Famous Discoverers and Explorers of America (eBook)

FAMOUS DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS OF AMERICA.

LEIF ERICSON: THE FIRST EUROPEAN TO EXPLORE, AND SETTLE IN, AMERICA.

On the shore of a great fiord, or estuary of the sea, in the far northern country of Greenland, stood a little boy. He was sturdy-limbed, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, and he was looking out across the water at a great high-prowed Viking ship which lay bobbing upon the waves.

He stood there thinking, thinking, until, as he gazed enraptured upon the scene before him, a tall, bearded Norwegian came up behind him. He smiled upon the little boy, and, laying his hand upon his head, said:

“Little one, what are you dreaming about?”

The youthful Norwegian looked around and also smiled.

“Good Lothair,” he answered, “I am thinking of the time when I shall be able to sail far to the westward, with the older Vikings, and can have adventures of mine own.”

The other laughed.

“Ah, ha, that time will not be far distant,” said he, benignly. “You will wax tough and sinewy in this bracing air and by sailing in these blue fiords. And then, some day, one of the Vikings will want a stout fellow to man an oar. He will call upon Leif, little Leif. And I’ll warrant that little Leif will then be ready.”

“I will be.”

“And would you go far to the westward, to the land of the setting sun?”

“Even so.”

“And would you be willing to risk life and limb amidst ice and snow?”

“I’d be glad to do it.”

Lothair laughed loud and long.

“You are a true Viking, my boy. You are, indeed, one of those whom Thor has smiled upon and whom the Valkyrias would love to assist in battle. Keep up your spirit, and, some day, you may be famous, who knows?”

So saying he walked away, still laughing softly to himself.

And the little boy still kept on thinking, thinking, and looking out upon the great, blue sea which seemed to beckon to him, to nod to him, and to sigh: “Come on! Come on! I have marvelous things to reveal to you, little boy.”

The youthful Viking turned around, went back to his home, and kept on working and sailing, and fishing, and playing, until a time came when he had waxed great in both strength and in stature, and, as he looked at himself in the polished surface of his shield he said: “Ah! Now, indeed, I am a true Viking. I am ready for great things.”

This little boy was the son of Eric the Red, a strong man, and a bad man, also. Eric’s father lived in Iceland, whither he had been forced to fly from Norway, for he had killed a man there and he would himself have been killed, had he not jumped into a boat, rowed to a Viking ship, and sailed to the westward. And Eric the Red seems to have inherited the traits of his father, for he, too, killed another. He had lent some of his furniture to a neighbor who would not restore it. Eric, therefore, carried off his goods and the other pursued him. They met, and hot words passed; so they had a struggle and Eric killed the fellow. He was thus made an outlaw, so he went sailing away to find some place where he could live in peace, far from his brother Vikings. He found a land, where he settled, and called it Greenland, for, said he, “other Vikings will come here and settle, also, if I give this place a good name.”

Eric the Red, had two children, of whom one was called Thorstein, and the other, Leif. The first developed into a thin youth with black hair and a sallow complexion, but the second was rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and sturdy-limbed. He was, in fact, the little boy to whom Lothair spoke as he stood upon the banks of the fiord, gazing far into the distance, determined, some day, to sail towards the West where he was certain that adventure and treasure, too, perhaps, were waiting for him.

One of the men who accompanied Eric, the murderer, to Greenland was named Herjulf. This bold and daring adventurer had a son named Bjarni, who roved the seas over, in search of adventure, for many, many years. Finally, in 986, he came home to Iceland in order to drink the Yuletide ale with his father. Finding that his parent had gone away, he weighed anchor and started after him to Greenland, but he encountered foggy weather, and thus sailed for many days by guess work, without seeing either the sun or the stars. When, at length, he sighted land, it was a shore without mountains. He saw, through the misty murk, only a small height covered with dense woods. So, without stopping in order to make explorations, he turned his prow to the north and kept on. He knew that this was not Greenland, and, so we may think it strange that he did not stop to examine the rugged coastline.

The sky was now fair and a brisk breeze was astern, so, after scudding along for nine or ten days, Bjarni saw the icy crags of Greenland looming up before him, and, after some further searching, found his way to his father’s house. He had more than once sighted a heavily timbered shore-line, to the west, while steering for home, and, when he told of it, great curiosity was excited amongst the Norsemen.

Little Leif had now grown to be a man of size and strength. He had made many a journey to Norway, and, when there, in the year 998, found that Roman missionary priests were preaching up and down the land, and had converted the King, Olaf Tryggbesson, who had formerly worshiped the Gods Thor and Odin. Leif, himself, became a Christian and was baptized, so, when he returned to Greenland, he took several priests with him, who converted many of the people. Old Eric the Red, however, preferred to worship in the way of his fathers, and continued to believe in the mystical Valhalla, or hall of departed spirits, where the dead Vikings were supposed to drink huge cups of ale while feasting with their gods.

Upon a bright, warm day in the year 1000 A. D., a great Viking ship lay calmly upon the waters of the bay before the town of Bratthalid in Greenland, and on shore all was bustle and confusion. Leif Ericson, in fact, had determined to sail far to the westward, even as he had dreamed of doing when a little boy; and so, with thirty staunch adventurers, he was preparing to load his ship with sufficient provisions to last for the journey to that strange country of which Bjarni had brought news. It took several weeks to gather provisions and men, but at length everything was ready. The sail was hoisted, the great oaken oars were dipped into the water, and the sharp bow of the Viking ship was turned toward the open sea. “Huzzah! Huzzah!” shouted the Norsemen. “Huzzah!”

The Viking ship, which had a huge dragon’s head at the prow, was such a tiny affair, when compared with the massive ocean liners of to-day, that one can well imagine how she must have been tossed about by the great, surging waves; but she kept on and on, ever steering westward, until a land was discovered which seemed to be filled with flat stones, so they called it Helluland, or flat-stone land. This was the Newfoundland of our maps, to-day.

Leaving this behind them, the Vikings kept on steering southward and westward, until they saw a low-lying and heavily wooded shore. This was Nova Scotia, and they coasted along it, for many days, occasionally coming to anchor in one of the deep bays, and heaving overboard their fishing lines, so as to catch some of the many fish which seemed to abound in these waters.

They sailed on towards the south, and at last reached a place where a beautiful river flowed through a sort of an inland lake into the sea. Many islands were near the mouth of this stream, and, as salmon seemed to abound in the waters of this blue and clear-flowing estuary of the Atlantic, Leif decided that this was a good place in which to spend the winter. So down went the anchor, the Viking ship was moored near the shore, and the men scrambled to the beach in order to erect huts in which to spend the cold season. Thus the dream of the little boy, as he had stood upon the shore of Greenland, years before, had come true, and Leif had reached a new world, to which he had been led by his daring and his love of adventure.

You see, that, although it was long supposed that Columbus was the first white man from Europe to ever set his foot upon the shore of America, such is not the case.

The real discoverer of America, of whom we have any definite record, was Bjarni, the son of Herjulf, who, in the midst of fog and murk, coasted along the shore of Nova Scotia in 986 A. D.

And the first European to make a settlement upon the shores of the new world was Leif Ericson, who sailed into that blue, salmon-filled river which flows “through a lake into the sea.” So, if you look along the coast of New England, and try to find a river which answers this description, you will, I think, find but one. This is the river Charles, which, emptying into the Charles River Basin a huge lake, if you wish flows into the blue Atlantic. And, if you search the shore upon the Cambridge side near the hospital, you will find, to-day, the cellars of four houses, the houses, no doubt, which Leif and his men erected in the year 1000 A. D.

The Vikings built their huts, caught many salmon, and journeyed inland, where they found a profusion of wild grapes, so many, in fact, that they dried a great mass of them, loaded them into the hold, and called this land Vinland the Good. They also found a race of people living in this country, who were ferocious in aspect, with...