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Steam Shovel at Work in Culebra Cut, Panama Canal.

THE STORY
OF
OUR COUNTRY

EVERY CHILD CAN READ

EDITED BY

REV. JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT, D.D.

ILLUSTRATED
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.
PHILADELPHIA

Copyright, 1910, By
The John C. Winston Co.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A TALK WITH THE YOUNG READER
ABOUT THE HISTORY OF OUR
COUNTRY

IF any of the readers of this book should have the chance to take a railroad ride over the vast region of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, they would see a wonderful display of cities and towns, of factories and farms, and a great multitude of men and women actively at work. They would behold, spread out on every side, one of the busiest and happiest lands the sun shines upon. Here and there, amid the miles on miles of farms, they might see a forest, here and there a wild beast, here and there a red-faced Indian, one of the old people of the land; but these would be almost lost in the rich and prosperous scene.

If our young traveler knew nothing of history he might fancy that it had been always this way, or that it had taken thousands of years for all those cities to be built and these great fields to be cleared and cultivated. Yet if he had been here only three hundred years ago he would have seen a very different sight. He could not then have gone over the country by railroad, for such a thing had never been thought of. He could not have gone by highroad, for there was not a road of any kind in the whole length and breadth of the land. Nowhere in this vast country would he have seen a city or town; nowhere a ploughed field, a farmhouse, or a barn; nowhere a horse, cow, or sheep; nowhere a man with a white or a black face. Instead of great cities he would have seen only clusters of rude huts; instead of fertile farms, only vast reaches of forest; instead of tame cattle, only wild and dangerous beasts; instead of white and black men, only red-skinned savages.

Just think of it! All that we see around us is the work of less than three hundred years! No doubt many of you have read in fairy tales of wonderful things done by the Genii of the East, of palaces built in a night, of cities moved miles away from their sites. But here is a thing as wonderful and at the same time true, a marvel wrought by men instead of magical beings. These great forests have fallen, these great fields have been cleared and planted, these great cities have risen, these myriads of white men have taken the place of the red men of the wild woods, and all within a period not longer than three times the life of the oldest men now living. Is not this as wonderful as the most marvelous fairy tale? And is it not better to read the true tale of how this was done than stories of the work of fairies and magicians? Let us forget the Genii of the East; men are the Genii of the West, and the magic of their work is as great as that we read of in the fables of the "Arabian Nights."

The story of this great work is called the "History of the United States." This story you have before you in the book you now hold. You do not need to sit and dream how the wonderful work of building our noble nation was done, for you can read it all here in language simple enough for the youngest of you to understand. Here you are told how white men came over the seas and found beyond the waves a land none of them had ever seen before. You are told how they settled on these shores, cut down the trees and built villages and towns, fought with the red men and drove them back, and made themselves homes in the midst of fertile fields. You are told how others came, how they spread wider and wider over the land, how log houses grew into mansions, and villages into cities, and how at length they fought for and gained their liberty.

Read on and you will learn of more wonderful things still. The history of the past hundred years is a story of magic for our land. In it you will learn of how the steamboat was first made and in time came to be seen on all our rivers and lakes; of how the locomotive was invented and railroads were built, until they are now long enough in our country to go eight times round the earth; of the marvels of the telegraph and telephone—the talking wire; of the machines that rumble and roar in a thousand factories and work away like living things, and of a multitude of marvels which I cannot begin to speak of here.

And you will learn how men kept on coming, and wars were fought, and new land was gained, and bridges were built, and canals were dug, and our people increased and spread until we came to be one of the greatest nations on the earth, and our cities grew until one of them was the largest in the world except the vast city of London. All this and more you may learn from the pages of this book. It is written for the boys and girls of our land, but many of their fathers and mothers may find it pleasant and useful to read.

There are hundreds who do not have time to read large histories, which try to tell all that has taken place. For those this little history will be of great service, in showing them how, from a few half-starved settlers on a wild coast, this great nation has grown up. How men and women have come to it over the seas as to a new Promised Land. How they have ploughed its fields, and gathered its harvests, and mined its iron and gold, and built thousands of workshops, and fed the nations with the food they did not need for themselves. Year by year it has grown in wealth, until now it is the richest country in the world. Great it is, and greater it will be. But I need say no more. The book has its own story to tell. I only lay this beginning before you as a handy stepping-stone into the history itself. By its aid you may cross the brook and wander on through the broad land which lies before you.

THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY

CHAPTER I

COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR

IF any of my young readers live in Chicago they will remember a wonderful display in that city in 1893. Dozens of great white buildings rose on the shore of the lake, as beautiful as fairy palaces, and filled with the finest of goods of all kinds, which millions of people came to see.

Do you know what this meant? It was what is called a World's Fair, and was in honor of a wonderful event that took place four hundred years before.

Some of you may think that white men have always lived in this country. I hope you do not all think so, for this is not the case. A little more than four hundred years ago no white man had ever seen this country, and none knew that there was such a country on the face of the earth.

It was in the year 1492, that a daring sailor, named Christopher Columbus, crossed a wide ocean and came to this new and wonderful land. Since then men have come here by the millions, and the mighty nation of the United States has grown up with its hundreds of towns and cities. In one of these, which bears the name of Chicago, the grand Columbian World's Fair was held, in honor of the finding of America by the great navigator four hundred years before.

This is what I have set out to tell you about. I am sure you will all be glad to know how this broad and noble land, once the home of the wild red men, was found and made a home for the white people of Europe.

Some of you may have been told that America was really discovered more than four hundred years before Columbus was born. So it was. At that time some of the bold sailors of the northern countries of Europe, who made the stormy ocean their home, and loved the roll of the waves, had come to the frozen island of Iceland. And a ship from Iceland had been driven by the winds to a land in the far west which no man had ever seen before. Was this not America?

Soon after, in the year 1000, one of these Northmen, named Leif Ericson, also known as Leif the Lucky, set sail for this new land. There he found wild grapes growing, and from them he named it Vinland. This in our language would be called Wineland.

After him came others, and there was fighting with the red men, whom they called Skrellings. In the end the Northmen left the country, and before many years all was forgotten about it. Only lately the story has been found again in some old writings. And so time went on for nearly five hundred years more, and nothing was known in Europe about the land beyond the seas.

Now let us go from the north to the south of Europe. Here there is a kingdom called Italy, which runs down into the Mediterranean Sea almost in the shape of a boot. On the western shore of this kingdom is a famous old city named Genoa, in which many daring sailors have dwelt; and here, long ago, lived a man named Columbus, a poor man, who made his living by carding wool.

This poor wool-carder had four children, one of whom (born about 1436) he named Christopher. Almost everybody who has been at school in the world knows the name of this little Italian boy, for he became one of the most famous of men.

Many a boy in our times has to help his father in his shop. The great Benjamin Franklin began work by pouring melted tallow into moulds to make candles. In the same way little Columbus had to comb wool for his father, and very likely he got as tired of wool as Franklin did of candles.

The city he lived in was full of sailors, and no doubt he talked to many of them about life on the wild waters, and heard so many stories of danger and adventure that he took the fancy to go to sea himself.

At any rate we are told that he became a sailor when only fourteen years old, and made long and daring voyages while he was still young. Some of those were in Portuguese ships down the coast of Africa, of which continent very little was known at that time. He went north, too; some think as far as Iceland. Who knows but that he was told there of what the Northmen had done?

Columbus spent some time in the island of Madeira, far out in the Atlantic ocean, and there the people told him of strange things they had seen. These had come over the seas before the west winds and floated on their island shores. Among them were pieces of carved wood, and canes so long that they would hold four quarts of wine between their joints. And the dead bodies of two men had also come ashore, whose skins were the color of bronze or copper.

These stories set Columbus thinking. He was now a man, and had read many books of travel, and had studied all that was then known of geography. For a time he lived by making maps and charts for ship captains. This was in the city of Lisbon, in Portugal, where he married and settled down and had little boys of his own.

At that time some of the most learned people had odd notions about the earth. You may have seen globes as round as an orange, with the countries laid out on them. But the people then had never seen such a globe, and the most of them thought that the earth was as flat as a table, and that any one who sailed too far over the ocean would come to the edge of the earth and fall off.

This seems very absurd, does it not? But you must remember that people then knew very little about the earth they lived on, and could not understand how people could keep on a round globe like flies on a ball of glass.

But there were some who thought the earth to be round, and Columbus was one of these.

At that time silk and spices and other rich goods were brought from China and India, thousands of miles to the east, by caravans that traveled overland. Columbus thought that by sailing west, over the broad Atlantic, he would come to these far countries, just as a fly may walk around the surface of an orange, and come to the place it started from.

The more Columbus thought about this, the more certain he became that he was right. He was so sure of it that he set out to try and make other people think the same way. He wanted ships with which to sail across the unknown seas to the west, but he had no money of his own to buy them with.

Ah! what a task poor Columbus now had. For years and years he wandered about among the kings and princes of Europe, but no one would believe his story, and many laughed at him and mocked him.

