length, — that the spot where this occurred in Thorfinn's experience was
at or near Gerry's Landing, just above the ancient bluff known as Symond's
Hill, by the river (the site of Leifs houses), near the City Hospital. That
was the spot where a great industry in Vinland began. The mfisur blocks
were felled and hewn at first along the neighboring bluffs on the Charles.
At the base of these bluffs are still ditches, or canals, into which the blocks
may have been rolled, and along which, after the ditches were fdled with
the water at high tide, the blocks wore lloatcd down to where the ship
lay. The ship was the nalhcrinci-placc. The Ijlocks had been '• brouf/ht to
the ship." Thej- were not taken on board immediately ; but removed from
the water, and enrried f>// hand and jrilcd on a cliff to dry. When the imme-
diate shores of the river had been exhausted of the mfisur wood, the shores
of the tributaries flowhig into the river became the field of activity, and the
mosur blocks were sent floating down the streams ; and where the streams
were remote from the bases of the slopes on either side, and .sources of water
were at hand, canals, or nearly level troughs, wore dug to transport the

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF N()UU.MUK(iA.

blocks to the Htroams, and ultimately to the Charles. We now sec why
(lams and ponds were necessary at the mouths of the streams, to prevent
the blocks from going down the Charles without a convoy, and out to sea
to be lost. Consider as an example the pond at the mouth of the Cold-
spring Brook opposite Watertown. 1 call its artificial wall below a boom-
ihini. It is a good example. Th're is another striking one just below
Newton Upper Falls, on the left bank, through the ridge. The volume
of water of the stream spread out against the dam would become, on the
brow, too shallow for the blocks to pass over. They would thus be saved
as logs are, by a boom across a stream down which they are floating.

There is an admirable canal, walled on one side for a thousand feet, along
the west bank of Stony Brook, in the woods above the Fitchburg Railroad
Crossing between Waltham and Weston. The Cheesecake Brook is another,
and Coldspring Brook another. There is an interesting dry canal near Mur-
ray Street, not far from Newtonville. It may be seen from the railway-cars
on the right, a little to the east of Eddy Street, approaching Boston. These
are among the monuments. The forts — dwelling-places surroimded by
water, and in tlieir day also by stockades — gave examples of ditches such
as we have surrounding the ancient fort, near the Tower.

The canals, ditches, deltas, boom-dams, ponds, fish-ways, forts, dwellings,
walls, terraces of theatre and amphitheatre, scattered throughout the basin
of the Charles, are fhe monuments I had in mind when I said there was not
a square mile draining into the river that lacked an incontestable monument
of the presence of the Northmen.

To make clearer our conception of the picture I am trying to present,
let us follow an individual block of mosur wood.

I have spoken of the canals at the base of the hillsides along the tribu-
taries to the Charles. The block of mclsur wood we will follow shall be the
burr, or wart, growing on an oak near the top of the slope along Stony
Brook, a quarter of a mile above the Fitchburg Crossing between Waltham
and Weston. The tree on which the burr grows is felled by the axe, and the
trunk above and below the burr cut off. The wood of the trunk portion

DISCnVKUY OF THE AXCFENT CITY OF NORfMHEOA.

of the block Ih hewn nwny, to reduce its weight and size. The block, ho
shorn and shapi-d, is rolled down the hill till it reaches the canal, where it
floats with other blocks, rolled down by other choppers, in a sluggish current,
to be discharj,'ed at the outlet into Stony Hrook, or on a delta as at the end
of the ditch near the Tower, which is on n little ridge projecting into the
Itay, or Iicij(t (literally a norutnbci/d)}

The dischargo on the delta jxM-mitted assortment before making up the
rafts that were to descend the Charles, This detention would enable each
chopper, at intervals, to select and mark the fruit of his labor, or coch
contractor to gather and identify the results of the work of his several
axemen. There were evidences, before the reservoir was establisliod, of
boom-dams and ponds on Stony Bmok at various points above, which might
have been used for marking or assorting and rafting the burrs. Once in the
Charles, the rafts would descend to the required great boom-dcm at the sea
port of Norumbega, wherever that might be.

Do some think that 1 have given undeserved dignity to the ditches in
calling them canals ? They are so named in the old deeds in Weston. If
you look at them on the left of the highway between Sibley's and Weston,
with the stone walls on either side, you will not wonder that the word
'• canal " as well as " ditch " should have suggested itself They are so
called on the published town maps of Millis and Ilolliston, many miles
above us.

Now let us return fn the sentences in the Saga of Thorfinn that liave
held such vast secrets.

It was, we remember, a single article o( domestic use, in part composed
of wood, which was paid for with £\C> sterling (Beamish), — a sum which in
modern equivalents of labor would be several times greater! It must have
been something valued by the travelling Bremen merchant, not l)ecause
of its ossociation with Thorfinn. but for .something else, to a merchant, of

* The Norse aiid Alc^)nquin have common elements. I wa.s at first surprised and then delighted
with this coincidence. It |)oints to dccpor truth. Tlio roots no ami liih an<l the uttemnco u'l arc com-
mon to Norso and AlRonqnin, and many other luuguages, classic and aborigvnal. But, this will be
discussed at length elsewhere.

mi^M

fliM

*»«»-.i~'« '«B^

,,.4J"-

a;.:, .\N:i canal. OU UITCH NliAK NOHHK DAM.

ttl ONK WALL AND CANAL NKAH TMI-". NOHSE DAM AND SIBLEY'.S STATION

FITC11HUH(-. H. R.

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOllUMBEGA.

vastly greater moment. Let us assume for the occasion, what we shall
presently find lully sustained, that it was because it suggested the basis
of an indmtrial. advenlure. Wliat then was it that gave value to the 7nosurr

wood ?

