Читать книгу Facts and fancies for the curious from the harvest-fields of literature - Charles C. Bombaugh - Страница 6

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“What parts of the American coasts that adventurous Icelander, Bjarne Herjulfson, saw cannot be determined with certainty,” says that learned antiquarian, Professor R. B. Anderson, “but from the circumstances of the voyage, the course of the winds, the direction of the currents, and the presumed distance between each sight of land, there is reason to believe that the first land that Bjarne saw in the year 986 was the present Nantucket; the second, Nova Scotia; and the third, Newfoundland. Thus he was the first European whose eyes beheld any part of the American continent.”

But Bjarne made no exploration of the shores, and could take back no definite report of them. What little he had to say, however, stimulated the curiosity of Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, and aroused a determination to go in quest of the unknown lands. He bought Bjarne’s ship and set sail, in the year 1000, with a crew of thirty-five men, far away to the southwest of Greenland. They landed in Helluland (Newfoundland), afterwards in Markland (Nova Scotia), and eventually found their way to the shores of Massachusetts Bay, or Buzzard’s Bay, or Narragansett Bay, the exact locality being disputed by local antiquarians. The likelihood seems to favor Fall River. Finding abundance of grapes, they called the place of their sojourn Vinland. They remained there two years, and on their return to Greenland, another expedition was fitted out by Leif’s brother Thorwald. But Leif is entitled to the credit of being the first pale-faced man who planted his feet on the American continent.