First he tried Genoa, the city where he was born, but the people there told him he was a fool or had lost his senses.

Then he went to the king of Portugal. This king was a rascal, and tried to cheat him. He got his plans from him, and sent out a vessel in secret, hoping to get the honor of the discovery for himself. But the captain he sent was a coward and was scared by the rolling waves. He soon came back, and told the king that there was nothing to be found but water and storm. King John, of Portugal, was very sorry afterward that he had tried to rob Columbus of his honor.

Columbus was very angry when he heard what the king had done. He left Portugal for Spain, and tried to get the king and queen of that country to let him have ships and sailors. But they were at war with a people called the Moors, and had no money to spare for anything but fighting and killing.

Columbus stayed there for seven long years. He talked to the wise men, but they made sport of him. "If the earth is round," they said, "and you sail west, your ships will go down hill, and they will have to sail up hill to come back. No ship that was ever made can do that. And you may come to places where the waters boil with the great heat of the sun; and frightful monsters may rise out of the sea and swallow your ships and your men." Even the boys in the street got to laughing at him and mocking him as a man who had lost his wits.

After these many years Columbus got tired of trying in Spain. He now set out for France, to see what the king of that country would do. He sent one of his brothers to England to see its king and ask him for aid.

He was now so poor that he had to travel along the dusty roads on foot, his little son going with him. One day he stopped at a convent called La Rabida, to beg some bread for his son, who was very hungry.

The good monks gave bread to the boy, and while he was eating it the prior of the convent came out and talked with Columbus, asking him his business. Columbus told him his story. He told it so well that the prior believed in it. He asked him to stay there with his son, and said he would write to Isabella, the queen of Spain, whom he knew very well.

So Columbus stayed, and the prior wrote a letter to the queen, and in the end the wandering sailor was sent for to come back to the king's court.

Queen Isabella deserves much of the honor of the discovery of America. The king would not listen to the wandering sailor, but the queen offered to pledge her jewels to raise the money which he needed for ships and sailors.

Columbus had won. After years and years of toil and hunger and disappointment, he was to have ships and sailors and supplies, and to be given a chance to prove whether it was he or the wise men who were the fools.

But such ships as they gave him! Why, you can see far better ones every day, sailing down your rivers. Two of them did not even have decks, but were like open boats. With this small fleet Columbus set sail from Palos, a little port in Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492, on one of the most wonderful voyages that has ever been known.

Away they went far out into the "Sea of Darkness," as the Atlantic ocean was then called. Mile after mile, day after day, on and on they went, seeing nothing but the endless waves, while the wind drove them steadily into the unknown west.

The sailors never expected to see their wives and children again. They were frightened when they started, and every day they grew more scared. They looked with staring eyes for the bleak fogs or the frightful monsters of which they had been told. At one place they came upon great tracts of seaweed, and thought they were in shallow water and would be wrecked on banks of mud. Then the compass, to which they trusted, ceased to point due north and they were more frightened than ever. Soon there was hardly a stout heart in the fleet except that of Columbus.

The time came when the sailors grew half mad with fear. Some of them made a plot to throw Columbus overboard and sail home again. They would tell the people there that he had fallen into the sea and been drowned.

It was a terrible thing to do, was it not? But desperate men will do dreadful things. They thought one man had better die than all of them. Only good fortune saved the life of the great navigator.

One day a glad sailor called his comrades and pointed over the side. A branch of a green bush was floating by with fresh berries on it. It looked as if it had just been broken off a bush. Another day one of them picked from the water a stick which had been carved with a knife. Land birds were seen flying over the ships. Hope came back to their hearts. They were sure now that land must be near.

October 11th came. When night fell dozens of men were on the lookout. Each wanted to be the first to see land. About 10 o'clock that night, Columbus, who was looking out over the waves, saw a light far off. It moved up and down like a lantern carried in a man's hand.

Hope now grew strong. Every eye looked out into the darkness. About two o'clock in the morning came the glad cry of "Land! Land!" A gun was fired from the leading vessel. One of its sailors had seen what looked like land in the moonlight. You may be sure no one slept any more that night.

When daylight came the joyful sailors saw before them a low, green shore, on which the sunlight lay in beauty; men and women stood on it, looking in wonder at the ships, which they thought must be great white-winged birds. They had never seen such things before. We can hardly think what we would have done if we had been in their place.

When the boats from the ships came to the shore, and Columbus landed, clad in shining armor, and bearing the great banner of Spain, the simple natives fell to the ground on their faces. They thought the gods had come from heaven to visit them.

Some of the red-skinned natives wore ornaments of gold. They were asked by signs where they had got this gold, and pointed south. Soon all were on board again, the ships once more spread their sails, and swiftly they flew southward before the wind.

Day by day, as they went on, new islands arose, some small, some large, all green and beautiful. Columbus thought this must be India, which he had set out to find, and he called the people Indians. He never knew that it was a new continent he had discovered.

Columbus and the Egg.

The month of March of the next year came before the little fleet sailed again into the port of Palos. The people hailed it with shouts of joy, for they had mourned their friends as dead.

Fast spread the news. When Columbus entered Barcelona, where the king and queen were, bringing with him new plants, birds and animals, strange weapons, golden ornaments, and some of the red-skinned natives, he was received as if he had been a king. He was seated beside the king; he rode by his side in the street; he was made a grandee of Spain; all the honors of the kingdom were showered on him.

We here recall the incident of Columbus and the egg. A dinner was given in his honor and many great men were there. The attention Columbus received made some people jealous. One of them with a sneer asked Columbus if he did not think any one else could have discovered the Indies. In answer Columbus took an egg from a dish on the table and handing it to the questioner asked him to make it stand on end.

After trying several times the man gave it up. Columbus, taking the egg in his hand, tapping it gently on one end against the top of the table so as to break the shell slightly, made it balance.

"Any one could do that," said the man. "So any one can discover the Indies after I have shown him the way," said Columbus.

It was his day of pride and triumph. Poor Columbus was soon to find out how Spain treated those who had given to it the highest honor and the greatest riches. Three times again he sailed to the New World, and once a base Spanish governor sent him back to Spain with chains upon his limbs. Those chains he kept hanging in his room till he died, and asked that they should be buried with him.

They who had once given him every honor, now treated him with shameful neglect. He who had ridden beside the king and dined with the highest nobles of Spain, became poor, sad and lonely.

He died in 1506, fourteen years after his great discovery.

Then Spain, which had treated him so badly, began to honor his memory. But it came too late for poor Columbus, who had been allowed to die almost like a pauper, after he had made Spain the richest country in Europe.

CHAPTER II

THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS

VERY likely some of the readers of this book have asked their fathers or mothers how Spain came to own the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico, whose people they treated so badly that the United States had to go to war a few years ago and take these islands from Spain. Of course, you all know how the battleship Maine was blown up in the harbor of the city of Havana, and nearly all its brave sailors went to the bottom and were drowned. That was one reason why we went to war. If you should ask me that question, I would say that these were some of the islands which Columbus found, when he sailed into those sunny seas four centuries ago. They were settled by Spaniards, who killed off all their people and have lived on them ever since. There they have raised sugar cane, and tobacco, and coffee, and also oranges and bananas and all kinds of fine fruits.

They might have kept on owning these islands and raising these fruits for many years to come, if they had not been so cruel to the people that they rose against them, and with the help of the United States Government the islands were taken from Spain.

When Columbus told the nobles and people of Spain of his wonderful discovery, and showed them the plants and animals, the gold and other things, he had found on these far-off islands, it made a great excitement in that country.

You know how the finding of gold in Alaska has sent thousands of our own people to that cold country after the shining yellow metal. In the same way the gold which Columbus brought back sent thousands of Spaniards across the wide seas to the warm and beautiful islands of which the great sailor told them, where they hoped to find gold like stones in our streets.

Dozens of ships soon set sail from Spain, carrying thousands of people to the fair lands of the west, from which they expected to come back laden with riches. At the same time two daring sailors from England, John Cabot and his son Sebastian, crossed the ocean farther north, and found land where the Northmen had found it five hundred years before. In the seas into which the Cabots sailed, great fish were so plentiful that the ships could hardly sail through them, and bears swam out in the water and caught the fish in their mouths. That was certainly a queer way of fishing.

When the Cabots came back and told what they had seen, you may be sure the daring fishermen of Europe did not stay long at home. Soon numbers of their stout little vessels were crossing the ocean, and most of them came back so full of great codfish that the water almost ran over their decks.

Do you not think these fishermen were wiser than the Spaniards, who went everywhere seeking for gold, and finding very little of it? Gold is only good to buy food and other things; but if these can be had without buying they are better still. At any rate, the hardy fishermen thought so, and they were more lucky in finding fish than the Spaniards were in finding gold.

Thus the years passed on, and more and more Spaniards came to the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (which is now known as Hayti or San Domingo). And some of them soon began to sail farther west in search of new lands. Columbus, in his last voyage, reached the coasts of South America and Central America and other Spanish ships followed to those new shores.

