set on foot that search for the Northwest Passage which resulted in the
discovery of almost everything except the Passage itself. To the craze for
a Northwest Passage is due the exploration of Baffin's and Hudson's Bays,
of the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence, and of the Great Lakes; the
establishment of the English and French fur-trading Companies, which
hastened the development of Canada; and the settlement of Oregon and
Washington. It led English and Spanish explorers and freebooters up the
California coast, and on to Vancouver and Bering Straits; Alaska was
circumvented, and the Northwest Passage was found, though the everlasting
ice mocked the efforts of the finders. In short, the entire continent was
tapped and sounded with a view to forcing a way through or round it; and
by the time the attempt was finally given up, the contour, size, and
possible value of America had been estimated much more quickly and
accurately than they would have been, had not India lain west of it.

All this time Spain had been having the best of the bargain. She had
fastened upon the West Indies, Mexico, and Central and South America, and
had found gold there in abundance; she bade other nations keep hands off,
and was less solicitous than they about the rumored riches of the Orient.
Spain, in those days, was held to be invincible on the sea; England's
fight with the Spanish Armada was yet to come. But there were already
Englishmen of the Drake and Frobisher type who liked nothing better than
to capture a Spanish galleon, and "singe the king of Spain's beard"; and
these independent sea-rovers were becoming so bold and numerous as to put
the Spaniards to serious inconvenience and loss. But the latter could not
be ousted from their vantage ground; so the English presently bethought
themselves that there might be gold in the more northerly as well as in
the central parts of the Continent; and they turned to seek it there.
Nothing is more noticeable in every phase of these events than the
constant involuntary accomplishment of something other--and in the end