Days of the Discoverers

Part 1

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

GREAT DAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY SERIES

DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS

L. LAMPREY

Author of "In the Days of the Guild", "Masters of the Guild", etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY

FLORENCE CHOATE and ELIZABETH CURTIS

NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1921, by

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages

Made in the United States of America

TO FORESTA

Upon the road to Faerie, O there are many sights to see,-- Small woodland folk may one discern Housekeeping under leaf and fern, And little tunnels in the grass Where caravans of goblins pass, And airy corsair-craft that float On wings transparent as a mote,-- All sorts of curious things can be Upon the road to Faerie!

Along the wharves of Faerie-- There all the winds of Christendie Are musical with hawk-bell chimes, Carillons rung to minstrels' rimes, And silver trumpets bravely blown From argosies of lands unknown, And the great war-drum's wakening roll-- The reveille of heart and soul-- For news of all the ageless sea Comes to the quays of Faerie!

Across the fields to Faerie There is no lack of company,-- The world is real, the world is wide, But there be many things beside. Who once has known that crystal spring Shall not lose heart for anything. The blessing of a faery wife Is love to sweeten all your life. To find the truth whatever it be-- That is the luck of Faerie!

Above the gates of Faerie There bends a wild witch-hazel tree. The fairies know its elfin powers. They wove a garland of the flowers, And on a misty autumn day They crowned their queen--and ran away! And by that gift they made you free Of all the roads of Faerie!

CONTENTS

PAGE To Foresta v

I ASGARD THE BEAUTIFUL (1348) 1 The Viking's Secret 17

II THE RUNES OF THE WIND-WIFE (1364) 18 The Navigators (1415-1460) 34

III SEA OF DARKNESS (1475) 35 Sunset Song 48

IV PEDRO AND HIS ADMIRAL (1492) 50 The Queen's Prayer 65

V THE MAN WHO COULD NOT DIE (1493-1494) 66 The Escape 80

VI LOCKED HARBORS (1497) 81 Gray Sails 93

VII LITTLE VENICE (1500) 94 The Gold Road 104

VIII THE DOG WITH TWO MASTERS (1512) 105 Cold o' the Moon (1519) 117

IX WAMPUM TOWN (1508-1524) 121 The Drum 133

Part 2

X THE GODS OF TAXMAR (1512-1519) 134 The Legend of Malinche 148

XI THE THUNDER BIRDS (1519-1520) 150 Moccasin Flower 165

XII GIFTS FROM NORUMBEGA (1533-1535) 167 The Mustangs 181

XIII THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN (1528-1536) 182 Lone Bayou (1542) 195

XIV THE FACE OF THE TERROR (1564) 197 The Destroyers 214

XV THE FLEECE OF GOLD (1561-1577) 215 A Watch-dog of England (1583) 237

XVI LORDS OF ROANOKE (1584) 238 The Changelings 250

XVII THE GARDENS OF HELENE (1607-1609) 252 The Wooden Shoe 269

XVIII THE FIRES THAT TALKED (1610) 270 Imperialism 282

XIX ADMIRAL OF NEW ENGLAND (1600-1614) 284 The Discoverers 299

BIBLIOGRAPHY 300

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"'I will tell you where there is plenty of it'" (in color) Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

"'And Freya came from Asgard in her chariot drawn by two cats'" (in color) 4

"Nils marked out an inscription in Runic letters" 30

"The miniature globe took form as the children watched, fascinated" 44

"He proposed that Caonaba should put on the gift the Spanish captain had brought" 78

"A sapling, bent down, was attached to a noose ingeniously hidden" 86

"The natives seemed prepared to traffic in all peace and friendliness" (in color) 132

"Cortes flung about his shoulders his own cloak" 146

"Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard" (in color) 162

"Cartier read from his service-book" 176

"The creatures darkened the plain almost as far as the eye could see" 190

"'Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?'" 204

"Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard" 226

"If he had to wear her fetters, they should at least be golden" 244

"The Grand Master of the day entered the dining hall" 266

Part 3

DAYS OF THE DISCOVERERS

ASGARD THE BEAUTIFUL

A red fox ran into the empty church. In the middle of the floor he sat up and looked around. Nothing stirred--not the painted figures on the wooden walls, nor the boy who now stood in the doorway. This boy was gray-eyed and flaxen-haired, and might have been eleven or twelve years old. He was looking for the good old priest, Father Ansgar, and the wild shy animal eyeing him from the foot of the altar made it only too clear that the church, like the village, was deserted.

