Note 169 — PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERY.

This is language that might be employed by an Icelander, to indicate the difference between the new country and his own. It may have been an intentional exaggeration, similar to those of Eric in describing Greenland. Yet even if it were a serious attempt at history, it could not be regarded as farther from the truth, than Dr. Cotton Mather's description of the climate of New England, where he tells us that water tossed up in the air, came down ice; and that in one place in Massachusetts, it actually snowed wool, some of which, he tells us, he preserved in a box in his study.