s bride,
whose spirit had been roused by the reports from Vinland and by her
former unsuccessful attempt to find it, Thorfinn now undertook to visit
that country in force sufficient for founding a colony there.
Accordingly in the spring of 1007 he started with three or four
ships,[187] carrying one hundred and sixty men, several women, and quite
a cargo of cattle. In the course of that year his son Snorro was born in
Vinland,[188] and our chronicle tells us that this child was three years
old before the disappointed company turned their backs upon that land of
promise and were fain to make their way homeward to the fiords of
Greenland. It was the hostility of the natives that compelled Thorfinn
to abandon his enterprise. At first they traded with him, bartering
valuable furs for little strips of scarlet cloth which they sought most
eagerly; and they were as terribly frightened by his cattle as the
Aztecs were in later days by the Spanish horses.[189] The chance
bellowing of a bull sent them squalling to the woods, and they did not
show themselves again for three weeks. After a while quarrels arose, the
natives attacked in great numbers, many Northmen were killed, and in
1010 the survivors returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber and
peltries. On the way thither the ships seem to have separated, and one
of them, commanded by Bjarni Grimolfsson, found itself bored by worms
(the _teredo_) and sank, with its commander and half the crew.[190]

[Footnote 187: Three is the number usually given, but at least
four of their ships would be needed for so large a company; and
besides Thorfinn himself, three other captains are
mentioned,--Snorro Thorbrandsson, Bjarni Grimolfsson, and
Thorhall Gamlason. The narrative gives a picturesque account of
this Thorhall, who was a pagan and fond of deriding his
comrades for their belief in the new-fangled Christian notions.
He seems to have left his comrades and returned to Europe
before they had abandoned their enterprise. A further reference
to him will be made below, p. 203.]

[Footnote 188: To this boy Snorro many eminent men have traced
their ancestry,--bishops, university professors, governors of
Iceland, and ministers of state in Norway and Denmark. The
learned antiquarian Finn Magnusson and the celebrated sculptor
Thorwaldsen regarded themselves as