THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY THE NORSEMEN AND THEIR RAVEN PILOT. The Romance of Discovery A Thousand Years of Exploration and the Unveiling of Continents BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION AUTHOR OF "THE MIKADO'S EMPIRE," "COREA, THE HERMIT NATION " BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND," AND " SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON " ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK T. MERRILL BOSTON W. A. WILDE & COMPANY 25 Bromfield Street \^ Copyright, 1897, By W. a. Wilde & Company. All rights reserved. THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. ^7 ^ 4 ©ctiicatcti TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS WHETHER BORN IN OR BROUGHT TO Cjje raorlti's Kcijj anti Better lEurope THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE. In this four hundredth anniversary year of John Cabot's landfall in North America, I have written, at the request of my publishers, this book entitled " The Romance of Discovery." It is intended to be the first of a series of three works in illustration of American history. The second volume will deal with the romance of colonization. The third will tell the story of American victories in war and diplomacy. Strictly speaking, the discovery and exploration of America form but one of many phases in an ever-continu- ing movement of the Aryan race ; yet I have tried to show how America was reached and populated from the West, as well as from the East. I have not treated the achievement of Columbus as though it were a strange and unconnected episode, but rather as a link in a chain of events which issued in a knowledge to mankind of the Old as well as of the New World. I have tried to do justice to the various nationalities of Europe that took part in making known the continent between Europe and Asia. If I have given to Portugal, Holland, and Japan more credit than is usually bestowed by American authors, I have no other apology to make than the love of truth and fair play. Neither in this volume nor in any other history of the discovery of America, do our English ances- 7 8 PREFACE. tors figure very largely. Providence seems to have or- dained that the Latin races should be pioneers, and that the English should enter into the labors of their southern brethren, in order that the best part of this continent might be won for the ideals of Christianized Germanic civilization. In the next volume, when the story of the colonies will be told, I trust that our English forefathers may receive the honors due them. While following the best authorities, sincerely endeavor- ing to give true history and to exclude what is doubtful and unauthenticated, I have tried to show the powerful influence of romantic ideas, of myths and of fairy tales, upon human action, — in a word, the power of the world of imagination and fancy upon this world of toil, and especially upon the discovery and exploration of America. I trust that not a little personal familiarity, through travel, with our own and some of the other countries and the routes referred to, will but add to the value of this work. My best thanks are due to my friend, William Nelson Noble, Esq., of Ithaca, whose criticisms and suggestions have been of service to me in the preparation of this work. May this humble contribution to the history of the noblest of all lands nourish American patriotism, while hastening — though perhaps only as the raindrop hastens the harvest — that federation of the nations of the earth which is implied in our common Christianity. W. E. G. Ithaca on Cayuga Lake, March 15, 1897. TABLE OF CONTENTS. I. The Oldest Route to Our Continent II. The First Families of America .... III. The Blond Sailors and their Raven Pilots . IV. The Norsemen dash out into the Deep Sea . V. How the Japanese helped to discover America VI. The Old Trade Routes to the East VII. Portugal founds a Training School of Discoverers VIII. Italy, the Home of Commerce and Exploration . IX. Columbus sails West to reach the Far East X, The Pope cuts the World in Half .... XI. John Cabot sails to seek Antilia and the Seven Cities XII. America receives its Name, and the World is sailed ROUND XIII. El Dorado, or the Gilded Chieftain XIV. The French among the Codfish and the Whales XV. The Land of Flowers and the Fountain of Youth XVI. A Lonely Tramp across the Continent . XVII. Coronado and the Exploration of New Mexico . XVIII. English Slave-Traders and Buccaneers . XIX. Drake ploughs an English Furrow round the World 9 13 20 28 35 45 55 65 79 90 98 105 112 126 134 146 161 168 183 195 lO CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XX. Raleigh's Dream of a New English Nation . . 207 XXI. Captain John Smith explores Virginia and the New England Coast 217 XXII. The Dutch attempt the Northeast Passage and open the Seas of the Orient 221 XXIII. The Orange, White, and Blue in the Hudson River 233 XXIV. Captain Block's Exploring Cruise in the Yacht " Restless " 246 XXV. The Bourbon Lilies in Canada. Champlain's Decisive Shot 258 XXVI. La Salle seeks China and discovers the Mississippi . 269 XXVII. Native-born American Explorers of the Eighteenth Century 283 XXVIII. Nineteenth Century Explorations West of the Mis- sissippi . 293 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE The Norsemen and their Raven Pilot . . , Frontispiece 33 Christopher Columbus at the La RAbida Monastery ... 88 I Cartier sets up a Cross in Newfoundland . . . . -138 A Brother Padilla finds the Cross set up by Coronado . .174 '1 Arrival of the "Half Moon" at the Hudson River. . . 238 II 4. THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. yi^o^ CHAPTER I. THE OLDEST ROUTE TO OUR CONTINENT. IN geology, America Is the old world ; but in human history It is the new one. Before the other continents were shaped by the hand of God, He had already lifted up out of the waters the northern portion of America. Before ever a road was made by man, great natural highways had been trodden by animals whose existence preceded his own. Lonor before His creatures had found them out, the paths of God were in the sea, and His ways were upon the waters. When first placed upon this globe, man was only a little child, who, as he grew up, but very gradually began to perceive the wisdom, love, and care of his Heavenly Father. Many thousands of years passed before he knew that there was one "gulf stream " in the Atlantic Ocean and another in the Pacific. Heat, light, and electricity are forces 13 14 THE ROMANCE OE DISCOVERY. which, ever since the creation, have been at ail times ready for the use of man ; but it is only in our own ao^e that he has tamed and harnessed them, even as he has tamed and harnessed the animals that serve him, and it is but recently that he has begun to do this. The great prophet tells us that God did not create the earth in vain ; He formed it to be in- habited. But the question arises. Did men spread over the earth like plants and animals '^. We have been taught that the race originated in what is called the " old world," — Asia. On that continent written history began ; and so Asia must be con- sidered as being the old home of civilization. Even so late as the fifteenth century, Europeans had never dreamed of a " new world." It is true that the Norweo'ians discovered Iceland in the ninth century, and Greenland in the tenth ; but these islands were believed to be a part of the old world, — Europe, Asia, and Africa. Indeed, neither the suggestion of a " new world," nor the idea of reaching Asia by sailing westward, could possibly have entered the mind of man, until he had first thought of the earth as being a globe, instead of being flat like a table. There had long been two natural passageways from Asia to the " new world," both of which were well used for many centuries before Europe had THE OLDEST ROUTE TO OUR CONTINENT. 1 5 acquired any knowledge of America. Let us con- sider them. Glancing along the line of the Arctic Circle, either on a globe or a Mercator's chart, we per- ceive that there is a region of ice extending through Norway, Russia, Siberia, Alaska, British America, Greenland, and Iceland, over which one might make a journey around the top of the world. Travellers going eastward from Lapland could have reached Lapland again by land journeys, ex- cept where, in their skin boats, they were com- pelled to encounter the perils of the sea, crossing the narrow Behring Strait and the three water pas- sages to Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. Along this route the " new world " was accessible to the inhabitants of the old one, who might reach it, going either east or west. We are certain that in prehistoric times, journeys must have been made over this thoroughfare ; for the Eskimo people, who lived in snow huts among the walrus and the polar bears, are found both in Asia and America. There is another road to America which God made, most probably, before there was a man on the earth. This is a water-route along which one might easily have journeyed, even in the childhood days of the race, when the boatman had no com- pass, chart, or sextant. Although there were no 1 6 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. lighthouses to guide his course, there were great landmarks pointing the directions of going and coming. We shall also find that both the winds and currents were most favorable for a trip east- ward to America. Very curiously, this ocean path- way is along a line of earthquakes, and of volcanoes which often furnish light at night and smoke by day, so that pillars of fire and of cloud have guided wanderers in the wilderness ocean, from the old seats of nations to the lonely continent, America. Man's first need is for food, then for clothing and shelter. Along this route the traveller can find plenty to eat, since nature has established, as it were, restaurants at stations along the way. More- over, shelter has been provided for him ; while all sorts of material for clothing, both that which grows out of the ground and that which grows on the backs of animals, have been ever at hand. Thus the Power, or the Providence, that made and furnished this great and wonderful highway was ever inviting the peoples of the old world to discover the new lands toward the sunrise. He not only made the ocean canal, but He beckoned onward. Let us look at this remarkable sea-road. In the Pacific Ocean, between the Tropic of Cancer and Micronesia, there is a great current which flows up from the equator (where, under the THE OLDEST ROUTE TO OUR CONTINENT. 1/ vertical rays of the sun, the water almost boils), and which, moving for the most part westward, meets the great hot drifts coming up past Borneo and the Philippines. Thus both streams form a great, deep blue river in the sea, which, rushing like a mill race, scours the front of Formosa and the long chain of Japanese Islands. It then crosses east- ward toward the Aleutian Islands, and, flowing down to Vancouver, passes along the whole west- ern front of the United States, Mexico, and Central America. It is a curious fact that in this warm and indigo-blue stream anything that can float will move over a great circle of the earth. Moreover, all the way from the Malay Archi- pelago to Vancouver, the water is comparatively shallow. Consequently it is a great feeding ground for fish and other marine creatures which supply nourishment to man, and attract from the interior highlands down to the coast, such other animals as also prey upon this sea-food. Even a savage boy, without much trouble, might easily make a journey along this ocean canal, because he would always have landmarks to guide his course ; for all along there are thousands of islands full of inlets and har- bors, which are like stepping-stones and may be used for resting-places. The many-colored waters indicate, like a barometer, the condition of the weather and furnish daily probabilities. Even the 1 8 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. fishes and the birds are good pilots, and one need rarely be troubled with any terrors of the lonely deep. Thus, along a great circle of the earth, there is a well-marked ocean pathway, illumined by light- giving volcanoes, provided with the proper winds to bend the sail and furnish motor power, having a temperature substantially uniform along the whole route, and abundantly supplied with food. This great, warm stream, the " Nile of the Pacific," de- posits over the beds of landlocked areas, tropical silt and lower forms of marine creatures which feed fish and animals, thus contributing to the life of man. The best fishing-grounds of the world are in this ocean river, along which, as we shall see, America received most of its inhabitants who came from Asia. There is this great difference between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. To navigate the ocean between America and Europe, one must sail boldly out from sight of land without mountain peaks or islands to guide his course. In the far north, there is only the little Faroe Island group between Iceland and Norway. Further south there is nothing ; and the route from continent to conti- nent shows only unbroken water. What wonder that on the ancient maps the Atlantic Ocean was indicated as being a great "Sea of Darkness".? THE OLDEST ROUTE TO OUR CONTINENT. 1 9 What wonder that no American Indian ever drifted away to Europe ? It is otherwise in the Pacific Ocean, which is spotted all over with islands, especially in the north and south. Above and below the Equator is a great archipelago. Along the Tropic of Cancer are the Hawaiian and other islands in mid-ocean, and the Japanese and Philippine islands are nearer the con- tinent. In the northern Pacific are the Kuriles, — well called " the smokers," — with the Aleutian Islands not far off, and then Alaska. Let us now look at these Asians who became the first Americans, whom the sailors from Norway called " Skralligs," and the discoverer from Italy named " Indians." CHAPTER II. THE FIRST FAMILIES OF AMERICA. THERE are many ways of learning history. We read it not only from written documents, monuments, and coins, but also from the science of ethnology, from geological relics, from language, and from what is written on the body of man. We know that civilization always springs up along the water, in warm river valleys, such as those of the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Ganges, and Yang-tse. While the people having writing and books — the Egyptians, Assyrians, Hindoos, and Chinese — were growing into nations, there was a human stream of the dark-skinned races, reddish, brown, and yellow, moving along natures oldest highway from Asia into America. One set of peoples was of the northern or Eskimo type, like their cousins in Siberia. Another set had red skins, like the copper-colored Formosan head-hunters of to-day. When southern Europeans first reached the West Indies in the fifteenth century, the Eskimos occupied the region just below and inside the Arc- tic Circle. The various Indian tribes roaming over 20 THE FIRST FAMILIES OF AMERICA. 21 what is now the United States, north and east, seemed to have developed in and migrated from the valley of the Columbia River. In the Missis- sippi valley were the buffalo hunters, who lived and migrated with these animals. In the east, the Iroquois and Algonquins lived on fish and deer, and had maize lands. In what is now the south- west of the United States and Mexico, there was a great group of tribes living in the dry regions. In South America, the home of mighty forests as large as Europe, were many tribes of Indians. In Peru they had developed something like civilization. Although the inhabitants of the whole continent of America seem, on first view, so different, and although there were one hundred and twenty sepa- rate families of languages, yet all the tribes in America except the Eskimos were much alike in one great social principle. Marriage must be inside the tribe and descent remain in the female line. There were many handicrafts and cunning devices of hunter, fisherman, warrior, farmer, or weaver; but nothing absolutely new was invented on this continent. Every one of the aboriginal American arts — of industry, of war, and of orna- ment — can be matched in Asia, Oceanica, or Eu- rope. All the myths and folklore of the Indians point to their origin in the northwest and to Asia beyond. 22 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. How numerous the inhabitants of America were in 1492, we do not know, but we are certain that the population was densest where food was plenti- ful and readily obtained, and in regions of country where paths and communications were easy and natural. Great areas of the continent, some of them larger than Europe, were almost wholly un- inhabited by man. In British America there is a forest seventeen hundred miles long from east to west, and a thousand miles wide from north to south. This was not used or traversed by the red men until game grew scarce in the Hudson's Bay region, when trappers were compelled to go farther afield for flesh or furs. Another stretch of timber land covers a large part of the state of Washington and British Columbia. In the valley of the Ama- zon River, we are in darkest South America. The thicket, covering much of northern Brazil and the eastern portions of those countries between Brazil and the Pacific, is twenty-one hundred miles long by thirteen hundred miles wide. Very few people dwelt in these regions. So also in the desert of Nevada, and in the great dry and thirsty lands of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, but few human beings could exist away from the river valleys. As a rule, the mountains, the thick forests, and the waterless regions were but slightly used or occupied. We may say at once. THE FIRST FAMILIES OF AMERICA. 23 that over a large portion of the Americas, the only human habitations were those of hunters and occasional wanderers. The mass of the aborigines o:athered alons^ the watercourses, at the river mouths on the seacoast, and in fertile valleys; in a word, where they could get food, find good trails on land, and secure water-ways for their canoes. SeekinQ- food and makino^ war were the chief occupations of the first Americans, who were mostly of the stone age. Their land journeys were on foot. The Eskimos and Canadian Indians had dogs to pull their sleds. Down in Peru they used a little camel, the llama, but the chief means of transportation were the human back and legs. Even in their savage state, men and women had many wants. The fishermen living near the sea- shore needed what the hunters dwelling in the interior could furnish. Thus barter grew up. The seacoast tribes furnished salt, dried clams, oysters, and fish, shells for wampum and ornament ; while the interior tribes supplied meat, skins, flint arrow-heads, pipe-stone, and tobacco. The women did the drudgery of tilling the fields, cooking, and housekeeping, besides rearing the children ; while the men made weapons and tools, hunted, fished, and fought. Who built the mounds, we do not know, nor can 24 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. we tell whether the mound-builders were a race separate from and previous to the red Indians ; or, whether, as is most probable, they were the same people. But centuries before any white man from Europe saw America, there was a lively commerce between these mound-builders ; for among their remains we find obsidian knives from Mexico and the Yellow Stone Park, mica from North Carolina, gold, silver, meteoric iron, and shells, from the Gulf of Mexico. Indian commerce in its total bulk was enormous. In many old quarries we find the aban- doned workshops of these ancient artificers, and hard by the unnoticed relics along old streams, once dammed by beavers, we see their trapping grounds. The industries of the Americans were varied and remarkable. The introduction of new weapons from Europe, like firearms, axes, and iron arrow- heads, destroyed the old Indian trades and work- shops, just as steam and improved machinery, applied to weaving in England, have left the ruins of many water-power mills along the inland streams. European tools, clothing, money, and hundreds of other things which the red men wanted, threw out of employment thousands of expert native workmen and left the old workshops, in the quarries, the for- est, and the seashore, deserted and useless. In prehistoric times, before white men destroyed the old native crafts, some of the Indian specialists THE FIRST FAMILIES OF AMERICA. 25 were expert bow-makers ; others chipped arrow- heads. One man made spear-points or chisels, another scrapers, and still others dishes or jewellery. The fingers of some squaws were nimble in mould- ing earthen vessels, others were expert in weaving and embroidering, while still others gathered up shells in summer and strung them into wampum during the winter. The younger and stronger men became famous as warriors or hunters and rose to be chiefs. There was almost as much division of labor and consequent expertness in some tribes as there is in modern civilized life. Wherever groups of Indians who were able to do something more than hunt or fish, could plant and raise crops and store food away and engage in traf- fic, there a higher state of civilization was reached. In the long run, the farmer is always able to excel the mere hunter. In Peru the Indians knew how to make hard metal tools and build stone fortresses, and possessed well-laid-out cities. They wove cloth, made wonderful gold ornaments, cut statues, and had a powerful military organization. In Mexico and in Peru, also, they irrigated their lands. They were expert in digging canals, in making dikes, and in chiselling and polishing hard stone. In Arizona they had towns and fortresses on the tops of rocks, with dwellings hollowed out in the cliffs, and they had made some progress in the arts. In New 26 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. York, between the Niagara and the Hudson, the five Iroquois tribes had great farms of corn, beans, squashes, and pumpkins, and could store up large quantities of food. They built long houses of tim- ber and bark, each of which held a number of fami- lies. They had well-situated and fortified towns, while their commerce was highly developed. Their confederacy was a remarkable political structure, and there were among them not only thousands of fierce warriors, but many leaders skilled in state- craft and diplomacy. So it was not an empty wilderness which the Norsemen or Columbus were to discover, but a land populated with millions of human beings, whose social life, languages, political and military methods, arms and architecture, commerce and trade, were well worth the study of the new-comers from Europe. They even had some art in communi- cating ideas and various methods of handing down tradition. The native Americans were probably as religious in their way as the Europeans who con- quered them were in theirs. The men of the stone age had already discovered and occupied this con- tinent lonQ[ before the invaders from across the Atlantic appeared with iron, agriculture, writing, and a superior religion. As had already happened on a smaller scale in India, China, Japan, and other countries, so here in THE FIRST FAMILIES OF AMERICA. 2/ America the same thing took place and the same story may be told again. It was one of discovery, exploration, colonization, conquest, with much cru- elty on the side of the conquerors and some improvement of the aborigines. In most portions the amalgamation of conqueror and conquered fol- lowed. In others the ancient inhabitants were first enslaved and then, partially or wholly, converted to the imported faith. It was a mutual discovery which the Americans and Europeans made of each other; and it is more than probable that they who had more light did not act with any more reason or righteousness. How the different nations who dis- covered the aborigines treated them, — the one for the most part preserving and the other destroying, — we shall learn in the course of our three sepa- rate narratives, "The Romance of Discovery," "The Romance of Colonization," and " The Romance of Conquest." The first of these North American people ever seen by Europeans were called " Skralligs," as we shall see. CHAPTER III. THE BLOND SAILORS AND THEIR RAVEN PILOTS. UP in the far north of Europe, in the high lati- tudes where the summer days are very long, often with eighteen or twenty hours of sun or twi- light, but where the winter days are very short, live the hardy Scandinavians. They fill all the region between the Baltic and the North Seas, and between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Atlantic Ocean. Theirs is a great mountain land full of dark and gloomy forests, with uncounted lakes and streams which never dry up, because fed by the endless snows and ice. Along the shore of Norway, from the North Cape, where one can see the summer sun at midnight, down to " the naze," or nose, runs a coast which is walled with mountains, but pierced all along with fiords. These are deep narrow cracks in the earth's crust, full of water, with many a cove and beach, where boats can be built and launched, and where hardy men and women are reared. Together with the fiords are numberless islands, rich in meat and eggs, and birds and fish. Here is situated one of 28 THE BLOND SAILORS AND THEIR RAVEN PILOTS. 29 nature's great schools for the training of brave and hardy sailors. In this great region of the Norsemen, which in- cludes Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, has long lived a fair-haired, blue-eyed race ; hardy, vigorous, and daring, fond of the sea, and not afraid of its waves or storms. How long these blond folks have lived here, cannot be reckoned. Asfes acjo their ancestors dwelt among these same rocks and waters. They did not become Christians until about the time of Christianity's millennial year. While in the warm and rich region of the Mediterranean, great cathedrals and splendid edifices in stone rose to the glory of God in Christ, and the stories of Bethlehem, of Nazareth, of Jerusalem, and of Calvary were fa- miliar in every household, these people in the far north were still mostly pagans. Some tribes of them, marching overland, but oftener rowing out in their barges, and sailing in their ships, had reached the shores of Netherlands, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Besides war and slaughter, battle and burning, they had made settlements. Some had even gone to the Mediterranean Sea and sailed as far as Constantinople. Coming back, they told of the wonders of the warm lands where oranges, lemons, and olives grew. Fierce and bloody were these pagan Norsemen who enjoyed nothing more than a raid upon French 30 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. or Dutch market towns, many a one of which they left in ashes. They also liked to go into Christian churches and defile or burn the sacred emblems, of whose meaning they knew nothing. For centu- ries. Christian people kneeling on their church floors prayed every Sunday in their litany, " From the fury of the Norsemen, good Lord, deliver us." When the English caught the robbers, Dane or Norse, they used to skin them alive and nail their hides to the church doors. In the Netherlands they cut off their heads on the wet sea-beach. Yes, these men, ancestors of many of us, were pagans. They had a mythology which explained to them the world and creation. It did not tell of a garden of Eden, so warm that a man and his wife could live without clothing and not feel cold, but of an original northern chaos, or rather of two worlds. In one, there were ice-cold streams, icebergs, and snow crystals. In the other, which was bright and hot, sat a guardian deity with a flaming sword. When the two worlds met in conflict, and the sparks and the frost vapor came together, large drops tric- kled down. These took the form of an immense giant named Ymer, and of a great cow^ named Aud- humbla. The cow nourished the mighty giant and fed herself by licking the salty frost crystals on the rocks. After three days a man named Bure was produced, and there being a giantess named Bestla, THE BLOND SAILORS AND THEIR RAVEN PILOTS. 31 three sons were born. These, when they grew up, slew the giant Ymer, and out of his dead body they made the present world. So, to the boys and girls who grew up in the old Norse world, the earth was the giant's flesh, the ocean was his blood, the rocks were his bones, the trees of the forest were his hairs, the great, round, vaulted sky was his skull, and the clouds were his brains. However, the giants had not all died, and there were wars between them and the men. Dwarfs and elves lived on the earth, while beneath it were the inhabitants of the lower world. The gods and the men were friends, but the giants and the underworld people were the enemies of both gods and men. Wonderful is the Norse mythology, which these first discoverers of the Faroe Islands and Iceland believed. Curiously enough, showing how mythol- ogy is true to nature, of all the giants, ^gir, the ruler of the sea, is the wealthiest. So rich indeed is he, that he once entertained all the sfods in his magnificent hall in grand style. It was over the seas of ^gir that the hardy Norseman rowed and sailed to reach the rich lands of the South, and seize the wealth of towns and churches. The giant's blood, as they called the ocean, gave them food, and ever tempted them to adventure and booty. 32 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. One of these Northmen discovered Greenland, but did not name it. Later, in the year 982, Erik the Red, who had been banished there from Iceland, gave an example to all land agents and speculators, who wish to sell lands, whether valuable or worthless, by writing an attractive advertisement. Erik named this gray and white country of rock, ice, and polar bears, Greenland, in order to attract colonists. The Norwegians were the first Europeans to see and dwell in America. In their days there was no compass, chart, sextant, or chronometer. The splen- did equipments of modern ships and the science of navigation based on mathematics, were unknown ; but there were bold hearts, iron-like muscles, hardy bodies, and strong wills. God's lights in the skies were theirs. The sun, rising and setting every day, gave them true direction east and west, — a path of golden light, — as they thought, over the blood of Ymer. At night the glorious stars, set into the round skull of the world-giant, shed their mild radi- ance. How easy to sail straight westward ! No wonder that Iceland was early discovered, colonized, and made one of the homes of these blond and blue-eyed people. No wonder, either, that Greenland was so early known and visited that when the South Europeans learned geog- raphy from the Arabs and began to think of the matter, they considered Greenland to be a part THE BLOND SAILORS AND THEIR RAVEN PILOTS. 33 of the old world, because it belonged to European people. But what happened, when clouds hid sun and star, when mist and fog covered the surface of the ocean, when adverse winds blew and terrible currents drove the ships out of their courses, and storms howled and roared, sending rain, sleet, and ice into the faces and over the bodies of the hardy mariners? Then, to the Norsemen's fancy, the brains of Ymer were blowing about, hiding the light and the land. With- out chart or compass, what could these vikings — men of the viks or bays, yet true kings of the sea — do.^ In the earlier world, as among the Indians of the forest to-day, the average man lived nearer to the beasts and birds. The creatures of fin, fur, feather, and hoof were like companions. The man often lived under the same roof with his horses, cows, and pet birds, and when he died, he wanted them buried with him. He understood the language, motions, and powers of the brutes better than does the civil- ized man in our time. So, when the Norseman sailed far from land, he took a pilot with him. This pilot was black and feathered. It was a raven. Be- fore ever he had heard of Father Noah and his ark, he took this ancient friend of man, yet so much feared, in his ship with him. Far out at sea, be- yond the roar of breakers, or the scent of smoke or 34 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. trees, or even amid wintry gales and cloud-covered skies, or in fog or mist, the raven was set free. While in sight, its course was watched with intense straining eyes. If the bird came back, then land was not near. If it did not return, the men rowed with all speed in the direction of its flight, and soon they landed on some shore. Robert Browning, the poet, once wrote : — " God guides me and the bird." In the story of Ararat, of the Norseman, and of the first Italian in America, "our little brothers of the air," with wisdom taught them by the Almighty, found for Noah, for Leif, and for Columbus, the path to land. CHAPTER IV. THE NORSEMEN DASH OUT INTO THE DEEP SEA. IT was in a.d. 986 that Bjarne, an Icelander, while on his way to Greenland with Erik the Red, to help make a settlement in the new country, had a most wonderful adventure. Three days after they had left Iceland the wind blew from the north, and continued during several days, driving them far southward and into a fosf. When at length the sun appeared, so that they could dis- cover east and west, and north and south, they found land along the horizon, but no part of it corresponded with Greenland. On this new and strange shore they saw no high mountains, but only wooded hills. Being so far out of their course, they did not venture to leave their ship, but, turning round, sailed northward and finally reached Greenland, having twice, in the meanwhile, sighted land on the left. What could this new land have been, if not some part of northeastern America ? The story of Bjarne's adventure is told in the Sagas, which are 35 36 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. famous old Norwegian books of poetry. It is be- lieved by some, that Bjarne first saw some part of Maine or Massachusetts, then Nova Scotia, and then Newfoundland. A few years later Bjarne came to Norway and told of his discovery. Leif Erikson, who heard him, was mightily excited, and wanted to see that new land again. So he bought Bjarne's ship, and gathered thirty-five hardy men to go out and look upon these new lands. In the same kind of stoutly ribbed, undecked boats, such as have been dug up occasionally out of the old vikings' graves, let us imagine Leif Erikson and his crew setting out from Norway in the year A.D. looo. Leif is a hardy Icelander, thirty years of age. He is not a pagan, but has become a Christian ; for the bright light of the new religion is breaking over the dark forests of Norway, and already the harper and minstrels are singing songs in the king's court, about Bethlehem and its mes= sage of peace. Like so many later ones, this is a missionary expedition. King Olaf wants Leif to go to Green- land, and preach the story of Christ and the Cross to the natives. Without religion, America would never have been discovered by Norse, Spaniard, or Italian. This is the first motive that launches the ship and drives it westward ; but there is also another which appeals to the spirit of daring and NORSEMEN DASH OUT INTO THE DEEP SEA. 37 adventure, and by this motive the hardy young man Leif is impelled. We can imaoine his startino^. A Norse boat at that time was heavily built, with long planks or strips of wood riveted with iron and braced with knee-timbers, stoutly tied with thongs. In the strong gunwales, the oar locks were solid and part of the wood. The huge prow rose up in the form of a dragon, or was shaped like the head of a cow. The captain stood on a platform near the bow, for there was no deck. The keel and swelling sides were so arranged that when run on shore the boat could be covered over and used as a house. In time of favorable winds, the seats of the rowers were empty, and their battle shields hung along the gunwales. Instead of a high stern-post and rudder, there was on the right, near the end, a long and wide oar, — the " steer-board," from whence we get our word "star-board." On a fair day their short and small flags would flutter at the mast- head. Anciently, these had pictures of the raven or dragon on them. Probably, since Leif was a Christian, there would be at the top of the mast, and above its one big sail, the figure of the cross, which might also be on its pennon. Perhaps he carried a cage of ravens as winged pilots. The comforts of life could not have been very numerous on such a craft. Their food, of the 38 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. roughest kind, was generally eaten uncooked. When the breeze was stiff behind, they need not row ; but they had to toil all day at the oar when the wind was not favorable. They were constantly wet in stormy weather. In winter, with beards hung with icicles or coated with rime, sleet on their eyebrows and hair, and ice covering their clothes and the boat side, their hardships were such as only the strongest men could endure. Neverthe- less, in the year of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, in 1893, a party of hardy young Norwe- o^ians crossed the Atlantic in a craft built on the model of an ancient viking's ship. The Sao^as tell us that Leif found the coast seen by Bjarne far to the south of Greenland. The first landfall, which was probably Newfoundland, he named the Country of Slates, or of flat stones. The second, which was probably Nova Scotia, he called Woodland. Finally, he reached some part of the continent to the southwest, which might have been the valley of the Charles River, near Boston ; or, possibly, Rhode Island, which place he named Vineland, or Wine Land. Here he settled and spent the winter. On ac- count of the great number of wild grapes growing there, he gave the country its name. The Sagas go on to tell us about the grain, the grapes, and the fish, as well as about the natives, who do not NORSEMEN DASH OUT INTO THE DEEP SEA. 39 seem to have been very friendly. These " Skral- hgs " were probably not Eskimos, but red Indians. In the springtime, when the days began to be long, and the great features of the sky and land- marks could be easily distinguished, Leif made his voyage homeward. On the way he was able to rescue fifteen men from shipwreck, and so was called Leif the Lucky. When his father died in Greenland, he became the chief of the colony, and lived until a.d. 1021. Leif had a brother named Thorvald. This man started off in a single ship, and with his people lived three winters in Vineland, making explorations meanwhile south and north. From first to last women have had a great deal to do with the mak- ing of America. It was a Norse woman who now proposed a colony in Vineland, instead of a camp. In the year 1006 a Norwegian named Thorfinn arrived in Greenland. He married a widow named Gudrid, and she induced him to sail with his ships to Vineland, and make permanent dwelling there. They took with them cattle and other things nec- essary for their homes. During the first winter, which was very severe, a son was born of the couple and named Snorre. From this child, who first saw light in the yet unnamed America, the great Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen claimed descent. In the springtime they moved to the spot where Leif 40 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Erikson had spent the winter. After three years Thorfinn, with part of his colonists, returned to Greenland. After that, trading voyages were common be- tween Greenland and Vineland. The ships brought timber to Greenland, where it was very much needed for the building of Christian churches. One of the missionary bishops of Greenland, Erik Upsi, went to Vineland in 1121. The accounts in the Sagas of the voyagers are very full of detail, but are not of the kind that we should like to have, so as to prove absolutely that the Norsemen really occupied a part of what is now the United States. These men were hardy sailors, but not scholars, prophets, or scientific men. They tell of killing bears, of finding eggs when they were hungry, of burying their chief who was slain in battle, of a rock shaped like a ship's keel, of broad and flat- faced natives who wanted to sell furs, of the beaches where they hauled up their ships, and of the strong tides and currents, — just the things that do most interest sailors. We even learn what articles of commerce they sought and carried away. Voyages to Vineland continued until that awful event in the history of Norway which broke the spirit of the Norsemen, and made them the quiet and unadventurous people which they continued to be from the time of Columbus until the modern NORSEMEN DASH OUT INTO THE DEEP SEA. 4 1 revival of marine enterprise under Nordenskjold, who found the Northeast Passage, and sailed over the north of Asia to Japan in 1879, and Nansen, who, in 1895, nearly reached the North Pole. The event which stopped further exploration and com- merce with America was the awful plague called the Black Death. It broke out at the beQ:inninQ^ of the second quarter of the fourteenth century, and until A.D. 1350 ravaged the country, depopulating the valleys and seacoasts, and sweeping off one third of the nation. The last record of a Norse ship that went to Vineland after timber is of a.d. 1347. From that time forth a great fog, such as blots out the sight of sky and land from the sailor, falls upon history, and we see no more of the hardy Norsemen in North American waters. It is yet uncertain whether the Norsemen dis- covered America precisely as their friends and admirers, led by Professor Eben Horsford, think they did. We cannot tell exactly where the Norse- men had their settlement, although the Sagas seem reasonably clear on the general subject. Iceland's oldest historian, Ari, as early as 1130, speaks of the discovery of Vineland. He got his information from his uncle, who, when a boy, had lived in Greenland. There he learned about the discov- eries from an old man, who had himself accom- panied Erik the Red from Iceland in 986, and had 42 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. seen Leif Erikson when he came back from Vine- land. From Ari the Wise came the later accounts of the discovery of Vineland. One account was got by a bishop from a peasant on Flatty Island, off the west coast of Iceland, and in the fourteenth century this islander's story was put into writing. Whether Columbus learned about America from the Scandinavian sailors whom he must have met at the ports, or from Norse books and writings, we cannot tell ; but this we do know : (i) That the Pope and other foreign potentates in the thirteenth century sought the friendship of Haakon, King of Norway, " in view of his power and experience on the sea." (2) That Adam of Bremen, writing late in the eleventh century, makes distinct mention of the regions which had been discovered by the Norse- men. After describing Iceland and Greenland, he tells us that the nephew of Canute the Great " men- tioned another land which had been discovered in this ocean [the Atlantic] which is called Vineland, because the vine producing excellent wine grows there spontaneously, and corn grows there abun- dantly without being sown. This we know not from fabulous conjecture, but from positive state- ments of the Danes." It may have been that Columbus saw this book, which was written in Latin and circulated throughout Europe. Columbus vis- NORSEMEN DASH OUT INTO THE DEEP SEA. 43 ited Iceland in February, 1477, and could easily have heard about the lands discovered by Leif Erikson. (3) That Gudrid, the widow of Thorfinn, after her return to Norway, made a pilgrimage to Rome, where she was well received. It would be strange indeed if her tonsfue had been silent about her wonderful experiences. Many still believe it was in the region back of Boston and in the basin of the -Charles River that the Norsemen lived, traded and fought the Skral- liors or savage natives, and that the traditional and almost mythical city of Norumbega lay there. In- deed, my friend, the late Professor Eben Horsford, was so confident that this was the place described in the SaQ-as that he bouoht several acres of land near Maiden, Mass., and there erected a memorial to the Norse discoverers. This is a handsome tower of boulders and pebbles, having upon its front a polished granite tablet giving a translation of the passages from the Sagas which show what the Norsemen collected and exported. These were Masur-wood, or burls, fish, furs, and agricultural products. He thought that the name Norumbega was only the Indian's corruption of Norveger (Norway). Near Watertown, Professor Horsford believed he found docks, dams, walls, basins, ter- raced places of assembly, and at Maiden, a fort. Whatever we may believe, it is certain that the 44 THE ROMANCE OE DISCOVERY. Norsemen were the pathfinders for Columbus and the pioneers of later discoveries. Before their time, all the other peoples of Europe practised naviga- tion only by moving along the shore with land- marks in view. The idea of striking out into the unmarked and pathless ocean, and through the imagined " sea of darkness," was unknown to the more southern European peoples, and it was never attempted by them until after the Northmen had done it. On the contrary, the Norwegians, who probably invented, or re-invented the keel, struck boldly out of sight of land with nothing but the great lights of heaven to guide, and with only the ravens for their pilots — even as these had helped Elijah and directed Noah before their time. Thus as perfectly as in a mathematical demonstration, they proved the possibility of navigating the deep and unmarked ocean. It is not likely that in the future progress of research, the modest honors of the Norsemen, in the history of discovery, will ever be taken from them. CHAPTER V. HOW THE JAPANESE HELPED TO DISCOVER AMERICA. WE think it a great thing that between the Norsemen, Columbus, Cabot, and Amerigo Vespucci, America was discovered ; but it was almost as wonderful that the old world itself was found out. It required many hundreds of years to learn the boundaries and form of the old world of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. While the Norsemen were rowing their galleys about the coasts of northern and southern Europe, and even driving their keels westward in deep-sea navigation, those Asiatic Norsemen, the Japanese, were finding out their far eastern world. They were brave men, not afraid to leave the shore. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, their sailors roamed southward into the Riu Kiu archi- pelago and to, Formosa, which they conquered. At the same time their daring pirates and navigators were scouring the seas and coasts north, south, and west. Landing in Tartary, Korea, and China, these Oriental brown men struck the same terror among the peoples of these countries as the Occi- 45 46 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. dental blonds did among Europeans. To this day, the name and the dread of the Japanese are upon all the coast peoples from Kamtchatka to Siam and the Philippines. The mothers of Chi- nese and Korean children still scare their naughty boys and girls by the name of the "Wo-jin," or Japanese. In the course of centuries, especially during that very long peace, in Tycoon times, from the days of the Pilgrims to those of Commo- dore Perry, these exploits of the ancient and medi- ceval Japanese buccaneers and raiders became fairy tales, like that of "Jack the Giant-Killer." This folk-lore is still told not only in Japanese, but in other languages, though with many a curious variation. The Japanese had something to do not only with the discovery of America, but also with the populat- ing and making of it. Ages ago they noticed the dark blue river of warm water flowing northward in the ocean's mass, and they named it Kuro Shiwo or the Black Stream. Into this indigo-blue current, during centuries upon centuries, Japanese fishermen and sailors, often with their wives and. children, have been caught in storms and driven out to sea. Help- less in the Black Stream, they have drifted along, often to lingering death by thirst or starvation, but often also to new life in a new world. Landing on the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, British America or HOW JAPANESE HELPED DISCOVER AMERICA. 