| | 1 | Author: | unknown | Add | | | Title: | History of Virginia  | | | | Published: | 2006 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Far removed from the impulse of mere adventure, which
had always been a powerful influence with the Anglo-Saxon
people in their migrations, was the spirit which led persons
of that race to cast a lustful eye upon the North American
continent long before any part of its soil had been taken up
by Englishmen. Being a people of imperturbable common
sense then as now, the supreme motive which governed them,
in their earliest explorations in those remote regions, was of
a thoroughly robust and practical nature. It was only to be
expected that the reports, exaggerated in the transmission, of
the incredible wealth drawn by the Spaniards from the mines
of Peru and Mexico would have inflamed to fever pitch the
cupidity of a daring and enterprising trading folk like the
Englishmen of the sixteenth century. It was the hope of
discovering gold and silver that chiefly prompted the first
adventurers to set out for that shadowy land, which Elizabeth,
with a splendid royal egotism, had named Virginia, in
commemoration of her own immaculate state. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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