i899-'oo Transactions 23 



villages and the 14 churches and one cathedral are the ruins of a 

 few stone houses and of the Kakortok Cathedral church ' 'where 

 the credo was intoned and censers swung while not less than ten 

 generations lived and died.* 



Bjarni Hergulfson, another Icelander, on his way from Ice- 

 land to Eric's settlement to see his father, driven by storms out 

 of his course, sighted land far to the south and slowly made his 

 way back north to Greenland, seeing land occasionally as he went. 



Interested in the account of Bj ami's adventures, I^ief, the son 

 of Eric, sailed in the summer of 1000 to the south till he came to 

 a land of slate. This he called Helluland or Slate land. Pursu- 

 ing his voyage southward he came to another country which he 

 called Mark land or Wood land. Then turning west he reached a 

 third region which he named Vinland, because wild grapes grew 

 there. He had skirted the shores of I^abrador, Newfoundland 

 and Nova Scotia. 



The Icelanders, the Norwegians and the Swedes — the men 

 of the north— having shown the way, the men of the south put in 

 their claim to good seamanship, possibly led by that instinct 

 which has ever influenced the dwellers in one zone to search the 

 countries of other zones for purpose of trade ; as witness the 

 colossal processes of Empire-building now right merrily going on, 

 the greatest the world has ever seen ; the Russians, the Germans, 

 the French and the English nations (the Unistoniams not by any 

 means to be omitted) all stretching out their hands for tropical 

 countries and watching each other with keen eyes lest in the 

 partition of Africa and the breaking up of China any one should 

 get bigger pieces than the others. Canada, having consolidated 

 herself from ocean to ocean by the successful achievement of the 

 great work of Confederation, bristling as it was with many dif- 

 ficulties, is not without signs that she too may feel herself drawn 

 by the magnetic force of dissimilarity, with its consequent natural 

 expansion of trade, to enfold within her embrace the British 

 Tropical West Indies. 



Whatever the impelling cause the men of the south in that 

 day and time in the history of the European people essayed to 

 explore the north, the process being the opposite of that of the 

 present era when the movement is from north to south. 



*Fiske's "Discovery of America." 



