THE NORTHMEN IN GREENLAND. These Northmen were certainly a very wonderful people, and they did very wonderful things; but of all their enterprises the most singular would seem to be their coming to Greenland, where they were without the lines of conquest which were so attractive to their brothers and ancestors; for they were kindred of the Northman Rollo, son of Rögnvald, jarl of Maere, and king of the Orkneys, who ravaged the banks of the Seine, and played buffoon with the King of France; the same with those Danes who, in Anglo-Saxon times, conquered the half of England: descendants they were of the same Cimbri who threatened Rome in the days of Marius, and of the Scythian soldiers of conquered Mithridates, who, under Odin, migrated from the borders of the Euxine Sea to the north of Europe, whence their posterity descended within a thousand years by the Mediterranean, and flourished their battle-axes in the streets of Constantinople; fellows they were of all the sea-kings, and vikings, and “barbarians” of the North, whose god of war was their former general, and who, scorning a peaceful death, sought for Odin’s “bath of blood” whenever and wherever they could find it. In Greenland they appear like a fragment thrown off from a revolving wheel by centrifugal force. And here they seem to have lost the traditional ferocity of their race, though not its adventurous spirit. Sailing westward, they discovered America, which was the crowning glory of their career. Sailing eastward, they saw the light of Christianity which was breaking in the North, and its blessings followed them to their distant homes. These two voyages to the west and east symbolize the character of this wonderful race. Love of change made their conversion to Christianity easy; love of adventure made all enterprises of discovery seem trifling hazards, and gave them the world to roam in. To their achievements in the Western hemisphere the influence of the Christian religion was, no doubt, very powerful. It weaned them from Europe and its perpetual wars, and while it did not destroy, it turned their enterprise into a new channel, and one more consistent with the new faith. The introduction of Christianity into Greenland was accomplished by Lief, son of Red Eric; and it was the same man who discovered America—two grand achievements which rank Lief Ericson as one of the heroes of history. With respect to the former event, an old Icelandic saga thus briefly records the fact: