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The American Bison is interesting as the only living species of the ox family indigenous to America, except the musk ox of the subarctic regions. It is commonly called buffalo by Americans, but must be distinguished from the true buffalo. The bison was within recent times very abundant in America, especially in the prairies beyond the Mississippi, and from 63° N. lat. to New Mexico. Now it is nearly extincta result of hard winters, cattle-ranching, railways and immigration.

The Sons of Liberty was an association of the colonists of North America, called into existence in 1765 by Lord Grenville's Stamp Act. The colonists combined to throw off allegiance to Great Britain and to make North America independent. The association began in New York and Connecticut. The term "Sons of Liberty" was suggested by a speech of Colonel Barré's. The "Daughters of Liberty" mutually bound themselves to drink no tea and wear no article of apparel imported from England while the import duties were unrepealed.

When the Southern States were practically disfranchised after the Civil War, there grew up swarms of adventurers who went down to that section and organized the negro voters, got elected to all the chief offices, plundered the state treasuries, contracted huge state debts, and stole the proceeds. Government in the South Carolina and Mississippi states was a mere caricature. When, in 1876, President Hayes refused the "carpetbaggers" the protection of Federal troops, the régime fell to pieces, and the rule fell again into the hands of the resident whites.

The Alien and Sedition Laws were passed by Congress June 25, 1798, empowering the President for two years to banish at his discretion the alien enemies of the Republic. This power was (July 6) enlarged by authorizing the President to apprehend and remove aliens. The Sedition Act, defining sedition, with heavy penalties for the offence, became law July 14. These statutes were principally directed against Frenchmen, when war between France and the United States seemed imminent. The laws were bitterly opposed as undemocratic and were repealed when Jef ferson came into power.

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What is called the affair of the "Trent," took place on November 8, 1861, when Captain Wilkes, of the Federal war steamer "San Jacinto,' boarded the Royal British packet "Trent," and carried off Messrs. Mason and Slidell, Confederate commissioners and their secretaries, and conveyed them to Boston. There were great rejoicings in the Northern States, and the thanks of Congress were voted to Captain Wilkes (December 2); but the foreign envoys at Washington protested against his act, and a firm dispatch arrived from the British Government (December 18), in consequence of which Messrs. Mason and Slidell and their secretaries were released, and sailed for Europe (January 1, 1862).

The Danites, or "destroying angels," were a secret society founded by Joseph Smith in 1838, professedly merely for the defence of the Mormon sect against the mob. The members, originally some 300 in number, were bound by an oath, under penalty of death, to sustain the "first presidency" and one another in all things, whether right or wrong. They were divided into companies of fifties and tens, with suitable officers and a general over the whole; special "destruction companies" were appointed for the purpose of burning and destroying, at first by way of reprisal; but afterwards assassinations, to fulfil prophecies of Smith's, were laid to their charge.

Wilmot Proviso is the name given to an amendment to a bill appropriating $2,000,000 for the purchase of Mexican territory, moved (Aug. 8, 1846) in the United States Congress by Mr. David Wilmot, Democrat, in the following terms: "That, as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by the United States, neither slavery or involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of the said territory." This proviso, adopted by the House of Representatives, rejected by the Senate, became the starting point for the "Free-soil" movement of 1848.

"Pilgrim Fathers" is the name given to the one hundred and two Puritans who came to this country in 1620, in a ship called the "Mayflower," and colonized what are now the Northeastern States, called New England. This was the second English settlement in the New World, and was planted at New Plymouth, near Boston. The tyranny of the Ecclesiastical Commission in England raised up a host of dissenters, and in 1580 they chose John Robinson for their leader. Their independence soon drew upon them the heavy hand of the law, and they left the kingdom. The larger part settled at Leyden, in Holland, whence 102 of them came to America, and many others followed later.

The Capital of the United States has been located at different times at the following places: At Philadelphia from Sept. 5, 1774, to Dec., 1776; at Baltimore from Dec. 20, 1776, to March, 1777; at Philadelphia from March 4, 1777, to Sept., 1777; at Lancaster, Pa., from Sept. 27, 1777, to Sept. 30, 1777; at York, Pa., from Sept. 30, 1777, to July, 1778; at Philadelphia from July 2, 1778, to June 30, 1783; at Princeton, N. J., June 30, 1783, to Nov. 20, 1783; Annapolis, Md., Nov. 26, 1783, to Nov. 30, 1784; Trenton from Nov., 1784, to Jan., 1785; New York from Jan. 11, 1785, to 1790; then the seat of government was removed to Philadelphia, where it remained until 1800, since which time it has been in Washington.

The "Alabama Question" was raised in the winter of 1862-63, when Mr. Seward declared that the Union held itself entitled to demand full compensation for the damages inflicted on American property; and the divergence of view more than once threatened to issue in the gravest consequences to both nations. In 1871 a commission met at Washington; and by a treaty concluded there, provision was made for referring this claim to a tribunal composed of five arbitrators, of whom the Queen, the President of the United States, the King of Italy, the President of the Swiss Confederation, and the Emperor of Brazil, were each to appoint one. The tribunal met at Geneva in December, 1871, and by its final award Great Britain was ordered to pay a sum of $15,000,000; this sum covering also some responsibility for the depredations of the ships "Florida" and "Shenandoah." The claim for indirect damage to American commerce was dropped.

Vinland ("Wineland ") is the name given to the chief settlement of the early Norsemen in North America. It is undoubtedly represented in modern times by a part of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The first that saw it was Bjarne Herjulfson, who was driven thither by a storm in the summer of 986 A.D., when making a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, of which country his father, Herjulf, and Eric the Red were the earliest colonists. But Bjarne did not touch the land, which was first visited by Leif the Lucky, a son of Eric the Red, about 1000 A.D. One part of the country he named Helluland ("Stoneland"); another Markland ("Woodland"), the modern Newfoundland and Nova Scotia; a Ger

man in his company having found the grape (most probably the Vitis vulpina) growing wild, as in his native country, Leif called the region Vinland. The natives from their dwarfish size they called skraelings. Two years afterward Leif's brother, Thorwald, came, and in the summer of 1003 led an expedition along the coast of New England southwards, but was killed the year following in an encounter with the natives. The most famous of the Norse explorers, however, was Thorfinn Karlsefne, an Icelander, who had married Gudrid, widow of Thorstein, a son of Eric the Red, and who in 1007 sailed from Greenland to Vinland with a crew of one hundred and sixty men, where he remained for three years, and then returned, after which no further attempts at colonization were made.

Pocahontas, daughter of the Indian chief, Powhatan, born about 1595, figures prominently in the travels of Captain John Smith, in connection with the part she played in the history of the early English colonists in Virginia. The expedition under Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and others had landed in Chesapeake Bay in 1607. The James River was explored, and a settlement formed, but a great drawback was the lack of food-supplies. In one of the expeditions for food, and to explore the Chickahominy, Smith was taken prisoner, brought before the chief Powhatan, and his head laid on a stone preparatory to having his brains beaten out with clubs. At this juncture, Pocahontas, then a young girl, "when no entreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him from death."

The stars and stripes of the United States of America are said to have been suggested by the coat armorial of the Washington family, but it is hardly possible to reconcile this supposition with the actual history of the American flag. The earliest flag consisted of horizontal stripes, with the earlier British union device in the place which it occupies in the British ensign. Soon after the Declaration of Independence congress resolved that the flag of the United States should have thirteen stripes, alternately red and white, and that the British union device should be superseded by a blue field with thirteen white stars, the number both of stripes and of stars being correspondent to the number of States. In 1808 it was enacted that the stripes should continue to be thirteen, that the stars should be twenty in number, there being then twenty States, and that a star should be added for every new State that came into the union.

Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, is eighty-five miles by rail southwest of Louisville. The cave is about ten miles long; but it is said to require upwards of one hundred and fifty miles of traveling to explore its multitudinous avenues, chambers, grottoes, rivers and cataracts. The main cave is only four miles long, but it is from forty to three hundred feet wide, and rises in height to one hundred and twenty-five feet. Lucy's Dome is three hundred feet high, the loftiest of the many vertical shafts that pierce through all the levels. Some avenues are covered with a continuous incrustation of the most beautiful crystals; stalactites and stalagmites abound. There are several lakes or rivers connected with Green River outside the cave, rising with the river, but subsiding more slowly, so that they are generally impassable for more than six months in the year. The largest is Echo River, three-fourths of a mile long, and in some places two hundred feet wide. The air of the cave is pure and healthful; the temperature remains constant at about 54°.

The "Alabama" was a steamer built at Birkenhead, near Liverpool, England, by Messrs. Laird, for the Confederacy during the Civil War. In spite of the remonstrances of Mr. Adams, then United States minister to England, the "Alabama,' "then known as the "No. 290," was allowed to leave the Mersey. She obtained cannon and ammunition at the Azores, and hoisted the Confederate flag, with Captain (afterwards Admiral) Raphael Semmes in command. From this time, August, 1862, until June 19, 1864, when she was beaten and sunk in the English Channel by the United States warship "Kearsarge," the "Alabama" carried on a career of privateering, closely approximating to piracy. She preyed on the American merchant marine, capturing and sinking or burning over sixty vessels and destroying $4,000,000 worth of property. No attempt was made to take the prizes into port for condemnation, and until she met the "Kearsarge" the noted cruiser kept well out of the way of American war-ships.

In the United States, under the Pre-emption Act of 1841, an actual settler on the public lands enjoys the right, in preference to any one else, of purchasing at a fixed price the land on which he has settled, to the extent of not more than one hundred and sixty acres. In the case of "offered" lands the settler must file his "declaratory statement" within thirty days after entry, and within a year proof must be made of settlement and cultivation, and the land thereupon paid for, at $1.25 per acre if outside the limits of a railroad grant, or $2.50 if within such limits. If the tract settled on is "unoffered," an approved plan of the township must first be received at the district land office; the statement must then be filed within three months, and final proof and payment be made within thirty months thereafter. Title to land is thus obtained much sooner (possibly within six months) than under the homestead laws; but a homestead settler may at any time after six months purchase the land under the pre-emption laws; as, on the other hand, the holder of a preemption claim may convert it into a homestead.

HISTORIC MINOR POLITICAL PARTIES.

The minor American parties which have appeared and disappeared during our century and over of national life are the following: AntiRenters, a New York party which flourished about 1841. They resisted the collection of back rents on the Van Rensselaer manor near Albany. They had strength enough to defeat Wright, the regular Democratic candidate for Governor of New York. Barn-burners, New York, 1846, seceders from the Democratic party. They were opposed to slavery extension. Bucktails, New York, about 1815; they supported Madison. Conservatives, New York and some other states, 1837; paper money Democrats. Doughfaces, 1820, Northern members of Congress, who voted in favor of the Missouri compromise. Hunkers, New York, a faction of the Democrats favoring the South, the Barn-burners being the other factor. Know-Nothings, New York, 1854, opposed to naturalization of foreigners unless they had been twenty-one years in the country. Loco-Focos, New York, 1835; a branch of the Democratic party. Liberal Republicans, 1872; Republicans who joined with the Democrats in support of Greeley for president. Temperance, or Prohibition, from 1830 down, in many States; in favor of preventing or restricting the sale of liquors. Woman's Rights, from 1860 down; those who favored granting to women the right of suffrage.

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PASSENGER LIST OF THE MAYFLOWER.

The following is a complete list of the male passengers landed at Plymouth from the Mayflower:

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THE CLIMATES OF THE UNITED STATES
Mean annual temperature, Fahrenheit, at places named:

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The following gives the area of our country, and when and how the territory was acquired:

Square Miles.

Territory ceded by England in 1783..

815,615

Louisiana acquired from France in 1803.

930.928

Florida acquired from Spain in 1821..

59.268

Texas admitted into the Union in 1845..

237,504

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