irst heard of the great river destined to
carry French dominion to the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: Movements due to religion.]

Trade often finds in religion an associate and coadjutor in directing
and stimulating the historical movement. China regards modern Christian
missions as effective European agencies for the spread of commercial and
political power. Jesuit and fur-trader plunged together into the wilds
of colonial Canada; Spanish priest and gold-seeker into Mexico and Peru.
American missionary pressed close upon the heels of fur-trader into the
Oregon country. Jason Lee, having established a Methodist mission on the
Willamette in 1834, himself experienced sudden conversion from
religionist to colonizer. He undertook a temporary mission back to the
settled States, where he preached a stirring propaganda for the
settlement and appropriation of the disputed Oregon country, before the
British should fasten their grip upon it. The United States owes Hawaii
to the expansionist spirit of American missionaries. Thirty years after
their arrival in the islands, they held all the important offices under
the native government, and had secured valuable tracts of lands, laying
the foundation of the landed aristocracy of planters established there
to-day. Their sons and grandsons took the lead in the Revolution of
1893, and in the movement for annexation to the United States. Thus
sometimes do the meek inherit the earth.

[Sidenote: Religious pilgrimages.]

The famous pilgrimages of the world, in which the commercial element has
been more or less conspicuous,[189] have contributed greatly to the
circulation of peoples and ideas, especially as they involve multitudes
and draw from a large circle of lands. Their economic, intellectual and
political effects rank them as one phase of the historical movement.
Herodotus tells of seven hundred thousand Egyptians flocking to the city
of Bubastis from all parts of Egypt for the festival of Diana.[190] The
worship of Ashtoreth in Bambyce in Syria drew votaries from all the
Semitic peoples except the Jews. As early as 386 A.D. Christian
pilgrims flocked to Jerusalem from Armenia, Persia, India, Ethiopia, and
even from Gaul and Britain. Jerusalem gave rise to those armed
pilgrimages, the Crusades, with all their far-reaching results. The
pilgrimages to Rome, which in the Jubilee of 1300 brought two hundred
thousand worshipers to the sacred city, did much to consolidate papal
supremacy