And now, said Uncle Juvinell, I see you are all agog, slate and pencil in hand, ready to jot down any question that may chance to pop into your busy young brains, to be asked and answered, for our further enlightenment, at the end of our evening lesson. So, without more ado, we will begin.

But, before trudging on further in our delightful journey, we must pause a moment, and turning square round, with our faces towards the long-ago years of the past, take a bird's-eye view of the early history of our country, that we may know exactly where we are when we come to find ourselves in the outskirts of that long and bloody struggle between the two great nations of England and France, commonly called the Seven Years' War, and sometimes the Old French War. Now, although this would not be as entertaining to your lively fancies as an Arabian tale or an Indian legend, yet you will by and by see very plainly that we could not have skipped it, without losing the sense of a great deal that follows; for it was during this war that our Washington first experienced the trials and hardships of a soldier's life, and displayed that courage, prudence, and ability, which in the end proved the salvation and glory of his native country.

In the first place, you must know, my dear children, that this beautiful land of ours, where now dwell the freest and happiest people the blessed sun ever shone upon, was, only a few hundred years ago, all a vast unbroken wilderness; a place where no one but savage Indians found a home, whose chief amusement was to fight and kill and scalp each other; and whose chief occupation was to hunt wild beasts and birds, upon whose flesh they fed, and with whose hairy skins and horns and claws and feathers they clothed and decked themselves. Where in the leafy summer-time may now be heard the merry plough-boy whistling "Yankee Doodle" over the waving corn, the wild Indian once wrestled with the surly bear, or met his ancient enemy in deadly fight. Nibbling sheep and grazing cattle now range the grassy hills and valleys where he was wont to give chase to the timid deer, or lie in wait for the monstrous buffalo. Huge steamers ply up and down our mighty rivers where he once paddled his little canoe. Splendid cities have risen, as if at the rubbing of Aladdin's enchanted lamp, where in the depths of the forest he once kindled the great council-fire, and met the neighboring tribes in the Big Talk. The very schoolhouse, where you little folks are now tripping so lightly along the flowery path of knowledge, may perhaps stand on the selfsame shady slope, where, of a long summer evening, he would sit at the door of his bark-built wigwam, smoking his long pipe, and watching his naked red children with a more fatherly smile than you can well imagine in one so fierce, as with many a hoop and yelp they played at "hide-and-seek" among the gray old trees and pawpaw thickets. On yonder hill-top, where we at this moment can see the windows of the house of God shining and glancing in the moonlight, he may have stood, with his face to the rising or setting sun, in mute worship before the Great Spirit.

But the stronger and wiser white man came; and, at his terrible approach, the red man, with all his wild remembrances, passed away, like an echo in the woods, or the shadow of an April cloud over the hills and valleys; and the place that once knew him shall know him no more for ever.

And yet it might have been far otherwise with him and with us, had not a certain Christopher Columbus chanced to light upon this Western World of ours, as he came hap-hazard across the wide Atlantic, where ship had never sailed before, in quest of a shorter passage to Asia.

By this great discovery, it was proved to the entire satisfaction of all who are in the least interested in the matter, that this earth upon which we live, instead of being long and flat, with sides and ends and corners like a great rough slab, was round, and hollow inside, like an India-rubber ball, and went rolling through empty space, round and round the sun, year after year, continually.

Of this bold and skilful sailor, the most renowned that ever lived, I should like to tell you many things; but, as we set out to give our chief attention to the story of Washington, we must deny ourselves this pleasure until the holidays of some merry Christmas yet to come, when your Uncle Juvinell, if he still keeps his memory fresh and green, will relate to you many wonderful things in the life of this great voyager, Columbus.

Up to this time, all the nations of Christendom had for ages upon ages been sunk in a lazy doze of ignorance and superstition. But, when tidings of the great discovery reached their drowsy ears, they were roused in a marvellous manner; and many of the richest and most powerful forthwith determined to secure, each to itself, a portion of the new-found region, by planting colonies; or, in other words, by making settlements therein.

For this purpose, they sent out fleets of ships across the Atlantic to these distant shores, laden with multitudes of men, who brought with them all manner of tools and implements wherewith to clear away the forests, till the soil, and build forts and cities, and arms to defend themselves against the attacks of the war-like savages. Thus, for example, Spain colonized Mexico; France, Canada; and England, that strip of the North-American continent, lying between the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, now known as the eastern coast of the United States.

At first, the new-comers were received and treated with much kindness and hospitality by the natives: but it was not long before they discovered that they were likely to be robbed of their homes and hunting-grounds; when rage and jealousy took possession of their hearts, and from that time forward they never let slip an opportunity of doing all the mischief in their power to the hated intruders. Then began that long train of bloody wars between the two races, which have never ceased except with defeat or ruin of the weaker red man, and bringing him nearer and nearer to the day when he must either forsake his savage life, or cease to have an existence altogether.

