Peter Parleys Tales About America and Australia

Peter Parley's Tales About
America and Australia

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Peter Parley's Tales About America and
Australia, by Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Edited by Rev. T. Wilson,
Illustrated by S. Williams
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia
Author: Samuel Griswold Goodrich
Editor: Rev. T. Wilson
Release Date: October 17, 2005 [eBook #16891]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PETER
PARLEY'S TALES ABOUT AMERICA AND AUSTRALIA***
E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Janet Blenkinship, and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

(http://www.pgdp.net) from images generously made available by the
University of Florida and the Internet Archive/Children's Library

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which
includes the original illustrations. See 16891-h.htm or 16891-h.zip:
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/8/9/16891/16891-h/16891-h.htm) or
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/6/8/9/16891/16891-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through the Florida Board of
Education, Division of Colleges and Universities, PALMM Project,
2001. (Preservation and Access for American and British Children's
Literature, 1850-1869.) See
http://fulltext10.fcla.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=juv&idno=UF00003253
&format=jpg or
http://fulltext10.fcla.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=juv&idno=UF00003253
&format=pdf

TALES ABOUT AMERICA AND AUSTRALIA.
by
PETER PARLEY.
A New Edition,
Brought Down to the Present Time.
Revised by The Rev. T. Wilson.
With Illustrations by S. Williams.

London: Darton and Hodge, Holborn Hill. 1862.

CONTENTS.
PAGE
PARLEY TELLS HOW AMERICA WAS FIRST DISCOVERED,
AND ABOUT COLUMBUS 1
PARLEY DESCRIBES THE INHABITANTS 12
COLUMBUS SETS SAIL TO RETURN TO SPAIN; ENCOUNTERS
A DREADFUL STORM 21
COLUMBUS PREPARES FOR ANOTHER VOYAGE 35
PARLEY TELLS HOW COLUMBUS DISCOVERED THE
CONTINENT OF AMERICA 45
PARLEY TELLS HOW COLUMBUS WAS ROBBED OF THE
HONOUR OF GIVING HIS NAME TO AMERICA 59
PARLEY TELLS HOW COLUMBUS WAS SHIPWRECKED, AND
OF HIS DEATH 65
PARLEY TELLS OF OVANDO'S CRUEL TREATMENT OF
ANACAONA, THE PRINCESS OF HAYTI 73
PARLEY DESCRIBES THE TREES, THE PLANTS, AND
FLOWERS OF THE NEW WORLD 79
PARLEY TELLS OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 96
PARLEY RELATES HOW PIZARRO DISCOVERED AND
CONQUERED PERU 121
PARLEY DESCRIBES THE BEAUTIES OF AMERICA 133
PARLEY TELLS OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN
AMERICA 141

PARLEY TELLS OF THE ORIGINAL NATIVE AMERICANS 150
PARLEY SHOWS HOW THE UNITED STATES AROSE, AND
WHAT FOLLOWED THEIR ESTABLISHMENT 165
PARLEY TELLS ABOUT NEW SOUTH WALES 176
PARLEY DESCRIBES THE INHABITANTS OF AUSTRALIA--THE
BRITISH SETTLEMENTS--THE GOLD REGIONS--RECENT
EXPLORATIONS 183
CONCLUSION 205
CHAPTER I.
PARLEY TELLS HOW AMERICA WAS FIRST DISCOVERED,
AND ABOUT COLUMBUS THE DISCOVERER.
Now that I have given you an account of European cities in my "Tales
about Europe," I shall now furnish you with some description of
America, with its flourishing cities, and its multitude of ships, its fertile
fields, its mighty rivers, its vast forests, and its millions of happy and
industrious inhabitants, of which I am quite certain you must be very
curious to know something, when you are told that though the world
has been created nearly six thousand years, and many powerful nations
have flourished and decayed, and are now scarcely remembered, yet it
is only three hundred and seventy years ago since it was known that
such a country as America existed.
It was in the year 1492, which you know is only 370 years since, on the
third of August, a little before sunrise, that Christopher Columbus,
undertaking the boldest enterprise that human genius ever conceived, or
human talent and fortitude ever accomplished, set sail from Spain, for
the discovery of the Western World.
I will now give you a short account of Columbus, who was one of the
greatest men the world ever produced. He was born in the city of
Genoa, in Italy; his family were almost all sailors, and he was brought

up for a sailor also, and after being taught geography and various other
things necessary for a sea captain to know, he was sent on board ship at
the age of fourteen. Columbus was tall, muscular, and of a
commanding aspect; his hair, light in youth, turned prematurely grey,
and ere he reached the age of thirty was white as snow.
His first voyages were short ones, but after several years, desiring to
see and learn more of distant countries, and thinking there were still
new ones to be discovered, he went into the service of the King of
Portugal and made many voyages to the western coast of Africa, and to
the Canaries, and the Madeiras, and the Azores, islands lying off that
coast, which were then the most westerly lands known to Europeans.
In his visits to these parts, one person informed him that his ship,
sailing out farther to the west than usual, had picked up out