and they answered, ‘Well, well!’ everyone; and, ‘Be of good
     courage!’ We heard three of their pieces go off; and the rest
     called for a firebrand to light their [punk] matches [for their
     matchlock muskets]. One took a log of the fire on his shoulder, and
     went and carried it unto them. The cry of our enemies was dreadful,
     especially when our men ran out to recover their arms. Their note
     was after this manner, ‘Woach! woach! ha ha hach woach!’”

This “hideous and great cry” was the first Indian warwhoop the Pilgrims
ever heard. It must have curdled the blood of those quaint old Puritans
who had never heard a modern college yell! The white men’s matchlocks
and snaphances seem to have scared the Indians even more than their
warwhoop and arrows--tipped with brass, buckhorn, and eagles’
claws--frightened the white men. So the red men ran away and lived to
fight another day.

The Indians who first fought with the Pilgrims proved to be the Nausets,
an unfriendly tribe living on Cape Cod. The white men named this place,
“The First Encounter.” The Lookout Committee went on after this until
they reached the main land and soon found the site they had been
searching for so long. Bradford’s diary contains the record:

     “On the Sabbath day we rested; and on Monday we sounded the harbor,
     and found it a very good harbor for shipping. We marched also into
     the land and found divers cornfields and little running brooks--a
     place very good for situation. So we returned to our ship
     [_Mayflower_] again with good news to the rest of our people, which
     did much comfort their hearts.”

Though Bradford did not then think it worth mentioning, there was a big
boulder in the edge of the harbor upon which these men sprang out of the
shallop. This happened on the 21st of December, 1620, and is known as
the Landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. December 21st is
celebrated now, more than three hundred years after that event, as
Forefathers’ Day. This place was marked Plymouth on Captain John Smith’s
map of New England, and the Pilgrims, who had sailed from Plymouth,
England, were glad to give their new-found settlement that name.

Four days after this landing, the _Mayflower_ sailed from the end of
Cape Cod and came to anchor in Plymouth harbor. The first thing the
Pilgrims did was to build a common house of logs to be used later as a
sort of town hall. Then they erected a square cabin on top of the hill
for both church and fort. On its flat roof they mounted three brass
cannon. Christmas Day came while they were building their first cabin,
but they worked all that day, for they were too strict even to celebrate
Christmas. While they were building their village of log cabins with
thatched roofs, some of them stayed in their quarters on the
_Mayflower_.

It seemed a long time before they saw Indians again. But one day while
the grave and reverend Pilgrims were holding a council in their common
house, a tall red man came stalking up to their door, saying: “Welcome,
Yankees! Welcome, Yankees!” “Yankees” was the nearest the Indian could
pronounce “Englishmen”! From this, the people of New England are still
called Yankees.

This Indian’s name was Samoset. He had learned a little English from
some fishermen farther north on the New England coast. He came again to
Plymouth bringing another red man named Squanto, who, years before, had
been carried away with other savages by an English captain and sold into
slavery. Squanto had been taken to London and learned to speak English.
He was glad to stay with the Pilgrims and talk for them to the tribes
around Plymouth, for while he was away a slave in foreign lands, his own
people had been taken with a dreadful disease called a plague, and when
he came back they had all died, and poor Squanto was left alone in the
world.

The Pilgrims elected Myles Standish, who was the only soldier in the
company, their captain. But about the first work Captain Standish had to
do was to take care of the sick, and he did so, according to the poet
Longfellow, “With a hand as gentle as woman’s.”

In the spring there were only fifty-one of the Pilgrims--just one-half
the number that had landed on Plymouth Rock. Among the first to die was
Rose Standish, the Captain’s beautiful wife. Although they were not
attacked that winter, they knew the Indians were lurking about, so the
Pilgrims did not make mounds of the graves in their poor little burial
ground on the hill for fear the savages would see how few white men were
left, and attack them while they were all so ill. At one time only two
men were well enough to nurse all the rest and bury them as fast as they
died.

In April the men were well enough to plant corn and do other work. It
was so hot that Governor Carver, the oldest of all the Pilgrims, was
prostrated by the heat and died. William Bradford was elected Governor
in his place.

When the Pilgrims had erected cabins enough to house all who were left
of them, they built a stockade, or wall of upright logs, around the
settlement. In April, 1621, the _Mayflower_ started back to England.
Much as they had suffered through the long, dreary winter, none of the
Pilgrims wished to return home on their little ship. That plucky band of
men and women had come to America to stay.

They marched to their church-fort on the hill every Sunday, led by their
governor, minister, and captain. The men carried their muskets to be
ready to defend themselves if the Indians tried to surprise them while
at their worship. The Pilgrims believed in watching and fighting as well
as praying.

After a long time, Massasoit, the great Indian chief, came with a
company of his braves to see the Pilgrims, and the white men and the red
made a treaty of peace and friendship. Afterwards the chief of a more
distant tribe sent an Indian runner to Plymouth with a bundle of arrows
tied together with a rattlesnake skin. Captain Standish promptly filled
the snake skin with powder and bullets and sent it back. This frightened
the Indians, for they thought the white “medicine man” had the power to
send a plague among them which would make them all sicken and die.

After a time the people of Plymouth were comfortable and at peace with
their Indian neighbors. Then a lad known as “that Billington boy”
disobeyed the rules by going outside the limits and was lost. The
settlers were alarmed, and Captain Standish took a small company of men
and made a search for the lad. They found him with the unfriendly
Nausets, the Indians they had fought with at “The First Encounter.”

The Indians around Plymouth laughed at the little red-headed white
captain because he was so small. He was so quick-tempered that they
named him “Little-Pot-That-Soon-Boils-Over.” Once when a tall, wiry
Indian north of Plymouth insulted him, the fiery little captain had all
he could do to control himself. Standish and three other white men had
gone up to that place for the purpose of punishing the Indians who were
threatening the whole colony with death. Watching his chance, the white
captain sprang upon the big Indian chief who had sneered at him,
snatched the savage’s own knife, and killed him with a single stab. The
other white men dispatched their Indians. The account of this brave deed
of the Captain of Plymouth was reported among the Indians far and near,
and the Pilgrims had long years of peace because the red men had gained
a wholesome respect for Myles Standish, whose name they now changed to
Sword-of-the-White-Man.

JOHN WINTHROP, A PURITAN MAKER OF MASSACHUSETTS

John Winthrop can not be called a boy’s hero; yet he was a hero, and his
life was strange and interesting. He was a son of a good Puritan family
in England. When a young man he met Oliver Cromwell, who became Lord
Protector of England. He was acquainted with John Milton, the blind
Puritan poet who wrote “Paradise Lost,” one of the greatest poems in the
English language. John Winthrop had also to transact certain business
with Cromwell’s cousin, John Hampden, the great English patriot who
opposed King Charles when he sought to impose taxation upon the people
without their consent.

[Illustration: GOVERNOR JOHN WINTHROP.]

Young Winthrop was married the first time when he was seventeen, and his
son Henry was born when the young father was eighteen. In 1629, the
father decided to go to America where he could worship God as he thought
best. He and four hundred men and women set sail from England in a
fleet of small ships, intending to join the settlement at Salem, started
a year before. One of these ships was the _Mayflower_, in which the
Pilgrims of Plymouth had sailed nine years before.

On their second morning out from England they spied eight ships coming
behind them. The captain of the _Arabella_, the ship on which Winthrop
sailed (as he wrote in the logbook or journal of the voyage),

     “caused the gun-room and gun-deck to be cleared. After noon we
     still saw those eight ships to stand towards us. Having more wind
     than we, they came up apace. We all prepared to fight with them,
     and took down some cabins which were in the way of our ordnance
     [cannon] and out of every ship were thrown such bed matters as were
     subject to take fire. We drew forth our men and armed them with
     muskets and other weapons and instruments for fireworks. To try it
     our captain shot a ball of wildfire fastened to an arrow, out of a
     crossbow, which burnt in the water a good time.

     “The women and children were removed into the lower deck that they
     might be out of danger. All things being thus fitted, we went to
     prayer upon the upper deck. It was good to see how cheerful all the
     company appeared; not a woman or child showed fear.

     “It was now about one of the clock, and the fleet seemed to be
     within a league of us; therefore our captain, because he would show
     he was not afraid of them, and that he might see what was to be
     done before night should overtake us, tacked about and stood to
     meet them. And when they came near, we perceived them to be our
     friends.

     “So every ship (as they met) saluted each other and the musketeers
     discharged their small shot; and so, God be praised, our fear and
     danger was turned into mirth and friendly entertainment. Our danger
     being thus over, we espied two boats fishing in the Channel. So
     every one of our four ships manned out a skiff, and we bought of
     them great store of excellent fresh fish of divers sorts.”

The voyagers were seventy-six days--nearly eleven weeks--crossing the
Atlantic. They had passed through storms, but when, early in June, they
sighted America, Winthrop wrote in his journal:

     “We had now fair sunshine weather, and so pleasant a sweet air as
     did much refresh us; and there came a smell off shore like the
     smell of a garden. There came a wild pigeon into our ship, and
     another small land bird.”

In four days the _Arabella_ was anchored in Salem Harbor. The poor
little settlement welcomed some of the newcomers with “a good supper of
venison pasty. In the meantime most of our people went on shore upon the
land of Cape Ann, which lay very near us, and gathered store of fine
strawberries.”

“Salem, where we landed, pleased us not,” wrote one of the men on board
to a countess in England. Winthrop, who had been elected governor of the
colony they were to found, looked about for a better place to settle,
and decided on a site they called Charlestown, on the Charles River.
Although they had left England because of their obstinate and foolish
king, Charles the First, they named rivers and towns for him, and one of
their earliest churches was called King’s Chapel. When no one was
allowed to think for himself, or even to wear such clothes as he saw
fit, it would have been regarded as almost a crime to speak a word
against the king, no matter how much he deserved a bad name.

When Governor Winthrop came back from Charlestown to Salem, he wrote in
his journal: “We went to Massachusetts to find out a place for our
sitting down.” By “Massachusetts” he meant only that part of the country
along Boston Harbor, about fifteen miles south of Salem. Just after his
return, his eldest son Henry, who had come over on another ship, arrived
at Salem. That very day the young man started with several of the ship’s
officers to visit some Indian wigwams. In his journal the father
describes what happened:

     “They saw, on the other side of the river, a small canoe. He would
     have had one of the company swim over and fetch it, rather than
     walk several miles on foot, it being very hot weather, but none of
     the party could swim but himself; and so he plunged in, and, as he
     was swimming over, was taken with a cramp a few rods from shore,
     and drowned.”

“My son Henry! My son Henry!” wrote the bereaved governor to his wife in
England. “Ah, poor child. Yet it grieves me much more for my dear
daughter. Yet for all these things (I praise my God) I am not
discouraged.”

Henry, the son of John Winthrop’s first wife, had been married in
England. He had come without his bride to the western wilds to build a
little home before sending for her.

Heartsore but not dismayed, Governor Winthrop took his followers and
tried to make the settlement at Charlestown, now part of the great city
of Boston. But their sufferings were not over. As at Jamestown, on the
James River in Virginia about twenty-five years before this, the
settlers were ill with malaria and some of them died.

Then a strange old hermit, who had lived about twenty years alone on a
tree-topped hill on the other side of the river, came to see the new
governor, and invited him to come over the river and build his town on
the hill which had been named Three-mount, Tri-mountain, or Tremont. So
Winthrop and his people moved once more and named the new place for the
city of Boston in England. The old hermit proved to be William
Blackstone, a minister from old England. On the Three Mounts he tilled a
small farm which extended down into the now historic Boston Common. He
had brought from England his library, and spent his time reading,
farming, and raising apples. He had left England because he would not
worship according to the legal forms there. But he did not like the way
the Puritans wished him to worship, either. So he moved away from Boston
as soon as he could dispose of his house and other real estate.

Blackstone also had been kind to the Indians. His influence did much
toward keeping the red tribes friendly with the white settlers of
Boston. On the highest of the three mounts was placed a sort of
lighthouse or beacon which sailors could see far down the harbor. This
gave the name of Beacon Hill to that part of Boston. On this hill the
State House has since been erected. This building has a great dome
covered with gold-leaf which glistens in the sun and can be seen for
many miles around. “All roads lead” to the dome of the State House in
Boston, as the spokes of a wheel come together in the hub. Because of
this fact, a humorous writer gave Boston the title of “The Hub of the
Universe.”

Though the Indians gave the early settlers very little trouble, the
wolves which howled around the settlement were alarming, and sometimes
dangerous to the little children. Sometimes a bear would come ambling
into “Boston Town.” The people’s cows were pastured on the Common. This
made some people who wished to make fun of Boston claim that the narrow,
crooked streets of that city were laid out by the cows, as they wandered
down from the Common to drink at a certain spring.

