Washington and His Country - 1887 Author:Washington Irving Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: stricken town. This hostility of the Iroquois kept the French away from the Hudson river until it was too late for them to contend successfully for the mastery o... more »f New York. But for this circumstance the French might have succeeded in possessing New York, and thus separating the New England colonies from those in the south. § 3. The English In Virginia. Sir Walter Raleigh. — As John Cabot had discovered the North American continent for the English, they claimed it as their property ; but many years elapsed before they came to take possession. From the reign of Henry VII. to that of Elizabeth their attention was absorbed by affairs at home. During Elizabeth's reign the great struggle between Catholic and Protestant assumed the form of an international contest, in which the gigantic power of Spain was pitted against England and the Netherlands, while France was divided within itself. In 1588 the defeat of the Invincible Armada marked the overthrow of Spanish supremacy and the triumph of Protestantism. England had prepared the way for this glorious victory by training up such a set of naval captains as has never been surpassed in any age or country. The most famous of these were Sir Francis Drake, Sir Martin Frobisher, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Thomas Cavendish, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Lord Howard of Effingham, and Sir Walter Raleigh. They began as buccaneers and raiders upon the Spanish possessions in all parts of the globe ; they ended as colonizers; while from first to last they were explorers. Drake and Cavendish carried the British flag into the Pacific, visited the coast of California, and circumnavigated the earth. Frobisher, in quest of a northwestern passage to India, entered the Arctic Ocean and explored a part of it. Hawkins — to our shame and sorrow in later days — began t...« less