: From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People by Hedin Sven Anders - Voyages and travels Juvenile literature; Geography Juvenile literature Travel

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

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rophet; others have called him a crafty adventurer, who stole Toscanelli's plan in order to gain power, honour, and wealth for himself. But when, about twenty years ago, the fourth century since his discovery was completed, full amends were made to his memory and his achievements were celebrated throughout the world. He opened new fields for unborn generations, he extended the bounds of the earth, and guided the world's history into new channels.

Four years before the death of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci of Florence, who made four voyages across the ocean, suggested that the new lands had nothing to do with Asia, but were a "New World" in distinction to the Old; and a German schoolmaster, who wrote a geographical text-book, suggested in the introduction that as the fourth continent had been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci , there was no reason why it should not be called Amerigo or America after its discoverer. The proposal was accepted, and only too late was it realised that Columbia would have been the proper name.

During the succeeding centuries white men struck their claws ever firmer into America. The Indians were forced back into the backwoods, and in North America they have been almost exterminated. Under French, and later, under English rule, those parts of North America have developed an unexpected power and wealth which were despised by the Spaniards, who in their boundless greed of gain thought of nothing but gold.

NEW YORK

In a house in a Swedish countryside sit an old man and woman talking seriously.

"It is a great pity," says the old woman, "that Gunnar is beginning to think of America again."

"Yes, he will never rest," replies the old man, "till we have given our consent and let him go. To-day he says that an emigration 'touter' has promised him gold and green forests if he will take a ticket for one of the Bremen line steamers. I reminded him that the farm is unencumbered, but he answered that it could not provide for both his brothers and himself. 'It was a very different thing for you, father,' he said, 'but there are three of us to divide the produce.' He thinks it is a hopeless task to grub in our poor stony hills, when boundless plains in the western states of North America are only waiting to be ploughed, and in any factory he can be earning wages so large as to yield a small income for several years."

"Yes, indeed, I know, it is his cousins who have put this fancy in his head with their glowing letters. But I suppose we cannot prevent him going if his heart is set on it?"

"What can we do? He is a free man and must go his own way."

"Well, perhaps it is best. When he is home-sick he will come back again."

"I am afraid it will be long enough before that happens. At starting all seems so fine. 'I shall soon come home with a small pile.' In reality all his memories will grow faint within a year, and the distance to the red cottage will seem to grow longer as time flies. I mourn for him as dead already; he will never come back."

A few days after this our emigrant Gunnar breaks all ties and tears up all the roots which since his birth have held him bound to the soil of Sweden. He travels by the shortest route to Bremen and steps on board an emigrant steamer for New York. During the long hours of the voyage the people sit on deck and talk of the great country to which they are all bound. Before the last lighthouse on the coast of Europe is lost to sight, Gunnar seems to have all America at his finger-ends. The same names are always ringing in his ears--New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco have become quite familiar, and he has only to insert between them a number of smaller towns, a few rivers, mountains, and lakes, to draw in a few railway lines, to remember the great country of Canada to the north and mountainous Mexico in the south, to place at three of the corners of the continent the peninsulas of Alaska, California, and Florida, and at the fourth the large island of Newfoundland, and then his map of North America is complete.

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