Sometimes the town suffered from disease and famine. One day, when
Governor Winthrop had divided his last cupful of cornmeal with a
starving beggar, he appointed a day of fasting and prayer to God for
food. On the very day set for this fast, a ship arrived from England
with provisions, and the people had a feast instead. Another time when
the people did not have enough to eat, an Indian chief named
Chickataubot came and presented the governor with a great quantity of
corn. As with the Indians, so with the white settlers at first, it was
either feast or famine.

The people of Boston were kinder to the Indians than to the white men
who failed to agree with them in religion. They banished the Baptists
and hanged the Quakers. Besides Roger Williams, they drove out a good
woman named Anne Hutchinson, because she argued too well against some of
their beliefs. This gifted woman and her family were murdered and
scalped by Indians in the log cabin in which they lived after they were
banished from Boston.

Governor Winthrop finally sent for his wife and his other children. One
of his sons became governor of Connecticut. John Winthrop was twelve
times elected governor of Massachusetts. More than once he was chosen
deputy governor. He was good to the poor and unfortunate. In this he was
far in advance of his time. It was said that he kept his private purse
open for the public. Once, when he found that a man was stealing wood
from his pile, he laughed and said he would stop that. He did so by
inviting the man to come in the daytime and help himself to all the wood
he needed. But the man never came again.

Cotton Mather, one of the greatest of Boston preachers, said of Governor
Winthrop that he was--

“The terror of the wicked, and delight of the sober, the envy of the
many, but the hope of those who had any hopeful design in hand for the
common good of the nation.”

ROGER WILLIAMS, A MINISTER WHO LIVED THE GOLDEN RULE

When the Pilgrim Fathers left Europe in the clumsy little ship, the
_Mayflower_, they came to America to have freedom to think and act as
they believed right in matters of religion. Many men in England who
wished to have their own religious beliefs were called Puritans because
they wished to purify the Church of England from things which they
thought were wrong. King James of England had announced that they must
all worship in the ways of the Church of England or he would “harry them
out of the land.”

Puritans and other people who would not conform to the service of the
Church of England were called Nonconformists. The group of
Nonconformists who went away from their own country in 1620, to come as
strangers to America, were called the Pilgrims. They came to America in
the _Mayflower_, and landed on a big boulder in the edge of the harbor
at a place they named Plymouth. Companies of Puritans sailed from
England a few years later and landed on the shores of Massachusetts Bay,
some at Salem, and some at a place they named Boston, for another town
in England. John Winthrop was the leader of this last company, and was
made governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The Puritans soon found that there were some of their number who did not
believe just as they did. It seems strange now that those who had come
from England just to find a place where they could worship God in the
way they saw fit could not let others do the same. They came to do what
their consciences told them was right, but they would not let others
think that any other way was right.

So when members of the Society of Friends, called Quakers, came,
dressing differently and thinking it wrong to fight and treat the
Indians cruelly, the Puritans sent them away. If the Quakers came back
to Boston after being sent away, they were hanged on the Common. A man
who did not think what his neighbors believed was likely to have a hard
time of it. For any one to dress differently from others was considered
a great offense. It was the same all over the world, especially in
England. The first man who tried to wear a silk hat in London was chased
through the streets. The mob battered his hat and tore his clothes, and
he barely escaped with his life.

Therefore, when Roger Williams, a bright young minister from England,
came to preach in the first church of Boston, the people soon found that
he believed in a different form of baptism from theirs, and some were
angry enough to wish to kill him for being a Baptist. So he left Boston
and went to live at Plymouth. The preaching of those days was not so
much about doing good and living by the Golden Rule as about certain
fixed beliefs. This often led to angry arguments, and some good people
became very violent. On this account Roger Williams soon had to leave
Plymouth. Then he went to Salem and built a little church there which is
still standing, about three hundred years old. Here the young minister
kept on preaching what the leaders thought were strange and wicked
teachings. It was decided that such a reckless preacher should be
arrested and sent in chains to England to be tried, and imprisoned or
put to death. But Roger Williams heard of this decision and did not wait
to be arrested. When the captain and his men from Boston came to the
Salem minister’s house, they found that he had left there three days
before.

When the people of Boston, Salem, and Plymouth next heard of Roger
Williams, he was settled on Narragansett Bay. The Indians there received
him gladly, for he had been one of the few white men who treated them
kindly, as William Penn, fifty years afterwards, dealt with the Indians
along the Delaware River.

Williams and his friends built a group of log houses and named their
settlement Providence, because they believed that, in the providence, or
care, of God, they had found a safe retreat among the savages from the
severity of the pious Puritans of Massachusetts. Quakers and other
religious people, who were driven from the Puritan colonies, came and
settled near Roger Williams. Even here the people of different beliefs
quarreled over religious matters, and good Pastor Williams had all he
could do to keep them from fighting and injuring one another.

Soon the savage Pequot Indians tried to persuade all the Indian tribes
to join together and kill at a stroke all the white men who had come
over the Great Water and taken from the natives certain parts of their
country. When the white men of Boston and Plymouth heard of this they
sent and begged Roger Williams to use his good influence with his
neighbors the Narragansetts, a large and powerful tribe, to prevent them
from joining in the plot to murder all the white men--as the Indians
could have done if all the tribes had joined together and attacked all
at once.

Here was a chance for Roger Williams to get even with those who had
wished to kill or imprison him and who had driven him from place to
place. But the minister of Providence returned good for evil. Taking his
life in his hands, he went to the Indian village. The Pequot braves were
there in the wigwam of Canonicus, the Narragansett chief,

[Illustration: THE LANDING OF ROGER WILLIAMS.

_From the painting by Alonzo Chappel_]

trying to persuade him and his tribe to take part in a war against the
“palefaces.” Roger Williams was a hero. He stayed with those Indians,
sleeping with them at night without showing the least sign of fear,
though he very well knew that a savage Pequot might stab him in his
sleep.

The Providence minister was successful. Canonicus refused to join with
the Pequots. Because the Narragansetts stayed out of the war, other
tribes also kept out of it. The Pequots went ahead, but the white men
defeated and destroyed them. By his conduct at this time of need, Roger
Williams set both red men and white a noble example. He taught them all
by his life that a true Christian loves his enemies and does good to
those who treat him badly. The man who founded the town of Providence
and the state of Rhode Island was the friend both of white men and red
because he lived the Golden Rule.

LORD BALTIMORE, CALVERT AND CLAIBORNE, THE THREE FATHERS OF MARYLAND

George Calvert, of Kipling, England, was such a fine man that he was
beloved by king and people alike. King James gave him the title of “Sir”
George Calvert, and made him Secretary of State. As the king and the
church in England were Protestant, Sir George felt it his duty to give
up his royal honors when he became a Catholic. But King James’ son,
Charles the First, instead of taking Calvert’s rank away from him, made
him “Baron” Baltimore. A baron is higher in position than a knight, who
is called “Sir.”

A few years after the Pilgrims came to America and settled at Plymouth
in order to worship God as they thought right, Lord Baltimore asked
permission to make a settlement for himself and the Catholics of England
who were persecuted because of their religion. The first place chosen by
him for a Catholic settlement was in Newfoundland. But though the
climate was lovely and cool there in spring and summer, the settlers
found it so cold in winter that they had to go back to England. King
Charles then granted Lord Baltimore another great tract of land much
farther south, between the English settlement at Jamestown and that of
the Puritans at Plymouth in New England. Lord Baltimore named this
region “Mary Land,” in honor of King Charles’ wife, the queen of
England.

[Illustration: GEORGE CALVERT, LORD BALTIMORE]

As all the other English settlements in America were Protestant, the
party had great trouble in securing supplies and getting started for the
New World. Before they were quite ready, the first Lord Baltimore died,
and his eldest son, Cecil Calvert, who then became Lord Baltimore,
inherited Maryland as part of his father’s estate. But some of the land
granted to Lord Baltimore had been settled years before and was claimed
by the colonists of Virginia. On account of this, young Lord Baltimore
had to stay in London to look out for his rights in America. Therefore
his younger brother, Leonard Calvert, was sent to act for him as
governor of Maryland.

At last the voyagers sailed away in two ships, the _Ark_ and the _Dove_.
There were one hundred and twenty-eight passengers, not counting
servants and children. There were others on board who, not having money,
bound themselves by law to work for a certain time in America to pay
their passage across the sea.

The two ships were caught in a terrific storm on the way and the _Dove_
was not to be seen anywhere. After many days of hoping against hope,
those on the _Ark_ gave up for lost the _Dove_ and all their friends on
it. Then the _Ark_ sailed on alone, stopping, after many weeks, at one
of the islands of the West Indies. While they were anchored there their
sorrow was turned to joy, for the _Dove_ caught up with them. It had
been driven out of sight by the fierceness of the gale and had found
refuge in a harbor near by.

The two sister ships now sailed northward and entered the mouth of the
Potomac. Of this river Father White, one of the company, wrote:

     “Never have I beheld a larger or more beautiful river. The Thames
     seems a mere rivulet in comparison with it; it is not disfigured by
     any swamps, but has firm land on each side. Fine groves of trees
     appear, not choked with bushes and undergrowth, but growing at
     intervals as if planted by hand, so that you might easily drive a
     four-horse carriage through the midst of the trees.”

Governor Leonard Calvert had heard so many stories of the fierceness and
cunning of the Indians that he did not land at once. After the two ships
had cruised about the rivers and the bay awhile, he decided to settle at
the mouth of a small river, which they named St. Mary’s, and built a
group of cabins, calling this place St. Mary’s also.

They were quite surprised to find their Indian neighbors friendly,
bringing corn and provisions, and showing them all they could about
planting and trapping and hunting. The settlers soon learned that the
Indians were friendly because they wanted the white men to help them
when they went to war with their savage enemies. The red men thought the
strangers’ “firesticks” (guns) worked magic, like lightning and thunder
from above. The children of young Maryland saw much to entertain and
sometimes to frighten them. When the Indians painted themselves with
red, black, and yellow stripes, they looked even uglier than before. The
white people had heard of the savages’ war dances and scalp dances, but
they now found the natives had also their corn dances, something like a
harvest or Thanksgiving festival.

The Maryland colonists were kind to the tribes and gained their
friendship, as Champlain had done and as William Penn and the Quakers of
Philadelphia were to do about fifty years later. The Indians in and
around Maryland learned to believe in the goodness of the people of the
Baltimore colony.

Most of the trouble Governor Calvert had in settling Maryland was with a
white leader named Claiborne, who had settled on the largest island in
the bay. He claimed that this land, which was named Kent Island, was
part of Virginia.

Governor Calvert visited Jamestown, and the governor of that colony said
that the island was part of Lord Baltimore’s land. Then Claiborne
announced that Kent Island was not only separate from either colony, but
that it belonged to him. He had made friends among the Indians, far and
near, and began to boast that he was going to drive all the other white
people out of that country.

The Marylanders went to work like so many beavers, building a fort and
other defenses to be ready for an attack. When they heard that the
people on Kent Island had fitted out a large sailboat as a man-of-war,
Governor Calvert fitted up two pinnaces, or small boats, and mounted a
cannon in each. Then the men of Maryland sailed for Kent Island and
captured it, after a battle in which several persons were killed. After
this there was no more trouble with Claiborne, and since that time Kent
Island has belonged to Maryland. Lord Baltimore held the rights over
Maryland by a grant from the king, somewhat as William Penn afterward
came to own Pennsylvania. Although Cecil, Baron Baltimore, was never
able to visit his property in the New World, his name was given to
Baltimore, the greatest city of Maryland, and Anne Arundel County was
named for his wife.

The purpose of the colony was not all religious. Trading and business
were also the objects of those brave settlers, and some of the most
successful merchant princes have sprung from that old Maryland
stock--“the best out of Old England.” The women of Maryland have been
far-famed for their beauty. There is good reason for naming the
loveliest of climbing roses, “Baltimore Belles.”

The best thing grown in old Maryland was its patriotism. When the
Fathers were signing the Declaration of Independence, the chief man
from Maryland was Charles Carroll. As there was another Charles Carroll,
the hero in Independence Hall signed his name “Charles Carroll of
Carrollton.” The patriotic spirit of the colony still lives in that
song, popular in all the states: “Maryland, my Maryland!”

WILLIAM PENN, THE FOUNDER OF PENNSYLVANIA

When William Penn was born, his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, was
sailing out to sea on an English battleship. Little William’s mother was
a lovely woman from Holland, and as good as she was beautiful. While in
college at Oxford, young Penn attended Quaker meetings, which had been
started by followers of George Fox, the founder of a religious sect, the
Society of Friends, or Quakers, as they were commonly called.

[Illustration: WILLIAM PENN.

_In State Capitol of Pennsylvania_]

The professors in charge of Oxford University did not believe in such
meetings, so they turned out of the college those who attended them.
When William Penn went home, sent away from Oxford, his father was so
angry that he gave his Quaker son a beating and drove him from home.
Young Penn would have had to starve or beg in the streets but for his
good mother, who sent and helped him secretly. Even after that William
was found at a Quaker meeting in London and put in prison for eight
months.

