Straumsfjord. The answer to Mr. Dieserud’s objection to Cape Cod that the wild grape flourishes there close to the sea, and must therefore have been found, is that no landing was made there.[102] Karlsefni, unattracted by the prospect, sailed on, and consequently the discovery was deferred. ‘They went their ways, till interrupted by a fjord’, so one might almost interpret the language of the saga. In any case, the likeliest fjord to attract attention on a coasting voyage would be one lying right in the track of the ship. And such a fjord, if my conjecture is right, was Straumsfjord. _Straumsfjord._ Dead in the course of a ship following the coast westward from Cape Cod lies Long Island Sound. Though not, strictly speaking, a fjord, it has, until the East River channel, leading to New York, is explored, exactly the appearance of one. It is very narrow at each end, and its greatest breadth, fifteen to sixteen miles, is only maintained for about twenty miles in its central part. Until the sound was explored by Adriaan Block in 1614, it was probably not known that Long Island was separated from the mainland. [Illustration: SUGGESTED POSITION OF STRAUMSFJORD & HÓP] At the mouth of the sound is an important island, Fisher’s Island, with an extreme length of six miles, between which and the less important Gull Islands runs a strong tidal stream, appropriately known as the Race. This is sufficiently formidable to necessitate the warning of the _Coast Pilot_,—‘Sailing vessels in the vicinity of the Race, or navigating along the southern side of the Sound near Gull and Plum Islands, should give them a wide berth when the ebb stream is running, or they may be drawn into one of the passages before aware of their danger.’ ‘There is always a strong tide-rip in the Race except for a period of about thirty minutes slack between the turn of the streams.’ Long Island is of interest to naturalists as a meeting-place for equatorial and arctic species of birds, and was a centre of the whaling industry as late as the first part of the nineteenth century, and Douglas, as already mentioned, in his _Summary of the Planting of the British North American Settlements_ (1760) mentions specially that small whales affect the flats of Long Island. Altogether this sound appears to fulfil in every respect the requirements of Straumsfjord. The mainland immediately to the north of Fisher’s Island is hilly, though the mention of mountains at Straumsfjord may have another significance, which will be dealt with later on.