thousand miles from the ocean, and yet
it is an important port on the shores of Lake Michigan, and steamers
from London can land their cargoes at its quays. More than twenty
thousand vessels enter and leave the port in one year. It is the
greatest grain and provision market in the world.

It may with truth be said that in America cities rise up almost in a
night-time. The forest and the prairie are one day out of the reach of
civilisation, and the next they are one with the throbbing centres of
life and progress. The railway, the means of communication, changes
all as by a wizard's touch.

One day the news spread through a certain district, that two lines of
railway were to cross at a certain point in the wilderness. Settlers
at once crowded to the place, and next day the land was staked out in
town lots, with all the details of streets, squares, and market-place.
Soon afterwards, shanties were seen on the prairies, moving with all
speed, on rollers, towards the new town. On the second day a number of
houses were under construction, while the owners camped near by in
tents. In a few months hundreds of dwellings had been erected, and a
newspaper established to chronicle the doings of the inhabitants.

"The old nations of the earth creep on at snail's pace: the Republic
thunders past with the rush of an express," says a recent American
writer. "Think of it!" he continues; "a Great Britain and Ireland
called forth from the wilderness, as if by magic, in less than the span
of a man's few days upon earth."

This marvellous growth and rapid change from wilderness to cultivation
must be known and understood by readers on this side of the Atlantic,
they can appreciate the story of a Lincoln or a Garfield who began life
in a log hut in a backwoods settlement in the Far West, and made their
way to the White House, the residence of the ruler of an empire as
large as the whole of Europe.

CHAPTER II.

THE PIONEERS.

A New England Village--Hardships of Emigrants--The Widow Ballou and her
Daughter Eliza--The Humble Dwelling of Abram Garfield--The Garfields
and the Boyntons--The Removal to a New Home--The Wonderful Baby-Boy.

The early settlers from the Old World first peopled the eastern shores
of the Atlantic, and founded the New England States, New York State,
and the whole seaboard from Maine to Florida.

A New England village was a collection of log houses on the edge of a
deep forest. Snow drifted int