Five hundred years before Columbus crossed the Western Ocean Icelandic barks had plowed their way, first to Greenland, then to the American mainland. The latter their crews called Vinland from its vines and surnamed from its character "the Good." In the _Saga of Olaf Tryggvison_ we read: "That same spring also King Olaf sent Leif Ericson to Greenland to bid christening there; so that same summer he went thither. He took up a ship's crew on the sea who had come to nought, and were lying on the wreck of the ship; and in that journey found he Vinland the Good, and came back in harvest-tide to Greenland." In the _Vinland Voyages_, commonly called the _Saga of Eric the Red_, the North American coast is described with great accuracy, but unfortunately still greater brevity, "The land seemed to them fair and thick wooded, and but a short space between the woods and the sea, and white sands. There were many islands and great shallows." Many Icelanders in these latter days have emigrated to the United States or Canada, and the son of one of them is V. Stefansson, who, in the service of the American Museum of Natural History, discovered the blond Eskimo of Victoria Land known as Akuliakattamiut, just possibly descended from the ancient Norse settlers in Greenland. To-day (1913), in the service of the Government of Canada, he is exploring the polar ocean to the north of that wide land. Sturdy independence and passionate attachment to their weirdly beautiful island have always marked the Icelanders, and though since the fall of the Republic more than six and a half centuries have worn away, the spirit of the nation has not decayed. Even by the great Margaret (p. 120) they would not consent to be taxed. In 1393 it is recorded[29]: "The Stadholder brought forward the Queen's demand at the meeting, when all the chief men promised to give sixteen feet of vadmal (cloth used for barter) for Vigfus' sake--he was very much beloved in Iceland; but on this condition, that it should not be called a tax, and should not be demanded again. But the inhabitants of Eyafjordr refused to give anything." And about the year 1000, while other Europeans were trembling for the end of the world or wondering why it had not come, Icelandic sailors, who knew not fear, were wandering admiringly through the woods of the North American Continent, were warring with the Scraelings or Indians, were eating the grapes of the New World, were planning settlements, possibly building churches,[30] in what became New England more than six centuries later. What boundless possibilities were before them had they only realised the value of that land! How different the history of mankind if any considerable number of their countrymen, sprinkled through all lands from the ice-fields of Greenland to the Russian steppes, and from the North Cape to Constantinople, had been summoned from their widely-scattered stations for the settlement of Vinland the Good! [Illustration] CHAPTER III