It was their custom to sail the seas and rivers rather than march on the land. They were a hardy and daring people, who liked nothing better than to fight and conquer and rob in other countries. There was not a land in western Europe, even as far south as Sicily, that they did not visit. Wherever they went they plundered and burned and murdered, leaving a blackened trail. THE DANES IN ENGLAND. The Danes ravaged the eastern and southern shores of England, and after they were tired of robbery, partly because there was little left to take, they began to settle in the land. Alfred, the greatest of the early English kings, was driven by them into the swamps for a while, but in the year 878 A.D. he conquered an army of them in battle and persuaded one of their kings to be baptized as a Christian. Alfred was obliged to allow them to keep the eastern portion of England, a region called Danelaw, because the law of the Danes was obeyed there. [Illustration: A VIKING SHIP AT SEA] THE DANES BECOME NORMANS. No more Danes or Northmen came to trouble England for a time, but instead they crossed the Channel to France and rowed up the Seine and tried to capture Paris. A few years later a Frankish king gave them the city of Rouen, further down the Seine, and the region about it which was called Normandy. These Normans also accepted Christianity. THE VIKINGS BECOME DISCOVERERS. Before another hundred years had passed the Northmen performed a feat more difficult than sailing up rivers and burning towns. They were the first to venture far out of sight of land, though their ships were no larger than our fishing boats. These bold sailors visited the Orkney and the Shetland Islands, north of Scotland, and finally reached Iceland. In Iceland their sheep and cattle flourished, and a lively trade in fish, oil, butter, and skins sprang up with the old homeland and with the British islands. Before long one of the settlers, named Eric the Red, led a colony to Greenland, the larger and more desolate island further west. He called it Greenland because, he said, men would be more easily persuaded to go there if the land had a good name. This was probably in the year 985. [Illustration: LEIF ERICSON From the statue in Boston]