"ERIC THE RED."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 150, 26 June 1937, Page 28 (Supplement)

"ERIC THE RED."

NORSE EXPLORER.

SAGA OF SON'S VOYAGES.

NO one seems to have doubted the assurance of school books that Columbus discovered- America until some bookworm, delving into certain old musty records of Norway, came across a collection of manuscripts known as "The Sagas." These writings, handed down from father to son in a few Scandinavian families, remained tucked away in the libraries of Norway and Sweden until first translated into English for the Columbian Exposition, where they were exhibited. From the sagas we learn that about the year 984 a young Norseman, "Eric the Red," so called because of the colour of his hair, killed a man in his native land and fled to Iceland. There he lived for some years, until banished for a similar crime, when he sailed westward to Greenland. The next year, after having returned to Iceland, he revisited Greenland with a large fleet of ships filled with immigrants; but one of these vessels was driven far off her course and Bjarni Herjulfson, her commander, coasted on a strange land to the south-west, which on his final arrival at Greenland he reported to be a long and level coast country from which it took him nine days to return. In the meantime Leif, a son of Eric (whence his name Ericsson) sailed back to Norway, the forbidden land of his father, and found that country just in the act of embracing the Christian creed, which he also accepted. Returning to Greenland with a priest, he introduced the religion' into that island, where he established churches. Journey Southward. Leif, upon hearing of the view which Bjarni had had of the land to the southwest, took with him a group of his companions, set sail for the new continent about the year 1000, and, after having been on his way for a number of days, found a country whose barren shore stretched back to ice-covered mountains. This place, now thought by some to have been Labrador or Newfoundland, he called "Helluland," oil account of the number of stones on the beach. Further south he came to a sandy coast with a level forest country back of it, and this, supposed to have been Nova Scotia, he called "Markland," on account of its trees. Proceeding further southward, he found flowing into a large expanse of water a river, up which he sailed and on whose shores he built huts to lodge in during the winter. He sent out exploring parties, and, because these found an abundance of grapes in the surrounding country, he called the place "Vinland." The whole region which lie explored after this last landing is thought to be that extending