ered1531. Pizarro subjugates Peru.
1541. De Soto discovers the Mississippi.
1552—1599. Edmund Spencer, English poet.
1552—1618. Sir Walter Raleigh, English historian and poet.
1554—1586. Sir Philip Sidney, poet and knight.
1553—1603. Reign of Elizabeth.
1561—1626. Francis Bacon, English philosopher.
1564—1616. Shakespeare, English poet.
1585. Raleigh's first Virginia colony.
1587. Raleigh's second colony.
1603—1625. Reign of James I.
Quebec founded by Champlain.
1608. Quebec founded by Champlain.
1608—1674. John Milton, English poet.
1609. Hudson discovers the Hudson River. a mighty inland river which told of a vast extent of land to the northward, and soon the world was ready to believe almost any marvellous tale.
The new continent, with its strange vegetable and animal life, with its mystery and its wealth, appealed powerfully to the imagination of the masses. It was literally a new world that was opened to the eyes of Europeans, a world peopled by a race of beings as distinct and individual as if the only one ever created on the planet, the objects of the most intense curiosity in the Old World.
It was a century of feverish dreams of new empires, of gold, of conquest. The return of Pizarro from Peru with his shiploads of treasure set all of Europe on fire. Spain, England, and France took the lead, and vied with each other in a mad scramble for the new continent.
The Colonial Age. — (Fisher's Colonial Era, Thwaite's The Colonies: 1492—1750.) The Age of Discovery was succeeded inAmerica by the Colonial Age. The spirt of maritime adventure and exploration which had grown into a passion during the early part of the Sixteenth Century began to subside as the new continent became better known, and the nations now sought to make good to acquired territory by planting colonies.