Now, this may appear very unjust and wrong to my little friends; and, to some extent, it really was: but, in those days, might made right; or, in other words, the strong ruled the weak. And yet we are bound to believe that all this, in the long-run, has worked, and is still working, to the greatest good of the greatest number: for, had it been otherwise, all this beautiful land, now the home of a Christian and happy people, would have remained the dismal wilderness we have described it; answering no good end, as far as concerns the spread of truth and knowledge, and the cultivation of those useful arts which make a nation prosperous in peace, and strong in war.

Notwithstanding their troubles with the Indians, the hardships and privations to which the first settlers of a wild country are always exposed, and the shameful neglect with which they were treated by the mother-countries, the French and English colonies went on growing and thriving in a way that was wonderful to behold. At the end of a hundred and fifty years, or thereabouts, they had so grown in strength and increased in numbers, and had so widened their boundaries, that at last the continent, vast as it is, seemed too narrow to hold them both; and they began throwing up their elbows for more room, in a manner that would have been thought quite uncivil in a private individual at a dinner table or in a stage-coach.

Whereupon there arose a hot dispute between the kings of France and England as to whom belonged all that immense region stretching from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, in the one direction; and, in the other, from the Ohio to the Great Lakes of the North.

The French claimed it by the right of discovery: by which they meant, that a certain Father Marquette had, nearly a hundred years before, discovered the Mississippi during his wanderings as a missionary among the Indians of the Far West. They pretended, that, as this pious man had paddled a little canoe up and down this splendid river a few hundred miles, his royal master, the King of France, was thereby entitled to all the lands watered by it, and the ten thousand streams that empty into it.

The English, on the other hand, claimed it by the right of purchase; having, as they said, bought it at a fair price of the Six Nations, a powerful league or union of several Indian tribes inhabiting the region round about the great lake's Erie and Ontario. What right the Six Nations had to it, is impossible to say. They claimed it, however, by the doubtful right of conquest; there being a tradition among them, that their ancestors, many generations before, had overrun the country, and subdued its inhabitants.

Now, the poor Indians who occupied the land in question were very indignant indeed when they heard that they and theirs had been sold to the white strangers by their red enemies, the Six Nations, whom they regarded as a flock of meddlesome crows, that were always dipping their ravenous bills into matters that did not in the least concern them; and their simple heads were sorely perplexed and puzzled, that two great kings, dwelling in far-distant countries, thousands of miles away beyond the mighty ocean, should, in the midst of uncounted riches, fall to wrangling with each other over a bit of wilderness land that neither of them had ever set eyes or foot on, and to which they had no more right than the Grand Caliph of Bagdad, or that terrible Tartar, Kublah Khan.

"Of all this land," said they, "there is not the black of a man's thumb-nail that the Six Nations can call their own. It is ours. More than a thousand moons before the pale-face came over the Big Water in his white-winged canoes, the Great Spirit gave it to our forefathers; and they handed it down, to be our inheritance as long as the old hills tell of their green graves. In its streams have we fished, in its woods have we hunted, in its sunny places have we built our wigwams, and in its dark and secret places have we fought and scalped and burnt our sworn enemies, without let or hinderance, time out of mind. Now, if the English claim all on this side of the Ohio, and the French claim all on this side of the Big Lakes, then what they claim is one and the same country,—the country whereon we dwell. Surely our white brothers must be dreaming. It is our hearts' desire, that our brothers, the English, keep on their side of the Ohio, and till the ground, and grow rich in corn; also that our brothers, the French, keep on their side of the lakes, and hunt in the woods, and grow rich in skins and furs. But you must both quit pressing upon us, lest our ribs be squeezed in and our breath be squeezed out, and we cease to have a place among men. We hold you both at arm's-length; and whoever pays good heed to the words we have spoken, by him will we stand, and with him make common cause against the other."

But to these just complaints of the poor Indian the French and English gave no more heed than if they who uttered them were so many whip-poor-wills crying in the woods. So they fell to wrangling in a more unreasonable manner than ever. Finally, to mend the matter (that is to say, make things worse), the French, coming up the Mississippi from the South, and down from the Great Lakes of the North, began erecting a chain of forts upon the disputed territory, to overawe the inhabitants thereof, and force the English to keep within the Alleghanies and the Atlantic. As a matter of course, the English regarded this as an insult to their dignity, and resolved to chastise the French for their impudence. And this it was that brought about that long and bloody struggle, the Old French War.

Thus, my dear children, do great and wise nations, professing to follow the humane teachings of the man-loving, God-fearing Jesus, often show no more truth and justice and honesty in their dealings with one another than if they were as ignorant of the Ten Commandments as the most benighted heathens, to whom even the name of Moses was never spoken. Yet, from your looks, I see that you are wondering within yourselves what all this rigmarole about England, France, the Six Nations, and disputed territories, can have to do with George Washington. Had you held a tight rein on your impatience a little while longer, you would have found out all about it, without the inconvenience of wondering; and hereafter, my little folks, rest assured that your Uncle Juvinell never ventures upon any thing without having all his eyes and wits about him, and that what he may tell you shall always prove instructive, although it may now and then—with no fault of his, however—seem to you somewhat dry and tedious.