An American history

Front matter

AN

AMERICAN HISTORY

BY

Part I The Establishment Of The English Chapter Page

I. The New World

The Discovery of America 3

A Century of Exploration 13

II. The English Colonies

The Old Dominion 27

The New England Settlements 35

The Proprietary Colonies 52

The Colonies in the Eighteenth Century . . 67

HI. The Struggle with France for North America

The Rise of New France 81

The Fall of New France 92

Part II

SEPARATION OF THE COLONIES FROM ENGLAND IV. British Rule in America

The Authority of Parliament in the Colonies 107

Taxation without Representation 112

The Punishment of Massachusetts 120

V. The Birth of the Nation

The Declaration of Independence . . . .127

The Revolutionary War ... .... 136

Peace 150

V vi Conteiits

Part III The New Republic Chapter Page

VI. The Constitution

The Critical Period - • i59

"A More Perfect Union" i66

The Federal Power - • 1 73

VI I. Federalists and Republicans

Launching the Government . 184

The Reign of Federalism 193

The Jeffersonian Policies 205

The War of 1812 213

Part IV

VIII. The Growth of a National Consciousness

" The Era of Good Feeling " 229

The Monroe Doctrine 236

IX. Sectional Interests

Facing Westward 245

The Favorite Sons . . .251

An Era of Hard Feelings 259

The "Tariff of Abominations" 267

X. " The Reign of Andrew Jackson "

Nullification 277

The War on the Bank 282

A New Party 289

Contents , vii

Part V Slavery And The West Chapter Page

XI. The Gathering Cloud

Slavery in the Colonies 303

The Missouri Compromise 308

The Abolitionists 316

XII. Texas

Westward Expansion 328

The " Reoccupation " of Oregon and the

" Reannexation " OF Texas 336

The Mexican War 342

XIII. The Compromise of 1850

The New Territory 351

The Omnibus Bill 35^

A Four Years' Truce 364

Part VI

XIV. Approaching the Crisis

The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the Formation of the Republican Party 379

" Bleeding Kansas " 3^8

"A House divided against Itself" .... 395

XV. Secession

The Election of Abraham Lincoln .... 405

The Southern Confederacy 414

The Fall of Fort Sumter 421 viii ^ Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

XVI. The Civil War

The Opposing Forces . 430

From Bull Run to Gettysburg .... 436

The Triumph of the North 452

Emancipation 469

XVII. The Era of Reconstruction

How THE North used its Victory .... 477 The Recovery of the Nation ..... 489

Part VII

THE POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC SINCE THE CIVIL WAR

XVIII. Twenty Years of Republican Supremacy

The New Industrial Age 505

The Republican Machine 510

The Party Revolution of 1884 520

XIX. The Cleveland Democracy

A People's President 533

A Billion-Dollar Country 544

Problems of Cleveland's Second Term . . ^t^^

XX. Entering the Twentieth Century

The Spanish War and the Philippines . .574

The Roosevelt Policies 591

Present-Day Problems 609

APPENDIX I 627

INDEX 649

LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

George Washington Frontispiece

Types of Indian Dwellings, — the Pueblo, the Tepee, and the

Long House 24

Portrait of John Smith 3°

Pilgrim Monument at Provincetown, Mass 3^

Facsimile of Bradford MS. "History of Plimoth Plantation" 38

La Salle taking Possession of Louisiana 86

Franklin at the Court of France, 1778 138

Group of Famous Revolutionary Buildings 1 54

The Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States . . .180

Alexander Hamilton 192

Interview between Washington and Citizen Genet 196

Thomas Jefferson 206

John C. Calhoun 255

Henry Clay 256

Andrew Jackson • 278

Webster's Reply to Hayne 280

Sherman's Army destroying the Railroads in Georgia . . . 462 Lee's Letter to Grant respecting the Surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia 465

Abraham Lincoln 468

White House, after the Remodeling of 1902 506

Grover Cleveland 534

President Taft 608

LIST OF FULL-PAGE AND DOUBLE- PAGE MAPS

PAGE

Voyages of Discovery in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries lo Early Maps of America (Lenox, Finaeus, Miinster, Mercator) i8, 19

Proprietary Grants made by the Stuart Kings 54

French Explorations on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi . 88

