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.  They had found self-sown corn too, probably maize.  The streams were full of salmon.  But they had called the land Vinland, by reason of its grapes.  Quaint enough, and bearing in its very quaintness the stamp of truth, is the story of the first finding of the wild fox-grapes.  How Leif the Fortunate, almost as soon as he first landed, missed a little wizened old German servant of his father’s, Tyrker by name, and was much vexed thereat, for he had been brought up on the old man’s knee, and hurrying off to find him met Tyrker coming back twisting his eyes about—­a trick of his—­smacking his lips and talking German to himself in high excitement.  And when they get him to talk Norse again, he says:  “I have not been far, but I have news for you.  I have found vines and grapes!” “Is that true, foster-father?” says Leif.  “True it is,” says the old German, “for I was brought up where there was never any lack of them.”

The saga—­as given by Rafn—­had a detailed description of this quaint personage’s appearance; and it would not he amiss if American wine-growers should employ an American sculptor—­and there are great American sculptors—­to render that description into marble, and set up little Tyrker in some public place, as the Silenus of the New World.

Thus the first cargoes homeward from Vinland to Greenland had been of timber and of raisins, and of vine-stocks, which were not like to thrive.

And more.  Beyond Vinland the Good there was said to be another land, Whiteman’s Land—­or Ireland the Mickle, as some called it.  For these Norse traders from Limerick had found Ari Marson, and Ketla of Ruykjanes, supposed to have been long since drowned at sea, and said that the people had made him and Ketla chiefs, and baptized Ari.  What is all this? and what is this, too, which the Esquimaux children taken in Markland told the Northmen, of a land beyond them where the folk wore white clothes, and carried flags on poles?  Are these all dreams? or was some part of that great civilisation, the relics whereof your antiquarians find in so many parts of the United States, still in existence some 900 years ago; and were these old Norse cousins of ours upon the very edge of it?  Be that as it may, how nearly did these fierce Vikings, some of whom seemed to have sailed far south along the shore, become aware that just beyond them lay a land of fruits and spices, gold and gems?  The adverse current of the Gulf Stream, it may be, would have long prevented their getting past the Bahamas into the Gulf of Mexico; but, sooner or later, some storm must have carried a Greenland viking to San Domingo or to Cuba; and then, as has been well said, some Scandinavian dynasty might have sat upon the throne of Mexico.