Historical Tales Volume I Part 1

Historic Tales.

Vol. 1.

by Charles Morris.

PREFACE.

It has become a commonplace remark that fact is often stranger than fiction. It may be said, as a variant of this, that history is often more romantic than romance. The pages of the record of man's doings are frequently ill.u.s.trated by entertaining and striking incidents, relief points in the dull monotony of every-day events, stories fitted to rouse the reader from languid weariness and stir anew in his veins the pulse of interest in human life. There are many such,--dramas on the stage of history, life scenes that are pictures in action, tales pathetic, stirring, enlivening, full of the element of the unusual, of the stuff the novel and the romance are made of, yet with the advantage of being actual fact. Incidents of this kind have proved as attractive to writers as to readers. They have dwelt upon them lovingly, embellished them with the charms of rhetoric and occasionally with the inventions of fancy, until what began as fact has often entered far into the domains of legend and fiction. It may well be that some of the narratives in the present work have gone through this process. If so, it is simply indicative of the interest they have awakened in generations of readers and writers.

But the bulk of them are fact, so far as history in general can be called fact, it having been our design to cull from the annals of the nations some of their more stirring and romantic incidents, and present them as a gallery of pictures that might serve to adorn the entrance to the temple of history, of which this work is offered as in some sense an illuminated ante-chamber. As such, it is hoped that some pilgrims from the world of readers may find it a pleasant halting-place on their way into the far-extending aisles of the great temple beyond.

VINELAND AND THE VIKINGS.

The year 1000 A.D. was one of strange history. Its advent threw the people of Europe into a state of mortal terror.

Ten centuries had pa.s.sed since the birth of Christ. The world was about to come to an end. Such was the general belief. How it was to reach its end,--whether by fire, water, or some other agent of ruin,--the prophets of disaster did not say, nor did people trouble themselves to learn. Destruction was coming upon them, that was enough to know; how to provide against it was the one thing to be considered.

Some hastened to the churches; others to the taverns. Here prayers went up; there wine went down. The pet.i.tions of the pious were matched by the ribaldry of the profligate. Some made their wills; others wasted their wealth in revelry, eager to get all the pleasure out of life that remained for them. Many freely gave away their property, hoping, by ridding themselves of the goods of this earth, to establish a claim to the goods of Heaven, with little regard to the fate of those whom they loaded with their discarded wealth.

It was an era of ignorance and superst.i.tion. Christendom went insane over an idea. When the year ended, and the world rolled on, none the worse for conflagration or deluge, green with the spring leaf.a.ge and ripe with the works of man, dismay gave way to hope, mirth took the place of prayer, man regained their flown wits, and those who had so recklessly given away their wealth bethought themselves of taking legal measures for its recovery.

Such was one of the events that made that year memorable.

There was another of a highly different character. Instead of a world being lost, a world was found. The Old World not only remained unharmed, but a New World was added to it, a world beyond the seas, for this was the year in which the foot of the European was first set upon the sh.o.r.es of the trans-Atlantic continent. It is the story of this first discovery of America that we have now to tell.

In the autumn of the year 1000, in a region far away from fear-haunted Europe, a scene was being enacted of a very different character from that just described. Over the waters of unknown seas a small, strange craft boldly made its way, manned by a crew of the hardiest and most vigorous men, driven by a single square sail, whose coa.r.s.e woollen texture bellied deeply before the fierce ocean winds, which seemed at times as if they would drive that deckless vessel bodily beneath the waves.

This crew was of men to whom fear was almost unknown, the stalwart Vikings of the North, whose oar-and sail-driven barks now set out from the coasts of Norway and Denmark to ravage the sh.o.r.es of southern Europe, now turned their prows boldly to the west in search of unknown lands afar.

Shall we describe this craft? It was a tiny one in which to venture upon an untravelled ocean in search of an unknown continent,--a vessel shaped somewhat like a strung bow, scarcely fifty feet in length, low amids.h.i.+ps and curving upwards to high peaks at stem and stern, both of which converged to sharp edges. It resembled an enormous canoe rather than aught else to which we can compare it. On the stem was a carved and gilt dragon, the figurehead of the s.h.i.+p, which glittered in the bright rays of the sun. Along the bulwarks of the s.h.i.+p, fore and aft, hung rows of large painted wooden s.h.i.+elds, which gave an Argus-eyed aspect to the craft. Between them was a double row of thole-pins for the great oars, which now lay at rest in the bottom of the boat, but by which, in calm weather, this "walker of the seas" could be forced swiftly through the yielding element.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIKING s.h.i.+PS AT SEA.]

Near the stern, on an elevated platform, stood the commander, a man of large and powerful frame and imposing aspect, one whose commands not the fiercest of his crew would lightly venture to disobey. A coat of ring-mail encircled his stalwart frame; by his side, in a richly-embossed scabbard, hung a long sword, with hilt of gilded bronze; on his head was a helmet that shone like pure gold, shaped like a wolf's head, with gaping jaws and threatening teeth. Land was in sight, an unknown coast, peopled perhaps by warlike men. The cautious Viking leader deemed it wise to be prepared for danger, and was armed for possible combat.

Below him, on the rowing-benches, sat his hardy crew, their arms--spears, axes, bows, and slings--beside them, ready for any deed of daring they might be called upon to perform.

