And is it once morning, then is it noon-day,
For the light must eternally conquer.
Foss.
It was a lovely summer evening. Through the open windows of the sitting-room streamed in the delicious summer air with the fragrance of the hay, which now lay in swath in the dale. At one table, Susanna prepared the steaming tea, which the Norwegians like almost as much as the English; at another sate Mrs. Astrid with Harald and Alette, occupied with the newly-published beautiful work, "Snorre Sturleson's Sagas of the Norwegian Kings, translated from the Icelandic of J. Aal." The fourth number of this work lay before Harald, open at the section "The Discovery of Vineland." He had just read aloud Mr. Aal's interesting introduction to the Sagas of Erik Röde and Karlefne, and now proceeded to read these two Sagas themselves, which contained the narrative of the first discovery of America, and of which we here give a brief compendium.
"At the end of the tenth century, at the period when the Northmen sought with warlike Viking hosts the south, and the Christianity with the Gospel of Peace made its way towards the North, there lived in Iceland a man of consequence, named Herjulf. His son was called Bjarne, and was a courageous young man. His mind was early turned towards travel and adventures. He soon had the command of his own ship, and sailed in it for foreign lands. As he one summer returned to the island of his ancestors, his father had shortly before sailed for Greenland, and had settled himself there. Then also steered Bjarne out to sea, saying, 'He would, after the old custom, take up his winter's board with his father, and would sail for Greenland.'
"After three days' sail, a fierce north wind arose, followed by so thick a fog that Bjarne and his people could no longer tell where they were. This continued many days. After that they began to see the sun again, and could discern the quarters of the heaven. They saw before them land, which was overgrown with wood, and had gentle eminences. Bjarne would not land there, because it could not be Greenland, where he knew that they should find great icebergs. They sailed on with a south-west wind for three days, and got sight of another land, which was mountainous, and had lofty icebergs. But Bjarne perceived that neither was this Greenland, and sailed farther, till he at length discovered the land which he sought, and his father's court.
"On a visit to Erik Jarl in Norway, Bjarne related his voyage, and spoke of the strange country which he had seen. But people thought that he had had little curiosity not to have been able to say more about this country, and some blamed him much on this account. Erik Röde's son Leif, the descendant of a distinguished line, was filled with zeal at Bjarne's relation, to pursue the discovery, and purchased of him a ship, which he manned with five-and-thirty men, and so set out to sea, to discover this new land. They came first to a country full of snow and mountains, which seemed to them to be destitute of all magnificence. They then came in sight of one whose shore was of white sand, and its surface overgrown with woods.[8] They sailed yet farther westward, and arrived at a splendid country, where they found grapes and Indian corn and the noble tree 'Masur.'[9]
"This country[10] they called 'Vineland,' and built a house, and remained there through the winter, which was so mild that the grass was but little withered. Moreover, the day and night were of more equal length than in Iceland or Greenland. And Leif was a tall and strong man, of a manly aspect, and at the same time wise and prudent in all matters. After this expedition, he grew both in consideration and wealth, and was universally called 'The Happy.'
"Amongst the voyages to this new country which followed on that of Leif, Karlefne's is the most remarkable. But the new colonists were attacked with heavy sickness; and the peculiar home-sickness of the inhabitants of the North might perhaps, in part, drive them back from the grapes of Vineland to their own snowy home: certain it is, that they retained no permanent settlement in the new country. They were also continually assaulted by the natives, whom their weapons were not powerful enough to restrain.
"In the mean time, several Icelandic annalists have recorded that, in every age, from the time of Leif to that of Columbus, America was visited by the Northmen. Testimonies and memories of these voyages we have now only in these relations, and in the remarkable stone called 'Dighton written Rock,' on the bank of Taunton river, in Massachusetts, and whose ruins and hieroglyphics, at length, in 1830, copied by learned Americans, corroborate the truth of these relations."
Harald now commented on these figures with great zeal, remarking that, in Norway, similar ones were yet found engraven on the face of rocks, on tombstones, etc. "Do you see, Alette," continued he, eagerly, "this represents a woman and a little child; probably Karlefne's wife, who bore a son during this visit to Vineland. And this must be a bull; and in Karlefne's Saga a bull is mentioned, which terrified the natives by his bellowings; and these figures to the right represent the natives. This must be a shield, and these Runic letters."
"It requires a right good strength of imagination for all this, my brother," here interrupted Alette, smilingly, who was not altogether so patriotic as Harald; "but granted that all this was evidence of the first discovery of America by our ancestors, what then? What good, what advantage has the world derived thence? Is it not rather sorrowful to see that such important discoveries should have been lost, that they could be obliterated, as if they had never been, and must be made anew? Had not Columbus, some centuries later, braved both the narrow-mindedness of men and the yet unmeasured tracks of the ocean, it is probable that to-day we should know nothing of America, and of these stones, the traces of our forefathers on this foreign soil."