offensive but little.’ So they did, but the savages,[23] after shooting at them for a while, afterwards fled away, each as quickly as he could. Then Thorvald asked his men if they were wounded at all; they said there were no casualties. ‘I have got a wound under the arm,’ said he; ‘an arrow flew between the gunwale and the shield under my arm and here it is, and it will be my death. Now my advice is that you prepare to go away as quickly as possible, after carrying me to that headland which I thought the best place to dwell in: maybe it was the truth that came into my mouth that I should stay there awhile. Bury me there with a cross at my head and at my feet, and call it Crossness hereafter for ever.’ Greenland was then converted, though Eric the Red died before conversion. Now Thorvald died, but they carried out all his instructions, after which they went and met their companions, and told each other such tidings as they knew, and they stayed there that winter, gathering grapes and vines for their ship. Then in the spring they prepared to go back to Greenland, and arrived with their ship in Ericsfjord, with great news to tell Leif. NOTE. ‘_A wooden barn_’. (_Kornhjálm af tre_). This is the only allusion, direct or indirect, which is made to corn in the course of the Flatey Book version. It is frequently referred to as one of the absurdities affecting the credit of this part of the story. But it does not seem to me to have any necessary or probable connexion with the wild corn of the Saga of Eric. The ‘selfsown wheat’ is never mentioned by the historian of the Flatey Book; unlike the wild grapes, he does not seem to have heard of this feature. It is therefore impossible to suppose that the barn is an imaginary feature introduced to colour the reports of wild corn. It is recorded merely as the only trace of human occupation met with during the exploration conducted in the ship’s pinnace. And its very inappropriateness to the uncultivated crops of which we are told in the rival version seems to me a strong proof of its authenticity. Like the whole of this part of the story, it is too purposeless to be invented. We need not on this account imagine that it actually was a barn. The storage of Indian corn in New England, according to the earliest observers, was, for the most part at any rate, in holes in the ground, and an island remote from human habitation seems a most unlikely situation. On the other hand, De Laet’s _Nieuwe Werelt_ reports Hudson as having seen ‘a house well constructed of oak bark, and circular in shape, so that it had the appearance of being well built, with an arched roof. It contained a great quantity of maize or Indian corn, and beans of the last year’s growth, and there lay near the house, for the purpose of drying, enough to load three ships.’ (_Hudson the Navigator_, Hakluyt Society, p. 161).