AMERICA. never ing the sea by several mouths, after a course of 7471 feet above the sea-level. Of the same descripRaised by the table-land les. With such streams separated by such a tion, too, is the Lake of Titicaca, decidedly the try, a ship-channel between the two oceans largest in South A. shot by any means appear to be impracticable. of Peru and Bolivia to a height of 12,846 feet, it yet as to the second route, which, as well as the has no outlet to the sea; for the Desaguadero, which is already in actual use as a place of transit: empties it, loses itself in the apparently land-locked San Juan itself, about 100 miles long, has a Lake Uros to the southward. Of this great body of Besides such round numbers as current, which, though in some places water, the magnitude is not so well ascertained ed by short rapids, is stated to be always as its altitude. able throughout for boats of 10 tons, and for 16,000 and 5000 square miles, which are larger vessels to a considerable distance from meant to be accurate, one is perplexed to meet a Lake Nicaragua, again, said to measure statements so minute, and yet so discordant, as les by 40, is adapted for ships of any burden, 4032 and 2225 square miles. But even the lowest fifteen fathoms deep. At its west end it estimate is more than equivalent to a square of res the Tipitapa from Lake Leon, which, with 47 miles a side-an area which, with a depth ranging th of 35 miles, and a breadth of 15, is only 28 up to 120 fathoms, exceeds, perhaps, anything to be higher than itself, or 156 above the level of the found to the south of the basin of the St Lawrence. The vast advantage in point of fluvial communicaTwo schemes seem to be agitated with ext to the more westerly portion of the route-tion possessed by the new world over the old, has cheme proposing to avail itself of Lake Leon, already been adverted to. There is, however, a the other to carry the ship-canal at once from hydrographical feature in which one of the grand Nicaragua. Lastly, as to the third route, divisions of the eastern continent is decidedly supethe intervening land, actually designated as rior to A. The coast-line of Europe, in proportion to thmus, is only 130 miles wide: the Coatzacoalcos extent of surface, is incomparably longer than that is said to traverse nearly the entire breadth; of even the northern half of the western continent. the Tehuantepec, which gives name to the This is at once apparent on glancing at the two maps. of the earth which are best fitted for human interus, goes far to complete what the other has It is surely a suggestive fact, that the two portions course, are also hydrographically so connected as to The dividing sea, besides being itself physibe beyond comparison the most accessible to each other. cally by far the narrower of the two intercontinental oceans, is virtually narrowed still more by its winds and its currents. Along a belt of about 30° on either side of the equator, the easterly trade with its attendant current wafts the voyager westward from Africa; while above that belt, the reaction, strengthened and accelerated by the peculiar formation of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, is ready to carry him round again to Europe, under the double pressure of the Florida stream and its generally prevailing breezes from the south-west. Nor yet can the hydrographical relations of A. with Asia be denied their proportion of significance and influence, linked as the two continents are by Behring's Strait, and twice bridged as is their ocean, first by the Aleutian Isles-a continuation of the Kuriles and Japan-and then by the Polynesian clusters, that series of offshoots, as it were, from the Indian Archipelago. practical value of the enterprise of connecting navigation the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans is ady evidenced by the fact, that, in the face of competition of the last two routes, the Panama road is perhaps the most profitable undertaking the kind in the new world. In fact, the compleof any one of those three routes for sea-going would be to realise Columbus's idea of a term passage to the East. Uf the Lakes of A. a brief notice will be sufficient. North A., besides the vast reservoirs of the St Tence, a line drawn north-west from the centre Lake Superior, appears, on the face of the map, to tersect a kindred series-Lake Winipeg, Lake Athaasca, Great Slave Lake, and Great Bear Lake-the rst of the four being connected with the Nelson, the remaining three with the Mackenzie. It may not be out of place to observe, that the general rection indicated is pretty nearly parallel with the Pacific coast, just as the general direction of the Lawrence from the great bend at the head of Lake Erie is pretty nearly parallel with the Atlantic res. As to the secondary lakes of North-west A., eir name is legion, almost every stream, whether rge or small, expanding itself here and there stly beyond its average width, and being, as it One lake, or Vere, a St Lawrence in miniature. ther pond, is too singular to be overlooked. On the Athabasca Pass of the Rocky Mountains, where the road, little better than a succession of glaciers, runs through a region of perpetual snow, a mall body of water, named by the Hudson's Bay Company's voyageurs as the Committee's Punchbowl,' sends its tribute from one end to the Columbia, and from the other to the Mackenzie. To proceed southwards along the continent, Central A. abounds in lakes. The Leon and the