Introductory American History

Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

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  • INTRODUCTION.
  • INTRODUCTORY AMERICAN HISTORY
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    INTRODUCTORY AMERICAN HISTORY

    BY

    HENRY ELDRIDGE BOURNE AND ELBERT JAY BENTON

    PROFESSORS OF HISTORY IN WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

    1912

    INTRODUCTION.

    This volume is the introductory part of a course in American history embodying the plan of study recommended by the Committee of Eight of the American Historical Association.[1] The plan calls for a continuous course running through grades six, seven, and eight. The events which have taken place within the limits of what is now the United States must necessarily furnish the most of the content of the lessons. But the Committee urge that enough other matter, of an introductory character, be included to teach boys and girls of from twelve to fourteen years of age that our civilization had its beginnings far back in the history of the Old World. Such introductory study will enable them to think of our country in its true historical setting. The Committee recommend that about two-thirds of one year's work be devoted to this preliminary matter, and that the remainder of the year be given to the period of discovery and exploration.

    The plan of the Committee of Eight emphasizes three or four lines of development in the world's history leading up to American history proper.

    First, there was a movement of conquest or colonization by which the ancient civilized world, originally made up of communities like the Greeks and Phoenicians in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean Seas, spread to southern Italy and adjacent lands. The Roman conquest of Italy and of the barbarian tribes of western Europe expanded the civilized world to the shores of the Atlantic. Within this greater Roman world new nations grew up. The migration of Europeans to the American continent was the final step.

    Second, accompanying the growth of the civilized world in extent was a growth of knowledge of the shape of the earth, or of what we call geography. Columbus was a geographer as well as the herald of an expanding world.

    A third process was the creation and transmission of all that we mean by civilization. Here, as the Committee remark, the effort should be to “show, in a very simple way, the civilization which formed the heritage of those who were to go to America, that is, to explain what America started with.”

    The Committee also suggest that it is necessary “to associate the three or four peoples of Europe which were to have a share in American colonization with enough of their characteristic incidents to give the child some feeling for the name 'England,' 'Spain,' 'Holland,' and 'France.'“

    No attempt is made in this book to give a connected history of Greece, Rome, England, or any other country of Europe. Such an attempt would be utterly destructive of the plan. Only those features of early civilization and those incidents of history have been selected which appear to have a vital relation to the subsequent fortunes of mankind in America as well as in Europe. They are treated in all cases as introductory. Opinions may differ upon the question of what topics best illustrate the relation. The Committee leaves a wide margin of opportunity for the exercise of judgment in selection. In the use of a textbook based on the plan the teacher should use the same liberty of selection. For example, we have chosen the story of Marathon to illustrate the idea of the heroic memories of Greece. Others may prefer Thermopylae, because this story seems to possess a simpler dramatic development. In the same way teachers may desire to give more emphasis to certain phases of ancient or mediaeval civilization or certain heroic persons treated very briefly in this book. Exercises similar to those inserted at the end of each chapter offer means of supplementing work provided in the text.

    The story of American discovery and exploration in the plan of the Committee of Eight follows the introductory matter as a natural culmination. In our textbook we have adhered to the same plan of division. The work of the seventh grade will, therefore, open with the study of the first permanent English settlements.

    The discoveries and explorations are told in more detail than most of the earlier incidents, but whatever is referred to is treated, we hope, with such simplicity and definiteness of statement that it will be comprehensible and instructive to pupils of the sixth grade.

    At the close of the book will be found a list of references. From this teachers may draw a rich variety of stories and descriptions to illustrate any features of the subject which especially interest their classes. In the index is given the pronunciation of difficult names.

    We wish to express gratitude to those who have aided us with wise advice and criticism.

    [Footnote 1: The Study of History in Elementary Schools. Scribner's, 1909.]

    INTRODUCTORY AMERICAN HISTORY

    CHAPTER I. THE SCATTERED CHILDREN OF EUROPE

    THE EMIGRANT AND WHAT HE BRINGS TO AMERICA. The emigrant who lands
      at New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or any other seaport, brings with
      him something which we do not see. He may have in his hands only a
      small bundle of clothing and enough money to pay his railroad fare to
      his new home, but he is carrying another kind of baggage more valuable
      than bundles or boxes or a pocket full of silver or gold. This other
      baggage is the knowledge, the customs, and the memories he has brought
      from the fatherland.

      He has already learned in Europe how to do the work at which he hopes
      to labor in America. In his native land he has been taught to obey the
      laws and to do his duty as a citizen. This fits him to share in our
      self-government. He also brings great memories, for he likes to think
      of the brave and noble deeds done by men of his race. If he is a
      religious man, he worships God just as his forefathers have for
      hundreds of years. To understand how the emigrant happens to know what
      he does and to be what he is, we must study the history of the country
      from which he comes.

    ALL AMERICANS ARE EMIGRANTS. If this is true of the newcomer, it is
      equally true of the rest of us, for we are all emigrants. The Indians
      are the only native Americans, and when we find out more about them we
      may learn that they, too, are emigrants. If we follow the history of
      our families far enough back, we shall come upon the names of our
      forefathers who sailed from Europe. They may have come to America in
      the early days when there were only a few settlements scattered along
      our Atlantic coast, or they may have come since the Revolutionary War
      changed the English colonies into the United States.

      Like the Canadians, the South Americans, and the Australians, we are
      simply Europeans who have moved away. The story of the Europe in which
      our forefathers lived is, therefore, part of our story. In order to
      understand our own history we must know something of the history of
      England, France, Germany, Italy, and other European lands.

    WHAT THE EARLY EMIGRANTS BROUGHT. If we read the story of our
      forefathers before they left Europe, we shall find answers to several
      important questions. Why, we ask, did Columbus seek for new lands or
      for new ways to lands already known? How did the people of Europe live
      at the time he discovered America? What did they know how to do? Were
      they skilful in all sorts of work, or were they as rude and ignorant
      as the Indians on the western shores of the Atlantic?

      The answers which history will give to these questions will say that
      the first emigrants who landed on our shores brought with them much of
      the same knowledge and many of the same customs and memories which
      emigrants bring nowadays and which we also have. It is true that since
      the time the first settlers came men have found out how to make many
      new things. The most important of these are the steam-engine, the
      electric motor, the telegraph, and the telephone. But it is surprising
      how many important things, which we still use, were made before
      Columbus saw America.

      [Illustration: A MODERN STEAMSHIP AND AN EARLY SAILING VESSEL
      The early emigrants came in small sailing vessels and suffered great
      hardships]

      For one thing, men knew how to print books. This art had been
      discovered during the boyhood of Columbus. Another thing, men could
      make guns, while the Indians had only bows and arrows. The ships in
      which Columbus sailed across the ocean seemed very large and wonderful
      to the Indians, who used canoes. The ships were steered with the help
      of a compass, an instrument which the Indians had never seen.

      Some of the things which the early emigrants knew had been known
      hundreds or thousands of years before. One of the oldest was the art
      of writing. The way to write words or sounds was found out so long ago
      that we shall never know the name of the man who first discovered it.
      The historians tell us he lived in Egypt, which was in northern
      Africa, exactly where Egypt is now. Some men were afraid that the new
      art might do more harm than good. The king to whom the secret was told
      thought that the children would be unwilling to work hard and try to
      remember because everything could be written down and they would not
      need to use their memories. The Egyptians at first used pictures to
      put their words upon rocks or paper, and even after they made several
      letters of the alphabet their writing seemed like a mixture of little
      pictures and queer marks.

      [Illustration: Cleopatra EGYPTIAN PHONETIC WRITING]

    OLD AND NEW INVENTIONS. Those who first discover how to make things
      are called inventors, and what they make are called inventions. Now if
      we should write out a list of the most useful inventions, we could
      place in one column the inventions which were made before the days of
      Columbus and in another those which have been made since. With this
      list before us we may ask which inventions we could live without and
      which we could not spare unless we were willing to become like the
      savages. We should find that a large number of the inventions which we
      use every day belong to the set of things older than Columbus. This is
      another reason why, if we wish to understand our ways of living and
      working, we must ask about the history of the countries where our
      forefathers lived. It is the beginning of our own history.

      [Illustration: Phoenician Early Greek Early Latin English
      GROWTH OF LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET]

    A PLAN OF STUDY. The discovery of America was made in 1492, at the
      beginning of what we call Modern Times. Before Modern Times were the
      Middle Ages, lasting about a thousand years. These began three or four
      hundred years after the time of Christ or what we call the beginning
      of the Christian Era. All the events that took place earlier we say
      happened in Ancient Times. Much that we know was learned first by the
      Greeks or Romans who lived in Ancient Times.

      It is in the Middle Ages that we first hear of peoples called
      Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Dutchmen, Italians, Spaniards, and
      many others now living in Great Britain and on the Continent of
      Europe. We shall learn first of the Greeks and Romans and of what they
      knew and succeeded in doing, and then shall find out how these things
      were learned by the peoples of the Middle Ages and what they added to
      them. This will help us to find out what our forefathers started with
      when they came to live in America.

        QUESTIONS

        1. What does the emigrant from Europe bring to America besides his
        baggage?

        2. Why are all Americans emigrants?

        3. What did the earliest emigrants from Europe to America bring with
        them?

        4. Which do you think the more useful invention—the telephone or
        the art of writing? Who invented this art? Find Egypt on the map.
        How did Egyptian writing look?

        5. Why was it a help to Columbus that gunpowder and guns were
        invented before he discovered America?

        6. When did the Christian Era begin? What is meant by Ancient Times?
        By the Middle Ages? By Modern Times? In what Times was the art of
        writing invented? In what Times was the compass invented? In what
        Times was the telephone invented?

        EXERCISES

        1. Collect from illustrated papers, magazines, or advertising
        folders, pictures of ocean steamships. Collect pictures of sailing
        ships, ships used now and those used long ago.

        2. Collect from persons who have recently come to this country
        stories of how they traveled from Europe to America, and from ports
        like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to where they now live.

        3. Let each boy and girl in the schoolroom point out on the map the
        European country from which his parents or his grandparents or his
        forefathers came.

        4. Let each boy and girl make a list of the holidays which his
        forefathers had in the “fatherland” or “mother country.” Let each
        find out the manner in which the holidays were kept. Let each tell
        the most interesting hero story from among the stories of the mother
        country or fatherland. Let each find out whether the tools used in
        the old home were like the tools his parents use here.

    CHAPTER II. OUR EARLIEST TEACHERS

    ANCIENT CITIES THAT STILL EXIST. In Ancient Times the most
      important peoples lived on the shores of the Mediterranean. The
      northern shore turns and twists around four peninsulas. The first is
      Spain, which separates the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean;
      the second, shaped like a boot, is Italy; and the third, the end of
      which looks like a mulberry leaf, is Greece. Beyond Greece is Asia
      Minor, the part of Asia which lies between the Mediterranean Sea and
      the Black Sea.

      The Italians now live in Italy, but the Romans lived there in Ancient
      Times. The people who live in Greece are called Greeks, just as they
      were more than two thousand years ago. Many of the cities that the
      Greeks and Romans built are still standing. Alexandria was founded by
      the great conqueror Alexander. Constantinople used to be the Greek
      city of Byzantium. Another Greek city, Massilia, has become the modern
      French city of Marseilles. Rome had the same name in Ancient Times,
      except that it was spelled Roma. The Romans called Paris by the name
      of Lutetia, and London they called Lugdunum.

    RUINS WHICH SHOW HOW THE ANCIENTS LIVED. In many of these cities
      are ancient buildings or ruins of buildings, bits of carving, vases,
      mosaics, sometimes even wall paintings, which we may see and from
      which we may learn how the Greeks and Romans lived. Near Naples are
      the ruins of Pompeii, a Roman city suddenly destroyed during an
      eruption of the volcano Vesuvius.

      For hundreds of years the city lay buried under fifteen or twenty feet
      of ashes. When these were taken away, the old streets and the walls of
      the houses could be seen. No roofs were left and the walls in many
      places were only partly standing, but things which in other ancient
      cities had entirely disappeared were kept safe in Pompeii under the
      volcanic ashes.

      The traveler who walks to-day along the ruined streets can see how its
      inhabitants lived two thousand years ago. He can visit their public
      buildings and their private houses, can handle their dishes and can
      look at the paintings on their walls or the mosaics in the floors. But
      interesting as Pompeii is, we must not think that its ruins teach us
      more than the ruins of Rome or Athens or many other ancient cities.
      Each has something important to tell us of the people who lived long
      ago.

    ANCIENT WORDS STILL IN USE. The ancient Greeks and Romans have left
      us some things more useful than the ruins of their buildings. These
      are the words in our language which once were theirs, and which we use
      with slight changes in spelling. Most of our words came in the
      beginning from Germany, where our English forefathers lived before
      they settled in England. To the words they took over from Germany they
      added words borrowed from other peoples, just as we do now. We have
      recently borrowed several words from the French, such as tonneau and
      limousine, words used to describe parts of an automobile, besides the
      name automobile itself, which is made up of a Latin and a Greek word.

      [Illustration: RUINS OF A HOUSE AT POMPEII The houses of the
      better sort were built with an open court in the center]

      In this way, for hundreds of years, words have been coming into our
      language from other languages. Several thousand have come from Latin,
      the language of the Romans; several hundred from Greek, either
      directly or passed on to us by the Romans or the French. The word
      school is Greek, and the word arithmetic was borrowed from the French,
      who took it from the Greeks. Geography is another word which came,
      through French and Latin, from the Greeks, to whom it meant that which
      is written about the earth. The word grammar came in the same way. The
      word alphabet is made by joining together the names of the first two
      Greek letters, alpha and beta.

      Many words about religion are borrowed from the Greeks, and this is
      not strange, for the New Testament was written in Greek. Some of these
      are Bible, church, bishop, choir, angel, devil, apostle, and martyr.
      The Greeks have handed down to us many words about government,
      including the word itself, which in the beginning meant “to steer.”
      Politics meant having to do with a polis or city. Several of the
      words most recently made up of Greek words are telegraph, telephone,
      phonograph, and thermometer.

    MANY WORDS BORROWED FROM THE ROMANS. Nearly ten times as many of
      our words are borrowed from the Romans as from the Greeks, and it is
      not strange, because at one time the Romans ruled over all the country
      now occupied by the Italians, the French, the Spaniards, a part of the
      Germans, and the English, so that these peoples naturally learned the
      words used by their conquerors and governors.

    INTERESTING ANCIENT STORIES. In the poems and tales which we learn
      at home or at school are stories which Greek and Roman parents and
      teachers taught their children many hundred years ago. We learn them
      partly because they are interesting, and because they please or amuse
      us, and partly because they appear so often in our books that it is
      necessary to know them if we would understand our own books and
      language. Who has not heard of Hercules and his Labors, of the Search
      for the Golden Fleece, the Siege of Troy, or the Wanderings of
      Ulysses? We love modern fairy stories and tales of adventure, but they
      are not more pleasing than these ancient stories.

      [Illustration: THE PLAIN OF MARATHON]

    THE STORY OF THE GREEKS. Our language and our books are full of
      memories of Greek and Roman deeds of courage. The story of the Greeks
      comes before the story of the Romans, for the Greeks were living in
      beautiful cities, with temples and theaters, while the Romans were
      still an almost unknown people dwelling on the hills that border the
      river Tiber.

    MEMORIES OF GREEK COURAGE. The most heroic deeds of the Greeks took
      place in a great war between the Greek cities and the kingdom of
      Persia about five hundred years before Christ. In those days there was
      no kingdom called Greece, such as the geographies now describe.
      Instead there were cities, a few of which were ruled by kings, others
      by the citizens themselves. These cities banded together when any
      danger threatened them. Sometimes one city turned traitor and helped
      the enemy against the others. The most dangerous enemy the Greeks had,
      until the Romans attacked them, was the kingdom of Persia, which
      stretched from the Aegean Sea far into Asia. In the war with the
      Persians the Greeks fought three famous battles, at Marathon,
      Thermopylae, and Salamis, the stories of which men have always liked
      to hear and remember.

    PREPARING FOR MARATHON, 490 B.C. To the Athenians belong the
      glories of Marathon. They lived where the modern city of Athens now
      stands. The ruins of their temples and theaters still attract students
      and travelers to Greece. The plain of Marathon lay more than twenty
      miles to the northeast, and the roads to it led through mountain
      passes. When the Athenians heard that the hosts of the Great King of
      Persia were approaching, they sent a runner, Pheidippides by name, to
      ask aid of Sparta, a city one hundred and forty miles away, in the
      peninsula now called the Morea, where dwelt the sturdiest fighters of
      Greece. This runner reached Sparta on the second day, but the Spartans
      said it would be against their religious custom to march before the
      moon was full. The Athenians saw that they must meet the enemy
      alone—one small city against a mighty empire. They called their ten
      thousand men together and set out. On the way they were joined by a
      thousand more, the whole army of the brave little town of Plataea.

      [Illustration: GREEK SOLDIERS IN ARMS From a Greek vase of
      about the time of the battle of Marathon]

    HOW THE ATHENIANS WERE ARMED. Although the Persians had six times
      as many soldiers as the Athenians, they were not so well armed for
      hand to hand fighting. Their principal weapon was the bow and arrow,
      while the Greeks used the lance and a short sword. The Greek soldier
      was protected by his bronze helmet, solid across the forehead and over
      the nose; by his breastplate, a leathern or linen tunic covered with
      small metal scales, with flaps hanging below his hips; and by greaves
      or pieces of metal in front of his knees and shins. He was also
      protected by a shield, often long enough to reach from his face to his
      knees. According to a strange custom the Athenians were led by ten
      generals, each commanding one day in turn.

    THE BATTLE-GROUND. Marathon was a plain about two miles wide, lying
      between the mountains and the sea. From it two roads ran toward
      Athens, one along the shore where the hills almost reached the sea,
      the other up a narrow valley and over the mountains. The Athenians
      were encamped in this valley, where they could attack the Persians if
      they tried to follow the shore road.

      The Persians landed from their ships and filled the plain near the
      shore. They wanted to fight in the open plain because they had so many
      more soldiers than the Athenians and because they meant to use their
      horsemen. For some time the Athenians watched the Persians, not
      knowing what it was best to do. Half the generals did not wish to risk
      a battle, but Miltiades was eager to fight, for he feared that delay
      would lead timid citizens or traitors to yield to the Persians. He
      finally gained his wish, and on his day of command the battle was
      ordered.

    THE BATTLE. The Persians by this time had decided to sail around to
      the harbor of Athens and had taken their horsemen on board their
      ships. When they saw the Greeks coming they drew up their
      foot-soldiers in deep masses. The Athenians and their comrades—the
      Plataeans—soon began to move forward on the run. The Persians thought
      this madness, because the Greeks had no archers or horsemen. But the
      Greeks saw that if they moved forward slowly the Persians would have
      time to shoot arrows at them again and again.

      When the Greeks rushed upon the Persians the soldiers at the two ends
      of the Persian line gave way and fled towards the shore. In the
      center, where the best Persian soldiers stood, the Greeks were not at
      first successful, and were forced to retreat. But those who had been
      victorious came to their rescue, attacked the Persians in the rear,
      and finally drove them off. The Persians ran into the sea to reach the
      ships, and the Athenians followed them. Some of the Greeks were so
      eager in the fight that they seized the sides of the ships and tried
      to keep them from being rowed away, but the Persians cut at their
      hands and made them let go.

      [Illustration: THE STRAITS OF SALAMIS Where a great sea-fight
      between Greeks and Persians took place]

    THE NEWS OF THE VICTORY. The Athenians had won a victory of which
      they were so proud that they meant it never should be forgotten. Their
      city had suddenly become great through the courage and self-sacrifice
      of her citizens. One hundred and ninety-two Greeks had fallen, and on
      the battle-field their comrades raised over their bodies a mound of
      earth which still marks their tomb. The victors sent the runner
      Pheidippides to bear the news to Athens. Over the hills he ran until
      he reached the market place, and there, with the message of triumph on
      his lips, he fell dead.

    OTHER VICTORIES OF THE GREEKS. Marathon was only the beginning of
      Greek victories over the Persians, only the first struggle in the long
      wars between Europe and Asia. Ten years after Marathon the Spartans
      won everlasting glory by their heroic stand at the Pass of Thermopylae —three hundred Greeks against the mighty army of the Persian king
      Xerxes. The barbarian hordes passed over their bodies, took the road
      to Athens, burned the city, but were soon beaten in the sea-fight
      which took place on the waters lying between the mainland of Athenian
      territory and the island of Salamis. This victory was also due to
      Athenian courage and leadership, for the Athenians and their leader,
      Themistocles, were resolved to stay and fight, although the other
      Greeks wanted to sail away.

    WHY MARATHON IS REMEMBERED. The victories of Marathon and Salamis
      were great not only because small armies of Greeks put to flight the
      hosts of Persia, they were great because they saved the independence
      of Greece. If the Greeks had become the subjects and slaves of Persia,
      they would not have built the wonderful buildings, or carved the
      beautiful statues, or written the books which we study and admire.
      When we think of the Greeks as our first teachers we feel as proud of
      their victories as if they were our own victories.

    THE WARS OF THE GREEK CITIES. The Athenians had done the most in
      winning the victory over the Persians, and therefore Athens was for
      many years the most powerful city in Greece. The Spartans were always
      jealous of the Athenians, and in less than a century after the victory
      of Marathon they conquered and humbled Athens. The worst faults of the
      Greeks were such jealousies and the desire to lord it over one
      another. Greek history is full of wars of city against city, Sparta
      against Athens, Corinth against Athens, and Thebes against Sparta. In
      these wars many heroic deeds were done, of which we like to read, but
      it is more important for us to understand how the Greeks lived.

        QUESTIONS

        1. What ancient cities still exist? Find them on the map.
        (For each difficult name find the pronunciation in the index.)

        2. What things do we find in the ruins of ancient cities which tell
        us how the people lived?

        3. From what country did most of our words come in the beginning?
        Why are they now called English? What peoples used the word
        geography before we did? About how many words do we get from the
        Greeks, and how many from the Romans?

        4. Which people became famous earlier, the Greeks or the Romans?
        Point out on the map the peninsula where each lived.

        5. Why do we like to remember the brave deeds of the Greeks?

        6. Find the city of Athens on the map. Find Sparta. Where
        was Marathon? What city won glory at Marathon?

        7. What were the worst faults of the Greeks?

        EXERCISES

        1. Collect pictures of ruined cities in Italy, Greece, and Asia
        Minor, from illustrated papers, magazines, or advertising folders.
        Collect postal cards giving such pictures.

        2. Choose the best one of the Greek stories mentioned in Chapter II,
        and tell it.

        3. Find out how differently soldiers now are clothed and armed from
        the way the Greek soldiers were.

        4. Find out why a long distance run is now called a “Marathon.”

    CHAPTER III. HOW THE GREEKS LIVED

    THE GREEK CITIES. The Greeks lived in cities so much of the time that
      we do not often think of them as ever living in the country. The
      reason for this was that their government and everything else
      important was carried on in the city. The cities were usually
      surrounded by high, thick stone walls, which made them safe from
      sudden attack. Within or beside the city there was often a lofty hill,
      which we should call a fort or citadel, but which they called the
      upper city or acropolis. There the people lived at first when they
      were few in number, and thither they fled if the walls of their city
      were broken down by enemies.

      In Athens such a hill rose two hundred feet above the plain. Its top
      was a thousand feet long, and all the sides except one were steep
      cliffs. On it the Athenians built their most beautiful temples.

    PRIVATE HOUSES. Unlike people nowadays the Greeks did not spend much
      money on their dwelling-houses. To us these houses would seem small,
      badly ventilated, and very uncomfortable. But what their houses lacked
      was more than made up by the beauty and splendor of the public
      buildings, halls, theaters, porticoes, and especially the temples.

    TEMPLES. The temples were not intended to hold hundreds of worshipers
      like the large churches of Europe and America to-day. Religious
      ceremonies were most often carried on in the open air. The Parthenon,
      the most famous temple of Ancient Times, was small. Its principal room
      measured less than one hundred feet in length. Part of this room was
      used for an altar and for the ivory and gold statue of the goddess
      Athena.

      [Illustration: THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS AS IT IS TO-DAY]

    THE PARTHENON. In a picture of the Parthenon, or of a similar temple,
      we notice the columns in front and along the sides. The Parthenon had
      eight at each end and seventeen on each side. They were thirty-four
      feet high. A few feet within the columns on the sides was the wall of
      the temple. Before the vestibule and entrances at the front and at the
      rear stood six more columns. The beauty of the marble from which
      stones and columns were cut might have seemed enough, but the builders
      carved groups of figures in the three-cornered space (called the
      pediment) in front between the roof and the stones resting upon the
      columns. The upper rows of stones beneath the roof and above the
      columns were also carved, and continuous carvings (called a frieze)
      ran around the top of the temple wall on the outside. The temple was
      not left a glistening white, but parts of it were painted in blue, or
      red, or gilt, or orange.

      [Illustration: THE TOP OF THE ACROPOLIS 2000 YEARS AGO The
      Parthenon is the large temple on the right]

    OTHER GREEK TEMPLES. This beautiful temple is now partly ruined. Ruins
      of other temples are on the Acropolis, and one better preserved,
      called the Theseum, stands on a lower hill. There are also similar
      ruins in many places along the shores of the Mediterranean. The most
      interesting are at Paestum in Italy, and at Girgenti in Sicily. Long
      before these temples were ruined they had taught the Romans how to
      construct one of the most beautiful kinds of buildings, and this the
      Romans later taught the peoples of western Europe.

    GREEK METHODS OF BUILDING STILL USED. If we look at our large
      buildings, we shall see much to remind us of the Greek buildings.
      Sometimes the exact form of the Greek building is imitated; sometimes
      this form is changed as the Romans changed it, or as it was changed by
      builders who lived after the time of the Romans. If the model of the
      whole building is not used, there are similar pillars, or gables, or
      the sculpture in the pediment and the frieze is imitated. The Greeks
      had three kinds of pillars, named Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The
      Doric is simple and solid, the Ionic shows in its capital, or top,
      delicate and beautiful curves, while the Corinthian is adorned with
      leaves springing gracefully from the top of the pillar.

      [Illustration: Doric Ionic Corinthian GREEK ORDERS OF
      ARCHITECTURE]

      [Illustration: RUINS OF THE GREEK THEATER AT EPIDAURUS]

    THEATERS. The first Greek theater was only a smooth open space near a
      hillside, with a tent, called a skene, or scene, in which the
      actors dressed. Later an amphitheater of stone seats was constructed
      on the hillside, and across the open end was placed the scene,
      which had been changed into a stone building. On its front sometimes a
      house or a palace was painted, just as nowadays theaters are furnished
      with painted scenery. In these open-air theaters thousands of people
      gathered. Plays were generally given as a part of religious festivals,
      and there were contests between writers to see which could produce the
      best play. Sometimes the plays followed one another for three days
      from morning until night. Many of them are so interesting that people
      still read them, after twenty-five hundred years. The Romans studied
      them, and so do modern men who are preparing themselves to write
      plays.

      [Illustration: THE MODERN STADIUM AT ATHENS]

    THE STADIUM. A building which somewhat resembled the theater was the
      stadium, where races were run. The difference was that it was oblong
      instead of half round. The most famous stadium, at Olympia, was seven
      hundred and two feet long, with raised seats on both sides and around
      one end of the running track. The other end was open. About fifty
      thousand persons used to gather there to watch the races.

    PORTICOES. There were other buildings, some for meeting places, some
      for gymnasiums, and still others called porticoes, where the judges
      held court or the city officers carried on their business. The
      porticoes were simply rows of columns, roofed over, with occasionally
      a second story. As they stretched along the sides of a square or
      market place they added much to the beauty of a city.

    GREEK SCULPTURE. We know that the Greeks were skilful sculptors
      because from the ruins of their cities have been dug wonderful marble
      and bronze statues which are now preserved in the great museums of the
      world, in Paris, London, Berlin, and Rome, and here in America, in New
      York and Boston. Museums which cannot have the original statues
      usually contain copies or casts of them in plaster. The statues are
      generally marred and broken, but enough remains to show us the
      wonderful beauty of the artist's work. Among the most famous are the
      Venus, of Melos (or “de Milo"), which stands in a special room in a
      museum called the Louvre in Paris; the Hermes in the museum of Olympia
      in Greece; and the figures from the Parthenon in the British Museum in
      London.

      [Illustration: THE DISCUS-THROWER (DISCOBOLOS) An ancient
      Greek statue now in the Vatican]

      Artists nowadays, like the Roman artists long ago, study the Greek
      statues and the Greek sculpture, in order that they may learn how such
      beautiful things can be made. They do not hope to excel the Greeks,
      but are content to remain their pupils.

    PAINTING AND POTTERY. The Greeks were also painters, makers of
      pottery, and workers in gold and silver. Many pieces of their
      workmanship have been discovered by those who have dug in the ruins of
      ancient buildings and tombs.

      [Illustration: A GREEK BOOK The upper picture, shows the book
      open.]

    WHAT THE BOYS WERE TAUGHT. The Greek boys were not very good at
      arithmetic, and even grown men used counting boards or their fingers
      to help them in reckoning. In learning to write they smeared a thin
      layer of wax over a board and marked on that. There was a kind of
      paper called papyrus, made from a reed which grew mostly in Egypt, but
      this was expensive. Rolls were made of sheets of it pasted together,
      and these were their books. One of the books the boys studied much was
      the poems of Homer—the Iliad and the Odyssey—which tell about the
      siege of Troy and the wanderings of Ulysses. Boys often learned these
      long poems by heart. They also stored away in their memories the
      sayings of other poets and wise men, so that they could generally know
      what to think, having with them so many good and wise thoughts put in
      such excellent words.

    GAMES AND EXERCISES FOR BOYS. It is not surprising that Greek boys
      knew how to play, but it is surprising that they played many of the
      games which boys play now, such as hide-and-seek, tug of war, ducks
      and drakes, and blind man's buff. They even “pitched pennies.” In
      school the boys were taught not only to read and write, but to be
      skilful athletes, and to play on the lyre, accompanying this with
      singing. The gymnasium was often an open space near a stream into
      which they could plunge after their exercises were over. They were
      taught to box, to wrestle, to throw the discus, and to hurl the spear.
      Military training was important for them, since all might be called to
      fight for the safety of their city.

    THE OLYMPIC GAMES. Boys and young men were trained as runners,
      wrestlers, boxers, and discus throwers, not only because they enjoyed
      these exercises and the Greeks thought them an important part of
      education, but also that they might bring back honors and prizes to
      their city from the great games which all the Greeks held every few
      years. The most famous of these games were held at Olympia. There the
      Greeks went from all parts of the country, carrying their tents and
      cooking utensils with them, because there were not enough houses in
      Olympia to hold so many people. Wars even were stopped for a time in
      order that the games might not be postponed.

    THE REWARDS OF THE VICTORS. The principal contest was a dash for two
      hundred yards, although there were longer races and many other kinds
      of contests. Unfortunately the Greeks liked to see the most brutal
      sort of boxing, in which the boxer's hands and arms were covered with
      heavy strips of leather stiffened with pieces of iron or lead. For the
      games men trained ten months, part of the time at Olympia. The prize
      was a crown of wild olive, and the winner returned in triumph to his
      city, where poets sang his praises, a special seat at public games was
      reserved for him, and often artists were employed to make a bronze
      statue of him to be set up in Olympia or in his own city.

      [Illustration: GREEK GAMES—RUNNING From an antique vase]

    THE GOVERNMENT OF ATHENS. The citizen of Athens, and of other Greek
      cities, had more to do with his government than do most Americans with
      theirs. As nearly all work was done by slaves, he had plenty of time
      to attend meetings. All the citizens could attend the great assembly,
      or ecclesia, where six thousand at least must be present before
      anything could be decided. By this assembly foreigners might be
      admitted to citizenship or citizens might be expelled, or ostracized,
      from Athens as hurtful to its welfare.

      There was a smaller council of five hundred which decided less
      important questions without laying them before the general assembly.
      This body was chosen by lot just as our juries are, but members of the
      council whose term had ended had a right to object to any new member
      as an unworthy citizen A tenth of the council ruled for a tenth of the
      year, and they chose their president by lot every day, so that any
      worthy man at Athens had a chance to be president for a day and a
      night.

      [Illustration: A DECREE OF THE COUNCIL—ABOUT 450 B.C.]

      Many citizens also served in the courts, for there were six thousand
      judges, and in deciding important cases as many as a thousand and one,
      or even fifteen hundred and one, took part. Before such large courts
      and assemblies it was necessary to be a good speaker to be able to win
      a case or persuade the citizens. Some of the greatest orators of the
      world were Athenians, the best known being Demosthenes.

    SOCRATES. The Athenians were not always just, although so many of them
      acted as judges. One court, composed of five hundred and one judges,
      condemned to death Socrates, the wisest man of the Greeks and one of
      the wisest in the world. He did not make speeches, or write books, or
      teach in school. He went about, in the market place, at the gymnasium,
      and on the streets, asking men, young and old, questions about what
      interested him most, that is, What is the true way to live? If people
      did not give him an answer which seemed good, he asked more questions,
      until sometimes they went away angry. Many of them thought because he
      asked questions about everything that he did not believe in anything,
      not even in the religion of his city.

      [Illustration: SOCRATES After the marble bust in the Vatican]

    THE DEATH OF SOCRATES, 399 B.C. After a while the enemies of Socrates
      accused him of being a wicked man who persuaded young men to be
      wicked. He was tried by an Athenian court, which made the terrible
      blunder of finding him guilty and condemning him to death. According
      to the Athenian custom he was obliged to drink a cup of poisonous
      hemlock. This he did, after talking to his friends cheerily about how
      a good man should live. As he wrote no books we have learned about him
      from his friends. The most famous of these was Plato, who is also
      counted among the wisest men that ever lived. The story of the lives
      of these men is another gift which the Greeks made to all who were to
      live after them, and it is quite as valuable as are the ways of
      building, artistic skill, or great poems and plays.

        QUESTIONS

        1. Why do we wish to know how the Greeks lived?

        2. What was an Acropolis? How does the Acropolis at Athens look?

        3. On the picture of the Parthenon point out the pediment. Show
        where the frieze was placed. Find on a map Paestum.

        4. What did the Greeks first mean by a scene? Why do we still
        study Greek plays? What is left of the Greek theaters?

        5. What was a stadium, a portico, a gymnasium? Do we have such
        buildings?

        6. How do we know that the Greeks made beautiful statues?

        7. What games for Greek boys were like our games? Tell about the
        great public games of the Greeks.

        8. How were the Greek rolls or books made?

        9. Tell the story of Socrates.

        EXERCISES

        1. Are there any buildings in your town which are like Greek
        buildings?

        2. Find in your town Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns.

        3. Get from a wall-paper dealer a sample of a frieze for a papered
        room.

        4. What is the difference between the government of Athens and the
        government of your town?

        5. What is the difference between the courts at Athens and the
        courts in your town?

        6. Are Olympic games held now? Where?

        7. Which prizes would you prefer, the prizes given to winners at
        Greek games or the prizes given to winners in our athletic games?