47 California, they have intermixed with the natives and their names have been lost, though many of their words survive. All this is a matter not of mere guess, but of Japanese tradition and history, and the actual rec- ord of hundreds of cases. Many of those picked up at sea, thousands of miles from Japan, I have known personally. Japanese coins and other ob- jects have been often found at many points along the Pacific American coast. Not a few Japanese words are easily recognized in the speech of the northwestern coast Indians. Without any doubt, a notable part of the population of North America has come from that Japanese archipelago which, since 1894, extends from the Philippines to Kamt- chatka. Every year in our century, Japanese and other waifs, living or dead, have been noted or rescued at sea. In the days before general Euro- pean navigation, they drifted helplessly to ruin or were stranded on the coast which curves all the way round from Nippon to Mexico. It is remarkable that both the great ocean cur- rents were discovered by Americans. Dr. Benjamin Franklin, in crossing the Atlantic, noticed the seam between the warm and cold water and the difference in color, and called the attention of the sailors to it. The Pacific Stream, the Black Current of the Japanese, was first discovered, that is, scientifically 48 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. studied, located, explained, and mapped by a brill- iant American naval officer, Captain Silas Bent, who visited Japan with Captain Glynn in 1850, and with Commodore M. C. Perry in 1853-54. There have been some who think that the Chi- nese also knew about America, but the book about Fu-san, or Fusang, is probably nothing more than a description by some Chinese traveller of Fu-san in Korea, and does not concern America. Never- theless, it is quite probable that not a few Chinese sailors have drifted up to Kuro Shivvo, and landed on the shores of America. For ages the Japanese have had notions, such as we find in romances and fairy tales, about Fusang (or Fuso) and Horai, which might have been in America, if anywhere. Many other myths, such as the Amazon's country, or island inhabited only by women, the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and various sorts of Utopias, were common in the Mikado's empire. No Japanese or Chinese ever " discovered " America in any other way than that of Madoc, the Welshman, that is, in imagination, or by the pure guesswork of later glori- fiers. By a true discoverer, we mean one who not only finds unknown land, but tells, writes, or sends back word about his discovery. In another way than by helping to populate its shores, the Japanese contributed very efficiently to the historic discovery of America, in 1492. We HO IF JAPANESE HELPED DISCO VER AMERICA. 49 are learning more and more to look into all the causes of a great event or movement, such as the revelation of a new world. We know that a good deal more than the dream of Columbus, or the favor or disfavor of a Spanish king and queen, was be- hind the discovery of this continent. One must know the history of the world in order to understand that of the United States. The coast- line of Africa was first explored and the new water route eastward to India found by the Portuguese. Then came the thought of sailing westward to get to India on the other side. All the first discoverers of America were Italians, — Columbus, the Cabots, Vespucci, Verrazano, and Fray Marcus. Why and how did Portugal lead the world in discovery .f* And why did Italy follow so soon after .^ It was because the eastern routes by sea and land, over the Mediterranean and by caravans, were shut up, completely stopping all trade. Who shut them ? We answer, first the Saracens in North Africa, and then the Turks in Constanti- nople. Yet, what moved the Turks westward from their old ancestral seats around the Caspian Sea, causing them to advance to the west upon Syria, Constanti- nople, and the old Byzantine Empire, and into Egypt } The Saracens had, centuries before, over- flowed North Africa, and even occupied much of 50 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Spain and Portugal, but the Turks completely blocked the only remaining routes north and south to the Indies. What led or drove the Turks into their western movement, making them press upon Europe ? To this we answer. It was the Mongols, and the Mongols were very probably led by a Japanese. The story is a very simple one. By the twelfth century, after several hundred years of fighting, all the tribes and peoples in the Japanese Islands had been conquered and brought under the sway of that conquering tribe from the Asian Highlands, which had discovered, explored, and colonized Japan, and pacified its savages or " Indians." The head of this tribe was the Mikado (a title meaning Holy Gate or Sublime Porte), a religious as well as a political chief, who, at Kioto, combined Church and State in his person just as the Sultan does in Constantinople. After the wars of exploration and conquest had ceased and peace had come, the two great, noble families, the Heiki and the Genji, or the Whites and the Reds, quarrelled. Then they broke into a feud which later kindled the flames of strife throughout the whole empire. It was like the civil War of the Roses in England. At first, the Heiki were success- ful and killed or banished the Genji leaders. In 1 1 59 Tokiwa, the beautiful concubine of the Genji leader, fled with her three children, not know- HOW JAPANESE HELPED DISCOVER AMERICA. 51 ing where her future food and shelter were to be. One of her children was a babe at the breast. Capt- ured by her lord's enemy, she saved her own life and that of her children by entering the harem of her conqueror. To make a long and fascinating story short, one of her sons grew up to be the mighty leader, Yoritomo. Another, the babe, be- came Yoshitsune, the field-marshal, who annihilated the Heiki, after several campaigns, from 1180-85, finishing with a great naval battle at Shimonoseki (where the treaty between Japan and China was signed in May, 1895). This son of Tokiwa was the most brilliant of all Japan's mediaeval generals. When the people declared that the glory of the victories was due to Yoshitsune, his older brother, Yoritomo the Tycoon, now that he had exhausted the benefit of his younger brother's service, became bitterly jealous of him. The spark was fanned to flames by a slanderer. The older persecuted his younger brother and finally ordered his death. Yoshitsune fled northward to the island of Yezo and thence escaped to Tartary. In Chinese pro- nunciation his name was Genghi Khe. There are good arguments for thinking that it was this Japanese field-marshal who organized the Mongol tribes into that mighty host, which poured victori- ous out of their northern highlands upon the warm, rich lands of China. The Mongols conquered the 52 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. great Chinese world, which included the Middle Kingdom and many vassal nations. Then this great cavalry leader, now known as Genghis Khan, whose genius both for war and peace resembled that of Napoleon, swept westward with his irresistible horsemen. He died in 1227; but under his suc- cessors the Mongol empire spread westward until it touched the Caspian Sea. In the succeeding generations, the son and grand- sons of Genghis continued his work of conquest, and their realm covered almost all Asia from Korea to Syria, as well as large portions of Russia. This invasion of the Mongols, even greater than those of their ancestors from the steppes, the Scythians and Huns, caused the establishment of many dy- nasties famous in history. It stirred up all Asiatic humanity to a movement westward, even as the mis- sionary wars of Mahomet had forced them north- ward and the North Africans westward. The Turkomans and the various tribes of Turks were pushed and excited to action by the Mongols. Later, one branch of the great clan penetrated India, and is known in history as the line of the Mogul emperors whose splendid empire began in the fifteenth century. Almost all the rulers of nations in Asia, except in Arabia and the purely Turkish dominions, be- came vassals of Khublai Khan, the grandson of HOW JAPANESE HELPED DISCOVER AMERICA. 53 Genghis Khan. The Mongols even entered Europe, occupying for several generations large parts of Russia. These men from China, aided by the Arabs, brought with them not only the Chinese myths and notions of alchemy, magic, and fancy, but also Chinese arts and inventions, the magnetic needle, wall-paper, gunpowder, and printing, which spread westward. The old-world myths and fairy tales had almost as much influence on the romance and fact of the discovery and exploration of America as did the realities of compasses, globes, and maps, as we shall see. The mariner s compass — long known in China, and whose use in a voyage from Nankin to Korea in a.d. 1122 is recorded — came into Italy by the sea-route. While the Mongols were in power, laws were modified, literature and public works flourished, and order was maintained over all Asia. Good roads were kept open and a general spirit of toleration prevailed. The Nestorian Christians entered the Chinese empire in welcome. They converted the royal family of a Tartar tribe, living near Lake Baikal in Mongolia, where now Russian steamers ply and the Siberian railway passes. Noticing the similarity in sound of the Tartar chief's title, " Owang Khan," to the Hebrew Cohen or Kahna, priest, and Johann, John, the Europeans called him Prester John, that is. Priest John. This famous 54 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. character, who in 1 202 became the vassal of Genghis Khan, issued letters to the Pope and Kings of France and Portugal. He long survived, in western poetry and legend, as the priestly ruler of an earthly para- dise. The legend of Prester John powerfully in- fluenced the Spanish friars in America, who hoped to find some such prince and convert him to the church. CHAPTER VI. THE OLD TRADE ROUTES TO THE EAST. WHILE the Franks, or the peoples in Europe which afterwards became nations, — ItaHan, German, French, Spanish, — were developing their history during the middle ages, Arabia was consid- ered the land of spices. This was not because these aromatic plants grew there, but because in the Ara- bian ports were the markets to which the spices of India and the Malay archipelago were brought. The Arabs, as we know from their own geogra- phers, traded in the far East not only with China, but even with Korea. In Spain, with their univer- sities, learned men, books, libraries, and science, the Saracens taught much to the Christian nations, then only partially risen out of their semibarbarism. In time, Moorish Spain became the centre of science in Europe. From the ninth to the fifteenth century the Europeans knew little about the world, except what the learned men could gather from the ancient authors, Strabo and Ptolemy. Much of their 55 56 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. knowledge of countries, and even their idea of the roundness of the earth, was obtained from the old Greeks through Arabic translations. During the Renaissance, or rebirth of knowledge, art, and lit- erature in the fifteenth century, the ancient Latin and Greek authors were eagerly read. This discov- ery of the ancient world of books, statues, coins, and ideas was almost as wonderful as the finding out of a new continent. As Moorish Spain had led in science, so Italy was pioneer in literature and phi- losophy, thus powerfully influencing all the nations in this awakening of curiosity to know about the world. Of the Italian cities, Pisa and Florence became centres of art and science, while Venice and Genoa excelled in Oriental commerce. For over half a century there was much com- merce between Venice and Genoa and the Mogul and Chinese empires, or India and Cathay. The Italian merchants used to bring from Asia, silks, cashmeres, muslins, dyewood, perfumes, spices, gold, precious stones, and pearls. They used to boast that no one in Europe could spice wine or season meat without helping to enrich one of these Italian cities. Their fleets traded directly with every mari- time country in Europe, as well as with the near and the far East. A great many arts and sciences have arisen out of the need of men to fill their stomachs and please THE OLD TRADE ROUTES TO THE EAST. 57 their appetites. In our day, we raise a variety of fruits and garden vegetables at home, and import eatables of all sorts from many countries, which our ancestors did not have ; but we, too, enjoy spices for the flavor they give. Formerly, spices grew only in the far East. Now they are produced in all hot countries, and we have introduced many of the Oriental fruits and plants in our gardens. Until within a century or two, however, most people in Europe had to live chiefly on salt or fresh meat and fish and grain, with little in the way of salads or esculents, and in winter, their diet was especially restricted. So they enjoyed all the more the fla- vors of the aromatic nuts, seeds, rinds, barks, roots, and dried fruits used in cookery, or ground fine to sift on choice dishes. At dinner, a seat near the spice-box was the seat of honor. The very word "spice," from "specie," means kind; that is, the kind of delicacy, just as " specie " means, not paper, but the right kind of, money. Cloves, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cardamon, pepper, mace, capsicum, cinna- mon, cassia, and vanilla were all in demand. Many others, with names too hard to pronounce, were also imported at high prices. Of not a few of these spicy or piquant barks, herbs, or nuts thus imported at great expense, it was believed that they would heal man's aches, pains, and diseases, or keep them off. It was for the Oriental spices, even more than 58 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. for silk and gold, that the southern Europeans were so eager to trade with the infidels further south and east. The Genoese usually took the northern route by way of Constantinople and the Black Sea. They loaded their ships with goods brought either from the Caspian Sea region and China by caravan, or from India through the valley of the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Persian Gulf. The traffic was partly by camels overland, and partly by river boats and sea-going ships. Thus India, China, and the Malay archipelago, full of spice islands, poured their wealth into sunny Italy, which grew rich and cultured, and finally became the bestower of light, science, wealth, and comfort upon all Europe, besides being the mother of the discoverers of America. At this time Italy was divided into many power- ful municipal republics, — Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence. The Venetians had not only a great rich city built upon piles in the lagoons of the Adri- atic Sea, but also many neighboring and subject lands which ministered to their glory, fame, and wealth. The symbol of Venice was the lion of St. Mark, who was her patron saint. Her ships sent after Arabian goods took the southern route and sailed to the eastern end of the Mediterranean, where caravans from Cairo met them. By this THE OLD TRADE ROUTES TO THE EAST. 59 means, the Venetians had a longer water route than the Genoese, but one that required constant skill to navigate, and not a little military force and fighting to keep open. In time, it got to be quite common for Italian travellers and merchants to visit Arabia and go to Mecca. Besides her trade, Venice had famous manufactories. Here were made most of the beads and many of the glass and metal trinkets used later in the traffic with the Africans and Americans. One gentleman, now living in the Mohawk valley, has duplicated in Venice shops or museums every pattern of the beads, which he found by the hundreds, in the Iroquois Indian graves in New York. The Venetians and the Mongols got along very well together. Princes, envoys, and merchants from Europe visited the court of the Great Khan, and Italian artists and decorators in India helped to build and beautify the mosques and minarets and tombs of Mogul India ; perhaps even the Taj Mahal. Among other travellers in the far East, who heard also of Japan, were Matteo and Nicolo Polo, who made two overland journeys from Italy to China. On their second journey, in 1271, they carried letters from Pope Gregory X. to the Chinese Emperor, who was then a Mongol, and called the Great Cham, or Khan. With , them 6o THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. went Marco Polo, who spent many years as an officer in the service of the Khan, visiting Tibet, Persia, and southern China. For three years he was governor of a large city. These Venetians in the Chinese empire used the paper money and passports then in common use, and saw the Grand Canal, which, though dug long before, had been greatly improved by the Khan. They heard stories of Japan and of its gilded roofs, gold-plated pagodas and temples, of which the columns and water-gutters under the eaves were of gold. Centuries afterward, when living in Japan, I my- self saw castle towers tipped with golden-scaled bronze dolphins which flashed high in the air, and temple roofs with heavy and wide eaves-troughs made of solid gold, which were set to catch the sacred droppings of the rain from heaven. I saw also viroin ©"old coins as bis: as a man's extended hand, besides temple pillars and ceilings and for- ests of idols covered with gold-leaf. When the mighty Mongol Armada was in prep- aration to sail on its vain attempt to conquer Japan, the Polos taught the Mongols how to make catapults and other European engines of war. These Venetians were in Cathay, or the Chinese empire, over twenty years. They then returned by way of Persia, arriving in Italy in 1295. When Marco Polo wrote his wonderful book, telling of THE OLD TRADE ROUTES TO THE EAST. 6 1 the marvellous curiosities of China, and about the brave Japanese who fought the Mongol Armada, and cut off the heads of the great Khan's mes- sengers, he was laughed at. He spelled and pro- nounced the Chinese name, Shi-pen-kok (meaning Sun-root Land, or Kingdom of the Rising Sun) as Cipango or Zipangu, and China (Katai) as Cathay. His book was at first branded as a mass of falsehoods, and in derision he was called " Signor Milliano," or " Lord Millions," because he used the word " million " so often. Gradually, his story was found to be true. There is little doubt but that Columbus read Polo's book a great deal, and thought much about what he had said concerning Cathay, or China, and Zipangu, or Japan. Franciscan friars also visited China, and Christian churches were begun in sev- eral Chinese cities. Embassies from the Pope and the Khan exchanged courtesies at Avignon and Peking. Cathay and Cambaluc (China and Peking) became well known in Europe. Italian merchants, doctors, and priests travelled and lived in Chinese cities ; and, on the other hand, Chinese engineers and physicians won fame in Persia. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century was the golden age of Italian commerce with the East, when gems, rich silks, gold and silver, jewelled arms and armor, statues, pictures, and palaces were 62 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. more plentiful in Italy than anywhere else in Europe. The Venice of our century is only a shadow of its former greatness. As long as the Eastern trade continued, Columbus was not likely to go to the poor West, or to Spain ; nor w^as any new world toward the sunset likely to be discov- ered. But suddenly (as it seems in history, though in reality, gradually) the trade routes were blocked, commerce ceased, and Italy became poor. Why? we ask, and the answer is, Because of tremendous political changes in Asia, but chiefly on account of Mahometan bigotry. In Asia, with the one exception of Japan (which has the lousiest continuous line of rulers in the world), dynasties do not last long, and political structures are not permanent. The great Mongol empire, after scarcely more than a century of life, was broken into fragments. In 1368, the Chinese rebelled against their Mongol rulers and set up the Mings, a native line of emperors ; but Confu- cianism became more narrow and severe. Many of the nations once under the great Mongol Khan were converted from gentle and tolerant Buddhism to intolerant Islam, which teaches that men of other faiths should be put to the sword. The empire of Timour rose in Central Asia, and THE OLD TRADE ROUTES TO THE EAST. 63 between the years 1360 and 1405 Timour con- quered most of western Asia, including Syria and Asia Minor, invaded Russia to Moscow, defeated the Turks in battle, and forced other nations to acknowledge his power. But when Timour died of ague in 1405, the Turks were left free to press their conquest of the Greek Christian empire, and to ad- vance on Constantinople. The Saracens had long held Spain and Portugal, Egypt and North Africa; but while Christian valor was driving the Mahometans out of Europe, other influences were at work to usher in a new era of knowledge about the earth on which men lived, and which some thinkers suspected was a round planet. In this century, also, wood-engraving, printing, paper, the rousing of energies by the fierceness of the Turks, and the cutting off of old luxuries and supplies, stirred and widened the thoughts of men, compelled new enterprises, and paved the way for the discovery of America. The introduction and improvement of the mariner's compass, and the invention of the astrolabe, or star-catcher, for tak- ing the position of the heavenly bodies, greatly aided navigation. One of the first countries to explore the sea for new trade routes, to attempt to reopen traffic with the Orient, to set out in quest of new lands, and, if possible, of Christian friends, to begin the mighty 64 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. work of uniting the nations of the earth, and to make the explorations and settlements which the Dutch first, and the English afterwards, confiscated and appropriated, was little Portugal. To this country let us now look. CHAPTER VII. PORTUGAL FOUNDS A TRAINING SCHOOL OF DIS- COVERERS. DOWN in the southwest corner of Europe is a country now very much impoverished, often made miserable by earthquakes, and kept poor by superstition and the ignorance of its people. It forms part of that Iberian peninsula which is shut off by mountains and the sea from the rest of Europe. Having plenty of rivers, the country is like a great vineyard, for here is the climate in which grapes grow luxuriantly. Instead of the northern butter and beer, there is plenty of oil and w^ine. Oporto gives its name both to its rich and heavy port wine, and to the kingdom itself. In ancient times this city was named Cale, and the Latin w^ords " Portus Cale," meaning the port or gate to Cale, have become Portugal. Anciently the country was called Lusitania. Although to-day poor, unrenowned, and one of the lowest among the Powers of Europe, Portugal was once a great nation. Here were first kindled the bright beacon lights of modern discovery. In F 65 66 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. the fifteenth century, the people of this kingdom led in the making of modern geography. Best of all, Portugal was pioneer in the growing federation of nations which already exists under international law, and which is yet to culminate in that unity of the world which is implied in Christianity. One feature that greatly influenced the maritime and colonial polity of Portugal, was the peculiar sentiment and national tone produced by its long warfare against Mahometanism. In a.d. 711, Tarik landed on the coast, and the Saracen occupied parts of the Iberian peninsula for five or six hundred years. The splendid Moorish cities, palaces, and gateways, still remaining in Spain, date from this era. When the Christians began to lift their heads and drive back the Saracens, Portugal was one of the first Christian kingdoms formed. This fight for life continued during several hundred years. It was one of religion, of race, and of civilization for the Fatherland. The Moors fought the duel bravely, and were only driven away, inch by inch, from the soil of the Iberian peninsula. We ought to excuse, or at least be ready to explain, much of the peculiar religious bigotry of the Spaniards and Portuguese of early days, because of their long struggle for life and faith against equally bigoted Mahometans. It was because Prince Henry, born in 1394, nearly a century before Columbus' discovery, and PORTUGAL'S TRAINING SCHOOL OF DISCOVERERS. 6/ called The Navigator, sought to continue this war- fare of the cross against the crescent in every part of the world, that Portugal became the first naval academy in Europe, and trained up a line of dis- coverers. Prince Henry established, in 141 5, a school of navigation, in which noblemen were edu- cated, and the sailor's craft made honorable. He introduced the use of the astrolabe and the mas:- netic needle, or the mariner's compass. Set on gimbals in a box, with a card or face marked with thirty-two points, it was much improved over the Chinese original. From this school, issued that movement of maritime discovery and enterprise which placed Portugal in the van of European civilization. The coast-line of Africa was gradu- ally learned, the route to the Indies reopened, and Columbus stimulated to his discovery. On the 4th of March, 1894, all Portugal was ablaze with bunting and vocal with music, for the people were everywhere celebrating the five hun- dredth anniversary of the sailor prince who never left land, but who became the father of modern naviga- tion. His captains discovered Africa, and he in- spired Columbus. Through his influence, within a century one-half of the sflobe was discovered. Who was this Prince Henry, and how came his call from God to open the East and West } Henry was the son of King John (under whom 6S THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Portugal first began to drive back the Moors) and of Philippa, daughter of " old John of Gaunt, time- honored Lancaster." Trained to war, he, like so many soldiers of that age, might have spent his life in fighting for this king or that, in any cause that paid him well. In 141 5 he went with his two brothers on an expedition against the Moorish rock-fortress and city of Ceuta in Morocco. So hard was the fighting and so gallant the bravery of the three princes, but especially of Henry, that in one day the place fell into the hands of the Christians. So splendid became the fame of Prince Henry that, all at once, the Pope, the Emperor, and the Kings of Castile and of England invited the youth- ful hero to take command of their armies. But, in- stead of more glory and war. Prince Henry suddenly became a student, and faced for twelve long years costly failure and disheartening ridicule; yet he ever kept on dreaming of new countries and finding new paths in the sea. This seemed a conversion almost as wonderful as that of St. Paul. What, or who caused it ? Let us look at Ceuta. The name is probably a corruption of the Roman Septas, or seven. It is a twin rock opposite Gibraltar, and was one of the Pillars of Hercules, marking the end of the earth at which the whole ancient world had written, " ne PORTUGAL'S TRAINING SCHOOL OF DISCOVERERS. 6g plus ultra " — no more beyond. It was Prince Henry who rubbed out that legend, and bade men seek further. To-day, in America, — sometimes called by en- vious Europeans, " the land of the almighty dollar," — those Pillars of Hercules survive in the sign for our unit of value. In the graphic device " $," we have a skeleton picture of the two Pillars of Hercules, of which Ceuta was one, with the tower flags or streamers in between, in the form of a letter S. The American silver dollar has replaced the old Spanish " pillar dollar," or " piece of eight," but the Q^host of it remains in our writinor. Whenever we use commercial arithmetic, we borrow the Arabic numerals brought by the Saracens, first from India and then from Arabia, into Spain, and for our dollar mark, we make a diagram of the two Pillars of Her- cules, the twin rocks of Gibraltar and Ceuta wuth the Christian flag of Spain flying where once the crescent banner waved. Ancient ideas shut up the world at Ceuta and Gibraltar, as the Philistines shut up Samson. Prince Henry, like the Hebrew giant, rose up out of sleep, and carrying the bars and gates away with him, opened that world, of which European people, from the Pope to the peasant, were then ignorant. Prince Henry found that some of his Moorish prisoners in Ceuta, instead of being horned devils. 70 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. were polished gentlemen of noble rank, liberally edu- cated and well travelled. He treated them kindly. They in return told of the great continent of Africa where they lived; of the mountains, deserts, and oases ; of the city of Timbuctoo, with its ivory pal- ace and gilded roofs ; of the Niger River, of Guinea, of Mozambique and Zanzibar. Still further, they thrilled the young Christian prince, their captor, with stories of voyages to India, whence shiploads of pearls and rubies, gold and spices, came to enrich the Mahometans ; of the huge animals ; of amazing forests and fruits, and of the populous countries of the great continent over which blazed the Southern Cross amid starry skies. All this set Prince Henry's imagination on fire. "Africa for Christ" became his watchword — to be understood, of course, in his own way. He used his opportunity at once. He was grandmaster of the order of Christ, and had control of its vast reve- nues. He was governor for life of Algarve, the extreme southeastern province of Portugal and of Europe. At Sagres, down at the very tip of the kingdom and the continent, he founded an observa- tory, the first in Portugal. He devoted himself to the study of astronomy and mathematics. He sum- moned to his aid all the men skilled in navigation, or in making maps or instruments, of whom he could hear. He trained up young Portuguese naval PORTUGAL'S TRAINING SCHOOL OF DISCOVERERS, yi officers, who became fearless captains. In a decade, he had won away from Venice and Genoa the mo- nopoly of seamanship and natural science. Henry was not always successful at first, and the nobles ridiculed him, complained of him for wasting money, as they said; but he persevered. Soon his ships began to creep out along the African coast. The Azores, the Madeiras, the Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands were first discovered, and then colonized ; so that, by a.d. 1420, they had become part of the kingdom. The song of the pretty yel- low canary birds was heard on the continent. The island groups became vineyards. In 1434, Cape Bojador was reached. In 1443, Gonsalvez came back with a bag of gold-dust and ten black men. This was the beoinnino: of the slave-trade to Eu- rope. These Africans were sent to be seen by the Pope, who at once gave Prince Henry a title deed of the country from Cape Bojador to the Indies, that is of all Africa. From this time, a little black boy is seen attending as page, or leading the horse of nearly every prince in Europe. Gradually the Portuguese captains became bolder. They drove their little ships down past Sierra Leone and along the grain, the gold, and the ivory coasts. Moving hundreds of miles toward the ris- ing sun, yet ever keeping within sight of land, in 1440 they discovered Guinea. By 1446, fifty-one J 2 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. ships had visited Senegal. When the Turks were rushing into Constantinople, in 1453, the famous annalist, Azurara, wrote his chronicles of the dis- covery and conquest of Guinea. As he says in this wonderful book, "The Lord Prince (Henry) had five reasons for the discovery of foreign countries. " First, to. ascertain the truth about these regions, as it appeared to him that if he or some other lord did not attempt the discovery, no mariner or mer- chant would try the venture, as it is quite clear that such persons will navigate to places only where they can reap evident profits. " Second, he thought that perchance some Chris- tian country might be found, with which his friend- ship and commerce might be established. " The third reason was that he wanted to know the true extension of Mussulman's power, his born and sworn enemy. "The fourth reason was that during the thirty-one years that he had waged war against the Mussul- mans, he had never found a single Christian prince that would help him for the love of Jesus Christ, and he might find in the undiscovered world some Chris- tian power that would be his ally. " Fifth, the great desire of augmenting and in- creasing the faith in our true religion." With such motives, the highest that can animate man, and with others also, — making a mixture as PORTUGAL S TRAINING SCHOOL OF DISCOVERERS. 73 in most men and nations, — Portugal nobly started on the career of exploration. Her ships kept ever moving to the southward along the edge of the dark continent. When Henry died, in 1460, eigh- teen hundred miles of new coast had been discovered and explored; Portugal was not only the centre of geographical interest and science, but also a magnet drawing to itself the Italian mariners, map-makers and scholars; and the good work, begun by Henry, kept on. The Guinea trade made Lisbon rich, and hither flocked the Italian merchants, geographers, and map-makers, whose occupation at home was gone, and who did not care about the petty wars then go- ing on in Italy. Here they talked about the round- ness of the earth, and the belief that it was a globe gained new adherents. Before 1470, Bartholomew, the brother of Christopher Columbus, established himself at the Portuguese capital to make maps of the new discoveries in Africa ; and there, sometime before 1473, Christopher Columbus joined him. In 1477, Christopher made a voyage to Iceland, where he heard of the westward sea-travels of Leif Erik- son. When Captain Diaz started on a voyage to reach the vei*y southernmost end of Africa, Bartholomew Columbus joined him. They passed the mouth of the Congo River, — that gateway into a great divis- 74 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. ion of Africa; and, in our day, associated with the names of Livingstone and Stanley, one of whom explored its cradle lands, and the other its course to the sea. It was, in i486, after fifty years of Portuguese enterprise, that Bartholomew Columbus, leaving his map-making, accompanied Captain Bartholomew Diaz, with whom, over five thousand miles from home, he reached the southern tip of Africa, which Diaz named the Cape of Storms. When they re- turned, the wise king, delighted with this logical result of Prince Henry's enlightened foresight, scratched out of the record in the log-book, " Cape of Storms," and wrote in its place a name which proved a prophecy, — "Cape of Good Hope"; for, with the eyes of faith, he already saw the all-sea route opened to the Indies. Prince Henry was vindicated. The next Portuguese fleet, with Afri- can pilots, sailed straight to India. When Bartholomew Columbus told his brother what he had seen, Christopher was, more than ever, satisfied that the earth was round, and that by sail- ing west he could reach Japan, which, he thought, projected far out toward Europe. Meanwhile, the future world-giver kept on trying to persuade the King of Spain; but in order to "have two strings to his bow," he sent his brother Bartholomew to England to interest King Henry VII. in the idea PORTUGAL'S TRAINING SCHOOL OF DISCOVERERS. 75 of getting to Japan by the back door. Henry was slow in making up his mind, and by the time Bar- tholomew reached France, he heard of his brother Christopher's return homeward. We must not forget that all this was before Columbus discovered some islands and parts of a continent that he never knew^ belonged to a new world. It was Prince Henry's and King John's naval and colonizing policy that prepared the way for the success of Columbus. It was because Portugal discovered the old world first, that the Genoese thought of, and was encouraged to find, the new one. On the German Behaim's globe, made in 1487, the Portuguese flag is marked on so many coasts, countries, and islands that it seems as if the only European country then likely to pos- sess the earth was little Portugal. Even Siam and the Golden Chersonese, or Malay peninsula, are so marked. Japan looms largely, but no continent appears between Europe and Asia. The King of Portugal kept on encouraging his brave navigators. When he died, his successor, Manoel, fitted out an expedition under Vasco da Gama, a gentleman in the king's household, who in 1497 reached India by an all-sea passage, and then bravely continued in his little ship the cir- cumnavigation of the globe. This first furrow round the world ploughed by j6 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. a ship's keel was followed by another made by the Portuguese Cabral, who in 1500 started out with eighteen ships, expecting* to reach Farther India where the spices grew, by following the route opened by da Gama. Obeying his instructions, he kept far out in the Atlantic, and, being driven still further by storms, came in sight of Brazil by acci- dent. He explored the coast, and took possession of it. He then visited East Africa, Calcutta, and Cochin China, reaching Lisbon July 23, 1501, with an amazingly rich cargo of spices, which in those days were often worth their weight in gold. Vasco da Gama's second voyage was made with twenty ships, in 1502-3; but no one circumnavi- gated the globe again until 15 19, when the feat was repeated by Magellan, a Portuguese, who had been in the East Indies. Like so many others, he considered America a barrier to the far East ; but knowing that Balboa had found an ocean behind it, Magellan hoped to sail around the obstruction, and thus get to the lands of spice, gold, silk, and gems. Yet this squadron left Europe under Spanish auspices, Magellan having quarrelled with the Por- tuguese Court, which he thought had treated him meanly. Crossing the Atlantic, he passed through the strait, which he named after himself. It was a long while, however, before this watercourse was used as a practical highway. Nevertheless, PORTUGAL'S TRAINING SCHOOL OF TISCOVERERS. J'J Magellan's voyage and discovery gave to the world its first distinct knowledge of the Pacific. Soon afterwards, the Spanish di'scovery of the Philippines led to their colonization and the development of a rich commerce through Mexico to the Asiatic islands. Even North American waters mirrored the flag of Lusitania. In 1500 Caspar Cortereal ploughed the Atlantic, reaching the high latitudes of America, and finding amazing sea-w^ealth. Kidnapping some of the people, probably red Indians, he brought them home, and told also of the new-found fisheries. King Emanuel thought more of the promising re- sources of labor that would require no wages than of the fisheries. So he named this new slave-coast Terra de Labrador, or Land of Laborers, which name it still keeps. No one can omit Portugal from the romance of discovery, or when telling the story of the finding of America, and of its size and shape. From far Formosa which the Portuguese named, and from Japan which a Portuguese, Mendez Pinto, was the first to enter and describe from sight, to Labrador, Portugal has a noble record of discovery. If, at times, we are tempted to look with con- tempt upon little Portugal, because of her smallness and weakness, and to despise the country because of prevalent bigotry and ignorance, and her ap- 78 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. proval of the slave-trade in Africa, we must not forget her history. It is a great fact that the Portuguese discovered the African continent, and opened Asia; and this they did without undue vio- lence. Portugal, with the grandest of all motives that can move mankind to action, — the motive of religion, — bore the almighty spirit of civilization round this orb to awaken slumbering races and resuscitate dead nations. It was Portugal that brought separate communities together, and began the assimilation of mankind to mankind. CHAPTER VIII. ITALY, THE HOME OF COMMERCE AND EXPLORATION. ITALY, by its shape and situation in the middle ' of southern Europe, very close to Africa, and not far from Asia, — a peninsula with many harbors, — was fitted from the first to be a land of ships and sailors, and the home of conquerors. Shaped like a boot, with a strong leg and unwearied foot inside of it, Italy seems to walk upon the sea. Japan boasts herself as " the country within the four seas," but Italy and her islands are washed by five seas, — the Ligurian, the Tyrrene, the African, the Ionian, and the Adriatic, — all of them famous for their deep azure color, and for the phosphorescence of the w^ater. Here grew up the Roman nation which, at first regal, then republican, and finally imperial, ran a splendid career of twelve hundred years. With its standing army of three hundred and fifty thousand men in fifty legions, and with a wonderful system of roads and laws, the Romans ruled the earth, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Cataracts of the Nile and from the Rhine River to the desert of Africa. The common idea of the 79 8o THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. " world " to a Roman lay In the word "oikumene," — the inhabited part of the earth. In the fifth century the Roman empire fell. For five hundred years afterwards Italy was harassed by the Barbarians who poured in from the North. About the tenth century, the people of the towns made struggles to govern themselves ; and so there grew up many city republics which built walls and made themselves independent of the feudal lords or nobles. In this way the famous cities of Pisa, Florence, Venice, and Genoa sprang up. At the head of the Adriatic, where seven or eight rivers rolled down their mud and slime into the sea, making many islands amid very shallow water, there gradually collected together many rich people who had fled from the interior cities, when the Huns, under Attila, invaded Italy. There, forgotten by the Roman rulers, and beyond the reach of the Barbarians who had no ships, a population grew up, supporting theriiselves by catching fish and making salt. Each little island was a republic by itself, but sent delegates who met in council and elected a doge or duke. In a.d. 809 they made choice of the island of Rialto, and built the city of Venice as the capital of their republic. Twenty years later they sent to Alexandria for the body of St. Mark, and made him the patron of their state. For centuries the lion of St. Mark ITALY, HOME OF COMMERCE AND EXPLORATION. 8 1 figured on all their arms, their banners, and their ships; and the cry, "Viva San Marco," inspired their courage in many a sea-fight. Millions of boys were named after the lion-like evangelist. For six cen- turies the Venetians maintained their independence aeainst the Lombards on one side and the Saracens on the other. They greatly assisted the first cru- saders with their fleets. They steadily enriched themselves by commerce with Asia and Africa, and extended their sway and influence over many sub- ject and neighbor lands. On the other side of Italy, a little further south, seated grandly on the sea, is the city of Genoa. Its splendid harbor is sheltered by the Apennine Mountains, and is safely enclosed with moles and masonry, against which the sea-waves break in vain. It already had a history when Rome and Carthage were contesting in a death struggle for the supremacy of the Mediterranean. In the sixth century, with the disruption of the Roman empire, it fell into the hands of the Lombards. Like the other Italian coast cities, it suffered so much from the Saracens that, in self-defence, its navy was en- larged, and thus was laid the foundation of its sea- power. In the eleventh century, when the western world warred with the Moslems for the sepulchre of Jesus, Genoa was a tremendous rival of Venice in the crusading business. Both were more eager for 82 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. the profit of transporting crusaders than for getting possession of an empty tomb. These two cities, with Pisa, had then more vessels on the Mediter- ranean than all the rest of Christendom. The Genoese encouraged the crusaders with enthusi- asm, enjoying the fat contracts made for conveying them to Syria. Within Genoa the Superb grew up great trading firms and princely merchants who built magnificent palaces. In 1240 this marine repubHc was able to place Michael, the ruler of her choice, upon the throne of the Byzantine empire, and to receive, in addition to her already extensive eastern posses- sions, the suburbs of Constantinople and the great fort of Smyrna. With Corsica, Minorca, Marseilles, and Nice already in the hands of the Genoese, they were able to control, not only, much of the Mediter- ranean commerce but also the northern overland route to India through the Black and Caspian seas. Thus Genoa became amazingly rich, and her sailors were to be found in many seas, always ready to trade and navigate, and to fight or to quarrel with the rival galleys and ships from Venice. In these democratic Italian republics, there was much turbulence but also much independence of spirit, the people being bold, energetic, and indus- trious. The wealth and power of the Genoese excited the jealousy and cupidity of invaders, ITALY, HOME OF COMMERCE AND EXPLORATION. 83 who several times conquered them; but patriots always rose up to deliver and throw off the yoke. One of these was the famous Andrea Doria, after whom was named our first American ship of war, which carried the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, to the Dutch Island of St. Eustacius in the West Indies, where on the i6th of November, from the Dutch governor and fort, our colors — the thir- teen red and white stripes — received the first for- eign salute ever fired in honor of the American flag. Genoa was under the control of France, and it was the time of the greatest quarrels between her nobles and people when the feuds of the Guelphs and Ghibellines about which Dante has sung, were at their height, when in the Colon family there were born three sons, — Bartholomew, Christopher, and Diego. The name " Colon " is Genoese. The form " Columbus" is Latin, and means a dove, just as does that of "Jonah," the Hebrew voyager. Each of these sons grew up to be interested in ships, voyages, and geography. It is interesting to walk about Genoa, in the streets where the Columbus boys played, to visit the wharves and shore, over which they looked towards the deep blue waters out of which would sail and into which came the gay ships that sought and brought the wonders of far-off countries.. One 84 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. can go there to-day, as I have done, and lodge in great gloomy hotels which were once mighty palaces. For a little money, one can sleep in the banqueting room or audience chamber of a former prince. As Christopher grew up, he had to help his father — a wool comber by trade — to earn a living for the family ; but he also went to school and learned a good deal about geography, and to write easily in Latin. In 1460, Christopher, when only fourteen, took to the sea, becoming a cabin boy and doino: some other service that lads were able to perform in the galleys of that day. Perhaps it seemed then to him as if he might one day become a merchant prince with many vessels ; but an event occurred, which disappointed hundreds of Genoese, stopped their trade, ruined their merchant princes, and turned the face of young Christopher from the East to the West. News came that the Turks had captured Con- stantinople, and soon the crest-fallen Genoese cap- tains came sailing back with many empty ships. They said that the Turks had refused to let them pass into the Black Sea, except upon payment of tolls so enormous that all profits would be lost. Thus, at a blow, the rich trade with the East was cut off, and Genoa, for a while, was miserably poor. Perhaps the boy of seventeen did not care so much about being an Indian merchant, for he kept on ITALY, HOME OF COMMERCE AND EXPLORATION. 85 studying geography and mathematics, and began to ask himself whether some other way could not be opened to the golden lands of Asia. He was not a young man to give up easily. Probably about this time Columbus began to believe that the earth was round. Nearly two thousand years before, some unknown Greek had got hold of the idea, and the philosopher Aristotle and the geographer Strabo, had talked it over. Averroes, a Moorish scholar of the twelfth century, at Cordova in Spain, made the idea known in Europe. Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon had also read of, and revived, the dream of a ball-like earth hansfino^ in the air. When Alliacus made the idea popular in his book, " Imago Mundi," Colum- bus thought he w^ould some day be able to prove it to all. In his various voyages and talks with sea-faring men he got many hints favoring the the- ory, and he noticed that ships would rise upon the horizon when coming toward him, and sink when going away. If the earth were round, why could he not find China by sailing the other way towards the west.f* He knew that Genoa, his native city, could not help him in his enterprises, though he earnestly entreated her to do so. Had Genoa been willing or rich enough to fit out ships for her son, the new world might have become the possession of this city republic. 86 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY, It was in the year 1470, when either thirty-four or twenty-four years old, that his brother Bartholo- mew went to Lisbon, as we have seen, and set up in business as a map-maker, selling his goods to the many sea-captains at that port. Columbus followed his brother, and also drew maps, and made voyages. He became ardently interested in the successes of Prince Henry's navigators, but he thought out another way of steering. In 1474, he began cor- responding with the Italian geographer Toscanelli, who assured him that his plan of a voyage was practicable, and that he could reach Cathay by sail- ing westward three thousand miles. He now began to broach his proposition to the King of Portugal, arguing that such a voyage would greatly enrich his possessions and wealth. Meanwhile, he married a lady named Felipa Moniz, and probably had three children. One of these, Ferdinand, wrote the biog- raphy of Columbus, which is the basis of almost all the narratives written about the man who gave a new world to Spain. Enthusiastic as Columbus was, everything seemed to confirm his ideas. In 1477 he made a voyage to the far North, reaching Iceland, and learning about Leif Erikson and Thorfinn's trips to Vineland. He was thus still further assured. In those days, fight- ing, trading, slave-catching, and slave-selling were often done by the same crew in the same vessel. ITALY, HOME OF COMMERCE AND EXPLORATION. %y Columbus had experiences in a slave-trading expe- dition to Guinea, and went on piratical expeditions several times ; but while his brother would sail east, Christopher insisted on sailing west. Christopher got tired of trying to do anything in Portugal, and started off for Spain to interest the monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, leaving word to have his brother go to England and plead his west- ern scheme with King Henry VII. While Colum- bus chafed and worried in Spain, cooling his heels in waiting upon the King and Queen, mocked by the boys who thought him a crank, getting poorer and poorer, bearing the ridicule of the Council, the gray hairs multiplying in his beard and hair, he learned of his brother's voyage to the Cape of Good Hope. This only made him the more resolved to sail the contrary way toward the set- ting sun. Spain had then a good many reasons for not want- ing to risk men, money, or ships in a project that seemed like trying to make water run up hill. In the first place, the central government was not yet strong, or perfectly certain of getting control of all the provinces or of driving out the Moors. The people were poor after the long wars. The plague was sweeping off thousands. The Inquisition was not yet a financial success. It had spent more money to carry on the hellish work than it got in 88 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. revenue by confiscating the estates of Jews and Moors and other people called " heretics." The government would not say either Yes or No to Columbus. The learned men to whom the mat- ter was referred, — most of whom were too old to entertain a new idea, — were yet not unanimous, one way or the other ; and while the Court was moving about from camp to castle, a long and patient hearing of the whole case could not be given. Meanwhile, Columbus, though probably fifty-six years old and his beard getting grayer, kept on arguing. His new friends also firmly sup- ported his views. When, finally, the last crescent flag had been lowered, and the silken banners of the cross waved hio;h in air above the Moorish citadel of Granada, there was no further excuse to postpone the final decision. Yet at this moment, Christopher, hopeless, hungry, and footsore, stood with his little son at the door of the monastery La Rabida, and begged for food. The abbot, who heard his story with patience, had been at one time confessor of the Queen, and now thought he might have some influence at Court. So he went to see the Queen who was, indeed, like her Syrian namesake, a Jezebel to heretics, but a lovely and Christian Queen to her friends. The ofood abbot was successful. A court suit was ob- tained for Columbus, who presented himself before CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT THE LA RABIDA MONASTE RY. ITALY, HOME OF COMMERCE AND EXPLORATION. 89 the sovereigns at the city of the holy faith, Santa Fe, — a name which has been dupHcated in our terri- tory of New Mexico. At first, the whole project seemed to be wrecked because Christopher's terms were too high. He wanted to be made admiral of the ocean and viceroy of all the lands he should discover ; to keep posses- sion of one-tenth of all the gold and other wealth that might be acquired, and to have all his rights and titles made hereditary. The King was unable at first to agree to these demands, for while to Chris- topher the scheme was as reality, to Ferdinand it was as a dream. So the Genoese came away once more disheartened, but firm in his claim. Nevertheless three good friends — one a court lady, and another a royal minister, and the greatest, the Queen — caught enthusiasm from the dreamer, and prevailed with the King. Christopher was called back, and the compact was signed April 17, 1492. CHAPTER IX. COLUMBUS SAILS WEST TO REACH THE FAR EAST. IT was not until Friday, August 3, 1492, that the three ships and crews were ready. As a punish- ment for some offence, the people of Palos were condemned to furnish three vessels with all proper equipments. It is more than probable that Jewish merchants assisted with money in the enterprise. It was hard, however, to get a crew to start out under a man who was supposed to be nursing a crazy notion. Even by emptying the prisons and pardoning debtors and criminals, who were released on their promise to enlist as sailors, the necessary number of one hundred and twenty men was long in being made up ; for, after the jail birds were free, many deserted. The quality of the men who were finally obtained did not increase the chances of success. Christopher's motive was perfectly clear. In his journal of the voyage, he says, in the introduction, that he was sailing with one object in view, which was to reach the dominion of the great Mongol 90 COLUMBUS SAILS WEST TO REACH THE EAST. 9 1 Khan, — a line of sovereigns established most prob- ably, as we have seen, by the Japanese Yoshitsune. In fact, the Genoese was over a century behind the times, for the Mongol power in China had fallen a hundred and fifty years before, and the Ming dy- nasty of pure Chinese emperors had been reigning in Nanking since 1368. But there were no tele- graphs or newspapers then, and the Turks had for many years shut off all tidings from the far East. As for Japan, which he hoped to reach, the end of the fifteenth century was the poorest and most mis- erable time in its history. The King of Spain, however, knew no more than the Genoese. This is what Columbus wrote : " In consequence of the information which I had given to your Highnesses of the lands of India and of a Prince, who was called the Grand Khan . . . therefore your Highnesses determined to send me, Christopher Columbus, to see the said Prince and the people and lands . . . and ordered that I should not go by land to the East, by w^iich it is the cus- tom to go, but by a voyage to the West, by which course, unto the present time, we do not know for certain that any one has passed." The Italics are ours. It is probable that Colum- bus did not know for certai7i, that any one had sailed far westward into the Atlantic, though it is quite probable that he had heard of the discoveries 92 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. of the Norsemen. He must surely have known of the voyages of the Enghsh sailors and others who made voyages far out into the Atlantic to find An- tilia or the island of the Seven Cities, of which we shall hear more. On the chart of the globe which he had made himself, Japan stands out prominently between Europe and Africa, not, as it really is, long and narrow between Kamtchatka and the Philip- pines, but very broad from east to west, as if squeezed flat to fit the theory. Indeed, it was wonderfully like a modern railway map on which distances are lengthened or shortened to suit the advertisement. The whole region under attention is squeezed out of proportion, so as to gain patrons or furnish a quick view. Christopher had the mariner's compass, derived from China, but greatly improved. He had also the astrolabe, introduced or at least made popular by Prince Henry, w^ith which he could find out his position by taking observations of the stars or sun. Best of all, he had profound faith — in God, in the possibility of success, and in his personal mission. He and his men went to church to ask the divine blessing upon their adventure. Then, although it was Friday, Admiral Columbus sailed away a half- hour before sunrise. His little squadron consisted of the ship Santa Maria, or Holy Mary, of one hundred tons' burden; COLUMBUS SAILS WEST TO REACH THE EAST. 93 with two caravels named Nina and Piiita. Only the ship was decked, each of the other vessels hav- ing but a light floor at bow and stern. '^ The caravels got their name from beetles, being the same as the Egyptian "scarab," — the word "cara- vel " meaning a little beetle. They were narrow at the poop and wide at the bow. Each had four masts and a bowsprit. The principal sails were lateen ; that is, sails fastened at the top along the boom, which was coupled at the centre of the mast, while the lower ends of the sails were held by ropes tied at the base of the ship. Extending from little masts on the bow were two square sails. In those days everything was rich in color, and the painted canvas sails were magnificent with designs of the cross, the heraldry of the King of Spain, the arms of Aragon and Castile, and the images of the bleed- ing Christ. Nevertheless, these caravels were very disagreeable sea-craft with which to attempt a long voyage. Reaching the Canary Islands, the frontier of the old world, several weeks were lost in mending the clumsy rudder of one vessel, and in altering the sail of another. At last, on September 6, they began, as it seemed to the men, climbing up the water-hill of the world and sliding down on the other side, until the islands faded from sight. Then there were weeping eyes. Bearded men broke out 94 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. into bitter lamentations, because they had bidden farewell to " the habitable world." Hundreds of years afterwards, orators and essay- ists wishing to magnify Christopher Columbus and move their auditors by exciting in them enthu- siasm or religious jealousy, hatred, or prejudice, have tried to tell a wonderful story of mutiny, to show that the Admirals life was in danger. They have striven to crowd into this journey on the water awful and significant adventures ; but, as a matter of fact, it was a very ordinary, hum-drum voyage. The simple truth is, as we read it in his own diary of the cruise, only one thing seemed very wonderful to Columbus himself. That was the variation of the magnetic needle, which trem- bled away to the northwest rather than to the northeast. This phenomenon startled the Ad- miral, and especially his subaltern and crew. When thirty-one days out from sight of land, a flock of birds — not sea-gulls or petrels — flew in front of the ship, moving to the southwest. Seeing them, Alonzo Pinzon, captain of the Pinta, begged Columbus to follow in their track. The Admiral yielded, and these land birds became pilots to the Spaniards. Thus it came to pass that He who guides the raven and sees the sparrow fall, ordered that the Latin emigrants and civilization should find their COLUMBUS SAILS WEST TO REACH THE EAST. 95 home in central and southern America, while the northern and better America should be as yet unknown. Still the ships kept on. On the evening of the thirty-fifth day, even while Admiral Christopher was wondering whether, after all, he should have to turn back to satisfy the clamors of his men, he saw ahead a light. Early in the morning of Thurs- day, October ii, a sailor in the top shouted the good news, — " Land!" Soon the sun rose, reveal- ing the low, sandy shore of Watling's Island, around part of which they had sailed during the night. With fine dress and banners, and all display of costume and weapons, appropriate for the signifi- cant ceremony, Admiral Columbus in a panoply of steel, and his men in armor, landed. According to the custom of discoverers, and in signification of possession, Columbus and his men kneeled and kissed the ground. With wet eyes, they poured out their thankso^ivin^f to God. Then, with the ceremonies of the church, Columbus planted the banners of Aragon and Castile. The splendid colors waved to the wind, while he took possession of the country for Ferdinand and Isabella and their viceroy, Columbus. The natives called the land "Cat Island," but Columbus baptized it " San Salvador," or " Holy Saviour." One of the first questions he asked was 96 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. whether this was Japan, but the only answer, and, indeed, the only conversation possible, was by signs. Thinking that any land that was not of Europe must be of Asia, and that he was in the Indies, he called the people " Indians." One of the first things he noticed was that some of the men wore pieces of gold hung from their noses, and Colum- bus was anxious to know whether they had more. By signs they informed him that " there was a king in the south who owned many vessels filled with gold." Perhaps these islanders had in mind the gilded chieftain in South America, who, when elected, powdered himself with gold, and then, going out on a eold-decorated raft to the middle of a lake, plunged in and washed off the gold-dust as an offerinc: to the Q-oddess of the lake. From this moment began a quest of the golden man and the chasing of phantoms that led thousands of Span- iards to miseries of hunger and thirst, starvation and death. The Spaniards also visited other Bahama Islands, and then landed on Cuba in November. Pinzon was the discoverer of Hayti, or San Domingo, though he got no credit for it. The party spent most of the winter in the delightful climate, though losing the Santa Maria by shipwreck. However, the Admiral saved her timbers, and with them built COLUMBUS SAILS WEST TO REACH THE EAST, 97 a fort on the northern side of Hayti, to which he gave the name of " Little Spain," or " Hispaniola." As he had stepped upon this island on Christmas Day, he called the place " Nativity," or " Birth- day," " La Navidad." Everywhere the people were friendly, for the Spaniards seemed like visitors from heaven. The natives were soon cruelly un- deceived. Columbus thought that it would be easy for his men to get along very well with such gentle people. So he selected forty men from his crew, which would be rather crowded on the two vessels remaining, and left them to form the first European settlement in the new land. Then, after salutes and farewells, he turned his two prows homeward, and after a very stormy voyage, he arrived safely March 15, 1493. He and his companions were welcomed as those who had come back from the dead. H CHAPTER X. THE POPE CUTS THE WORLD IN HALF. THE westward movements of men from the sea of Japan to the Bosphorus drove the Greek scholars of Constantinople all over Europe, and the Italian mariners to the maritime states facing the Atlantic. Christopher Columbus became the most famous of all, because, although he did not discover the American continent, he was original and daring in sailing westward across the Atlantic. Columbus did not get many thanks or much honor, after the first splendid reception awarded him by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Indeed, nobody supposed that he had discovered a new world, but only some projecting land or islands running out from the Asian continent. Nevertheless, it was be- lieved that he had found a new pathway to the Indies. At once there began a great rivalry, with the possi- bilities of a bitter quarrel, between Portugal and Spain, just as there had been between Venice and Genoa, but with new features added. As Venice had enjoyed the southern, and Genoa the northern route to the riches of Asia, so Portugal, having 98 THE POPE CUTS THE WORLD IN HALF. 99 opened the southern path to India, feared that Spain, by taking the northern or western route, would gain even more wealth. The Portuguese re- garded Columbus as being only a disciple of Prince Henry, who had won success by following his methods. What promised to be a dangerous quarrel was averted by ah Italian prince, living in Rome, who ruled a small territory called the States of the Church around the city on the Tiber, in area about the size of Maryland and Delaware. Italians were first to discover and then to divide the world. This Italian prince, the Pope, was then considered to be the head of all the Christian churches, except the Greek Catholic church, w^hich extended over Russia and Greece. At that time it was believed that the whole world w-as under papal control, because the Pope claimed to be the vicar of God. The nations of the earth not yet known — it was thought — ought to be, and sooner or later w^ould be, under the control of the spiritual head of the church. During the middle ages, most men held the same idea about the dominance of the relis^ious over the political organization of society, — of Church over State, — as w^as common in such countries as Russia, Turkey, China, Japan, and the African king- doms. Such ideas have for the most part died out of the world, or are steadily sinking out of sight, but lOO THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. formerly they were very powerful. No king or nation would have thought of owning any land which the sailors or foreigners in their employ had discovered, unless claim to ownership was first ratified by the Pope. In accordance with the ideas of the age, the Pope, in decrees called bulls (from the " bulla " or round seal), had already confirmed Portugal in the posses- sion of the islands and countries of Africa dis- covered by its people. Knowing this, as soon as Columbus had returned, Ferdinand applied to the Italian Pope-Prince, as his spiritual superior, to confirm the Spanish claims to the countries beyond the western ocean already sighted or which might be discovered. Pope Alexander VI. in his bull of demarcation, dated May 3, 1493, confirmed the Spanish claim. Drawing a line from north to south out in the Atlantic Ocean, three hundred miles west of the Azores, where the compass pointed exactly north, his Holiness divided the world in two portions. All lands newly discovered by the Portuguese, which did not belong to any other Christian prince on the east of this line were to be the property of Portugal. Everything, not already possessed by Christians west of the line, was to be Spain's. Thus, as easily as a boy divides an apple, the Pope cut the world in half. This at first satisfied the Portuguese, but later they THE POPE CUTS THE WORLD IN HALF. lOI petitioned their spiritual superior to draw the Hne eio^ht hundred miles farther west. His Holiness assented, and a treaty between Spain and Portugal was signed June 7, 1494. By this clever arrange- ment, the Portuguese held possession of Brazil after it had been discovered by Cabral in 1500, though Pinzon the Spaniard had made landfall on its coast earlier in the same year. Thus it came to pass, that the Pope became one more of those Italians who busied themselves with the new world, its discoveries, and its conquests, and yet who never owned a foot of land within it. Of such Italians there were many, and Italy sent forth the sowers to make harvest fields for others to reap. " Unhappy Italy that beats the bush, while others catch the bird," wrote Peter Martyr. Portugal founded a school for navigators. Italy sent out the pioneers. Spain won the new world and lost it. France founded a vast, but transient empire. Eng- land did least exploring, yet founded a new nation. It was not only the seafaring people of Venice and Genoa who found their occupation gone when the Turks blocked the eastern trade routes, but also many others in Italian cities who directly or indi- rectly had been growing rich by the lucrative traffic in spices and gold. It is in the latter half of the fifteenth century that we find Italian merchants, bankers, engineers, artists, and skilled mechanics I02 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. moving northward and settling in France and Ger- many, and in the Netherlands (or lowlands of west- ern Europe, which are now Belgium and Holland), and in England. In the large cities of these countries, one can see to-day more than one " Lombard Street," where the business men from Lombardy had their banking offices, goldsmiths' shops, and warehouses. Other thoroughfares and many families in Europe and America are named after Italian cities, places, and persons. The Longo-bards, or long-bearded bar- barians, anciently from northwestern Germany, after centuries of residence in Italy, had become keen and shrewd money-lenders and merchants. At this time also, in England especially, but also in the Nether- lands, Italian mechanics, engineers, and doctors found employment and introduced many good ideas and inventions. Italian was studied, and notably influenced the English language and literature. Fleets of Venetian and Genoese ships found that trade with Netherlands and England, though not, indeed, so profitable as with the East, was well worth cultivating and increasing. Antwerp became a very rich city, with its harbor ever full of ships, while London and Norwich, the two largest English business centres, also profited by this commerce. Their shops and stores were full of Italian novel- ties and the rich dresses, fashions, and notions THE POPE CUTS THE WORLD IN HALF. 103 imported from the Mediterranean nations. The jewels, stuffs, pictures, art works, rugs, and carpets from Italy beautified English noblemen's castles, the houses of the court ladies and gentlemen, and rich merchants' dwellings. At that time Bristol, in Devonshire, with its curious little narrow, but deep, Avon stream, the river of Wyckliffe and Shakespeare, was the chief western seaport of the country, and had a good trade with the southern countries. There was liv- ing here with his wife and three sons, a Venetian merchant and navigator, whose name in its English form is John Cabot. He had travelled in Arabia, and had been at Mecca, where he saw many cara- vans, as in the days of Joseph and the Midianites, laden with balm and spicery. On inquiry, he found that they came from the far East. Like most edu- cated Italians, Cabot believed the world was round. When he heard of the exploit of his fellow-country- man, and perhaps his fellow-citizen, Christopher Columbus, proud of Italy, but jealous for Venice, the republic and city of which he was a naturalized citizen, Cabot longed also to share in the glory of new discoveries, and to win the favor of King Henry VII. Besides romantic notions, his practical object, like that of all the other navigators, was to find the lands of jewels and spices, so as to control the trade in them, if possible, for liis sovereign. 104 ^^^^ ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. King Henry, who took no stock in the project of Bartholomew Columbus, would take none directly in Cabot's venture. He was perfectly willing, how- ever, to let the people of Bristol fit out and pay for any expedition they might send, while he gave his royal commission to this brilliant Italian. CHAPTER XI. JOHN CABOT SAILS TO SEEK ANTILIA AND THE SEVEN CITIES. TN all human history men are moved as much by ^ sentiment as by matter-of-fact considerations. Now it happened that romance as well as prosaic love of money led to the equipment of the ship Matthew, with its total crew of nineteen men, com- manded by John Cabot, which sailed from Bristol, England, at sunrise June 24, 1497. This little craft opened a gateway, not for the Italian, but for the English language, people, laws, and ideas, on this American continent. Cabot sailed not only on the Atlantic, but into American history in a way he never dreamed of. On what he did and on what he saw, all subsequent English and British claims to North America were based. Yet he was not seeking the stern reality which he actually met, but a city of fairy tales, an island of legend, the pots of gold that are found only at the roots of a rainbow. The story runs, that when Tarik the Saracen landed in Portugal and began its conquest, the 105 I06 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. bishop of Oporto with thousands of his fellow- Christians fled to an island far out in the western Atlantic, where he -founded seven cities. This was called Antilia, or the island of the Seven Cities. It was filled with riches of all kinds, even the shore sparkling with golden sands which no one cared for. It was supposed to lie in front of the west of the Cape de Verde group; that is, it was ante-insula or Antilia. The re-discovery of these islands which had been known to the Romans, by the Portuguese excited a lively interest in Bristol. Every year, between 1484 and 1490, the sailors of Devonshire had made a voyage far westward into the ocean to find the golden strand. After six voyages, the commander of the seventh was to find land. So, like Jason and the Argonauts in search of the golden fleece, John Cabot pointed his prow toward the settingr sun to find Antilia and the Seven Cities, and to take possession of the island of the golden sands for King Henry and England. If not Antilia, he hoped to reach Japan, or China, or spice-lands, or the Golden Chersonese. He sailed due west in the high latitudes, instead of going south to the Cape de Verde Islands. He kept nearer the Arctic Circle than to the Tropic of Cancer. Very little indeed is known of this voyage. Cabot saw no human being at his landfall some- JOHN CABOT SAILS TO SEEK ANTILIA. lO/ where in British America, probably at Cape Breton. Instead of sparkHng gold or cities, he found a bleak and rocky coast. He landed in what he thought was the territory of Genghis Khan's successors. He set up the symbol of the Christian faith, with the flags of England and Venice — the cross of St. Georo^e and the lion of St. Mark. Beino: out of provisions, though fish were amazingly abundant in the sea, he turned his prow homewards, but over his larboard he saw tw^o islands. All that we really know of John Cabot's voyage is this : some years afterwards, his son Sebastian Cabot, who may or may not have been with his father, drew a map and wrote on it : — " In the year of our Lord 1497, John Cabot, a Venetian, and his son Sebastian discovered that country which no one before his time had ventured to approach, on the 24th of June, about five o'clock in the morning." It is not probable that many English people even as much as heard of this voyage till many years later, or that the Bristol people set much value upon the discovery, though King Henry VII. made the Venetian a present of ten pounds sterling for finding " the new isle." John Cabot, however, was called the Grand Admiral. He dressed in silk, when silk was excessively rare in England. He maintained a retinue on the streets, and the people I08 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. of Bristol ran after him as if he were a second Columbus. He made a map of his discovery and a globe which excited interest in England. He died probably the next year. Cabot had not found Antilia, but others went sailing over the seas to reach it. Myths and fairy tales, which men think true, are long in dying. We shall see the Spaniards, during the next cen- tury, chasing the myth of the Seven Cities among the Zunis and their cliff dwellings in New Mexico, and even among the buffaloes in Kansas. As for Antilia, the name survives in the Antilles of the West Indies, of which Cuba is " the pearl." Sebastian, the second son, nobly took up his father's work and carried it farther. Believing that the earth was a globe, he argued that the shortest path to the dominions of Genghis Khan lay far up north where the degrees of longitude approached each other. This young Venetian, in 1498, with a squadron manned by English volunteers, crossed the Atlantic. Although it was in July, they could not set foot on Labrador because of the dense mass of icebergs. The daylight lasting eighteen hours was excellent for exploration, and they landed at many points, noticing that the native dressed in fur clothing, and had ornaments and tools of copper. Fish were so plentiful that the ships seemed to plough their way through them. The bears came JOHN CABOT SAILS TO SEEK ANT ILIA. lOQ down to the shore and used their claws for grappHng hooks, pulHng the cod out of the water and feasting on them. The deer were bigger than those in England. He called the country Baccalaos, or cod- fish land. He sailed somewhere southwardly and then returned home. There was not much in England at this time to keep an enterprising Italian on her shores, and there was little appreciation anywhere of what the Cabots had done. Sebastian Cabot entered the service of Spain, and made other voyages. He came back to England in 1547, where he made maps and globes, and was chosen president of an English company, organized to trade with Russia through Archangel. He died in London about 1558. Yet, at such a time the discoveries of the Cabots had no more practical importance than had the voyages of the Norsemen. They could not, in that age and in that era of thought, be of any special benefit to England. They did not, and they could not, produce any special desire for further discoveries ; certainly not any for coloniza- tion or possession. The rest of the European world was mightily excited over the new regions beyond sea, and book after book on the subject was printed; but in England it was not till 1509, in a funny pamphlet called the " Ship of Fools," that no THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. there was any reference made in English Hterature either to Columbus' or to Cabot's wonderful dis- covery. At that time England was influenced by Latin ideas in religion, and under the spiritual con- trol of the Pope ; and there was no thought of breaking with his authority, which had been exer- cised in the division of the earth. For sixty years the story of the Cabot discoveries was unwritten in England, and popularly unknown there. The Pope had already cut the globe into Portu- guese and Spanish hemispheres, and any claim of right founded on discovery must be confirmed by the Pope, in order to be valid. Few Englishmen of that day would have thought of disregarding the Pope's command. Until Latin ideas had been given up, the yoke of the Pope's authority cast off, and the people possessed the new world of ideas that came in with the Reformation, the English cared little for exploration. Then the proofs of Cabot's discoveries were used as a sponge to wipe out the Pope's bull of demarcation, as one erases chalk writing from a blackboard. When money and the profits of trade and the fisheries rose clearly in sight, the English were stirred to conquest and colonization. This will appear more clearly in future chapters, when we shall see that, by the Reformation, all the northern maritime nations found a new sphere upon the ocean. The sea JOHN CABOT SAILS TO SEEK A NT I LI A. Ill became the cradle of the Reformation, and its power was born on the waves. The time came, in due course, when the pen proved to be mightier than the prow. In 1553, fifty-six years after John Cabot's American landfall, Mr. Richard Eden, who had known the old man, Sebastian Cabot, and seen him die, wrote a little book, " A Treatise on the New India." This roused the English folk to see that their Italian guests, the Cabots, had found a great world for them to conquer and colonize. Eden was a great admirer of the Spaniards, and wanted the English to convert the Indians. He published another book, giving much information from Spanish and other authors about America. He saw Philip II. of Spain and Queen Mary enter London in 1554 on their marriage journey. Yet not until after the reign of Bloody Mary, and when Elizabeth had long been seated on the throne, and hostilities with Spain begun, did Eng- lish sailors venture on the deep seas. Then, more than a century after John Cabot's glimpse of Occi- dental land, the west-country mariners of England sailed the seas over. They made little pretence of discovery or exploration. Their real object was to spoil the Spaniards. CHAPTER XII. AMERICA RECEIVES ITS NAME, AND THE WORLD IS SAILED ROUND. COLUMBUS had not reached Japan or China, but he still believed he would get there. When Ferdinand and Isabella confirmed him in all his rights and titles, they also authorized the equip- ment of a new and larger fleet of seventeen vessels, which sailed September 25, 1493. There was noth- ing to do but sail straio^ht ahead till near the West India Islands. Nearly a month was spent at Porto Rico. When, late in November, they came to the settlement, they found nothing but the bones of their former comrades, who had been unable to maintain authority among themselves or to keep peace with the natives. Selecting a spot thirty miles further east, Columbus founded the first Eu- ropean city in America. The crew of this second expedition were, for the most part, lazy and avaricious men. Unused to work, they made poor colonists with which to begin an empire. New and strange diseases broke out 112 AMERICA RECEIVES ITS NAME. I13 among them ; and even Columbus fell ill. He had written March 14, 1493, before leaving Europe, promising their Invincible Majesties all the gold they needed; but when, in 1494, he was obliged to send home twelve of his ships, instead of lading them with gold or gems, he had only a gloomy re- port of death, sickness, and woe. Besides this, he made a proposition that African slaves be sent over to labor for the colony. Columbus, neither better nor worse than the men of his age, thus laid the foundation of slavery in America, both of the red and the black man. Although the merciful King and Queen did not approve of his plan, Columbus had five shiploads of black men Irom Guinea sent to these new Indies. In the island itself, the natives were conquered by treachery and murder. The Spaniards levied upon the conquered natives a tribute in the form of a hawk's bell full of gold, once in three months, with the alternative, in the case of inability to get the gold, of working like slaves on the farms of their conquerors. The hawk's bell was a tiny measure shaped like a small sleigh-bell, but most of the Indi- ans could not furnish the precious metal, and so were enslaved. This cruel order produced more war, bloodshed, and misery. Within a generation the whole population of Hayti — an island nearly as large as Maine — was swept away through the re- 114 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. morseless cruelties of the Spaniards. The coming of the white man was that of the wolf among lambs. In April, 1494, Columbus left the colony to ex- plore unknown lands to the west. On the 12th of June, just as he thought he was getting near some great Chinese city full of gold, his men refused to go any further, and he was obliged to turn back. But, before he would yield, he compelled eighty of them to swear that they had touched the continent, and that it was possible to reach Spain by travelling westward overland. Whoever, on his return home, should break his oath was to be heavily fined and have his tongue cut out. Returning to Hayti, Co- lumbus found that his brother, Bartholomew, had ar- rived, and that some of the party had seized his ship and gone home, where they spread very damaging reports about Christopher. The King, therefore, sent out an agent, to inquire into affairs, who reached the colony in October, 1495. Columbus then de- cided to go home and plead his cause before the King and Queen. After nearly three years' absence he reached Cadiz, June 11, 1496. All went well with the Admiral, while in the pres- ence of Ferdinand and Isabella, who renewed his commissions and assisted him to fit out a new fleet of eight ships. It was still very hard to get crews, for the people of Spain in general were thoroughly AMERICA RECEIVES ITS NAME. 115 disappointed. Instead of being loaded down with yellow metal, his sailors had brought back yellow faces, made so by strange and awful diseases. Not a little of the wealth imported into Spain was in the form of human flesh, to be sold in Europe as slaves. The street loafers called Columbus the Ad- miral of Mosquito Land and the man mighty in promises who had done nothing. After long de- lays, the Admiral was able to secure the required crews by getting the privilege of transporting crim- inals to the West Indies. Such a policy could not but stamp the very name of colonist and colony with disgrace and ignominy. It was not until May 30, 1498, that the ships sailed. This time Columbus steered in a southerly course, and his first landfall w^as at an island with three peaks which he called the Trinity or Trini- dad. In our days this island, from its lakes of asphalt, furnishes us with material for roofs and pavements. A few days later, August i, 1498, Co- lumbus sighted the low land at the mouth of the Orinoco River, and this was most probably the first view of the mainland of America, by Colum- bus or by any Italian or Spaniard. He noticed the fresh waters rushing out into the salt sea, and called the place the Dragon's Mouth. The land was later called Little Venice, or Venezuela. When the Ad- miral reached Hayti on the last day of August, both Il6 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. the colony itself and its relation to the natives were at the worst. Now came melancholy days for Columbus. He got into a quarrel with Francis Roldan, who was ambitious and perhaps treacherous, and whom Co- lumbus finally sent off to Spain with his adherents, each one being allowed a slave or woman. The reports of these men on their arrival added fuel to the fires of detraction already kindled by the enemies of the Genoese of whom so many Spaniards were jealous. A new cargo of slaves added to the irrita- tion felt at Court, and King Ferdinand sent out an officer of his household named Bobadilla, who ex- ceeded his authority, for he sent Columbus home in chains. This was more than the sovereigns had intended. Yet, although they would not again give Columbus command of the island, they gave him another fleet of four ships for further explorations, and agreed to protect his estate. Still strong in his belief that China or Japan would be his next landfall, the Admiral again started west- ward. Refused help at Hayti, he sailed on between Cuba and Jamaica, skirting the coast of Central America, and getting into the tornadoes of that re- gion. Among the names he gave, Costa Rica, or the Rich Coast, still holds its own. He explored the rim of the sea and the edge of the land from the Isle of Pines to the east of the Isthmus of Darien, find- AMERICA RECEIVES ITS NAME. 1 17 ing some gold, many storms, but no path to Asia. By August 1 2, 1 503, all his vessels had been wrecked, and he was left stranded on a barren island, with a prospect of starvation. His brave companion Mendez volunteered to reach Hayti in an open boat, and succeeded. Columbus and his fellow- survivors, on June 25, 1504, after ten months of suffering, saw over the waves the relief boats ap- proaching. A few weeks were spent in the colony. The battered old man reached Spain after a stormy voyage, only to find that his best friend Queen Isa- bella was dead, and that the King now cared very little for him. He could get no help, and his pite- ous letters were in vain. He died at Valladolid, May 20, 1506, but his dust and bones were carried across the ocean, over which he was the first to sail, and were deposited in the cathedral of San Domingo, before the year 1549. In 1796, with imposing cere- monies, their removal to Havana, in Cuba, was accomplished. The island on which the first Spanish settlement in America began, later passed into the control of France, and then after revolution became the seat of the negro republics, Hayti and San Domingo. President Grant was once eager to have the United States purchase San Domingo, but the sentiment of our country was so strong against him that the project was abandoned. In course of time all the Il8 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Spanish possessions in America, except Cuba, were lost to Spain. Painfully and miserably, Christopher Columbus gained the aureole of immortal fame. Before he died, about seven thousand miles of the coast of the double continent had been discovered and mapped. During his life, Hispaniola was the chief seat of gold production in these western lands, and from 1492 to 15 10, five hundred thousand ducats of gold were sent to Spain from this place ; whence also the hammock was introduced into Europe. Peter Martyr, as early as 1494, spoke of a " new world," though yet a very little one. Com- merce between the lately explored Africa and the newly discovered America was almost wholly in human flesh and blood. It was not only an Italian from Spain who first steered westward, and discovered the West Indian archipelago and South America, an Italian and his son from England, who sighted islands and coasts in the ice-regions of North America, an Italian in Italy who divided the world in half and gave it away, but the whole double continent of America bears an Italian name. Amerigo Ves- pucci was a Florentine, born for trade rather than for learning, March 9, 145 1. The boy Amerigo was educated by his uncle, a Dominican monk. In the business house of the great merchant princes, AMERICA RECEIVES ITS NAME. 1 19 Medici, he found employment until the failure of the Eastern trade. Then went to Cadiz. Later, he was employed by another Florentine named Berandi, and helped in preparing Columbus' second expedi- tion in 1493. When Berandi, who had taken a royal contract to fit out another fleet, died, Vespucci stepped forward and fulfilled the contract. Vespucci kept up an interest in his old home, and wrote letters to the chief magistrate of Florence. All we know about the travels in the westward world, of America's godfather, are from transla- tions of these letters which perhaps have long ago perished. We gather from them that Vespucci made four voyages, each beginning in May, and that two of them, in 1497 and 1499, were for the King of Spain, Vespucci acting probably as pilot or factor. With four ships, in the first expedition, he says that he reached land, " upon a coast which we thought to be that of a continent, which many think to be the northern coast of South America." This would bring him within sight of the American continent, several weeks earlier than Cabot's land- fall, and fourteen months before Columbus caught sio-ht of South America at the Orinoco. How^ever, Vespucci never claimed the honor of the discovery of the double continent, or of nam- ins: the Americas. How America came to be this Italian's namesake happened in a curious way. In 120 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY, 1507, the year after Columbus died, at the college in the little French town Saint Die, was a German teacher of geography named Martin Waldseemiiller, who published his lecture notes in a Latin pamphlet entitled "An Introduction to a Description of the World." To this booklet of a few pages, a copy of which is now worth its weight in gold, he added translations into Latin of Vespucci's letters. He also wrote, "The Fourth part of the world having been discovered by Americus, it may be called Amerige ; that is, the land of Americus or Amer- ica." These letters were widely read, for Latin was the one tongue common to all educated people in Europe. Thus, this German, whose countrymen had so little to do with the discovery of America, — though afterward a good deal to do with the making of it, — gave the new world a name that stuck to it. Though applied at first only to the South Ameri- can continent, just as Asia was originally only the name of a province, it soon became that of the whole land-mass between the poles. Vespucci was a friend of Columbus, and probably had no idea of taking away any glory from him or from Cabot. In 15 15, after Vespucci had been dead three years, and the idea that the earth was round had become quite common, the German, Schooner, made his famous globe. This is the way the world then looked to the Europeans : we see the name AMERICA RECEIVES ITS NAME. 121 America applied to the South American continent. Something is known, also, of the mainland lying north, but it is not yet called North America. There is plenty of sea or vacant space above the latitude of Labrador. Westward, Japan, as a single long island, is apparently but a few miles off. Still further to the Occident, upper India projects out within a short distance of Japan. If the Italians discovered, the Germans named, America. A large portion of the northern part of South America was later explored by Germans, to whom the Emperor Charles V., in 1529, leased the province of Venez- uela as security for a loan of money. For a century or so, Germans and Spaniards were on a mad hunt for that American will-of-the-wisp, El kojjibre dorado, or the gilded man. Only gradually did the real idea of a " new world," and of a great continent lying between Europe and China, get into the heads of the people of Europe. America was yet very far from being fully discovered. Certainly its real character was not known. Even if they talked about a "new world," they meant simply some western coasts and islands newly discovered. It was reserved for a Portuguese, who afterwards became a naturalized Spaniard, to be the real dis- coverer of America not merely at one or two points, but as a continent by itself, and a very large obstacle in the way to China, while one of his ships actually 122 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. sailed around the globe, being the first to circum- navigate it. It is true that the western side of North America was revisited by Drake, the Englishman, after the Spaniards had seen and sailed along it, and that after Magellan, much remained still to be discov- ered. Indeed, much of the North American conti- nent, whose northern end is still unknown, even now remains to be explored. We cannot yet say whether the North Pole is in the water or on the land. Magellan was a boy about thirteen years old when he first heard of the triumphs of Columbus. F'rom his twenty-fifth to his thirty-second year he accom- panied those Portuguese ships which sailed clear into the Malay Archipelago, and among the Spice Islands. While fighting the Moors in Morocco, in 15 14, he first thought out the plan of getting through America in order to find China; for Balboa's dis- covery had shown that there was an ocean beyond. Because his own government, as he thought, had treated him badly, and would not aid him, he applied to Spain, and became a Spanish citizen. Reaching the splendid city of Seville in October, 15 17, he lived in the house of an exiled Portuguese, Diego Barboza, a man of position and influence, whose daughter he married. There, amid the groves of oranges, lemons, and olives he awaited his opportunity. AMERICA RECEIVES ITS NAME. 1 23 The young Netherlander, born in Ghent, who became the great Emperor Charles V., was now King of Spain, and he looked kindly upon young Magellan's scheme to tap the riches of the Chinas and the Indies. Bishop Fonseca, who had opposed Columbus, Balboa, and Cortez, was also warmly interested. Magellan's proposal was to take a Spanish fleet to the Malay Archipelago over a new route. At this time the Portuguese were trading directly with India and the Spice Islands by an all- sea route around Africa. The Court of Lisbon protested, and tried to prevent Magellan's expedi- tion by offering him and his friends brilliant in- ducements to return to Portugal. Magellan was warned to keep clear of that half of the world belonging to Portugal, but he expected to reach the other spice regions, which were inside the Spanish meridian, by sailing westward. A rich merchant joined him and offered to go on private speculation, but Charles V. finally sent out at gov- ernment expense five ships, which swung clear of their moorings at San Lucas September 20, 15 19. Touching at Madeira, trading with the Indians on the Brazilian coast, exploring the Rio de la Plata, following the unknown coast of Patagonia, he reached, March 31, the port of San Julian, where a mutineer was hanged. Magellan decided to re- main here till finer weather came on. Leavino^ late 124 ^^^ ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. in August, he discovered, on October 21, the day holy to the Eleven Thousand Virgins, the strait which he called after St. Ursula and her throng of martyr maidens, " Todos Los Santos." He sent in two ships to explore the inlet, but they could find no end to it; as it is over three hundred miles long. So, thinking that he had discovered the passage to China, Magellan ordered the whole fleet through. They spent a month at the work, stop- ping often to fish or explore. Reaching the open ocean November 28, Magellan called it " Pacific," or the peaceful sea, on account of the fine weather. This strait has ever since been a well-travelled highway. It was named " Magellan " by the Span- iards, Cape Virgin and Cape Holy Spirit being at each entrance. Magellan now steered for the north. His men suffered greatly from bad food and water, which brought on scurvy, that ancient enemy of the sailor. From this disease seafaring men have suf- fered for ages, until toward the middle of this cen- tury, when onions and other vegetables, lime-juice and anti-scorbutics have routed the enemy, and driven it to exile, so that now a case of scurvy is rarely seen on board a well-kept ship. At one of the islands, natives stole one of his boats, so he gave the group a name which still sticks, — " La- drones," or Robber Islands. Not correctly informed AMERICA RECEIVES ITS NAME. 125 as to the position of the Moluccas, his ships kept too far north; but on March i6, 1521, he discov- ered Samar, one of the group of islands named — though not till some years later — after Philip II. of Spain, and called " Philippines." The chief of one island was very hospitable, and, as the Span- iards thought, formally accepted allegiance to Spain ; but at Mactan Island the natives were hos- tile, and in his attack upon them, April 27, 1521, the commander and eight of his men were killed. Magellan could afford to die. He had discovered the southwest passage to China. The voyage, how- ever, w^as continued, and one of the ships reached Spain. The captain was honored by the King with a coat of arms, on which was a globe, with the motto, " You first sailed round Me." A Span- ish expedition under Villalobos was soon after- wards sent out, and took possession of the islands so wonderfully rich in timber, metals, gums, and spices. CHAPTER XIII. EL DORADO, OR THE GILDED CHIEFTAIN. AS with the discoveries of Cabot and the Norse- men, so with Magellan's. The importance of his voyaging was not at first recognized. The mind of Europe was bent on finding the direct passage to the old gold and spice lands of Asia, while America was ever the undesirable obstacle in the way. For eighty years or more to come, men kept on trying to drive their ships through this barrier, hoping to find some river, bay, strait, or other water passage through America in order to reach Japan and China. Nevertheless, geographers began to divide the Indies, to distinguish between the "East" and the "West" Indies. One thing healed the smart of the Spaniards' dis- appointment, while it kept them from making any further important explorations in North America. This was the discovery of mines of gold and silver in Mexico and Peru, to2:ether with the treasures won by seizure. Nevertheless, in time the great thought and practical achievement of Magellan bore fruit. He had given the first distinct knowl- 126 EL DORADO, OR THE GILDED CHIEFTAIN. 