That an important colony was founded by the new adventurers there appears no reason to doubt, although it is impossible to fix its exact locality. Booths were erected, stores were laid in for the winter, and amicable relations were opened with the Skrællings, who came in great numbers, first to stare at the intruders, and then to trade with them, exchanging valuable furs for red cloth, etc. A slight and almost ludicrous incident was the first thing to break up what had appeared to be the beginning of a long course of successful colonization. A bull belonging to one of the leaders of the expedition rushed suddenly among the buyers and sellers, so terrifying the natives, who had never before seen an animal of that description, that they fled to their kayaks, or skin-boats, in the greatest confusion, returning some weeks later in greatly increased numbers, and armed with bows and arrows, to revenge themselves for what they took to be an intentional insult. Fierce indeed was the struggle in which they were now involved, and, overwhelmed by superior numbers, the colonists seemed likely to be exterminated, when the tide was turned by the courage of Freydis, a daughter of Eric the Red, who, imbued with the brave spirit of her father, suddenly faced the savages, and brandishing a sword which she had taken from a dead warrior of her own race, she invited the enemy to come and slay her if they would, even tearing open her dress to make clear her meaning. The Skrællings, perhaps taking these strange gestures for the signs of superhuman agency, gazed for a moment in awe-struck silence at the lonely figure standing thus unprotected among the slain, and then, with cries as wild and weird in the ears of the Northmen as those of their champions to the natives, they one and all turned and fled.