This description, as the reader will instantly recognize, can apply only to North America. The first of the coasts which Leif and his navigators saw must have been Newfoundland, or Labrador; the second was probably the coast of New Brunswick; the third was Maine. The causes which led to the voyage, the names, the incidents, are so natural and so connected as to bear the impress of truth. And Snorro, the earliest historian of the voyage, was not an inventor: he related events as he received them from authorities which no longer exist, or from tradition. Neither he nor his countrymen entertained the slightest doubt that a new and extensive region had been discovered. The sequel will corroborate the belief that they were right. [Sidenote: 1004 to 1008.] The next chief that visited Vinland was Thorwald, another son of Eric the Red. With thirty companions he proceeded to the coast, and wintered in the tent which had sheltered his brother Leif. The two following summers were passed by him in examining the regions both to the west and the east; and, from the description in the Icelandic sagas, we may infer that he coasted the shore from Massachusetts to Labrador. Until the second season no inhabitants appeared; but two who had ventured along the shore in their frail canoes were taken, and most impolitically, as well as most inhumanly, put to death. These were evidently Esquimaux, whose short stature and features resembled those of the western Greenlanders. To revenge the murder of their countrymen, a considerable number of the inhabitants now appeared in their small boats; but their arrows being unable to make any impression on the wooden defences, they precipitately retired. In this short skirmish, however, Thorwald received a mortal wound; and was buried on the next promontory with a cross at his head and another at his feet, a proof that he had embraced Christianity. Having passed another winter, his companions returned to Greenland. The following year Thorstein, another son of Eric the Red, embarked for the same place with his wife Gudrida and twenty-five companions; but they were driven by the contending elements to the remote western coast of Greenland, where they passed the winter in great hardships. This adventure was fatal to Thorstein, whose corpse was taken back to the colony by his widow. [Sidenote: 1009.]