ould burst off as well as
buttons, and loops were not warranted to last for ever, any more than
button-holes. Socks were unknown to those hardy pioneers, but soft
leather shoes, not unlike mocassins, and boots resembling those of the
Esquimaux of the present day, were constantly wearing out, and needed to
be replaced or repaired; hence the women of the colony had their hands
full, for, besides these renovating duties which devolved on them, they
had also the housekeeping--a duty in itself calling for an amount of
constant labour, anxiety, and attention which that ridiculous creature
_man_ never can or will understand or appreciate--at least so the women
say, but, being a man, we incline to differ from them as to that!

Then, when each day's work was over, the men returned to their several
abodes tired and hungry. Arrangements had been made that so many men
should dwell and mess together, and the women were so appointed that
each mess was properly looked after. Thus the men found cheerful fires,
clean hearths, spread tables, smoking viands, and a pleasant welcome on
their return home; and, after supper, were wont to spend the evenings in
recounting their day's experiences, telling sagas, singing songs, or
discussing general principles--a species of discussion, by the way,
which must certainly have originated in Eden after the Fall!

In Karlsefin's large hall the largest number of men and women were
nightly assembled, and there the time was spent much in the same way,
but with this difference, that the heads of the settlement were
naturally appealed to in disputed matters, and conversation frequently
merged into something like orations from Leif and Biarne Karlsefin and
Thorward, all of whom were far-travelled, well-informed, and capable of
sustaining the interest of their audiences for a prolonged period.

In those days the art of writing was unknown among the Norsemen, and it
was their custom to fix the history of their great achievements, as well
as much of their more domestic doings, in their memories by means of
song and story. Men gifted with powers of composition in prose and
verse undertook to enshrine deeds and incidents in appropriate language
at the time of their occurrence, and these scalds or poets, and saga-men
or chroniclers, although they might perhaps have _coloured_ their
narratives and poems slightly, were not likely to have falsified them,
because they were at first related and sung in the presenc