    CHAPTER IV. GREEK EMIGRANTS OR COLONISTS

    WHEN THE ATLANTIC WAS UNKNOWN. One of the most important things
      done by the men of Ancient Times was to explore the coasts and lands of
      Europe and to make settlements wherever they went. At first they knew
      little of the western and northern parts of Europe. Herodotus, a Greek
      whom we call the “Father of History,” and who was a great traveler,
      said, “Though I have taken vast pains, I have never been able to get an
      assurance from any eye-witness that there is any sea on the further side
      of Europe.” By the “further side” he meant “western,” and his remark
      shows that he did not know of the Atlantic Ocean. He understood that tin
      and amber came from the “Tin Islands,” which he called the “ends of the
      earth.” As tin came from England, it is plain that he had heard a little
      of that island.

      [Illustration: MAP OF THE WORLD AS DESCRIBED BY THE GREEK
      HISTORIAN HERODOTUS]

    GREEK EMIGRANTS. Long before Athens became a great and beautiful
      city the Greeks had begun to make settlements on distant shores. Those
      who lived on the western coast of Asia Minor, as well as those who lived
      where the kingdom of Greece is now, sent out colonists or emigrants. The
      Greek colonies were very important, because by them the ancient
      civilized world was made larger, just as by the settlement of America
      the modern world was doubled in size. The colonists sailed away from
      home for the same reasons which led our forefathers to leave England and
      Europe for America. They either hoped to find it easier in a new land to
      make a living and obtain property, or they did not like the way their
      city was ruled, and being unable to change this, resolved to build
      elsewhere a city which they could manage as they pleased.

    HOW THEY LOCATED A NEW CITY. There were several different lands to
      which they could go, just as the European of to-day may sail for the
      United States or South America or Australia. They could attempt to
      settle on the shores of the Black Sea, or cross over to northern Africa,
      or try to reach Italy and the more distant coasts of what are now France
      and Spain. In order to choose wisely, they generally asked the advice of
      the priests of their god Apollo at his temple at Delphi. These priests
      knew more about good places for settlements than most other persons,
      because travelers from everywhere came to Delphi and the priests were
      wise enough to inquire about all parts of the world.

      [Illustration: The territory occupied by the Greeks is
      indicated by solid black
    ]

      The story is told that one group of emigrants was advised to locate
      their new colony opposite the “city of the blind.” They discovered that
      these words meant that an earlier band of emigrants had passed by the
      wonderful harbor of the present city of Constantinople and had settled
      instead on the other shore of the Bosphorus. Taught by the oracle they
      chose the better place and began to build the city of Byzantium, which
      later became Constantinople.

    MOTHER AND DAUGHTER CITIES. Solemn ceremonies took place when
      colonists departed. They carried with them fire from the hearth of the
      mother city in order to light a similar fire on their new hearth, for
      every city had its hearthstone and on it a fire that was never quenched.
      The ties between the mother and the daughter city were close, and the
      enemies of one were the enemies of the other. He who wished to visit the
      colony usually went to the mother city to find a ship bound thither.

    WHERE THE SETTLEMENTS WERE MADE. When the Greek sailors first
      entered the Black Sea, they thought it a boundless ocean, and called it
      the Pontus, a word which means “The Main.” Until that time they had been
      accustomed to sail only from island to island in the Aegean Sea. After a
      while they made settlements all around the shores of the Black Sea, and
      in later times Athens drew from this region her supply of grain. Still
      more important settlements were made in Sicily and southern Italy, for
      it was through these settlements that some of the things the Greeks
      knew, like the art of writing, were taught to the Italian tribes and to
      the Romans.

    DANGERS OF THE VOYAGE. At first Greek sailors feared the dangers of the
      western Mediterranean as much as those of the Black Sea. They imagined
      that the huge, misshapen, and dreadful monsters Scylla and Charybdis
      lurked in the Straits of Messina waiting to seize and swallow the
      unlucky passer-by. On the slopes of Mount Aetna dwelt, they thought,
      hideous, one-eyed giants, the Cyclops, who fed their fierce appetites
      with the quivering flesh of many captives.

      [Illustration: GREEK RUINS AT PAESTUM IN ITALY]

    GREEKS IN THE WEST. The earliest settlement of the Greeks in Italy
      was at Cumae, on a headland at the entrance of the Bay of Naples. Later
      these colonists entered the bay and founded the “new city,” or Neapolis,
      which we call Naples. Finally there were so many Greek cities in
      southern Italy that it was named “Great Greece.” The Greeks also made
      settlements in what is now southern France and eastern Spain. The
      principal one was Massilia, or Marseilles. Through the traders of this
      city the ancient world obtained a supply of tin from Britain, a country
      which is now called England.

    GREEK COLONIES AS CENTERS OF CIVILIZATION. The Greeks in these
      colonies traded with the natives whose villages were near by, and many
      of the natives learned to live like the Greeks. In this way the Greeks
      became teachers of civilization, and the Greek world, which at first was
      made up of cities on the shores of the Aegean Sea, was spread from place
      to place along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea.

      [Illustration: A GREEK TRIREME]

    GREEK SHIPS. The ships of the Greeks were very different from
      modern vessels. Of course they were not driven by steam, nor did they
      rely as much on sails as modern sailing ships do. They had sails, but
      were driven forward mostly by their oars. The trireme, or ordinary
      war-ship, had its oars arranged in three banks, fifty men rowing at
      once. After these had rowed several hours, or a “watch,” another fifty
      took their places, and finally a third fifty, so that the ships could be
      rowed at high speed all the time. With the aid of its two sails a
      trireme is said to have gone one hundred and fifty miles in a day and a
      night. These boats were about one hundred and twenty feet long and
      fifteen feet wide. They could be rowed in shallow water, but were not
      high enough to ride heavy seas safely. They had a sharp beak, which,
      driven against an enemy's ship, would break in its sides. The Greek
      grain ships and freight boats were heavier and more capable of enduring
      rough weather.

      [Illustration: ALEXANDER THE GREAT After the bust in the
      Capitoline Museum, Rome]

    ALEXANDER THE GREAT, KING OF MACEDON FROM 336 TO 323 B.C. Greek
      ways of living were also carried eastward as well as westward. The
      enlargement of the Greek world in this direction was due to Alexander
      the Great, the most skilful soldier and the ablest leader of men among
      all the Greeks. Alexander was king of Macedon, and like the earlier
      Greeks he regarded the Persians as his enemies, and made war upon them.
      After conquering the Persians he marched across western Asia until he
      had reached the Indus River in India. He was a builder of cities as well
      as a conqueror. He founded seventy cities, and sixteen of them were
      named for him. The most important was the Alexandria which is still the
      chief seaport of Egypt. Greek became the language commonly spoken
      throughout the lands near the eastern Mediterranean. This is the reason
      why in later times the New Testament was written in Greek.

    ALEXANDRIA. Of this Greek world Athens ceased to be the center and
      Alexandria took its place. At Alexandria there was a great library which
      contained over five hundred thousand volumes or rolls. There also was
      the museum or university, in which many learned men were at work. The
      best known of these men was Euclid, who perfected the mathematics which
      we call geometry, and Ptolemy, whose ideas about geography and the shape
      and size of the globe Columbus carefully studied before he set out on
      his great voyage. Alexandria was also a center of trade and commerce.
      From Alexandria, because its ships were the first foreign ships to be
      admitted to a Roman port, the Romans gained their liking for many of the
      beautiful things which the Greeks made.

        QUESTIONS

        1. Why were the Greek colonies important? Why did the Greeks
        emigrate to the colonies?

        2. Point out on the map, the lands to which they might go.
        Name several cities which they built.

        3. What were the ties between the daughter and the mother city?

        4. Why was a part of southern Italy called Great Greece?

        5. Describe a Greek trireme and the way it was managed.

        6. Of what country was Alexander the Great king? When did he reign?
        How far east did he march? What did he do besides winning victories?

        7. Why was the city of Alexandria famous in Ancient Times?

        8. Of what help was Ptolemy to Columbus?

        EXERCISES

        1. Find out the colonies we have. For what purpose do Americans go
        to these colonies? Is it as hard to reach them as it was for the
        Greeks to reach their colonies?

        2. What country now has the most colonies?

        3. Learn and tell the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops.

        4. Find out what is meant at Constantinople by “the Golden Horn?”
        Who now live at Constantinople, at Naples, at Marseilles?

        5. Collect pictures of these cities.

        REVIEW

        (Chapters II, III, and IV)

        Ten things we owe to the Greeks:

        1. Many useful words.

        2. Many interesting tales.

        3. Many examples of heroism.

        4. Knowledge of how to construct beautiful buildings.

        5. How to carve beautiful statues, reliefs, and friezes.

        6. How to write great plays.

        7. How to speak before large audiences.

        8. Wise sayings of men like Socrates and Plato.

        9. Knowledge of geography and mathematics.

        10. Their work as colonists in teaching other peoples to live, and
        think and act as they did.

        Two important dates:

        Battle of Marathon, 490 B.C. Death of Alexander the Great, 323 B.C.

    CHAPTER V. NEW RIVALS OF THE GREEKS

    THE GREEK COLONIES AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. The Greek colonies were
      sometimes in danger of being attacked by the native tribes whose lands
      they had seized or by the wilder tribes that dwelt further from the
      coast. In Sicily their most dangerous neighbors were the Carthaginians
      at the western end of the island. The chief town of these people was
      Carthage, situated opposite Sicily in northern Africa in what is now
      Tunis. The Carthaginians were emigrants from Tyre and other cities of
      Phoenicia on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and because of
      their many ships held control of a large part of the western
      Mediterranean. They had colonies even in Spain, where in very early
      times Phoenician traders had gone to obtain gold and silver.

    THE GREEKS AND THE ROMANS. In Italy the most dangerous neighbors of
      the Greek colonists were the Romans, who lived half-way up the western
      side of the peninsula along the river Tiber. The history of the Romans,
      like the history of the Greeks, is full of interesting and wonderful
      tales. Some of them are legends, such as every people likes to tell
      about its early history. They relate how the city was founded by two
      brothers, Romulus and Remus; how Horatius defended the bridge across the
      Tiber against the hosts of the exiled Tarquin king; how the farmer
      Cincinnatus, having been made leader or dictator, in sixteen days drove
      off the neighboring tribes which were attacking the Romans and then went
      back to his plough.

    THE GAULS BURN ROME, 390 B.C. The Romans told stories of their
      defeats as well as of their victories. One of these tells how hosts of
      Gauls, a people of the same race as the forefathers of the French,
      streamed southward from the valley of the Po. The Romans were alarmed by
      such tall men, with fierce eyes, and fair, flowing hair, whose swords
      crashed through the frail Roman helmets. They sent a large army to stop
      the invaders, but in the battle, which was fought only twelve miles from
      Rome, this army was destroyed.

      The few defenders that were left withdrew to the Capitoline, the
      steepest of the hills over which the city had spread. Some of the older
      senators and several priests scorned to seek a refuge from the fury of
      the barbarians, and took their seats quietly in ivory chairs in the
      market place or Forum at the foot of the Capitoline hill. The Gauls at
      first gazed in wonder at the strange sight of the motionless figures.
      When one of them attempted to stroke the white beard of a senator, the
      senator struck him with his staff; then the Gauls fell upon senators and
      priests and slew them.

      [Illustration: CLIFF OF THE CAPITOLINE HILL]

      The sides of the Capitoline hill were so steep that for a long time the
      Gauls were baffled in their attempts to seize it. At last they
      discovered a path, and one dark night were on the point of scaling the
      height when some geese, sacred to the goddess Juno, cackled and flapped
      their wings until the garrison was aroused and the Gauls hurled headlong
      down the precipice. The garrison was saved, but the city was burned.
      This happened in Rome just one hundred years after the battle of
      Marathon in Greece.

    THE CAUDINE FORKS. Another adventure did not have so happy an
      ending. The Romans were at war with the Samnites, a tribe living on the
      slopes of the Apennines, who were continually attacking the Greek cities
      on the coast. The war was caused by the attempt of the Romans to protect
      one of the Greek cities. The Roman generals, with a large army, in
      making their way into the Samnite country attempted to march through a
      narrow gorge which broadened out into a plain and then was closed again
      at the farther end by another gorge. When they reached this second gorge
      they found the road blocked by fallen trees and heaps of stones. They
      also saw Samnites on the heights above them. In alarm they hastened to
      retrace their steps, only to find the other entrance closed in the same
      way. After vain attempts to force a passage or to scale the surrounding
      heights they were obliged to surrender.

      [Illustration: THE REGION OF THE CAUDINE FORKS]

      [Illustration: ITALY BEFORE THE GROWTH OF ROMAN POWER]

      The Samnites compelled the Roman army, both generals and soldiers, each
      clad in a single garment, to pass “under the yoke” made of two spears
      set upright with one laid across, while they stood by and jeered. If any
      Roman looked angry or sullen at his disgrace, they struck or even killed
      him. This was called the disaster of the Caudine Forks, from the pass
      where the Romans were caught.

    THE ROMANS AND THE GREEK CITIES. Not many years after this the
      Romans quarreled with the Greek cities of southern Italy. The Greeks of
      Tarentum, situated where Taranto is now, called to their aid Pyrrhus,
      who ruled a part of Alexander's old kingdom. Pyrrhus was a skilful
      general, and he had with him, besides his foot-soldiers and horsemen,
      many trained elephants. A charge of these elephants was too much for the
      Romans, who were already hard pressed by the long spears of the soldiers
      of Pyrrhus. But the Romans were ready for another battle, and in this
      they fought so stubbornly and killed so many of the Greek soldiers that
      Pyrrhus cried out, “Another victory like this and we are ruined.” In a
      third battle, which took place 275 B.C., he was defeated, and returned
      to Greece, leaving the Romans masters of the Greek cities in Italy.

    THE ROMANS CONQUERORS OF ITALY. By this time there were few tribes
      south of the river Po which did not own the Romans as their masters. All
      Italy was united under their rule. This was the first step in the
      conquest of the world that lay about the Mediterranean Sea and in the
      extension of that ancient world to the shores of the Atlantic and to
      England. Before we read the story of the other conquests we must inquire
      who the Roman people were and how they lived.

    HOW THE ROMANS LIVED. In early times most of the Romans were
      farmers or cattle raisers. A man's wealth was reckoned according to the
      number of cattle he owned. Their manner of living was simple and frugal.
      Like the Greek, the Roman had his games. He enjoyed chariot-races, but
      used slaves or freedmen as drivers. He also went to the theater,
      although he thought it unworthy of a Roman to be an actor. Such an
      occupation was for foreigners or slaves.

      [Illustration: A ROMAN WEARING A TOGA]

    ROMAN BOYS AT SCHOOL. The boys at school did not learn poems, as
      did the Greek boys, but studied the first set of laws made by the
      Romans, called the Twelve Tables. This they read, copied, and learned by
      heart. Their interest in laws was the first sign that they were to
      become the world's greatest lawmakers.

    ROMAN WOMEN. In their respect for women the Romans were superior to
      the Greeks. The Roman mother did not remain in the women's apartments of
      the house, as she was expected to do at Athens, but was her husband's
      companion, received his guests, directed her household, and went in and
      out as she chose.

    PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS. The men of the families which first ruled
      Rome were called patricians or nobles, while the rest were plebeians or
      common people. There were also many slaves, but they had no rights. At
      first only the patricians knew exactly what the laws were, because the
      laws were not written in a book. When disputes arose between patricians
      and plebeians about property, the plebeians believed the patricians
      changed the laws in order to gain an advantage over their poorer
      neighbors.

      The story is told that twice the plebeians withdrew from the city and
      refused to return until their wrongs were removed. Then they compelled
      the nobles to draw up the laws in a roll called the Twelve Tables. At
      this time messengers were sent to Athens to examine the laws of the
      Greeks. The richer plebeians were also gradually admitted to all the
      offices of the Roman republic, and so became nobles themselves.

    GOVERNMENT AT ROME. The Romans had once been ruled by kings, but
      now their chief officers were consuls. Two consuls were chosen each year
      because the Romans feared that a single consul might make himself a
      king, or, at least, gain too much power. The real rulers of Rome,
      however, were the senators, the men who had held the prominent offices.
      There were assemblies of the people, but these generally did what the
      senators or other officers told them to do.

      Among the interesting officers of Rome was the censor, who drew up a
      list or census of the citizens and of their property. Another officer
      was the tribune, chosen in the beginning by the plebeians to protect
      them against the patricians. The tribune was not at first a member of
      the senate, but he was given a seat outside the door, and if a law was
      proposed that would injure the plebeians, he cried out, “Veto,” which
      means “I forbid,” and the law had to be dropped. This is the origin of
      our word “veto.”

    HOW THE ROMANS TREATED THE ITALIANS. The Romans were wise in their
      dealings with the cities or tribes which they conquered. They not only
      sent out colonies of their fellow-citizens to occupy a part of the lands
      they had seized, but they also gave the conquered peoples a share in
      their government, and in some cases allowed them to act as citizens of
      Rome. These new Roman citizens helped the older Romans in their wars
      with other tribes. In this way Roman towns gradually spread over Italy.

      [Illustration: A ROMAN MILITARY STANDARD]

        QUESTIONS

        1. What was the name of the dangerous neighbors of the Greeks in
        Sicily? Find Carthage on the map. Where did the
        Carthaginians come from originally? Find Phoenicia on the map.

        2. Who were the dangerous neighbors of the Greeks in Italy? Find the
        Tiber and Rome on the map.

        3. Tell the story of the capture of Rome by the Gauls. How long was
        this after the battle of Marathon? How long after the death of
        Socrates? How long before Alexander became king of Macedon?

        4. Find the land of the Samnites on the map. Tell the story
        of the Caudine Forks.

        5. What Greek king did the people of Tarentum call to Italy to help
        them against the Romans? What did he say after his second battle
        with the Romans?

        6. After the defeat of Pyrrhus how much of Italy owned the Romans as
        masters? How did the Romans treat the Italians?

        7. Explain how the early Roman ways of living differed from the ways
        of the Greeks.

        8. How differently did the Romans and the Greeks govern themselves?

        EXERCISES

        1. Read the story of Horatius in Macaulay's “Lays of Ancient Rome.”

        2. Collect pictures of Rome and Italy.

        3. Is there a modern city of Carthage? What country rules over
        Tunis? Are there now any Phoenicians?

        4. Read the description of Tyre in the Bible, Ezekiel xxvii. 3-25,
        and tell what is said there about the riches of the Tyrians. Find
        out who destroyed Tyre.

        [Illustration: AN EARLY ROMAN COIN]

    CHAPTER VI. THE MEDITERRANEAN A ROMAN LAKE

    ROME IN PERIL. The conquest of Italy by the Romans took about two
      hundred and fifty years. The conquest of the peoples living in the
      other lands on the shores of the Mediterranean took nearly as long
      again. Only twice in these four or five hundred years was Rome in
      serious danger of destruction. Once it was by the Gauls, as we have
      read, who captured all the city except the citadel. The second time it
      was by the Carthaginians, who lived on the northern coast of Africa.
      The Romans were finally victorious over all their enemies because they
      were patient and courageous in misfortune and refused to believe that
      they could be conquered.

    CAUSE OF WAR WITH CARTHAGE. The Carthaginians were angry at the way
      the Romans treated them. They watched with alarm the steady growth of
      the Roman power, and feared that the Romans, if masters of Italy,
      would attack their trade with the cities of the western Mediterranean.
      A quarrel broke out over a city in Sicily. At first the Carthaginians
      seemed to have the best of it, because they had a strong war fleet
      while the Romans had only a few small vessels. But the Romans
      hurriedly built ships and placed upon each a kind of drawbridge,
      fitted with great hooks called grappling-irons. These they let down
      upon the enemy's decks as soon as the ships came close enough, and
      over these drawbridges the Roman soldiers rushed and captured the
      Carthaginian ships.

      When the Carthaginians asked for peace, the Romans demanded a great
      sum of money and a promise that the Carthaginians would leave the
      cities in Sicily which they occupied. Soon afterward the Romans took
      advantage of a mutiny in the Carthaginian army to demand more money
      and to seize Sardinia and Corsica. No wonder the Carthaginians were
      angry. The result was a new and more terrible war.

    HANNIBAL. The Carthaginians in the new war were led by Hannibal, who
      understood how to fight battles better than any of the generals whom
      the Romans sent against him. The story is told that when he was a boy
      his father made him promise, at the altar of his city's gods, undying
      hatred to Rome. Even the Romans thought him a wonderful man. Their
      historians said that toil did not wear out his body or exhaust his
      energy. Cold or heat were alike to him. He never ate or drank more
      than he needed. He slept when he had time, whether it was day or
      night, wrapping himself in a military cloak and lying on the ground in
      the midst of his soldiers. He did not dress better than the other
      officers, but his weapons and his horses were the best in the army.

    WAR CARRIED INTO ITALY, 218 B.C. Hannibal decided that the war should
      be carried into Italy to the very gates of Rome. He started from
      Spain, half of which the Carthaginians ruled, marched across southern
      Gaul, and came to the foot-hills of the Alps. To climb the Alps was
      the most difficult part of his long journey.

    CROSSING THE ALPS. There were no roads across the mountains, only
      rough paths used by the mountaineers, who constantly attacked
      Hannibal's soldiers, bursting out suddenly upon them from behind a
      turn in the trail, or rolling huge rocks upon them from above. The
      elephants, the horses, and the baggage animals of the army were
      frightened, and in the tumult many of them slipped over the precipices
      and were dashed on the rocks below. For five days the army toiled
      upward, and then rested two days on the summit of the pass.

      [Illustration: THE ALPS THAT HANNIBAL HAD TO CROSS]

      Although the road down into Italy was short, it was steep, and the
      paths were slippery with ice and with snow trodden into slush by
      thousands of men and animals. In one place there had been a landslide,
      and the road along the rocky slope was cut away for a thousand feet.
      In order to build a new road it was necessary to crack the rocks. This
      the soldiers did by making huge fires and pouring wine over the heated
      surface. At last, worn out, ragged, and half starved, the army reached
      the plains of Italy, but with a loss of half its men.

    HOW HANNIBAL WON A VICTORY. The first great battle with the Romans was
      fought on the river Trebia in northern Italy, and in it Hannibal
      showed how easily he could outwit and destroy a Roman army. It was a
      winter's day and the river was swollen by rains. The two camps lay on
      opposite banks. In the early morning Hannibal sent across the river a
      body of horsemen to attack the Roman camp and draw the Romans into a
      battle. At the same time he ordered his other soldiers to eat
      breakfast, to build fires before their tents to warm themselves, and
      to rub their bodies with oil, so that they might be strong for the
      coming fight.

      The Romans were suddenly roused by the attack of the Carthaginian
      horsemen, and, without waiting for food, moved out of camp, chasing
      the horsemen toward the river. Into its icy waters the Romans waded
      breast-high, and when they came up on the opposite bank they were
      benumbed with cold. As soon as Hannibal knew that the Romans had
      crossed the river he attacked them fiercely with all his troops. Two
      thousand men whom he had placed in ambush fell upon the rear of their
      line. Their allies were frightened by a charge of elephants. Seeing
      that destruction was certain, ten thousand of the best soldiers broke
      through the Carthaginian line and marched away. All the rest of the
      army was destroyed.

    ROMAN ENDURANCE. This was not the last of the Roman defeats. Two other
      armies were destroyed by Hannibal during the next two years. In the
      battle of Cannae nearly seventy thousand Romans, including eighty
      senators, were slain. The news filled the city with weeping women, but
      the senate did not think of yielding. When their allies deserted them,
      they besieged the faithless cities, took them, beheaded the rulers,
      and sold the inhabitants into slavery.

      They did not dare to fight Hannibal in the open field, but tried to
      wear him out by cutting off all small bodies of his troops and by
      making it difficult for him to get food for his army. They carried the
      war into Spain and finally into Africa, and when, with a weakened
      army, Hannibal faced them there, they defeated him. His defeat was the
      ruin of Carthage, for the unhappy city was compelled to see her fleet
      destroyed, to pay the Romans a huge sum of money, and to give up Spain
      to them.

      [Illustration: A ROMAN SOLDIER]

    OTHER ROMAN TRIUMPHS. The war with Carthage ended two hundred and two
      years before the birth of Christ. In the wars that followed, Roman
      armies fought not only in Spain and Africa, but also in Greece and
      Asia. Carthage was destroyed; as was also Corinth, a Greek city. Roman
      generals enriched themselves and sent great treasures back to Rome.
      Roman merchants grew rich because their rivals in Carthage and Corinth
      were ruined or because the conquered cities were forbidden to trade
      with any city but Rome. All this took a long time and many wars, but
      in the end the Romans became masters of every land along the shores of
      the Mediterranean. This was not wholly a misfortune, for the Romans
      had learned that the Greeks were superior to them in some things and
      they took the Greeks as their teachers in most of the arts of living.
      The ancient world became a sort of partnership, and we call its
      civilization Graeco-Roman, that is, both Greek and Roman.

    THE ROMANS AS RULERS. The Romans at first treated the lands in Sicily,
      Spain, Africa, Greece, and Asia as conquered territories, or
      provinces, sending to rule over them officers who were to act both as
      governors and judges. With these men went many tax-collectors or
      “publicans.” The Romans were obliged to leave in most provinces a
      large body of soldiers to put down any attempt at rebellion. Often the
      officers and the publicans robbed the country instead of ruling it
      justly.

    EVIL RESULTS OF CONQUEST. During the wars the Romans had lost many of
      their simple ways of living. Some had grown rich in the business of
      providing for the armies and navies, and they were eager for new wars
      in order to make still bigger fortunes. Hannibal's marches up and down
      Italy had driven thousands of farmers from their homes, and they had
      wandered to Rome for safety and food. When the war was over many of
      them did not go back to their homes. Those who did found that they
      could no longer get fair prices for their crops because great
      quantities of wheat were shipped to Rome from the conquered lands.
      Wealthy men bought the little farms and joined them, making great
      estates where slaves raised sheep and cattle or tended vineyards and
      olive groves. There was not much work for free men in Rome, for slaves
      were very cheap. One army of prisoners was sold at about eight cents
      apiece. In this way the poor were made idle, while the rich sent
      everywhere for new luxuries.

      [Illustration: GLADIATORS After carvings on the tomb of
      Scaurus]

    CRUEL SPORTS. To amuse the idle crowds, office-seekers and victorious
      generals provided cruel sports. Savage animals were turned loose to
      tear one another to pieces. What was worse, human prisoners were
      compelled to fight, armed with swords or spears. These men were called
      gladiators, and often were specially trained to fight with one another
      or with wild beasts.

    SOME THINGS THE ROMANS LEARNED. But the successes of the Romans
      brought them other things which were good. They took the buildings of
      the Greeks as models and built similar temples and porticoes in Rome,
      especially about the old market place or Forum. Their own houses,
      which in earlier times were nothing but cabins, they enlarged, and if
      they were rich enough, built palaces, adorned with paintings and with
      statues. Unfortunately many of these came from the plunder of Greek
      cities, for the Romans were great robbers of other peoples. The poorer
      Romans continued to live in wretched hovels.

    THE THEATER. The Romans learned more about the theaters of the Greeks.
      Their plays were either translated into Latin from Greek or retold in
      a different manner from the original Greek. The Romans did not succeed
      in writing any plays of their own which were as good as the plays of
      the Greeks.

      [Illustration: RUINS OF THE ROMAN THEATER AT ORANGE, FRANCE]

    THE NEW EDUCATION OF THE ROMANS. The Greeks also taught the Romans how
      to write poems and histories. The first histories were written in
      Greek, but later the Romans learned how to write in Latin prose and
      poetry as good as much that had been written by the Greeks. Greek
      became the second language of every educated Roman, and thus he could
      enjoy the books of the Greeks as well as those written by Romans. The
      education of the Roman boy now began with the poems of Homer, and the
      young man's education was not thought to be finished until he had
      traveled in Greece and the lands along the eastern Mediterranean.

        QUESTIONS

        1. How long did it take the Romans to conquer Italy? How long to
        conquer the lands about the Mediterranean? In what “Times” did all
        this happen?

        2. Why did the Carthaginians and the Romans fight? What did Hannibal
        promise his father? What sort of a leader was Hannibal?

        3. How did Hannibal reach Italy? How did he win the battle of the
        Trebia?

        4. Why was he unable to force the Romans to yield?

        5. How long before the beginning of the Christian Era did this war
        with Hannibal close? How long after the battle of Marathon, and
        after the death of Alexander the Great?

        6. What other lands did the Romans conquer? How did they rule these
        colonies?

        7. Were they better for the wealth and power they gained? What
        became of many of the Italian farmers? Where did the Romans get
        their slaves?

        8. What good things did they learn from the Greeks? What was the
        Graeco-Roman world?

        EXERCISES

        1. On an outline map of the lands around the Mediterranean mark on
        each land, Spain, Greece, northern Africa, Asia Minor, and Egypt,
        the dates at which the Romans conquered each, finding these dates in
        any brief Roman or Ancient History—Botsford, Myers, Morey,
        West, Wolfson.

    CHAPTER VII. THE ANCIENT WORLD EXTENDED TO THE SHORES OF THE ATLANTIC

    NEW CONQUESTS OF THE ROMANS. The Romans had as yet conquered only
      civilized peoples like themselves, with the exception of the tribes in
      Spain and southern Gaul. Now the Roman armies were to push northward
      over the plains and through the forests of Gaul, across the Rhine into
      unknown Germany, and over the Channel into Britain, equally unknown.
      They were to be explorers as well as conquerors. In this way they were
      to carry their civilization to the Rhine and the Atlantic, and so
      increase greatly the part of the earth where men lived and thought as
      the Romans did and as the Greeks had before them. The ancient civilized
      world was beginning to move from its older center, the Mediterranean,
      toward the shore of the Atlantic.

    ANCESTORS OF THE FRENCH AND THE GERMANS. The tribes living in Gaul
      were not at that time called French, but Gallic. The Gauls were like the
      Britons who lived across the Channel in Britain. The German ancestors of
      the English had not yet crossed the North Sea to that land. Beyond the
      Rhine lived the Germans, who had but little to do with the Romans and
      the Greeks and were still barbarians. The Gauls living farthest away
      from the Roman settlements were not much more civilized.

      The principal difference between the Germans and the Gauls was that the
      Gauls lived in villages and towns and cultivated the land or dug in
      mines or traded along the rivers, while the Germans had no towns and
      dwelt in clearings of the forest. Their wealth, like that of the early
      Romans, was their cattle. The land they cultivated was divided between
      them year after year, so that a German owned only his hut and the plot
      of ground or garden about it. Some of the towns of the Gauls were placed
      on high hills and were protected by strong walls.

    THE TERRIBLE GERMANS. The Romans had at first been afraid of the
      Gauls, because they had never forgotten how terribly these people had
      once defeated them. But since that time they had fought the Gauls so
      often that they were losing this fear. They now dreaded more to meet the
      Germans, who seemed like giants because they were taller even than
      the Gauls.

      [Illustration: GALLIC WARRIORS]

    GALLIC AND GERMAN WARRIORS. The leaders of the Germans were sometimes
      kings and sometimes nobles whom the Romans called duces, from which
      comes our word duke. The Gallic chieftains were adorned with gold
      necklaces, bracelets, and rings. When they went out to battle, they wore
      helmets shaped like the head of some ravenous beast, and their bodies
      were protected by coats of chain armor made of iron rings. Their
      principal weapon was a long, heavy sword. Both German and Gallic nobles
      were accompanied by bands of young men, their devoted followers, who
      shared the joys of victory or died with them in case of defeat. It was a
      disgrace to lose one's sword or to survive if the leader was killed.

    HOW THE GERMANS LIVED. When the Germans were not fighting they were
      idle, for all work was done by women and slaves. They were great
      drinkers and gamblers, and often in their games a man would stake his
      freedom upon the result. If he lost, he became the slave of the winner.
      The Germans respected their wives, even if they compelled them to do the
      hard work. The women sometimes went with the men to battle, and their
      cries encouraged the warriors, or if the warriors wavered, the fierce
      reproaches of the women drove them back to the fight.

    RELIGION OF THE GERMANS. We remember the religion of the Germans
      because four days of the week are named for their gods or the gods of
      their neighbors across the Baltic. Their principal god was Wodan, or
      Odin, god of the sun and the tempest. Wodan's day is Wednesday. Thursday
      is named for Thor, the Northmen's god of thunder. The god of war, Tiw,
      gave a name to Tuesday, and Frigu, the goddess of love, to Friday. The
      German, like his northern neighbors, thought of heaven as the place
      where brave warriors who had died in battle spent their days
      in feasting.

    JULIUS CAESAR. Julius Caesar was the great Roman general who
      conquered the Gauls and led the first expeditions across the Rhine into
      Germany and over the Channel into Britain. He was a wealthy noble who,
      like other nobles, held one office after another until he became consul.
      He was also a great political leader, and with two other men controlled
      Rome. We should call them “bosses,” but the Romans called them
      “triumvirs.”

      [Illustration: JULIUS CAESAR After the bust in the Museum at
      Naples]

    CAESAR IN GAUL. As soon as Caesar became governor of the province
      of southern Gaul, he showed that he was a skilful general as well as a
      successful politician. He interfered in the wars between the Gauls,
      taking sides with the friends of the Romans. When a large army of
      Germans entered Gaul, he defeated it and drove it back across the Rhine.
      One war led to another until all the tribes from the country now called
      Belgium to the Mediterranean coast professed to be friends of the Roman
      people. His campaigns lasted from 58 B.C. for nine years. Two or three
      times Caesar was very close to ruin, but by his courage and energy he
      always succeeded in gaining the victory.

    VERCINGETORIX, GALLIC HERO. The great hero of the Gauls in their
      struggle with the Romans was Vercingetorix. He was a young noble who
      lived in a mountain town of central Gaul. His father had been killed in
      an attempt to make himself king of his native city. Vercingetorix
      believed that if the Gauls did not unite against the Romans they would
      soon see their lands become Roman provinces. As he knew his army was no
      match for the Romans in open fight, he persuaded the Gauls to try to
      starve the Romans out of the country. He planned to destroy all village
      stores of grain, and to cut off the smaller bands of soldiers which
      wandered from the main army in search of food.

    CAESAR AND VERCINGETORIX. Vercingetorix found the work of
      conquering Caesar in this way too difficult. He was finally driven to
      take refuge in Alesia, on a hilltop in eastern Gaul. Here the Romans
      prepared to starve him into surrender. They dug miles of deep trenches
      about the fortress so that the imprisoned Gauls could not break through.
      They dug other trenches to protect themselves from the attacks of a
      great army of Gauls which came to rescue Vercingetorix. These trenches
      were fifteen or twenty feet wide; they were strengthened by palisades
      and ramparts, and filled with water where this was possible. Several
      times the Gauls nearly succeeded in breaking through, but the quickness
      and stubborn courage of Caesar always saved the day.

