Francisco de Coronado, marching northward from Mexico, in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, found only the squalid villages of the Zuni Indians, after stumbling on the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and marching as far north as the southern line of Kansas.  Jacques Cartier, following another will-o’-the-wisp to the north, and searching for the storied city of Norembega, supposed to exist somewhere in the wilderness south of Cape Breton, found it not, indeed, but laid the foundations for the great empire which France was to establish along the St. Lawrence.

And Henry Hudson, in the little Half-Moon, chartered by a company of thrifty Dutchmen to search for the northwest passage, blundered instead upon the mighty river which bears his name, explored it as far north as the present city of Albany, and paved the way for that picturesque Dutch settlement which grew into the greatest city of the New World.  He did more than that, for, persevering in the search and sailing far to the north, he came, at last, into the great bay also named for him, where tragic fate lay waiting.  For there, in that icy fastness of the north, his mutinous crew bound him, set him adrift in a small boat, and sailed away and left him.

So, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, the New World was fairly well defined upon the maps which the map-makers were always industriously drawing; and so were the spheres of influence where each nation was to be for a time paramount; the Spaniards in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch along the Hudson, the French on the St. Lawrence, and the English on the long coast to the south.  But in all the leagues and leagues from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, nowhere had the white man as yet succeeded in gaining a permanent foothold.

* * * * *

Although the continent of North America had been discovered by John Cabot in 1497, nearly a century elapsed before England made any serious attempt to take possession of it.  Cabot’s voyages had created little impression, for he had returned from them empty-handed; instead of finding the passage to the Indies which he sought, he had discovered nothing but an inconvenient and apparently worthless barrier stretching across the way, and for many years the great continent was regarded only in that light, and such explorations as were made were with the one object of getting through it or around it.  In fact, as late as 1787, opinion in Europe was divided as to whether the discovery of the New World had been a blessing or a curse.

But Spain had been working industriously.  The honor of giving America to the world was hers, and she followed that first discovery by centuries of such pioneering as the world had never seen.  Her explorers overran Mexico and Peru, discovered the Mississippi, the Pacific, carved their way up into the interior of the continent, looked down upon the wonders of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, founded