With this paragraph the story of the vision of Nephi is focused more particularly on the United States. The prophet sees multitudes gathered here.
The First Settlers. The explorations of the Cabots proved the beginning of the colonization of North America. Before the close of the 17th century, the French had explored the Great Lakes, the Fox, Maumee, Wabash, Wisconsin, and Illinois rivers, and the Mississippi from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf. They had traversed a vast region from New Foundland to Texas. In 1688, the population of this "New France" was estimated at 11,000.
British sailors and colonists were also moved upon to settle in the new country. Sir Martin Frobisher, in 1576, entered Baffin Bay and declared the country in that region to be the possession of the British crown. Sir Francis Drake, from a mountain top in Panama, gazed upon the Pacific, and decided that he would sail on that ocean. He went through the straits of Magellan and then coasted north as far as Oregon. Sir Humphry Gilbert and his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh planted colonies here and hunted for gold and pearls, and learned to use tobacco. At that time England was threatened by the Spanish Armada, and when Sir Walter returned to America, after an absence of three years, he found that his family and colony had perished. How, history does not say. In 1607, the London Company sent a colony to South Virginia, where Captain Newport founded the first permanent English settlement in the United States. It was called Jamestown in honor of the King of England. Another trading concern, the Plymouth Company, sent settlers to North Virginia.
In 1609, Captain Henry Hudson, an English navigator in Dutch service, entered the Hudson River. The Hollanders claimed the territory called New Netherland, where the foundations of the city of New York were laid, in 1613.
The first permanent settlement in Delaware was made near Wilmington by Swedish colonists, in 1638, on a tract of land called New Sweden. Swedes also established the first settlement in Pennsylvania, but these settlements were soon absorbed by the Hollanders and then by the English.
The period between 1607 and 1775 saw the English settlements expand and become thirteen prosperous colonies. They were: Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. They had little in common. Each colony had its own problems, its own struggles. But this seeming disorder was but transitory. The Divine Architect was assembling his material for a new nation, destined to raise the Ensign of liberty to all the world.