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sults even than those of Columbus himself, and of the Spanish explorers who succeeded him. Nor, however paradoxical it may sound, will there be any difficulty in proving the soundness of this opinion. The Spanish adventurers, indeed, were instrumental in bringing vast regions under the dominion of the Spanish crown, and in pouring, for a certain number of years, rivers of gold into the Spanish treasury, but the policy which accomplished these results was a barren policy of cruelty, rapine, and extortion. It led to the extinction of two interesting and original civilizations, to the demoralization of the conquerors, and to the ultimate impoverishment of the kingdom whose revenues had been thus artificially inflated. Nor, giving every credit to the South and Central American Republics for the characteristics which now distinguish them, can the result of the original impulse to which they owe their birth be regarded as ideal. John Cabot, on the other hand, having by good fortune struck the northern coast of America, acquired for the Anglo-Saxon race-the only race that possesses a proper conception of the two pillars that support civilization: "Liberty" and "Justice". —a permanent footing on a vast theatre peculiarly fitted for the development of the best forms of human energy. It is true he found neither gold nor treasure; nor were there cities, temples, palaces, or richly cultivated lands of which he could make a prey. Snowfields, ice-bound rivers, desolate primeval woods, and a bitter climate were his portion. And yet it was amid these unpromising surroundings that he hit upon a mine of wealth, richer, more perennial, and better calculated to stimulate legitimate and remunerative industry than the El Dorados of Peru or the ingots of Mexico; for he "cast his shoe over" the deep-sea fishing grounds that fringe the neglected island of Newfoundland. No sooner did it become known to the hardy mariners of Devon and Bristol that this prolific source of an honest livelihood was open to them, than the road across the Atlantic between the west of England and St. John's became a beaten track. The Icelandic voyage was abandoned, and all the energies of our seamen were employed in reaping these new-found harvests of the Western Sea. Yet nearly a hundred years

were to elapse before the government of England comprehended the importance of the jurisdiction which John Cabot had asserted on its behalf over these uninviting regions. In the meantime other nations, as was to be expected, were not slack in seeking to claim a share in our good fortune. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, and Breton ships crowded onto the banks, or sought refuge in St. John's and the neighboring anchorages, though they all agreed in acknowledging the unavowed ascendency of their British associates, who imposed their authority upon these cosmopolitan fleets in what was sometimes a very rough-and-ready manner. In this way our honest mariners, and they alone, not only preserved intact England's territorial rights over Newfoundland, but also her sovereignty along the coasts of Nova Scotia and northern Virginia, as New England was at first called; for it was not until the end of the sixteenth century that the island was formally taken possession of by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in the name of Queen Elizabeth.

It is to Raleigh that the credit is due of the more energetic interest that now came to be taken in Newfoundland. He was never tired of reiterating that its loss would be the greatest calamity that could befall his sovereign; he spared neither pains nor money in stimulating its colonization ; and it was at his instigation perhaps that Elizabeth passed an Act of Parliament, requiring her loyal subjects to eat fish on Wednesdays as well as on Saturdays, though this was to be done solely from "political" motives, i.e., to encourage the fishing industry; for the same statute applied a penalty to anyone who advocated the practice on religious grounds. In 1600 the Newfoundland trade and fishery employed 250 ships and 10,000 men; for already the island had become the stepping-stone, first to Raleigh's own unsuccessful endeavor to establish a colony in Virginia, and, some years later, to the settlement effected by the London Company at Jamestown. It was to be expected that both France and Spain would regard the expansion of our influence in the western Atlantic with disfavor; but, after the defeat of the Armada, the Spanish fishing fleet of 200 ships and 6,000 men ceased to frequent such distant waters, and on

the ascent of the St. Lawrence by Jacques Cartier, in 1534, the attention of the French became concentrated upon Canada. In 1610 Lord Bacon appears, in conjunction with Raleigh, as a promoter of a trading company to Newfoundland. About the same time Lord Baltimore obtains a grant of land on the island, which, however, he afterward exchanges for another patent, under which he was empowered to settle Maryland, where the city of Baltimore preserves his name and the memory of his enterprise. In the same way, John Mason, Governor of Newfoundland and a captain in the British navy, founded New Hampshire.*

On the accession of James the First, with his autocratic traditions and his High Church prejudices, a fresh incentive was applied to the colonizing impulse, which, in the next generation, was still further accelerated by the tyranny of Charles and the ecclesiastical zeal of Laud. The irritation to which King James's policy gave birth had already resulted in the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers and their associates as early as 1620, and it has been calculated that by 1640 from twenty to thirty-some, indeed, say as many as sixty -thousand Englishmen had sailed from British and Dutch ports to New England. This movement, and the untoward circumstances which led to it, undoubtedly bred an anti-monarchical spirit in the breasts of our colonists and their descendants, and paved the way for those republican forms of government which have been adopted by the United States, and, following their example, by all the Spanish and Portuguese settlements in the two Americas. But on these obvious consequences of Stuart folly it is not necessary to insist. What concerns us more is the fact that the expansion of England's navy, and the development of her maritime strength, may be clearly traced to the results which flowed from John Cabot's unostentatious voyage, through the stimulus given to ship-building, to seafaring, and to seamanship in connection with the Newfoundland fishing fleets.

But the further and still more important outcome of Cabot's adventure continued

See Judge Prowse's full, conscientious, and most interesting "History of Newfoundland." The learned author abundantly exhibits the debt of gratitude we owe to the founders of the colony.

