Chapter II: Pre-Columbian Voyages (1)

There is something solemn and impressive in the spectacle of human life thus going on for countless ages in the Eastern and Western halves of our planet, each all unknown to the other and uninfluenced by it. The contact between the two worlds practically begins in 1492.

[Sidenote: The Chinese.]

[Sidenote: The Irish.]

[Sidenote: Cousin, of Dieppe.]

By this statement it is not meant to deny that occasional visitors may have come and did come before that famous date from the Old World to the New. On the contrary I am inclined to suspect that there may have been more such occasional visits than we have been wont to suppose. For the most part, however, the subject is shrouded in the mists of obscure narrative and fantastic conjecture. When it is argued that in the fifth century of the Christian era certain Buddhist missionary priests came from China by way of Kamtchatka and the Aleutian islands, and kept on till they got to a country which they called Fusang, and which was really Mexico, one cannot reply that such a thing was necessarily and absolutely impossible; but when other critics assure us that, after all, Fusang was really Japan, perhaps one feels a slight sense of relief.[160] So of the dim whispers of voyages to America undertaken by the Irish, in the days when the cloisters of sweet Innisfallen were a centre of piety and culture for northwestern Europe,[161] we may say that this sort of thing has not much to do with history, or history with it. Irish anchorites certainly went to Iceland in the seventh century,[162] and in the course of this book we shall have frequent occasion to observe that first and last there has been on all seas a good deal of blowing and drifting done. It is credibly reported that Japanese junks have been driven ashore on the coasts of Oregon and California;[163] and there is a story that in 1488 a certain Jean Cousin, of Dieppe, while sailing down the west coast of Africa, was caught in a storm and blown across to Brazil.[164] This was certainly quite possible, for it was not so very unlike what happened in 1500 to Pedro Alvarez de Cabral, as we shall hereafter see;[165] nevertheless, the evidence adduced in support of the story will hardly bear a critical examination.[166]

[Footnote 160: This notion of the Chinese visiting Mexico was
set forth by the celebrated Deguignes in 1761, in the _Mémoires
de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, tom. xxviii. pp. 506-525. Its
absurdity was shown by Klaproth, "Recherches sur le pays de Fou
Sang," _Nouvelles annales des voyages_, Paris, 1831, 2e série,
tom. xxi. pp. 58-68; see also Klaproth's introduction to
_Annales des empereurs du Japon_, Paris, 1834, pp. iv.-ix.;
Humboldt, _Examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie du
nouveau continent_, Paris, 1837, tom. ii. pp. 62-84. The fancy
was revived by C. G. Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), in his
_Fusang_, London, 1875, and was again demolished by the
missionary, S. W. Williams, in the _Journal of the American
Oriental Society_, vol. xi., New Haven, 1881.]

[Footnote 161: On the noble work of the Irish church and its
missionaries in the sixth and seventh centuries, see
Montalembert, _Les moines d'Occident_, tom. ii. pp. 465-661;
tom. iii. pp. 79-332; Burton's _History of Scotland_, vol. i.
pp. 234-277; and the instructive map in Miss Sophie Bryant's
_Celtic Ireland_, London, 1889, p. 60. The notice of the
subject in Milman's _Latin Christianity_, vol. ii. pp. 236-247,
is entirely inadequate.]

[Footnote 162: The passion for solitude led some of the
disciples of St. Columba to make their way from Iona to the
Hebrides, and thence to the Orkneys, Shetlands, Færoes, and
Iceland, where a colony of them remained until the arrival of
the Northmen in 874. See Dicuil, _Liber de mensura Orbis Terræ_
(A. D. 825), Paris, 1807; Innes, _Scotland in the Middle Ages_,
p. 101; Lanigan, _Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, chap.
iii.; Maurer, _Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte des Germanischen
Nordens_, i. 35. For the legend of St. Brandan, see Gaffarel,
_Les voyages de St. Brandan_, Paris, 1881.]

[Footnote 163: C. W. Brooks, of San Francisco, cited in
Higginson, _Larger History of the United States_, p. 24.]

[Footnote 164: Desmarquets, _Mémoires chronologiques pour
servir à l'histoire de Dieppe_, Paris, 1785, tom. i. pp. 91-98;
Estancelin, _Recherches sur les voyages et découvertes des
navigateurs normands_, etc., Paris, 1832, pp. 332-361.]

[Footnote 165: See below, vol. ii. p. 96.]

[Footnote 166: As Harrisse says, concerning the alleged voyages
of Cousin and others, "Quant aux voyages du Dieppois Jean
Cousin en 1488, de João Ramalho en 1490, et de João Vaz
Cortereal en 1464 ou 1474, le lecteur nous pardonnera de les
passer sous silence." _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884, tom. i.
p. 307.]

[Sidenote: Those stories are of little value;]

It is not my purpose to weary the reader with a general discussion of these and some other legends or rumours of pre-Columbian visitors to America. We may admit, at once, that "there is no good reason why any one of them may not have done" what is claimed, but at the same time the proof that any one of them _did_ do it is very far from satisfactory.[167] Moreover the questions raised are often of small importance, and belong not so much to the serious workshop of history as to its limbo prepared for learned trifles, whither we will hereby relegate them.[168]

[Footnote 167: Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i. 59.]

[Footnote 168: Sufficiently full references may be found in
Watson's _Bibliography of the Pre-Columbian Discoveries of
America_, appended to Anderson's _America not discovered by
Columbus_, 3d ed., Chicago, 1883, pp. 121-164; and see the
learned chapters by W. H. Tillinghast on "The Geographical
Knowledge of the Ancients considered in relation to the
Discovery of America," and by Justin Winsor on "Pre-Columbian
Explorations," in _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i.]

