herefore, pledged themselves to pay a certain tribute, and to support
the king in case of war, with a given number of armed men, in accordance
with the size and value of their holdings. This same system Rollo is
said to have introduced into Normandy, whence it spread over all Europe.
Though we have now no more use for it, it proved a great and important
element in the progress of civilization.

Rollo the Ganger must have been nearly eighty years old when he died in
927. His son, William Longsword, who succeeded him as Duke of Normandy,
was a man of gentler disposition and in vigor and sagacity inferior to
his father. Rollo's descendant in the fifth generation was William the
Conqueror, who inherited in a larger measure the qualities of his great
ancestor.

[Signature: Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen.]

LEIF ERICSON[5]

[Footnote 5: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN

(About 1000)

[Illustration: Leif Ericson.]

The story of the Finding of Wineland the Good is contained, in somewhat
differing versions, in two parchment books, the one belonging to the
first, and the other to the last, quarter of the fourteenth century.
Both agree in attributing the discovery to Leif the Lucky, the son of
Eric the Red; though the Flatey Book says that he was induced to
undertake this voyage by a certain Bjarne Herjulfson, who, having been
driven out of his course by storms, had seen strange lands, but had not
explored them.

Leif's father, Eric the Red, was, like most Norsemen of his day, an
unruly and turbulent man, whose sword sat loosely in its sheath. He was
born about the middle of the tenth century at Jaederen, in Norway, but
was outlawed on account of a manslaughter, and set sail for Iceland,
where he married a certain Thorhild, the daughter of Jorund and
Thorbjorg the Ship-chested. But the same high temper and quarrelsome
spirit which had compelled him to leave Norway got him into trouble also
in his new home. He was forced by blood-feuds and legal acts of
banishment to change his abode repeatedly, and finally he was declared
an outlaw. Knowing that his life was forfeited, Eric, as a last
desperate chance, equipped a ship, and sailed "in search of that land
which Gunbjoern, the son of Ulf the Crow, had seen when he was driven
westward across the main;" and promised, in case he found it, to return
and apprise his friends of the discovery. Fortune favored him, and he
found a great, inhosp