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Show 395. worlds was a fashionable business, and when such large game was no longer to be found, islands lying unclaimed in the great oceans, inhabited by useful and profitable people to be converted or enslaved, became attractive objects; . . . Those early explorers and adventurers were mostly brave, enterprising, and after their fashion, pious men. In their clumsy sailing vessels they dared to go where no chart or light-house showed the way, where the set of the currents, the location of sunken outlying rocks and shoals were all unknown, facing fate and weather, undaunted however dark the signs, heaving the lead and thrashing the men to their duty and trusting in Providence. When a new shore was found on which they could land, they said their prayers with superb audacity, fought the natives if they cared to fight, erected crosses, and took possession in the names of their sovereigns, establishing claims, such as they were, to everything in sight and beyond, to be quarrelled for and battled for, and passed from hand to hand in treaties and settlements made during the intermissions of war. This violence, Muir saw, was what the settlement of the West was founded on, and such a view must have gravely colored his own explorations in Alaska, where he played a role filling in the blank places, and laying claim to at least one island for the United States. It was a crude and warlike affair all told, and he knew that it still continued, especially on the north coasts of Oregon and Washington. |