I might tell you many wonderful things about these daring men. One of them was named Balboa, whose story you will be glad to hear, for it is full of strange events. This man had gone to the island of Hispaniola to make his fortune, but he found there only bad fortune. He had to work on a farm, and in time he became so poor and owed so much money that it seemed as if he could never get out of debt. In fact he was in sad straits.

No doubt the people who had lent him money often asked him to pay it back again, and Balboa, who got into a worse state every day, at length took an odd way to rid himself of his troubles. A ship was about to set sail for the west, and the poor debtor managed to get carried aboard it in a barrel. This barrel came from his farm and was supposed to contain provisions, and it was not till they were far away from land that it was opened and a living man was found in it instead of salt beef or pork.

When the captain saw him he was much astonished. He had paid for a barrel of provisions, and he found something which he could not well eat. He grew so angry at being cheated that he threatened to leave Balboa on a desert island, but the poor fellow got on his knees and begged so hard for his life that the captain at length forgave him. But he made him work to pay his way, and very likely used the rope's end to stir him up.

Of course you have learned from your geographies where the Isthmus of Darien (now called Panama) is, that narrow strip of land that is like a string tying together the great continents of North and South America. It was to the town of Darien, on this isthmus, that the ship made its way, and here Balboa made a surprising discovery. Some of the Indian chiefs told him of a mighty ocean which lay on the other side of the isthmus, and that beyond that ocean was the wonderful land of gold which the Spaniards wished to find.

What would you have done if you had been in Balboa's place, and wanted gold to pay your debts? Some of you, I think, would have done what he did. You would have made your way into the thick forest and climbed the rugged mountains of the isthmus, until, like Balboa, you got to the top of the highest peak. And, like him, you would have been filled with joy when you saw in the far distance the vast Pacific ocean, its waves glittering in the summer sun.

Here was glory; here was fortune. The poor debtor had become a great discoverer. Before his eyes spread a mighty ocean, its waves beating on the shore. He hurried with his men down the mountain sides to this shining sea, and raised on its shores the great banner of Spain. And soon after he set sail on its waters for Peru, the land of gold. But he did not get very far, for the stormy weather drove him back.

Poor Balboa! he was to win fame, but not fortune, and his debts were never to be paid. A jealous Spanish governor seized him, condemned him as a traitor, and had his head cut off in the market place. And so ended Balboa's dream of gold and glory. I could tell you of other wonderful adventures in these new lands. There is the story of Cortez, who found the great kingdom of Mexico, and conquered it with a few hundred Spaniards in armor of steel. And there is the story of Pizarro, who sailed to Peru, Balboa's land of gold, and won it for Spain, and sent home tons of silver and gold. But these stories have nothing to do with the history of the United States, so we must pass them by and go back to the early days of the country in which we dwell.

The first Spaniard to set foot on what is now the United States was an old man named Ponce de Leon, who was governor of Porto Rico. If he had lived until now he would have been on our soil while on that island, for it now belongs to the United States. But no one had dreamed of our great republic four hundred years ago.

At that time there was a fable which many believed, which said that somewhere in Asia was a wonderful Fountain of Youth. It was thought that everybody who bathed in its waters would grow young again. An old man in a moment would become as fresh and strong as a boy. De Leon wanted youth more than he did gold, and like all men at that time he thought the land he was in was part of Asia, and might contain the Fountain of Youth. He asked the Indians if they knew of such a magic spring. The red men, who wanted to get rid of the Spaniards, by whom they had been cruelly treated, pointed to the northwest.

So, in the year 1513, old Ponce de Leon took ship and sailed away in search of the magic spring. And not many days passed before, on Easter Sunday, he saw before him a land so bright with flowers that he named it "Flowery Easter." It is still called Florida, the Spanish word for "flowery."

I am sure none of my young readers believe in such a Fountain of Youth, and that none of you would have hunted for it as old De Leon did. Up and down that flowery land he wandered, seeking its wonderful waters. He found many sparkling springs, and eagerly drank of and bathed in their cool, liquid waves, but out of them all he came with white hair and wrinkled face. In the end he gave up the search, and sailed away, a sad old man. Some years afterwards he came back again. But this time the Indians fought with the white men, and De Leon was struck with an arrow, and hurt so badly that he soon died. So he found death instead of youth. Many people go to Florida in our own days in search of health, but Ponce de Leon is the only man who ever went there to find the magical Fountain of Youth.

About twenty-five years afterwards another Spaniard came to Florida. It was gold and glory he was after, not youth. This man, Fernando de Soto, had been in Peru with Pizarro, and helped him to conquer that land of gold. He now hoped to find a rich empire for himself in the north.

So with nine ships and six hundred brave young men he sailed away from his native land. They were a gay and hopeful band, while their bright banners floated proudly from the mastheads, and waved in the western winds. Little did they dream of what a terrible fate lay before them.

I think you will say that De Soto deserved a bad fate when I tell you that he brought bloodhounds to hunt the poor Indians, and chains to fasten on their hands and feet. That was the way the Spaniards often treated the poor red men. He brought also two hundred horses for his armed men to ride, and a drove of hogs to serve them for fresh meat. And in the ships were great iron chests, which he hoped to take back full of gold and other precious things.

For two long years De Soto and his band traveled through the country, fighting Indians, burning their houses and robbing them of their food. But the Indians were brave warriors, and in one terrible battle the Spaniards lost eighty of their horses and many of their men.

In vain De Soto sought for gold and glory. Not an ounce of the yellow metal was found; no mighty empire was reached. He did make one great discovery, that of the vast Mississippi River. But he never got home to tell of it, for he died on its banks, worn out with his battles and marches, and was buried under its waters. His men built boats and floated down the great river to the Gulf of Mexico. Here, at length, they found Spanish settlements. But of that brave and gallant band half were dead, and the rest were so nearly starved that they were like living skeletons.

We must not forget that humble Italian traveler and explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who in 1499, saw the part of South America where lies the island of Trinidad. He afterwards reached the coast of Brazil. Some years later, when maps were made of the country he had visited, some one called it America. In later years this name was used for the whole continent. So what should have been called Columbia came to be called America.

CHAPTER III

THREE EARLY HEROES

WHAT do you think of Captain John Smith, the hero of Virginia? Was he not a man to dream of, a true hero? Why, I feel half ashamed to say anything about him, for every one of you must know his story. I am sure all those who love good stories of adventure have read about him.

John Smith was not the kind of man to work at a trade. He ran away from home when a boy, and became a wanderer over the earth. And a hard life he had of it. At one place he was robbed, and at another place was shipwrecked. Once he leaped overboard from a ship and swam ashore. Once again he fought with three Turks and killed all of them without help. Then he was taken prisoner, and sold as a slave to a cruel Turk, who put a ring round his neck and made him work very hard.

One day his master came out where he was at work and struck him with his whip. He soon found that John Smith was a bad man to whip. He hit the Turk a hard blow with the flail he was using, and killed him on the spot. Then he ran away, got to Russia, and in time made his way back to England. But England was too quiet a place for him. A ship was about to cross the sea to America and he volunteered to go in it. He had not half enough of adventure yet. Some people think that Captain Smith bragged a little, and did not do all he said. Well, that may be so. But it is certain that he was a brave and bold man, and just the man to help settle a new country where there were savage red men to deal with.

The English were in no hurry in sending out settlers to the New World which Columbus had discovered. While the Spaniards were seeking gold and empires in the south, and the French were catching fish and exploring the rivers and lakes in the north, all the English did was to rob the Spanish ships and settlements, and to bring them negroes from Africa for slaves.

But the time came, a hundred years after America was discovered, when some of the English tried to form a settlement on the coast of North Carolina. Poor settlers! When the next ship came out they were all gone. Not a soul of them could be found. Nothing was left but some letters they had cut into the bark of a tree. What became of them nobody ever knew. Likely enough they wandered away and were killed by the Indians.

Nothing more was done until the year 1607, when the ship in which Captain John Smith had taken passage sailed up a bright and beautiful river in Virginia. It was the month of May, and the banks were covered with flowers.

The colonists thought this a very good place to live in, so they landed and began to look around them. The river they called the James, and the place they named Jamestown. But instead of building a town and preparing for the future, as sensible men would have done, they began to seek for gold, and soon they were in no end of trouble. In a short time their food was all eaten. Then some of them were taken sick and died. Others were killed by the Indians. It looked as if this colony would come to grief as did the former one.

So it would if it had not been for Captain Smith. He was only one man among a hundred, but he was worth more than all the rest of the hundred. He could not keep still, but hustled about, here, there and everywhere. Now he was exploring the country, sailing up the rivers or up the broad Chesapeake Bay. Now he was talking with the Indians, getting food from them for the starving colonists. Now he was doing his best to make the men build houses and dig and plant the ground. You can see that John Smith had enough to keep him busy. He had many adventures with the Indians. At one time he was taken prisoner by them and was in terrible danger of being killed. But he showed them his pocket compass, and when they saw the needle always pointing north, they thought there must be magic in it. They were still more surprised when he sent one of them with a letter to his friends. They did not understand how a piece of paper could talk, as his paper seemed to do.

