"Pilgrim Fathers" is the name given to the one hundred and two Puritans who came to this country in 1620, in a ship called the "Mayflower," and colonized what are now the Northeastern States, called New England. This was the second English settlement in the New World, and was planted at New Plymouth, near Boston. The tyranny of the Ecclesiastical Commission in England raised up a host of dissenters, and in 1580 they chose John Robinson for their leader. Their independence soon drew upon them the heavy hand of the law, and they left the kingdom. The larger part settled at Leyden, in Holland, whence 102 of them came to America, and many others followed later.

The Capital of the United States has been located at different times at the following places: At Philadelphia from Sept. 5, 1774, to Dec, 1776; at Baltimore from Dec. 20, 1776, to March, 1777; at Philadelphia from March 4, 1777, to Sept., 1777; at Lancaster, Pa., from Sept. 27,1777, to Sept. 30, 1777; at York, Pa., from Sept. 30, 1777, to July, 1778; at Philadelphia from July 2, 1778, to June 30, 1783; at Princeton, N. J., June 30, 1783, to Nov. 20, 1783; Annapolis, Md., Nov. 26, 1783, to Nov. 30, 1784; Trenton from Nov., 1784, to Jan., 1785; New York from Jan. 11, 1785, to 1790; then the seat of government was removed to Philadelphia, where it remained until 1800, since which time it has been in Washington.

The "Alabama Question" was raised in the winter of 1862-63, when Mr. Seward declared that the Union held itself entitled to demand full compensation for the damages inflicted on American property; and the divergence of view more than once threatened to issue in the gravest consequences to both nations. In 1871 a commission met at Washington; and by a treaty concluded there, provision was made for referring this claim to a tribunal composed of five arbitrators, of whom the Queen, the President of the United States, the King of Italy, the President of the Swiss Confederation, and the Emperor of Brazil, were each to appoint one. The tribunal met at Geneva in December, 1871, and by its final award Great Britain was ordered to pay a sum of $15,000,000; this sum covering also some responsibility for the depredations of the ships "Florida" and "Shenandoah." The claim for indirect damage to American commerce was dropped.

Vinland ("Wineland ") is the name given to the chief settlement of the early Norsemen in North America. It is undoubtedly represented in modern times by a part of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The first that saw it was Bjarne Herjulfson, who was driven thither by a storm in the summer of 986 a.d., when making a voyage from Iceland to Greenland, of which country his father, Herjulf, and Eric the Red were the earliest colonists. But Bjarne did not touch the land, which was first visited by Leif the Lucky, a son of Eric the Red, about 1000 a.d. One part of the country he named Helluland (" Stoneland "); another Mark-land ("Woodland"), the modern Newfoundland and Nova Scotia; a German in his company having found the grape (most probably the Vitis vulpina) growing wild, as in his native country, Leif called the region Vinland. The natives from their dwarfish size they called skraelings. Two years afterward Leif's brother, Thorwald, oame, and in the summer of 1003 led an expedition along the coast of New England southwards, but was killed the year following in an encounter with the natives.

The most famous of the Norse explorers, however, was Thorfinn Karlsefne, an Icelander, who had married Gudrid, widow of Thorstein, a son of Eric the Red, and who in 1007 sailed from Greenland to Vinland with a crew of one hundred and sixty men, where he remained for three years, and then returned, after which no further attempts at colonization were made.

Pocahontas, daughter of the Indian chief, Powhatan, born about 1595, figures prominently in the travels of Captain John Smith, in connection with the part she played in the history of the early English colonists in Virginia. The expedition under Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and others had landed in Chesapeake Bay in 1607. The James River was explored, and a settlement formed, but a great drawback was the lack of food-supplies. In one of the expeditions for food, and to explore the Chickahominy, Smith was taken prisoner, brought before the chief Powhatan, and his head laid on a stone preparatory to having his brains beaten out with clubs. At this juncture, Pocahontas, then a young girl, "when no entreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him from death."

The stars and stripes of the United States of America are said to have been suggested by the coat armorial of the Washington family, but it is hardly possible to reconcile this supposition with the actual history of the American flag. The earliest flag consisted of horizontal stripes, with the earlier British union device in the place which it occupies in the British ensign. Soon after the Declaration of Independence congress resolved that the flag of the United States should have thirteen stripes, alternately red and white, and that the British union device should be superseded by a blue field with thirteen white stars, the number both of stripes and of stars being correspondent to the number of States. In 1808 it was enacted.that the stripes should continue to be thirteen, that the stars should be twenty in number, there being then twenty States, and that a star should be added for every new State that came into the union.

Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, is eighty-five miles by rail southwest of Louisville. The cave is about ten miles long; but it is said to require upwards of one hundred and fifty miles of traveling to explore its multitudinous avenues, chambers, grottoes, rivers and cataracts. The main cave is only four miles long, but it is from forty to three hundred feet wide, and rises in height to one hundred and twenty-five feet. Lucy's Dome is three hundred feet high, the loftiest of the many vertical shafts that pierce through all the levels. Some avenues are covered with a continuous incrustation of the most beautiful crystals; stalactites and stalagmites abound. There are several lakes or rivers connected with Green River outside the cave, rising with the river, but subsiding more slowly, so that they are generally impassable for more than six months in the year. The largest is Echo River, three-fourths of a mile long, and in some places two hundred feet wide. The air of the cave is pure and healthful; the temperature remains constant at about 54°.

The "Alabama" was a steamer built at Birkenhead, near Liverpool, England, by Messrs. Laird, for the Confederacy during the Civil War. In spite of the remonstrances of Mr. Adams, then United States minister to England, the "Alabama," then known as the "No. 290," was allowed to leave the Mersey. She obtained cannon and ammunition at the Azores, and hoisted the Confederate flag, with Captain (afterwards Admiral) Raphael Semmes in command. From this time, August, 1862, until June 19, 1864, when she was beaten and sunk in the English Channel by the United States warship "Kearsarge," the "Alabama" carried on a career of privateering, closely approximating to piracy. She preyed on the American merchant marine, capturing and sinking or burning over sixty vessels and destroying $4,000,000 worth of property. No attempt was made to take the prizes into port for condemnation, and until she met the "Kearsarge" the noted cruiser kept well out of the way of American war-ships.

In the United States, under the Pre-emption Act of 1841, an actual settler on the public lands enjoys the right, in preference to. any one else, of purchasing at a fixed price the land on which he has settled, to the extent of not more than one hundred and sixty acres. In the case of "offered" lands the settler must file his "declaratory statement" within thirty days after entry, and within a year proof must be made of settlement and cultivation, and the land thereupon paid for, at $1.25 per acre if outside the limits of a railroad grant, or $2.50 if within such limits. If the tract settled on is "unoffered," an approved plan of the township must first be received at the district land office; the statement must then be filed within three months, and final proof and payment be made within thirty months thereafter. Title to land is thus obtained much sooner (possibly within six months) than under the homestead laws; but a homestead settler may at any time after six months purchase the land under the pre-emption laws; as, on the other hand, the holder of a preemption claim may convert it into a homestead.