The French and Indian Wars 99

An Old View of the Siege of Quebec 100

England's Acquisitions in America in the French Wars of

1689-1763 • . . . . 102

The United States in 1 783 152

The Louisiana Purchase Territory, with States subsequently

made from it 210

Routes to the West, 1 81 5-1 825 248

The Acquisition of the Far West, 1 845-1 850 350

Canals and Railroads operated in 1850 368

The Presidential Election of i860 412

The Chief Campaigns of the Civil War 438

Territorial Growth of the United States 548

The Greater United States and the Panama Canal Routes . .602 Progress of the Referendum and the Initiative 612

AMERICAN HISTORY

Part I. The Establishment Of The English

PART I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ENGLISH

CHAPTER I The Discovery of America

HE discovery of America was an accident, i. Trade

The brave sailors of the fifteenth century Europe and

who turned the prows of their tiny vessels 1^^^ J^^L^^f,* ^ -^ in the Middle

into the strange waters of the Atlantic Ages were seeking a new way to " the Indies,"

— a term vaguely used to denote not India alone but also China, Japan, and all the Far Eastern countries of Asia. From these lands western Europe had for centuries been getting many of its luxuries and comforts. Ever-lengthening traders' caravans brought Oriental rugs, flowered silks, gems, spices, porcelains, damasks, dyes, drugs, perfumes, and precious woods across the plains and plateaus of middle Asia to the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea, or crept along the hot borders of the Arabian peninsula to the headwaters of the Red Sea. At the ports of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean the fleets of Venice and Genoa were waiting to carry the Indian merchandise to the distributing centers of southern Europe, whence it was conveyed over the Alpine passes or along the Rhone valley to the busy, prosperous towns of France, Germany, England, and the Netherlands.

2. The Turks But in the fourteenth century the Osmanli Turks — an aggrestrade routes s^^^' bigoted Mohammedan race — began to block the path of the (1300-1450) Eastern traders. The Turks were determined not only to drive

the Christians out of Asia, but to cross over into Europe themselves. In 1453 they captured the great city of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine, or eastern Roman, Empire. In the following decades they dislodged the '' Franks " (as they called all Europeans) from Syria, Asia Minor, and the islands of the ^gean Sea. The Venetian and Genoese trade was ruined by these wars, which practically closed the eastern end of the Mediterranean to European vessels, and made it of the utmost importance to discover new routes to the rich treasure lands of the Indies.

3. The Under the stimulus of this practical need the study of geogmafuime*' raphy and the science of navigation flourished in the fifteenth flx^^^^^u'^ *^® century. Hundreds of J)ortolani, or sailing charts, were drawn century by the Italian and Portuguese mariners. Six new editions of the

"Geography" of Ptolemy were published between 1472 and 1492.^ The compass and the astrolabe (for measuring latitude) were perfected. Ships were designed to sail close to the wind and to stand the buffeting of the high ocean waves. Before the end of the fifteenth century Portuguese sailors had pushed nearly a thousand miles westward into the uncharted Atlantic, and were creeping mile by mile down the western coast of Africa. In i486 Bartholomew Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and had not his crew refused to go farther from home, he might have stood out across the Indian Ocean and reached the Spice Islands of the East and all the cities of the Chinese Empire.

4. christo- While Dias was making his way back to Portugal an Italian seeks aid^or ^ mariner from Genoa, named Cristoforo Colombo, better known

a westward j^y j^jg Latinized name of Columbus, who had become convinced

voyage to the ^ '

Indies by his geographical studies that he could reach the Indies by

1 Claudius Ptolomaeus, a Greek astronomer, wrote a " Geography " about the year 150 a.d., which remained the standard work on the shape and size of Europe, Asia, and Africa (the known world of the Middle Ages) until after the great voyages of the fifteenth century.

sailing westward across the Atlantic, was seeking aid for his project at the courts of Europe. He first applied to the king of Portugal, in whose service he had already made several voyages down the African coast. On being repulsed he transferred his request to Ferdinand and Isabella, the sovereigns of Spain, and at the same time sent his brother Bartholomew, who had been with Dias on his famous voyage, to solicit the support of King Henry VII of England.

Columbus had despaired of enlisting the interest of the Span- 5. Ferdinand ish sovereigns, and was about to start for Paris, when the influ- of Spain furence of some important persons at the Spanish court procured fun^g^^^prii him a favorable audience. He met Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 their gorgeous camp before Granada, from which city they had just driven out the last of the Moorish rulers in Spain. In the auspicious moment of victory the sovereigns were moved to grant Columbus financial aid for his project, to confer upon him a title of nobility, and to create him admiral of all the lands and islands which he might find on his voyage. This was in April, 1492. By the following August, Columbus was ready to start from Palos, with three small ships and about a hundred sailors, on what proved to be the most momentous voyage in history.

Columbus was a student as well as a man of affairs. His son 6. Columbus's Ferdinand tells us in his '' Biography" that his father was influ- knowi^dgr enced by the old Arabian and Greek astronomers. There are geographical works in existence with notes in Columbus's handwriting in the margin. He shared with the best scholars of his day the long-established belief in the sphericity of the earth.^ As a guide for his voyage he had a chart made for the king of Portugal in 1474, by the Florentine astronomer Toscanelli, to

1 The popular idea that Columbus " discovered that the earth is round " is entirely false. More than eighteen hundred years before Columbus's day the Greek philosopher Aristotle demonstrated the sphericity of the earth from the altitude of the stars observed from various places. Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar, in 1267 even collected passages from the writers of classical antiquity to prove that the ocean separating Spain from the eastern shore of Asia was not very wide. The merit of Columbus was that he proved the truth of these theories by courageous action.

7. Toscanelli's map of 1474 demonstrate that the Indies could be reached by sailing westward. Toscanelli had calculated the size of the earth almost exactly, but, misled by the description of travelers to the Far East, he had made the continent of Asia extend eastward almost all the way across the Pacific Ocean, so that Cipango (or Japan) on his map occupied the actual position of Mexico. Columbus therefore, although not deceived as to the length of voyage

The Toscanelli Map of 1474 The outline of the Western Continent is in red, showing its actual position

8. Columbus crosses the Atlantic, September- October, 1492 necessary to reach land, was deceived to the day of his death as to the land he reached at the end of his voyage.

The little trio of vessels, favored by clear skies and a steady east wind, made the passage from the Canary Islands to the Bahamas in five weeks. No storms racked the ships, but still it was a fearsome voyage over the quiet seas. To the trembling crews each mile westward was a further venture into the great mysterious " sea of darkness," where horrible monsters might be waiting to engulf them, where the fabled mountain of loadstone might draw the nails from their ships, or the dreaded boring worm puncture their wooden keels. The auspicious and unvarying east wind itself was a menace. How could they ever get home again in the face of it '^. And if the world was round, as their captain said, were they not daily sliding down its slope, which they could never remount? Dark faces and ominous whisperings warned Columbus of his danger. Early in October there were overt signs of mutiny, but the great pilot quelled the discontent, saying that complain as they might, he must reach the Indies, and would sail on until with God's help he found them. His courage was rewarded, for the very next night he espied a light ahead, and when day dawned (October 12, 1492) the sandy beach of an island lay spread before the eyes of his wearied crew. Surrounded by the naked awe-stricken natives, Columbus took solemn possession of the land in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella, and called it San Salvador (" Holy Saviour ").

He then continued his voyage among the small islands of the 9. He is dis Bahamas, seeking the mainland of Cathay (China)

Columbus's Flagship, the Sattta Maria

\\i\. I- appointed in When he not finding reached the apparently interminable coast of Cuba, he was sure t^e cities of i^^ J ' Cathay, and

that he was at the gates of the kingdom of the Great Khan, returns to and that the cities of China with their fabulous wealth would soon hear the voice of his Arab interpreter, presenting to the monarch of the East the greetings and gifts of the sovereigns of Spain. He was doomed to disappointment. The misfortunes which dogged his steps to the end of his life now began. Martin Pinzon, pilot of the Finta, deserted him on the coast of Cuba. His largest caravel, the Santa Maria ^ was wrecked on Christmas

10. Columbus's later voyages (1493-1502) ; his disgrace and death (1506)

Day on the coast of Hayti, which he mistook for the long-sought Cipango, and he hastened back to Spain in the remaining vessel, the tiny Nina. He was hailed with enthusiasm by the nation, and loaded with honors by his sovereigns, who had no suspicion that he had failed to reach the islands lying off the rich lands of the East, or that he had discovered still richer lands in the west. Columbus made three more voyages to the "Indies" in 1493, 1498, and 1502. On the voyage of 1498 he discovered the mainland of South America, and in 1502 he sailed along the coast of Central America, vainly attempting to find a strait