William Penn’s father was a great man, a friend of King Charles the
First. When that king was put to death, Admiral Penn became the friend
of Cromwell, who had fought against the king. After Cromwell died, the
Admiral attached himself to King Charles the Second, and to the king’s
brother, the Duke of York, who afterward became James the Second.
Although these four rulers were different--even bitter enemies to one
another--shrewd Admiral Penn managed to keep the favor of them all. He
was ambitious also to have his eldest son become the favorite of kings.
He allowed William to come home after he was free from prison, in order
to send him away to Paris, as he hoped the youth would forget his queer
belief in the gay life there. The father asked the son’s friends, who
were sons of English noblemen, to influence William while in Paris to do
everything that was against the Quaker belief. One day a stranger met
young Penn in the street and picked a quarrel with him, drawing his
sword and challenging the peace-loving young man to a duel with swords.
Penn was forced, much against his will, to fight. He had always been an
active youth and fond of sports. While at college he had been very good
at fencing. By skilful play he disarmed the quarrelsome fellow and ended
the duel without hurting the stranger, as if it were all done in sport.
This pleased all who saw the sword-play and it did credit to the heart
as well as to the skill of the young Quaker.

When William returned home he was so handsome and had gained so much in
courtly manners that his father was thoroughly pleased. But the Great
Plague broke out in London then, carrying off nearly seventy thousand
people in that city alone. This frightened even the most worldly into
leading religious lives, and made William Penn’s conscience trouble him.
Repenting of his gay life, he finally joined the Friends for good and
all, and became one of their most earnest members and preachers. His
father ordered him out of the house and threatened to cast him off
utterly.

William was now imprisoned in the London Tower because of something he
had written against the Church of England. While in prison he wrote “No
Cross, No Crown,” and other works in defense of the Quakers. His father,
whose heart was touched by his son’s courage and unselfishness, appealed
to the Duke of York, King Charles’ brother, and got William out of the
Tower.

Admiral Penn died soon after this, leaving William a rich man. The royal
treasury owed him immense sums of money loaned to King Charles and his
brother James. But young Penn was again arrested because he was a
Friend, and imprisoned in Newgate, where the worst criminals were kept.
When he was again set free he began to seek some good place outside of
England where he and his Quaker followers could serve God and their
fellow-men without being treated like criminals. Learning of a certain
region in America, he went to King Charles and asked for it in payment
of the large amount of money Charles owed him.

As the king was still unable to pay the great debt in money, he was glad
to grant Penn a charter for the vast tract of land. When Penn came
before the king and the council to have the state paper signed and
sealed, he did not remove his hat, as Quakers think it wrong to show
such reverence to any one but God. King Charles allowed Penn to keep
his hat on, but removed his own, to the astonishment of all, and said
with a smile, “It is the custom at court for only one person to remain
covered.”

Penn suggested calling the tract of country they were ceding to him,
Sylvania, which meant “forest land”; but the king insisted on naming it
Pennsylvania, or Penn-forest. This name was written in the charter, so
William Penn had to abide by it, though he thought it vain to have the
land named for himself. The religious leader was now happy in having a
country where he and his people could live and love God and one another
in their own simple way. Sailing across the ocean in his good ship,
_Welcome_, Penn bought the country from its rightful owners, the
Indians. He made a solemn treaty with them which was “never sworn to,
and never broken.”

No Quaker ever hurt or wronged an Indian, and no Indian ever injured a
Friend, though the red savages murdered settlers belonging to other
religious faiths. William Penn laid out a town which soon became the
largest city in America. For this place he made up a name, Philadelphia,
composed of two Greek words meaning “Brother” and “love.”

Grand as it was to own such a great country as Pennsylvania, and to
found a large and flourishing city like Philadelphia, it was even
grander to teach people to live by the Golden Rule, and to help along
religious liberty. It was most fitting that the Declaration of
Independence should be adopted and signed in the State House of
Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, the city of William Penn.

[Illustration: WILLIAM PENN’S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS.]

PATRIOTS OF THE REVOLUTION

PATRICK HENRY, THE “FIREBRAND OF THE REVOLUTION”

“Pat Henry’s a good-for-nothing fellow. Just lounges about his
father-in-law’s tavern telling stories and fiddling.”

This was the verdict of the people of Hanover Court House, Virginia,
when Patrick Henry was a young man. When he was but a youth he had
married the tavern-keeper’s daughter. He had tried farming and failed,
people said, because he was “too lazy to do anything but go a-fishing.”
But he was a great reader and had studied law in a random, listless way.

The door of opportunity opened one day before this young man of whom the
neighbors had so little good to say. There was a case in court called
“the Parsons’ Cause.” This famous lawsuit arose in the following way: An
old law required each church in Virginia to pay its minister sixteen
thousand pounds of tobacco as his yearly salary. Later the legislature
of Virginia passed another law which permitted each parish to pay its
minister a smaller salary in money. The King of England set this law
aside and then the “parsons,” as the clergy were called, brought a
lawsuit to collect the unpaid parts of their salaries. Young Patrick
Henry’s sympathies were with the men who were sued and he offered his
services in their defense.

When the people of Hanover Court House heard of this, they laughed as if
it were a huge joke.

[Illustration: PATRICK HENRY DELIVERING HIS CELEBRATED SPEECH, MAY,
1765.]

“The good-for-nothing! What can _he_ do, with his low, tavern talk?”
they asked in scorn. “His stories may do for a bar-room, but for such a
fellow to speak in such an important case will be an insult to the
court.”

The courtroom was well filled on the day of the trial. The opposing
lawyers had promised to make short work of Patrick Henry, and teach him
a lesson he would not soon forget. There was a strange stillness when
the young man rose to speak. At first he seemed unable to control his
voice, and some of those present nudged each other and whispered: “He’s
going to break down! I told you so. He ought to have known better than
attempt a big case like this.”

Then young Henry’s will seemed to come to his rescue. He straightened
up. His face flushed eagerly. His eyes blazed with indignation. His
words soon came in a torrent of eloquence. He declared that the people
of Virginia had the right to make their own laws and that if the King
interfered he was no longer the father of his people, but a tyrant whom
they need not obey. The jury, carried away by the young lawyer’s fiery
appeal, decided that the parsons should have only one penny more money.

The people who had come to sneer now began to cheer. They carried the
young lawyer out of the courthouse on their shoulders.

That success showed that the “ne’er-do-well” was really a great lawyer.
After that Patrick Henry spent his time in his law office instead of
going fishing or loafing about the hotel. He studied to improve his
mind, and practiced in correcting his errors of speech, while learning
to make good use of his new-found gift of speaking in public.

Honors were showered, thick and fast, on the fiery lawyer. Other cases
were brought to him and he won them right and left. Soon he was sent to
the House of Burgesses, or the legislature of Virginia.

When other leaders hesitated to take the steps necessary to obtain their
rights, Patrick Henry did not falter. He seemed to see farther than
other men into the future. He made the halls of the lawmakers ring for
liberty, beginning his great liberty speeches ten years before the
colonies were prepared to meet and declare their independence.

When Virginians were sent to the first Congress of the United Colonies
in Philadelphia, Patrick Henry was one of those chosen to go with George
Washington and Richard Henry Lee. Here, in a fiery speech, Patrick Henry
exclaimed: “I am not a Virginian--I am an American!” He had to leave
Congress before signing the Declaration of Independence; but soon after
he became the first governor of Virginia, which was now no longer a
British colony but a new state. He was four times elected governor of
the state.

Patrick Henry was “the firebrand of the Revolution”; that is, his
burning words spread like a prairie fire from south to north, and
inspired the people with a burning zeal for liberty which could not be
quenched till all thirteen colonies had gained their independence and
had become the United States of America.

It has been said that Patrick Henry “rocked the world with his voice.”
The best known of his speeches was made just a few weeks before the
battle of Lexington, which was the first skirmish of the Revolution.
Here are the closing words of that great speech:

     “Gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace! Peace!’--but there is no peace. The war
     is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will
     bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are
     already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it the
     gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so
     sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid
     it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but, as
     for me, _give me Liberty or give me Death!_”

NATHAN HALE, WHO SPOKE THE BRAVEST WORDS IN HISTORY

Nathan Hale was a country boy, the sixth of ten children. When he was
twelve his mother died. It had been her wish that Nathan should study to
be a minister. So the lad entered Yale College when he was only
fourteen. Young as he was, Nathan became president of the debating
society. He was a big, strong, handsome fellow, full of fun and fond of
sports. He was best at what was known as the broad jump. For many years
“the Hale jump” made the record for the college. He was a strong swimmer
and excelled in shooting at the mark. In going about the college
grounds, Hale was often seen placing one hand on top of a six-foot fence
and vaulting over it with ease. One of his chums has told how Nathan
would stand in one hogshead, with his hands on his hips, and jump up out
of that into the second hogshead; then, in the same manner, leap into
the third hogshead and from there out on the ground--“all without
touching.” His athletic feats were so wonderful that the boys used to
boast of the things “Young Hale” did for “Old Yale.”

When he was seventeen, the young athlete also showed himself such a
ready and eloquent speaker that he was chosen for the highest honors of
the debating society. One address of his is still kept in the records of
Yale University. One of the questions he proposed and took part in
debating was: “Is it right to enslave the Africans?”

Right after his graduation, at the age of eighteen, young Hale began to
teach school and do tutoring besides, to pay his way while studying to
be a minister. But early in 1775, when he had been teaching less than
two years, the news of the first battles in the War for Independence
fired the fervent soul of the young patriot, and he joined the army.

Nathan Hale was appointed lieutenant in a company sent by Connecticut,
his native state, to become part of General Washington’s army which was
trying to take the city of Boston, then in the hands of the British. The
army then was without uniforms, proper arms, or training. During the
summer Lieutenant Hale “turned” twenty-one and was promoted to the rank
of captain.

When the time for which the Connecticut men had enlisted was nearly up,
the young captain was shocked and hurt to find that some of the men in
his own company were not willing to serve a little longer. Here is a
short, signed entry he made in his camp-book in November:

     “28. Tuesday. Promised the men if they would tarry another month
     they should have my wages for that time. NATHAN HALE.”

The youthful Connecticut officer and some of his men were among the few
who stayed till the British were driven out of Boston by sea. After this
the commander-in-chief, foreseeing that New York must be the next point
of attack for the British, sent all his soldiers on ahead to that city.
In the first brigade to go was Captain Nathan Hale, with as many of his
little company as he could command.

While officers like Hale were recruiting new soldiers and drilling the
raw recruits, Washington went to consult with the Congress then in
session at Philadelphia. During this visit he designed the first
American flag and ordered it made. It was the summer of the Declaration
of Independence.

Washington and his untrained troops, less than fourteen thousand in
number, had to defend and hold New York City, Brooklyn, and the
surrounding country against an army nearly three times as large. The
British troops under General Howe were well fitted out and trained, and
were aided by a fleet of warships commanded by the general’s brother,
Admiral Lord Howe. The Howes and their regular soldiers thought it would
be an easy matter for their army, numbering three to one of their
enemies, to capture the American army and carry Washington and the other
ring-leaders of the rebellion back to England to be hanged for treason.

When, late in August, Washington learned that Howe was landing his army
on Long Island from Staten Island, he sent General Putnam to meet and
hold the British back. As the British outnumbered Putnam’s company five
to one, this was impossible, and the Americans retreated to their
defenses. This engagement was called the battle of Long Island. At
nightfall the British encamped around the cornered Americans, and the
commander told his staff that they would take that “nest of rebels” in
the morning.

A dense fog came in from the sea, and Washington, under cover of it, got
as many boats together as his sailor soldiers could manage, and they
rowed away from Long Island in the silent watches of the night. Next
morning, when Howe came to capture the nest, the birds had flown.

Washington was now forced to fly with his army from place to place, and
the danger of being captured was greater than before. So he needed to
learn, if possible, what General Howe’s plans were. Captain Nathan Hale
was selected for this dangerous service.

There were some people in the colonies who believed that Washington was
a traitor and that his men were rebels. These people called themselves
Loyalists, but others called them Tories. Because of Nathan Hale’s frank
face and sincere manner it was thought that he could make friends with
these Tories and find out what was desired through them and their
friends, the British officers. Also, he was an educated gentleman. He
could take a position as tutor in the family of a rich Tory. British
officers visited these Loyalists and often discussed plans with them.

Captain Hull, a college friend of Captain Hale’s, was now an army
comrade also. When he heard that Hale was chosen, he called to beg him
not to go as a spy. He argued:

“Your nature is too frank and open for deceit and disguise. General
Washington--nor any commander--has a right to ask you to assume the garb
of friendship for the betrayal of others.”

Hale hesitated a moment at this, but when he spoke his voice was clear
and firm:

“I think I owe it to my country to do the thing which seems so important
to General Washington, and I know of no other way of getting the desired
information than by assuming a disguise and passing into the enemy’s
camp.”

