[Sidenote: Historic Myths.]
We live in times when the researches of scholars are minute, pitiless,
and exhaustive, and when no hitherto received historical fact is
permitted to escape the ordeal of the most critical scrutiny. Many are
the cherished historical beliefs which have latterly been assailed
with every resource of logical argument and formidably arrayed proofs,
unearthed by tireless diligence and pursuit. Thus we are told that the
story of William Tell is a romantic myth; that Lucretia Borgia, far from
being a poisoner and murderess, was really a very estimable person; and
that the siege of Troy was a very insignificant struggle, between armies
counted, not by thousands, but by hundreds.
In the same way the old familiar question, "Who discovered America?"
which every school-boy was formerly as prompt to answer as to his age
and name, has in recent years become a perplexing problem of historical
disputation; and at least can no longer be accurately answered by the
name of the gallant and courageous Genoese who set forth across the
Atlantic in 1492.
[Sidenote: Icelandic Discoverers.]
Bancroft, on the first page of his history, pronounces the story of
the discovery of our country by the Icelandic Northmen, a narrative
"mythological in form and obscure in meaning"; and adds that "no clear
historical evidence establishes the natural probability that they
accomplished the passage." But the first volume of Bancroft was
published in 1852. Since then, the proofs of the discovery of the
continent by the Icelanders, very nearly five hundred years before
Columbus was thrilled with the delight of beholding the Bahamas, have
multiplied and grown to positive demonstration. They no longer rest upon
vague traditions; they have assumed the authority of explicit and well
attested records.
[Sidenote: Discoverers of America.]
The discovery of the New England coast by the Icelanders is the earliest
which, down to the present, can be positively asserted. But it has been
recently urged that there are some evidences of American discovery by
Europeans or Asiatics long prior to Leif Erikson. There are certain
indications that the Pacific coast was reached by Chinese adventurers in
the remote past; and it is stated that proofs exist in Brazil tending to
show that South America was discovered by Phoenicians five hundred years
before Christ. The story is said to be recorded on some brass tablets
found in northern Brazil, which give the number of the vessels and
crews, state Sidon as the port to which the voyagers belonged, and even
describe their route around the Cape of Good Hope and along the
west coast of Africa, whence the trade-winds drifted them across the
Atlantic.
[Sidenote: Icelandic Voyagers.]
Confining ourselves to credible history, it appears that in the year 986
(eighty years before the conquest of England by William of Normandy), an
Icelandic mariner named Bjarne Herrjulson, making for Greenland in his
rude bark, was swept across the Atlantic, and finally found himself
cast upon dry land. He made haste to set sail on his return voyage, and
succeeded in getting safely back to Iceland. He told his story of
the strange land beyond the seas; and so pleased had he been with its
pleasant and fruitful aspect that he named it "Vineland."
[Sidenote: Leif Erikson.]
The story of Bjarne impressed itself upon an intelligent and adventurous
man, Leif Erikson; who, having purchased Bjarne's ship, set sail for
Vineland in the year 1000, with a crew of thirty-five men. He reached
what is now Cape Cod, and passed the winter of 1000-1 on its shores.
Returning to Iceland, his example was followed, two years later, by
another Erikson, who established a colony on the shores of Narragansett
Bay, not far from Fall River, where the founder died and was buried.
[Sidenote: Columbus in Iceland.]
It is well nigh certain that Christopher Columbus, in the year 1477,
visited Iceland, and even sailed one hundred leagues beyond it,
discovering there an unfrozen sea. The idea of western discovery was
already in his mind, and he had received hints of a western continent,
from certain carved objects picked up in the Atlantic by other
navigators. It is altogether probable that the conjectures of Columbus
were confirmed into conviction by the Icelandic traditions of Leif's
discovery, during his sojourn at Rejkjawik. From this time Columbus was
more than ever intent upon the enterprise which, fifteen years after,
conferred upon him imperishable glory.
[Sidenote: Voyage of Columbus.]
The story of Columbus is, or should be, familiar to every American who
can read. How he sailed forth from the roads of Saltez on the 3d of
August, 1492, with three vessels and a crew of one hundred and twenty
men; how the voyage was stormy and full of doubts and discouragements;
how, finally, early on the morning of October 12, Rodrigo Triana, a
seaman of the _Pinta_, first descried the land which Columbus christened
San Salvador; how they pushed on and found Cuba and Hayti; how, after
returning to Spain, Columbus made two more voyages westward,--one
in 1493, when he discovered Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Porto Rico: and
another in 1498 when the Orinoco and the coast of Para rewarded his
researches; and his subsequent unhappy fate--all these events have been
related by many writers, and most vividly of all by the graphic pen of
Washington Irving.
