] they called 'Vineland,' and built a house, and
remained there through the winter, which was so mild that the grass was
but little withered. Moreover, the day and night were of more equal
length than in Iceland or Greenland. And Leif was a tall and strong man,
of a manly aspect, and at the same time wise and prudent in all matters.
After this expedition, he grew both in consideration and wealth, and was
universally called 'The Happy.'

"Amongst the voyages to this new country which followed on that of Leif,
Karlefne's is the most remarkable. But the new colonists were attacked
with heavy sickness; and the peculiar home-sickness of the inhabitants
of the North might perhaps, in part, drive them back from the grapes of
Vineland to their own snowy home: certain it is, that they retained no
permanent settlement in the new country. They were also continually
assaulted by the natives, whom their weapons were not powerful enough to
restrain.

"In the mean time, several Icelandic annalists have recorded that, in
every age, from the time of Leif to that of Columbus, America was
visited by the Northmen. Testimonies and memories of these voyages we
have now only in these relations, and in the remarkable stone called
'Dighton written Rock,' on the bank of Taunton river, in Massachusetts,
and whose ruins and hieroglyphics, at length, in 1830, copied by learned
Americans, corroborate the truth of these relations."

Harald now commented on these figures with great zeal, remarking that,
in Norway, similar ones were yet found engraven on the face of rocks, on
tombstones, etc. "Do you see, Alette," continued he, eagerly, "this
represents a woman and a little child; probably Karlefne's wife, who
bore a son during this visit to Vineland. And this must be a bull; and
in Karlefne's Saga a bull is mentioned, which terrified the natives by
his bellowings; and these figures to the right represent the natives.
This must be a shield, and these Runic letters."

"It requires a right good strength of imagination for all this, my
brother," here interrupted Alette, smilingly, who was not altogether so
patriotic as Harald; "but granted that all this was evidence of the
first discovery of America by our ancestors, what then? What good, what
advantage has the world derived thence? Is it not rather sorrowful to
see that such important discoveries should have been lost, that they
could be obliterated, as if they had never been, and must be made anew?