rudely constructed, and an outpost of civiliza- 

 tion. In the foreground is a team of horses. 

 Around the whole is inscribed, "The Seal of 

 the Territory of Alaska." 



354. The coat-of-arms of the Philippine Is- 

 lands was adopted in 1905. Its principal fea- 

 ture is an escutcheon showing the national 

 colors of the United States. Imposed upon 

 this escutcheon are the arms of Manila on a 

 shield, the upper half red and the lower blue. 

 Upon the upper half of this shield, in gold, is 

 the castle of Spain, with blue windows, and 

 on the lower half a sea-lion bearing in its right 

 paw a hilted sword. The crest is the American 

 spread eagle, and beneath is a scroll with the 

 words "Philippine Islands." 



355. The coat-of-arms of Mindanao and 

 Sulu was adopted in 1905, along with those of 

 the Philippine Islands and Porto Rico. It con- 

 sists of the escutcheon of the United States, 

 upon which is imposed a Moro war . vinta sail- 

 ing an Indian sea. Above the escutcheon is 

 the American spread eagle mounted on a 

 wreath, supported by the crossed weapons of 

 war of the Indian seas, and below the device 

 is a scroll bearing the words "Mindanao and 

 Sulu." 



356. The present coat-of-arms of the Island 

 of Porto Rico, adopted in 1905, is a restoration 

 of the original arms of the Spanish colony of 

 "the rich port." Therefore it is in all its parts 

 reminiscent of Spanish times. On a green cir- 

 cular field is a lamb of silver on the red-bound 

 book and bearing the crossrcrowned banner of 

 Christ. This is the device ascribed to St. John. 



Above the lamb are the gold-crowned letters 

 F and I — Ferdinand and Isabella. Surround- 

 ing the green field is a white border edged 

 with gold. Upon this border are the castles of 

 Castile, the crowned red lions that proclaim 

 Lebn, the crosses of Jerusalem, and the stand- 

 ards of Spain in the days when the star of her 

 fame was at its zenith. 



357- The flag of the Secretary of the In- 

 terior, with its light green field bearing in the 

 center a golden buffalo and a five-pointed star 

 in each quarter, stands for many of the na- 

 tion's activities and much of the world's prog- 

 ress. The Department whose chief it pro- 

 claims fosters the priceless fruits of American 

 inventive genius, aids and safeguards those 

 who have made America the foremost min- 

 eral-producing country of the earth, supervises 

 the pension system through which is dis- 

 charged the national duty toward those who 

 have fought the battles of the Republic, spon- 

 sors the cause of justice to the Red Man, who 

 has given a continent to civilization. This De- 

 partment directs the national aspects of Amer- 

 ican education, and thus leads Western civili- 

 zation to a new era; it is saving to posterity 

 the inestimable boon of majestic forests and 

 untouched stretches of primeval nature ; it is 

 reclaiming millions of acres of unproductive 

 land and tapping the bare rocks of waste places 

 with the wand of irrigation. Also it has dis- 

 tributed an empire to the pioneers of the West 

 and transformed a million square miles of idle 

 territory into a wealth- and strength-produc- 

 ing region of infinite national value. 



FLAGS FAMOUS IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



358. The Raven of the Vikings. — Five 

 hundred years before the arrival of Columbus 

 in the New World, Eric the Red is supposed 

 to have guided his ships, square-sailed, deco- 

 rated with curiously carved figureheads, and 

 manned by hardy Norsemen, to the shores of 

 Vinland (Labrador, or Nova Scotia, or the 

 New England coast), and there planted for a 

 brief period this banner with the strange de- 

 vice of "a raven, with wings extended and 

 open bill, upon a white ground." 



359. Flag of Columbus, Standard of 

 Spain. — A quartered flag of red, gold and sil- 

 ver — the standard of Castile and Leon — is gen- 

 erally accepted as having been the first Euro- 

 pean banner flown on American soil. This 

 truly regal standard was planted on the beach 

 before the startled gaze of the awe-struck abo- 

 rigines when Christopher Columbus, richly clad, 

 set foot on shore on October 12, 1492, and, in 

 the name of their Catholic majesties, Isabella 

 and Ferdinand, formally took possession of the 

 island which he called San Salvador, but which 

 is believed to have been what is now known as 

 Watling Island in the Bahamas. 



360. Flag of Cabot, England. — Giovanni 

 Caboto (John Cabot), the discoverer of North 

 America, had many points in common with his 

 contemporary, Columbus. They were both 

 Genoese, both believed the earth to be round, 



and that the east could be reached by sailing 

 west, and both finally set out on their voyages 

 of discovery under the flag of a foreign mon- 

 arch. Cabot's flag was the royal standard of 

 England, the red cross of St. George on a 

 white ground, and his patron was King Henry 

 VII, whose enthusiasm for the enterprise was 

 quickened by the news that Columbus had 

 found the East in the West. It was on June 

 24, 1497, that this flag of England was planted 

 in the New World (probably on the northern 

 extremity of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia), 

 and the explorer took possession of the coun- 

 try in the name of England's king. 



361. This was the union flag which prob- 

 ably was displayed from the main mast of the 

 Mayflower that bore the Pilgrim Fathers to 

 Plymouth in 1620, and on the ships which 

 brought the English settlers to Jamestown in 

 1607. These vessels also displayed St. George's 

 cross (360) at the fore mast and the red ensign 

 (382). The union flag had come into existence 

 in 1603, when James VI of Scotland ascended 

 the throne of England as James I, thus uniting 

 the two countries under one sovereign after 

 centuries of warfare. He ordered all ships to 

 display this flag at the main mast. They con- 

 tinued to use their own ensigns and jacks, how- 

 ever — English ships 1123 and 1127, Scottish 

 ships 1 131 and 831 (note 11 32 for Scotch de- 



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