The Maura Medal (Spain), struck to commemorate the Four-Hundredth Anniversary of Columbus's Discovery of America

which would let him through to the main coast of Cathay. All the while the clouds of misfortune were gathering about him. His costly expeditions had so far brought no wealth to Spain. While his ships were skirting the pestilential coasts of South America, the Portuguese Vasco da Gama had reached the real Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, and brought back to Lisbon cargoes of spices, satins, damask, ivory, and gold (see map, p. 10). The Spanish sovereigns were jealous of the laurels of the Portuguese mariners. Mutiny, shipwreck, and fever were lighter evils for Columbus to contend with than the plots of his enemies and the envious disappointment of the grandees of

Spain. One of the Spanish governors of Hayti sent him home in irons. His little sons, Diego and Ferdinand, who were pages in the queen's service, were jeered at as they passed through the courtyard of the Alhambra : " There go the sons of the Admiral of the Mosquitoes, who has discovered lands of vanity and delusion as the miserable graves of Castilian gentlemen." Returning from his fourth voyage in 1504, he found his best friend at court, Queen Isabella, on her deathbed ; and bowed with discouragement, illness, humiliation, and poverty, he followed her to the grave in 1506. So passed away in misery and obscurity a man whose service to mankind was beyond calculation. His wonderful voyage of 1492 had linked together the two hemispheres of our planet, and " mingled the two streams of human life which had flowed for countless ages apart " (John Fiske).^

Had Columbus and his fellow voyagers known that a solid 11. Pope barrier of land reaching from arctic to antarctic snows, and yi's "debeyond that another ocean vaster than the one they had just ^^^^}^^^ crossed, lay between the islands they mistakenly called the Indies and the real Indies of the East, they would have probably abandoned the thought of a western route and returned to contest with Portugal the search for the Indies via the Cape of Good Hope. As it was, the Spanish sovereigns, confident that their pilots had reached the edge of Asia, asked of Pope Alexander VI a " bull " (or formal papal decree) admitting them to a share with Portugal in all lands and islands which should be discovered in the search for the Indies. The Pope, who was quite generally recognized in Europe as the arbiter of international disputes, acceded to the request, and in his bull of 1493

1 Columbus was by no means the first European to visit the shores of the western continent. There are records of a dozen or so pre-Columbian voyages across the Atlantic by Arabians, Japanese, Welshmen, Irishmen, and Frenchmen, besides the very detailed account in the Icelandic sagas, or stories of adventure, of the visit of the Norsemen to the shores of the western world in the year looo. Under Lief the Lucky the Norsemen built booths or huts and remained for a winter on sorrie spot along the coast of Labrador or New England. But these voyages of the Norsemen to America five hundred years before Columbus were not of importance, because they were not followed up by exploration and permanent settlement.

The Nezv World 1 1

divided the undiscovered world between Spain and Portugal by a " demarcation " line, which was determined the next year at 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. All lands discovered to the west of this line were to belong to Spain ; those to the east, to Portugal (see map, p. 10).

The Pope's bull, however, did not deter the other nations of 12. John Europe from taking part in the search for the Indies by both the the mainland

eastern and the western routes. The honor of being the first of ?* ^^LT:^^^'

'=' em conti-

the mariners of Columbus's time to reach the mainland of the nent, 1497 western continent belongs to John Cabot, an Italian in the service of King Henry VII of England. In the summer of 1497, while the Spanish navigators were still tarrying among the West Indies, Cabot sailed with one ship from Bristol, and after plant- . ing the banner of England somewhere on the coast of Labrador, returned to plan a larger expedition. The voyage of 1 49 7 created great excitement in England for a time. '^ This Venetian of ours who went in search of new islands is returned," wrote an Italian in London to his brother at home ; " his name is Zuan Cabot, and they all call him the great admiral. Vast honor is paid him, and he dresses in silk. These English run after him like mad people." The more prosaic account book of Henry VII contains the entry: ^' To hym that found the new isle lO;^." But interest in Cabot's voyage soon died out. The importance of the voyage for us is that it was for two centuries made the basis of England's claims to the whole mainland of North America.

Cabot's name is not connected with mountain, river, state, or 13, The town in the New World, but the name of another Italian became Am^rfgo^

the birth name of the continent. Amerie^o Vespucci was a yespucci

^ _ ^ (Amencus

Florentine merchant established at Cadiz in Spain. He helped vespucius),

fit out Columbus's fleet, and catching the fever for maritime adventure, he joined the goodly company of navigators. In 1501 he made a most remarkable voyage in the service of the king of Portugal. Sailing from Lisbon, he struck the coast of South America at Cape San Roque, and running south to the thirtyfourth parallel, found the constant westward trend of the coast carrying him across the Pope's line separating Portuguese from

Spanish territory. So he turned south by east into the Atlantic,

and reached the icebound crags of a desert island, 54° south

latitude. Again heading northeast, he struck boldly across the

south Atlantic and reached the coast of Sierra Leone in a straight

course of four thousand miles (see map, p. 10). This voyage,

which lasted over a year, showed that the land along whose

northern shores the Spanish navigators had sailed was not an

island off the southeastern coast of Asia, but a great continent.

