s
Poem, "Columbus," _High School Reader_, pp. 143-145.

When Columbus landed on the island-fringe of America in 1492, he thought
he had found what he had set out to find--the eastern country of India;
and he believed it all his life. This idea survived for several
generations, partly because of the great wealth of Mexico and Peru. When
Europeans were at last convinced that it was not India, they began again
to seek a way to the East, and looked on the continent of America merely
as an obstacle in their path. To find the road to Cathay was still their
chief ambition.

In 1497, John Cabot, under a charter from Henry VII of England, set out
to find a way to the East, and landed on North America; in 1498, his
son, Sebastian Cabot, explored the coast from Labrador to South
Carolina, with the same object.

In 1534, on his first voyage, Cartier thought, when he arrived at Gaspe
and saw the great river coming from the west, that he had discovered the
gateway to the East.

With the same object in view, Champlain, in 1609, explored the Richelieu
River and Lake Champlain. In 1613, he listened, only to be deceived, to
the story of Vignau about a way to the East up the Ottawa River to a
large lake and into another river that would lead to the Western Sea.

Henry Hudson made four voyages in search of a way through or round the
continent. On the first, second, and fourth, he tried to go round by a
North-west or a North-east passage. On the third voyage, in 1609, he
sailed up the Hudson River for 150 miles, only to find his way blocked.
A curious fact is that on this voyage he must, at one time, have been
only about twenty leagues from Champlain, when the latter was exploring
Lake Champlain on the same errand. (Show this on the map.) On his fourth
voyage, in 1610, Hudson discovered the bay that now bears his name, and
he must have thought, when he saw that great stretch of water to the
West, that he was at last successful. He wintered there, and when the
ice broke up in the spring, his men mutinied and set him, his young son,
and two companions, adrift in a boat, and they were never heard of
again. (See _The Story of the British People_ pp. 234-235.)

The Mississippi was long looked upon as a possible way to the Pacific
Ocean. La Salle explored the great lakes and the Ohio, Illinois, and
Mississippi Rivers. This last he found to flow south into the Gulf of
Mexico, instead of west into the Pacific Ocean. His settlement on
Mo