“But,” urged his friend almost in despair, “think of the disgrace of it!
If you were caught, you would be hanged as a criminal! Dear Nathan, I
beg of you, don’t go.”

Nathan Hale could not help being deeply moved. He said gently: “He took
upon himself the disguise of the men He came to live among, for the good
of many and the cause of the right. He was arrested and hanged--on a
cross! Who am I that I should set up my judgment against His example and
General Washington’s will?”

Still, Captain Hull could not give up. He has left on record his last
attempt to persuade the young man whose love of country had become a
religion: “I urged him for the love of country, for the love of kindred,
to abandon an enterprise which would only end in the sacrifice of the
dearest interests of both. He paused--then, affectionately taking my
hand, he said, ‘I _will_ reflect, and _do nothing but what duty
demands_.’ He was absent from the army and I feared he had gone to the
British lines to execute his fatal purpose.”

Naturally very little is known of the spy in the few weeks that
followed. Sergeant Hempstead has told of going with him to the point
chosen for crossing on a waiting sloop to Long Island, many miles from
the British camp. Hempstead says Hale was then “dressed in a brown suit
of citizen’s clothes, with a round, broad-brimmed hat.” When the captain
and the sergeant wrung each other’s hands in farewell, Nathan Hale gave
into Hempstead’s care his private papers and letters and his
shoe-buckles. The letters were to Hale’s aged father and to the girl
whom he expected to marry.

At the end of several weeks Nathan Hale had succeeded in carrying out
General Washington’s instructions, even to making a number of sketches.
So far as he knew, he had not been suspected. This, he thought, was
rather surprising, for there were Tories everywhere.

It was late in September, “in the dark of the moon,” when Hale slipped
away from the British on Long Island and strolled down to the water’s
edge where he was to meet the sloop and sail back to his own army. He
waited some time for the ship, but it did not come. After some delay a
sailboat came in sight and made up to the shore. He was greatly
relieved, for it did not occur to him that there was anything wrong. As
the boat drew near he hailed it with a happy shout. When it was too
late, Hale saw that some of the men in the boat were in British uniform.
In a moment more, he was their prisoner. He had been betrayed--it was
never known by whom. He had a Tory cousin who was blamed at first, but
his innocence was proven in time.

[Illustration: THE LAST WORDS OF CAPTAIN NATHAN HALE, THE HERO-MARTYR OF
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

_From the painting by F. O. C. Darley_]

He was taken to General Howe’s headquarters. The telltale sketches and
data were found in his shoes. He did not attempt to deny that he was a
spy. It was not necessary to try him after he confessed. He was turned
over to the provost marshal to be hanged next day.

Of course, no one knows what Nathan Hale thought that last night, but it
may well be believed that he did not waste his last hours in despairing
regrets. If he was permitted to write farewell letters that night, they
were never delivered. In the morning Hale asked if he might speak with a
minister, but that was curtly denied him. “Will you lend me a Bible a
moment, then?” was his dying request. “No!” snapped the marshal.

A kind-hearted British officer, who noticed the pure, honest face of the
young American spy, offered him shelter from the sun in his tent during
a brief delay. The heart of this enemy captain was touched, and it was
he who preserved Nathan Hale’s noble words for future ages. If the young
spy could have known that his death would strengthen the hearts of
patriots to fight for liberty, and that what he was about to say would
go resounding down the ages, it would have added to his joy that hot
September day. A poet has described the moment when they came and led
him out:

    “To drum-beat and heart-beat
       A soldier marches by;
     There is color in his cheek,
       There is courage in his eye;
     Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat,
       In a moment he must die.”

They led him to an apple tree near at hand. While they were fastening
his arms behind him and tying a rope around his ankles, he gazed up into
the tree. On his handsome face rested the resigned expression which is
shown in the bronze and marble statues of Nathan Hale in the Yale yard
where he used to play, and in the park before City Hall, in New York.

“Well, have you any confession to make?” asked the marshal. This called
Nathan Hale’s mind back. He smiled at the needless question, for he had
confessed the night before and had thus made a trial unnecessary.
Hesitating only a moment, he answered the officer with simple courtesy,
in the bravest words ever uttered by mortal man:

“_I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country._”

LAFAYETTE, THE BOY HERO OF TWO WORLDS

In a great stone building among the tree-covered hills in the south of
France there lived a little boy who at birth received fourteen names and
titles. He belonged to the noble French family of the Lafayettes, who
had been knights for at least seven hundred years. The boy never saw his
father, for shortly before the child was born, his brave young soldier
father was killed in a battle with the English. The home in which this
fatherless boy lived was a castle, but it looked like a great prison or
a modern storage warehouse with a huge, round tower at each end. Across
its few small windows were iron bars.

Out of all the Lafayette boy’s names, the family called him Gilbert.
When he was eleven years old Gilbert was sent to a school in Paris where
sons from French gentlemen’s families were taught the things it was
thought proper for young nobles to know. First of all, they studied
heraldry, which explained the coats-of-arms of their royal and noble
relations and was really a sort of family history of France. The boys
also learned to ride and to fence and to talk politely--even wittily, if
they happened to be bright enough. Besides their own French language
they learned Latin so that they could write and even speak it. Then the
youths who had a taste for history were instructed in that study, not
the history of the whole French people, but the records of the royal and
great families, and the battles and schemes of the kings and princes.

In this boys’ college the rooms were very small, dark, and narrow, like
prison cells, and the pupils were locked in at night. Gilbert was never
allowed a holiday. If his mother came to see him she was permitted to
talk with him in the presence of a tutor, almost as if he were a
prisoner. The masters feared that a good, motherly chat with her son
would distract the boy’s mind from his studies.

Madame de Lafayette wished to do all she could to help her son in his
future life. So she moved to Paris and was presented at court; that is,
she was introduced to the king and queen and the highest nobles of
France. When Gilbert was thirteen his mother died, leaving her son
almost alone in the world. He had a rich uncle who might have been his
guardian, but he also died, leaving young Lafayette another fortune and
making him a very wealthy marquis.

Boys and girls in French noble families were often betrothed in infancy
and brought up expecting to marry each other when old enough. Marriage
seemed to be rather a question of the family fortunes than of the young
people’s real love for each other. When young Marquis de Lafayette was
left without parents to plan a proper marriage for him, a rich duke who
was a great favorite with King Louis decided to arrange for the orphan
boy to marry his own daughter Adrienne. In order to bring this about,
Adrienne’s parents invited Gilbert de Lafayette to come and live in
their palace, where they all could care for him as a son until it was
proper for him to marry their daughter. There was a wonderful wedding
when Lafayette was sixteen and Adrienne fourteen years old.

From that time, besides all the wealth of the Lafayettes, the riches of
his father-in-law, the duke, gave the young marquis a splendid position
at the court of France. If the boy bridegroom only had enjoyed that sort
of high life he might have been very happy. But the things which
interested the young nobleman were of quite a different sort. While he
was at a dinner, in honor of a younger brother of George the Third, king
of England, he heard that the American people had started their fight
for independence. Lafayette’s sympathies for the unhappy people across
the sea were so aroused that he began at once to plan to leave his
palace home, his lovely young wife, and his baby daughter, in order to
help the American people in their struggle. To find out how best to do
this, he went to see Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane, the agents for the
United States in France. Knowing how much the American people needed
Lafayette’s money and influence, these statesmen encouraged him in every
way.

The young marquis fitted out a ship and made ready to start, taking with
him several Frenchmen of high rank who also expected to be made officers
in the American Army. But Lafayette’s father-in-law did not relish the
youth’s idea of fighting for the common people against kings and nobles,
so he persuaded the king to order the marquis not to leave the country.
In spite of King Louis’s command, Lafayette walked on board his own
ship, under the detectives’ noses, disguised as the bodyservant of a
stranger from another country who also was going to fight for American
liberty.

The Marquis de Lafayette reached the American army, near Philadelphia,
after many dangers and hardships. General Washington could not help
smiling at the earnestness of “Major-General” Lafayette, aged nineteen,
who could command only as much of the English language as he had learned
while crossing the Atlantic. Though “the Marquis,” as everyone learned
to call him, volunteered to serve anywhere without pay, Washington
offered him a place on his staff. Once when the commander-in-chief asked
Lafayette how to improve the discipline of the American troops, the
noble youth replied, “I am here, General, to learn, not to teach.”

[Illustration: GENERAL LAFAYETTE WOUNDED AT THE BATTLE OF BRANDYWINE.]

General Lafayette received his first wound in the Battle of Brandywine,
where he fought hard to keep the British back from Philadelphia. While
riding his horse at the head of his men he was shot in the leg. He
recovered from this wound in time to come to Valley Forge and suffer
with Washington the hardships of the long, bitter winter there.

While at Valley Forge the young general was sent to keep the British
from coming out from Philadelphia and attacking the American camp.
Lafayette took his station at Barren Hill near the Schuylkill River.
When the British commander had word of this he sent out three companies
to surround the boy general from three directions, and make him their
prisoner. So sure were they of making this capture that they planned a
dinner in honor of their noble French prisoner, and invited their
friends in Philadelphia to be present and meet the Marquis de Lafayette.

But the boy general was too shrewd for them all. Quick as a flash he saw
a way out of the trap they had set for him. Ordering the heads of his
columns to stand in the edge of a grove where they could be seen as if
in battle array, he ordered a retreat by a secret path. When the three
British lines marched up the hill, even the Americans in the edge of the
woods had disappeared, and the companies only met one another and looked
sheepish as they marched down again. Their game had gotten away, and
they had to eat that dinner without their prisoner-guest.

Howe and his men soon heard that the French were sending ships and men
to help their American friends, so they went away from Philadelphia as
quickly as possible. On the way to New York, Washington met them and
gave battle at Monmouth, New Jersey. He appointed General Lafayette
second in command; but General Charles Lee was offended because “that
French boy” was placed above him. To relieve his chief, Lafayette gave
up the command. This was the battle in which Lee disobeyed Washington’s
command and prevented the American army from winning a real victory. It
was Lafayette who saw that something was going wrong and helped to save
the day for the Americans.

Hearing of his wife’s illness and his little daughter’s death, Lafayette
asked leave of absence to go home to France. He returned to America as
soon as he could, after persuading the French government to send more
money, more men, and more ships to help bring the long war with England
to an end. Soon after his return, “the Marquis” was sent with his
regiment to meet Cornwallis and defend Virginia.

Cornwallis laughed when he saw that “the Boy” had been sent against him.
But “the Boy” was more than a match for the British commander in the
south. He kept retreating and advancing up and down the James River. One
day Cornwallis would think he was trapping Lafayette, but the next day
he found himself only moving farther from his base of supplies. “The
Boy” did this just to gain time, for he had learned that the expected
fleet was in American waters with a French army on board, and that
Washington was on his way down from near New York to meet the French
ships and men and surround Cornwallis. It was now the British general’s
turn to retreat. He retired to Yorktown, where he was surrounded by the
Americans and French and was soon forced to surrender.

As soon as the fighting was ended, General Washington gave a dinner to
the French officers and their English prisoner, Lord Cornwallis. The
defeated general was so well treated by Washington and his men that the
two commanders became good friends.

When the Americans had gained their independence, General Lafayette
returned to France, where he was received as a hero, even by the king
whose command he had disobeyed by running away to help America. The
people were so fond of the brave young marquis, that King Louis
appointed him a marshal of France, though he was only twenty-four.

The French Revolution soon broke out, but it was very different from the
American Revolution, because the people of France had the wrong idea of
liberty. They killed the king, the queen, and many of the nobles in a
savage and cruel way. They even imprisoned and put to death some of
their early leaders, who loved liberty, but who were not willing to do
such savage deeds to obtain it. Lafayette was one of the lovers of
liberty who suffered much from the French people during the Revolution,
because he did not believe in going to extremes.

Washington and Lafayette did not forget each other. They wrote devoted
letters to each other as if they were father and son. The French
nobleman named his son for Washington, who, during the troublous years
in France, received and cared for the boy as if he were a grandson.

Nearly fifty years after Lafayette’s first coming to America, he made
his fourth voyage to our country, bringing with him his son, George
Washington de Lafayette. He came, at the invitation of President Monroe
and Congress, as the guest of the United States. Because of the
enthusiasm with which he was welcomed all over the country, his visit
was remembered as one of the brightest times in the history of the
United States.

One hundred and forty years after the Marquis de Lafayette’s first
coming to help America, four millions of American young men were
enrolled to rescue republican France from her brutal enemy. A million
soldiers had crossed the ocean, and another million were on their way
when a company of Americans visited the last resting-place of Lafayette.
As they laid a wreath upon the tomb of the “Friend of America,” General
Pershing, the commander of the American forces, exclaimed, “Lafayette,
we are here!”

