CHAPTER I.
THE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY OF AMERICA [Sidenote: Leif Ericson.] 1.

Leif Ericson discovers America, 1000 .-- In our early childhood many of us learned to repeat the lines:-- Columbus sailed the ocean blue In fourteen hundred, ninety-two.
[Sidenote: Leif discovers America, 1000.

_Higginson_, 25-30; _American History Leaflets_, No.

3.] We thought that he was the first European to visit America.

But nearly five hundred years before his time Leif Ericson had discovered the New World.