    DEATH OF VERCINGETORIX. Vercingetorix now proved that he was a real
      hero. He offered to give himself up to Caesar, if this would save the
      town. But Caesar demanded the submission of all the chiefs. When they
      had laid down their arms before the conqueror, Vercingetorix appeared on
      a gaily decorated horse. He rode around the throne where Caesar sat,
      dismounted in front, took off his armor, and bowed to the ground. His
      fate was hard. He was sent to Rome a prisoner, was shown in the
      triumphal procession of the victorious Caesar, and was then put to death
      in a dungeon. On the site of Alesia stands a monument erected by the
      French to the memory of the brave Gallic hero. The defeat of
      Vercingetorix ended the resistance of the Gauls, and not many years
      afterward their country was added to the long list of Roman provinces.

      [Illustration: THE BRIDGE ON WHICH CAESAR'S ARMY CROSSED THE
      RHINE]

    CAESAR IN GERMANY. Caesar crossed the Rhine into Germany on a bridge
      which his engineers built in ten days. He laid waste the fields of the
      tribes near the river in order to make the name of Rome feared, and then
      returned to Gaul and destroyed the bridge. Twice he sailed over to
      Britain, the last time marching a few miles north of where London now
      stands. His purpose was to keep the Britons from stirring up the Gauls
      to attack him. Other generals many years later conquered Britain as far
      as the hills of Scotland.

    THE GERMAN HERO HERMANN. The Romans were not fortunate in their
      later attempts to conquer a part of Germany. When Caesar's grandnephew
      Augustus was master of Rome, he sent an army under Varus into the
      forests far from the Rhine. Hermann, a leader of the Germans, gathered
      the tribes together and utterly destroyed the army of Varus. Whenever
      Augustus thought of this dreadful disaster, he would cry out, “O Varus,
      give me back my legions!” The Rhine and the Danube became the northern
      boundaries of the Roman conquests.

    GAULS AND BRITONS BECOME ROMAN. Although the Gauls had fought
      stubbornly against Caesar they soon became as Roman as the Italians
      themselves. They ceased to speak their own language and began to use
      Latin. They mastered Latin so thoroughly that their schools were
      sometimes regarded as better than the schools in Italy, and Roman youths
      were sent to Gaul to learn how best to speak their own language. The
      Britons also became very good Romans. Even the Germans frequently
      crossed the Rhine and enlisted in the Roman armies. When they returned
      to their own country they carried Roman ideas and customs with them.

    THE INTEREST OF AMERICANS IN ROMAN SUCCESSES. For Americans the
      influence the Romans exerted in Spain, Gaul, Germany, and Britain is
      more important than their work in the eastern Mediterranean, because
      from those countries came the early settlers of America. The
      civilization which the Romans taught the peoples of western Europe was
      to become a valuable part of the civilization of our forefathers.

      [Illustration: THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT IN 395
      A.D.]

    SIZE OF THE ROMAN WORLD. We may realize how large the world of the
      Romans was by observing on a modern map that within its limits lay
      modern England, France, Spain, Portugal, the southern part of
      Austria-Hungary, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, the Turkish Empire both in
      Europe and Asia, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco. For a time
      they also ruled north of the Danube, and the Rumanians boast that they
      are descended from Roman colonists. The peoples in southern Russia were
      influenced by the Greeks and by the Romans, although the Romans did not
      try to bring them under their rule.

      No modern empire has included so many important countries. If we compare
      this vast territory with, the scattered colonies of the Greeks, we shall
      understand how useful it was that the Romans adopted much of the Greek
      civilization, for they could carry it to places that the Greeks
      never reached.

      [Illustration: RUINS OF THE ANCIENT GAULS AT CARNAC,
      IN BRITTANY, FRANCE]

        QUESTIONS

        1. After the Romans had conquered the lands about the Mediterranean,
        into what other countries did they march?

        2. Who once lived where the French now live? Tell how the Gauls
        lived.

        3. How did the manner of living of the Germans differ from that of
        the Gauls? Were the Britons similar to the Germans or to the Gauls?

        4. What names do we get from the names of the German gods?

        5. Who was Julius Caesar? Why did he go among the Gauls? What was
        the result of his wars with the Gauls? Tell the story of
        Vercingetorix.

        6. After the conquest of the Gauls, into what countries did Caesar
        go?

        [Illustration: A ROMAN COIN WITH THE HEAD OF JULIUS CAESAR]

        7. What was the fate of the Roman army in Germany in the time of
        Augustus?

        8. In which of these countries did the peoples become much like the
        Romans?

        9. Why have Americans a special interest in the Roman conquest of
        Gaul and Britain?

        EXERCISES

        1. Caesar and Alexander were two of the greatest generals who ever
        lived. How many years after Alexander died did Caesar begin his wars
        in Gaul? What difference was there between what these two generals
        did? Whose work is the more important for us?

        2. Plan a large map of the Graeco-Roman world, pasting on each
        country a picture of some interesting Greek or Roman ruin. This will
        take a long time, but many pictures may be found in advertising
        folders of steamship lines and tourist agencies.

        REVIEW

        (Chapters IV, V, VI, and VII)

        How the Graeco-Roman world was built up:

        1. The Greeks drive back the Persians.

        2. The Greeks settle in many places on the shores of the
        Mediterranean and Black Seas.

        3. Alexander conquers the countries about the eastern Mediterranean.

        4. The Romans conquer the Greeks in Italy, but learn their ways of
        living.

        5. The Romans conquer the Carthaginians and seize their colonies.

        6. The Romans conquer all the lands around the Mediterranean.

        7. The Romans conquer Gaul and Britain.

        Important dates in this work of building a Graeco-Roman world :

        Battle of Marathon, 490 B.C. Work of Alexander ended, 323 B.C.
        Romans become masters of Italy, 275 B.C. Romans conquer Hannibal,
        202 B.C. Caesar's conquest of Gaul complete, 49 B.C.

        [Illustration: ROMAN FARMER'S CALENDAR]

    CHAPTER VIII. THE CIVILIZATION OF THE ROMAN WORLD

    STRIFE AT ROME. While the Romans were conquering the ancient world
      they had begun to quarrel among themselves. Certain men resolved that
      Rome should not be managed any longer by the noble senators for their
      own benefit or for the benefit of rich contractors and merchants. They
      wished to have the idle crowds of men who packed the shows and circuses
      settled as free farmers on the unused lands of Italy.

      Among these new leaders were two brothers, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus,
      sons of one of Rome's noblest families. The other nobles looked upon
      them with hatred and killed them, first Tiberius and afterward Caius.
      These murders did not end the trouble. The leaders on both sides armed
      their followers, and bloody battles were fought in the streets. Generals
      led their armies to Rome, although, according to the laws, to bring an
      army into Italy south of the Rubicon River was to make war on the
      republic and be guilty of treason. Once in the city these generals put
      to death hundreds of their enemies.

    CAESAR RULES ROME. The strife in the city had ceased for a time
      when Pompey, a famous general, who had once shared power with Caesar as
      a “triumvir,” joined the senators in planning his ruin. Caesar led his
      army into Italy to the borders of the Rubicon. Exclaiming, “The die is
      cast,'“ he crossed the sacred boundary and marched straight to Rome.
      Pompey and his party fled, and civil war divided the Roman world into
      those who followed Caesar and those who followed Pompey, Caesar was
      everywhere victorious, in Italy, Africa, Spain, and the East. He brought
      back order into the government of the city and of the provinces, but in
      the year 44 B.C. he was murdered in the senate-house by several
      senators, one of whom, Marcus Brutus, had been his friend.

    ORIGIN OF THE TITLE “EMPEROR.” Caesar had not been called
      “emperor,” though the chief power had been his. One of his titles was
      “imperator,” or commander of the army, a word from which our word
      “emperor” comes. He was really the first emperor of Rome. In later times
      the very word Caesar became an imperial title, not only in the Roman
      Empire, but also in modern Germany, for “Kaiser” is another form of the
      word “Caesar.”

    BEGINNINGS OF THE EMPIRE. Caesar's successor was his grandnephew
      Octavius, usually called Augustus, which was one of his titles. Augustus
      carried out many of Caesar's plans for improving the government in Rome
      and in the provinces. The people in the provinces were no longer robbed
      by Roman officers. Many of them became Roman citizens. After a time all
      children born within the empire were considered Romans, just as if they
      had been born in Rome.

    THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The Roman Empire carried on the work which the
      republic had begun. It did some things better than the republic had done
      them. Within its frontiers there was peace for two or three hundred
      years. Many people had an opportunity to share in all the best that the
      Greeks and Romans had learned. Unfortunately the peoples imitated the
      bad as well as the good.

    ROMAN ROADS. As builders the Romans taught much to those who lived
      after them. Their great roads leading out from Rome have never been
      excelled. In Gaul these roads served, centuries later, to mark out the
      present French system of highroads and showed many a route to the
      builders of railroads. They were made so solid that parts of them still
      remain after two thousand years.

      [Illustration: Augustus Caesar After the statue in the Vatican]

    HOW THESE ROADS WERE BUILT. In planning their roads the Romans did
      not hesitate before obstacles like hills or deep valleys or marshy
      lands. They often pierced the hills with tunnels and bridged the valleys
      or swamps. In building a road they dug a trench about fifteen feet wide
      and pounded the earth at the bottom until it was hard. Upon this bottom
      was placed a layer of rough stones, over which were put nine inches of
      broken stone mixed with lime to form a sort of concrete. This was
      covered by a layer six inches deep of broken bricks or broken tiles,
      which when pounded down offered a hard, smooth surface. On the top were
      laid large paving stones carefully fitted so that there need be no jar
      when a wagon rolled over the road.

      Such roads were necessary for the traders who passed to and fro
      throughout the empire, but especially for troops or government
      messengers sent with all speed to regions where there was danger of
      revolt or where the frontiers were threatened by the barbarians.

    [Illustration: CROSS-SECTION OF A ROMAN ROAD]

    AQUEDUCTS. Next to their roads the most remarkable Roman structures
      were the aqueducts which brought water to the city from rivers or
      springs, some of them many miles away. Had they known, as we do, how to
      make heavy iron pipes, their aqueducts would have been laid underground,
      except where they crossed deep valleys. The lead pipes which they used
      were not strong enough to endure the force of a great quantity of water,
      and so when the aqueducts reached the edge of the plain which stretches
      from the eastern hills to the walls of Rome, the streams of flowing
      water were carried in stone channels resting upon arches which sometimes
      reached the height of over ninety feet.

    THE CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT. The Claudian aqueduct, which is the most
      magnificent ever built, is carried on such arches for about seven miles
      and a half. Although broken in many places, and though the water has not
      flowed through its lofty channels for sixteen hundred years, it is one
      of the grandest sights in the neighborhood of Rome. If we add together
      the lengths of the aqueducts, underground or carried on arches, which
      provided Rome with her water supply, the total is over three hundred
      miles. They could furnish Rome with a hundred million gallons of water
      a day.

      [Illustration: RUINS OF THE CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT Completed by the
      Roman Emperor Claudian in 52 A.D. The structure was nearly a hundred
      feet high]

    PUBLIC BATHS. The Romans used great quantities of water for their
      public baths, which were large buildings with rooms especially made for
      bathing in hot or cold water and for plunges. They were also, like the
      Greek gymnasiums, places for exercise, conversation, and reading. Many
      were built as monuments by wealthy men and by emperors. A very small fee
      was charged for entrance, and the money was used to pay for repairs and
      the wages of those who managed the baths.

      [Illustration: RUINS OF THE COLOSSEUM]

    TWO FAMOUS BUILDINGS. Many of the Roman temples, porticoes, and
      theaters were copied from Greek buildings, but the Romans used the arch
      more than did the Greeks, and in this the builders of later times
      imitated them. Among their greatest buildings were the amphitheaters,
      from the benches of which crowds watched gladiators fighting one another
      or struggling with wild beasts. The largest of these amphitheaters was
      the Colosseum, the ruins of which still exist. Its outer walls were one
      hundred and sixty feet high. In one direction it measured six hundred
      and seventeen feet and in another five hundred and twelve. There were
      seats enough for forty-five thousand persons. The lowest seats were
      raised fifteen feet above the arena or central space where men or wild
      beasts fought. Through an arrangement of underground pipes the arena
      could be flooded so that the spectators might enjoy the excitement of a
      real naval battle.

      Another great building was the Circus Maximus, built to hold the crowds
      that watched the chariot-races, and at one time having seats for two
      hundred thousand persons. In their amusements the Romans became more and
      more vulgar, excitable, and cruel. Some equally splendid buildings were
      used for better things.

      [Illustration: The Pantheon]

    THE PANTHEON. One of these was the Pantheon, a temple which was
      afterward a Christian church. It still stands, and is now used as the
      burial-place of the Italian kings. The most remarkable part of it is the
      dome, which has a width of a little over one hundred and forty-two feet.
      No other dome in the world is so wide. The Romans were very successful
      in covering large spaces with arched or vaulted ceilings. All later
      builders of domes and arches are their pupils.

      [Illustration: THE ARCH OF TITUS]

    BASILICAS. The Romans had other large buildings called basilicas.
      These were porticoes or promenades, with the space in the center covered
      by a great roof. They were used as places for public meetings. One of
      them had one hundred and eight pillars arranged in a double row around
      the sides and ends of this central space. The name basilica is Greek and
      means “royal.” Some of these basilicas were used as Christian churches
      when the Romans accepted the Christian religion. The central space was
      then called the “nave,” and the spaces between the columns the aisles.

    TRIUMPHAL ARCHES. The Romans built beautiful arches to celebrate
      their victories. Several of these still remain, with sentences cut into
      their stone tablets telling of the triumphs of their builders. Modern
      people have taken them as models for similar memorial arches.

      [Illustration: A ROMAN AQUEDUCT Still in good repair, the Pont
      du Gard, near Nimes, France]

    ROMAN LAW. The Romans did much for the world by their laws. They
      showed little regard for the rights of men captured in war and were
      cruel in their treatment of slaves, but they considered carefully the
      rights of free men and women. Under the emperors the lawyers and judges
      worked to make the laws clearer and fairer to all. Finally the Emperor
      Justinian, who ruled at the time when the empire was already half ruined
      by the attacks of barbarian enemies, ordered the lawyer Tribonian to
      gather into a single code all the statutes and decrees. These laws
      lasted long after the empire was destroyed, and out of them grew many of
      the laws used in Europe to-day. They have also influenced our laws
      in America.

      [Illustration: PAVEMENT OF A ROMAN VILLA IN ENGLAND Unearthed
      not many years ago at Aldborough. Such stones laid in the form of
      designs or pictures are called Mosaics]

        QUESTIONS

        1. In the political strife at Rome what did the brothers Tiberius
        and Caius Gracchus try to do?

        2. What did Julius Caesar do when a party of senators tried to ruin
        him? What was the result of his war with the other Roman leaders?

        3. From what Roman word does “Emperor” come? What is the origin of
        the word “Kaiser”? How did Caesar die?

        4. Who was Caesar's successor and the first one who organized the
        Roman Empire?

        5. Why were the Romans such great builders of roads? How were their
        roads built? Do any traces of them still remain?

        6. How did the Romans provide the city with a supply of pure water?

        7. What was a Roman bath?

        8. Were the Romans as famous as the Greeks for their buildings? Name
        the largest buildings in Rome. What was a basilica? Of what use were
        basilicas to the Christians later?

        9. Do you remember the earliest form of the Roman law (Chapter
        V)? What did Justinian do with the laws in his day? Are
        these laws important to us?

        EXERCISES

        1. What emperors are there now? Are they like Caesar and Augustus?

        2. Find out if our roads are built as carefully as the Roman roads
        and if they are likely to last as long. What different kinds of
        roads do we have? Can any one in the room construct a small model of
        a Roman road?

        3. Find out how water is now carried to cities. Are cities provided
        with great public baths like those of the Romans?

        4. Ask a librarian or a lawyer to show you a copy of the revised
        statutes of your state. This is a code somewhat like the code of
        Justinian, only not so brief.

        [Illustration: TEMPLUM JOVIS CAPITOLINI (Medallion)]

    CHAPTER IX. CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE

    THE RELIGION OF THE JEWS. Among the cities captured by the Romans
      was Jerusalem, about which cluster so many stories from the Old
      Testament. There, hundreds of years before, lived David, the shepherd
      boy who, after wonderful adventures, became king of his people. There
      his son Solomon built a temple of dazzling splendor. Among this people
      had arisen great preachers,—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah,—who declared that
      religion did not consist in the sacrifice of bulls and goats, but in
      justice, in mercy, and in humility. They had a genius for religion, just
      as the Greeks had a genius for art, and the Romans a genius for
      government.

    THE JEWS CONQUERED BY THE ROMANS. When the Jews first heard of the
      Romans they admired these citizens of a republic who made and unmade
      kings. In later years they learned that the Romans were hard masters and
      they feared and hated them. The Jewish kingdom was one of the last
      countries along the shores of the Mediterranean which the Romans
      conquered, but like all the others it finally became a Roman province.

    JESUS OF NAZARETH. A few years before the Jewish kingdom became a
      Roman province there was born in a village near Jerusalem a child named
      Jesus. After he had grown to manhood in Nazareth he gathered about him
      followers or disciples whom he taught to live and act as is told in the
      books of the New Testament.

      [Illustration: A VIEW OF JERUSALEM Showing the Mount of Olives
      in the distance]

      This was the beginning of the Christian religion. It was first held by a
      little band of Jews, but Paul, a Jew born in Tarsus, a city of Asia
      whose inhabitants had received the rights of Roman citizenship, believed
      that the message of the new religion was meant for all nations. He
      taught it in many cities of Asia Minor and Greece, and even went as far
      west as Rome. Several of the epistles or letters in the New Testament
      were written by Paul to churches which he had founded or where he had
      taught. So it happens that from Palestine came religious teachings which
      multitudes consider even more important than the art and literature of
      the Greeks or the laws and political methods of the Romans.

    WHY THE CHRISTIANS WERE PERSECUTED. The Romans at first refused to
      permit any one in their empire to call himself a Christian. They
      disliked the Jews because the Jews denied that the Roman gods were real
      gods, asserting that these gods were mere images in wood and stone. The
      Christians did this also, but in the eyes of the Roman rulers the worst
      offense of the Christians was that they appeared to form a sort of
      secret society and held meetings to which other persons were not
      admitted. The emperor had forbidden such societies.

      The Romans also disliked the Christians because of their refusal to join
      in the public ceremonies which honored the emperor as if he were a god
      who had given peace and order to the world and who was able to reward
      the good and punish the evil. The Christians believed it to be wrong to
      join in the worship of an emperor, whether he were alive or dead.

    CHRISTIANS PUT TO DEATH. The Romans were cruel in their manner of
      punishing disobedience, and many Christians suffered death in its most
      horrible forms. Some were burned, others were tortured, others were torn
      to pieces by wild animals in the great amphitheaters to satisfy the
      fierce Roman crowd. Nero, the worst of the Roman emperors, who, many
      thought, set Rome on fire in order that he might enjoy the sight of the
      burning city, tried to turn suspicion from himself by accusing the
      Christians of the crime. He punished them by tying them to poles,
      smearing their bodies with pitch, and burning them at night as torches.

    THE CHRISTIANS ALLOWED TO WORSHIP. The new religion spread rapidly
      from province to province in spite of these persecutions. At first the
      Christians worshiped secretly, but later they ventured to build
      churches. Finally, three centuries after the birth of Christ, the
      emperors promised that the persecutions should cease and that the
      Christians might worship undisturbed.

      [Illustration: A VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE]

    THE ROMAN EMPIRE BECOMES CHRISTIAN ABOUT 325 A.D. Constantine was
      the first emperor to become Christian. He was the one who made the Greek
      city Byzantium the capital of the empire and for whom it was renamed
      Constantinople. For a time both the old Roman religion and the Christian
      religion were favored by the emperors, but before the fourth century
      closed the old religion was forbidden. In later days worshipers of the
      Roman gods were mostly country people, called in Latin pagani, and
      therefore their religion was called “paganism.”

    HOW THE CHURCH WAS RULED. One of the reasons why the Christians had
      been successful in their struggle with the Roman emperors was that they
      were united under wise and brave leaders. The Christians in each large
      city were ruled by a bishop, and the bishops of several cities were
      directed by an archbishop. In the western part of the empire the bishop
      of Rome, who was called the pope, was honored as the chief of the
      bishops and archbishops, and the successor of the Apostle Peter. In the
      eastern part the archbishops or patriarchs of Constantinople and
      Alexandria and Jerusalem honored the pope, but claimed to be equal in
      authority with him.

      There were also two kinds of clergy, parish priests and monks. The
      priests were pastors of ordinary parishes, but the monks lived in groups
      in buildings called monasteries. Sometimes their purpose was to dwell
      far from the bustle and wrongs of ordinary life and give themselves to
      prayer and fasting; sometimes they acted as a brotherhood of teachers in
      barbarous communities, teaching the people better methods of farming,
      and carrying the arts of civilized life beyond the borders of
      the empire.

        QUESTIONS

        1. Where did the Jews live in Ancient Times?

        2. Do you remember any of the stories of David?

        3. What finally became of the kingdom over which David ruled?

        4. What era in the history of the world begins with the birth of
        Jesus Christ?

        5. Why did the Romans forbid the Christians to worship? How did the
        Romans punish them? How long after the birth of Christ before the
        emperors allowed the Christians to worship undisturbed?

        [Illustration: A MONASTERY IN THE MIDDLE AGES Abbey of
        Saint-Germain des Pres as it appeared in 1361 with wall, towers, and
        moat or ditch]

        6. What is the name of the first Roman emperor who became a
        Christian? What name was soon given to the worshipers of the old
        Roman gods?

        7. By what titles were the leaders of the Christians named? What two
        kinds of clergy were there?

        Important date: 325 A.D., when the Roman Empire became Christian.

    CHAPTER X. EMIGRANTS A THOUSAND YEARS AGO

    THE MIDDLE AGES. It was more than a thousand years from the time of
      Constantine to the time of Columbus. This period is called “Mediaeval,”
      or the “Middle Ages.” During these long centuries the ancient civilized
      world of the Roman Empire was much changed. The Roman or Greek cities on
      the southern shores of the Mediterranean were captured by Arabs or
      Moors. The Moors conquered the larger part of Spain. The eastern lands
      of Palestine and Asia Minor fell into the hands of the Turks. The Turks,
      the Moors, and the Arabs were followers of the “prophet" Mohammed, who
      died in the year 632. The Mohammedans were enemies of the Christians.

    WESTERN EUROPE. The other part of the European world was also
      changed. The countries on the shores of the Atlantic were now more
      important than those on the shores of the Mediterranean. The names of
      the different countries were changed. Instead of Gallia or Gaul, there
      was France; instead of Britannia, England; for Hispania, Spain; for
      Germania, Deutschland or Germany. Italy, the center of the old empire,
      was finally divided into several states—city republics like Genoa and
      Venice, provinces ruled by the pope, and other territories ruled by
      dukes, princes, or kings.

    FATE OF CIVILIZATION. The most important question to ask is, How
      much of the manner of living or civilization of the Greeks and the
      Romans did the later Europeans still retain? The answer is found in the
      history of the Middle Ages. In this history is also found what men added
      to that which they had learned from the Greeks and the Romans. The
      emigrants to America were to carry with them knowledge which not even
      the wisest men of the ancient world had possessed.

      [Illustration: WALL OF AURELIAN This wall enclosed the ancient
      city of Rome. It was about thirteen miles in circumference, fifty-five
      feet high, and had three hundred towers]

    MEDIAEVAL GERMAN EMIGRANTS. The first part of the history of the
      Middle Ages explains how the German peoples from whom most of our
      forefathers were descended began to move from the northern forests
      towards the borders of the Roman Empire. Many thousand men had already
      crossed the Rhine and the Danube to serve in the Roman armies. Sometimes
      an unusually strong and skilful warrior would be made a general. Germans
      had also crossed the Rhine to work as farmers on the estates of the rich
      Gallic nobles. Other Germans, called Goths, worked in Constantinople and
      the cities of the East as masons, porters, and water-carriers. The
      Romans had owned so many slaves that they had lost the habit of work and
      were glad to hire these foreigners.

    STORY OF ULFILAS. Many of the Goths who lived north of the Danube
      had forsaken their old gods and become Christians. They were taught by
      Bishop Ulfilas, once a captive among them, afterward a missionary. He
      translated the Bible into the Gothic language, and this translation is
      the most ancient specimen of German that we possess. Many of the other
      German tribes learned about Christianity from the Goths, and although
      they might be enemies of the Roman government, they were not enemies of
      the Church.

    THE GOTHS INVADE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The Roman emperors tried to
      prevent the northern tribes from crossing the frontier in great numbers,
      because, once across, if they did not find work and food, they became
      plunderers. Not many years after Constantine's death, a million Goths
      had passed the Danube and had plundered the country almost to the walls
      of Constantinople. This was not like the invasion of a regular army,
      which comes to fight battles and to arrange terms of peace.

      The Goths, and the Germans who soon followed their example, moved as a
      whole people, with their wives and children, their cattle, and the few
      household goods they owned. Wherever they wished to settle they demanded
      of the Romans one third, sometimes two thirds, of the land. They soon
      learned to be good neighbors of the older inhabitants, although at first
      they were little better than robbers. Alaric, one of the leaders of the
      Goths, led them into Italy and in the year 410 captured Rome. Alaric did
      not injure the buildings much, and he kept his men from robbing the
      churches. Some of the other barbarous tribes who roamed about plundering
      villages and attacking cities did far greater damage. The Roman
      government grew weaker and weaker, until one by one the provinces fell
      into the hands of German kings.

    BEGINNINGS OF ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND GERMANY. Britain was attacked by
      the Angles and Saxons from the shores of Germany across the North Sea.
      They drove away the inhabitants or made slaves of
      them and settled upon the lands they had seized. The country was then
      called Angle-land or England, and the people Anglo-Saxons or Englishmen.

      The Roman provinces in Gaul were gradually conquered by the Franks from
      the borders of the Rhine, and they gave the name France to the land.

      At about the same time the other German tribes that had remained in
      Germany united under one king.

    THE RESULT OF BARBARIAN ATTACKS. The part of the ancient world
      which lay about Constantinople was less changed than the rest during the
      Middle Ages. The walls of Constantinople were high and thick, and they
      withstood attack after attack until 1453. Within their shelter men
      continued to live much as they had lived in Ancient Times. A few
      delighted to study the writings of the ancient Greeks. In Italy and the
      other countries of western Europe most of the cities were in ruins. The
      ancient baths, amphitheaters, aqueducts, and palaces of Rome crumbled
      and fell. The mediaeval Romans also used huge buildings like the
      Colosseum as quarries of cut stone and burned the marble for lime. This
      was done in every country where Roman buildings existed.

      [Illustration: THE AMPHITHEATER AT ARLES]

      The amphitheater at Arles in southern France had a still stranger
      fortune. It was used at one time as a citadel, at another as a prison
      and gradually became the home of hundreds of the criminals and the poor
      of the city. “Every archway held its nest of human outcasts. From stone
      to stone they cast their rotting beams and plaster and burrowed into the
      very entrails of the enormous building to seek a secure retreat from the
      pursuit of the officers of the law.”

      Few persons traveled from Constantinople to Italy or France, and few
      from western Europe visited Constantinople. The men of Italy and France
      and England did not know how to read Greek. Many of them also ceased to
      read the writings of the ancient Romans.

      [Illustration: ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH, CANTERBURY, ENGLAND This
      church is on the site of a chapel built in the sixth century. Its walls
      show some of the bricks of the original chapel]

    THE ENGLISH BECOME CHRISTIANS, 597 A.D. Christianity had spread
      throughout the Roman Empire, and it became the religion of all the
      tribes who founded kingdoms of their own upon the ruins of the Empire.
      The Angles and Saxons, when they invaded Britain, were still worshipers
      of the gods Wodan and Thor. They had never learned from the Goths of
      Ulfilas anything about Christianity.

      One day in the slave market at Rome three fair-haired boys were offered
      for sale. Gregory, a noble Roman, who had become a monk and was the
      abbot of his monastery, happened to be passing and asked who they were.
      He was told they were Angles. “Angels,” he cried, “yes, they have faces
      like angels, and should become companions of the angels in heaven.” When
      this good abbot became pope, he sent missionaries to Angle-land and they
      established themselves at Canterbury.

      [Illustration: GREGORY AND THE LITTLE ENGLISH SLAVES]

    MISSIONARIES TO THE GERMANS AND THE SLAVS. The conversion of the
      English helped in the spread of Christianity on the Continent, for
      Boniface, an English monk, was the greatest missionary to the Germans.
      He won thousands from the worship of their ancient gods and founded many
      churches. The Slavs, who lived east of the Germans, were taught by
      missionaries from Constantinople instead of from Rome.

    THE EDUCATED MEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES. The missionaries and teachers
      of the Church had been educated like the older Romans. They read Roman
      books, and tried to preserve the knowledge which both Greeks and Romans
      had gathered. Influenced by them, the emigrants and conquerors from the
      north also tried to be like the Romans. Educated men, and especially the
      priests of the Church, used Latin as their language. In this way some
      parts of the old Roman and Greek civilization were preserved, although
      the Roman government had fallen and many beautiful cities were mere
      heaps of ruins.

    THE VIKINGS. The emigration of whole peoples from one part of
      Europe to another did not stop when the Roman Empire was overrun. New
      peoples appeared and sought to plunder or crowd out the tribes which had
      already settled within its boundaries and were learning the ways of
      civilization.

      One of these peoples came from the regions now known as Norway, Sweden,
      and Denmark. They were called Danes by the English, and Northmen or
      Normans by other Europeans. They had another name, Vikings, which was
      their word for sea-rovers.

      It was their custom to sail the seas and rivers rather than march on the
      land. They were a hardy and daring people, who liked nothing better than
      to fight and conquer and rob in other countries. There was not a land in
      western Europe, even as far south as Sicily, that they did not visit.
      Wherever they went they plundered and burned and murdered, leaving a
      blackened trail.

    THE DANES IN ENGLAND. The Danes ravaged the eastern and southern
      shores of England, and after they were tired of robbery, partly because
      there was little left to take, they began to settle in the land. Alfred,
      the greatest of the early English kings, was driven by them into the
      swamps for a while, but in the year 878 A.D. he conquered an army of
      them in battle and persuaded one of their kings to be baptized as a
      Christian. Alfred was obliged to allow them to keep the eastern portion
      of England, a region called Danelaw, because the law of the Danes was
      obeyed there.

      [Illustration: A VIKING SHIP AT SEA]

    THE DANES BECOME NORMANS. No more Danes or Northmen came to trouble
      England for a time, but instead they crossed the Channel to France and
      rowed up the Seine and tried to capture Paris. A few years later a
      Frankish king gave them the city of Rouen, further down the Seine, and
      the region about it which was called Normandy. These Normans also
      accepted Christianity.

    THE VIKINGS BECOME DISCOVERERS. Before another hundred years had
      passed the Northmen performed a feat more difficult than sailing up
      rivers and burning towns. They were the first to venture far out of
      sight of land, though their ships were no larger than our fishing boats.
      These bold sailors visited the Orkney and the Shetland Islands, north of
      Scotland, and finally reached Iceland. In Iceland their sheep and cattle
      flourished, and a lively trade in fish, oil, butter, and skins sprang up
      with the old homeland and with the British islands.

      Before long one of the settlers, named Eric the Red, led a colony to
      Greenland, the larger and more desolate island further west. He called
      it Greenland because, he said, men would be more easily persuaded to go
      there if the land had a good name. This was probably in the year 985.

      [Illustration: LEIF ERICSON From the statue in Boston]

    DISCOVERY OF VINLAND. Eric had a son, called Leif Ericson, or Leif
      the Lucky, who visited Norway and was well received at the court of King
      Olaf. Not long before missionaries had persuaded Olaf and his people to
      give up their old gods and accept Christianity, and Leif followed their
      example. Leif set out in the early summer of the year 1000 to carry the
      new religion to his father, Eric the Red, to his father's people, and to
      his neighbors. The voyage was a long one, lasting all the summer, for on
      the way his ship was driven out of its course and came upon strange
      lands where wild rice and grape-vines and large trees grew. The milder
      climate and stories of large trees useful for building ships aroused the
      curiosity of the Greenlanders.

      They sent exploring expeditions, and found the coast of North America at
      places which they called Helluland, that is, the land of flat stones;
      Markland, the land of forests; and Vinland, where the grape-vines grow.
      Helluland was probably on the coast of Labrador, Markland somewhere on
      the shores of Newfoundland, and Vinland in Nova Scotia.

    THE SETTLEMENT IN VINLAND. Thornfinn Karlsefni, a successful trader
      between Iceland and Greenland, attempted to plant a colony in the new
      lands. Karlsefni and his friends, to the number of one hundred and sixty
      men and several women, set out in 1007 with three or four ships, loaded
      with supplies and many cattle. They built huts and remained three or
      four winters in Vinland, but all trace of any settlement
      disappeared long ago.

      They found, their stories tell us, swarthy, rough-looking Indians, with
      coarse hair, large eyes, and broad cheeks, with whom they traded red
      cloth for furs. Trouble broke out between the Northmen and the Indians,
      who outnumbered them. So many Northmen were killed that the survivors
      became alarmed and returned to Greenland.

      [Illustration: DISCOVERIES OF THE NORTHMEN The American lands
      they found are marked with diagonal lines]

    VINLAND FORGOTTEN. The voyages to Vinland soon ceased and the
      discoveries of Leif and his followers were only remembered in the songs
      or “sagas” of the people. They thought of Vinland mainly as a land of
      flat stones, great trees, and fierce natives. Nor did the wise men of
      Europe who heard the Northmen's story guess that a New World had been
      discovered. It was probably fortunate that five hundred years were to go
      by before Europeans settled in America, for within that time they were
      to learn a great deal and to find again many things which the Romans had
      left but which in the year 1000 were hidden away, either in the ruins of
      the ancient cities or in libraries and treasure-houses, where few knew
      of them. The more Europeans possessed before they set out, the more
      Americans would have to start with.

      [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A BIT OF AN OLD SAGA MANUSCRIPT]

        QUESTIONS

        1. What is meant by the “Middle Ages” or the “Mediaeval” period?

        2. Show on the map, what part of the Roman Empire was
        conquered by the Mohammedans.

        3. Mention the Roman names of England, France, Germany, and Spain,
        Why were they changed to what they are now?

        4. What people early in the Middle Ages began to emigrate from their
        homes to the Roman Empire? What did they do for a living?

        5. Where did the Goths live? Who taught them the Christian religion?
        When the Goths entered the Roman Empire what did they ask of the
        inhabitants? Did they destroy much? How many years separated the
        capture of Rome by Alaric from its capture by the Gauls?

