whole lecture. Not only does it
smack of the sea-breeze and the salt water, like all the finest old Norse
sagas, but it gives a glimpse at least of the nobleness which underlay
the grim and often cruel nature of the Norseman. It belongs, too, to the
culminating epoch, to the beginning of that era when the Scandinavian
peoples had their great times; when the old fierceness of the worshippers
of Thor and Odin was tempered, without being effeminated, by the Faith of
the "White Christ," till the very men who had been the destroyers of
Western Europe became its civilisers.

It should have, moreover, a special interest to Americans. For--as
American antiquaries are well aware--Bjarne was on his voyage home from
the coast of New England; possibly from that very Mount Hope Bay which
seems to have borne the same name in the time of those old Norsemen, as
afterwards in the days of King Philip, the last sachem of the Wampanong
Indians. He was going back to Greenland, perhaps for reinforcements,
finding, he and his fellow-captain, Thorfinn, the Esquimaux who then
dwelt in that land too strong for them. For the Norsemen were then on
the very edge of discovery, which might have changed the history not only
of this continent but of Europe likewise. They had found and colonised
Iceland and Greenland. They had found Labrador, and called it Helluland,
from its ice-polished rocks. They had found Nova Scotia seemingly, and
called it Markland, from its woods. They had found New England, and
called it Vinland the Good. A fair land they found it, well wooded, with
good pasturage; so that they had already imported cows, and a bull whose
lowings terrified the Esquimaux. They had found self-sown corn too,
probably maize. The streams were full of salmon. But they had called
the land Vinland, by reason of its grapes. Quaint enough, and bearing in
its very quaintness the stamp of truth, is the story of the first finding
of the wild fox-grapes. How Leif the Fortunate, almost as soon as he
first landed, missed a little wizened old German servant of his father's,
Tyrker by name, and was much vexed thereat, for he had been brought up on
the old man's knee, and hurrying off to find him met Tyrker coming back
twisting his eyes about--a trick of his--smacking his lips and talking
German to himself in high excitement. And when they get him to talk
Norse again, he says: "I have not been far, but I have news for you. I
have found vines and g