THE IMMORTAL REPLY OF JOHN PAUL JONES

Of the millions of boys who have had “sea fever,” perhaps none suffered
with it more than John Paul, a bright, sandy-haired Scotch lad. His
father was a gardener on the estate of a noble lord. John went to school
but little, yet he studied hard while he was there. He had learned to
sail a boat quite well when he had a chance, at twelve years old, to go
to America as a cabin boy. When the owner of the ship soon after failed
in business, John Paul entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman. He
learned all he could in the short time he was a “middy,” but, as his
father was poor, he saw no chance to get ahead there.

He left the navy and found work on a merchant ship running between
Scotland and the West Indies. Coming back from a voyage to Jamaica, the
ship’s captain and mate both died, and John Paul, though still a mere
boy, sailed the ship home. So he became a captain before he was twenty.
In those days, shipmasters treated their men roughly, and once young
Captain Paul had to flog the ship’s carpenter. The man died some time
afterward of fever, and, to spite the young shipmaster, he claimed that
he had been fatally injured by John Paul’s cruelty. After that, on
another voyage, the sailors mutinied or turned against their captain,
and tried to kill him. In self-defense the young master knocked the
leader down stairs and he died of the fall.

The next time John Paul was heard from, he was living in America with a
wealthy man named Jones. It was just at the beginning of the War for
Independence, and the young Scotchman was so in love with liberty and
the new country that he decided to become an American. In doing this he
took the name of his new-found friend Jones. Instead of John Paul, the
British subject, he now called himself Paul Jones, American. He went to
the Congress in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, in May, 1775, to offer
his services. He was promptly given command of several ships to defend
the colonies against Great Britain. The next year the Declaration of
Independence was signed. On the 14th of June, 1777, the Congress
appointed him to the command of the American ship-of-war, _Ranger_. On
the same day the Congress adopted a flag and made this record:

     “_Resolved_, That the flag of the thirteen United States be
     thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, and that the union be
     thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new
     constellation.”

Captain Paul Jones had a silk flag made at once and raised it on the
_Ranger_, on the first birthday of the United States, July 4th, 1777.
The first voyage of this ship was to France, and the young United States
captain announced to the French admiral, in the harbor he was about to
enter, that he would expect the French fleet to salute the new American
flag. After some delay, the French officer consented and the _Ranger_
sailed into port between two rows of French ships-of-war, which had
French flags flying, and French sailors and soldiers manning the
yardarms, and cannon booming all along the line, in honor of the Stars
and Stripes. That was a great day for the United States, for this was
the first time a foreign kingdom recognized the new republic of America.

France not only treated the United States as an equal, but she went to
war with England and helped the Americans win their independence.
Captain Jones was a little, peppery man, and had been an American only
two years, but he was trying to make up for lost time. He believed so
much in the people’s right to be free, that he considered being an
American citizen the highest honor in the world. He begged the high
French officials and Doctor Franklin, who represented the United States
in France, to let him take the _Ranger_ out and fight England all by
himself. The British had taken American prisoners and treated them as
spies and traitors, instead of as prisoners of war. Captain Jones wished
to capture some British prisoners and teach the enemy how prisoners of
war should be treated.

When the Americans in Paris and the French tried to convince the brave
little captain that it would be dangerous for him to go out with but one
ship, he replied that he liked nothing better than “going into harm’s
way,” and he finally went. He waited outside an English port till the
warship _Drake_ came out. The British commander stared at the new flag,
for he had never seen it before. “What ship is that?” he asked. “It is
the American ship _Ranger_.” Some one on the _Drake_ made fun of the
new flag, saying it looked like a patchwork quilt. “Very well,” retorted
Captain Jones, “we will cover your Union Jack with it, then.”

The battle between the _Ranger_ and the _Drake_ lasted just one hour and
four minutes. When it was over, the _Drake_ had lost her captain and
first lieutenant and thirty-eight men, killed and wounded, while the
loss on the _Ranger_ was only two killed and six wounded.

When Captain Jones returned to the shores of France he brought with him
the _Drake_ as a prize, with a goodly crew of British prisoners to
exchange for Americans. As he had promised, the Stars and Stripes were
at the _Drake’s_ masthead over the British flag. There was no trouble
then about saluting the American flag. All France and America went wild
over this victory. In fact, nearly every nation under heaven--excepting
Great Britain--was greatly pleased with the escapade of brave little
Captain Jones.

Of course, Captain Jones had just had enough to make him long to be
“going into harm’s way” on a larger scale. But France now had her own
troubles with England. She needed all the ships and men she could raise
to make a navy able to beat the big fleet Great Britain was getting
ready for a great naval battle. Still, Captain Jones would not be put
off. With Doctor Franklin’s help the French found him a poor old ship
which they told him to arm and man and go ahead with. Jones did his
best, but the foundry did not fill his order for cannon, and he was
obliged to take some old guns which were too heavy for the positions he
had to give them. It was bad enough to be forced to fight the whole
British navy with a poor, slow, rotten old hulk with out-of-date guns,
but the men he had to take to do the fighting were worse. Among them
were Portuguese and Malays who could not understand orders in either
French or English; but, worst of all, there were a hundred or more
English prisoners, who would watch their chance to stab or shoot the few
Americans in command, and surrender the ship to their own countrymen.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard” almanac had been published as a
French book, under the title of “Bonhomme Richard,” or “Goodman
Richard.” So Jones, in compliment to his genial friend and helper, named
his newly-made-over ship, _Bonhomme Richard_. Before he got this craft
ready, several French commanders and crews wished to join him. These men
were not capable commanders, but they had better ships and crews than
Captain Jones, the one man best able to use them to advantage.

When Jones started out with the _Richard_, he was followed by a sort of
private fleet, among which were the _Alliance_ and the _Pallas_. The
commanders of the other ships refused to obey orders unless they
happened to feel so disposed. Most of the other ships got lost or
started off, like pirates, after prizes for themselves, so that when
Jones met the leading ships of the British, there were only the
_Richard_, the _Alliance_, and the _Pallas_ left.

When the three ships came round a high point called Flamborough Head and
saw there the British men-of-war, _Serapis_ and _Countess of
Scarborough_, Commander Jones ordered the _Pallas_ to engage the
_Countess_ while he, with the _Richard_, tackled the _Serapis_.

The commander had one lieutenant, Richard Dale, an American who had
escaped in the most mysterious way from an English prison. Without the
heroic aid of this officer Jones might have lost the day--or the night,
for the battle did not begin until dark. There were hundreds of people
on the shore watching the fight. At the very beginning they saw--and
heard--the old cannon on the _Richard_ bursting and killing nearly all
the gunners and powder-boys serving them.

Meanwhile the _Serapis_, which was a brand-new ship with twice the
number and weight of guns that Jones had, was raking the _Richard_ fore
and aft, and shooting great, ragged holes in her sides. The sea came
pouring into the ship and the British prisoners came running up, yelling
frantically, “We are sinking!” By sheer force of will and fear of eye,
Paul Jones and Richard Dale drove those excited Englishmen back into the
hold to work the pumps, as though they would pump the North Sea dry.

Jones sailed his ship close to the _Serapis_, intending to catch hold of
its side with hooks called grappling-irons. This made it possible for
the men on both ships to fight hand to hand. The _Richard_ came
alongside with such force that a spar which stuck out at the side
(called the jib-boom) was driven into the ropes which held the mast
nearest the stern of the _Serapis_ (called the mizzenmast). The grip
which Captain Jones now had on the _Serapis_ was like that of a Boston
bulldog who has an English mastiff by the throat. If one ship went down,
the other would have to go too.

“Well done, my brave lads. We have got her now!” shouted Jones; and he
ordered the sailing master to haul the _Richard’s_ cable over and tie
the jib-boom of the _Serapis_ to his own mizzenmast. When the cable
caught and became tangled the master uttered an oath.

“Don’t swear,” said Jones calmly. “In another moment we may be in
eternity; but let us do our duty.”

The ropes and spars of the two ships were now so tangled that the men in
the top of the _Richard_ scrambled across into the rigging of the enemy,
like monkeys in two treetops. In spite of all the captain’s efforts, the
_Richard_ was now on fire in a dozen places. The people on shore
cheered, for it looked as if the English were burning the “pirate” ship.
The master-at-arms, hearing a report that the captain and Dale had both
been killed, started with two others to surrender to the commander of
the _Serapis_, all three shouting, “Quarter!” The commander of the
_Serapis_, hearing the cry, asked Jones if he was ready to give up.

“No,” shouted the American commander, “_I have not yet begun to fight!_”

By this time even the masts of the _Richard_ were burning; but an
American sailor saw a chance to do great harm to the enemy. Seizing a
hand grenade, or bomb, he crept across the yardarms of both ships and
threw it down upon the deck of the _Serapis_. The bomb fell and burst on
a train of gunpowder scattered by broken cartridges. The flame blazed
along past several of the big guns, ending in a terrific explosion.

This turned the tide of the battle. The Americans swarmed on board the
_Serapis_ and took possession of it. The English commander surrendered
by pulling down the flag of his ship. In giving up his sword to Jones he
said, with a sneer,

“It is painful to me that I must resign to a man with a halter around
his neck.”

The American captain seemed not to notice the intended insult. Every
American boy and girl has a right to be proud of Paul Jones for his
noble reply:

“Sir, you have fought like a hero.”

[Illustration: JOHN PAUL JONES COMMANDING THE “BON HOMME RICHARD” IN THE
BATTLE WITH THE “SERAPIS.”]

The _Pallas_ had captured the _Countess of Scarborough_ after an hour’s
fighting. The _Bonhomme Richard_, when cut loose from the _Serapis_,
sank to the bottom of the sea. Before the rest of the enemy’s fleet
could stop them, Jones and the commander of the _Pallas_ sailed away
with the _Serapis_ and the _Countess_ to a safe neutral port in Holland.
The British now offered a reward of more than fifty thousand dollars for
Captain Paul Jones, dead or alive. The people of Holland begged him not
to fly the American flag, as there were two British fleets waiting
outside that Dutch harbor to capture him. But Paul Jones insisted on
flying the Stars and Stripes, not only in that port, but when he came
out and ran the gauntlet of more than forty British men-of-war. He
passed them all with colors flying, and reached a French port in safety.

Captain Paul Jones was one of the heroes of the world. The French made
him a knight and King Louis presented him with a magnificent
gold-handled sword. The United States Congress voted him a gold medal in
honor of his greatest victory and passed a resolution commending “his
zeal, prudence and intrepidity,” assigned him to the command of a new
ship of the line then being built, and proposed to create for him the
rank of real admiral, until then unknown in the American navy. General
Washington wrote him a letter of congratulation in which he said: “You
have won the admiration of the world.”

Thus the son of a poor gardener became our greatest naval hero in the
War of the Revolution. But above all the honors he received at home and
abroad, this was Paul Jones’s proudest boast: “_I have ever looked out
for the honor of the American flag._”

GENERAL MARION, THE CAROLINA “SWAMP FOX”

A hundred years ago, when boys had but few books of any kind, “The Life
of General Marion” was their favorite book of adventure, because of its
short stories of rare bravery and hairbreadth escapes. General Francis
Marion, of whom the book tells, was a southern man, born the same year
as General Washington, and a commander of some of the American troops in
the War for Independence.

During that war, when the British found that they could accomplish
little in the northern states, they decided to carry the war into the
south. Lord Cornwallis was the British commander; under him Colonel
Tarleton was a cavalry officer notorious for bullying and cruelty who
became a terror to the whole region. Another commander of British troops
in the south was a former American general, Benedict Arnold, the
traitor, who joined the British after he had failed to deliver West
Point into the hands of the enemy.

General Horatio Gates was sent by the Congress to defend the south
against the British. But General Gates was not a great or brave
commander. He was defeated by Cornwallis at Camden, South Carolina. He
lost two thousand men, and the rest of his soldiers were scattered.
Because of this terrible defeat--the worst in the whole War for
Independence--the southern people were deeply discouraged.

What was to be done? In the south there were many Tories, as the people
were called who believed that those who fought against England for
liberty were rebels. Besides fighting in the British campaigns, the
southern Tories went about in bands, shooting and injuring all the
“rebels” they

[Illustration: GENERAL MARION, THE CAROLINA “SWAMP FOX.”]

could. So the southern patriots gathered together in small companies to
defend their families from the British and the Tories, and to prevent
the British from capturing the whole southern country before Washington
could send down a better general and another army.

During the months after the defeat at Camden, the fight was carried on
in what was called guerrilla warfare--_guerrilla_ being Spanish for
“little war.” Small bands of Americans hid in the woods and swamps, and
when they caught the British off guard, suddenly pounced upon them,
taking or rescuing prisoners. The greatest leader of this kind of
warfare on the American side was General Marion.

These southern soldiers had very poor weapons. Most of their guns were
the kind used in shooting birds, and were loaded with shot instead of
bullets. For swords they had wooden-handled saws with the teeth ground
down to a smooth edge. They had but little to eat--often only potatoes,
which they could bake in the ashes of their campfires.

