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It was Menendez who crushed French Protestantism in America. To plant religious freedom on this western soil was not the mission of France. It was for her to rear in northern forests the banner of absolutism and of Rome; while among the rocks of Massachusetts, England and Calvin fronted her in dogged opposition. Long before the ice-crusted pines of Plymouth had listened to the rugged psalmody of the Puritan, the solitudes of western New York and the stern wilderness of Lake Huron were trodden by the iron heel of the soldier and the sandalled foot of the Franciscan friar. France was the true pioneer of the Great West. They who bore the fleur-de-lis were always in the van, patient, daring, indomitable. And foremost on this bright roll of forest chivalry stands the half forgotten name of Samuel de Champlain.FRANCIS PARKMAN.b

IT has seemed clearest and most logical to trace the story of American discovery from the beginning to the end, and to describe the natives by whom the land was pre-empted, before taking up the process of colonisation. But it must not be concluded that the colonists waited patiently until the discoverers had, by long groping, made out definitely the shape of the mysterious new world. On the contrary the colonists trod zealously on the very heels of the explorers; often the two classes were combined in one expedition.

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The first colonies, as we have seen, were those planted by the Norsemen in Greenland. They have disappeared as completely as some of the later efforts that which Raleigh planted on Roanoke Island, for example, and which was swallowed into oblivion as into a quicksand. The mistakes of the early colonists were as numerous as their excesses. For both they often made the atonement of vast hardship and death. Gold was, as ever, the first cry, and it rolled up its usual security of murder and crime. Agriculture, as always, was despised at first, and then became the chief reliance, the true mine of wealth. In the beginning, the colonists fought with nature, and the natives, and then they fell upon one another. Then they banded together to fight their mother countries, and we behold the thirteen colonies at war with

[-1501 A.D.] France, then with England; the South and Central Americans and the Island peoples shaking off the yokes of Spain and of France, and the great empire of Brazil overawing the mother monarchy of Portugal. Finally, we shall see the descendants of the colonists issuing a new bull of demarcation, called the Monroe Doctrine, and forbidding the European countries that settled the New World, to interfere further in its destinies or to hope for any future accession.

In the colonisation of America religion appears everywhere, now as the inspiration of unbounded heroism, endurance, and justice, now as the technical excuse for unlimited duplicity, ravage, and murder. It was "for the good of the Catholic cause" that Columbus and others advocated the enslaving and slaughter of the heathen; it was "for the good of the Catholic cause that Las Casas advocated liberty, gentleness, and the importance of setting the unconverted a good example. It was "for the sake of Calvinism" that De Gourgues hanged the Spaniards left by Menendez. It was religious example that led the Puritans to forsake England for Holland, then Holland for America, and in the new home of religious liberty, to banish dissenters and to inflict heathenish cruelties upon the Quakers who had left the same country for the same religious liberty. It was religion that warmed them in the bleak wilderness; and upheld them through pestilence, starvation, and the dread of the stealthy and ghostly Indian enemy.

Of almost equal sustaining and enspiriting power has been the lust for wealth. In the creed of the early explorers God and gold were closely bracketed. No pilgrimage for a religious end has ever been more superbly achieved in the face of greater hardships than the march of Coronado; yet he frankly hunted only the seven golden cities of Cibola.

In the exploration of America, gold and the spices of India were the wills-o'-the-wisp that drew the unwilling victim through marsh and thicket and morass. The Spanish and the English made gold their first ambition. Consequently there was little but failure for their first efforts. The glory of the first successful, as of the first well-intentioned, colonisation belongs to the French, both Huguenot and Catholic. They had their failures as well as the others, but they came to cultivate and invest, to found a home. They treated the Indian neither with the mercilessness nor the condescension of the Spaniards and the English. The French and the Indians in general lived very amicably together, and intermarriage was the common thing. In consequence the French were the first to reach a modus vivendi, and easily made the Indians allies in their contests with the English. Yet by the irony of history, French institutions have had far less influence in the New World than either English, or Spanish, or even Dutch.

This chapter, devoted to early experiments in colonisation, shows how untrustworthy is ground that the prophet must always stand on unless he waits till after the event; for it shows the English and the Spanish failing and the French succeeding dramatically with picturesque ease. Before taking up these colonies let us glance at the nature of the territory they sought to make their own.a

1

R. G. THWAITES ON THE PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF NORTH AMERICA

North America could not, in a primitive stage of the mechanic arts, have been developed by colonisation on any considerable scale from the west,

[ Reproduced by permission. Copyright, 1897, by Longmans, Green, & Co.]

