de las Indias_, cap. 43). I attach no
importance to this statement, and only mention it to connect it with some
other curious notices of the tribe now extinct who occupied that
locality. Both De Ayllon and Lawson mention their very light complexions,
and the latter saw many with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a fair skin;
they cultivated when first visited the potato (or the groundnut),
tobacco, and cotton (Humboldt); they reckoned time by disks of wood
divided into sixty segments (Lederer); and just in this latitude the most
careful determination fixes the mysterious White-man's-land, or Great
Ireland of the Icelandic Sagas (see the _American Hist. Mag._, ix. p.
364), where the Scandinavian sea rovers in the eleventh century found men
of their own color, clothed in long woven garments, and not less
civilized than themselves.
[23-1] The name Eskimo is from the Algonkin word _Eskimantick_, eaters of
raw flesh. There is reason to believe that at one time they possessed the
Atlantic coast considerably to the south.
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