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Wilfred Harold Munro
Tales of an Old Sea Port
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4066338091666
Table of Contents
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TALES OF AN OLD SEA PORT
INTRODUCTION: OLD BRISTOL
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From the earliest days of the Plymouth Colony the name Mount Hope Lands has been applied to the peninsula in Narragansett Bay of which Bristol, Rhode Island, is the chief town. The history of this town is more crowded with notable incident than that of any other in New England. First and most picturesque is the story of the Norsemen. Around Mount Hope the legends of the Norsemen cluster, shadowy, vague, elusive, and yet altogether fascinating. Only legends they are and must remain.
After the lapse of a thousand years of changing climates and of varying shores no man can definitely locate the Vinland of the Vikings. Many have attempted to do so, and, like the late Professor E. N. Horsford,[1] have established their theses to their own satisfaction and the satisfaction of the present dwellers in their Vinland, but they have not succeeded in convincing any one else. One of the latest writers[2] approaching the subject without local prejudice, and judging of the past by the ever changing present, will have it that the physical conditions of the lands around Narragansett Bay in the eleventh century were such as to make it more than probable that the “Hop” of the Norsemen is the Mount Hope of today.[3] In his conclusions all good Bristolians, yea more, all good Rhode Islanders, cheerfully join. Scandinavian writers insist that the name “Mount Hope” is of Norse origin. They assert that it is only an English spelling of the Indian name Montop, or Monthaup, and they are probably correct in their assertion. The Indians had no written language and our Pilgrim ancestors spelled the Indian words as they pleased, sometimes in half a dozen ways upon the same page. They go on to say that the termination “hop” was the name which Thorfinn and his companions gave to this region when they wintered here in 1008, and they bring forward the old Norse sagas to prove it. This is the story as the sagas tell it: