The story of the Old world; a European background to The story of our country

Preface

All of Old- World history is the New World's heritage; no historian dare assert in regard to the most remote and seemingly insignificant occurrence of ancient record that it had no influence upon the course of later human events. But there are certain events connected with earlier human progress that have had a direct and easily traceable influence upon our New- World destinies; a knowledge of these is essential to a full understanding and enjoyment of the story of our country.

A committee of eight eminent teachers^ reporting upon the study of American history in our schools, has declared that too much emphasis is placed upon the Atlantic Ocean as a barrier between the history of the New World and that of the Old. This book is written to meet that criticism. It is not a condensed ^^ general history.'' It is, in reality, the story of our country carried beyond and behind that wall habitually erected by earlier school historians upon the borders of the Atlantic.

Contents

CHAPTER I p^oj,

Americans 1

Immigrants (1). the coming of the Germans (5). — When America was unknown (11). — Useful inventions (13).

CHAPTER II The Greeks 17

The Siege of Troy (21). — The Battle of Marathon (27). — Leonidas and the Three Hundred (31). — Salamis (34). — The city wall (35). — Pericles and Athens (38). — The Greek boy (42). — The Olympic games (46).

CHAPTER III Rulers of Greece 49

The government of Athens (49). — Solon (51). — The Story of Socrates (54). — The boyhood of Alexander the Great (58).

CHAPTER IV Rome and the Romans 67

The city of the Seven Hills (67). — Horatius at the Bridge (69). — The Sacred Mount (72). — Cincinnatus (74). — The first Punic War and Regulus (76). — The second Punic War and Hannibal (78). — Cornelia's jewels (82).

CHAPTER V C/ESAR AND THE WeST 87

Early life of Caesar (87). — Two great Romans (89). — Caesar and the Gauls (91). — The Story of Vercingetorix (95).

— Crossing the Rubicon (98) . — Last Years and Death of Caesar (101). — The Empire and the City (103).— The Coming of Christianity (107). — What Rome gave to the World (112).

vii viii CONTENTS

Chapter VI Page

Heirs to the Romans 115

The Story of Clovis (116).— The Story of King Arthur (118). — The Viking (121). — Alfred becomes King (123). — The Greatest of the EngHsh Kings (126). — Beginnings of American Liberty (130). — The English Parliament (135). — The Welsh and the Scots (138). — The Manor of the Middle Ages (139).— The Walled Town (142). — Training for Knighthood (144). —The Canterbury Cathedral (146).

CHAPTER Vn

The Crusades 148

The First Crusade (149). — King Richard and the Third Crusade (154). —The Results of the Crusades (159).

CHAPTER VIII The Western World 165

The Northmen (165). — Marco Polo (168). — The Voyage of Diaz (170). — Christopher Columbus (172). — The Name America (177). — John Cabot (178). — Vasco da Gama (180). — Balboa and the South Sea (182). — Magellan's Voyage (184). — Jacques Cartier (187). — Cortez and Mexico (191). — The Search for Gold (195).

CHAPTER IX European Claims to America 200

Sir Francis Drake (202). — The Gentle Lord de Bayard (206). — The Fate of Fort Carolina (208). — Spain and the Dutch (211). — William of Orange (213). — The Story of Sir Philip Sidney (216). — The Invincible Armada (217). — The Story of Gilbert and Raleigh (220).

Suggestive Topics for Composition and Discussion . . 225

THE STORY OF THE OLD WOELD

CHAPTER I Americans

N almost every city or community in the United States there are famihes who came from foreign lands. Some of them have been in this country a long time and perhaps the children were born here; others came more recently and children as well as parents were born abroad.

In some parts of the country a very large proportion of the people are newcomers. In Minnesota and other states lying near it a great many of the people are Scan'di-naVi-ans — Swedes, Nor-we'gi-ans, or Danes — or, rather, they were until recently. Now they are Americans. They came to America to make it their permanent home. They purchased or rented small farms and went to work to make a living. They are industrious, good people. Some of them have risen to high positions. Not long ago an American-born Swede was governor of Minnesota and others have served in the United States Senate.