Their horses, however, were the finest and fastest in all that country.
Although these men had to deny themselves food and clothing, their
horses were well fed and groomed, for often the masters’ lives depended
on the fleetness of their steeds. And the horses sometimes acted as if
they understood and enjoyed the terrible game of life and death their
masters were playing.

Some of the bravest men in the south, seeing no other way to save or to
serve their country, came and offered themselves to General Marion, to
fight under the greatest hardships and risks in the most dangerous
adventures. Among these was the famous Sergeant Jasper, who was one of
the first to risk his life for the flag. Nine British ships-of-war
attacked a fort in Charleston Harbor. They shot away the staff on which
the American flag was flying; but Jasper jumped out, caught the banner
before it touched the ground, and climbed up and nailed it in place,
while the guns were aimed at him as well as at the starry ensign.

While Sergeant Jasper was under General Marion he was often sent out on
scout and spy duty. He had a natural talent for disguising himself. He
went once to visit a sergeant in a British regiment. While he was there
a number of American prisoners were brought in. Taking it for granted
that a guard of ten British soldiers, with these prisoners, would pass a
certain spring, Jasper left the British camp to obtain help. He found
only one American who could go with him. The two hid themselves near the
spring, surprised the ten redcoats, disarmed them, and, with the former
prisoners, marched gaily back to Marion’s headquarters with the ten
captured British soldiers.

Once when General Marion came to a river ferry, he heard that a company
of ninety British regulars were taking more than two hundred captured
Americans to the prison-ship at Charleston. The prisoners already in the
hold of the ship were starved and neglected. Besides, smallpox had
broken out among them, and many of the best men among the patriots were
dying of that loathsome disease. So General Marion ordered his men to
ride through the darkness to the ford where the British and their
prisoners had crossed the river a few hours before. Here they learned
that the redcoats and their charges were going to stay that night at a
country tavern called the Blue House. The Americans approached this
place with great caution. When they came to a wooden bridge, they took
horse-blankets and laid them down on the bridge to deaden the sound of
the horses’ hoofs.

Before deciding how to make an attack, General Marion sent several
scouts to find out the lay of the land. With tread as sure and silent as
that of moccasined Indians, the scouts returned and whispered this
report:

“The officers are carousing in the house. Some of the men are outside.
Many of them must be asleep, as we could not get a glimpse of them. A
few sentinels are lounging about, without a thought of being attacked.”

Marion told his men to lie down under the trees for a little rest. Very
early in the morning, when all the British, including the sentinels,
seemed to be asleep, he roused the men and ordered the attack.

The odds were over three to one against them, but Marion’s men were used
to that. They were taking a great risk, but there was much to be
gained--guns, equipment and British prisoners who could be exchanged so
as to release Americans from the prison-ship. Best of all, each man of
the thirty might be the means of setting ten other Americans free.

When the men were well awake, General Marion sent a lieutenant ahead,
directing him as follows:

“Take a few men with you, make a wide circle, and come in behind the
house. Get as close to them as you can, and wait till I give the signal.
Then close in on them and see that no one gets away. We must make quick
work of this. See that your guns are all right.”

To the men waiting with him he said: “Are you ready?”

“Ready, sir,” they whispered back.

“Come on, then,” he commanded. “Follow me. Don’t make any noise. Don’t
speak. Watch me. Don’t fire till I say the word.”

They crept around the Blue House like Indians, testing every twig lest
it snap, and feeling their way in the darkness. Suddenly a shot rang out
in the early morning air. A sentinel on the other side of the house must
have seen the lieutenant’s men. The British soldiers, roused from a
sound sleep, jumped about, peering this way and that in the darkness. No
one knew what had happened, or what would happen next.

The officers came tumbling out, swearing and yelling. As the Americans
came rushing in from all sides, shouting and shooting, the British
thought they were attacked by an army instead of by thirty guerrillas.
Marion’s men grabbed the rifles of the British soldiers, shooting some
and knocking others down. Some of the British shouted, “Quarter!” and
General Marion ordered his men to stop firing.

There was a wholesale surrender, and the hundreds of American prisoners
were set free. Many of them joined Marion’s men. When the British saw
how they and their prisoners had been taken in, ten to one, they looked
sheepish.

But the British leader, the bullying Colonel Tarleton, had made his
escape. His motto seemed to be--

    “He who fights and runs away
     Will live to fight another day.”

He ran away, at least, though he did not do any fighting first.

Five months after the battle of Camden, there was another battle at
Cowpens. The British army, commanded by Tarleton, was only a little
larger than the American. The redcoats were so badly beaten that they
lost over nine hundred men, while the American loss was only
seventy-two.

One day, not long after, Tarleton was bullying a southern woman in her
home, where he and some of his officers were quartered. There was, on
the American side, a Colonel Washington, a distant relative of the
commander-in-chief. In his insulting way, Tarleton asked, when the lady
said this officer was a relative of hers:

“What does Colonel Washington look like? I have never had the pleasure
of meeting him.”

“You might have seen him,” said the lady, sweetly, “if you had _looked
behind you_ at the Battle of Cowpens!”

This polite way of calling him a coward made Tarleton very angry, but he
was no match in wit for a brave and brilliant southern woman.

Though many of the wealthiest people of the south were Tories, some of
them were true patriots. A widow named Motte had just built a beautiful
home on a hilltop, and had furnished it elegantly, when the British
decided that it would make a fine fort, and promptly took possession of
it. General Marion and his guerrilla band surrounded the mansion and
told Mrs. Motte, who was then staying in a neighbor’s house, that if he
could set her house afire he could “smoke out” the British and capture
them. That woman patriot was glad to sacrifice her lovely home for the
good of her country; so Marion burned down the mansion and made the
redcoats his prisoners.

WINNERS OF THE WEST

WOLFE AND MONTCALM, THE RIVAL HEROES OF QUEBEC

More than one hundred years after Champlain returned from France to his
beloved Quebec, France and Great Britain were at war. In America this
struggle was called the French and Indian War, because the English
colonists had to fight against the French and their Indian allies, who
came down from Canada to keep the English out of the country along the
Ohio River. In Europe this strife, in which several other nations took
part, was known as the Seven Years’ War.

During this war young George Washington was first heard of. He was sent
into the western wilderness in the dead of winter to carry a message
from the English governor of Virginia to the French commander at a fort
in western Pennsylvania. A few years later, General Braddock came over
with an army of British regulars to fight the French and their allies in
the region where the young messenger had been. Major George Washington
was on the English general’s staff, and saved many of the British
regulars after Braddock fell, defeated, near Fort Duquesne, where
Pittsburgh now stands.

The British attacked the French also at Louisburg, in Nova Scotia, and
at Ticonderoga, near the southern end of Lake Champlain; but the most
important point to attack was Quebec, “the Gibraltar of America,” which
Champlain had built nearly one hundred and fifty years before. The
general then in military command at Quebec was the Marquis de Montcalm,
a true Frenchman, devoted to his king, and to his mother, wife, and
children, from all of whom he was separated because of his warm love of
country.

[Illustration: THE MARQUIS DE MONTCALM, THE BRAVE DEFENDER OF QUEBEC.]

In his frequent letters to his mother and his wife, Montcalm told all
his troubles with the governor of Canada and the Canadian volunteers. He
had brought from France to Quebec an army of regular soldiers. They
looked with scorn upon the French Canadian raw recruits, who seemed
about as rude as their Indian neighbors. The Canadian governor, on his
side, saw with jealous eyes the French marquis who had come from Old
France to command the Canadian companies along with his own French
troops. It needed rare tact and true love of country for Montcalm to
keep friendly with the Canadian governor, who pretended to be the
friend of the marquis while secretly turning everybody he could against
him.

When the general won a great victory at Oswego, hundreds of miles away,
the governor, who was not there, wrote to his friends and the men over
him in France about “my” victory and what “I” planned and “I” did with
such great success. But though Montcalm wrote about his trials and
troubles to his wife and mother, he managed to keep on good terms with
the governor and to prevent an outbreak between the French regulars and
the Canadian soldiers and Indian warriors.

General Montcalm knew that the British would attack the French
stronghold of Quebec. To keep this fortress at the narrow point in the
St. Lawrence River might mean the saving not only of all Canada, but
also of the French forts and territory along the Wabash and Mississippi
rivers, more than a thousand miles away to the southwest.

The fortress at Quebec seemed impossible to take, for it was on top of a
high, steep cliff looking over the St. Lawrence. The lower part of the
town lay along the level of the river far below, but the town would be
of no use whatever to an enemy that could not take the fort, frowning
directly overhead. It seemed that the only way the fort might be reached
by an enemy was by way of the St. Charles River, just below the town.
Troops might be taken up this river, and reach Quebec by going a long
distance around back of the city. Montcalm had logs chained together,
making a “boom,” and threw that across the St. Charles where it flows
into the St. Lawrence. Then no ship or large boat could enter there and
land soldiers behind the fort.

Not only was the St. Lawrence River narrow at Quebec, but there were
many rocks in the swift channel below, so that no ship without a
skilled pilot could pass up to the town. Montcalm, however, wishing to
make Quebec doubly safe, posted most of his army below the town, to
prevent the approach of the enemy.

Meanwhile William Pitt, the British prime minister, decided, as Montcalm
had foreseen, that Quebec must be taken. Pitt made up his mind also that
a young British officer named Wolfe was the right man to place in
command of the British army, to capture the Canadian fortress. Wolfe’s
father had been a general, and from the age of sixteen the son had been
a soldier. As a colonel under General Amherst at Louisburg, James Wolfe
had shown himself so fearless as to be even rash, and so devoted to his
duty that he seemed not to care for his own life. He was so daring and
reckless that some one tried to warn the king of England by saying,
“That young Wolfe is mad.”

“Mad, is he?” snapped King George. “Then I only hope he will bite some
others of my generals!”

Colonel Wolfe was as keen and wise as he was brave; so the king
appointed him general and commanded him to capture Quebec.

James Wolfe was as devoted to his mother as Montcalm was to his--even
more so, for Wolfe had neither wife nor child to divide his affection.
He wrote home often about his army life, his hopes, and his aims. With
all his successes and honors, General Wolfe was a very modest young man.

He sailed up the St. Lawrence with a small army--only nine thousand men.
Of these he wrote to William Pitt:

“Our troops are good, and if valor can make amends for the want of
numbers, we shall probably succeed.”

To the astonishment of Montcalm and the French army and people, the
British ships sailed up to the Isle of Orleans opposite Quebec as if
there were no dangerous rocks in the rapid river there. Wolfe had taken
some Canadian pilots on board farther down the St. Lawrence, and had
threatened to hang them if one of the ships ran upon a rock.

Still, Montcalm told the people that there could be no danger. The hated
English had only run into a trap. They could go neither upstream nor
down, and when winter came their ships would be frozen in the ice and
become an easy prey. So the French general refused to risk an attack. He
decided to play a waiting game and let time and nature fight for France.
On the day when Wolfe’s fleet arrived, a violent storm came up, and
several British ships and floats were dashed on the rocks and badly
damaged. After that, Montcalm sent out burning ships to set fire to the
English fleet and destroy it. But Wolfe’s men bravely towed the French
fire-ships out of the way, and the only men lost were the Canadian
captain in charge of the fire-ships and six of his sailors, who were
burned to death.

Next Wolfe tried to enter the country on the Quebec side of the river,
near the Falls of Montmorency, where the water falls two hundred and
fifty feet over high cliffs. These falls are so beautiful that some of
the English risked being shot by the Canadians in order to see them. The
region between the Falls of Montmorency and Quebec was so well guarded
by French and Canadians that Montcalm was sure the English could never
get behind Quebec. He sent word to the British general: “You will, no
doubt, demolish the town, but you shall never get inside of it.” Wolfe
answered back: “I will have Quebec if I stay here till the end of
November.” But every English attack failed, and even the brave young
commander became discouraged. He had never known good health, and he
was now quite ill.

When he was urged to attack the English general and capture or drive him
back, Montcalm said with a smile, “Let him amuse himself where he is. If
we drive him off he may go to some place where he can do us harm.”

But the French made another attempt to set fire to the British fleet
with seventy rafts, small boats, and schooners. Again they failed, and
the French themselves explained that this was due only to the courage of
the English sailors, who swarmed out in little boats to fight the fire
before it could do any harm to their fleet.

In August General Wolfe was ill in bed, and it was reported in the
British army that he was not likely to live long. But even while he was
so ill, the young commander’s one thought was the capture of Quebec. On
the last day of August he said to his physician that he now had a plan
to carry out if he could only live to lead his army in person. “I know
too well that you cannot cure me,” he continued, “but pray make me so
that I may be without pain for a few days, and able to do my duty. That
is all I want.”

In his letter to his mother that day he wrote:

     “The enemy puts nothing to risk, and I can’t in conscience put the
     whole army to risk. He has wisely shut himself up so that I can’t
     get at him without spilling a torrent of blood, and that perhaps to
     little or no purpose. The Marquis de Montcalm is at the head of a
     great number of bad soldiers, and I am at the head of a small
     number of good ones that wish for nothing so much as to fight him,
     but the wary old fellow avoids an action.”

