WRITTEN FOR THE AMERICAN 8. S. UNION, AND REVISED

BY THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION.

AMERICAN SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION.

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PHILADELPHIA:

NO. 146 CHESNUT STREET.

E312

ADVERTISEMENT.

The historical portion of this volume is extracted from the best authorities, but it has been deemed unnecessary to introduce references.

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ENTERED according to the ACT of CONGRESS, in the year 1832, by PAUL BECK, Jr. Treasurer, in trust for the American Sunday School Union, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

INTRODUCTION.

In the year 1486, a foot traveller, holding a boy by the hand, stopped at the gate of a convent in Spain, to ask for some bread and water for his wearied child. While he was receiving it from a kind Friar, he gave him a history of himself, and told him for what purpose he had come into that country. At that time, the inhabitants of Europe, Asia, and Africa, did not know that there was any other land than those continents, and some islands not very distant from them.

The most learned men, who were endeavouring to increase their knowledge of geography, thought that the ocean surrounded those countries like a great belt, and Christopher Columbus, the stranger who stood at the convent gate, was perhaps the first person who thought that belt might be crossed to the land on the opposite side; which was supposed to be the eastern part of Asia. He was born about the year 1436, and was the son of a wool-comber, who lived in a city of Italy, called Genoa, and who was too poor to give him much education; but Columbus was very attentive to the instructions which he received in the few years that he went to school. When he was a child, he said he would like to be a sailor, and he was very diligent in

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