[Footnote 232: Rafn, p. 160; De Costa, p. 134; Storm, p. 330.] [Footnote 233: Here the narrator seems determined to give us a genuine smack of the marvellous, for when the fleeing uniped comes to a place where his retreat seems cut off by an arm of the sea, he runs (glides, or hops?) across the water without sinking. In Vigfusson's version, however, the marvellous is eliminated, and the creature simply runs over the stubble and disappears. The incident is evidently an instance where the narrative has been "embellished" by introducing a feature from ancient classical writers. The "Monocoli," or one-legged people, are mentioned by Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 2: "Item hominum genus qui Monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, mirae pernicitatis ad saltum." Cf. Aulus Gellius, _Noctes Atticae_, viii. 4.] [Footnote 234: Between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, June 15, 1608. For the description, with its droll details, see _Purchas his Pilgrimes_, iii. 575.] * * * * * [Sidenote: Misleading associations with the word "saga."] [Sidenote: Unfortunate comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon.] [Sidenote: The story of the Trojan War, as we have it, is pure folk-lore.] It is now time for a few words upon the character of the records upon which our story is based. And first, let us remark upon a possible source of misapprehension due to the associations with which a certain Norse word has been clothed. The old Norse narrative-writings are called "sagas," a word which we are in the habit of using in English as equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives. To cite a "saga" as authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale; and I cannot help suspecting that to some such misleading association of ideas is due the particular form of the opinion expressed some time ago by a committee of the Massachusetts Historical Society,--"that there is the same sort of reason for believing in the existence of Leif Ericsson that there is for believing in the existence of Agamemnon. They are both traditions accepted by later writers, and there is no more reason for regarding as true the details related about the discoveries of the former than there is for accepting as historic truth the narrative contained in the Homeric poems." The report goes on to observe that "it is antecedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests."[235] The second of these statements is characterized by critical moderation, and expresses the inevitable and wholesome reaction against the rash