458 THE PROGRESS OF MARITIME DISCOVERS. 



about the year 1000 by Leif, a son of Erick the Ked, the founder 

 of the Greenland colony; who, sailing along the American 

 coast as far as 411° 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 

 in 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 ceutury, 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 Northerh 

 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 