In the last canto of "The Lord of the Isles" occurs the couplet (it is

King James who »peaks at the banquet), —

" ' Bring hero,' he said, ' the mfisers four
My noble fathers loved of yore.' "

A reference to the appendix of the edition of Scott edited by Lockhart
reveals that these " mfisers" were wooden JrM^-cv/yM — flagons, beakers —
mounted in silver, and kept by King Robert the Bruce as heirlooms in
an iron chest, with other bric-a-brac, gold and silver ornaments, and the

royal treasure.

Maser wood was employed in the manufacture of communion cups for
cliurch service, — chalices, — and is mentioned in inventories of ancient
cathedrals. It is also mentioned by Spenser,—

" A mighty mazer bowl of wine was set."

And here is a line from Ben Jonson, —

" Their brimful mazers to the feasting bring."

On going back to the root of the word, it proves to be the same as
that of mass, and originated in the process by which wheaten flour and
water could, with kneading, be made to increase in size and become a
mass. (Skeat.) The moistened gluten became adhesive ; more flour would
cling ; and so, by alternate additions of water and Hour and kneading, the
dough would increase in volume. From this came the name maza, which the
Spanish give to the dough of corn moal, — a woid in use in Mexico to-day,
and the source of the specific botanical name of Indian corn in Zca mais.
The word in St. Domingo is tnahlz. The early Tilgrims heard of it as Indian
imkum. Tlic kneading gave to the flour and water mixed a fibrous, interla-

DISCOVERY OF TIIK ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

cing texture, which bound the whole together. This was the mass, which gave
its name to the Sacrament in which it served. Miiser wood possessed this
texture. Maser, or mazit); or masiir wood is defined, in Old High German, ns
"warty outgrowth from trees," — we call them burrs, or borls. It could bo
wrought into thin forms, and would not nadili/ crack or split. Tlie Swedes
had scale-pans for weighing made of this wood, thin and light, and also plates
and trenchers and kneading-troughs and bowls and goblets. Maser wood
is still used in this country to make mortars for grinding pepper, cinnamon,
and the like in domestic service ; also for kneading-troughs. There was
a factory for wooden mortars and other products of the turning-latlie on
Chester Brook, — Mead's. This wood may have been used more or less in
the Old World in place of the costly bronze and perishable glass and
earthenware, — great wants of civilization. In ancient and very early
times it was used for war-clubs. A snuill growth of stem surrounded by
a ring of the maser growth was easily converted into a war-club, — the
club of Hercules. (Larousse.) It became the symbol of command carried
by the leader, and was the foundation of a u.sage, or fashion, that pre-
vails to this day, and preserves the use of the word in the wacc, borne
before the Speaker of the House of Commons as well as of the American
Congress, — before the Lord Mayor, the Lord Chancellor, and so on. We
SCO traces of this word in the iiiaxc of the dance and the 7)iazc of a laby-
rinth ; in viasiir/ca, the Polish dance ; in macerate, a process of knc-ading (see
also master and mcastire).

Now, maser wood was tough, lasting, decorative ; did not grow every-
where and on all trees ; was sought for, and paid for generously, by the
Church, the aristocracy, the municipality, the government, and for domes-
tic uses. It had already naturally become relatively scarce in Europe.
It was a form of wood-growth that pointed possibly to the old age of
the forest.' A virgin supply would be a prize to be laid before enter-

' Hero m.iy Imvc been tlio seed of expansicni into a prent industry, and a comnieren witli tlio New
World conducted primarily and chiefly by or through the Northnn'n. Wo catch glimpses of its spread,
possibly, in (ho ancient Unizil (lie. Arhre.i. island of woods), in liarcn'non carried across the seas by
the Basques, and in chance arrivals at other points in Europe. The Massachusetts Indians conceived

,:^^t;:^;i

^'~~' ■^' .*;-■-.!'.> i'*-* :^'««;^-j"X'w-'-v «.<*•'■

ftiifcl '■'^:'.^.^-'

BUHHSON OAK TREES ON IllE LINE OF DIT-CH L.EADINlJ IC) I'HORFINNS L.ANDlNi^.

-.X :^ .?.i.

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMDEGA.

prising merchants, wood-donlers, and decorators of houses and furniture.
Leif and Froydia knew of its vahic, as also Thorlinn, and it was
their i)rincipal cargo on leaving Vinland. The Bremen merchant was con-
versant with the wants of civilization and the methods of enterprise.
Thorfinn did not notice, or take account of, the muscr scah-paiis of the
husasnotra from the point of view of the enterprising Southern man. lie
knew that the wood cuuld be wnnujM into thin forms without liabiliti/ to crack
or wnrp, and appreciated the significance of a new source.

At first the maser wood could be gathered near the settlement, as
we have seen ; but the supply would soon be exhausted. The choppers
must go farther. There were no horses, no roads. The obvious method
of transportation was by water, — at first from the immediate wooded
shores of the Charles, then from the shores of its tributaries, and then
along artificial canals, conducting to these tributaries and the river. But
to prevent the blocks from going out to sea, there must be dams at the
mouths of the tributaries to arrest them. 1 had found many canals lead-
ing to tributaries and to the Charles, when I reflected that if I had
rightly divined the office of these canals, there must be at the mouth of
each tributary, or along the stream near and above it, a dam and pond,
or the remains of them or their equivalents, wherever the industry of
the miiser wood was prosecuted by the Northmen. I have traced these
dams up the Charles nearly to its extreme source. I have followed them
on the Neponset and the Piscataqua, and on the tributaries to the Merrimac.
Not only the boom-dams at or near the mouths of the streams falling into
the Charles, but the canals all over Newton and Weston, in Belmont and
Watertown, and Woburn and Arlington and Medford and Cambridge, in
Dedhain and Millis and IloUiston and elsewhere, are frequently walled

