Famous discoverers and explorers of America : their voyages, battles, and hardships in traversing and conquering the unknown territories of a new world

Front matter

NY PUBLIC LIBRARY

THE BRANCH LIBRARIES

Hi

Preface

My Dear Boys:

It has seemed fitting to include in the Famous Leaders Series this volume upon the discoverers and explorers, not only of ^STorth America, but also of Central and South America.

It has been impossible to include them all in a volume of this character ; but I have selected the most important, and have omitted such men as Sebastian Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Sir Francis Drake, Baffin, Verendrj^e, Robert Gray, Lewis and Clark, Pike, Franklin, Fremont, and many others.

This is no new subject. The lives and histories of these discoverers have been written by many another; but I have endeavored to bring before you a series of pictures of some of the most noted of these men of daring and grim determination, and, if I have succeeded in painting the canvas with colors which are agreeable, then, my dear boys, I shall feel that the moments occupied in the preparation of these pages have been well spent.

Believe me.

Yours very affectionately, Chaeles H. L. Johnston.

Chevy Chase, Maryland.

August, 1917.

TEE VOICE

A voice came from the westward, it whispered a message clear.

And the dripping fog hanks parted as the clarion tones drew near;

It spohe of shores untrodden, and it sang of mountains hold.

Of shimmering saifids in distant lands which were covered with glittering gold.

It sang of hemlock forests, where the moose roamed, and the hear.

Where the eider hred near the cascade's head, and the lucivee had his lair.

It praised the rushing water falls, it told of the salmon red.

Who swam in the spuming ripples hy the rushing river s head.

It chanted its praise of the languorous days which lay 'neath the shimmering sun.

Of the hirch canoe and the Indian, too, who trapped in the forests dun.

Yea, it told of the hars of silver, and it whispered of emeralds green.

Of topaz, sapphire, a7id amethyst, which shone with a

dazzling sheen,

ix

THE VOICE

Of warriors red with feathered head, of hujfalo, puma,

and deer.

Of the coral strand in a palm-tree land, and of dizzying

mountains sheer.

And the voice grew louder and louder, and it fell upon

listening ears.

Of the men who had heard strange mu^ic which was

moistened with women s tears.

Of the men who loved to wander, of the souls who cared

to roam.

Whose bed was the hemlock's tranches, who rejoiced

in the forest's gloom.

Leif the LucTcy, Magellan, deLeon and Cortes hold, C artier, Drake, and Franklin; Pizarro and. Baffin, old; Shackleton, Hudson, Roosevelt; brave Peary and gay

Champlain, Fremont, Lewis, Balboa; Verendrye, and the Cabots

twain; 'Twas the voice that called them onward, 'tivas the voice

that is calling still.

And the voice will call 'till the end of it all,

AND THE VOICE HAS A CONQUERING WILL.