Of all nations in the world, America is the most interesting to the Chinese.

A handful of people left England to explore this country: gradually their number increased, and, in course of time, emigrants from other lands swelled the population.

They were governed by officials from the home of the first settlers, but when it appeared to them that they were being treated unjustly, they rebelled and declared war against their rulers, the strongest nation on the face of the earth.

After seven years of strenuous, perilous, and bloody warfare, during which thousands of lives were sacrificed on both sides, the younger race shook off the yoke of the older, and England was compelled to recognize the independence of the American States.

Since then, in the comparatively short space of one hundred and thirty years, those revolutionists and their descendants, have not only made the commonwealth the richest in the world, but have founded a nation whose word now carries weight with all the other great powers.
The territory at first occupied was not larger than one or two provinces of China, but by purchase, and in other ways, the commonwealth has gradually grown till now it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the north where ice is perpetual to the south where the sun is as hot as in equatorial Singapore.