If now we go back a hundred years or more we shall find that the ancestors of all of us came from foreign lands — from the same countries that we see on the

Europe, the Mother of America

THE AMERICANS

An Emigrant Ship of 1630 map of Europe. We are all Eu^ro-pe'ans a few generations back. We are a transplanted people. And the Europeans are still coming, in great numbers.

Nearly three hundred years ago, when Massachusetts was being settled, about twenty thousand people came to that colony in the space of ten years — from 1630 to 1640 — an average of two thousand a year. This was called the '' Great Migration.'' What would our ancestors have

thought could they have foreseen the present human river flowing to our shores from Europe -^ more than a milUon a year?

If we could spend a day at Ellis Island, near New York City, where most of the immigrants land, we should probably see thousands of these people debark from the incoming ships. In colonial days they came in small sailing vessels and two or three months were spent on the sea. Now they come in great,

swift steamships, often called ''ocean greyhounds,'' and seldom are they more than a week on the ocean.

The immigrants on landing are all examined by inspectors. Each must pay a small fee for the privilege of remaining. If one is a criminal, or diseased,

An Ocean Greyhound

In a New Land

By permission of Century Co.

or likely to become a pauper, he is sent back. After the immigrants have passed the test of our immigration

laws, they begin the task of earning a living. Some go to the far West, others to the South, but many remain in the large cities of the East. Those who go far into the interior of the continent have another long and toilsome journey ahead of them before they reach their future homes.

Most railroads have special immigrant cars, with hard, cushionless seats, on which a lower fare is charged, and into these cars the people are crowded for their journey to other parts of the country.

Why do these people come here? Look at them as they arrive and most of them seem very poor. Their clothing is coarse and their goods are tied up in rough bundles. Many of them cannot speak the English language. It is true there may be a criminal or anarchist among them; but the great majority of them are good people, honest and industrious, and they come to America in the hope of doing

THE COMING OF THE GERMANS 5

better for themselves and for their children than they could do in the Old World. They have done a brave deed in leaving the home of their childhood and crossing the great ocean to better their condition. A lazy, shiftless person would not do such a thing. In a few years the children learn our language, and often the parents too. In time they will learn our ways and become good Americans. The one thing above all else that makes good Americans is our public schools.

We are fond of believing that our ancestors who braved the Atlantic billows to find a home in the New World were heroes, and perhaps they were; but many of the late comers have shown the same kind of courage.

THE COMING OF THE GERMANS

Let us now go back to colonial times and take a hurried view of one of the settlements, as an example of all. Which shall we choose?

From ''The Story of Our Country" you have read of the coming of the

Pilgrim Fathers in the Mayflower. You have also read of the first settlement at Jamestown in Virginia, of the early settlement of New York by the Dutch, of the coming of William Penn to Pennsylvania and of General Oglethorpe to Georgia. These are treated in nearly all our histories. But how many know about the first settlement of the Germans?

Emigrants on Shipboard

Seldom is there much said about them in our school histories; perhaps because they were not among the first settlers and did not found a separate colony.

They are a great people and the German Empire is one of the most powerful nations of to-day. The Germans have played a great part in building up America to what it is now. It was a German, Waldsee Miiller, who first suggested that the vast lands of the Western World be called America. The only man who founded two of the original thirteen colonies was a German — Peter Minuit, the founder of New York and Delaware. In both cases he led a people not of his own blood — the Dutch to New York and the Swedes to Delaware. It was a German who summoned the first Colonial Congress, in New York, in 1691 — Jacob Leisler. There was one German, named Tyrker, with Leif Ericson on his first voyage to the American shores, 1000 a.d.; there were a few Germans among the first settlers at Jamestown and a few in the still earlier settlement at Port Royal, South Carolina. Moreover, there are twenty million of the people of the United States to-day who are of German descent, through one or both parents. Only the English surpass them in this respect, and they but little. All others fall far below them. For these reasons and because the early coming of the Germans is not well known, we have chosen to give a brief narrative of their first settlement.