the early English colonists could have come only for wood. But even in Thorfinn's time, in the ac-
count of Freyilis, it is relatod that "the expedition to Vinland was commonly esteemed to be both
lucrative and honorable." Her vessels, as wo have seen, broiicfht homo wood from Vinland. Leif
owed his added name — " the Lucky " — to having had the good fortune to save the crew o' a wrecked
ship Kiaded with wood on its way to Greenland. The importation of certain kinds of wood from the
region of Viidaiid was already an estnbli.shod industry. Gudrid told the Pope at Rome of the Chris-
tian aettloments by Scandinavians, already in her time, in Vinland. See also Adam von Bremen.

Alrtii^«iiMliiiiiiiVir iitfiiilll

WmKSS^^mmsmif>.^immimm ■jmw wimirinin smsimft-vmm,»<m».

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUUMHEGA.

with Btonc, as in the case of the Cheesecake and Coldspring, where the
Boston and Albany Railroad crosses below Newtonville, and near the Catholic
Theological Seminary in Brigliton, and the stream crossing the highway
between Sibley's and Weston. Undoubtedly the walls have been repaired
in modern times, and in some cases it will be dilVicult to distinguish be-
tween ancient canals and modern ditches for drainage. Some of the dams
are very massive. In some cases the ponds have more or less been fdled
with alluvial deposit, and now constitute meadow-land, or a swamp, as at
the mouth of the Cheesecake. In others a modern dam below has sub-
mer"-ed the mouth of the stream, — in which cases the outline of the dam
is sometimes betrayed in the growth of shrubbery. In a few cases a
canal ends in a delta, — as on Eddy Street in Newton, near the fish-traps
on the Cheesecake, and at the end of the canal near the Tower. In
nianv cases the uum is accoinpar.icd by .1 fish-wny, — as on the stream from
Lexington to the Mystic, and on Mother Brook.

Along these canals and tributaries are artificial islands that once gave
sites and protection to Norse homes, — as you may see near the railroad
station at West Newton on the street toward the Lower Falls, and near
Burroughs Pond. One is still indicated in the grounds of Hon. Chauncy
Smith in Cambridge, in the broad mound around which a canal formerly
conducted water from the slopes beyond Craigie Street. The original
path of the modern Brattle Street crossed on tlie boom-dam below the
pond into which the canal led, and which has only recently been filled.
The dwellings had the additional protection of stockades, like the old
fort near the Tower, occupied after the Northmen by the Breton French
as a trading-post, as remarked by Thevet.

All these boom-dams at the entrance to the Charles point to a larger
boom-dam across the Charles, where the total harvest of blocks from all
the basins might be drawn from the water and piled to dry. That must
have been near the place where they were shipped.

Do you ask now, Whore did these blocks find place for shipment?
When I answer that, I shall have turned aside the screen which has

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMDEGA.

SO long baffled the students of New England cartography, and shown you
the Hite of the ancient Norumbega.

Go with me down the Cliiirles from the Tower past Mington and Lily
Point Grove, and the great Watch Factory of Waltham, and the boom-
dam at the mouth of Beaver Brook, now a pond filled with deposit from
the brook, past the swamp at the mouth of the Cheesecake, past
Bemis's Station, past the terraced hillside on the right, which is entitled
to more study than I have been able to give to it, and at length we
shiill come to a stone dam over wliich the sweet water of the river pours
to-day. This dam is made of field bowlders such as compose the beau-
tiful new churches in Weston, Watertown, and Wellesley, — not square-
cornered stones, or split or hewn, or the product of drilling in the quarry
and blasting, but like the larger stones of the Tower, adjusted to their
most stable positions. It is at the head of tide- water. Within the memory
of livino- men, once only has the incoming tide risen above the crest of
the dam. It was when the easterly storm and tide and wind swept
away the Minot's Ledge Liglit. With that single exception, — so I have
been told, — the dam has been the dividing line between fresh water
and salt at high tide.

Has it ever occurred to any one to ask how long that dam has been
there? The Watertown Historical Society has just come into being, or it
would not have ooen left till to-day to demand an answer to this question.

The earliest man of Winthrop's colony to ascend the Charles was
Roger Clapp (1630). His story is a part of the history of Watertown.
Let me repeat it to you. lie describes the narrow, shallow rapids below,*
which he reached, as he estimated, three leagues from the mouth of the
river. His party found in the neighborhood an encampment of Indians,
some three lumdred by estimate, at the head of tide-Avater, where some
of them were taking fi.sh in the shallows above the tide-water.

1 The shallows — rapids at ebb tido — proventnd the explorers (Champlain perhaps among them)
from ascending the Charles to the site of Norumbega. Heylin ant! thers ascribe to the falls on the
American rivers the failure more thoroughly to ixploro the interior. Had the explorers gone up at
^()(/-tide, it might not have been left to our time to find Norumbega.

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OK NOUUMDEGA.

Clapp observed the phallows at the hond of tide-water at Watertown,
and also shared the product of the devices used by the Inthaiis for fishing
purposes just ])elo\v, which involved the descent and fall of the stream
as early as 1C30. Wood, who came to the country the year before Clapp,
and loft in August, 1G33, and whoso book ("New England's Prospect")
bears date of 1034, wrote of the fall of fresh waters and the fishing at
a weir below.

This full and the fishing were mentioned by Josselyn in 1038. Later
still, Duntim wrote of a " (jrcaf fall of fresh waters which convoigh them-
Belves into the ocean through the Charles River."

