was the first reached and the
most important. It was conquered by different European races, and
shoals of European settlers were thrust forth upon its shores. These
sometimes displaced and sometimes merely overcame and lived among the
natives. They also, to their own lasting harm, committed a crime whose
shortsighted folly was worse than its guilt, for they brought hordes
of African slaves, whose descendants now form immense populations in
certain portions of the land. Throughout the continent we therefore
find the white, red, and black races in every stage of purity and
intermixture. One result of this great turmoil of conquest and
immigration has been that, in certain parts of America, the lines of
cleavage of race are so far from coinciding with the lines of cleavage
of speech that they run at right angles to them--as in the four
communities of Ontario, Quebec, Havti, and Jamaica.

Each intruding European power, in winning for itself new realms beyond
the seas, had to wage a twofold war, overcoming the original
inhabitants with one hand, and with the other warding off the assaults
of the kindred nations that were bent on the same schemes. Generally
the contests of the latter kind were much the most important. The
victories by which the struggles between the European conquerors
themselves were ended deserve lasting commemoration. Yet, sometimes,
even the most important of them, sweeping though they were, were in
parts less sweeping than they seemed. It would be impossible to
overestimate the far-reaching effects of the overthrow of the French
power in America; but Lower Canada, where the fatal blow was given,
itself suffered nothing but a political conquest, which did not
interfere in the least with the growth of a French state along both
sides of the lower St. Lawrence. In a somewhat similar way Dutch
communities have held their own, and indeed have sprung up in South
Africa.

All the European nations touching on the Atlantic seaboard took part
in the new work, with very varying success; Germany alone, then rent
by many feuds, having no share therein. Portugal founded a single
state, Brazil. The Scandinavian nations did little: their chief colony
fell under the control of the Dutch. The English and the Spaniards
were the two nations to whom the bulk of the new lands fell: the
former getting much the greater portion. The conquests of the
Spaniards took place in the sixteenth century. The West Indies and
Mexico, Pe