Our first century . pushed theirexplorations up the St. Lawrence, through the GreatLakes, and onward to the Mississippi itself. Theypreached and traded as they went,but they were moved in part bythe hope of finding somewherethat water way through Americato Asia which had been the lureof all other adventurers ever sinceColumbus had found a continentstanding in the way. They did not find that waterway of course, for the simple rea-son that it did not exist. Butthey did find a vast and fertileterritory west of the Alleghenies which they later tookpossession of as a French domain. Had they been ab
Our first century . pushed theirexplorations up the St. Lawrence, through the GreatLakes, and onward to the Mississippi itself. Theypreached and traded as they went,but they were moved in part bythe hope of finding somewherethat water way through Americato Asia which had been the lureof all other adventurers ever sinceColumbus had found a continentstanding in the way. They did not find that waterway of course, for the simple rea-son that it did not exist. Butthey did find a vast and fertileterritory west of the Alleghenies which they later tookpossession of as a French domain. Had they been ablepermanently to hold that great valley of the Mississippiand its tributaries, the English colonies in America, allof which lay mainly east of the Allegheny Mountains,could never have built up on this continent the greatrepublic of which we are all proud to be citizens. Thestory of the French expulsion from the Mississippi valleybelongs to a later period of history. Another thing that the French were doing all this. French Couicur Lo THE FRENCH IN AMERICA 163 time was fishing on the banks of Newfoundland and inthe waters east of the EngHsh colonies. The people ofNew England also employed themselves largely in fish-ing. Their climate and soil did not greatly tempt mento farming or stock raising, and so the men of that re-gion, as we have seen in a former chapter, with shrewdintelligence, began to build ships and to man them foruse in the profitable industry of fishing for cod andmackerel in those seas in which such fish abound. Thiscircumstance led ultimately to important consequences,as we shall see later. For one thing it prompted NewEngland carpenters to learn how to build stout and fleetships out of the superb timber which abounded in theircountry, and it prompted the young men of New Eng-land to become expert sailors, skilled in all the arts ofnavigation, and as bold upon the sea as ever the vikingsof Scandinavia had been. These circumstances, unimportant as they may s
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