ts own
story to tell. I only lay this beginning before you as a handy
stepping-stone into the history itself. By its aid you may cross the
brook and wander on through the broad land which lies before you.

THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY

CHAPTER I

COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR

IF any of my young readers live in Chicago they will remember a
wonderful display in that city in 1893. Dozens of great white buildings
rose on the shore of the lake, as beautiful as fairy palaces, and filled
with the finest of goods of all kinds, which millions of people came to
see.

Do you know what this meant? It was what is called a World's Fair, and
was in honor of a wonderful event that took place four hundred years
before.

Some of you may think that white men have always lived in this country.
I hope you do not all think so, for this is not the case. A little more
than four hundred years ago no white man had ever seen this country, and
none knew that there was such a country on the face of the earth.

It was in the year 1492, that a daring sailor, named Christopher
Columbus, crossed a wide ocean and came to this new and wonderful land.
Since then men have come here by the millions, and the mighty nation of
the United States has grown up with its hundreds of towns and cities.
In one of these, which bears the name of Chicago, the grand Columbian
World's Fair was held, in honor of the finding of America by the great
navigator four hundred years before.

This is what I have set out to tell you about. I am sure you will all be
glad to know how this broad and noble land, once the home of the wild
red men, was found and made a home for the white people of Europe.

Some of you may have been told that America was really discovered more
than four hundred years before Columbus was born. So it was. At that
time some of the bold sailors of the northern countries of Europe, who
made the stormy ocean their home, and loved the roll of the waves, had
come to the frozen island of Iceland. And a ship from Iceland had been
driven by the winds to a land in the far west which no man had ever seen
before. Was this not America?

Soon after, in the year 1000, one of these Northmen, named Leif Ericson,
also known as Leif the Lucky, set sail for this new land. There he found
wild grapes growing, and from them he named it Vinland. This in our
language would be called Wineland.

After him came others, and there was fighting with the red men, whom