Since this chapter was written I have seen an English translation of the valuable paper just mentioned, "Studies on the Vineland Voyages," in _Memoires de la societe royale des antiquaires du Nord_, Copenhagen, 1888, pp. 307-370. I have therefore in most cases altered my footnote references below, making the page-numbers refer to the English version (in which, by the way, some parts of the Norwegian original are, for no very obvious reason, omitted). By an odd coincidence there comes to me at the same time a book fresh from the press, whose rare beauty of mechanical workmanship is fully equalled by its intrinsic merit, _The Finding of Wineland the Good--the History of the Icelandic Discovery of America_, edited and translated from the earliest records by Arthur Middleton Reeves, London, 1890. This beautiful quarto contains phototype plates of the original Icelandic vellums in the _Hauks-bok_, the MS. AM. 557, and the _Flateyar-bok_, together with the texts carefully edited, an admirable English translation, and several chapters of critical discussion decidedly better than anything that has gone before it. On reading it carefully through, it seems to me the best book we have on the subject in English, or perhaps in any language. Since the above was written, the news has come of the sudden and dreadful death of Mr. Reeves, in the railroad disaster at Hagerstown, Indiana, February 25, 1891. Mr. Reeves was an American scholar of most brilliant promise, only in his thirty-fifth year.] [Footnote 178: Rink, _Danish Greenland_, p. 6.] [Footnote 179: We thus see the treacherousness of one of the arguments cited by the illustrious Arago to prove that the Greenland coast must be colder now than in the tenth century. The Icelanders, he thinks, called it "a green land" because of its verdure, and therefore it must have been warmer than at present. But the land which Eric called green was evidently nothing more than the region about Julianeshaab, which still has plenty of verdure; and so the argument falls to the ground. See Arago, _Sur l'etat thermometrique du globe terrestre_, in his _Oeuvres_, tom. v. p. 243. There are reasons, however, for believing that Greenland was warmer in the tenth century than at present. See below, p. 176.]