Some have urged that the southern part of Labrador may have been
Markland; but its trees of any considerable size are to be found only
by following up inlets far into the interior where the Arctic current
has less power to chill; there is nothing to indicate that conditions
were very different then in this regard; and to judge by the narrative
itself we must not conceive of the Norse visitors as pausing to explore
deeply without allurement, but rather as hastening down the shore in
quest of warmer regions and ampler pasturage for their stock which they
carried with them, also of a good warm site for settlement, such as
Leif had already reported. They were primarily colonists, not explorers
of the disinterested or glory-seeking type. It was most natural to sail
on; noting only what they could discern from the sea, or by a brief
boat-landing. This would hardly give them the idea of a forest land in
any part of hard-featured, ice-battered Labrador.
It is probable that, like some later navigators, they would not
think of the Strait of Belle Isle as other than a fiord or inlet,
after the pattern of the great Hamilton Inlet farther north; and if
they guessed Markland to be an island it would be on quite different
grounds--chiefly the natural tendency (which persisted until long after
their time) to consider every western discovery insular; but they would
at least be alive to the distinction between treelessness and an ample
forest cover, and we see that in point of fact they did distinguish the
regions on just this score.
NOVA SCOTIA AS MARKLAND
Certainly this might involve the inclusion of Nova Scotia in the
second of the three regions; and there have been many to champion this
peninsula as distinctively Markland. But other features of Nova Scotia
attracted the attention of Karlsefni’s party and gave parts of that
land an individuality distinguished from that of the forest country.
The great cape Kjalarness, which seems to have been the northern horn
of Cape Breton Island, and the exceedingly long strands, which may
now be represented in part by the low front of Richmond County, are
duly recorded, with no suggestion of their belonging to Markland,
the region farther north. Also on the Stefánsson map above referred
to (Fig. 18), the name Promontorium Vinlandiae is applied to a long
protuberance apparently meant for this part of Cape Breton Island,
containing the counties of Victoria and Inverness, and the much earlier
statement in Arna-Magnaean Manuscript 194 concerning the sea running in
between Markland and Wineland seems to mark all south of Cabot Strait
as belonging in some sense to the latter region. No doubt the name
Markland may sometimes have been used with vagueness of limitation;
but on the whole it seems most likely that Newfoundland was Markland
almost exclusively. It seems practically certain, at the least, that
the characteristics first noted in Newfoundland supplied the earlier
regional name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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