Early in September Wolfe seemed himself again, though he realized that
he had only a few days to live. The French saw the British fleet pass
their fort on the way up the river at night, although the cannon of the
fort belched lightnings and bellowed thunder at them. Montcalm wondered
what the English were going to try to do, after all. “They mean to land
somewhere,” he said.

Wolfe did “mean to land somewhere,” and that somewhere was the very
place Montcalm did not dream of, a steep cliff back of the town. When
any one spoke of the danger of the capture of Quebec, the French general
would shrug and smile and say, “But the English cannot fly!”

One night when it was very dark, sixteen hundred British soldiers came
floating down the river in their ships’ boats till they came opposite
the town. Wolfe was with them in person, as he had hoped and prayed to
be. As they were slowly floating, the young commander repeated the
familiar lines by Gray,

    “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
     And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
     Await alike the inevitable hour--
     The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

“I would rather have written those lines,” he said with deep feeling,
“than take Quebec to-morrow!”

As their boats stole in to the shore, a sentinel called out in French,
“Who goes there?”

“France,” answered a voice in French.

“What regiment?”

“The Queen’s,” again in good French, by a Scotchman who had seen service
in France.

A little later another sentryman challenged them.

“What is that?”

The Scotchman whispered, “Provision boats. _Sh!_ the English will hear
us!”

In this way they reached a point at the foot of the steep cliff.
Twenty-four men started to climb up where it seemed impossible. As they
kept on, others started up after them. Then came others, General Wolfe
among the number. In a short time quite a large company, in red coats
and Scotch kilts, had reached the top and dragged several small cannon
after them. The French felt so safe from attack that the small guard on
the Plains of Abraham, as the level top was called, was taken by
surprise and easily overcome.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM.

_From the painting by Alonzo Chappel_]

An alarm spread. A Frenchman on horseback came dashing over to
Montcalm’s headquarters, gasping: “The English--on the Plains of
Abraham!”

There was a great fight on top of that cliff. Wolfe was seen
here--there--everywhere! But before the British drove the French back,
the young general had fallen--shot three times.

“Shall I go for a surgeon?” asked an Englishman.

“There’s no need,” Wolfe whispered. “It’s all over with me.”

A little later a man shouted, “See how they run!”

“Who run?” repeated Wolfe, opening his eyes.

“The enemy, sir. They are giving way everywhere!”

Wolfe roused up long enough to send a brief order to the next in
command, telling him just how to go ahead and capture the fort. Then he
lay down wearily, smiling as he closed his eyes. “Now God be praised, I
shall die in peace,” he said.

The French hero of Quebec also was shot through the body in that last
short fight. “How long have I to live?” he asked.

“Not more than twelve hours,” said the surgeon in charge.

“So much the better,” said the dying Montcalm. “I am happy that I shall
not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”

DANIEL BOONE, THE GREAT INDIAN FIGHTER OF KENTUCKY

Of all the great American hunters, trappers, and Indian fighters, Daniel
Boone was the leader. He was born in Pennsylvania, but while still a boy
he moved with his parents to North Carolina. Besides learning to do farm
work and help his father at the loom and the forge, the

[Illustration: DANIEL BOONE, THE GREAT INDIAN FIGHTER OF KENTUCKY.

_From the painting by Chappel_]

Boone boy found time for trapping, hunting, and learning the arts of a
woodsman. Father Boone, though of Quaker descent, encouraged this son to
go hunting and to learn the woodcraft of the Indians. When the lad was
twelve his heart was delighted by the gift of a light rifle from his
sensible father.

Of course, Daniel did not have much chance to go to school, but he
acquired mathematics enough to fit him for the business of backwoods
life and to make him a fair land surveyor. But he never had the gift of
spelling. For many years a giant beech-tree was pointed out where he had
had a bear-fight; it was a kind of monument to Daniel’s poor spelling.
In the bark, high on its trunk, he had cut these crooked letters: “D.
Boon cilled a bar on this tree in the year 1760.” Yet, although he did
not spell even his own name correctly, Daniel Boone was the best
educated of all the pioneers, for he had just the kind of knowledge that
his country needed most at that time.

When Daniel was twenty-one a call came to North Carolina for men to help
the soldiers of General Braddock, who had been sent by the king of
England to fight the French and Indians. The English wished to keep
control of the country north and south of the Ohio River. Young Boone
volunteered and was in the battle of Fort Duquesne, when Braddock was
defeated and killed, and when young Major George Washington led the
colonial troops, who fought Indian fashion and saved a small part of
Braddock’s army from being killed and scalped. This fight proved a
turning point in the life of the North Carolina soldier, for he met in
the ranks a scout named John Finley, who had been on a hunting trip in
the wild country south of the Ohio. Finley drew a picture of this wild
region that warmed the heart of Daniel Boone. One of the chief beauties
there for the born hunter was that the Indians did not inhabit the
country. They only went back and forth across it, so that they did not
kill or scare away the game.

Daniel went home to North Carolina and married a beautiful girl of
seventeen, and they kept house in a cabin the young husband had built
with his own hands. He lived there several years with his wife and
little boy, near his father’s family. But he was restless, going on
hunting trips farther and farther from home, until he had followed the
game over the mountains into the region of the Tennessee River.

The friend of the French and Indian War, John Finley, came to visit the
Boones one fall, and they made him stay all that winter. “The call of
the wild” was too strong to let Boone stay at home long after that. In
the spring he and Finley, with four other men, on six horses, with
bedding and a small cooking outfit on six packhorses, started off, early
one bright morning, on their wonderful shooting and trapping trip. They
were armed with hunting-knives, tomahawks and their trusty rifles.

When they had crossed the mountains they hunted the bear, buffalo, elk,
and deer, and trapped little fur animals with such success that they
soon had quite a fortune in furs. As they prepared to start east with
these, a band of Indians appeared on the scene, broke up their little
camp, and captured everything they had. The savages spared the white
men’s lives; but they made signs that they would kill them all if they
found them there again, and they took Boone and another man prisoners.
The rest of the party, badly frightened, took up their weary march for
home, empty-handed. Boone, and his companion, when they escaped, only
went far enough to make the Indians think they also were afraid; then
they came back and hunted alone in all that wild region.

After long, lonely months, Boone’s brother came and brought gunpowder
and supplies, and the Boones hunted and trapped there two years longer.
They started home with a rich store of furs, but some Indians came along
and robbed them again. The red men afterward killed the brother, but
Daniel, after hairbreadth escapes, reached North Carolina, safe and
sound, but poorer than when he went away.

Still, Daniel Boone was rich in wood lore and Indian craft. He gave such
attractive accounts of the beautiful country and the chances to get rich
quickly that quite a number of heroic people were persuaded to go back
with him and settle in the land. He started over the mountains again
with ten in his own family, besides neighbors and friends. No one could
have followed the way but a cunning scout like Daniel Boone, to whom
every leaf, every sound, every mark in the earth had its own secret
message. During the journey the party were attacked by Indians, and
Boone’s eldest son, a lad of seventeen, was killed.

This experience discouraged the others and they tried to induce their
leader to go back with them. He sturdily refused, saying, “There are
nearly a hundred of us. We can beat the Indians yet.” Nevertheless, it
seemed wiser to wait awhile before pushing on across the mountains; so
they went back a little way and settled for a year or two on a little
mountain river.

By this time many people in the Carolinas and Virginia had heard about
the Promised Land of Daniel Boone. He was engaged to mark the way or
“blaze the trail” through to Kentucky. This trail was afterwards
traveled so much that it was called the Wilderness Road. Taking thirty
men with him, Boone once more set out on the way to settle Kentucky.
They came to a halt in the heart of that country, and built a stockade
on the Kentucky River. This enclosure, a little longer than a square,
with a fort at each of the four corners and eight smaller cabins in the
space inside, was surrounded by a high fence of sharpened logs standing
upright. To this strong stockade the rest of the party gave the name of
Boonesboro, in honor of the Kentucky pioneer. Later, Boone returned for
his family and brought them to their new home.

Many and exciting were the adventures of the settlers. One afternoon two
girls went out canoeing on the river with the daughter of Daniel Boone.
When the three girls had passed a bend in the river and were too far
away for their shrieks to be heard at the fort, a fierce-looking Indian
sprang out from the bushes on the farther bank and pulled in their
canoe. Other savages stifled the girls’ cries and plunged with them into
the darkening forest.

Before long the absent ones were missed and the alarm was given. The
empty canoe was found, and a search party was formed, led by the fathers
of the missing girls. The hunt lasted two days and two nights. On the
morning of the third day the anxious fathers saw smoke rising from an
Indian camp. As the camp was over fifty miles from Boonesboro, the
savages had become careless. Boone and two other men crept up near the
camp and shot the two Indians guarding their three white captives. The
other red men jumped and ran for the woods. The happy fathers and their
friends returned to their anxious families at Boonesboro with the
daughters unhurt.

While Washington and his little armies were waging the War for
Independence along the eastern coast, Daniel Boone and his pioneers were
fighting just as bravely for their country. Though they did not realize
it then, the Backwoods Territory formed by far the greater part of the
future United States. Boone was the leader who remained on guard while
others did the things which are oftener described in the history of the
country. He helped the pioneers with his advice, and defended the
families of the men who went out and fought in the historic battles.

One reason why the Indians feared and revered this “White Chief” was
that Daniel Boone, as if by magic, had often escaped death at their
hands. But once his good fortune seemed to fail him. Near Boonesboro was
a salt “lick,” or a spring of salt water, where salt was left spread
around the spring like frost or a white powder on the ground. Deer,
buffalo, and other animals often came there to lick up the salt, and
pioneers often hid near by and shot them. Boone and thirty men had come
from the fort to gather a supply of salt to have on hand in case they
should be attacked by Indians. Boone and his men were surrounded and
captured; and, as this was during the War for Independence, they were
taken to Detroit to be dealt with by the British Governor Hamilton. On
the way through deep snows and zero weather they were all in danger of
starving. At a solemn council some of the Indians proposed to get rid of
their prisoners by torturing and burning them to death. There were one
hundred and twenty of the savages, and the vote stood fifty-nine for the
killing to sixty-one against. There was no doubt that the Indians’
regard for Daniel Boone saved the lives of all those white men. Though
this seemed to have been done by a single vote, it was a strange thing
that sixty-one hostile savages were willing to keep alive and feed their
prisoners at the risk of starving themselves.

At Detroit, Hamilton offered the Indians five hundred dollars if they
would let Daniel Boone go free, as he wanted to use him as a British
scout. The savages refused and took him to their chief village in the
Ohio country. Boone knew their language, but he pretended not to
understand a word they said among themselves. He seemed to be very fond
of their mode of life and acted pleased when they told him they were
going to make him a chief. He won their good will by not wincing when
they tortured him to see if he could prove himself worthy of that great
honor.

The white chief was the best marksman in all the tribe. When they let
him go off hunting by himself they counted the bullets and measured the
gunpowder they gave him. But he cut the bullets in two and used very
small charges of powder, thus saving nearly half to use when he should
find a chance to escape. Hearing the others talking of an attack they
were going to make on Boonesboro, he slipped away one morning while out
hunting, when he would not be missed till night. Not daring to shoot
game for food, nor wishing to waste time to dress and cook it, he was
nearly starved when he reached the Kentucky fort, after going one
hundred and sixty miles through a region full of hostile tribes.

The Indians must have wasted many days searching for him, as it was six
weeks before his adopted tribe and other savages arrived at Boonesboro.
Daniel Boone held the fort for ten days, with fifty white men and boys
and twenty-five women and children, against four hundred and fifty red
men. Several times the Indians set fire to the fort, but the brave
white men put out the fire at great risk to their lives. The Indians
tried to tunnel under the log fence, but the cunning white chief met and
beat them back at every point. At last the savages gave up the fight and
slunk away.

Now that so many settlers had moved to Kentucky, the old hero found that
country too crowded to suit him, so he and his family moved to a wilder
region on the Missouri River, “to find elbow room,” he said. After
hundreds of thrilling adventures and narrow escapes, the Indian hunter
died in bed, with his wife and three of his children around him. A
friend who was near him in his latter days said of Daniel Boone: “Never
was old age more green nor gray hairs more graceful.”

GEORGE ROGERS CLARK, THE YOUNG HERO WITH A GREAT IDEA

Soon after the beginning of the War for Independence, George Rogers
Clark, a tall, broad-shouldered, red-haired, blue-eyed young man of
twenty-four, left his home in Virginia and went over the mountains to
join the settlers in Kentucky. He had already had some adventures in the
wilderness along the Ohio River, hunting wild game and fighting wilder
Indians. Not long after Clark’s arrival, the pioneers joined together
and sent him and another man back to Virginia to see if they could have
Kentucky adopted as a county of that state. Virginia had just been
declared one of the thirteen United States. Clark and his companion were
also to try to get the legislature to grant them money enough to buy
gunpowder, which was now the greatest need of the Kentucky settlers in
fighting the Indians.

