The weekly Placer herald., 1852-10-02

I.ss--s. - ~ y ~ ~ =
.veet milk. and in return received from
,hs 9hai;Jbfea Skfdiingues their most val
ned commoditiesssLEe iesssLeq nnarrels, however,
could not be avoideds the sayageys 5, were
fsyssd ffd retire, and the N Northmen had to1
guard guard their cabins with stockades'rq tlisi
/ three happy years were passed ,.'a' .ln
,ranau;litv, The visits of the Skr9lg'n-
cues suues be becatiie peaceful, and aHat in the summer
of the fourth year. leaying the colphy
prosperous, ,Thorfnis'nd Gudr''ia' W. ws'n''"s u
| l;u,e Snorro, theifiVinland born son, re-
tuirtned to, YceIanud..q .aspIendid cargo Was sas
sold. 'lC(;r Crowds Of volunteers offered to go
back with them, and many successful aud
prosperous voyages were made. Finally
Thorfn gave the direction Of Vinland ,'h.. at
fairs to other chiefs, and spent his latter aateli
days, il in n Iceland, where ,lhe, lived in an ap0
tioue hall like alagman oofs N Norwhy. die
died in a green old age, and Gddr,da, !,
after pilgrimage to Rome, returned ne,tdt to a a
closiitterr liitt r'ai and church which her son Snorro
had built on the lands of his fathers and
piously devoted the remainder OF her days,
ta9Gn1a0o 10 aeoq7nq 95l 7ot h3n'loA "0 :. !.
Thus and thus runs, the tale Of ancient
mariners to Norway; sande thus and thus
the old chronicles, read nightly aloud, to
the family circle, delight the long winter
evenings ling Of the modern Norwegians,w w-i
Different authors give the narratives with
marvellous uniformity; but theyappea
more infinitely than elsewhere, in the So
called s.Manuscript of Flatey"h written,
its author asserts, from the words ofThor-
fin hitnselE o. Iceland historians |of'later
dates speak aabundantly Of Vinland, but,
as the expeditions after Thorfn varied
little from his, the chroniclers cOntented
themselves with describing more minute
" those only which are remarkable. One
whom the critics have considered among
the most authentic, relates the story of, a
Saxon priest, Johan, who went to Vini
land a. missionary, and was there con-
demned to death: In 1921, a Greenland
bishop named Eric undertook the same
errand, but his fate teappears never to have
been known, and, indeed, from this peril
cd Vinland was gradually forgotten.--
The colony, of 'Thorfin does notsappear TO
have been much reinforced afterhis death.
| IL = d
His successors explored more southerly
coasts, and landed in New York and New
Jersey War broke 'outin Narraganset
| with the .Skrnlingues, and ,notwithstand- I
inp the sunerinr .ar,ns ana F~ce'ss~s IS tho
coIonists, the little band gradually wasted
away, but not before they had built such
monuments on the Rhode Island coasts as
will puzzle antiquaries in Centuries to-
come.
a. The expeditions ofthe Mortimer were
not confnedto the Southern latitudes.a In
1856, ledsonAby their priests, they peneg
trated Barrow's Straits and Lancaster
Sound, not, perhaps, in search of a, north
west passage, but to pick up drift wood,
as they thought, from Siberia, and to kill
sea bears and whales, At length Green
land was, swept BY the plague, a few
struggling survivors were pnnrdered by
the natives, and although Pope Nicholas
V. appointed bishop to Greenland in
144S, the chroniclers of the North were
dumb hundred years before. Iceland
had fallen from her high estate; she was
a tributary, dependant upon foreign kings
and all that her enterprise, and the i'm
domitable courage of her N orthmen he
rees had found on the western oceans
sunk deep below the horizen of human
knowledge, until again brought out by the
immortal hero from the South, like
"drowned honour; by the locks.'fot 81 "a
rnf836d Al L4.4.l LIZ AAZlA---ih yd97sa
CALAvEkNs lrEMs.A The Chronicle al
last Saturday came to hand through
Todd's, Express. Its columns are pnusu-
ally interesting. 19hi7nl oa m, ,ed i9sisf
The IN feeling towards foreigners, par.
ticularly Chilians and MexicatIs, is spread.
ing, and Sthe2 Chfoniclen predicts that the
latter class will ibei expelled from the pla.
GERS Of Calayafas county. The frequen
robberies and murders. committed Rv, -, 81 /,