WILLIAM PENN

The first settlement of Germans was in Pennsylvania. You have read about William Penn and the Quakers

WILLIAM PENN 7

who founded Philadelphia. Before coming to America Penn went to Germany, where he made many friends. A few years later, when he received a charter from the king of England, a number of Germans became interested and decided to go to the new land of Penn. The first shipload of Germans came from Crefeld, a city on the Rhine River. They came in the good ship Concord, which was to them what the Mayflower was to the Pilgrim Fathers. It was a strong, roomy vessel, and its commander was Captain Jeffreys.

The company of German emigrants was not a large one ; there were thirteen families and a devoutly religious people they were. It was in midsummer, 1683, when they launched out upon the deep sea for the long

The Site of Philadelphia and the " Treaty Tree"

journey to their new home in the Western World. We can imagine how the tears must have filled their eyes when they saw fading from view the shores of the land they were leaving behind, the land of their childhood's home, which they never expected to see again.

After a voyage of two and a half months the Concord reached the mouth of the Delaware. It was in the early autumn, when the forests are dressed in rainbow colors and all nature is so charming and so inviting. How refreshing the sight of land must have been to these weary travelers after the long weeks upon their floating home, where nothing met the eye but the ceaseless rolling billows around them.

The Concord sailed up the Delaware and reached

Philadelphia on October 6, 1683. One year before

this William Penn had arrived from England and had

William Perm's House

already laid out the new city on the western bank of the Delaware. He was expecting the Germans, some of whom were Quakers, and he received them with a warm welcome.

The real leader of this German colony did not come in the Concord; he had arrived in another ship a few weeks earlier. His name was Daniel Pas-to'ri-us. He was a very learned man and spoke several languages. Pastorius came to be an intimate friend of William Penn and the two dined together twice a week. In

GERMANTOWN 9

later years Pastorius wrote that Philadelphia, then a village of a few houses, was surrounded by dense forests and that sometimes he lost his way in the underbrush when going to Penn's house.

The first thing to be decided when the German colonists arrived was where to make their home. Through their leader, Pastorius, and a company in Germany, they had purchased from William Penn a large tract of land, thousands of acres, for about ten cents an acre. But just where this land was to be set apart for them was not determined.

At length it was decided that they settle about six miles north of Philadelphia, and thither they went. Faithfully they toiled in cutting away the timbers, clearing the land for planting, and building homes. Pastorius wrote that his house was thirty feet long and fifteen feet broad, and that for a window glass he used oil-soaked paper. He put a Latin motto over his door, of which the English would be, ^'A poor home, but good cheer. '^ When Penn first visited him at the new house he had a hearty laugh at the motto and encouraged his friend to continue building.

GERMANTOWN

The new settlement was called Germantown. It was a happy community. By the next spring streets had been laid out and patches cleared for planting. Cottages had sprung up here and there and the shouts of playing children rang out among the forest trees. Others soon came from Germany and settled at Germantown, and it became one of the most prosperous settlements in America. Many of the people were weavers and they set up looms and opened a store in Philadelphia for the sale of their wares. The town founded by Germans has long been absorbed by the great city, but that part of Philadelphia is still called by the old name — Germantown.

The people of Germantown were so busy with their farming and weaving that it was difficult to find men to hold office, and at length a fine was imposed on anyone who refused. How strange this seems to our generation; we have more office seekers than offices. The people of Germantown were sober and industrious, and criminals were so few that the courts often adjourned because they had nothing to do.

