PREFACE
My Dear Boys:
It has seemed fitting to include in the Famous Leaders Series this volume upon the discoverers and explorers, not only of North America, but also of Central and South America.
It has been impossible to include them all in a volume of this character; but I have selected the most important, and have omitted such men as Sebastian Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Sir Francis Drake, Baffin, Verendrye, Robert Gray, Lewis and Clark, Pike, Franklin, Frémont, and many others.
This is no new subject. The lives and histories of these discoverers have been written by many another; but I have endeavored to bring before you a series of pictures of some of the most noted of these men of daring and grim determination, and, if I have succeeded in painting the canvas with colors which are agreeable, then, my dear boys, I shall feel that the moments occupied in the preparation of these pages have been well spent.
Believe me,
Yours very affectionately,
Charles H. L. Johnston.
Chevy Chase, Maryland.
August, 1917.
THE VOICE
A voice came from the westward, it whispered a message clear,
And the dripping fog banks parted as the clarion tones drew near;
It spoke of shores untrodden, and it sang of mountains bold,
Of shimmering sands in distant lands which were covered with glittering gold.
It sang of hemlock forests, where the moose roamed, and the bear,
Where the eider bred near the cascade’s head, and the lucivee had his lair.
It praised the rushing water falls, it told of the salmon red,
Who swam in the spuming ripples by the rushing river’s head.
It chanted its praise of the languorous days which lay ’neath the shimmering sun,
Of the birch canoe and the Indian, too, who trapped in the forests dun.
Yea, it told of the bars of silver, and it whispered of emeralds green,
Of topaz, sapphire, and amethyst, which shone with a dazzling sheen.
Of warriors red with feathered head, of buffalo, puma, and deer,
Of the coral strand in a palm-tree land, and of dizzying mountains sheer.
And the voice grew louder and louder, and it fell upon listening ears,
Of the men who had heard strange music which was moistened with women’s tears.
Of the men who loved to wander, of the souls who cared to roam,
Whose bed was the hemlock’s branches, who rejoiced in the forest’s gloom.
Leif the Lucky, Magellan, deLeon and Cortés bold,
Cartier, Drake, and Franklin; Pizarro and Baffin, old;
Shackleton, Hudson, Roosevelt; brave Peary and gay Champlain,
Frémont, Lewis, Balboa; Verendrye, and the Cabots twain;
’Twas the voice that called them onward, ’twas the voice that is calling still,
And the voice will call ’till the end of it all, and the voice has a conquering will.