Historia, filosofía-biografia-pensamiento

1584. These half-piratical attempts against Spain led continually into American waters, till the notion of forming a permanent outpost here as base for such adventures suggested to Sir Humphrey Gilbert the plan, which he failed to realize, of founding an American settlement. Gilbert visited our shores in 1579, and again in 1583, but was lost on his return from the latter voyage. In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh sent two captains, Amidas and Barlow, to inspect the coast off what is now North Carolina. They reported so favorably that he began, next year, a colony on Roanoke Island. England was now a Protestant land, and no longer heeded Spanish claims to the transatlantic continent, save so far as actual settlements had been made. 1586. Sir Richard Grenville commanded this expedition, but was to return on seeing the one hundred and eight colonists who accompanied him well established. Queen Elizabeth gave the name VIRGINIA to the new country. Drake, tending homeward from one of his raids ...

How the French fought for foothold in Florida and were routed by the Spaniards has just been related. So early as 1504, and possibly much earlier, before Cabot or Columbus, French sailors were familiar with the fisheries of Newfoundland. To the Isle of Cape Breton they gave its name in remembrance of their own Brittany. The attention of the French Government was thus early directed toward America, and it at length determined to share in the new discoveries along with the Spanish and the English. In 1524 Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, was sent by Francis I. on a voyage of discovery to the New World. Sighting the shores of America near the present Wilmington, North Carolina, he explored the coast of New Jersey, touched land near New York Bay, and anchored a few days in the harbor of Newport. In this vicinity he came upon an island, which was probably Block Island. Sailing from here along the coast as far north as Newfoundland, he named this vast territory New France. 1540. In 1534...