in population and wealth than New York and Pennsylvania. Virginia and the Carolinas had extended their settlements westward far into the interior. Some emigrants had even wandered to western Tennessee. Daniel Boone had led the way to Kentucky. A few English or Americans had colonized Natchez, on the Mississippi. But the settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee lived with rifle in hand, seldom safe from the attacks of the natives, and were to form in the war of independence that admirable corps of riflemen and sharp-shooters who were noted for their courage and skill from the siege of Boston to the fall of Cornwallis. The Virginians were settled in the Tennessee mountains long before the people of New York had ventured to build a village on the shores of Lake Erie or the Pennsylvanians crossed the Alleghanies. But still even Virginia is represented to us about this period as in great part a wilderness. In the North the line of cultivated country must be drawn along the shores of the Hudson River, omitting the dispersed settlements in two or three inland districts. The Delaware and a distance of perhaps fifty miles to the westward included all the wealth and population of Pennsylvania. The Alleghanies infolded the civilized portions of Virginia, and North and South Carolina cannot be said to have reached beyond their mountains. So slowly had the people of North America made their way from the sea-coast.

[Of the inland country very little was known, while the region beyond the Mississippi was "a land of fable, where countless hosts of savages were believed to rule over endless plains and to engage in ceaseless battles." Long afterwards it was supposed that the waters of the Missouri might extend to the Pacific.]

Within the cultivated district a population usually, but probably erroneously, estimated at three millions were thinly scattered over a narrow strip of land. The number

can scarcely be maintained. The New England colonies could have had not more than eight hundred thousand inhabitants; the middle colonies as many more; the Southern a little over a million. New York had a population of two hundred and forty-eight thousand, and was surpassed by Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, and was at least equalled, if not exceeded, by North Carolina. Its growth had been singularly slow. The small population of the Union was composed of different races and of almost hostile communities. There was a lasting feud between the Dutch at Albany and the people of New England. . . . The Germans settled in Pennsylvania retained their national customs and language, and were almost an alien race. Huguenot colonies existed in several portions of the country. The north of Ireland had poured forth a stream of emigrants. Swedish settlements attracted the notice of Kalm along the Delaware. North Carolina a clan of Highlanders had brought to the New World an intense loyalty and an extreme ignorance. The divisions of race and language offered a strong obstacle to any perfect union of the different colonies. But a still more striking opposition existed in the political institutions of the various sections. In the South, royalty, aristocracy, and the worst form of human slavery had grown up together. In no part of the world were the distinctions of rank more closely observed, or mechanical and agricultural industry more perfectly contemned. New England the institutions were democratic, and honest labor was thought no shame. In the South episcopacy was rigidly established by law; in New England a tolerant Puritanism had succeeded the persecuting spirit of Cotton Mather and Winthrop. . . .

In

In

In the course of a century, within their narrow fringe of country the colonists had transformed the wilderness

into a fertile and productive territory. Agriculture was their favorite pursuit. Travellers from Europe were struck with the skill with which they cultivated the rich and abundant soil, the fine farm-houses that filled the landscape, the barns overflowing with harvests, the cattle, the sheep. The Northern and middle colonies were famous for sheep and corn. Pennsylvania was the granary of the nation. In New Jersey the fine farms that spread from Trenton to Elizabethtown excited the admiration of the scientific Kalm. Long Island was the garden of America, and all along the valleys opening upon the Hudson the Dutch and Huguenot colonists had acquired ease and opulence by a careful agriculture. The farm-houses, usually built of stone, with tall roofs and narrow windows, were scenes of intelligent industry. While the young men labored in the fields, the mothers and daughters spun wool and flax and prepared a large part of the clothing of the family. The farm-house was a manufactory for all the articles of daily use. Even nails were hammered out in the winter, and the farmer was his own mechanic. school and a church were provided for almost every village. Few children were left untaught by the Dutch dominie, who was sometimes paid in wampum, or the New England student, who lived among his patrons, and was not always fed upon the daintiest fare.

A

The progress of agriculture at the South was even more rapid and remarkable than at the North. The wilderness was swiftly converted into a productive region. The coast from St. Mary's to the Delaware, with its inland country, became within a century the most valuable portion of the earth. Its products were eagerly sought for in all the capitals of Europe, and one noxious plant of Virginia had supplied mankind with a new vice and a new pleasure.

Tobacco was in Virginia the life of trade and inter

All

course; prices were estimated in it; the salaries of the clergy were fixed at so many pounds of tobacco. other products of the soil were neglected in order to raise the savage plant. Ships from England came over annually to gather in the great crops of the large planters, [and] Virginia grew enormously rich from the sudden.

rise of an artificial taste.

[Other crops replaced tobacco farther south. In South Carolina the cultivation of rice, brought thither in 1694 from Madagascar, had become greatly developed. Indigo, sugar, molasses, tar, pitch, were other valuable Southern products, but cotton, which was destined to assume the place farther south which tobacco then held in Virginia, was as yet cultivated only in small quantities for the use of the farmers. The commercial restrictions imposed by England acted detrimentally upon American agriculture, yet it flourished in spite of them.]

The commerce of the colonies flourished equally with their agriculture. It was chiefly in the Northern colonies that ships were built, and that hardy race of sailors formed whose courage became renowned in every sea. But the English navigation laws weighed heavily upon American trade. Its ships were, with a few exceptions, only allowed to sail to the ports of Great Britain. No foreign ship was suffered to enter the American harbors. [Yet] the colonists contrived to build large numbers of ships, and even to sell yearly more than a hundred of them in England. The ship-yards of New England were already renowned. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were seats of an important trade. On the island of Nantucket the whalefishery had been established that was to prove for a brief period a source of great profit and a school of accomplished seamen. The spermaceti-whale was still seen along the American coast, but the New England whaler had already penetrated Hudson Bay, and even pierced the Antarctic. . . . In consequence of the rigid navigation laws, smug

gling prevailed all along the American coast, and swift vessels and daring sailors made their way to the ports of France and Spain to bring back valuable cargoes of wine and silks. Boston was the chief seat of ship-building, and its fast-sailing vessels were sent to the West Indies to be exchanged for rum and sugar. In 1743 it was estimated that New England employed one thousand ships in its trade, besides its fishing-barks. . . .

The rise of American commerce had seemed wonderful to Burke, Barré, and all those Englishmen who were capable of looking beyond the politics of their own narrow island; but no sooner had America become free than its trade doubled, and soon rose to what in 1775 would have seemed incredible proportions. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia became at once large cities, and England was enriched by American freedom. . . .

In manufactures the colonists can be said to have made but little progress. The English government had vigorously forbidden them to attempt to make their own wares. A keen watch had been kept over them, and it was resolved that they should never be suffered to compete with the artisans of England. The governors of the different colonies were directed to make a careful report to the home government of the condition of the colonial manufactures, in order that they might be effectually destroyed. From their authentic but perhaps not always accurate survey it is possible to form a general conception of the slow advance of this branch of labor. South of Connecticut, we are told, there were scarcely any manufactures: the people imported everything that they required from Great Britain. Kalm, indeed, found leather made at Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania, as good as the English, and much cheaper. He praises the American mechanics; but, in general, we may accept the reports of the governors that