12/ edge of the Pacific. As the Spaniards had dis- covered the Phihppines, which were far enough around the world to be reckoned outside of the Portuguese claim, Villalobos and his men soon col- onized them. This group of over four hundred islands, between Formosa and the Moluccas, forming the northern part of the Malay Archipelago, with an area of one hundred and fifteen thousand square miles, an ex- ceedingly fertile soil rich in products both natural and cultivated, without dangers of wild beasts, and valuable in every way, became the rich treasure house of the King of Spain in the far East, while Peru and Mexico remained his inexhaustible store- house in the West. The Spaniards in America had little taste for work, but much for adventure. Most of them pre- ferred robbery to earning an honest living. They did not even care to mine the precious metals, but chose rather to roam over the continent and to lay their hands on gold wherever it had been already stored up. Once, an American popular lecturer went to Great Britain for pounds, shillings, and pence. " How strange," said Sandy, Taffy, and John, — one and all, — " we thought America was the place to make money." " True," replied the lecturer ; " but here it is made already." 128 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. So with the Spaniards, they wanted gold ah'eady dug and refined. Furthermore, they hid their pur- pose under the garb of rehgion. It is a curious fact, also, that South America was explored and its geography gradually learned because the Spaniards kept chasing phantoms and echoes. The myth of the El Dorado lured them on. What was this 1 In Venezuela, or Little Venice, there are many lakes, in each of which the Indians thought that a god dwelt who must be worshipped with offerings of gold or precious stones. Herein they were like the old Japanese, who believed in the Queen of the World and her palaces under the sea. On the top of a little mountain near Santa Fe, was one lake, at the bottom of which there lived a goddess, in whose honor a wonderful ceremony had been ob- served from times long before the coming of the Spaniards, and until about 1490. It was this: Whenever a new war-chief was chosen, there was a great parade of the warriors to the lake. In front walked a band of mourners, who were naked men painted red. These were followed by others, richly decorated with gold and emeralds, with feather crowns or with jaguars' skins. Their music was made with horns, pipes, and conch shells. The priests wore tall black caps and black robes marked with white crosses. The elders, nobles, and higher priests carried the newly chosen chief, the gilded EL DORADO, OR THE GILDED CHIEFTALN. 1 29 man, on a platform hung with sheets of gold. This living man was clothed with pure gold. His body had been first smeared all over with resinous gum, and then fine gold dust was powdered over him, until, from crown to sole, he was shining like a golden statue. The procession halted at the w^ater's edge. Then the chief and his bearers stepped upon a raft, and in the presence of thousands of spectators pushed put to the middle of the lake. There the chieftain plunged into the water and washed off his covering of gold, while his tribesmen threw in the gems and jewellery they had brought with them. Dancing and music closed the exercises of the day. All this was meant as an offering to propitiate the goddess that dwelt in the lake. This ceremony was of the same nature as the offerings made by the Iroquois Indians, when pass- ing Rock Regio or Split Rock in Lake Champlain, where Arendt van Curler was drowned. Only, the northern savages threw in tobacco, a pipe, or some similar gifts to placate the god residing there. Per- haps gold dust was of no more value to the native Venezuelans of a.d. 1490 than was tobacco to the Mohawks. In digging for drains in Venezuela, men have found, besides other interesting metallic relics, a group of ten golden human figures representing K 130 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. the raft with the gilded chief and his compan- ions. When the Spaniards first heard the story of the chieftain clothed in gold, — el homb re dorado^ -^'^ it is in Spanish, — they were too late. It was " the day after the fair." The Muysca Indians near Bogota having conquered the tribe whose chief was the El Dorado, or the gilded, the ceremony had ceased twenty years or more before white men heard the story. When the fact died, the myth was born, even as the western clouds take on their most ororo^eous colors after the sun has set. Nevertheless, for nearly a hundred years, the myth survived the reality on which it had been founded. The Span- iards and the Germans went all over the northern half of South America, searching for the phantom, which was not laid until the Germans Von Hum- boldt and Schomburgh and Bandelier, in our cen- tury, showed the beginning and growth of the delusion. Both stories — that of the Grand Khan and that of the Gilded Chieftain — had already changed from fact to fiction, from history to mythology, when the Italians and Spaniards began to chase them. The "dead fact stranded on the shores of the oblivious years " was like the coal tar which, in its decompo- sition turns into gorgeous aniline colors, and tints EL DORADO, OR THE GILDED CIIIEETAIN. 131 the river current with iridian splendors. Neverthe- less, because of this lust for gold and the spirit of adventure, the new continent was opened on all sides. Not at first, but in due time, the Strait of Magel- lan became a practical highway. Commerce be- tween Mexico and the Philippines developed. The Japanese Christians, who had come under direction of their new Spanish missionary teachers, to visit Europe to declare themselves spiritual vassals of the Holy See at Rome, to do obeisance to the King of Spain, and to leave splendid gifts of armor and W'Capons at Madrid, sailed by w^ay of the Pacific and crossed through Mexico. Returning home, these Japanese had gone entirely around the globe. In a very large sense of the word, the sovereign of Spain was " King of the Indies." Here, in our story of achievement, which eventu- ated in the settlement and appearance in history of the United States of America, practically ends the history of the Spanish discoveries in American coasts and waters, so far as we are directly con- cerned. The Portuguese colonized Brazil, and the Spaniards discovered and occupied the other por- tions of South America, as well as most of the West India Islands, Central America, and Florida. The Confederacies of Indian tribes in Mexico and Peru were conquered, and those countries were 132 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. made Spanish provinces from which poured silver rivers into the treasury at Madrid. As many prov- inces were added by Cortez to the reahn of the Emperor Charles V., as his father had had cities. The Spaniards also made persistent and impor- tant explorations in what is now the southern part of our country, especially in the Cotton States, from Florida to the Mississippi, and in the southwestern regions from Texas to California. We shall glance at these later. Though not evident to the world at the time, when one of Magellan's squadron circumnavigated the globe, it is now clear in the perspective of his- tory that some Power had determined that America in the North Temperate Zone, its best portion as to climate, fertility, mineral wealth, and natural high- ways, was to be occupied and dominated by other than the Latin races. Italy owned not a foot of soil. Portugal had only sub-tropical Brazil. Spain held, drained, and looted lower North America, Central America, and most of South America. It was reserved for the northern nations of Europe only partially to discover and to explore, but wholly to occupy and colonize the territory now compris- ing the United States of America. When America had been known as a continent, and the world first circumnavigated, there was little sign that the English, Dutch, or Scandinavian would EL DORADO, OR THE GILDED CHIEFTAIN. 1 33 launch out into the deep, or sail their ships beyond si""ht of land. It was the Reformation that orave England her sea power and Holland her eastern empire, and which made America the nobler theatre of the enterprise and faith of the Teutonic peoples. The Japanese Yoshitsune, the Mongols, and the Turks, by pushing westward, not only sent the southern nations of Christendom out on the sea in quest of lands beyond the Atlantic, but, by driving the Greek scholars with the Greek New Testament among Germanic nations, helped unconsciously the Reformation, the Dutch Republic, English sea- power, and the United States of America. CHAPTER XIV. THE FRENCH AMONG THE CODFISH AND THE WHALES. FRANCE Is one of the maritime European na- tions that has a large ocean front and a coast population which, from ancient times, has been daring upon the sea. While her southern neigh- bors were inquiring about new routes to those sunny Oriental lands where French crusaders had won immortal fame, the French could not remain indifferent. Every man of public spirit in southern Europe seemed to be talking of new sea-routes to the gold and spice lands. Being a people strongly inclined to Latin Christianity, the French needed fish dinners, at least three days in a week, and their sailors went far and wide to find the material. When King Francis I. heard how the Pope had carved the world in half, for only two nations living in one peninsula, he demanded to see Father Adam s will. He doubted the right of an Italian prince to dispose of so much of the universe by means of a bull. When the bold fisherman of St. Malo sailed far to the west, and, quite probably, fished off the banks of Newfoundland, the King was glad to hear 134 FRENCH AMONG THE CODFISH AND WHALES. 1 35 reports about a possible New France towards the setting sun. Yet, it is not probable that any French national ship with a French commander saw the North American continent until after an Italian navigator from Florence came in person and interested the French King and Court in his plans for a voyage westward. Verrazano, as his name was, had trav- elled in Greece and Syria, making money in the spice and silk trade. When forced by Turkish successes to look elsewhere, he did so. He took the advice which old Italians then frequently gave to their juniors, — "Go west, young man." He entered the French naval service in 1505, when twenty-five years old. Twelve years afterwards, he sailed to the East Indies in a Portuguese vessel, be- coming an expert navigator. Again, in a French privateer, he w^aylaid Spanish ships coming from the West Indies, capturing one in 1523, which con- tained the spoils which Cortez had taken from Montezuma in Mexico. After that, he thought he should like to see the silver continent for himself. The next year, 1524, he went out on a voyage of exploration to North America, making landfall near Cape Fear. He sailed northward along the coast, discovering a bay which was either that of New York or Narragansett. Then going four hundred and fifty miles northeast, to latitude 50°, he returned 136 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. to France. From Dieppe, July 19, 1524, he wrote to the King, claiming to have discovered over two thousand miles of a new coast. Once again, he got already to sail over the Atlantic either as a mer- chant to the Indies, or as a corsair for the pillage of Spanish vessels, but his career closed inglori- ously. He was captured on the southern coast of Spain and was put to death as a pirate. Indeed, not a few of the first discoverers, now so famous, suffered similar varieties of fate. They were thrown into prison, kept in chains, or had their heads cut off. Instead of winning gold, princes' favors, glory, and honor, they found them- selves and their children disgraced. Frequently in those days, between discoverers and explorers and pirates and sea-rovers, there was but a thin, some- times invisible, line of difference. It seems astonishing, in our day, that with so many famous names, as those of John Cabot, Ver- razano, and others, we find so little written or printed evidence of their work. Yet there seems little doubt but that this Venetian made such a voyage, and that he discovered new coasts in America. His fame rests upon a publication of Ramusio, who was the secretary of the senate in Venice. Besides publishing Verrazano's letter in 1556, and attempting to popularize in Italy his brother's fame as a discoverer, Ramusio may have FRENCH AMONG THE CODFISH AND WHALES. 1 37 embellished the story, besides adding that Verra- zano made another voyage to America and was killed by the savages. Ramusio knew the Cabots, and was one of the first to collect and publish accounts of voyages and travels. Thus it would seem that the first of French dis- coveries in America were made by another of those ubiquitous Italians in foreign employ. The Italians then led the world in nautical science and in daring on the sea. Nevertheless, Verrazano's discoveries had no more immediate practical importance among the French than had those of the Cabots among the English, until Jacques Cartier entered the river St. Lawrence and beo^an New France. Cartier was born in that little fishing-village named St. Malo, the fortified seaport town on the English Channel, near the mouth of the Ranee River, from which brave adventurous fishermen had probably sailed, even before his time, to the fishing-banks off New- foundland. Like their English brethren of the sea, the brave sailors of St. Malo hated the Inquisi- tion and paid back the Spaniards in their own coin, when the latter were too zealous to reduce heretics to ashes. To this day thousands of French fishermen come to the Grand Banks to catch cod. Not infrequently their little boats are cut in two and sunk, by the 138 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. ocean steamers that rush through the waters Hke railway trains. Crossing the Atlantic in September, 1895, for the eighth time, I remember that our steamer made a detour in order to avoid a wreck which had been caused by collision. The gunwale of this sin2:le-masted smack had been stove in, but the stump of the mast remained. The seaweed had already gathered, and the hulk had become a " derelict." As our big ship got in her rear, I read through my glass, on the stern of the waterlogged wreck, "Jacinth, Saint Malo." Cartier was born on the last day of 1594, and fol- lowed the sea from boyhood. Like many other young men of his century, he hoped some day to find the western passage to China. When the war between Spain and France was over, and the priva- teers had to seek new employment, Cartier was given two ships, of fifty tons each, and 162 picked men. Leaving St. Malo April 20, 1534, he sailed straight across the ocean. He sighted the head- lands of Newfoundland on May loth, meeting storms, floating ice, white bears, and wild fowls, seemingly as numerous as snowflakes in a winter's storm. His men explored the island coasts, and straits, and landing, they set up a cross. At one place they found a French ship from Brest. This was not surprising, for at various points these coasts had been visited by the Norsemen, by Cabot, by '"~l CARTIER SETS UP A CROSS IN NEWFOUNDLAND. FRENCH AMONG THE CODFISH AND WHALES. 139 Cortereal the Portuguese, by Basque whalers, and by fishermen from Brittany. Probably hundreds of vessels had been off the banks for fish before Cartier came. They thought that Labrador, which the Norse- men had named the country of slate or rock, was the land of Nod, to which Cain had been banished, and indeed the natives whom they met seemed to have Cain's bad manners. The red man's opinions of the Frenchmen are not given. They kept on amid mists and storms, examining the archipelago, and sprinkling the names of the saints very fre- quently upon promontories and harbors. Not till the last day in June did they reach the mainland. The Micmac Indians came around the ship in such numbers that Cartier was obliged to fire blank car- tridges out of his cannon to scare them away. The next day he landed, and pleased their chief with the present of a red hat. He met other Indians, but having no provisions to spare, could not safely stay longer. He turned his prows homeward August 15, having two Indians on board. On this voyage he found neither the mouth of the St. Lawrence River nor the route to Japan. His Indians, with their curious costumes, and hair done up like a bundle of hay, with feathers sticking in the mass, made a great sensation in France. They certainly helped to stir up interest in further explorations. 140 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. The next year, the King, wishing to see more of his new subjects, and to hear of new reahns, gave Cartier three ships in which to seek further for some waterway across America to spice lands ; but the St. Malo sailors, not caring to venture again where they found only icebergs, white bears, birds, codfish, and red savages, were slow in signing articles. They thought the whole scheme was wild, and Cartier a dreamer. So Cartier had to man his ships with pardoned criminals, though some very good sailors went with him. During July and August he met with the same stormy weather as before, and was totally discouraged in not finding a passage through to the Pacific Ocean. Two Indians told him that the strait between Anticosti and Salvador, which he had named St. Peter's Channel, led to a river which narrowed inland and became shallow, besides having rapids. This river, they said, was the en- trance to Canada. When, on August i8, Cartier saw many whales driving westward, he being too full of the Chinese idea to believe the Indians, ordered the ships to move west. Soon he came to water that was first brackish and then fresh. Nevertheless, having China on the brain, he thought that even fresh water might lead to regions of spice and silk. Soon he came into the broad river, passed the Saguenay, and in mid-September reached the site of Quebec. FRENCH AMONG THE CODFISH AND WHALES. 141 Canada, ever rich in forests, was then lovely with the colors of the frost-touchecl leaves, and seemed almost like heaven to the weary Frenchman. How the country got its name is still a puzzle. Some say the gold-seeking Spaniards had seen the coun- try and cried out in disgust, " Aca ! nada " — " Noth- ins: there." Others derive the name from the Iroquois word kamiata, meaning a collection of huts or a village. The new-comers made friends with the Indians, who gathered in thousands to see the ships ; but Donnacona, then chief, not liking Cartier's proposed exploration of the river, tried to frighten the white men away with the antics of some of his tribesmen dressed like imps. These, he said, were messengers from the god that dwelt farther up the river and who did not like strangers. At such painted and tricked-out demons, Cartier, who was familiar with European painted and sculptured devils, was only amused. With a party of men he went on his way, exploring the river as far as the rapids. Landing at one point, Cartier and his party climbed the high ground, enjoyed the splendid view, and called the name of the place Montreal, the royal hill. King's Mountain. After an astonishing amount of reli- gious ceremonies, the white men ended with theft and treachery. It was a slave-catching and a slave- stealing age, when neither English, Spanish, Dutch, 142 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. nor French had any conscience about burning men for holding different rehgious opinions, depriving dark-skinned men of their Hberty, or of kilHng " infidels," and Cartier seized and carried off several of the Indian leaders, including Donnacona. After a winter spent at the harbor of the Holy Cross, with much suffering from scurvy, of which they were cured by drinking decoctions of the leaves and bark of the white pine, the Frenchmen returned to St. Malo, July i, 1536. The King was delighted to see his new subjects, to hear of Cartier's success, and to learn of the great river St. Lawrence. Noth- ing, however, was done until 1541, when Cartier sailed again with Roberval and five ships. This time, having encountered weather even more stormy than before, little was accomplished beyond explor- ing the rapids above Montreal. When he got home, his king knighted Cartier. From this time forth, fleets of French fishing-vessels crossed the Atlantic regularly, and Portuguese, Spanish, and French vessels brought thousands of tons of cod for Friday food to Europe. France had now solid ground for claims upon, and further occupation of, America. Nevertheless, there were no immediate movements towards Canada. The French were soon after disturbed by internal dissensions and wars for the freedom of conscience. Catherine de Medici, who was the real FRENCH AMONG THE CODFISH AND WHALES. 1 43 ruler of the kingdom during the reign of her three sons, did not care to spend her resources or attempt to get new revenues in the scarcely known regions beyond the Atlantic. Aside from some minor enterprises and failures in Canada, the only French attempts during the sixteenth century to colonize any part of North America were made during the struggle of the Huguenots for freedom in religion. By the advice of Admiral Coligny, Jean RibaUt took out twenty or thirty settlers and built a little log fort at Port Royal, in what is now South Carolina. Finding grapes plentiful, they gathered and pressed them, making about twenty hogsheads of wine ; but in that lonesome land, between the forest wilderness and the sea, when winter came on, they nearly died of homesickness. Resolving to return home, they built a rude boat out of green timber, for which they made sails and rigging from their bed-clothes and clothing, and then turned their prow eastward. Wonderful to relate, they were seen by a ship, picked up, and taken to England. A second expedition was sent out the next year, 1564, under Laudonniere. This time the French built a fort further south, on the St. John's River, in Florida, where, after a while, they were rein- forced by Jean Ribaut, who came with seven ships and three hundred men. These Huguenot settle- 144 ^^^ ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. ments represented the efforts of Admiral Coligny and his fellow-patriots to found a French Protes- tant state in America. How real the Pope's division of the world was then held to be, and how terrible it then was to break his command, Coligny and Ribaut soon dis- covered. The King of Spain sent one of his bravest officers, Pedro Menendez, to uproot the settlement. The Spaniard arrived with a great fleet and force. "By a clever ambuscade he sur- prised the French garrison, captured the women and children alive, and massacred the men found in the fort. He then induced Ribaut, whose fleet had been nearly ruined by storms, with three hundred of his followers, who were almost starved, to sur- render on the promise of protection. The prisoners were then marched off to the Spanish settlements in Florida, near St. Augustine, and there were all deliberately shot in cold blood, for in those days Spaniards did not keep faith with men called heretics. The King of France, being a true follower of the Pope, paid no attention either to this insult to his flag or to the massacre of his subjects, but a French nobleman named de Gourgues, at his own expense, sailed with ships and men to Florida to take revenge. He surprised and captured the Spanish garrison, and hanged every one of the FRENCH AMONG THE CODFISH AND WHALES. 145 prisoners, putting above each an inscription on a board, " Not Spaniards, but Assassins." Unable with his force to attack St. Augustine, he sailed away, and the Spaniards were left in possession of the country. How far away seem these days, when human heinous killed each other in the name of Christ and thought they were doing God service ! But slowly have men learned that the Almighty is not honored by those who cloak their murderous passions under the name of religion. All churches were then po- litical, and therefore persecuted those who held the doctrine of the separation of Church and State, now the law of the United States of America. Yet al- ready in Europe, from Switzerland to England, the believers in the right of Christians to govern them- selves without politicians, native or foreign, were sowing the seed of those truths which have become flower and fruit in the Constitution and laws of the United States. CHAPTER XV. THE LAND OF FLOWERS AND THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. LIKE the horns of the crescent enclosing the old moon, the United States projects far south around the Gulf of Mexico. On the west is the southern boundary of Texas, and the warm water is salt until it touches the fresh flood of the Rio Grande. On the east there projects southward, Florida, a land reared for the most part out of the ocean by coral insects, yet with its highlands and orange plantations, its coquina or shell-rock, and its Evero-lades. In both of these southern extremities of our country there are many Spanish names, among which those of the saints abound. From the frequent references to dogmas and mysteries of the Christian faith in French and Spanish names, one would imagine that the people of these coun- tries were religious above all others, but this does not follow. St. Augustine, the oldest town in the United States, was founded by the Spaniards. Florida and all the land in what is now the Cotton States, as far west as the Mississippi, were first explored by men 146 LAND OF FLOWERS AND FOUNTALN OF YOUTLI. 147 of Castile and Aragon. The whole country across to California was traversed by heroes from the same kingdom, whose names, whose blood, whose archi- tecture and reliction still attest their couraee and enterprise and show how deeply they have made their mark upon the history of our country. Florida is the first of the states of our Union that was ever seen by a European. It was visited as one would visit a fairyland, to find the pot of gold under the rainbow, or the golden fleece before the dragon's shrine. Herein we see mental differences between the southern and the northern nations of Europe. The former are more romantic. They act oftener upon ideas alone. The northern peoples are more practical and prosaic. The Spaniards, in many instances, went to America under dreamy delusions and with chivalrous ideas, chasing myths and shadows. Their brains were full of old-world notions and fairy tales, which they tried to realize on this side of the Atlantic. No wonder they laid themselves open to the wit and sarcasm of Cervan- tes, who poked fun at the hare-brained knights charging at windmills when other objects of attack were absent, The Spaniards explored America not only for gold but to realize all sorts of fancies that now belong to fairyland and the Arabian Nights. The more practical Englishmen and Dutchmen cared next to nothing about the new continent in 148 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. the west, until they saw there was good soil, fish, mines, and money in it, and opportunity to make fortunes. There was no more strange quest in Teutonic or Japanese fairy world than was that of the gray- bearded knight of Aragon, who had heard of a miraculous fountain whose waters would make old people young again. This was one of those won- derful myths of the middle ages, which came from the far East, and thence through the Moors to Europe, and which the Spaniards really brought with them across the sea. In the new world they tried to see what their eyes were looking for. They had expected to find that part of the old world, which is as wonderful in its myths as in its reali- ties, — China and Japan. For a hundred years after Columbus, they never thought of any " new " world although they were actually in it. They brought with them the Chinese and Arabic notions of alchemy, the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, the fountain of youth, the Amazons, the odd notions of Chinese Tauism, and the myth of the Seven Cities. To these they added new American myths, like that of The Gilded Man, which not for hun- dreds of years were entirely given up. Even yet, lingering among the uneducated, we catch glimpses of their ghosts in old romances, in gypsy lore, in almanacs, and in fortune-tellers' advertisements. Yet LAND OF FLOWERS AND FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 149 these notions once moved thousands of men to cross the seas, traverse deserts, jungles, and swamps, and to starve and die in American forests. Ponce de Leon opened his eyes in Aragon, in 1460. Of noble family, he grew up to be a soldier. He helped to wrest Granada from the Moors, and went with Columbus, in 1493, to found the city of Little Spain. At fifty years of age, he was made governor of Porto Rico. One day he heard, from a native, of an island to the northwest, called Dimini, which had a miraculous spring into which if an old man plunged, he would come out without wrinkles and gray hair, and be strong once more. This news set the old man's imagination on fire. He. became as eager for the plunge in the forest foun- tain, as was Don Quixote to charge the windmill. Receiving his sovereign's permission to investi- gate and settle Dimini, Ponce de Leon sailed in March, 15 13. He discovered some of the Bahama Islands, and in the lovely month of April, on Easter Sunday, he landed a few miles north of St. Augus- tine. Taking possession with great ceremony, he called the land Pascua Florida, or the Paschal Flowery Land, the first word being the Spanish for Pascal or Palm Sunday. Curiously enough, the China so long sought for by voyagers from Europe, is also called the Flowery Land, or, in Spanish La Florida. Ponce de Leon sailed down the coast I50 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. about two hundred miles, and then returned to his island. There he was kept busy for several years by those Indian wars, in which the aborigines were exterminated. At last, in 1521, he went again with three ships and with soldiers to conquer the new country, and get his baptism of youth. In attempt- ing to plant a colony, instead of finding a fountain of life he was met by hostile Indians, and so badly wounded that he died soon after reaching Cuba. The first flowers of Spanish history in Florida were those of nightshade rather than of amaranth. Florida, which meant to a Spaniard any and all land north of the Gulf of Mexico, having been dis- covered, the next step was to colonize it. For this purpose, the King of Spain sent out a splendid fleet of vessels wdth six hundred men, under the com- mand of de Narvaez. The treasurer was Cabeza de Vaca, of whom we shall hear again. He was born in the town of Xeres, of which " sherry " wine is the namesake, and he became the greatest of early American travellers. He was the Stanley of Darkest America, known in its interior less than we now know, in some respects at least, the planet Mars. Instead of landing on the east coast, the little army, reduced by mutiny to about four hundred men, reached a place near Tampa Bay, probably at Clearwater Harbor, on the west coast. Landing was effected on Good Friday, in the year 1528. While LAND OF FLOWERS AND FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 15 1 the soldiers marched inland and northward, the sailors in their fleet followed along the coast. The explorers met with misfortunes from the very first. Expecting to live off the land, the hun- gry men found no food, but everywhere encountered fiercely hostile Indians. Then began a long war. Out of every canebrake and from every swamp, sped the deadly arrows. In their wild fastnesses, the Florida savages, lov- ing their oozy lair, long defied the white man's prowess. During our century, these Seminoles ambuscaded Colonel Dade and his brave band of over one hundred men. Even yet the swamps of the Everglades are not fully explored. An advance in the hot weather in ancient Flor- ida must have been a friohtful task. Loaded down with their armor, weapons, and clumsy firearms, the Spaniards floundered about among the rivers, lakes, and swamps, making, with their gay dress and shin- ing breastplates and helmets, splendid targets for their foes. They were quickly decimated by the agate-tipped shafts of their unseen enemies, and by starvation. Worse than all was their lack of unity. Losing morals and discipline, one set plotted against the other. When they reached the coast, they were unable to find their ships. With tremendous labor, they built five miserable boats and sailed westward along 152 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. the coast line of the Gulf hoping to reach Mexico. Terrible storms swooped down upon them. The miserable craft were scattered and wrecked. The castaways found themselves on a strange shore beyond the mouth of the Mississippi River, with starvation facing them. In order to preserve life, they had to turn cannibals. The shores of the wretched island which they called Mai Hodo, or Misfortune Island, were inhabited by poorly fed savages who kept body and soul together with roots, berries, clams, and fish, from the sea, but who, nevertheless, treated the white men kindly. Without weapons or clothing, which had been lost in the water, the Spaniards spent the winter on the island. In the spring thirteen of the sixteen sur- vivors tried to escape, but were captured and all killed except three, who were kept as slaves. Of the great expedition there remained but four half-starved sick men, one of whom was the now famous Cabeza de Vaca, the first man to traverse the North American continent, as we shall see. His name means Cow- Head, but he had the brains of an unusually bright man. In the Norse mythol- ogy, the cow was the primal animal of creation, and the cow's head at the prow of the Norseman's galley first pointed to the new world. So also this Spaniard, honorably named after the head of a cow, was, in a threefold sense, a remarkable man. He LAND OF FLOWERS AND FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 1 53 was the first pioneer who explored the whole south- ern part of the United States. He was the first American commercial traveller, the forerunner of the great and worthy host of to-day. He was the founder of the Cherokee theology, and told his savage friends the story of the creation, at which, two centuries later, the American missionaries in Georgia and the theologians at Andover were greatly puzzled, because Cherokee tradition so closely resembled the Hebrew narrative. We must not fors^et that these were the first Europeans to look upon the Mississippi ; for in their voyage westward, they had passed the great fresh water current which rushes into the Gulf of Mexico. Their Island of Misfortune was west of the great river, probably at Matagorda Bay, in Texas. At any rate, they were so far from Florida that they neither heard of the next explorer of Florida nor did he hear of them. Leaving Cabeza de Vaca for a while, we shall anticipate a little by continuing the story of the further exploration of Florida. The results of the great expedition had not been cheering. No doubt, in Spain, many a jibe was made at the flowery name first given to what proved to be a land of storms and disaster. Neverthe- less, there were young Spaniards ever ready to dare and to do for sovereign and country, especially 154 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. when gold had been ah*eady so quickly gained else- where, and honors so quickly showered upon certain of their countrymen in other fields. One example, among many, of quick success was that of the Spanish student, Ferdinand de Soto, who, when but twenty-three years old, came to the new world. He was with Balboa in his discovery of the Pacific, and with Pizarro in Peru. Then he returned to Spain a wealthy man, with a name as well as a fortune, and was able to get for his wife the daughter of his noble friend who had helped him in the days of youth and poverty. When only forty years old, he was rich enough to lend money to the Emperor Charles V., but he longed for still greater glory. Hearing Cabeza de Vaca's story of the Zuni tribes of New Mexico, which lived in the cliffs, or, as the story came to him, in high houses of clay and stone, having door-posts lined with emeralds, he offered to equip a force at his own expense to win a new empire for Spain. He was appointed governor to Cuba with oversight also of Florida, which meant all the land north of the Gulf of Mexico, extending indefinitely northward and westward. Having the right of exploration, the young soldier called together a company of adventurous spirits and equipped them handsomely. In May, 1539, he landed at Tampa Bay with nearly nine hundred LAND OF FLOWERS AND FOUNT A LW OF YOUTH. 155 men mostly in the prime of youth, in gayest dress and armor. They were furnished with playing- cards for games, priests and altars for religion, horses for the officers and cavalry, and a large drove of hogs for fresh food. It was as gay, as fanatical, as wicked a company as ever set foot on any shore. They came with mixed motives, to kill, enslave, and conquer in the name of God. They had bloodhounds and manacles for the natives, whom they intended to catch. They were as zealous as they were avaricious, confidently expect- ing to win, as Pizarro and Cortez had done, a new empire, rich in gold. Under splendid banners and crosses, which he had erected, and with dazzling ceremonies, de Soto consecrated the land to God and tlie King. It was now to be seen whether the man who had suc- ceeded so grandly in the South American high- lands could subdue the wilderness of a flat region, full of mud and malaria, and totally different in all its aspects from the mountains and forests of the southern continent. The march northward and westward was begun amid swamps and thickets. The hostile natives, the malarious climate, the new and strange diseases, and the constant danorer of huno^er was terrible, but to the end of his life, de Soto's men kept discipline and obeyed him. 156 • THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. During their hunt for gold and for Indian treasure- cities, they met with many wonders. Two escaped Spanish captives joined them. They put the Indian slaves whom they kidnapped, in iron collars and chains, and made them grind corn and carry packs. In October the harbor of Pensacola was discovered, and word was sent to Cuba for supplies to be for- warded next year. Turning to the northeast, they crossed during March and April the rich plains and rivers of Georgia, passing through a region popu- lated by the ancestors of the now civilized tribes in the Indian Territory. In May they entered the Cherokee country. Fearing to cross the mountains, they wandered about in Alabama, reaching the large Indian town of Mobile near the middle of October. Here a great battle ensued, for the Indians, refusing to let these slave-makers occupy their houses, fought with splendid courage. Only after a desperate con- flict and repeated cavalry charges, did the white warriors with armor and sword, guns and horses, win costly victory over the men of the stone age. Of the Spanish horses, twelve were killed and seventy injured; of the men, eighteen were slain and one hundred and fifty had arrow wounds. In the burning town the Spaniards lost their baggage and trophies. Twenty-five hundred of the natives, it is recorded, were killed, burned, or suffocated. Only five hundred tattered men in rusty armor LAND OF FLOWERS AND FOUNT A LN OF YOUTH. 1 57 now remained of the original nine hundred. March- ing north through the Chickasaw country, they seized the wigwams and corn of the Indians and spent the winter on the Yazoo River. In the spring, rather than furnish two hundred slaves to de Soto, the Indians set fire to the town, burning up many horses, hogs, and " Christians," besides clothing and weapons. The invaders expected now to be over- whelmed in an attack by great numbers, but the spirit of the half-naked whites rose to the emer- gency. The Spaniards were good blacksmiths and metal-workers. Within a week, at their forges, they had made new weapons or mended old ones, and were too well prepared to be safely meddled with by men having only clubs and stone-headed arrows. De Soto would not give up or turn back. Resum- ing the march, after a week's toiling through swamp and forest, they reached the muddy Mississippi, near what is now Memphis. The fear of men who wore steel hats and fought on horses, had preceded them, and a fleet of two hundred canoes filled with Indians, their chief in feathers and state dress, came down the river to offer presents of food, fish, and persimmon bread. The horses could not be got across the mile-wide river in bark canoes, which they would have swamped or kicked through, so the Spaniards had to build barges. 158 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY, How strange it seems that two Spanish expedi- tions, each chasing the phantom of " the Seven Cities rich in gold," — an idea which they had in their brains before leaving Europe, — were within a few leagues of each other at this time, and were mutu- ally ignorant of each other's presence. In mid- summer, 1 541, Coronado, who from Mexico had traversed Arizona and New Mexico, and who, hav- ing: found that "the Seven Cities of Cibola" were only Indian villages with no gold, was seeking other gleaming phantoms among buffaloes and savages in central Kansas; while at the same time de Soto, on a similar hunt, was chasing brain spectres and piercing himself with many sorrows. They never met on earth to compare experiences, although both were in Arkansas. De Soto's party moved north into Missouri and up along the banks of the Father of Rivers. The Indians believed the white men to be gods who were able to heal the blind. The explorers enjoyed the bountiful crop of nuts, berries, and fruits of the land. At the northernmost point of their travels they spent a month, hearing of bisons, but not of any gold. Then they marched westward, spending the winter along the line of the Washita River, mur- dering, burning, mutilating, or enslaving the savages, as suited their whim, making a hell on earth in their rage and disappointment. LAND OF FLOWERS AND FOUNTALN OF YOUTH. 