SHIPS OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII.
And by this time the coast of the Pacific on the western side of America had been reached at several points by travellers overland, and the extent and contour of the New World could be tolerably well mapped out except in its north-western quarter.
CHAPTER II
THE STORIES OF THE OLD EAST AND OF THE NEW WEST
The story of the New World before the coming of the Spaniards may be told shortly because we know so little of it.
At its far north-westerly corner the Continent of America is divided from Asia by a narrow strait. It is a shallow strip of ocean, and there is no doubt that there was a time when it did not exist as a dividing barrier, and that animals—man among the rest—poured into America from Asia at what was then a point of junction between them.
It is therefore generally thought that it was from the great birthplace and nursery of the human race, the central and northern parts of Asia, that the American continent was populated. The so-called Indian tribes which still exist both in North and South America are supposed to be the descendants of those Asiatic immigrants. One might almost say of them that they have no story, in the sense of any record along the lines of what we know as human progress in other parts of the world. Apart from what they have learnt from the white man since the year 1500—and unhappily they learned from him much evil, as well as good—they still represent what we imagine mankind generally to have been in nearly the earliest days of his existence as man and as something better than the apes. They represent man in the hunting phase: that is to say before he passed into the second of the three recognised phases and became pastoral, a keeper of flocks and herds.
The Red Indian