What follows is therefore put forward rather as an interesting suggestion than as a vital part of the main argument. But assuming that the sentence under consideration refers to the relation between Straumsfjord and Hóp, we know that mountains or hills were features of the landscape of both these places, and such features are not elsewhere specifically mentioned. If I am right in supposing Straumsfjord to be Long Island Sound and Hóp the estuary or lower waters of the Hudson, it would be quite correct to say that hills visible from the one place would also be visible from the other. If, as seems probable, the camp or base at Straumsfjord lay near the island at its mouth, it would also be true to say that any such mountain would be about the same distance from that camp, whether approached via Long Island Sound or by a route to the south of Long Island. As the explorers did nothing else, till the first winter at Straumsfjord, except investigate their surroundings, it is more than likely that they cruised sufficiently far up the sound to be able to see hills also visible from the Hudson valley. If this interpretation could be relied on it would therefore afford a strong confirmation of the topography suggested in this chapter, and I feel that this may be the correct explanation of the passage. It is safer, however, to treat the sentence as irremediably corrupt, and to conclude that the information it appears to contain may be a mere gloss, or may express a mistaken notion of the explorers. It is one of the many points as to which certainty is impossible, but it equally cannot afford a valid argument against theories which would otherwise be acceptable. IX. AFTERMATH AND CONCLUSION. ‘And here’, in the words of Eric’s Saga, ‘this story ends.’ The attempt at colonization had proved a failure; the snows of Iceland and Greenland were thenceforward to be preferred to the chance of frequent collision with the Wineland Skrælings. No further attempt at a permanent settlement seems ever to have been made. It by no means follows that the newly-discovered countries remained unvisited. A land full of timber, lying but a few days’ sail from Greenland, where such a commodity was unobtainable, must almost certainly have tempted the members of Eric’s small colony at any rate to occasional visits. Of these we could not, in the nature of things, expect to hear much. Always more or less isolated by its dangerous coast and the little-known sea which separated it from Iceland, Greenland became after 1294 almost entirely cut off from the land of saga by the Norwegian royal edict making trade with the former country a crown monopoly. The minor enterprises of the colonists were, moreover, of little or no interest to Icelandic audiences.[104] _Entries in the Annals._