1 59 Discouraged and melancholy, de Soto now again turned towards the Mississippi, where the tattered remnants of his host gathered round him, as he named his successor, May 20, 1542. The next day he breathed his last. Some priests were yet left in the company, and requiem mass was celebrated over his body. At midnight the corpse, wrapped up and weighted to sink, was dropped into the river. So perished the discoverer of the Mississippi, but it was very long before his widow in Cuba, whom he had left as a bride, heard of his melancholy end. Both Coronado and de Soto left home, wife, comforts, and fortune to hunt ghosts. Still in the hope of reaching wealth, and too proud to give up and return home poor, the surviv- ors wandered on westward toward Mexico and to the buffalo pastures and hunting-grounds of the Pawnees and Comanches; but, in despair, they again turned to the great river in December. Five months were spent in building seven undecked boats. Nails were made out of the chains and collars used on the Indian slaves. Hogs, horses, and game were killed and their flesh dried, the corn stores of the Indians were robbed, and barrels to hold fresh water were made. Then, with the rising flood they started down the river on their fresh and salt water journey to Mexico. In seven- teen days they had reached the Gulf. In about l6o THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY, forty days more the three hundred and nineteen survivors arrived at Panuca in Mexico, thus ending five years of suffering and of the infliction of suffer- ing on others. This was the first inland navigation of American waters by Europeans. De Soto's men had probably traversed the territory of no fewer than eleven or twelve of the states of our union, from Florida to Texas. CHAPTER XVI. A LONELY TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT. IT is time now to tell of Cabeza de Vaca's most wonderful overland travels from Tampa Bay to the City of Mexico, and how his explorations pre- pared the way for the Spanish settlements and col- onies in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Let us glance at his early history and see what kind of a man he was, and what strange vicissitudes he underwent. His full name was Alvar Nuiiez Cabeza de Vaca. His ancestors had won their family name two centuries before, in battle against the Moors. His grandfather had conquered the Canary Islands for the King of Spain. These islands, long before the time of Columbus and until the days of Raleigh's Virginia colonies, formed the far western limit of the old world. From the Canaries, which are still famous for their wines and song birds, most of the early exploring expeditions southward and westward sailed. At the Isle of Misfortune, as we remember, Cabeza de Vaca had been left behind, because too ill to walk, but he held on to life. As warm M l6l 1 62 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. weather advanced, he recovered and actually won his way to the confidence of the Indians. After winning success as a pedestrian, merchant, and doctor among the natives, he at last reached Mexico and afterwards returned to his European home. He came back to America as Governor of Paraguay ; he failed and returned to Spain as a convict. He was kept in prison eight years, and when released lived at Seville until 1564. In 1542 Cabeza de Vaca produced the book which ofives us the first written account of the southern part of our great country. In this, he tells us, not only about himself, but also about the Indians. He describes their modes of life in war and peace, and their commerce. It was this devout Catholic who first taught the southern Indians the truths of the Christian religion. He was really the first missionary among them and learned their laneuaee. From him, the ancestors of the Chero- kees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and other civilized tribes learned about God and Christ and creation, and received an outline of the Bible story. He laid the foundations on which in later times other missionaries builded. He thus prepared the way for their success. From Cabeza de Vaca to the Cherokee Bible, and the Cherokee Indians of to-day, it is a long story of wrongs and sorrows, but also of progress. A LONELY TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT 163 How this Spaniard became a doctor and a mer- chant is told in his own book. Even when he was on Misfortune Island the Indians wished to make the white men physicians, but the proposition was received with hearty laughter. The Spaniards took the matter as a joke and thought the Indians were making fun of them, but the redskins were so much in earnest that they kept the white men hungry until they should yield and be obedient. The Indian theory was, that it was not necessary to know anything especially about roots or herbs, pills or tonics, but that as the sticks and stones and birds and beasts and reptiles had healing power, such strange creatures as white men must certainly be able to drive away diseases. Many of these Indians were very poor and mis- erable, having little to eat. Their life consisted chiefly in wandering from one place of food to another. As their white slave was too weak to draw a bow, to follow and trap animals, or to carry wood and water, even if they had allowed him to do that which was squaw's work, they let him wander about to find his own food, and go and come as he chose. Gradually, as his strength returned, he made long journeys up and down the coast. Soon he began to trade, acting as importer and exporter. He broudit sea-snails, corn, medicine, shells, sea- beads, and other things from among the coast 164 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Indians and traded off his wares among the interior tribes for skins, red ochre, flints for arrow-heads, cement, reeds for arrow-shafts, and red-dyed tassels of deerskin. Everywhere the Indians treated him kindly and gave him food for his wares. As in the time of war the Indians of mutually hostile tribes could not themselves traffic, they were only too glad to have this neutral peddler carry on the business of a common carrier, which he did to his own profit. He was not only the first commercial traveller in North America, but was also the first white man who ever saw or heard of the bison or buffalo, and the first to describe what he called the "hunch-back cows." Gradually he learned from the medicine men the tricks of their profession. All over the world, sav- ages, who know nothing of the real causes and nature of disease, think that sickness and death come from spells or witchcraft caused by some enemy, or by being possessed of demons. Hence, the " medicine men " or wizards pretend by devilish tricks, noises, or by making themselves hideous, to frighten and drive out the imp or to neutralize the spell. Soon this lonely Spaniard had a great reputation as one who could suck out the poison, the imaginary stone or the thorn which made the trouble, for the mind- cure existed then as now. Instead of surgical instru- ments and pill-boxes, his chief aid in influencing A LONELY TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTINENT. 1 65 patients was a rattle made of a dried bladder skin with beans inside. Once on a long journey, after having occasionally heard rumors of the presence of his countrymen, he wandered into Texas. There he found two Span- iards and a negro named Stephen, or Estevanico, and these four, naked and hungry, resolved to set out for Mexico. In August, 1535, they reached a tribe where each of the four practised medicine, so they quickly became men of renown and importance. They crossed Texas and went through the mod- ern Mexican provinces of Chihuahua and Sonora. Everywhere they stopped to heal the sick. Not con- tent with what they had learned from the Indians, they earnestly prayed to God for their patients. It is more than probable that after their departure these four strangers were themselves made into gods and their memory worshipped. At least, we may infer as much from what we know has happened in old Japan again and again. Indeed, pretty much the whole stock of heathen gods are only men w^ith posthumous reputation for powder. The travellers were agreeably surprised to find fields in which beans and pumpkins were cultivated, and that their red owners lived in houses made of timber and sod, like our " sod-shacks " in the new territories. The women w^ere decently dressed in cotton clothing, and even washed their clothes, using l66 ° THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. soap-root, which is still employed by our own Ind- ians and Mexicans. It was like a royal feast when they had cooked deer's hearts to eat during their three days' stay in one town. Then they met an Indian havino- on his necklace a horseshoe nail and the buckle of a sword belt, which he said he had Qfot from men with beards who had come from the sky and fought his people. This was their first sight in eight years of anything European. In Sinaloa, they heard of Spanish slave-catchers who had just left the place. After a hurried march, they overtook on the next day four Spaniards, to whom, though nearly overcome wdth emotion, they told their story, which seemed incredible. The Span- ish officers were not very hospitable to these sun- burned, savage-looking men of matted hair and tangled beard, who talked so excitedly, and the four survivors were abused in various ways ; but finally. May I, 1536, they reached Culiacan, and later the City of Mexico. They had now to train themselves to be white men in habits, and to eat the food and wear the clothes of civilization. In August, 1537, after a walk of probably over ten thousand miles, and having been the means of stimulating expeditions which opened Arizona and New Mexico to Spanish civilization, and our Indian Territory, Kansas, and Colorado to exploration, Cabeza de Vaca reached Spain. It was his accounts A LONELY TRAMP ACROSS THE CONTLNENT. 1 6/ of the countries he had traversed, and his reports of " the Seven Cities of Cibola, full of gold " of which he had heard, but had not seen, that started both Coronado and de Soto, the one from the east, and the other from the west, on their terrible marches. It was a double chase after the shadows of a fairy tale. CHAPTER XVII. CORONADO AND THE EXPLORATION OF NEW MEXICO. ONE name that ought never to be forgotten by Americans is that of Brother Mark, or Fray Marcus, who heard of the Seven Cities of Cibola from Cabeza de Vaca on his arrival in Mexico, and at once resolved to visit them. Brother Mark was another of that noble Italian band who, besides Cabot and Columbus, did so much to make Amer- ica known. He was born in that city of Nice, over which, in i860, the soldier Garibaldi's heart was nearly broken, because Count Cavour the states- man ceded it to France. Mark had come to Amer- ica with Pizarro in 1531. After his experiences in Peru he was in Guatemala and then came to Mexico. Ordered by his superior, not to needlessly expose his life to danger, he, in the spring of 1539, started with the black man Estevanico and a few Indians to walk the whole distance from the City of Mexico to Zuni land. Following the coast of the Southern Sea, as the Spaniards called the Pacific Ocean, until near Matape, he ordered the negro forward. He 168 CORONA DO AND EXPLORATION OF NEW MEXICO. 1 69 told him to send back reports by Indian messen- gers, by means of large or small crosses on pieces of white wood, enlarging the marks according as the news was encouraging. Carrying his medicine rattle and making use of his powers as a wizard, this " Black Mexican," as the Zuni Indians still call him, made a wonderful impression and great progress, and finally reached the Zuni pueblos or towns. There he seems to have abused his privileges, by behaving rudely to the men and insulting the women, and was killed. Per- haps this was the first blood of an African negro shed on what is now United States soil. Brother Mark received very good tidings in the form of large cross-marks on white wood, until he got within sight of the Zuiii villages, where some hungry and tattered companions of black Stephen met him and told him the bad news. Mounting a hill from which he could overlook the promised land, Mark saw large houses several stories high in what seemed a city full of people dressed in cotton. He planted a cross on this prospect hill and then made a hasty retreat. Brother Mark saved his head by using his heels, as he had been ordered to do. Getting back into Mexico, he told so wonderful a story that he was considered the biggest liar Spain had thus far pro- duced. Like Mendez Pinto, who, when he talked I/O THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. of Japan, was set down as mcndacioics, and Marco Polo, who was called " Millioner " or exaggerator, so the good brother was at first quoted as an edifying but highly untrustworthy story-teller. In reality, his written report, as read to-day and confirmed by historical research, is wonderfully accurate. He said nothing of gold, but all Spaniards then imag- ined that where population and fertile soil existed, there must be gold in plenty. An expedition, quickly fitted out and with Brother Mark serving as land pilot, started for Zuiii. There they arrived in due time, but the friar had to leave the party on account of rheuma- tism. He came back to live in the City of Mexico, until 1558, when he died. Brother Mark was the discoverer of New Mexico. The exploring expedition by which New Mexico was made known, was commanded by Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, a governor of the Mexican province of New Galicia. He was a city-bred man, knowing little of frontier life, but was full of the idea of finding on land the " Seven Cities rich in gold," which John Cabot had tried to discover in the ocean. Coronado left behind him wife and home, fortune and comforts. At his own expense, he had equipped this expedition of three hundred Span- iards and eight hundred Indians, with a thousand spare or pack horses, many sheep and swine, and CORONADO AND EXPLORATION OF NEW MEXICO. I 'J I six small cannon, which cost him what would now be nearly a quarter of a million dollars, and he left home deeply in debt. It has been said that one reason why this band of new explorers had been so promptly raised and sent off, was because it was thought that they were leav- ing their country for their country's good. The little army was composed chiefly of young Span- iards who were too fond of clrawino- their swords and of engaging in other activities not popular in a settled community. They were not only sent away ; they were ordered not to come back, but remain as colonists. To shorten a long story, with a fleet by sea and a little army by land to aid him, Coronado and a picked guard of fifty horsemen went ahead quickly and reached Zuiii land early in July. Capturing the Indian town without difficulty, he sent parties to seize the villages of cliff-dwellers at Moqui, to the grand canon of Colorado, and to the Pueblo in northern New Mexico. Yet he found nothino- that corresponded to the fairy tales he had heard or thought he heard. During the winter Coronado, now reinforced, marched to the Rio Grande, among the Pecos tribes, where he heard of the Quivira, which he understood was a large city, full of pure gold. The man who, by signs, told him this story, was a captive Indian 172 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. from the region of the buffaloes in Kansas. He had been taken prisoner by the Pecos when on a hunt and wanted to get back home. The Span- iards called him " the Turk," thinking he looked like one. Again lured by a new golden myth, Coronado and his men tramped across Texas, surviving awful dangers and hardships, and reaching far into the Indian Territory. On the great prairies, seeing nothing but the sky and buffaloes, they wandered round and round in a circle, losing their way. They ruthlessly slaughtered bulls and cows by the hundreds. They found only savages dressed in leather clothes and living in tents. By this time, believing himself to have been deceived, Coronado selected thirty men to go for- ward with him while the main body marched south- ward to the Rio Grande. He did not get to the Mississippi River, where he might have met de Soto and his band, and found his countrymen in like quest and plight with himself. With his thirty men, he went northward into Kansas and possibly Nebraska ; but, though he met the Ouivira Indians, he found them to be only buffalo-hunters living on the plains, and knowing nothing of the yellow metal. They first put " the Turk " in chains and then hanged him. It is very doubtful whether, until he saw the Spaniards, this savage knew what gold was. COKONADO AND EXPLORATION OF NEW MEXICO. 1 73 During Coronado's absence in the northward, the other Spaniards, who had been left waiting, amused themselves by slaughtering the bisons, both bulls and cows, littering the plains with over five hun- dred carcasses. Many of these " hunch-backed " oxen were fierce and showed fight, killing several horses. The Spaniards enjoyed the sport as if they had been at home, where bull fights are still com- mon. They thus began the extinction of that herd of over five millions of beef-producing bisons ; which, in the northern pasture, was exterminated between the years of 1871 and 1875, the southern portion being finally destroyed between 1881 and 1883. The cow-boy and domestic cattle have, in this region, taken the place of Spaniard, Indian, and bison. So, after all, unable to found a colony, and poor and empty, Coronado and his men came home with no golden fleece, and shorn of nearly everything but life itself. Unwelcomed and undesired, Coro- nado and about one hundred followers reached the City of Mexico in midsummer, 1542. In our minds we usually associate the Spanish- American explorer with a horse, the animal which he introduced into the new world. Yet the Span- iard was more than a cavalier or centaur. Most of his greatest land explorations were made on foot. In bands and companies these searchers for gold, 1/4 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. danger, and fame, overran not only the South American continent, but also Mexico, the whole re- gion of the present Cotton States, Texas, and the country west and southwest of Kansas and Colorado. Where there were no paths and often no water, grim and determined men in chase of phantoms, and missionaries eager to save souls, tramped. If Cabeza de Vaca walked his thousands, his country- man, Andres del Campo, walked his tens of thou- sands. The former, a refugee with his face and hope ever homeward, wrote a book and told his story. Between April, 1542, and 1550, Andres del Campo walked nearly nine years. He wrote no book, but he explored Colorado and Kansas, besides wandering to and fro in the great arid regions between these American states and Mexico. We shall see how it came about. The missionary zeal of the friars, and their love of souls, were even greater than the layman's love of gold. In the autumn of 1542, Brother Padilla led a little band into the newly explored regions. The company consisted of some Indian boys, two young men of Mexico named Lucas and Sebastian, and the soldier Andres del Campo, who was on horse, the others being on foot. They travelled over the dry lands, across Colorado and through Kansas, until they saw a cross which had been set up by Coronado in one of the Sioux Indian towns. BROTHER PADILLA FINDS THE CROSS SET UP BY CORONADO. COKONADO AND EXPLORA770N OF NEW MEXICO. I 75 After laboring among the red men awhile, the friar decided to move to another tribe. On the first day's march out, some hostile savages in their war paint met them. The boys and horseman escaped, being urged by Brother Padilla to do so. The Indian archers made of the missionary a willing martyr, a St. Sebastian. He was shot to death wath arrows, according to the fashion of savages, who empty their quivers where one shaft would suffice. The full story of Andres del Campo and the young men Lucas and Sebastian, we do not know, except that they were captured by the Indians, made slaves, half-starved, and brutally treated. Yet, after eight years' wandering over the country from Kansas to Mexico, the three walked into Tampico, in 1550. It looked now as though New Spain, as Mexico was then called, would not be greatly enlarged, if at all, during the sixteenth century, while all idea of a permanent colony was for the time being abandoned. Nevertheless, as Spaniards do not readily yield, they did not give up hope. Further- more, it is not easy to dislodge the spectres of the brain. They brought to America from Europe old-world myths that are not yet utterly dead, and were then very much believed. We must not forget that one of Coronado's par- 1/6 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. ties went by water. Hernando Alarcon sailed along the Pacific coast and up the Gulf of Old California. Unable to force his ships against the current of the Colorado River, he went up in two boats a distance of eighty leagues, finding houses and inhabitants. Very probably he reached a point as far north as the great bend where it turns off to the right and east, at the foot of a mountain range. There he heard of the death of a negro and the capture of the Zufii villages by the Spaniards. He thought it best not to undertake the land journey eastward, and so he returned to Mexico. He thus explored the Vermilion or Red Sea, as the Gulf of Old Cali- fornia was then called, and looked upon the soil of three of our United States, — California, Nevada, and Arizona. Thus inland California was seen on its western side from a river boat. Its seacoast was explored from the Pacific, three years later, by Juan Rod- rigues Cabrillo, a Portuguese in the Spanish service, who named Cape Mendoza, now Cape Mendocino, and the Farallone Islands. In 1592, a Spanish naviofator sailed as far north as British America, o entering and naming the strait of Juan de Fuca, which forms our national boundary between Van- couver's Island and Washington, — between British, and composite, or distinctive America. California was reexplored by the Spaniard Vis- CO RON ADO AND EXPLORATION OF NEW MEXICO. 1 77 cano in 1602, but was not colonized until the Fran- ciscan fathers began their mission at San Diego in 1 769. San Francisco, which has become the great- est city on the Pacific coast, was established in 1776, the year of our Independence, as the mission Do- lores. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Spaniards were acquainted with the two Americas as one continent. From the Chesapeake Bay, dis- covered by Spanish navigators and named the Bay of Santa Maria, to the fortieth degree of latitude on the western coast, they know North America in outline. Thus far all attempts to get a foothold within the present waters of the United States had resulted in dismal failures for the Spaniards. Yet while there was still comparative peace in Europe, before the Dutch and English heretics had begun to make trouble for the lord of half the world, and there were plenty of young Spaniards who wanted adventure and more money, and were ready to seek both at whatever cost, and while the missionary spirit was still strong, it looked as if North America, like South America, might yet become New Spain. In 1560 Aviles de Menendez went to Florida, to establish there a little colony. He found a few French Huguenots on the ground, and these he promptly seized and hanged, "not as Frenchmen, but as heretics." He then built the town which he named after that greatest of all the African saints, the N 178 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. mightiest of the church fathers who, among both Protestant and CathoHc theologians, is still so great a favorite ; for both the ultra- Montane Catholics and the rigid Calvinists honor his memory and imitate him in mind and ways. The city of St. Augustine bade fair to be a new Eternal City. Like the old saint's " City of God," it could not be destroyed. Though in 1560 the French nobleman de Gourges captured its three forts and hanged the colonists " not as Spaniards, but* as villains," and although in 1586 the Eng- lishman Sir Francis Drake destroyed the colony, — even as a dragon is supposed to swallow up the moon, — yet St. Augustine was at once defiantly re- built. It remained Spanish until 1763. When it became English, Florida was explored and described by the Dutchman Romaine, who afterwards entered the service of Congress, became an officer in the American army, built forts at West Point, wrote one good book on Florida, and another — the first ever printed in Hartford — justifying the American independence of Great Britain, and citing the example of the Dutch in revolting against Spain in 1667. The Spaniards introduced the orange into Florida, and the old stocks left by them have been, by grafting, made to produce those wonderful fruits — nature's bottles of wine — which excel all others in the world. Except, however, a CO RON A DO AND EXPLORATION OF NEW MEXICO. 1 79 few remnants of architecture and names of places, the Spanish mark upon Florida has been slight indeed. By 1 58 1, the year in which the United States of Netherland published their Declaration of Inde- pendence to Spain, the ill-fortune of Coronado had faded from most minds. A new generation had grown up. Men, then nearly forty years of age, had been born since he had reentered Mexico with his tattered tramps. So again, some lion-hearted missionaries started on foot to reach Zuni. Tarry- ing to preach the Gospel, they were slain by the Indians. Only nine soldiers, their companions, succeeded in reexploring the country as far as Zuiii. Next year, further addition was made to geog- raphy by Antonio Edpejo, a rich Cordovan, who started with fourteen men into the desert. He marched up along the Rio Grande, and passed the site of Albuquerque, a town taking its name after one in Spain, but suggesting also the name of the famous Portuguese conqueror of Malacca and first European navigator of the entire Red Sea. He met with little or no opposition from the Indians. He then turned westward and explored the northern parts of Arizona, visiting at least ^mq, of the cities of the " Cliff Brothers," or the Pueblo Indians. Returning again to the Rio Grande River and the l8o THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Pecos Indians, he went down the stream named after them, into Texas, and thence got back to Santa Barbara. He expected to return the next year and colonize New Mexico. However, he died soon afterward, and left a noble record of explora- tion, but established no colony. Another who followed him, in 1590, was Gasper Casteno de Sousa. But having violated the require- ments of the royal governor, he was arrested and brought home a prisoner. The real colonizer of New Mexico was Juan de Onate, who founded the second oldest town in the United States, San Gabriel of the Spaniards, and also Santa Fe. Unlike Coronado and others who attempted to tame the wild and treeless wilderness, and to make the desert blossom as the rose, Onate was a native American frontiersman. Born in Mexico, he was thoroughly familiar with its moun- tains and deserts. He knew^ how to fight Indians, to find food and water, and to be patient and hope- ful amid discouragements. His parents had come from the old country, and his father had discovered the silver mines of Zacatecas, then the richest in the world. Yet, so far from being satisfied with mining silver, Onate wanted to win new lands for Spain. The government would not provide funds for any more expeditions. After so many costly failures, the country north of Mexico was then CORONA DO AND EXPLORATION OF NEW MEXICO. l8l regarded very much as most persons still look upon the Arctic regions, as a land in which there is noth- ing but disappointment and death. With such a menace of starvation and poverty, after having lost so many men and so much money, — especially while so many thousand Spanish sol- diers and so many ship-loads of Peruvian and Mex- ican silver were required to fight the little Dutch Republic, — the crown of Spain had early refused to send another man or to spend a fresh maravedi. So at great expense, Onate fitted out his own expe- dition. After many delays, and a refusal by the new viceroy even of permission to start, Onate set out in 1597. He had two hundred soldiers and as many colonists, among whom were women and children, besides tools and seed, sheep and cattle. Just north of where Santa Fe now stands he founded, in September, 1597, the town of St. Gabriel of the Spaniards. Not satisfied wdth this, after seeing his colonists well under way in their new life, he explored the country round about and far northward, and in 1600 he reached Nebraska. Four years later he took thirty men and marched entirely across New Mexico and Arizona to the Gulf of California, returning safely to his colony in 1605, when he founded the city of the Holy Faith, or Santa Fe. The next year he again explored the regions to the 1 82 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. northeast ; but of these, his last movements, we know very little, if anything. In 1608 he retired from the government of the new province. Thus, before a single English settlement had been successfully made in America, the whole of the southern part of the United States had been more or less explored by the Spaniards, who had also founded three cities. CHAPTER XVIII. ENGLISH SLAVE-TRADERS AND BUCCANEERS. RELIGION has always had much to do with geography and exploration. Pilgrims to sacred shrines in far countries, w^iether the Chinese to India, the Hindoos to Arabia, or the Europeans to Palestine, have added first and most to knowledge of strange lands. In the sixteenth century, until the Dutchmen taught a contrary lesson, the religion of a country was regulated by the King. " Who owns the region, owns the religion," was a maxim. Under the system of the Pope and the Emperor, when the Church and the Empire governed all Europe, for a nation to change its religion meant war. People had not then learned toleration or freedom of con- science. The people of southern Europe had a curious idea in regard to the Reformation, for they thought it meant piracy. The first notion that many Span- iards and Italians had of a Protestant, was that he was a pirate. This was because as soon as the nations of northern Europe — French, Dutch, and Enelish — be^an to reform their faith and worship, 183 1 84 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. they and the Spaniards and Portuguese became ene- mies and immediately sailed out on the seas to capture each other's ships. For a long while there lingered in Spain and Italy this strange idea, that the Dutch and English had become Protestants simply because they could make themselves rich by robbing Spanish commerce. It was also believed that the only motive which brought the Protestant people to America was to secure Spanish gold and treasure. In this the Latin nations were not quite rieht, thouoh the Eno^lish and Dutch desire to defend themselves against the Spanish Giant Grim, who claimed half the world and kept the Inquisition ready to torture and burn all heretics, was a power- ful motive in colonizing America. Earlier than the discovery of America, and before Spanish commerce had been greatly developed, the Inquisition had been established in Spain, where Church and State were one. This Inquisition put to death a great number of Jews and Moors. Isa- bella, who aided Columbus, was one of the greatest upholders of the horrible system. Myriads of people were tortured in the most barbarous way, and tens of thousands more were burned to death. After all the Jews and Moors had been either incarcerated, incin- erated, exiled, or forced to say that they were Chris- tians, then the Inquisition was ready for new kinds of heretics. These were found plentifully among ENGLISH SLAVE-TRADERS AND BUCCANEERS. 1 85 those who Hked to read the Bible in their own language and who had no use for Italian priests. Not content with haling Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians before the tribunals, the Spanish Inquisi- tion caught the English sailors found in Spain and imprisoned, tortured, and burned them. This made the English people hate the Inquisi- tion and determine to do Spain all the harm they could. Unable to accomplish very much on land, they resolved to damage the Spaniards on the seas. They learned how to build swifter ships, that would spread more sail, and move forward whether the wind was in the wake or in their teeth, answer- ing quickly to the helm. They made heavier and longer-ranged cannon. Pretty soon privateering became the rage. Men left commerce and the fish- eries to make money in this lively, exciting, and lucrative business. The English Jack did not care to declare war out- right against the Spanish giant. England was too poor and weak to openly defy the owner of America, and as yet it seemed still uncertain whether the little Protestant states would be able to hold their own. On the other hand, Spain had her hands full in trying to colonize a new continent and to put down the revolt in the Netherlands. Until he could crush the Dutch United States, Philip II. did not care to venture upon open war with Elizabeth. 1 86 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Consequently, during two generations there was a tremendous amount of bloodshed and murder, piracy and burning of ships and towns on both sides. There were all the horrors and wickedness of war, without its honorable and redeeming features. Even the great Spanish Armada, which hoped to invade England and conquer it, was built and was sent in times of professed peace and without any declaration of war. This was the supreme effort of southern or papal Europe to put down the rights of conscience and freedom of thought in northern Europe. It was but one of several gigantic attempts which were' made by the Latin nations and civiliza- tion to crush the Teutonic spirit and overwhelm the Germanic nations. Whether in the case of Arminius and Varus in the ancient forests of Teu- toberg; at the Reformation; in the Dutch war of Independence; in the defeat of the Spanish Ar- mada ; in the Thirty Years War in Europe ; in the two centuries of struggle between the French and English for possession of the North American con- tinent ; or in the attempt of foreigners to make the United States a country ruled by priests and sol- diers, — the result was and will be ever the same. The Latin idea of the centralization of power over conscience and personal liberty will not work in America. It was the west country of England that for the ENGLISH SLAVE-TRADERS AND BUCCANEERS. 1 8/ most part, in the sixteenth century, produced deep- sea sailors and adventurous mariners and explorers. Those on the eastern and southeastern coast were chiefly petty traders, who rarely went out of sight of land. They trafficked in the North and Baltic seas and along the English Channel, but rarely sailed long out of sight of land. In the western counties, Bristol had sent John Cabot. Devon produced many men of the sea. Plymouth was the centre of vast enterprise. The size of the ships in those days was very small. They were more like our little coasting-vessels, yachts, or sail-boats. Anything with a hull as big as one of our ordinary Erie Canal boats would have been a wonder, in the age of King Henry VIII. Yet, whereas our canal boats, when loaded, rise very little above the water, the sixteenth century ships had great castles built above their decks from the middle to the stern. Often there was a tower or " forecastle," as the name still is, near the bow. The heavy wooden turrets of some of the old fight- ing ships looked much like those of steel on our modern battle ships. The opening of the Atlantic by the Spaniards revolutionized English seamanship and navigation, for long voyages required longer and larger ships. Henry VIII. first saw the importance of gunpow- der in war, and imported Italians to cast new styles 1 88 THE ROMAXCE OF DISCOVERY. of heavier artillery, but the first English ships that came to America were armed with bows and arrows rather than with cannon and round shot. Columbus had offered the new world to Henry \'III. when he sent his brother with maps and globes, together with quotations from Plato and Aristotle, to prove that there was a pathway to China by sailing towards the setting sun ; but Henry could see no money in the venture, and thoueht the idea a wild dream. So America was found by the Spaniards and not by the English, and little thought came to Englishmen of coloniz- inor America. Something unexpected happened in England to turn the prows of her sailors across the Atlantic. This was the divorce, by Henry VHI., of his Span- ish wife, Catherine of Aragon, which made Henry the public enemy of papal Europe. The divorce seemed an insult to the Pope and to all people and nations that looked on this Italian prince as the vicar of God. Catherine was the daughter of Fer- dinand and Isabella, the friends of Columbus. If the mother, by sending the Genoese, had started Spanish colonization in trans-Atlantic regions, the daughter was the indirect means of despatching Englishmen to America. She had already married the oldest son of Henry VII. of England. In 1509, under an express dispensation of the Pope, she EXGLISH SLAVE-TRADERS AXD BUCCA.YEERS. 1 89 became the wife of Henry \'III., who was six years younger than herself. Her only living child became Queen Mary, who married Philip H., and was such a persecutor that she was called Bloody IMarv. Some of the best churches now on Ens^lish soil are built on the old ash-heaps where her victims were burnt. Henry began to love Anna Boleyn, and wanted the Pope to divorce him from his Spanish Kate. The Pope declining, Henry divorced himself. In those days kings were a good deal more important than they are now. The people of northern Europe, and especially King Henry's countrymen, took up the quarrel and sided with him. At the Court of Rome, the focus of politics as well as religion, the English influence was foiled by the priests and lawyers from the land of the Bull-fight and the Inquisition, and Henry was excommunicated, but for this he cared not a fig. '' Bluff King Hal " had just the spirit and habits which his countiymen admire. He was a fighter and could defend himself. At once the English people became partisans for or against their king, and the modern political par- ties, the one the National, Liberal or Reforming, and the other, the Conser\'ative or Catholic party, besfan their historv. Henrv. beins; intenselv En^- lish, was very popular. When the Inquisition began to make more racks and buy more wood in order to 190 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. burn alive King Henry's subjects, then English sailors longed to take their revenge on the seas. America was the treasure house of the Kincr of Spain, and they proposed to help themselves to his possessions. A tremendous zeal for exploration and discovery now broke out among sailors and landsmen in the British Isles, but it was not in the interests of science. Their object was the Spanish gold and silver beyond sea. One Thomas Stukely was a specimen explorer of the long line made famous by Hawkins and Drake. Having a pretext to settle an English col- ony in Florida, Stukely collected one hundred tall soldiers and set out from Plymouth in a ship of four hundred tons. When once out of harbor, Stukely said to his men, " The sea is my Florida," and started on a piratical expedition to loot the cargoes of plate ships from America. To this day, " plate," the tell-tale name for old silver and table service in England, points to the days when the chief source of plate vjdiS plala, or Spanish silver, not mined out of the ground, but found on the ocean. Stukely made Ireland his sally-port and base of supplies. Other privateers and corsairs chose the Scilly Isles as their headquarters. " The pirates of Penzance " in the sixteenth century figured not in a comic opera, but in reality. The man who opened for Englishmen the path ENGLISH SLAVE-TRADERS AND BUCCANEERS. 191 to the West Indies, and, first in our English tongue, described Florida, was William Hawkins, the father of two more famous freebooters in as many gener- ations. He stuck to business and avoided politics. He saw that there was money in seizing and selling negroes. In 1530 he made a voyage to Guinea and opened that African slave trade which enriched England during three centuries. He sold his cap- tured flesh and blood to the Portuguese in South America. On his second voyage, having crossed the Atlantic, he brought back a savage Brazilian chief, who was a great curiosity in England. Haw- kins is known to have made three voyages to Guinea and Brazil. " Guinea gold " was by this time well known in Queen Elizabeth's realm. Thus began our ancestors' interest in strange peoples. From the first, the English were great kidnappers. They stole many natives, of various colors of cuticle, in order to show them in the counties at home. This was both to stir up interest in exploration schemes and to make money. At that time Moors, negroes, or men of reddish skin were a great curiosity. Their stone hatchets, bows and arrows, canoes and ornaments, seemed as won- derful as if brought from another planet. Later on, the North American Indians attracted great crowds. The London or Plymouth of that day were very different from these cities in our century. 192 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. when people of all nations may be met on the streets. Shakespeare, in " The Tempest," speaks of "salvages and men of Indes " and of the "holiday fools," who will lay out ten Dutch farthings even " to see a dead Indian." Like father, like son. Where William Hawkins stole tens, his son John cauQ^ht and sold thousands of necfroes. With the intention of outdoing his father, Haw- kins the second left Plymouth in 1562 for the Canary Islands. Sailing down to Sierra Leone, he captured his first cargo of three hundred black men and carried them over to the town founded by Columbus, Hispaniola, which had already become the chief slave market of the new world. There, Hawkins sold his human cattle at a high profit. In return he brought home pearls, sugar, ginger, and the spices which our forefathers liked so much, besides some hides which he sent to Spain, then the greatest country in Europe for boots and shoes. Cordovan leather was everywhere famous, and the "cordwainer" of modern days is a cordovan out of Spain, — a shoemaker. On his second voyage Hawkins was not less of a trader, but more of an explorer. He had four ships and nearly two hundred men. They went first to Guinea, and then crossed the ocean, the holds of their ships packed tight with poor negroes. On the way over, their ships got into a calm, and for ENGLISH SLAVE-TRADERS AND BUCCANEERS. 193 twenty-one days they could not move. The danger of their provisions running out was great, but in March they reached the Spanish slave markets and began selling their human freight. Hawkins made surveys of other islands in the West Indies, took soundings, studied the currents, made charts, and sailed along the coast of Florida, giving us the first description in our own language of the land which now forms our most southern state. Hawkins tells us about tobacco. He says that the Indians, when they travelled, had a kind of dry herb which they put into an earthen cup at the end of a cane. This they fired, sucking the smoke through the cane. This satisfied their hunger and helped them to go without meat or drink. Haw- kins helped the Huguenot colonists whom he met in Florida. He noticed that these Frenchmen, from a country of vineyards, had already made twenty hogsheads of wine from the grapes that grew in that region, and that they had all got into the habit of smoking tobacco. Hawkins tells us many other things about Flor- ida. Indeed, it is possible that, take it altogether, we have in his sketch the best account of any one of our Atlantic coast states, at so early a period of their history. He noticed that the tribal or com- munal houses were as big as English barns. These were made of tree trunks and poles covered with 194 ^'^^ ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. palmetto leaves. Inside, the fire kept burning all night. The country abounded in deer and game, fish and birds, millet, corn, grapes, besides very much sorrel. Hawkins describes the favorite dish of boiled corn meal, which the Yankees afterwards called " hasty pudding " ; the Englishmen in Penn- sylvania, who had come from the middle counties of England, "mush"; while the Dutch adopted the Indian word " suppawn." Hawkins may have called it "pap." He says, " It maketh good meal, beaten and sodden with water and eateth like that where- with we feed children." He noticed that the Frenchmen made soup of it. When John Hawkins arrived home in England with gold, silver, pearls, and jewels, there was great excitement throughout the kingdom. The Queen honored and rewarded the successful slaver, tak- ing dinner with him on board of his ship, and grant- ing him a coat of arms, whereon was a black shield with a golden lion walking over the waves. His crest was the figure of half a Moor; that is, a bound and captive slave with bands of gold on his arms and gold rings in his ears. Later on, this pious slave-robber added, by ofiicial permission, the pil- grim's scallop shell in gold, between the cross-staff of a palmer or pilgrim to the Holy Land. CHAPTER XIX. DRAKE PLOUGHS AN ENGLISH FURROW ROUND THE WORLD. THE Englishman's crusade of the sixteenth cen- tury was for slaves and money. Henceforth to him America was " the land of the Almighty Dol- lar," — the latter term being even then in vogue for a silver coin. Englishmen now became warmly interested in the promising new world. They even began to think a little of colonization, but much more of the money to be gotten by trading negroes and robbing the Spaniards. Guinea gold flowed into the English mint, though it was not till 1664 that the coin of that name was struck. The coinage of the guinea lasted till 181 7. Since then a guinea is a sentimental sum, but not a coin. A gift, an honorarium for a speech, sermon, or lecture, or a polite present, is made in o^uineas. Washes and baro^ains are made in the pounds, shillings, and pence of the mediaeval Teutonic era still retained by British people. In Spain, Philip H. got fearfully excited over the idea of the English burglars, as he considered them, 195 196 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY, breaking into his private treasure house. We soon find him issuing edicts that no EngHshman of any creed or kind should be allowed in the West In- dies. When edicts, as he found, were of no use, he set up the Inquisition in Mexico to torture and burn these foreigners from northern Europe, who singed his beard, picked his pockets, and captured his ships. While they did these things, he could not pay his troops who were fighting to destroy the Dutch United States. Hence, his mercenaries mutinied, and the Netherlanders got the advantage over him. With such tokens of favor from his queen, such rich profits in prospect, and withal, considering it highly pious and proper to steal men, and sell them for money, we find Hawkins starting out again in 1567. This time Francis Drake commanded the Judith, while Hawkins himself was in his old ship, the Jes7is. The little hawk was the pioneer of the dragon. Where Hawkins swooped on chickens and picked bones, Drake was to swallow whole towns and fleets. Capturing five hundred negroes, though having to feed them during seven weeks, they finally arrived in the West Indies, where the people had been warned against them. Nevertheless, as the Spanish farmers and miners wanted slave labor, there was a chance to sell, though the Englishmen sometimes DRAKE PLOUGHS A FURROW ROUND THE WORLD. 1 97 had to fight before getting permission to trade. Storm-beaten, they put into the harbor of Vera Cruz, near which is the famous castle San Juan d'Uloa, which was bombarded by our army and navy in 1846. A great Spanish fleet of twelve ships arriving, the English were attacked, and only the two little ships the Minion and the Jndith reached England in January, 1669. The poor Englishmen captured were horribly tortured by the Inquisition. Where Hawkins had been as Saul, Drake was now as David against the Spanish Philistines. He took terrible revenge for the " perfidy " of the Span- iards. Henceforth he devoted his life to doing as much injury to the King of Spain as possible. He did not pretend to be either an explorer or a trader ; but only a private avenger against the Spaniards. Queen Elizabeth was only too glad to let him go forth on his own risk and account. This would save her the trouble of declarins^ war while hurtino^ her enemies. She could approve or disown Drake as suited her policy. Drake made voyages to the West Indies in the years 1570, 1571, and 1572. Marching across the Isthmus, with the aid of the Maroons, a tribe of Indians reinforced with run- away black slaves, he climbed a tree, in the midst of the densely forested mountains. Seeing the great blue Pacific Ocean melting in the distance of silvery haze, he descended, fell on his knees, and 198 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. prayed to God that some time he might sail on that sea and " make a perfect discovery of the same." After further service in EngHsh waters on the Queen's behalf, Drake was ready in 1577 for an- other piratical raid on the Spaniards, which proved to be in the end " the first English furrow ploughed round the world." Of his ships, the Pelican, the Elizabeth, Sivan, Marigold, and Christopher, the largest was of one hundred, and the smallest of fifteen tons. The Pelican had twenty cannon mounted on carriages, besides others in the hold. It was common in those days for guns, which could only fire stones and small balls, to burst, or be other- wise disabled. An extra lot was therefore taken in and stowed away in the hold to be used when wanted. Some idea of Drake's love of luxury and the wealth he had gotten, may be learned when we read that besides having^ musicians and rich furni- ture, all the vessels on the table and even many in the cook room were of pure silver. In order to mislead the Spanish envoy at London, Drake pre- tended to be going to Egypt, but when once out of the English Channel his prows were turned to the southwest, to the lands of El Dorado, — of silver, gold, and gems, — South America. Early in June they reached Port Saint Julian on the south coast of Patagonia, where they spent two months. One of the first sights they saw on arriv- DRAKE PLOUGHS A FUR ROW ROUND THE WORLD. 