d as to the cause of his excitement,
he replied that he had discovered vines loaded with grapes, and was much
pleased at the sight inasmuch as he had been brought up in a vine
country. Wild grapes, indeed, abounded in this autumn season, and Leif
accordingly called the country Vinland. The winter seems to have passed
off very comfortably. Even the weather seemed mild to these visitors
from high latitudes, and they did not fail to comment on the unusual
length of the winter day. Their language on this point has been so
construed as to make the length of the shortest winter day exactly nine
hours, which would place their Vinland in about the latitude of Boston.
But their expressions do not admit of any such precise construction; and
when we remember that they had no accurate instruments for measuring
time, and that a difference of about fourteen minutes between sunrise
and sunset on the shortest winter day would make all the difference
between Boston and Halifax, we see how idle it is to look for the
requisite precision in narratives of this sort, and to treat them as one
would treat the reports of a modern scientific exploring expedition.

[Footnote 183: The year seems to have been that in which
Christianity was definitely established by law in Iceland,
viz., A. D. 1000. The chronicle _Thattr Eireks Raudha_ is
careful about verifying its dates by checking one against
another. See Rafn, p. 15. The most masterly work on the
conversion of the Scandinavian people is Maurer's _Die
Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume_, Munich,
1855; for an account of the missionary work in Iceland and
Greenland, see vol. i. pp. 191-242, 443-452.]

[Footnote 184: The name means "Turk," and has served as a
touchstone for the dullness of commentators. To the Northmen a
"Southman" would naturally be a German, and why should a German
be called a Turk? or how should these Northmen happen to have
had a Turk in their company? Mr. Laing suggests that he may
have been a Magyar. Yes; or he may have visited the Eastern
Empire and taken part in a fight _against_ Turks, and so have
got a soubriquet, just as Thorhall Gamlason, after returning
from Vinland to Iceland, was ever afterward known as "the
Vinlander." That did not mean that he was an American redskin.
Se