American Men of Action

of Genoa, a poor wool-comber named Dominico Colombo, and about 1446, a son was

d northern Africa, and western Asia; but to the east stretched the fabulous country of the Grand Khan, Catha

owed his father's trade till early manhood, he finally found his real vocation as a seaman. It was on the ocean that true romance dwelt, for it led to strange lands and peoples, and no one knew what wonders and mysteries lay behind each horizon. It was there, too, high courage was developed and endurance, for it was there that men did battle hand to hand with nature's mightiest forces. It was the on

rica, rounding this headland and that, searching always for a passage to India, which they knew lay somewhere to the east, until, at last, they had sailed triumphantly around the Cape of Good Hope. It is worth remark

s business kept him in close touch with both mariners and astronomers, so that he was acquainted with every development of both discovery and theory. In more than one mind the conviction was growing up that the eastern shore of Asia could be reached by sailing westward from Europe-a conviction springing

ked his. The idea possessed him; there was room in him only for a dogged determination to realize it, to trample down such obstacles as might arise to keep him from his goal. And obstacles enough there were, for many years of waiting and disappointment lay before him-years during which, a shabby and melan

lous wealth and beauty which lay in the country to the east. The great motive behind all the early voyages was hope of gain, and Columbus had his full share of it. Yet there grew up within him, in time, somethi

was evidently impressed, for he took possession of the maps and plans which Columbus had prepared, under pretense of examining them while considering the project, placed them in the hands of one of his own captains and dispatched him secretly to try the route. That captain, whose name ha

one is certain-England missed the great opportunity just as Portugal had. And for long years it seemed that, in Spain, Columbus would have no better fortune. The Spanish monarchs listened to him with interest-as who would not?-and appointed a council of astronomers and map-makers to examine the project and to pass upon its feasibil

nding to leave the boy with his wife's sister there, while he himself journeyed on to Paris. Trudging wearily across the country, they came one night to the convent of La Rabida, and Columbus stopped to ask for

money being sent him so that he need not appear in rags. The Spanish monarchs received him well, but when they found that he demanded the title of admiral at once, and, in case of success, the title of viceroy, together with a tenth part of all profits resulting from either trade or conquest, they abruptly br

ssioned eloquence, the glory which Spain would win should Columbus be successful. The queen's patriotic ardor was enkindled, and when Ferdinand still hesitated, she cried, "I undertake the enterprise for my own crown of Castile. I will pled

ss adventurer, asking for honors, dignities and rewards which any grandee of Spain might have envied him. That they should have been granted was due to the impulsive sympathy of Isabella and the indifference of her royal consort

willing to embark on such a voyage, the maddest in all history. Only by the most extreme measures, by impressment and the release of criminals willing to accompany the expedition in order to get out of jail, were crews finally provided. A third small vesse

hey were bidding farewell forever to their native land. Even at the present day, few men would care to undertake such a voyage in such ships. The two little caravels, Ni?a and Pinta, were

nto the region of the trade winds, which, blowing steadily from the east, drove the vessels westward day after day over a smooth sea. But this very thing, favorable as it was, added greatly to the terror of the men. How were they to get back to Spain, with the wind always against them? What w

floating seaweed, the Sargasso Sea, and it seemed certain that the ships would soon be so entangled that they could move neither backward nor forward. Still Columbus pushed steadily

care, the eyes gray and piercing, the high nose and long chin telling of a mighty will, the cheeks ruddy and freckled from life in the open, the white hair falling about his shoulders. Picture him standing there, a memorable figure, whose hour of triumph was at hand. He knew the desperate condition of thin

The lookout had also seen it, and soon after, as the moon rose, a gun from the Pinta, which was in the lead, announced that land had b

ador. It was one of the Bahamas, but which one is not certainly known. Columbus, of course, believed himself near the coast of Asia, and spent two months in searching for Japan, discovering a number of islands, but no trace of the