During the next

for a long time to be clouded and confused by the rival pretensions of other nations. The Dutch, following in the track of Hudson, who, in 1609, had explored the river which still bears his name, established themselves on Manhattan Island, and in 1615 built Fort Nassau, near the present site of Albany. ten years the States of New Netherland and New Amsterdam were fairly consolidated, in spite of James the First's assertion of a prior right of occupancy on the strength of the younger Cabot's coasting voyage. In the same way Lower Canada was taken possession of by the French, who, by the erection of forts on the banks of the Ohio and along the valley of the Mississippi, extended their sovereignty over the "Hinterland," as it would now be called, which enclosed on all sides the British possessions. In our day an impression prevails that the French make bad colonists; but their achievements both as explorers and settlers in North America at this time equalled in daring, energy, and success anything that has been exhibited by ourselves. So true was their coup d'œil in the choice of their forts and blockhouses that each selection they made, though at that time choked by the bush or lost in the prairie, has since become a centre of trade and the site of a prosperous city; and to this day, thanks to the intelligence, the vigor, and, under its new conditions, the fecundity of the race, they hold their own on equal terms with their British fellow-subjects in Canada, as is signally illustrated at the present moment by the fact of the office of the First Minister of the Crown in the Dominion being filled by Mr. Laurier, a distinguished French Canadian.

It was inevitable that causes of offence should arise between these inchoate and incongruous offshoots of different European nations thus thrown at random on the shores of the New World, especially as the boundaries of their respective territories were not only indefinite but undefinable by any public law to which they could agree to appeal-while the partisanship of the Iroquois and the Six Nations on the one side, and of the Algonquins on the other, still further complicated the situation. The hold of the Dutch upon the regions they occupied was slight, and their

interests were still further compromised by the mismanagement of their rulers, so that Charles the Second had little difficulty in reviving and revindicating the claims of his grandfather to the great province of New York, as it came to be called in honor of his brother, the Duke of York, its nominal governor. In the case of the French the position was very different, and had Louis the Fourteenth, the Regent, and Louis the Fifteenth, understood the real interests of their country, the whole face and destiny of the American continent might have assumed a different aspect. But the French kings spent on their mistresses, their palaces, and their pleasures the money which should have gone to their hardy "voyageurs" and settlers on the other side of the Atlantic, and the fall of Quebec determined once for all the fate of the western continent. To estimate the

result of this momentous event would be a vain endeavor; for what words would be sufficient to embrace or to anticipate the consequences to mankind, to civilization, and to religion of the occupation of the temperate zones of North America by what will soon be one hundred millions of the Anglo-Saxon race. It may suffice to say that while in the hold of Columbus's caravel there lurked the Inquisition, slavery, the carnage of Cortez and Pizarro, the devastating policy of successive Spanish viceroys, and a permanent instability of affairs-all the elements which unite in constituting a free, God-fearing state and a mighty nation, in developing the prosperity and ordered government which are born of honest industry, found their way to the New World through the instrumentality of John Cabot and the rough western seamen who accompanied him.

GREENCASTLE JENNY

A BALLAD OF 'SIXTY-THREE

By Helen Gray Cone

OH, Greencastle streets were a stream of steel
With the slanted muskets the soldiers bore,
And the scared earth muttered and shook to feel
The tramp and the rumble of Longstreet's Corps ;
The bands were blaring "The Bonny Blue Flag,"
And the banners borne were a motley many;
And watching the gray column wind and drag
Was a slip of a girl-we'll call her Jenny.

A slip of a girl-what needs her name ?—

With her cheeks aflame and her lips aquiver,
As she leaned and looked with a loyal shame
At the steady flow of the steely river:
Till a storm grew black in the hazel eyes

Time had not tamed, nor a lover sighed for;
And she ran and she girded her, apron-wise,

With the flag she loved and her brothers died for.

Out of the doorway they saw her start

(Pickett's Virginians were marching through),
The hot little foolish hero-heart

Armored with stars and the sacred blue.
Clutching the folds of red and white

Stood she and bearded those ranks of theirs,
Shouting shrilly with all her might,

"Come and take it, the man that dares !"

Pickett's Virginians were passing through;
Supple as steel and brown as leather,
Rusty and dusty of hat and shoe,

Wonted to hunger and war and weather;

Peerless, fearless, an army's flower!

Sterner soldiers the world saw never,
Marching lightly, that summer hour,

To death and failure and fame forever.

Rose from the rippling ranks a cheer;

Pickett saluted, with bold eyes beaming,

Sweeping his hat like a cavalier,

With his tawny locks in the warm wind streaming. Fierce little Jenny! her courage fell,

As the firm lines flickered with friendly laughter,

And Greencastle streets gave back the yell

That Gettysburg slopes gave back soon after.

So they cheered for the flag they fought

With the generous glow of the stubborn fighter,
Loving the brave as the brave man ought,

And never a finger was raised to fright her:
So they marched, though they knew it not,

Through the fresh green June to the shock infernal,

To the hell of the shell and the plunging shot,

And the charge that has won them a name eternal.

And she felt at last, as she hid her face,

There had lain at the root of her childish daring
A trust in the men of her own brave race,

And a secret faith in the foe's forbearing.
And she sobbed, till the roll of the rumbling gun
And the swinging tramp of the marching men

Were a memory only, and day was done,

And the stars in the fold of the blue again.

(Thank God that the day of the sword is done,
And the stars in the fold of the blue again!)

VOL. XXII.-9

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