National Geographic : 1899 Mar
74 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES yet for more than a century after the voyages of Columbus there were but two settlements within the present limits of the United States, and both of Spanish origin. The Atlantic slope, whose streams flow eastward from the Alleghany mountains, abounds in safe harbors and land-locked bays, in whose restful waters the ships of the early French and English navigators found shelter after their long and perilous voyages; but the dense forest frowned beyond the coast-line, the shore seemed unattract ive, and the ships sailed southward to the fabled land of gold and precious stones. It was with surprise that the early mar iners skirted these somber shores barring the way to India, for they believed that north of Florida, supposed to be an island, the open sea led on to the Indian ocean. 1 A waterway across the continent was diligently sought in the belief that America, if not an island, was but a projection of Asia, and John Smith Expected by ascending the James, the Potomac, or the Hudson, to emerge upon the South sea. Among his commissions was one to seek a new route to China by ascending the Chickahominy. With the opening of the seventeenth century were planted the first English colonies in America. Humble merchants and pilgrims, wanderers going forth in frail ships to find uncertain lands, holding as their titles vague charters from King James, landed at Jamestown and on Plymouth Rock." With a world to divide, monarchs were generous in those days, and did their rude surveying on the council table, using parallels of latitude and unknown seas for boundaries. It mattered little that the London and Plymouth companies were granted lands overlap ping by three degrees of latitude, for as neither was allowed to settle within a hundred miles of the other, there was no danger of bad neighbors. When, to rectify all errors, the London Com pany received new boundaries, 3 they were described as extending two hundred miles from Old Point Comfort along the Atlantic coast in each direction, north and south, and "up into the land from sea to sea, west and northwest "-a line which was after ward held to give to Virginia the greater part of North America. There was no contest for possession of the continent in those early days. Hudson leisurely sailed up the river which now bears his name and claimed it for the Dutch. Gustavus Adol phus, the "Snow King" of the North, without opposition, sent 1 See Da Vinci's map of 1512-1516. This and the other maps referred to in the notes may be found in McCoun's Historical Geography of the United States. 2 See map of King James' Patent of 1606. 3 See map of Reorganization of the Plymouth Company in 1620.