LU

the ship must founder, but by some miracle it kept afloat, and on March 15, 1493, sailed again into the port of Palos. The great navigator was r

truth! Could they have guessed that the proud kingdom of Spain was but an insignificant patch compa

importance. Not a trace did he find of that golden country, which he sought so eagerly, and at last, broken in health and fortune, in disfavor at court, stripped of the rewards and dignities which had been pro

ing over the edge and dropping off into space; they knew that there were no dragons, nor monsters, nor other blood-curdling terrors to be encountered, but that the other side of the world was much like the side they lived on. That was Columbus's great achievement. To cross the Atlantic, perilous as the voyage w

negative slowly take shape in the acid bath-the sharp out-lines first, then, bit by bit, the detail. Just so did America grow beneath the

of the King of England and with an English ship and an English crew prophetic of the race which was, in time, to wrest the supremacy of the continent from the other nations of Europe. They explored the coast from Newfoundland as far

ery in the New World. He wrote a number of letters describing the voyages which he claimed to have made, and one of these was printed in a pamphlet which had a wide circulation, so that Vespucci's name came to be connected in the public mind with the new land in the west much more prominently than that of any other man. In 1502, in a little book dealing with

instead. Ferdinand Magellan, man of iron if there ever was one, seeking a western passage to the Moluccas, skirted the coast of South America, wintered amid the snows of Patagonia, worked his way through the strait which bears his name, and held on westward across the Pacific, making the first circumnavigation of the globe, a feat so startl

ttlements in Chili and Peru and capture a Spanish treasureship, held northward along the coast as far as southern Oregon, and then turned westward across the Pacific, around the Cape of Good Hope, and home again, where Elizabeth, in spite of

, with an experience gained with Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, and succeeding Ponce de Leon in the governorship of Florida, marched with a great expedition through what is now Sout

n 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

esent 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 ca

es 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

m 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 onl

i-yes, and did more than that. They opened the first churches, set up the first presses, printed the first books, wrote the first histories, drew the first accurate maps. They established schools among the Indians, sent missionaries to them, translated the Bible into twelve Indian dialects, made thousands of converts, and established an Indian policy as humane and enlightened-once Spanish supremacy was recognized-as any in the world. The savages with

rew from Mexico and Peru she poured out to prop the tottering pillars of church despotism; and the end came when, in 1588, Elizabe

Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on a voyage to the New World ten years earlier, and after Gilbert's tragic death, took over the patent for land in America which Gilbert held. It is worth noting that this patent provided in the plainest terms t

orn of his estates, was a prisoner in the Tower under charge of treason, that a new charter was given to an association of influential men known as the Virginia Company, which was destined to have permanent results. On New Year's Day, 1607, an expedition of three ships, carrying, besides their crews, one hundr

uted to the presence of the Huguenot heretic on board, and he was forthwith flung into the sea. Whether the storm thereupon abated, history does not state, but Smith managed to swim to a small island, from which he was rescued next day. Journeying across Europe to Styria, he entered the service of Emperor Rudolph II., and spent two or three years fighting against the Turks, accomplishing

as accused of plotting mutiny, arrested and kept in irons until the ships reached Virginia. Late in April, the fleet entered Hampton Roads, and proceeding up the river, which was forthwith named the James, cam

nd bitter feuds arose among the survivors. These were for the most part "gentlemen adventurers," who had accompanied the expedition in the hope of finding gold, and who were wholly unfitted to cope with the condit

tain John Smith. With two companions, he was paddling in a canoe up the Chickahominy, when the party was attacked by Indians. Smith's two co

th was dragged to them and his head forced down upon them, but even as one of the warriors raised his club to dash out the captive's brains, the Powhatan's daughter, a child of thirteen named Pocahontas, threw herself up

ccurred in the years which followed. But to the captive, it partook of the very essence of romance; he had only the dimmest idea of what was really happening, and his account of it, written many years later, was of the most sentimental kind. Many doubts have been cast on the story, and historians seem hopelessly divided abo

yet in the ascendancy, and he spent the summer of 1608 in exploration, leaving the colony to its own devices. When he returned to it in September, he found it reduced and disheartened. His brave and cheery presence acted as a tonic, and

under him, he instituted an iron discipline, whipped the laggards into line, and by the end of April had some twenty houses built, thirty or forty acres of ground broken up and planted, nets and weirs arranged for fishing, a new fortress under way, and various small manufactures begun. A great handicap was the system, by which all property was held in common, so that the drones shared equally with the workers, but Smith took care that there should be

