We do of course know that there are several comparatively old dates in American history,but the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea,no distinct realization,of the stretch of time which they represent.
To say that De Soto,the first white man who ever saw the Mississippi River,saw it in 1542,is a remark which states a fact without interpreting it:it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset by astronomical measurements,and cataloguing the colors by their scientific names;--as a result,you get the bald fact of the sunset,but you don't see the sunset.
It would have been better to paint a picture of it.
The date 1542,standing by itself,means little or nothing to us;but when one groups a few neighboring historical dates and facts around it,he adds perspective and color,and then realizes that this is one of the American dates which is quite respectable for age.
For instance,when the Mississippi was first seen by a white man,less than a quarter of a century had elapsed since Francis I.'s defeat at Pavia;the death of Raphael;the death of Bayard,SANS PEUR ET SANS REPROCHE;the driving out of the Knights-Hospitallers from Rhodes by the Turks;and the placarding of the Ninety-Five Propositions,--the act which began the Reformation.When De Soto took his glimpse of the river,Ignatius Loyola was an obscure name;the order of the Jesuits was not yet a year old;Michael Angelo's paint was not yet dry on the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel;Mary Queen of Scots was not yet born,but would be before the year closed.Catherine de Medici was a child;Elizabeth of England was not yet in her teens;Calvin,Benvenuto Cellini,and the Emperor Charles V.were at the top of their fame,and each was manufacturing history after his own peculiar fashion;Margaret of Navarre was writing the 'Heptameron'and some religious books,--the first survives,the others are forgotten,wit and indelicacy being sometimes better literature preservers than holiness;lax court morals and the absurd chivalry business were in full feather,and the joust and the tournament were the frequent pastime of titled fine gentlemen who could fight better than they could spell,while religion was the passion of their ladies,and classifying their offspring into children of full rank and children by brevet their pastime.
In fact,all around,religion was in a peculiarly blooming condition:the Council of Trent was being called;the Spanish Inquisition was roasting,and racking,and burning,with a free hand;elsewhere on the continent the nations were being persuaded to holy living by the sword and fire;in England,Henry VIII.had suppressed the monasteries,burnt Fisher and another bishop or two,and was getting his English reformation and his harem effectively started.When De Soto stood on the banks of the Mississippi,it was still two years before Luther's death;eleven years before the burning of Servetus;thirty years before the St.Bartholomew slaughter;Rabelais was not yet published;'Don Quixote'was not yet written;Shakespeare was not yet born;a hundred long years must still elapse before Englishmen would hear the name of Oliver Cromwell.