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Around 1300, people in Europe read of Marco Polo's travels to Cathay and other exciting Asian lands.
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In the early 1400's, people in Europe began to look to the seas and beyond. Some longed for adventure.
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By the late Middle ages, Europeans had developed a taste for spices in their diets. Most Islands in Asia. Some Europeans began to look for ways to bypass Venice's hold on the spice trade.
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In 1492 Columbus led his first expedition westward. He landed in the Bahamas, islands that he believed to be hear Asia.
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In 1497 King Henry VII sent Cabot on a voyage to the west. The english thought that there might be a water route through the Americas that would lead North and West to Asia.
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On another voyage in 1498, Columbus reached South Carolina.
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Spain was taking control of much of South and Central America and many Caribbean islands, including Cuba and Hispaniola.
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In the 1500's serveral European nations competed for land and colonies in the new world.
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Juan Ponce de Leon explored and settled the island of Puerto Rico.
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In early 1513, Ponce de Leon set out with ships and crew. His expedition landed on the east coast of Florida, a name Ponce de Leon derived from the Spanish word for flowers.
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Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon had seen some of the Atlantic coastline of this region on an expedition in 1520
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Spain was the most powerful nation in the world. Spanish explorers had claimed huge tracts of land in the New World.
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In 1524 King Francis I of France sent Italian navigator Giovanni Da Verazano westward. Verrazona first reached land at North Carolina's Outer Banks.
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Giovanni da verrazano wrote a report of his voyage and explorations to King Francis I of France.
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In July 1526, Ayllon led a group of over 500 men, women, and children to a river he called jordan ( for the Jordan River in ancient Palestine).
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Hernando de Soto sailed with a military expedition from Havana,Cuba, to the west coast of Flordia.
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With possession of Florida fairly secure and greater wealth to the south, Spaniards focused their attention southward after the 1560s
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The atlantic coastal region that is today part of the southeastern United States had seen a fflurry of spanish activity in the 1560s.
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France sent a colony under the command of Jean Ribault to North America.
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Ribault's Huguenots attempted to settle near present day Port Royal, South Carolina, in April 1562
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In 1565 Spain sent troops under Pedro Menendez de Aviles to Florida.
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Juan Pardo and Hernando Boyano led a small group of men to the South Carolina coast.
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In 1566 an expedition set out for Chesapeake Bay from the west indies to set up a Catholic mission