Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PKEFACE. THE following Catechism is designed to smooth the way to the study of Geography. What put it in the way of question and answer, was, that I intended three young lads then under my care, should commit it to memory. It is published in the same order, that others may take the same advantage. This was my first view. My second arose from this consideration, that as news-papers are happily and pretty generally circulated among us, there must be many honest farmers and their families who must be ignorant of many countries, towns, rivers and seas mentioned in them; and my book would enable them to read with more intelligence. Though these were laudable and sufficient motives for its publication, yet I acknowledge a third, and a more powerful reason, knowing what false and absurd ideas the bulk of mankind entertained of the works of God around them, and consequently how dishonourable such opinions are to the Deity, and how unworthy of that wisdom and beauty manifested in his works; I judged it a duty I owed to my Creator and to my fellow-creatures, to attempt to lead common readers to some more just conceptions of the divine works ; and this in so small a compass that the size of my book should not deter them; and I hope in a manner suited to their understandings. If I did not add a fourth inducement for publishing, my reader would for me. I did, and still do hope my book may bring me in a few dollars, which will be welcome guests when they arrive. The reader will readily discover the intimate connection betwixt Geography, and its elder sister Astronomy. I hope that hard word will fright no reader. It signifies no other than the doctrine of the heavenly bodies, of which the Sun, Moon, Planets and Comets, compose the part we are most nearly connected with. A moderate share of...