OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. WRITTEN FOR THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, AND STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ADVERT.SEMENT. The historical portion of this volume is extracted from the best authorities; but it has been deemed unnecessary to introduce references. ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by HERMAN COPE, Treasurer, in trust for the American Sunday-school Union, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. E 312 R 33 INTRODUCTION. IN the year 1486, a foot traveller, holding a boy by the hand, stopped at the gate of a convent in Spain, to ask for some bread and water for his wearied child. While he was receiving it from a kind Friar, he gave him a history of himself, and told him for what purpose he had come into that country. Αι that time, the inhabitants of Europe, Asia, and Africa, did not know that there was any other land than those continents, and some islands not very distant from them. He The most learned men, who were endeavouring to increase their knowledge of geography, thought that the ocean surrounded those countries like a great belt, and Christopher Columbus, the stranger who stood at the convent gate, was perhaps the first person who thought that belt might be crossed to the land on the opposite side; which was supposed to be the eastern part of Asia. was born about the year 1436, and was the son of a wool-comber, who lived in a city of Italy, called Genoa, and who was too poor to give him much education ; but Columbus was very attentive to the instructions which he received in the few years that he went to school. When he was a child, he said he would like to be a sailor, and he was very diligent in 3 using every opportunity to gain a knowledge of geography and navigation. At the age of fourteen, he went to sea. A seafaring life was, at that time, a very dangerous and toilsome one; and the years of his boyhood were passed in hardships, which were severe but useful lessons to teach him to command his naturally hasty temper, and to endure sufferings without shrinking or complaining. He reflected on what he observed in his voyages, and on what he had learned of geography, and felt convinced, that if a vessel sailed from Europe towards the west, it might reach a land which was then unknown; and that land he thought it was probable was an inhabited one. The Bible would nave taught him that a time will come when All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God," and he might then have felt the religious hope that he should be permitted to carry the glad tidings to the unknown land, the discovery of which he began to speak of with as much certainty as if he had seen it. He considered his almost infant desire to become a sailor as a proof that he was thus early preparing to be the discoverer of that land; and this confidence never left his mind, but cheered him in his darkest hours of disappointment. He thought deeply on the subject for many years, and at length resolved to undertake a voyage of discovery, which the more he thought of, the stronger became his hope that it |