"It will never do for us to sit quiet here until Knutson returns," said
Nils when at Midsummer nothing had been seen of the ships. "We shall be
at one another's throats or quarreling with the savages." He had been
inquiring about the nature of the country, and had learned that westward
a great river led to five inland seas, so connected that canoes could go
from one to another. Along this chain of waters lived tribes who spoke
somewhat the same language and traded with one another. Southward lived
a warlike people who sometimes attacked the lake tribes. Beyond the last
of the lakes they did not know what the country was like. The waters
inland were not troubled with the water-demon so far as they knew. Nils,
Anders and Thorolf held a council and decided to explore the wilderness
as far as they could go in the _Rotge_. It was nothing more than all
their ancestors had done. Often, in their invasions of England, France
and other unknown regions Vikings had gone up one river and come down
another, and the _Rotge_, for all her iron strength, was no more than a
wooden shell when stripped.[6]
They set forth, escorted by a flotilla of small canoes, on a clear
summer morning, and found their progress surprisingly easy. Fish, game
and berries were plentiful, the villages along the river supplied corn
and beans, and though it was not always easy to drag the _Rotge_ around
the carrying-places pointed out by their native guides, they did not
have to turn back.
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