[Footnote 17: One of the objections brought forward by Robertson against the Norman discovery of America is, that the wild vine has never since been found so far north as Labrador; but modern travelers have ascertained that a species of wild vine grows even as far north as the shores of Hudson's Bay.[18] Since Robertson's time, however, the locality of the first Norman settlement has been moved further south, and into latitudes where the best species of wild vines are abundant.] [Footnote 18: Sir A. Mackenzie's Travels in Iceland, 1812. Preliminary Dissertation by Dr Holland, p. 46.] [Footnote 19: Rafn, _Antiq. Amer._] [Footnote 20: The Esquimaux were at that time spread much further south than they are at present.--Humboldt's _Cosmos_, vol. ii., p. 268.] [Footnote 21: Eric Upsi, a native of Iceland, and the first Greenland bishop, undertook to go to Vinland as a Christian missionary in 1121.] [Footnote 22: "The learned Grotius founds an argument for the colonization of America by the Norwegians on the similarity between the names of Norway and La Norimbegue, a district bordering on New England."--Grotius, _De Origine Gentium Americanarum_, in quarto, 1642. See, also, the Controversy between Grotius and Jean de Laet.] [Footnote 23: Accurate information respecting the former intercourse of the Northmen with the Continent of America reaches only as far as the middle of the fourteenth century. In the year 1349 a ship was sent from Greenland to Markland (New Scotland) to collect timber and other necessaries. Upon their return from Markland, the ship was overtaken by storms, and compelled to land at Straumfjord, in the west of Iceland. This is the last account of the "Norman America," preserved for us in the ancient Scandinavian writings. The settlements upon the west coast of Greenland, which were in a very flourishing condition until the middle of the fourteenth century, gradually declined, from the fatal influence of monopoly of trade, by the invasion of the Esquimaux, by the black death which depopulated the north from the year 1347 to 1351, and also by the arrival of a hostile fleet, from what country is not known.