voyages must have been undertaken, but all traces of them are lost. In 1524 Giovanni da Verrazano. sailing with a commission from the French king, followed the North American coast for a long distance, perhaps from Cape Fear as far as Cape Race. His narrative provides the earliest description of many of the characteristic features of the coast. At one point he saw open water beyond low-lying land, such as the narrow islands which protect the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, and he guessed that this might be the much-sought Southern Sea. In consequence, many of the maps of the ensuing years represent a vast gulf of the Pacific, entering from the west and occupying the larger part of the northern continent, being separated by a narrow isthmus from the Atlantic. In 1534 and 1535 Jacques Cartier entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence and sailed up the river as far as the present site of Montreal, where he heard of the Great Lakes— another hopeful clue to the longed-for water passage to the east. During the second half of the century, attempts at settlement led to a more careful determination of the details of the north Atlantic coast. St. Augustine was founded in 1565. Raleigh's famous “lost colony” on the Carolina or “Virginia” coast was established in 1587, and the attempts to determine the fate of the settlers led to several voyages during the next two decades, by means of which the coast was more or less carefully examined from New Jersey southward. Farther north, the work of Gosnold in 1602, Pring in 1603, Champlain and Weymouth in 1605, and Hudson in 1609, marked out the courses which were followed year by year by a constantly increasing number of vessels.
Champlain settled Quebec in 1608, and began the systematic exploration of the interior by visiting the lake which preserves his name in 1609. In 1615 he penetrated to Lake Huron. Traders and missionaries year by year pushed their way farther up the river and along the lakes. Père Allouez, in 1665, founded a mission on the southern shores of Lake Superior, and in 1672, accompanied by P. Dablon, he made a tour through Wisconsin and Illinois. A year later Marquette and Joliet reached the Upper Mississippi. In 1679 La Salle began his career by a voyage from Niagara to the southern end of Lake Michigan. Hennepin, one of La Salle's companions, crossed to the Mississippi, which he followed up as far as Minneapolis in 1680. Two years later La Salle made a trip down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and on to the Gulf of Mexico, establishing the claim of France to the whole of the interior of the continent.
Henry Hudson, in 1610, entered the bay to which his name has been attached, and there he was left in an open boat by his mutinous sailors. Some years earlier, in 1502, Juan de la Fuca, in a Spanish vessel, probably entered the sound on the western coast which was more carefully explored and named by Captain Vancouver exactly two hundred years later, and carried home a report that he had seen a vast stretch of open water extending eastward. The attempts to find a way between these two bays, the search for the northwest passage, belongs to the article on Arctic discovery. The discovery of the interior of Canada was largely accomplished by the trappers and agents of the Hudson's Bay Company, which was organized in 1670; but it was not until 1740 that Varenne de la Verendrye made known the vast extent of the country lying east of the northern Rocky Mountains. In 1769-72 the fur trader Hearne traced the Coppermine River to the sea, and in 1793 Mr. (afterward Sir A.) Mackenzie, while crossing the continent for the first time north of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, discovered the course of the river to which his name has been given.
The exploration of the western part of the United States did not begin until after the republic had acquired that region. As soon as the Louisiana purchase had been concluded, Jefferson dispatched Lewis and Clark to investigate the course of the Missouri and determine its relation to the Pacific, which they did by descending the Columbia to the sea, their journey occupying the years 1804-06. Pike, meanwhile, was traversing the country between the head waters of the Mississippi and Red rivers, and afterward, 1806, he followed the mountain ranges south, discovering the peak known by his name, and making important contributions to an understanding of the geography of the southwest.
Among the other explorers of the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century were Long, Bonneville, Schoolcraft, Catlin, Nicollet, and Frémont. Among their successors in the second half of the century were Wheeler, Whitney, Hayden, and Powell. The list of explorers of British America and Alaska in the nineteenth century embraces Sir John Franklin, Back, Richardson, Beechy, Dease, Simpson, and Rae, whose activity lay in the realm of Arctic exploration, and Bell, Selwyn, Dawson, Dall, Muir, Allen, Schwatka, Ogilvie, Russell, and Low. Of the many explorers of South America in modern times mention may be made of Humboldt, Maximilian of Wied, Spix, Martius, Auguste de Sainte-Hilaire. Orbigny, Pöppig, the brothers Schomburgk, Darwin, Avé-Lallemant, Tschudi, Castelnau, Burmeister, Herndon and Gibbon, Chandless, Crevaux, Bates, Karl von den Steinen, and Ehrenreich. Among the explorers of the Andes in recent times have been Reiss, Stübel, Whymper, Fitzgerald, and Conway.
Colonization. Before Columbus left the newly discovered West India Islands in January, 1493, he built a fort on Española, now Haiti. Here some forty of his sailors remained to form a settlement which should serve as headquarters for the further discoveries that Columbus expected to make as soon as he could return to the new world. These first Spanish colonists were killed by the Indians, but their places were taken by others, numbering between two and three hundred, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage. During the early months of 1494 the town which they built, named in honor of the queen, Isabella, rapidly assumed the appearance of a flourishing city. During the next ten years a constant stream of settlers, many of them accompanied by their families, flowed from Spain into the new city. Many of these remained there to practice the trades necessary to town life, while others took farms near by or went on to assist in building up the newer towns which were being established at every good harbor and in the mining districts. These places became in a surprisingly short time practically self-supporting, and they were soon able to supply men and equipment for further exploration. Cortes drew from Cuba whatever he needed for his enterprise of 1519, a debt which Mexico repaid by furnishing the supplies for the large expedition which Vasquez Coronado led through the present Arizona
