He Made No Stay At Either Of These Places; But The Wind Being Now Fallen, He Made All The Haste He Could To Return By A North-East Course To Greenland, Where He Reported The Discovery Which He Had Made.

Lief, the son of Eric-raude, who inherited from his father an inordinate desire of distinguishing himself by making discoveries and planting colonies, immediately fitted out a vessel carrying thirty-five men; and taking Biorn along with him, set sail in quest of this newly discovered country.

The first land discovered in this voyage was barren and rocky, on which account Lief gave it the name of Helleland, or Rockland. 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.

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