[-1501 A.D.]

except in the face of difficulties almost insuperable. The Pacific coast of the country is dangerous to approach; steep precipices frequently come down to the shore, and the land everywhere rises rapidly from the sea, until not far inland the broad and mighty wall of the Cordilleran mountain system extends from north to south. That formidable barrier was not scaled by civilised men until modern times, when European settlement had already reached the Mississippi from the east, and science had stepped in to assist the explorers. At San Diego and San Francisco are the only natural harbours, although Puget Sound can be entered from the extreme north, and skilful improvements have in our day made a good harbour at the mouth of Columbia river. The rivers of the Pacific slope for the most part come noisily tumbling down to the sea over great cliffs and through deep chasms, and cannot be utilised for progress far into the interior.

The Atlantic seaboard, upon the other hand, is broad and inviting. The Appalachian range lies for the most part nearly a hundred miles inland. The gently sloping coast abounds in indentations- safe harbours and generous land-locked bays, into which flow numerous rivers of considerable breadth and depth, by means of which the land can be explored for long distances from tide-water. By ascending the St. Lawrence and the chain of the Great Lakes, the interior of the continent is readily reached. Dragging his craft over any one of a half-dozen easy portages in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio, the canoe traveller can emerge into the Mississippi basin, by means of whose farstretching waters he is enabled to explore the heart of the New World, from the Alleghanies to the Rockies, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. A carrying trail, at the headwaters of the Missouri, will lead him over to tributaries of the Columbia, whereby he gains access to the Pacific slope; while by another portage of a few miles in length, from Pigeon river to Rainy river, he is given command of the vast basin of Hudson Bay - a labyrinth of waterways extending northward to the Arctic Ocean, and connected by still other portages with the Pacific. The Hudson river and lakes George and Champlain form a natural highway from the St. Lawrence southward to the ocean. By the Mohawk and a short carrying-place, the Hudson was from early times connected with the Great Lakes. The Potomac, the Susquehanna, the Roanoke, and other southern rivers can be traced northwestward to their sources in the mountains; and hard by are the headwaters of west-flowing feeders of the Mississippi. The Appalachian mountains run for the most part in parallel ridges northeast and southwest; and their valley system, opening out through the Cumberland gap upon the Kentucky prairies and the valleys of the Ohio basin, also affords a comparatively easy highway from the Atlantic sea coast to the interior.

Thus with the entrance of North America facing the east, and with Europe lying but little more than one half the distance from Boston that Asia lies from San Francisco, it was in the order of things that from the east should have come the people who were to settle and civilise the New World. Colonists could on this side of the continent found new commonwealths, yet at the same time easily maintain their connection with the fatherland. The march of Aryan emigration has ever been on lines little diverging from due east or west. It is fortunate that the geographical conditions of North America were such as to make her an inviting field for the further migration of the race.

The Atlantic border may be considered as the threshold of the continent. It was among its dense, gloomy forests of hard wood and pine that European nations planted their colonies; here those colonies grew into states, which were the nucleus of the American Union. The Appalachians are not high enough

[1501 A.D.) seriously to affect the climate or landscape of the region. Their flanks slope gradually down to the sea, furrowed by rivers which from the first gave character to the colonies. In New England, where there is an abundance of good harbours, the coast is narrow and the streams are short and rapid, with stretches of navigable water between the waterfalls which turn the wheels of industry for a busy, ingenious, and thrifty people. The long, broad rivers of the south, flowing lazily through a wide base-plain, the coast of which furnishes but little safe anchorage, served as avenues of traffic for the large, isolated colonial estates strung along their banks; the autocratic planters taking pleasure in having ports of entry at their doors. The Hudson and the Potomac lead far inland-paths to the waterways of the interior — and divide the Atlantic slope into three grand natural divisions, the New England, the Middle, and the Southern, in which grew up distinct groups of colonies, having quite a different origin, and for a time but few interests in common. The Appalachian mountains and their foot-hills abound in many places in iron and coal; works for the smelting of the former were erected near Jamestown, Virginia, as early as 1620, and early in the eighteenth century the industry began to be of considerable importance in parts of New England, New York, and New Jersey; but the mining of anthracite coal was not commenced until 1820. The soil of the Atlantic border varies greatly, being much less fertile in the north than in the south; but nearly everywhere it yields good returns for a proper expenditure of labour. The climate is subject to frequent and extreme changes. At about 30° latitude the mean temperature is similar to that on the opposite side of the Atlantic; but farther north the American climate, owing to the divergence of the Gulf Stream and the influence of the great continent to the west, is much colder than at corresponding points in Europe. The rainfall along the coast is everywhere sufficient.

