Champlain settled Quebec in 1608, and began the systematic exploration of the interior by visiting the lake which preserves his name in 1609. In 1615 lie penetrated to Lake Huron. Traders and missionaries year by year pushed their way farther up the river and along the lakes. l'fre Allonez, in 1665, founded a mission on the southern shores of Lake Superior, and in 1672, accompanied by P. Dablon, he made a tour through Wisconsin and Illinois. A year later _Marquette and Joliet reached the Upper Missis sippi. in 1679 La Salle began his career by a voyage from Niagara to the southern end of Lake Michigan. Hennepin, one of La Salle's companions, crossed to the Mississippi, which he followed up as far as Minneapolis in 1680. Two years later La Salle made a trip down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and on to the Gulf of Mexico, the claim of France to the whole of the interior of the continent.
Henry Hudson, in 1610, entered the hay to which his name has been attached, and there he was left. in an open boat by his mutinous sailors. Sinne years earlier, in 1592, Juan de la Film, in a Spanish vessel, probably entered the sound on the western coast. which was more carefully ex plored and moiled by Captain Vancouver ex actly two hundred years later, and carried home a report that he had seen a vast stretch of open water extending eastward. The attempts to find a way between these two bays. the search for the northwest passage, belongs to the article on Arctic discovery. The discovery of the interior of Canada was largely accomplished by the trap pers and agents of the Hudson's Bay Company, Nvh lel] was organized in 1670; but it was not until 1740 that Varenne Ile la Verendrye made known the vast extent of the country lying east of the northern Rocky Mountains. In 1769-72 the fur trader Hearne traced the Coppermine River to the sea, and in 1793 Mr. (afterward Sir A.) Mac kenzie, while crossing the continent for the first time north of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, discovered the course of the river to Nv eI his name has been given.
The exploration of the western part of the United States did not begin until after the re public had acquired that region. As soon as the Louisiana purchase had been concluded, Jeffer son dispatched Lewis and Clark to investigate the course of the Missouri and determine its rela tion to the Pacific, which they did by descending the Columbia to the sea, their journey occupying the years 1804-06. Pike, meanwhile, was travers ing the country between the head waters of the Mississippi and Red rivers, and afterward, 1806, he followed the mountain ranges south, discovering the peak known by his name, and making important contributions to an standing of the geography of the southwest.
Among the other explorers of the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century were Long, Bonneville, Sehooleraft, Catlin, Nicollet, and Fremont. Among their sue-cesso•s in the second half of the century were Wheeler, Whit ney, Hayden, and Powell. The list of explorers of British America and Alaska in the nineteenth century embraces Sir John Franklin, Back, Rich ardson, Beechy, Dense, Simpson, and Rae, whose activity lay in the realm of Arctic exploration, and Bell, Selwyn, Dalt, Muir, Allen, Sehwatka, Ogilvie, Russell, and Low'. Of the many explorers of South America in modern times mention may be made of Humboldt, Maxi milian of \Vied, Spix, Martins, Anguste de Sainte-Hilaire. Orhigny, Piippig, the brothers Schomburgk, Darwin, .Ave-Lallemant, Tschudi, Castehnau, Burmeister, Herndon and Gibbon, Chandless, Crevaux, Bates, Karl von den Steinen, and Ehrenreieh. Among the explorers of the Andes in recent times have been Reiss, Stilbel, Whympe•, Fitzgerald, and Conway.
CoLoNiZATION. Before Columbus left the newly discovered West India Islands in January, 1493, lie built a fort on Espanola, now Haiti. Here sonic forty of his sailors remained to form a settlement which should serve as headquarters for the further discoveries that Columbus ex pected to make as soon as he could return to the new world. Those first Spanish colonists were killed by the Indians, but their places were taken by others, numbering. between two and three hun who accompanied Columbus on his second voyaoc. During the Pally months of 1494 the town which they built, named in honor of the queen, Isabella, rapidly assumed the appearance of a flourishing city. During the next ten years a constant stream of settlers, many of them ac companied by their families, flowed from Spain into the new city. Many of these remained there to practice the trades necessary to town life, while others took farms near by or went on to assist in building up the newer towns whieh were being established at every good harbor and in the mining districts. These places became in a sur prisingly short time practically self-supporting, and they were soon able to supply men and equip ment for further exploration. Cortes drew from Cuba whatever he needed for his enterprise of 1519, a debt which Mexico repaid by furnishing the supplies for the large expedition which Vas quez Coronado led through the present Arizonft and New Mexico to the great buffalo plains of the Mississippi Valley in 1540-41. :Moreover, Almag•o and Pizarro drew from Panama the means for their adventurous expeditions into Peru and Ecuador. and these countries furnished the supplies to send Valdivia southward into Chile (1540), and Oreliana and Ursua (see the article AcaurntE) to explore the trans-Andean regions. By 1550 the Spanish-American settle ments were firmly established, with every pros pect of developing into powerful and wealthy colonies. Unluckily. the home Government in Spain persisted in retaining all the administra tive authority in the hands of official); appointed in Europe. As a result, the colonists were sub jected to a succession of incompetent., corrupt governors, ignorant of American conditions, and desirous only of socuring the greatest annual revenue for themselves and for the royal treas ury. Deprived of all the incentives of public service, the Spanish-Americans suffered a steady decline in social and intellectual tone, very similar to that which was so noticeable in the northern English colonies between 1690 and 1750. Mis sionary zeal supplied almost the only active force for extending the colonial limits. The Jesuits built up a very remarkable domination over the natives along the upper ParaMi and Paraguay. and north of Mexico the Franciscans, although driven out of New Mexico by the native "rebel lion" of 1610, eventually succeeded in laying the foundations for permanent settlements in that region. During the eighteenth century there was a flourishing provincial life along the upper Rio Grande del Norte, the strength of which may be inferred from the fact that the first printing press west of the Mississippi, in what is now United States territory, was set up about 1737 in the town of San Fernando de Taos, New Mexico, which is still many miles from any rail way. The Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits sent their friars into Upper California, and the mission buildings whose ruins are now so care fully cherished were begun during the second half of the eighteenth century. Soldiers and ranchers followed the priests, and by 1800 the Spanish settlements were scattered thickly along the Pacific coast and throughout the southwest.