When the two young delegates, in coonskin caps and leather leggings,
arrived at the Virginia capital they found to their dismay that the
legislators of the new state had just adjourned and gone home. Patrick
Henry, the fiery orator who had shouted in that very capitol building,
“Give me liberty or give me death!” was now governor of Virginia. The
young men from Kentucky went and told him they must not go back without
that powder; so Governor Henry got them five hundred pounds, and
arranged to make it all right when the State legislature should meet
again. Clark succeeded also in having Kentucky made a county of
Virginia.

[Illustration: COLONEL GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.]

While the battles of the Revolution were being fought along the Atlantic
coast, there was a terrible state of affairs in the great valley of the
Ohio. Henry Hamilton, the British governor at Detroit, then in charge
of the forts and trading posts on the Wabash and Mississippi rivers, was
doing one thing that made the settlers’ blood boil wherever they heard
of it. He had hired all the Indians he could to fight on the British
side by furnishing them with scalping-knives and paying them a bounty,
or money prize, on every scalp they brought in to prove that they had
killed an American man, woman, or child. The savages went everywhere on
the warpath, murdering as many people as they could to earn as much
bounty money as possible.

In the midst of this horrible warfare a bright idea came to George
Rogers Clark, but he kept it to himself. He sent two men across the Ohio
and up the Mississippi and Wabash rivers to see what was going on at the
British trading-posts there. The word they brought back made the young
man start at once for Virginia--this time alone. He called again on
Governor Patrick Henry and on his old neighbor, Thomas Jefferson. Both
of those great patriots approved his plan and charged him on no account
to let it leak out before he was ready to act, for fear some wily Indian
or dishonest Frenchman might give warning and spoil it all.

When George Rogers Clark started again from Virginia he wore the badge
of a colonel in the Continental army; and he had the promised support of
the state. He went west by way of the Ohio River as far as what is now
Louisville. The settlement he started there owes its name to the news
which Clark heard from some men who joined him there; that the king and
the people of France had pledged money, men, and ships to help the
United States in the War for Independence. The new town was named in
honor of the French king.

The first thing the young commander had to do was to raise a company of
about two hundred men for his secret purpose. All he told his recruits
was that they were to go on a mission to put a stop to the terrible
outrages of the “British” Indians upon the settlers. It was not until
they were again floating down the Ohio River toward the Mississippi that
he told them that they were out to capture three towns on the
Mississippi and the Wabash, which, as his two friends had found out for
him, were not well guarded by the British. Most of the people in these
towns were French settlers, but were under British rule. When they had
nearly reached the place where the Ohio flows into the Mississippi, they
left their boats and marched through tangled forests and across the
plains toward Kaskaskia, the nearest of the three towns. They arrived on
the Fourth of July, 1778, the second anniversary of American
independence. They hid for a whole day in a clump of trees and bushes on
the shore of the Mississippi. After nightfall Clark detailed half his
men to surround the village, and led the rest to the fort, where he
found the French commander of the fort giving a dance by the flaring
light of several torches. Some of the women of the settlement and
several Indians were present. The young Virginian went right in and
stood there smiling--it was so different from what he had
expected!--when an Indian spied him and gave an ear-splitting warwhoop.

The dancers stopped as if shot. All stared at the tall young officer
with the keen but kindly eyes. After a moment the newcomer raised his
voice and said, “Go on with the dancing, but I wish to announce that you
are no longer subjects of King George. This fort and this place now
belong to the State of Virginia.” As he spoke, his men burst in and
took the French officers prisoner. Clark added, to the village people,

“You can go to your homes, but you must stay there. All who leave their
houses to-night will do so under pain of death. The town is guarded by
my men.”

The French settlers spent the night in fear, for Clark disarmed the
village at once. Some of their chief men came to him next day to beg him
to spare their lives. The young commander shook hands with them and told
them that they need not be afraid of any one but the British. “King
Louis of France,” he explained, “is the friend of America. He is going
to help us in our fight for liberty.”

The French were all glad to hear the good news and lost no time in
swearing to be true to the United States government.

In his record, Clark went on:

     “The scene was changed from almost dejection to that of joy in the
     extreme--the bells ringing, the church crowded, returning
     thanks--in short, every appearance of extravagant joy that could
     fill a place with almost confusion.”

To Colonel George Rogers Clark and his sturdy pioneers this easy
campaign so far seemed like a pleasure excursion. They were well
received also at Fort Cahokia, on the Mississippi across from St. Louis.
Then a French volunteer took a few men to Fort Sackville at Vincennes
and placed them on guard there. Thus the three scattered strongholds of
the British in the Northwest Territory came to belong to the new State
of Virginia.

When Governor Hamilton got word, by Indian runner, of all that had
happened, he came down from Detroit to Vincennes on the Wabash with five
hundred English and Indians in canoes. He easily retook Fort Sackville,
for Clark had not been able to spare more than half a dozen men to hold
it.

By that time winter had come on, and the Wabash began to rise and flood
its banks. The river overflowed this part of the country so regularly
that the region was called “the drowned lands.” The flood, of course,
made it impossible for Hamilton to march his men to the Mississippi. He
announced that he would wait until spring before retaking the other
forts. So he sent away his Indian allies and ordered part of his troops
back to winter quarters at Detroit.

When the young Kentucky colonel heard of this he saw a chance to spring
another surprise. He started out with one hundred and seventy men to
travel two hundred and fifty miles through, rather than over, trails
almost impossible to pass because of snow, ice, and overflowing streams.
The worst part of all the journey was at the last, near Vincennes, where
the whole country looked like a large lake. Clark himself led the way,
feeling out the path with his feet. He placed the tall, stalwart men
among those who were smaller and weaker. Sometimes they had to wade in
the icy waters up to their necks. Only the hardiest of the pioneers
could endure long hours in such cold water. Some of the men became numb
and unconscious. Their robust companions carried them in their arms or
held them on floating logs until they came to a dry knoll like an oasis
in the desert. There the active men would rub and warm the chilled
bodies of the rest. Meantime a meal would be prepared of duck, venison,
or other game, which Clark and his more able-bodied men had been able to
shoot, dress, and cook in the ways best approved by hungry pioneers.
After they had eaten and dried their clothes, they would make up lost
sleep. Clark himself was a wonder of endurance, cheerfulness, and tact.
He started his men singing the favorite songs of the frontier, like,
“Keep Your Powder Dry,” and encouraged and animated them by every means
in his power.

It took five days to wade the last nine miles. Washington’s crossing the
Delaware in boats was a short and easy passage compared with this feat
of George Rogers Clark. But the humor of the American pioneer, who made
a joke of his hardest experiences, saved the day. Clark wrote of the
“antic little drummer-boy” who floated across a river on his drum; but
he did not tell how a tall soldier took that drummer on his shoulder and
led the way through deep waters, while the boy beat a merry march for
that shivering, laughing company.

Near Vincennes they met a man out shooting ducks. From him they learned
that Hamilton and his garrison did not dream of being attacked. By this
man Clark sent in to the people of the settlement this warning:

     “To the Inhabitants of Post Vincennes:

     “_Gentlemen_: Being now within two miles of your village with my
     army, determined to take your fort this night, and not willing to
     surprise you, I take this method to request such of you as are true
     citizens and willing to enjoy the liberty I bring you, to remain in
     your houses; and those, if any there be, that are friends to the
     king, will instantly repair to the fort, and join the _hair-buyer
     general and fight like men_! Those who are true friends of liberty
     may depend on being well treated; and I once more request them to
     keep out of the streets, for every one I find in arms on my arrival
     I shall treat as an enemy.

(Signed) G. R. CLARK.”

As a result of this notice, the Indians took to the woods and the French
villagers shut themselves in their homes. Clark and his men soon rushed
into the town and surrounded Fort Sackville. The next day a party of
“British” Indians came into town on their ponies, grinning and shaking
the scalps they had taken from a number of Kentucky settlers. These
Indians on the warpath did not know of the presence of the little
American army until some wrathful Kentuckians fell upon and killed every
one of them in plain view of Hamilton and his soldiers. The besieged
garrison fought desperately for days, but the pioneer sharpshooters with
their deadly aim forced them to surrender.

The British never attempted to take the little river fortresses again.
And when the treaty of peace was signed between the young United States
and old England, that vast Northwest Territory was safe in the hands of
the new nation. But for the great thought so heroically carried out by
George Rogers Clark and his men, that western empire--now occupied by
the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin--would at
the end of the war have belonged to England. As Clark said to Governor
Patrick Henry when he outlined his plan of capturing the three river
forts and holding all that territory for the United States of America:
“A country which is not worth defending is not worth claiming.”

LEWIS AND CLARK, TWO ADVENTURERS IN THE FAR WEST

William Lewis, a nephew of General Washington’s sister Betty, lived near
Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful estate in Albemarle County, Virginia. Two
years before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, a boy was
born into the Lewis family. This baby was given his mother’s maiden
name, Meriwether.

Twenty-five years after writing the Declaration Jefferson became
President of the United States and went to live in the still unfurnished
White House in the new city of Washington. Then he chose for his
secretary Meriwether Lewis, whom he had seen grow up from boyhood. He
was such a remarkable young man that later ex-President Jefferson wrote,
in a story of the life of his former secretary:

     “When only eight years of age, he often went out in the dead of
     night alone with his dogs into the forest, to hunt the raccoon and
     opossum (which, seeking their food in the night, can then only be
     taken), plunging through the winter’s snows and frozen streams in
     pursuit of his object.

     “His talent for seeing things led him to a true knowledge of plants
     and animals of his own country. At the age of twenty, yielding to
     the ardor of youth and a passion for more dazzling pursuits, he
     engaged as a volunteer in a body of militia called out by President
     Washington. At twenty-three he was promoted to a captaincy and
     appointed paymaster of his regiment.”

In 1803, President Jefferson, acting for the United States, bought of
France, through Napoleon, all the country west of the Mississippi, which
LaSalle had claimed and named Louisiana. That vast region was sold for
fifteen million dollars, which amounted to only two and a half cents an
acre. This act is known as the Louisiana Purchase. The new country,
called Louisiana Territory, was an unknown region thousands of miles in
extent. Traders had gone up the Missouri River a few hundred miles, and
voyagers along the Pacific coast had traded with the Indians at the
mouth of the Columbia River; but no one knew much about the wide expanse
of territory lying between, or of the rise and course of either of those
great rivers. So it was decided that some one should undertake the long
and dangerous journey among savage tribes and wild beasts,

[Illustration: LEWIS AND CLARK ON THEIR EXPEDITION INTO THE FAR WEST.

_From an old painting_]

and find out all about the region. Young Lewis had wished years before
to explore that country and had been kept from going, so now he begged
the President to let him take charge of the great hunt for facts. The
President had good reasons for consenting. He knew that Captain Lewis
was brave, firm, and persevering, and that nothing could turn him from
his purpose. He was well acquainted with the character and customs of
the Indians, and was used to the hunting life. He had carefully studied
the plants and animals of his own country. Above all, he was honest,
fair-minded, and truthful, so that whatever he might report would be
sure to be true. For these reasons the President felt no hesitation in
trusting Captain Lewis to do so important a task.

With fatherly pride ex-President Jefferson afterward wrote that young
Lewis was not certain that he could do this great work right; so he
attended a scientific school to learn more about plants, animals,
minerals, physical geography and astronomy. He wanted all he should see
to be of the highest value to his own country and to the other nations
which claimed the great tracts next to the vast territory he had been
appointed to explore. Besides, he went to a factory where firearms were
made, so as to gain the working knowledge he might need some time to
save the lives of his party.

He started down the Ohio by boat from Pittsburgh. At Louisville he
picked up his former neighbor, William Clark, brother of George Rogers
Clark. He had been a mighty hunter and Indian fighter, and had served
his country under General Anthony Wayne. Captain Lewis thought it best
that there should be two leaders, in case of any accident to himself.
The two captains were real comrades and generous commanders, keeping the
respect and friendship of their men through the many hardships of their
wanderings in the wilderness.

They started out from St. Louis in May, 1804, with thirty-two
experienced hunters, scouts, and woodsmen, on their great adventure.
They had only a barge with sails and two smaller boats to go up the
“Big Muddy,” as the Indians called the Missouri River. With the aid,
later, of a few Indian canoes they were to find their way to the
far-distant purple mountains and into the hazy regions of mystery
beyond. The President had charged his two young neighbors: “Keep in
peace and good-will with the savages,” so the wise partners and their
picked men joined in councils and powwows with the various Indian tribes
all the way up the long river. They had brought with them bright medals
which the chiefs admired. Though the red men could not read the words
printed on them, “Peace and Friendship,” they could understand the two
clasped hands, one red and the other white, under the lettering, for