Nova Scotia were incorporated with the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, and known as the Royal Province of Massachusetts Bay.

The thirteen original colonies thus settled were New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

In the great contest between England and France for supremacy in the North American continent the colonists fought manfully for the English cause and suffered severely.

In 1749 a company of traders obtained a grant from the Crown of 600,000 acres on the east bank of the Ohio, in what is now West Virginia and Pennsylvania. They made surveys of the territory and one of the surveyors was George Washington. This was regarded by France as an encroachment on her territory and precipitated a struggle. General Braddock was defeated on a march to attack Fort Duquesne. But Amherst captured Ticonderoga; Sir William Johnson captured Fort Niagara; and Wolfe captured Quebec, the result being that France, driven from America, surrendered everything east of the Mississippi River to England. This increased the territory of the thirteen colonies to 827,844 square miles.

Now begins, in 1764, the story of colonial oppression by England. The colonists declared that they could not

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be taxed without representation and many harassing duties were levied on colonial imports. The odious Stamp Act was the torch that lit the war between England and her colonies, which lasted from 1775 to 1783, and terminated in the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781.

Congress, meantime, had, on July 4, 1776, adopted the Declaration of Independence, and thus the United States of America came into existence. The treaty of 1783 with England confirmed the States in the possession of all territory east of the Mississippi River, being the same territory given up by France to England in 1763.

In addition to the thirteen original States created by act of Congress in 1776, the District of Columbia, a territory of 64 square miles, was created by Congress in 1790, being ceded by the States of Maryland and Virginia to the Federal Government, on which to found the city of Washington.

Vermont was created out of New York territory in 1791; Maine was separated from Massachusetts in 1820; Kentucky from Virginia in 1792; Tennessee from North Carolina in 1796; Ohio, from the original Territory Northwest of the Ohio, in 1802. Mississippi and Alabama, as at present defined, became independent States in 1817 and 1819 respectively, being formed out of the territory of Mississippi, organized in 1798 out of land ceded by the States of South Carolina and Georgia.

Ohio was the first State formed from the original Territory Northwest of the Ohio River. It was admitted in 1802. The western part of this Northwest Territory became known as the Territory of Indiana. After several changes of internal boundaries and of titles, this was divided into the States of Indiana, 1816; Illinois, 1818; Michigan, 1837; and Wisconsin, in 1848. An addition to these States was that of West Virginia, being the western part of Virginia, which joined the North during the Civil War.

Once the Mississippi was reached the great plains west of the river forming an integral part of the immense basin, intensified the land hunger of the pioneers. The geographic solidarity of the Mississippi valley and Anglo-Saxon aggressiveness were working for the acquisition of Louisiana, that vast territory comprising everything between the Mississippi River and the crests of the Rocky Mountains, excepting Texas. The occasion of the purchase was the offer of the territory, in 1803, by Napoleon to the United States, for $15,000,000. The offer was promptly accepted. Napoleon had just lost the colony of San Domingo, and he regarded it as geographically impossible for France to retain its permanent possession, menaced as it was externally by England, and internally by the United States. This astonishing stroke of fortune added 900,000 square miles to the territory of the

United States, doubling its area, and opened the way for further expansion to the Pacific Coast.

Before the Louisiana purchase was consummated the Lewis and Clark expedition was planned to prepare the way for just such an enterprise. In 1804 they explored the headwaters of the Missouri and the basin of the Columbia, and in 1805 reached the Pacific. By virtue of discovery, occupation, and cession from Spain, the northern boundary of the new Territory of Oregon was established by treaty with Great Britain, in 1846, on the 49th parallel, this being the third addition to United States territory, amounting to 290,000 square miles.

The fourth addition to our territory was the purchase of the Floridas from Spain in 1819, comprising 59,268 square miles, which terminated a long discussion as to territorial rights and boundaries.

The next enlargement of our domain was that of the Republic of Texas which was admitted as a State in 1845. Texas originally belonged to Mexico, but was settled by Americans who in 1836 declared their independence. Its annexation added 375,239 square miles to the United States.

The people of Texas held that their territory extended as far as the Rio Grande del Norte on the southwest, but Mexico held that it only extended to the Nueces River. This precipitated a war between the United States

and Mexico, and in 1848, by conquest, all the remaining Pacific lands south of Oregon Territory, including New Mexico, California and the intervening country from the Rio Grande to the Pacific, and from the Gila, north to the boundary of Oregon, fell into the dominion of the United States, amounting to 545,783 square miles. The Gila River boundary in New Mexico and Arizona, as fixed by the Mexican concession, was corrected by the Gadsden purchase in 1853, of land to the southern watershed, amounting to 45,000 square miles, the price being $10,000,000.

Out of the vast domain thus acquired the following States and Territories were constituted: Louisiana, 1812; Missouri, 1821; Arkansas, 1836; Florida, 1845; Texas, 1845; Iowa, 1846; California, 1850; Minnesota, 1858; Oregon, 1859; Kansas, 1861; Nevada, 1864; Colorado, 1876; North Dakota, 1889; South Dakota, 1889; Montana, 1889; Washington, 1889; Idaho, 1890; Wyoming, 1890; Utah, 1896. Territories organized — Indian Territory, 1834; New Mexico, 1850; Arizona, 1863; Oklahoma, 1890. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867 for $7,200,000. Its area is 577,390 square miles.

The Republic of Hawaii, consisting of eight islands in the Pacific, about 2,200 miles southwest of San Francisco was added in 1898. There are eight inhabited and several small uninhabited islands, the total area being 6,740 square miles. Honolulu, the

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capital, is situated in the island of Oahu that lies in the center of the group.

The latest accessions of territory made by the United States are the following islands taken from Spain after the war of 1898:

The Philippine Islands, an archipelago of some 1,600 islands lying in the Pacific Ocean around the intersection of the 12th parallel of north latitude and the 122d degree of east longitude, of which the capital is Manila in the island of Luzon. The total area is 127,853 square miles. North and south the length of the entire group is 1,500 miles, while the distance east and west is 650 miles.

Porto Rico lies in the West Indies about 1,000 miles from New York. It is about 100 miles in length and 40 miles in width and has an area of 3,776 square miles.

Guam, in the Ladrone Islands in the Pacific Ocean, lies about 1,500 miles east of Manila. It is 31 miles long and from 5 to 7 miles wide and has an area of 195 square miles.

Tutuila, an island of the Samoan group, having an area of 54 square miles. The adjoining Manna group also belongs to the United States.

The following tables give the various States and Territories with the dates of their ratifications of the Constitution, the dates of their admission into the Union, or their organization, their area, population and principal cities, and also the population at each census.