Mara L. Pratt - American History Stories, Volume I

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

This edition, first published in 2010 by Yesterday's Classics, an imprint of Yesterday's Classics, LLC, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Educational Publishing Co. in 1908. This title is available in a print edition (ISBN 978-1-59915-202-8).

Yesterday's Classics republishes classic books for children from the golden age of children's literature, the era from 1880 to 1920. Many of our titles are offered in high-quality paperback editions, with text cast in modern easy-to-read type for today's readers. The illustrations from the original volumes are included except in those few cases where the quality of the original images is too low to make their reproduction feasible. Unless specified otherwise, color illustrations in the original volumes are rendered in black and white in our print editions.

SHIPS OF THE NORSEMEN

M ANY, many years ago, O, so many that I fear you could not count them even, this country in which we live was one vast expanse of woodland and fields, mountains and swamps.

There were no cities, no villages, not even a single house to break the view across the wild fields.

The whole country looked as it does now in those places which have not yet been built up.

Did you ever stand on a high hill and look off across the country where not one house was to be seen? How broad the fields looked and how strange it was to see the sky dipping down and seeming to rest upon the hills and trees away off at the horizon line! Well, that is the way it looked to the little boys and girls here so many years before the white people came to this country.

We do not know very much about these little boys and girls, and their fathers and mothers; for they knew nothing about writing, and so left no books to tell us about themselves.

We know that they used to live in tents, which they called wigwams; that they called the women squaws, and the baby boys and girls papooses; and that they were all called Indians by the white men.

These Indian people, according to our ideas, were very rude and wild. The fathers spent their time in hunting and fishing. The mothers stayed about the tents, kept the fires going, tilled the ground, raised the corn, cooked the food, such as it was, and loved their children just as mothers do the world over.

The little boys and girls had no schools, no books, no toys to keep them busy; so they spent their time playing about the tent or learning to fish and hunt and build canoes.

Perhaps you think they had lovely times with nothing to do; but I am afraid they sometimes had very hard times too.

If I were to tell you the way the tribes of Indians used to pounce down upon their homes, and slay the fathers, burn the mothers, and steal the children; and the way the children used to huddle into their tents during the cold, cold winters, I think you would not envy them at all.

L ITTLE indeed did the people of Europe know of this country across the water or of the strange copper-colored people living here.

Lately there has been raised in Boston a monument in memory of Lief, the brave Northman or Norseman, who in the year 1000 sailed from his home in Iceland and came to the coast of America.

The vessel in which this Norseman came was odd-looking enough. Sometimes it moved along by the aid of its sails, sometimes each man would take an oar and so help it to move over the water.

The first land these hardy Norsemen found was flat and stony near the sea; but inland high mountains could be seen from the shore. This was Newfoundland. Then on the Norsemen sailed farther south, pleased with the warmth of the sun and the green trees, the song birds and the rich fruits. At one place, supposed to be on the shores of Massachusetts or Rhode Island, one of their company found such delicious wild grapes and in such abundance that Lief gave to the country the name of Vinland.

So delightful was the climate and so rich the fruits that the little band built huts and planned to spend the winter in the beautiful Vinland. It was all very strange to them, the swiftly changing day and night; for in their own land they had only one long day and one long night in a year.

STATUE OF LEIF ERICSON, BOSTON

Spring came, and Lief hastened back to Iceland to tell of the wonderful new land. Other Norsemen came, and, later still, a Norwegian nobleman with his beautiful young wife, Gudfrida. A colony was formed and the people lived very happily here for three years or more.

Then for some reason the colony died out, and little is known of them except what has been found in old chronicles in Iceland.

In Newport, Rhode Island, is a strange old tower which was once believed to have been built by these Norsemen. Certainly it is old enough and strange enough; but as to the true story of the Norsemen in America, I suppose we shall never know it.

ROUND TOWER, NEWPORT

They were a brave, sturdy people and very fond of adventures. No people were ever so brave upon the sea as these Norsemen, and it is a great pity we do not know all about them.

These Northmen were the only Europeans who ever ventured far away from home. The people of the southern counties of Europe would look out across the sea and wonder; but they dared not venture out a great ways upon the ocean.

In fact, the ships in those days were small and frail, hardly more sea-worthy than a simple pleasure yacht to-day; and therefore very little had been learned of the oceans.

"There is," sailors of southern Europe would sometimes say, "an island far out at sea,a beautiful sunny island with rich fruits and beautiful flowers and great purple mountains. Rich gems and gold and silver sparkle about its shores, and in the centre on a gentle slope of ground stands the palace of the sea-god."

But although the southern sailors talked of it and the poets sang of it, no one had ever seen this land. Sometimes on a clear day, standing upon the shores and looking away out to where the sky seemed to dip down and meet the earth, some imaginative person would think he saw the island, and would call to his companions; but before they could come, behold, it always disappeared.

There was living at this time a good man whom the people called Saint Brandon. He was always trying to help others to do what to him seemed right and good; and when he heard of this island, he with another good priest sailed away towards it, hoping to find an opportunity to help the people who might be living there.