Spain. "I do not know," said Talleyrand. And so the question was left all uncertain. For two hundred and fifty years, in fact, Florida was a bone of contention, Spain, France, England, and at last the United States tugging at the morsel of tropical richness. The phases of the contention since 1803 it is not worth while to follow here; 1819 is the year in which the long controversy was concluded, a treaty then being arranged with Spain which John Quincy Adams regarded as the most important transaction in which he was ever concerned. By that treaty Florida was definitely ceded to the United States, which in return for the concession renounced all claim to the territory west of the Mississippi as far as the Rio Grande. Spain is said to have congratulated herself on this arrangement: in return for a province isolated and impossible of defense against a most aggressive neighbor, she was set at rest as regards a region contiguous to Mexico, the secure holding of which was most important to her American empire. But unfortunate Spain could not be happy long; in a few years American ad

venturers who had fixed themselves in Texas, with small ceremony turned out the Spanish Government, and in 1844 Texas became part of the United States. In the mind of John Quincy Adams, the treaty of 1819 was perhaps more important for what it secured to the United States on the Pacific than for the acquisition of Florida. Spain yielded her claim to all territory north of the forty-second degree of latitude, the region comprised within Oregon and Washington. Resting upon this, upon the discovery of the mouth of the Columbia by Captain Gray in 1792, and upon the early establishment of Astoria, the United States could well afford to let go the vague title derived from the Louisiana Purchase. As the country grew, the ancient disputes were swallowed up and have long ceased to possess other than an historic interest.

In the development of the Louisiana Purchase, two machines have played a great part. In the year 1815 two little craft made their way down-stream among the rafts and broadhorns, exciting some interest among the river-men, because in their movements

they were in a measure independent of oar, sail, or current a mysteriously moving wheel, connected somehow with a furnace which smoked away from a tall funnel, being the principal agent of progress. Their cargoes delivered, the queer craft, to the great wonder of all, made their way back up-stream to the Ohio, whence they had descended. The application of the power of steam to locomotion thus proved successful, a demonstration the consequences of which it is scarcely possible to exaggerate. As regards the New West, the civilization

which has come to pass upon the area of the Louisiana Purchase, it is quite within bounds to say that it may look upon the locomotive as its creator.

Deferring for the moment further consideration of this instru

mentality, another con

Eli Whitney

trivance must be mentioned-the notion of a Yankee's brain wrought out in wood and