The weir fishing was continued by the whites, and the profit in later
times divided between Watertown and Brighton down to 1800;' and
I had the honor a few months ago to converse at length with the
latest custodian of this industry, the present Town Clerk of Watertown,
Mr. Ingram, who pointed out to me the theatre of the industry with
the weir. He conducted me also to the oldest map of Watertown. in
the Secretary of State's office in Bost(m ; and on that I found traced the
canal through which flowed the waters that turned the first wheel of the
first flouring-mill in New England.

Let us look a little further. There may be some among ns who have
not heard of Roger Clapp, the first of the Puritans to reach the head of
tide-water on the Charles ; or possibly of Wood or Josselyn or Dunton,
who wrote of the spot a few years later. But there is one of whom
every son and daughter of New England has heard, John Winthroj),—
the great leader of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. He was the an-
cestor of the venerable scholar, stitesman, orator, public servant, wlio —

" In nn old age seroiio (ind hn<;lit
And lovely as a Lai)l:ind night," —

is the living object of our reverent and grateful homage. John Winthrop
records nn incident in the history of the Colony that relates to the age
of the dam at Watertown.

> See Nelson's History of Waltham.

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOIIUMBEOA.

On the very npot whore, nccorcViiig to popuhir beUetV the first
flouring-iiiill in New England — possibly in America — was set up, now
stands its ellicient successor (more than one generation of mills between),
still in active service, depending for its water-power upon the same difter-
encc of level between the water above the dam and below tlie mill, of
which advantage was taken by the early colonists. The ancient mill was
driven by an undershot wheel, as was the modern one, till the turbine
came, the water passing under instead of over the wheel. It happened
on one occasion that a little child fell into the raceway above the mill.
Before the eyes, but beyond the rescue of the miller, the child floated into
the flume above the wheel. An accident had removed one of the blades
of the wheel. As Winthrop relates, a special Providence directed that the
current should bring the child exactly into the place of the lost blade of
the water-wheel, — ''for otherwise," he says, ''if an eel pass through, it is
cut asunder," — so that when the miller reached the outlet of the ilume,
he found the child absolutely unharmed, sitting waist-deep in the water
below. And now, so long as the history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
shall be read, so long will the story of the wonderful deliverance
of the little cliild be remembered as an incident of the early life of
Watertown.

The significance of the event to us is that it preserves the testimony
of Winthrop as to the age of the dam above. The water-power was
gained by the dam. It was a fall of only four and a half feet, as Mr.
Mugce, the present proprietor, informs me; and this involved a canal or
raceway of nearly a quarter of a mile in length along the gentle descent
of the Charles.

Who built the dam ? It was made of natural, rounded, massive field-
bowlders. English pioneers, economical of time and men, in a region of
virgin forests build dams of loood cut along the banks nbo\e and floated
down, not of scattered bowlders gathered over great areas from the sur-

> The mill-stones were brought from England, and are mentioned in the cost of equipment for
the colony.

DlSrOVEUY (IF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUlMliEGA.

face of tho soil. All history ia silent. Dudley, who later had ft lawsuit
about tho ownership of the mill, iw silent. Winthrop himself is Bilent.
Could the thoughtful pen that recorded tho discovery of Adam's chair,
since lost, and again and recently found ; rcconied the fight between
the mouse and the snake, witnessed with such natural interest by tho
Puritans who f ' a ring around the combatants ; as also this inci-

dent at tho nii .inc, — could tho same thoughtful pen have failed to
mention so considerable an achievement in the interests of tho infant
colony as the construction of a stone dam across the Charles, had it
occurred contemporaneously with these other events? Impossible. What
follows ? This : J'/jc dam was licre when Winlhrop came.

But before Winthrop came, Roger Clapp had learned of tho Indians
at net-fishing in the shallows at the head of tide-water, the fish being
massed there, because they could get no farther on their way to spawning-
ground. When Winthrop first saw the dam it had become a familiar
fact. It had been found already built, and concealed under the fall of
fresh waters.

The earliest ap of the site of Watertown, to which I have referred,
has on it the d on which the flouring-mill was erected; and it is

recorded that u, colonists found the natural canal, or raceway, ^hen
they came. What again follows ? This : The dam teas the work a
people who had come and gone before the earliest F)ujlish settlement ;i
our shores.

Look at the testimony of the weir. The structure consists of a low
stone-wall spanning the river, shaped like the letter V, with the angle
down stream, and a trap at the point. The weir is submerged at flood-
tide. With tho flood come schools of fish socking spawning-ground and
fresh water. In the absence of a dam there would have been nothing
to arrest their progres.s, and they would not have stopped at Watertown
any more than at any other point below or above. With a dam the fish
would mass below, and with the ebb-tide seek escape at tho angle of
the weir. The fact that they were taken in great numbers at the pres-

/ ^^<r^y>p \T'"/ ^■-^■-' I

/"^^^^....e.

^V:^ 7*-/

rt/.

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

ent Watertown by a weir is absolute proof of the existence of the dam
Wood says one hundred thousand were taken in two tides, — that is, in a
single day. The Indians had taught the settlers that the fish could be
used for manuring their corn, and the poor crop of 1631 had made them
feel the necessity of a fertilizer.

In the spring of 1032, authorized by Winthrop, the ivcir was set up.
The order presupposes the existence of the dam; without it the weir
would have had nothing to catch.

The dam must have been already built before 1631. It could not
have been built by the handful of Saltonstall's half-invalid men between
the autumn of 1631 and the spring of 1632. Why? Because it was built
of rounded bowlders gathered from the fields, not from quarries ; and
that involved too much time and labor. How do we know it was
built of field stone, -rounded bowlders? In this way. Not many years
ago the foundations of portions of the dam were undermined, and the
water broke through and left the structure bare to its base, open to

any eye.