-or been eaten by their companions! There was a hasty consultation, and it was decided that Virginia must be abandoned. On Thursday, June 7, 1610, the cabins were stripped of such things as were of value, and the whole company

e to save Virginia. He proceeded at once to place the colony upon a new and sounder basis, and it was never again in danger of extinction, though Jamestown itself was fin

edition, he was captured by the French and forced to serve against the Spaniards. Broken in health and fortune, he spent his remaining years in London, dying there in 1631. There is a

ss desperately along the St. Lawrence. We have seen how Jacques Cartier explored and named that region, but civil and religious wars in France put an end to plans of colonization

hing anything in the way of colonization. Another expedition in the following year saw the founding of Port Royal, while Champlain made a careful exploration of the New England coast, but he found nothing that attracted him as did the mighty river to the north. Thither, in 1608, he went, and sailing up the river to a point where a mighty promontory rears its head, disembarked and erected the first rude huts of the city which he called by the

had from the first treated the Indians well, and it was this necessity of gaining their friendship that determined the policy which France pursued-the policy of making friends of the Indians, entering into an alliance with them, and helping them fight their battles. Champlain opened operati

g years were spent in further explorations, which carried him across Lake Ontario, and in plans for the conversion of the Indians, to which the aid of the Jesuits was summoned. Missions were established, a

tion to the west, in the course of which he visited Lake Michigan and perhaps Lake Superior. Following in his footsteps, the Jesuits gradually establis

e Indian languages, in order to fit himself for the career of western exploration which he contemplated. One day he was visited by a party of Senecas, who told him of a river, which they called the Ohio, so great that many months were required to traverse it. From their description, La Salle concluded that it must fall into the Gulf of

the Mississippi. A fortnight later, they reached a little village called Peoria, where the Indians received them well, and continuing down the river, passed the Missouri, the Ohio, and finally, having gone far enough to convince themselves that the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the Gulf of California, they turned about and reached Green Bay again in September, having paddled more than 2,500 miles. Marque

r for France against all comers. Such occupation would, according to French doctrine, give France an indisputable right to the whole territory which the river and its tributaries drained, and La Salle's plan was to establish a chain of forts stretching from Lake Er

ce at the mouth of the Mississippi, naming the country Louisiana in honor of his royal master, whose property it was solemnly declared to be. That done, the intrepid explorer hastened back to France; a fleet was fitted out

a thin chain of forts connecting it with Canada, where the French power remained unbroken for three quarters of a century longer; while not until the beginning of the nineteenth c

welcome refuge. The vessel was the Mayflower, and she had just completed the most famous voyage in American history, after that of Columbus. The colonists she carried, about a hundred in number, Separatists from the Church of England

gregation got away without interference, but Bradford and a few others were arrested and spent several months in prison. As soon as he was released, he joined the colony in Amsterdam, and afterwards, in 1609, removed with it to Leyden. But the newcomers found themselves out

eir captain brought up off Cape Cod, and it was decided to land there. After some days' search, a suitable site