One thing more must be said about the Germans of Germantown — that by which they will be longest remembered. Negro slavery then existed in all the colonies, north and south. It was hateful to the Germans and they were the first in America to raise their voice against it. On April 18, 1688, the settlers of Germantown met and drew up a protest against slavery. This precious document is still preserved, in the handwriting of Pastorius. It was drawn up to be sent to the meeting of the Quakers, which was soon to take place. The Quakers received the protest against this traffic in human beings and acknowledged it. But they did not act upon it, and seventeen years went by before the Quakers passed resolutions against slavery. The honor of being first in the field to raise their voice against slavery in America must ever be awarded to the Pennsylvania Germans.

IllJliil

WHEN AMERICA WAS UNKNOWN 11

WHEN AMERICA WAS UNKNOWN

It seems strange that but little more than four hundred years ago half the land area of the earth was wholly unknown to the people of the other half, and that only one hundred years ago a large part of the United States was an unbroken wilderness. The land was covered with vast forests, or rolling prairies, and was inhabited only by scattered tribes of a savage race who knew nothing of civilization. How long these people, whom ^^ J^^

we call Indians, had

i. J T_ 1 ^ ,1 Indian Picture Writing

lived here before the

coming of the white man we do not know — perhaps thousands of years. The Indians had no books and no literature and had not recorded their own history. Where they came from and who they were we can only guess. All we know is that here we found them, that they could tell us nothing of their remote past, and that few of them could do more than hunt and fish.

Fifteen hundred years before the discovery of America by white men, the Christian era began. During these intervening fifteen centuries Europe slowly advanced in civilization. The known world at the beginning of the Christian era was very small compared to the world we know. It consisted of a few countries around the Med'i-ter-ra'ne-an Sea and was under a single government — the government of Rome.

The people of Italy were then called Romans; now they are known as Italians. The inhabitants of France were called Gauls, and later Franks, while the people who lived in England were Britons. The names England and English came into use centuries later.

In those early days the people had strange notions about the earth. We know that the earth is a vast globe swinging in space around the sun, making one of its sublime revolutions every year and turning on its axis once in twenty-four hours, making the sun, moon, and stars seem to rise and set. The people did not then know these things. They believed the earth to be flat and that the sun and moon revolved around it. They thought the earth was the center of the universe and that Europe was the top and center of the earth.

There was no end to the fantastic behefs of those days. Some thought the earth sloped downward in all directions and if a vessel sailed too far down the slope it could never get back. If the earth is round, they said, certainly nobody could live on the other side. How could they walk with their heads downward? Some believed that far to the southward the ocean was so hot that the water boiled with fury and that nothing could Hve in it. Another belief was that a great bird hovered over the sea, so great that it could carry off a ship in its talons.

These absurd notions were gradually dispelled as men came to study science and to know more about nature. And their study brought about a great many useful inventions, some of which we feel that we could not do without. Let us notice a few of these.

USEFUL INVENTIONS 13

USEFUL INVENTIONS

We all know of the wonderful advantage of modern inventions. Take the telephone for example. If we wish to order something from the grocer, or speak to a friend in a distant town, or call a doctor at night, we simply go to an instrument on the wall or on our table and talk into it. Our voice is carried through a wire by means of electricity. What a marvelously strange thing this would have seemed to our grandfathers; and so it was to us at first, but we are becoming accustomed to it.

Take another example — the sewing machine. Sixty or seventy years ago all sewing had to be done by hand, and a great majority of women and many men in the factories spent their time with the needle and thimble in slavish toil. The sewing machine has changed all that; it has freed women as no other invention has done. It has enabled her to give more attention to study and culture and has thus perhaps played as great a part as any other invention in raising our standard of civilization.

The past hundred years have produced more great inventions than any preceding century, but we must not think that our age has originated everything useful. If we go back to the time of Columbus and before, we shall find inventions that we could not well get along without. Among these are the mariner's compass, gunpowder, and printing.

In the ancient world all printing was done by hand. The great books of ancient times — the Bible, Homer's

poems, and the like — were all preserved by hand printing. For one to reproduce a copy of the Bible in this way required several years of tedious toil.

Books as we have them did not exist in those early times. In As-syr'i-a they wrote on clay tablets and then baked the tablets to make the writing hard and lasting.

