458 THE PROGRESS OF MARITIME DISCOVERY. 
about the year 1000 by Leif, a son ot Erick the Red, the founder 
ot the Greenland colony; who, sailing along the American 
coast as far as 412° north lat. discovered the good Winland, 
which received its name from the wild vines which Tyrker, a 
German who accompanied the expedition, found growing there 
+1 abundance. The fertility and mild climate of this coast, 
when compared with that of Labrador and Greenland, induced 
the discoverers to settle, and to found the first European colony 
on the American continent. Frequent wars with the Eskimos 
or Skrelingers (dwarfs), who at that time, as I have already 
mentioned in the fourth chapter, extended far more to the south 
than at present, soon however destroyed the colony; and the last 
account of Norman America we find in the old Scandinavian 
records is the mention of a ship which, in the year 1347, had 
sailed from Greenland to Markland (Nova Scotia) to gather 
wood, and was driven by a storm to Stamfjord on the west coast 
of Iceland. About this time also the colonies in Greenland, 
which until then had enjoyed a tolerable state of prosperity, 
decayed and ultimately perished under the blighting influence 
of commercial monopolies, of wars with the aborigines, and 
above all of the black death (1347-1351), that horrible plague 
of the fourteenth century, which, after having depopulated 
Europe, vented its fury even upon those remote wilds. Thus 
the knowledge of the Norman discovery of America gradually 
faded from the memory of man, and thus also it happened that 
the names and deeds of Leif and Bjorne Herjulfson remained 
totally unknown to the southern navigators, who at that time 
moreover, had little intercourse with the nations of Northern . 
Europe. 
Besides his well-authenticated Norman predecessors, Colum- 
bus may possibly have had others. Traces of early Irish and 
Welsh discoveries are pointed out by the Northern historians, 
and John Vaz Cortereal, a Portuguese navigator, is said to have 
visited the coasts of Newfoundland some time previous to the 
voyages of Columbus and Cabot. 
If before the first voyage of the great Genoese navigator a 
mighty longing to penetrate to distant countries pervaded the 
public mind of Europe, it may be imagined to what a feverish 
glow this reigning idea of the century was excited, when the 
