T would be out of place in this small book to give in detail a history of all the discoveries which were made along the shores of North and South America at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. As the main object is to depict brie?y the political history of the Thirteen English Colonies on the North American seaboard, it will be unnecessary to say more than a few words about the discoverers whose enterprise and bravery made colonisation possible. With the Spanish, French, and Dutch voyagers it is not proposed to deal; their stories are well known, and affected but little the establishment of our early settlements in the West. Like the British nation, these three peoples also strove to create lasting empires in America but unlike their rival, they failed. The Spaniards made the fatal error of attempting to settle during the period of explora tion. They based their colonies upon slavery, and a mistaken commercial policy; and the sparseness of their colonists made them incapable of contending against the pressure of surrounding savagery. The result was that they, who were without the traditions A.