erected a large house. They did not
want for salmon, in both the river and the lake; and
they thought the salmon larger than any they had ever
seen before. The country appeared to them to be of so
good a kind that it would not be necessary to gather
fodder for the cattle for winter. There was no frost
in winter, and the grass was not much withered. Day
and night were more equal than in Greenland and
Iceland.

The chronicle goes on to tell how Leif and his men spent the winter in
this place. They explored the country round their encampment. They
found beautiful trees, trees big enough for use in building houses,
something vastly important to men from Greenland, where no trees grow.
Delighted with this, Leif and his men cut down some trees and loaded
their ship with the timber. One day a sailor, whose home had been in a
'south country,' where he had seen wine made from grapes, and who was
nicknamed the 'Turk,' found on the coast vines with grapes, growing
wild. He brought his companions to the spot, and they gathered grapes
sufficient to fill their ship's boat. It was on this account that Leif
called the country 'Vineland.' They found patches of supposed corn
which grew wild like the grapes and reseeded itself from year to year.
It is striking that the Norse chronicle should name these simple
things. Had it been a work of fancy, probably we should have heard, as
in the Chinese legends, of strange demons and other amazing creatures.
But we hear instead of the beautiful forest extending to the shore, the
mountains in the background, the tangled vines, and the bright patches
of wild grain of some kind ripening in the open glades-the very things
which caught the eye of Cartier when, five centuries later, he first
ascended the St Lawrence.

Where Vineland was we cannot tell. If the men really found wild grapes,
and not some kind of cranberry, Vineland must have been in the region
where grapes will grow. The vine grows as far north as Prince Edward
Island and Cape Breton, and, of course, is found in plenty on the
coasts of Nova Scotia and New England. The chronicle says that the
winter days were longer in Vineland than in Greenland, and names the
exact length of the shortest day. Unfortunately, however, the Norsemen
had no accurate system for measuring time; otherwise the length of the
shortest winter day would enable us to know at what exact spot Leif's
settlement was made.

Leif and his men staye