There was no California-there was the country of course. But it belonged to Mexico and only came to the United States when Texas did, in the Mexican war, 1845-1848.

In early times, and even after the Revolutionary war, it had been thought that we should never want the country west of the Mississippi, and that this would always be a wilderness and a place for the Indians. But as the country grew, people changed their minds. In 1821 the United States bought Florida from Spain. Before that, however, in 1803, Louisiana was bought by us from France. The French had first come there in 1699; then France ceded it to Spain, 1762; but in 1800 Spain gave it back to France. Three years later the United States bought it from France.

We know the boundaries of Louisiana now. But in those days it was very much larger and its boundaries were "vague and undetermined." On the north it went to Canada; or one old record says it "ends on the north at a place called Detroit between Lake Erie and Lake Huron." On the south it ran to the Gulf of Mexico. And as no one could tell on the west just where the French country ended which the United States had bought as Louisiana, and where the Spanish possessions began, the

Americans pushed west as far as they could and said the land had been French and belonged to them.

Ohio had been made a State only in 1802; and in 1809 the country west of this largely remained to be settled and conquered from the wilderness for civilization. Kentucky and Tennessee were States about the end of 1700; Vermont was admitted in 1791. But in 1809 these were the only new States admitted into the Union since the Revolution. This makes us realize what a different country even in size it was from today.

But, after all, it is not the size of a country that counts so much; it is not its many inventions and comforts and conveniences of business and of life, and, especially, it is not its vast wealth that makes its real power and greatness -it is the men and women in it that really count for its present and its future. And in America at that time were men and women as strong and brave and able as any who live today; and most of all there were good and true men and women who loved God and loved their country.

It was into this country of great performance and still greater promise, and to be a leader of such men and women in a time of terrible struggle and danger, the choice of the

people and, under God, their ruler to guide this nation to life instead of death-it was to do all this, and beyond it, to show in his own character how true and great a man can be, that, February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born.

II.

DANIEL BOONE AND THE LINCOLN PIONEERS.

The original grant of Colonial Virginia was a very large country indeed; it included not only Virginia as it now is on the map, but the whole of West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and "every、 thing westward to the Mississippi, and as much further as the colony had a mind to claim." The Virginia called afterward "the mother of States" was only the part between the Alleghany Mountains and Chesapeake Bay-our present Virginia.

The people who settled Virginia were more from the rural districts of England than those who came to New England; some were squires and many were yeomen. They were not so ready to build cities and live together as in New England; they liked better to spread over the country and have great estates. And they did not have so hard a time with the Indians as did the New England people, so that they could do this more safely.

As we know, the first Virginia company was organized in 1606. But this did not succeed, because people in England wanted to do all the management and give those here no rights. Then, in 1624, the English government took control, and the colonists came over faster. They soon found that there was no gold in the State and that they were too far south to get furs from the Indians. But about this time tobacco was introduced into Europe, and Virginia was found to be a fine place to grow tobacco; the colonists went into its culture largely. They needed plenty of land for this; and after a time when the best lands in Virginia had been taken up, they began to look over the mountains to see what was beyond.

It was not all desire for tobacco fields, however, that influenced them. The Anglo-Saxon people love land, they want space enough to live in, and to own for themselves acres and acres of rich lands. So, as has been said, after the best lands in Virginia had been taken up, the most ambitious and adventurous settlers began to dream of going to those beyond; and at that time Kentucky seemed to them a world of wonders and romance. It had the Ohio river on the north, the Mississippi on the west, the Cumberland Mountains between it and Virginia; it had rich and fertile lands ready for the pio