        6. What tribes conquered England or Britain? What tribes conquered
        Roman Gaul or France? How long before Constantinople was captured?

        7. What was the effect of these raids and wars upon many cities? Who
        tried to keep fresh the memory of what the Greeks and the Romans had
        done? Who used the language of the Romans?

        8. Tell the story of the way the English became Christians. Who
        taught the Christian religion to many Germans? From what city did
        the Slavs receive missionaries?

        9. What different names are given to the inhabitants of Denmark,
        Norway, and Sweden who became rovers over the seas? Where did they
        make settlements?

        10. Tell the story of how Leif the Lucky discovered America. Why did
        the Northmen leave Vinland?

        EXERCISES

        1. Point out on the map all the places mentioned in this chapter.

        2. On an outline map mark the names of the peoples mentioned in the
        chapter on the countries where they settled.

        3. Ask children in school who know some other language than English
        what are their names for England, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy.

        Important dates:

        Alaric's capture of Rome, 410 A.D.

        Discovery of America by the Northmen, 1000 A.D.

    CHAPTER XI. HOW ENGLISHMEN LEARNED TO GOVERN THEMSELVES

    HEROES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. The Middle Ages, like Ancient Times, are
      recalled by many interesting tales. Some of them, such as the stories of
      King Arthur and his Knights, the story of Roland, and the Song of the
      Niebelungs, are only tales and not history. Others tell us about great
      kings, Charlemagne and St. Louis of France, Frederick the Redbeard of
      Germany, or St. Stephen of Hungary. The hero-king for England was
      Alfred, who fought bravely against the pirate Danes and finally
      conquered and persuaded many of them to live quietly under his rule.

    KING ALFRED BEGAN TO REIGN IN 871. King Alfred was a skilful
      warrior, but he was also an excellent ruler in time of peace. When he
      was a boy he had shown his love of books. His mother once offered a
      beautifully written Saxon poem as a prize to the one of her sons who
      should be the first to learn it. Alfred could not yet read, but he had a
      ready memory, and with the aid of his teacher he learned the poem and
      won the prize.

      At that time almost all books were written in Latin and few even of the
      clergy could read. During the long wars with the Danes many books had
      been destroyed. Men found battle-axes more useful than books and ceased
      to care about reading. King Alfred feared that the Saxons would soon
      become ignorant barbarians, and sent for priests and monks who were
      learned and were able to teach his clergy. He sent even into France
      for such men.

    EARLY ENGLISH BOOKS. As it would be easier for people to learn to
      read books written in the language they spoke rather than in Latin,
      Alfred helped to translate several famous Latin books into English.
      Among these was a history written by a Roman before the Germans had
      overthrown the Roman Empire. This history told about the world of the
      Greeks and the Romans.

      Alfred commanded some of his clergy to keep a record from year to year
      of things which happened in his kingdom. This record was called the
      Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and was the first history written in the English
      language. It was carefully kept for many years after Alfred's death.
      Another wise thing Alfred did was to collect the laws or “dooms" of the
      earlier kings, so that every one might know what the law required.

      [Illustration: EXTRACT FROM THE SAXON CHRONICLE From a copy in
      the British Museum]

    THE BEGINNING OF A NAVY. Alfred has been called the creator of the
      English navy. He thought that the only way to keep the Danes from
      plundering his shores was to fight them on the sea. He built several
      ships which were bigger than the Danish ships, but they were not always
      victorious, for they could not follow the Danish ships into shallow
      water. Nevertheless, the Danes could not plunder England as easily
      as before.

    THE NEW ARMY. Alfred organized his fighting men in a better way. In
      times past the men had been called upon to fight only when the Danes
      were near, but now he kept a third of his men ready all the time, and
      another third he placed in forts, so the rest were able to work in the
      fields in safety. There are good reasons why Englishmen regard Alfred
      as a hero.

    WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR BEGAN TO RULE ENGLAND IN 1066. About a
      hundred and fifty years after Alfred died, William, duke of Normandy,
      crossed the Channel with an army, killed the English king in battle, and
      seized the throne. This was not altogether a misfortune to the English,
      for they came under the same ruler as the Normans and they shared in all
      that the men of the Continent were beginning to learn. For one thing,
      builders from the Continent taught the English to construct the great
      Norman churches or cathedrals which every traveler in England sees.
      Besides, William the Conqueror was a strong king and put down the chiefs
      or lords that were inclined to oppress the common people.

    HENRY II. Henry II, one of William's successors, ruled over most of
      western France as well as over England. His officers and nobles were
      tired out by his endless traveling in his lands, which extended from the
      banks of the river Loire in France to the borders of Scotland. All
      Englishmen and Americans should remember him with gratitude because of
      the improvements he made in the ways of discovering the truth when
      disputes arose and were carried into courts.

      [Illustration: THE NORMANS CROSSING THE ENGLISH CHANNEL From the
      Bayeux Tapestry, embroidered in the time of William the Conqueror. The
      figures are worked on a band of linen two hundred and thirty feet long,
      and twenty inches wide. Worsteds of eight colors are used]

    ORDEALS AND TRIALS BY BATTLE. Before Henry's reign it was the
      custom when a man was accused of a crime to find out the truth by
      arranging a wager of battle or what were called ordeals. The two most
      common ordeals were the ordeal by fire and the ordeal by water. In the
      ordeal by fire an iron was heated red-hot, and after it had been blessed
      by a priest it was put into the hand of the man the truth of whose word
      was being tested, and he had to carry it a certain number of feet. His
      hand was then bound up and left for three days. If at the end of that
      time the wound was healing, men believed he was innocent, for they
      thought God would keep an innocent man from being punished.

      In the ordeal by water the man was tied and thrown into water which had
      been blessed by the priest. If he was guilty, the people thought the
      water would not receive him. If he sank at once, he was pulled out and
      treated as if he had told the truth.

      [Illustration: TRIAL BY BATTLE After a drawing in an old
      manuscript]

      A wager of battle was a fight between the two men whose dispute was to
      be settled, or between a man and his accuser. Each was armed with a
      hammer or a small battle-axe, and the one who gave up lost his case.

    TRIAL BY JURY. King Henry introduced a better way of finding out
      the truth. He called upon twelve men from a neighborhood to come before
      the judges, to promise solemnly to tell what they knew about a matter,
      and then to decide which person was in the right. They were supposed to
      know about the facts, and they were allowed to talk the matter over with
      one another before they made a decision.

      Later these men from the neighborhood were divided into two groups, one
      to tell what they knew and the other to listen and decide what was true.
      Those who told what they knew were called the witnesses, and those who
      listened and decided were called jurors. The name jurors came from a
      Latin word meaning to take an oath.

    RICHARD THE LIONHEARTED. King Henry had two sons, Richard and John.
      Richard was the boldest and most skilful fighter of his time. When the
      news was brought to England that Jerusalem had been captured by the
      Mohammedans, he led an army to Palestine to recapture it. He failed to
      take the city, but he became famous throughout the East as a fearless
      warrior and was ever afterwards called the “Lionhearted.” At his death
      his brother John became king. He was as cowardly and wicked as Richard
      was brave and generous.

    THE GREAT CHARTER. The leaders of the people, the nobles and the
      clergy, soon grew tired of John's wickedness. In 1215 they raised an
      army and threatened to take the kingdom from John and crown another
      prince as king. John was soon ready to promise anything in order to
      obtain power once more, and the nobles and bishops met him at Runnymede
      on the river Thames, a few miles west of London, and compelled him to
      sign a list of promises. As the list contained sixty-three separate
      promises, it was called the Great Charter or Magna Charta. If John did
      not keep these promises, the lords and clergy agreed to make war on him,
      and he even said that this would be their duty.

    PROMISES OF THE CHARTER. Many of the articles of the Great Charter
      were important only to the men of King John's day, but others are as
      important to us as to them. In these the king promised that every one
      should be treated justly. He said he would not refuse to listen to the
      complaints of those who thought they were wronged. The king also
      promised that he would not decide in favor of a rich man just because
      the rich man might offer him money. He would put no one in prison who
      had not been tried and found guilty by a jury. By another important
      promise the king said he would not levy new taxes without the consent of
      the chief men of the kingdom. This opened the way for the people to have
      something to say about how their money should be spent. This right is a
      very important part of what we call self-government.

      [Illustration: A PORTION OF THE GREAT CHARTER]

    PROMISES OF THE GREAT CHARTER RENEWED. In after times whenever the
      English thought a king was doing them a wrong they reminded him of the
      promises made by King John in the Great Charter and demanded that the
      promises be solemnly renewed.

      In 1265 a great noble named Simon de Montfort asked many towns to send a
      number of their chief men to meet with the nobles and clergy to talk
      over the conduct of the king. Others, even kings, soon followed Simon's
      example by asking the townsmen for advice about matters of government.
      After a while this became the custom. Occasionally the king wanted the
      advice of the clergy, the nobles, and the townsmen at the same time and
      called them together. The meeting was called a parliament, that is, an
      assembly in which talking or discussion goes on.

      [Illustration: Parliament House Westminster Hall Westminster
      Abbey—WHERE PARLIAMENT MET IN LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

    THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT. Only the most important nobles or lords
      could go in person to the assemblies, otherwise the meeting would be too
      large to do any business. The other lords chose certain ones from their
      number to go in place of all the rest. We call such men representatives.
      In this way, besides the men who represented the towns, there were
      present these nobles who represented the landowners of the counties.
      Gradually these nobles and the townsmen formed an assembly of their own,
      while the greater lords, the bishops, and abbots sat together in another
      assembly. The two assemblies were called the House of Commons and the
      House of Lords, and the two made up the parliament.

    AN ASSEMBLY OF REPRESENTATIVES. This parliament was a great
      invention. The English had discovered a better way of governing
      themselves than either the Greeks or the Romans. We call it the
      representative system. If a Roman citizen who lived far from Rome wanted
      to take part in the elections, he was obliged to leave his farm or his
      business and travel to Rome, for only the citizens who were at Rome
      could have a share in making the laws. It never occurred to the Romans
      that the citizens outside of Rome could send some of their number as
      representatives to Rome. The formation of the English parliament was an
      important step towards what we mean in America by “government of the
      people, for the people, and by the people.”

        QUESTIONS

        1. Mention the names of heroes or hero-kings of the Middle Ages.
        What stories have you learned about these heroes?

        2. Who was the hero-king of the English? How did he early show his
        love of books? What did he do to help his people to a knowledge
        of books?

        3. How did he succeed better than other kings in driving back the
        Danes? Why has he been called the creator of the English navy?

        4. What was the name of the Norman duke who conquered the English
        and ruled over them? Did this conquest hinder or help them?

        5. Why should we remember Henry II gratefully? Explain an ordeal and
        a trial by battle. How were the first juries formed and what did
        they do? How were they afterwards divided?

        6. For what was King Richard most celebrated? What sort of a king
        was his brother John?

        7. Why was the Charter which John was forced to grant called
        “Great”? Repeat some of its promises. Did the English soon forget
        these promises?

        8. Who asked the townsmen to send several of their number to talk
        over affairs with the clergy and the nobles? What was this body
        finally called? Into what two bodies was it divided?

        9. What is a “representative system”? Why was it an invention? What
        did the Romans do when they lived in towns distant from Rome and
        wanted to take part in elections or help make the laws?

        EXERCISES

        1. Learn and tell one of the King Arthur stories and a part of the
        story of the Niebelungs. Find a story about Charlemagne, Frederick
        the Redbeard, St. Louis, or St. Stephen.

        2. Collect pictures of war vessels, those of old times and those of
        to-day, and explain their differences.

        3. Find out how men nowadays decide whether an accused man is
        guilty.

        4. What is the name of the assembly in your state which makes the
        laws? What assembly at Washington makes the laws for the
        whole country?

    CHAPTER XII. THE CIVILIZATION OF THE MIDDLE AGES

    WHAT THE ENGLISH OWED TO THEIR EUROPEAN NEIGHBORS. If the English
      succeeded better than other Europeans in learning how to govern
      themselves, one reason was that the Channel protected them from attack,
      and they could quarrel with their king without running much risk that
      their enemies in other countries would take advantage of the quarrel to
      seize their lands or attempt to conquer them.

      The French were not so well placed. France also was not united like
      England, and whole districts called counties or duchies were almost
      independent of the king, being ruled by their counts and dukes. In
      France it would not have been wise for the people to quarrel with the
      king, for he was their natural protector against cruel lords. Germany
      and Italy were even more divided, with not only counties and duchies,
      but also cities nearly as independent as the ancient cities of Greece.

      The Europeans on the Continent did many things which the English were
      doing, and some of these were so well done that the English were ready
      to accept these Europeans as their teachers. The memory of what the
      Greeks and the Romans had done remained longer in southern France and
      Italy because so many buildings were still standing which reminded
      Frenchmen and Italians of the people who built them.

      [Illustration: A MONK COPYING MANUSCRIPT BOOKS]

    CLASSES OF PEOPLE. The people of Europe, as well as of England,
      were divided into two classes, nobles and peasants. The clergy seemed to
      form another class because there were so many of them. Besides the
      parish priests and the bishops there were thousands of monks, who were
      persons who chose to dwell together in monasteries under the rule of an
      abbot or a prior, rather than live among ordinary people where men were
      so often tempted to do wrong or were so likely to be wronged by others.
      The monks worked on the farms of the monasteries, or studied in the
      libraries, or prayed and fasted. For a long time the men who knew how to
      read were nearly always monks or priests. Outside of the monasteries or
      the bishops' houses there were few books.

    THE NOBLES. The nobles were either knights, barons, counts, or
      dukes. In England there were also earls. Many mediaeval nobles ruled
      like kings, but over a smaller territory. They gained their power
      because they were rich in land and could support many men who were ready
      to follow them in battle, or because in the constant wars they proved
      themselves able to keep anything they took, whether it was a hilltop or
      a town. Timid and peaceable people were often glad to put themselves
      under the protection of such a fighter, who saved them from being robbed
      by other fighting nobles.

      In this way the nobles served a good purpose until the kings, who were
      at first only very successful nobles, were able to bring nobles as well
      as peasants under their own rule and to compel every one to obey the
      same laws. After this the nobles became what we call an aristocracy,
      proud of their family history, generally living in better houses and
      owning more land than their neighbors, but with little power
      over others.

      [Illustration: PLAN OF A MEDIAEVAL CASTLE 1. The Donjon-keep. 2.
      Chapel. 3. Stables. 4. Inner Court. 5. Outer Court. 6. Outworks. 7.
      Mount, where justice was executed. 8. Soldiers' Lodgings]

      [Illustration: PIERREFONDS—ONE OF THE GREAT CASTLES OF FRANCE]

    CASTLES. For safety, kings and nobles in the Middle Ages were
      obliged to build strong stone forts or fortified houses called castles.
      They were often placed on a hilltop or on an island or in a spot where
      approach to the walls could be made difficult by a broad canal, or moat,
      filled with water. At different places along the walls were towers, and
      within the outer ring of walls a great tower, or keep, which was hard to
      capture even after the rest of the castle had been entered by the enemy.
      These castles were gloomy places to live in until, centuries later,
      their inner walls were pierced with windows. Many are still standing,
      others are interesting heaps of ruins.

    KNIGHTHOOD. The lords of the castles were occupied mostly in
      hunting or fighting. They fought to keep other lords from interfering
      with them or to win for themselves more lands and power. They hunted
      that they might have meat for their tables. In later times, when it was
      not so necessary to kill animals for food, they hunted as a sport.
      Fighting also ceased to be the chief occupation, although the nobles
      were expected to accompany the king in his wars.

      From boyhood the sons of nobles, unless they entered the Church as
      priests or monks, were taught the art of fighting. A boy was sent to the
      castle of another lord, where he served as a page, waiting on the lord
      at table or running errands. He was trained to ride a horse boldly and
      to be skilful with the sword and the lance. When his education was
      finished he was usually made a knight, an event which took place with
      many interesting ceremonies.

      The young man bathed, as a sign that he was pure. The weapons and arms
      for his use were blessed by a priest and laid on the altar of the
      church, and near them he knelt and prayed all night. In the final
      ceremony a sword was girded upon him and he received a slight blow on
      the neck from the sword of some knight, or perhaps of the king. His
      armor covered him from head to foot in metal, and sometimes his horse
      was also covered with metal plates. When he was fully armed, he was
      expected to show his skill to the lords and ladies who were present.

    THE DUTIES OF A KNIGHT. The duties of the knight were to defend the
      weak, to protect women from wrong, to be faithful to his lord and king,
      and to be courteous even to an enemy. A knight true to these duties was
      called “chivalrous,” a word which means very much what we mean by the
      word “gentlemanly.” There were many wicked knights, but we must not
      forget that the good knights taught courtesy, faithfulness in keeping
      promises, respect for women, courage, self-sacrifice, and honor.

      [Illustration: A Knight in Armor Thirteenth century]

    THE PEASANTS. Most of the people were peasants or townsmen. There
      were few towns, because many had been burned by the barbarian tribes
      which broke into the Roman Empire, or had been destroyed in the later
      wars. The peasants were crowded in villages close to the walls of some
      castle or monastery. They paid dearly for the protection which the lord
      of the castle or the abbot of the monastery gave them, for they were
      obliged to work on his lands three days or more each week, and to bring
      him eggs, chickens, and a little money several times a year. They also
      gave him a part of their harvest.

    THE TOWNSMEN. At first the towns belonged to lords, or abbots, or
      bishops, but many towns drove out their lords and ruled themselves or
      received officers from the king. When they ruled themselves, their towns
      were called communes. The citizens agreed that whenever the town bell
      was rung they would gather together. Any one who was absent was fined.
      For them “eternal vigilance was the price of liberty.” Some of the
      belfries of these mediaeval towns are still standing, and remind the
      citizens of to-day of the struggles of the early days.

      [Illustration: VIEW OF CARCASSONNE This is an ancient city in
      France founded by the Romans]

      The men of each occupation or trade were organized into societies or
      guilds, with masters, journeymen, and apprentices. There were guilds of
      goldsmiths, ironmongers, and fishmongers, that is, workers in gold and
      iron and sellers of fish. The merchants also had their guilds. In many
      towns no one was allowed to work at a trade or sell merchandise who was
      not a member of a guild.

    OLD CITIES WHICH STILL EXIST. Many of the towns which grew up in
      the Middle Ages are now the great cities of England and Europe. Their
      citizens can look back a thousand years and more over the history of
      their city, can point to churches, to town halls, and sometimes to
      private houses, that have stood all this time. They can often show the
      remains of mediaeval walls or broad streets where once these walls
      stood, and the moats that surrounded them. The traveler in York or
      London, in Paris, in Nuremburg, in Florence, or in Rome eagerly searches
      for the relics about which so many interesting stories of the past
      are told.

    VENICE AND GENOA. One of the most fascinating of these old cities
      is Venice, built upon low-lying islands two miles from the shore of
      Italy and protected by a sand bar from the waters of the Adriatic.
      Venice was founded by men and women who fled from a Roman city on the
      mainland which was ruined by the barbarians in the fifth century after
      Christ. In many places piles had to be driven into the loose sands to
      furnish a foundation for houses. The Venetians did not try to keep out
      the water but used it as streets, and instead of driving in wagons they
      went about in boats. They grew rich in trade on the sea, as the Greeks
      had done in those same waters hundreds of years before.

      Farther down the coast of Italy were the cities Brindisi and Taranto,
      the Brundusium and Tarentum of the Romans. Across the peninsula to the
      west was another trading city called Genoa, which was the birthplace
      of Columbus.

    MODERN LANGUAGES. While the people of mediaeval times were building
      city walls and towers to protect themselves they were also doing other
      things. Almost without knowing it they formed the languages which we now
      speak and write—English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish.

      The English and German languages are closely related because the
      forefathers of the English emigrated to England from Germany, taking
      their language with them. This older language was gradually changed, but
      it still remained like German. Dutch is another language like both
      English and German.

      There are many words in these languages borrowed from other peoples.
      Englishmen, because of their long union with western France, borrowed
      many words from the French. The French did not invent these words, for
      the French language grew out of the Latin language which the French
      learned from the Romans.

    HOW MODERN LANGUAGES WERE FORMED. In English we have two sets of
      words and phrases: one is used in writing books or speeches, the other
      in conversation. When the Gauls learned Latin, the language of Rome,
      most of them learned the words used in conversation and did not learn
      the words of Roman books. Before long spoken words differed so much from
      the older written words that only scholars understood that the two had
      belonged to the same language. This new language was French. In the same
      way Italian and Spanish grew out of the ordinary Latin spoken in Italy
      and Spain.

      When men began to write books in the new languages, the changes went on
      more slowly because the use of words in books kept the spelling the
      same. Men wrote less in Latin, but it was still used in the religious
      services of the Church and in the schools and universities.

      [Illustration: VENICE AND THE GRAND CANAL]

    SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. In the Middle Ages most boys and girls
      did not go to school. Education was principally for those who expected
      to become priests or monks. The schools were in the monasteries or in
      the houses or palaces of the bishops. The students were taught a little
      Latin grammar, to write or speak Latin, and to debate. They also learned
      arithmetic; enough astronomy to reckon the days on which the festivals
      of the Church should come; and music, so much as was then known of it.
      Printing had not been invented, so there were no text-books for them to
      study, and written books or manuscripts were too costly. Students
      listened to the teacher as he read from his manuscripts and copied the
      words or tried to remember them.

    THE BEGINNING OF UNIVERSITIES. If students remained in the schools
      after these things had been learned, they studied the laws of the
      Romans, or the practise of medicine, or the religious questions which
      are called theology. Some teachers talked in such an interesting way
      about such questions that hundreds of students came to listen. Like
      other kinds of workers, who were organized in societies or guilds, the
      teachers and students formed a guild called a university. The teachers
      were the master-workmen, and the students were the apprentices.

    WHERE THE STUDENTS LIVED. In the beginning the universities had no
      buildings of their own, and the teachers taught in hired halls, the
      students boarding wherever they could find lodgings. Partly to help
      students who were too poor to pay for good lodgings, and partly to bring
      the students under the direct rule of teachers, colleges were built.
      These were not separate institutions like the American colleges, but
      simply houses for residence, although later some teaching was done
      in them.

    SOME FAMOUS UNIVERSITIES. The oldest university was in Bologna in
      Italy, and teachers began to explain the laws of the Romans to its
      students eight hundred years ago. The University of Paris was called the
      greatest university in the Middle Ages. Its students numbered sometimes
      between six and seven thousand. About the same time the English
      universities of Oxford and Cambridge were formed, and there, many years
      later, a large number of the men who settled in America were educated.

    THE WISDOM OF THE ARABS. Students in these universities obtained
      several of the writings of the Greeks through the Arabs, the followers
      of Mohammed, who had conquered most of Spain. Long before Europeans
      thought of founding universities the Arabs had flourishing schools and
      universities in Spain. The capital of the Mohammedan Empire was first at
      Bagdad on the Euphrates, where once ruled Haroun-al-Raschid, the hero of
      the tales of the Arabian Nights.

      [Illustration: VIEW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD Built in the
      fourteenth century]

    WHAT EUROPEANS BORROWED FROM THE ARABS. The Arabs had learned much
      of geography and mathematics from the Greeks, and they also found out
      much for themselves. The numerals which we use are Arabic; and algebra,
      one of our principal studies in mathematics, was thought out by the
      Arabs. Their learned men were deeply interested in the books of
      Aristotle, an ancient Greek, who had been a teacher of Alexander the
      Great. They translated his books into Arabic, and Christian students in
      Spain translated the Arabic into Latin. The great scholars at the
      University of Paris believed that Aristotle reasoned better than other
      thinkers, and took as their model the methods of reasoning found in this
      Latin translation of an Arabic translation of what Aristotle had
      written in Greek.

      [Illustration: THE ALCAZAR AT SEVILLE Built by the Moors in the
      twelfth century. Note the elaborate decoration of the Moorish
      architecture.]

    BUILDERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. The Greeks and the Romans had been
      great builders, but the men of the Middle Ages succeeded in building
      churches, town halls, and palaces or castles which equaled in grandeur
      and beauty the best that the ancient builders had made. The large
      churches or cathedrals seem wonderful because their builders were able
      to place masses of stone high in the air and to cover immense spaces
      with beautiful vaulted roofs. Builders nowadays imitate, but not often,
      if ever, equal them. Fortunately the original buildings are still
      standing in many English and European cities: in Canterbury, Durham, and
      Winchester; in Paris, Chartres, and Rheims; in Cologne, Erfurt, and
      Strasbourg; in Barcelona and Toledo; in Milan, Venice, and Rome.

      [Illustration: NOTRE DAME IN PARIS View from the rear,
      showing the arches and buttresses]

    CHURCH BUILDING. The Italians began by building churches like Roman
      basilicas. Roman arches and domes, supported by heavy walls, were also
      used north of the Alps, and the method of building was named Romanesque,
      or in England, Norman. The architects or builders of western France
      discovered a way of roofing over just as large spaces without using such
      heavy walls, so that the interior could be lighted by larger windows.
      Instead of having rounded arches they used pointed arches. The walls
      between the windows were strengthened by masses of stone called
      buttresses. The peak of the roof of these cathedrals was sometimes more
      than one hundred and fifty feet above the floor. The glass of the
      windows showed in beautiful colors scenes from the Bible or from lives
      of sainted men and women. The outer walls, especially the western front,
      the doorways and the towers, were richly carved and adorned with
      statues, and often with the figures of strange birds and beasts which
      lived only in the imagination of the builders. This method of building
      was named Gothic, and it was used not only for churches but for town
      halls and private houses. Architects use similar methods of
      building nowadays.

      [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT AMIENS A typical Gothic
      interior.]

    THE RENAISSANCE. Men who could build and adorn great churches and
      town halls and who were eager to study in the new universities should be
      called civilized. The barbarous days were gone, but men still had much
      to learn from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Many of the ancient
      buildings were in ruins, the statues half buried or broken, the
      paintings destroyed, and the books lost. Men began to search for what
      was left of these things and to study them carefully to learn what the
      Graeco-Roman world had been like. After a while students could think of
      nothing else, and tried to imitate, if they could not surpass, what the
      Romans and the Greeks had done. The age in which men were first
      interested in these things is called the Renaissance or “rebirth,”
      because men were so unlike what they had been that they seemed born
      again. With the beginning of the Renaissance the Middle Ages came to
      an end.

      [Illustration: ST. PETER'S AT ROME]

    PETRARCH. One of the earliest of these “new” men was Petrarch, an
      Italian poet who lived in the fourteenth century, a hundred years before
      Columbus. He wished above all things to read, copy, and possess the
      writings of the Romans, and especially of Cicero, an orator and writer
      who lived in the days of Julius Caesar. Petrarch and his friends
      searched for the manuscripts of Roman authors which had been preserved,
      hidden away in monastery libraries.

      The same love of Roman books seized others, and princes spent large sums
      of money in collecting and copying ancient writings. At this time a
      beginning of the great libraries of Europe was made, Petrarch tried to
      learn Greek, but could find no one in Italy able to teach him.

    GREEK BOOKS BROUGHT AGAIN TO ITALY. Shortly after Petrarch died
      some Greeks came from Constantinople seeking the aid of the pope and the
      kings of the West in an attempt to drive back the Turks, who had already
      crossed into Europe and settled in the lands which they now occupy.
      Unless help should be sent to Constantinople, the city would certainly
      fall into their hands. With these Greeks was one of those men who still
      loved to read the writings of the ancient authors. He was persuaded to
      remain a few years in Florence and other Italian cities and teach Greek
      to the eager Italian scholars. He was also persuaded to write a grammar
      of the Greek language, in order that after he had returned to
      Constantinople others might be able to continue his teaching.

      Collectors of books now searched for Greek writings as eagerly as they
      had searched for Latin writings. Merchants sent their agents to
      Constantinople to buy books. One traveler and scholar brought back to
      Italy over two hundred. Soon Italy was the land to which students from
      Germany, France, and England went to learn Greek and to obtain copies of
      Greek books. It was fortunate that so many books had been brought from
      Constantinople, for at last, in 1453, the Turks captured that city and
      no place in the East was left where the books of the Greeks were studied
      as they had been at Constantinople.

      [Illustration: A PRINTING OFFICE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

    THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. After collectors of Greek and Roman
      writings had made several good libraries, partly by purchase, partly by
      copying manuscripts belonging to others, a great invention was made
      which enabled these writings to be spread far and wide and placed in the
      hands of every student. This invention was the method of printing with
      movable types. It is not quite certain who made the invention, although
      John Gutenberg, of Mainz, in Germany, has generally been called the
      inventor. Probably several men thought of the method at about the same
      time, that is, about 1450.

    DIFFERENT KINDS OF TYPE. In forming their type the German printers
      imitated the lettering made by copyists with a quill. Their type is
      called Gothic, and it is still widely used in German books. The Italian
      printers made their letters more round and simple in shape, imitating
      the handwriting of the best Italian copyists. This is the Roman type, in
      which many European peoples, as also the English and the Americans,
      print their books. The Italians also prepared a kind of lettering which,
      because they were the inventors, is named italic.

    THE ALDINE PRESS. One of the most famous printers of this early
      time was a Venetian named Aldus Manutius or Manucci. He gathered about
      him a number of Greeks and planned to print all the Greek manuscripts
      that had been discovered. This he did in beautiful type, imitated from
      the handwriting of one of his Greek friends. He sold the books for a
      price per volume about equal to our fifty cents, so that few scholars
      were too poor to buy.

    SOME EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. Another great printer was the Englishman
      William Caxton, who learned the art in the Netherlands. Among the books
      he printed was Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The first book printed by
      Gutenberg was the Bible in Latin. Early in the sixteenth century,
      through the labors of a Dutch scholar, Erasmus, and of his printer, the
      German Froben, the New Testament in Greek was printed.

    ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE. The artists and the architects of this
      time began to imitate the buildings they found or that they unearthed.
      They used round arches and domes more than the pointed arches and
      vaulted roofs of the Gothic builders. Sculptors pictured in stone the
      stories of the Greek and Roman gods and heroes. Statues long buried in
      ancient ruins were dug up, and great artists like the Italian Michel
      Angelo studied them and rivaled them in the beautiful statues they cut.
      On every hand men's minds were awakened by what they saw of the work of
      the founders of the civilized world.

      [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF PART OF CAXTON'S AENEID (REDUCED)
      With the same in modern type]

        QUESTIONS

        1. Why did the memory of the Greeks and Romans remain longer in
        France and Italy than in Germany and England?

        2. What different classes of people were there in the Middle Ages?
        What was the difference between a parish priest and a monk?

        3. How did the nobles gain a living? Were they useful? In what sorts
        of houses did they live? Describe a castle. What was the “keep”?

        4. How were the sons of nobles trained? What was a page? How was a
        young man made a knight? What were the duties of a knight?

        5. Were the farmers or peasants prosperous and happy in the Middle
        Ages? How did the townsmen learn to protect themselves? What was a
        guild? Why are many Europeans proud of their cities?

        6. Why is Venice especially interesting? Why do we remember Genoa?

        7. From what language did French, Italian, and Spanish grow? How
        were the changes made in the old language? Where did the English get
        their language? Was it just like the English we speak?

        8. What did the boys study in the Middle Ages? What did the word
        “university” mean then? Name two or three universities founded then
        which still exist. What did the Arabs teach Christian students?

        9. What sort of buildings did men in the Middle Ages especially like
        to build? Are these buildings still standing? Why do we admire these
        great churches?

        10. What do we call the time when men began to study once more Roman
        and Greek books, and began to imitate the ways of living and
        thinking common in the Graeco-Roman world? Who was the first of
        these “new” men? Where especially did men search for Greek books?

        11. What invention helped men spread far and wide this new
        knowledge? How do the Germans come to have “Gothic” type? Where do
        we get our Roman and italic type? What books did the Venetian
        printer Aldus print? Name a famous English and a famous
        German printer.

        12. What besides ancient books did the men of the Renaissance like
        to study and imitate?

        EXERCISES

        1. Find out what titles of noblemen are used now in different
        European countries. In what country are men often knighted? Why are
        they knighted? What title shows that a man is a knight?

        2. Collect pictures of armor and of castles, especially of castles
        still standing. Collect pictures of old town walls.

        3. Collect pictures of Venice and Genoa, especially from advertising
        folders.

        4. Find the names of several large American universities. Do the
        students live in “colleges” as students did in the Middle Ages?

        5. Tell one or two stories from the Arabian Nights. Collect pictures
        of Arabian costumes and of Arabian buildings in Spain, or Africa,
        or Asia.

        6. Collect pictures of English and European cathedrals. Find
        pictures of churches in America which resemble them.

        REVIEW

        How ancient civilization was preserved

        1. What ruined so many ancient cities?

        2. Who tried to preserve the memory of what the Greeks and the
        Romans had done?

        3. What language did the churchmen continue to use?

        4. How did the missionaries help?

        5. How did Alfred teach the English some of the things the Romans
        had known?

        6. What did the Arabs teach the Christians which the Greeks had
        known?

        7. What was studied at Bologna? How did the universities help in
        preserving the ancient knowledge?

        8. What did Petrarch do to find lost books? What did other men of
        Petrarch's time do?

        9. What help came from the invention of printing?

        10. From what besides books did the men of the Renaissance learn
        about the Greeks and the Romans?

        [Illustration: HUSBANDMAN AND COUNTRY WOMAN OF FIFTEENTH
        CENTURY]

    CHAPTER XIII. TRADERS, TRAVELERS, AND EXPLORERS IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES

    THE PERILS OF TRADERS. There was a time in the Middle Ages when
      merchants scarcely dared to travel from one town to another for fear of
      being plundered by some robber lord or common thief. If they traveled by
      sea they might also be attacked by robbers. Some of these robbers, like
      the Northmen, came from afar, but others were ordinary sailors who put
      out from near-by ports when there seemed nothing better to do.

      This state of things gradually changed. The kings or great lords
      succeeded in protecting merchants on land, and the merchants armed
      vessels of their own to drive the pirates from the sea. As trade grew
      greater the towns became richer and stronger and the robbers and pirates
      fewer, so that the number of merchant ships increased rapidly and long
      voyages were attempted.

    FAIRS. At first trade was carried on at great fairs, held in places
      convenient for the merchants of England and western Europe. The fairs
      lasted about six weeks, and one fair followed another. As soon as the
      first was over the merchants packed their unsold wares and journeyed to
      the next. At the fairs were found drugs and spices, cottons and silks
      from the East, skins and furs from the North, wool from England, and
      other products from Germany, Italy, France, and Spain.

    THE TREASURES OF THE EAST. Men in the Middle Ages were dependent
      for luxuries upon the lands of Asia which are commonly called the East.
      By this name we may mean Persia, Arabia, India, China, or the Molucca
      Islands, where the choicest spices still grow. Spices were a great
      luxury, and were needed to flavor the food, because the manner of
      cooking was poor and there was little variety in the kinds of food. Most
      of the cotton cloth, the silks, the drugs, and the dyes were also
      procured from the East.

