Tlie Voyage of Leif Ericsson. 5 



length of the winter days, which were nine hours long. The na- 

 tives the}'' described resembled our Indians and not the Eskimo 

 of northern latitudes, and from these statements and the calcu- 

 lation of latitude from the length of the day, it is believed that 

 it was New England. There they founded the colony of Norum- 

 bega, but after a few years it was abandoned, as the settlers were 

 unable to withstand the attacks of the natives. All original rec- 

 ords of the discovery of Vineland have perished, and our present 

 knowledge is derived from the sagas of the Northmen, written 

 at least one or two generations after Vineland had been aban- 

 doned. These legends bear the imj^ress of truth, and there is no 

 reasonable doubt that Leif Ericsson is a real character and Vine- 

 land his discovery. The sagas were lost, or laid away and for- 

 gotten in the libraries of Norway and Sweden. In our day some 

 of them have been unearthed, and we know more of the work of 

 Leif Ericsson and his Northmen than was ever known before. 



This discovery was not known beyond Greenland and Iceland 

 except to a few men in Scandinavia, for this was the darkest age 

 in the history of Europe. 



When the Northmen were making their settlement in Green- 

 land, Peter the Hermit appeared in southern Europe, mus- 

 tering his forces for the first of those crusades which in their 

 ultimate results accomplished a work of vastly greater imj^or- 

 tance than the redemption of the holy places from the Mo- 

 hammedans. The transportation of pilgrims to and from the 

 Holy land gave emjjloyment to the ships of Venice and Genoa 

 and restored commerce to the Mediterranean. Their vessels 

 brought the treasures of the Orient and the science and art of 

 Greece and Asia Minor to Venice and Genoa, whence they were 

 distributed through Italy and Europe. The feudal system was 

 broken down and the renaissance brought in. Europe awoke 

 from the long sleep of the dark ages to new life and energy ; 

 progress in art and science became rapid, and the world entered 

 upon an era of invention and discovery. 



By the middle of the fifteenth century, Brunelleschi had fin- 

 ished the Duomo at Florence, where Savonarola was preaching 

 and Michael Angelo was studying. Faust and Gutenberg were 

 inventing movable types at Frankfort, upon which the Bible — 

 the first book ever issued from the printing press — was printed. 

 . Gunpowder and the mariners' compass were just coming into use 

 in European countries, though both had been discovered earlier. 



In England, the Wars of the Roses Avere over. Henry VII 



