He whiled away three years on its coast, and as soon as he was allowed ventured back with the tidings, while, to propitiate intending settlers, he said he had been to Greenland, and so the land got a sunny name. The next year, which seems to have been A.D. 985, he started on his return with thirty-five ships, but only fourteen of them reached the land. Wherever there was a habitable fiord, a settlement grew up, and the stream of immigrants was for a while constant and considerable. Just at the end of the century (A.D. 999), Leif, a son of Eric, sailed back to Norway, and found the country in the early fervor of a new religion; for King Olaf Tryggvesson had embraced Christianity and was imposing it on his people. Leif accepted the new faith, and a priest was assigned to him to take back to Greenland; and thus Christianity was introduced into arctic America. So they began to build churches[519] in Greenland, the considerable ruins of one of which stand to this day.[520] The winning of Iceland to the Church was accomplished at the same time. [Illustration: PLAN OF VIKING SHIP.] There were two centres of settlement on the Greenland coast, not where they were long suspected to be, on the coast opposite Iceland, nor as supposed after the explorations of Baffin’s Bay, on both the east and west side of the country; but the settlers seem to have reached and doubled Cape Farewell, and so formed what was called their eastern settlement (Eystribygd), near the cape, while farther to the north they formed their western colony (Westribygd).[521] Their relative positions are still involved in doubt. [Illustration: ROWLOCK OF THE VIKING SHIP.]