PART I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD




CHAPTER I

THE GREAT MIGRATION TO AMERICA


The tide of migration that set in toward the shores of North America
during the early years of the seventeenth century was but one phase in
the restless and eternal movement of mankind upon the surface of the
earth. The ancient Greeks flung out their colonies in every direction,
westward as far as Gaul, across the Mediterranean, and eastward into
Asia Minor, perhaps to the very confines of India. The Romans, supported
by their armies and their government, spread their dominion beyond the
narrow lands of Italy until it stretched from the heather of Scotland to
the sands of Arabia. The Teutonic tribes, from their home beyond the
Danube and the Rhine, poured into the empire of the Cæsars and made the
beginnings of modern Europe. Of this great sweep of races and empires
the settlement of America was merely a part. And it was, moreover, only
one aspect of the expansion which finally carried the peoples, the
institutions, and the trade of Europe to the very ends of the earth.

In one vital point, it must be noted, American colonization differed