4 INTRODUCTION. inhabitants were a few scattered tribes of feeble barbarians, destitute of commerce and of political connection. The axe and the ploughshare were unknown. The soil, which had been gathering fertility from the repose of centuries, was lavishing its strength in magnificent but useless vegetation. In the view of civilization the immense domain was a solitude. It is the object of the present work to explain how the change in the condition of our land has been accomplished; and, as the fortunes of a nation are not under the control of blind destiny, to follow the steps by which a favoring Providence, calling our institutions into being, has conducted the country to its present happiness and glory. COLONIAL HISTORY. CHAPTER I. EARLY VOYAGES. FRENCH SETTLEMENTS. I. or THE enterprise of Columbus, the most memorable CHAP. maritime enterprise in the history of the world, formed between Europe and America the communication which 1492. will never cease. The national pride of an Icelandic historian has indeed claimed for his ancestors the glory of having discovered the western hemisphere. It is 1000, said, that they passed from their own island to Green- 1003. land, and were driven by adverse winds from Greenland to the shores of Labrador; that the voyage was often repeated; that the coasts of America were extensively explored, and colonies established on the shores of Nova Scotia or Newfoundland. It is even suggested, that these early adventurers anchored near the harbor of Boston, or in the bays of New Jersey; and Danish antiquaries believe that Northmen entered the waters of Rhode Island, inscribed their adventures on the rocks of Taunton River, gave the name of Vinland to the south-east coasts of New England, and explored the inlets of our country as far as Carolina, But the story of the colonization of America by Northmen, rests on narratives, mythological in form, and obscure in meaning; ancient, yet not contemporary. The 2 6 EARLY VOYAGES. CHAP. chief document is an interpolation in the history of Sturleson, whose zealous curiosity could hardly have neglected the discovery of a continent.' The geographical details are too vague to sustain a conjecture; the accounts of the mild winter and fertile soil are, on any modern hypothesis, fictitious or exaggerated; the description of the natives applies only to the Esquimaux, inhabitants of hyperborean regions; the remark which should define the length of the shortest winter's day, has received interpretations, adapted to every latitude from New York to Cape Farewell; and Vinland has been sought in all directions, from Greenland and the St. Lawrence to Africa. The nation of intrepid mariners, whose voyages extended beyond Iceland and beyond Sicily, could easily have sailed from Greenland to Labrador; no clear historic evidence establishes the natural probability that they acccomplished the passage. Imagination had conceived the idea, that vast inhabited regions lay unexplored in the west; and poets had declared, that empires beyond the ocean would one day be revealed to the daring navigator.3 But Colum1492. bus deserves the undivided glory of having realized that belief. During his lifetime he met with no adequate recompense. The self-love of the Spanish monarch was offended at receiving from a foreigner in his employ benefits too vast for requital; and the contemporaries of the great navigator persecuted the merit which they could not adequately reward.. Nor had posterity been 1 Antiquitates Americanæ, Hafniæ, 1837. The chief work. Schöning's ed. of Sturleson, i. 304-325. Thorfæus, Winlandia Antiqua. A.de Humboldt, Examen Critique, ii. 124, &c. Of American writers, Wheaton's Northmen, 22-28; Belknap's Amer Biog. i. 47-58; Moulton's 2 Antiq. Americanæ, 289,291,296. 3 Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella,ii.117. Pulci,c.xxv.st.229--232, COLUMBUS. JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT. I. mindful to gather into a finished picture the memorials HAP of his career, till the genius of Irving, with candor, liberality, and original research, made a record of his 1499 eventful life, and in mild but enduring colors sketched his sombre inflexibility of purpose, his deep religious enthusiasm, and the disinterested magnanimity of his character. Columbus was a native of Genoa. The commerce of the middle ages, conducted chiefly upon the Mediterranean Sea, had enriched the Italian republics, and had been chiefly engrossed by their citizens. The path for enterprise now lay across the ocean. The states which bordered upon the Atlantic, Spain, Portugal, and England, became competitors for the possession of the New World, and the control of the traffic which its discovery was to call into being; but the nation which, by long and successful experience, had become deservedly celebrated for its skill in navigation, continued for a season to furnish the most able maritime commanders. Italians had the glory of making the discoveries, from which Italy derived no accessions of wealth or power. 7 1497 24. In the new career of western adventure, the American continent was first discovered under the auspices of June the English, and the coast of the United States by a native' of England. In the history of maritime enterprise in the New World, the achievements of John and Sebastian Cabot are, in boldness, success, and results, second only to those of Columbus. The wars of the houses of York and Lancaster had ceased; tranquillity and thrifty industry had been restored by the prudent 1 History of the Travayles in the East and West Indies, by R. Eden and R. Willes, 1577, fol. 267. "Sebastian Cabot tolde me, that he 8 FIRST VOYAGE OF THE CABOTS. CHAP. severity of Henry VII.; the spirit of commercial activI. ity began to be successfully fostered; and the marts of 1496. England were thronged with Lombard adventurers. The fisheries of the north had long tempted the merchants of Bristol to an intercourse with Iceland;1 and the nautical skill, necessary to buffet the storms of the Atlantic, had been acquired in this branch of northern commerce. Nor is it impossible, that some uncertain traditions respecting the remote discoveries which Icelanders had made in Greenland towards the north-west, "where the lands2 did nearest meet," should have excited "firm and pregnant conjectures." The magnificent achievement of Columbus, revealing the wonderful truth, of which the germs may have existed in the imagination of every thoughtful mariner, won the admiration which was due to an enterprise that seemed more divine than human, and kindled in the breasts of the emulous a vehement desire to gain as signal3 renown in the same career of daring; while the politic king of England desired to share in the large returns, which were promised by maritime adventure. It was, therefore, not difficult for John Cabot, a Venetian merchant, residing at Bristol, to engage Henry VII. in plans for dis1496. covery. He obtained from that monarch a patent,' emMar. powering himself and his three sons, or either of them, 5. their heirs, or their deputies, to sail into the eastern, western, or northern sea, with a fleet of five ships, at their own proper expense and charges; to search for 1 Selden, Mare Clausum, b. ii. 2 Bacon's Hist. of Henry VII. sio is wrong. The passage from Ramusio is also in Eden's Trayayles, ed. 1577, fol. 267.-De Thou, Hist. 1. xliv. 4 See the patent in Hakluyt, iii. 25, 26; Chalmers's Polit. Annals, 7, 8; Hazard's Hist. Coll. i. 9. |