In Egypt they used papyrus, and from this we get our word '^ paper." The papyrus was a tall, rush-like plant, which was split and the pieces gummed together. In Asia Minor and other places they used parchment, made of the skins of goats and other animals. A fine kind of parchment, made of calfskin, was called vellum. On all these the work of printing was done by hand.

The invention of printing from movable type dates from about the middle of the fifteenth century. The inventor was John Gu 'ten-berg of Mainz, a city on the Rhine river in Germany. It was about the year 1450 that Gutenberg began printing. His type was carved out of wood. The art of printing soon spread to the

The Manuscript

Fragment from mural painting by Alexander in Library of Congress

USEFUL INVENTIONS other countries of Europe. From that time to the present the art has grown and improved and to-day it constitutes one of the most extensive of modern industries. The great cyhnder printing presses are among the wonders of the large cities and vast numbers of books and papers are turned out by them. When all printing was done by hand, books were few and expensive, while newspapers and magazines did not exist. It was very difficult to acquire an education in those remote days. In our own times books and papers are so cheap and so plentiful that anyone who wishes may use them.

The invention of printing naturally brings to mind another, which is very much older — the invention of the alphabet.

The American Indians used a sort of picture writing to express their thoughts.

The ancient Egyptians used characters that we call hi'er-o-glyphlcs,and the Assyrians a wedge-shaped character which they made in soft clay and then baked. In all these the characters stood for words or objects and not for sounds, as do the letters of our alphabet.

Hieroglyphics

From a mural painting by Alexander in Library of Congress

The Phoe-ni'ci-ans, a people who hved on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, were the inventors of the

alphabet; that is, characters to represent different sounds. We do not know the exact time of the invention, but it was probably about one thousand years before Christ. From the Phoenicians the Greeks learned to write by means of letters and the Romans learned the same from the Greeks. The Romans changed the shape of many of the letters to about the form in which we now have them.

By these few examples we see that many of the advantages we enjoy have come to us from the far past and are not of our own making. In the following chapters we shall take a closer view of the two most wonderful countries of antiquity and note some of the things they contributed to our modern life in America.

Specimen of Gutenberg's Type

John Gutenberg

From an old print

CHAPTER II The Greeks

N ancient times, long before America was discovered by Christopher Columbus, there lived in a little country called Greece a people highly civilized and noted for their love of nature and works of art. Many of their ideas and institutions have come down to us, and we Americans, as well as other civilized nations, owe them much.

Where is Greece and who were these people? As we look on the map of Europe we find three peninsulas extending into the Mediterranean Sea. The most eastern is the Balkan, and the southern part of this peninsula is Greece.

Greece is a mountainous country with a broken coastline. Many Httle islands dot the seas and bays that touch its shore. The most beautiful sea that washes its shores is the blue ^-ge'an. The islands of this sea are not only rich in minerals, but they afford an easy voyage for the navigator who crosses the waters to Asia Minor, where Greece first established her colonies.

The situation of Greece and the formation of its land surface gave it many advantages — a varied and beautiful landscape, access to the older countries of the East, and power as an independent country. Olives, grapes, and wheat grew in the valleys and on the hill slopes. Mines of copper and silver and quarries of marble were found among the rocks. Its ranges of mountains protected it against invading forces. These ranges afforded boundaries for cantons or independent states. Wherever the Greeks settled they showed the same independence that characterized their mother country. Greece was small, but nearly every one of its states had contact with the sea, and this influenced the Greeks to colonize and thus spread their civilization.

Greece and her Islands

They beheved the earth to be flat and that Greece occupied the middle of it. They thought that the

THE GREEKS

Apollo Belvidere earth was divided into halves by the Mediterranean

Sea.