Nicaragua have been already noticed. But such bodies of water are perhaps most numerous on the table-land of Mexico, or as it is often termed, the plateau of Anahuac. The largest of these is Chapala, estimated to contain 1300 square miles-an area which, however insignificant in comparison with the great lakes of the north, is more than equivalent to a circle of 40 miles in diameter. Many of these reservoirs Such is the of the table-land have no outlet. case with the various lakes of the valley of Mexico, enclosed as they are by mountains at a height of History. We propose to glance at this under the three heads of Aboriginal Ages, Discovery, and Colonisation. As to the Aboriginal Ages, there arises a question, too interesting to be overlooked, and yet too doubtful to be solved, as to the origin of the native tribes and peoples of A. Without prejudicing the question (which will be considered under INDIANS) whether the aboriginal inhabitants of A. are to be considered, in an ethnological point of view, as substantially of one stock, it appears highly probable that they did not all spring from one and the same primeval band This view, of adventurers; in other words, that different colonies, voluntary or involuntary, must have reached the new continent at different times. to say nothing of the direct testimony of local traditions, seems to be in itself more than probable, when we consider that, through the length and breadth of the universal ocean, even the most insignificant specks of land had each received, at least, one influx of human wanderers. But, beyond such probabilities, and such traditions, the view in question is strengthened by facts, which it is difficult otherwise to explain-by diversities of language, by different degrees, or kinds, of civilisation, and, above all, by monuments, architectural or otherwise, of 197 AMERICA. defunct races of bygone days. On this supposition, had certainly visited A. The Scandinavians, after whence came the successive shoals of invaders? To having colonised Iceland in 875 A.D., and Greenland this question no direct answer can be given. We in 983, had, by the year 1000, discovered A. as can only scan the various routes by which, pre- far down as 41° 30′ N. lat., a point near to New viously to what we call the discovery of A., the old Bedford, in the state of Massachusetts. These world was most likely to people the American Scandinavians afterwards settled in the neighbourcontinent. To begin with the natural routes on the hood-the mother-country, most probably through side of the Pacific-Behring's Strait, the Aleutian the intervention of Iceland and Greenland, mainIsles, and the Polynesian Archipelagoes-we can taining an intercourse with the colony down to hardly conceive anything but barbarism having been the 14th c. But these enterprises do not appear conducted to A. by any one of them. The country to have left any special impress on the character or which stretches back from Behring's Strait to the prospects of the new continent, being more akin, Kolyma, may be asserted to be, without exception, perhaps, to similar incidents of yet earlier ages, than the most inhospitable portion even of Siberia; to the long-meditated and well-matured scheme of and, moreover, the strait itself has more prob- the illustrious Genoese. Subsequently to the Scandiably been a channel of migration from America navian discovery, and previous to that of Columbus, than from Asia, the Tchuktchi of the latter regard- A. is believed by some to have been visited by a ing themselves rather as a branch, than as the Welsh prince. In Cardoc's Historie of Cambria_it stem, of the Tchuktchi of the former. With respect, is stated that Madoc, son of Owen Gwynnedd, again, both to the Aleutian Isles and the Polyne- prince of Wales, set sail westward in 1170 with a sian Archipelagoes, the successive stepping-stones in small fleet, and after a voyage of several weeks, either series, instead of being presumed to have been landed in a region totally different both in its inhaso many halts for Asiatic Columbuses and Magellans, bitants and productions from Europe. Madoc is must rather be viewed as each a mother-country to supposed to have reached the coast of Virginia a new colony, as each a point of departure for a Neither this, however, if true, nor the earlier Scandifresh swarm. Thus would the ever-aggravating navian expeditions, can be said even to have formed blight of isolation-exemplified even in the old a connecting-link between the A. of the red man world among the Laplanders, the Kamtchadales, and the A. of his white brother. Even if the northand the Hottentots-prepare at each remove a men had possessed resources worthy of their heroic deeper and deeper barbarism to land at last on courage, the old world was not yet ripe for the the western shores of A. Further, if civilisation, appropriation of the new. as certainly appears to have been the case, ever did find its way to A., it must have come directly and immediately from the old world, and that under circumstances and conditions of by no means a favourable character. In remote times, such accidental, or, to speak more correctly, unintentional visits of Europeans and Asiatics may have occurred, as we know to have actually taken place in more modern days. Japanese junks have repeatedly been driven, by stress of weather, across the Pacific to the new world; and again, on the Atlantic, the easterly trades, within eight years after Columbus's earliest