rse's twelve toilsome years of struggle while
he was working out his great invention. How is the telegraph useful to
men?

7. What do you admire about Morse?

8. Are you making frequent use of your map?

CHAPTER XIV

THE REPUBLIC GROWS LARGER

SAM HOUSTON

In a preceding chapter you learned how the great territories of Louisiana
and Florida came to belong to America. We are now to learn of still other
additions, namely, the great regions of Texas and California.

The most prominent man in the events connected with our getting Texas was
Sam Houston.

[Illustration: Sam Houston.]

He was born, of Irish descent, in 1793, in a farmhouse in Virginia. When
he was thirteen years old the family removed to a place in Tennessee, near
the home of the Cherokee Indians. The boy received but little schooling
out in that new country. In fact, he cared far less about school than he
did for the active, free life of his Indian neighbors.

So when his family decided to have him learn a trade he ran away from home
and joined the Cherokees. There he made friends, and one of the chiefs
adopted him as a son. We may think of him as enjoying the sports and
games, the hunting and fishing, which took up so much of the time of the
Indian boys.

On returning to his home, at the age of eighteen, he went to school for a
term at Marysville Academy. In the War of 1812 he became a soldier and
served under Andrew Jackson in the campaign against the Creek Indians. In
the battle of Horseshoe Bend he fought with reckless bravery. During that
fearful struggle he received a wound in the thigh. His commander, Jackson,
then ordered him to stop fighting, but Houston refused to obey and was
leading a desperate charge against the enemy when his right arm was
shattered. It was a long time before he was well and strong again, but he
had made a firm friend in Andrew Jackson.

Later Houston studied law and began a successful practice. He became so
popular in Tennessee that the people elected him to many positions of
honor and trust, the last of which was that of governor. About that time
he was married, but a few weeks later he and his wife separated. Then,
suddenly and without giving any reason for his strange conduct, he left
his home and his State and went far up the Arkansas River to the home of
his early friends the Cherokee Indians. The Cherokees had been removed to
that distant country, beyond the Mississippi, by the United States
Govern