prison for debt. In his earlier manhood he had suffered various imprisonments for conscience' sake, but now he chafed under confinement and to secure his release mortgaged his province in the New World. But still other misfortunes awaited him. He was stricken with paralysis, and for years he lay a helpless invalid, dying in 1718 at the age of seventy-four.

The character of Penn is one of the most admirable in history. It is difficult to find a man, especially one whose life is spent in the midst of political turmoil and governmental strife, so utterly incorruptible as was William Penn. When on the threshold of manhood, when the hot flush of youth was on his cheek, the blandishments of wealth and station and of royal favor beckoned him to a life of ease and pleasure; but he turned away from them all and chose to cast his lot with a despised people-purely for conscience' sake. No allurements of Pharaoh's court, no threats of an angry father, nor frowning walls of a prison-cell could shake his high-born purpose to serve God in the way that seemed to him right. His life was full of light and shadow. He suffered much, but he also accomplished much far more than the age in which he lived was ready to acknowledge. He founded a government and based it on the eternal principle of equal human rights, with its sole object as the freedom and happiness of its people; and that alone was sufficient to give him a name in history.

Thirty-seven years elapsed between the founding of Pennsylvania and the death of the founder, and he spent but four of these years in America; yet we are wont to regard William Penn almost as truly an American as was Franklin or Washington, and in the annals of our country his name must ever hold a place among the immortals.

The growth of Pennsylvania was more rapid than that of any other of the thirteen colonies, and though it was the last founded save one, it soon came to rank with the most important, and at the coming of the Revolution it stood third in population. Penn had willed the colony to his three sons, John, Thomas, and Richard, and these with their successors held it until after the Revolution. In the early part of the eighteenth century a great number of palatine Germans, driven from their homes by religious wars, Pennsylvania found their way to Pennsylvania, settled Germantown (since absorbed by Philadelphia), and scattered over the Schuylkill and Lehigh valleys. The English were for a time. alarmed at the influx of such numbers of a foreign people; but they

Germans.

COLONIZATION-PENNSYLVANIA

159

were not long in discovering that these Germans were an industrious, peace-loving people, fairly educated, and, while wholly unostentatious, as sincerely religious as the Puritan or the Quaker.

Still greater during this period was the stream of Scotch-Irish from Ulster. These hardy Scotch Presbyterians, who had occupied northern Ireland for two or three generations, being curbed in their industries for the protection of English industries and annoyed by petty religious persecution, came to America in great numbers,'so great as to form more than half the population of Pennsylvania, and to spare many thousands of their numbers to the southern colonies along the coast and the wilderness of Kentucky and Tennes

see.

In Pennsylvania they settled chiefly on the plains and mountain slopes west and south of the Susquehanna. These people, as well as the Germans and others, were attracted to Pennsylvania because of the liberal, humane government inaugurated by William Penn. Slavery was never popular in Pennsylvania, and the number of slaves was kept down by strict laws against their importation. Before the Revolution many of them had been set free by their masters. Of Redemptioners, mostly Germans and Irish, there were probably more in Pennsylvania during the eighteenth century than in any other colony. The majority of them, after their period of servitude, became useful citizens.

During the long period of her colonial youth we find in Pennsylvania the same kind of quarreling between the people and the governors, the same vagaries in issuing paper money, the same unbridled spirit of freedom, the same monotonous history, as we find in most of the other colonies. Among her governors we find in the early period no really great men, but in 1723 there arrived in Philadelphia a young man from Boston who soon rose to be the leading figure in the colony, and so he continued for more than half a century. This was Benjamin Franklin, who, it may be further said, was the greatest character of colonial America.

1 Fiske, "Dutch and Quaker Colonies," Vol. II, p. 353.

CHAPTER VIII

COLONIAL WARS

FRENCH EXPLORERS

BEFORE the coming of the Pilgrim Fathers, or even the founding of Jamestown, the French had made a beginning toward the occupation of Canada. At the moment when Henry Hudson was bartering with the Indians along the banks of the Hudson, Champlain was but a few miles away, exploring the beautiful lake that bears his

Quebec founded, 1608.

name; and the year before that he had established a post on a rocky cliff overlooking the majestic St. Lawrence, and had named it Quebec.1 For many years thereafter the French came in small numbers, scattering through the wilderness, trading in furs, and seeking to convert the Indians to Christianity. The conversion of the Indians became the care of the French gov ernment, and the work was intrusted to the Jesuit priests — men who would brave every peril to carry the religion of Rome to the benighted red man. They established missions in many places and at the same time made useful explorations through the great northern wilderness. In 1634 Jean Nicollet, sent by Champlain, discovered Lake Michigan. Other Frenchmen discovered Lake Superior and portions of the boundless regions west and south of it.