Father Ansgar was dead of the strange swift pestilence that was called in 1348 the Black Death. So also were the sexton, the cooper, the shoemaker, and almost all the people of the valley. A ship had come into Bergen with the plague on board, and it spread through Norway like a grass-fire. Only last week Thorolf Erlandsson had had a father and mother, a grandmother, two younger sisters and a brother. Now he was alone. In the night the dairy woman and the plowmen at Ormgard farm had run away. Other farms and houses were already closed and silent, or plundered and burned. Ormgard being remote had at first escaped the sickness.

Thorolf turned away from the church door and began to climb the mountain. At the lane leading to his home he did not stop, but kept on into the woods. It was not so lonely there.

Up and up he climbed, the thrilling scent of fir-balsam in his nostrils, the small friendly noises of the forest all about him. Only a few months ago he had come down this very road with his father, driving the cattle and goats home from the summer pasture. All the other farmers were doing the same, and the clear notes of the lure, the long curving horn, used for calling the cattle and signaling across valleys, soared from slope to slope. There was laughter and shouting and joking all the way down. Now the only persons abroad seemed to be thieving ruffians whose greed for plunder was more than their fear of the plague.

A thought came to the boy. How could he leave his father's cattle unfed and uncared for? What if he were to drive the cows himself to the saeter and tend them through the summer? He faced about, resolutely, and began to descend the hill.

Within sight of the familiar roofs he heard some one coming from the village, on horseback. It proved to be Nils the son of Magnus the son of Nils who was called the Bear-Slayer, with a sack of grain and a pair of saddlebags on a sedate brown pony. Nils was lame of one foot and no taller than a boy of nine, although he was thirteen this month and his head was nearly as large as a man's. He had been an orphan from baby-hood, and for the last three years had lived in the priest's house learning to be a clerk.

"Hoh!" called Nils, "where are you going?"

"To the farm to get our cattle and take them to the saeter. There is no one left to do it but me."

"Cattle?" queried the other interestedly, "She will be glad of that."

"She!" said Thorolf, "who?"

"The Wind-wife--Mother Elle, who used to sell wind to the sailors--the Finnish woman from Stavanger. She has gathered up a lot of children who have no one to look after them and is leading them into the mountains. She has Nikolina Sven's daughter Larsson, and Olof and Anders Amundson, and half a score of younger ones from different villages. She says that if it is God's will for the plague to come to the saeter it will come, but it is not there now, and it is in the valleys and the towns. She has gone on with the small ones who cannot walk fast, and left Olof and Anders and me to bring along the ponies with the loads. I'll help you drive your beasts."

Without trouble the lads got the animals out of the byres and headed them up the road. Norway is so sharply divided by precipitous mountain ranges and deeply-penetrating fiords, that it may be but a few miles from a farm near sea level to the high grassy pastures three or four thousand feet above it where the cattle are pastured in summer. The saeter maidens live there in their cottages from June to September, making butter and cheese, tending the herds and doing such other work as they can. The saeter belonging to Ormgard and its neighbors was the one chosen by Mother Elle as a refuge for her flock.

The forest of magnificent firs through which the road passed presently grew less somber, beginning to be streaked with white birches whose bright leaves twinkled in the sun. Then it reached the height at which evergreens cease to grow. The birches were shorter and sparser, and through the thinning woodland appeared glimpses of a treeless pasture dotted with scrubby low bushes and clumps of rushes. A glint of clear green water betrayed a small lake in a dip of the hills. And now were heard sounds most unusual in that lonely place, the high sweet voices of children.

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