﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 89 



Leif put to sea when his ship was ready for the voyage. For a long time he 

 was tossed about upon the ocean, and came upon lands of which he had 

 previously no knowledge. There were self-sown wheat-fields and vines growing 

 there. There were also those trees which are called " mausur," and of all these 

 they took specimens. Some of the timbers were so large that they were used 

 in building. Leif found men upon a wreck, and took them home with him, and 

 procured quarters for them all during the winter. In this wise he showed 

 his nobleness and goodness, since he introduced Christianity into the country, 

 and saved the men from the wreck; and he was called Leif the Lucky ever 

 after. Leif landed in Ericsfirth and then went home to Brattahlid ; he was well 

 received by everyone. He soon proclaimed Christianity through the land, and 

 the Catholic faith, and announced King Olaf Tryggvason's messages to the 

 people, telling them how much excellence and how great glory accompanied 

 the faith. 



Leif was a man with a mission now, and it held him tightly to the 

 Greenland colony, which he probably never left again. If he built 

 any house in Wineland, it must have been during the summer, when 

 he was inspecting those " lands " with no thought of remaining, 

 but in the assurance of more engrossing work elsewhere for the 

 winter. In the warm months the ship itself or any temporary shelter 

 would have sufficed, and if he had forgotten his duty as a vehicle of 

 the faith in any futile burst of architecture, be sure the priest, ever 

 at hand r would have reminded him. Presumably he did not build. 



The natural meaning of " lands " would indicate several points of 

 observation along the sea front ; which seems likely with most of 

 the summer ahead for gratifying a proper curiosity. Obviously he 

 must have approached some part of the coast and then followed it 

 one way or the other. It may be instructive to see what later navi- 

 gators did on the same shore when similarly situated. Cabot and 

 Hudson 1 with a hundred years and more between them, took the 

 downward course perhaps as far as North Carolina, probably tempted 

 by southern conditions, which were progressively more genial, then 

 turned about northward and in the end went home. Thorfinn 

 Karlsefni did the same, but apparently did not reach so low a latitude. 

 We may reasonably conjecture that Leif turned southward, too. This 

 supposition is fortified by the insistence of early geographers on a 

 probable connection between Wineland and Africa ; by Thorfinn's evi- 

 dent expectation of warmth and fertility; by the disappointment of 

 his party when the facts of Straumey fell short of the imagined 

 standard ; by the adjective " Good " traditionally applied to the 

 country, perhaps with the significance of blessed or supernally fortu- 



] Hakluyt: Principal Voyages (1904), vol. 7, pp. 152, 154. Also Nansen : Tn 

 Northern Mists; taking John Cabot on toward Cape Cod. 



