From "AMERICA, NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS." Chapter X. By
Rasmus B. Anderson. Copyright, 1883, by S. C. Griggs & Co.
In the year 986, the same year that he returned from Greenland, the
above-named Erik the Red moved from Iceland to Greenland, and among
his numerous friends, who accompanied him, was an Icelander by name
Herjulf.
Herjulf had a son by name Bjarne, who was a man of enterprise and fond
of going abroad, and who possessed a merchant-ship, with which he
gathered wealth and reputation. He used to be by turns a year abroad
and a year at home with his father. He chanced to be away in Norway
when his father moved over to Greenland, and on returning to Iceland
he was so much disappointed on hearing of his father's departure with
Erik, that he would not unload his ship, but resolved to follow his
old custom and take up his abode with his father. "Who will go with me
to Greenland?" he said to his men. "We will all go with you," replied
the men. "But we have none of us ever been on the Greenland Sea
before," said Bjarne. "We mind not that," said the men,--so away they
sailed for three days and lost sight of Iceland. Then the wind failed.
After that a north wind and fog set in, and they knew not where they
were sailing to. This lasted many days, until the sun at length
appeared again, so that they could determine the quarters of the sky,
and lo! in the horizon they saw, like a blue cloud, the outlines of an
unknown land. They approached it. They saw that it was without
mountains, was covered with wood, and that there were small hills
inland. Bjarne saw that this did not answer to the description of
Greenland; he knew he was too far south; so he left the land on the
larboard side and sailed northward two days, when they got sight of
land again. The men asked Bjarne if this was Greenland; but he said it
was not, "For in Greenland," he said, "there are great, snowy
mountains; but this land is flat and covered with trees." They did not
go ashore, but turning the bow from the land, they kept the sea with
a fine breeze from the southwest for three days, when a third land was
seen. Still Bjarne would not go ashore, for it was not like what had
been reported of Greenland. So they sailed on, driven by a violent
southwest wind, and after four days they reached a land which suited
the description of Greenland. Bjarne was not deceived, for it was
Greenland, and he happened to land close to the place where his father
had settled.
It cannot be determined with certainty what parts of the American
coast Bjarne saw; but from the circumstances of the voyage, the course
of the winds, the direction of the currents, and the presumed distance
between each sight of land, there is reason to believe that the first
land that Bjarne saw in the year 986 was the present Nantucket, one
degree south of Boston; the second Nova Scotia, and the third
Newfoundland. Thus Bjarne Herjulfson was the first European whose eyes
beheld any part of the present New England.