voyage, wafted the unconscious Portuguese to Brazil, during their second voyage to India-the very first, in fact, which they had attempted by steering clear of the headlands of Africa. Such incidents, however frequently they might have happened, were much more likely to civilise existing communities than to found new ones; and it is at least a curious fact, that the only aboriginal nations which could be regarded as in any sense civilised at the date of the Spanish conquest, pointed in their traditions to such events as we have endeavoured to describe. Mexico and Peru had each had its Cecrops, or semi-divine civiliser -the former referring him to the east across the Atlantic, and the latter to the west, across the Pacific. How far such hypotheses may account for the admitted facts, we are not left altogether to conjecture. Isolated individuals of our own nation have enabled us to bring the light of the present to bear on the past. When we consider what William Adams achieved in Japan, two hundred years ago, and what John Young and James Brooke have, more recently, effected in the Sandwich Islands and in Borneo, we can perhaps the more easily understand certain undeniable traces and traditions of aboriginal civilisation. Discovery. Whatever may have been the kind and degree of aboriginal civilisation, A. was not destined to be the perpetual inheritance of the red man. New actors were to appear on the scene, before whom the old possessors were in a great measure to pass away. Previously to the times of Columbus, Europeans 198 At the end of the 15th c., however, science and politics were alike strengthening Europe for its task. The mariner's compass and the astrolabe had facilitated long voyages out of sight of land; while, in almost every country of Christendom, various causes were consolidating government, and promoting the growth of population-a position which derives, perhaps, its best illustration from the fact that the capture of Granada-the last foothold of the Moslem in Spain-preceded by only a few months the discovery of A. Columbus (q. v) set out on his great enterprise to discover A. under the patronage of the crown of Spain, on Friday, the 3d of August 1492; at which date, properly speaking, begins the deeply interesting history of A. Had the Atlantic been broader, or had not the easterly trades wafted Columbus almost on a parallel from the Canaries to the Bahamas, he must have failed in his bold attempt; and, in fact, those same easterly trades, assisted by a still nearer approach of the two continents, speedily proved their own value in this respect by carrying the Portuguese, without their own consent, to the shores of Brazil. Nay, Columbus's discovery of A., if not so accidental, was quite as unintentional as that of the Portuguese. It was towards the East that his hopes directed his western course, hopes whose supposed fulfilment still lives in the misapplication to the new world of the terms Indian and Indies. Much of our subsequent knowledge of America has been owing to the same desire of reaching the E. Indies that led to its discovery. The gorgeous East was the aim alike of Davis, Baffin, and Hudson at the north, and of Magellan, Schouten, and Lemaire at the south, to say nothing of the earlier enterprise of Balboa on the Isthmus of Darien; while, under a similar impulse, the French of Canada were ascending lake after lake as nature's ready-made highway to the same goal. Even to more recent times may these remarks be applied. While the eastern coasts of Africa, and the upper shores of Asia, as not bearing on the grand question of oriental traffic, were comparatively neglected and forgotten, our own Cook and Vancouver, in quest of a passage AMERICA. between the two oceans, surveyed every nook and the express purpose of entering, if possible, Balboa's cranny of A. from Columbia River to Behring's Great South Sea, found his way into the La Plata or Strait. Nor yet have the aspirations of Columbus and his noble band of successors and imitators been altogether disappointed. That same continent which, in their case, barred a westward advance along nearly the whole interval between the arctic and antarctic circles, has to us already become, or is gradually becoming, more than a substitute for the ocean which it was found so extensively to displace. By means of the railway across the Isthmus of Panama, the Caribbean Sea, whether for passengers or for goods, is virtually nearer to the Pacific than an open channel could have Nor is it rendered it to any sea-going vessels. merely across the scanty span of Central A. that The Pacific art is outstripping nature in the race. Railroad now spans the vast territory of the United States, from Omaha to San Francisco, and brings the east and west shores of the great continent of North America within three days' journey from each other. The length of this line is nearly 2000 miles. Nor is this the only line of communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The Pennsylvanian Railroad, originally connecting Philadelphia with Pittsburg, now embraces an uninterrupted line from ocean to ocean, with numerous branch lines, and forms the longest line of railway in the world, being 4000 miles in length. But Columbus found something better than what he himself or his successors and imitators looked for. He had discovered a land which, besides eclipsing India in the richness and variety of its commerce, was to confer on Europe a still more solid