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1907 Past and Present
OUTLINE HISTORY.It is but a little more than four hundred years since the day on which occurred the event that proved to be the first ray of light from the rising sun of civilization whose beams were destined to penetrate and dissipate the clouds of barbarism that hovered over the untamed wildness of the American continent; and during the ages that preceded that event, no grander country, in all respects, ever awaited the advance of civilization and enlightenment. With climate and soil diversified between almost the widest extremes; with thousands of miles of ocean shores indented by magnificent harbors to welcome the world's commerce; with many of the largest rivers of the globe intersecting and dividing its territory, and forming natural commercial highways; with a system of lakes so grand in proportions as to entitle them to the name of inland seas; with mountains, hills and valleys laden with the richest minerals and almost exhaustless fuel; with soil of amazing fertility and almost boundless area; and with scenery unsurpassed for granduer, it needed only the coming of the Caucasian to transform a continent of wilderness, inhabited by savages, into the free and enlightened republic which is today the wonder and admiration of the civilized world. It is a marvelous land of greatness and prosperity. If credence be given to earliest chapters of history concerning this continent, the first Europeans to visit America were the Scandanavians, who colonized Iceland in the year 875, Greenland in 983, and about the year 1000 had pushed their discoveries southward as far as the Massachusetts coast. But, as is well known, it was well toward the close of the fifteenth century before the western hemisphere became known to southern Europe, a discovery accidentally made in quest of a westerly route to India and China. The voyage and discoveries of the Genoese explorer, Christopher Columbus, in 1492, are matters of common history. In 1497 the Venetian sailor, John Cabot, was commissioned by Henry VII of England to voyage to the new country and take possession of it in the name of the British King. He discovered Newfoundland and adjacent islands. In 1500 the coast of Labrador and the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. were explored by two brothers from Portugal named Cortereal. In 1508 Aubert discovered the St. Lawrence river, and four years later Ponce de Leon discovered Florida. Magellan, the Portuguese navigator, passed through the straits bearing his name in 1819, and no doubt the special honor of being the first to circumnavigate the globe belongs of right to him. In 1534 Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence as far as the site of the city of Montreal, and five years later, De Soto explored Florida. An English navigator named Drake discovered upper California in 1578. This brief data of the accomplishments of less than a century is given to indicate the activity of the different maritime powers of Europe in seeking to possess the rich prize supposed to exist in the new world. These varied expeditions resulted in the Spaniards getting a foothold in the south, and the French in the north part of the continent, where the cod fisheries of Newfoundland and the valuable fur trade of the limitless northwest gave ample promise of large commercial returns. The subsequent dislodgement of these nationalities, events that preceded the Revolutionary War, are well-known historical happenings, and the bare reference to the causes that led up to these severe and prolonged struggles for territory, has been made to supply a link so often omitted in our national history, relative to both past and present. The thirteen colonies whose history is closely joined to the intrepid people who came over in the Mayflower, held tenaciously to the absolute right of possession until the armies of Spain, France and England had alike been driven out and the stars and stripes floated over an united country of which political equality was the chief corner stone. PREV <== Continue ==> NEXTTranscribed January, 2018 by Cheryl Siebrass from Past and Present of Greene County, Iowa, Together with Biographical Sketches of many of its Prominent and Leading Citizens and Illustrious Dead by E. B. Stillman, Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1907, pp. 6-7. |
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