But all this was not enough to save his life. The great chief Powhatan looked on him as the leader of these white strangers who had settled in his land. He wanted to get rid of them, and thought that if he killed the man of the magic needle and the talking paper they would certainly be scared and go away.

So Captain Smith was tied hand and foot, and laid on the ground with his head on a log. And a powerful Indian stood near by with a great war club in his hand. Only a sign from Powhatan was needed, and down would come that club on the white man's head, and it would be all over with the brave and bold John Smith.

Alas! poor Captain Smith! There was no pity in Powhatan's eyes. The burly Indian twisted his fingers about the club and lifted it in the air. One minute more and it might be all over with the man who had killed three Turks in one fight. But before that minute was over a strange thing took place. A young Indian girl came running wildly toward him, with her hair flying and her eyes wet with tears. And she flung herself on the ground and laid her head on that of the bound prisoner, and begged the chief to give him his life.

It was Pocahontas, the pretty young daughter of Powhatan. She pleaded so pitifully that the chief's heart was touched, and he consented that the captive should live, and bade them take the bonds from his limbs.

Do you not think this a very pretty story? Some say that it is not true, but I think very likely it is. At any rate, it is so good that it ought to be true. Afterwards this warm-hearted Indian princess married one of the Virginians named John Rolfe and was taken to London and shown to the Queen. I am sorry to have to say that poor Pocahontas died there and never saw her native land again.

Captain Smith got safely back to Jamestown. But his troubles were not at an end, for the colonists were as hard to deal with as the Indians. Some of them had found a kind of yellow stuff which they were sure was gold. They loaded a ship with this and sent it to England, thinking that they would all be rich. But the yellow stuff proved to be what is known as "a fool's gold," and worth no more than so much sand. Instead of becoming rich, they were laughed at as great fools.

After a while Smith was made governor, and he now tried a new plan to make the men work. He told them that if they did not work they should not eat. None of them wanted to starve, and they knew that John Smith meant just what he said, so they began to build houses and to dig the ground and plant crops. But some of them grumbled and some of them swore, and it was anything but a happy family.

Captain Smith did not like this swearing, and he took a funny way to stop it. When the men came home at night each one who had sworn had a can of cold water poured down his sleeve for every time he had done so. Did any of my readers ever try that? If they did they would know why the men soon quit grumbling and swearing. All was beginning to go well in the colony when Captain Smith was hurt by some gunpowder that took fire and went off. He was hurt so badly that he had to go back to England. After that all went ill.

As soon as their governor was gone the lazy men quit working. The profane men swore worse than before. They ate up all their food in a hurry, and the Indians would bring them no more. Sickness and hunger came and carried many of them to the grave. Some of them meddled with the Indians and were killed. There were five hundred of them when winter set in; but when spring came only sixty of them were alive. And all this took place because one wise man, Captain John Smith, was hurt and had to go home.

The whole colony would have broken up if ships had not come out with more men and plenty of food. Soon after that, the people began to plant the ground and raise tobacco, which sold well in England. Many of them became rich, and the little settlement at Jamestown in time grew into the great colony of Virginia.

This ends the story of the hero of Jamestown. Now let us say something about the hero of Plymouth. In the year 1620, thirteen years after Smith and his fellows sailed up the James River, a shipload of men and women came to a place called Plymouth, on the rocky coast of New England. It was named Plymouth by Captain Smith, who had been there before. A portion of the rock on which they first stepped, is still preserved and surrounded by a fence.

These people are known as Pilgrims. They had been badly treated at home because they did believe in the teachings of the Church of England, and they had come across the stormy sea to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, without fear of being put in prison.

With them came a soldier. He was named Captain Miles Standish. He was a little man, but he carried a big sword, and had a stout heart and a hot temper. While the Pilgrims came to work and to pray, Captain Standish came to fight. He was a different man from Captain Smith, and would not have been able to deal with the lazy folks at Jamestown. But the Pilgrims were different also. They expected to work and live by their labor, and they had no sooner landed on Plymouth Rock than they began to dig and plant, while the sound of the hammer rang merrily all day long, as they built houses and got ready for the cold winter. But after all their labor and carefulness, sickness and hunger came, as they had come to Jamestown, and by the time the winter was over, half the poor Pilgrims were dead.

The Indians soon got to be afraid of Captain Standish. They were afraid of the Pilgrims, too, for they found that these religious men could fight as well as pray. One Indian chief, named Canonicus, sent them a bundle of arrows with a snake's skin tied round it. This was their way of saying that they were going to fight the Pilgrims and drive them from the country. But Governor Bradford filled the snake skin with powder and bullets and sent it back. When Canonicus saw this he was badly scared, for he knew well what it meant. He had heard the white men's guns, and thought they had the power of using thunder and lightning. So he made up his mind to let the white strangers alone.

But the Pilgrims did not trust the red men. They put cannon on the roof of their log church, and they walked to church on Sunday like so many soldiers on the march, with guns in their hands and Captain Standish at their head. And while they were listening to the sermon one man stood outside on the lookout for danger.

At one time some of the Indians made a plot to kill all the English. A friendly Indian told Captain Standish about it, and he made up his mind to teach them a lesson they would remember. He went to the Indian camp with a few men, and walked boldly into the hut where the plotting chiefs were talking over their plans. When they saw him and the men with him, they tried to frighten them. One of them showed the captain his knife and talked very boldly about it.

A big Indian looked with scorn on the little captain. "Pah, you are only a little fellow, if you are a captain," he said. "I am not a chief, but I am strong and brave."

Captain Standish was very angry, but he said nothing then. He waited until the next day, when he met the chiefs again. Then there was a quarrel and a fight, and the little captain killed the big Indian with his own knife. More of the Indians were slain, and the others ran for the woods. That put an end to the plot.

There is one funny story told about Captain Standish. His wife had died, and he felt so lonely that he wanted another; so he picked out a pretty young woman named Priscilla Mullins. But the rough old soldier knew more about fighting than about making love, and he sent his young friend, John Alden, to make love for him.

John told Priscilla's father what he had come for, and the father told Priscilla what John had told him. The pretty Priscilla had no fancy for the wrinkled old soldier. She looked at her father. Then she looked at John. Then she said: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"

John did speak for himself, and Priscilla became his wife. As for the captain, he married another woman, and this time I fancy he "spoke for himself."

Miles Standish lived to be 70 years old, and to have a farm of his own and a house on a high hill near Plymouth. This is called Captain's Hill, and on it there is now a stone shaft a hundred feet high, with a statue of bold Captain Standish on its top.

We have now our third hero to speak of, Roger Williams. He was not a captain like the others, but a preacher; but he was a brave man, and showed in his way as much courage as either of the captains.

The Pilgrims were quickly followed by other people, who settled at Boston and other places around Massachusetts Bay until there were a great many of them. These were called Puritans. They came across the seas for the same reason as the Pilgrims, to worship God in their own way.

But they were as hard to live with as the people at home, for they wanted to force everybody else into their way. Some Quakers who came to Boston were treated very badly because they had different ways from the Puritans. And one young minister named Roger Williams, who thought every man should have the right to worship as he pleased, and said that the Indians had not been treated justly, had to flee into the woods for safety.

It was winter time. The trees were bare of leaves and the ground was white with snow. Poor Roger had to wander through the cold woods, making a fire at night with his flint and steel, or sometimes creeping into a hollow tree to sleep.

Thus he went on, half frozen and half starved, for eighty long miles, to the house of Massasoit, an Indian chief who was his friend. The good chief treated him well, for he knew, like all the Indians, what Roger Williams had tried to do for them. When spring time came, Massasoit gave his guest a canoe and told him where to go. So Roger paddled away till he found a good place to stop. This place he called Providence. A large city now stands there, and is still called Providence.

Roger Williams had some friends with him, and others soon came, and after a few years he had quite a settlement of his own. It was called Rhode Island. Such a settlement as that at Plymouth, at Boston, and at Providence, was called "a colony."

He took care that the Indians should be treated well, and that no one should do them any harm, so they grew to love the good white man. And he said that every man in his colony should worship God in the way he liked best, and no one should suffer on account of his manner of worship.

It was a wonderful thing in those days, when there were wars going on in Europe about religion or the manner of worship, and everybody was punished who did not believe in the religion of the state.

Do you not think that Roger Williams was as brave a man as John Smith or Miles Standish, and as much of a hero? He did not kill any one. He was not that kind of a hero. But he did much to make men happy and good and to do justice to all men, and I think that is the best kind of a hero.

CHAPTER IV

THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS COME TO AMERICA

I WONDER how many of my readers have ever seen the great city of New York. I wonder still more how many of them knew that it is the largest city in the world except London. But we must remember that London is ten times as old, so it can well afford to be larger.

