ng his orders, he followed them across the border, burned
some of their villages, and hanged some of the Indian chiefs. He did not
stop until he had all of Florida under his control.

This was a high-handed proceeding, for that territory belonged to Spain.
However, serious trouble was avoided by our buying Florida (1819). This
purchase added territory of fifty-nine thousand two hundred and
sixty-eight square miles to the United States. It was only six thousand
square miles less than the whole area of New England.

By studying your map you can easily see how much the area of the United
States was extended by the purchase of Louisiana and of Florida. The
adding of these two large territories made America one of the great
nations of the world in landed estate.

SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

1. Tell all you can about Jefferson's boyhood. What kind of student was he
in college?

2. How did he help his countrymen before taking up his public life?

3. Why did the Westerners wish the Mississippi to be open to their trade?

4. Why was Napoleon willing to sell us the whole of Louisiana? Use your
map in making clear to yourself just what the Louisiana Purchase included.

5. Why did Jefferson send Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition? What
were the results of this expedition?

6. What kind of boy was Andrew Jackson? What kind of man?

7. What part did he take in the events leading up to the purchase of
Florida?

CHAPTER XIII

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

After the purchase of Louisiana and the explorations of Lewis and Clark,
the number of settlers who went from the eastern part of the country to
find new homes in the West kept on increasing as it had been doing since
Boone, Robertson, and Sevier had pushed their way across the mountains
into Kentucky and Tennessee, twenty-five or thirty years earlier.

These pioneers, if they went westward by land, had to load their goods on
pack-horses and follow the Indian trail. Later the trail was widened into
a roadway, and wagons could be used. But travel by land was slow and, hard
under any conditions.

Going by water, while cheaper, was inconvenient, for the travellers must
use the flatboat, which was clumsy and slow and, worst of all, of little
use except when going down stream.

The great need both for travel and for trade, then, was a boat which would
not be dependent upon wind or current, but could be propelled by steam.
Many men had tried to work out such an