Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

ALTHOUGH the discovery of America used to be dated from the voyage of Columbus to the West Indies in 1492, there can be little doubt that this great hero was by no means the first explorer of our era to visit the New World. The existence of land to the west of the Pillars of Hercules was even known to the ancients. Frequent mention is made by Greek and Roman authors of islands on the West, especially of the fair Atlantis, concerning which Plato gives many details, declaring it to have been of vast extent and great beauty, but to have been swallowed up by the sea in pre-historic times. Some modern authors are of opinion that the Canaries are the only existing remains of this Atlantis; others that the so-called island was in reality the mainland of America. Leaving this question to those now studying it with the aid of the recent discoveries in the New World, we pass on to find trustworthy accounts in the old sagas—of which the principal, recently discovered in an Icelandic monastery, are preserved in the Royal Library at Copenhagen—of the presence of Danish settlers in Greenland as early as 982 A.D. These were led thither by the great Eric the Red, who is supposed, however, merely to have acted on information left behind by an early settler of Iceland, named Gunnbiorn, a century before. Gunnbiorn was the true discoverer of Greenland, which he had sighted—though not visited—naming it Hvidsaerk, or the “White Shirt,” because of the perpetual covering of snow worn by its highlands. In a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, four years after the visit of Eric the Red to the latter country, a Danish navigator named Bjarni Herjulfson was driven far out of his course to the South, and saw land stretching away on the West; but he returned home without making any exploration of the new territories, for which, says tradition, “he was greatly blamed.” His reports, however, of what he had seen, led to the fitting out and heading of a far more important expedition by Leif the Lucky, who, making direct for the most southerly point gained by his predecessors, reached the modern Newfoundland, which he called Helluland, and, landing, found it to be “a country without grass, and covered with snow and ice.”

From Helluland, Leif sailed to the present Nova Scotia, which he named “Markland,” or woodland, because of its extensive forests; and thence he is said to have been driven by a contrary wind on to the coast of New England, but on what part of that coast there is no evidence to show, although it is generally agreed to have been in about N. lat. 41° 24′, a little to the north of Rhode Island. Excursions inland revealed the newly-discovered district to be rich in vines and timber; and loading his vessel with grapes and wood, Leif made haste to return home with his trophies, giving such glowing accounts of his adventures on his arrival, that a short time later his brother Thorvald started with a crew of thirty men for the land of promise.

Thorvald is supposed on this trip to have coasted along the shores of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Long Island, and in the ensuing year, 1004, to have sailed as far north as Cape Cod (N. lat. 42° 5′, W. long. 70° 10′), where he was wrecked in a violent storm. His vessel was not, however, materially damaged, and having repaired it, he coasted along the present Massachusetts till he came to what is now the harbor of Boston. There he landed, and wandering to and fro in the beautiful scenery with his men, he for the first time came upon some natives, probably Esquimaux, who were resting peaceably beneath their quaint skin-boats.

With the cruelty characteristic of the wild sea-kings of the North, Thorvald at once gave the signal for attack. The poor Skrællings, as he dubbed the natives, were quickly overpowered. One only escaped, and the others were foully murdered. No wonder that this was the beginning of the end of Thorvald’s enterprise. That very night, as he and his followers were sleeping peacefully, untroubled by any remorse for their evil deeds, they were roused by the war-whoop of the Skrællings, come at the bidding of the one survivor to avenge his comrades.

The white men took refuge in their ship, and all escaped unhurt except Thorvald himself, who received a wound in the side, from which he shortly afterward died. He was buried within sight of the Atlantic, on what is now Massachusetts Bay, and his sorrowing followers returned home with the terrible tidings in the ensuing spring.

Undaunted by the fate of his brother, another son of Eric, Thorstein by name, set out for Vinland in 1005, but he failed to find it, and returned home, stricken with mortal sickness, in the same year. On his deathbed, however, he prophesied that his widow, Gudrid, would marry again, and hinted that a great career of discovery and conquest was before her future children. He was right in the first part at least of his speech, for two years later we find Gudrid, as the wife of a sturdy Icelander named Karlsefne, forming part of the largest expedition yet sent out from Greenland to Vinland—an expedition consisting of no less than three ships, and one hundred and forty men and women.