Days of the Discoverers

The winter was colder than they had expected. This land, so much further south than Norway, was bitten by frost as Norway never was. There is something in intense cold which is...

[1] Kanonghsionni was the name which the Iroquois gave themselves. It appears that at this time they occupied the country along the St. Lawrence held some centuries before by th...

He was a dark thin young friar from the mountains near Seville. In 1488 his mother, waiting, as women must, for news from the wars, vowed that if God and the Most Catholic Sover...

Klooskap's children, the last and least, Bidden to dance at his farewell feast, Under the great moon's wizard light, Over the mountain's drifted white, The Winag'mesuk, the wood...

"Nay, that's a bigger place than you guess, over yonder. Ever see the map that Doctor Dee made for Queen Bess near thirty years ago? I remember him showing it to my grandsire wi...

But this was not an impossible situation to the young Spanish cavaliers, for in the Moorish wars it had often been necessary to construct a road over the mountains. A number of...

Amerigo Vespucci has been unjustly accused of endeavoring to steal the glory of Columbus, but there is no evidence that he ever contemplated anything of the kind. It was a Germa...

"And I understand,"--the King put the collection of curiosities back into the wallet that had held them, "that this represents one fifth at least of the gains of the voyage."

He held out a curious worm-eaten bit of reddish brown wood, rudely ornamented with carved figures in relief. Old Sancho took it and turned it about, examining it with narrowed a...

"_Amigo_, put yourself in the place of one of these caciques, with white men bedeviling you for a treasure which you never even troubled yourself to pick up when it lay about lo...

For two years Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, and the valiant gentlemen Samuel de Champlain, Bienville de Poutrincourt, and others of his company, had been striving to maintain...

The trumpeter's guess was a shrewd one. When the tiny fleet reached the West Indies, the commander took his men into his confidence and revealed the true object of his voyage--t...

Colón always answered frankly the questions put to him, but there was one secret which he kept to himself from the beginning. Knowing that he would be likely to have trouble whe...

"First came they to a barren land covered with big flat stones, and this Leif named Helluland, the slate land. Southward sailed he for many days until he saw a coast covered wit...

This story follows closely the "Relacion of Cabeca de Vaca." It illustrates the resourcefulness, bravery and ingenuity of Spanish cavaliers of the heroic age as hardly any other...

"That sounds like old Saavedra," was Doughty's idle comment. "He had great store of antiquated sentiments--like those in the chronicles of the paladins. I knew his nephew well--...

Beyond there lay a bleak and misty shore, And in the fog a wild gigantic form White-haired, a savage, called a greeting to them. Friendly the huge men were, and took these men,...

Upon the road to Faerie, O there are many sights to see,-- Small woodland folk may one discern Housekeeping under leaf and fern, And little tunnels in the grass Where caravans o...

Transylvania in 1600 was on the very frontier of Christendom. John Smith needed all the philosophy he had learned from his favorite author when, after many adventures, he was ta...

Before half a dozen speeches had been said it was quite clear that the dark-eyed child who played the Indian King was the heart and fire of the piece. They were all clever child...