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 region of Georgia. But it all ended only in mutiny and misfortune. There was more gold and less fighting in Mexico and South America. The Spaniards claimed regions further north more to keep others from the Gulf than to colonize what is now the United States.

Soon Hawkins, Drake, and the buccaneers on the Gulf gave Spain enough to do. The French occupied the St. Lawrence, and even part of Florida. Raleigh and others led out unsuccessful English colonies. After the wreck of the Armada had destroyed Spanish prestige, the advance of the French in Canada, and of the English farther south, was more rapid. Jamestown and Plymouth were the beginning of colonies which gradually lined the Atlantic. The French took possession of the Great Lakes, and, under Marquette, Joliet, and La Salle, explored the Mississippi to its mouth.

The grand plan gradually took shape in the French mind of colonizing the mouth of the great river, bringing the native tribes under control, opening trade with them, discovering mines, and uniting Louisiana, as La Salle called it, with Canada by a chain of forts at