The Mentor: The Contest for North America, Vol. 1, No. 35, Serial No. 35 / The Story of America in Pictures

The Mentor
“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”
Vol. 1 No. 35
LA SALLE
CAPTURE OF LOUISBURG
DEERFIELD MASSACRE
CAPTURE OF QUEBEC
BRADDOCK’S DEFEAT
PONTIAC WAR
By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Professor of Government, Harvard University
The whole round world is now open. Gone is the pleasure of finding new lands, sighting strange mountains, floating down mysterious rivers, and meeting unknown races of men. After Mt. Everest is climbed by some daring mountaineer, and after an airship lands on the highest peak of Mt. McKinley, what will be left for the seeker of novelty? Where can you now find a river or mountain range or tribe certified never before to have been seen by white men?
That rich pleasure was enjoyed in the fullest measure by the explorers in North America; in fact, they enjoyed it so much that they kept it alive for four centuries. For a good two hundred and fifty years the English at intervals battered their way into Hudson Bay, and Davis Strait, and the Arctic deserts, trying to smash a route through the ice, around to the north of Asia and Europe. Nearly three centuries passed after De Soto reached the lower Mississippi before Lieutenant Pike found its source in its native lair. As late as 1880 no man, white or red, knew the passes across the Canadian Rockies; and to this day only three boat parties have ever gone through the length of the canyon of the Colorado.