      [Illustration: TRADER'S CARAVAN CROSSING THE DESERT]

    ROUTES TO THE EAST. No one knew that it was possible to reach Asia
      by sailing around the southern point of Africa or through what is called
      the Strait of Magellan. The products of the East were brought to Europe
      by several routes, two reaching the Mediterranean at Alexandria, in
      Egypt, a third at Antioch, in Syria, and a fourth on the southeastern
      shore of the Black Sea.

      The loads were carried by camels in long caravans across the deserts
      from the Red Sea, or the Persian Gulf, or from northern India. Ships
      from the Italian cities of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice struggled with one
      another for the right to bring back these precious wares and sell them
      to the merchants of Europe, who were ready to pay high prices.

      [Illustration: MAP OF THE TRADE ROUTES IN THE MIDDLE AGES]

    VENETIAN TRADERS. Merchants from Germany came to Venice to trade
      the products of the North for spices, drugs, dyes, and silks, which they
      carried back across the Alps. Once a year the Venetians sent a fleet of
      vessels westward through the straits of Gibraltar and along the Atlantic
      shore as far as Bruges and London. The voyage was long and dangerous,
      and the Venetians traded in ports on the way. Spices in Bruges sold for
      two or three times what they cost in Venice.

    THE CRUSADES. One event that brought to the Venetians an
      opportunity to enrich themselves was the Crusades. The Mohammedans had
      long held a large part of Spain, and towards the end of the eleventh
      century they threatened France and Italy. They also attacked what was
      left of the Roman Empire in the East, and the emperors sent to the pope
      and the western kings frantic appeals for help. Thousands of Frenchmen,
      Germans, Englishmen, and Italians were suddenly seized with the desire
      to go to Palestine and drive the Mohammedans from Jerusalem, the Holy
      City, and from the tomb of Christ. For the next two centuries large
      armies were sent there, sometimes gaining victories, sometimes being
      defeated in battle or overcome by disease.

    WHAT THE VENETIANS GAINED FROM THE CRUSADES. Most of the Crusaders
      went to the Holy Land by sea, and when they had no ships of their own
      they often took passage in Venetian ships. The Venetians asked large
      sums for this, and also succeeded in obtaining all the rights of trade
      in many of the seaports which were captured. Sometimes the Venetians
      undertook to govern islands like Cyprus and Crete, or territories along
      the coasts, but their main aim was to increase their trade rather than
      to build up an empire.

      THE NEW VENETIAN SHIPS. The Crusaders who returned to Europe brought
      back a liking for the luxuries of the East, and their tales made other
      men eager for them. For this reason more ships were built to sail in the
      Mediterranean. The shipowners attempted to make their ships larger and
      stronger. They were larger than those built by the English or by other
      peoples along the Atlantic coast, but they would seem small to us. There
      is an account of Venetian ships in the thirteenth century which tells us
      that they were one hundred and ten feet long and carried crews of one
      thousand men. They relied mainly upon the use of oars, but had a mast,
      sometimes two masts, rigged with sails, which they could use if the wind
      was favorable.

      [Illustration: VENETIAN SHIPS]

    DANGERS OF THE SEA. One difficulty about sailing was the lack of
      any means in cloudy weather, and especially at night, of telling the
      direction in which they were going. The sailors did not like to venture
      far from shore, although the open sea is safer during a storm than a
      wind-swept and rocky coast. At the time when the sailors of the
      Mediterranean were building up their trade to Alexandria, Antioch, and
      the Black Sea, two instruments came into use which enabled them to tell
      just where they were.

    THE COMPASS. One of these instruments was the compass, which the
      Chinese had long used, and which was known to the Arabs before the
      Europeans heard of it. If a boy will take a needle, rub its point with a
      magnet, and lay the needle on a cork floating in water, he will have a
      rough sort of compass. The point of the needle wherever it may be turned
      will swing back towards the north, thus guiding the sailors.

      [Illustration: MARINER'S COMPASS]

      The compass was known in Europe about 1200. There is a story that at
      first sailors thought its action due to magic and refused to sail under
      a captain who used it. But a century later it was in general use, and
      had been so much improved that even in the severest storms the needle
      remained level and pointed steadily towards the north.

      [Illustration: AN ASTROLABE]

    THE ASTROLABE. The other instrument, called the astrolabe, was a
      brass circle marked off into 360 degrees. To this circle were fastened
      two movable bars, at the ends of which were sights, or projecting pieces
      pierced by a hole. The astrolabe was hung on a mast in such a way that
      one bar was horizontal and the other could be moved until through its
      sights some known star could be seen. The number of degrees marked on
      the circle between the two bars told how high the star was above the
      horizon, and the sailors could reckon the latitude of the place where
      they were. In a similar way their longitude could be found out.

      The astrolabe was not so useful as the compass, for it could be used
      only on clear days or nights. With these two instruments it was possible
      to sail far out into the Atlantic. By the middle of the fourteenth
      century ships from Genoa and Portugal had visited the Madeira and the
      Canary Islands, and even the Azores which are a thousand miles from
      the mainland.

    WHAT MEN THOUGHT ABOUT A SEA ROUTE TO THE EAST. Men learned more
      about other strange lands through a Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, who
      wrote an account of his wonderful journey to the court of the Grand
      Khan, or Emperor of the Mongols, of his travels through China, and of
      his return to Persia by sea.

      Many men in the Middle Ages had believed that east of Asia was a great
      marsh, and that because of it even if they succeeded in sailing around
      Africa it would be impossible to reach the region of the spices and
      silks and jewels which they so much desired. They also thought that the
      heat in the tropics was so intense that at a certain distance down the
      coast of Africa they would find the water of the ocean boiling. These
      things and the tales of strange monsters that inhabited the deep sea had
      terrified them. The news which Marco Polo brought changed this feeling.

    THE MONGOLS. The way Marco Polo happened to visit the court of the
      Mongol emperor was this. The Mongol Tartars were great conquerors, and
      they not only subdued the Chinese but marched westward, overrunning most
      of Russia and stopping only when they were on the frontiers of Italy.
      For a long time southern Russia remained under their rule. Their capital
      was just north of the Great Wall of China.

      The Mongol emperor did not hate Europeans, and even sent to the pope for
      missionaries to teach his people. Marco Polo's father and uncle while on
      a trading expedition had found their way to his court, and on a second
      journey, in 1271, they took with them Marco, a lad of seventeen years.
      The emperor was much interested in his western visitors and took young
      Marco into his service.

      [Illustration: THE MONGOL EMPEROR OF MARCO POLO'S TIME After an
      old Chinese manuscript]

    MARCO POLO'S TRAVELS. Marco Polo traveled over China on official
      errands, while his father and uncle were gathering wealth by trade.
      After many years they desired to return to Italy, but the emperor was
      unwilling to lose such able servants. It happened, however, that the
      emperor wished to send a princess as a bride to the Khan or Emperor of
      Persia, also a Mongol sovereign, and the three Polos, who were known to
      be trustworthy seamen, were selected to escort the princess to her royal
      husband. After doing this they did not return to China, but went on
      to Italy.

      They had been absent twenty-four years, and they found that their
      relatives had given them up for dead and did not recognize them. It was
      like the old story of Ulysses, who, when he returned to his native
      Ithaca after his wanderings, was recognized by nobody. The Polos proved
      the truth of what they said by showing the great treasures which they
      had sewed into the dresses of coarse stuff of a Tartar pattern which
      they wore. They displayed jewels of the greatest value, diamonds,
      emeralds, rubies, and sapphires.

      [Illustration: MAP OF MARCO POLO'S TRAVELS
      The known world is in white, the undiscovered in black, and that first
      described by Marco Polo is dotted]

    WHAT MARCO POLO TOLD. In the account Marco Polo wrote of his
      travels and of the countries he had visited he described a wonderful
      palace of the Great Emperor. Its walls were covered with gold and
      silver, the dining hall seated six thousand people, and its ceiling was
      inlaid with gold. This palace seemed to Marco Polo so large, so rich,
      and so beautiful that no man on earth could design anything to equal it.
      The robes of the emperor and his twelve thousand nobles and knights were
      of silk and beaten gold, each having a girdle of gold decorated with
      precious stones.

      Marco Polo told of great cities in China where men traded in the costly
      wares of the East, and where silk was abundant and cheap. He described
      from hearsay Japan as an island fifteen hundred miles from the mainland.
      Its people, he said, were white, civilized, and wondrously rich. The
      palace of the emperor of Japan was roofed with gold, its pavements and
      floors were of solid gold, laid in plates two fingers thick.

    REASONS FOR FINDING A SEA ROUTE TO THE EAST. Tales of such great
      wealth made Europeans more eager than ever to reach the East. Marco Polo
      had shown that it was possible to sail past India, through the islands,
      to the eastern coast of Asia. When printing was invented his account was
      printed, and the copy of that book which Columbus owned is still
      preserved. Upon its margins Columbus wrote his own opinions about
      geography.

      Other travelers besides the Polos returned with similar tales of the
      East. Soon, however, all chance to go there by way of the land was lost,
      because the Mongol emperors were driven out of China and the new rulers
      would not permit Europeans to enter the country. The ordinary caravan
      routes to the East were also closed not long afterwards. In 1453 the
      Turks captured Constantinople, drove away the Italian merchants, and
      prevented European sailors from reaching the Black Sea. Fifty years
      later the Turks seized Egypt and closed that route also. Fortunately
      before this happened a better route had been discovered.

    THE PORTUGUESE SAILORS. During the Middle Ages the Portuguese princes
      fought to recover Portugal from the Moors. When this was done they were
      eager to cross the straits and attack the Moors in Africa. Prince Henry
      of Portugal made an expedition to Africa and returned with the desire to
      know more about the coast south of the point beyond which European
      sailors dared not venture. Sailors were afraid of being lost in the Sea
      of Darkness or killed by the heat of the boiling tropics.

      [Illustration: DANGERS OF THE “SEA OF DARKNESS” From an old
      picture]

      From his love of exploring the seas Prince Henry has been called “The
      Navigator.” He took up his residence on a lonely promontory in southern
      Portugal, and gathered about him learned men of all peoples, Arabian and
      Jewish mathematicians, and Italian mapmakers. Captains trained in this
      new school of seamanship were sent into the southern seas. Each was to
      sail farther down the western coast of Africa than other captains had
      gone. Before Prince Henry died in 1460 his captains had passed Cape
      Verde, and ten years later they crossed the equator without suffering
      the fate which men had once feared. But they were discouraged when they
      found that beyond the Gulf of Guinea the coast turned southward again,
      for they had hoped to sail eastward to Asia.

      [Illustration: THE PORTUGUESE ROUTE TO INDIA
      The broken lines show the old trade routes to the East. The solid line
      shows the new Portuguese route]

    CAPE OF GOOD HOPE DISCOVERED. At last in 1487 the end of what
      seemed to be an endless coast was reached. The fortunate captain who
      accomplished this was Bartholomew Diaz, who came of a family of daring
      seamen. He had been sailing southward along the coast for nearly eight
      months, when a northerly gale drove him before it for thirteen days. The
      weather cleared and Diaz turned eastward to find the coast. As he did
      not see land he turned northward and soon discovered land to the west.
      This showed that he had passed the southern point of Africa. His crew
      were unwilling to go farther and he followed the coast around to the
      western side again. The southern point he called the Cape of Storms, but
      the king of Portugal, when the voyagers returned, named it the Cape of
      Good Hope, for now he knew that an expedition could be sent directly to
      the Indies.

      Diaz had sailed thirteen thousand miles, and his voyage was the most
      wonderful that Europeans had ever heard about.

    THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA. Eleven years later the Portuguese king sent
      Vasco da Gama, another captain, to attempt to reach the coast of India
      by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope which Diaz had discovered. Da
      Gama was successful and landed at Calicut on the south-western coast of
      India. He returned to Portugal in 1499, and his cargo was worth sixty
      times the cost of the voyage. This was the beginning of a trade with the
      East which enriched Portugal and especially the merchants of Lisbon.

        QUESTIONS

        1. What dangers threatened traders in the Middle Ages who traveled
        by sea or land? What was a fair?

        2. What products were brought from the East? By what routes? Point
        these out on a map. What rival trading cities were in Italy? How did
        the Venetians get their wares to London?

        3. Who were the Crusaders? Why did they attack the Mohammedans? What
        did the Venetian traders gain by these wars? Describe a large
        Venetian ship of this time.

        4. When was the compass invented? Why was it dangerous to sail great
        seas and oceans without a compass? Tell how an astrolabe was made.

        5. What at first kept men from attempting to sail to eastern Asia?
        Who was Marco Polo? Describe his adventures. How did he return to
        Venice? How did people learn about the lands he had visited?

        6. Why after 1453 was it necessary to find a sea route to Asia? What
        did Prince Henry the Navigator succeed in doing? How was the Cape of
        Good Hope discovered? Who went with Diaz on this voyage?

        7. Who first sailed to India by the Cape of Good Hope? Was the
        voyage profitable? What city was made rich by the new trade?

        EXERCISES

        1. Find from a map in the geography how many miles goods must have
        been carried to reach Venice from Persia, India, the Moluccas, or
        China. How far is it from Venice by sea to Bruges or London?

        2. Where and how do we now obtain cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves?

        3. What line of emperors has been recently ruling over China? Where
        has been their capital? Find out about the present Mongols. Collect
        pictures of China and Japan.

        4. Read a longer account of Marco Polo.

        5. Study the geography of Portugal. Collect pictures of Portugal.
        Find out if many Portuguese are living in the United States.

        REVIEW

        Steps Towards the Discovery of America

        Greek colonies in Italy, Gaul, and Spain.

        Roman conquest of Gaul, Spain, and Britain.

        Viking voyages to Greenland and Vinland.

        Venetian trade in spices with the East, and Venetian voyages to
        London and Bruges.

        Marco Polo's travels in China and the East.

        Portuguese voyages down the coast of Africa and about the Cape of
        Good Hope.

    CHAPTER XIV. THE DISCOVERY OF A NEW WORLD

    CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. Six years before Vasco da Gama made his
      famous voyage to India around Africa and opened a new trade route for
      the Portuguese merchants, another seaman had formed and carried out a
      much bolder plan. This was Christopher Columbus, and his plan was to
      sail directly west from Europe into the unknown ocean in search of new
      islands and the coast of Asia. Columbus, who was a native of Genoa in
      Italy, had followed his younger brother to Portugal. Both were probably
      led there by the fame of Prince Henry's explorations.

      The brothers became very skilful in making maps and charts for the
      Portuguese. They also frequently sailed with them on their expeditions
      along the coast of Africa. All the early associations of Columbus were
      with men interested in voyages of discovery, and particularly with those
      engaged in the daring search for a sea route to India.

    HOW COLUMBUS FORMED HIS PLAN. Columbus gathered all the information
      on geography which he could from ancient writers and from modern
      discoverers. Many of them believed that the world was shaped like a
      ball. If such were its shape, Columbus reasoned, why might not a ship
      sail around it from east to west? Or, better, why not sail directly west
      to India, and perhaps find many wonderful islands between Europe and
      Asia? His imagination was also fired by Marco Polo's description of the
      marvelous riches of China, Japan, and the Spice Islands. But the idea of
      going directly west into the midst of the unknown and seemingly
      boundless waste of water, and on and on to Asia, appeared to most men of
      the fifteenth century to be madness.

      [Illustration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS The oldest known picture of
      Columbus, in the National Library, Madrid]

    HIS NOTION OF THE DISTANCE TO ASIA. Columbus made two fortunate
      errors in reckoning the distance to the Indies. He imagined that Asia
      extended much farther eastward than it actually does, making it nearer
      Europe, and estimated the earth to be smaller than it is. His figures
      placed Japan less than 3,000 miles west of the Canary Islands, instead
      of the 12,000 miles which is the real distance. He accordingly thought
      Japan would be found about where Mexico or Florida is situated.

    HOW HE SECURED HELP. Even so, many years passed before Columbus was
      able to undertake a voyage. He was too poor himself, and needed the help
      of some government to fit out such an expedition. He may have tried to
      get his native city, Genoa, to help him. There is such a story. If he
      did, it was without success. He tried to obtain the help of Portugal,
      where he lived a long time, and whose princes were greatly interested in
      the discovery of new trade routes. His brother visited England in the
      same cause. Neither of these countries, however, was willing to
      undertake this expensive and doubtful enterprise.

      The King and Queen of Spain, to whom Columbus turned, kept him waiting
      many years for an answer. They thought that they had more important work
      in hand. There was another king in Spain at the time, the king of the
      Moors. Ferdinand and Isabella, the Christian king and queen, were trying
      to conquer the Moors, and thus to end the struggle between Christians
      and Mohammedans for the possession of Spain, which had lasted nearly
      eight centuries. This war required all the strength and revenue
      of Spain.

      Fortunately, just as Columbus was becoming thoroughly discouraged, the
      war with the Moors came to an end. Granada, the seat of their former
      power, was finally taken in January, 1492. Now was a good time to ask
      favors of the sovereigns of Spain, and to plan large enterprises for the
      future. Powerful friends aided Columbus to renew his petition, and Queen
      Isabella was persuaded to promise him all the help that he needed.

    THE SHIPS OF COLUMBUS. Three ships, or caravels as they were
      called, were fitted out. The Santa Maria was the largest of the three,
      but it was not much larger than the small sailing yachts which we see
      to-day. It was about ninety feet long by twenty feet broad, and had a
      single deck. This was Columbus's principal ship or flagship. The second
      caravel, the Pinta, was much swifter, built high at the prow and
      stern, and furnished with a forecastle for the crew and a cabin for the
      officers, but without a deck in the center. The third and smallest
      caravel, called the Nina, the Spanish word for baby, was built much
      like the Pinta. Ninety persons made up the three crews.

      [Illustration: COLUMBUS'S IDEAS OF THE ATLANTIC The shaded portions
      represent the land as Columbus expected to find it. The light outline
      of the Americas shows the actual position of the land as he found it.]

      The ships were the usual size of those which coasted along the shores
      of Europe in the fifteenth century. Expeditions had never gone far out
      into the ocean. Columbus preferred the smaller vessels in a voyage of
      discovery, because they would be able to run close to the shores and
      into the smaller harbors and up the rivers.

    BEGINNING OF THE VOYAGE. The expedition set sail from Palos in
      Spain, August 3, 1492. It went directly to the Canary Islands. These
      were owned by Spain, and were selected by Columbus as the most
      convenient starting-point. The little fleet was delayed three weeks at
      the islands making repairs. On September 6 Columbus was off again. He
      struck due west from the Canaries.

    THE TERRORS OF THE VOYAGE. While the little fleet was still in
      sight of the Canary Islands a volcanic eruption nearly frightened the
      sailors out of their wits. They deemed such an event an omen of evil.
      But the expedition had fine weather day after day. Steady, gentle,
      easterly winds, the trade winds of the tropics, wafted them slowly
      westward. But the timid sailors began to wonder how they would ever be
      able to return against winds which seemed never to change from the east.

      Then they came to an immense field of seaweed, larger in area than the
      whole of Spain. This terrified the sailors, who feared they might be
      driven on hidden rocks or be engulfed in quicksands. They imagined, too,
      that great sea-monsters were lurking beyond the seaweed waiting to
      devour them.

      [Illustration: A CARAVEL OF COLUMBUS After the reconstructed
      model exhibited at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893]

    THE FIRST SIGNS OF A NEW LAND. In spite of fears and complaints,
      and threats of resistance, Columbus kept a westward course for more than
      four weeks. Then as he began to see so many birds flying to the
      southwest, he concluded that land must be nearer in that direction. He
      had heard that most of the islands held by the Portuguese were
      discovered by following the flight of birds. So on October 7 the
      westward course was changed to one slightly southwest.

      From this time on the signs of land grew frequent. Floating branches,
      occasionally covered with berries, pieces of wood, bits of cane, were
      encouraging signs. Birds like ducks and sandpipers became common sights.
      The Queen had promised a small pension to the one who should first see
      land. Columbus had offered to give a silken doublet in addition. With
      what eagerness the sailors must have kept on the lookout!

    THE GREAT DISCOVERY. At last as the fleet was sailing onward in the
      bright moonlight Columbus saw a light moving as if carried by hand along
      a shore. A few hours later, about two o'clock on the morning of October
      12, a sailor on the Pinta saw land distinctly, and soon all beheld, a
      few miles away, a long, low beach. The vessels hove to and waited for
      daylight. Early the same day, Friday, October 12, 1492, they approached
      the land, which proved to be a small island. Columbus named it San
      Salvador, which means Holy Saviour. We do not know which one of the
      Bahama islands he first saw, but we believe it was the one now called
      Watling Island. Columbus went ashore with the royal standard and banners
      flying to take possession of the land in the name of King Ferdinand and
      Queen Isabella.

    WHERE COLUMBUS THOUGHT HE WAS. The astonished inhabitants of the
      island soon gathered to see the strange sight—the landing of white men
      in the West Indies. They looked upon the ships as sea-monsters, and the
      white men as gods. Nor was Columbus less puzzled by what he saw. The
      people were a strange race—cinnamon colored, naked, greased, and
      painted to suit each one's fancy. They had only the rudest means of
      self-defense, and were almost as poor as the parrots that chattered in
      the trees above them. Such savages bore little resemblance to the people
      whom Marco Polo said inhabited the Spice Islands.

      Columbus thought that he had reached some outlying island not far from
      Japan. A cruise of a few days among the Bahamas satisfied him that he
      was in the ocean near the coast of Asia, for had not Marco Polo
      described it as studded with thousands of spice-bearing islands? He had
      not found any spices, but the air was full of fragrance and the trees
      and herbs were strange in appearance. Of course if the islands were the
      Indies, the people must be Indians. Columbus called them Indians, and
      this name clung to the red men, although their islands were not the
      true Indies.

      [Illustration: WATLING ISLAND, WHERE COLUMBUS FIRST LANDED]

    THE SEARCH FOR THE GOLDEN EAST. Columbus thought that the natives
      meant to tell him in their sign language of a great land to the south
      where gold abounded. He set off in search of this, and came upon a land
      the natives called Cuba. Its large size convinced him that he had at
      last found the Asiatic mainland, and he sent two messengers, one a Jew
      knowing many languages, in search of the Emperor of China. They found
      neither cities nor kingdoms, neither gold nor spices. This was a great
      disappointment to Columbus, but he patiently kept up his search for the
      riches which he expected to find.

    THE MISFORTUNES OF COLUMBUS. While on the coast of Cuba, Pinzon,
      the commander of the Pinta, deserted him. Pinzon, whose ship was
      swifter than the others, probably wished to be the first to get home, in
      order to tell a story which would gain him the credit of the discovery
      of the Indies. A few days later Columbus discovered a large island which
      the natives called Hayti, and which he called Espanola or “Spanish
      Land.” At every island he searched for the spices and gold which Marco
      Polo had given him reason to expect. In a storm off Espanola Columbus's
      own ship, the Santa Maria, was totally wrecked. Such disasters
      convinced him that it was high time to return to Spain with the news of
      his discovery.

    PREPARATIONS FOR RETURN TO SPAIN. As there was not room for both
      crews on the tiny Nina, his one remaining ship, it became necessary to
      leave about forty sailors in Espanola. A fort was built, and supplies
      were left for a year. Columbus with the rest set off on the return to
      Spain. Ten Indians were captured and taken with them to show to his
      friends in Europe. Besides, Columbus hoped that they would learn the
      language of Spain, and carry Christianity back to their people.

    THE SEARCH FOR CHINA RENEWED. There was rejoicing in Palos when the
      voyagers returned. Great honors were bestowed upon Columbus. It was now
      easy to get men and money for another voyage. In September, 1493,
      Columbus started to return to his islands, this time with seventeen
      ships and fifteen hundred men, all confident that they would soon see
      the marble palaces of China, and secure a share in the wealth of the
      Spice Islands. No one yet realized that a new world—two great
      continents—lay between them and their coveted goal in Asia. Columbus
      went directly to Espanola, where he found that his colony of the
      previous year had been murdered by the Indians. A new settlement was
      quickly started. A little town called Isabella was built, with a fort, a
      church, a market place, public granary, and dwelling-houses. Isabella
      was the first real settlement in the New World.

      [Illustration: MAP OF LANDS DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS]

    OTHER VOYAGES TO THE NEW WORLD. Columbus made two other voyages. He
      continued to search for the coast of Asia, which he believed to be near.
      He made a third voyage from Spain to the West Indies in 1498. He sailed
      farther south, and came upon the mainland which later was called South
      America. A fourth expedition in 1502 touched on the coast that we call
      Central America. He died soon after this voyage, still believing that he
      had discovered a new route to the Indies and new lands on the coast
      of Asia.

    THE SAD END OF COLUMBUS'S LIFE. The close of his life was a sad
      one. The lands he had found did not yield the riches which he had
      expected. The colonists whom he had sent out to the islands had
      rebelled, and jealous enemies had accused him falsely before the king
      and queen of misgovernment in his territories. Once his opponents had
      him carried to Spain chained like a common prisoner. He was given his
      liberty on reaching Spain, but the people had become prejudiced
      against him.

      Ferdinand, the son of Columbus, tells us that as he and his brother
      Diego, who were pages in the queen's service, happened to pass a crowd
      of his father's enemies, the latter greeted them with hoots: “There go
      the sons of the Admiral of Mosquitoland, the man who has discovered a
      land of vanity and deceit, the grave of Spanish gentlemen.” Hardships
      and disappointments broke down the great discoverer, and he died
      neglected and almost forgotten by the people of Spain.

      [Illustration: THE COLUMBUS MONUMENT AT GENOA]

        QUESTIONS

        1. What plan did Columbus form? Why was it bolder than the plan Diaz
        had carried out in 1487, or even than that Da Gama carried out a few
        years later? Why did men like Columbus and Diaz desire to find a sea
        route to India? Had anybody before Columbus believed the
        earth round?

        2. What mistake did Columbus make in estimating the size of the
        earth? Why was this a fortunate error?

        3. From what countries did Columbus try to obtain help? Why did he
        find it so hard to secure this? What event in Spain finally favored
        his cause? Who were the Moors?

        4. Why was Columbus surprised when he saw the natives in the West
        Indies? Why were the Indians on their side surprised?

        5. What islands did Columbus find and claim for Spain on his first
        voyage? How many other voyages did he make? What new lands did he
        find on his later voyages? What did he think he had found?

        6. Why did the enemies of Columbus in Spain call him the Admiral of
        Mosquitoland, the man who discovered a land of vanity and deceit,
        the grave of Spanish gentlemen? What did they mean by this?

        EXERCISES

        1. Find pictures of the ships of Columbus or of the sailing ships of
        other explorers of that day. How does the deck arrangement on those
        differ from the ocean steamships of to-day? What advantage would
        ships like those of Columbus have over present steamships in
        exploring strange coasts? What disadvantages?

        2. Draw up a list of reasons why Columbus's sailors were afraid to
        go on and wished to turn back to Spain.

        3. Trace on an outline map the voyage of Columbus. Mark where
        Columbus found land, and where he expected to find Japan and China.
        What great mass of land was really very near the island he first
        discovered?

        4. Find from the maps mentioned in Chapter IV (Greek World), Chapter
        VII (Roman World), Chapter VIII (The world after Polo's journey),
        and Chapter XIV (The world as known after Columbus), how much more
        the Romans knew of the world than the Greeks had known, the
        Europeans after Marco Polo's journey than the Romans, and the
        Europeans after Columbus's voyage than after Marco Polo's journey.

        Important Date—1492. The discovery of America by Columbus.

    CHAPTER XV. OTHERS HELP IN THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD

    THE RACE TO THE INDIES. The discovery of all the lands which make
      what we call the New World came very slowly. It was the work of many
      different explorers. Most of the expeditions sent out to the new islands
      went in search of a passage to India. It was a fine race. Each nation
      was eager to see its ships the first to reach India by the westward
      route. All were disappointed at finding so much land between Europe and
      Asia. It seemed to them to be of little value and to block the way to
      the richer countries of the East. Gradually, however, they discovered
      the great continents which we know as North and South America. Columbus
      had done more than he dreamed, and his discovery was a turning-point
      in history.

    JOHN CABOT. John Cabot, an Italian mariner at this time in the
      service of England, left Bristol in 1497 on a voyage of discovery. This
      was five years after Columbus discovered the West Indies. Cabot had
      heard that the sailors of Portugal and of Spain had occupied unknown
      islands. He planned to do the same for King Henry VII of England. For
      his voyage he had a single vessel no larger than the Nina, the
      smallest ship in the fleet of Columbus. Eighteen men made up his crew.
      He passed around the southern end of Ireland, and sailed north and west
      until he came to land, which proved to be the coast of North America
      somewhere between the northern part of Labrador and the southern end of
      Nova Scotia.

    CABOT'S DISCOVERY. John Cabot saw no inhabitants, but he found
      notched trees, snares for game, and needles for making nets, which
      showed plainly that the land was inhabited by human beings. Like
      Columbus, Cabot thought he was off the coast of China.

    THE CABOT VOYAGES FORGOTTEN. Before the end of 1497 John Cabot was
      back in Bristol. It is almost certain that he and his son, Sebastian
      Cabot, made a second voyage to the new found lands in the following
      year. The Cabot voyages, however, were soon almost forgotten by the
      people of England.

      [Illustration: SEBASTIAN CABOT After the picture ascribed to
      Holbein]

    THE NAMING OF THE NEW LANDS. Why was our country named America
      rather than Columbia or New India? Both the southern and northern
      continents which we call the Americas were named for Americus Vespucius
      rather than for Christopher Columbus. This seems the more strange since
      we know so little about the life of Americus. Americus Vespucius was
      born in Florence, Italy, and like many other young Italians of that day
      entered the service of neighboring countries. He went to Spain and
      accompanied several Spanish expeditions sent to explore the new
      continent which Columbus had discovered on his third voyage.

      Perhaps Americus went as a pilot; he certainly was not the leader in any
      expedition. But he seems to have written to his friends interesting
      accounts of what he had seen. In one of these letters Americus seems to
      have written boastfully of how he had found lands which might be called
      a new world. He said that the new continent was more populous and more
      full of animals than Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and that the climate
      was even more temperate and pleasant than any other region. This was
      clearly a new world.

    WHY AMERICUS WAS REGARDED AS THE DISCOVERER OF AMERICA. The
      statement of Americus was scattered widely by the help of the newly
      invented printing press. It was written in Latin, and so could be read
      by the learned of all countries. They were impressed by the belief of
      Americus that he had seen a new world and not simply the Indies. This
      was especially true of men living outside of Spain who had heard little
      of Columbus or his discovery.

      Columbus for his part had written as if his great discovery was a way to
      the Indies and the finding of islands on the way thither less important.
      Besides, when he saw what we call South America he had no idea that it
      was a new world. The people of Europe either never knew that he had
      discovered the mainland or had forgotten it altogether. But they heard a
      great deal about Americus and his doings. It is not strange that
      Americus rather than Columbus was long regarded as the true discoverer
      of America.

    TWO NAMES FOR THE NEW LANDS. Even then the new continent might not
      have been called America but for the suggestion of a young scholar of
      the time. Martin Waldseemueller, a professor of geography at the college
      of St. Die, now in eastern France, wrote a book on geography. In his
      description of the parts of the world unknown to the ancients, he
      suggested naming the continent stretching to the south for Americus.

      [Illustration: FACSIMILE Of the passage in the Cosmographia
      Introductio
    (1507), by Martin Waldseemueller, in which the name of
      America is proposed for the New World.]

        The facsimile's transcription reads as follows:

        Nunc Vero et hae partes sunt latius lustratae, et alia quarta
        pars per Americum Vesputium (ut in sequentibus audietur) inventa
        est quam non video cur quis jure vetet ab Americo inventore
        sagacis ingenii viro Amerigen quasi Americi terram, sive Americam
        dicendam: cum et Europa et Asia a mulieribus sua sortita sint
        nomina. Ejus situm et gentis mores ex bis binis Americi
        navigationibus quae sequuntur liquide intelligidatur.

      Waldseemueller thought Americus had been the real discoverer of this
      continent. He said, “Now, indeed, as these regions are more widely
      explored, and another fourth part has been discovered by Americus
      Vespucius, I do not see why any one may justly forbid it to be named
      Amerige—that is, Americ's Land, from Americus, the discoverer.”

      Others adopted Waldseemueller's suggestion and the name America came into
      general use outside of Spain. But the Spaniards continued to call all
      the new lands by the name which Columbus had given them—the Indies.
      America was at first the name for South America only, but later was also
      used by writers for the other continent which was soon found to the
      north. It was natural to distinguish the two continents as South and
      North America.

    BALBOA. The successors of Columbus kept up a ceaseless search for
      the real Indies, but the more they explored the more they saw that a
      great continental barrier was lying across the sea passage to Asia. A
      few began to suspect that after all America was not a part of Asia.
      Vasco Nunez Balboa was one of these. Balboa was a planter who had
      settled in Espanola. He fell deeply into debt, and to escape his
      creditors had himself nailed up in a barrel and put aboard a vessel
      bound for the northern coast of South America. From there he went to the
      eastern border of Panama with a party of gold seekers. The Indians told
      him of a great sea and of an abundance of gold on its shores to be found
      a short distance across the isthmus. It is probable that the Indians
      wished to get rid of the Spaniards as neighbors.

      [Illustration: VASCO NUNEZ BALBOA]

    BALBOA'S DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC. Balboa resolved to make a name
      for himself and to be the discoverer of the other sea. He set off in
      1513. The land is not more than forty-five miles wide at Panama, but it
      is almost impassable even to this day. For twenty-two days the hardy
      adventurers advanced through a forest, dense with thickets and tangled
      swamps and interlacing vines—so thick that for days the sun could not
      be seen—and over rough and slippery mountain-sides until they came to
      an open sea stretching off to the south and west. Balboa called it the
      South Sea, but it is usually called the Pacific Ocean, the name given it
      afterward.

      Balboa had made the important discovery that the barrier of land was
      comparatively narrow. This gave the impression that North America, too,
      was narrower than it proved to be, and the search for the passage to the
      Indies was pushed with greater vigor.

    MAGELLAN. A Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, had really won the
      race begun by Prince Henry's navigators and Columbus for India, the land
      of cloves, pepper, and nutmegs. He had won in 1497 by going around the
      Cape of Good Hope. Another explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, finally,
      reached the Indies in a long westward voyage lasting two years, from
      1519 to 1521.

      [Illustration: FERDINAND MAGELLAN]

    THE BEGINNING OF MAGELLAN'S VOYAGE. Magellan, himself a Portuguese,
      tried in vain like Columbus to persuade the king of Portugal to aid him
      in his project. He succeeded better in Spain, and sailed from there in
      1519 with a small fleet given him by the young king Charles. The five
      ships in his fleet were old and in bad repair, and the crews had been
      brought together from every nation. They sailed directly to South
      America, and spent the first year searching every inlet along the coast
      for a passage.

