At the end of October, 1578, Sir Francis Drake, the Sea-King of Devon, as he was called, and the most daring and persistent of the enemies of the Spanish settlements in America, sailed from Cape Horn, at the southern extremity of the continent, and steered northward into the great Pacific, with the golden realm of […]

The river Biobio, in Southern Chili, was for centuries the boundary between liberty and oppression in South America. South of it lay the land of the Araucanians, that brave and warlike people who preserved their independence against the whites, the only Indian nation in America of which this can be said. Valorous and daring as […]

The early history of America has few romantic tales of love and devotion, but there is one woven in with the history of the settlement of Buenos Ayres, the modern Argentina, which is told by all the historians of the time, and which exists as the one striking love romance of the Spanish conquest. It […]

We have now to relate the most remarkable adventure in the story of the conquest of Peru, and one of the most remarkable in the history of the New World,–the expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro to the upper waters of the Amazon and the pioneer voyage down that mighty river. Francisco Pizarro was well aided by […]

The remarkable success of Cortez and Pizarro in Mexico and Peru went far to convince the Spaniards that in America they had found a veritable land of magic, filled with wonders and supremely rich in gold and gems. Ponce de Leon sought in Florida for the fabled Fountain of Youth. Hernando de Soto, one of […]

The great expedition to the land of gold, which Vasco Nunez de Balboa had planned to make, was left by his death to be carried out by one of his companions in the discovery of the South Sea, the renowned Francisco Pizarro. It was an expedition full of romantic adventure, replete with peril and suffering, […]

There is no chapter in all history more crowded with interesting and romantic events than the story of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards under Cortez. And of all these records of desperate daring and wonderful success, the most extraordinary is the tale of the Noche Triste, the terrible night-retreat of the Spaniards from […]

About a hundred years before the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, there reigned over the kingdom of Tezcuco, in the valley of Mexico, a monarch whose history is as interesting and romantic as any that can be found in the annals of Europe. His story was preserved by his descendants, and its principal events are […]

It was a splendid road to fortune which Columbus opened to the adventurers of Spain, and hundreds of them soon took that promising path. Among these was one Vasco Nunez de Balboa, a man poor in gold or land, but rich in courage and ambition, and weary enough of trying to live at home like […]

The island elysium which Columbus had discovered, and of which he wrote and conversed in the most glowing terms, seemed like a fairy-land of promise to the people of Spain, and hundreds of adventurers soon crossed the seas, hopeful of winning gold and ready for deeds of peril and daring in that wonderful unknown land. […]

Of the three ships with which Columbus made his first voyage, the “Pinta” deserted the others and went off on a voyage of discovery of its own, and the “Santa Maria,” the flag-ship of the admiral, ran ashore on the coast of Hispaniola and proved a hopeless wreck. Only the little “Nina” (the “girl,” as […]

The 12th of October, 1492, ranks very high among the important dates in the history of the world. For on that day men from Europe, then the centre of civilization, first gazed on a rich new land beyond the seas, a great virgin continent, destined to become the seat of flourishing civilizations and to play […]

We have two pictures to draw, preliminary scenes to the fatal battle of Hastings Hill. The first belongs to the morning of September 25, 1066. At Stamford Bridge, on the Derwent River, lay encamped a stalwart host, that of Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. With him was Tostig, rebel brother of King Harold of England, […]

Of all the many fair maidens of the Saxon realm none bore such fame for beauty as the charming Elfrida, daughter of the earl of Devonshire, and the rose of southern England. She had been educated in the country and had never been seen in London, but the report of her charms of face and […]

In his royal villa at Chippenham, on the left bank of the gently-flowing Avon, sat King Alfred, buried in his books. It was the evening of the 6th of January, in the year 878, a thousand years and more backward in time. The first of English kings to whom a book had a meaning,–and the […]

One day, in the far-off sixth century, a youthful deacon of the Roman Church walked into the slave-market of Rome, situated at one extremity of the ancient Forum. Gregory, his name; his origin from an ancient noble family, whose genealogy could be traced back to the days of the early Caesars. A youth was this […]

In the month of October, in the year of our Lord 1192, a pirate vessel touched land on the coast of Sclavonia, at the port of Yara. Those were days in which it was not easy to distinguish between pirates and true mariners, either in aspect or avocation, neither being afflicted with much inconvenient honesty, […]

Terrible was the misery of England. Torn between contending factions, like a deer between snarling wolves, the people suffered martyrdom, while thieves and assassins, miscalled soldiers, and brigands, miscalled nobles, ravaged the land and tortured its inhabitants. Outrage was law, and death the only refuge from barbarity, and at no time in the history of […]

Henry I., king of England, had made peace with France. Then to Normandy went the king with a great retinue, that he might have Prince William, his only and dearly-loved son, acknowledged as his successor by the Norman nobles and married to the daughter of the Count of Anjou. Both these things were done; regal […]

William of Normandy, by the grace of God and his iron mace, had made himself king of England. An iron king he proved, savage, ruthless, the descendant of a few generations of pirate Norsemen, and himself a pirate in blood and temper. England strained uneasily under the harsh rein which he placed upon it, and […]