There can be no doubt that it was to Bradford's wise head and strong hand the colony owed its quick rally, and its escape from the prolonged misery which makes horrible the early history of Virginia. He seems to have possessed a temper resolute, but magnanimous and patient to an unusual degree, together wit

divided the colony's land among the several families, in proportion to their number, and compelled each family to shift for itself. The communal system had nearly wrecked Jamestown and would have wrecked Plymouth had not Bradford had th

h was finally absorbed. Of Bradford himself, little more remains to be told. The establishment of Plymouth Plantation was his life work. He was a far bigger man than most of his contemporaries, with a broader outlook upon life and deeper resources within himself. One

lar arm was ever ready to support the religious, and to compel every resident of the colony to walk in the strait and narrow way of Puritanism. This was a task

eaning toward Puritan doctrines, and had ended by out-Puritaning the Puritans. This was principally apparent in an intolerance of compromise which led him to remarkable extremes. He refused to conform to the use of the common pra

despatched from Boston for him, he promptly took to the woods, and, making his way with a few followers to Narragansett Bay, broke ground for a settlement which he named Providence. It was the beginning of the first state in the world

His town of Providence was built on land which the Indians had given him, and he soon acquired considerable influence among them. He learned to speak their language with great facility, translated the Bible into their tongue, and on more than one occasion saved New England from the horrors of an Indian war. But, despite his lofty character, it is i

a vessel chartered by the Dutch West India Company, entered the Hudson river and explored it for some hundred and fifty miles. The Dutch claimed the region as the result of that voyage, and during the next few years, D

. The charge has since been made that their captain had been bribed by the thrifty Dutch to land them somewhere else, and at any cost, to keep them away from the

trinkets and merchandise to the value of $24, and founding New Amsterdam as the central trading depot. From the first, the

ntered the army at an early age, and, as governor of Cura?ao, lost a leg in battle. In 1646, he was appointed director-general of New Netherlands, and reached New Amsterdam in

hildren, for the advantage of the chartered West

her-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-spirited old governor"-the adjectives describe him well; a sufficiently imposing figure, with his slashed hose and velvet jacket and tall cane and silver-banded wooden leg, he ruled the colony

and to some extent not sorry to be delivered from his rule; the terms offered by the English were favorable, and though Stuyvesant swore he never would surrender, a white flag was finally run up over the ramparts of Fort Amsterdam. The cit

d of the spot designed by nature to be the commercial and military centre of the Atlantic sea-board, and confirmed a possession of it that was never thereafter seriously disturbed, until the colonies themselves disputed it. Had New Amst

er great commonwealth with a unique history. New Jersey was given jointly to Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley, and in 1673, Lord Berkeley sold his share, illy-defined as the "southwestern part," to a Qua

onished everybody and scandalized his relatives by joining the Society of Friends, or Quakers, founded by George Fox only a short time before. His family at once removed him from Oxford and sent him to Paris, in the hope that amid the gayeties of the French capital he would forget hi

ke," his angry father told him, "but don't you dare to

them, much to his father's indignation, and even went so far as to wear his hat in the king's presence, an act of audacity which only amused that merry monarch. The story goes that the king, seeing young Penn covered, removed his own hat, remark

for months on end, but gradually he began to win for the Friends a certain degree of respect and consideration, perhaps as much because of his high social station, gallant bearing and magnetic personality, as because

ards he secured from the crown a charter for a great strip of country in that region. Penn named this region "Sylvania," or "Woodland," but when the King came to approve the charter, he

eryone; it was declared that governments exist for the sake of the governed, that to reform a criminal is more important than to punish him, that the death penalty should be inflicted only for murder

ew World, and late in the following autumn, at a spot just above the junction of the Schuylkill and Delaware, laid out a city as square and level as a checker-board, and named it Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. Before taking possession of the land, he concluded a treaty with the Delaware Indians, to whom it belonged, "the only treaty,"

or a time in caves along the river. The remainder of Penn's life was spent for the most part in England, where his interests deman

by far the most important were the so-called Scotch-Irish-Scotchmen who, a century before, had been sent to Ireland by the English government, in the hope of establishing there a Protestant population which would, in time, come to outnumber and control the native Irish. The Scotch were Presbyterians, of course, and finding the Irish environment distasteful, began, about 1720, to come to America in such numbers that, fift

