nd had begun a new chapter in the world's wonderful story. In
1592, there was hardly anybody here to celebrate the anniversary--in
fact, there was hardly anybody here at all, except a few Spanish
settlers in the West Indies, in Mexico, and in Florida. In 1692, there
were a few scattered settlements of Frenchmen in Canada, of Englishmen
in New England, Dutchmen in New York, Swedes in Delaware, and Englishmen
in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. But none of these people
loved the Spaniards. They hated them, indeed; for there had been fierce
fighting going on for nearly a hundred years between Spain and England,
and you couldn't find an Englishman, a Dutchman or a Swede who was
willing to say a good word for Spain, or thank God for the man who
sailed away in Spanish ships to discover America two hundred years
before.

In 1792, people did think a little more about this, and there were a few
who did remember that, three hundred years before, Columbus had found
the great continent upon which, in that year 1792, a new republic,
called the United States of America, had only just been started after a
long and bloody war of rebellion and revolution.

We do not find, however, that in that year of 1792 there were many, if
any, public celebrations of the Discovery of America, in America itself.
A certain American clergyman, however, whose name was the Rev. Elhanan
Winchester, celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the Discovery
of America by Columbus. And he celebrated it not in America, but in
England, where he was then living. On the twelfth of October, 1792,
Winchester delivered an address on "Columbus and his Discoveries,"
before a great assembly of interested listeners. In that address he said
some very enthusiastic and some very remarkable things about the America
that was to be:

"I see the United States rise in all their ripened glory before me,"
he said. "I look through and beyond every yet peopled region of the
New World, and behold period still brightening upon period. Where one
contiguous depth of gloomy wilderness now shuts out even the beams of
day, I see new States and empires, new seats of wisdom and knowledge,
new religious domes spreading around. In places now untrod by any but
savage beasts, or men as savage as they, I hear the voices of happy
labor, and see beautiful cities rising to view. I behold the whole
continent highly cultivated and fertilized, full of cities, towns and
villages, beautiful an