Herjulf had a son by name Bjarne, who was a man of enterprise and fond of going abroad, and who possessed a merchant-ship, with which he gathered wealth and reputation. He used to be by turns a year abroad and a year at home with his father. He chanced to be away in Norway when his father moved over to Greenland, and on returning to Iceland he was so much disappointed on hearing of his father's departure with Erik, that he would not unload his ship, but resolved to follow his old custom and take up his abode with his father. "Who will go with me to Greenland?" he said to his men. "We will all go with you," replied the men. "But we have none of us ever been on the Greenland Sea before," said Bjarne. "We mind not that," said the men,--so away they sailed for three days and lost sight of Iceland. Then the wind failed. After that a north wind and fog set in, and they knew not where they were sailing to. This lasted many days, until the sun at length appeared again, so that they could determine the quarters of the sky, and lo! in the horizon they saw, like a blue cloud, the outlines of an unknown land. They approached it. They saw that it was without mountains, was covered with wood, and that there were small hills inland. Bjarne saw that this did not answer to the description of Greenland; he knew he was too far south; so he left the land on the larboard side and sailed northward two days, when they got sight of land again. The men asked Bjarne if this was Greenland; but he said it was not, "For in Greenland," he said, "there are great, snowy mountains; but this land is flat and covered with trees." They did not go ashore, but turning the bow from the land, they kept the sea with a fine breeze from the southwest for three days, when a third land was seen. Still Bjarne would not go ashore, for it was not like what had been reported of Greenland. So they sailed on, driven by a violent southwest wind, and after four days they reached a land which suited the description of Greenland. Bjarne was not deceived, for it was Greenland, and he happened to land close to the place where his father had settled. It cannot be determined with certainty what parts of the American coast Bjarne saw; but from the circumstances of the voyage, the course of the winds, the direction of the currents, and the presumed distance between each sight of land, there is reason to believe that the first land that Bjarne saw in the year 986 was the present Nantucket, one degree south of Boston; the second Nova Scotia, and the third Newfoundland. Thus Bjarne Herjulfson was the first European whose eyes beheld any part of the present New England. REUBEN GOLD THWAITES