y
maintained commercial intercourse. The country to which the
merchant vessels sailed was Vinland.

"The fact next in importance that this history establishes is,
that the first of the Northmen to set foot on the shores of
Vinland was Leif Ericson. The story is a simple one, and most
happily told by Prof. Mitchell, who for forty years was
connected with the coast survey of the United States in the
latitudes which include the region between Hatteras and Cape
Ann. Leif, says Prof. Mitchell, never passed to the south of the
peninsula of Cape Cod. He was succeeded by Thorwald, Leif's
brother. He came in Leif's ship in 1002 to Leif's headquarters
in Massachusetts Bay and passed the winter. In the spring, he
manned his ship and sailed eastward from Leif's house, and,
unluckily running against a neck of land, broke the stem of the
ship. He grounded the ship in high water at a place where the
tide receded with the ebb to a great distance, and permitted the
men to careen her in the intervals of the tide, to repair her.
When she was ready to sail again, the old stem or nose of the
ship was set up in the sand. Thorwald remained a couple of years
in the neighboring bay, examining sandy shores and islands, but
not going around the point on or near which he had set up his
ship's nose. In a battle with the Indians he was wounded and
died, and was buried in Vinland, and his crew returned to
Greenland. A few years later, Thorfinn and his wife, Gudrid, set
out with a fleet of three ships and 160 persons, of whom seven
were women, to go to Vinland, and in two days' sail beyond
Markland they came to the ship's nose set upon the shore, and,
keeping that upon the starboard, they sailed along a sandy
shore, which they called Wunderstrandir, and also
Furderstrandir. One of the captains, evidently satisfied that
they were not in the region visited by Leif and Thorwald, turned
his vessel to the north to find Vinland. Thorfinn and Gudrid
went further south and trafficked, and gathered great wealth of
furs and woods, and then returned to Greenland and Norway."

Prof. Horsford refers next to various geographic names on the New
England coast which are of Scandinavian origin.

"What do all these names mean? They are certainly not Algonquin
or Iroquois names. They are not names bestowed by the Plymouth