Yule, Polo, II. 246 reached the Chinese coast about 1292, and thus reported: "And I tell you with regard to that Eastern Sea of Chin, according to what is said by the experienced pilots and mariners of those parts, there be 7459 Islands in the waters frequented by the said mariners. . . . And there is not one of those Islands but produces valuable and odorous woods . . . and they produce also a great variety of spices." In course of time the question began to be asked, Why might not the Spice Islands and Japan be reached by sea from western Europe? hence attempts were made to find a water passage around Europe by the Arctic Ocean, and around Africa by the Atlantic Ocean. Pollard, Moreover the learned men of the Renaissance discovered that the ancients believed that the world is round. Α strange book of wonders, called the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which is dated 1322, says, "For when the sun is east in those parts towards paradise terrestrial, it is then Mandeville, midnight in our parts of this half, for the roundness of the earth. For our Lord God made the earth all round in the midplace of the firmament." By 1470 the Florentine astronomer Toscanelli actually figured out the circumference of the earth at almost exactly its true length. If the world was really round, why might not India be reached by sailing westward instead of eastward? 249 5. The colonizing nations Such a question could best be solved by the maritime nations of western Europe - by Spain, France, England, and Portugal. The adventurous Portuguese by 1450 had already discovered the four groups of the Canary, Madeira, Cape Verde, and Azores or Western Islands. Under the direction of Prince Henry the Navigator, they pushed down the west coast of Africa; but on his death (1460) they had reached no farther south than Sierra Leone. The neighbor and great rival of Portugal was Spain; in 1469 the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile brought under one sovereignty the Christian parts of that land. In 1492, by the conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, the way was opened for a great Spanish kingdom. Twenty-seven years later Charles V., king of Spain and ruler of the Netherlands (grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella), by his election as German Emperor, brought Spain into the heart of European politics. Spain built a powerful navy, and organized an infantry which could defeat knights in armor, and was almost invincible by other footmen; for many years Spain remained the strongest state in Europe. The immediate theater of American history lay unknown beyond the Atlantic. The Europeans of the fifteenth century thought of the world as consisting of only three parts- 6. America; Europe, Asia, and Africa. It required a generation of the Atlantic slope explorers after 1492 to evolve the idea that North America is not part of Asia; more than a century elapsed before men generally began to think of it in its true proportions, and its true relations to the rest of the world. Nevertheless the physical character of the land constantly had a controlling effect on the course of discovery and colonization; and therefore it must be considered among the essentials of American history. The Atlantic coast of North America abounds in deep and sheltered bays and estuaries which make fine harborage, and helped the early settlers in their seafaring. The coast is bold and rugged as far south as Cape Ann; and the country inland, as far south as the Hudson, is hilly and stony and abounds in waterfalls. Farther south lies a low coast plain which gradually widens till it reaches Georgia, and thence stretches westward along the Gulf of Mexico to Texas. Its sandy coast is fringed with shallow lagoons, partly inclosed by long, narrow islands. Up to the foothills of the Appalachians the south country is flat and fertile, and well adapted to agriculture. The water powers at the head of navigation on the sluggish rivers afford natural advantages which determined the location of a line of towns and cities, such as Trenton, Richmond, Petersburg, Raleigh, Columbia, Augusta, and Macon. The very flatness. of the Atlantic coast gave rise to one disadvantage: innumerable swamps and fresh-water ponds bred mosquitoes; when our forefathers sickened with fevers, they little guessed that it was this insignificant enemy which brought disease, death, and often the ruin of a colony. Inland the Atlantic coast plain terminates in the Appalachian Mountain system, which extends in a belt about a hundred miles wide from Gaspé Peninsula in the Gulf of St. Lawrence 1600 miles southwestward to northern Alabama. The average elevation is about 2000 feet, the passes from 1500 to 3000 feet; though Mt. Washington and the North Carolina ranges rise above 6000 feet. The eastern half of the system consists of long, parallel, and steep-sided mountain ridges; the western half is an upland plateau which declines gradually to the west and is deeply trenched by the steep-sided valleys of the streams. Like the lower coast lands, this whole highland region was originally clothed with forests which concealed the lurking savage. The west slope of the Appalachian plateau merges into a vast low plain, which is drained partly northeastward to 7. Interior of North America Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but chiefly southward through the Mississippi River system to the Gulf of Mexico. The whole region is characterized by a smooth surface and gentle slopes, a little broken by the bluffs along the streams. The northern belt, and the southern as far west as the Ozark Mountains, were originally forest-covered; but the central part from Indiana westward abounded in treeless, grassy prairies, which expanded westward until they covered all the land excepting fringes of timber along the water courses. This St. Lawrence and Mississippi valley is the most exten |