6. _Greenland_ owed its discovery to the Icelandic colony. Towards the close of the tenth century, Eric the Red, son of Torwald, a Norwegian jarl, who had been compelled to forsake his country in consequence of a feud, was, for the same reason, obliged to leave Iceland. Whither was he to repair? To Norway he could not; for there were the deadly enemies of his family whom old Torwald had made. To hide himself in Iceland was hopeless; and in the Orkneys, which were far distant, he could scarcely hope to escape the vengeance of those enemies. He therefore resolved to seek a land of which some maritime adventurers had obtained a confused knowledge. Sailing towards the west, he at length discovered a small island in a strait, which he called Eric’s Sound, and on which he passed the winter. The following spring, he examined the neighbouring continent, which from its smiling verdure—smiling in comparison with the bleak desolation of Iceland—he called _Greenland_. Filled with the importance of this adventure, he soon returned to that island, and succeeded in collecting a number of colonists, whom he established in the newly-discovered land. Yet Greenland was not uninhabited: better for the settlers had it been so; for the wild natives were not friendly to men whom they regarded as intruders on their own domain. Some years after the settlement of the colony, viz. in 999, Leif, the son of Eric, repaired to Norway, where he was well received by the reigning monarch, Olaf Trygveson: Olaf was soon interested in the description which Leif gave of the country; and in his zeal for the conversion of all pagans, he resolved to support the new colony. Whatever might be the faults of the royal convert, he was the instrument of much good. He persuaded or forced Leif to receive baptism, and caused a missionary to accompany him to Greenland. Hence the introduction of that religion among the Norwegian colonists; but it had little success amongst the natives, who, whether from stupidity or vicious habits, have always been slow to comprehend its truths. During more than three centuries this infant colony flourished: the plague of 1348 lamentably thinned its numbers; and early in the following century the rest were either exterminated by the savage inhabitants, or compelled to leave the country. Not a vestige remains of that colony; nor is it clearly ascertained in what part of the coast it was located.