﻿104 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



Then he " sailed away to the northward past Wonderstrands and 

 Keelness, intending to cruise to the westward around that cape." No 

 more was heard of him, until, after their return to Iceland, traders 

 brought word that he had been enslaved in Ireland, where he is said 

 to have died. Storms were given the credit of causing this unex- 

 pected and rather prodigious and disastrous journey; but perhaps he 

 had taken the opportunity to withdraw with a ship from westward 

 lands altogether. 



To offset this defection, the baby Snorri had arrived as a little 

 reinforcement, his birth-place being apparently the shore of the 

 bay behind Straumey, before they moved out to that island in the 

 winter : for we are told later that " Snorri, Karlsefni's son was 

 born the first autumn and was three winters old when they (finally) 

 went away." He may have been about six months old when the party 

 divided, and " Karlsefni cruised southward off the coast with Snorri 

 and Biarni and their people." 



No doubt there was hope of establishing their home permanently 

 in some spot which would better fulfill the expectations aroused by 

 Leif. The absence lasted however, only a year ; making an episode 

 presenting so many special problems that it must be treated separately. 



Returning from this southern sojourn : 



They now arrived again at Streamfirth where they found great abundance 

 of all those things of which they stood in need. Some men say, that Biarni 

 and Gudrid remained behind there with a hundred men, and went no further ; 

 while Karlsefni and Snorri proceeded to the southward with forty men, tarry- 

 ing at Hop barely two months and returning again the same summer. Karl- 

 sefni then set out with one ship, in search of Thorhall and Huntsman, but the 

 greater part of the company remained behind. They sailed to the northward 

 around Keelness, and then bore to the westward, having land to the larboard 

 [left]. There were wooded wildernesses there; and when they had journeyed 

 a considerable distance, a river flowed down from the east toward the west. 

 They sailed into the mouth of the river, and lay to by the southern bank. 



It happened one morning, that Karlsefni and his companions discovered in an 

 open space in the woods above them, a speck, which seemed to shine toward 

 them, and they shouted at it: it stirred, and it was a Uniped 1 [onefooter], 

 who skipped down to the bank of the river by which they were lying. Thor- 

 vald, a son of Eric the Red, was sitting at the helm, and the Uniped shot an 

 arrow into his inwards. Thorvald drew out the arrow and exclaimed : " There 

 is fat around my paunch ; we have hit upon a fruitful country, and yet we are 



1 Nansen: In Northern Mists; contains a picture of a harmless-looking one 

 copied from the well-known Hereford map. The fancy may have come from 

 the south ; but Norsemen were ready to see Unipeds even in Scandinavia on 

 slight provocation — much more on an inner shore of a land of mystery and 

 dread. 



