“Or Iceland,” observed Biarne, who had joined the group. “Where can you show such mountains—spouting fire, and smoke, and melted stones,—or such boiling fountains, ten feet thick and a hundred feet high, as we have in Iceland?”
“That’s true,” observed Krake, who was an Icelander.
“Oh!” exclaimed Tyrker, with a peculiar twist of his ugly countenance, “Turkey is the land that beats all others completely.”
At this there was a general laugh.
“Why, how can that be?” cried Swend, who was inclined to take up the question rather hotly. “What have you to boast of in Turkey?”
“Eh! What have we not, is the question. What shall I say? Ha! we have grapes there; and we do make such a drink of them—Oh!—”
Here Tyrker screwed his face and figure into what was meant for a condition of ecstasy.
“’Twere well that they had no grapes there, Tyrker,” said Biarne, “for if all be true that Karlsefin tells us of that drink, they would be better without it.”
“I wish I had it!” remarked Tyrker, pathetically.
“Well, it is said that we shall find grapes in Vinland,” observed Swend, “and as we are told there is everything else there that man can desire, our new country will beat all the others put together,—so hurrah for Vinland!”