      [Illustration: THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN]

      They found that the natives of South America used for food vegetables
      that “looked like turnips and tasted like chestnuts.” The Indians called
      them “patatas.” In this way the potato, one of the great foods of
      to-day, was found by Europeans. A whole winter was passed on the cold
      and barren coast of Patagonia. Magellan called the natives “Patagones,”
      the word in his language meaning big feet, from the large foot-prints
      which they left on the sand.

    THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. Magellan finally found a strait, since
      named for him the Strait of Magellan, and sailed his ships through it
      amid the greatest dangers. The change from the rough waters of the
      strait to the calm sea beyond made the word Pacific or Peaceful Sea seem
      the most suitable name for the vast body of water which they
      had entered.

    THE FIRST VOYAGE ACROSS THE PACIFIC. From the western coast of
      South America Magellan struck boldly out into the Pacific Ocean on his
      way to Asia. The crews suffered untold hardships. The very rats which
      overran the rotten ships became a luxurious article of food which only
      the more fortunate members of the crews could afford. The poorer seamen
      lived for days on the ox-hide strips which protected the masts. These
      were soaked in sea-water and roasted over the fire.

      Magellan was fortunate enough to chance upon the Isle of Guam, where
      plentiful supplies were obtained. He called the group of small islands,
      of which Guam is one, the Ladrones. This was his word for robbers, used
      because the natives were such robbers. The expedition discovered a group
      of islands afterwards called the Philippines. There Magellan fell in
      with traders from the Indies and knew that the remainder of the voyage
      would be through well-known seas and over a route frequently followed.
      Poor Magellan did not live to complete his remarkable voyage. He was
      killed in the Philippine Islands in a battle with the natives.

      [Illustration: AN OLD MAP OF THE NEW WORLD—1523 After
      Magellan's voyage, but before the exploration of North America had
      gone far]

      Only one of the five ships found its way through the Spice Islands,
      across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and so back to
      Spain; but this one carried home twenty-six tons of cloves, worth more
      than enough to pay the whole cost of the expedition. Such was the value
      of the trade Europe was so eagerly seeking.

    WHAT MAGELLAN HAD SHOWN THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE. Magellan's voyage
      had, however, been a great event. Historians are agreed that it was the
      greatest voyage in the history of mankind. It had shown in a practical
      way that the earth is a globe, just as Columbus and other wise men had
      long taught, for a ship had sailed completely around it.

      But Magellan had also proved some things that they had not dreamed. He
      had shown that two great oceans instead of one lay between Europe and
      Asia; he had made clear that the Indies which the Spanish explorers had
      found, and which other people were beginning to call the Americas, were
      really a new world entirely separate from Asia, and not a part of Asia
      as Columbus had thought.

        QUESTIONS

        1. Why were the early American explorers disappointed at finding two
        continents between Europe and Asia?

        2. What land did John Cabot discover? Where did he think this land
        was? Why did the English people take little interest in this voyage?

        3. Why was our country named America? Do you think that Americus
        Vespucius deserved so great an honor? By what name did the Spaniards
        continue to call the new region? Why did the Spaniards have one name
        and the other Europeans another name for a long time?

        4. How did Balboa come to find the Pacific Ocean? Why did men search
        for a passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific more vigorously
        after Balboa's expedition?

        5. Why has Magellan's voyage been called the greatest one in
        history? What three things had Magellan shown the European world?

        EXERCISES

        1. Make out a list of the explorers mentioned in this chapter who
        helped in the discovery of the New World, and place opposite the
        name of each the name of the land he discovered.

        2. Trace Magellan's voyage on the map and make a list of the lands
        or countries he passed. Look at the map of North America on this old
        map, and at the one in mentioned Chapter XIX. How do you account for
        the queer shape of North America on the old map?

        Important date—1519-21. Magellan's ship made the first voyage
        around the world.

    CHAPTER XVI. EARLY SPANISH EXPLORERS AND CONQUERORS ON THE MAINLAND

    THE CIVILIZATION OF THE MEXICAN INDIANS. Early Spanish explorers on
      the coast of Mexico found the Indians of the mainland more highly
      civilized than the natives of the West Indies. Some of these, especially
      the Aztecs, lived in large villages or cities and were ruled by powerful
      chiefs or kings. They built to their gods huge stone temples with towers
      several stories in height.

      Their houses, quite unlike those of the other Indians the Spanish had
      seen, were made of stone or sun-dried brick and coated with hard white
      plaster. Some of them were of immense size and could hold many families.
      Doors had not been invented, but hangings of woven grass or matting of
      cotton served instead. Strings of shells which a visitor could rattle
      answered for door-bells.

      The streets of the towns were narrow, but were often paved with a sort
      of cement. Aqueducts in solid masonry somewhat like the old Roman
      aqueducts, although not so large, carried water from the neighboring
      hills for fountains and rude public baths.

      The women wove cotton and prepared clothing for their families. Workmen
      made ornaments of gold and copper, and utensils and dishes of pottery
      for every-day use. The people cultivated the fields around the cities,
      raising a great variety of foods, and even built ditches to carry water
      for irrigating the fields. All this was in striking contrast with the
      simple habits of the West Indians.

      [Illustration: AZTEC SACRIFICIAL STONE Now in the National
      Museum in the City of Mexico]

    CRUEL CUSTOMS OF THE AZTECS. With all the good features of Mexican
      life, with all the superiority of the Mexicans over the other Indians,
      there was much that was hideous and cruel. The Aztecs, the most powerful
      tribes, were continually at war with their neighbors. They lived mainly
      upon the plunder of their enemies and the tribute which they took from
      those they had conquered. Like all Mexicans, they worshiped great ugly
      idols as gods and to these their priests offered part of the captives
      taken in war as human sacrifices.

    SPANISH IDEAS OF MEXICO. The reports of the Aztec civilization and
      of the treasures of gold, mostly untrue, excited the interest and greed
      of the Spaniards. Mexico seemed like the China which Marco Polo had
      described, and might offer a chance of immense wealth for those who
      should conquer it. In truth, Mexican civilization did resemble that of
      Asia more than anything that the Spaniards had seen. Montezuma, a
      powerful chief or king of the Aztecs, lived somewhat like a Mongol
      Emperor of Persia or China.

      [Illustration: MONTEZUMA, THE LAST KING OF MEXICO After Montanus
      and Ogilby]

    CORTES. In 1519 the governor of Cuba sent Hernando Cortes to
      explore and conquer Mexico. The expedition landed where Vera Cruz is now
      situated. The ships were then sunk in order to cut off all hope of
      retreat for the soldiers. “For whom but cowards,” said Cortes, “were
      means of retreat necessary!” Cortes, with great skill, worked up the
      zeal of his soldiers to the fury of a religious crusade. All thought it
      a duty to destroy the idols they saw, to end the practice of offering
      human sacrifices, and to force the Christian religion upon the natives.

      The small army marched slowly inland towards the City of Mexico, which
      was the capital of Montezuma's kingdom. Cortes and his men had learned
      the Indian mode of fighting from ambush, and also how successfully to
      match cunning and treachery with those villagers who tried to prevent
      his invasion of their country.

    HOW THE SPANIARDS AND THE AZTECS FOUGHT. The Mexican warriors,
      though they fought fiercely, were no match for the Spaniards. The
      Mexicans were experts with the bow and arrow, using arrows pointed with
      a hard kind of stone. They carried for hand-to-hand fighting a narrow
      club set with a double edge of razor-like stones, and wore a crude kind
      of armor made from quilted cotton. But such things were useless against
      Spanish bullets shot from afar.

      [Illustration: THE ARMOR OF CORTES After an engraving of the
      original in the National Museum, Madrid]

      The roaring cannon, the glittering steel swords, the thick armor and
      shining helmets, the prancing horses on which the Spanish leaders were
      mounted, gave the whole a strange, unearthly appearance to the
      simple-minded Indians. The story is told that the Mexicans believed that
      one of their gods had once floated out to sea, saying that, in the
      fulness of time, he would return with fair-skinned companions to begin
      again his rule over his people. Many Aztecs looked upon the coming of
      the white men as the return of this god and thought that resistance
      would be useless. Such natives sent presents, made their peace with
      Cortes, and so weakened the opposition to the conquerors.

    CORTES IN PERIL. Cortes easily entered the City of Mexico, and
      forced Montezuma to resign. But here the natives attacked his army in
      such numbers that he had to retreat to escape capture. The Spaniards
      fled from the city at night amid the onslaught of the inhabitants
      fighting for their religion and their homes.

      [Illustration: CANNON OF THE TIME OF CORTES After Van Menken.
      There are in the naval museum at Annapolis guns captured in the Mexican
      War supposed to be those used by Cortes]

      The retreat cost the Spaniards terrible losses. Cortes started in the
      evening on the retreat with 1,250 soldiers, 6,000 Indian allies, and 80
      horses. There were left in the morning 500 soldiers, 2,000 allies, and
      20 horses. Cortes is said to have buried his face in his hands and wept
      for his lost followers, but he never wavered in his purpose of taking
      Mexico. He was able to defeat the Indians in the open country, and to
      return to the attack on the capital city.

    CAPTURE OF THE CITY OF MEXICO. The siege which followed, lasting
      nearly three months, has rarely been matched in history for the bravery
      and suffering of the natives. The fighting was constant and terrible.
      The fresh water supply was cut off from the inhabitants in the city, and
      famine aided the invaders. At length the defenders were exhausted and
      Cortes entered. It had taken him two years to conquer the Aztecs. A
      greater task remained for him to do. He was to cleanse and rebuild the
      City of Mexico, make it a center of Spanish civilization, and Mexico a
      New Spain. By such work Cortes showed that he could be not only a great
      conqueror, but also an able ruler in time of peace.

      [Illustration: THE CITY OF MEXICO UNDER THE CONQUERORS
      From the engraving in the “Niewe Wereld” of Montanus]

    PIZARRO. A few years after Cortes conquered Mexico a second army
      conquered another famous Indian kingdom. Francisco Pizarro commanded
      this expedition, which set out from Panama in 1531. Pizarro had been
      with Balboa at the discovery of the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, and,
      like his master, had become interested in the stories the Indians told
      of a rich kingdom far to the south. The golden kingdom which the Indians
      described was that of the Incas, who lived much as the Aztecs. The
      Spaniards called the region of the Incas the Biru country or, by
      softening the first letter, the Peru country, from Biru, who was a
      native Indian chieftain.

      [Illustration: A STONE IDOL OF THE AZTEC'S
      It is more than eight feet high and five feet across, and was dug up in
      the central square of the City of Mexico more than one hundred
      years ago]

    CONQUEST OF PERU. Pizarro found the Incas divided as usual by civil
      wars and incapable of much resistance. One of their rival chiefs was
      outwitted when he tried to capture Pizarro by a trick, and was himself
      made a prisoner instead. He offered to give Pizarro in return for his
      freedom as much gold as would fill his prison room as high as he could
      reach. The offer was accepted, and gold, mainly in the shape of vases,
      plates, images, and other ornaments from the temples for the Indian
      idols, was gathered together.

      The Spaniards soon found themselves in possession of almost $7,000,000
      worth of gold, besides a vast quantity of silver. As much more was taken
      from the Indians by force. The whole was divided among the conquerors.
      Pizarro's share was worth nearly a million dollars. But the poor chief
      who had made them suddenly rich was suspected of plotting to have his
      warriors ambush them as they left the country, was tried by his
      conquerors, and put to death. The bloody work of conquest was soon over.
      Peru, like Mexico, rapidly became a center of Spanish settlement.
      Emigrants, instead of stopping in the West Indies, had the choice of
      going on into the newer regions which Cortes and Pizarro had won.

    EMIGRANTS TO SPANISH AMERICA. It was much harder in the sixteenth
      century to leave Spain and settle in America than it is today. The first
      and sometimes the greatest difficulty was in getting permission to leave
      Spain. No one could go who had not secured the king's consent. The
      emigrant must show that neither he nor his father nor his grandfather
      had ever been guilty of heresy, that is, that he and his forefathers had
      been steadfast Catholic Christians. His wife, if he had one, must give
      her consent. His debts must all be paid. The Moors and the Jews of Spain
      could not secure permits to move to the New World. Foreigners of
      whatever nation were not wanted in the colonies and were usually kept
      out. Spain tried to keep its colonies wholly for Spaniards.

    HARDSHIPS OF THE SEA VOYAGE. Those who did go to the colonies found
      the voyage dangerous and costly. One traveler has related that it cost
      him about one hundred and eighty dollars for the passage, and that he
      provided his own chickens and bread. The danger to sailing ships from
      storms was much greater than it is today for steamships. The voyage
      required three or four weeks and not uncommonly as many months.

    THE NEED OF LABORERS. The hardships and dangers of the voyage and
      the reports of suffering from famine and disease kept most people from
      going to the New World. Emigration was slow, amounting to about a
      thousand a year. There were always fewer capable white laborers than the
      landowners in the colonies needed for their work, for there was much to
      do in clearing the land and preparing it for use. The landowners were
      usually well-to-do Spaniards who did not like to work in the fields
      themselves. A great many of the laborers who migrated to America served
      in the army or went to the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru. The
      craze for gold constantly robbed the older colonies of their farm
      laborers. The landowners in the islands of the West Indies, during the
      early history of the colonies, made slaves of the Indians and compelled
      them to take the place of the laborers they needed and could not obtain.

    INDIAN SLAVERY. The people of Europe thought that the whole world
      belonged to the followers of Christ. Non-Christians, whether Indian or
      negro, had the choice of accepting Christianity or of being made slaves.
      The choice of Christianity did not always save them from the fate of
      slavery. In this the Spaniards were no more cruel than their neighbors
      the English or the French. The Spanish planters from the beginning
      forced the Indians to work their farms. The gold seekers made them work
      in their mines.

      The labor in every case was hard, and specially hard for the Indian
      unused to work. The overseers were brutal when the slaves did not do the
      tasks set for them. Hard usage and the unhealthful quarters rapidly
      broke down the natives. The white men also brought into the island
      diseases which they, with their greater experience, could resist, but
      from which, one writer says, the Indians died like sheep with a
      distemper.

      [Illustration: A SPANISH GALLEON Ships like this carried the
      Spanish emigrants to America]

    SLAVERY DESTROYS THE WEST INDIANS. When the number of the Indians
      in Espanola and Cuba had decreased so much that there were not enough
      left to meet the needs of the planters, slave-hunters searched the
      neighboring islands for others. Finally, when the Indians were nearly
      gone, and the planters began to look to the mainland for their slaves,
      the king of Spain forbade making slaves of the Indians. Unfortunately he
      did not forbid them to capture negroes in Africa for the same purpose,
      and the change merely meant that negroes took the place of Indians as
      slaves. The story of the change is in great part the story of the life
      of Bartholomew de Las Casas.

    LAS CASAS. The father of Las Casas was a companion of Columbus on
      his second voyage in 1493. He returned to Spain, taking with him a young
      Indian slave whom he gave to his son. This youth became greatly
      interested in the race to which his young slave belonged. In 1502 he
      went to Espanola to take possession of his father's estate. The
      planter's life did not long satisfy him and finally he became a priest.
      He moved from Espanola to Cuba, the newer colony.

      Las Casas became convinced that Indian slavery was wrong, and gave his
      own slaves their freedom. In his sermons he attacked the abuses of
      slavery. He visited Spain in order to help the slaves, and secured many
      reforms which lessened the hardships of their lot. Since the planters
      demanded more laborers and Las Casas thought the negro would be hardier
      than the Indian, he advocated negro slavery in place of Indian slavery
      as the less of two evils. Finally, in 1542, Las Casas persuaded his
      king, Charles V, to put an end to Indian slavery of every form.

      His success came too late to benefit the natives of the West Indies.
      They had decreased until almost none were left. It is said that there
      were two hundred thousand Indians in Espanola in 1492, and that in 1548
      there were barely five hundred survivors. The same decrease had taken
      place in the other islands. But the work of Las Casas came in time to
      save the Indians on the mainland from the fate of the luckless
      islanders.

    NEGRO SLAVERY. Las Casas later regretted that he had advised the
      planters to obtain negroes to take the place of the Indians. Some
      negroes had been captured by the Portuguese on the coast of Africa
      during their explorations and taken to Europe as slaves. Columbus
      carried a few of these to the West Indies with him, and others had
      followed his example, but negro slavery had grown very slowly until
      after Las Casas stopped Indian slavery, when it increased rapidly in
      Spanish America.

      [Illustration: LAS CASAS After the picture by Felix Parra in the
      Academy, Mexico. Las Casas is supposed to be imploring Providence to
      shield the natives from Spanish cruelty]

    THE MISSIONS OF THE MAINLAND. Las Casas became at one time a
      missionary to a tribe of the most desperate warriors located on the
      southern border of Mexico, in a region called by the Spaniards the “Land
      of War.” Three times a Spanish army had invaded the country, and three
      times it had been driven back by the native defenders. Las Casas wished
      to show the Spaniards that more could be accomplished by treating the
      Indians kindly than by bloody warfare and conquest.

      He and the monks whom he took with him learned the language of the
      Indians, and went among them not as conquerors but as Christian
      teachers. Their gentle manners and endless patience won the friendship
      of the Indians in time and changed the land of constant warfare into one
      of peace. They led the natives to destroy their idols and to give up
      cannibalism. The mission established among them and kept up by the monks
      who were attracted to it was only one of a great number which sprang up
      on the mainland.

    THE WORK OF THE MISSIONS. Influenced by the work of Las Casas
      against Indian slavery and for Indian missions, the Spaniards bent their
      efforts to preserve and Christianize the natives wherever they came upon
      them in America. Catholic priests gathered the Indians into permanent
      villages, which were called missions. Within about one hundred years
      after the death of Columbus, or by 1600, there were more then 5,000,000
      Indians in such villages under Spanish rule. Priests taught them to
      build better houses, checked their native vices, and suppressed heathen
      practices.

      Every mission became a little industrial school for children and parents
      alike, where all might learn the simpler arts and trades and the customs
      and language of their teachers. Each Indian cultivated his own plot of
      land and worked two hours a day on the farm belonging to the village.
      The produce of the village farm supported the church. The monks or
      friars who had charge of the mission cared for the poor, taught in the
      schools, preserved the peace and order of the village, and looked after
      the religious welfare of all.

      [Illustration: RUINS OF A SPANISH MISSION HOUSE]

      Gradually Spanish emigrants settled in the mission stations, and
      planters established farms around them, and they became Spanish villages
      in every respect like those in the islands or in the Old World, except
      that many inhabitants in the towns on the mainland were Indians. The
      emigrants freely intermarried with the Indians and a mixed race took the
      place of the old inhabitants. The customs, language, religion, and rule
      of Spain prevailed in this New Spain, though in some ways the new
      civilization was not so good as that of the Old World.

        QUESTIONS

        1. In what ways did the Aztecs resemble the Europeans? How did they
        differ from them? Why were the Spaniards particularly anxious to
        conquer Mexico?

        2. Why did many of the Mexicans refuse to fight the Spaniards? How
        many soldiers and Indian allies did Cortes lose in one battle? How
        long did it take Cortes to conquer Mexico?

        3. What other Indian people was conquered a few years later? By
        whom? What seemed to be the main object of these conquerors, Cortes
        and Pizarro, in their expeditions?

        4. Why did the Spaniards make slaves of the Indians in the West
        Indies? Why did they later cease making slaves of Indians and begin
        making slaves of negroes? What share had Las Casas in this change?

        5. What good work did the priests and monks in the Spanish Missions
        accomplish? What became of the Aztecs or other Indian tribes
        in Mexico?

        EXERCISES

        1. Find all you can about the houses, food, clothing, and
        occupations of any Indians living in your part of the United States,
        or if none are there now, learn this from your parents or from some
        neighbor who knew the Indians. Did they resemble the Aztecs in these
        respects or the West Indians?

        2. Review the account of emigrating to Spanish America four hundred
        years ago. Who could not go to Spanish America then? Find out who
        may not come into the United States to-day. What did it cost one
        traveler to get to America in the sixteenth century? Find out the
        cost of a voyage from Europe to America to-day. How long did it take
        to make such a voyage? Find out the usual length of a voyage from
        Europe to-day.

    CHAPTER XVII. THE SPANISH EXPLORERS OF NORTH AMERICA

    PONCE DE LEON. While men like Cortes were exploring and conquering
      the countries on the west shore of the Gulf of Mexico, others began to
      search the vast regions to the north. One of these explorers was Ponce
      de Leon, who had come to Espanola with Columbus in 1493. He afterwards
      spent many years in the West Indies capturing Indians, and understood
      from something they said that a magic fountain could be found beyond the
      Bahamas which would restore an old man to youth and vigor, if he
      bathed in it.

      [Illustration: PONCE DE LEON]

      As Ponce de Leon was beginning to feel aged he went in search of this
      wondrous fountain, but he found instead a coast where flowers grew in
      great abundance. It was the Easter season in 1513. Since the Spanish
      call this season Pascua Florida or Flowery Easter, Ponce called the
      new flowery country Florida. He went ashore near the present site of St.
      Augustine, and later, while trying to establish a settlement, lost his
      life in a battle with the Indians.

    EXPLORATIONS OF NORTH AMERICAN COAST. Other Spanish explorers
      between 1513 and 1525 followed the whole Gulf coast from Florida to Vera
      Cruz, and the Atlantic coast from Florida to Labrador. They sought
      continually for a passage to India. Every large inlet was entered, for
      it might prove to be the long-looked-for strait. Slowly the coast of
      North America took shape on the maps of that time. Two famous
      expeditions into the interior of the country did much to enlarge this
      knowledge. One was made by De Soto through the region which now forms
      seven southern states of the United States, and the other was by
      Coronado through the great southwest.

      [Illustration: HERNANDO DE SOTO]

    DE SOTO. Hernando de Soto, a noble from Seville in Spain, had won
      fame and fortune with Pizarro in Peru. The King of Spain, to reward his
      bravery and skill in conquering Indians, made him Governor of Cuba. In
      those days the Governor of Cuba controlled Florida. It was a larger
      Florida than the present state of that name, for Spanish Florida
      included the whole north coast of the Gulf of Mexico running back into
      the continent without any definite boundary.

    THE STORY OF THE GILDED MAN. De Soto had heard a fanciful story of
      a country so rich in gold that its king was smeared every morning with
      gum and then thickly sprinkled with powdered gold, which was washed off
      at night. De Soto thought this country might be somewhere in Florida,
      and prepared to search for the Gilded Man, or in the Spanish language
      El Dorado.

    THE COMRADES OF DE SOTO. More than six hundred men, some of them
      from the oldest families of the nobility of Spain and Portugal, flocked
      to De Soto's banner. They sold their possessions at home and ventured
      all their wealth in the hope of obtaining great riches in Florida.

    DE SOTO'S ROUTE THROUGH THE SOUTH OF NORTH AMERICA. De Soto crossed
      from Cuba to the west coast of Florida in 1539, and advanced northward
      by land to an Indian village near Apalachee Bay. Here he spent the first
      winter. A white man, whom the Indians had taken captive twelve years
      before and finally adopted, joined De Soto and became very useful as an
      interpreter.

      [Illustration: SPANISH KNIGHT OF 16TH CENTURY]

      In the spring De Soto renewed his explorations. It was like a journey
      into the interior of Africa. The expedition passed northeasterly through
      the country now within Georgia and South Carolina, as far, perhaps, as
      the border of North Carolina. From here it passed through the mountains,
      and turned southwesterly through Tennessee and Alabama until a large
      Indian village called Mauvilla was reached. This was near the head of
      Mobile Bay. Mobile was named from the Indian village Mauvilla. The
      Alabama Indians, whose name means “the thicket clearers,” were near by.
      Here again De Soto changed his course to the northwest into the
      unknown interior.

    THE HARDSHIPS OF THE JOURNEY. His army was almost exhausted by the
      difficulties of the journey. A road had to be cut and broken through
      thickets and forest, paths had to be made through the many swamps, and
      fords found across the rivers. It frequently became necessary to stop
      for months at a time, to let the horses, worn out from travel and
      starving because of the scarcity of fodder, fatten on the grass. The
      stores which the army brought with them soon gave out. The men were
      forced to live like Indians, and were often reduced to using the roots
      of wild plants for food. Where they could, they robbed the Indians of
      their scanty stores of corn and beans.

      [Illustration: INDIANS BROILING FISH]

    CRUEL TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS. De Soto was cruel in his treatment
      of the conquered natives along his route. Many of his officers came with
      him really for the purpose of obtaining Indian slaves for their
      plantations in Cuba. Indian women were made to do the work of the camp.
      Indian men were chained together and forced to carry the baggage. The
      chiefs were held as hostages for the good behavior of the whole tribe.
      The Indians who tried to shirk work or offered resistance were killed
      without mercy.

      [Illustration: MAP OF DE SOTO'S ROUTE—1539-1542]

      De Soto's cruelties made the Indian of the South hate the white men, and
      left him the enemy of any who should come to those regions in
      after-years. More than once De Soto narrowly escaped destruction at the
      hands of the enraged savages. They attacked the Spaniards with all their
      strength at Mauvilla, and again while they were in camp in northern
      Mississippi for the winter of 1540-1541. These two battles with the
      Indians cost the Spaniards their baggage, which was destroyed in the
      burning villages. New clothing, however, was soon made from the skins of
      wild animals. Deerskins and bearskins served for cloaks, jackets,
      shirts, stockings, and even for shoes. The great army must have looked
      much like a band of Robinson Crusoes.

    THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. De Soto marched on northwesterly
      until May 8, 1541, when he was somewhere near the site of the present
      city of Memphis. There he came upon a great river. One of his officers
      tells us that the river was so wide at this point that if a man on the
      other side stood still, it could not be known whether he were a man or
      not; that the river was of great depth, and of a strong current; and
      that the water was always muddy.

      De Soto called it, in his own language, the Rio Grande or Great River,
      but the Indians called it the Mississippi. Americans have adopted the
      Indian name. Other Spanish explorers had probably passed the mouth of
      the Mississippi River before De Soto, and wondered at its mighty size,
      but De Soto was the first white man to approach it from the land and to
      appreciate the importance of his discovery.

    WANDERINGS WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. The Spaniards cut down trees,
      made them into planks and built barges on which they crossed the
      Mississippi. Then they wandered for another year through the endless
      woods and marshes of the low-lying lands now within the state of
      Arkansas. They probably went as far west as the open plains of Oklahoma
      or Texas. In these border regions between the forests and the prairies
      they met Indians who used the skins of the buffalo for clothing.

      [Illustration: BURIAL OF DE SOTO IN THE MISSISSIPPI]

    DEATH AND BURIAL OF DE SOTO. The severe winter of 1541-1542
      discouraged the hardy travelers, who had now spent nearly three years in
      a vain search. The natives whom they had found made clothing from the
      fiber in the bark of mulberry trees and from the hides of buffaloes, and
      stored beans and corn for food, but such things seemed of little value
      to the seekers for the Gilded Man.

      De Soto returned to the Mississippi and prepared to establish a colony
      somewhere near the mouth of the Red River. It was his purpose to send to
      Cuba for supplies, and, with this settlement as a base, make a farther
      search in the plains of the great West. He did not live to carry out his
      plan. Long exposure and anxiety had weakened him. The malaria of the
      swamps attacked him, and he died within a few days. His body was wrapped
      in mantles weighted with sand, carried in a canoe, and secretly lowered
      in the midst of the great river he had discovered.

      His successor tried to conceal De Soto's death from the Indians. The
      Spaniards had called their leader the Child of the Sun, and now he had
      died like any other mortal. They were afraid if the Indians found his
      body they would cease to believe that the strangers were immortal and
      would massacre them all. The Indians were told that the great leader had
      gone to Heaven, as he had often done before, and that he would return in
      a few days.

    RESULTS OF DE SOTO'S JOURNEY. The weary survivors built boats,
      floated down the Mississippi into the Gulf, and sailed cautiously along
      the coasts to Mexico. They had been gone four years and three months,
      and half of the army which set out had perished. However, the expedition
      of De Soto will always remain one of the most remarkable journeys in the
      history of North America. It had extended the Spanish claims far into
      the interior. With it had begun the written history of the country now
      composing at least eight states in the United States, Florida, Georgia,
      South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and
      Arkansas. It had perhaps reached the present Oklahoma and Texas, and had
      certainly passed down the Mississippi River through Louisiana.

    THE STORY OF THE SEVEN CITIES. While De Soto was exploring the
      southeastern part of North America a second expedition searched the
      southwest. Both were looking for rich Indian kingdoms like Mexico and
      Peru. The second expedition came about in this manner. Some of the
      Indians from northern Mexico told the Spaniards a strange tale of how in
      the distant past their ancestors came forth from seven caves.

      [Illustration: AN INDIAN OF NORTHERN MEXICO]

      The Spaniards, however, confused the tale with a story of their own
      about Seven Cities. They believed that at the time Spain was overrun by
      the Moors in the eighth century, seven bishops, flying from persecution,
      had taken refuge, with a great company of followers, on an island or
      group of islands far out in the Atlantic Ocean, and that they had built
      Seven Cities. Wonderful stories were told in Spain of these cities, of
      their wealth and splendor, though nobody ever pretended to have actually
      seen them. The Spaniards thought the Indians meant to tell them of these
      Seven Cities instead of seven caves.

      The mistake was natural, as the Spanish explorers had much trouble in
      understanding the Indian languages. They had long expected to find the
      Seven Cities in America. Indeed there was rumor that white travelers had
      seen them north of Mexico.

    THE JOURNEY OF FRIAR MARCOS. In 1539 the Viceroy of Mexico sent a
      frontier missionary, Friar Marcos by name, together with a negro,
      Stephen, and some Christianized Indians to look for them. Friar Marcos
      traveled far to the north. He inquired his way of the Indians, always
      asking them about Seven Cities. He described them as large cities with
      houses made of stone and mortar. The Indians, half-understanding him,
      directed him to seven Zuni villages or pueblos. The first of these they
      called Cibola. Friar Marcos henceforth spoke of them as the Seven Cities
      of Cibola.

      The good friar himself never entered even the first of them. His negro,
      Stephen, had been sent on in advance to prepare the way, but this rough,
      greedy fellow offended the Indians, who promptly murdered him. When the
      friar approached he found the Indians so excited and hostile that he
      dared not enter their village. He did, however, venture to climb a hill
      at a distance, from which he had a view of one of the cities of Cibola.
      The houses, built of light stone and whitish adobe, glistened in the
      wonderfully clear air and bright sunlight of that region, and gave him
      the idea of a much larger and richer city than really existed. Friar
      Marcos, by this time thoroughly frightened, hurriedly retraced
      his steps.

    CORONADO. There was great excitement in Mexico over the story Friar
      Marcos told. The account of what had been seen grew, as such stories
      always do, in the telling and retelling. Nothing else was thought of in
      all New Spain. The Viceroy of Mexico made ready a great army for the
      conquest of the Seven Cities of Cibola. He gave the command to his
      intimate friend, Francisco de Coronado. Everybody wanted to accompany
      him, but it was necessary to have the consent of the viceroy. Sons of
      nobles, eager to go, traded with their more fortunate neighbors for the
      viceroy's permit. Some men who secured these sold them as special favors
      to their friends. Whoever obtained one of them counted it as good as a
      title of nobility. So high were the expectations of great wealth when
      the Seven Cities should be discovered!

      [Illustration: A ZUNI PUEBLO FROM A DISTANCE]

    THE ARMY OF CORONADO. In the early part of 1540, Coronado set forth
      from his home in western Mexico near the Gulf of California. He had an
      army of three hundred Spaniards, nearly all the younger sons of nobles.
      They were fitted out with polished coats of mail and gilded armor,
      carried lances and swords, and were mounted on the choicest horses from
      the large stock-farms of the viceroy. There were in the army a few
      footmen armed with crossbows and harquebuses. A thousand negroes and
      Indians were taken along, mainly as servants for the white masters. Some
      led the spare horses. Others carried the baggage, or drove the oxen and
      cows, the sheep and swine which would be needed on the journey. A small
      fleet carried part of the baggage by way of the Gulf of California,
      prepared also to help Coronado in other ways, and to explore the Gulf
      to its head.

      [Illustration: THE ROUTE OF CORONADO]

    THE ROUTE OF CORONADO TO CIBOLA. The large army marched slowly
      through the wild regions of the Gulf coast. Coronado soon became
      impatient and pushed ahead of the main body with a small following of
      picked horsemen. They went through the mountainous wilderness of
      northern Mexico and across the desert plains of southeastern Arizona.
      After a march lasting five months, over a distance equal to that from
      New York to Omaha, Coronado came upon the Seven Cities of Cibola; but
      the real Seven Cities of Cibola as Coronado found them bore little
      resemblance to what he had expected.

      [Illustration: A ZUNI PUEBLO]

    THE REAL SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA. The first city of Cibola was an
      Indian pueblo of about two hundred flat-roofed houses, built of stone
      and sun-dried clay. The houses were entered by climbing ladders to the
      top and then passing down into the rooms as we enter ships through
      hatches. The people wore only such clothes as could be woven from the
      coarse fiber of native plants, or patched together from the tanned skins
      of the cat or the deer. They cultivated certain plants for food, but
      only small and poor varieties of corn, beans, and melons. They had some
      skill in making small things for house and personal decoration, mainly
      in the form of pottery and simple ornaments of green stone.

      The kingdom of rich cities dwindled to a small province of poor villages
      inhabited by an unwarlike people. We know now that Coronado had found
      the Zuni pueblos in the western part of New Mexico. The conquest of
      these was a wofully small thing for so grand and costly an expedition.
      No gold or silver or precious jewels had been found.

      [Illustration: CANYON OF THE COLORADO]

    THE CANYON OF THE COLORADO. Yet the wonders of the natural world
      about them astonished and interested the Spaniards. Some of their number
      found the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River and vividly described it to
      their comrades. As they looked into its depths it seemed as if the water
      was six feet across, although in reality it was many hundred feet wide.
      Some tried without success to descend the steep cliff to the stream
      below or to discover a means of crossing to the opposite side. Those who
      staid above estimated that some huge rocks on the side of the cliff were
      about as tall as a man, but those who went down as far as they could
      swore that when they reached these rocks they found them bigger than the
      great tower of Seville, which is two hundred and seventy-five feet high.

      CORONADO IN NEW MEXICO. Coronado marched from the Cities of Cibola
      eastward to the valley of the Rio Grande River, and settled for the
      winter in an Indian village a short distance south of the present city
      of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Spaniards drove the natives out, only
      allowing them to take the clothes they wore.