Why, if you should go back no farther than the time of your great-grandfather you would find no city of New York. All you would see would be a sort of large village on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River. And if you went back to the time of your grandfather's great-grandfather, I fancy you would see nothing on that island but trees, with Indian wigwams beneath them. Not a single white man or a single house would you see.

In the year 1609, just two years after Captain Smith sailed into the James River, a queer-looking Dutch vessel came across the ocean and began to prowl up and down the coast. It was named the "Half Moon." It came from Holland, the land of the Dutch, but its captain was an Englishman named Henry Hudson, who had done so many daring things that men called him "the bold Englishman."

What Captain Hudson would have liked to do was to sail across the United States and come out into the Pacific Ocean, and so make his way to the rich countries of Asia. Was not that a funny notion? To think that he could sail across three thousand miles of land and across great ranges of mountains!

But you must not think that Captain Hudson was crazy. Nobody then knew how wide America was. For all they knew, it might not be fifty miles wide. Captain John Smith tried to get across it by sailing up James River. And Captain Hudson fancied he might find some stream that led from one ocean to the other.

So on he went up and down the coast looking for an opening. And after a while the "Half Moon" sailed into a broad and beautiful bay, where great trees came down to the edge of the water and red men paddled about in their canoes. Captain Hudson was delighted to see it. "It was," he said, "as pleasant with grass and flowers as he had ever seen, and very sweet smells."

This body of water was what we now call New York Bay. A broad and swift river runs into it, which is now called Hudson River, after Henry Hudson. The bold captain thought that this was the stream to go up if he wished to reach the Pacific Ocean. So, after talking as well as he could with the Indians in their canoes, and trading beads for corn, he set his sails again and started up the splendid river. Some of the Indians came on board the "Half Moon," and the Dutch gave them brandy, which they had never seen or tasted before. Soon they were dancing and capering about the deck, and one of them fell down so stupid with drink that his friends thought he was dead. That was their first taste of the deadly "fire water" of the whites, which has killed thousands of the red men since then.

Captain Hudson and the Dutch no doubt thought that this was great fun. People often do much harm without stopping to think. But on up the river went the "Half Moon."

At some places they saw fields of green corn on the water's edge. Farther on were groves of lofty trees, and for miles great cliffs of rock rose like towers. It was all very grand and beautiful.

"It was a very good land to fall in with," said Captain Hudson, "and a pleasant land to see."

As they sailed on and on, they came to mountains, which rose on both sides the river. After passing the mountains, the captain went ashore to visit an old chief, who lived in a round house built of bark. The Indians here had great heaps of corn and beans. But what they liked best was roast dog. They roasted a dog for Captain Hudson and asked him to eat it, but I do not know whether he did so or not. And they broke their arrows and threw them into the fire, to show that they did not mean to do harm to the white men.

After leaving the good old chief the Dutch explorers went on up the river till they reached a place about 150 miles above the sea, where the city of Albany now stands. Here the river became so narrow and shallow that Captain Hudson saw he could not reach the Pacific by that route, so he turned and sailed back to the sea again.

A sad fate was that of Captain Hudson, "the bold Englishman." The next year he came again to America. But this time he went far to the north and entered the great body of water which we call Hudson Bay. He thought this would lead to the Pacific, and he would not turn back, though the food was nearly all gone. At last the crew got desperate, and they put the captain and some others into an open boat on the wide waters, and turned back again. Nothing more was ever heard of Captain Hudson, and he must have died miserably on that cold and lonely bay.

But before his last voyage he had told the Dutch people all about Hudson River, and that the Indians had many fine furs which they would be glad to trade for beads, and knives, and other cheap things. The Dutch were fond of trading, and liked to make a good bargain, so they soon began to send ships to America. They built a fort and some log huts on Manhattan Island, and a number of them stayed there to trade with the red men. They paid the Indians for the island with some cheap goods worth about twenty-four dollars. I do not think any of you could guess how many millions of dollars that island is worth now. For the great city of New York stands where the log huts of the Dutch traders once stood, and twenty-four dollars would hardly buy as much land as you could cover with your hand.

The country around is now all farming land, where grain and fruit are grown, and cattle are raised. But then it was all woodland for hundreds of miles away, and in these woods lived many foxes and beavers and other fur-bearing animals. These the Indians hunted and killed, and sold their furs to the Dutch, so that there was soon a good trade for both the red and the white men. The Dutch were glad to get the furs and the Indians were as glad to get the knives and beads. More and more people came from Holland, and the town grew larger and larger, and strong brick houses took the place of the log huts, and in time there was quite a town.

Men were sent from Holland to govern the people. Some of these men were not fit to govern themselves, and the settlers did not like to have such men over them. One of them was a stubborn old fellow named Peter Stuyvesant. He had lost one of his legs, and wore a wooden leg with bands of silver around it, so that he was called "Old Silver Leg."

While he was governor an important event took place. The English had a settlement in Virginia and another in New England, and they said that all the coast lands belonged to them, because the Cabots had been the first to see them. The Cabots came from Italy, but they had settled in England, and sailed in an English ship.

So one day a small fleet of English vessels came into the bay, and a letter was sent on shore which said that all this land belonged to England and must be given up to them. The Dutch might stay there, but they would be under an English governor. Old Peter tore up the letter and stamped about in a great rage on his silver leg. But he had treated the people so badly that they would not fight for him, so he had to give up the town.

The English called it New York, after the Duke of York, the king's brother. It grew and grew till it became a great and rich city, and sent ships to all parts of the world. Most of the Dutch stayed there, and their descendants are among the best people of New York to-day. Not long after these English ships came to New York Bay, other English ships came to a fine body of water, about 100 miles farther south, now called Delaware Bay. Into this also runs a great stream of fresh water, called Delaware River, as wide as the Hudson. I think you will like to learn what brought them here.

No doubt you remember what I said about some people called Quakers, who came to Boston and were treated very badly by the Puritans. Did any of my young readers ever see a Quaker? In old times you would have known them, for they dressed in a different way from other people. They wore very plain clothes and broad-brimmed hats, which they would not take off to do honor to king or noble. To-day they generally dress more like the people around them.

If they were treated badly in Boston they were treated worse in England. Thieves and highwaymen had as good a time as the poor Quakers. Some of them were put in jail and kept there for years. Some were whipped or put in the stocks, where low people called them vile names and threw mud at them. Indeed, these quiet people, who did no harm to any one, but were kind to others, had a very hard time, and were treated more cruelly than the Pilgrims and the Puritans.

Among them was the son of a brave English admiral, who was a friend of the king and his brother, the Duke of York. But this did not save him from being put in prison for preaching as a Quaker and wearing his hat in court.

This was William Penn, from whom Pennsylvania was named. You may well fancy that the son of a rich admiral and the friend of a king did not like being treated as though he were a thief because he chose to wear a hat with a broad brim and to say "thee" and "thou," and because he would not go to the king's church.

What is more, the king owed him money, which he could not or would not pay. He had owed this money to Admiral Penn, and after the admiral died he owed it to his son.

William Penn thought it would be wise to do as the Pilgrims and Puritans had done. There was plenty of land in America, and it would be easy there to make a home for the poor Quakers where they could live in peace and worship God in the way they thought right. This they could not do in England.

Penn went to the king and told him how he could pay his debt. If the king would give him a tract of land on the west side of the Delaware River, he would take it as payment in full for the money owing to his father.

King Charles, who never had money enough for his own use, was very glad to pay his debts in this easy way. He told Penn that he could have all the land he wanted, and offered him a tract that was nearly as large as the whole of England. This land belonged to the red men, but that did not trouble King Charles. It is easy to pay debts in other people's property. All Penn was asked to pay the king was two beaver skins every year and one-fifth of all the gold and silver that should be mined. As no gold or silver was ever mined the king got nothing but his beaver skins, which were a kind of rent.

What do any of my young readers know about the Delaware River? Have any of you seen the wide, swift stream which flows between the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and runs into the broad body of water known as Delaware Bay? On its banks stands the great city of Philadelphia, in which live more than a million people, and where there are thousands of busy workshops and well-filled stores. This large and fine city came from the way the king paid his debt. King Charles was not a good man, but he did one thing that had a good ending.

There were white men there before the Quakers came. Many years earlier a number of people from Sweden had come and settled along the river. Then the Dutch from New York said the land was theirs, and took possession of the forts of the Swedes. Then the English of New York claimed the land as theirs. Then Quakers came and settled in New Jersey. Finally came William Penn, in a ship called by the pretty name of the "Welcome," and after that the land was governed by the Quakers or Friends, though the Swedes stayed there still.

We have something very pleasant to say about good William Penn. He knew very well that King Charles did not own the land, and had no right to sell it or give it away. So he called the Indians together under a great elm tree on the river bank, and had a long talk with them, and told them he would pay them for all the land he wanted. This pleased the red men very much, and ever afterwards they loved William Penn.