, however, he took a place apart, almost at once, by his interest in prison reform. The condition of the English prisons of the day was indescribably foul and loathsome, and as horror after horror was unearthed by his investigations, a great project began to take shape in his mind. This was nothing less than the

the support of influential men secured, and on November 16, 1732, the first shipload of emigrants left England. Oglethorpe himself accompanied

the river flowing at its feet. Oglethorpe himself was indefatigable. He concluded a treaty with the Indians, provided for the defense of the colony against the Spaniards, who held Florida, and, most important of all, welcomed a colony of Jews, who had come from London at their own expense, and who soon

r them, and Oglethorpe gave them permission to select a home in any part of the province, and sent his carpenters to assist them in building t

brought in. When he returned to Georgia, it was with two vessels, and over three hundred colonists-Scotchmen, Salzburgers and Moravians, the sturdiest people of the Old World. Oglethorpe welcomed them all, and it was this mixture of races which served to give Ge

s were spent in retirement. That he was an extraordinary man cannot be gainsaid, and the plan, so far in advance of his age, which

love of adventure, but in order to establish for themselves a home where they would be free in matters of the spirit. The traces of that purpose may be found on almost every page of American history and do much to ren

to wors

MM

October 12, 1492; returned to Palos, March 15, 1493; embarked on second voyage with 17 vessels and 1,500 men, September 25, 1493; discovered Dominica, Porto Rico, Jamaica, and returned to Spain, March, 1496; started on third voyage, May 30, 1498; discovered Trinidad and the mouth of the Orinoco; recalled to Santo Domingo by

om Henry VII. a patent for the discovery, at his own expense, of unknown lands in the eastern, western, or northern seas; sai

arch of a northwest passage, 1517; removed to Spain and made grand pilot of Castile, 1518; sailed in command of a Spanish expedition, April 3, 1526;

accompanied four expeditions as astronomer in 1497, 1499, 1501 and 1503, during which some explor

to all who drank of its waters, and sailed in search of it, March, 1513; discovered the mainland and landed on April 8, Pascua Florida, or Easter Sunday, taking possession of the country for the King of Spain and calling it Florida, in honor of the day; re

September 20, 1519; reached the Brazilian coast, explored Rio de la Plata, wintered on Patagonian coast, passed through Strait of Magellan and reached

other towns and taking an immense treasure; sailed again from England, December, 1577, circumnavigating the globe and reaching home again September, 1580, where he was met by Queen Elizabeth and kni

pointed governor of Porto Rico and Florida, 1537; landed at Tampa Bay, May 25, 1539; discovere

Cibola and the Seven Cities supposed to have been founded seven centuries before by some Spanish bishops fleeing from the Moors; pene

hree voyages to Canada, 1534-1542; exploring the Gulf of St. Lawrence

Scotia and explored coast as far south as Chesapeake Bay; explored Hudson river, September, 1609; sailed again to find a northwest passage, 1610; ente

t, December 19, 1606; chosen president of colony, September 10, 1608; returned to London in autumn of 1609; explored New England coast, 1614; created admi

Canada and New England, 1603-1607; founded Quebec, 1608; disco

and date of both bi

western exploration, discovering Ohio river, 1669; descended the Mississippi to its mouth, 1681; led a band of c

re Mississippi river, by Frontenac, governor of New France, 1672; explor

ce, 1637; accompanied Joliet in 1673;

0; governor of Plymouth colony, 1621-1657 (except in 1633-1634,

-1635; ordered to leave colony and fled from Salem, January, 1636; founded Providence, June, 1636; went to

nd returned to Holland in 1644; appointed director-general of New Netherlands, 1646; reached New A

d grant of Pennsylvania, 1681; founded Philadelphia, 1682; returned to England, 1684; deprived of government of colony on charge

ia for insolvent debtors and persecuted Protestants, and conducted expedition for its