[Sidenote: but the case of the Northmen is entirely different.]

[Sidenote: The Viking exodus from Norway.]

[Sidenote: Founding of Iceland, A. D. 874.]

But when we come to the voyages of the Northmen in the tenth and eleventh centuries, it is quite a different affair. Not only is this a subject of much historic interest, but in dealing with it we stand for a great part of the time upon firm historic ground. The narratives which tell us of Vinland and of Leif Ericsson are closely intertwined with the authentic history of Norway and Iceland. In the ninth century of our era there was a process of political consolidation going on in Norway, somewhat as in England under Egbert and his successors. After a war of twelve years, King Harold Fairhair overthrew the combined forces of the Jarls, or small independent princes, in the decisive naval battle of Hafursfiord in the year 872. This resulted in making Harold the feudal landlord of Norway. Allodial tenures were abolished, and the Jarls were required to become his vassals. This consolidation of the kingdom was probably beneficial in its main consequences, but to many a proud spirit and crafty brain it made life in Norway unendurable. These bold Jarls and their Viking[169] followers, to whom, as to the ancient Greeks, the sea was not a barrier, but a highway,[170] had no mind to stay at home and submit to unwonted thraldom. So they manned their dragon-prowed keels, invoked the blessing of Wodan, god of storms, upon their enterprise, and sailed away. Some went to reinforce their kinsmen who were making it so hot for Alfred in England[171] and for Charles the Bald in Gaul; some had already visited Ireland and were establishing themselves at Dublin and Limerick; others now followed and found homes for themselves in the Hebrides and all over Scotland north of glorious Loch Linnhe and the Murray frith; some made their way through the blue Mediterranean to "Micklegard," the Great City of the Byzantine Emperor, and in his service wielded their stout axes against Magyar and Saracen;[172] some found their amphibious natures better satisfied upon the islands of the Atlantic ridge,--the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Færoes, and especially noble Iceland. There an aristocratic republic soon grew up, owning slight and indefinite allegiance to the kings of Norway.[173] The settlement of Iceland was such a wholesale colonization of communities of picked men as had not been seen since ancient Greek times, and was not to be seen again until Winthrop sailed into Massachusetts Bay. It was not long before the population of Iceland exceeded 50,000 souls. Their sheep and cattle flourished, hay crops were heavy, a lively trade--with fish, oil, butter, skins, and wool, in exchange for meal and malt--was kept up with Norway, Denmark, and the British islands, political freedom was unimpaired,[174] justice was (for the Middle Ages) fairly well administered, naval superiority kept all foes at a distance; and under such conditions the growth of the new community in wealth[175] and culture was surprisingly rapid. In the twelfth century, before literature had begun to blossom in the modern speech of France or Spain or Italy, there was a flourishing literature in prose and verse in Iceland. Especial attention was paid to history, and the "Landnáma-bók," or statistical and genealogical account of the early settlers, was the most complete and careful work of the kind which had ever been undertaken by any people down to quite recent times. Few persons in our day adequately realize the extent of the early Icelandic literature or its richness. The poems, legends, and histories earlier than the date when Dante walked and mused in the streets of Florence survive for us now in some hundreds of works, for the most part of rare and absorbing interest. The "Heimskringla," or chronicle of Snorro Sturleson, written about 1215, is one of the greatest history books in the world.[176]

[Footnote 169: The proper division of this Old Norse word is
not into _v[=i]-king_, but into _v[)i]k-ing_. The first
syllable means a "bay" or "fiord," the second is a patronymic
termination, so that "vikings" are "sons of the fiord,"--an
eminently appropriate and descriptive name.]

[Footnote 170: Curtius (_Griechische Etymologie_, p. 237)
connects [Greek: pontos] with [Greek: patos]; compare the
Homeric expressions [Greek: hygra keleutha, ichthyoenta
keleutha], etc.]

[Footnote 171: The descendants of these Northmen formed a very
large proportion of the population of the East Anglian
counties, and consequently of the men who founded New England.
The East Anglian counties have been conspicuous for resistance
to tyranny and for freedom of thought. See my _Beginnings of
New England_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 172: They were the Varangian guard at Constantinople,
described by Sir Walter Scott in _Count Robert of Paris_. About
this same time their kinsmen, the Russ, moving eastward from
Sweden, were subjecting Slavic tribes as far as Novgorod and
Kief, and laying the foundations of the power that has since,
through many and strange vicissitudes, developed into Russia.
See Thomsen, _The Relations between Ancient Russia and
Scandinavia_, Oxford, 1877.]

[Footnote 173: Fealty to Norway was not formally declared until
1262.]

[Footnote 174: The settlement of Iceland is celebrated by
Robert Lowe in verses which show that, whatever his opinion may
have been in later years as to the use of a classical
education, his own early studies must always have been a source
of comfort to him:--

[Greek: Chaire kai en nephelaisi kai en niphadessi bareiais
Kai pyri kai seismois nêse saleuomenê
Enthade gar basilêos hyperbion hybrin alyxas
Dêmos Hyperboreôn, kosmou ep' eschatiê,
Autarkê bioton theiôn t' erethismata Mousôn
Kai thesmous hagnês heuren eleutherias.]

These verses are thus rendered by Sir Edmund Head (_Viga Glums
Saga_, p. v.):--

"Hail, Isle! with mist and snowstorms girt around,
Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,--
Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path
The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath:
Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free,
And held unscathed their laws and liberty."

Laing (_Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 57) couples Iceland and New
England as the two modern colonies most distinctly "founded on
principle and peopled at first from higher motives than want or
gain."]

