rose," inhabited by teeming millions pursuing their avocations peacefully, and each contributing his part to the good of all, it will be a consummation which the mind is lost in contemplating, and of which the imagination is powerless to form an adequate conception.

The rapid strides which the West has made in civilization and in wealth are marvellous. Every body is acquainted with them, from the child who goes to school to the patriarch with the snows of eighty winters on his brow, how Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis, the spots on which they stand, but a few years since unbroken forests, have sprung into existence and grown with such rapidity and power that they now outrival in wealth and population the older cities of the East, with two centuries of growth on their record; how new States, like Ohio, are wresting the rod of empire from their eastern sisters, and are overshadowing the rest with their power and influence.

The subjects which we shall treat on in this work are of lasting and deep interest to every man, woman, and child on the continent. They need no apology. No one who has a spark of patriotism animating his bosom will turn away from the glowing annals of the West.

With resources such as Nature has vouchsafed to no other clime, blessed with a race of men who are no idlers in their vineyard, but chaining all the elements into their service until there seems no limit to their acquisitions, there cannot fail to be set up along its mighty rivers and over its broad prairies a pavilion of

human progress which shall bless mankind.

This structure is yet in process of erection: the materials of construction, workmen ascending and descending, mar its present appearance; but when the work is finished the scaffolding will fall, and the noble edifice will start in its wondrous beauty before an astonished world!

We will not enlarge upon this topic here. Our province lies with things as they now exist, and the reader will pardon us for indulging in these remarks upon the future of THE GARDEN OF THE WORLD.

HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

OF THE

WEST.

WITH the intention of giving a clear and succinct view of the "Garden of the World," we shall commence with a synopsis of its history, carefully compiled for the "Great West."

Twenty years after the great event occurred which has immortalized 'the name of Christopher Columbus, Florida was discovered by Juan Ponce de Leon, exgovernor of Porto Rico. Sailing from that island in March, 1512, he discovered an unknown country, which he named Florida, from the abundance of its flowers, the trees being covered with blossoms, and its first being seen on Easter Sunday, a day called by the Spaniards Pascua Florida; the name imports the country of flowers. Other explorers soon visited the same coast. In May, 1539, Ferdinand de Soto, the governor of Cuba, landed at Tampa Bay with six hundred followers. He marched into the interior, and on the 1st of May, 1641, discovered the Mississippi; being the first European who had ever beheld that mighty river.

Spain for many years claimed the whole of the country bounded by the Atlantic to the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the north, all of which bore the name of Florida. About twenty years after the discovery of the Mississippi, some Catholic missionaries attempted to form settlements at St. Augustine and its vicinity; and a few years later a colony of French Calvinists had been established on the St. Mary's, near the coast. In 1565 this settlement was annihilated by an expedition from Spain, under Pedro Melendez de Aviles, and about nine hundred French, men, women, and children, cruelly massacred. The bodies of many of the slain were hung from trees, with the inscription, "Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics." Having accomplished his bloody errand, Melendez founded St. Augustine, the oldest town by half a century of any now in the Union. Four years after, Dominic de Gourges, burning to avenge his countrymen, fitted out an expedition at his own expense, and surprised the Spanish colonists on the St. Mary's, destroying the ports, burning the houses, and ravaging the settlements with fire and sword, finishing the work by also suspending some of the corpses of his enemies from trees, with the inscription, "Not as Spaniards, but as murderers." Unable to hold possession of the country, De Gourges retired to his fleet. Florida, excepting for a few years, remained under the Spanish crown, suffering much in its early history from the vicissitudes of war and piratical incursions, until 1819, when, vastly diminished from its original boundaries, it was ceded to the United States, and in 1845 became a state.

In 1535 James Cartier, a distinguished French mariner, sailed with an exploring expedition up the St. Lawrence, and taking possession of the country in the name of his king, called it "New France." In 1608 the energetic Champlain created a nucleus for the settlement of Canada by founding Quebec. This was the same year with the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, and twelve years previous to that on which the Puritans first stepped upon the rocks of Plymouth.

To strengthen, the establishment of French dominion, the genius of Champlain saw that it was essential to establish missions among the Indians. Up to this period" the far west" had been untrod by the foot of the white man. In 1616 a French Franciscan, named Le Caron, passed through the Iroquois and Wyandot nations to streams running into Lake Huron; and in 1634, two Jesuits founded the first mission in that region. But just a century elapsed from the discovery of the Mississippi ere the first Canadian envoys met the savage nations of the north-west at the Falls of St. Mary's, below the outlet of Lake Superior. It was not until 1659 that any of the adventurous fur traders wintered on the shores of this vast lake, nor until 1660 that Rene Mesnard founded the first missionary station upon its rocky and inhospitable coast. Perishing soon after in the forest, it was left to Father Claude Allouez, five years subsequent, to build the first permanent habitation of white men among the north-western Indians. In 1668 the mission was founded at the Falls of St. Marys, by Dablon and Marquette; in 1670