THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.
They proceeded on through a tract of shoal water, which corresponds with the sound between Nantucket and Cape Cod, and appear to have run across the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, and to have ascended the Pocasset River as far as Mount Hope Bay, which they took for a lake. Here they cast anchor, and, "bringing their skin cots from the ship, proceeded to make booths." They remained during the winter, finding plenty of salmon in the river and lake. "The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good, that cattle would not require house-feeding in winter, for there came no frost, and little did the grass wither there." Their statement that on the shortest day the sun was above the horizon from half-past seven till half-past four enables geographers to fix the latitude of the place where they were at 41° 43′ 10″, which is very nearly that of Mount Hope Bay.
One evening a man of the party was missing,—a German named Tyrker, whom Leif regarded as his foster-father. He determined to seek for him, and for this purpose chose twelve reliable men. Tyrker soon returned and said that he had been a long distance into the interior, and had found vines and grapes. "But is this true, my fosterer?" said Leif. "Surely is it true," he returned; "for I was bred up in a land where there is no want of either vines or grapes." The next morning Leif said to his sailors, "We will now set about two things, in that the one day we gather grapes, and the other cut vines and fell trees, so from thence will be a loading for my ship." The record states that the long-boat was filled with grapes. Leif gave the country the name of Vinland, from its vines.
To the reader of the present day it may seem that the wild vines of Massachusetts and Rhode Island can hardly have been so prominent a feature of the native products as to have given a name to the whole region. But it is certain that six centuries later the Puritans found wild maize and grapes growing there in profusion, while the neighboring island of Martha's Vineyard received its name from the English for a precisely similar reason.
Upon the return of Leif to Greenland, his brother Thorwald thought that "these new lands had been much too little explored." Leif gave him his ship, and he put out to sea, with thirty men, in the year 1002. Nothing is known of their voyage till they came to Leif's booths in Vinland. They laid up their ship, caught fish for their support, and spent a pleasant winter. They passed two years in exploring the interior, and then returned by the north, where Thorwald was killed in a battle with the Esquimaux.
But a more successful discoverer than any of these was Thorfinn Karlsnefne,—that is, Thorfinn the Predestined Hero. He was a wealthy merchant of Iceland, the heir of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian princes. He visited Greenland in 1006, where he married Gudrida, the widow of an Icelandic adventurer, and in 1007 sailed, in three ships and with one hundred and sixty men, upon a voyage to Vinland. His wife went with him, and, in the autumn of the same year, bore him a son named Snorri, who was, of course, the first of European blood born in America. From him the celebrated Swedish sculptor Thorwaldsen was lineally descended. Thorfinn remained here three years, and had many communications with the aborigines. A singular result of this relation may perhaps be traced in the names successively given to one spot. The Northmen called one of their settlements Hóp, and the Puritans, six centuries later, found that the Indians called it Haup. It would appear that they had continued, in their own tongue, the appellation bestowed upon the place in the Norse language. The Puritans anglicized it, and called it Mount Hope.
We have no accounts of any further voyages made by the Northmen to America. The records were preserved in the literature of the island, but the memory of them gradually faded away from the popular mind.
Several writers claim for these early navigators a degree of merit beyond that which they are willing to accord to Columbus. They reply to the argument that Bjarni's discovery of the American coast was merely accidental, as he had started in search of Greenland, that Columbus' discovery of America was accidental also, as he started in search of Asia, and as he believed the land to be Asia to the day of his death. "Besides," they say, "how different were the circumstances under which the two voyages were made! The Northmen, without compass or quadrant, without any of the advantages of science, geographical knowledge, personal experience, or previous discoveries, without the support of either kings or governments,—which Columbus, however discouraged at the outset, eventually obtained,—but guided by the stars, and upheld by their own private resources and a spirit of adventure which no dangers could repress, crossed the broad Northern ocean and explored these distant lands."
This is all true; and doubtless our wonder at the success with which these early voyages were prosecuted would be augmented tenfold, could we obtain authentic information upon the character and capacity of the ships in which they were made. Nothing reliable exists upon this subject, except a few rude inscriptions; and from these, as reproduced in the engravings we have given, it would actually appear that the vessels used had no decks, and that they were partly propelled by oars. However navigation may have improved since the days of the Northmen, it is certain that no sailor would now attempt an Arctic voyage in an open boat; and when we read of the perils and sufferings of our modern Polar adventurers, it is impossible not to be amazed at the success with which the Danes and Norwegians, with their slender appliances, endured and outlived them.
