The English were not the only people who had colonies in North America. The Spaniards, who claimed the whole continent, had planted a colony at Saint Au'-gus-tine, in Florida, in 1565, forty-two years before the first English colony Jamestown. Saint Augustine is thus the oldest city in the United States. But the Spaniards were too busy in Mexico and in Central and South America to push their settlements farther to the north, though they were very jealous of the English colonies, and especially of South Carolina and Georgia.

The French laid claim also to a large part of North America. They tried to plant a colony in Canada in 1549, and afterward made some other attempts that failed. Quebec [kwebec'] was founded by a great French explorer, Champlain, in 1608, the very year after the English settled at Jamestown. At Quebec the real settlement of Canada was begun, and it was always the capital of the vast establishments of the French in America.

The French, like the English, were trying to find the Pacific Ocean, and they were much more daring in their explorations than the English colonists, whose chief business was farming. A French explorer named Joliet [zhol-yay] reached the Mississippi in 1673, and another Frenchman, La Salle [lah-sahl], explored the great country west of the Alleghany Mountains, and discovered the Ohio. After many disasters and failures, La Salle succeeded in reaching the mouth of the Mississippi. Father Hennepin, a priest, explored the upper Mississippi. The French then laid claim to all the country west of the Alleghanies. Over the region they established posts and mission-houses, while the English contented themselves with multiplying their farming settlements east of the mountains.

When La Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi, he took possession of the country in the name of Louis XIV., and called it Louisiana, in honor of that king. The settlement of Louisiana was begun in 1699. The French held the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, the two great water-ways of North America, and they controlled most of the American Indian tribes by means of missionaries and traders. They endeavored to connect Canada and Louisiana by a chain of fortified posts, and so to hold for France an empire, in the heart of America, larger than France itself.

But the weakness of the French in America lay in the fewness of their people. Canada, the oldest of their colonies, was in a country too cold to be a prosperous farming country in that day. Besides, its growth was checked by the system of lordships with tenants, which some of the English colonies had also tried. But inferior as the French were in numbers, they were strong in their military character; they were almost all soldiers. The English were divided into colonies, and could never be made to act together; but the French, from Canada to the Mississippi, were absolutely subjected to their governors.

The French influenced and leveraged the American Indians to push back against the English colonies. The great business of the French in Canada was the fur trade, and this was pushed with an energy that quite left the English traders behind. The French drew furs from the shores of Lake Superior and from beyond the Mississippi. The French traders gained great influence over the American Indians. The English treated the American Indians as inferiors, the French lived among them on terms of equality. The French also gained control of the American Indian tribes by means of missionary priests, who risked their lives and spent their days in the dirty cabins of the American Indians to convert them to European religions. The powerful Iroquois confederacy, known as the "Five Nations," and afterward as the "Six Nations," sided with the English, and hated and killed the French. They lived in what is now the State of New York. But the most of the tribes were managed by the French, who sent missionaries to convert them, ambassadors to flatter them, gunsmiths to mend their arms, and military men to teach them to fortify, and to direct their attacks against the settlements of the English.

The wars between the French colony in Canada and the English colonies in what is now the United States were caused partly by wars between France and England in Europe. But there were also causes enough for enmity in the state of affairs on this side of the ocean. First, there was always a quarrel about territory. The French claimed that part of what is now the State of Maine which lies east of the Kennebec River, while the English claimed to the St. Croix. The French also claimed all the country back of the Alleghanies. With a population not more than one twentieth of that of one of the English colonies, they spread their claim over all the country watered by the lakes and the tributaries of the Mississippi, including more than half of the present United States. Second, both France and England wished to control the fisheries of the eastern coast. Third, both the French and the English endeavored to get the entire control of the fur trade. To do this the French tried to win the Iroquois Confederacy to their interest, while the English sought to take the trade of the Western tribes away from the French. Fourth, the French were Catholics and the English mostly Protestants. In that age men were very bigoted about religion, and hated and feared those who differed from them.



SPANISH DISCOVERIES IN FLORIDA

Ponce de Leon [pon'-thay day lay-on; commonly in English, ponss deh lee'-on], an old Spanish explorer, set sail in 1513 from the island of Puerto Rico, to discover a land reported to lie to the northward of Cuba, and which had somehow come to be called Bimini [bee-mcc-nee]. It was said to contain a fountain, by bathing in which an old man would be made young again. On Easter Sunday Ponce discovered the mainland, which he called Florida, from Pascua Florida [pas'-kwah floree'- dah], the Spanish name for Easter Sunday. In 1521 Ponce tried to settle Florida, but his party was attacked and he was mortally wounded by the American Indians. Florida was then believed to be an island. After his death, other Spanish adventurers explored the coast from Labrador southward, and even tried to find goldmines, and plant colonies in the interior of the country. The most famous of these expeditions was that of Hernando de Soto [aer-nan'-do day so'-to], a Spanish explorer, who reached Florida in 1539. He marched through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. He was determined to find some land yielding gold, like Mexico and Peru. But he treated the American Indians cruelly, killing some of them wantonly, and forcing others to serve him as slaves. The American Indians, in turn, attacked him again and again, until his party was sadly reduced. De Soto tried to descend the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, but at the mouth of the Red River he died of a fever. His body was buried m the Mississippi, to keep the American Indians from disfiguring it in revenge. A few of his followers reached the Gulf and got to the Spanish settlements in Mexico.