1 99 ing were the well-picked and whitened bones of a human skeleton, at the base of a gibbet, on which Magellan had hanged one of his mutineers. Drake, no better or worse, at this same place, put to death one of the men of his command whom he believed to be treacherous. After the southern winter was over, they sailed southward, meeting with driving storms. They passed through the Straits of Magel- lan and got out into the Pacific, but alone. Drake's ship was indeed like a pelican in the wilderness, for none other of his squadron was in sight. The other ships had foundered or been shipwrecked, or the commanders had deserted this man whom the Spaniards always called " the dragon." Drake landed on a point of land and gave the name of Elizabeth Island to Terra del Fuego, or the Land of Fire. His tree-top glimpse had now become a boundless vision. Out into the Pacific he sailed northward, occa- sionally stopping for supplies. At Valparaiso he robbed a Spanish ship, and then kept upward along the coast, getting fresh water or provisions as he needed them. At Arica he made a tremendous haul, plundering the Spanish ships of their gold, silver, jewels, and spices, not caring for anything but what he could easily carry, for he had now but one ship. Arica is a town of Chili, whence now starts a railroad into the interior. 200 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Callao was another rich place full of plunder, where Drake also got news from Europe. With a cart-load or more of silver in her gizzard, the Peli- ca7i now spread her white wings in pursuit of a treasure ship that had sailed two weeks before. Coming up with and capturing her on the first of March, Drake found her cargo to consist of about three million dollars' worth of bullion, coined and uncoined money, metallic vessels and gems ; or, what would be equal in our time, to about twelve millions of dollars. There were thirteen boxes of the silver coin called real, which until lately was called in our country " levy " or " bit," the half being " fip." These words are the English contractions of eleven-penny and five-penny bits or pieces. Reals were also called " Spanish shillings," and the " piece of eight," or eight shillings, a dollar. This capture gave the Englishmen plenty of small change for further use. There were also eighty pounds' weight of gold, twenty-six tons of uncoined silver, and an enor- mous golden cross with emeralds as large as pigeon eggs. Drake was kind enough not to put the Span- iards to death, though in those days of brutal war the captors on either side usually threw the cap- tured overboard. After six days he gave the cap- tain a change of linen and some provisions and let him and the crew go. He could afford to throw DRAKE PLOUGHS A FURROW ROUND THE WORLD. 20 1 the shell away, after having opened the oyster and eaten the meat. All this time wondering what had become of his other ships, Drake kept northward, in the path of the Spanish explorers who had been before him. Everything was new, wild, and wonderful to his men. Some things were pleasant and some things otherwise. On one island an earthquake gave them a new and terrifying sensation. In 1 510, thirty years before Drake was born, a Spaniard had written a novel telling about a fabu- lous island rich in gold and precious stones, — somewhat akin to Antilia, or the Japanese Horai. From this romance the name California received its name. Thirty-six years before Drake, Cabrillo had discovered the coast line of this, one of the most important states of the American Union, but when Drake saw California, it was inhabited only by sav- ages of the stone age. Strangely enough, we know more about the exact discovery and exploration of our western or Pacific coast (with the names and dates, while the determinations of latitude and lon- gitude are more full and exact) than of our eastern coast, which is nearest to Europe. Drake no doubt at this time had the map of Furnala, made in 1574, which pictures Japan as if it were only a few miles off from the coast of North America. His men found it very cold even in 202 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. June and July, the ground without greenness, and the natives wearing furs. The Pacific coast cHmate has not changed very much in three centuries. One Indian came out in a canoe and threw some tobacco on board the ship. No doubt the man in the canoe made an offering of tobacco, as an act of worship, supposing that the men in the Pelican were gods, for he would take nothing in exchange except a hat which was thrown him. Drake tried to find the western end of a passage homeward into the Atlantic Ocean, but was disappointed. He went no farther north than Oregon, which he named New Albion, after his native country, because the white cliffs which he saw reminded him of the southern sea-face of his own land. Giving up all idea of sailing eastward through the continent of America, and in that way getting back to England, Drake determined to return by the way of the Philippines and the Cape of Good Hope. He at once entrenched his camp and, set- ting up tents, began the work of refitting his ship. An immense crowd of Indians came on the ground, bringing feathers and tobacco as presents, the chief making a long speech which tired the English- men to listen to, they not being able to under- stand a word. In return, Drake lifted up his eyes to heaven and calling on his men to pray with him, they all knelt down together. After prayer, they DRAKE PLOUGHS A FURROW ROUND THE WORLD. 203 sang songs, read chapters of the Bible, and returned presents to the Indians. Other ceremonies followed a few days later, when the great war chief and his body-guard visited the English settlement. In their ceremonies, Drake understood them to mean that they wanted to be- come the subjects of the white man. They put one of the feather crowns upon Drake's head and hung one of their great chains made of bone upon his neck. So in the name and to the use of Queen Elizabeth, Drake took the sceptre, crown, and dig- nity of the country into his hands. While his ship was being braced and cleansed, Drake travelled inland and saw enormous herds of deer, and what he thought were conies or rabbits, but were probably opossums. He erected a post on which he affixed a plate of brass, engraved with the Queen's name, with the date of landing, and the gift of the country by the people. He also gave specimens of the English sixpences to the people. Having driven fresh oakum between his planks, mended his cordage, strengthened his masts, and filled the water casks, Drake turned his prow west- ward. The friendly savages built fires on the hills and kept them up as long as the Pelican was in sight. Drake sailed successfully round the Cape of Good Hope. On September 26, 1580, in grand 204 ^^^ ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. style, with gilded masts, and his sailors dressed in silk, gold, and gems, he sailed into Plymouth. He was the British Puck. He had put a girdle round the earth. He then went to Court and told his adventures. So far from the Oueen or the Qrovernment either disowning Drake's acts as those of a pirate, or of making any claim to land which Drake had discov- ered, no one ever thought of this as a voyage of exploration at the time or until hundreds of years afterwards. As usual, the Spanish envoy in Lon- don made protest against Drake's piracy, but Eliza- beth was only too proud of the man, who, besides circumnavigating the globe, could bring home such a shipload of jewels, coin, and bullion. She made Drake a knight, and ordered the ship Pelican to be carefully kept. To-day in the Bodleian Library at Oxford there is a chair made of her timber by Sir John Davis, the Arctic navigator. Very appropriately, three hundred years after- wards. Christian men in America erected a cross on the Oregon coast to commemorate this visit of Albion's great navigator and the first Englishman who went round the globe. Both Drake and Hawkins afterwards tried their hand against the Spaniards of the West Indies, but Hawkins died of a wound, and Drake of a fever, and the expedition ended in loss and misery. There are some Englishmen who still hope that the leaden DRAKE PLOUGHS A FURROW ROUND THE WORLD. 205 coffin in which Drake's body was sunk may be re- covered and his bones yet find a resting-place in his homeland. In " Westward Ho," the novel, Charles Kingsley tells grandly the story of these west- country freebooters. Drake and Hawkins were amonof the first EnQ^lish heroes of the sea. They set the example very often since followed by pious pirates and industrious buc- caneers. In diplomacy, war, statecraft, and religion, England has never lacked men of action, unscrupu- lous men whose sincere purpose — as sincere as that of a Spanish heretic-burner — has been to make England great. They set an example which Ameri- cans have too often followed. One of our naval officers made it his motto, " Right or wrong, my country," thus setting patriotism above righteous- ness, — a principle that makes of earth a hell. From the time of Hawkins and Drake, and long after, English sailors dressed in gay colors, wore gold earrings in their ears, and were very fond of flags and decorations. The brutalities of war and ship life were very great then, and the barbarities in the name of reliQ:ion showed how little the teachings and life of Jesus were understood. It took centu- ries for our fathers to learn that gain is not godliness, that slave-catching is inhuman, and that to persecute a man who differs from you in religion is not Christ- like, but devilish. 206 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Yet there were even in the sixteenth century, some moderate men in power, Hke the repubhcan president of the Dutch United States, WilHam the Silent, who preached and practised the toleration which is com- mon to-day. In the countries where the Reformed churches were national or political, Bible-reading people nicknamed " Anabaptists " were already teachino: the doctrines which are now settled in the Constitution of the United States and commonplace in our country. Both Protestants and Catholics, in every country except Holland, from Russia to Eng- land, persecuted and killed these non-political Chris- tians. Some of these separatists, also, abused their liberty and became anarchists, but the Anabaptists, so-called, and the Mennonites are the real spiritual ancestors of most American Christians in many denominations. CHAPTER XX. Raleigh's dream of a new English nation. THE English, during the time of the Tudors, be- came a new nation. The old Wars of the Roses, the long quarrels between the nobility, were over. A closer union between the throne and the people resulted. England began to do something else than to raise sheep and wool. King Henry had encouraged his subjects to trade in the Netherlands and had enlarged the British navy. Queen Eliza- beth was just the kind of a woman to carry out her father's plans and even go beyond them. Henry was intensely English and, therefore, with all his faults he was very popular. His daughter was, like him, a strong character. Though fickle and vain, coquettish and fond of flattery, with a temper not always kept under control, she yet loved her country and people. She took good care of the finances and had great ability in governing. She encouraged her sailors and increased the loyalty of the people to the throne. The days of chivalry were not yet over, but the English knights instead of going on crusades, now 207 208 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. went to fight the Spaniards, by helping the Dutch repubhcans in their war of independence, by looting the Spanish plate fleets from the West Indies, or by attempting commerce or explorations. One of the best dressed and handsomest of these knights was Walter Raleigh, a Devonshire man born in 1552. When a student at Oxford, he left his books to go as volunteer on behalf of Huguenot lib- erty under Admiral Coligny. Afterwards he served in the Dutch army under William of Orange. His fight with Spain lasted during his whole life. His supreme idea was to make England great. He as- pired to clip the wings of Spain, which, like a great eagle, 'rampant and eager to make Holland and Eng- land its prey, seemed to overshadow Europe. He saw that the enemy had got rich by his possessions in America, and he proposed to make England mighty and opulent in the same way. When the colony sent out to Florida by Coligny had been de- stroyed by the Spaniard Menendez, Raleigh, who was a sailor as well as a soldier, wanted at once to settle and develop North America. His first cruise west- ward was in 1578 in command of the ship Falco7i under Sir Humphrey Gilbert. In those days it was very hard to provision a ship for a long voyage. Little was then known about preserving food in such quantity and variety so as to keep off that horrible disease called the scurvy. RALEIGH'S DREAM OF A NEW ENGLISH NATION. 209 Many a voyage which began with promise ended in disaster because of the scurvy or of hunger. How- ever brave in spirit, men cannot sail or work on empty stomachs. Even hearts of oak require plenty of stimulus. In our day the average ship is healthier than the average house, but it was not so then. All of Gilbert's ships had to turn back. Raleigh him- self tried to reach the West Indies, but when near the Cape de Verde Islands his bread-bags were nearly empty, and he had to turn back. Fighting both the storms and the Spaniards on the way, he reached Plymouth, in May, 1579. Exploration is very costly business. Some one must pay the bills. Raleigh made up his mind to get rich first and then to be his own banker. He entered the Queen's service in Ireland and was very successful. He was not only brave, but witty and learned. He dressed magnificently and knew just how to please the coquettish Queen Elizabeth. He succeeded in makins^ a fortune. The Queen also gave him certain monopolies and the confis- cated estates of noblemen in both Ensfland and Ireland, and he found himself able to send out a colony at his own expense. The Queen would not let her favorite run the risk of Q:ettinQ^ killed and thrown overboard by Spaniards ; but Raleigh, though he did not himself go, sent out two ships which sailed April 27, 1584, to discover and explore the 2IO THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. coast of North America northward from Florida. He did not know then that the Spaniards had ah'eady sailed along the coast as far as the Chesa- peake Bay. The road to the West Indies in those days lay in creeping along the coast of Europe and Africa to the Canary Islands and then striking out boldly westward. Instead of following a short straight line — the modern ocean lane, two miles wide — they moved first down, and then up, over half a circle. One month's sailing brought Raleigh's ships to the Antilles, June 20th. Then moving northward, on the 4th of July they reached the American coast, from which the land breeze wafted the delicious perfume of blooming flowers. Yet the ships could not get into the country, because they were not able to find an inlet. This seems strange to us who can see along the coast, on our well-made maps, all sorts of estuaries, bays, and arms of the sea. They sailed one hundred and twenty miles and then entered the first opening visible, which was probably New Inlet, in North Carolina. In the name of England's Queen, they took possession of the inviting land, which was very sandy and low toward the water's edge. Grapes were so plentiful that the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them. Coming out of England, then a very bleak land compared with its garden- RALEIGH'S DREAM OF A NEW ENGLISH NATION. 211 like surface as seen to-day, these men were pleased with the richness of this southern landscape and archipelago. The forests were full of deer, rabbits, hares, and birds in incredible abundance. Of trees they noticed the pine, cedar, cypress, sassafras, and others. The war chief of the country, with forty or fifty men who seemed to have very good manners, came to meet them. The English asked the name of the country. The savage, who did not understand the question, said, " Win-gan-da-coa," which means, " you wear fine clothes." The Englishman, supposing that the Indian had replied to his question, thought that "Win-gan-da-coa " was the name of the country. Many geographical names in all parts of the world have arisen in this same way, when exchange of ideas is by signs only. The next day the chief brought his wife and children to make a call on the white visitors. This American lady had a band of white coral on her forehead and strings of pearls hanging down from her ears to her waist. The other women wore ear- rings of copper, and the king had a plate of metal on his head. The men wore their hair lono: on one side, but the women on both sides. Captain Bar- low, with seven men, went twenty miles to Roanoke Island, where they found a village of nine houses built of cedar and fortified round about with sharp- 212 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. pointed trees, with the entrance narrow and easily defended. Here they were entertained by the chiefs wife. Pleased and happy though they were with the air and the soil, the trees, the fruits, and the people, Raleigh's pioneers were not very practically minded about either exploration or colonization. After a few weeks they returned to England, taking with them two natives, one of them named Wanchese and the other Manteo, after whom the town in Dare County is named. Raleigh was delighted with the results of the voyage, and the Queen even more so. She made her favorite a knight, so that ever afterwards he was called Sir Walter Raleigh. She felt that her reign was honored by the discovery. She gave the new country a name which showed that she was still un- married. The state of Virginia is the oldest child, the first born of the noble family of English-speak- ing commonwealths. Raleigh had a new seal of his arms cut, showing that he was the warden and gov- ernor of the land of the Virmn Oueen. He became a member of Parliament from Devon, and secured political advantages which still further enriched him. He now dreamed of ruling a great estate beyond sea in semi-feudal style. Raleigh sent a squadron of seven ships, which sailed in the spring of 1585. On board were one RALEIGH'S DREAM OF A NEW ENGLISH NATION. 213 hundred English and Irish householders, with many things necessary to begin a new state, but without one woman. Such a " colony " might make a camp, but never a home. It was under the charge of Ralph Lane, who had, like Raleigh, seen service in Ireland, and whom many Irishmen followed to the new world. Thomas Cavendish, who afterwards sailed round the world, Hariot the mathematician who developed the science of algebra, and the artist White, a good painter, who engaged to make water colors of what he saw, were of the number. The seven ships went out ready either to fight or to trade with Spaniards, on their long round-about way from the Canaries to the West Indies. In due season the squadron dropped anchors off the little sand-spit between Pamlico Sound and Ocacroke Inlet. What happened to Raleigh's colonies in North Carolina belongs not to this our story of the " Ro- mance of Discovery," but to our succeeding volume of " The Romance of Colonization." Suffice it to say, that in March, 1586, Sir Ralph Lane explored the Roanoke River in search of gold mines and an entrance into the Pacific Ocean. He and his men were driven back by hunger after having eaten their dogs. The colony was a total failure. Visited by Sir Francis Drake, who had been in the West Indies attacking the Spanish settlements, the colonists 214 ^-^^ ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. returned on his ships, reaching Plymouth, July 27, 1586. Robbing Spaniards had thus far paid better than planting colonies. Though Raleigh's venture had not been a success, yet there was much to please the Queen, the Court, and himself. Thomas Hariot the mathematician, and the man who had best used his eyes and pen, brought back a good description of the country, and this, John White, the skilful artist, had illustrated in water colors ; for, at that time, there was scarcely an oil-painter in all England un- less it were a Dutchman or Italian. Among other things, the potato was carried into Ireland by the Irishmen. The tubers were first planted on Raleigh's estate, and in time formed the national vegetable of Ireland. They served also to enrich the British table, for at this time garden vege- tables were little known or used in England by the common folks, who in winter lived wholly on salt meat, fish, and grain. Royalty and the nobles had to depend on the Dutch. The island of Walcheren in Zealand was called " Queen Elizabeth's kitchen garden." Then there were Indian corn and tobacco. The dried weed made a great sensation and be- came very popular, even the game or joke of weio^hino: smoke ofettins: into voo:ue. The Dutch- men took to pipes and cigars even more than the English. RALEIGH'S DREAM OF A NEW ENGLISH NATION. 21 5 Another Virginian enterprise was planned. With eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and two children, a second settlement was begun July 22, 1587. A little babe, the first child born of English parents in America, saw the light on the i8th of August, and was named Virginia. Her mother was the daughter of the governor, John White. Dare County was named after her father. Late in the autumn, Governor White returned to England for provisions and reinforcements ; but owing to the war excitement in England on account of the Spanish Armada, no help ever reached the colonists, most of whom miserably perished. The first English colony in America w^as a failure, because of inexperience and a badly chosen place of settlement ; but, more than all, on account of the war with Spain. It added a little, but only a little, to geographical knowledge ; yet, nevertheless, it was Raleigh, who by talking and writing, by his money, his energy, and his practical experiments, educated Englishmen into the idea of building up a nation beyond the sea. When the seventeenth century opened, not only had England failed to hold a foot of land in the new world, but it seemed as though Spain alone would dominate the entire continent. Who then could foresee that great family of English-speaking nations in both hemispheres and on five continents, 2l6 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. which are now bound together by a common lan- guage, hope, and idea? If England is to be honored above all countries on earth as the mother of com- monwealths, Raleigh is the first and greatest of foster-fathers. I CHAPTER XXI. CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH EXPLORES VIRGINIA AND THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. T HE settlement of Jamestown belongs to the romance of colonization, and not to that of dis- covery and exploration. Nevertheless, Captain John Smith was an English explorer and adven- turer, rather than a colonizer. He was such a great romancer and even so much of a falsifier, that it is very uncertain whether he ever was in Hungary fighting the Turks, as he declared he had been. It is, however, an historical fact, that he gained his experience in war, as did every one of the military fathers and protectors of the American colonies, in the Dutch war of independence. Captain John Smith served four years in the army of the Dutch United States against Spain. Arriving at Jamestown, when about thirty years old, he was taken prisoner while exploring the Chickahominy. He was brought by Opecanca- nough, whose name remains on a Virginia river, — the Opecan, — to Powhattan, a war chief whose town was on the York River. After a few weeks Smith 217 2l8 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. was released with presents of corn for the colonists. He made a boating voyage, as much for food as for knowledge, up the James River as far as Richmond, all the while, no doubt, having the hope of striking upon some passage into China. In 1608 he made two extended surveys of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary waters. He probably entered the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and the Potapsco rivers, and looked upon the site of Baltimore. He heard of the dreaded Mohawks, — a tribe of the Iroquois whose power extended from Canada to the Carolinas, and from the Con- necticut to the Mississippi, and with whom Cham- plain in Canada and La Salle in Illinois, as we have seen, had already come in contact. Captain Smith made a map of his discoveries, which is still very interesting. He saw from the first that the only thing to make colonies successful was intelligently directed labor, good agriculture, and manual indus- try. Gold-seeking meant the chase of phantoms, followed by starvation and death. He left the col- ony in September, 1610, but whether for his own or the colony's good, or both, it is not certain. In 1614, having noticed that "the Dutch had become rich by the contemptible trade of fish," and had thus beaten even the Spaniards in acquiring wealth, so that the powerful monarchy had to make truce with the little republic. Smith got London CAPTAIN JOHN SMI TH EX PL ORES VI R GINIA. 2 1 9 merchants to fit out for him two ships with which to open the mines of wealth in the ocean. Coming over to the coast of North America, he kept his men busy in fur-trading and fishing, whereby he and they made plenty of money, and at the same time he explored a considerable part of the coast of our three eastern states, Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. He made a pretty fair map of the country named New England, and sent copies to his friend Henry Hudson. For his services, he was given the rank of admiral. In June, 1615, he tried to establish a small colony in Maine, but storms prevented this. He was capt- ured by a French man-of-war, but escaped in a boat. From 16 16 to 1631 he wrote books and pamphlets, showing his countrymen their grand opportunity, and urging the colonization of Amer- ica. He also narrated his own adventures on the European continent, many of which, as he relates them, are now believed to be fictitious. With all his faults, Captain John Smith must be ranked among the first of the English explorers of America. When the Pilgrim fathers and mothers, who had been reinforced and tempered in republican Hol- land, landed on Plymouth Rock to lay the founda- tions of distinctive America, the original work done by English explorers on the Atlantic coast had been neither large, nor important, nor brilliant. Except 220 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. the voyage of the ItaHan, Sebastian Cabot, along the shore, and the entrance of some parties into a few of the rivers, bays, and inlets, they had not dis- covered or explored any part of the coast not pre- viously made known by either the Spanish or the French, while the Dutch discovered and revealed the coast line between Virginia and New England. It was, however, reserved for the Englishman, last in discovery, to be first in successful colonization. CHAPTER XXII. THE DUTCH ATTEMPT THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE AND OPEN THE SEAS OF THE ORIENT. TO the day of his death, Columbus thought he had discovered only some islands off the coast of Japan. The aim of Cabot, Frobisher, Davis, and others, even into the seventeenth century, was to discover a passage to China either by the north- west or the southwest, or right through America. With pluck and perseverance, they kept on trying to find also the Northeast Passage. The southeast route around the Cape of Good Hope was already held by Portuguese, and, besides, it was exceedingly far off. The company of Merchant Adventurers, of which Sebastian Cabot in his old age became presi- dent, sent Sir Hugh Willoughby with three ships northward, but he never came back. Richard Chan- cellor, in another vessel, "discovered " Archangel and began direct trade with Russia. The Muscovy Com- pany was formed in London. In 1556 the brave Stephen Burrough took his little English ships up as far as Nova Zembla, and partially explored it and the coasts adjacent, but came back with experience 221 222 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. only. Once again, in 1580, the Englishmen tried again, only to be driven back by the frost king. After that, it was impossible to get English capital- ists to advance money on any further experiment in finding the Northwest Passage to China. Failing again and again to cut through the continent, and losing money in the many attempts, they never got thoroughly interested in America until its commer- cial advantages had been demonstrated. During the first age of exploration, the Dutch United States had not been able to join in advent- ures on the deep and distant seas. The little re- public of seven states, which in 1579 formed their Union, and in 1581 published their Declaration of Independence, had but eight hundred thousand in- habitants, and was fighting for life against Spain. Their territory consisted chiefly of a narrow strip of fertile clay soil lying along the sea, between the Scheldt and the Ems rivers, with a large sand- heath and plenty of morasses over the rest of the national area, all of which was no larger than New Hampshire. Every man, every ship, and every dollar had to be used to fight the Spaniards. At first the case seemed as hopeless as that of the shepherd boy of Bethlehem, armed only with five smooth stones and a sling, against the Philistine giant. Nevertheless, the Dutch, with genuine grit, with faith in God, with DUTCH ATTEMPT THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE. 223 intense hatred against the Inquisition, with enter- prise and skill in trade, kept up the fight. They paid their debts, especially the soldiers' wages, so that their army never mutinied and the country actually grew richer. Declaring war openly in an honorable way, they enriched themselves by seizing the Spanish treasure ships and by keeping up trade with their enemies' countries and colonies even in time of war. One admiral, Piet Hein, captured the Silver Fleet, containing twelve millions of dollars. When the English abandoned the bold but dis- appointing work in the North Sea, the Dutch re- solved to find the northern route to China. The first proposition of the sort had come to them, in 1 58 1, from the English sea-captain. Beets, but was then necessarily refused. Gradually, however, the idea of beating Spain at sea and compelling her to sue for peace, became popular and was made very effective. By the end of the century, having begun the war in 1567, they sent out Dutch ships and men to plant colonies in the world at large, which had been divided up by the Pope, between the Spaniards and Portuguese. The Dutch government had not begun hostilities against the Spaniards in any mean or underhanded way, by privateering, piracy, or buccaneering, but in open war honorably declared, and when they made truce with the Spaniards in 1609 ^^^^y kept it in 224 ^^^' ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. good faith. Their rulers were not vacillating, now approving and now disapproving of their captains at sea as it suited their changing humors, but the States-General or Congress, in 1614, publicly offered a prize of twenty-five thousand guilders to any one who would discover a northern passage to the East Indies. To win the money, the navigator must go and return. Dutch traders made expedi- tions among the icebergs, and opened a good busi- ness with those regions bordering on the White Sea between Lapland and Russia, having their chief sta- tion at Archangel. The great commercial house of de Moucheron, at Middleburg in Zealand, was espe- cially famous for its wealth made in this way. As early as 1598, it is said, Dutch ships and crews were in the Hudson and Delaware rivers, but simply as traders making no claim as discoverers. Among the learned promoters of Dutch explora- tion was Domine Petrus Plancius, who besides being a pastor and preacher was one of the best-informed geographers in Europe. His writings and personal influence greatly helped to send the ships of the republic in all oceans. In 1594, 1595, and 1596, brave soldiers and skilful pilots carried the orange, white, and blue flag still farther northward and eastward. One of the most famous of these expeditions was that of Heemskerk, Barentz, and Derijp, who were DUTCH ATTEMPT THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE. 225 sent out In 1596. They discovered Nova Zembla, which is a pair of twin islands Hke those of Tsushima between Japan and Korea, and also Spitsbergen. Their ship was so frozen in, that they w^ere obliged to winter on Nova Zembla. They had plenty of clothing, wine, and food, except meat. Using the driftwood, they constructed a hut with a big fire- place. The white polar bears prowled about them, evidently longing to taste the Dutchmen, who shot Bruin and used his fat to feed their lamps, which were kept burning during the perpetual night from November 4 to January 24. These merry Dutchmen, in the white world of ice and snow and far from their homes, celebrated with fun and frolic their old home-land festival on the 5th of January — the eve of the day of the Three Kings — by tossing the pancake and drink- ing healths to their boatswain, who acted for the nonce as sovereign of Nova Zembla. When day- light came, the bears left and the foxes came in troops, furnishing the men with fresh and whole- some meat, and with material for caps and socks. In June, fearing lest they might be again shut in by the ice, they left their ship among the bergs. In two open boats, and despite many perils and labors, they reached Norway and home, where they were welcomed as men risen from the dead. Their story has often been told and sung by 23rose writers Q 226 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. and poets. They were proud of having gone further than the EngHshmen, but their awful ex- periences dampened for a long time any zeal for further explorations. Within the present century, the relics of Barentz and his men have been found and placed in the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam, where to-day they are eloquent and compel tears. The story of these Arctic explorers was well known in Ensfland. We find it referred to on the theatre stage. Shakespeare in "Twelfth Night," Act III., Scene II., makes Fabian in Olivia's house say to Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, " You are now sailed into the North of my lady's opinion ; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard." Nevertheless, the Hollanders were not discour- aged. They turned their thoughts in other direc- tions and to warmer regions, being determined that the Spaniards and Portuguese should not monopo- lize trade with the far East. When Cornelius Hout- man of Gouda, — famous for its pipes and printing, — who had spent some years at Lisbon, came back and told of the tremendous profits made by the Portuguese in spices, the desire to have a hand in the trade was strong. By the advice of Domine Plancius, nine Dutch merchants formed a company and at once fitted out at their own cost four vessels which cleared from the Texel, April 2, 1595, for Ban- DUTCH ATTEMPT THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE. 22/ tarn and Java — names now associated with diminu- tive chickens and good coffee. After fighting storms, Portuguese, and tropical diseases, ninety brave men, out of the two hundred and fifty who started out, returned to Amsterdam in 1597, with enough pepper, nutmeg, and mace to lower at once the high prices of spices. There was a general jubilee all over Holland. The Dutch had invaded Portu- oal's half of the world. The o:reat obstacle to the navio-ation of Eastern seas was the want of charts and geographical knowl- edofc. Yet even this was soon overcome. There was a Dutchman named Jan van Linschoten born in Haarlem in 1563. He had two brothers in Spain established in business, which, in 1586, the King of Spain broke up, by seizing Dutch ships, and order- ing all trade with the heretics to be stopped. The young Haarlemer entered the service of the Bishop of Goa, when that Portuguese prelate went out to India. Linschoten, in making this voyage, learned the sea-route and methods of naviofation and trade. Having returned to his own country and while liv- ing at Enkhuizen, in 1592, he joined himself as a trader, or supercargo, to one of the ships which, in 1594, went through the Arctic seas to find the way to India. Turned back by icebergs, he took a great interest in the expedition of Heemskerk and Barentz in 1596. In the same year, he published 228 THE ROMANCE OE DISCOVERY. his wonderful books which gave charts and told of the sea-routes not only to the Spice Islands, but even to the Chinese coasts, Formosa, and Japan. Linschoten's writings opened to all Europe, but especially to the Dutch and English, the whole Eastern world. He was treasurer of the city of Enkhuizen, not then, as it is now, a sleepy little town, but a great flourishing city with hundreds of ships daily at its wharves. His books treated of the voyage of a mariner to the East or Portuguese Indies, with descriptions of the cruises made by the Portuguese in the East. At last the " East Indies," so long talked about, were actually mapped and described, and the way thither made clear; but the Portuguese looked on the Dutchmen as burglars who had broken into their secret house and rifled their private papers. Another volume described the coast of Guinea and another the resources of the King of Spain. Linschoten's books were quickly translated into Latin, French, English, and German and had a tremendous effect. Soon after this, the Dutch East and West India companies were organized, and also the English companies, of the same name, which were copied after the Dutch. Linschoten's book gave the first true map of the world in which the East India shores, islands, and routes were accurately placed. It made a deep DUTCH ATTEMPT THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE. 229 impression in England, where we find it made the subject of a joke in the theatres. Marian, in Shakes- peare's " Twelfth Night," Act III., Scene II., says of Malvolio, after the latter had been misled by a false letter into making love to Countess Olivia, " He does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map, with the augmentation of the Indies." Another Dutchman, Gerard Mercator, by his globes and maps, especially those drawn on what are called " Mercator's projection," did more than any other one person to set men's minds free from the ancient and imperfect notions of Ptolemy, whose geography had been rendered obsolete by the numerous dis- coveries of the sixteenth century. After this, the orange, white, and blue flag of the Dutch republic began to flutter in every sea, and expeditions for trade and exploration were numer- ous. They examined the coasts of countries, like India, which the Portuguese had possessed. The Dutch established tradinsf houses at a number of points in Guinea and along the coast of Africa, and in India, Malacca, Burma, Formosa, and Japan. They discovered and explored the coasts of the Malay Archipelago, New Holland now called Aus- tralia, New Zealand, and Tasmania or Van Die- men's Land. The Dutch were the first to begin studying the Oriental languages, and they founded the first Asiatic society. In time, they conquered 230 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. the Spice Islands of the Malay Archipelago from the Portuguese. Turning their attention to America, as early as 1598, they sent out an expedition westward, which sailed through Magellan's Straits and into the Pacific. A Dutchman from the city of Hoorn dis- covered and named Cape Horn. In later years they captured from the Spaniards some of the West India Islands, set up factories in Guiana and Brazil, explored the archipelago south and west of Patago- nia, and repeatedly circumnavigated the world. No one would ever get any idea from a geography or atlas now published in England or the United States, how numerous were the discoveries and how great were the explorations which the Dutch made in every part of the world ; for the British conquer- ors have erased or Anglicized most of the Dutch names formerly on the maps. It was when in search of the Northwest Passage that Henry Hudson in the Dutch ship. Half Moon, — so named after a famous fortress of that name, — discovered and entered the Hudson River. Undiscouraged by the English and Dutch at- tempts to reach China by sailing around Russia and Siberia, Hudson resolved again to dare the terrors of the ice and snows. His whole mature life had been spent on icy seas. In 1607, being employed by the Muscovy Company, in a little ship DUTCH ATTEMPT THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE. 23 1 with only ten men, he had reached within ten degrees of the pole. In 1608 he had sailed as far as Nova Zembla. When he came back, the Am- sterdam Dutchmen, eager to find some one of experience and ability who would try once again to win the golden prize of twenty-five thousand guilders, were ready to employ Hudson in the new venture. At first the merchants and the sea-captain could not agree on terms, and for a while it looked as if the French envoy in the Netherlands would get Hudson into French service; but on the 8th of January, 1609, Captain Hudson and his friend Hon- dius, the famous map-maker who could talk both Dutch and English, met and agreed. Hudson soon informed the French minister that he could not serve King Henry IV. The directors of the East India Company con- tracted with Hudson to fit out a vessel of sixty tons' burden for a voyage, around the north of Nova Zembla, to India. It was wiiile Hudson was wait- ing for the sailing of his ship, that the English refugees escaping from persecution, and destined to found Massachusetts, arrived in Amsterdam from Scrooby, England. Some of them may have seen him sail away, for it is very probable that they lived in the neighborhood of the wharves. Plancius and Linschoten, no doubt, helped Hudson with advice and maps. 232 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. On the fourth day of April, the Half Moon swung clear from her moorings, within the half-moon canal at Amsterdam and in front of the Weeper's Tower, — which old building is still standing, and contains the harbor master's office. About and in front of this tower, on both sides of the canal, were gathered the women, children, and friends of the hardy Dutch mariners about to sail on adventurous voyages. Then, and afterwards, during the next fifty years, many crowds assembled here to see ships sailing for America. Hudson, passing out into the Zuyder Zee and up through the Texel, was soon in the North, butting against the great ice mass that re- fused to open or to allow him to reach Nova Zem- bla. It was quite soon evident that he could not find India that year by going eastward. What should he do } CHAPTER XXIII. THE ORANGE, WHITE, AND BLUE IN THE HUDSON RIVER. HUDSON'S crew consisted of but twenty men. Like himself, the sailors did not want to go home empty-handed. So he gave them a choice of two routes in seeking the Northwest Passage. The first was by sailing about the latitude of forty de- grees. This course would bring them to a warm and comfortable climate. Or, they might sail through Davis Strait and inside the Arctic circle. In either case he hoped to reach the Orient. Although the crew voted to try the Davis Strait passage, yet, either on account of storms which drove him out of his course, or else because he deliber- ately chose to try a more southern passage, Hudson moved southwestwardly. He soon reached New- foundland, sailed down along the coast of Maine, and stopped at Mount Desert Island, where he cut down and trimmed a huQ^e tree to make a new fore- mast. He came to Cape Cod, which he named New Holland. Getting far out beyond the sands and shallows, he did not see the coast again until the 2Sth of August, when he found himself off the coast 233 234 ^^^ ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. of Maryland. Moving northward alongshore, he en- tered Delaware Bay, and coasted along and around New Jersey. On Wednesday, September 2, 1609, at five o'clock in the afternoon, he passed around Sandy Hook. Charmed with the scenery, he cast his anchor in what he thought was a great lake of water. He was in New York Bay, where for ten days he re- mained, keeping his men meanwhile busy in making soundings, locating the channel, and exploring the bay beyond the narrows. He invited the Indians to come on board his ship and treated them well, but in the trip beyond the narrows, Coleman, one of his crew, was shot by the red men. He traded off axes, knives, shovels, and other tools or trifles for furs. The savages made ornaments of whatever could be scoured and kept bright. At last, believ- ing it was safe to do so, he took his ship up into this waterway, which he thought might possibly lead toward China, if not to it. Passing what is now the Battery, he sailed up along Manhattan Island, the Palisades, the Highlands, the Catskills, and reached the vicinity of Troy about the 20th of September. This was what we call the head of navigation, and the water was too shallow to allow further progress. Hudson sent a ship's boat about twenty-seven miles northward beyond the anchor- age. The men found the river still more shallow, ORANGE, WHITE, AND BLUE IN HUDSON RIVER. 235 and the volume of water growing less, with a great mountainous country lying beyond. This was a sad disappointment to Hudson and his crew, after they had sailed nearly one hundred and fifty miles through so noble a stream. Much of the water was salt or brackish until past the High- lands, and hence they supposed that they were in a strait, rather than a river flowing out of springs in the mountains and therefore entirely landlocked. There was no getting to China that way. On the 23d of September they turned their prow south- ward and after eleven days sailed out from Sandy Hook. Thus, for over a month, amid the autumnal glories of nature's colors, the orange, white, and blue flag of the federal republic of the Netherlands had been mirrored on the grandest river in eastern North America. The brave Hollanders and their English captain had revealed a new coast, river, and territory between New England and Virginia. Instead of going, as most vessels would have done, to the West Indies or the Canary Islands, the Half Moon moved straight across the ocean, arriving No- vember 7, 1609, ^t Dartmouth. At first, the Eng- lishmen wanted to claim the credit of this discovery. They detained both ship and captain, and the Half Moo7i did not get to Amsterdam till July of the new year. The British government permitted Hudson 236 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. to keep his contract with his Dutch employers and send on his report to Amsterdam, yet Hudson him- self probably never got to Holland again. Never- theless, Henry Hudson had discovered for the Dutch the greatest of all the gateways, from the Atlantic into the heart of the region which is now United States territory. The next year, with English sailors, Hudson started again to sail through America to China. He entered and explored the great bay which is named after him. Then his crew mutinied, and putting him with his son and seven infirm sailors in an open boat, set them adrift amid the floating ice. So ended his useful and daring life. Strangely enough, Champlain, the French ex- plorer, as well as Hudson visited Mount Desert Island, in 1609, and thence moved northward and into the St. Lawrence, while Hudson went south- ward and into the waterway of the Empire State. Within four months of time and two degrees of latitude, they were near each other in the territory of New York, Champlain being at Ticonderoga and Hudson at Troy. It was like the nearness and far- ness of de Soto and Coronado in the Mississippi valley. The actions of Champlain and Hudson were initial, typical, and far-reaching in influence upon the decision of the question which occupied states- ORANGE, WHITE, AND BLUE IN HUDSON RIVER. 