When English colonists arrived on the shores of their 'New World', they set about the God-given task to 'subdue the earth and till the soil'. They founded Jamestown on the great Bay of Chesapeake. Yet, surrounded by the natural wealth of the most prolific estuary in North America, the English starved to death. Inland lay the 'endless forest' - home to the Cherokee who like all other tribes had a very different view of wilderness and wildlife. This land did not belong to them; they belonged to the land. Now their world would change.
Confronting the Wilderness In summer the northern land now known as Canada swarmed with biting flies. In winter it was a place of aching cold, echoing to the calls of ravens and howls of wolves. But this endless maze of forests and secret waterways was also home to innumerable beavers, lynx, otters and black bears - all with soft, thick fur. In the 17th-century, these lustrous pelts became the lure for exploration as French and English traders rivalled for business with Indian trappers.
For the Spanish who came in the wake of Christopher Columbus, the vast wealth of their new empire in Central and South America was not enough; they wanted more. They sailed north, chasing rumours of gold, slaves and the Fountain of Youth. Here they found a swamp and called it 'Florida'. It took Americans, four centuries later, to turn this wild and steamy backwater into dollars. Alligator leather, egret plumes and the sun-drenched land itself, drained of its vital water, finally became the El Dorado dreamt of by the Spanish
Beyond the forests of the east lay a vast grassland that was home to millions of buffalo and to many proud Indian tribes. Explorers Lewis and Clark were the first to document the wildlife and native peoples of this rolling sea of grass which, within a century, would be swept aside by the coming of the white man.
Mountains form the spine of the continent - a great divide separating east from west. The first explorers found themselves in a no-man's-land that was the realm of mountain lions and grizzly bears. But for the mountain men there was more than breathtaking scenery and the lure of furs; there was the prospect of gold and silver to be hewn from the hills. One discovery survived the onslaught to become perhaps the richest treasure of all: the world's first National Park - Yellowstone.
Today more than two million people live in style in the hottest, driest part of North America, the Sonoran desert. They are the last in a long line of settlers - Spanish missionaries, American cowboys and farmers - who all tried to impose a new way of life on the fragile nature of this desert. Unlike the plants and animals which have evolved spectacular ways of coping with these arid lands, the newcomers seeking the sunshine of Phoenix, Arizona, are only now beginning to face the harsh reality of living here on the edge of existence.
Alaska, vast and remote, was the white man's last frontier; for the native peoples of America it had been their first. Since they came from Asia thousands of years ago, the Indians and the Eskimos of Alaska have led lives dependent on nature. The abundant wildlife lured white hunters to this icy land: Russians came for otter and seal pelts; Yankees for the blubber of whales and walrus. With the discovery of oil, will today's Americans keep faith with what survives of their last great wilderness?
California, isolated by huge ranges of mountains and a vast expanse of desert, was once an island to itself. Here, between the forests of the Pacific coast and the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, lay a sun-drenched paradise that long ago had been discovered and settled by many different Indian tribes who flourished on its natural bounty. In the 'golden age' of the Spanish missions this ancient world began to change; then came the Americans in the rush for real gold. In their quest for wealth, the settlers swept aside an old world and replaced it with a new one. In California, the frontier finally ran out.
