"Some Indians lived in tents covered with the skins of wild animals. Others had houses of birch bark. Then again, there were tribes who braided grasses into pretty mats with which they covered the framework of their houses.
"The food was also different. In the south, where the air is warm and pleasant almost all the year, the Red Men ate a great deal of fruit. Up here in the north they lived largely on the corn that the women planted and tended, while out on the great plains they ate quantities of buffalo meat."
Lucy's eyes opened wider and wider as the old man talked.
"I didn't need to close them at all," she said. "I can always see the pictures you paint with words. You make them so bright, Uncle Sam."
"Some other time, my dear, we will talk more about the Red Children, but now we will turn to the first white men who visited America.
"The first visitors from Europe were bold Norsemen. Their homes were in the far north. There were many deep, narrow bays along the shores of their own country and they loved the ocean from the time they were born. While they were still children, they learned to sail over its rough waves, and by the time they were young men they were quite fearless. The worst storms and the fiercest winds did not make them tremble.
"From year to year they kept sailing farther and farther westward in their queer boats."
"Why were they queer, Uncle Sam?" asked Lucy.
"They would seem queer to us because they had such high prows and sterns and because large figures of dragons and other strange creatures were often carved on the ends of the boats. The sails, too, were of a different shape from any you ever saw.
"But let me go on with my story. It happened one time that some Vikings, as these brave Norse seamen were called, sailed so far into the west that they came to an island they had never seen before. This was Iceland. You have heard the name, haven't you, children?"