74 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



yet for more than a century after the voyages of Columbus there 

 were but two settlements within the present limits of the United 

 States, and both of Spanish origin. The Atlantic slope, whose 

 streams flow eastward from the Alleghany mountains, abounds 

 in safe harbors and land-locked bays, in whose restful waters 

 the ships of the early French and English navigators found 

 shelter after their long and perilous voyages ; but the dense 

 forest frowned be} r ond the coast-line, the shore seemed unattract- 

 ive, and the ships sailed southward to the fabled land of gold 

 and precious stones. It was with surprise that the early mar- 

 iners skirted these somber shores barring the way to India, for 

 they believed that north of Florida, supposed to be an island, 

 the open sea led on to the Indian ocean. 1 A waterway across the 

 continent was diligently sought in the belief that America, if 

 not an island, was but a projection of Asia, and John Smith 

 expected by ascending the James, the Potomac, or the Hudson, 

 to emerge upon the South sea. Among his commissions was one 

 to seek a new route to China by ascending the Chickahominy. 



With the opening of the seventeenth century were planted 

 the first English colonies in America. Humble merchants and 

 pilgrims, wanderers going forth in frail ships to find uncertain 

 lands, holding as their titles vague charters from King James, 

 landed at Jamestown and on Plymouth Rock. :! With a world 

 to divide, monarchs were generous in those days, and did their 

 rude surveying on the council table, using parallels of latitude 

 and unknown seas for boundaries. It mattered little that the 

 London and Plymouth companies were granted lands overlap- 

 ping by three degrees of latitude, for as neither was allowed to 

 settle within a hundred miles of the other, there was no danger 

 of bad neighbors. When, to rectify all errors, the London Com- 

 pany received new boundaries, 3 they were described as extending 

 two hundred miles from Old Point Comfort along the Atlantic 

 coast in each direction, north and south, and "up into the land 

 from sea to sea, west and northwest" — a line which was after- 

 ward held to give to Virginia the greater part of North America. 



There was no contest for possession of the continent in those 

 early days. Hudson leisurely sailed up the river which now 

 bears his name and claimed it for the Dutch. Gustavus Adol- 

 phus, the "Snow King" of the North, without opposition, sent 



i.See Da Vinci's map of 1512-1510. This and the other maps referred to in the notes 

 may be found inMcCoun's Historical Geography of the United'States. 

 2 See map of King James' Patent of 1600. 

 8 See map of Reorganization of the Plymouth Company in 1020. 



