If now we look at the details of the story we shall find many ear-marks of truth in it. We must not look for absolute accuracy in a narrative which--as we have it--is not the work of Leif or Thorfinn or any of their comrades, but of compilers or copyists, honest and careful as it seems to me, but liable to misplace details and to call by wrong names things which they had never seen. Starting with these modest expectations we shall find the points of verisimilitude numerous. To begin with the least significant, somewhere on our northeastern coast the voyagers found many foxes.[203] These animals, to be sure, are found in a great many countries, but the point for us is that in a southerly and southwesterly course from Cape Farewell these sailors are said to have found them. If our narrators had been drawing upon their imaginations or dealing with semi-mythical materials, they would as likely as not have lugged into the story elephants from Africa or hippogriffs from Dreamland; mediaeval writers were blissfully ignorant of all canons of probability in such matters.[204] But our narrators simply mention an animal which has for ages abounded on our northeastern coasts. One such instance is enough to suggest that they were following reports or documents which emanated ultimately from eye-witnesses and told the plain truth. A dozen such instances, if not neutralized by counter-instances, are enough to make this view extremely probable; and then one or two instances which could not have originated in the imagination of a European writer will suffice to prove it. [Footnote 203: "Fjoeldi var thar melrakka," i. e. "ibi vulpium magnus numerus erat," Rafn, p. 138.] [Footnote 204: It is extremely difficult for an impostor to concoct a narrative without making blunders that can easily be detected by a critical scholar. For example, the Book of Mormon, in the passage cited (see above, p. 3), in supremely blissful ignorance introduces oxen, sheep, and silk-worms, as well as the knowledge of smelting iron, into pre-Columbian America.] Let us observe, then, that on coming to Markland they "slew a bear;"[205] the river and lake (or bay) in Vinland abounded with salmon bigger than Leif's people had ever seen;[206] on the coast they caught halibut;[207] they came to an island where there were so many eider ducks breeding that they could hardly avoid treading on their eggs;[208] and, as already observed, it was because of the abundance of wild grapes that Leif named the southernmost country he visited Vinland. [Footnote 205: "Thar i drapu their einn bjoern," i. e. "in qua ursum interfecerunt," id. p. 138.]