It led also to the naming of the western continent.

14. The Vespucci wrote to Italian friends : ^' We found what may be

reveaie™jf ' called a new world . . . since most of the ancients said that there

Vespucci's

Facsimile of Page in Waldseemiiller's Edition of Ptolemy's ''Geography" (1507), suggesting the Name of America

was no continent below the equator." A^espucci's " new world," then, was a new southern continent. In 1507 the faculty of the college of St. Die, in the Vosges Mountains, were preparing a new edition of Ptolemy's '' Geography." Martin Waldseemiiller wrote an introduction to the edition, in which he included one of Vespucci's letters, and made the suggestion that since in addition to Europe, Asia, and Africa, ^^ another fourth part has been discovered by Americus Vespucius . . . I do not see what fairly hinders us from calling it A?ne?'ige or America, viz., the land of Americus.'^ At the same time Waldseemiiller made a map of the world on which he placed the new continent and named it America. This map was lost for centuries, and scholars were almost convinced that it never existed, when in the summer of

1 90 1 an Austrian professor found it in the library of a castle in Wiirttemberg. It had evidently circulated enough before its disappearance to fix the name ^' America " on the new southern continent, whence it spread to the land north of the Isthmus of Panama.^

The admirers of Columbus from the sixteenth century to 15. Why the the twentieth have cried out against the injustice of the name was not "^

"America" instead of " Columbia" for the New World, "as if °amedfor

ITS rea.!

the Sistine Madonna had been called not by Raphael's name, discoverer,

Columbus but by the name of the man who first framed it." But there

was no injustice done, at least with intent. " America " was a

name invented for what was thought to be a netv tvorld south

of the equator, whereas Columbus and his associates believed

that they had only found a new way to the Old World. When it

was realized that Columbus had really discovered the new world

of which Vespucci wrote, it was too late to remedy the mistake

in the name. So it came about that this continent was named,

by an obscure German professor in a French college, after an

Italian navigator in the service of the king of Portugal.

A Century of Exploration

From the death of Columbus (1506) to the planting of the 16. The first permanent English colony on the shores of America (1607) pioration^S" just a century elapsed, — a century filled with romantic voyages the s^ixteenth and thrilling tales of exploration and conquest in the New World. Nowadays men explore new countries for scientific study of the native races or the soil and its products, or to open up new markets for trade and develop the hidden resources of the land ; but in the romantic sixteenth century Spanish noblemen tramped

1 Although Waldseemiiller himself dropped the name " America " when he realized that this was, after all, the land discovered by Columbus in 1498, and in the same edition of Ptolemy for which he had written the Introduction, labeled South America " terra incognita " (" unknown land "), the name " America " soon reappeared and gradually spread to the northern continent until, in 1541, the geographer M creator applied it to the whole mainland from Labrador to Patagonia.

through the swamps and tangles of Florida to find the fountain of perpetual youth, or toiled a thousand miles over the western desert, lured by the dazzling gold of fabled cities of splendor. The sixteenth century was furthermore a century of intense religious belief ; so we find a grim spirit of missionary zeal mingled with the thirst for gold. The cross was planted in the wilderness, and the soldiers knelt in thanksgiving on the ground stained by the blood of their heretical neighbors.

17. Eastern Of course it was Asia with its fabulous wealth, not America object of the with its savage tracts and tribes, which was the real goal of

explorers' European explorers. Until even far into the seventeenth century search r r y

the mariners were searching the northern coast of America for a way around the continent, and hailing the broad mouth of each new river as a possible passage to the Indies. Columbus in his fourth voyage (1502) had skirted the coast of Central America to find the passage to Cathay, and Vespucci in his great voyage of 1501-1502 had followed the South American coast far enough to demonstrate that he had found a '' new world," even if he had not discovered a gateway to the East.

