e wind is stronger, the rain is
heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests
bigger, the plains broader.

AMERICA'S WELCOME.

PATRICK HENRY, a celebrated American orator and patriot. Born at
Studley, Hanover County, Virginia, May 29, 1736; died, June 6,
1799. The author of the celebrated phrase, "Give me liberty or give
me death," in speaking in the Virginia Convention, March, 1775.

Cast your eyes over this extensive country; observe the salubrity of
your climate, the variety and fertility of your soil, and see that soil
intersected in every quarter by bold, navigable streams, flowing to the
east and to the west, as if the finger of Heaven were marking out the
course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the
way to wealth. You are destined, at some time or other, to become a
great agricultural and commercial people; the only question is, whether
you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, and at some distant
period; lingering on through a long and sickly minority; subjected,
meanwhile, to the machinations, insults, and oppressions, of enemies,
foreign and domestic, without sufficient strength to resist and chastise
them; or whether you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the
full enjoyment of those high destinies, and be able to cope,
single-handed, with the proudest oppressor of the Old World. If you
prefer the latter course, as I trust you do, encourage immigration;
encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants, of the Old World
to come and settle in this land of promise; make it the home of the
skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and happy, as well as the
asylum of the distressed; fill up the measure of your population as
speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven hath placed in your
power; and I venture to prophesy there are those now living who will see
this favored land amongst the most powerful on earth; able to take care
of herself, without resorting to that policy, which is always so
dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes,
they will see her great in arts and in arms; her golden harvests waving
over fields of immeasurable extent; her commerce penetrating the most
distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain boasts of those who now
proudly affect to rule the waves.

[Illustration: Nina. Santa Maria. Pinta.

THE FLEET OF COLUMBUS (See pages 216 and 282.)]

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