(6) The Virgin Islands in the West Indies were bought from Denmark in 1917. Their area is 132 square miles and their population 26,000.

(7) Almost a dozen small islands in the Pacific, particularly Guam, Wake, and American Samoa belong to the United States. These islands together have a total population of about 23,000.

(8) Several other countries have been brought under the influence of the United States so that they are something like the protectorates that European nations hold in Asia. These are the republics of Cuba, Haiti, San Domingo, Panama, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

When all these regions are added to the continental area, the whole territory controlled by the United States includes 3,743,448 square miles, which is about one-fifteenth of the total land area of the globe. The total population is 117,859,358, which is about one-sixteenth of the world's population.

Why Geography Is Important

For us it is a great thing that the United States has so many different kinds of territory. The sea fronts and the mountains affect the winds and the temperature and the rainfall. Mountain regions are likely to contain valuable metals and minerals. The flat open country is best for farming. The mountain streams furnish water power. The prairies pour forth fruit and grain. Where you find cheap oil, cheap iron, cheap lumber, cheap food, the great cities spring up; furnaces, and mills and shops are built. Railroads and good roads.

THE INCREASING NUMBER AND SIZE OF OUR GREAT CITIES is a third problem that we must solve. The dots on this map show the principal cities in the United States.

for motor traffic carry products from one section to another.

The growth and history of the United States have been much affected by its place on the map of the world. It began as a strip of land on the Atlantic, varying from 50 to 200 miles wide. Because the Appalachian Mountains were easy to cross, the pioneers settled the eastern part of the Mississippi Valley. To get further it was necessary to annex western territory-first Louisiana which was the whole western valley of the Mississippi, then Oregon, then Texas, then New Mexico and California. That gave to the United States the best site for a nation in the whole world, for it fronts on both the eastern and the western oceans, and is connected from end to end by railroads and lake and river navigation.

On this continental strip of territory 1,500 miles wide from north to south the

climate ranges all the way from the dairies and wheatlands of North Dakota to the cotton and sugar cane and rice and oranges and pineapples of the Gulf states. The country has always fed itself and has a surplus of food to send to other countries. Somewhere within its limits can be found almost every important metal or mineral-even cocoanuts and tropical fruits and rubber can be raised in some of the islands.

The job of taking, building and using the wide continent from sea to sea, has made the people of the United States keen and wide-awake and able to take care of themselves. It has offered room for the millions of immigrants from foreign countries. The greatest thing that has ever been done by the American people has been to set up a government and a way of living that was big enough and strong enough to hold this wide and splendid land.

Before American history began, the people of Europe knew very little geography outside their own neighborhood. No one any longer visited the rich and populous countries of southern Asia, for the Turks had seized Asia Minor, and cut off the travel to Europe. A few scientific men had found out that the earth is a round globe. Among them was Christopher Columbus, who was born in 1436 in Genoa. The Italians were the best sailors of that time and Columbus made many voyages. He felt sure that he could reach India and China and Japan, that lay far to the eastward, by sailing westward.

Norsemen had found strange lands across the Atlantic five hundred years

earlier, but their discoveries were forgotten. Columbus, backed up by Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Spain, was the first to venture out with three little vessels and a hundred and twenty men, into the trackless ocean beyond the Azores and Canary Islands. He sailed thirty-three days from the last sighted land, till he reached an unknown island not far from the coast of Florida, October 12, 1492. Then he discovered Cuba and other West India islands. He had a right to speak of himself as one "who has accomplished a task to which the powers of mortal man had never hitherto attained.” He left a few men in a fort he built, and they were the first European colonists in America.

Within the next ten years he made three more voyages, coasting the northern part of South America, and also Central America, passing by the Isthmus of Panama without guessing how near he was to what the Spaniards called the South Sea, or what is now known as the Pacific Ocean.

At first Columbus believed that he had reached the islands

off the coast of Asia, and expected to find rich cities and much gold. Before he died he knew that he must have found new continents; and perhaps he foresaw the forts and cities that were to be built by Spanish

not to say it rained, for it was like a repetition of the deluge."

Columbus was a great geographer, because he could break loose from the old ideas that the world was a flat pancake, and because he had such courage and faith in himself and his men. He had many enemies and died poor. He says

ing like a cauldron on a mighty fire. Never did the sky look more fearful; All this time the waters from heaven never ceased descending,

of himself: "So much toil and dan

ger have profited

me nothing, and at this very day I do not possess a roof in Spain that I can call my own; if I wish to eat or sleep,

I have nowhere to go but to the inn or tavern, and most times lack wherewith to pay the bill."

Yet his was the glory of being the first of the bold voyagers and explorers who opened His up America. name has been given Ito Colombia, one of the South American countries; and is often applied to the United States. The

name America was given, first to South America, in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, who followed Columbus and wrote up his own voyages.

T

HE discovery of America was something like the Tales of the Arabian Nights for Europe. During ages the people in Europe knew that there was a distant land, commonly called India, and also a China and a Japan; but Africa lay between.

Sea-going ships were small and weak, and they had to steer without charts by the stars. The compass came into use about this timeand also instruments for finding the place of the ship on the seas. Then the sailors began to make big voyages on the open ocean.

The Portuguese made voyage after voyage down the west coast of Africa, till in 1487 they reached the Cape of Good Hope and saw the open ocean to the eastward. Four years later Christopher

Columbus discovered America in

Verrazano

discovered land for the French, including New York Harbor. Thus within thirty years of the discovery by Columbus, four of the principal ship-building and ship-sailing powers of Europe touched and laid claim to parts of America.

The Portuguese contented themselves with the rich region of Brazil.

the early morning of October 12, 1492.

Portuguese and Spanish Discoverers

In 1497 the Portuguese, Vasco da Gama, pushed beyond Africa and reached India; and that part of the world is still called the East Indies. The same year an English navigator, John Cabot, struck a part of America, probably the Island of Cape Breton. In 1500 the Portuguese, Cabral, found Brazil on the eastern side of South America. In 1524

Spain sent emigrants first to the West India islands, then to Mexico and the northern part of South America, into Peru, thence to Chile; and they also settled what is now Argentine on Plata River. Magellan, a Spanish explorer, discovered the Straits which bear his name in 1519, and was the first to sail west around the world.

the La

Europe was anxious to reach Asia direct by sea. The English made desperate attempts for years to find a "Northwest Passage" by water, beyond Greenland. The Spanish also sent out several expeditions into the region which is now the Gulf States of the United States, and discovered the Mississippi River; but made no settlements north of Texas and New Mexico. They, nevertheless, insisted that all the American lands, both north and south, continent and the islands (excepting only Brazil), belonged to them, whether they occupied them or not.