en not at sea, he settled for the rest
of his days.

Such is the story of Bjarne Herjulf, as the Norsemen have it. To the
unprejudiced mind there is every reason to believe that his voyage had
carried him to America, to the coast of the Maritime Provinces, or of
Newfoundland or Labrador. More than this one cannot say. True, it is
hard to fit the 'two days' and the 'three days' of Bjarne's narrative
into the sailing distances. But every one who has read any primitive
literature, or even the Homeric poems, will remember how easily times
and distances and numbers that are not exactly known are expressed in
loose phrases not to be taken as literal.

The news of Bjarne's voyage and of his discovery of land seems to have
been carried presently to the Norsemen in Iceland and in Europe. In
fact, Bjarne himself made a voyage to Norway, and, on account of what
he had done, figured there as a person of some importance. But people
blamed Bjarne because he had not landed on the new coasts, and had
taken so little pains to find out more about the region of hills and
forests which lay to the south and west of Greenland. Naturally others
were tempted to follow the matter further. Among these was Leif, son of
Eric the Red. Leif went to Greenland, found Bjarne, bought his ship,
and manned it with a crew of thirty-five. Leif's father, Eric, now
lived in Greenland, and Leif asked him to take command of the
expedition. He thought, the saga says, that, since Eric had found
Greenland, he would bring good luck to the new venture. For the time,
Eric consented, but when all was ready, and he was riding down to the
shore to embark, his horse stumbled and he fell from the saddle and
hurt his foot. Eric took this as an omen of evil, and would not go; but
Leif and his crew of thirty-five set sail towards the south-west. This
was in the year 1000 A.D., or four hundred and ninety-two years before
Columbus landed in the West Indies.

Leif and his men sailed on, the saga tells us, till they came to the
last land which Bjarne had discovered. Here they cast anchor, lowered a
boat, and rowed ashore. They found no grass, but only a great field of
snow stretching from the sea to the mountains farther inland; and these
mountains, too, glistened with snow. It seemed to the Norsemen a
forbidding place, and Leif christened it Helluland, or the country of
slate or flat stones. They did not linger, but sailed away at once. The
description of the snow-covered hi