Lippincott Company in November, , the publishers requested the compiler to prepare a companion volume on similar lines. It is not for a class of readers, but for the multitude. Even the scholar, who will find little in its pages with which he is unfamiliar, will have ready reference to facts and fancies which are not always within convenient reach. For permission to select passages from copyrighted books, the grateful acknowledgments of the compiler are due to Messrs.
Anderson of Wisconsin, and Hon. Hampton L. Carson, of Philadelphia. Indebtedness is also acknowledged to writers and publishers whose copyrights have expired by limitation. Thus he was the first European whose eyes beheld any part of the American continent. But Bjarne made no exploration of the shores, and could take back no definite report of them.
What little he had to say, however, stimulated the curiosity of Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, and aroused a determination to go in quest of the unknown lands. The likelihood 10 seems to favor Fall River. Finding abundance of grapes, they called the place of their sojourn Vinland. But Leif is entitled to the credit of being the first pale-faced man who planted his feet on the American continent.
To cite a saga as authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale. Whatever such narrative may be, it is not folk-lore. These sagas are divisible into two well-marked classes. In the one class are the mythical or romantic sagas, composed of legendary materials; they belong essentially to the literature of folk-lore.
In the other class are the historical sagas, with their biographies and annals. These writings give us history, and often very good history. They come down to us in a narrative form which stamps them as accurate and trustworthy chronicles.