    A WINTER IN AN INDIAN VILLAGE. The soldiers passed the severe
      winter of 1540-1541 comfortably quartered in the best houses of the
      Indian village. A plentiful supply of corn and beans had been left by
      the unfortunate owners. The live stock brought from Mexico furnished an
      abundance of fresh meat. Coronado required the Indians to furnish three
      hundred pieces of cloth for cloaks and blankets for his men, to take the
      place of their own, now worn out. Nor did the officers give the Indians
      time to secure the cloth that was demanded, but forced them to take
      their own cloaks and blankets off their backs. When a soldier came upon
      an Indian whose blanket was better than his, he compelled the unlucky
      fellow to exchange with him without more ado.

      Coronado's strenuous efforts to provide well for the comforts of his men
      made him much loved by them, but much hated by the Indians. It is no
      wonder that such treatment drove the Indians into rebellion, and that
      Coronado was obliged to carry on a cruel war of reconquest and revenge.

    THE TALE OF QUIVIRA. An Indian slave in one of the villages cheered
      Coronado and his followers with a fabulous tale about a wonderful city,
      many days' journey across the plains to the northeast, which he called
      Quivira. The king of Quivira, he said, took his nap under a large tree,
      on which were hung little gold bells, which put him to sleep as they
      swung in the air. Every one in the city had jugs and bowls made of
      wrought gold. The slave was probably tempted by the eagerness of his
      hearers to make his tale bigger. He perhaps made it as enticing as he
      could in order to lead the strangers away to perish in the pathless
      plains where water would be scarce and corn unknown.

    THE SEARCH FOR QUIVIRA. The slave's story deceived the Spaniards.
      Coronado grasped eagerly at the only hope left of finding a rich country
      and marched away in search of Quivira. He traveled to the northeast for
      seventy-seven days. There were no guiding land marks. Soldiers measured
      the distance traveled each day by counting the footsteps. The plains
      were flat, save for an occasional channel cut by some river half buried
      in the sand; they were barren, except for a short wiry grass and a small
      rim of shrubs and stunted trees along the watercourses.

    QUIVIRA. The most marvelous sight of the long journey was the herds
      of buffaloes in countless numbers. The Indians guided Coronado in the
      end to a cluster of Indian villages which they called Quivira. This was
      somewhere in what is now central Kansas near Junction City. The Indians
      were in all probability the Wichitas. Here again the great explorer met
      with a bitter disappointment.

      [Illustration: INDIAN TEPEES]

      Instead of a fine city of stone and mortar, he found scattered Indian
      villages with mere tent-like houses formed by fastening grass or straw
      or buffalo skins to poles. The people were the poorest and most
      barbarous which he had met. Coronado was, however, fortunate in securing
      a supply of corn and buffalo meat in Quivira for his long
      return journey.

    CORONADO'S OPINION OF THE WEST. A year later a crestfallen army of
      half-starved men clad in the skins of animals stumbled back homeward
      through Mexico in straggling groups. Great sadness prevailed in Mexico,
      for many had lost their fortunes besides friends and relatives in the
      enterprise. Coronado seemed to the people of the time to have led a
      costly army on a wild-goose chase. He himself thought that the regions
      he had crossed were valueless. He said they were cold and too far away
      from the sea to furnish a good site for a colony, and the country was
      neither rich enough nor populous enough to make it worth keeping.

    RESULTS OF CORONADO'S EXPLORATIONS. We know better to-day the
      value of Coronado's great discoveries. He had solved the age-long
      mystery of the Seven Cities, and explored the southwest of the United
      States of our day. The rich region now included in the great states of
      Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas had been seen, and it
      was soon after described for the European world. His men had explored
      the Gulf of California to its head, and the Colorado River toward its
      source for two hundred miles. They had proved that lower California was
      not an island but a part of the mainland. Others soon explored the
      entire coast of California to the limits of the present state of Oregon.

    HOW DE SOTO AND CORONADO CAME NEAR MEETING. De Soto and Coronado
      together pushed the Spanish frontier far northward to the center of
      North America. A story which was told by De Soto's men shows how close
      together the two great explorers were at one time. While Coronado was in
      Quivira, De Soto was wandering along the borders of the plains west of
      the Mississippi River, though neither knew of the nearness of the other.
      An Indian woman who ran away from Coronado's army fell in with De
      Soto's, nine days later. If De Soto and Coronado had met on the plains
      there would have been a finer story to tell, almost as dramatic as the
      meeting of Stanley and Livingstone in central Africa. One cannot refrain
      from wondering how different would have been the ending with the two
      great armies united and encouraged to continue their explorations.

        QUESTIONS

        1. What story had Ponce de Leon heard in the West Indies? What did
        he find? Why did he call the new country which he discovered
        Florida? What was included in Florida as the Spaniards
        understood it?

        2. What was De Soto looking for in North America? How long did he
        search? What did he find? Was he disappointed? What was he planning
        to do when he died? Why was his journey very remarkable? Through
        what present states of the United States did he pass?

        3. Where did the Spaniards expect to find the Seven Cities? Why did
        he expect to find them there? What was the story of the Seven
        Cities? Of the Seven Caves?

        4. What did Coronado expect to find at the Seven Cities of Cibola?
        What did he find there? Why did he go far on into North America in
        search of Quivira? What did he find on the way to Quivira? What did
        he find Quivira to be?

        5. What did Coronado think of his own discoveries? What had he found
        out of interest or value to the rest of the world? Which of the
        present states of the United States did his route touch?

        REVIEW

        1. Review the effect of the discoveries of Columbus,
        Magellan, De Soto, Coronado, on the knowledge of the new world.

        Important date—1541. The discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto.

    CHAPTER XVIII. RIVALRY AND STRIFE IN EUROPE

    THE RIVALS OF SPAIN. When the early voyages to America and Asia were
      ended, the French, the English, and the other northern peoples of
      Europe seemed to be beaten in the race for new lands and for new
      routes to old lands. The French had sent a few fishermen to the Banks
      of Newfoundland, and that was all. The English had made one or two
      voyages and appeared to be no longer interested. (See Chapter XIV,
      Cabot) The Dutch seemed to be only sturdy fishermen, thrifty farmers,
      or keen traders, occupied much of the time in the struggle against the
      North Sea, which threatened to burst the dikes and flood farms and
      cities.

    THE TRADE-WINDS. The Portuguese and the Spaniards had a great
      advantage in living nearer the natural starting-point for such voyages.
      To go to Asia ships went by way of the Cape of Good Hope. To go to
      America a southern route was taken, for in the North Atlantic the
      prevailing winds are from the southwest, while south of Spain the
      trade-winds blow towards the southwest, making it easy to sail to
      America. To take the northern route, which was the natural one for
      French and English sailors, would be to battle against head winds and
      heavy seas.

    THE SPANIARDS AND THE PORTUGUESE DIVIDE THE WORLD. The Spaniards
      and the Portuguese believed that their discoveries gave them the right
      to all new lands which should be found and to all trade by sea with the
      Golden East. Two years after the first voyage of Columbus the Spaniards
      agreed with the Portuguese that a line running 370 leagues west of the
      Cape Verde Islands should separate the regions claimed by each. The
      Spaniards were to hold all lands discovered west of that line, and the
      Portuguese all east of it. This left Brazil within the region claimed by
      the Portuguese. The rest of North and South America lay within the
      Spanish claims. It is the future history of this region that especially
      interests us as students of American history.

      [Illustration: CABOT MEMORIAL TOWER Erected at Bristol, England,
      in memory of the first sailor from England to visit America]

    THE MAIN QUESTION. Were the Spaniards to keep what they claimed and
      continue to outstrip their northern rivals? The answer to this question
      is found in the history of Europe during the sixteenth century.
      Unfortunately for the Spaniards they were drawn into quarrels in Europe
      which cost them many men and much money. The consequence was that they
      were unable to make full use of their discoveries, even if they had
      known how. Before the century was ended their rivals, the English and
      the French, were stronger than they; and the Dutch, their own subjects,
      had rebelled against them.

    THE ENGLISH AND THE FRENCH DESIRE A SHARE. Men had such great ideas
      of the immense wealth of the Indies that the successes of one nation
      made the other nations eager for some part of the spoil. Englishmen and
      Frenchmen were not likely to allow the Portuguese to take all they could
      find by sailing eastward around the Cape of Good Hope, and the Spaniards
      to keep whatever they discovered by sailing directly westward or by
      following the route marked out by Magellan. Both would search for new
      routes to the East, and both would lay claim to lands they saw by the
      way, regardless of any other nation. Many quarrels came from this
      rivalry, but quarrels arose also from other causes.

    KING CHARLES AND KING FRANCIS. About the time Cortes conquered
      Mexico, his master, King Charles of Spain, began a war against Francis,
      the king of France. As long as these two kings lived they were either
      fighting or preparing to fight. Had Charles been king of Spain only,
      there might have been no trouble, but he ruled lands in Italy and
      claimed others which the French king ruled. He also ruled all the region
      north of France which is now Belgium and Holland, and he owned a
      district which forms part of eastern France near Switzerland. As he was
      the German emperor besides, the French king thought him too dangerous to
      be left in peace. These wars have little to do with American history,
      except that they helped to weaken the king of Spain and to prevent the
      Spaniards from making the most of their early successes in colonizing.

    RELIGION A CAUSE OF STRIFE. Religion was the most serious cause of
      quarrel in the sixteenth century, and the king of Spain was the prince
      most injured by the struggle. At the time of Prince Henry of Portugal
      and of Columbus all peoples in western Europe worshiped in the same
      manner, taught their children the same beliefs, and in religious matters
      they all obeyed the pope. But by 1521 this had changed. The troubles
      began in Germany when Charles V was emperor. Before they were over
      Philip II, son of Charles, lost control of the Dutch, who rebelled and
      founded a republic of their own. The English finally became the
      principal enemies of Spain. The French, most of whom were of the same
      religion as the Spaniards, came to hate Spanish methods of defending
      religion, especially after the Spaniards had massacred a band of French
      settlers in America.

      [Illustration: EMPEROR CHARLES V]

    THE “REFORMERS.” Many men became discontented at the way the Church
      was managed. At first all were agreed that the evils of which they
      complained could be removed if priests, bishops, and pope worked
      together to that end. After a while some teachers in different countries
      not only complained of evils, but refused to believe as the Church had
      taught and as most people still believed. They did not mean to divide
      the Christian Church into several churches, but they thought they
      understood the words of the Bible better than the teachers of
      the Church.

    THE REFORMATION. At that time people who were not agreed in their
      religious beliefs did not live peaceably in the same countries. The
      princes and kings who were faithful to the Church ordered that the new
      teachers and their followers should be punished. Other princes accepted
      the views of the “reformers,” and soon began to punish those of their
      subjects who continued to believe as the Church taught. In Germany these
      princes were called “Protestants,” because they protested against the
      efforts of the Emperor Charles and his advisers to stop the spread of
      the new religion. This name was afterwards given to all who refused to
      remain in the older Church, subject to the bishops and the pope.

    CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT LEADERS. The most famous leaders of the
      Roman Catholics at this time were Ignatius Loyola, a Spaniard, Reginald
      Pole, an Englishman, and Carlo Borromeo, an Italian. Loyola had been a
      soldier in his youth, but while recovering from a serious wound,
      resolved to be a missionary. With several other young men of the same
      purpose he founded the Society of Jesus or the Jesuit Order. Of the
      Protestants the greatest leaders were Martin Luther, a German, and John
      Calvin, a Frenchman. Luther was a professor in the university at
      Wittenberg in Saxony, which was ruled by the Elector Frederick the Wise.
      Calvin had lived as a student in Paris, but when King Francis resolved
      to allow no Protestants in his kingdom, Calvin was obliged to leave the
      country. He settled in the Swiss city of Geneva.

    THE LUTHERAN CHURCH. Luther's teachings were accepted by many
      Germans, especially in northern Germany. He translated the Bible into
      German. After a while his followers formed a Church of their own which
      was called Lutheran. It differed from the Roman Catholic Church in the
      way it was governed as well as in what it taught.

    THE FRENCH HUGUENOTS. Calvin lived in Geneva, but most of those who
      accepted his teachings continued to live in France. The nickname
      Huguenots, or confederates, was given to them. They were not permitted
      by the French king to worship as Calvin taught, but by 1562 so many
      nobles had joined them that it was no longer possible to treat them as
      criminals. They were permitted to hold their meetings outside the walled
      towns. The leader whom they most honored was Admiral Gaspard de Coligny.
      Both he and they, as we shall see, soon had reason to fear and hate the
      Spaniards. But we must first understand the difficulties which the king
      of Spain had in dealing with his Dutch subjects.

    THE KING OF SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS. Philip II inherited from his
      father Charles seventeen duchies, counties, and other districts north of
      France in what is now Belgium and Holland. Charles had known how to
      manage these people, because he was brought up among them. The task of
      managing them was not easy. Each district or city had its own special
      rights and its people demanded that these should be respected by the
      ruling prince. Charles had remembered this, but Philip wished to rule
      the Netherlanders, as these people were called, just as he ruled the
      people of Spain.

      [Illustration: THE DIKES ALONG THE YSSEL IN THE NETHERLANDS]

    PROTESTANTS IN THE NETHERLANDS. The trouble was made worse because
      many of the Netherlanders became followers of Luther or Calvin, and
      brought their books into the country. Now Philip, like his father
      Charles, was faithful to the teachings of the Church, and thought it was
      his duty to punish such persons. The result was that Philip soon had two
      kinds of enemies in his Netherland provinces, those who did not like the
      way he ruled and those who refused to believe as the Church taught, and
      the two united against him. After a while most of the Lutherans were
      driven away, but the Calvinists kept coming in over the border
      from France.

    THE NETHERLANDS. The Netherlands, or Low Countries, are well
      named, especially the northern part where the Dutch live, because much
      of the land is below the level of the sea at high tide, and some of it
      at low tide. For several hundred years the Dutch built dikes to keep
      back the sea, or pumped it out where it flowed in and covered the lower
      lands. Occasionally great storms broke through the dikes and caused the
      Dutch months or years of labor. A people so brave and industrious were
      not likely to submit to the will of Philip II. The chances that they
      would rebel were increased by the spread of the new religious views,
      which the Dutch accepted more readily than their neighbors, the southern
      Netherlanders. The southern Netherlanders who became Calvinists
      generally emigrated to the northern cities, like Amsterdam, where they
      were safer.

      [Illustration: Map Of The Netherlands]

    WILLIAM OF ORANGE. William, Prince of Orange, was the leader of the
      Dutch against Philip II. He had been trusted by Charles, Philip's
      father, who had leaned on his shoulder at the great ceremony held in
      Brussels when Charles gave up his throne to Philip. William was called
      the “Silent,” because he was careful not to tell his plans to any except
      his nearest friends. When Philip returned to Spain, William was made
      governor or stadtholder of three of the Dutch provinces—Holland,
      Zealand, and Utrecht. Philip was angry because William and other great
      nobles in the Netherlands opposed his way of dealing with the heretics
      and of ruling the Netherlands. In this both the southern Netherlanders
      and the northern Netherlanders were united, although the southern
      Netherlanders remained faithful to the Roman Catholic religion.

    SPAIN AND ENGLAND. The English at first had no reason to quarrel
      with the king of Spain. They were friendly to the Netherlanders, who
      were his subjects. During the Middle Ages they sold great quantities of
      wool to the Netherland cities of Bruges, Brussels, and Ghent, and bought
      fine cloth woven in those towns. The friendship of the ruler of the
      Netherlands seemed necessary, if this trade was to prosper. It was the
      trouble about religion which finally made the English and the
      Spaniards enemies.

    HENRY VIII. During the reign of Henry VIII, King of England, the
      king, the parliament, and the clergy decided to refuse obedience to the
      pope. The king called himself the head of the Church in England.
      Lutheran views crept into the country as they had done into the
      Netherlands, but King Henry at first disliked the Lutherans quite as
      much as he grew to dislike the pope.

    THE ENGLISH CHURCH. So long as Henry lived not much change was made
      in the beliefs or the manner of worship in the Church. During the short
      reign of his son, the English Church became more like the Protestant
      Churches on the Continent, except that in England there were still
      archbishops and bishops, and the government of the Church went on much
      as before. When Henry's daughter Mary was made queen she tried to stop
      these changes, and for a few years her subjects were again obedient to
      the pope, but she died in 1558 and her half-sister, Elizabeth,
      became queen.

      [Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH]

    THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE CATHOLICS. In religious matters Queen
      Elizabeth did much as her father and her brother had done. All persons
      were forced to attend the religious services carried on in the manner
      ordered in the prayer-book. Roman Catholics could not hold any
      government office. They were punished if they tried to persuade others
      to remain faithful to the older Church. Philip did not like this, but
      for a time he preferred to be on friendly terms with the English.

      [Illustration: COSTUMES AT THE TIME OF ELIZABETH]

    QUEEN ELIZABETH. Queen Elizabeth ruled England for forty-five
      years. The English regard her reign as the most glorious in their
      history. Before it was over they proved themselves more than a match for
      the Spaniards on the sea. They also began to seek for routes to the East
      and to attempt settlements in America. Their trade was increasing. The
      Greek and Roman writers were studied by English scholars at Oxford and
      Cambridge. Books and poems and plays were written which were to make the
      English language the rival of the languages of Greece and Rome. This was
      the time when Shakespeare wrote his first plays.

        QUESTIONS

        1. Why was it easier to sail toward America from Spain or Portugal
        than from England?

        2. What peoples divided the new world between them? Where did they
        draw the line of division?

        3. Why were the kings of France and Spain rivals? Over what
        countries did King Charles rule?

        4. When did religion become a cause of strife? What king was chiefly
        injured by such struggles?

        5. Who were called “reformers?” By what other names were they
        called?

        6. Who were the leaders of the Catholics? of the Protestants? Who
        were the Huguenots? What was their leader's name?

        7. Why did Philip II and his subjects in the Netherlands quarrel?

        8. What was strange about the land in which the Dutch lived? Who was
        the hero of the Dutch?

        9. Why were the English and the Spaniards at first friendly? What
        king of England refused to obey the pope?

        10. Why do Englishmen think Queen Elizabeth a great ruler? How did
        Elizabeth settle the question of religion?

        EXERCISE

        Collect pictures of the Dutch, of their canals, dikes, and towns.

    CHAPTER XIX. FIRST FRENCH ATTEMPTS TO SETTLE AMERICA

    CARTIER. During the reign of Francis I, the French made the first
      serious attempts to find a westward route to the Far East and to settle
      the new lands that seemed to lie directly across the pathway. In 1534
      Jacques Cartier was sent with two ships in search of a strait beyond the
      regions controlled by Spain or Portugal which would lead into the
      Pacific Ocean. Cartier passed around the northern side of Newfoundland
      and into the broad expanse of water west of it. This he called the Gulf
      of St. Lawrence.

    CARTIER AT MONTREAL. Cartier made a second voyage in the following
      year, exploring the great river which he called the St. Lawrence. He
      went up the river until the heights of Mount Royal or Montreal, as he
      called them, appeared on his right hand, and swift rapids in the river
      blocked his way in front. The name Lachine rapids, or the China rapids,
      which was afterwards given to these, remains to remind us that Cartier
      was searching for a passage to China.

    THE FIRST WINTER IN CANADA. Cartier spent the severe winter which
      followed at the foot of the cliffs which mark the site of the modern
      city of Quebec. The expedition returned to France with the coming
      of spring.

    ATTEMPTS TO PLANT A COLONY AT QUEBEC. Several years later, in 1541,
      Cartier and others attempted to establish a permanent settlement on the
      St. Lawrence. As it was hard to get good colonists to settle in the cold
      climate so far north, the leaders were allowed to ransack the prisons
      for debtors and criminals to make up the necessary numbers. They
      selected the neighborhood of the cliffs where Cartier had wintered in
      1535, where Quebec now stands, as the most suitable place for their
      colony. But the settlers were ill-fitted for the hardships of a new
      settlement in so cold and barren a country. Diseases and the hostility
      of the Indians completely discouraged them, and all gladly returned
      to France.

      [Illustration: MAP SHOWING JACQUES CARTIER's VOYAGES
      Thus: 1st Voyage——2d Voyage.... 3d Voyage—> —>]

      The zeal of the French for American discovery and settlement on the St.
      Lawrence ceased with Cartier. His hope that the St. Lawrence would prove
      the long-sought passage to China had to be given up, but the river which
      he had discovered and so thoroughly explored proved to be a great
      highway into the center of North America.

    COLIGNY'S PLAN FOR A HUGUENOT COLONY. Nearly thirty years later the
      French Protestant leader, Coligny, formed the plan of establishing a
      colony in America, which would be a refuge for the Huguenots if their
      enemies got the upper hand in France. An expedition left France in 1564,
      and selected a site for a settlement near the mouth of the St. Johns
      river in Florida. It seemed a good place. A fort, called Fort Caroline,
      was quickly built. But the first colonists were not well chosen. They
      were chiefly younger nobles, soldiers unused to labor, or discontented
      tradesmen and artisans. There were few farmers among them.

    THE MISDEEDS OF THE COLONISTS. They spent their time visiting
      distant Indian tribes in a vain search for gold and silver, or
      plundering Spanish villages and ships in the West Indies. No one thought
      of preparing the soil and planting seeds for a food supply. It seemed
      easier to rob neighbors. The provisions which they had brought with them
      gave out. Game and fish abounded in the woods and rivers about them, but
      they were without skill in hunting and fishing. Before the first year
      had passed the miserable inhabitants of Fort Caroline were reduced to
      digging roots in the forest for food. Starvation and the revenge of
      angry Indians confronted them.

    RELIEF SENT TO THE COLONY. In August, 1565, just as the
      half-starved colonists were preparing to leave the country, an
      expedition with fresh settlers—mostly discharged soldiers, a few young
      nobles, and some mechanics with their families, three hundred in
      all—arrived in the harbor. It brought an abundance of supplies and
      other things needed by a colony in a new country. It looked then as
      though these Frenchmen would succeed in their plan and establish a
      permanent colony in America.

      [Illustration: FORT CAROLINE, THE FRENCH SETTLEMENT IN FLORIDA
      From De Bry's Voyages]

    FORT CAROLINE AND THE SPANIARDS. The French had, however, settled
      in Florida. Indeed, it would have been difficult to settle in America at
      any place along the Atlantic coast without doing so. The Spaniards
      regarded all North America from Mexico to Labrador as lying within
      Florida. The attempt of the French to settle on the lands claimed by the
      king of Spain was sure to bring on a war, sooner or later. The conduct
      of the French at Fort Caroline in plundering the Spanish colonies in the
      West Indies made all Spaniards anxious to drive out such a nest of
      robbers and murderers. Besides, the Spaniards hated Coligny's followers
      more than ordinary Frenchmen, because they were Huguenots.

    MENENDEZ. At the time the news reached Spain of Coligny's
      settlement at Fort Caroline, a Spanish nobleman, Pedro Menendez, was
      preparing to establish a colony in Florida, and thus after a long delay
      carry out the task which De Soto had vainly attempted. Menendez was
      naturally as eager as the king to drive out the French intruders. So an
      expedition larger than was planned at first was hurried off. Menendez
      was to do three things: drive the French out, conquer and Christianize
      the Indians, and establish Spanish settlements in Florida.

    THE DEFEAT OF THE FRENCH FLEET. Menendez with a part of his fleet
      arrived before Fort Caroline just one week after the relief expedition
      which Coligny had sent over came into harbor. His ships attacked and
      scattered those of the French. The vessels of the French for the most
      part sought refuge on the high seas. They were too swift to be
      overtaken, but no match for the Spanish in battle. Menendez decided to
      wait for the rest of his ships before making another attack on Fort
      Caroline. Meanwhile he sailed southward along the coast for fifty miles
      till he came to an inlet. He called the place St. Augustine.

    ST. AUGUSTINE FOUNDED. A friendly Indian chief readily gave his
      dwelling to the Spaniards. It was a huge, barn-like structure, made of
      the entire trunks of trees, and thatched with palmetto leaves. Soldiers
      quickly dug a ditch around it and threw up a breastwork of earth and
      small sticks. The colonists who came with Menendez landed and set about
      the usual work of founding a settlement. Such was the beginning of the
      Spanish town of St. Augustine, founded in 1565, and the oldest town in
      the United States.

      [Illustration: ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA, AS FOUNDED BY MENENDEZ
      Pagus Hispanorum as given in Montanus and Ogilby]

    FRENCH SAIL TO ATTACK ST. AUGUSTINE. Both sides prepared for a
      terrible struggle, the French at Fort Caroline and the Spaniards in
      their new quarters at St. Augustine. The French struck the first blow. A
      few of the weaker and the sick soldiers were left at Fort Caroline to
      stand guard with the women and children. The main body aboard the ships
      advanced by sea to attack St. Augustine, but a furious tempest scattered
      and wrecked the French fleet before it arrived.

    MENENDEZ DESTROYS FORT CAROLINE. Menendez now took advantage of the
      storm to march overland to Fort Caroline, wading through swamps and
      fording streams amid a fearful rain and gale. His drenched and hungry
      followers fell like wild beasts upon the few French left in the fort.
      About fifty of the women and children were spared to become captives. As
      many men escaped in the forests around the fort, but the greater part
      were killed.

    CAPTURE OF THE SHIPWRECKED FRENCH. The French fleet had been
      wrecked off the coast of Florida a dozen miles south of St. Augustine. A
      few days later Menendez discovered some survivors wandering along the
      coast, half starved, trying to live on the shell-fish they found on the
      beach, and slowly and painfully working their way back toward Fort
      Caroline. The Frenchmen begged Menendez to be allowed to remain in the
      country till ships could be sent to take them off, but he was unwilling
      to make any terms with them.

    MURDER OF THE CAPTIVES. The unhappy Frenchmen were taken prisoners,
      and, a few hours later, put to death. Other shipwrecked refugees were
      captured a few days later, and these suffered the same fate. Nearly
      three hundred perished in this cold-blooded manner. It was a merciless
      deed, and yet such was the character of all warfare at the time.
      Menendez believed that he was doing his duty. Nor did the king of Spain
      think Menendez unduly cruel, for when he heard the story of the fate of
      the Frenchmen of Fort Caroline he sent this message to Menendez: “Say to
      him that, as to those he has killed, he has done well; and as to those
      he has saved, they shall be sent to the galleys.”

      [Illustration: NORTH AMERICA AS KNOWN AFTER THE EXPLORATIONS OF
      DE SOTO CORONADO AND CARTIER]

      [Illustration: (map)]

        QUESTIONS

        1. Who was the leader in the first French efforts to explore and
        settle in North America? Find as many reasons as possible why France
        had not tried to settle in America before. What parts of the
        continent did Cartier become interested in? Why was he specially
        interested in St. Lawrence region?

        2. How did Montreal get its name? Why was the name, Lachine rapids,
        given to the rapids above Montreal on the St. Lawrence river?

        3. Why did Cartier fail in his attempts to plant a French colony in
        North America? How much had he and his friends accomplished for
        France in North America?

        4. Why did Coligny later wish to establish a colony in America?
        Where did his people try to settle? Find the place on the map.
        Give several reasons why they soon got into trouble with
        the Spaniards.

        5. What did the king of Spain send Menendez to Florida to do? What
        things did he accomplish? Why do we specially remember St.
        Augustine? Find it on the map.

        EXERCISES

        1. Examine the map of North America in 1541. What parts
        of North America were known? What parts were unknown? Can you see
        why the explorers would search each bay or inlet or great river?

        2. Find how far into the continent of North America the French
        explored the St. Lawrence river, that is, the distance from
        Newfoundland to Montreal by using the scale of miles on a map in one
        of your geographies.

        Important Date: 1565. The founding of St. Augustine.

    CHAPTER XX. THE ENGLISH AND THE DUTCH TRIUMPH OVER SPAIN

    CRUEL TREATMENT OF THE NETHERLANDERS. Two years after the cruel
      massacre of the Huguenot colony in Florida, Philip II, the King of
      Spain, decided to put an end to the obstinacy of the Netherlanders, and
      sent an army from Spain commanded by the Duke of Alva, who was as
      pitiless as Menendez. Alva began by seizing prominent nobles, and he
      would have arrested the Prince of Orange, but he escaped into Germany. A
      court was set up which condemned many persons to death, including the
      greatest nobles of the land. The people nicknamed it the Council of
      Blood. Alva also turned the merchants against him by compelling them to
      pay the “tenth penny,” that is, one tenth of the price of the goods
      every time these were either bought or sold. Alva made himself so
      thoroughly hated that even Philip decided to call him back to Spain.

    THE BEGGARS OF THE SEA. Just then something happened which gave
      Coligny and the Huguenots their chance for vengeance. The men who were
      resisting the king's officers in the Netherlands had been nicknamed the
      “Beggars.” When they were driven from the cities they took to the sea.
      The “Beggars of the Sea” sometimes found a port of refuge in La
      Rochelle, a Huguenot town on the western coast of France, and sometimes
      they put into friendly English harbors. From these places they would
      sail out and attack Spanish vessels. When Queen Elizabeth in 1572
      ordered a fleet of these “Beggars” to leave, they crossed over to their
      own shores and drove the Spanish garrison out of Brille. This success
      encouraged the Dutch and many of the southern Netherlanders to rise and
      expel the Spanish soldiers from their towns.

    THE FRENCH PROMISE AID. As soon as Coligny heard the news he urged
      the French king to send an army into the Netherlands and take vengeance
      not only for the massacre at Fort Caroline, but also for all the wrongs
      that he and his father and his grandfather had ever received at the
      hands of the Spaniards. The French king agreed and wrote a letter to the
      Netherlanders promising aid.

      [Illustration: GASPARD DE COLIGNY After the portrait in the
      Public Library, Geneva]

    MASSACRE OF HUGUENOTS IN PARIS. The plan was never carried out.
      While Coligny and many other Huguenots were in Paris, his enemies
      attempted to kill him. When the attempt failed these enemies, including
      the king's mother, persuaded the king that Coligny and the Huguenots
      were plotting against him, and goaded the king into ordering the murder
      of all the Huguenots in Paris and the other cities of France. Thousands
      of Huguenots perished. When the Netherlanders heard of what had befallen
      Coligny and his followers, they were crushed with grief. Coligny had
      missed the chance of vengeance. But the Spanish king was soon to have
      other enemies besides the Huguenots who were ready to help the Dutch.
      These new enemies were the English.

    THE ENGLISH DRAWN INTO THE CONFLICT. The religious troubles in
      England had been growing more serious. Two or three plots were made to
      assassinate Elizabeth in order to put on the throne Queen Mary of
      Scotland, who was the next heir. Philip began to encourage these
      plotters, especially after the pope in 1570 had excommunicated Elizabeth
      and forbidden her subjects to obey her as queen. She was sure to be
      dragged into the struggle in the Netherlands sooner or later. We have
      seen that she had once sheltered the “Beggars of the Sea.” The murder of
      Coligny and his followers frightened the English and made many of them
      anxious to join in the conflict before their friends on the Continent,
      the French Huguenots and the Dutch Calvinists, were utterly destroyed.

    GROWTH OF ENGLISH TRADE. If England should be drawn into war, her
      safety would depend mainly upon her ships. Englishmen had always taken
      to the sea, as was natural for men whose shores were washed by the
      Atlantic, the Channel and the North Sea, but they were slow in building
      fleets of ships either for trade or for war. The trade of the country
      with other peoples in the Middle Ages was carried on mostly by
      foreigners. Yet since the days of Elizabeth's father and grandfather a
      change had taken place. English merchants found their way to all
      markets. They also made new things to sell. Refugees driven by the
      religious troubles from France and the Netherlands brought their skill
      to England and taught the English how to weave fine woolens and silks.

    THE NEW ENGLISH NAVY. The English navy was growing. One of the new
      ships, The Triumph, carried 450 seamen, 50 gunners, and 200 soldiers.
      Besides harquebuses for the soldiers, there were many kinds of cannon
      with strange names, such as culverins, falconets, sakers, serpentines,
      and rabinets. Four of the cannon were large enough to shoot a
      cannon-ball eight inches in diameter. But it was on the skill and
      courage of her men rather than upon the size of her ships that England
      relied for victory.

      [Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE After the painting at Buckland
      Abby, England]

    SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. One of these men was Francis Drake. He was son
      of a chaplain in the navy and as a boy played in the rigging of the
      great ships-of-war, as other boys play in the streets. In time young
      Drake was apprenticed to the skipper of a small trading vessel. Fortune
      smiled on the lad early in life. His master died, and out of love for
      the apprentice who had served him so well, left him the vessel. Francis
      Drake became thus a shipmaster on his own account, and in time the most
      popular of Queen Elizabeth's sea-captains.

    SLAVE-TRADERS. He often went with his cousin, John Hawkins, on
      voyages to Africa. They bought negro slaves from slave-traders along the
      coast, or kidnaped negroes whom they found, and carried them to the
      Spanish planters of the West Indies. Hawkins and Drake were as devout
      and humane as other men of their time. They simply could not see any
      wrong in enslaving the heathen black men in Africa. Besides, they
      enjoyed the wild life of the slave-trader with its dangers and
      rich rewards.

    WHY DRAKE HATED THE SPANIARDS. The king of Spain tried to keep the
      trade in slaves for his own merchants, and attempted to prevent the
      trade of the English slavers with the West Indies. Spanish ships-of-war
      ruined one of the voyages from which Hawkins and Drake hoped for large
      profits. The Spaniards won thereby the undying hatred of Drake.

    THE DRAGON OF THE SEAS. It was a time, too, when Drake's countrymen
      at home shared his intense hatred of the Spaniard. While England and
      Spain were not at war with one another, English and Spanish traders
      fought whenever they met on the high seas. The English made the Spanish
      settlements in America their special prey. At certain times of the year
      Spanish ships, called government ships, carried to Spain gold and
      silver—the royal share of the products of America. Drake, like many
      another of his countrymen, lay in wait to rob these ships of their
      precious cargoes. He managed to gather a fortune by his cunning and
      courage. More than once he was forced to bury his treasures in the sand
      to lighten his ships that they might sail the faster, and escape his
      pursuers. The Spaniards came to know and to fear Drake as the Dragon
      of the Seas.

      [Illustration: SPANISH TREASURE SHIP]

    DRAKE'S VENTURE. Drake once formed the plan to take a fleet into
      the Pacific Ocean in order to plunder the treasure ships where they
      would be less on their guard. A fleet of five ships was made ready.
      Contributions from wealthy merchants and powerful nobles, perhaps a gift
      from Queen Elizabeth herself, gave him the means for unusual luxuries in
      the equipment of his fleet. Skilful musicians and rich furniture were
      taken on board Drake's own ship, the Pelican, or the Golden Hind as
      he afterwards christened it. The brilliant little fleet left Plymouth in
      1577. One after another of the ships turned back or was destroyed on the
      long voyage of twelve months across the Atlantic and through the Strait
      of Magellan.

    BEYOND THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. The Golden Hind alone remained to
      carry out the original project. As it entered the Pacific Ocean a furious
      storm drove the little vessel southward beyond Cape Horn to the regions
      where the oceans meet. No one before had sailed so far south.

