The history of the early discoveries in North America forms a wonderful chapter in the great chronicle of human progress and achievements, and in its details there are narratives of adventure, prowess, love, and all the elements of romance, more startling and attractive than the most brilliant conceptions of the imagination ever evolved. The story of the progress of settlements which followed is equally marvelous and attractive. These tempt the pen on every side, but as they are connected only incidentally with my subject, I pass them by with brevity of notice. In the preceding pages I have taken a very brief survey of events in the _progress of discovery_ which opened the way to settlements in the New World; a brief survey of the _progress of settlements_ will be found interwoven with the records upon the pages which follow. They are all united by the often invisible threads of God's providence; and each apparently insignificant event in the wondrous history of our continent is a link as important in the great chain of human deeds, directed by divine intelligence, as those which arrest the attention and command the admiration of the world. Never was this truth oftener and more strikingly illustrated than in our history of the war for independence; and the student of that history, desirous of understanding its true philosophy, should make himself familiar with the antecedents which have a visible relation thereto. ** See page 178, vol. i. PICTORIAL FIELD-BOOK OF THE REVOLUTION. CHAPTER I. "Our young wild land, the free, the proud! Uncrush'd by power, unawed by fear, Her knee to none but God is bow'd, For Nature teaches freedom here: From gloom and snow to light and flowers Expands this heritage of ours: Life with its myriad hopes, pursuits, Spreads sails, rears roofs, and gathers fruits. But pass two fleeting centuries back; This land, a torpid giant, slept, Wrapp'd in a mantle thick and black That o'er its mighty frame had crept, Since stars and angels sang, as earth Shot, from its Maker, into birth." Street. HE love of country, springing up from the rich soil of the domestic affections, is a feeling coexistent and coextensive with social n itself. Although a dreary climate, barren lands, and unrighteous laws, wickedly administered, may repress the luxuriant growth of this sentiment, it will still maintain firm root in the heart, and hear with patience the most cruel wrongs. Man loves the soil that gave him birth as the child loves the mother, and from the same inherent impulses. When exiled from his father-land, he yearns for it as a child yearns for home; and though he may, by legal oath, disclaim allegiance to his own and swear fealty to another government, the invisible links of patriotism which hind him to his country can not be severed; his lips and hand hear false witness against his truthful heart.