Vinland, how did it happen that the English and French in the seventeenth century, and from that day to this, have never set eyes upon a wild horse, or wild cattle, pigs, or hounds, or any such indication whatever of the former presence of civilized Europeans? I do not recollect ever seeing this argument used before, but it seems to me conclusive. It raises against the hypothesis of a Norse colonization in Vinland a presumption extremely difficult if not impossible to overcome.[267] [Footnote 261: "Their hoefdhu medh ser allskonar fenadh, thviat their aetloedhu at byggja landit, ef their maetti that," i. e., "illi omne pecudum genus secum habuerunt, nam terram, si liceret, coloniis frequentare cogitarunt." Rafn, p. 57.] [Footnote 262: Major, _Prince Henry the Navigator_, p. 241.] [Footnote 263: Irving's _Life of Columbus_, New York, 1828, vol. i. p. 293.] [Footnote 264: _Histoire chronologique de la Nouvelle France_, pp. 40, 58; this work, written in 1689 by the Recollet friar Sixte le Tac, has at length been published (Paris, 1888) with notes and other original documents by Eugene Reveillaud. See, also, Laet, _Novus Orbis_, 39.] [Footnote 265: John Smith, _Generall Historie_, 247.] [Footnote 266: Darwin, _Animals and Plants under Domestication_, London, 1868, vol. i pp. 27, 77, 84.] [Footnote 267: The views of Professor Horsford as to the geographical situation of Vinland and its supposed colonization by Northmen are set forth in his four monographs, _Discovery of America by Northmen--address at the unveiling of the statue of Leif Eriksen_, etc., Boston, 1888; _The Problem of the Northmen_, Cambridge, 1889; _The Discovery of the Ancient City of Norumbega_, Boston, 1890; _The Defences of Norumbega_, Boston, 1891. Among Professor Horsford's conclusions the two principal are: 1. that the "river flowing through a lake into the sea" (Rafn, p. 147) is Charles river, and that Leif's booths were erected near the site of the present Cambridge hospital; 2. that "Norumbega"--a word loosely applied by some early explorers to some region or regions somewhere between the New Jersey coast and the Bay of Fundy--was the Indian utterance of "Norbega" or "Norway;" and that certain stone walls and dams at and near Watertown are vestiges of an ancient "city of Norumbega," which was founded and peopled by Northmen and carried on a more or less extensive trade with Europe for more than three centuries.