The Mentor, No. 35,
The Story of America in Pictures:
The Contest for North America

The Mentor

“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

THE STORY OF AMERICA IN PICTURES
THE CONTEST FOR NORTH AMERICA

By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
Professor of Government, Harvard University

The whole round world is now open. Gone is the pleasure of finding new lands, sighting strange mountains, floating down mysterious rivers, and meeting unknown races of men. After Mt. Everest is climbed by some daring mountaineer, and after an airship lands on the highest peak of Mt. McKinley, what will be left for the seeker of novelty? Where can you now find a river or mountain range or tribe certified never before to have been seen by white men?

That rich pleasure was enjoyed in the fullest measure by the explorers in North America; in fact, they enjoyed it so much that they kept it alive for four centuries. For a good two hundred and fifty years the English at intervals battered their way into Hudson Bay, and Davis Strait, and the Arctic deserts, trying to smash a route through the ice, around to the north of Asia and Europe. Nearly three centuries passed after De Soto reached the lower Mississippi before Lieutenant Pike found its source in its native lair. As late as 1880 no man, white or red, knew the passes across the Canadian Rockies; and to this day only three boat parties have ever gone through the length of the canyon of the Colorado.

ROBERT CAVELIER DE LA SALLE

Born 1643; died 1687.

In the work of opening up North America the French surpassed the English: if no bolder, they were more adventurous. From the lower St. Lawrence they held a direct route into the interior, which flanked the two great obstacles to western exploration; namely, the Six Nations of the Iroquois and the Alleghany Mountains. It is hard to say which was the firmer wall against English discovery.

FRENCH ADVENTURE

LA SALLE’S SHIP, THE GRIFFIN

From an old print.

If we were only French, we could weep at the splendid story of French discovery, as compared with the final collapse of the French empire on the continent of North America. The French were the first to find the St. Lawrence; first to see each one of the Great Lakes; first to spread exaggerated ideas about Niagara Falls—where, according to Mark Twain, the hack fares in his time were so much higher than the falls that the visitor did not perceive the latter. They were first to be awestruck at the site of the future city of Chicago; first to reach the Mississippi; first to be stopped by the Falls of St. Anthony, which unfortunately were not at that time subject to conservation; first to navigate the Mississippi; first to see the Rocky Mountains; first to cross from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay. What a fate, to be the star actors in so many first performances, and then not to appear at