Transcriber’s Notes The cover image was provided by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. Punctuation has been standardized. This book has illustrated drop-caps at the start of each chapter. These illustrations may adversely affect the pronunciation of the word with screen-readers or not display properly in some handheld devices. This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsiste

In a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, four years after the visit of Eric the Red to the latter country, a Danish navigator named Bjarni Herjulfson was driven far out of his course to the South, and saw land stretching away on the West; but he returned home without making any exploration of the new territories, for which, says tradition, “he was greatly blamed.” His reports, however, of what he had seen, led to the fitting out and heading of a far more important expedition by Leif the Lucky, who

Ignorant of the important fact, that the land barring their progress westward formed part of one vast continent, one hardy Spanish mariner after another wasted his strength in seeking for some channel between the so-called islands hemming in his bark on this side and on that, until at last the mystery was solved by a freebooter named Vasco Nunez de Balboa, whose romantic story must be given here, forming as it does an era in the history of the whole of the New World. Nothing could well have been

One sailor alone had the courage to respond to the invitation, and he was nearly drowned in attempting to swim to the shore. Picked up in an exhausted condition by the Indians, he was, however, restored by their tender treatment. Fires were lighted, by which his clothes were dried; and when he was completely restored, he was allowed to return to his comrades, who had all the while been watching the proceedings on shore in horror-struck silence, expecting the lighting of the fires to be the preli

On receiving the news of the sad fate of his half-brother, and of the total failure of his expedition, so far as any practical results were concerned, Sir Walter Raleigh lost not a moment in obtaining a new patent from the Queen; and though forbidden at the last moment by Her Majesty to sail himself, he succeeded in dispatching two vessels, under the command of Captain Philip Amadas and Captain Barlow, as early as the 27th of April, 1583. The coast of Florida was sighted on the 2d of July of the

De Monts left France on the 9th March, 1604, taking Champlain with him as a confidential adviser. A short visit to Nova Scotia was succeeded by a cruise in the Bay of Fundy, dividing that Peninsula from the mainland; and after much hesitation, a small island near the mouth of the St. Croix, a river of New Brunswick, was chosen as the site for the first settlement. It turned out an unlucky selection, and as soon as the first winter was over, De Monts and Champlain went down the coast to try and f

Though prevented by the hostility of the Iroquois, or Five Nations—occupying the whole of the South-west of Canada—from actually visiting them, Champlain, on this trip, approached very nearly the sources of the Hudson in the lofty Adirondack Mountains, on the south-west of the great lake, and in the north-eastern corner of the present State of New York, thus connecting his own work with that of his great Dutch contemporary. The discovery of Lakes Peter and Champlain may be said to have closed th

A disastrous result ensued. Two of the ships were wrecked, and when about to prosecute his voyage in the third, Cortes was recalled to Mexico by a rebellion which had broken out in his absence. A little later, however, a certain Francisco de Ulloa, who had been throughout the companion of Cortes, spent a year in cruising about the Gulf of California, and discovered it to terminate in N. lat. 32°, in a bay resembling the Adriatic, to which he gave the name of the Sea of Cortes. In 1537, a new imp

Thanksgivings were held in all the churches, in gratitude for the “signal mercy” which had preserved the little band of avengers, of whom two only had been left behind, in their terrible work; but that work had in reality only begun. The unhappy survivors of the “signal mercy,” driven to bay, had joined the inland members of their tribe, and the tale of the two massacres at which Endicott had presided roused a deadly enmity against the whites throughout the length and breadth of Pequod land; nay

Suspecting no treachery, Coxe turned back, and the spot which witnessed this somewhat ignominious retreat is still known as the English Turn. The emigrants—most of them Huguenot refugees, who had accompanied the unsuccessful Englishmen—settled in Carolina; and though they subsequently begged to be allowed to join their fellow-countrymen in Louisiana, they were refused permission to do so by the French monarch. The close of the year witnessed the return of D’Iberville with sixty emigrants from Ca

SIOUX VILLAGE. Having obtained guides at the Indian village of Prairie des Chiens, then an important outpost of the French fur-trade, Pike continued the ascent of the great river till he came to the mouth of the Iowa. Here he was met by a party of Sioux or Dacotah Indians, whose chief gave him a hearty welcome, assuring him that the redskins had tried to keep themselves sober in his honor. In this, says Pike, they had not been very successful, and in their unsteady gait and wild salute of three

As is known to every schoolboy, Cook reached the Sandwich Islands in safety, and, steering from them across the Pacific, he arrived on the western coast of America, in about N. lat. 50°. Steering into the inlet now known as Nootka Sound, between the island of the same name and that now called Vancouver’s, the great explorer sailed up the coast, passing between the modern Queen Charlotte’s Island and the mainland. Cook, however, made no minute examination of its many interesting phenomena, till h

The rest of the natives were furious, and hurried after their spokesman, leaving the deck strewn with peltries. A little later, some of the whites who had gone on shore returned to the vessel, and urged the captain to weigh anchor, as they feared a general attack from the natives. In this advice they were seconded by Samazee, who declared that the vengeance for the insult offered to a chief would be terrible. But Thorn’s blood was up. He declined to leave the coast; and when further urged, repli

At this point, situated in N. lat. 39°, W. long. 105°, the Rocky Mountains presented an almost impassable barrier, a perpendicular wall of sandstone, some 200 feet high, running along on either side as far as the eye could reach, with granite masses towering beyond it to the sky. Several attempts were made to scale this wall, and from one height gained a view was obtained of both branches of the Platte, one coming from the north-west and the other from the south, but it was found impossible to r

Fremont left the mouth of the Kansas, at the head of a party of about twenty, about the 2d of May, and followed its course across the state of the same name, till he reached the barren banks of the Platte, or Nebraska. Here he decided to follow the southern fork of that important tributary of the Mississippi, and a march of a few miles brought the party into the districts occupied by the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians, the former of whom at first appeared disposed to dispute the passage of the whi

The Pawnees, the Sioux, and the Arapahoes, amazed and awe-struck at their numbers, fled at their approach, but the less easily cowed enemies of famine and pestilence thinned their ranks. Still undaunted, the survivors, leaving the dead bodies of their comrades a prey to the wild beasts of the wilderness, pressed on, and, the Rocky Mountains left behind, they swarmed into the valley of Humboldt’s River, watering the western half of the newly-formed State of Utah. Many were here obliged to halt fo

The guide leading the way, all but Cozens, who was in no humor for the sport, ♦ proceeded to climb up to the mouth of the hole, it being agreed that each should fire as he saw the bear emerge from his retreat. When all were in position, the guide commenced operations by dropping a large handful of pebbles in front of the mouth of the cave. The effect was almost immediate. But a minute or two elapsed before the hunted animal put his head out and calmly surveyed his tormentors. Rogers, one of the

SASKATCHEWAN STEAMER. The admission of British Columbia to the newly-formed Dominion of Canada in 1871, the last act of the great political drama alluded to above, was clogged with the condition that a railway should be constructed within ten years “from the Pacific to a point of junction with the existing railway systems in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.” The English, if chary of undertaking new responsibilities, are prompt in acting on them, and the authorities of Canada, now fully alive