Localities probably visited by men. There is much more of this same sort in the tradi tions of the Northmen; but there is nothing to yield us any more definite knowledge. There is little doubt of their having reached the North American coast; but the North- whether Vinland was Rhode Island, or Nova Scotia, or some other place, we perhaps shall never know. For a time it was thought that it must be Rhode Island. The Norse narratives describe a mild climate, with wild grapes; and it was thought that this must refer to Newport, R.I., where there are plenty of these grapes on the islands in the harbor. But wild grapes grow in Nova Scotia also; and the climate there might seem mild to those who had come from Iceland. This is all we know about the matter. Perhaps there may yet be found along the coast of New England some real memorial of the Northmen; and in the mean time, if it were not for their own legends, it would be hard to believe that they ever came. CHAPTER V. WH THE COMING OF COLUMBUS. still un HATEVER may have been the truth about the America visit of the Northmen to America, it is certain, known to that, if they came, they sailed away again, never to Europeans. return. Even their colony in Greenland was at last abandoned; and the memory of Vinland almost disappeared. For nearly five centuries, so far as we know, not a European vessel crossed the Atlantic. of the older people in Iceland may have remembered that their grandparents had told them of a country far to the west, where vines grew; and perhaps they used to tell these legends, in the long, dark evenings, to the Spanish and English Some TOMB OF COLUMBUS. sailors who went on trading voyages to Iceland. There came a time of great commercial activity among the nations of Southern Europe; and voyages began to be Christopher Common belief about the shape of the earth. What learned men thought. attempted in all directions. And one voyage was at last undertaken that was destined to make the New World known to the Old World. There was born at Genoa, in Italy, about 1435, a boy named "Cristoforo Colombo," or, in English, "Christopher Columbus." His father was a weaver of cloth, but his ancestors had been sailors; and the little Columbus was sent to school at ten years old to learn navigation. At fourteen he went to sea; and from that time, so long as he lived, he was either making voyages or else drawing charts. He lived in Portugal, then in Spain, these being the great seafaring nations at that day; and he sailed to almost all the ports then known. Most of his voyages, however, were in the Mediterranean Sea. these there was almost as much fighting as sailing; for that sea was full of pirates. On one occasion his ship was burnt, and he swam six miles to shore with the aid of a spar. And throughout all these adventures he was gradually forming the plan of sailing farther west upon the Atlantic than anyone had yet dared to sail. In But it must be remembered that the people of Europe, in those days, did not know the real shape of the earth, as it is now known. Most persons did not suppose it to be a sphere. They thought it was a flat surface, with the ocean, like a great river, lying round about its edges. What was on the other side of this river, they hardly dared to guess. Yet some scientific men had got beyond this ignorant view; and they supposed the earth to be a sphere, but thought it much smaller than it really was. They did not dream that there could be room on it for two wide oceans and for two great bodies of land. They thought that there was |