Very soon after this first successful barter the aborigines came back in much greater number than before with bundles of pelts and stood outside the palisades which the Norsemen had been foresighted enough to erect around their house in the meantime. Karlsefni, sensing the making of another good bargain, instructed the women to offer more milk. The Skraelings took it thirstily, pitching their bundles of furs over the palisades. But then one of them tried to steal a Norse weapon and a battle ensued during which many of the Skraelings were slain. Evidently Karlsefni thought it was too dangerous at Vinland. It would appear that he moved his colony the second year to a site probably on the Hudson River. In the meantime according to some students he had explored the country from its northernmost parts, where he mentioned seeing “many artic foxes,” to the Chesapeake Bay, no doubt entering many rivers, the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, possibly the James, and identifying correctly the extent of the Appalachian mountain range. There is reason to believe that he built shelters and maintained a separate camp somewhere in the Chesapeake tidewater. It may have been there, as the Norsemen told it, that swarthy, ill-looking men with broad cheeks and ugly hair on their heads, came in canoes and stared at them in amazement. Later, these same men came back with “fur-skins and all-grey skins” wanting swords and spears in trade. Evidently there was no milk in this camp, wherever it was, but fortunately the natives finally agreed to take red cloth in exchange for their pelts. “In return for unblemished skins, the savages would accept a span length of red cloth and bind it around their heads. Thus the trading continued. When Karlsefni’s people began to run short of cloth, they ripped it into pieces so narrow that none was broader than a finger, but the savages even then gave as much for it as before, or more.” And, so the trading continued, according to a version of the saga in _Hauk’s Book_, until it ended in a battle as usual. Once more many of the natives were killed. So were two of the Norsemen. After three years Karlsefni abandoned the idea of a permanent settlement. The Skraelings were too hostile. The Norse, with their superior boats and shields, could cope with them on water. But on land the red men were too numerous and had the advantage of surprise. They couldn’t be held at bay--the Norsemen didn’t have the terrifying firearms available to later colonists coming to America. All of which may reasonably account for the dearth of Viking artifacts on the eastern seaboard of America. The Norsemen kept close to the shore-line, whether on the seacoast or on a tidewater river, building their huts near the safety of their shielded dragon ships. Today, the sites of those early camps may well be under water as the level of the sea has risen at least five or six feet in the intervening time due to glacial meltings.