[Footnote 175: Just what was then considered wealth, for an
individual, may best be understood by a concrete instance. The
historian Snorro Sturleson, born in 1178, was called a rich
man. "In one year, in which fodder was scarce, he lost 120 head
of oxen without being seriously affected by it." The fortune
which he got with his first wife Herdisa, in 1199, was
equivalent nominally to $4,000, or, according to the standard
of to-day, about $80,000. Laing, _Heimskringla_, vol. i. pp.
191, 193.]

[Footnote 176: Laing's excellent English translation of it was
published in London in 1844. The preliminary dissertation, in
five chapters, is of great value. A new edition, revised by
Prof. Rasmus Anderson, was published in London in 1889. Another
charming book is Sir George Dasent's _Story of Burnt Njal_,
Edinburgh, 1861, 2 vols., translated from the _Njals Saga_.
Both the saga itself and the translator's learned introduction
give an admirable description of life in Iceland at the end of
the tenth century, the time when the voyages to America were
made. It is a very instructive chapter in history.

The Icelanders of the present day retain the Old Norse
language, while on the Continent it has been modified into
Swedish and Norwegian-Danish. They are a well-educated people,
and, in proportion to their numbers, publish many books.]

[Sidenote: Discovery of Greenland, 876.]

[Sidenote: Eric's Colony in Greenland, 986.]

Now from various Icelandic chronicles[177] we learn that in 876, only two years after the island commonwealth was founded, one of the settlers named Gunnbjörn was driven by foul weather to some point on the coast of Greenland, where he and his crew contrived to pass the winter, their ship being locked in ice; when the spring set them free, they returned to Iceland. In the year 983 Eric the Red, a settler upon Öxney (Ox-island) near the mouth of Breidafiord, was outlawed for killing a man in a brawl. Eric then determined to search for the western land which Gunnbjörn had discovered. He set out with a few followers, and in the next three years these bold sailors explored the coasts of Greenland pretty thoroughly for a considerable distance on each side of Cape Farewell. At length they found a suitable place for a home, at the head of Igaliko fiord, not far from the site of the modern Julianeshaab.[178] It was fit work for Vikings to penetrate so deep a fiord and find out such a spot, hidden as it is by miles upon miles of craggy and ice-covered headlands. They proved their sagacity by pitching upon one of the pleasantest spots on the gaunt Greenland coast; and there upon a smooth grassy plain may still be seen the ruins of seventeen houses built of rough blocks of sandstone, their chinks caulked up with clay and gravel. In contrast with most of its bleak surroundings the place might well be called Greenland, and so Eric named it, for, said he, it is well to have a pleasant name if we would induce people to come hither. The name thus given by Eric to this chosen spot has been extended in modern usage to the whole of the vast continental region north of Davis strait, for the greater part of which it is a flagrant misnomer.[179] In 986 Eric ventured back to Iceland, and was so successful in enlisting settlers for Greenland that on his return voyage he started with five and twenty ships. The loss from foul weather and icebergs was cruel. Eleven vessels were lost; the remaining fourteen, carrying probably from four to five hundred souls, arrived safely at the head of Igaliko fiord, and began building their houses at the place called Brattahlid. Their settlement presently extended over the head of Tunnudliorbik fiord, the next deep inlet to the northwest; they called it Ericsfiord. After a while it extended westward as far as Immartinek, and eastward as far as the site of Friedrichsthal; and another distinct settlement of less extent was also made about four hundred miles to the northwest, near the present site of Godthaab. The older settlement, which began at Igaliko fiord, was known as the East Bygd;[180] the younger settlement, near Godthaab, was called the West Bygd.

[Footnote 177: A full collection of these chronicles is given
in Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanæ_, Copenhagen, 1837, in the
original Icelandic, with Danish and Latin translations. This
book is of great value for its full and careful reproduction of
original texts; although the rash speculations and the want of
critical discernment shown in the editor's efforts to determine
the precise situation of Vinland have done much to discredit
the whole subject in the eyes of many scholars. That is,
however, very apt to be the case with first attempts, like
Rafn's, and the obvious defects of his work should not be
allowed to blind us to its merits. In the footnotes to the
present chapter I shall cite it simply as "Rafn;" as the exact
phraseology is often important, I shall usually cite the
original Icelandic, and (for the benefit of readers unfamiliar
with that language) shall also give the Latin version, which
has been well made, and quite happily reflects the fresh and
pithy vigour of the original. An English translation of all the
essential parts may be found in De Costa, _Pre-Columbian
Discovery of America by the Northmen_, 2d ed., Albany, 1890;
see also Slafter, _Voyages of the Northmen to America_, Boston,
1877 (Prince Society). An Icelandic version, interpolated in
Peringskiold's edition of the _Heimskringla_, 1697, is
translated in Laing, vol. iii. pp. 344-361.

The first modern writer to call attention to the Icelandic
voyages to Greenland and Vinland was Arngrim Jónsson, in his
_Crymogoea_, Hamburg, 1610, and more explicitly in his
_Specimen Islandiæ historicum_, Amsterdam, 1643. The voyages
are also mentioned by Campanius, in his _Kort beskrifning om
provincien Nya Swerige uti America_, Stockholm, 1702. The
first, however, to bring the subject prominently before
European readers was that judicious scholar Thormodus Torfæus,
in his two books _Historia Vinlandiæ antiquæ_, and _Historia
Gronlandiæ antiquæ_, Copenhagen, 1705 and 1706. Later writers
have until very recently added but little that is important to
the work of Torfæus. In the voluminous literature of the
subject the discussions chiefly worthy of mention are Forster's
_Geschichte der Entdeckungen und Schiffahrten im Norden_,
Frankfort, 1784, pp. 44-88; and Humboldt, _Examen critique_,
etc., Paris, 1837, tom. i. pp. 84-104; see, also, Major,
_Select Letters of Columbus_, London, 1847 (Hakluyt Soc.) pp.
xii.-xxi. The fifth chapter of Samuel Laing's preliminary
dissertation to the _Heimskringla_, which is devoted to this
subject, is full of good sense; for the most part the shrewd
Orkneyman gets at the core of the thing, though now and then a
little closer knowledge of America would have been useful to
him. The latest critical discussion of the sources, marking a
very decided advance since Rafn's time, is the paper by Gustav
Storm, professor of history in the University of Christiania,
"Studier over Vinlandsreiserne," in _Aarbøger for Nordisk
Oldkyndighed og Historie_, Copenhagen, 1887, pp. 293-372.

