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With Erik the Red went a man named Heriulf Bardson. Biorni, or Bjarni, this Heriulf's son, was absent from home when they left; he was himself a rover, but had always spent his winters with his father, and resolved to follow him to Greenland, though he warned his men that the voyage was imprudent, since none of them had sailed in those seas. He

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sailed westward, was lost in fogs, and at last came to a land with small hills covered with wood. This could not, he thought, be Greenland; so he turned about, and leaving this land to larboard, "let the foot of the sail look towards land," that is, sailed away from land. He came to another land, flat and still wooded. Then he sailed seaward with a south-west wind for two days, when they saw another land, but thought it could not be Greenland because there were no glaciers. The sailors wished to land for wood and water, but Bjarni would not-" but he got some hard speeches for that from his sailors," the saga, or legend, says. Then they sailed out to sea with a south-west wind for three days, and saw a third land, mountainous and with glaciers, and seeming to be an island; and after this they sailed four days more, and reached Greenland, where Bjarni found his father, and lived with him. ever after.

But it seems that the adventurous countrymen of Bjarni were quite displeased with him for not exploring farther; and

at last a daring man named Leif bought Bjarni's ship, and set sail, with thirty-five companions, to explore southward and westward. First they reached the land which Bjarni had last seen, the high island with the glaciers, and this they called. Helluland, or "Flat-stone Land." Then they came to another land which they called Marckland, or "Woodland." Then they sailed two days with a north-east wind, and came to a land with an island north of it; and landing on this island, they found sweet dew on the grass, which has been explained as the honey-dew sometimes left by an insect called aphis. This pleased them, like great boys, as they were; then they sailed between the island and the land; then the ship ran aground, but was at last lifted by the tide, when they sailed up a river and into a lake; and there they cast anchor, and brought their sleeping-cots on shore, and remained a long time.

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They built houses there and spent the winter; there were salmon in the lake, the winter was very mild, and day and night were more equal than in Greenland. They explored the land, and one day a man of their number, Leif's fosterbrother, named Tyrker, came from a long expedition and told Leif, in great excitement, that he had some news for him; he had found grape - vines and grapes. Can that be true, my foster-brother?" said Leif. "Surely it is true," he said, "for I was brought up where there is no want of grape-vines and grapes"-he being a German. The next day they filled their long-boat with grapes, and in the spring they sailed back to Greenland with a ship's load of tree-trunks — - much needed there-and with the news of the newly discovered land, called Vinland, or "Wine-land." Leif was ever after known as "Leif the Lucky," from this success.

But still the Norsemen in Greenland thought the new region had been too little explored, so Thorwald, Leif's brother, took the same ship, and made a third trip, with thirty men. He reached the huts the other party had built, called in the

legends Leifsbudir, or "Leif's booths." They spent two winters there, fishing and exploring, and in the second summer their ship was aground under a ness, or cape, to the northward, and they had to repair it. The broken keel they set up on the ness as a memorial, and called it Kialarness. Afterwards they saw some of the natives for the first time, and killed all but one, in their savage way. Soon after there came forth from a bay "innumerable skin-boats," and attacked them. The men on board were what they called "Skraelings,' or dwarfs, and they fought with arrows, one of which killed. Thorwald, and he was buried, with a cross at the head of his grave, on a cape which they called Krossaness, or "Cross Cape." The saga reminds us that "Greenland was then Christianized, but Erik the Red had died before Christianity came thither."

Thorwald's men went back to Greenland without him, their ship being loaded with grape-vines and grapes. The next expedition to Vinland was a much larger one, headed by a rich man from Norway named Karlsefne, who had dwelt with Leif in Greenland, and had been persuaded to come on this enterprise. He brought a colony of sixty men and five women, and they had cattle and provisions. They found a place where a river ran out from the land, and through a lake into the sea; one could not enter from the sea except at highwater. They found vines growing, and fields of wild wheat; there were fish in the lake, and wild beasts in the woods. Here they established themselves at a place called Hóp, from the Icelandic word hópa, to recede, meaning an inlet from the ocean. Here they dwelt, and during the first summer the natives came in skin boats to trade with them—a race described as black and ill-favored, with large eyes and broad cheeks, and with coarse hair on their heads. On their first visit these visitors passed near the cattle, and were so frightened by the bellowing of the bull that they ran away again.

The natives brought all sorts of furs to sell, and wished for weapons, but those were refused by Karlsefne, who had a more profitable project, which the legends thus describe: "He took this plan -he bade the women bring out their dairy stuff for them [milk, butter, and the like], and so soon as the Skraelings saw this they would have that and nothing more. Now this was the way the Skraelings traded: they bore off their wares in their stomachs, but Karlsefne and his companions had their bags and skin wares, and so they parted." This happened again, and then one of the Norsemen killed a native, so that the next time they came as enemies, armed with slings, and raising upon a pole a great blue ball, which they swung at the Norsemen with great noise. It may have been only an Eskimo harpoon with a bladder attached, but it had its effect; the Norsemen were terrified, and were running away, when a woman named Freydis, daughter of Erik the Red, stopped them by her reproaches, and urged them on. Why do ye run," she said, “stout men as ye are, before these miserable wretches, whom I thought ye would knock down like cattle? If I had weapons, methinks I could fight better than any of you." With this she took up a sword that lay beside a dead man, the fight was renewed, and the Skraelings were beaten off.

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There is a curious account of one "large and handsome man," who seemed to be the leader of the Skraelings. One of the natives took up an axe, a thing which he had apparently never seen before, and struck at one of his companions and killed him. Upon which this leader took the axe and threw it into the sea in terror, and after this they all retreated, and came no more. Karlsefne's wife had a child that winter who was called Snorri, and the child is believed to have been the ancestor of some famous Scandinavians, including Thorwaldsen the sculptor. But in spring they all returned to Greenland with a load of valuable timber, and thence went

to Iceland, so that Snorri grew up there, and his children after him. One more attempt was made to colonize Vinland, but it failed through the selfishness of a woman who had organized it the same Freydis who had shown so much courage, but who was also cruel and grasping; and after her return to Greenland, perhaps in 1013, we hear no more of Vinland, except as a thing of the past.

There are full accounts of all these events, from manuscripts of good authority, preserved in Iceland; the chief narratives being the saga of Erik the Red and the Karlsefne saga, the one having been written in Greenland, the other in Iceland. These have been repeatedly translated into various languages, and their most accessible form in English is in Beamish's translation, which first appeared in London in 1841, and has lately been reprinted by the Prince Society of Boston, under the editorship of Rev. E. L. Slafter. This version is, however, incomplete, and is also less vivid and graphic than a partial one which appeared in the Massachusetts Quarterly Review for March, 1849, by James Elliot Cabot, of Brookline, Massachusetts. There are half a dozen other references of undoubted authority in later Norse manuscripts to "Vinland the Good" as a region well authenticated. Mingled with these are other allusions to a still dimmer and more shadowy land beyond Vinland, and called "Whiteman's Land,” or “Ireland the Mickle," a land said to be inhabited by men in white garments, who raised flags or poles. But this is too remote and uncertain to be seriously described.

Such is the Norse legend of the visit of the Vikings. But to tell the tale in its present form gives very little impression of the startling surprise with which it came before the community of scholars nearly half a century ago. It was not a new story to the Scandinavian scholars: the learned antiquary Torfæus knew almost as much about it in 1707 as we know to-day. But when Professor Rafn published, in 1837,

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