was nothing but wilderness. And when they had proceeded for a long
time, there was a river which came down from the land, flowing from
the east towards the west. They directed their course within the
river's mouth, and lay opposite the southern bank.

13. One morning Karlsefni's people beheld as it were a glittering
speak above the open space in front of them, and they shouted at it.
It stirred itself, and it was a being of the race of men that have
only one foot, and he came down quickly to where they lay. Thorvald,
son of Eirik the Red, sat at the tiller, and the One-footer shot him
with an arrow in the lower abdomen. He drew out the arrow. Then said
Thorvald, “Good land have we reached, and fat is it about the paunch.”
Then the One-footer leapt away again northwards. They chased after
him, and saw him occasionally, but it seemed as if he would escape
them. He disappeared at a certain creek. Then they turned back, and
one man spake this ditty:--

“Our men chased (all true it is) a One-footer down to the shore; but
the wonderful man strove hard in the race....[D] Hearken, Karlsefni.”

Then they journeyed away back again northwards, and saw, as they
thought, the land of the One-footers. They wished, however, no longer
to risk their company. They conjectured the mountains to be all one
range; those, that is, which were at Hop, and those which they now
discovered; almost answering to one another; and it was the same
distance to them on both sides from Straumsfjordr. They journeyed
back, and were in Straumsfjordr the third winter. Then fell the men
greatly into backsliding. They who were wifeless pressed their claims
at the hands of those who were married. Snorri, Karlsefni's son, was
born the first autumn, and he was three winters old when they began