Do you not think it must have been a pretty scene when Penn and the Quakers met the Indian chiefs under the great tree—the Indians in their colored blankets and the Quakers in their great hats? That tree stood for more than a hundred years afterwards, and when the British army was in Philadelphia during the war of the Revolution their general put a guard around Penn's treaty tree, so that the soldiers should not cut it down for firewood. The tree is gone now, but a stone monument marks where it stood. A city was laid out on the river, which Penn named Philadelphia, a word which means Brotherly Love. I suppose some brotherly love is there still, but not nearly so much as there should be.

Streets were made through the woods, and the names of the trees were given to these streets, which are still known as Chestnut, Walnut, Pine, Cherry, and the like. People soon came in numbers, and it is wonderful how fast the city grew. Soon there were hundreds of comfortable houses, and in time it grew to be the largest in the country.

The Indians looked on in wonder to see large houses springing up where they had hunted deer, and to see great ships where they had paddled their canoes. But the white men spread more and more into the land, and the red men were pushed back, and in time none of them were left in Penn's woodland colony. This was long after William Penn was dead.

But while Penn's city was growing large and rich, he was becoming poor. He spent much money on his province and got very little back. At last he became so poor that he was put in prison for debt, as was the custom in those days. In the end he died and left the province to his sons. The Indians sent some beautiful furs to his widow in memory of their great and good brother. They said these were to make her a cloak "to protect her while she was passing without her guide through the stormy wilderness of life."

CHAPTER V

THE CAVALIER COLONIES OF THE SOUTH

VIRGINIA has often been called the Cavalier colony. Do any of you know why, or who the Cavaliers were? Perhaps I had better tell you. They were the lords and the proud people of England. Many of them had no money, but they would do no work, and cared for nothing but pleasure and fighting. There were plenty of working people in that country, but there were many who were too proud to work, and expected others to work for them, while they hoped to live at ease.

Some of this kind of men came out with John Smith, and that is why he had so much trouble with them. The Puritans and the Quakers came from the working people of England, and nobody had to starve them to make them work, or to pour cold water down their sleeves to stop them from swearing.

While religious people settled in the North, many of the proud Cavalier class, who cared very little about religion, came to the South. So we may call the southern settlements the Cavalier colonies, though many of the common people came there too, and it was not long before there was plenty of work.

The first to come after John Smith and the Jamestown people were some shiploads of Catholics. You should know that the Catholics were treated in England even worse than the Puritans and the Quakers. The law said they must go to the English Church instead of to their own. If they did not they would have to pay a large sum of money or go to prison. Was not this very harsh and unjust?

The Catholics were not all poor people. There were rich men and nobles among them. One of these nobles, named Lord Baltimore, asked the King for some land in America where he and his friends might dwell in peace and have churches of their own. This was many years before William Penn asked for the same thing. The King was a friend of Lord Baltimore and told him he might have as much land as he could make use of. So he chose a large tract just north of Virginia, which the King named Maryland, after his wife, Queen Mary, who was a Catholic. All Lord Baltimore had to pay for this was two Indian arrows every year, and a part of the gold and silver, if any were found. This was done to show that the King still kept some claim to Maryland, and did not give away all his rights.

And now comes a story much the same as I have told you several times already. A shipload of Catholics and other people came across the ocean to the new continent which Columbus had discovered many years before. These sailed up the broad Chesapeake Bay. You may easily find this bay on your maps. They landed at a place they called St. Mary's, where there was a small Indian town. As it happened, the Indians at this town had been so much troubled by fighting tribes farther north that they were just going to move somewhere else. So they were very glad to sell their town to the white strangers.

All they wanted for their houses and their corn fields were some hatchets, knives and beads, and other things they could use. Gold and silver would have been of no value to them, for they had never seen these metals. The only money the Indians used was round pieces of seashell, with holes bored through them. Before these people left their town they showed the white men how to hunt in the woods and how to plant corn. And their wives taught the white women how to make hominy out of corn and how to bake johnny-cakes. So the people of Maryland did not suffer from hunger like those of Virginia and New England, and they had plenty to eat and lived very well from the start.

This was in the year 1634, just about the time Roger Williams went to Rhode Island. Lord Baltimore did the same thing that Roger Williams did; he gave the people religious liberty. Every Christian who came to Maryland had the right to worship God in his own way. Roger Williams went farther than this, for he gave the same right to Jews and all other people, whether they were Christians or pagans.

It was not long before other people came to Maryland, and they began to plant tobacco, as the people were doing in Virginia. Tobacco was a good crop to raise, for it could be sold for a high price in England, so that the Maryland planters did very well, and many of them grew rich. But religious liberty did not last there very long, and the Catholics were not much better off than they had been in England. All the poor people who came with Lord Baltimore were Protestants. Only the rich ones were Catholics. Many other Protestants soon came, some of them being Puritans from New England, who did not know what religious liberty meant.

These people said that the Catholics should not have the right to worship in their own churches, even in Maryland, and they went so far that they tried to take from Lord Baltimore the lands which the king had given him. There was much fighting between the Catholics and the Protestants. Now one party got the best of it, and now the other. In the end the province was taken from Lord Baltimore's son; and when a new king, named King William, came to the throne, he said that Maryland was his property, and that the Catholics should not have a church of their own or worship in their own way in that province. Do you not think this was very cruel and unjust? It seems so to me. It did not seem right, after Lord Baltimore had given religious liberty to all men, for others to come and take it away. But the custom in those days was that all men must be made to think the same way, or be punished if they didn't. This seems queer now-a-days, when every man has the right to think as he pleases.

In time there was born a Lord Baltimore who became a Protestant, and the province was given back to him. It grew rich and full of people, and large towns were built. One of these was named Baltimore, after Lord Baltimore, and is now a great city. And Washington, the capital of the United States, stands on land that was once part of Maryland. But St. Mary's, the first town built, has gone, and there is hardly a mark left to show where it stood.

Maryland, as I have said, lies north of Virginia. The Potomac River runs between them. South of Virginia was another great tract of land, reaching all the way to Florida, which the Spaniards then held. Some French Protestants tried to settle there, but they were cruelly murdered by the Spaniards, and no one else came there for many years.

About 1660 people began to settle in what was then called "the Carolinas," but is now called North Carolina and South Carolina. Some of these came from Virginia and some from England, and small settlements were made here and there along the coast. One of these was called Charleston. This has now grown into a large and important city.

There were some noblemen in England who thought that this region might become worth much money, so they asked the king, Charles II., to give it to them. This was the same king who gave the Dutch settlement to the Duke of York and who afterwards gave Pennsylvania to William Penn. He was very ready to give away what did not belong to him, and told these noblemen that they were welcome to the Carolinas. There were eight of these men, and they made up their minds that they would have a very nice form of government for their new province. So they went to a famous man named John Locke, who was believed to be very wise, and asked him to draw up a form of government for them.

John Locke drew up a plan of government which they thought very fine, but which everybody now thinks was very foolish and absurd. I fancy he knew more about books than he did about government. He called it the "Grand Model," and the noble lords thought they had a wonderful government indeed. There were to be earls, and barons, and lords, the same as in Europe. No one could vote who did not hold fifty acres. The poorer people were to be like so many slaves. They could not even leave one plantation for another without asking leave from the lord or baron who owned it.

What do you think the people did? You must not imagine they came across the ocean to be made slaves of. No, indeed! They cared no more for the "Grand Model" than if it was a piece of tissue paper. They settled where they pleased, and would not work for the earls and barons, and fought with the governors, and refused to pay the heavy taxes which the eight noble owners asked.

In time these noblemen got so sick of the whole business that they gave their province back to the king. It was then divided into two colonies, known as North Carolina and South Carolina. As for the lords and barons, nobody heard of them any more.

The people of the Carolinas had other things beside the Grand Model of government to trouble them. There were savage Indians back in the country who attacked them and killed many of them. And there were pirates along the coast who attacked ships and killed all on board. But rice and indigo were planted, and afterwards cotton, and much tar and turpentine were got from the pine trees in North Carolina, and as the years went on these colonies became rich and prosperous, and the people began to have a happy time.

I hope none of my young readers are tired of reading about kings and colonies. I am sure they must have enjoyed reading about John Smith and Miles Standish and William Penn and the rest of the great leaders. At any rate, there is only one more colony to talk about, and then we will be through with this part of our story. This is the colony of Georgia, which lies in the tract of land between South Carolina and Florida.

I am sure that when you are done reading this book you will be glad that you did not live two or three hundred years ago. To-day every one can think as he pleases, and do as he pleases, too, if he does not break the laws. And the laws are much more just and less cruel than they were in former times. Why, in those days, every man who owed money and could not pay it might be put in prison and kept there for years. He could not work there and earn money to pay his debts, and if his friends did not pay them he might stay there till he died. As I have told you, even the good William Penn was put in prison for debt, and kept there till his friends paid the money.

There were as many poor debtors in prison as there were thieves and villains. Some of them become sick and died, and some were starved to death by cruel jailers, who would not give them anything to eat if they had no money to pay for food. One great and good man, named General James Oglethorpe, visited the prisons, and was so sorry for the poor debtors he saw there, that he asked the king to give him a piece of land in America where he could take some of these suffering people.

