[Illustration]
_By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Professor of Government, Harvard University_
The whole round world is now open. Gone is the pleasure of finding new
lands, sighting strange mountains, floating down mysterious rivers,
and meeting unknown races of men. After Mt. Everest is climbed by some
daring mountaineer, and after an airship lands on the highest peak of
Mt. McKinley, what will be left for the seeker of novelty? Where can
you now find a river or mountain range or tribe certified never before
to have been seen by white men?
That rich pleasure was enjoyed in the fullest measure by the explorers
in North America; in fact, they enjoyed it so much that they kept it
alive for four centuries. For a good two hundred and fifty years the
English at intervals battered their way into Hudson Bay, and Davis
Strait, and the Arctic deserts, trying to smash a route through the
ice, around to the north of Asia and Europe. Nearly three centuries
passed after De Soto reached the lower Mississippi before Lieutenant
Pike found its source in its native lair. As late as 1880 no man, white
or red, knew the passes across the Canadian Rockies; and to this day
only three boat parties have ever gone through the length of the canyon
of the Colorado.
[Illustration: ROBERT CAVELIER DE LA SALLE
_Born 1643; died 1687._]
In the work of opening up North America the French surpassed the
English: if no bolder, they were more adventurous. From the lower St.
Lawrence they held a direct route into the interior, which flanked the
two great obstacles to western exploration; namely, the Six Nations of
the Iroquois and the Alleghany Mountains. It is hard to say which was
the firmer wall against English discovery.