esent United States. On Easter Sunday, 1512, he
discovered the land to which he gave the name of Florida or Flower Land.
Numberless discoverers succeeded him. De Soto led a great expedition
northward and westward, in 1539-43, with no greater reward than the
discovery of the Mississippi. Among the French explorers to claim Canada
under the name of New France, were Verrazzano, 1524, and Cartier,
1534-42. Champlain began Quebec in 1608. The oldest town in the United
States, St. Augustine, Florida, was founded September 8, 1565, by
Menendez de Aviles, who brought a train of soldiers, priests and negro
slaves. The second oldest town, Santa Fe, was founded by the Spaniards
in 1581.

John Cabot, a Venetian residing in Bristol, was the first person sailing
under the English flag, to come to these shores. He sailed in 1497, with
his three sons, but no settlement was effected. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was
lost at sea in 1583, and Walter Raleigh, his cousin, took up claims that
had been made to him by Queen Elizabeth, and crossed to the shores of
the present North Carolina. Sir Richard Grenville left one hundred and
eighty persons at Roanoke Island, in 1585. They were glad to escape at
the earliest opportunity. Fifteen persons left there later were murdered
by the Indians. Still a third settlement, consisting of one hundred and
eighteen persons, disappeared, leaving no trace. Raleigh was discouraged
and made over his patent to others, who were still less successful.

The Plymouth Colony and London Colony were formed under King James I. as
business enterprises. The parties to the patents were capitalists, who
had the right to settle colonists and servants, impose duties and coin
money, and who were to pay a share of the profits in the enterprise to
the Crown.

The London company, under the name of Jamestown, established the
beginning of the first English town in America, May 13, 1607, with one
hundred colonists. Captain John Smith was the genius of the colony, and
it enjoyed a certain prosperity while he remained with it. A curious
incident of its history was the importation of a large number of young
women of good character, who were sold for one hundred and twenty, or
even one hundred and fifteen, pounds of tobacco (at thirteen shillings a
pound) to the lonely settlers. The Company failed, with all its
expenditures, some half-million dollars, in 1624, and at that time,
numbered only two thousand souls--the relics of nine thousand,