Since this chapter was written I have seen an English
translation of the valuable paper just mentioned, "Studies on
the Vineland Voyages," in _Mémoires de la société royale des
antiquaires du Nord_, Copenhagen, 1888, pp. 307-370. I have
therefore in most cases altered my footnote references below,
making the page-numbers refer to the English version (in which,
by the way, some parts of the Norwegian original are, for no
very obvious reason, omitted). By an odd coincidence there
comes to me at the same time a book fresh from the press, whose
rare beauty of mechanical workmanship is fully equalled by its
intrinsic merit, _The Finding of Wineland the Good--the History
of the Icelandic Discovery of America_, edited and translated
from the earliest records by Arthur Middleton Reeves, London,
1890. This beautiful quarto contains phototype plates of the
original Icelandic vellums in the _Hauks-bók_, the MS. AM. 557,
and the _Flateyar-bók_, together with the texts carefully
edited, an admirable English translation, and several chapters
of critical discussion decidedly better than anything that has
gone before it. On reading it carefully through, it seems to me
the best book we have on the subject in English, or perhaps in
any language.

Since the above was written, the news has come of the sudden
and dreadful death of Mr. Reeves, in the railroad disaster at
Hagerstown, Indiana, February 25, 1891. Mr. Reeves was an
American scholar of most brilliant promise, only in his
thirty-fifth year.]

[Footnote 178: Rink, _Danish Greenland_, p. 6.]

[Footnote 179: We thus see the treacherousness of one of the
arguments cited by the illustrious Arago to prove that the
Greenland coast must be colder now than in the tenth century.
The Icelanders, he thinks, called it "a green land" because of
its verdure, and therefore it must have been warmer than at
present. But the land which Eric called green was evidently
nothing more than the region about Julianeshaab, which still
has plenty of verdure; and so the argument falls to the ground.
See Arago, _Sur l'état thermométrique du globe terrestre_, in
his _Oeuvres_, tom. v. p. 243. There are reasons, however, for
believing that Greenland was warmer in the tenth century than
at present. See below, p. 176.]

[Footnote 180: The map is reduced from Rafn's _Antiquitates
Americanæ_, tab. xv. The ruins dotted here and there upon it
have been known ever since the last rediscovery of Greenland in
1721, but until after 1831 they were generally supposed to be
the ruins of the West Bygd. After the fifteenth century, when
the old colony had perished, and its existence had become a
mere literary tradition, there grew up a notion that the names
East Bygd and West Bygd indicated that the two settlements must
have been respectively eastward and westward of Cape Farewell;
and after 1721 much time was wasted in looking for vestiges of
human habitations on the barren and ice-bound eastern coast. At
length, in 1828-31, the exploring expedition sent out by the
Danish government, under the very able and intelligent Captain
Graah, demonstrated that both settlements were west of Cape
Farewell, and that the ruins here indicated upon the map are
the ruins of the East Bygd. It now became apparent that a
certain description of Greenland by Ivar Bardsen--written in
Greenland in the fourteenth century, and generally accessible
to European scholars since the end of the sixteenth, but not
held in much esteem before Captain Graah's expedition--was
quite accurate and extremely valuable. From Bardsen's
description, about which we shall have more to say hereafter,
we can point out upon the map the ancient sites with much
confidence. Of those mentioned in the present work, the
bishop's church, or "cathedral" (a view of which is given
below, p. 222), was at Kakortok. The village of Gardar, which
gave its name to the bishopric, was at Kaksiarsuk, at the
northeastern extremity of Igaliko fiord. Opposite Kaksiarsuk,
on the western fork of the fiord, the reader will observe a
ruined church; that marks the site of Brattahlid. The fiord of
Igaliko was called by the Northmen Einarsfiord; and that of
Tunnudliorbik was their Ericsfiord. The monastery of St. Olaus,
visited by Nicolò Zeno (see below, p. 240), is supposed by Mr.
Major to have been situated near the Iisblink at the bottom of
Tessermiut fiord, between the east shore of the fiord and the
small lake indicated on the map.]

This colonization of Greenland by the Northmen in the tenth century is as well established as any event that occurred in the Middle Ages. For four hundred years the fortunes of the Greenland colony formed a part, albeit a very humble part, of European history. Geographically speaking, Greenland is reckoned as a part of America, of the western hemisphere, and not of the eastern. The Northmen who settled in Greenland had, therefore, in this sense found their way to America. Nevertheless one rightly feels that in the history of geographical discovery an arrival of Europeans in Greenland is equivalent merely to reaching the vestibule or ante-chamber of the western hemisphere. It is an affair begun and ended outside of the great world of the red men.

But the story does not end here. Into the world of the red men the voyagers from Iceland did assuredly come, as indeed, after once getting a foothold upon Greenland, they could hardly fail to do. Let us pursue the remainder of the story as we find it in our Icelandic sources of information, and afterwards it will be proper to inquire into the credibility of these sources.

[Sidenote: Voyage of Bjarni Herjulfson, 986.]

