AFTERNOON EXERCISES.

At the appointed hour (2 o'clock P. M.), the Association was called to order by the President, and the public exercises conducted as arranged in the programme.

PRAYER.

BY THE REV. THOMAS CORLETT.

O Lord, the strength and hope of all those who put their trust in Thee, mercifully accept our thanks for continued life and health to meet together again as on this day. We implore Thy blessing upon our beloved country, and all in authority, that they may have grace, wisdom, and understanding so to discharge their several duties as most effectually to promote Thy glory, the interests of true religion and virtue, and the peace, honor, and welfare of the state and nation; and for Thy great mercy and goodness to us, and to Thy servant, our Chief Magistrate, for rescuing him from the jaws of a painful and cruel death, and our nation from untold evils, bless and praise Thy great and glorious name; may it be Thy pleasure, O Lord, to restore him to perfect health, and evermore to save our nation from such calamity. To the families of those of our Society who have been removed from us by death, grant Thy grace and consolation; and to us who still survive, grant grace and wisdom so to live and do, as to be dispensers of good to others, and so approve ourselves worthy in Thy sight of the rich heritage here be

stowed, and at the close of our pilgrimage on earth, to be raised to that higher and better citizenship with Thy saints in glory everlasting, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SONG: "AULD LANG SYNE."

BY THE ARION QUARTETTE.

SETTLEMENT OF THE WESTERN RESERVE. BY J. H. RHODES, ESQ.

Not quite 400 years ago all Europe believed the world to be flat, and the sun, after sinking at night, to be in some mysterious manner ferried back to its rising place, beneath the horizon's edge, and along the watery outskirts of the world. Columbus was one of a half dozen in all Europe who believed it to be round, and that by sailing westward across the trackless Atlantic, a new route to the Indies of Asia might be discovered.

Hopeless and heartless he had become, suing in vain for the favor of Henry the VIIIth of England, and had at length, in his advanced years, besieged the King of Spain, and was in despair of success. At last the decisive hour had come. In the palace of Ferdinand an anxious throng, the haughty knights and nobles of Castile and Aragon, had gathered. A game of chess was in progress in the palace between King Ferdinand and a high official of those, the palmiest days of the Spanish court. Queen Isabella, the warm friend of Columbus, who had plead vainly for the royal aid, was leaning over the shoulders of the king, watching, with fast beating heart and kindling eye, the progress of the mimic contest of the heroes of the chess-board. The fate of Columbus had been staked on the results of the game. If Ferdinand, the king, should win, he had promised assistance to Columbus.

If he lost, Columbus' dreams and hopes would go down in ruin. No wonder that all eyes were spell-bound on the ivory warriors of the chess-board. Columbus was present, and hope and fear chased each other in flush and pallor across his anxious face, like sunlight and shadow across a summer lake. Never before in the history of mankind was so much at stake in the results of a game of chess. Never did the discovery of a new world hang on so slender a thread. Never before were the interests of the ignorant and oppressed millions of Europe, and the vast and countless possibilities of the discovery of a new world thrown into such a precarious balance.

The game had from the first been against the king, and for a time alarm and terror were painted on the faces of Columbus' friends, as the combinations of Ferdinand's opponent threatened him with defeat. The critical moment had come, and the fair Queen Isabella hung in breathless watchfulness of the game. Her quick eye, her flashing intu itions had penetrated the darkness that brooded over the result. She saw, as in a vision, that the king could now check in five moves. The king's ear eagerly caught the whispered admonitions of the queen, and in a moment the fatal check was announced, which gave to Columbus the Nina, the Pinta, and the San Jacinto, three vessels, with which, on the evening of August 3, 1492, he set forth from the port of Palos, on the south coast of Spain, in quest of new worlds.

The story of the voyage is perhaps the most fascinating of all stories of voyages in the history of man. I cannot dwell upon it, but westward he sailed, and sailed, and sailed, until, on the 13th of October, the palm tree of the New World became the enraptured vision that brought wild delight to him. and his sailors. On his return to Spain the news spread like prairie-fire throughout Europe, and soon thereafter the work of conquest and settlement of the New World began.

Nearly 400 years have passed since then. Twelve generations only of mankind, but in that period the proudest

achievements of the race have been won.

Men and women

have passed away, generation after generation, but the race remains and continues in apparently immortal youth and vigor. Thus did America rise from the obscurity of the great unknown sea that rolled its untraveled waters between the two continents.

The history of the settlement of the Western Reserve is not so romantic, not so wonderful, but it too has its story of trial, adventure, suffering, and discovery, and deserves to be chronicled for future generations.

I accepted the invitation of your president to address you on this occasion, not because I have lived forty years in the county, and could thus be a member of the Early Settlers' Association of Cuyahoga County, but because I was requested to speak on a subject that has always possessed a charm to my mind that has made its study a pleasure.

Voyaging into this life from unknown seas, I was landed on the Western Reserve. Here I have always lived, and here, in all probability, I shall again take passage over other unknown seas to voyage to other worlds, yet to be discovered by us all.

Ohio has been conspicuous, of late years, in the history of the country, and the Western Reserve has been conspicuous in Ohio. Ohio is peculiarly situated. Its northern boundary is mostly in Lake Erie. Its southern boundary is the great river, 900 miles in length, flowing from the mountains of Pennsylvania to the great central valley of the Mississippi. After the war of the revolution, when this great Northwest was an unbroken, and almost unexplored, wilderness, this great river was the natural highway from the Atlantic States to the West and South. Railroads were then undreamed. Steam, that great giant and slave of modern civilization, was like the sleeping beauty in the fairy tales, awaiting the advent of some knight who should penetrate the thickets of ignorance and wake it into life. Boats moving with the current or propelled

by oars, were the easiest means of travel and transportation. The only other methods of penetrating into the country were the ax to cut a road, and a team of horses or oxen to pull and push the way. Hence this mighty river, sweeping onward between full banks, overhung with dense foliage, was the natural highway for traffic and travel, and to the survivors of the revolution it had all the mystery and romance of the river Nile. The Ohio, the beautiful river, laid the wand of enchantment on the imaginations of the men who had survived the long war for liberty and independence, and when, at length, by the terms of peace, all this vast continent of the Northwest, this seat and nursery of great States yet to be, was thrown open for settlement and occupation, the soldiers who had suffered for eight years, who came out of the war for independence with nothing but wounds on their bodies. and fiat dollars in their pockets, turned toward the great West with an inexpressible longing and hope that we to-day can scarcely imagine.

They, therefore, came through the wilderness-the Puritans of New England and the cavaliers of Virginia, and blended in years into that community of people now constituting the Commonwealth of Ohio. To each Ohio offered advantages of climate, fertility of soil, and mineral resources that were boundless, and that have resulted in that immense and varied industry which characterizes the State. The pioneer to Ohio did not come on a railroad, to be landed on a farm already cleared and outlined by a furrow, with all the luxuries of civilization at the nearest station. You could track his way through the forests only by the blaze of the ax on the trees, by the struggle with panther or bear, or by the treacherous Indian ambush. No canned fruits and meats beguiled him on the way to his new home. No prairie, with its stumpless, undulating sea of verdure, greeted him on his arrival. No new town or village sprang, as if by magic, into existence, at the nearest railway station, to offer ready oppor