benefit. Colonisation, which, since the early ages of Greece, had slumbered for 2000 years, received an impetus, which, after building up empires in the West, was to build up others in an East richer far than that which was so long the loadstar of European navigators-an east where, almost without a metaphor, the grass was to be wool, and the stones to be gold. The first-fruits of Columbus's enterprise were the Bahamas, Watling's Island probably being the spot where he landed on the 11th of October 1492. Without attempting, in so summary a sketch as this, to distinguish the results of each of his four voyages from each other, it may be sufficient to state that this great man, besides Hispaniola, or St Domingo, Cuba, Jamaica, and others of the Antilles, discovered and explored Central A. from Honduras southward along the coast of Veragua, and South A. from the mouths of the Orinoco westward, as far as Margarita. It was on this last-mentioned scene of his operations that he was followed by Hojeda, whose pilot, Amerigo Vespucci (q. v.), has been allowed to wrest from Columbus the glory of giving his name to the new world. Within twenty years after Columbus's first discovery, Ponce de Leon discovered Florida; and, what was certainly of far more consequence, he ascertained that, through the strait which separated that peninsula from the Bahamas, there constantly ran a strong current to the north-east. In 1513, again, just one year later, Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien to the Great South Sea, or, as it was afterwards named, the Pacific Ocean. About thirteen years before this last event, almost immediately after Columbus's own continental explorations, the interval left between his most southerly point from Honduras, and his most westerly point from the Orinoco, was, in a great measure, filled up by the voyage of Bastidas. To the south, again, of the Orinoco, Pinzon and Solis sailed along the continent down to 40° S. lat., between the years 1500 and 1514. The former, after anticipating, by a few months, the Portuguese on the shores of Brazil, had seen the Amazon; and the latter, sent out for Plate, being there slain by the neighbouring natives. To pass now to the western coast of A. The conquerors of Mexico and Peru effected, in a few years, more perhaps than they left behind them for future ages to effect, ranging along the coast from the southern extremity of Chili to the peninsula and Gulf of California. Beyond Lower California, the only direction in which there was much to do, the English Drake, whose voyage took place in 1578, divided with the Spaniards the credit of having discovered Upper California. For nearly two centuries, excepting the half-fabulous voyages of Fonte and Fuca, the Spaniards and the English alike slumbered over their task; and it was not till towards the close of the last century, that Cook and Vancouver co-operated with Spanish and American navigators in dispelling the mystery that had so long hung over the northwest coast of A. To advert to inland discoveries: As early as 1537, within six years after the landing of Pizarro in Peru, and within two after the founding of Buenos Ayres, the Spaniards met each other on the eastern borders of Peru, from the opposite shores of the continent; and, in 1540, within three years more, they sent forth that eastward expedition which ended 199 AMERICA. in Orellana's exploration of the Amazon, from its source to its mouth. In the northern half of the continent, similar enterprises were of a much later date. It was in 1682 that the French first descended the Mississippi; it was in 1771 that Hearne traversed the wilderness from Hudson's Bay to the mouth of the Coppermine; and it was respectively in 1789 and 1793 that Alexander Mackenzie reached the mouth of the river that bears his name, and passed through what is now British Columbia, to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Colonisation.-Among the European powers that colonised A., the most prominent were Spain, Portugal, France, and England. colonisation, were at first less energetic than those of Spain. In fact, Portugal, which had doubled the The efforts of Portugal, in the cause of American Cape of Good Hope in the year 1497, was so zealously engaged in the East as to allow an age to elapse before sending any colony to Brazil. The discovery of the country took place in 1500; but its colonisa tion only in 1531, or rather 1548. Within 32 years thereafter, in 1580, Brazil, at the same time as Portugal itself, was annexed to the Spanish monarchy, partly into the hands of the revolted Hollanders. In 1640, Brazil, as well as Portugal, threw off the soon afterwards falling, in this its new character, But the continued presence of the latter retarded the progress of the colony. It was only after their Spanish yoke with the help of the Dutch settlers. expulsion, that the Portuguese, who had lost nearly everything in India, turned their attention more largely to Brazil. It accordingly became the most flourishing colony, as such, to the south of the English settlements; and, as the refuge of the House of Braganza from French domination, it received, about fifty years ago, an impetus which has rendered it, as an independent state, the most flourishing power of Southern A. Lawrence and the Mississippi, may be said rather to have pitched camps than to have planted colonies, France, as the claimant to the basins of the St in those vast possessions. She regarded A. chiefly as a supplementary