It would seem to have been especially ordered by Providence that
the discovery of the two great divisions of the American
hemisphere should fall to the two races best fitted to conquer
and colonize them. Thus the northern section was consigned to
the Anglo-Saxon race, whose orderly, industrious habits found an
ample field for development under its colder skies and on its
more rugged soil; while the southern portion, with its rich
tropical products and treasures of mineral wealth, held out the
most attractive bait to invite the enterprise of the Spaniard.
How different might have been the result, if the bark of Columbus
had taken a more northerly direction, as he at one time
meditated, and landed its band of adventurers on the shores of
what is now Protestant America!
Under the pressure of that spirit of nautical enterprise which
filled the maritime communities of Europe in the sixteenth
century, the whole extent of the mighty continent, from Labrador
to Terra del Fuego, was explored in less than thirty years after
its discovery; and in 1521, the Portuguese Maghellan, sailing
under the Spanish flag, solved the problem of the strait, and
found a westerly way to the long sought Spice-islands of India, -
greatly to the astonishment of the Portuguese, who, sailing from
the opposite direction, there met their rivals, face to face, at
the antipodes. But while the whole eastern coast of the American
continent had been explored, and the central portion of it
colonized, - even after the brilliant achievement of the Mexican
conquest, - the veil was not yet raised that hung over the golden
shores of the Pacific.
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