134

GROWTH OF ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS, 1700-1760 178

AREA OF GERMAN SETTLEMENTS AND FRONTIER
LINE IN 1775 180

AREA OF SETTLEMENT IN 1774; BOUNDARY PROPOSED
BY SPAIN IN 1782; BOUNDARY SECURED
BY TREATY OF 1783; AND SETTLEMENTS WEST
OF ALLEGHANIES IN 1783 272

BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

CHAPTER I

THE DISCOVERY OF THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW

_We come in search of Christians and spices._ VASCO DA GAMA.

_Gold is excellent; gold is treasure, and he that possesses it does
all that he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls
into paradise._

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.

I

Contact with the Orient has always been an important factor in the
history of Europe. Centers of civilization and of political power have
shifted with every decisive change in the relations of East and West.
Opposition between Greek and barbarian may be regarded as the _motif_ of
Greek history, as it is a persistent refrain in Greek literature. The
plunder of Asia made Rome an empire whose capital was on the Bosphorus
more centuries than it was on the Tiber. Mediaeval civilization rose to
its height when the Italian cities wrested from Constantinople the
mastery of the Levantine trade; and in the sixteenth century, when the
main traveled roads to the Far East shifted to the ocean, direction of
European affairs passed from Church and Empire to the rising national
states on the Atlantic. The history of America is inseparable from
these wider relations. The discovery of the New World was the direct
result of European interest in the Far East, an incident in the charting
of new highways for the world's commerce. In the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries Europeans first gained reliable knowledge of Far
Eastern countries, of the routes by which they might be reached, above
all of the hoarded-treasure which lay there awaiting the first comer.
Columbus, endeavoring to establish direct connections with these
countries for trade and exploitation, found America blocking the way.
The discovery of the New World was but the sequel to the discovery of
the Old.

From the ninth to the eleventh century the people of Western Europe had
lived in comparative isolation. With half the heritage of the Roman
Empire in infidel hands, the followers of the Cross and of t