d happiest lands the sun shines upon. Here and there, amid the miles
on miles of farms, they might see a forest, here and there a wild beast,
here and there a red-faced Indian, one of the old people of the land;
but these would be almost lost in the rich and prosperous scene.

If our young traveler knew nothing of history he might fancy that it had
been always this way, or that it had taken thousands of years for all
those cities to be built and these great fields to be cleared and
cultivated. Yet if he had been here only three hundred years ago he
would have seen a very different sight. He could not then have gone over
the country by railroad, for such a thing had never been thought of. He
could not have gone by highroad, for there was not a road of any kind in
the whole length and breadth of the land. Nowhere in this vast country
would he have seen a city or town; nowhere a ploughed field, a
farmhouse, or a barn; nowhere a horse, cow, or sheep; nowhere a man with
a white or a black face. Instead of great cities he would have seen only
clusters of rude huts; instead of fertile farms, only vast reaches of
forest; instead of tame cattle, only wild and dangerous beasts; instead
of white and black men, only red-skinned savages.

Just think of it! All that we see around us is the work of less than
three hundred years! No doubt many of you have read in fairy tales of
wonderful things done by the Genii of the East, of palaces built in a
night, of cities moved miles away from their sites. But here is a thing
as wonderful and at the same time true, a marvel wrought by men instead
of magical beings. These great forests have fallen, these great fields
have been cleared and planted, these great cities have risen, these
myriads of white men have taken the place of the red men of the wild
woods, and all within a period not longer than three times the life of
the oldest men now living. Is not this as wonderful as the most
marvelous fairy tale? And is it not better to read the true tale of how
this was done than stories of the work of fairies and magicians? Let us
forget the Genii of the East; men are the Genii of the West, and the
magic of their work is as great as that we read of in the fables of the
"Arabian Nights."

The story of this great work is called the "History of the United
States." This story you have before you in the book you now hold. You do
not need to sit and dream how the wonderful work of building our noble
natio