Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/23

 Among the movements that have scattered the human race far and wide over the surface of the earth, the English migration to America was in one fundamental respect unique. Spain, like Rome, conquered and exploited, but the English, by force of circumstances, were driven into another line of expansion. They had no less lust for gold than had the Spanish, but the geographical area which fell into their hands at first did not yield the precious treasure. They would have rejoiced to find, overcome, and exploit an ancient American civilization—another Mexico or Peru; their work in India revealed the willingness of the spirit and flesh; and yet in the economy of history this was not to be their fate in the New World.

Instead of natives submissive to servitude, instead of old civilizations ripe for conquest, the English found an immense continent of virgin soil and forest, sparsely settled by primitive peoples who chose death rather than bondage. To this continent the English colonial leaders, like the Greeks in expansion, transported their own people, their own economy, and the culture of the classes from which they sprang, reproducing in a large measure the civilization of the mother country. Unlike the Spaniards and other empire builders, the English succeeded in founding a new state, which became vast in extent, independent in government, and basically European in stock. That achievement is one of the capital facts of world history.

How did it happen that the English, who came late upon the imperial scene, alone among the European powers achieved just this result? It was certainly not because they were first in the arts of exploration, war, and colonization. Far from it; the Italians were the pathfinders of the high sea. Three hundred years before the English ventured from their little island home to plant colonies in Virginia, Italian mariners had sailed out through the Straits of Gibraltar, and down the coast of Africa in search of a water route to the fabled markets of the East. It was an Italian, Christopher Columbus, who unfurled the flag of Spain