[Sidenote: Menendez.]
The era of American discovery may be said to have continued till the
memorable fourth day of September, 1565, when the Spaniard Menendez
founded the first town on this continent, on the Florida coast, which he
called St. Augustine. In one sense, indeed, the era of discovery did not
cease down to within the memory of men still living; for the discovery
of a path across the Rocky Mountains might well be regarded as included
in it. But during the period which intervened between the return of
Columbus from his first voyage and the building of St. Augustine,
the extent and character of the eastern portion of our continent was
revealed to Europe by many and successful navigators.
[Sidenote: The Cabots.]
The story of Columbus inspired the cupidity and territorial ambition of
England, France, Spain, and Italy; and in the year 1497 John Cabot,
a Venetian by birth, but long a resident of Bristol, England, set out
thence across the Atlantic. He was accompanied by his son Sebastian.
On the 24th of June he came in sight of Newfoundland, and then of Nova
Scotia; then he sailed southward and reached Florida. As this was a year
before the third voyage of Columbus, in which he saw the coast of the
mainland, to John Cabot belongs the honor of having landed upon the
American continent before Columbus.
[Sidenote: Amerigo Vespucci.]
Voyages to the new land now followed each other in quick succession
for many years. It was in 1499 that the accomplished but unscrupulous
Amerigo Vespucci made his first voyage to Hispaniola, following it up by
voyages along the coast of South America. He returned thence to claim,
after the death of Columbus, the honors due to the great Genoese.
[Sidenote: Verrazzani.]
Portugal and France, jealous of the success of the Spanish and English
expeditions, lost no time in entering into this perilous and brilliant
competition for maritime honor and western possession. Portugal sent out
Cortereal, and France Verrazzani. The former skirted the coast for six
hundred miles, kidnapping Indians, and spending some time at Labrador,
where he came to his death. Verrazzani, in 1524, sailed for the Western
Continent in the _Dolphin_, ranged along the coast of North Carolina,
and so northward until he espied the beautiful harbor of New York, and
anchored for a brief rest in that of Newport. Verrazzani returned to
France with glowing accounts of the beauty, fertility, and noble harbors
of the country.
[Sidenote: Jacques Cartier.]
Within ten years France sent forth another expedition, under the command
of the famous Jacques Cartier, which was destined to acquire for that
nation its claim to the possession of Canada. Cartier sailed from St.
Malo to Newfoundland in twenty days. He went up the St. Lawrence, and
returned home to tell the thrilling tale of his adventures. The next
year he came back to discover the sites of Montreal and Quebec; and he
made two more voyages, in 1540 and 1542.
[Sidenote: Ponce de Leon.]
Meanwhile, Spain was resolved to sustain the great prestige she had
gained by the expeditions of Columbus, and to yield to no rival her
claims to dominion on the new continent. In 1512, Don Juan Ponce de
Leon, a brave soldier and adventurous man, who had accompanied
Columbus on his second voyage, landed on the peninsula of Florida, and
established the right of Spain to its possession. Five years after,
Fernandez landed on the coast of Yucatan; and ere long Garay explored
the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
[Sidenote: De Soto.]
It is not possible, in this survey, to follow, or even to name, the
Spanish expeditions of discovery and conquest between 1512 and 1550.
Suffice it to say that during this period subjects of the Spanish king
landed on the coast of South Carolina, entered the harbors of New York
and New England, crossed Louisiana and northern Mexico to the Pacific,
explored Mexico and Peru, marched across Georgia under the lead of the
renowned Ferdinand de Soto, penetrated to the interior, and, after many
romantic adventures and desperate hardships, discovered the magnificent
river which we call the Mississippi; made perilous excursions into the
wild depths of Arkansas and Missouri, and even to the remote banks of
the Red River.
[Sidenote: Character of the Discoverers.]
The enterprises of Spaniards, English, Portuguese, and French were alike
prompted by the greed of gain. All sought the fabled El Dorado; all
craved the power of colonial dominion. None the less were the navigators
and soldiers, whom the nations sent forth to reveal a new world to
civilization, men of courage and fortitude, able in achieving the
momentous tasks assigned to them. Columbus and Cabot, at least, thought
less of riches and fleeting honors than of the proper and noble glories
of discovery; it was left to their Spanish successors to kidnap the
Indians, to rob their settlements and murder their women, and to invade
the peaceful wilds of America, with fire and the sword.