178 



THI: STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



application of the "Monroe Doctrine" in regard 

 to the Samoan group of islands strategically .situ- 

 ated in the Pacific Ocean, which had been s< 



< Jerniany, resulted in the conclusion of a 

 treaty which saved the absorption of the i>land<. 

 The Bering Sea question, long a diplomatic 

 stumbling-block b< -rates and 



Great Britain, was, after skillful diplon.. 

 referred to a board of arbitration. A dangerous 

 complication with Italy, caused by the lynching 

 of Italians in New Orleans in 1891, was amicably 

 led and friendly relations restored. In 

 ber, 1891, the crew of the United S- 

 war-vessel "Baltimore" having met with out- 

 rageous treatment ly the police of Valparaiso, 

 the government demanded an apology from 

 which after delay was extended, with 

 -e of full reparation. The presidential 

 election in 1892 resulted in the selection of 

 1. President Harrison retired 

 h 1. ls:i. President William 

 ley was inaugurated March 4, 1897, and 

 a year later, after a number of attempts to allay 

 the Cuban situation, came the war with Spain. 



:ierican War.) 



A peace commission (consisting of American: 

 Hon. William R. Day, president; Senators, C. 

 K. Davis, William 1\ Frye, Geo. Gray; White- 

 : id, with Prof. .1. H. Moore, secretary 

 Spanish: Senor Montero Rios, president; Gen- 

 eral Cerero, Senor de Villaurratia, Senor de 

 Abarzua) met in Paris to discuss 

 : ins of peace between Spain and the United 

 December 28, 1898, Spain ceded to the 

 : State< the Philippines, Porto Rico, and 

 Guam, and agreed to retire from Cuba, accept- 

 offer of $20,000,000, the United States' 

 proposition. 



lent MeKinley was inaugurated for the 

 second term March 4, 1901. He was assassi- 

 September 14, 1902, and was succeeded 

 by Yice-Pre-ident Roosevelt, who, after the 

 election of l!M)l. was inaugurated March 5, 1905, 

 for a full term. 



President Roosevelt at once set about initiat- 

 ing needed reforms in railroad, corporations, 

 and trust methods, and in pushing forward the 

 iction of the Panama Canal. In 1906, 

 a race war occurred at Brownsville, Texas, 

 :ig in the colored troops stationed there 

 being ordered out of the State, and in their 

 subsequent expulsion from the United States 

 army by order of the President. In March, 1907, 

 nt issued orders for the exclusion of 

 Japanese laborers, and for the dismissal of 

 against the San Francisco school board. 

 M opened the way for negotiations 

 BO the governments of Japan and the 

 United States, which culminated, early in 1908. 

 by order of the .Japanese Government in the 

 complete restraint of Japanese immigration to 

 the United States. 



\>riiiont. The fi^t white settlement 

 was made at Brattleboro, in 1724, as a military 



by the Massachusetts colon! 

 1 as a base of operations during the French 

 wars. Immigration set in, and in 1768, 124 

 townships had been granted by Governor Went- 

 wurth. of New Hampshire, by which colony 

 the fee and jurisdiction of the soil were claimed. 



A counter-claim was made bv New York in 1763, 

 and until the outbreak of the Revolution there 

 - a bitter controversy between the two colo- 

 nies over their respective rights to Vermont. In 

 1777, the people of Vermont declared their 

 independence, and, though admission to the 

 confederacy of States was sought, it was refused, 

 and Vermont remained outside of the Union till 

 17!H. During the previous year New York 

 had surrendered its claims for a financial consid- 

 eration. Vermont was the first State to join 

 the original thirteen. Though not confederated 



I with the other colonies against Great Britain, 

 the "Green Mountain Boys" had signalized 

 their valor and patriotism in a number of hard- 

 fought battles and expeditions. Among these 

 were the capture of Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen, 

 the invasion of Canada, the battles on Lake 

 Champlain, and the two battles near Bennington, 

 which were the primary cause of Burgoyne's 

 defeat at Saratoga. In 1837, Vermont was the 

 starting point of the Canadian raids, and also of 

 the Fenian raids. 



V inland the name given to the chief set- 

 tlement of the early Norsemen in North America. 

 It is undoubtedly represented in modern times 

 by part of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. 

 The first that saw it was Bjarne Herjulfson, 

 who was driven thither by a storm in the sum- 

 mer of A. D. 986, when making a voyage from 

 Iceland to Greenland, of which country his 

 father, Herjulf, and Eric the Red, were the 

 earliest colonists. But Bjarne did not touch 

 the land, which was first visited by Leif the 

 Lucky, a son of Eric the Red, about A. D. 1000, 

 One part of the country he named Hellulund 

 ("Stoneland"); another Markland ("Wood- 

 land"), the modern Newfoundland and Nova 

 Scotia; a German in his company having found 

 the grape growing wild, as in his native country, 

 Leif called the region Vineland. The natives 

 from their dwarfish size they called skraelings. 

 Two years after Leif's brother, Thorwald, 

 arrived, and in the summer of 1003 led an expe- 

 dition along the coast of New. England south, 

 but was killed the year following in an encounter 

 with the natives. The most famous of the 

 Norse explorers, however, was Thorfinn Karl- 

 sefne, an Icelander, who had married Gudrid, 

 widow of Thorstein, a son of Eric the Red, and 



| who in 1007 sailed from Greenland to Vineland 

 with a crew of 160 men, where he remained for 



' three years, and then returned, after which no 

 further attempts at colonization were made. 

 Ran, in his " Antiquitates Americanae," pub- 

 lished the first full collection of the evidence 

 which proves the pre-Columbian colonization 

 of America. Both he and Finn Magnusen labor 

 4,0 show that Columbus derived his first hints 

 of a new world from the accounts of these old 

 Icelandic expeditions. Finn Magnusen is be- 

 lieved to have established the fact that Colum- 

 bus did visit Iceland in 1477, fifteen years before 

 he undertook his expedition across the Atlantic, 

 and so may have heard something of the long- 

 abandoned Vineland. 



Virginia. The name Virginia, originally 

 bestowed by Queen Elizabeth in 1584 on the 

 region now known as North Carolina, discovered 

 by .Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition, was after- 



