rent
from that of the dim and confused traditions of the classical writers
and of the Irish and Chinese legends. In fact, many scholars are now
convinced that the eastern coast of Canada was known and visited by the
Norsemen five hundred years before Columbus.

From time immemorial the Norsemen were among the most daring and
skilful mariners ever known. They built great wooden boats with tall,
sweeping bows and sterns. These ships, though open and without decks,
were yet stout and seaworthy. Their remains have been found, at times
lying deeply buried under the sand and preserved almost intact. One
such vessel, discovered on the shore of Denmark, measured 72 feet in
length. Another Viking ship, which was dug up in Norway, and which is
preserved in the museum at Christiania, was 78 feet long and 17 feet
wide. One of the old Norse sagas, or stories, tells how King Olaf
Tryggvesson built a ship, the keel of which, as it lay on the grass,
was 74 ells long; in modern measure, it would be a vessel of about 942
tons burden. Even if we make allowance for the exaggeration or
ignorance of the writer of the saga, there is still a vast contrast
between this vessel and the little ship Centurion in which Anson sailed
round the world.

It is needless, however, to prove that the Norsemen could have reached
America in their ships. The voyages from Iceland to Greenland which we
know they made continually for four hundred years were just as arduous
as a further voyage from Greenland to the coast of Canada.

The story of the Norsemen runs thus. Towards the end of the ninth
century, or nearly two hundred years before the Norman conquest, there
was a great exodus or outswarming of the Norsemen from their original
home in Norway. A certain King Harold had succeeded in making himself
supreme in Norway, and great numbers of the lesser chiefs or jarls
preferred to seek new homes across the seas rather than submit to his
rule. So they embarked with their seafaring followers--Vikings, as we
still call them--often, indeed, with their wives and families, in great
open ships, and sailed away, some to the coast of England, others to
France, and others even to the Mediterranean, where they took service
under the Byzantine emperors. But still others, loving the cold rough
seas of the north, struck westward across the North Sea and beyond the
coasts of Scotland till they reached Iceland. This was in the year 874.
Here they made a settlement that presen