Their dress consisted of trousers of coa.r.s.e stuff, belted at the waist; thick woollen s.h.i.+rts, blue, red, or brown in color; iron helmets, beneath which their long hair streamed down to their shoulders; and a shoulder belt descending to the waist and supporting their leather-covered sword-scabbards. Heavy whiskers and moustaches added to the fierceness of their stern faces, and many of them wore as ornament on the forehead a band of gold.

They numbered thirty-five in all, this crew who had set out to brave the terrors and solve the mysteries of the great Atlantic. Their leader, Leif by name, was the son of Eirek the Red, the discoverer of Greenland, and a Viking as fierce as ever breathed the air of the north land. Outlawed in Norway, where in hot blood he had killed more men than the law could condone, Eirek had made his way to Iceland. Here his fierce temper led him again to murder, and flight once more became necessary. Manning a s.h.i.+p, he set sail boldly to the west, and in the year 982 reached a land on which the eye of European had never before gazed. To this he gave the name of Greenland, with the hope, perhaps, that this inviting name would induce others to follow him.

Such proved to be the case. Eirek returned to Iceland, told the story of his discovery, and in 985 set sail again for his new realm with twenty-five s.h.i.+ps and many colonists.

Others came afterwards, among them one Biarni, a bold and enterprising youth, for whom a great adventure was reserved. Enveloped in fogs, and driven for days from its course by northeasterly winds, his vessel was forced far to the south. When at length the fog cleared away, the distressed mariners saw land before them, a low, level, thickly-wooded region, very different from the ice-covered realm they had been led to expect.

"Is this the land of which we are in search?" asked the sailors.

"No," answered Biarni; "for I am told that we may look for very large glaciers in Greenland.

"At any rate, let us land and rest."

"Not so; my father has gone with Eirek. I shall not rest till I see him again."

And now the winds blew northward, and for seven days they scudded before a furious gale, pa.s.sing on their way a mountainous, ice-covered island, and in the end, by great good fortune, Biarni's vessel put into the very port where his father had fixed his abode.

Biarni had seen, but had not set foot upon, the sh.o.r.es of the New World. That was left for bolder or more enterprising mariners to perform. About 995 he went to Norway, where the story of his strange voyage caused great excitement among the adventure-loving people. Above all, it stirred up the soul of Leif, eldest son of Eirek the Red, then in Norway, who in his soul resolved to visit and explore that strange land which Biarni had only seen from afar.

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 s.h.i.+p which we have seen set sail for southern lands.

This s.h.i.+p 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. Superst.i.tious, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e. I will give this land a name, and will call it h.e.l.luland,"--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 sh.o.r.es."

They landed, but tarried not long. Soon they took s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p, the pioneer in American discovery, came to rest within the inland waters of the New World.

Not many minutes pa.s.sed before the hardy mariners were on sh.o.r.e, and eagerly observing the conditions of their new-discovered realm. River and lake alike were full of salmon, the largest they had ever seen, a fact which agreeably settled the question of food. The climate seemed deliciously mild, as compared with the icy sh.o.r.es to which they were used. The gra.s.s was but little withered by frost, and promised a winter supply of food for cattle. Altogether they were so pleased with their surroundings that Leif determined to spend the winter at that place, exploring the land so far as he could.

For some time they dwelt under booths, pa.s.sing the nights in their leather sleeping-bags; but wood was abundant, axes and hands skilful to wield them were at hand, and they quickly went to work to build themselves habitations more suitable for the coming season of cold.

No inhabitants of the land were seen. So far as yet appeared, it might be a region on which human foot had never before been set. But Leif was a cautious leader. He bade his men not to separate until the houses were finished. Then he divided them into two parties, left one to guard their homes and their s.h.i.+p, and sent the other inland to explore.

"Beware, though," he said, "that you risk not too much. We know not what perils surround us. Go not so far inland but that you can get back by evening, and take care not to separate."

Day after day these explorations continued, the men plunging into the forest that surrounded them and wandering far into its hidden recesses, each evening bringing back with them some story of the marvels of this new land, or some sample of its productions strange to their eyes.

An evening came in which one of the explorers failed to return. He had either disobeyed the injunctions of Leif and gone too far to get back by evening, or some peril of that unknown land had befallen him. This man was of German birth, Tyrker by name, a southerner who had for years dwelt with Eirek and been made the foster-father of Leif, who had been fond of him since childhood. He was a little, wretched-looking fellow, with protruding forehead, unsteady eyes, and tiny face, yet a man skilled in all manner of handicraft.

Leif, on learning of his absence, upbraided the men bitterly for losing him, and called on twelve of them to follow him in search. Into the forest they went, and before long had the good fortune to behold Tyrker returning. The little fellow, far from showing signs of disaster, was in the highest of spirits, his face radiant with joy.

"How now, foster-father!" cried Leif. "Why are you so late?

and why have you parted from the others?"

Tyrker was too excited to answer. He rolled his eyes wildly and made wry faces. When words came to him, he spoke in his native German, which none of them understood. Joy seemed to have driven all memory of the language of the north from his mind. It was plain that no harm had come to him. On the contrary, he seemed to have stumbled upon some landfall of good luck. Yet some time pa.s.sed before they could bring him out of his ecstasy into reason.

"I did not go much farther than you," he at length called out, in their own tongue "and if I am late I have a good excuse. I can tell you news."

"What are they?"