One of the men who accompanied Eric to Greenland was named Herjulf, whose son Bjarni, after roving the seas for some years, came home to Iceland in 986 to drink the Yuletide ale with his father. Finding him gone, he weighed anchor and started after him to Greenland, but encountered foggy weather, and sailed on for many days by guess-work without seeing sun or stars. When at length he sighted land it was a shore without mountains, showing only small heights covered with dense woods. It was evidently not the land of fiords and glaciers for which Bjarni was looking. So without stopping to make explorations he turned his prow to the north and kept on. The sky was now fair, and after scudding nine or ten days with a brisk breeze astern, Bjarni saw the icy crags of Greenland looming up before him, and after some further searching found his way to his father's new home.[181] On the route he more than once sighted land on the larboard.

[Footnote 181: In Herjulfsfiord, at the entrance to which the
modern Friedrichsthal is situated. Across the fiord from
Friedrichsthal a ruined church stands upon the cape formerly
known as Herjulfsness. See map.]

[Sidenote: Conversion of the Northmen to Christianity.]

This adventure of Bjarni's seems not to have excited general curiosity or to have awakened speculation. Indeed, in the dense geographical ignorance of those times there is no reason why it should have done so. About 994 Bjarni was in Norway, and one or two people expressed some surprise that he did not take more pains to learn something about the country he had seen; but nothing came of such talk till it reached the ears of Leif, the famous son of Eric the Red. This wise and stately man[182] spent a year or two in Norway about 998. Roman missionary priests were then preaching up and down the land, and had converted the king, Olaf Tryggvesson, great-grandson of Harold Fairhair. Leif became a Christian and was baptised, and when he returned to Greenland he took priests with him who converted many people, though old Eric, it is said, preferred to go in the way of his fathers, and deemed boisterous Valhalla, with its cups of wassail, a place of better cheer than the New Jerusalem, with its streets of gold.

[Footnote 182: "Leifr var mikill madhr ok sterkr, manna
sköruligastr at sjá, vitr madhr ok gódhr hófsmadhr um alla
hluti," i. e. "Leif was a large man and strong, of noble
aspect, prudent and moderate in all things." Rafn, p. 33.]

[Sidenote: Leif Ericsson's voyage, 1000.]

[Sidenote: Helluland.]

[Sidenote: Markland.]

[Sidenote: Vinland.]

Leif's zeal for the conversion of his friends in Greenland did not so far occupy his mind as to prevent him from undertaking a voyage of discovery. His curiosity had been stimulated by what he had heard about Bjarni's experiences, and he made up his mind to go and see what the coasts to the south of Greenland were like. He sailed from Brattahlid--probably in the summer or early autumn of the year 1000[183]--with a crew of five and thirty men. Some distance to the southward they came upon a barren country covered with big flat stones, so that they called it Helluland, or "slate-land." There is little room for doubt that this was the coast opposite Greenland, either west or east of the strait of Belle Isle; in other words, it was either Labrador or the northern coast of Newfoundland. Thence, keeping generally to the southward, our explorers came after some days to a thickly wooded coast, where they landed and inspected the country. What chiefly impressed them was the extent of the forest, so that they called the place Markland, or "wood-land." Some critics have supposed that this spot was somewhere upon the eastern or southern coast of Newfoundland, but the more general opinion places it somewhere upon the coast of Cape Breton island or Nova Scotia. From this Markland our voyagers stood out to sea, and running briskly before a stiff northeaster it was more than two days before they came in sight of land. Then, after following the coast for a while, they went ashore at a place where a river, issuing from a lake, fell into the sea. They brought their ship up into the lake and cast anchor. The water abounded in excellent fish, and the country seemed so pleasant that Leif decided to pass the winter there, and accordingly his men put up some comfortable wooden huts or booths. One day one of the party, a "south country" man, whose name was Tyrker,[184] came in from a ramble in the neighbourhood making grimaces and talking to himself in his own language (probably German), which his comrades did not understand. On being interrogated as to the cause of his excitement, he replied that he had discovered vines loaded with grapes, and was much pleased at the sight inasmuch as he had been brought up in a vine country. Wild grapes, indeed, abounded in this autumn season, and Leif accordingly called the country Vinland. The winter seems to have passed off very comfortably. Even the weather seemed mild to these visitors from high latitudes, and they did not fail to comment on the unusual length of the winter day. Their language on this point has been so construed as to make the length of the shortest winter day exactly nine hours, which would place their Vinland in about the latitude of Boston. But their expressions do not admit of any such precise construction; and when we remember that they had no accurate instruments for measuring time, and that a difference of about fourteen minutes between sunrise and sunset on the shortest winter day would make all the difference between Boston and Halifax, we see how idle it is to look for the requisite precision in narratives of this sort, and to treat them as one would treat the reports of a modern scientific exploring expedition.

[Footnote 183: The year seems to have been that in which
Christianity was definitely established by law in Iceland,
viz., A. D. 1000. The chronicle _Thattr Eireks Raudha_ is
careful about verifying its dates by checking one against
another. See Rafn, p. 15. The most masterly work on the
conversion of the Scandinavian people is Maurer's _Die
Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume_, Munich,
1855; for an account of the missionary work in Iceland and
Greenland, see vol. i. pp. 191-242, 443-452.]

