From the rugged clime of New England, from the banks of the Chesapeake, from the Savannahs of Carolina and Georgia, the descendants of the Puritans, the Cavalier, and the Huguenot, swept over the towering Alleghanies, but a century ago the barrier between civilization on the one side and almost unbroken barbarism on the other; and banners of the Republic waved from flagstaff and highland, through the broad valleys of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri.

Nor stopped its progress there.
Thence onward poured the tide of American civilization and, progress, over the vast regions of the Western plains; and from the snowy crests of the Sierras you look down on American States fronting the calm Pacific, an empire of themselves in resources and wealth, but loyal in our darkest hours to the nation whose authority they acknowledge and in whose glory they proudly share.
"From a territorial area of less than nine hundred thousand square miles, it has expanded into over three millions and a half--fifteen times larger than that of Great Britain and France combined--with a shore-line, including Alaska, equal to the entire circumference of the earth, and with a domain within these lines far wider than that of the Romans in their proudest days of conquest and renown.

With a river, lake, and coastwise commerce estimated at over two thousand millions of dollars per year; with railway traffic of four to six thousand millions per year, and the annual domestic exchanges of the country, running up to nearly ten thousand millions per year; with over two thousand millions of dollars invested in manufacturing, mechanical, and mining industry; with over five hundred millions of acres of land in actual occupancy, valued, with their appurtenances, at over seven thousand millions of dollars, and producing annually crops valued at over three thousand millions of dollars; with a realm which, if the density of Belgium's population were possible, would be vast enough to include all the present inhabitants of the world; and with equal rights guaranteed to even the poorest and humblest of our forty millions of people, we can, with a manly pride akin to that which distinguished the palmiest days of Rome, claim as the noblest title of the world, 'I am an American citizen.'" And how long a time has it taken for this wonderful transformation?
In the language of Edward Everett, "They are but lately dead who saw the first-born of the pilgrims;" and Mr.Townsend (p.

21) says: "The memory of one man can swing from that time of primitive government to this--when thirty-eight millions of people living on two oceans and in two zones, are represented in Washington, and their consuls and ambassadors are in every port and metropolis of the globe." Is this enough?
The only objection we can anticipate is that this nation has progressed too fast and too far--that the government has already outgrown the symbol.

But what shall be thought of those who deny that it has any place in prophecy at all?
No; this prodigy has its place on the prophetic page; and the path which has thus far led us to the conclusion that the two-horned beast is the prophetic symbol of the United States, is hedged in on either side by walls of adamant that reach to heaven.