The Greeks enjoyed living in the outdoor air. Their

theaters were left open to the sky, and many of their

legislative halls and temples had no

roofs. Their fondness for nature was

seen in their early religion. Their gods

and goddesses dwelt on the mountains

and revealed themselves in the various

aspects of nature. Zeus (Roman name,

Jupiter) hurled the thunderbolt and

scourged with lightning; Hermes (Mercury) was the personification of the

wind; and Eos (Aurora) was the goddess of the dawn. Since 0-lym^pus was the highest and least accessible

of their mountains, the ancient Greeks thought it to be the abode of their great god Zeus, the king of heaven. Here dwelt also Hera (Juno) , his wife, the queen of heaven; A-the'ne (Minerva), his favorite child, the goddess of wisdom; A-poF-

lo, his son, the god of music and the god of the sun;

Ar'te-mis (Diana), Apollo's sister, the goddess of the

Diana hunting with her Maidens

From the painting by Makart, in Metropolitan Museum, New York moon and the patron of the chase. These ancient Greeks believed in many gods and goddesses. Posei'don (Neptune) was king of the seas, and Hades (Pluto) lord of the lower world. The goddess of love and beauty was Aph'ro-di'te (Venus). Ares (Mars) was the god of war, and his brother Hephses'tus (Vulcan) god of fire. Hestia (Vesta) was patroness of hearth and home, and De-me'ter (Ceres) the goddess of the fruitful earth.

Redrawn from the painting by Guido Reni

Aurora

The Greek myths and legends tell of these hero gods and goddesses. One of these legends is that of the siege of Troy. The story of the Trojan War was well known to the Greeks before a poet put the legend into a poem. They regarded that war as the great event of their early history.

Of the poems that treated of the Trojan War, the "iri-ad" and the ^'Od^s-sey^' have been preserved. They are called the Ho-mer'ic poems because the

THE SIEGE OF TROY

Greeks accepted them as the works of Homer, a bhnd poet. They give us pictures of the hfe of the ancient Greeks when each state w^as ruled by a king whose authority was supposed to descend from Zeus. The legend tells us that the descendants of Zeus founded Troy, or H'i-um, in the northwestern part of Asia Minor, and the '^ Iliad" is the story of the siege of Troy.

THE SIEGE OF TROY

One of the states of ancient Greece was Sparta, and Men^e-la'us was its king. His wife was the fairest woman of her time — the beautiful Helen.

She had many suitors before her marriage with Menelaus, but these wooers had agreed that they would uphold the rights of the successful suitor if it should ever become necessary. And it was not long before their help was needed.

The goddess of discord caused the trouble. At a wedding feast among the gods she threw upon the banquet table a golden apple which bore the inscription, ^^To the fairest." Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite quarreled for its possession. ''Power has the best Helen of Troy

right to it," said Hera. ''The "^^^"^Itd^LTi.hf ''

wisdom of the gods surpasses power," replied Athene. Aphrodite smiled at what they said. ^^Who has greater claims than the goddess of beauty?" she asked. The quarrel grew bitter and he who was chosen as umpire was not to be envied.

The decision was referred to Paris, the son of Priam, King of Troy. A handsome and attractive young man was this judge, and each goddess tried to bias him in her favor. ''Award the prize to me," said Hera, ''and I will give you great wealth and unhmited power." Then Athene, in glittering armor, promised him glory and renown in war if he would give the golden apple to her. But their bribes were nothing to Paris in comparison with Aphrodite's promise, "I will give you a bride as fair as myself if you will prefer me." The handsome young judge no longer hesitated.

" Ere yet her speech was finished, he consigned To her soft hand the fruit of burnished rind."

But where was Paris to find this fair bride? The answer to that lay with the goddess of beauty. She advised him to go to Greece and visit the King of Sparta, and that is what he did. The prince from Troy was graciously received by Menelaus and his beautiful queen. But he was not there many days before the king was called away from home. "Now is your opportunity," said Aphrodite. Would Paris prove false to the king who had generously entertained him? "Helen is the fairest of women and she is the bride destined for me," he said. No sooner had Men'e-la'us departed than Paris persuaded Helen to leave the court of Sparta and sail with him to Troy.