Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/192

No. 2. and No. 3., that there is no sequence of letters, either Runic or Roman, upon the Deighton Written Rock, but only detached unconnected marks, belonging to any people or period one may please to fancy. What is there to prove that these are not the scratches of some idle sailor boy, or of some master Deighton of the first settlers in 1620? Every Runic inscription given by Olaus Wormius, in his "Literatura Runica," is in regular columns of letters from right to left, or from top to bottom, or going round the stone; but still in regular rows, letter after letter. Here all the scratches are detached marks, such as a child would make on the smooth side of a stone, without meaning. The only semblance to letters is in the middle of the stone, in which antiquaries discover the name of Thorfinn,—viz. Thorfinn Karlsefne, the leader of the expedition. In the older copy (No. 2. of the inscription) we see a lozenge-shaped mark, a Roman letter R, a stroke, and a triangular mark. In the later copy of 1830 (No. 3.), the lozenge has got a tail to it, and the Roman letters RFIN are distinct. The first copy was taken in 1790, by Dr. Bay lie and Mr. Godwin; the latter in 1830, by the Rhode Island Historical Society. Both copies coincide; except that the figure of a cock, and of some animal apparently, and some unintelligible marks delineated in the older, have in the course of forty years become obliterated, and are not given in the later copy. But by some strange process, although it is one not at all uncommon in stones that have attracted the antiquary's notice, the thing sought for—the letters of the word Thorfinn —has in the course of the forty years gained wonderfully in distinctness, instead of becoming obliterated or less legible. Let any one look at the upper copy (No. 2.), and make out, if he can, any thing approaching to the word Thorfinn, except a lozenge and R, such as one may see on a box or package in