s thy name?' she said to Gudrid.
'My name is Gudrid; but what is thine?' 'Gudrid!' says the strange
woman. Then came the sound of a great crash and the woman vanished. A
battle followed in which many Skraelings were slain.

It all reads like a dream. In the end Karlsefni sailed back to
Ericsfirth with a great treasure of furs. A great and prosperous family
in Iceland was descended from him at the time when the stories were
written down. But it is said that Freydis who frightened the Skraelings
committed many murders in Vineland among her own people.

The Icelanders never returned to Vineland the Good, though a bishop
named Eric is said to have started for the country in 1121. Now, in the
story of Cortes, you may read how the Mexicans believed in a God called
Quetzalcoatl, a white man in appearance, who dwelt among them and
departed mysteriously, saying that he would come again, and they at
first took Cortes and his men for the children of Quetzalcoatl. So we
may fancy if we please that Bishop Eric, or one of his descendants,
wandered from Vineland south and west across the continent and arrived
among the Aztecs, and by them was taken for a God.[13]

FOOTNOTE:

[13] The story is taken from the Saga of Eric the Red, and from the
Flatey Book in Mr. Reeves's _Finding of Wineland the Good_ (Clarendon
Press, 1890). The discovery of Vineland was made about the year 1000.
The saga of Eric the Red was written about 1300-1334, but two hundred
years before, about 1134, Ari the learned mentions Vineland as quite
familiar in his _Islandingabok_. There are other traces of Vineland,
earlier than the manuscript of the Saga of Eric the Red. Of course we do
not know when that saga was first written down. The oldest extant
manuscript of it belonged to one Hauk, who died in 1334.

_THE ESCAPES OF CERVANTES_

MOST people know of the terrible war, waged even down to the present
century, between the Christian ships cruising about the Mediterranean
and the dreaded Moors or Corsairs of the Barbary Coast. It was a war
that began in the name of religion, the Crescent against the Cross; but,
as far as we can learn from the records of both sides, there was little
to choose in the way that either party treated the captives. A large
number of these were chained to the oars of the galleys which were the
ships of battle of the middle ages, and sometimes the oars were so long
and heavy that they needed forty men to each. The rowers had foo