18. Magei- With Columbus and Vespucci we must rank a third mariner, saiis^ar^ound Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese in the service of the king i^foT^M*^' ^^ Spain. In September, 15 19, Magellan with five ships and

about three hundred men started on what proved to be perhaps the most romantic voyage in history. Reaching the Brazilian coast, he made his way south, and after quelling a dangerous mutiny in his winter quarters on the bleak coast of Patagonia, entered the narrow straits (since called by his name) at the extremity of South America. A stormy passage of five weeks through the tortuous narrows brought him out on the calm waters of an ocean to which, in grateful relief, he gave the name " Pacific." ^ Magellan met worse trials than storms, however, when he put out into the Pacific. Week after week he

1 Magellan was not the first European to see that great ocean. Several years earlier the Spaniard Balboa, with an exploring party from Hayti, had crossed the isthmus now named Panama, and discovered the Pacific, to which he gave the pame " South Sea."

1519-1522 sailed westward across the smiling but apparently interminable sea, little dreaming that he had embarked on waters which cover nearly half the globe. Hunger grew to starvation, thirst to madness. Twice on the voyage of ten thousand miles land appeared to the eyes of the famished sailors, only to prove a barren, rocky island. At last the inhabited islands of Australasia were reached. Magellan himself was killed in a fight with the natives of the Philippine Islands, but his sole seaworthy ship, the Victoria, continued westward across the Indian Ocean, and rounding the Cape of Good Hope, reached Lisbon with a crew of eighteen "ghostlike men," September 6, 1522.

Magellan's ship had circumnavigated the globe. His wonder- 19. signififul voyage proved conclusively the sphericity of the earth, and Magellan's showed the great preponderance of water over land. It demon- voyage strated that America was not a group of islands off the Asiatic coast (as Columbus had thought), nor even a southern continent reaching down in a peninsula from the corner of China (see maps, pp. 18-19), ^^^ ^ continent set in its own he??iisphere, and separated on the west from the old world of Cathay by a far greater expanse of water than on the east from the old world of Europe. It still required generations of explorers to develop the true size and shape of the western continent ; but Magellan's wonderful voyage had located the continent at last in its relation to the known countries of the world.

While Magellan's starving sailors were battling their way 20. cortez'i across the Pacific, stirring scenes were being enacted in Mexico. JJexico^^ ° The Spaniards, starting from Hayti as a base, had conquered 1519-1521 and colonized Porto Rico and Cuba (1508), and sent expeditions west to the Isthmus of Panama (Balboa, 15 13), and north to Florida (Ponce de Leon, 15 13). In 15 19 Hernando Cortez, a Spanish adventurer of great courage and sagacity, was sent by the governor of Cuba to conquer and plunder the rich Indian kingdom which explorers had found to the north of the isthmus. This was the Aztec confederacy of Indian tribes under an " emperor," Montezuma. The land was rich in silver and gold ;

the people were skilled in art and architecture. They had an elaborate religion with splendid temples, but practiced the cruel rite of human sacrifices. Their capital city of Mexico was situated on an island in the middle of a lake, and approached by four causeways from the four cardinal points of the compass. One of their religious legends told of a fair-haired god of the sky (Quetzacoatl), who had been driven out to sea, but who would return again to rule over them in peace and plenty. When the natives saw the Spaniard with his " white-winged towers " moving on the sea, they thought that the " fair god " had returned. Cortez was not slow to follow up this advantage. His belching cannon and armored knights increased the superstitious awe of the natives. By a rare combination of courage and intrigue, Cortez seized their ruler, Montezuma, captured their capital, and made their ancient and opulent realm a dependency of Spain (152 1). It was the first sure footing of the Spaniards on the American continent, and served as an important base for further exploration and conquest. 21. Spanish The twenty years following Cortez's conquest of Mexico fn^America "i^rk the height of Spanish exploration in America. From 1520-1550 Kansas to Chile, and from the Carolinas to the Pacific, the flag and speech of Spain were carried. No feature of excitement and romance is absent from the vivid accounts which the heroes of these expeditions have left us. Now it is a survivor of shipwreck in the Mexican Gulf, making his way from tribe to tribe across the vast stretches of Texas and Mexico to the Gulf of California (Cabeza de Vaca, 1 528-1 536) ; now it is the ruffian captain Pizarro, repeating south of the isthmus the conquest of Cortez, and adding the untold wealth of the silver mines of Peru to the Spanish treasury (i 531-1533) ; now it is the noble governor De Soto, with his train of six hundred knights in "doublets and cassocks of silk" and his priests in splendid vestments, with his Portuguese in shining armor, his horses, hounds, and hogs, all ready for a triumphal procession to kingdoms of gold and ivory — but doomed to toil, with his famished