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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