    THE FIRST PRIZES. Drake regained control of his ship when the storm
      had passed, and sailed northward along the coast, plundering and robbing
      as he went. Once, as a land-party was searching along the shore for
      fresh water, it came upon a Spaniard asleep with thirteen bars of silver
      beside him. His nap was disturbed long enough to take away his burden.
      Further on they met another Spaniard and an Indian boy driving a train
      of Peruvian sheep laden with eight hundred pounds of silver. The
      Englishmen took their place, and merrily drove the sheep to their boats.
      A treasure ship, nicknamed the Spitfire, on the way to Panama, was
      captured after a long chase of nearly eight hundred miles. Drake
      obtained from it unknown quantities of gold and silver. With such a rich
      load, his thoughts turned to the homeward voyage.

    DRAKE'S VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD. By this time a host of Spanish
      war-ships were on Drake's track. They expected to capture him on his
      return through the Strait of Magellan. Drake, now confronted with real
      danger, cunningly outwitted his enemies. He and many other Englishmen of
      his day were sure a passage would be found somewhere through North
      America between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Spanish, French, and
      English explorers had all carried on the search for this passage. Drake
      decided to return by such a route, if it were possible. He followed the
      coast of California, and probably passed that of Oregon and Washington
      as far as Vancouver

      [Illustration: MAP OF DRAKE'S VOYAGE]

      When it grew colder and the coast turned to the westward, he gave up the
      search.

      After making some needed repairs in a small harbor a few miles above the
      modern San Francisco, Drake set out boldly across the Pacific to return
      home, as Magellan's men had done before him, by going around the world.
      He touched at the Philippines, visited the Spice Islands, and slowly
      worked his way around the Cape of Good Hope. The Golden Hind, long
      since given up as lost, reached England in the fall of 1580, after
      nearly three years' absence. For a second time a ship had sailed around
      the world. Drake was the first Englishman to gain the honor.

    DRAKE'S REWARD. Queen Elizabeth liked the story Drake told of
      outwitting and plundering Spaniards. Arrayed in her most gorgeous robes
      she visited his ship, where a banquet had been prepared. While Drake
      knelt at her feet she made him a knight. And so it was that the man whom
      the Spaniards called with good reason the Master Thief of the Seas, the
      English called by a new title, Sir Francis Drake, and praised as the
      greatest sea-captain of the age. His ship, the Golden Hind, was
      ordered to be preserved forever.

    THE DUTCH STRUGGLE AGAINST SPAIN. A few years after Drake returned
      the English took a deeper interest in the struggle between Philip and
      the Dutch. Although the Dutch had lost hope of help from the French
      Huguenots, they resisted Philip's generals more boldly than ever. The
      Spanish soldiers treated the towns which surrendered so savagely that
      the other towns decided it was better to die fighting than to yield. The
      siege of Leyden became famous because, after food had given out and the
      inhabitants were starving their friends cut the great dikes in order
      that the boats of the “Beggars of the Sea” loaded with provisions might
      be floated up to the very walls of the city. This unexpected flood also
      drove away the Spaniards. Fortunately after the rescue of the city a
      strong wind arose and drove back the waves so that the dikes could again
      be replaced.

      [Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH MAKING DRAKE A KNIGHT]

    THE DEATH OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE. King Philip had come to the
      conclusion that unless William of Orange were killed the Dutch could not
      be conquered, and so he put a price on Prince William's head, offering a
      large sum of money to any one who should kill him. The first attempts
      failed, but finally in 1584 he was shot.

    SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. The murder of William alarmed the English for
      Elizabeth's life, especially as Philip had already aided men who were
      plotting against her. She sent an army into the Netherlands to aid the
      Dutch, although she had not made up her mind to attack Philip directly.
      The army did not give much help to the Dutch, but it is remembered
      because a noble English poet, Sir Philip Sidney, was mortally wounded in
      one of the battles. The story is told that while Sidney was riding back,
      tortured by his wound, he became very thirsty, as wounded men always do,
      and begged for a drink of water. Looking up when it was brought to him
      he saw on the ground a common soldier more sorely wounded than he. He
      immediately sent the water to the soldier saying, “Thy necessity is
      greater than mine.”

    THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA. The king of Spain now decided that he could
      not subdue the Dutch until he had thoroughly punished the English. He
      even planned to put himself upon the English throne, claiming that he
      was the heir of one of the early kings of England. Months were spent in
      preparing a great fleet, an “Invincible Armada” which was to sail up the
      Channel, take on board the Spanish army in the Netherlands, and cross
      over to England. While these preparations were being made with Philip's
      usual care, Sir Francis Drake swooped down on Cadiz and burnt so much
      shipping and destroyed so many supplies that the voyage had to be
      postponed a year. This Drake called “singeing the king of
      Spain's beard.”

    THE ARMADA IN THE CHANNEL. It was July, 1588, before the
      “Invincible Armada” appeared off Plymouth in the English Channel. Many
      of the Spanish ships were larger than the English ships, but they were
      so clumsy that the English could outsail them and attack them from any
      direction they chose. Moreover, the Spaniards needed to fight close at
      hand in order that the soldiers armed with ordinary guns might join in
      the fray. The English kept out of range of these guns and used their
      heavy cannon.

      [Illustration: THE SPANISH ARMADA IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL After
      an engraving by the Society of Antiquarians following a tapestry in the
      House of Lords]

    DESTRUCTION OF THE ARMADA. With the English ships clinging to the
      flanks and rear of the Armada, the Spaniards moved heavily up the
      Channel. In the narrower waters between Dover and Calais the English
      attacked more fiercely, and sank several Spanish vessels. Soon the
      others were fleeing into the North Sea, driven by a furious gale. Many
      sought to reach Spain by sailing around Scotland and Ireland, and some
      of these ships were dashed on the rocky shores. Only a third of Philip's
      proud fleet returned to Spain.

    EFFECT OF THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA ON SPAIN. This was the last
      attempt Philip made to attack the English, because Spain had been
      exhausted in the effort to collect money and supplies for the Invincible
      Armada. The war dragged on for many years, and the English attacked and
      plundered Spanish vessels wherever they found them.

    THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE DUTCH. The ruin of the Armada also meant
      that the Dutch would succeed in becoming independent of the Spanish
      king. Seven of the northern provinces had already formed a union and had
      begun to call themselves the United Netherlands. They were growing
      richer while their neighboring provinces on the south, which had decided
      to return to their allegiance to Spain, grew poorer.

    FIRST VOYAGE OF THE DUTCH TO THE EAST. Even while the fight was
      going on the Dutch traded in places where Philip had not permitted them
      to trade while he could control them. One of these places was Lisbon,
      the capital of Portugal. Here the Dutch obtained spices which the
      Portuguese brought from the East Indies. But in 1580 Philip seized
      Portugal, and the Dutch could no longer go to Lisbon. This made them
      anxious to find their way to the East. In 1595 the first fleet set out.
      This voyage was unsuccessful, but other fleets followed, until soon the
      Dutch had almost driven the Portuguese, now subjects of the king of
      Spain, from the Spice Islands. Soon also Dutch sailors ventured across
      the Atlantic to the shores of America.

        QUESTIONS

        1. What country in northern Europe did Spain rule? What name was
        given to those who resisted the Spanish officers in the Netherlands?
        Why were they given this name?

        2. What promise did Coligny make to the people of the Netherlands?
        Why was he unable to carry it out? What other people were ready to
        help the Dutch? Can you give one reason at least why the English
        were willing to help the Dutch against Spain?

        3. Why had English trade grown important? Did this help to make a
        navy?

        4. Why did English sailors like Drake specially hate the Spaniards?
        What was Drake's method of making a living? How did he come to go
        around the world in 1577-1580? How long was it since Magellan made
        his voyage?

        5. What did the English think of Drake? What did the Spaniards think
        of him? Why did each people think as it did?

        6. Why did Philip of Spain have William of Orange killed? Why did
        this make the conquest of the Dutch even harder?

        7. Why did Philip, king of Spain, try to conquer England and make
        himself king of that country? How did he try to carry out his plan?
        Why were the English victorious in the great battle with the Armada?
        Where was the battle fought?

        8. How did the defeat of the Armada affect Spain's war in the
        Netherlands? Did all of the Netherlands become independent of Spain?

        9. What trade did the Dutch begin to carry on before their war with
        Spain ended?

        10. What new people became rivals of the Spaniards and French for
        trade and settlements in America?

        EXERCISES

        1. What parts of North America did Drake visit on his famous voyage
        around the world?

        2. What effect did the quarrels in Europe described in Chapters 19
        and 20 have upon the progress in exploring and settling America?

        3. Find out whether the people of the northern Netherlands and the
        southern Netherlands are still separate countries to-day.

    CHAPTER XXI. THE ENGLISH PEOPLE ATTEMPT TO SETTLE AMERICA

    ENGLISH INTEREST IN AMERICA AWAKENED. Voyages like those made by
      Sir Francis Drake awakened a desire throughout England to learn more
      about the New World. Until this time even the great discoveries of
      Columbus and the Cabots had failed to stir the English people to take
      part in the exploration and settlement of the Americas. The principal
      reason was because their attention was occupied by the struggle between
      their monarchs and the popes to decide whether king or pope should
      govern the English Church. This continued until Queen Elizabeth had been
      on the throne some years.

      Other sea-captains, hearing of Drake's success, now turned their ships
      toward the Americas. Many went to the West Indies, as he had done,
      mainly to seize the rich plunder to be found on board the ships of Spain
      bound homeward. Some of them explored the coast of North America, hoping
      to find valuable regions that had not fallen into the possession of the
      Spaniards.

    THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE. Martin Frobisher made three voyages, the
      last in 1578, in search of a passage through North America to China. He
      entered the bay which bears his name, and the strait which was later
      called after Hudson, but failed to find a passage. Drake attempted to
      find the western entrance to such a passage in 1579 as a short cut
      homeward when he tried to avoid his Spanish pursuers.

    GILBERT. A grander scheme was planned by Humphrey Gilbert. He
      wished to build up another England across the sea, just as the people of
      Spain were building up another Spain. He planned to do this by
      establishing farms to which he and others might send laborers who could
      not find work at home. Queen Elizabeth liked this plan, and to encourage
      him, and to repay him for the expense of carrying the emigrants over,
      she promised him the land for six hundred miles on each side of his
      settlements.

      [Illustration: CHARLCOTE HALL An English Manor House of the time
      of Queen Elizabeth]

    FAILURE OF GILBERT'S EXPEDITION. Gilbert tried twice to plant a
      colony in the neighborhood of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Sir Walter
      Raleigh, his half-brother, was one of his captains in the expedition of
      1578. He would have been in the disastrous second attempt in 1583 had
      not Queen Elizabeth, full of forebodings of danger to her favorite,
      refused to let him go. As it was he sent a ship at his own cost. Gilbert
      took a large supply of hobby-horses and other toys with which to please
      the savages. Mishap, desertion, and shipwreck pursued the luckless
      commander.

      The second expedition left Plymouth with five vessels in 1583. The ship
      that Raleigh sent, the best in the fleet, deserted before they were out
      of sight of England. One was left in Newfoundland. The wreck of the
      largest ship, with most of the provisions, off Cape Breton, so
      discouraged the crews that they prevailed upon Gilbert to abandon the
      plan to settle on such barren and stormy shores, Gilbert attempted to
      return on the Squirrel, the smaller of the two remaining vessels. This
      was a tiny vessel of scarcely ten tons burden. What was left of the
      little fleet voyaged homeward by the southern way, and ran into a
      fearful storm as it approached the Azores.

      Although Gilbert was urged to go aboard the larger vessel, he refused to
      desert his companions, with whom he had passed through so many storms
      and perils, and tried to calm the fears of all by his reply, “Do not
      fear, Heaven is as near by water as by land.” One night the Squirrel
      suddenly sank. All on board were lost. Such was the sad ending of the
      first efforts to establish an English colony in North America.

    RALEIGH Sir Walter Raleigh took up the interesting plan which his
      kinsman, Gilbert, had at heart. Raleigh was now at the height of his
      favor with Queen Elizabeth. She had made him wealthy, especially by the
      gift of large estates which she had taken from others. She readily
      promised him the same privileges in America which she had offered to
      Gilbert. Raleigh doubtless thought that he might increase his fortune
      and win glory for himself and for his country by planting English
      colonies in the New World. No man of the age was better fitted for the
      undertaking. He had shown himself a fearless soldier and an able
      commander in the war against Spain in the Netherlands. He had fortune,
      skill, and powerful friends. Like Gilbert, he was a friend of poets and
      scholars and a student of books; like Drake, he was a natural leader
      of men.

      [Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEIGH AND HIS SON]

    VIRGINIA. Raleigh began in 1584 by sending an expedition to explore
      the coast for a suitable site for a colony. His men sailed by way of the
      Canaries, and came upon North America in the neighborhood of Pamlico
      Sound, avoiding the stormy route directly across the Atlantic which
      Gilbert had followed. They found, therefore, instead of the bleak shore
      of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, the genial climate of North
      Carolina and Virginia.

      They carried home glowing reports of the country. They were particularly
      pleased with an island in Pamlico Sound called by the Indians Roanoke
      Island. They noted with wonder the overhanging grape-vines loaded with
      fruit, the fine cedar trees which seemed to them the highest and reddest
      in the world, the great flocks of noisy white cranes, and the numberless
      deer in the forests. The Indians appeared gentle and friendly, Elizabeth
      was so pleased with the accounts of the country that she allowed it to
      be called Virginia after herself, the Virgin Queen, and made Raleigh
      a knight.

    THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONISTS. Raleigh made several attempts to plant
      a colony in Virginia. The most famous one was led by John White in 1587.
      White had visited Virginia on an earlier voyage, and painted more than
      seventy pictures of Indian life, representing their dress and their
      manner of living. These may still be seen in the British Museum in
      London. His interest in the country and its Indian population made his
      appointment as governor seem a wise choice. Care was taken in the
      selection of colonists in order to secure farmers rather than
      gold-seekers. Twenty-five women and children were included in the colony
      of about one hundred and fifty persons.

    ROANOKE. White and his followers settled on Roanoke Island. They
      found that the fort, which one of Raleigh's officers had built some
      years earlier, was leveled to the ground. Several huts were still
      standing, but they were falling to pieces. The first task was to rebuild
      the huts and move into them from their ships. A baby girl was born a few
      days after the landing, the first child born of English parents in the
      New World. Her father, Ananias Dare, was one of White's councilors; her
      mother, Eleanor Dare, was the daughter of Governor White. The baby was
      given the name Virginia, the name of the country which was to be
      her home.

      [Illustration: MAP OF RALEIGH'S COLONIES]

    THE COLONISTS IN DANGER. The little colony must have foreseen the
      hostility of the Indians and a scarcity of food, for before Governor
      White had been in America two months, he was sent back to England to
      obtain more provisions, White, from his own account, did not wish to
      leave his daughter and granddaughter.

    WHITE'S SEARCH FOR AID. White returned to England in the fall of
      1587 at the wrong moment to ask for aid. All England was alarmed by the
      rumor that a great Spanish fleet was about to land an invading army. The
      friends of Virginia in England were too busy protecting their own homes
      from the invader to give heed to the needs of the farmer colonists
      across the sea. White traveled through England, seeking aid for his
      friends and family, but was disappointed everywhere.

    WHY RALEIGH GAVE NO HELP. Raleigh had by no means forgotten his
      colonists, but his queen and his country had the first claim on him
      through the long war with Spain. Twice during this period, he found time
      and means to prepare relief expeditions for Virginia. The queen stopped
      the first one just as it was ready to sail, because all the ships were
      needed at that moment for service in the war. A second expedition was
      attacked by the Spaniards and forced to return.

    THE LOST COLONY. White finally secured passage for himself on a
      fleet going to the West Indies, not with a fleet and relief supplies of
      his own, but as a passenger on another man's ship. It was the summer of
      1591 when he arrived at Roanoke, four years after his departure. The
      colonists were not to be found. Their houses were torn down. The chests
      which they had evidently buried in order to hide them from the Indians
      had been dug up and ransacked of everything of value. White's own papers
      which he had left behind were strewn about. His pictures and maps were
      torn and rotten with the rain. His armor was almost eaten through
      with rust.

      One trace of the fate of the settlers was left. The large letters
      CROATOAN were carved on a tree near the entrance to the old fort. White
      recalled the agreement made when he left four years before. If the
      colonists should find it necessary to leave Roanoke, they were to carve
      on a tree the name of the place to which they were going. If they were
      in danger or distress when they left, they were to carve a cross over
      the name of the place. White found no cross. The word Croatoan was the
      name of a small island lying south of Cape Hatteras, where Indians lived
      who were known to be friendly. White believed his friends to be safe
      among the Indians at Croatoan, but he could not go farther in search for
      them because the captains of the ships which brought him over refused to
      delay longer. They gave many excuses, but were evidently more eager to
      attack the Spaniards than to find a few luckless emigrants.

      [Illustration: AN INDIAN VILLAGE IN 1589
      After a drawing by John White, now in the British Museum]

      The fate of Raleigh's colony is one of the puzzles of history. It is
      believed that they took refuge with friendly Indians, and lived with
      them until they lost their lives in war or had adopted the ways of their
      protectors.

    VALUE OF THE EFFORTS OF THE ENGLISH AND THE FRENCH. Raleigh had
      failed to carry out his great plan to plant a new England in America,
      but he had awakened in his countrymen an interest in America, and made
      known the advantages of its soil and climate. The French had apparently
      made no greater headway. Cartier's colony on the St. Lawrence had broken
      up, and the Spaniards had driven the French colony from Florida. The
      history of Coligny's colony at Fort Caroline, Cartier's at Quebec,
      Gilbert's on the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Raleigh's at
      Roanoke, had shown how useless were attempts to settle in America which
      were not strongly supported by friends or by the home government. These
      attempts to plant colonies in America were not, however, as bad failures
      as they appeared. Both nations had learned much about the country and
      about the preparations needed for permanent settlements.

    WHAT THE SPANISH HAD ACCOMPLISHED. In 1600 Spain seemed to have
      achieved much more than either of her rivals. The map of that time shows
      Spain in possession of vast territories in North and South America. The
      English had a small tract, Virginia, in which they had some interest but
      no colonists. The French regarded the St. Lawrence valley as theirs by
      right of discovery, but they could point to no settlements to clinch
      that claim.

      The Spaniards, on the other hand, counted more than two hundred cities
      and towns which they had planted in their territories. About two hundred
      thousand Spaniards, farmers, miners, traders, soldiers, and nobles, had
      either migrated from Spain to America or had been born there of
      emigrants since Columbus's discovery. Five million Indians had come
      under their rule, and most of them were living as civilized men, and
      called themselves Christians. One hundred and forty thousand negro
      slaves had been carried from Africa to the plantations and mines in
      Spanish America.

      [Illustration: Regions in the New World and the East claimed by
      the Countries of Europe after a century of exploration.]

      The City of Mexico, the largest in all America, was much like the cities
      of Spain. Well-built houses of wood, stone, and mason-work abounded.
      Churches, monasteries, a university, higher schools for boys and girls,
      four hospitals, of which one was for Indians, and public buildings,
      similar to those in the cities of old Spain, already existed. Spanish
      life and Spanish culture had spread over a large area in the New World,
      and the most remarkable fact was that the Old World civilization had
      been bestowed on the Indian population. As Roman culture went into Spain
      and Gaul, so Spanish culture went into a New Spain in a new world.

    THE PROSPECTS OF THE SPANISH COLONIES. But the outlook for Spain in
      America was not wholly bright. Her struggle with her Dutch subjects and
      the war with England, which grew out of that quarrel, left her
      completely worn out. She no longer had the people to spare for American
      settlements. These ceased to grow as they once had. Negroes and Indians
      outnumbered the Spaniards in most of them. The three races mingled
      together and intermarried until a new people, the Spanish American,
      differing in color and blood from either of the old races, was formed.

    THE LATER STORY OF COLONIZATION. Spain's rivals—the Dutch, the
      English, and the French—were just reaching the height of their power.
      They had settled their most serious religious differences. Their
      merchants were eagerly looking about for commercial opportunities. A
      considerable population in each of them, but more especially in England,
      was discontented and ready to try its fortunes in a new world. The
      Spaniards had passed by the best parts of North America as worthless.
      The people and the unoccupied land were both ready for the formation of
      colonies on a larger scale. In many ways a greater story of American
      colonization remains to be told. This will be the story of the Dutch,
      the French, and the English colonization of North America.

        QUESTIONS

        1. Why had the English people not taken more interest in America
        before Drake's time? What finally, made the English sea-captains
        turn to American adventure and exploration?

        2. What did Gilbert attempt to do? How many reasons can you find for
        his failure?

        3. Why was Raleigh specially fitted to begin the task of planting
        English colonies in America? What part of North America did his men
        select for a settlement? Why did it seem a suitable place? What name
        was given to the country?

        4. Why did Raleigh fail to help his colony at Roanoke? What did
        White think had happened to them? Why didn't he go in search
        of them?

        5. Why had the French and the English been unsuccessful in their
        efforts to settle North America? Had they really gained anything
        from all their efforts?

        6. What had Spain accomplished since the voyage by Columbus? Why
        were the prospects of Spain not so bright as they had been? What
        rivals were ready to begin colonies in America?

        EXERCISES

        1. How much territory was Queen Elizabeth willing to give Gilbert
        for his plan in North America? Was there this much (twelve hundred
        miles) of the Atlantic coast of North America unclaimed by the
        French and the Spaniards?

        2. Find Roanoke Island on the map.

        3. Name the regions in the New World and the East claimed by the
        English, French, Portuguese, and Spaniards after a century of
        discovery and exploration (1492-1600). What parts of North America
        were still unknown? With the use of some map of the world to-day
        make a list of the colonies of the same countries now.

        REVIEW

        1. Prepare a list of the men who took the chief part in discovering
        the New World, and give for each the name of the region he found.

        2. What had the Greeks learned to do, the knowledge of which they
        carried into Italy? What more had the Romans learned to do, the
        knowledge of which they carried into Spain and Gaul and Britain?
        What more had the Spaniards, the French, and the English learned to
        do, the knowledge of which they either were already, as in the case
        of Spain, carrying into Spanish America, or, in the case of England
        and France, were prepared to carry into North America?

    REFERENCES FOR TEACHERS

    The following references are given in the hope that they will be helpful to the teacher. The list is by no means exhaustive, but enough are given so that one or more books for each subject should be found in any fairly equipped school or public library. Some of these books may be assigned to the brighter or more ambitious members of the class for home readings. Extracts from others may be read to the class directly. Still others will furnish the teacher a variety of stories or fuller statements of fact upon matters treated briefly in the text. A Bibliography of History for Schools and Libraries by Andrews, Gambrill and Tail (Longmans, 1911), will give many more references and further information regarding those that are given here.

        A. ANCIENT TIMES. THE GREEK PEOPLE. (For use with chapters ii, iii,
        and iv.)

        (a) Histories of the Greeks.

        Holm, History of the Greeks, 4 volumes, is the most trustworthy
        history of the Greeks. Bury, A History of Greece, 2 volumes;
        Botsford, History of the Ancient World; Goodspeed, History of the
        Ancient World; Myers, Ancient History; Wolfson, Essentials in
        Ancient History; and West, Ancient World, have brief accounts of
        the Greeks.

        (b) Versions of some famous old Greek stories, especially the
        story of Hercules and his Labors, the Search for the Golden Fleece,
        the Trojan War, and the Wanderings of Ulysses.

        A. J. Church, Stories from Homer; C. M. Gayley, Classical Myths; H.
        A. Guerber, Myths of Greece and Rome; and the same author's The
        Story of the Greeks; Haaren and Poland, Famous Men of Greece; C. H.
        and S. B. Harding, Stories of Greek Gods, Heroes and Men; Charles
        Kingsley, Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales. Hawthorne, in Tanglewood
        Tales, has retold the story of the Search for the Golden Fleece in a
        specially interesting manner. Bryant's translation of the Odyssey is
        one of the best known versions of that story and may generally be
        found in public libraries.

        (c) Short Biographies of some Greek Heroes. Short accounts of the
        lives of such heroes as Miltiades, Themistocles, Socrates,
        Alexander, and Demosthenes will be found in Cox, Lives of Greek
        Statesmen; Haaren and Poland, Famous Men of Greece; Jennie Hall, Men
        of Old Greece; Harding, Stories of Greek Gods, Heroes and Men; E.M.
        Tappan, The Story of the Greek People; and Plutarch's Lives. There
        are several abridged editions of the latter, but those by C.E.
        Byles, Greek Lives from Plutarch, and Edwin Ginn, Plutarch's Lives,
        are best adapted to the use of schools.

        (d) Various features of Greek Life, as the home, the schools,
        food, clothing, occupations, amusements, or government have been
        described in the books on Greek Life.

        Among these are Bluemner, Home Life of the Ancient Greeks (translated
        by Alice Zimmern); C.B. Gulick, The Life of the Ancient Greeks;
        Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece; and T.G. Tucker, Life in
        Ancient Athens.

        (e) Descriptions of Athens and Alexandria. Descriptions of these
        great centers of Greek civilization will be found in any history of
        Greece; that in Gulick, Life of the Ancient Greeks, ch. 2, or
        Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, for Athens, and in Draper,
        Intellectual Development of Europe, 1. pp. 187-204, for Alexandria,
        will serve the purpose.

        (f) A description of the battle of Marathon, abridged from the
        History of the World by Herodotus, will be found in F.M. Fling's
        Source Book of Greek History. This little book gives many incidents
        in Greek History as the Greek writers told them.

        (g) A description of the materials, methods of building,
        decoration of public buildings, and the uses of the temples,
        theaters, gymnasia, and stadia in Fowler and Wheeler's Greek
        Archaeology, ch. 2; and Tarbell's History of Greek Art.

        (h) Some may wish to read the careful statement in Holm's History
        of the Greeks, Vol. I, pp. 103-121, on the Truth about the Old Greek
        Legends, or the same author's account, Vol. I, pp. 272-295, of
        Emigration to the Colonies in the Olden Day.

        B. ANCIENT TIMES. THE ROMAN PEOPLE. (For use with chapters v, vi,
        vii, viii and ix.)

        (a) Histories of the Romans.

        Either Botsford, History of Rome; Pelham, Outlines of Roman History;
        How and Leigh, History of Rome; or Schuckburgh, History of Rome;
        though the last two do not cover the entire period of Roman history.
        Duruy, History of Rome, 8 volumes, is attractive in style and
        supplied with a great variety of pictures and other
        illustrative matter.

        Botsford, History of the Ancient World; Goodspeed, History of the
        Ancient World; Myers, Ancient History; Wolfson, Essentials in
        Ancient History; and West, Ancient World, give short accounts of the
        chief events in Roman history.

        (b) Versions of famous old Roman stories, especially the
        wanderings of Aeneas, the Story of Romulus and Remus, of the Sabine
        Women, Horatius at the Bridge, and Cincinnatus.

        A.J. Church, Stories from Virgil; C.M. Gayley, Classical Myths; H.A.
        Guerber, Myths of Greece and Rome; the same author's Story of the
        Romans; Haaren and Poland, Famous Men of Rome; and Harding, City of
        Seven Hills. Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome, gives the story of
        Horatius at the Bridge, together with several other stories from
        early Roman history.

        (c) Versions of the German myths about Odin (Wodan), Thor, Freya,
        and Tyr (Tiw). C.M. Gayley. Classical Myths; Guerber, Myths of
        Northern Lands; Haaren and Poland, Famous Men of the Middle Ages;
        Mary E. Litchfield, The Nine Worlds; H.W. Mabie, Norse Stories; Eva
        March Tappan, European Hero Stories; Alice Zimmern, Gods and Heroes
        of the North.

        (d) The Story of Hermann (or the struggle between the Romans and
        Germans) is told by Arthur Gilman, Magna Charta Stories, pp.
        139-155; and by Maude B. Dutton, Little Stories of Germany.

        (e) Short Biographies of some famous Romans. Short accounts of the
        lives of Romulus, the Gracchi, Caesar, Cicero, and Constantine are
        given in Haaren and Poland, Famous Men of Rome; Harding, The City of
        Seven Hills; and several of them in Plutarch's Lives. A simple
        account of the Life of Hannibal, the Carthaginian enemy of Rome,
        will also be found in these books.

        (f) Interesting phases of Roman Life: for example, the Roman boy,
        country life in Italy, the Roman house, traveling, amusements, etc.
        See W.W. Fowler, Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero; H.W.
        Johnston, The Private Life of the Romans; S.B. Platner, Topography
        and Monuments of Ancient Rome; T.G. Tucker, Life in the Roman World
        of Nero and St. Paul. Many phases of Roman life are described in
        F.M. Crawford's Ave Roma.

        (g) For descriptions of incidents in Roman history and phases of
        Roman life as the Greek and Roman writers told them, see Botsford,
        Story of Rome, and Munro, Source Book of Roman History.

        C. THE MIDDLE AGES. (For use with chapters x, xi, xii, and xiii.)

        (a) Histories of the people of Europe in the Middle Ages. G.B.
        Adams, Growth of the French Nation; U.R. Burke, A History of Spain
        from the Earliest Times to the Death of Ferdinand the Catholic;
        J.R. Green, Short History of the English People; E.F. Henderson, A
        Short History of German; H.D. Sedgwick, A Short History of Italy.

        (b) Collection of stories adapted to children of the grades: The
        Story of Beowulf, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,
        the Treasure of the Niebelungs, and of Roland. These stories have
        all been written many times, and any librarian can give the reader
        copies of them as told by several writers. The following is a
        partial list only:

        A.J. Church, Heroes and Romances; E.G. Crommelin, Famous Legends
        Adapted for Children; H.A. Guerber, Legends of the Middle Ages;
        Louise Maitland, Heroes of Chivalry; and Eva March Tappan, European
        Hero Stories; James Baldwin, The Story of Roland; Frances N. Greene,
        Legends of King Arthur and His Court; Florence Holbrook, Northland
        Heroes (Beowulf); Sidney Lanier, The Boy's King Arthur; Stevens and
        Allen, King Arthur Stories from Malory.

        (c) Famous Men of the Middle Ages; for example, Charlemagne, King
        Alfred, Rollo the Viking, William the Conqueror, Frederick
        Barbarossa, Richard the Lion-Hearted, King John, Saint Louis of
        France, Marco Polo, and Gutenberg.

        See A.F. Blaisdell, Stories from English History; Louise Creighton,
        Stories from English History; Maude B. Dutton, Little Stories of
        Germany; H.A. Guerber, The Story of the English; Haaren and Poland,
        Famous Men of the Middle Ages; Harding, The Story of the Middle
        Ages; S.B. Harding and W.F. Harding, The Story of England;
        M.F. Lansing, Barbarian and Noble; A.M. Mowry, First Steps in the
        History of England; L.N. Pitman, Stories of Old France; Eva March
        Tappan, European Hero Stories; H.P. Warren, Stories from English
        History; Bates and Coman, English History as told by the Poets.
        Edward Atherton, The Adventures of Marco Polo, the Great Traveler,
        is a convenient modernized version of Polo's own story of his
        travels. Marco Polo's description of Japan and Java has been
        reprinted in Old South Leaflets, Vol. II, No. 32.

        (d) Viking Tales. The interesting stories of the Northern
        discoveries and explorations have been told many times. Jennie Hall,
        Viking Tales, includes the story of Eric the Red, Leif the Lucky,
        and the attempt to settle in Vinland (Wineland).

        (e) The Trial of Criminals in the Middle Ages—Ordeals. Other
        kinds of Ordeals than those described in this book will be obtained
        in Ogg, Source Book of Mediaeval History, pp. 196-202; Pennsylvania
        Translations and Reprints, Vol. IV, No. 4. pp. 7-16; or in Thatcher
        and McNeal, Source Book, pp. 401-412. See Emerton, Introduction to
        the Middle Ages, pp. 79-81, for excellent explanation of mediaeval
        methods of trial.

        (f) Famous accounts of how the People of England won the Magna
        Charta.

        Use either Cheyney, Readings in English History, pp. 179-181;
        Kendall, Source Book of English History, pp. 72-78; Robinson,
        Readings in European History, Vol. I, pp. 231-333; or Ogg, Source
        Book of Mediaeval History, pp. 297-303.

        (g) Simple descriptions of Mediaeval Life. Maude B. Dutton, Little
        Stories of Germany; for example, the chapters on How a Page became a
        Knight, and A Mediaeval Town. S.B. Harding, The Story of the Middle
        Ages, especially the chapters describing life in castle, life in
        village, and life in monastery. Eva March Tappan, European Hero
        Stories, especially the topic, Life in Middle Ages, p. 118, the
        Crusades, p. 136, and Winning the Magna Charta, p. 111.

        D. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN TIMES. The Discovery of America. (For
        use with chapters xiv to xxi inclusive.)

        (a) Histories of American Discoveries and Explorations. E.G.
        Bourne, Spain in America; Fiske, Discovery of America, 2 volumes;
        and Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World.

        (b) Short, easy biographies of famous explorers. (Da Gama,
        Columbus, Magellan, De Soto, Coronado, Cartier, Drake, and Raleigh.)

        Foote and Skinner, Explorers and Founders of America; W.F. Gordy,
        Stories of American Explorers; W.E. Griffis, The Romance of
        Discovery; Haaren and Poland, Famous Men of Modern Times; Higginson,
        Young Folks' Book of American Explorers; Jeannette B. Hodgdon, A
        First Course in American History, Book I; W.H. Johnson, The World's
        Discoverers, 2 volumes; Lawyer, The Story of Columbus and Magellan;
        Lummis, The Spanish Pioneers; Mara L. Pratt, America's Story for
        America's Children, Book 2; Gertrude V.D. Southworth, Builders of
        our Country, Book I; Rosa V. Winterburn, The Spanish in the
        Southwest.

        (c) Stories of explorations as told by the explorers themselves.

        Columbus' own account of his discovery of America is in Hart, Source
        Readers in American History, No. 1, pp. 4-7. Early accounts of John
        Cabot's discovery and of Drake's Voyage in Hart, Source Readers, No.
        1, pp. 7-10, 23-25. The Death and Burial of De Soto as described by
        one of his followers, in Hart, Source Readers, pp. 16-19. The Old
        South Leaflets, No. 20, Coronado; Nos. 29 and 31, Columbus; No. 31,
        the Voyages to Vinland; No. 35, Cortes' Account of the City of
        Mexico; No. 36, The Death of De Soto; Nos. 37 and 115, the Voyages
        of the Cabots; No. 89, The Founding of St. Augustine; No. 92, The
        First Voyage to Roanoke; No. 102, Columbus' Account of Cuba; No.
        116, Sir Francis Drake on the Coast of California; No. 118,
        Gilbert's Expedition; No. 119, Raleigh's Colony at Roanoke.

        (d) The Stories of Indian Life in Spanish America, of Cortes,
        Coronado, and the Seven Cities of Cibola, and of the Missions. (See
        Rosa V. Winterburn, The Spanish in the Southwest.)