vered four or five miles, and fully 20,000 buildings were burned. It
is believed that 250 lives were lost, about 100,000 people made
homeless, and $192,000,000 worth of property destroyed.

[Illustration: THE BURNING OF CHICAGO IN 1871.]

Chicago's affliction stirred the sympathy of the whole country.
Contributions were sent thither from every State, and everything was
done to aid the sufferers who had lost their all. With true American
pluck, the afflicted people bent to the work before them. Night and day
thousands toiled, and within the space of a year a newer and more
magnificent city rose like a Phoenix from its ashes. Chicago to-day is
one of the grandest and most enterprising cities in the world.

SETTLEMENT OF THE NORTHWESTERN BOUNDARY.

We had made a treaty with England in 1846 which located the line of our
northwestern boundary along the 49th parallel westward to the middle of
"the channel" separating the continent from Vancouver's Island, and
then southward through the middle of the channel and of Fuca's Strait to
the Pacific Ocean. It was found, however, there were several channels,
and it was impossible to decide which was meant in the treaty. The claim
of England included the island of San Juan, she insisting that the
designated channel ran to the south of that island. Naturally, we took
the opposite view and were equally insistent that the channel ran to the
north, and that San Juan, therefore, belonged to us. The two nations
displayed their good sense by referring the dispute to arbitration and
selected the Emperor of Germany as the arbitrator. He decided in 1872 in
our favor.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1872.

It was a curious presidential election that took place in 1872. The
South was bitterly opposed to the Republican plan of reconstruction and
a good many in the North sympathized with them. One of the strongest
opponents of Grant's renomination was the _New York Tribune_, of which
Horace Greeley was editor. The Republicans who agreed with him were
called "Liberal Republicans," while the Straight-out Democrats retained
their organization. Naturally, the regular Republicans renominated
Grant, but Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, took the place of Schuyler
Colfax as the nominee for the Vice-Presidency. Horace Greeley, who had
spent his life in vigorously fighting the principles of the Democratic
party, was now endorsed by that organization after his nomination by the
Liberal Republicans, with B.