[Footnote 184: The name means "Turk," and has served as a
touchstone for the dullness of commentators. To the Northmen a
"Southman" would naturally be a German, and why should a German
be called a Turk? or how should these Northmen happen to have
had a Turk in their company? Mr. Laing suggests that he may
have been a Magyar. Yes; or he may have visited the Eastern
Empire and taken part in a fight _against_ Turks, and so have
got a soubriquet, just as Thorhall Gamlason, after returning
from Vinland to Iceland, was ever afterward known as "the
Vinlander." That did not mean that he was an American redskin.
See below, p. 203. From Tyrker's grimaces one commentator
sagely infers that he had been eating grapes and got drunk; and
another (even Mr. Laing!) thinks it necessary to remind us that
all the grape-juice in Vinland would not fuddle a man unless it
had been fermented,--and then goes on to ascribe the absurdity
to our innocent chronicle, instead of the stupid annotator. See
_Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 168.]

[Sidenote: Voyages of Thorvald and Thorstein, 1002-05.]

In the spring of 1001 Leif returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber.[185] The voyage made much talk. Leif's brother Thorvald caught the inspiration,[186] and, borrowing Leif's ship, sailed in 1002, and succeeded in finding Vinland and Leif's huts, where his men spent two winters. In the intervening summer they went on an exploring expedition along the coast, fell in with some savages in canoes, and got into a fight in which Thorvald was killed by an arrow. In the spring of 1004 the ship returned to Brattahlid. Next year the third brother, Thorstein Ericsson, set out in the same ship, with his wife Gudrid and a crew of thirty-five men; but they were sore bestead with foul weather, got nowhere, and accomplished nothing. Thorstein died on the voyage, and his widow returned to Greenland.

[Footnote 185: On the homeward voyage he rescued some
shipwrecked sailors near the coast of Greenland, and was
thenceforward called Leif the Lucky (et postea cognominatus est
Leivus Fortunatus). The pleasant reports from the newly found
country gave it the name of "Vinland the Good." In the course
of the winter following Leif's return his father died.]

[Footnote 186: "Jam crebri de Leivi in Vinlandiam profectione
sermones serebantur, Thorvaldus vero, frater ejus, nimis pauca
terræ loca explorata fuisse judicavit." Rafn, p. 39.]

[Sidenote: Thorfinn Karlsefni, and his unsuccessful attempt to found a colony in Vinland, 1007-10.]

In the course of the next summer, 1006, there came to Brattahlid from Iceland a notable personage, a man of craft and resource, wealthy withal and well born, with the blood of many kinglets or jarls flowing in his veins. This man, Thorfinn Karlsefni, straightway fell in love with the young and beautiful widow Gudrid, and in the course of the winter there was a merry wedding at Brattahlid. Persuaded by his adventurous bride, whose spirit had been roused by the reports from Vinland and by her former unsuccessful attempt to find it, Thorfinn now undertook to visit that country in force sufficient for founding a colony there. Accordingly in the spring of 1007 he started with three or four ships,[187] carrying one hundred and sixty men, several women, and quite a cargo of cattle. In the course of that year his son Snorro was born in Vinland,[188] and our chronicle tells us that this child was three years old before the disappointed company turned their backs upon that land of promise and were fain to make their way homeward to the fiords of Greenland. It was the hostility of the natives that compelled Thorfinn to abandon his enterprise. At first they traded with him, bartering valuable furs for little strips of scarlet cloth which they sought most eagerly; and they were as terribly frightened by his cattle as the Aztecs were in later days by the Spanish horses.[189] The chance bellowing of a bull sent them squalling to the woods, and they did not show themselves again for three weeks. After a while quarrels arose, the natives attacked in great numbers, many Northmen were killed, and in 1010 the survivors returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber and peltries. On the way thither the ships seem to have separated, and one of them, commanded by Bjarni Grimolfsson, found itself bored by worms (the _teredo_) and sank, with its commander and half the crew.[190]

[Footnote 187: Three is the number usually given, but at least
four of their ships would be needed for so large a company; and
besides Thorfinn himself, three other captains are
mentioned,--Snorro Thorbrandsson, Bjarni Grimolfsson, and
Thorhall Gamlason. The narrative gives a picturesque account of
this Thorhall, who was a pagan and fond of deriding his
comrades for their belief in the new-fangled Christian notions.
He seems to have left his comrades and returned to Europe
before they had abandoned their enterprise. A further reference
to him will be made below, p. 203.]

[Footnote 188: To this boy Snorro many eminent men have traced
their ancestry,--bishops, university professors, governors of
Iceland, and ministers of state in Norway and Denmark. The
learned antiquarian Finn Magnusson and the celebrated sculptor
Thorwaldsen regarded themselves as thus descended from Thorfinn
Karlsefni.]

[Footnote 189: Compare the alarm of the Wampanoag Indians in
1603 at the sight of Martin Pring's mastiff. Winsor, _Narr. and
Crit. Hist._, iii. 174.]

[Footnote 190: The fate of Bjarni was pathetic and noble. It
was decided that as many as possible should save themselves in
the stern boat. "Then Bjarni ordered that the men should go in
the boat by lot, and not according to rank. As it would not
hold all, they accepted the saying, and when the lots were
drawn, the men went out of the ship into the boat. The lot was
that Bjarni should go down from the ship to the boat with one
half of the men. Then those to whom the lot fell went down from
the ship to the boat. When they had come into the boat, a young
Icelander, who was the companion of Bjarni, said: 'Now thus do
you intend to leave me, Bjarni?' Bjarni replied, 'That now
seems necessary.' He replied with these words: 'Thou art not
true to the promise made when I left my father's house in
Iceland.' Bjarni replied: 'In this thing I do not see any other
way'; continuing, 'What course can you suggest?' He said: 'I
see this, that we change places and thou come up here and I go
down there.' Bjarni replied: 'Let it be so, since I see that
you are so anxious to live, and are frightened by the prospect
of death.' Then they changed places, and he descended into the
boat with the men, and Bjarni went up into the ship. It is
related that Bjarni and the sailors with him in the ship
perished in the worm sea. Those who went in the boat went on
their course until they came to land, where they told all these
things." De Costa's version from _Saga Thorfinns Karlsefnis_,
Rafn, pp. 184-186.]