23/ men, armies, and nations from* 1609 until 1763. That question was, whether Latin or Germanic civilization should prevail in North America. The French were a military people, bound by Church and State to mediaeval and feudal ideas. The Dutch were commercial, republican, and full of modern and progressive ideas. The Hurons and Algonquins became allies of the French. The Iro- quois from the year 1609 sought the Dutch and remained their friends and helpers. In the long struggle that followed, first the Iroquois, then the Dutch, and finally the English prevailed. The tri- color flag, with all it meant of hope for freedom and republican government still remains, though Indian, Dutch, French, or British power in the Hudson valley is no more. Hudson had discovered new coasts, — those of our Middle States from the tip of Delaware to nearly the northern end of New York. He had found a great river and its tributaries, and had told of the men, animals, and wonderful products seen by him. Immediately the desire to get the furs in this new market became a passion ; for the Dutch lived in a cold damp country, and peltry was ever in great demand. Since the trade with Archangel in Russia had been shut off, the Dutch- men were very glad to find in the new world what seemed to be a market; where, instead of hard 238 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. money, they need only pay in beads, trinkets, axes, and knives, while the supply of furs appeared to be inexhaustible. A trading company had already been formed, and no sooner did the Half Moon sail into the river Y at Amsterdam on her return, than the directors engaged the Dutch mate and a number of the crew to make another trip to America. With others, these men who had seen America started off again. Entering the Hudson River, they met the redskins coming off in their canoes with bundles of beaver skins and other furs. On their breasts dangled the various bits of hardware which Hudson had bartered on his first voyage. Even shovel blades had become jewellery. All Holland was soon stirred up on the subject of furs and exploration. Here was a market as good as China, but much nearer home. The merchants living in Rotterdam, Hoorn, and Enkhuizen, de- manded of their state legislatures and the Dutch Congress all information possible about the new country, and to have the charts of the South, or Delaware, River, and the North, or Hudson, River published. The facts in hand were duly forthcom- ing: and the res^ion was named New Netherland. Note this name. It was not New Netherlands. The Dutch were now a nation, with one country, and not merely a collection of provinces. New Netherland meant unity. It was the token of vie- ARRIVAL OF THE " HALF MOON" AT THE HUDSON RIVER. ORANGE, WHITE, AND BLUE IN HUDSON RIVER. 239 tory over Spain, and another way of translating their national motto Eendracht inaakt Macht, or " Union makes strength." In the year 1612 five ships were despatched for further exploration and trade. Among the officers of these ships were Henry Christiansen, Adriaen Block, and Cornelius Jacobson May. Two of these names are preserved in Block Island and Cape May. On their return home, besides a cargo of peltry, they brought two sons of war chiefs, whom they named Valentine and Orson. These young Indians were taken around through the different Dutch provinces, and the sight of them excited a tremendous interest in the New Netherland beyond sea. The year 1609 was the first one of the Great Truce. Spain had been trying during forty-three years to conquer the United States of the Nether- lands, but had not succeeded. She had already buried tens of thousands of her sons and mercena- ries in the Dutch ditches, but the men who fousfht for freedom were very tough, brave, and skilful, and were growing richer and stronger every day. Spain, fearing exhaustion, had to ask for peace, which was finally granted, after the owner of Peru and Mexico had recognized the Dutch Congress or States- General as " their Hio-h Mio;htinesses." By the terms of this truce, however, the Dutch 240 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. could not in honor begin a colony in New Nether- land ; for it would have been against their treaty to have then settled the country and occupied it. The Dutch kept good faith with Spain. Tolerant and ready to welcome men who worshipped God in whatever way pleasing to them, provided they obeyed the laws of the republic, the Dutch govern- ment gave asylum and welcome to Jews, Roman Catholics, the Anabaptists (so-called), the Walloons and French Huguenots, and to the Pilgrim Fathers, mothers and children, and to many other religious refugees driven out from England. Yet to send a colony to America, in dominions still claimed by Spain, would have been an act of war. Yet, all the time the Dutchmen kept talking about New Netherland, as well as their other con- quests and discoveries. It is true that Barneveldt, the Arminian political party, and the ultra-State- Sovereignty men opposed the idea of colonization, but the majority of people and the National party, or the Calvinists, led by Prince Maurice, heartily favored planting a Dutch colony in New Nether- land. Jesse de Forest of Leyden was one of thou- sands who looked forward to the time when, the truce being over, they could occupy the American Netherland with farmers as well as traders and build towns and cities. Barneveldt, the great states- man and diplomatist, feared that the Dutch people ORANGE, WHITE, AND BLUE IN HUDSON RIVER. 24 1 might be led away by military ambition, while Maurice, the President or Stadtholder and head of the army, and the Dutch people in general, espe- cially their ministers, geographers, and navigators, eagerly hoped to see the region about the Delaware and Hudson rivers become a New Holland. Al- though the Dutch could not then colonize Manhat- tan Island, they built huts where the sailors might find shelter and get fresh water and provisions. Captain Christiansen sailed with Block in 1613, — the one in the Fortune (or Good Tidings), the other in the Tiger, — and, landing on Manhattan Island, made it the centre of the fur-trade with the Indians. He determined to remain with his men through the winter and some time later, and so these first white inhabitants on the site of New York City built houses there, using the tree-trunks for posts, making the walls of boards, and roofing and covering them with the bark of trees peeled off in great masses. The Dutch were something more than mere trad- ers. They were true explorers, having a real desire to add to the science of geography which was so richly cultivated in their native country. The names of their countrymen, Plancius, Linschoten, Mercator, and Wagenaar, were already honorably known throughout all the civilized world. We do not find the level-headed Dutchmen digging for 242 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. gold or searching for a passage to China, but en- gaging industriously in honest trade. From his abode on Manhattan Island, Christiansen, in his boats, explored the numerous and wonderful water- ways which lead to the island whereon is America's greatest city. After making himself acquainted with that won- derful system of waterways which makes New York Bay the greatest of all the gateways from the Atlan- tic into the continent, Christiansen took his ship, Good Tidings (or Good Fortune, as we may translate the name), up to the great northern centre of Indian trade. This was at the junction of the Mohawk and the Hudson rivers, where the Indian trails from the north, west, east, and south came together. Here, also, the converging waterways and the valleys, with the wonderful configuration of the country, make one of the most interesting strategic points in the eastern United States. Nowhere else on the continent, from Labrador to Alabama, does the great Appalachian chain of mountains sink so low, form- ing a great natural gateway between New Eng- land and the West. From the St. Lawrence River to Sandy Hook, there is a great rift valley and a natural waterway, which crosses the land highways between the rising and setting sun. The railways of to-day from the north, south, east, and west (except that through the Hoosac Tunnel), do but ORANGE, WHITE, AND BLUE IN HUDSON RIVER. 243 follow the Indian trails once made for the moccasin. The steamboats run in the old water-paths of the canoe. There was not at this time a more intellectual or keen-witted people in all Europe than the brave republicans of Holland. They were daring, enter- prising, and resourceful. Their universities so far surpassed those of Great Britain that thousands of English and Scottish students attended at Leyden, Utrecht, Harderwijk, and Groningen. Those who look at the Dutch through the spectacles of Eng- lish or sectional American prejudice make a great mistake. Such people cannot properly understand either Netherlandish or American history. When the winter was over, Christiansen chose Barren Island, in the middle of the Hudson River, as his headquarters. Here he built a fort, the first in New Netherland, which he named Nassau, after Maurice, Count of Nassau, the great defender of the Dutch Union and the patron of exploration and of colonies. The lordly river which Hudson had entered was now named Mauritius. Barren Island near Albany, like Barren Hill near Philadelphia and several other very fertile places in the United States, was named after the bears. Both island and hill are on rich soil and are well covered with trees. After making further explorations, Christiansen was killed by Orson, one of the two Indians who 244 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. had been in Holland, though we do not know why. The command of the fort then fell upon Jacob Eelkins, who for three or four years remained at the head of the station. He found the Iroquois exceedingly anxious to buy firearms, and learned that they came from long distances westward to get them. At that time, no better guns were made anywhere else in Europe than in Holland. The musketeers of Holland and other cities constantly practised at the butts, or doclcn, and the Dutch were superb marksmen. The evolution of the firearm from the heavy arquebus to the modern musket was proceeding rapidly. Most old English words refer- ring to a gun, especially to the firing part, and the lock and cock, are of Dutch origin. The later explorations of the Mohawk valley, by Arendt van Curler, revealed the wonderful canoe route and waterway between the East and the West, connecting the Great Lakes with the Hudson. The water passage and land routes northward to New France had been of old used by the Iroquois. In sub- sequent years Dutchmen explored all New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Coming up the Susquehanna valley, they first entered that wonderful lake country of fifteen or more bodies of water in central New York, from Oneida Lake to Silver Lake, containing rich forests full of fur-bear- ing animals. ORANGE, WHITE, AND BLUE IN HUDSON RIVER. 245 Thus, from its outskirts to the far interior, the whole of New Netherland, the empire region, which afterward became our four Middle States, was ex- plored, and Dutch maps made of the region thus discovered and opened. One of the most noted maps, of 1614-15, which shows the country from Rhode Island to the Delaware River, is remarlcable for its knowledge of interior New York. It proves what Christiansen and Block did to make known America beyond the seacoast. In a word, the Dutchmen, although they had not yet settled a colony, as the English had done at Jamestown, did greatly enlarge European knowledge of the re- sources of the continent and of its physical geog- raphy. CHAPTER XXIV. CAPTAIN block's EXPLORING CRUISE IN THE YACHT " RESTLESS." LET US see now what became of Captain Adriaen Block. While his comrade, Christiansen, was up in the Mohawk region. Block's ship, Tiger, caught fire and was burned to the water's edge ; but, undis- mayed, though with few and poor tools, and using chiefly the green wood of the forest, he built the first ship constructed on Manhattan Island, and christened it the Onrust {Restless). The little ship was launched in the springtime and made a splen- did record. Being only sixteen tons' burden. Block could take her into the rivers and streams where a larger vessel could not go. He first went up the East River to Hell Gate and threaded his way among the islands into Long Island Sound, which he explored on its northern shore. He passed a large river, to the region or valley of which he, or some later Dutchman, gave the name " Woesten Hoek," which means the cor- ner or place of the wilderness. In the Indian tongue, and as pronounced by the red man's lips, 246 CAPTAIN BLOCK'S EXPLORING CRUISE. 247 when the English inquired its name, " Woesten Hoek " became " Housatonic." In one of the first large inlets, which was afterwards called New Haven harbor, he named the high ground Roden- burg, or Red Hill, the appropriateness of which any one will recognize who knows the vicinity of New Haven. He sailed into the Connecticut River and when he tasted the water, finding it so differ- ent from the brackish waters near New York and around Manhattan Island, he named it the Fresh River. The stream flowing into New Haven har- bor he named the river of the Red Hill. He located the country of the Mohicans, and finding another river of sweet water, most probably the Pawtucket, he marked it on his map as being fresh. Then noticing the coast bend away to the northward, he steered over to an island rising out of the sea, which he called Block Island, which name it bears to-day. He probably explored the coast as far as Point Judith. Either he or later Dutchmen gave the region the name of Red Island, or Rood Eylandt, which in English is pronounced Rhode Island. The result of Block's explorations was to show that the land stretching out eastward from New York was an island. He now entered Narragansett Bay, and finding it large and roomy, with a broad outlook, he named it Nassau Bay. He gave names to several more 248 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. of the islands, and then passed along that tremen- dous extension of Massachusetts, east of Buzzard's Bay, which looks like a doubled-up arm as though this grand state was showing the thickness of her muscle. As in the geography, so in the seal and arms of the commonwealth, above the standing Indian, is the bent arm sheathed in armor. The Dutch skipper rounded Cape Cod and then struck over to the opposite coast, reaching Nahant, Marble- head harbor, and Salem Inlet, which he called Pye Bay. Nearly all of Block's discoveries have been ruth- lessly wiped out or altered by English settlers except the name of the island which he discovered. In Narragansett Bay, between Kingston County and Jamestown, is the little Dutch Island. Captain May, whose vessel had been fitted out at Hoorn, the town which sent out both the ship and the man who discovered and named Cape Horn in South America, had taken the Fortune and had explored the southern coast of Long Island, which he found to be twenty-five Dutch miles long, from Visscher's Hoek, now called Montauk Point, to Manhattan Island. Visscher's name survives in an altered form in Fisher's Island, which belongs to New York. May also went along the coast of New Jersey, and he or later Dutchmen named Cape May and Cape Henlopen. The latter is the namesake CAPTAIN BLOCK'S EXPLORING CRUISE. 249 of a pretty little town called Hindeloopen, or the running hind, which nestles behind the dikes of the Zuyder Zee. When Block started for Manhattan, he met the ship Fortune, in command of Cornelius Hendrikson, on its way to Holland. He exchanged ships, direct- ing Hendrikson to continue the double business of trading for furs and making geography, while he crossed the Atlantic to report the explorations of himself, of Christiansen, and of May. These reports with the " figurative map " he laid before the gov- ernment, which sat in the district of The Hague, w^here the Congress of the United States sat. In March of this very year, the Dutch Congress, to stimulate enterprise and promote exploration, had issued a general charter for those who " discovered new passages, havens, countries, or places." Each discoverer was to be rewarded by being given a monopoly of trade to the country he should dis- cover, during at least four voyages. He was re- quired within fourteen days from the return from his first voyage to give his report, with exact details of the work which he had accomplished. It was on October ii, 1614, that Block presented himself before the States-General, in one of those rooms which overlook the Binnenhof in The Haeue. There he was able to prove that he had added vastly to Henry Hudson's discovery and had opened new 250 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. countries. What Block showed was so far beyond what Captain John Smith had yet discovered, that a resolution was moved and carried to grant a char- ter to a company of merchants, which, some months before, on the iSth of July, had asked for the privi- lege of exclusive trade with America and Africa. Block's arguments won the day, and the charter was signed and sealed before sundown. In token of the unity of the United States of the Netherlands, — e pluribiis ttiiimi, — the new region was called officially not New Netherlands-, as most English writers have it, but New Netherland. Curiously enough, on that same day. Captain John Smith, in England, was showing Prince Charles his journal and map of the region between Penobscot Bay and Cape Cod. He who became King Charles I. proposed the name New England, which was given. In Block's idea. New Netherland extended from the forty-fifth degree of north latitude to the Penobscot, beyond which was New France. Meanwhile the Dutch, who were getting ac- quainted with the interior of northern New York, kept up their fort on Castle Island, in the Hudson, until a flood in 1617 nearly ruined it. Then Eelkins selected a spot at the junction of Normans Kill with the Hudson River. This beautiful winding stream took its name from a Northman or Scandi- navian who had cultivated land there. The Indian CAPTAIN BLOCK'S EXPLORING CRUISE. 25 1 name was Tawasentha, meaning the place of many dead. For many generations this spot had been sacred as being not only their burying-place, but the eastern limit of the Iroquois confederacy. Near by rose a hill on the northern bank, called Tawas- gunshee, whence a view over the river valley could be obtained. Here the next year, in 1618, was held a great council of the five Indian tribes of the confederacy, whose long house, or residence, ex- tended from the falls of Cohoes to those of NiaQ:ara. With solemn ceremonies, these senators of the forest formed, with the commander and officers of the Fort Nassau, a treaty of friendship and an alliance of mutual helpfulness. This league of peace, be- tween the Dutch and Indians, became, in the course of American history, one of the primal elements which decided the fate of this continent for Anolo- Saxon civilization. Like a great dike, against which the waves of French energy and ambition beat in vain, it stood until the Indian ceased to be a political factor in the struggle. After Eelkins, it was remade and ratified by Arendt van Curler. It became that " silver chain " which was never broken until the English-speaking white men them- selves quarrelled and separated. The two significant ceremonies were the burial of the war-hatchet and the mutual drinkinor of the smoke of peace. The Indians laid a tomahawk 252 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. upon the loose ground and the chiefs repeatedly trampled and trod it down, pushing earth over it until it was no longer visible. Then the calumet or pipe was filled with tobacco, passed around, and solemnly smoked by red and white men. There are few more interesting historic sites in America than Tawasentha, near Albany. Here, according to Indian tradition, was the seat of the labors of their culture-hero Hiawatha, whom Long- fellow has celebrated. Not far away lived and wrought the Indian's friend, Arendt van Curler, one of America's great men. He was so true a friend of the Five Nations, that they named the governors of New York after him — Corlear. The " Covenant of Corlear," so often referred to in Ind- ian oratory, is not yet forgotten. Even the title which the Canadian Iroquois to this day give Queen Victoria, the Empress of India, is " The Great Curler" (Kora Kowa). The Iroquois, who hated Champlain, called the body of w^ater in northern New York, Corlear's Lake, and the bay near which he was drowned in 1657, Corlear's Bay. The little ship Restless was not yet at the end of its career of usefulness. In 161 5, Captain Cor- nelius Hendrikson sailed in her around the coast of New Jersey. To one place he gave the name Eyerhaven, that is the haven of eggs, which is cor- rect old English as well as good Dutch. It is now CAPTAIN BLOCK'S EXPLORING CRUISE. 253 called Egg Harbor. He gave the name Henlopen to what is now called Cape May, and to the point opposite, Cape Cornelius, though these names were afterwards changed. He went up into the beautiful Delaware Bay, until he found that, like that which Hudson had discovered, it narrowed and became a river. In sailing up past where Philadelphia now is, he reached perhaps as far as Trenton. He or some one after him named the Delaware's principal affluent, the Schuylkill, that is, the hidden kill or stream. The Great Truce was to end in 1621, and then war with Spain would begin again, and the Dutch would have opportunity to colonize New Nether- land, if they wanted to. Yet there was little induce- ment to a Dutchman to leave his home permanently. For discovery or exploration, trade or commerce, thousands of young Dutchmen, brave, enterprising, and brainy, were ready to sail into any seas or to go to either pole, but not to stay forever away from their homeland. There was plenty of room in the republic and no overcrowding, for until 1620 there were less than a million people in the seven states of the Union. Being a free land, where there was liberty of con- science for all men, there was no need of going else- where for worship in peace. The Dutch were not Pilgrims, because they had no need to be. Their 254 ^^^ ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. toleration and freedom had been already won. Yet^ besides the Separatists, called Anabaptists, and the Jews, driven out by the bigotry of persecuting state churches, both Protestant and Catholic, there were many Huguenots and British folks living in Holland. These people were not rooted to the soil, but dwelt as strangers in a strange land, whose language and customs they but partially knew. It was easy for them to go out as colonists to the new world, especially when, if they returned home to England or France, they would probably be at once clapped into prison. When the Great Truce should be over in 1621, there would be a fine opportunity for these Walloons or French Protestants, or the English Separatists from Yorkshire, to make homes in New Netherland. By the year 1620, Barneveldt, who had opposed colo- nization, was dead, and the Arminian political party or State-Sovereignty men had lost their power. Maurice, the president of the republic of the Dutch United States, received a petition from the direc- tors of the New Netherland company who traded with the Hudson River region and who now wanted to colonize it. These gentlemen said that there was an English preacher in Leyden who knew the Dutch language very well, and who stated that not fewer than four hundred families, both out of Hol- land and England, were inclined to go to New Netherland to live. CAPTAIN BLOCK'S EXPLORING CRUISE. 255 The directors recommended that these people, who were no other than Rev. John Robinson, Elder Brewster, William Bradford, and the Pilgrim fathers, mothers, and children, should be aided in transport- ing themselves to America to settle in the Hudson River region. The directors had promised to give them free passage to America, and to furnish every family with cows and animals for their farms ; but, as there was danger from their own cruel King James and from the Spaniards, they recommended that two ships of the Dutch navy be sent to convoy the squadron of colonists to New Netherland. This petition of the Dutch directors looked very reasonable from the point of view of plain patriots and business men, or even of Eno-lish refuo^ees who wanted a home where the iron hands of the harsh kings, James I. of England and Philip III. of Spain, could not reach them. James, the fool-king, had put old Sir Walter Raleigh to death, and was now trying to make a match for his daughter with a Spanish prince. These Englishmen could not trust their " dread sovereign " not to harass or murder them. To the political men in the States-General, how- ever, the matter of helping English colonists who were under the ban of their bishops and politicians looked very different. Though the Dutch United States had declared themselves independent of Spain, and had won a twelve years' truce, their freedom was 256 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. not yet fully assured. Spain, now rich and strong again, was to open a war next year, and every man and ship, every pike, gun, and cartridge, were needed for home defence. On the other hand, the Dutch had defied and irritated King James, because this monarch's intermeddling in Dutch affairs had be- come intolerable. They also had given offence to the political church of England by harboring and protecting the English refugees who were Separa- tists. The Dutch government had to be politic and cautious. They tried to keep King James in good humor, and professed to heed his remonstrances. Indeed, they could not wholly break friendship with the only other great Protestant Power in Europe. Furthermore, the English were already hinting at and professing the preposterous claim that because Henry Hudson was an Englishman, his discoveries belonged to England, though he was a servant of a Dutch company under the Dutch flag, and in a Dutch ship with Dutch sailors. This same argu- ment would have handed over the fruits of John and Sebastian Cabot's discoveries to Italy. Still, while there was even the shadow of a question, or an inch of ground for the wavering British king to stand on, it would have been the worst kind of policy for the Dutch to send, as their first colony, a company of people whom the English government and church CAPTAIN BLOCK'S EXPLORING CRULSE. 257 had persecuted and hated. It would have looked like open defiance. So the States-General were obliged to deny the petition of the Dutch directors, and to disappoint the Pilgrims in their hope of settling in New Netherland under friendly and generous patronage and beneath a republican flag. CHAPTER XXV. THE BOURBON LILIES IN CANADA. CHAMPLAIn's DECISIVE SHOT. WHEN the sixteenth century dawned, there were a good many motives to impel men to sail westward from Europe. Besides the India spices and the American lodes, there were the vast treasures of the deep and the wealth in sea-food, which were not likely to be ex- hausted like gold or silver mines. The great cur- rents coming up from the overheated water around the Equator and in the Gulf of Mexico is like the Nile River, which brings down out of the heart of Africa a top-dressing which enriches Egypt's fields. The Gulf Stream carries silt and animal life and matter, upon which the cod and other deep-sea fish feed, and makes a rich deposit on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Here during the ages billions of fish have accumulated in their generations, like mines in the water, storing up food for those nations of western Europe, whose religion requires the con- sumption of a great deal of fish on certain days. Not only was it thought not the proper thing to 258 THE BOURBON LILIES IN CANADA. 259 eat meat on Friday, but when the saints and holy days multiplied, there were at least three days in every week when fish dinners were necessary. This demand, both religious and commercial, gave the fishermen along the coast of France plenty to do, besides opportunities for wealth and stimulus to enterprise. It is highly probable that before the days of Columbus, French fishermen from St. M'alo and Dieppe had sailed directly across the ocean and fished on the Grand Banks, without ever troubling their heads about exploration and geography. After the different French provinces had become one great kingdom, and peace existed between the nations on either side of the Pyrenees, it was easy to send out Jacques Cartier, who entered the great river of St. Lawrence. He also ascended to Mon- treal and named it. Yet France furnished no important successors of Cartier in the line of ex- ploration until, in Samuel Champlain, the man was found who began New France in America. Under the popular King Henry IV. the illustrious House of Bourbon was established on the throne of France. The white lilies were the emblem of the Bour- bons, and from 1689 to 1792 theirs was the flag of France. It was these white lilies that were borne with the stars and stripes to victory at Yorktown in 1781. 260 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Champlain's first voyage was made In 1603. His explorations, begun in the region of the river and gulf of St. Lawrence, were continued during two summers along the coast of Maine. He entered the Penobscot and the Kennebec rivers and into Saco Bay. He visited Boston harbor, Cape Cod, and Nausett harbor, in what is now Massachusetts. In 1605, he again traversed the same line of sum- mer exploration, making his maps in winter. A feeble colony had also been attempted on Nova Scotia. After three years and four months of noble pioneer exploration, Champlain reached France again to tell his story not only by word of mouth, but in books which were widely read and richly enjoyed. When the colonists who had settled at Port Royal arrived at St. Malo early in October, and the specimens of grain, corn, wheat, rye, barley, oats, and other products were shown the king, Henry IV., His Majesty was greatly pleased. Champlain was made governor of another expedition sent out in 1608, when he laid the foundations of the city of Quebec. In the terrible winter which followed, twenty out of the twenty-eight men died from cold and disease. The Frenchmen, coming from a mild climate like that of France, were illy prepared to face a Cana- dian winter. Instead of a real colony, this was after THE BOURBON LILIES IN CANADA. 26 1 all but a fur-trading post, and so it remained for a quarter of a century, during which time the popu- lation never numbered over one hundred persons. Champlain was not satisfied in keeping a few Frenchmen in order and bartering trinkets and tools for Indian furs. His dream was of a New France. He wanted to see the great region of mighty rivers and inland seas developed and made full of happy homes and farms, to the enrichment of his sovereign and country. He had a king worth serving, Henry IV., who had not yet been pierced by the dagger of the assassin Ravaillac. When Champlain asked the Indians near Quebec to pilot him on his explorations, they declared themselves quite willing to do so, but only on the condition that he should help them and fight for them, if at- tacked by the Iroquois. Perhaps Champlain's brain was too busy with the idea of exploration to con- sider fully the effect of taking sides in Indian war- fare. On the other hand, perhaps, he deliberately purposed to make the Algonquins his allies and the Iroquois his enemies. In the centuries before the red man had pos- sessed the guns and powder of Europeans, his war- fare and his industries were quite different from those of later days. His ancient weapons were bows, arrows, and spears. Besides shooting or hurl- ing missiles, he wore armor usually made of bark 262 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. or hide. While ever ready for ambuscade and sur- prise, his frequent method of fighting was by bands in the open field ; or, at least, much more so than in later times, when he could get a gun and fire from behind a tree. With the introduction of mus- kets, the old methods of fighting in mass on open grounds passed away, though his cunning tricks and ambuscades, which are very ancient, have never been given up. When the summer was well opened in 1609, ^^^ while Henry Hudson in his Dutch ship was sailing toward the Hudson River, to get within less than a hundred miles of Champlain and his party, the three Frenchmen having arquebuses accompanied the sixty Indians. These were allied Algonquin and Huron warriors in birch-bark canoes, armed with flint-headed arrows and spears, and equipped with bark and skin armor. They moved up the St. Lawrence River, and entering the river Richelieu went southward along its western shore and, by the lake which now bears Champlain's name, into the territory of New York. Paddling deliberately and warily past the sites of Rouse's Point, Plattsburg, and Port Henry, the Algonquins kept ever on the lookout for their unsleeping enemy, the Iroquois. In the event of a battle, the allied Indians felt sure that with the three white men and their firearms they would surely win the victory. THE BOURBON LILIES IN CANADA. 263 The human beasts of prey were not disappointed. About two hundred Iroquois from the Mohawk tribe had come up from the region of Schenectady, and were lying in wait at Ticonderoga, hoping that some party of their northern enemies would be coming down on the warpath. It w^as on the even- ing of the 29th of July, 1609, that the canoes of the southerners were discovered, but battle was post- poned until the next morning. Then both parties being ready and eager, Champlain, dressed in his helmet and jacket of steel, with stout leather trou- sers and greaves, wearing his sword in his belt, put himself at the head of the Algonquins, and moved out to the attack. He directed his two Frenchmen to go into the woods in order to take the Mohawks in the flank. He had loaded his gun with two balls. When within arrow range he fired, killing two chiefs and wounding another Iroquois. About the same time the two Frenchmen opened fire, while the Canadian savages sent showers of arrows. All this was so new and strange to the Mohawks, that they probably thought the gods had come to fight with their enemies against them. They saw men holding at their shoulders what seemed to be sticks sending out lightning and thunder. Then, without any apparent cause, for no arrows or spears were visible, they beheld their bravest companions lying dead and wounded. All this so demoralized 264 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. them that when the enemies screeched out their yell of victory, the Mohawks retreated in panic. They left canoes, bows and arrows, and every- thing behind, and took to the woods, but not before ten of their number had been seized as prisoners. Hardly able to restrain their joy, the savages from Canada gathered up the spoil, and after tying their captives, enjoyed the usual dances. Like cats, they were happy at the idea of having prey to torment. Then they turned back and northward down the lake, stopping every once in a while to cook their food. They used hot coals and other means of inflicting pain, in order to make the prisoners of war suffer as horribly as possible. Indeed, their refinement of torture seemed more suitable to the Inquisition than to rude savagery. Champlain tried to dissuade them, but to the savage such customs formed part of his nature and religion, and an Indian would no more change them than the Pope would alter a church doctrine without a council. In his exultation at beating the Mohawks, Cham- plain was quite ready to return at once to France; and this he did, arriving on the 13th of October. He told the King how he had discovered and sur- veyed nearly the whole length of the beautiful island-studded lake that lies between the Adiron- dacks and the Green Mountains, all of which THE BOURBON LILIES IN CANADA. 265 domain he had, by the right of discovery, added to the realm governed by the House of Bourbon. In 161 1 and 1612, Champlain visited France to report progress. In 16 14, he explored the Ottawa River. In 161 5, he built a chapel at Quebec, and gave it in charge of missionaries whom he had per- suaded to come over to New France. From this time forth, the black-robed friars and fathers become prominent figures in the annals of American explo- ration and history. Although Champlain never saw the Great Lakes, about which the Indians told him, and which he so earnestly longed to be the first white man to look upon, yet his life was one of singular adventure. He crossed the Atlantic several times. With his Algonquin allies, he commanded in a second battle on Lake Champlain, in which the Iroquois were again beaten. In 161 5, he made a journey of nearly two thousand miles, on foot and in canoe, into central New York, going by way of the Ottawa River and Lakes Huron and Ontario. The object of the host of allied Indians, which he accompanied, was to assault the great six-sided fort of the Iro- quois built near Lake Onondaga. This large war expedition was a failure, and Champlain was wounded. The disappointed army of savages, made up from many Canadian tribes, recrossed Lake Ontario. While the red men hunted deer, 266 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Champlain studied the country and the native inhabitants. Champlain must be ranked in the first class of American explorers. He had carried the lilied banners of France far into the territory of what are now the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and Montreal in the Dominion of Canada and the Empire State of New York, as well as along the Atlantic coast from Labrador to Cape Cod. When he began his work of examining new lands and waters, there was no European settlement in eastern North America between Greenland and Mexico, and no exploration of a scientific character had yet been done between Hudson's and Chesapeake Bay. It is true that navigators had sailed along the coast and noticed the headlands and great bays, and even the Eng- lishmen Gosnold and Pring had touched upon the shores, but Champlain was their first real explorer. He surveyed nearly a thousand miles of seacoast, and his maps were of immense value. These, be- sides being pretty fair representations of the land and water visited, have on them accurate and properly located drawings of the fish, animals, vege- tables, and trees. Champlain's descriptions of the Indians of the United States and Canada, before they were influenced by the white man, are not only the first, but they are of the highest value. On Christmas Day, 1635, Champlain, in the little THE BOURBON LILIES IN CANADA. 267 fort on the rocky heights of Quebec, breathed his last. For thirty-two years he had devoted himself with heroic constancy to plant the flag of France in America, and to increase the knowledge of the world concernino; northeastern North America. The work did not cease with him, but was carried on by two very different classes of men, the Jesuit fathers and the wood-rangers. The former, ministers of religion, educated, re- fined, consecrated, noble, self-denying men, have left behind them records of priceless value. From 1632, the black-robed friars of the Society of Jesus — the Salvation Army of that day — sent home to their general accounts of their missionary work, including their travels. These writings were edited with care and published in Paris. For sixty-one years from 1632 until 1693, when Frontenac stopped the reports from Canada, a duodecimo volume of " Relations," well printed and bound in vellum, dropped annually from the printing-press of Sebas- tian Cramoisy in Paris. These were reprinted in Italy. Read at Court and by noblemen and people interested in religion and patriotism, these little volumes were awaited as eagerly as to-day we look for the morning journal, or the story-paper or maga- zine in which is a serial "to be continued." Their authors travelled on foot or travailed in spirit in Canada or Louisiana. To-day these volumes are 268 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. invaluable as a storehouse of material for the histo- rian, for much of what we know was made possible by the Jesuits. The French wood-rangers, on the contrary, did not, as a rule, know how to read or write. They have told no story of their wonderful journeys into the virgin forest, over Indian trails, and on waters never traversed by white men till they paddled their canoes over their surfaces. A large part of Ameri- can exploration was done honorably by these plain, rough, unlettered men. Champlain probably never knew what a train of influences he had set in motion by that one shot at Ticonderoga. In reality, by a single act he had made it impossible for the French to keep their foothold in America. He did not know what a powerful confederacy that of the Iroquois was, and that their faithfulness to the Dutch and English would be fatal to French dominion in America. As it was, the Mohawks, within a generation, armed themselves with Dutch guns and powder. When Champlain died, they were able to stop for a while both the fur trade and further French exploration. Champlain's shot drew the boundary line between two civilizations. Without knowing it, he rang the knell of French hopes. In the historian's eyes, his bullet pricked the dream-bubble of New France. CHAPTER XXVI. LA SALLE SEEKS CHINA AND DISCOVERS THE MISSISSIPPI. ONE of the most important and striking features of the North American continent is that system of great fresh-water seas or lakes, drained by the St. Lawrence River, which conveys their overflow to the sea. There is nothing else on earth quite like this orreat reservoir of fresh water in the heart of a continent, unless it be the vast unsalted seas in the interior of Africa which supply the Nile River. Forming part of the northern boundary of the United States, and the seat of the greatest inland water commerce in the w^orld, the names of the first explorers of the Great Lakes ought to be familiar to every American boy. If we look at that plateau of land west of Lake Superior, we shall find the fountains of the Missis- sippi, the St. Lawrence, and the Red River, three great streams which water the continent east of the Rocky Mountains. These empty into the Gulf of Mexico, the North Atlantic, and Hudson's Bay, re- 269 2/0 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. spectively. For ages the Indians had glided down the St. Lawrence River, using it as their chief trade- route, exchanging the red stone pipes, copper, and aeate arrow-heads of the far West for the sea-shells, salt, and other articles from the ocean's shore. When Champlain came to Canada and saw the copper and the furs, his imagination was powerfully stirred. In prophetic vision he beheld this great river made the highway of a nobler and richer commerce. The Frenchmen who survived the climate of Quebec took rather kindly to the Indian ways of life. They soon became very much like their sav- age allies, in habits, dress, food, and love of the forest and of outdoor life. Tough, alert, and in love with wild adventure, they enjoyed life in a birch- bark canoe, with alternate campings out and voyag- ing into the lands of the beaver and buffalo. Sitting by the roaring fire at night, under the stars, with the solemn trees for a background and the bright waters mirroring the jewelled skies before them, they loved to sing songs, to tell stories, and to hear the Indians recount the lore of their ancestors and their white comrades narrate their experiences. The legends of the red men were ever fascinating to those white men of the woods. Even before the death of Champlain, Brule had penetrated the region west of Lake Huron. Another voyageur in 1634 pad- LA SALLE SEEKS CHINA, DISCOVERS MLSSISSIPPL. 27 1 died through Mackinaw Strait and discovered Lake Michigan. For nearly twenty years after Champlain's death, in 1635, all French exploration and even the fur trade ceased on account of the Iroquois scourge. Having possessed themselves of guns and powder from the Dutch, the savage men of the Long House in New Netherland were able to fill almost the whole continent with terror. The storehouses at Quebec and the trading stations were empty. The Algonquin Indians scarcely dared to go out beyond their fortified villages, to hunt in the woods, for fear of the musketry of the Iroquois. Not until 1654, when peace between the French and the Five Na- tions was made, do we find that either the fur trade or exploration was revived. Then, the way being clear, two Frenchmen, Chouart and Radisson, went out into the Great Lake region and pushed on beyond Lake Superior and wintered with the Sioux Indians among the thousand lakes of Minnesota, — the region of sky- tinted waters. They heard of a great stream, as grand as the St. Lawrence, called the Father of Waters. When these men arrived at Quebec in midsummer of 1660, with three hundred Indians and a fleet of sixty canoes ladened with finest furs, there was great rejoicing in the little colony. All the white settlers in New France were mightily 272 THE ROMANCE OE DISCOVERY. stirred by the stories of those wonderful lands so rich in bison, beaver, sable, and ermine, and of strange Indians whose speech and customs were so different from those of the Hurons and the Algonquins. From that time on, various parties of adventur- ous fur traders penetrated into Wisconsin, and some of them probably got as far as the Mississippi. Among many big enemies, the little mosquito, no larger than an interrogation point, proved one of the most annoying obstacles to exploration. A new governor. Talon, arrived in 1665. He be- gan his work so eagerly that many hoped the white banners of France would soon float in the far West. During the summer his deputy, St. Lus- son, with Louis Joliet, raised the French flag at Sault Ste. Marie and took possession of the Lake Superior region, while Courcelles went exploring in person, through woods and waters, finding no enemies worse than mosquitoes. He established a fur-trading post on Lake Ontario, hoping thus to draw away the Iroquois from bartering their furs at Albany. The copper mines of Lake Superior were still unvisited by any white man, but in 1669, Louis Joliet, an active and lively wilderness-rover, appears on the scene. This man, after many adventures, was commissioned by Governor Frontenac, who LA SALLE SEEKS CHINA, DISCOVERS MISSISSIPPI. 2/3 arrived in 1672, to explore the Father of Waters. JoHet had for his companions the noble Father Marquette and five fellow wood-rangers ready for new adventures. Joliet spent the winter of 1672 in catechising all the Indians he could meet who had ever been on the great river. On May 17, 1673, he and his companions began a canoe voyage, going up the Fox River. They pulled out their boats at what is Portage City and put them on their backs. Then, like snails that carry their own houses, they walked two miles and, reaching the Wisconsin River, loaded again and dropped down the stream. After one month from their start, on June 17, the high bluffs of the Mis- sissippi rose before them. They paddled down past the Ohio, Missouri, and Arkansas affluents. Satisfying himself that this great stream flows into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the Pacific, Joliet returned by way of the Illinois River, passing by the site of Chicago up Lake Michigan to Green Bay and thence to Quebec. Joliet took many notes, but unfortunately he lost his manuscripts when in sight of home, and but fifteen minutes before he landed, by the sink- ing of a canoe in the river. Nevertheless, he pre- pared a map and a narrative from memory. He had not found a waterway to the Pacific Ocean, but he had shown that by making but two portages 274 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. between the mouth of the St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico, one could traverse all New France in a canoe. Joliet wanted to go again, but he was never able to get into the Mississippi valley ; for La Salle, jealous of all intruders into his chosen grounds, had him kept out of this region. Joliet was rewarded by being appointed royal hydrogra- pher and was given the island of Anticosti. Marquette, after whom a city has been named, won the confidence of the Indians. He was a good type of those Jesuit missionaries who were tireless travellers, fond of exploration and of the new and wonderful life in the new continent. He had es- tablished missions at Mackinaw, Sault Ste. Marie, and Green Bay. Some of these consecrated men went from tribe to tribe, carrying on their backs little portable altars, with breviary, candles, and the most necessary things for the peculiar services of the Roman form of Christianity. Their vehicle was the birch-bark canoe, which carried them when they were on the water, and which they carried when they were on land. Time and space would fail to fell of all the French explorers DuLhut, Hennepin, Tonti, and a host of others, who took part in making known the Great Lake region, the headwaters of the Missis- sippi, and the heart of British America. Perhaps like all great works that are evolutions, rather than LA SALLE SEEKS CILLNA, DLSC OVERS M/SSLSSLPPL 2/5 inventions, — printing, gunpowder, the steam en- gine, the telegraph, the landscape of England, an ocean steamer, — the best part of the French, Spanish, Dutch, and British exploration of this continent has been the work of unknown men. The "Great Unnamed" of history, as in holy script- ure, are more numerous than those of name and fame. The greatest figure in the French exploration of America, looming up above all others, is that of Robert Cavelier la Salle. His first and last idea was to make France great. His consuming am- bition was reenforced by a magnificent physique, a powerful brain, and an active will. He would serve king and country, first by finding the route to China throucfh French-American dominions, and next by extending New France until it should cover all the North American continent wxst of the Alleghanies. Arriving in Montreal in 1666, he began immediately to study the Indian dialects and made w^onderful progress. After exploring the forests of northern Canada, he made up his mind that no road to the riches of China and Japan could be found in that direction. His astrolabe, which he lost in the Canadian woods, was picked up a few years ago, after a burial of two centuries ; even as one of his axes was recently found in a tree growing near the Mississippi River. 