4 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



the south brought them to a land where the scenery was 

 softer, where (white) bears and (rein-) deer were abundant, 

 and where the coasts were green with trees, and there was an 

 island on its south-east, and they named the land Woodland 

 (Markland) ; and a day or two later they reached a promon- 

 tory which they named Keel-ness (Kjalarnes), rounded it, 

 passed along a sandy coast, and shot into a frith with an 

 island in front of it, where they could scarcely walk, because 

 eggs lay so thick there, and they named the frith Stream-fjord 

 (Straumfjord). There they gathered grapes and self-sown corn 

 and spent the winter (1003-4). Next year Thorhallr's ship 

 turned north and was never seen again, and the other two 

 ships went a little further south to a place by a river-mouth, 

 and the place was named Hopi, which means an estuary. 

 There dusky wide-cheeked Skraelings, as the Norsemen 

 called the (Eskimo) natives, visited them, bartered with them, 

 fled because a bull bellowed, returned with weapons, and 

 joined battle. So the colonists re-embarked (1005), and 

 reached Stream-fjord, and some of them re-rounded Keel-ness, 

 coasted westwards with primeval forests on their left, searched 

 for but failed to find Thorhallr, lost Thorvald at Cross-ness 

 (Krossanes), and saw the backs of the mountains whose 

 fronts they had seen at Hopi. One more winter was spent 

 at Stream-fjord, where Freydis and the women proved the 

 source of strife. Then (1006) the wanderers returned home- 

 ward, having taken two Skraeling children in Woodland on 

 the way, but not the children's parents, who ' went down 

 into the earth'. Karlsevne and his crew reached Eric's 

 abode, but Bjarni was driven out of his course, and his ship 

 was eaten of worms somewhere off Ireland, and he perished. 

 The deeds of these early colonists or ' builders ', as they 

 called themselves, stimulated a curiosity which time has not 

 quenched, and men still ask, if Slabland is Labrador, or the 

 equally desolate north-east coast of Newfoundland. Is 

 Woodland the south-east coast of Newfoundland, Keel-ness 



