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The Pictorial History of the American Revolution
The Pictorial History of the American Revolution Author:Robert Sears Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Known to leave Greenland. When the wind was favorable, he sailed to Norway, and sold his goods. The next year he proceeded to Iceland, and in the year following,... more » 1015, purchased the Glaumboe estate, where he resided during the remainder of hie life. Snorre, his American-born son, also dwelled and ended his days there. Among the numerous and illustrious descendants of Karlsefne was the learned bishop Thorlak Runolfson, born in 1085, of Snorre's daughter Halfrida, who was probably the original compiler of the account of the foregoing voyages. After these, many voyages were undertaken, and the last piece of information preserved in the ancient MSS. relates to a voyage, in the year 1347, from Greenland to Markland, undertaken for the purpose of bringing home timber and other supplies. On her voyage homeward the ship was driven out of her course, and arrived, with loss of anchors, at Straumfiord, in the west of Iceland. From the accounts of this voyage, written by a contemporary nine years after the event, it appears that the intercourse between Greenland and America Proper had been maintained to so late a date as L 347 ; for it is expressly stated that the ship went to Markland, which must have been thus mentioned as a country still known and visited in those days. Thus it appears that, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the ancient Northmen discovered a great extent of the eastern coasts of North America, and made frequent visits to Massachusetts and Rhode Island ; and that, during the centuries immediately following, the intercourse was never entirely broken off. As confirmatory of these statements, Dr. J V. C. Smith, of Boston, has written an account of a remarkable rough stone cemetery, discovered about fifty years ago in Rainsford island, in the bay of Boston, which c...« less