276 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. Nor are these the only rehcs of the man who cut his name so deeply in American history. A band of the Seneca Indians from the region of southwestern New York visited his little settle- ment near Montreal and told him of waters that rose in their country, but which flowed into the salt sea, after one had paddled in drinkable water for many months. La Salle immediately began to think that this stream must empty into the Ver- milion Sea, or Gulf of California. If so, could he not make his path direct to the Oriental spice lands, besides trading with the Indians and getting rich along the way.^ This was in 1668-69. His im- agination fired, he started out at once. Going up the great ocean river of the St. Lawrence, he explored Lake Ontario and the St. Louis or Ohio River. He also got into the Illinois or some other affluent of the Mississippi, possibly even reaching the main stream, before Joliet and Mar- quette. Of this we are not certain, but La Salle was the discoverer of the Ohio and the Illinois rivers. There are two years of La Salle's life shrouded in mystery, during which, it is said, some of his men refused to follow him. They came back to the land near the rapids, nine miles above Mon- treal, and the people in derision nicknamed the place and the water here " La Chine," or China. In LA SALLE SEEKS CHINA, DISCOVERS MISSISSIPPI 2// our day, it is one of the delights of Canadian travel to shoot the Lachine rapids in a steamer. La Salle went back to France in 1674 and was there made a nobleman. Receiving the approval of the King, he started again to America to make his great exploration. He gained as a companion, Henri de Tonti, an Italian of remarkable ability, whose father's name is still preserved in the Ton- tine system of life insurance. Tonti's hand had been lost in the wars, but the surgeons had replaced the flesh and nerves by a mass of iron which served its owner handsomely, not only to pull and lift things, but also to rap the skulls of the savages when they were stupid or disobedient. Tonti was a brave and faithful helper of La Salle, and did much toward making his explorations successful and in opening the Great West to France. His name deserves higher honor than it has yet received. La Salle built a ship near Niagara, on Lake Erie, the waters of which had never before mirrored a sail, having floated only canoes. Li the Griffin, as this " canoe with wings " was called, he sailed to Mackinaw and sent back the ship for supplies. Then with his companions he paddled to near the southeast corner of Lake Michigan, where at St. Joseph's River they built a fort. Crossing the coun- try to the headwaters of the Kankakee, which flows into the Illinois, they floated down the stream, pass- 278 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. ing over Marquette's route. At Utica they found corn, and below Peoria Lake wigwams, with Indians, who eave news from both north and south. La Salle, bitterly disappointed at not being promptly reenforced with supplies, built a stockade called Crevecour, or Broken Heart, near Peoria. Then he began the building of another ship of forty tons. Still the supplies had not come, and what should he do? He could not think of going to the Gulf of Mexico, much less to China, without mate- rials for barter and many other things necessary. The great-hearted leader actually resolved to walk all the way back to Canada, in the depth of winter, to o-et what he wanted. Over ice and snow, mud and thickets, flood and field, he made the thousand- mile passage in sixty-five days. While he was away. Father Hennepin started out to make explorations on his own account. He met with wonderful adventures, seeing and describing for the first time the Falls of St. Anthony and pass- ino- over the sites of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Hennepin had already seen and described the Falls of Niagara. Hennepin is the harlequin of French exploration, and either he or his editor has made books which make the historian laugh, because of their caricatures of fact and truth. While in Canada La Salle heard that his men had mutinied and scattered. He at once made the LA SALLE SEMKS CHINA, DISCOVERS MISSISSIPPI. 279 journey back to the fort of the Broken Heart. He passed through the lUinois country to find black- ened ruins where there had been large villages of Indians. These had been attacked and slaughtered by the fierce Iroquois from New York, now so terri- ble with their guns. He found the fort in ruins, but he passed down to the mouth of the Illinois River, and saw the Mississippi. He then returned to Fort Miami on the St. Joseph's River. No obstacles could daunt this heroic soul. Nature, and man both white and red, seemed against him. He resolved to band together the western tribes against the Iroquois, and in 1681 came back to Illinois and formed the league. This was an en- largement of Champlain's policy, as Sir William Johnson's was of Van Curler's. Then he found Tonti and returned to Canada. Having secured new supplies, he once more, in the autumn of 16S1, faced westward. With sleds and canoes his party of fifty-four persons, civilized and savage, crossed the portage at Chicago. Now on runners, and now afloat, they worked their way down the Illinois River. On the 6th of February, 1682, the whole party entered the ice-blocked Missis- sippi He named the river after Colbert, the great finance minister of Louis XIV. Waiting a week for the ice to clear away, they made their way south- ward to summer climes. 28o THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. At the Chickasaw Bluffs, they drove in some palisades, and called it Fort Prudhomme after the ofBcer left in charge. At the mouth of the Arkan- sas, a three days' conference was held with the savages, and then on the 14th day of March, 1682, in the name of Louis XIV., King of France, fol- lowed the formal ceremony of taking possession of the heart of the continent. Smoking the calumet of peace with the Natchez Indians, visiting other tribes at various points, planting crosses on the shores and bluffs, passing the mouths of the rivers and the site of cities since famous, they kept on, until on April 6 the great lonely flood divided into three channels, in each of which went one section of the party commanded by La Salle, Tonti, and d'Antray, respectively. Reaching the salt air and water, they again united on land near the mouth, having spent nine weeks on the voyage down this wonderful stream. Landing, La Salle erected a cross and also a post, on which he fastened a metal plate bearing the royal shield resplendent with three fleur-de-lis or lily-heads, the arms of the Bourbon House of France. In the ground was buried one of those many leaden plates which La Salle deposited at various points between Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, and of which some have been found in our times, on which were engraved, " Louis, the LA SALLE SEEKS CHINA, DISCOVERS MISSISSIPPI 28 1 Great, reigns." His French companions and Indian canoe' men fired off their guns and shouted "Vive le roi." In the name of the King of France, Louis XIV., he took possession of the whole terri- tory drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries — about as large as one-third of Europe. To all this great region, unmeasured and unexplored, he gave the name of Louisiana, in honor of Louis XIV. Then the grand old Latin hymn Vexilla Regis, a Forward — let the banners of the King advance," was sung, and another cheer for the King ended the ceremony. In explorations. La Salle had trodden the soil, threaded the waters, or passed through or along- side of probably a dozen great states of our Ameri- can Union. In his claim, he took possession of the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, vil- lages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers "upon the assurance he had had" (by signs and grimaces chiefly, not a word of the French or Mis- sissippi Indians' language being mutually under- stood) that La Salle and these Frenchmen were "the first Europeans who have descended or as- cended the said river " Colbert. He was particular to state that his possession had been " acquired by the consent of the nations dwelling therein." To- day we see how much the Mississippi had been al- 282 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. ready discovered by Cabeza de Vaca, de Soto, Jollet, and very probably by others before La Salle. The rest of the story of New France in America belono;s to the romance of colonization and of con- quest. We need not here tell of the tragic death of La Salle, or the foundation of New Orleans and Mobile and their history. The French founded on this continent " a vast but transient empire " which is now a memory. Of the sixty forts which they built between Canada and Mexico, many are now the sites of American cities. The missions to the Indians failed with the failure of New France. Thus, while the English did next to nothing toward exploring the continent, still holding only their first settlements on the Atlantic coast, France was makintT known to the world the wonders and riches of the interior continent. It seemed to be the design of Providence to let two Latin peoples do the work of opening this country, in order that other tribes of the great Aryan race should come in to possess and colonize. CHAPTER XXVII. NATIVE-BORN AMERICAN EXPLORERS OF THE EIGH- TEENTH CENTURY. IN the long struggle between the French and Eng- lish for the possession of the best portion of North America, the English people had the advan- tage. They held the coast and could easily be helped and reenforced from the mother-country. The colonists were protected on the north and west by their allies of the Iroquois confederacy. Best of all, with English ideas and representative gov- ernment, the people in the thirteen colonies were rooted in the soil. They were farmers and made homes, instead of being, as the French for the most part were, fur-traders, hunters, soldiers, and priests. Their organization was civil, that of the French military. During the eighteenth century, not only New France but much of New Spain disappeared from the area now covered by the United States. Of all the mighty domain over which the lilies of the House of Bourbon had floated, only two little islands off Newfoundland remained. These were allowed for the benefit of French fishermen. When, 283 284 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. during our Revolutionary War, King Louis XVI. and his able minister Count Vergennes lent our fathers aid in ships and sailors, officers, soldiers, and money, it was part of their scheme of European politics. They hoped to get back Canada. Wash- ington, John Adams, and Congress saw their pur- pose, and preferring English to French neighbors in the north, the campaign was made at Yorktown, and not at Quebec, as the French had desired. With the fall of New France, the eastern portion of New Spain fell also under Anglo-Saxon sway. Florida was given up to England after a Spanish possession of over two hundred and fifty years. Spain reaccepted Cuba in place of Florida and also her claims in the Pacific coast region of Van- couver Island and the north, in what is now British America. Very little had been done to explore the land of oranges and magnolias. But soon after Spain had made cession of the territory once named by Ponce de Leon, a Dutch officer named Romaine, a skilful engineer, began the exploration and survey of the country, while Vancouver was sent to the Pacific. Romaine spent some years learning about the hu- man beings and inhabitants of our most southern peninsular state. He wrote the first book in Eng- lish, and still one of the most important, about Florida. AMERICAN EXPLORERS OF THE i8th CENTURY. 285 When the Revolutionary War broke out, Ro- maine left the service of Great Britain and entered that of the United States. Under Washinsrton's orders he built forts at West Point. He also composed a very valuable historical work which showed that the American revolution was justi- fied, and that the Americans were but following out the precedents already given in the Dutch war of independence against Spain, from 1568 to 1648. The ground east of the Mississippi was now cleared of rival and hostile forces and the way made open for the union of all English colonies. In Florida the Spaniards had penetrated the country only a little and had but very slightly de- veloped its resources. They had made slaves of the Indians, but they had also sent many zealous missionaries among them, not a few of whom lost their lives. Negro slavery was begun in 1687. Set- tlements were made at Pensacola and a few other places. The Spaniards also introduced horses and cattle and orano^es. When EnQ^lish settlers came into the new country they found the soil wonder- fully fertile, which fact the Spaniards do not seem to have known. In 1783, Florida was again ceded back to Spain, — much to the disgust and loss of the English people living there. It was not until 1822 that the United States flag was hoisted over 286 THE ROMANCE OE DISCOVERY. Florida, and it became the permanent possession of the Union. The latter half of the eighteenth century was a famous one in the annals of exploration. Captain James Cook, who, as master of a sloop, had taken part in the capture of Quebec, observed in 1768 at Tahiti in the South Pacific the transit of Venus, which the Dutch-American astronomer Rittenhouse also observed at Philadelphia. Cook also visited New Zealand and explored the coast of New South Wales. In 1772, he sailed again with two ships, hoping to discover the Terra Australis, which was supposed to be a continent in the southern seas. Although he circumnavigated the globe, los- ing only one man and discovering New Caledonia, he did not find the imaginary continent, which must be classed with Antilia and the supposed lost con- tinent of Atlantis. There was another transit of Venus over the sun's disc on the 9th of December, 1774, the ele- ments for which were calculated by our own Ritten- house. The platform used by the astronomers stood in Independence Square in Philadelphia and was used during July, 1776, for the reading of the Declaration of Independence, which showed a new- born political star moving across the disc of history. In 1776, Cook sailed to explore Behring Strait. He discovered the Hawaii Islands, which were named AMERICAN EXPLORERS OF THE i8th CENTURY. 28/ after the Earl of Sandwich, who also gave his name to stratified refreshments. Cook was killed by the natives, but his lieutenant George Vancouver was ordered to follow up Cook's work. It was a grand day for Vancouver, who sailed on April I, 1 79 1. Even the name of his ship, the Discovery, showed how interested in exploration the British people and government had become. Among other officers with him were Lieutenant Puget, whose name is left on the great sound in our far northwest, and Broughton, after whom the great bay in Korea is named. Vancouver explored the Pacific coast from the thirtieth deQ:ree of north lati- tude to Cook's Inlet. He entered the waterways to see if the arm of the sea, named by Juan de Fuca nearly two centuries before, was only a strait, yet hoping to find a passage to the Great Lakes in British America. Vancouver's surveys were made with minute care. This illustrious officer is fitly remembered by the island which bears his name, whence noble steamers ply to Japan. In 1785, La Perouse the French explorer extended the bounds of our geographical knowledge by ex- ploring the northern Pacific coasts of America and Asia. He did not find the Northwest Passage. Though he and his companions lost their lives by wreck on a coral reef, he has left his name on the straits between Saghalien and Siberia. 288 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. While the romance of discovery was being slowly written all over the earth by the brave men of Europe, and while their ships, like shuttles wove, as in tapestry, bright pictures of the triumph of science, the native American did his share of work also. In the eighteenth century there steps into history a new figure. It is that of the explorer born on the soil. He realizes that there is a struQ^Qrle croino: on between the great Powers of Europe for the posses- sion of this continent. New Netherland and New Sweden are no longer on the map. The question, whether he is to live in New Spain, New France, or New England, is still uncertain, though the Eng- lish-speaking colonists believe it is going to be a New England ; or, better, a new Europe. The Indian is of a great deal of importance as a political factor, and each Power is trying to get the red man as an ally and friend. The Spaniards do not show much tendency to advance further northward, but the Frenchmen seem determined to press up from Louisiana, and down from Canada, and to build a fence to keep back the Englishmen from crossing the Alleghany. In this they only partially succeed, for New England holds her own along the coast, being easily and quickly reenforced on the ocean from the mother country; while in New York and Pennsylvania, the Dutch and Germans toughly AMERICAN EXPLORERS OF THE iSth CENTURY. 289 and perseveringly maintain their ground, powerfully aided by the Iroquois confederacy ; for Sir William Johnson, following up Van Curler's policy, by his skill and genius, keeps the Six Nations loyal to the British crown. In the South the new wealth from tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo, slave labor, and the o-enius and enterprise of the English colonists, so nobly reenforced by the sterling qualities of the men of Huguenot and German stock, manifested both in defence and offence, keep the Spaniards from making further advancements. At such a time, appears the native-born Ameri- can frontiersman, explorer, Indian fighter, soldier, pioneer, and commonwealth builder. After him bands of pioneers press forward from Virginia and the Carolinas in Kentucky and Tennes- see. The pathfinder in this region is Daniel Boone, one of that splendid Pennsylvania German stock, which has furnished so much good blood to the country. Though there were other American path- finders in the eighteenth century, we may take this man as the typical explorer of his age. As early as 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker in behalf of the Loyal Company, and Captain Christopher Gist in behalf of the Ohio Company, passed through Ken- tucky in search of fertile lands. Before they could locate their claims and settle colonists, the two 290 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. wars, the French and Indian, and the Revolution- ary came on to disturb their plans. Daniel Boone was born in Bucks County, Penn- sylvania, February 11, 1735. He went with other Germans down into North Carolina, where he mar- ried. In 1769, with five other young men he pene- trated a region south of the Ohio, then uninhabited by white men and covered with virgin forests. Like the Adirondack debatable land, between the Hurons and the Iroquois in northern New York, Kentucky was to the Indians " the dark and bloody ground." Boone and his companions made known the region now covered by Kentucky and Tennes- see, and began replenishing it and subduing it for the white race. In person and ideas, Daniel Boone was a very different character from the first white men who saw the land in 1541. The Spaniards under de Soto, in armor, with swords and spears and clumsy guns that were scarcely anything more than rude hand-cannons, touched Tennessee, where Memphis now stands. Over a century passed, and then the French, led by La Salle, came in Canadian dress, but with the banners and symbols of the Bourbons, and the emblems of a state or political church. Daniel Boone was dressed in hunting shirt, buckskin trousers and moccasins, with coon-skin cap. His gun was a flint-lock rifle. He had not, indeed, the AMERICAN EXPLORERS OF THE i8th CENTURY. 291 splendid breech-loading rifle of to-day, with its almost mathematically perfect grooving, finely ad- justed sights, and waterproof metallic cartridges; yet his was a weapon of unerring power in the hands of a quick and keen-eyed sharp-shooter like himself. The Swiss of Pennsylvania brought the rifle to America; but Kentucky was the ground on which it was developed. Boone's explorations opened the country to settlers, whose sons took part in the battle of King's Mountain in the war of the Revolution. He died on his farm in Missouri, in 1820. George Rogers Clark was another typical Ameri- can frontiersman, who knew how to explore and survey, keep back the Indians, and pave the way for new commonwealths. He settled in Kentucky, weakened the power of the Shawnees, secured Illi- nois from the French, and wrested from the hostile Indians and British the posts at Kaskaskia and Vincennes. He thus enabled the American com- missioners, at the Peace Convention in 1783, to fix the western boundary of the United States at the Mississippi River instead of the Alleghany Moun- tains. In 1803, under President Jefferson, the United States government purchased from France and Na- poleon Bonaparte the whole region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, all 292 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. that was left, but still a mighty domain and the best part, of New France. The price paid was fif- teen millions of dollars. Neither Napoleon, nor Jefferson, nor any one else knew in detail very much about the newly bought region. So the next year the chief executive, Jefferson, sent out two com- petent men to report upon the new territory. CHAPTER XXVIII. NINETEENTH CENTURY EXPLORATIONS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. THE nineteenth-century explorer who now ap- pears in view is of two different types. One is the frontiersman, rifleman, trapper, and hunter. Individually, or associated in small parties, he lives near or just beyond the border of civilization, seek- ing game and furs, leading parties of emigrants to their newly bought lands, or accompanying survey- ors who go to measure the wilderness and locate claims. He is a self-reliant, alert, and fearless per- son, who has learned a great deal from the Indians, their resources in war and peace, their tricks and ways ; but who, by means of superior intelligence and finer race-qualities, beats them on their own ground. Often he is as vindictive and cruel as he is rough and hardy; but whether as glorified and idealized by Cooper and the romancers, or as actual trangressor who falls into the clutch of army officer or magistrate, he possesses a fair balance of virtues and vices. Often he is kind and helpful, as gener- ous and as chivalrous as the knights who dressed in 293 294 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. silk and iron. Certainly he aids powerfully in the makinor of the United States. In the American frontiersman, there was no display of flaming banners or shining armor ; no dazzle of uniforms or emblems ; none of the ideas of a state church, of feudalism, of loyalty to king or pope, such as ruled the mind of his Spanish or French predecessors. He was in many respects just as much of a romantic figure, as truly a knight and protector of the weak and innocent, as strong a believer in the destiny of his race, as any of the cavaliers that had entered history before him. Very few of his kind now remain within the United States. With the banishing of the buffaloes, with the coming in of railways and telegraphs he, like the Indians, has dropped out of society, out of poli- tics, and out of use. He is no longer a part of the necessities and machinery of modern civilization. The other kind of explorer who has done so much to open the Great West which was sold by Napo- leon and bought by Jefferson, and to make straight the paths of civilization and Christianity, is the uni- formed United States military officer. Brave as a soldier, an explorer, and a pathfinder, he has been none the less a patriot and benefactor because he is a paid fighter. The American regular army officer is a noble figure in the romance of discovery. The whole vast space from the Gulf of Mexico and Old EXPLORATIONS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 295 California to Paget Sound and between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean has been chano^ed from New Spain into states and territories of the American Union. The work of examining^ and pioneering this region has been all done during this century by the civil and military commissioners, ex- plorers, and surveyors, both topographical and geo- logical. These have looked upon, measured, and appraised in detail the western half of the continent ; while the sailors and naval officers have sounded, charted, and surveyed the ocean and shores. These servants of the United States government have told us the past history of the region west of the Father of Waters, reconstructing for us its won- derful marine and animal life. We have learned that a large portion of our western territory is an old ocean bed with islands rising out here and there, in the present form of plateaus and mountains. There are also caiions, parks, forests, lakes, water- falls, and unique wonders above and beneath the soil that surprise the world. By the vitalizing touch of imagination, as w^e stand within the National Museum at Washington, we see living again the strange and wonderful forms of animal life, that swam, leaped, or flew in earth, air, and sea, before ever a human being looked upon that strange region, so rich and promising, between the Rockies and the rim of the Pacific. 296 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. The two explorers appointed by President Jeffer- son were Captain Meriwether Lewis, private secre- tary of President Jefferson and formerly of the regular army, and Captain William Clark, brother of the brave soldier who had conquered Indiana and Illinois for the United States during the Revolution. On May 14, 1804, they took boats at the little log- cabin villao^e called St. Louis at the mouth of the Missouri, which they began to ascend. By July 19, 1805, after over a year's boating and carrying, they had gone four hundred leagues. Before them rose the sides of that tremendous cleft in the mountains, where the river breaks through six miles of a rocky wall twelve hundred feet high. This they named the Gates of the Rocky Mountains. The source of the Missouri is in the Madison River, which rises in the Yellowstone National Park. From the fountain to its fall into the Mississippi, it is three thousand miles long. Reaching the great divide of waters, the party began to travel overland. On the 7th of October, 1805, having come to headwaters flowing in the other direction to the Pacific, they built canoes, and drifted down the river which they saw was even broader and more rapid than the Missouri. One month later, on November 7, they found them- selves near the mouth of this great stream, but in a heavy fog. As soon as the sun rent asunder the EXPLORATIONS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 297 veil of moisture, the Pacific Ocean dawned on their vision. Fourteen years before, Captain Robert Gray, a Rhode Islander, who was the first man to carry the American flag around the globe, had dis- covered this river and named it from his ship, the Coluntbia. Thus, indirectly, Christopher Columbus received recognition even on the Pacific. The two explorers took the same route back- ward, and reached St. Louis September 23, 1806. They had been absent thirty months, and had trav- elled over eight thousand miles. Their reports of the wonderful country traversed gave our Ameri- can people their first clear idea of the vast extent, the great possibilities of mineral and agricultural wealth, and the innumerable wonders in the Great West. The region of Oregon and Washington was prob- ably the first territory which the United States was able to claim directly by reason of exploration. Yet actual occupation and colonization were nec- essary to possession. It is even probable that, owing to the discoveries of Sir Francis Drake two centuries and a half before, analogous to those of the Cabots on the Atlantic front, Great Britain would have claimed and controlled this territory, had it not been for the American missionary Mar- cus Whitman, who with Dr. Parker was on gospel service among the Indians. 298 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. When young Whitman heard of the proposition of British colonists to begin settlements on territory which is now in the state of W^ashington, he rode across the country in midwinter to give the news and urge action that would reflect the stars and stripes on the waters of Juan de Fuca. Surviving the awful hardships of that memorable ride, and emerging without scath from storms, floods, and hostile redskins, Whitman succeeded in stirring up the government at Washington to vigorous action. In the following summer, he led a caravan of nine hundred American colonists to that resfion. With wagons and horses, axes and rifles, they crossed the continent, settled the region, and secured it for the United States. Whitman was afterwards slain by Indians, but Whitman College is his memorial. Other vast areas were opened to native American explorers in the various tracts ceded to, or pur- chased by, the United States, — Florida in 18 19, the Texas annexation of 1845 and Cession of 1850, the Mexican Cession of 1848, and the Gadsden pur- chase of 1853. In 1867, Alaska was bought of Russia for seven million dollars. Explorers like Dall, Whymper, and Schwatka have already done much to make this vast region known. Rich in mines, furs, timber, and fish, Alaska also added five hundred and fifty thousand square miles to our ter- ritory; brought the frontier of our national domain EXPLORATIONS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 299 within seven hundred miles of Japan's most north- ern island, and made San Francisco the central city of the United States. From Eastport in Maine to Altoo the most westward Aleutian Island, the dis- tance is about six thousand five hundred miles, and the area of the United States is about three million six hundred thousand square miles. Not only in making known the sea-front and in- land waterways of the home of the nation by means of the hydrographic and geodetic surveys, but also in distant seas, the American government and pri- vate enterprise have been ever active. In many seas and near the poles, ever since we became a nation, the stars and stripes have been carried by our brave seamen. The exploring expeditions of Commodore Charles Wilkes in the Antarctic, and of Rear-Admiral John Rodgers into the Arctic seas, the gallant attempts to reach the North Pole or to rescue brave comrades, from Dr. Kane down to Lieutenant Peary and the Cornell glacier party, form a thrilling story in the annals of science, enter- prise, and courage. Thus, our story of the romance of discovery is finished, so far as relates to the United States, for comparatively little yet remains that may be called unknown land within our national domain. In the older states some portions, like the Everglades of Florida, are still but little visited, and regions like 300 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY. the Adirondacks have only been recently opened or surveyed. In the far West, there are some areas still comparatively unknown and unoccupied. Alaska is but little developed. In the main, how- ever, the greater portion of our national territory has not only been discovered and explored, but its surface has been measured and mapped. In many of the states. New Jersey leading all, and in the territories also, the geological survey has been carried out to a wonderful degree. The student, with the aid of imagination, corrected by science, can see the invisible. He can picture in his mind the landscapes and water areas during the various QreoloQ:ic ao-es. In mental vision, he be- holds the great monsters sporting again in air, earth, and sea. He traverses the great forests that have made our coal. He notes the working of in- ternal forces and climatic agencies which have de- posited the elements and their combinations which in turn have produced ores, soils, forests, grass, sea- food, and shells. How these have given room and opportunity to the various tribes of animals and men to develop, can be discerned in outline. In the panorama of the earth's history, one sees the ice-cap covering like a great white sheet the north- ern half of the United States; watches the boulders, including Plymouth Rock, as they are transported from the north, and discerns the processes by EXPLORATIONS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 30I which the great landmarks and headlands have been carved and shaped. Imagine the coming, the migrations, the distribu- tion of the first human inhabitants that ever gazed upon the glorious scenery of our beautiful land ! See some of them happy, well-fed, and comfortable ; others desolate, starving, and finally passing away. Behold their works in the mounds ! Pick up their relics on old battle and hunting grounds. Note that some of the favored races, like the Zuiii, hold their own for ages against powerful enemies. Others, like the Iroquois, rise into creditable forms of political life and society, with art and commerce and the deposits and bequests on tradition. Yet all these aboriginal races, even at their high- est, were below that line of ink that divides savage race from civilization, — the line of letters. For, except rude methods of counting time and hand- ing down traditions by means of knotted threads, notched sticks, and woven wampum, the Indian had nothing else by which to record and store up knowledge. There was no written history, and life without letters is death. Whether the Indian by himself could have invented an alphabet, we do not know. Sequoyah or George Guess, the maker of the wonderful Cherokee phonetic system, was a half-breed, with a German father and a Cherokee mother. 302 THE ROMANCE OE DISCOVERY. With this mention of the red man's entrance into the reahii of letters, let our Romance of Discovery come to a close. We have seen that the story of the world's revelation is connected with the wander- ings of tribes and the misfrations of nations. It took men a lono: time to learn about other lands than that on which they or their fathers had been born. Only in the course of many centuries did they find that the earth was round and so very large. The replenishing of new continents has been the work of Christian peoples. When they first found out about new countries distant and wonderful, the earth seemed very large. Now that they have swift ships, fast railways, and telegraphs, and can go round the globe in a few weeks, meeting their friends and acquaintances in different parts of this planet, the earth seems smaller than it used to be. A commonplace remark is, " How very small the world is, after all." So it seemed, as I stood on the Grand Stand at the opening of the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, May i, 1893. Among the vast assem- blage gathered in the White City on the shores of Lake Michigan, were men of nearly every nation under heaven. Scores of red Indians, Eskimos, Mexicans, Alaskans, West Indians, and South Amer- icans, mingled with Europeans, Asiatics, Africans, EXPLORATIONS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 303 Australians, and representatives of almost all the nations of the old world. My seat was but a few feet distant from that of President Cleveland. On the platform were gath- ered Japanese, Korean, Chinese envoys from the once Far East, but now, to us, the Near West. The descendents of Cohuubus and the potentates and commissioners from Europe, especially from the nations that had helped to discover or colonize America, had come from beyond the Atlantic. In front, lay the lake, with silent gondolas and a veiled colossal figure at the end. The flag-staves held only bundles. The fountain-basins were empty. The roof-lines of the great edifices were dull. The sky was overcast. Prayer to Almighty God, music, an address by the Director-General, preceded the thrilling moment of revelation. Then, the President of the United States advanced to touch an electric button. It was a moment pregnant with surprises. A crash of sound and a blaze of color followed. Cannon roared. Steam whistles blew their blasts. Bells rang their peals. The great engine set acres of machinery in motion with buzz and whirr. Huz- zas rent the air. This for the ear! Most glorious was the revelation of color to the eye. Electric fountains burst into bloom of spray, 304 THE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY, the sfolden statute of Columbia unveiled her re- splendent form. Aloft on their staves, the sailor's knots burst into a blaze of color and glory, as the flaes of Castile and AraQ-on floated on the breeze, beside the starry banner of the free republic. So culminated the Romance of Discovery. All due honor to Columbus and to those, also, who went before, or who followed after him ! Laus Deo. W. A. Wilde &- Co., Publishers. OC/CCjSSS. By Orison Swett Marden. Author of ^ "Pushing to the Front," "Architects of Fate," etc. 317 pp. Cloth, ^1.25. It is doubtful whether any success books for the young have appeared in modern times which are so thoroughly packed from lid to lid with stimulating, uplifting, and inspiring material as the self-help books written by Orison Swett Marden. There is not a dry par- agraph nor a single line of useless moralizing in any of his books. To stimulate, inspire, and guide is the mission of his latest book, " Success," and helpfulness is its keynote. Its object is to spur the perplexed youth to act the Columbus to his own undiscovered possibilities ; to urge him not to wait for great opportunities, but to seize common occasions and make them great, for he cannot tell when fate may take his measure for a higher place. r HE ROMANCE OF DISCOVERY; or, a Thousand Years of Discovery, etc. By Wm. Elliot Griffis. 305 pp. Cloth, $1.50. The element of romance is present in even the dryest history, but it is only as this romantic element is recognized and due weight given to it that history is properly told. Dr. Grififis understands perfectly the importance of this element in writing history, and it is this that makes his books so readable. Probably no work has appeared recently which gives so just an estimate of exactly the amount each European nation contributed to the work of discovery of the new world. This new volume of Dr. Griffis's gives promise of being one of the most popular and important contributions to American history which has appeared during the present year. War of the Revolution Series. JTZASHINGTON' S YOUNG AIDS. A Story of the rr New Jersey Campaign, 1776-1777. By Everett T. Tomlin- SON, Ph. D. 391 pp. Cloth, $1.50. The crisis of the early days of the Revolution was met and passed during the Trenton campaign. As a fact in history this is well understood, but the details of this memorable campaign are less familiar. The existence of British prisons and prison ships, in which the Continental soldiers were crowded to an unbearable extent, forms a picture of this contest which is often overlooked. Dr. Tomlinson's greatest success lies in the clearness with which he draws a picture of the actual conditions which existed during the Revolution. The boys will be eager for this new volume. rHREE COIONIAI BOYS. A Story of the Times of '76. By Everett T. Tomlinson, Ph. D. 36S pp. Cloth, It is a story of three boys who were drawn into the events of the times is patriotic, exciting, clean, and healthful, and instructs without appearing to. The heroes are manly boys, and no objectionable language or character is introduced. The lessons of courage and patriotism especially will be appreciated in this day. — Boston Tra7iscript. rHREE YOUNG CONTINENTAIS. A Story of the American Revolution. By Everett T. Tomlinson, Ph. D. 364 pp. Cloth, $1,50. This story is historically true. It is the best kind of a story either for boys or girls, and is an attractive method of teaching history. — Journat o_f Ed7icatio7i, Boston. Boston: IV. A. Wilde &= Co., 25 Bromfield Street. IV, A. Wilde <&- Co., Publishers. Brain and Brawn Series. rHE BEACH PATROL. A Story of the Life-Saving Service. By William Drysdale. 318 pp. Cloth, ^1.50. The dangers and excitement of the Life-Saving Service are very graphically described and add to the general interest of the book. The real value of the story, however, lies in the fact, so clearly set forth, that it is possible for an earnest young man, of sterling integrity, to make an honorable place for himself in the world. It is a strong book, good for boys and young men. r'JIE YOUNG REPORTER. A Story of Printing House Square. By William Drysdale. 300 pp. Cloth, ^1.50. I commend the book unreservedly. — Golden Rule. "The Young Reporter" is a rattling book for boys. — Neiv I'ork Recorder. The best boys' book I ever read. — Mr. Phillips., Critic for New York Times. r'HE EAST MAIL. The Story of a Train Boy. By William Drysdale. 328 pp. Cloth, $1.50. "The Fast Mail " is one of the very best American books for boys brought out this season. Perhaps there could be no better confirmation of this assertion than the fact that the little sons of the present writer have greedily devoured the contents of the vol- ume, and are anxious to know how soon they are to get a sequel. — The Art Amateur, New York. Travel-Adventure Series. r\VER THE ANDES; or, Our Boys in Ne7v South \y America. By Hezekiah BaxTERWORTH. 368 pp. Cloth, $1.50. _ South America to-day presents a most interesting subject for study. Its history is one of a constant struggle for liberty against oppression. The cruelty and avarice of the Spanish conquerors was finally met by the solid opposition of the South American people. Out of the terrors of the Revolution came liberty and the wonderful commercial and industrial development for which South America is famous, as well as for her inex- haustible mineral wealth. The subject is an inspiring one, and Mr. Butterworth has done full justice to the high ideals which have inspired the great men of South America. /N WILD AFRICA. Adventures of Two Boys in the Sahara Desert, etc. By Thos. W. Knox. 325 pp. Cloth, $1.50. A story of absorbing interest. — Boston Journal. Our young people will pronounce it unusually good. — Albany Argus. He has struck a popular note in his latest volume. — Springjield Republican. rHE LAND OF THE KANGAROO. By Thos. W. Knox. Adventures of Two Boys in the Great Island Con- tinent. 318 pp. Cloth, $1.50. His descriptions of the natural history and botany of the country are very interesting. — Detroit Free Press. The actual truthfulness of the book needs no gloss to add to its absorbing interest. — 7"^!? Book Buyer, New York. Boston: W. A. Wilde ^ Co., 25 Bromjield Street. IV. A. Wilde &= Co.^ Publishers. Fighting for the Flag Series. MIDSHIPMAN JACK. By Chas. Ledyard Nor- ton. 290 pp. Cloth, $1.25. Tn th,. third volume of the " Fighting for the Flag Series." Jack is commissioned a ■A w t^/n the n^iv but while on his way North to join his class in Newport, where as poSible and Jack soon receives an assignment to duty under one of his former ship- mates. .7,77-7 (>fACK BENSON'S LOG; or, Afloat with the Flag in f '61. By Charles Ledyard Norton. 281pp. Cloth, $1.25. /Vn unusually interesting historical story, and one that will arouse the loyal impulses of etrrAmerlc'an boy^'or^girl. The story is distinctly superior to anything ever attemoted along this line before.— r/i^ /«'^'i?/^«'i^iAP'N THISTLETOP. By Sophie Swett. 282 pp. O Cloth, $1.25. Sophie Swett knows how to please young folks as well as old ; for both she writes simple, unaffected, cheerful stories with a judicious mingling of humor and plot. Such a story is " Cap'n Thistletop." — The Outlook. rHE MAR/ORIE BOOKS. Edited by Miss Lucy Wheelock. 6 Vols. Over 200 Illustrations. The Set, $1.50. A very attractive set of books for the little folks, full of pictures and good stories. r^OT'S LLBRAR Y. Edited by Miss Lucy Wheelock. X--^ 10 Vols. Over 400 Illustrations. The Set, I2.50. In every way a most valuable set of books for the little people. Miss Wheelock possesses rare skill in interesting and entertaining the little ones. Boston : IV. A. Wilde &= Co., 25 Bromfield Street. 4 W. A. Wilde &> Co., Publishers. T 'HE BEACON LIGHT SERIES. Edited by Nat- alie L. Rice. 5 Vols. Fully Illustrated. The Set, ^2.50. The stories contained in this set of books are all by well-known writers, carefully selected and edited, and they cannot, therefore, fail to be both helpful and instructive. ADY BETTY'S TWINS. By E. M. Water worth. 117 pp. With 12 Illustrations. 75 cents. L The story of a little boy and girl who did not know the meaning of the word " obe- dience." They learned the lesson, however, after some trying experiences. rHE MOONSTONE RING. By Jenny Chappell. 118 pp. With 6 Illustrations. 75 cents. A home story with the true ring to it. The happenings of the story are somewhat out of the usual run of events. -pELOUBETS SELECT NOTES. By F. N. Pelou- JL bet, D. D., and M. A. Peloubet. A Commentary on the Inter- national Sunday-School Lessons. Illustrated. 340 pp. Cloth, $1.25. This commentary is the one book every teacher must have in order to do the best work. It interprets the Scripture, illustrates the truths, and by striking comments convinces the mind. It is comprehensive, and yet not verbose, and furnishes winnowed material in the most attractive and yet convincing form from both spiritual and practical standpoints. Accurate colored maps and profuse original illustrations illuminate the text, and create an intelligent and instructive view of the subject matter. Teachers are invited to send for sample pages of " Select Notes." TT7AYS OE WORKING; or, Helpful Hints to Siinday- yy School Workers of all Kinds. By Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D. D. 216 pp. Cloth, $1.00. A really helpful manual for Sunday-school workers. — The Siatday-school Times. It unlocks the door to the treasure-house of Sunday-school success. — F. N. Peloubet, D. D. The best all-around book for a Sunday-school worker I know of. — Mario7i Law- rence, Secy Ohio State S. S. Association. Will take rank at once in Sunday-school literature, not only as a standard publica- tion, but as one of the most influential. — Congregatio7ialist , Boston. Cannot fail to be of value in the hands of all Sunday-school workers. — IV. H. Hall, Sec^y Of Conn. State S. S. Association. This book absolutely covers every phase of Sunday-school work in a clear, instruc- tive manner, and cannot fail to be of marked benefit to every worker. Send for sample pages. nPECIAL SONGS AND SER VLCES for Primary a?id kj Inlejynediate Classes. Compiled by Mrs. M. G. Kennedy. 160 pp. Price, 45 cents; $40.00 per hundred. The book contains Exercises for Christmas, Easter, Children's Day, Harvest, etc. ; Lessons on Lord's Prayer, Commandments, Books of the Bible, Missions, and many other subjects. Adapted to Primary and Intermediate Classes, Junior Endeavor Socie- ties, etc. It has ninety pages of new, bright music for all occasions, including a large number of Motion Songs that are now so popular. We feel sure the book will prove instructive, interesting, and entertaining. It is printed on heavy paper, bound in board covers. Sample pages sent on application. Boston: W. A. Wilde 6^ Co., 25 Bromjield Street. 5 6 80 «» c .0^ .0' ^o ^A% 4 O V .^' ^w&^ III, P V ^ «. '"'^^iiS^''^' .»-' ,' -1 A '\ ;%° V o TN -. ■^o ?p V i^' ^ •. '^-, _— i^^ <^ •/- r'^ ^'^^,. *!> o •• o \^^^r. < S' >\e..^\' > .%^ N. MANCHESTER,