A BOOK OF
AMERICAN EXPLORERS
Transcriber’s Notes
The cover image was provided by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Punctuation has been standardized.
Most abbreviations have been expanded in tool-tips for screen-readers and may be seen by hovering the mouse over the abbreviation.
This book has drop-caps at the start of each chapter. These drop-caps may adversely affect the pronunciation of the word with screen-readers.
This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated with a Transcriber’s Note.
Index references have not been checked for accuracy.
Footnotes are identified in the text with a superscript number and have been accumulated in a table at the end of the text.
Transcriber’s Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes have been accumulated in a table at the end of the book and are identified in the text by a dotted underline and may be seen in a tool-tip by hovering the mouse over the underline.
Rand, Avery, and Company,
117 Franklin Street,
Boston.
PREFACE.
IT has always seemed to me that the narratives of the early discoverers and explorers of the American coast were as interesting as “Robinson Crusoe,” and were, indeed, very much like it. This has led me to make a series of extracts from these narratives, selecting what appeared to me the most interesting parts, and altering only the spelling. The grammar is not always correct; but it would be impossible to alter that without changin