CHAPTER III 



SAILING CRAFT: THE PIONEERS 



WHEN we call Canada a new country in the 

 twentieth century we are apt to forget that 

 her seafaring annals may possibly go back to 

 the Vikings of the tenth century, a thousand 

 years ago. Long before William the Conqueror 

 crossed over from France to England the 

 Vikings had been scouring the seas, north, 

 south, east, and west. They reached Con- 

 stantinople; they colonized Iceland; they dis- 

 covered Greenland ; and there are grounds for 

 suspecting that the ' White Eskimos ' whom 

 the Canadian Arctic expedition of 1913 noted 

 down for report are some of their descendants. 

 However this may be, there is at least a pro- 

 bability that the Vikings discovered North 

 America five centuries before Columbus. The 

 saga of Eric the Red sings of the deeds of Leif 

 Ericson, who led the discoverers and named 

 the three new countries Helluland, Markland, 

 and Vineland. Opinions differ as to which 



