Leif returned to Greenland with more than this idea in his mind.  When Eirek left Norway he had left a heathen land.  When Leif visited it he found it a Christian country.  Or at least he found there a Christian king, Olaf Tryggvason by name, who desired his guest to embrace the new faith.  Leif consented without hesitation.  Heathenism did not seem very firmly fixed in the minds of those northern barbarians.  He and all his sailors were baptized, and betook themselves to Greenland with this new faith as their most precious freight.  In this way Christianity first made its way across the seas.  And thus it further came about that the ship which we have seen set sail for southern lands.

This ship was that of Biarni.  Leif had bought it, it may be with the fancy that it would prove fortunate in retracing its course.  Not only Leif, but his father Eirek, now an old man, was fired with the hope of new discoveries.  The aged Viking had given Greenland, to the world; it was a natural ambition to desire to add to his fame as a discoverer.  But on his way to the vessel his horse stumbled.  Superstitious, as all men were in that day, he looked on this as an evil omen.

“I shall not go,” he said.  “It is not my destiny to discover any other lands than that on which we now live.  I shall follow you no farther, but end my life in Greenland.”  And Eirek rode back to his home.

Not so the adventurers.  They boldly put out to sea, turned the prow of their craft southward, and battled with the waves day after day, their hearts full of hope, their eyes on the alert for the glint of distant lands.

At length land was discovered,—­a dreary country, mountainous, icy; doubtless the inhospitable island which Biarni had described.  They landed, but only to find themselves on a shore covered with bare, flat rocks, while before them loomed snow-covered heights.

“This is not the land we seek,” said Leif; “but we will not do as Biarni did, who never set foot on shore.  I will give this land a name, and will call it Helluland,”—­a name which signifies the “land of broad stones.”

Onward they sailed again, their hearts now filled with ardent expectation.  At length rose again the stirring cry of “Land!” or its Norse equivalent, and as the dragon-peaked craft glided swiftly onward there rose into view a long coast-line, flat and covered with white sand in the foreground, while a dense forest spread over the rising ground in the rear.

“Markland [land of forest] let it be called,” cried Leif.  “This must be the land which Biarni first saw.  We will not be like him, but will set foot on its promising shores.”

They landed, but tarried not long.  Soon they took ship again, and sailed for two days out of sight of land.  Then there came into view an island, with a broad channel between it and the mainland.  Up this channel they laid their course, and soon came to where a river poured its clear waters into the sea.  They decided to explore this stream.  The boat was lowered and the ship towed up the river, until, at a short distance inland, it broadened into a lake.  Here, at Leif’s command, the anchor was cast, and their good ship, the pioneer in American discovery, came to rest within the inland waters of the New World.