No geographical information contained in the sagas of Iceland and Greenland verifies the statement that the Northmen discovered America and explored the coast of a part of the present territory of the United States. What tradition relates respecting the Northmen finding wine-berries in Vinland does not make it indubitably evident that they were the fruit now called grapes.[63] The wine-wood that was cut and carried on board of Leif’s ship indicates that there was no large timber in Vinland, and that the trees that were felled were of a stunted growth as those that are now found on the coast of Greenland. The statements respecting the great number of eider ducks, the natives who were frightened by the bellowing of a bull, the skin-boats used by them, the want of food by the Northmen, their eating the flesh of a stranded whale to escape starvation, and the sarcastic language of the song sung by Thorhall concerning Vinland being a land of wine, clearly establish the fact that this country or region was very near the Arctic circle. Further, all the early maps of Greenland show Helluland, Markland, and Vinland to be regions of that country. The questionable interpretation of the characters on the rock, lying in the water, on the east side of the Taunton River, opposite Dighton, Massachusetts, by a number of foreign antiquaries, is a notable exemplification of the fictitious nature of the so-called evidence that the Northmen discovered America and explored a part of the eastern coast of the present territory of the United States.[64] The remarkable statement that the round, stone-tower, at Newport, Rhode Island, mentioned by Governor Benedict Arnold in his will, made in 1677, as “my stone-built windmill,” was erected by the Northmen, is also an instance of the infatuation of the learned men who believed it to be a Norse monument.[65]