Let us look at the Records of the General Court.

Wood returned to England in August, 1033. He records, in his "New
En-dand's Prospect," that there was «a water milne on Stony Brook
(Roxberry)" and another in Saugus. The mill at Watertown is under-
stood to have preceded all others. If this be so, it must have been
set up, at the latest, early in 1633. It was a work ..f private enterprise,
since subsequent action of the General Court decided that it belonged
to Mr. Dudley and not to Mr. Howe. At a town-meeting of Watertown
Jan. 3, 1634-5, it was " voted that four rods wide on each side of the
river .should be laid apart to the use of the ware, so that it may not
be prejudicial to the mill." The necessity of defining the rights or wants
of the weir had been revealed by experience in the years immediately

preceding. . .

As Winthrop was complained against by Dudley for personally authorizing
(the General Court not being in session) the construction of the weir in the

• r-

DISCOVEUY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

winter and spring of 1G31-32, it is clear the dam must have been previously
built.

The Records of the Court are preserved. They contain its action at the
session, July 5, 1031, authorizing a levy on the public for the opening
of the canal along Blackstone Street from the cove at the present riayniarket
Square through the water at the east, and another levy, at the session
Feb. 3, lGol-2, x i- making the palisade about Newtown (now Cambridge).

Now, is it not clear that a large work on Charles River, like the building
of a stone-dam, involving the labor for a long time of a large number of
able-bodied men, could not have been undertaken without discussion ? As a
private matter, it could not have been done .without capital and the co-
operation of laborers ; as a public matter, it could not have been under-
taken without the authority of the General Court ; but of this there is
no record. Contemporary or subsequent history does not mention it.

Finally, it would have been much cheaper to have built a mill on Clematis
Brook, with abundant fall, and without a costly dam.

The meaning of all this is that the dam was where it now is when Win-
throp came.

Why do T speak so confidently V Fortunate leisure has enabled me
to go far enough in certain directions of study and exploration to see
what must he as a matter of scientific deduction. When tliat point, the
what must he, is reached, prediction is natural, unavoidable, and safe.
As I prophesied from the literature of geography the finding of Fort
Norumbega at the junction of Stony Brook with the Charles, and went
to the spot and found it; and as 1 deduced the site of the remains of
Leif s houses in Vinland from the necessities which the strict construction
of the Sagas required, and went to the spot where I had indicated that
the remains had once been, and found them there more than a year
after the prediction was announced, — so I have arrived by inevitable
deduction at the scat and centre of the early colony of Northmen in
America.

I do not deduce the maser industry from the presence of the dam at

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

Watertown, but I deduce the davi and scajwrt and docks and wharves as
essential to the muscr industry roveidcd in the Sagas.

I may not take your time to tell of my interviews with many of the best-
informed and elderly men of Watertown, — with ladies who as little girls
had gathered wild violets and anemones on what, with the exception of
the trees, were the otherwise unoccupied islands below the dam, then as
now walled about with substantial masonry without mortar ; or of my
delight in finding the walled channels between these islands, — at least
four in number, — the docks ; or the hlack mcadoio iimck under the gravelly
earth that constitutes the body of the walled islands;' or the parallel cyclo-
pean walls extending on both sides of the river along the narrows and
shallows to which Clapp came in 1G30. These walls, extending to the
opening meadows toward the Arsenal, by narrowing the channel increased
the depth of the Avater at high-tide, and so made it practicable to float
the blocks across the river from the boom-dams on the right bank below
to the docks and wharves, as well as with greater ease and certainty to
lead ships to and from the docks ; or the long basin for the reception of
blocks and their accumulation, which also serves as a fish-way^ into the
basin from the north; or the great artificial basin (Cook's Pond), the pro-
duct of the boom-dam, on the opposue side of the river, — all of tchich,
and much more that miglit be named, belong to the period of seven to
nine centuries ago : the ivork of the Northmen.

All these are remains of the ancient seaport of Nonimhega. This was the
site, pictured on so many ancient maps, at the head of tide-water, on the
"River that flowed throttfjh a Luke to the Sea," — the Ifojj of Thorfinn, salt at
flood-tide and fresh at ehh, — the ancient Boston Back Bay. The islands were
wharves. The channels between them, closed or nearly closed at the upper

* This was alluvial snit, once the surface, submerged at extreme high-tide below tlie falls, and
deposited in the eddy of the flood-tido and current of tlio Charles before the dam was built. The
propri(!tor of tho foiuidry on the spot iiifornicd me that lie had ocoasion to find substantial foundation
t<5 support parts of the foundry. Ho dug down through the gravel till he came to black meadow muck,
aud through that to solid bottom.

" There is a fine display of lioon-daras and fish-ways on Vine Brook, between tho Arlington
Reservoir and the Mystic. See town m. o.

mii^

3g DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOUUMHEGA.

end near the hasin, wore docks. On these wharves the nifisor blocks that
had lloated down the Charles had been arrested and turned hy tlie dam into
the basin, — the northern canal, — where they were piled to dry and await
their turn to be shipped.

Here, besides the conveniences for piling under cover the mfiser blocks,
there were storehouses for dried salmon, for the peltry purchased in its
season, and not impossibly for the Indian corn grown on the plains of
Newton, Danvers, Millis, and Ilolliston.

On the shores above and below were naturally shops for barter, and
dwellings for all classes, and necessarily, with the culture of the Northmen,
provision for amusement, for public worship, and the wants of govern-
ment,— the Althing, to which these early (perhaps earliest) self-governing
people were accustomed.