Beyond the Appalachian mountain wall, the once heavily forested land dips gently to the Mississippi; then the land rises again, in a long, treeless swell, up to the foot of the giant and picturesque Cordilleras. The isothermal lines in this great central basin are nearly identical with those of the Atlantic coast. The soil east of the 105th meridian west from Greenwich is generally rich, sometimes extremely fertile; and it is now agreed that nearly all the vast arid plains to the west of that meridian, formerly set down as desert, need only irrigation to blossom as the rose. The Pacific slope, narrow and abrupt, abounds in fertile, pent-up valleys, with some of the finest scenery on the continent and a climate everywhere nearly equal at the same elevation; the isothermal lines here run north and south, the lofty mountain range materially influencing both climate and vegetation.

There is no fairer land for the building of a great nation. The region occupied by the United States is particularly available for such a purpose. It offers a wide range of diversity in climate and products, yet is traversed by noble rivers which intimately connect the north with the south, and have been made to bind the east with the west. It possesses in the Mississippi basin vast plains unsurpassed for health, fertility, and the capacity to support an enormous population, yet easily defended; for the great outlying mountain ranges, while readily penetrated by bands of adventurous pioneers, and though climbed by railway trains, might easily be made serious obstacles to invading armies. The natural resources of North America are apparently exhaustless; the United States commands nearly every North American seaport on both oceans, and withal is so isolated that there appears to be no necessity for "entangling alliances" with transatlantic powers. The United States seems permitted by nature to work out her own destiny unhampered by foreign

[1501 A.D.]

influence, secure in her position, rich in capabilities. Her land is doubtless destined to become the greatest stronghold of the Aryan race.c

H. H. BANCROFT ON SPANISH ADMINISTRATION: THE REPARTIMIENTO SYSTEM

We have seen how it had been first of all agreed that Columbus should be sole ruler, under the crown, of such lands and seas as he might discover for Spain. We have seen how, under that rule, disruption and rebellion followed at the heels of mismanagement, until the restless colonists made Española [Hispaniola] an angustiarum insula to the worthy admiral, and until their majesties thought they saw in it decent excuse for taking the reins from the Genoese, and supplanting him by agents of their own choosing.

The first of these agents was Juan Aguado, who was merely a commissioner of inquiry. With him, it will be remembered, Columbus returned to Spain after his second voyage, leaving his brother Bartholomew in command. The admiral was permitted to try again; but on reaching the seat of his government he was unable to quiet the disturbances which had increased during his absence. Rebellion had almost reached the dignity of revolution. After another fair trial Columbus was obliged to give it up, and to see himself displaced by a person far worse than himself. Perhaps it is true that a knave was better for the office than an honest man.

Not that Francisco de Bobadilla may be lawfully accused of dishonesty; the sovereigns seemed competent to take care of themselves where their revenue was concerned. And yet he was certainly influenced in his conduct by no sense of right or of humanity. He was popular for a time with the colonists because he was like them, and because he reduced the royal share of the product of the mines from a third to an eleventh, and permitted the dissolute to idle their time and illtreat the natives; and because he released those whom the admiral had imprisoned, and compelled Columbus to pay his debts, for which last-mentioned measures we have no fault to find with him.

The enchaining of the illustrious discoverer by an infamous agent, and for no crime, excited universal disgust throughout Christendom; and yet their majesties seemed in no haste to depose him; for it was not until the 3rd of September, 1501, in answer to the persistent remonstrances of Columbus that a change was made, and the government given to Nicolas de Ovando.

Ample instructions, both written and verbal, were given him before sailing. The natives should be converted, but their bodies should not be enslaved or inhumanly treated. They must pay tribute, and gather gold, but for the latter they should be paid wages. Neither Jews nor Moors might go to the Indies, but negro slaves, born into the possession of Christians, were to be permitted passage. Columbus might always keep there an agent to collect his dues, and he was to be treated with consideration. The idle and profligate were to be returned to Spain. Except the provinces given to Ojeda and Pinzon, Ovando's jurisdiction was made to extend over all the Indies, that is to say, over all the New World dominions of Spain, islands and firm land, with the capital at Santo Domingo, and subordinate or municipal governments in the more important localities.

There were no less than thirty ships and twenty-five hundred persons comprising the expedition. There were seventy-three respectable married women, who had come with their husbands and children, and who were to salt society at their several points of distribution. It was evident as the new governor

['Reproduced by permission. Copyright, 1882, by Hubert H. Bancroft.]

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