battle-field for England and herself. Every French settlement was but an inert part of a political machine, powerful, indeed, but unwieldy, expensive, and unproductive. The government was everything, and the individual subject was nothing. Hence, neither Louisiana nor Canada at all realised our idea of a colony. In corroboration of this may be cited two authentic and official facts. As an encouragement to marriage, rewards and exemptions were held out to the parents of three children; and the erection of a dwelling on a lot of less than forty arpents (about thirty-two acres) was prohibited by a royal ordinance. In 1762, France gave up Canada to England, and, as an indirect concession also to the same power, transferred Louisiana to Spain-events which, singularly enough, did much to facilitate France's grand scheme, the separation from England of her old colonies. Spain, of course, took the lead, having, with few exceptions, accomplished its task before any rival state had entered on its share of the work. In one respect, its colonies differed from all others on the new continent. Spain alone came in contact with civilisation, such as it was among the aborigines; and, accordingly, in the cases of Mexico and Peru, colonisation required to be preceded by something like regular war and formal conquest. But, notwithstanding this peculiar obstacle, the colonies of Spain grew at first with a rapidity which, perhaps, has scarcely found its parallel even in the somewhat congenial case of Australia. As an illustration of this for the statement needs no proof-it was colonial resources that armed Cortes and Pizarro for their respective enterprises. Without the direct and immediate aid, in either instance, of the old country, Cuba, within twenty-seven years after the first discovery, equipped the conquerors of Mexico; while the town of Panama, only twelve years later, sent forth the adventurers that were to subjugate Peru. So unexampled a degree of vigour and vitality continued to advance in Spain's transatlantic possessions, precisely while they were so organised and conducted as to afford scope to individual ambition. Never, perhaps, was this scope sufficiently free and full, for, even from the beginning, government often embarrassed and blighted the fairest schemes by its jealous and suspicious interference. But, for a time, it generally found its account in tolerating the unrestricted liberty, or licence, of its instruments. It was, therefore, only after law and order were established, and the original actors had disappeared from the scene, that the authorities of the mother-country stereotyped, as it were, their despotism along the all in the work of colonisation, was the last in the length and breadth of every colony. From that field among the four powers already mentioned. England, the most energetic and successful of moment, vigour and vitality were succeeded by stag- Among her continental colonies, to say nothing of nation and torpor. Still, with such elements of pros- Newfoundland, Virginia, the oldest, was established perity on every side-above the earth and below itmaterial interests could not fail to flourish. the soul had fled; the body alone remained behind. these two exceptions, the remaining eleven were, one in 1607, just four years after the union of the crowns; Under these circumstances, Spain, though continuing and all, founded during that period of civil and But and Georgia, the youngest, as late as 1733. With to claim the entire continent to the north, more espe- religious troubles which, in the mother-country's cially on the Pacific, did very little to enforce its own history, sent one Stuart to the scaffold, and pretensions. To this remark, New Mexico and Upper drove another into exile. In 1620, Massachusetts California were the only exceptions. before 1594 that New Mexico was at all occupied; 1631 respectively, New Hampshire and Connecticut and it was not till a century later that the province, were first settled; in 1634, Maryland was granted It was not was occupied by the Puritan fathers; in 1623 and after ten years of bush-fighting, was finally subdued; to Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic nobleman; in while it was only in 1767 that the Franciscans, on 1636, Rhode Island became a refuge from the secbehalf of Spain, took possession of Upper California. tarian intolerance of Massachusetts; in 1653, North But Spain never abandoned the hope of extending Carolina became an offshoot from Virginia; in 1664, its dominions towards the north-west coast. late as 1790, that power, while restoring Nootka from the Dutch; in 1670, South Carolina was estabSound, and acknowledging England's right of lished; and in 1682, Pennsylvania was granted to As New York, New Jersey, and Delaware were taken planting other settlements, took the precaution, William Penn, the Quaker, continuing to be a proprieuseless as it proved, of expressly reserving a similar tary government down to the Revolution. In nearly right to itself; and it was only in 1819, nearly thirty all these cases, the civil and religious liberties for years later, that Spain formally ceded to the United which chiefly the colonists expatriated themselves States all its claims to the coast above the parallel were secured by liberal, nay, virtually republican of 42°. See further under the separate head of charters. Subject only to the appointment of a AMERICA, SPANISH. governor on the part of the crown, every colony was 200 |