Here was the ancient seaport of Yinland, for the colony that came after
Thorfinn left, to which in 1121 Bishop Upsi came to hold up the symbols
of the Faith. The basin, wharves, docks, canals of this ancient seaport un-
derlie the city of Watertown to-day, and are connected with and serve its
most prominent industries. Here came and went the connnerce of the
Northmen first; later, the commerce of the Frenchmen, and possibly of
still other peoples. Here, at the modern Watertown, was the ancient
CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

I have not hesitated to state this as the result of research that may not
be questioned, -a research thnt included the Landfall of Leif Krikson on
Cape Cod. and the colonization of Massachusetts by Northmen nine hundred
years ago. To assert this, among other things, I set up the Tower m
Weston,°at the mouth of Stony Brook, where I first found evidences of the
work of the Northmen.

Over the tablet set in the wall of the Tower, the genius of the architect,
Mr. Tryon, has poised the Scandinavian falcon (the symbol of sovereignty
in Iceland) about to alight with a new world in his talons.

I may read what was designed to cover the principal additions to the
history of the foundation of Massachusetts.

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMBEGA.

AD. 1000. A.D. 1889.

NORUMBEGA.

CITY: COUNTRY: FORT: RIVER.

NORUMBEGA = NOR'MKEGA.

INDIAN UTTERANCE OF NORBEGA, THE ANCIENT FORM

OF NORVEGA, NORWAY: TO WHICH THE

REGION OF VINLAND WAS SUBJECT.

CITY

AT AND NEAR WATERTOWN,

WHERE REMAIN TO-DAY

DOCKS, WHARVES, WALLS, DAMS, BASIN.

COUNTRY

EXTENDING FROM RHODE ISLAND TO THE ST. LAWRENCE.

FIRST SEEN BY B.TARNI HEIUULFSON, 085 A. D.

LANDFALL OF LEIF ERIKSON ON CAPE COD, 1000 A. D.

NORSE CANALS, DAMS, WALLS, PAVEMENTS,

FORTS, TERRACED PLACES OF ASSEMBLY, REMAIN TO-DAY.

i*'

FORT

AT BASE OF TOWER AND REGION ABOUT

WAS OCCUPIED BY THE BRETON FRENCH IN THE

15TU, laTH, AND 17TII CENTURIES.

RIVER

THE CHARLES

DISCOVERED BY LEIF ERIKSON 1000 A. D.

EXPLORED BY TIIORWALD, LEIF'S BROTHER, 1003 A. D.

COLONIZED liV THORFINN KARLSEFNI 1007 A. D.

FIRST BISHOP ERIK GNUPSON 1121 A. D.

INDUSTRIES FOR 350 YEARS.

MASUR-WOOD (BURRS), FISH, FURS, AGRICULTURE.

LATEST NORSE SHIP RETURNED TO ICELAND IN 1347.

DISCOVEUY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NOULMUECiA.

It '

Among the considerations that led to the erection of the Tower, besides
those already mentioned, were these: —

1. It will coinmemorato the Discovkhy of Vinland ano Nouumrega
in the forty-third degree, and the idontificalion of Norunihoga with Norway,
the home coimtry to which this region wivs once subject by right of dis-
covery and colonization.

2. It will invite criticism, and so sift out any errors of interpre-
tation into which, sharing the usual fortune of the pioneer, I may have

been led. ,

3. It will encourage archaeological investigation in a fascniating and
almost untrodden field, and be certain to contribute in the results of
research and exploration, both in the study and the field, to the histon-
cal treasure of the Commonwealth.

4. It will help, by reason of its more presence, and by virtue of the
veneration with which the Tower will in time come to be regarded, to
brin- acquiescence in the fruit of investigation, and so allay the blind
scepticism, amounting practically to inverted ambition, that would deprive
Massachusetts of the glory of holding the Landfall of Leif E.ikson, and
at the same time the seat of the earliest colony of Europeans in America.

If time would permit. I might tell you further of the musor industry;

of the fisheries an.l furs and agriculture ; of the amusements, and the

republican form of government inherited with the Norse blood; of the social

relations of the Indians with the Northmen, and the splendid nuMi found

bv Thevet and Verra/.ano, and later by the Pilgrims an.l Puritans, in such

samples of chieftains as Massasoit and Uncas and King Philip- I ""gl't

point out the course of the Northmen, moving northeastward after the

maser blocks of the valley of the Charles had been exhausted ; the

traces of their stay on the Penobscot, and tluMr progress through the State

of Maine and Nova Scotia to Cape Breton ; the principal causes of the

decline of Greenland ; the final departure of the last ship lu the maser

trade from Markland (Cape Breton), and its arrival in 1347 m Iceland.

DISCOVKUV UV THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORUMHEGA

I miKht hint at the linos of roHCirch specially connected with traces
of the language of the Northmen, Buch a« the fact recorded by Roger
WilliamH that the title -Hachem" or "Haganioro" of the In.lians haH the
sa.no root an mk, the Icelandic wonl for " king." All this, how.vor, 1
must, in the u.ain, leave to othorn, who will .-ntor, with now entlum.asn,
„,ul n.ore time before then., into tluH fresh held in archu3ologioal and
geographical research.

It has been BUggested that the trustworthiness of my conclusions might
be tested by the spado, -that bronze and pottery shouM l)e sought for.

Articles of such materials were not improbably to some extent in use
in Vinland and Norumbega. Remnants of much corroded bronze have been
found by Nordenskjol.l in Greenland, from which place the early Northmen
came. Porous pottery wovdd, perhaps, be less likely to survive m such a
climate •• it lias, however, been found in ancient Norway. But of unple-
,nent8 which we know from the Sagas were in use here by the Northmen,
wo have found specimens. Thorwald's men subsisted through their fir.t
winter on the salmon of the Charles. Here is a stone sinker found near
the site of ThorwahVs dwelling-house. I have seen and photographed
several others found al,>ng th. banks of the Charles. Sin.ilar to these
were the sinkers used by the Indians.

