ship, and sailed out upon the seas, and came at length safely to
Greenland.

Then after a time Thorfinn sailed to Iceland. There he made his home
for the rest of his life, the people holding him in high honour.
Snorri also, his son who had been born in Vineland, grew to be a
man of great renown.

Such are some of the old Norse stories of the first finding of
America. The country which Leif called Helluland was most likely
Labrador, Markland Newfoundland, and Vineland Nova Scotia.

Besides these there were many other tales of voyages to Vineland.
For after Leif and his brothers many other Vikings of the North
sailed, both from Greenland and from Norway, to the fair western
lands. Yet although they sailed there so often these old Norsemen
had no idea that they had discovered a vast continent. They thought
that Vineland was merely an island, and the discovery of it made
no stir in Europe. By degrees too the voyages thither ceased. In
days of wild warfare at home the Norsemen forgot the fair western
land which Leif had discovered. They heard of it only in minstrel
tales, and it came to be for them a sort of fairy-land which had
no existence save in a poet's dream.

But now wise men have read these tales with care, and many have
come to believe that they are not mere fairy stories. They have
come to believe that hundreds of years before Columbus lived the
Vikings of the North sailed the western seas and found the land
which lay beyond, the land which we now call America.