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Gormlaki Audacia Directory 04
Page 01
From the spot where I met Pedro Nunes--quite close to the junction of the Canuma River with the Madeira River--going down by river it would have been possible to reach Manaos in two or three days. Dom Pedro Nunes, however, with his expedition, could not return, nor sell me a boat, nor lend me men; so that I thought my best plan was to go back with him up the River Canuma and then the Secundury River, especially when I heard from the trader that the latter river came from the south-east--which made me think that perhaps I might find a spot at its most south-easterly point where the distance would not be great to travel once more across the forest, back to my men whom I had left near the Tapajoz.
Important, too, is the story of supposed Norse sea-rovers hither, derived from certain Icelandic manuscripts of the fourteenth century. It is a pleasing narrative, that of Lief Ericson's sail in 1000-1001 to Helluland, Markland, and at last to Vineland, and of the subsequent tours by Thorwald Ericson in 1002, Thorfinn Karlsefne, 1007-1009, and of Helge and Finnborge in 1011, to points still farther away. Such voyages probably occurred. As is well known, Helluland has been interpreted to be Newfoundland; Markland, Nova Scotia; and Vineland, the country bordering Mount Hope Bay in Bristol, R. I. These identifications are possibly correct, and even if they are mistaken, Vineland may still have been somewhere upon the coast of what is now the United States.
He was sick, too, at the time, with an intermittent fever. The paroxysm returned once in three or four days, leaving him in tolerable health during the interval. He went first into the country of the Sabines, northeast of Rome, where he wandered up and down, exposed continually to great dangers from those who knew that he was an object of the great dictator's displeasure, and who were sure of favor and of a reward if they could carry his head to Sylla He had to change his quarters every day, and to resort to every possible mode of concealment. He was, however, at last discovered, and seized by a centurion. A centurion was a commander of a hundred men; his rank and his position therefore, corresponded somewhat with those of a _captain_ in a modern army. Caesar was not much disturbed at this accident. He offered the centurion a bribe sufficient to induce him to give up his prisoner, and so escaped.
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