The year 986 signalizes the
first visitation of white men to the New World.
Then it was that Herjulfson, a Norse
navigator, in sailing from Iceland to Greenland, was
driven by a storm to the coast of Labrador, or, as
some historians claim, to that of Newfoundland.
The uninviting character of the coasts of the new
land deterred him from landing. What
Herjulfson first saw, it was reserved for other
discoverers to explore. The Norsemen returned
to Greenland, and there related wonderful stories of
the land they had seen, but made no further attempts
at discovery.
Fifteen years later Lief Erickson, a brave and
daring Islandic captain, with mind inflamed with the
fabulous accounts of his brother Norsemen, resolved
to extend the discovery of Herjulfson, and in
the year 1001 set foot upon the shore of Labrador.
He directed his course southwest along the coast,
and finding the country pleasant and attractive
extended his explorations, and finally reached the
territory embraced within the present State of
Massachusetts, where he and his companions remained
one year. They proceeded along the coast
bordering upon Long Island Sound, and it is claimed
that the persevering band even found their way to
New York harbor.
That this early discovery of American soil may not be
deemed a myth, we will say, that while until
recently historians have been incredulous, they now
almost universally concede the fact; and by way of
trustworthy information we quote from Humboldt's
"Cosmos," as follows: "We are here on
historical ground. By the critical and highly
praiseworthy efforts of Professor Rafu and
the Royal Society of Antiquaries in Copenhagen, the
sagas and documents in regard to the expedition of
the Norsemen to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and
Vinland, have been published and satisfactorily
commented upon. The discovery of the northern
part of America by the Norsemen cannot be disputed.
The length of the voyage, the direction in which
they sailed, the time of hte sun's rising and
setting, are accurately given. Wile the
Caliphate of Bagdad was still flourishing America
was discovered, about the year 1001, by Lief,
the son of Eric the Red, at the latitude of
forty-one and a half degrees north."
Nor did the explanations of these intrepid Icelanders
cease with the expedition of Erickson and his
companions, but in the following year - 1002 -
Thorwald Erickson, brother to Lief
stimulated with a desire to see the new and
beautiful country, made a voyage to the coast of
Maine. He is said to have ended his days in
the vicinity of the present town of Fall River,
Massachusetts. In 1005 still another brother,
Thorstein Erickson, with a band of
adventurers, made a similar voyage, and was followed
in 1007 by Thorfinn Karlsefne, a celebrated
mariner, who sailed southward along the cost as far
as Virginia.
The Norsemen must be regarded as a band of roving
adventurers, who effected no settlements, and of
whose discoveries but few important records have
been preserved. The enthusiasm which the first
discovers excited gradually subsided, and as there
were no spoils in the wilderness which might fall
prey to the Norse freeholders and pirates, further
occupancy of the country was not attempted.
The shadows which had been for a moment dispelled
began to darken over a shores of the New World, and
the curtain was not again lifted for nearly five
hundred years. Then came the achievement of
Columbus, in the year 1492. Born of a holy
faith and an inflexible purpose, it was the greatest
maritime enterprise in the history of the world.
He touched upon an island subsequently called San
Salvador, and planting there the banner of Castile,
formally claimed possession of the land in the name
of Isabella, Queen of Spain. Marvelous
were the results of discovery and exploration which
followed. England and France vie with Spain
and with each other for the mastery in the New
World. The Spanish nation, led on by an
insatiable thirst for gold, pushed forward her
explorations in America with such energy and spirit
that in less than fifty years from the time of the
great discovery of
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Columbus, she had explored and laid claim to nearly
one-half of the present territory of the United
States. Her adventurers had visited the
present States and Territories of Florida, Georgia,
South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas,
the Indian Territory, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado,
Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California.
France likewise made large acquisitions of American
soil, though of later date. The discoveries
and explorations of James Cartier, of the
patriotic De Monts, of Samuel Champlain of
Marquette, of Joliet, and of the gallant La Salle,
secured to France, before the close of the Sixteenth
century, claims to North America territory greater
than those of any other European power. At the
time referred to, her sovereignty in America
embraced Newfoundland, Acadia, Nova Scotia, Hudson's
Bay, all the Canadas, more than half of Maine,
Vermont, and New York, the whole valley of the
Mississippi - including its eastern tributaries -
the great chain of lakes at the north and Texas at
the south, as far as to the Rio Bravo del Norte.
England's dominions in America lay along the Atlantic
seaboard. The thirteen original colonies
skirting the Atlantic from Florida to the verge of
Nova Scotia were the planting of the English people,
and constituted that nation's possessions up to the
time of the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. By
virtue of this treaty England obtained large
concessions of territory from France. The
entire possessions of the Bay of Hudson and its
borders; of Newfoundland, subject to the rights of
France in its fisheries; and all of Nova Scotia, or
Acadia, according to its ancient boundaries, passed
from the dominion of France to that of England.
And now the strife in America for the possession of
colonial monopolies and territorial sovereignty was
confined to these two great powers. France
still maintained her claim to much the larger extent
of territory, but her population, scattered over
this immense area, numbered only eleven thousand two
hundred and forty-nine persons in 1688, while that
of the English colonies in the same year exceeded
two hundred thousand. A contest of fifty
years' duration between these two great powers for
territorial acquisition in America followed,
resulting in the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, by virtue
of which France lost and England gained the whole
country between the Allegheny mountains and the
Father of Waters, except a small tract lying at the
mouth of the great river. The valley of the
Ohio, for whose special conquest a seven years' war
had been begun, thus passed to the possession of
Britain.
Strangely enough, for the success of this undertaking
the English nation was mainly indebted to the very
hero, who, a few years later, as Commander-in-Chief
of the American armies, was engaged in wresting it -
in common with the territory of the whole country -
from British rule, in order to transfer it to the
free people who should make for humanity a new
existence in America. In less than a decade
the dominos which England took from France were in
turn taken from her, and the United States of
America obtained a place among the nations of the
world, and undertook the glorious work of filling a
territorial continent with commonwealths. |
