For the remainder of this month and throughout November, we'll be profiling famous and less-than-famous early explorers of the New World.
The early seafaring age of exploration to the New World was a time of peril and unknown possibilities that lay beyond the horizon. Fortunes were to be made from gold. The New World natives died by the millions in a genocide of Biblical proportions. And new lands were opened for the crowded populations of Europe to fill.
Over the coming weeks, we'll be presenting an interesting array of explorers. In fact, the ball has already begun rolling with articles on Juan Bautista de Anza and Vasco Núñez de Balboa. (Click here to view a continually updated list of all explorers.)
You, as the reader, are probably saying, "But this is incredible" -- and you'd be right. Then you might go on to say, "This is just what I wanted to make my life complete. I've never felt happier or more historically satisfied in all my born days." There again you would be right as rain.
So remember to tell all your friends where to come to read articles written with a consistently mild degree of competence about various early explorers of the Americas.
All your favourites are likely to be here. There's Columbus. There's Magellan. There's Vespucci. There's bound to be something to suit every member of the family -- even Grandpa, who is normally so cranky and cantankerous. Well, he surely won't be once he gets a healthy dose of some Balboa, for example. Mm-mm; that's good explorers eatin'.
A sampling of New World explorers (for an updated list, click here):
Balboa, Discoverer of the Pacific
Columbus in the Garden of Eden
Christopher Columbus' Early Years
Columbus in the Years Leading up to 1492
Conditions on Early Ocean Voyages (Columbus)
Genocide in the New World (Columbus)
