89975B ASTER, LENOX AND EASTERN DISTRICT of PENNSYLVANIA, To Wit : 840 ******* SEAL BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the twenty-seventh day of August, in the forty-sixth Year of the Independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1821, WILLIAM GRIMSHAW, of the said District, hath deposited in this office the Title of a Book, the right whereof he claims as Author, in the words following, to wit: "History of the United States, from their first settlement as Colonies, to the cession of Florida, in Eighteen hundred and twenty-one; comprising every important political event; with a progressive view of the Aborigines, Population, Religion, Agriculture, and Commerce; of the Arts, Sciences, and Literature; occasional Biographies of the most remarkable Colonists, Writers and Philosophers, Warriors and Statesmen; and a copious Alphabetical Index. By WILLIAM GRIMSHAW, Author of a History of England, &c." In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, intituled, "An Act for the encouragement of Learning, by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.”_ And also to the Act, entitled, "An Act supplementary to An Act, entitled, "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such Copies during the Times therein mentioned," and extending the Benefits thereof to the Arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other Prints." Accompanying this edition, there is a small book of Historical Questions, for the use of Schools. HISTORY OF. THE UNITED STATES. CHAPTER I. Reflections. Improvements in Astronomy, Navigation, and ALTHOUGH the period of man's residence in this sublunary world is much curtailed, his amount of happiness is increased. Providence has more than compensated the diminution of his years, by the extension of his knowledge. His mental faculties are no longer engrossed by the mere operations of his body. When his corporeal frame is employed in its daily avocations, or reclined beneath the friendly shade, to recruit its exhausted powers, his mind ranges with delight over the cultivated field of science. His acquaintance with distant regions is enlarged; he goes abroad to indulge his curiosity, or makes an ideal excursion to amuse his imagination. The exploring of the deeply hidden nature of the elements has not been more tardy than our advances in geography. It is true, that the Chaldeans and the Egyptians, at a time even beyond the most ancient records of authentic history, had marked the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, with a degree of industry and success, no less worthy of admiration than difficult of comprehension, when we contemplate 2their scanty apparatus; and, that during the refined ages, many centuries before the Christian era, the latter, or perhaps the Greeks, had discovered the form, and the dimensions, of this globe, with a geometrical exactness approaching nearly to the truth; yet, their ideas concerning distant countries were extremely defective and perplexed. On this subject, A |