There was now not much land left to give. Settlements had been made all along the coast except south of the Carolinas, and the king told General Oglethorpe that he could have the land which lay there, and could take as many debtors out of prison as he chose. He thought it would be a good thing to take them somewhere where they could work and earn their living. The king who was then on the throne was named King George, so Oglethorpe called his new colony Georgia.

It was now the year 1733, a hundred years after Lord Baltimore had come to Maryland. General Oglethorpe took many of the debtors out of prison, and very glad they were to get out, you may be sure. He landed with them on the banks of a fine river away down South, where he laid out a town which he named Savannah.

The happy debtors now found themselves in a broad and beautiful land, where they could prove whether they were ready to work or not. They were not long in doing this. Right away they began to cut down trees, and build houses, and plant fields, and very soon a pretty town was to be seen and food plants were growing in the fields. And very happy men and women these poor people were.

General Oglethorpe knew as well as William Penn that the land did not belong to the king. He sent for the Indian chiefs and told them the land was theirs, and offered to pay them for it. They were quite willing to sell, and soon he had all the land he wanted, and what is more, he had the Indians for friends.

But if he had no trouble with the Indians, he had a good deal with the Spaniards of Florida. They said that Georgia was a part of Florida and that the English had no right there. And they sent an army and tried to drive them out.

I fancy they did not know that Oglethorpe was an old soldier, but he soon showed them that he knew how to fight. He drove back their armies and took their ships; and they quickly made up their minds that they had better let the English alone. There was plenty of land for both, for the Spaniards had only one town in Florida. This was St. Augustine.

Before long some Germans came from Europe and settled in the new colony. People came also from other parts of Europe. Corn was planted for food, and some of the colonists raised silkworms and made silk. But in the end, cotton came to be the chief crop of the colony.

General Oglethorpe lived to be a very old man. He did not die till long after the American Revolution. Georgia was then a flourishing state, and the little town he had started on the banks of the Savannah River was a fine city, with broad streets, fine mansions, and beautiful shade trees. I think the old general must have been very proud of this charming city, and of the great state which owed its start to him.

CHAPTER VI

THE RED MEN, HOW THEY LIVED AND WERE TREATED

NOW that you have been told about the settlement of the colonies, it is well to recall how many of them there were. Let us see. There were the Pilgrim and Puritan settlements of New England, Roger Williams's settlement in Rhode Island, the Dutch settlement in New York, the Quaker one in Pennsylvania, the Catholic settlement in Maryland, the Cavalier ones in Virginia and the Carolinas, and the Debtor settlement in Georgia. Then there were some smaller ones, making about a dozen in all.

These stretched all along the coast, from Canada, the French country in the north, to Florida, the Spanish country in the south. The British were a long time in settling these places, for nearly 250 years passed after the time of Columbus before General Oglethorpe came to Georgia.

While all this was going on, what was becoming of the native people of the country, the Indians? I am afraid they were having a very hard time of it. The Spaniards made slaves of them, and forced them to work so terribly hard in the mines and the fields that they died by thousands. The French and the English fought with them and drove them away from their old homes, killing many of them.

And this has gone on and on ever since, until the red men, who once spread over all this country, are now kept in a very small part of it. Some people say there are as many of them as there ever were. If that is so, they can live on much less land than they once occupied.

What do you know about these Indians? Have you ever seen one of them? Your fathers or grandfathers have, I am sure, for once they were everywhere in this country, and people saw more of them than they liked; but now we see them only in the Wild West shows or the Indian schools, except we happen to go where they live. Do you not want to know something about these oldest Americans? I have been busy so far talking about the white men and what they did, and have had no chance to tell you about the people they found on this continent and how they treated them. I think I must make this chapter an Indian one.

Well, then, when the Spanish came to the south, and the French to the north, and the Dutch and the Swedes and the British to the middle country, they found everywhere a kind of people they had never seen before. Their skin was not white, like that of the people of Europe, nor black like that of the Africans, but of a reddish color, like that of copper, so that they called them red men. They had black eyes and hair, and high cheek-bones, and were not handsome according to our ideas; but they were tall and strong, and many of them very proud and dignified.

These people lived in a very wild fashion. They spent much of their time in hunting, fishing, and fighting. They raised some Indian corn and beans, and were fond of tobacco, but most of their food was got from wild animals killed in the woods. They were as fond of fighting as they were of hunting. They were divided into tribes, some of which were nearly always at war with other tribes. They had no weapons but stone hatchets and bows and arrows, but they were able with these to kill many of their enemies. People say that they were badly treated by the whites, but they treated one another worse than the whites ever did.

The Indians were very cruel. The warriors shaved off all their hair except one lock, which was called the scalp lock. When one of them was killed in battle this lock was used to pull off his scalp, or the skin of his head. They were very proud of these scalps, for they showed how many men they had killed.

When they took a prisoner, they would tie him to a tree and build a fire round him and burn him to death. And while he was burning they would torture him all they could. We cannot feel so much pity for the Indians when we think of all this. No doubt the white men have treated them very unjustly, but they have stopped all these terrible cruelties, and that is something to be thankful for. In this country, where once there was constant war and bloodshed, and torturing and burning of prisoners, now there is peace and kindness and happiness. So if evil has been done, good has come of it.

At the time I am speaking of, forests covered much of this great continent. They spread everywhere, and the Indians lived under their shade, and had wonderful skill in following animals or enemies through their shady depths. They read the ground much as we read the pages of a book. A broken twig, a bit of torn moss, a footprint which we could not see, were full of meaning to them, and they would follow a trail for miles through the woods where we would not have been able to follow it a yard. Their eyes were trained to this kind of work, but in time some of the white men became as expert as the Indians, and could follow a trail as well.

The red men lived mostly in little huts covered with skins or bark, which they called wigwams. Some of the tribes lived in villages, where there were large bark houses. But they did not stay much in their houses, for they liked better to be in the open air. Now they were hunting deer in the woods, now fishing or paddling their bark canoes in the streams, now smoking their pipes in front of their huts, now dancing their war dances or getting ready to fight.

The men did nothing except hunting and fighting. The women had to do all other work, such as cooking, planting and gathering corn, building wigwams, and the like. They did some weaving of cloth, but most of their clothes were made of the skins of wild animals.

In war times the warriors tried to make themselves as ugly as they could, painting their faces in a horrid fashion and sticking feathers in their hair. They seemed to think they could scare their enemies by ugly faces.

I have spoken of the tribes of the Indians. Some of these tribes were quite large, and were made up of a great number of men and women who lived together and spoke the same language. Each tribe was divided up into clans, or small family-like groups, and each clan had its sachem, or peace-chief. There were war-chiefs, also, who led them to battle. The sachems and chiefs governed the tribes and made such laws as they had.

Every clan had some animal which it called its totem, such as the wolf, bear, or fox. They were proud of their totems, and the form of the animal was tattooed on their breast; that is, it was picked into the skin with needles. All the Indians were fond of dancing, and their war dances were as fierce and wild as they could make them.

The tribes in the south were not as savage as those in the north. They did more farming, and had large and well-built villages. Some of them had temples and priests, and looked upon the sun as a god. They kept a fire always burning in the temple, and seemed to think this fire was a part of their sun-god. They had a great chief who ruled over the tribe, and also a head war-chief, a high-priest, and other rulers.

In the far west were Indians who built houses that were almost like towns, for they had hundreds of rooms. A whole tribe could live in one of these great houses, sometimes as many as three thousand people. Other tribes lived in holes in the sides of steep rocks, where their enemies could not easily get at them. These are called Cliff-dwellers. And there were some who lived on top of high, steep hills, which were very hard to climb. These Indians raised large crops of corn and other plants.

Do you think, if you had been an Indian, you would have liked to see white people coming in ships across the waters and settling down in your country as if they owned it? They did not all pay for the land they took, like William Penn and General Oglethorpe. The most of them acted as if the country belonged to them, and it is no wonder the old owners of the country did not like it, or that there was fierce fighting between the white and the red men.

Do you remember the story of Canonicus and the snake skin, and that of Miles Standish and the chiefs? There was not much fighting then, but there was some soon after in Connecticut, whither a number of settlers had come from Boston and others from England. Here there was a warlike tribe called the Pequots, who became very angry on seeing the white men in their country.

They began to kill the whites whenever they found them alone. Then the whites began to kill the Indians. Soon there was a deadly war. The Pequots had made a fort of trunks of trees, set close together in the ground. They thought they were safe in this fort, but the English made an attack on it, and got into it, and set fire to the Indian wigwams inside. The fight went on terribly in the smoke and flame until nearly all the Pequots were killed. Only two white men lost their lives. This so scared the Indians that it was forty years before there was another Indian war in New England.

I have told you about the good chief Massasoit, who was so kind to Roger Williams. He was a friend to the white men as long as he lived, but after his death his son Philip became one of their greatest enemies.

