Story of Our Country Every Child Can Read

Lyman Hurlbut Jesse

Description

pubOne.info present you this wonderfully illustrated edition. 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.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819946557
• Langue: English

Extrait

A TALK WITH THE YOUNG READER
ABOUT THE HISTORY OF OUR
COUNTRY
IF any of the readers of this book should have thechance to take a railroad ride over the vast region of the UnitedStates, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the GreatLakes to the Gulf of Mexico, they would see a wonderful display ofcities and towns, of factories and farms, and a great multitude ofmen and women actively at work. They would behold, spread out onevery side, one of the busiest and happiest lands the sun shinesupon. Here and there, amid the miles on miles of farms, they mightsee a forest, here and there a wild beast, here and there ared-faced Indian, one of the old people of the land; but thesewould be almost lost in the rich and prosperous scene.
If our young traveler knew nothing of history hemight fancy that it had been always this way, or that it had takenthousands of years for all those cities to be built and these greatfields to be cleared and cultivated. Yet if he had been here onlythree hundred years ago he would have seen a very different sight.He could not then have gone over the country by railroad, for sucha thing had never been thought of. He could not have gone byhighroad, for there was not a road of any kind in the whole lengthand breadth of the land. Nowhere in this vast country would he haveseen a city or town; nowhere a ploughed field, a farmhouse, or abarn; nowhere a horse, cow, or sheep; nowhere a man with a white ora black face. Instead of great cities he would have seen onlyclusters of rude huts; instead of fertile farms, only vast reachesof 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 thework of less than three hundred years! No doubt many of you haveread in fairy tales of wonderful things done by the Genii of theEast, of palaces built in a night, of cities moved miles away fromtheir sites. But here is a thing as wonderful and at the same timetrue, a marvel wrought by men instead of magical beings. Thesegreat forests have fallen, these great fields have been cleared andplanted, these great cities have risen, these myriads of white menhave taken the place of the red men of the wild woods, and allwithin a period not longer than three times the life of the oldestmen now living. Is not this as wonderful as the most marvelousfairy tale? And is it not better to read the true tale of how thiswas done than stories of the work of fairies and magicians? Let usforget the Genii of the East; men are the Genii of the West, andthe magic of their work is as great as that we read of in thefables of the “Arabian Nights. ”
The story of this great work is called the “Historyof the United States. ” This story you have before you in the bookyou now hold. You do not need to sit and dream how the wonderfulwork of building our noble nation was done, for you can read it allhere in language simple enough for the youngest of you tounderstand. Here you are told how white men came over the seas andfound beyond the waves a land none of them had ever seen before.You are told how they settled on these shores, cut down the treesand built villages and towns, fought with the red men and drovethem back, and made themselves homes in the midst of fertilefields. You are told how others came, how they spread wider andwider over the land, how log houses grew into mansions, andvillages into cities, and how at length they fought for and gainedtheir liberty.
Read on and you will learn of more wonderful thingsstill. The history of the past hundred years is a story of magicfor our land. In it you will learn of how the steamboat was firstmade and in time came to be seen on all our rivers and lakes; ofhow the locomotive was invented and railroads were built, untilthey are now long enough in our country to go eight times round theearth; of the marvels of the telegraph and telephone— the talkingwire; of the machines that rumble and roar in a thousand factoriesand work away like living things, and of a multitude of marvelswhich I cannot begin to speak of here.
And you will learn how men kept on coming, and warswere fought, and new land was gained, and bridges were built, andcanals were dug, and our people increased and spread until we cameto be one of the greatest nations on the earth, and our cities grewuntil one of them was the largest in the world except the vast cityof London. All this and more you may learn from the pages of thisbook. It is written for the boys and girls of our land, but many oftheir fathers and mothers may find it pleasant and useful toread.
There are hundreds who do not have time to readlarge histories, which try to tell all that has taken place. Forthose this little history will be of great service, in showing themhow, from a few half-starved settlers on a wild coast, this greatnation has grown up. How men and women have come to it over theseas as to a new Promised Land. How they have ploughed its fields,and gathered its harvests, and mined its iron and gold, and builtthousands of workshops, and fed the nations with the food they didnot need for themselves. Year by year it has grown in wealth, untilnow it is the richest country in the world. Great it is, andgreater it will be. But I need say no more. The book has its ownstory to tell. I only lay this beginning before you as a handystepping-stone into the history itself. By its aid you may crossthe brook and wander on through the broad land which lies beforeyou.
THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR
IF any of my young readers live in Chicago they willremember a wonderful display in that city in 1893. Dozens of greatwhite buildings rose on the shore of the lake, as beautiful asfairy 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 aWorld's Fair, and was in honor of a wonderful event that took placefour hundred years before.
Some of you may think that white men have alwayslived in this country. I hope you do not all think so, for this isnot the case. A little more than four hundred years ago no whiteman had ever seen this country, and none knew that there was such acountry on the face of the earth.
It was in the year 1492, that a daring sailor, namedChristopher Columbus, crossed a wide ocean and came to this new andwonderful land. Since then men have come here by the millions, andthe mighty nation of the United States has grown up with itshundreds of towns and cities. In one of these, which bears the nameof Chicago, the grand Columbian World's Fair was held, in honor ofthe finding of America by the great navigator four hundred yearsbefore.
This is what I have set out to tell you about. I amsure 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 forthe white people of Europe.
Some of you may have been told that America wasreally discovered more than four hundred years before Columbus wasborn. So it was. At that time some of the bold sailors of thenorthern countries of Europe, who made the stormy ocean their home,and loved the roll of the waves, had come to the frozen island ofIceland. And a ship from Iceland had been driven by the winds to aland in the far west which no man had ever seen before. Was thisnot America?
Soon after, in the year 1000, one of these Northmen,named Leif Ericson, also known as Leif the Lucky, set sail for thisnew land. There he found wild grapes growing, and from them henamed it Vinland. This in our language would be calledWineland.
After him came others, and there was fighting withthe red men, whom they called Skrellings. In the end the Northmenleft 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 nothingwas 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 theMediterranean Sea almost in the shape of a boot. On the westernshore of this kingdom is a famous old city named Genoa, in whichmany daring sailors have dwelt; and here, long ago, lived a mannamed Columbus, a poor man, who made his living by cardingwool.
This poor wool-carder had four children, one of whom(born about 1436) he named Christopher. Almost everybody who hasbeen at school in the world knows the name of this little Italianboy, for he became one of the most famous of men.
Many a boy in our times has to help his father inhis shop. The great Benjamin Franklin began work by pouring meltedtallow into moulds to make candles. In the same way little Columbushad to comb wool for his father, and very likely he got as tired ofwool as Franklin did of candles.
The city he lived in was full of sailors, and nodoubt he talked to many of them about life on the wild waters, andheard so many stories of danger and adventure that he took thefancy to go to sea himself.
At any rate we are told that he became a sailor whenonly fourteen years old, and made long and daring voyages while hewas still young. Some of those were in Portuguese ships down thecoast of Africa, of which continent very little was known at thattime. He went north, too; some think as far as Iceland. Who knowsbut 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 ofstrange things they had seen. These had come over the seas beforethe west winds and floated on their island shores. Among them werepieces of carved wood, and canes so long that they would hold fourquarts of wine between their joints. And the dead bodies of two menhad also come ashore, whose skins were the color of bronze orcopper.
These stories set Columbus thinking. He was now am