When the student has grasped these fundamentals it will be time, and then only, to begin to thread with him the labyrinth of voyages and explorations which mark the first century of American history. Here the teacher will need to exercise great ingenuity and considerable caution. Rather a few facts well co-ordinated, than a multitude of details without any unifying principle is the one infallible rule. The Norsemen, for instance, one is tempted to say, may with profit be entirely neglected. “Nothing is clearer,” say Fiske (“Discovery of America,” I, pp. 235-254), “from a survey of the whole subject, than that these pre-Columbus voyages were quite barren of results of historic importance.... [That they constituted] in any legitimate sense of the phrase, a discovery of America is simply absurd.” Columbus, De Soto, Cortez, Coronado are really the only Spaniards whose names the student need remember. Equally, the voyages of Verrazano, Ribault, Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Marquette and Joliet tell the whole tale of French activities over a hundred and fifty years. Throughout this period, the teacher should keep these guiding posts constantly before the eyes of his students: First, that the Spaniards, when once they realized that they had discovered a new continent and had not reached the longed for shores of Cathay, were lured farther and farther into the heart of the continent in search of gold; second, that, owing to the direction of their approach, they occupied the southern and southwestern part of the continent only; third, that their forward movement ended in the end of the sixteenth century because of (a) their loss of naval supremacy (the Armada), (b) their narrow internal national policy (the expulsion of the Moriscos and the Inquisition), (c) their struggle to subdue the revolted Netherlands. French Explorations. Of the French, it should be noted: First, that they approached the continent from the north, entering it through the Gulf of St. Lawrence; second, that they rapidly turned their entire attention to the search for furs and to the conversion of the heathen Indian, “the quaint alliance of missionary and merchant, the black-robed Jesuit and the dealer in peltries,” as Fiske calls it (“Discovery,” II, p. 529); third, that the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes led them farther and farther into the continent, and consequently that the French settlements lacked the unity and compactness which is characteristic of the later English settlements with which they were soon to come into hostile contact. Finally, of the history of this period of Spanish and French settlements, it may be said that it is better to follow the history of both nations down to the end of the seventeenth century before entering upon the English and Dutch settlements. English and Dutch Settlements.