BY SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS London GIBBINGS & COMPANY, Ltd. 18 BURY STREET, W.C. 1894 Copyright, 1887, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston, U.S.A....

" Time's noblest offspring is the last. " This history is intended to meet, so far as it may, the want for brief, compact, and handy manuals of the beginnings of our country. Although primarily designed for young people, the fact has not been overlooked that the same want exists among adult readers, to whom an intelligent view of the subject, in a little space, is nowhere accessible. For the purpose in hand, the simplest language consistent with clearness has been made use of, though I have neve

The story we have to tell was the problem of the sixteenth century, and is no less the marvel of the nineteenth. Put in the simplest possible form, the riddle to be solved in every palace of Christendom was, "How is the discovery of a new world going to affect mankind?" SPANISH ARMS. To make the whole story clear, from beginning to end, calls for an effort to first put ourselves in relation with that remote time,—its thought, its interests, its aims and civilization. Let us try to do this now, a

After the discovery of America by Columbus, the French were among the first to turn their attention to this side of the Atlantic, not so much to make conquests in the spirit of universal dominion, as the Spaniards were doing, as to seek new outlets or new sources of supply for their commerce and fisheries. Spain, as we have seen, forced other nations to follow her lead at a respectful distance. With one foot planted in Europe and the other in America, she bestrode the Atlantic as the colossus of

" War with the world and peace with England. "— Spanish. We should expect to find a race of sailors pushing discovery on their own element. With English mariners of the seventeenth century, the belief in a North-west Passage to India was an inherited faith. Cabot led discovery in this direction. It became, almost exclusively, a field for the brave and adventurous of this nation who, from year to year, spreading their tattered sails to the frozen blasts of the Polar Sea, grimly fought their way o

We have now done with that part of French Louisiana lying east of the Mississippi. It is now blossoming all over with incipient civilization in the form of log cabins, trading-posts, cross-roads, hamlets, and schoolhouses. From 1793 to 1799 our old ally France, now become a republic, was trying first to cajole, then to bully us into taking up her quarrel with England. She even went to the length of demanding tribute-money from us as the price of peace, and, upon a refusal, of ordering our minist

"To lose themselves in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon." Mr. Jefferson had never forgotten his talk with Ledyard at Paris. It was the key-note of future projects. Even before Louisiana was ours, he began to take steps for having it explored, partly with the view of ascertaining its real value, but chiefly to determine whether the Missouri and Columbia Rivers would afford a practicable overland route for commerce with the Pacific. Should they do so, the discovery of the century would

Ever since the expedition of Lewis and Clarke, the head waters of the Missouri had been frequented by hunters, trappers, and traders. These men threaded every nook and corner of the wilderness in pursuit of a livelihood, and, rude geographers as they were, the remotest mountain solitudes were fast yielding up to them the secrets they had held since the creation of the world. Let us begin with a portrait of the trapper as drawn from life by Mr. Irving:— "When the trade in furs was chiefly pursued

What El Dorado [1] had been to the active imaginings of De Soto's Spaniards, was now to become a reality that would startle the world from its long forgetfulness. The world believed they had been chasing a phantom which lured them to their death. One seeks in vain to know why Nature at last revealed the secret she had so long kept hid from those who had sought but not found, to disclose it to others who had found without seeking. The war was scarcely ended [2] which gave us California, when a sc

At the period now reached by our story the political sense of the people, in all things touching the national life, was represented by the Whig and Democratic parties. There was yet another body formed to prevent the coming in of any more slave States, and therefore called the Free-Soil party. This last party had only come into being since the war with Mexico, and was not yet strong enough to successfully cope with the older ones for control in national affairs; but it was growing stronger every

It had long been predicted by those most familiar with the general characteristics of the Rocky Mountains, that eventually they would be found rich in mineral wealth. One of the earliest and most sanguine advocates of this idea was Colonel William Gilpin of Missouri, whose predictions, when viewed in the light of later knowledge, seem like the gift of prophecy. Reports were indeed more or less current at Salt Lake of the finding of gold among the mountain streams of the Great Basin, as far back