ILLUSTRATIONS. Logging in the far West Richmond, Va., and the Washington Monument Flowers of Peace . Silver Mining in Nevada The Product of the Pacific Silver Mines Inspection Car on the Great Pacific Railway, approaching St. Lake Horace Greeley's Birthplace The Art Gallery at the Centennial Exhibition Portrait of William Cullen Bryant Portrait of President Garfield Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Vassar College Observatory An American Railway Station An Ocean Steamer Principal Building of Wellesley College, seen over Lake Waban Longfellow - His Portrait and Birthplace in Portland, Me. Stone Hall, Wellesley College Portrait of William Dean Howells Symbols of our Age xxiii 535 539 544 549 553 555 559 564 568 572 577 579 583 584 586 591 595 596 598 HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CHAPTER I. COLUMBUS THE DISCOVERER. There shall come a time in later ages, when Ocean shall relax his chains and a vast continent appear, and a pilot shall find new worlds and Thule shall be no more Earth's bound. - Seneca's Medea, ii. 371. T CARAVELS OF COLUMBUS. HE history of the New World is entered by the gate of Romance. For many centuries the inhabitants of the Eastern continents had been looking to the westward for an undiscovered land of marvels. Plato had told the story of the famous island of Atlantis, describing with fascinating minuteness, the salubrity of the climate, the beauty of the natural scenery, the lofty mountains, abundant rivers, useful animals, rich mineral resources, the happiness of the sturdy and wealthy people who had the good fortune to be its inhabitants. The information regarding this fortunate land he asserted had been derived by Solon from an old priest in Egypt. It cannot now be determined that there was any other foundation than the imagination for the belief that there existed another continent beyond the Pillars of Hercules, but certain it is that as the idea that the earth was spherical in form became more and more firmly fixed in the minds of men, the opinion rapidly gained ground that the Eastern continents were but comparatively a small portion of the land of the world. The growth of this belief constitutes an interesting study. Both the shape and the size of the globe were unknown in ancient times. The earth was at first supposed to be a stationary plain, but at as early a date as the seventh century before Christ, Anaximander of Miletus, held that it was of cylindrical form. Four centuries later, Eratosthenes, the learned librarian of Alexandria, the founder of geodesy, who first raised geography to the rank of a science, considered the globe an immovable sphere, and constructed maps on mathematical principles, using for the first time, parallels of longitude and latitude. Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer, in the second century after Christ, re-asserted the spherical form of the earth, using the good reasons that were afterwards presented by Copernicus (1543). They had been proved true by the circumnavigation of the globe by Magalhaens, in 1519. Eratosthenes calculated that the earth was 252,000 "stadia" in circumference, but the unit of his measure is lost; and Pliny estimated this at 31,500 Roman miles, or a little over 28,000 English miles. In the ninth century, during the caliphate of Almamoun, the Arabian astronomers fixed the circumference of THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE. 3 the earth at about 24,000 miles. Sir John Mandeville, the English traveller, placed it at 20,425 miles, "in roundness and circuit above and beneath," but Columbus thought it considerably less, and believed that the shores of Asia were proportionally nearer to the Azores. The ancient estimates were too great, and the later measures too small, but the mistakes of Columbus exerted an important influence upon history, for had he known the actual distance from Europe to Asia, measured westward, he would never have ventured to try to cross the vast distance in his insignificant vessels. One of the most marked utterances of the ancients regarding the fabled land to the westward, is that of Seneca, a translation of which by archbishop Whately, is given at the head of this chapter. This philosopher, a native of Cordova in Spain, and teacher of the Emperor Nero, died in the year 65. His lines crystallize the thoughts that had long been current, perhaps giving them a more prophetic tone than any other than a philosopher and a poet would have used. Readers of Dante are familiar with the belief that the Terrestrial Paradise existed on the other side of the globe, at the antipodes of Jerusalem a point by the way, in the Pacific Ocean, near Tahiti. The desire to know where Paradise had been was one of the most firmly fixed in the mediæval mind. It was discussed in the fourth century with rapturous eloquence, by St. Basil and St. Ambrose, in their works on Paradise. They represented that there pure and eternal pleasures were furnished to every sense, the air was always balmy, the skies serene, and the inhabitants enjoyed perpetual youth and bliss without a care. |