Allouez.

In 1666 one of these, Father Allouez, went far into the lake region, beyond the head of Lake Superior, and while there he heard of the vast, treeless plains of Illinois and of the great river beyond that flowed toward the south. Returning to Quebec, Allouez related what he had heard, and the hearts of others were fired with a desire to explore the great valley in the southwest. Among these was Father James Marquette, who had recently come

1 As early as 1534 Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence as far as the site of Montreal, and Roberval made an unsuccessful attempt to plant a colony near the site of Quebec in 1542. The French had planted a colony of jail birds on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, in 1598, and De Monts settled a colony in Acadia in 1604; but neither colony was permanent. Champlain had made a previous exploring tour (1603) to the American coast.

FRENCH EXPLORATIONS

161

from France. He, with another Jesuit priest named Joliet and a few guides and companions, determined to explore the western wil derness, where no white man's foot had been. They ascended the Fox River, carried their canoes across the portage to the Wisconsin, and floated down this stream to the Mississippi. They then launched their little boats upon its bosom and floated for hundreds Marquette of miles with its current. The shores were covered and Joliet, 1673. with dense forests abounding in wild animals, or stretched away in boundless, grassy plains, with here and there the well-known traces of the red children of the forest. On they floated, past the mouths of the turbid Missouri and of the clear, sparkling Ohio, and still on until the semi-tropical plants and breezes replaced the rigorous climate of the north. When they reached the mouth of the Arkansas, they decided to retrace their steps, and the toilsome work of rowing up-stream was begun. After a weary journey of many weeks they reached the Illinois River, and, ascending it, crossed the country to Lake Michigan. Joliet now hastened back to Canada to tell of their discoveries, while the self-denying Marquette determined to remain in the wilderness and give his life to the enlightenment of the savages. But his labors were soon to end; one day, as he was kneeling by a rude altar of his own making, his spirit passed away, and his friends found his lifeless body in the attitude of prayer.

1675.

Of still greater importance were the achievements of Robert Cavelier de La Salle, a young Frenchman born at Rouen, France, and educated at a Jesuit school. While yet a young man he migrated to Canada and occupied an estate at Fort Frontenac, now Kingston, on the shore of Lake Ontario. Inflamed with the news of Marquette's discoveries, he determined to leave his lands and herds and explore the great western country, and thus to secure it for his king. La Salle was probably the first of his nation to plan the holding of the entire Mississippi basin and the lake region by means of military posts. After several years' negotiating, he received permission from Louis XIV to occupy and explore the great valley of the Mississippi. In the spring of 1682 he began one of the most famous exploring tours in the early history of our country. Taking with him a few companions, he floated down the Mississippi to its mouth, took possession of its vast basin in the name of France, and called it Louisiana in honor of the king. He then made the long

M

La Salle
reaches

mouth of
Mississippi.

April 9, 1682.

and weary journey back to Quebec, and thence sailed to France, where he soon succeeded in interesting his king in planting a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. The king sent La Salle back with four vessels, one of which was an armed frigate, bearing nearly three hundred colonists. It is claimed that the French king expended more money in fitting out this colony than did all the English sovereigns combined in planting their thirteen colonies in North America.

The little fleet sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, but missed the mouth of the great river and landed on the shore of Texas. One of the vessels was wrecked. Many of the voyagers returned to France, but the dauntless La Salle, with a small company, remained, built a fort, and spent some months in a fruitless search for the Mississippi. Contentions arose among the men, and one day La Salle was murdered by two of his own countrymen. Thus perished this ambitious Frenchman; his body was left to molder in the wilderness; his dream was unrealized, but his name, in connection with the greatest of American rivers, has a place in history second only to that of De Soto.

Death of La Salle, 1687.

KING WILLIAM'S WAR (1690-1697)

King James II of England, unlike his profligate brother, Charles II, was extremely religious, and his religion was that of Rome. The large majority of the people of England were Protestants; but they would have submitted to a Catholic king had he not used his official power to convert the nation to Catholicism. From the time of James's accession, in 1685, the unrest increased, until, three years later, the opposition was so formidable that the monarch fled from his kingdom and took refuge in France. The daughter of James and her husband, the Prince of Orange, became the joint sovereigns of England as William and Mary. This movement is known in history as the English Revolution.

Louis XIV, the king of France, was a Catholic and in full sympathy with James. Moreover, he denied the right of a people to change sovereigns, and espoused the cause of James; and war between the two nations followed. This war was reflected in America, as King William rejected an offer of colonial neutrality, and it is known as "King William's War." The English colonies had long watched the French encroachments on the north; the French determined to hold the St. Lawrence country, and to extend their power