PROVmCETOWN. 
217 
that you recognize on charts for more than a generation 
afterward, — though Verrazzani’s rude plot (made under 
French auspices) was regarded by Hackluyt, more 
than fifty years after his voyage (in 1524), as the 
most accurate representation of our coast. The French 
trail is distinct. They went measuring and sounding, 
and w^hen they got home had something to show for 
their voyages and explorations. There was no danger 
of their charts being lost, as Cabot’s have been. 
The most distinguished navigators of that day were 
Italians, or of Italian descent, and Portuguese. The 
French and Spaniards, though less advanced in the 
science of navigation than the former, possessed more 
imagination and spirit of adventure than the English, 
and were better fitted to be the explorers of a new con¬ 
tinent even as late as 1751. 
This spirit it was which so early carried the French 
to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi on the north, and 
the Spaniard to the same river on the south. It was 
long before our frontiers reached their settlements in the 
west, and a voyageur or coiireur de bois is still our con¬ 
ductor there. Prairie is a French word, as Sierra is 
a Spanish one. Augustine in Florida, and Santa Fe 
in New Mexico [1582], both built by the Spaniards, 
are considered the oldest towns in the United States. 
Within the memory of the oldest man, the Anglo- 
Americans were confined between the Apalachian 
Mountains and the sea, “ a space not two hundrea 
miles broad,” while the Mississippi was by treaty the 
eastern boundary of New France. (See the pamphlet 
on settling the Ohio, London, 1763, bound up with the 
travels of Sir John Bartrara.) So far as inland discov¬ 
ery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English 
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