[Sidenote: Freydis, and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1011-12.]

Among Karlsefni's companions on this memorable expedition was one Thorvard, with his wife Freydis, a natural daughter of Eric the Red. About the time of their return to Greenland in the summer of 1010, a ship arrived from Norway, commanded by two brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi. During the winter a new expedition was planned, and in the summer of 1011 two ships set sail for Vinland, one with Freydis, Thorvard, and a crew of 30 men, the other with Helgi and Finnbogi, and a crew of 35 men. There were also a number of women. The purpose was not to found a colony but to cut timber. The brothers arrived first at Leif's huts and had begun carrying in their provisions and tools, when Freydis, arriving soon afterward, ordered them off the premises. They had no right, she said, to occupy her brother's houses. So they went out and built other huts for their party a little farther from the shore. Before their business was accomplished "winter set in, and the brothers proposed to have some games for amusement to pass the time. So it was done for a time, till discord came among them, and the games were given up, and none went from one house to the other; and things went on so during a great part of the winter." At length came the catastrophe. Freydis one night complained to her husband that the brothers had given her evil words and struck her, and insisted that he should forthwith avenge the affront. Presently Thorvard, unable to bear her taunts, was aroused to a deed of blood. With his followers he made a night attack upon the huts of Helgi and Finnbogi, seized and bound all the occupants, and killed the men one after another in cold blood. Five women were left whom Thorvard would have spared; as none of his men would raise a hand against them, Freydis herself took an axe and brained them one and all. In the spring of 1012 the party sailed for Brattahlid in the ship of the murdered brothers, which was the larger and better of the two. Freydis pretended that they had exchanged ships and left the other party in Vinland. With gifts to her men, and dire threats for any who should dare tell what had been done, she hoped to keep them silent. Words were let drop, however, which came to Leif's ears, and led him to arrest three of the men and put them to the torture until they told the whole story. "'I have not the heart,' said Leif, 'to treat my wicked sister as she deserves; but this I will foretell them [Freydis and Thorvard] that their posterity will never thrive.' So it went that nobody thought anything of them save evil from that time."

[Sidenote: The whole story is eminently probable.]

With this grewsome tale ends all account of Norse attempts at exploring or colonizing Vinland, though references to Vinland by no means end here.[191] Taking the narrative as a whole, it seems to me a sober, straightforward, and eminently probable story. We may not be able to say with confidence exactly where such places as Markland and Vinland were, but it is clear that the coasts visited on these southerly and southwesterly voyages from Brattahlid must have been parts of the coast of North America, unless the whole story is to be dismissed as a figment of somebody's imagination. But for a figment of the imagination, and of European imagination withal, it has far too many points of verisimilitude, as I shall presently show.

[Footnote 191: The stories of Gudleif Gudlaugsson and Ari
Marsson, with the fanciful speculations about "Hvitramannaland"
and "Irland it Mikla," do not seem worthy of notice in this
connection. They may be found in De Costa, _op. cit._ pp.
159-177; and see Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_,
chap. v.]

[Sidenote: Voyage into Baffin's Bay, 1135.]

In the first place, it is an extremely probable story from the time that Eric once gets settled in Brattahlid. The founding of the Greenland colony is the only strange or improbable part of the narrative, but that is corroborated in so many other ways that we know it to be true; as already observed, no fact in mediæval history is better established. When I speak of the settlement of Greenland as strange, I do not mean that there is anything strange in the Northmen's accomplishing the voyage thither from Iceland. That island is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, and we know, moreover, that Norse sailors achieved more difficult things than penetrating the fiords of southern Greenland. Upon the island of Kingitorsook in Baffin's Bay (72° 55' N., 56° 5' W.) near Upernavik, in a region supposed to have been unvisited by man before the modern age of Arctic exploration, there were found in 1824 some small artificial mounds with an inscription upon stone:--"Erling Sighvatson and Bjarni Thordharson and Eindrid Oddson raised these marks and cleared ground on Saturday before Ascension Week, 1135." That is to say, they took symbolic possession of the land.[192]

[Footnote 192: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 152.]

[Sidenote: A Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord, in Norway.]

In order to appreciate how such daring voyages were practicable, we must bear in mind that the Viking "ships" were probably stronger and more seaworthy, and certainly much swifter, than the Spanish vessels of the time of Columbus. One was unearthed a few years ago at Sandefiord in Norway, and may be seen at the museum in Christiania. Its pagan owner had been buried in it, and his bones were found amidships, along with the bones of a dog and a peacock, a few iron fish-hooks and other articles. Bones of horses and dogs, probably sacrificed at the funeral according to the ancient Norse custom, lay scattered about. This craft has been so well described by Colonel Higginson,[193] that I may as well quote the passage in full:--

[Footnote 193: See his _Larger History of the United States_,
pp. 32-34.]

[Sidenote: Description of the ship.]

