The attempt to found a diocese at Rostoff was less successful. The first two bishops, Theodore and Hilarion, were driven away by the fierce tribes of the forest district of Meri, who held obstinately to their idols in spite of the zeal of St. Abramius. It cost the two succeeding bishops, St. Leontius and St. Isaiah, many years of extraordinary labor and exertion, attended frequently by persecutions, before they at length succeeded in establishing Christianity in that savage region, from whence it spread itself by degrees into all the surrounding districts. Thus Vladimir, having piously observed the commandments of Christ during the course of his long reign, had the consolation of seeing before his death the fruits of his own conversion in all the wide extent of his dominions. He departed this life in peace at Kieff, and was soon reckoned with his grandmother Olga among the guardian saints of Russia. John, the third metropolitan, who had been sent from Constantinople upon the death of Leontius, buried the Prince in the Church of the Tithes, which he had built, near the tomb of the Grecian princess, his wife, and the uncorrupted relics of St. Olga were translated to the same spot. LEIF ERICSON DISCOVERS AMERICA A.D. 1000 CHARLES C. RAFN SAGA OF ERIC THE RED (Besides the Northmen or Norsemen, those ancient Scandinavians celebrated in history for their adventurous exploits at sea, the Chinese and the Welsh have laid claim to the discovery of North America at periods much earlier than that of Columbus and the Cabots. But to the Norse sailors alone is it generally agreed that credit for that achievement is probably due. Associated with their supposed arrival and sojourn on the coast of what is now New England, about A.D. 1000, the "Round Tower" or "Old Stone Mill" at Newport, R.I., the mysterious inscription on the "Dighton Rock" in Massachusetts, and the "Skeleton in Armor" dug up at Fall River, Mass., and made the subject of a ballad by Longfellow, have figured prominently in the discussion of this pre-Columbian discovery. But these conjectural evidences are no longer regarded as having any connection with historical probability or as dating back to the time of the Northmen. It is considered, however, to be pretty certain that at the end of the tenth century or at the beginning of the eleventh the Northmen reached the shores of North America. About that time, it is known, they settled Iceland, and from there a colony went to Greenland, where they long remained. From there, either by design or by accident, some of them, it is supposed, may have reached the coast of Labrador, and thence sailed down until they came to the region which they named Vinland. From there they sent home glowing accounts to their countrymen in the northern lands, who came in larger numbers to join them in the New World.