Columbus and Other Heroes of American DiscoveryD'Anvers, N.
History
Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery
D'Anvers, N.
America -- Discovery and exploration; North America -- Discovery and exploration
Penn’s next care, after his interview with the Indians, was to call
together the emigrants――the greater number of whom were of his own
religious persuasion――and present them with their constitution,
framed so as to insure alike political and religious freedom; a fact
resulting in the flocking to his settlement of persecuted members of
every sect from the New England and Virginia colonies. In January,
1683, the foundations were laid, on the west bank of the Delaware
and at the mouth of the Schuylkill, of that fair town, now the second
in importance in the Union, called Philadelphia, or the “City of
Brotherly Love,” the streets of which were named after the groves of
chestnut, pine, and walnut trees through which they ran.
Before the end of its first year, the infant city contained eighty
houses, and four years after its foundation it numbered 2,000
inhabitants. As the years rolled on, and the mineral and agricultural
wealth of the western districts of Pennsylvania became more and more
fully revealed, town after town sprang up within its boundaries. In
the beginning of the 18th century, we find John Harris founding the
beautiful Harrisburg, under a grant from Penn, in the midst of the
magnificent scenery on the left bank of the Susquehanna, and though
the French and Indian war which broke out in 1754 checked for a moment,
as it were, the laying out of new cities, the now flourishing town of
Pittsburg rose on the site of Fort Duquesne, at the junction of the
Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers, as soon as the victory of Forbes in
1758 established the power of the British.
Illustration: THE TEA IN BOSTON HARBOR.
In 1774, the quarrels between the mother country and her now mighty
American colonies――of which the most thrilling incidents were the
Stamp Act riots of Boston in 1768, and the revolt against the payment
of the tea dues in the same city in 1773, when the boys of Boston,
disguised as Indians, flung the cargoes of tea into the sea to prevent
the payment of the tax――resulted in the War of Independence, during
which, strange to say, took place those first explorations of Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Ohio which were to add so greatly to the power of the
American Union about to be formed. But before we join the pioneers
of the new era of discovery in the West, we must turn once more to
the South, to bring our account of the work of the French down to the
important date we have reached in the history of their English rivals
in the East.
Illustration: INDIAN ORNAMENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
THE IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS OF LA SALLE, AND EARLY COLONIZATION
BETWEEN THE ALLEGHANIES AND THE MISSISSIPPI.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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