Note 116 — PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERY.

In those turbulent times children were not brought up at home, but were sent to be trained up in the families of trusty friends. This was done to preserve the family line. Often, in some bloody feud, a whole household would be destroyed; yet the children being out at foster, would be preserved, and in due time come to represent the family. In Leif's day, heathenism and lawlessness were on the decline. We have a true picture given us by Dasent, of the way in which children were treated in the heathen age.

He says: "With us, an old house can stand upon a crooked, as well as upon a straight support. But in Iceland, in the tenth century, as in all the branches of that great family, it was only healthy children that were allowed to live. The deformed, as a burden to themselves, their friends, and to society, were consigned to destruction by exposure to the violence of the elements. This was the father's stern right, and, though the mothers of that age were generally blessed with robust offspring, still the right was often exercised. As soon as it was born, the infant was laid upon the bare ground, and, until the father came and looked at it, heard and saw that it was strong in lung and limb, took it up in his arms, and handed it over to the nurse; its fate hung in the balance, and life or death depended upon the sentence of its sire. That danger over, it was duly washed, signed with the Thunderer's [Thor's] holy hammer—the symbol of all manliness and strength—and solemnly received into the family as the faithful champion of the ancient gods. When it came to be named, there was what we should call the christening ale. There was saddling, mounting and riding among kith and kin. Cousins came in bands from all points of the compass: dependents, freedmen and thralls all mustered strong. The ale is broached, the board is set, and the benches are thronged with guests; the mirth and revelry are at the highest, when in strides into the hall, a being of awful power, in whom that simple age set full faith. This was the Norne, the wandering prophetess, sybil, fortune teller, a woman to whom it was given to know the weirds of men, and who had come to do honor to the child, and tell his fortune.... After the child was named, he was often put out to foster with some neighbor, his father's inferior in power, and there he grew up with the children of the house, and contracted those friendships and affections which were reckoned better and more binding than the ties of blood."—Antiquaires du Nord, 1859, pp. 8-9.