She "was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the greatest length, and sixteen feet eleven inches at the greatest width, and from the top of the keel to the gunwale amidships she was five feet nine inches deep. She had twenty ribs, and would draw less than four feet of water. She was clinker-built; that is, had plates slightly overlapped, like the shingles on the side of a house. The planks and timbers of the frame were fastened together with withes made of roots, but the oaken boards of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. The bow and stern were similar in shape, and must have risen high out of water, but were so broken that it was impossible to tell how they originally ended. The keel was deep and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace of any metallic sheathing; but an iron anchor was found almost rusted to pieces. There was no deck and the seats for rowers had been taken out. The oars were twenty feet long, and the oar-holes, sixteen on each side, had slits sloping towards the stern to allow the blades of the oars to be put through from inside. The most peculiar thing about the ship was the rudder, which was on the starboard or right side, this side being originally called 'steerboard' from this circumstance. The rudder was like a large oar, with long blade and short handle, and was attached, not to the side of the boat, but to the end of a conical piece of wood which projected almost a foot from the side of the vessel, and almost two feet from the stern. This piece of wood was bored down its length, and no doubt a rope passing through it secured the rudder to the ship's side. It was steered by a tiller attached to the handle, and perhaps also by a rope fastened to the blade. As a whole, this disinterred vessel proved to be anything but the rude and primitive craft which might have been expected; it was neatly built and well preserved, constructed on what a sailor would call beautiful lines, and eminently fitted for sea service. Many such vessels may be found depicted on the celebrated Bayeux tapestry; and the peculiar position of the rudder explains the treaty mentioned in the Heimskringla, giving to Norway all lands lying west of Scotland between which and the mainland a vessel could pass with her rudder shipped.... This was not one of the very largest ships, for some of them had thirty oars on each side, and vessels carrying from twenty to twenty-five were not uncommon. The largest of these were called Dragons, and other sizes were known as Serpents or Cranes. The ship itself was often so built as to represent the name it bore: the dragon, for instance, was a long low vessel, with the gilded head of a dragon at the bow, and the gilded tail at the stern; the moving oars at the side might represent the legs of the imaginary creature, the row of shining red and white shields that were hung over the gunwale looked like the monster's scales, and the sails striped with red and blue might suggest his wings. The ship preserved at Christiania is described as having had but a single mast, set into a block of wood so large that it is said no such block could now be cut in Norway. Probably the sail was much like those still carried by large open boats in that country,--a single square on a mast forty feet long.[194] These masts have no standing rigging, and are taken down when not in use; and this was probably the practice of the Vikings."

[Footnote 194: Perhaps it may have been a square-headed lug,
like those of the Deal galley-punts; see Leslie's _Old Sea
Wings, Ways, and Words, in the Days of Oak and Hemp_, London,
1890, p. 21.]

[Sidenote: The climate of Greenland.]

In such vessels, well stocked with food and weapons, the Northmen were accustomed to spend many weeks together on the sea, now and then touching land. In such vessels they made their way to Algiers and Constantinople, to the White Sea, to Baffin's Bay. It is not, therefore, their voyage to Greenland that seems strange, but it is their success in founding a colony which could last for more than four centuries in that inhospitable climate. The question is sometimes asked whether the climate of Greenland may not have undergone some change within the last thousand years.[195] If there has been any change, it must have been very slight; such as, perhaps, a small variation in the flow of ocean currents might occasion. I am inclined to believe that there may have been such a change, from the testimony of Ivar Bardsen, steward of the Gardar bishopric in the latter half of the fourteenth century, or about halfway between the time of Eric the Red and our own time. According to Bardsen there had long been a downward drifting of ice from the north and a consequent accumulation of bergs and floes upon the eastern coast of Greenland, insomuch that the customary route formerly followed by ships coming from Iceland was no longer safe, and a more southerly route had been generally adopted.[196] This slow southward extension of the polar ice-sheet upon the east of Greenland seems still to be going on at the present day.[197] It is therefore not at all improbable, but on the contrary quite probable, that a thousand years ago the mean annual temperature of the tip end of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, was a few degrees higher than now.[198] But a slight difference of this sort might have an important bearing upon the fortunes of a colony planted there. For example, it would directly affect the extent of the hay crop. Grass grows very well now in the neighbourhood of Julianeshaab. In summer it is still a "green land," with good pasturage for cattle, but there is difficulty in getting hay enough to last through the nine months of winter. In 1855 "there were in Greenland 30 to 40 head of horned cattle, about 100 goats, and 20 sheep;" but in the ancient colony, with a population not exceeding 6,000 persons, "herds of cattle were kept which even yielded produce for exportation to Europe."[199] So strong a contrast seems to indicate a much more plentiful grass crop than to-day, although some hay might perhaps have been imported from Iceland in exchange for Greenland exports, which were chiefly whale oil, eider-down, and skins of seals, foxes, and white bears.

[Footnote 195: Some people must have queer notions about the
lapse of past time. I have more than once had this question put
to me in such a way as to show that what the querist really had
in mind was some vague impression of the time when oaks and
chestnuts, vines and magnolias, grew luxuriantly over a great
part of Greenland! But that was in the Miocene period, probably
not less than a million years ago, and has no obvious bearing
upon the deeds of Eric the Red.]

[Footnote 196: Bardsen, _Descriptio Groenlandiæ_, appended to
Major's _Voyages of the Venetian Brothers_, etc., pp. 40, 41;
and see below, p. 242.]

[Footnote 197: Zahrtmann, _Journal of Royal Geographical
Society_, London, 1836, vol. v. p. 102. On this general subject
see J. D. Whitney, "The Climate Changes of Later Geological
Times," in _Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at
Harvard College_, Cambridge, 1882, vol. vii. According to
Professor Whitney there has also been a deterioration in the
climate of Iceland.]

[Footnote 198: One must not too hastily infer that the mean
temperature of points on the American coast south of Davis
strait would be affected in the same way. The relation between
the phenomena is not quite so simple. For example, a warm early
spring on the coast of Greenland increases the discharge of
icebergs from its fiords to wander down the Atlantic ocean; and
this increase of floating ice tends to chill and dampen the
summers at least as far South as Long Island, if not farther.]

[Footnote 199: Rink's _Danish Greenland_, pp. 27, 96, 97.]

[Sidenote: With the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery of the American continent was almost inevitable.]

[Sidenote: Voyages for timber.]