Page:The Finding of Wineland the Good.djvu/69

 his return Leif purchased his ship, and went in search of the land which Biarni had seen, but had failed to explore, in the year 985, according to the chronology of the ' Short Story.'

Leif 's voyage of exploration, as described in the Flatey Book, could, therefore, scarcely have taken place before the year 1002 But, according to the other historical data already cited, Leif discovered Wineland during a voyage to Greenland, undertaken at the request, and during the lifetime, of King Olaf Tryggvason, hence obviously not later than the year 1000. The Flatey Book refers to this voyage in the following words: ' That same summer he [King Olaf Tryggvason] sent Gizur and Hialti to Iceland, as has already been written. At that time King Olaf sent Leif to Greenland to preach Christianity there. The King sent with him a priest and certain other holy men to baptize the folk, and teach them the true faith. Leif went to Greenland that summer and took [on board his vessel] a ship's-crew of men, who were at the time in great peril upon a wreck. He arrived in Greenland late in the summer, and went home to his father, Eric, at Brattahlid. The people afterwards called him Leif the Lucky, but his father, Eric, said that Leif's having rescued the crew and restored the men to life, might be balanced against the fact that he had brought the impostor to Greenland, so he called the priest. Nevertheless, through Leif's advice and persuasion, Eric was baptized, and all of the people of Greenland .'

It will be observ^ed, that, in this record of Leif's missionary voyage, no allusion is made to the discovery of Wineland, as in the other accounts of the same voyage, with which, in other respects, this passage agrees. By this variation a conflict with Biarni's claim to the priority of discovery, previously promulgated in the ' Short Story of Eric the Red,' is avoided. A portion of this passage may not, however, be so happily reconciled. It is said that, through Leif's advice and persuasion, Eric the Red was baptized, while we find in the ' Short Story of the Greenlanders,' the statement, that ' Eric the Red died before Christianity.' Moreover we have, in the ' Short Story of the Greenlanders,' in addition to this direct conflict of statement, an apparent repetition of the incident of the rescue of the shipwrecked mariners, when we are told that Leif effected a rescue of castaways on his return from a voyage of exploration to Wineland, and was therefore called Leif the Lucky. If this be not a repetition of the same incident, then we must conclude that Leif upon two different voyages saved