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They found no grass, but only a great field of snow stretching from the sea to the mountains farther inland; and these mountains, too, glistened with snow. It seemed to the Norsemen a forbidding place, and Leif christened it Helluland, or the country of slate or flat stones. They did not linger, but sailed away at once.
Though the creature did not dare to strike again, its hiss could be heard in the distance, and the gleam of its fangs showed in dark corners. If Leif had had Biorn's bad fortune, to begin at the wrong end of his journey, so that a barren Helluland was the climax that now lay before him, the hidden snake might have swelled, like Thora Borga Hiort's serpent-pet, into a devastating dragon.
They sailed up to the land and cast anchor, and launched a boat and went ashore, and saw no grass there. Then said Lief, "It has not come to pass with us in regard to this land as with Biarni, that we have not gone upon it. To this country I will now give a name, and call it Helluland," They returned to the ship, put out to sea, and found a second land.
Leif deigned to smile slightly. He stepped into his place, and from the stern he swept a long critical look over the barren coast, from the fox-dens up to the high-peaked mountains, and back again to the sea. "We will give as well as take," he said at last. "I will give a name to the land, and call it Helluland, for it is indeed an icy plain."
Fourteen years later than this voyage of Bjarni, which was said to have been in A.D. 986 that is, in the year 1000 or thereabouts Lief, the same who had brought the Christian priest to Greenland, taking with him 35 companions, sailed from Greenland in quest of the land seen by Bjarni, which Lief first found, where a barren shore stretched back to ice-covered mountains, and, because of the stones there, he called the region Helluland.
They had found Labrador, and called it Helluland, from its ice-polished rocks. They had found Nova Scotia seemingly, and called it Markland, from its woods. They had found New England, and called it Vinland the Good. A fair land they found it, well wooded, with good pasturage; so that they had already imported cows, and a bull whose lowings terrified the Esquimaux.
The emigrants after sighting Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, landed in an island, upon which they constructed some barracks and began the work of cultivation. But they must either have laid their plans badly, or have been wanting in foresight, for the winter found them without provisions, and they suffered cruelly from hunger.
Such are some of the old Norse stories of the first finding of America. The country which Leif called Helluland was most likely Labrador, Markland Newfoundland, and Vineland Nova Scotia. Besides these there were many other tales of voyages to Vineland. For after Leif and his brothers many other Vikings of the North sailed, both from Greenland and from Norway, to the fair western lands.
However this may be, there is at least a probability that the Vikings discovered North America five centuries before Columbus. The saga of Eric the Red sings of the deeds of Leif Ericson, who led the discoverers and named the three new countries Helluland, Markland, and Vineland.
The Icelandic Sagas possess a basis of historical truth, and there is reason to believe that Leif Ericson discovered three countries. The first land he made after leaving Greenland he named Helluland on account of its slaty rocks. Then he came to a flat country with white beaches of sand, which he called Markland because it was so well wooded.
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