But strangers dwelt there and
told him that his father was gone to Greenland, and he set sail for that
land. Soon was the ship swallowed up in a gray mist in which were
neither sun nor stars. They sailed many days they knew not where, but
suddenly the fog lifted and the sun revealed to them a coast of low
hills covered with forest. By this Bjarni thought that it was not
Greenland but some southerly coast. Therefore turned he northward and
sailed many days before he sighted the mountains of Greenland and his
father's house.
"Years afterward returned Bjarni to Iceland, and in his telling of that
voyage it came to the ears of Leif Ericsson, who asked him many
questions about the land he had seen. There grew no trees in Iceland or
Greenland, fit for house-timber, and Leif was minded to find out this
place of great forests. Thus it came that Leif sailed from Brattahlid in
Greenland with five and thirty men in a long ship upon a journey of
discovery.
"First came they to a barren land covered with big flat stones, and this
Leif named Helluland, the slate land. Southward sailed he for many days
until he saw a coast covered with wooded hills, and there he landed,
calling it Markland, the land of woods. Then southward again they bore
and came to a place where a river flowed out of a lake and fell into the
sea.
Pages:
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28