Here is an Indian arrow-point picked up on the Held of the battle
between Thorf.nn and the Sknvlings, in which a man of distinction.
Snorri Tliorbrandson, fell. His body was found, so the Sagas say, with a
sharp stone sticking iu his head. If the "sharp stone" may not have been
a flint arrow-point, but a stone tomahawk, here is a ^liarp stone that
„Kiy bear that name, which was found on the same battlefield.

A great stone mortar, such as Northmen used in very early times to
grind their grain iu Norway, was foun.l, as already mentioned, near the
Bite of the Tower, and is now set in the wall near its base.

Copper and brass, in the form of imploments of war or articles of
. Glazed pottery, Du Chaillu says, was unknown in U>e north. Montelius says the same.

'J.

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF NORFMBEGA.

1 <

decoration, have been found in graves within the territory of Norumbega.
In the grave of Uncas, in Norwich, Conn., a very ancient niiiser-bowl, long
used, was found, and is now preserved in the Slater Museum.

I have seen stone tablets, bearing inscriptions apparently of great his-
toric interest, some of which may have been wrought by men of Norse
descent. Mr. Ober, of Beverly, has had them photographed.

Such articles, as well as bronze and pottery, possibly await the student.

My own search, however, has been less detailed. I have looked for
the evidences and seats of certain industries pursued through long periods
of time and on a large scale by Northmen ; I have looked for the site
and memorials of an historic city, built, long occupied as a seaport, and
abandoned many centuries ago ; I have sought the birthplace of the earliest
European colony on our shores, and something of its course as a people ;
and I have to-day sketched the results of my labors.

To show that the Vinland oF Leif wus

^ >i '^ i^ ^iL^jk

between (Za^'a Arin omd GahejOod.

'♦^""H"

3»i 3f v<r| J«f »| ^

srsp/f^v/us. rrjo.

j^^gj^Hrom fl.Frenc t) map 1543

SOI./S. K Of

No r I u .nub vv ^^ a .^v

N o r \l u .nub o. ^ a .^v -^ *yt. XJ^x-%^^'''->-^

r^Ej(a/A!±f

VINLAND.

By E. H. clement.

MIST AND FLOTSAM.

A. D. 1000.

Earth endures j

Stfln" abiile —

Sliiiie ilown in the dUI sea;

01.1 arc till' shores ;

liut wIktl' aril old men?

I who have seen much

Such have I never seen.

Here is the land
Shat.'t;y with wood
With Its old valley,
Mound, and lioo<l,
But the heritors?
Fled like the flood's foam,
The lawyer and the laws
And the kinjidoiu
Clean swept lierefrom.

Kmkhson, Earth-Song.

Foil Fancy's (,'ift
Can nu'unlains litt:
The Muse can knit
What is past, what is done
With the wcIj thit 's just liecun.
Emeksos, The I'i'it.

SorNDKTU the prophetic wind,

The shadows shake on the rock hehind.

And the countless leaves <.f the pine are

strinRs
Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings.

Hearken ! hearken !
If thou wouldst know the mystic sonR
Chanted when the sphere was young.
Aloft, ahroad, the i>aan swells;
O wire man, hear' si thou half it tells'?
O wise man, hear'st tlum the least part "

•'V is the ehronielc of art.
To the open ear it sings
Sweet the genesis of things.

Kmkusun, Woodnoltt.

My spirit bows in gratitude

Before the Giver of all good.

Who fashioned so the human mind

That, from the waste of Time hehind,

A simple stone, or mound of earth.

Can summon the departed forth ;

Qui ken the Vast to life again,

Ttu' I'resent lose in what hath heen,

Anil in their primal freshness show

The huried forms of long ago.

As it a porlion of that Thought

By which the F.tenial Will is wrought,

Whose impulse (ills anew with breath

The frozen siditude of Death,

To mortal minds wen> sometimes lent,

To mortal musings sometimes sent,

To whi-per — even when it .seems

I'.ut Memory's fantasy of dreams —

Thr<.ugh the miml's waste of woe and sin,

Of an immortal origin!

WiiirnKii, 7"»i! Nvrtemen.

•mmmttm

iritanMettsJI

MARE OCEANUM.

WiiKN Earth's form and void begun

Underneath the ancient Sun,

Poured round all the flowing Ocean

First obeying Law in motion.

First of things terrestrial

Acknowledging celestial ;

Free still of all governance

Save eternal ordinance.

Universal potency

Lurks in all-embracing sea,

All-watering stream, all-nourishing,

From seeding unto flourishing;

Pervading eailh in myriad form,

Now glacier, now summer storm, —

Visiting thus but to return

Every drop to Ocean's urn ;

All-bearing on its broad highway

From yonder cape to far Catiiay;

Ever the same to all men free,

Whoe'er on land may master be, —

One law deduces history thence :

Tilings continue as commence.

Wiien the first savage launched his tree,

Bestriding it in southern sea.

Then hollowed it, then shaped an oar,

He linked tlie whole world shore to shore.

So bid we vikings' history

Surrender us onr mj-stery.

Ui)nian legions' solid walla

Till Britons still when they were thralls;

But our unfiithomiihlo wave

Was ne'er to old Homo's arms tnado slave :

Yet Christian Rome's new inlluence

Is wider tniced by finer senst) ;

Surpassing war, a mission's zeal

Red Erie tamed and laid Leifs keel,

So the Sea's worshipper devout

Will ever draw new wealth thereout.

