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TH

HE more or less legendary voyages of discovery attributed to the Northmen, and the attempts made by them to colonize the new world may be set aside; for neither sufficient historical data nor definite traces of such occupation remain. We first tread on firm ground in 1492, when Columbus, making his hazardous way over hitherto unknown seas, landed on an island of the Bahamas and demonstrated to Europe the existence of new lands beyond the Atlantic. Fired by his example, other voyagers sailed to the West and widened the area of discovery. John Cabot, setting out in 1497 under the auspices of the English crown, found New foundland or Labrador; Ponce de Leon, in the service of Spain, discovered Florida in 1513; while in 1524 Verrazzano, sailing under the French flag, explored the coast from the present North Carolina to Cape Cod. The Spaniards, who founded a settlement. at St. Augustine in 1565, gave the name Florida to the southern part of

* Revised by William MacDonald, Professor of American History, Brown University.

the continent; France called the northern part Canada, or New France; while England, relying upon the discoveries of Cabot and his successors, laid claim to the whole northern portion of the coast and interior.

In 1606, after an unsuccessful attempt by Sir Walter Raleigh and others to plant a colony in Virginia, James I. granted to the Virginia Company all that part of North America between the 34th and 45th parallels of latitude. The first permanent settlement was made at Jamestown in 1607. In 1614 Captain John Smith, who had helped to establish the Virginia settlement, explored the coast of New England and gave that region its name. Six years later (1620) a company of Pilgrims, or Separatists, who had been driven from England and taken refuge in Holland, planted a town at Plymouth. In 1628 the Massachusetts Bay Company began its colony at Salem, and in 1691 absorbed the Plymouth colony under a new charter issued by William and Mary.

Meantime Henry Hudson, an English navigator in Dutch employ, had

sailed up the Hudson River in 1609, and in 1614 a Dutch settlement was made on Manhattan Island. The Dutch West India Company, formed in 1621, received from their government a large grant of land on both sides of the Hudson, extending west to the Delaware River and south to include the present State of Delaware. This region was named New Netherland. The Swedes, too, settled on the west side of Delaware Bay, but the enterprise did not prosper, and New Sweden was conquered and annexed by the Dutch in 1655.

In 1625 the territory north of the Massachusetts Bay colony, between the Merrimac and Kennebec rivers, was granted to Captain John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, under the name of the Province of Maine. The grant was divided in 1629, and the southern portion, as far as the Piscataqua River, became New Hampshire. Rhode Island, first settled in 1636, received a royal charter in 1663, and the Connecticut settlements, begun in 1636, were united as one colony in 1662.

In 1664, war having broken out between England and Holland, Charles II. granted to his brother James, Duke of York, an extensive region which included the whole of New Netherland. The duke sent a fleet to take possession, and Governor Stuyvesant peaceably surrendered. The name of New Amsterdam was changed to New York, and the same name was given to the

province. The southern part of the territory was sold afterward to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, and the new colony was called New Jersey. In 1681 what are now Penn sylvania and Delaware were granted by Charles II. to William Penn. In 1703 Delaware became a separate colony.

Soon

The region between Virginia and the Spanish territory in Florida was granted by Charles II. in 1663 and 1665 to a group of English noblemen and named Carolina. In 1729 the grant was divided and became North Carolina and South Carolina. after the Virginian settlement, Lord Baltimore, in 1632, obtained from the king a charter for Maryland, so named in honor of the queen, Henrietta Maria. Georgia, the most southern of the English colonies, was founded in 1732.

Much of what is now the State of Maine was originally granted to the Earl of Stirling. In 1664 the eastern portion, as far as the St. Croix River, was added to the province of New York, Massachusetts later bought the Gorges claim, and in 1691 Maine became a part of the Massachusetts colony.

The thirteen "original colonies," as they were called, were thus New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.