Proceeding Farther, They Came To A Low Coast Having A Sandy Soil, Which Was Overgrown With Wood, For Which Reason It Was Called Mark-Land, Or The Woody-Land.

Two days after this they again saw land, having an island lying opposite to its northern coast; and on the mainland they discovered the mouth of a river, up which they sailed.

The bushes on the banks of this river bore sweet berries; the temperature of the air was mild, the soil fertile[2], and the river abounded in fish, particularly in excellent salmon. Continuing to sail up the river, they came to a lake, out of which the river took its rise; and here they passed the winter. In the shortest day of winter, the sun remained eight hours above the horizon; and consequently the longest day, exclusive of the dawn and twilight, must have been sixteen hours. From this circumstance it follows, that the place in which they were was in about 49 deg. of north latitude; and as they arrived by a south-westerly course from Old Greenland, after having cleared Cape Farewell, it must either have been the river Gander or the Bay of Exploits, in the island now called Newfoundland. It could not be on the northern coast of the Gulf of St Lawrence; as in that case, they must have navigated through the straits of Belleisle, which could not have escaped their notice. In this place they erected several huts for their accommodation during winter; and they one day found in the thickets a German named Tyrker, one of their own people, who had wandered among the woods and been missing for some time. While absent, he had subsisted upon wild grapes, from which he told them that in his country they used to make wine; and from this circumstance Lief called the country Winland det gode, or Wine-land the good[3].

In the following spring they returned to Greenland; and Thorwald, Lief's maternal grandfather, made a trip with the same crew that had attended his grandson, in order to make farther advances in this new discovery; and it is not at all to be wondered at, if people of every rank were eager to discover a better habitation than the miserable coast of Greenland, and the little less dreary island of Iceland. In this voyage the coast of the newly discovered land was examined towards the west, or rather the north-west. Next summer Lief sailed again to Winland, and explored the coast to the east or south-east. The coast was so much covered with wood and beset with islands, that they could not perceive a human creature, or animals of any kind. In the third summer they examined the islands on the coast of Winland, and so damaged their ship that they found it necessary to build a new one, laying up their old vessel on a promontory, to which they gave the name of Kiaeler-ness. In their new vessel they proceeded to examine the eastern or south-eastern shore of Winland, and in their progress they fell in with three boats covered with hides, having three men in each. These they seized, but one man found means to escape from them, and they wantonly butchered all the rest. Soon after this they were attacked by a great number of the natives, armed with bows and arrows, from which they screened themselves in their ship with a fence of planks; and they defended themselves with so much spirit that their enemies were forced to retire, after giving them battle for an hour. Thorwald received a severe wound from an arrow in this skirmish, of which he died; and over his grave, on a cape or promontory, two crosses were erected at his request; from which the cape was called Krossa-ness, or Cross Point.

To the natives of Winland, the Icelanders gave the name of Skraellinger, signifying cuttings or dwarfs, on account of their being of very low stature. These were probably the ancestors of the present Eskimaux, who are the same people with the Greenlanders, and are called Eskimantsik in the language of the Abenaki, on account of their eating raw fish; in the same manner as the Russians, in their official state papers, call the Samojeds Sirojed'zi, because they also eat raw and frozen fish and flesh.

In the same year Thorstein, the third son of Eric-raude, set sail for Winland, taking with him his wife, Gudridthe daughter of Thorbern, with his children and servants, amounting in all to twenty-five persons; but they were forced by a storm on the western coast of Greenland, where they were obliged to spend the winter, and where Thorstein died, with a large proportion of his retinue, probably of the scurvy. Next spring Gudrid took the dead body of her husband home; and Thorfin, surnamed Kallsefner, an Icelander of some consequence, descended from King Regner-Lodbrok, married the widow of Thorstein, from which he considered himself entitled to the possession of the newly discovered country. He accordingly sailed for Winland with a vast quantity of household furniture, implements of all kinds, and several cattle, and accompanied by sixty-five men and five women, with whom he began to establish a regular colony. He was immediately visited by the Skraellingers, who bartered with him, giving the most valuable furs for such wares as the Icelanders had to give in exchange. The natives would willingly have purchased the weapons of the Icelanders, but this was expressly and judiciously forbidden by Thorfin. Yet one of them found means to steal a battle-ax, of which he immediately made a trial on one of his countrymen, whom he killed with one blow; on which a third person seized the mischievous weapon and threw it into the sea. During a stay of three years, Thorfin acquired a large stock of rich furs and other merchandize, with which he returned to Greenland; and at length removing to Iceland, he purchased an estate in the northern part of Syssel, and built a very elegant house which he called Glaumba.

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