Philip's brother was taken sick and died after he had been to Plymouth, and the Indians thought that the people there had given him poison. Philip said that they would try to kill him next, and he made up his mind to fight them and drive them out of the country. The Indians had guns now, and knew how to use them, and they began to shoot the white people as they went quietly along the roads.

Next they began to attack the villages of the whites. They would creep up at night, set the houses on fire, and shoot the men as they came out. The war went on for a long time in this way, and there were many terrible fights.

At one place the people, when they saw the Indians coming, all ran to a strong building called a blockhouse. The Indians came whooping and yelling around this, and tried to set it on fire by shooting arrows with blazing rags on their points. Once the roof caught fire, but some of the men ran up and threw water on the flames.

Then the Indians got a cart and filled it with hay. Setting this on fire, they pushed it up against the house. It looked as if all the white men and women and children would be burned alive. The house caught fire and began to blaze. But just then came a shower of rain that put out the fire, and the people inside were saved once more. Before the Indians could do anything further some white soldiers came and the savages all ran into the woods.

There were other wonderful escapes, but many of the settlers were killed, and Philip began to think he would be able to drive them out of the country, as he wished to do. He was called King Philip, though he had no crown except a string of wampum,—or bits of bored shell strung together and twined round his head,—and no palace better than a bark hut, while his finest dress was a red blanket. It took very little to make an Indian king. The white men knew more about war than the Indians, and in the end they began to drive them back. One of their forts was taken, and the wigwams in it were set on fire, like those of the Pequots. A great many of the poor red men perished in the flames.

The best fighter among the white men was Captain Church. He followed King Philip and his men to one hiding place after another, killing some and taking others prisoners. Among the prisoners were the wife and little son of the Indian king.

"It breaks my heart," said Philip, when he heard of this. "Now I am ready to die."

He did not live much longer. Captain Church chased him from place to place, till he came to Mount Hope, in Rhode Island, where Massasoit lived when Roger Williams came to him through the woods. Here King Philip was shot, and the war ended. It had lasted more than a year, and a large number had been killed on both sides. It is known in history as King Philip's War.

There were wars with the Indians in many other parts of the country. In Virginia the Indians made a plot to kill all the white people. They pretended to be very friendly, and brought them meat and fish to sell. While they were talking quietly the savages drew their tomahawks or hatchets and began to kill the whites. In that one morning nearly three hundred and fifty were killed, men, women, and little children.

Hardly any of the settlers were left alive, except those in Jamestown, who were warned in time. They now attacked the Indians, shooting down all they could find, and killing a great many of them.

This was after the death of Powhatan, who had been a friend to the whites. About twenty years later, in 1644, another Indian massacre took place. After this the Indians were driven far back into the country, and did not give any more trouble for thirty years. The last war with them broke out in 1675.

The Dutch in New York also had their troubles with the Indians. They paid for all the lands they took, but one of their governors was foolish enough to start a war that went on for two years. A worse trouble was that in North Carolina, where there was a powerful tribe called the Tuscaroras. These attacked the settlers and murdered numbers of them. But in the end they were driven out of the country.

The only colonies in which the Indians kept friendly for a long time were Pennsylvania and Georgia. We know the reason of this. William Penn and General Oglethorpe were wise enough to make friends with them at the start, and continued to treat them with justice and friendliness, so that the red men came to love these good men.

CHAPTER VII

ROYAL GOVERNORS AND LOYAL CAPTAINS

DO any of my young readers know what is meant by a Charter? "Yes," I hear some of you say. "No," say others. Well, I must speak to the "No," party; the party that doesn't know, and wants to know.

A charter is a something written or printed which grants certain rights or privileges to the party to whom it is given. It may come from a king or a congress, or from any person in power, and be given to any other person who wishes the right to hold a certain property or to do some special thing.

Do you understand any better now? I am sorry I can not put it in plainer words. I think the best way will be to tell you about some charters which belong to American history. You should know that all the people who crossed the ocean to make new settlements on the Atlantic Coast had charters from the king of England. This was the case with the Pilgrims and the Puritans, with Roger Williams, William Penn, Lord Baltimore, and the others I have spoken about.

These charters were written on parchment, which is the skin of an animal, made into something like paper. The charters gave these people the right to settle on and own certain lands, to form certain kinds of government, and to do a variety of things which in England no one could do but the king and the parliament.

The colonies in New England were given the right to choose their own governors and make their own laws, and nobody, not even the king, could stop them from doing this. The king had given them this right, and no other king could take it away while they kept their charters.

Would you care to be told what took place afterwards? All kings, you should know, are not alike. Some are very mild and easy, and some are very harsh and severe. Some are willing for the people to have liberty, and some are not. The kings who gave the charters to New England were of the easy kind. But they were followed by kings of the hard kind, who thought that these people beyond the sea had too much liberty, and who wished to take away some of it.

Charles II., who gave some of these charters, was one of the easy kings, and did not trouble himself about the people in the colonies. James II., who came after him, was one of the hard kings. He was somewhat of a tyrant, and wanted to make the laws himself, and to take the right to do this from the people. After trying to rob the people of England of their liberties, he thought he would do the same thing with the people of America. "Those folks across the seas are having too good a time," he thought. "They have too many rights and privileges, and I must take some of them away. I will let them know that I am their master."

But they had their charters, which gave them these rights; so the wicked king thought the first thing for him to do was to take their charters away from them. Then their rights would be gone, and he could make for them a new set of laws, and force them to do everything he wished.

What King James did was to send a nobleman named Sir Edmund Andros to New England to rule as royal governor. He was the agent of the king, and was to do all that the king ordered. He began by undertaking to rob the people of their charters. You see, even a tyrant king did not like to go against the charters, for a charter was a sacred pledge.

Well, the new governor went about ordering the people to give him their charters. One of the places to which he went was Hartford, Connecticut, and there he told the officers of the colony that they must deliver up their charter; the king had said so, and the king's word must be obeyed.

If any of you had lived in Connecticut in those days I know how you would have felt. The charter gave the people a great deal of liberty, and they did not wish to part with it. I know that you and I would have felt the same way. But what could they do? If they did not give it up peacefully, Governor Andros might come again with soldiers and take it from them by force. So the lawmakers and officials were in a great fret about what they should do.

They asked Governor Andros to come to the State-house and talk over the matter. Some of them fancied they could get him to leave them their charter, though they might have known better. There they sat—the governor in the lofty chair of state, the others seated in a half circle before him. There was a broad table between them, and on this lay the great parchment of the charter. Some of those present did a great deal of talking. They told how good King Charles had given them the charter, and how happy they had been under it, and how loyal they were to good King James, and they begged Governor Andros not to take it from them. But they might as well have talked to the walls. He had his orders from the king and was one of the men who do just what they are told.

While the talk was going on a strange thing happened. It was night, and the room was lit up with a few tallow candles. Of course you know that these were the best lights people had at that time; gas or the electric light had never been heard of. And it was before the time of matches. The only way to make a light in those days was by the use of the flint and steel, which was a very slow method indeed.

Suddenly, while one of the Hartford men was talking and the governor was looking at him in a tired sort of way, all the lights in the room went out, and the room was in deep darkness. Everybody jumped up from their chairs and there was no end of bustle and confusion, and likely enough some pretty hard words were said. They had to hunt in the dark for the flint and steel; and then there came snapping of steel on flint, and falling of sparks on tinder, so that it was some time before the candles were lit again.

When this was done the governor opened his eyes very wide, for the table was empty, the charter was gone. I fancy he swore a good deal when he saw that. In those days even the highest people were given to swearing. But no matter how much he swore, he could not with hard words bring back the charter. It was gone, and nobody knew where. Everybody looked for it, right and left, in and out, in drawers and closets, but it was nowhere to be found. Very likely the most of them did not want to find it. At any rate, the governor had to go away without the charter, and years passed before anybody saw it again.

Do you not wish to know what became of it? We are told that it had been taken by a bold young soldier named Captain Wadsworth. While all the people in the room were looking at the one who was making his speech, the captain quickly took off his cloak and gave it a quick fling over the candles, so that in a moment they were all put out. Then he snatched up the charter from the table and slipped quietly out of the room. While they were busy snapping the flint and steel, he was hurrying down the street towards a great oak tree which was more than a hundred years old. This tree was hollow in its heart, and there was a hole in its side which opened into the hollow. Into this hole Captain Wadsworth pushed the charter, and it fell into the hollow space. I do not think any of us would have thought of looking there for it. I know nobody did at that time, and there it lay for years, until the tyrant King James was driven from the throne and a new king had taken his place. Then it was joyfully brought out, and the people were ever so glad to see it again.

The old tree stood for many years in the main street of the town, and became famous as the Charter Oak. The people loved and were proud of it as long as it stood. But many years ago the hoary old oak fell, and now only some of its wood is left. This has been made into chairs and boxes and other objects which are thought of great value.

Do you not think that Captain Wadsworth was a bold and daring man, and one who knew just what to do in times of trouble? If you do not, I fancy you will when I have told you another story about him.