Or noon or niglit, or fair or foul,

Patient as fasting monk in cowl,

He cons Earth's opening page here spread,

A blank still, or, if writ, unread

Save by the subtle divination

Of Science's imagination.

ODi'SSEYS.

Man here faced eternity, —
Poring on the mystery,
Ever venturing in its brink.
Better learning not to sink,
Still its wide, gray jiastures grazing,
Still beyond and farther gazing.
The eldest heroes of the world
Plied the oar and sails unfurled,
The eldest poet sang the Sea:
Make us another Odyssey !
Tell us more, and always more ;
How they added shore to shore.
Out from Posts of Hercules

Toward tho far Ilesperides ;
How Atlantis o'eu tlicy boanned,
Or believed they traced its atrand,
Looniiii}^ in enchanted mist ;
How, of sudden, sails were kissed
liy scented breeze fioni llajipy Isles
Whose fable seamen still beguiles.
What an epos, from I'haiuicians
Down to merciuuiting Venetians !
Argivo galleys, prows of Uonie,
Heaeliing e'en on our old home.
Tell how Uome's puissant rule
Reaches to the fanhest Tliule,
Ami from loua's cloistered halls
Christ's spell northmost lauds enthralls.
And Iceland, warming in its gleam,
Blossoms in church and academe ;
Until, Ruri)assing all the earth
In learning and in moral worth,
Forth sends, in first millennial year,
I'rinces and bishops even hero !

WUNDERSTRAND.

Tell net us that all is writ

Of Ocean's lore, — not us who sit

From birth in sight of Ocean's wonder.

And dream what therein is or under.

Many a record writ in water,

Making liistory-books the shorter,

Reappears to him who heeds

The truth that every law must needs

Hear but one fruitage, near or far,

I' t

This ngo or Hint, on any star.

So clear-eyed Science, sukc, sediito,

Hidden by Fancy all elate,

Constructs the ships the dreamer dreams,

Fi}^uring the very ribs and seams,

And, led by poet's ecstasies,

More and more of truth still sees.

Shore-dwellers never ipiit tlieir stand

Of watch upon the wonderstrand.

Noting the moods of the changing sea

For what new teaching thence may be.

E'en seaweed thrilling message bore,

"In the sun and the wind and the wild uproar,"

To him who sang how Hoston Hay

Takes Boston in her arms each day.

The child tlio salt waves reared beside.

Whose jilayfellow is the rising tide.

And tiny, monster-peoplfd pool,

Among the rocks, his earliest school, —

No chapter of a sea romaunt

His fervent faith may ever daunt.

The time-worn wreck's ribs in the sand

For chapel uf devotions stand.

He knows the wild-flowers of the deep,

The harvests strange that fisliers reap.

Eels Portuguese, and sipiids. and whales.

He lists old seamen tell their tales;

He sees one morn from shining sea

A fin revolved all silently.

Marking Behemoth's bulk beneath.

Or sea-dog's eye in green wave's wreath.

He sees the ebl) bare Ocean's bed.

And flood the broad seas inland spread;

Shudders at storm-rote in tlie night.

And finds the broken ship at li^ht.

IIo knowH how Iiuiniiij,' Hail round up

From uiiderworlil, — tirsl llio miiiiittii>.

And Uiun tlio ini/.7,cii, and then tliu hull,

Ah up thu long hwuU ridos tliu gull.

He onoo beholUti in a miruge

l$rig9 hottoin up and 8tranf,'fly largo

Slund in tho sky athwart limad Sound, —

A 8worn sea-serpent'a sauntering ground, —

And harks the nixeys ring the bell

Whose dolora mark the east wind's swell.

Ills childhood's awe is ne'er forgot

Of niaulstroni in steep Shirley (iut,

Nor seasoned yet tho ciiild's surpriso

Who saw before his infant eyes

Side-wheeled Cuiuirder overwiielm

Willi I'.riti.sli smoke the wine-glass dm

Of Apple Island. Small things? True:

Small thing for wonder is it, too,

That ships that fared to Greenland's shore

Should southwnrd fare a little more:

Gloucester now fishes Iceland seas,

Iceland then came to I'enikcse,

Light then as now did shallop run

0'(!r morning sea in jocund sun,

Hands stout as now when night winds rave

The rudder gnis{)ed and cut the wave,

Sweet then as now the smooth bay's reach,

And soft to keel the sandy beach.

A marvel greater far it were

If ne'er a bold adventurer.

To make the fartiiest voyage his boast,

Had wandered on from coast to coast.

Would such his lengthening leagues have reckoned

So long as Blue Hill onward beckoned ?

^J.

IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

1.0

I.I

1.25

7f IIM
- IIIIIM

^. as,

1.4

IIM

1.6

(5>

'<^.

e}.

n^ > ">->

Photographic

Sciences
Corporation

#^'^

^•^\
. -f^

'^'■

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, NY. 4580

(716) 872-4503

T
Iff 5

VINLAND RUNE.

t! t

[i )•
1 '

SiNO we, then, a rugged rune.

In Emerson's and Whittier's tune, —

Verse for honest-spoken folk.

Compact of stuff as egg of yolk.

Simple, blunt, but yet not coarse ;

Native, and still something Norse,

As is meet for kindred race

Dwelling in the very place

Where the Norsemen moored their ships

And left their names on savage lips.

Italian Colon Iceland sought,

And tales the bardic sagas taught

Of ancient trips to Western seas

Were treiisured by the Genoese.

Americus's traitorous tale

Too long is suffered to prevail:

Christopher was not alone

Victim for a time outshone,

Where that crafty story spread.