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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 Excerpt:...flood--but you have put it out of my head what the ship's mate told rne." Then, after recollecting himself, he went on. "These same trees, d' ye see, shed their leaves every year, and there they lie on the ground, for there is no one to meddle with them. So when the rain comes they are well soaked, and they become manure as it were, and help to nourish the soil; and when once the labor of felling the timber and clearing it away is over, the ground wants nothing more than scratching over with a light plough to be ready for sowing, and it brings forth crops unheard of!" "And how comes it," said the wife, "that America, seeing it is such a large place, and such a fine soil, has so much fewer people to live in it than England?" "Because," said Hopkins, "it is so far away, that it was not found out or known that there was such a country in former times. The mate says, that in those days no ship ventured to sail out so far on an unknown sea: they were not so handy at their rigging as they are now; nor the ships either so well built or so well managed; and as for a steam-boat, why, they never so much as heard of such a thing, because they were not invented as yet."--" They must have been but dolts in those times," cried his wife. "And how came they to find out America, after all?" "Why, once upon a time, a matter of three hundred years back, the mate says there was one Christopher Columbus, who was a fine, brave fellow, and had set his heart upon doing what no one had ever done before. So he got a ship and sailed on fearless in those unknown seas, till he reached land, and that land was America." "How pleased he must have been when he first saw it!" cried dame Hopkins;....