busied themselves in observing the attitude of the Indians, and in inducing them to side with the former power, Whether successful in this object or not, they soon appeared at headquarters with their budget of information, and with whatever allies their persuasion had gained; and, at all events, offered their own services as scouts or rangers. In this capacity they were invaluable. Their primitive habits dispensed with the necessity of supply trains, for they were content with what could be carried in their pockets, and, moreover, they needed no shelter. They covered the column's front and flanks, and taking to the brush with the readiness of savages, they rendered it impossible for an attack to occur without warning. Luxury being unknown to them was not missed. They never indulged even in the soldier's privilege of grumbling, but, disdaining it as a mark of incapacity, endured extreme fatigue without a murmur, Such were the men who covered the frontiers.

The part enacted by these men in the civilization of the country was no mean one; they paved the way for its advance. Preceded by the Leatherstockings, and under their protection, our frontier constantly advanced, and, like the god Boundary of the Romans, it never stopped to rest. The establishment of wellordered society in the interior was the same everywhere along the border, and the formation of one community illustrates all. The first on the ground were, of course, the rangers, who, according to the plan of historical development, led the way, and performed the task of spying out the land, of getting a proper knowledge of its geography and resources, and of securing the friendship of the aborigines who were inclined to peace, or of driving out those who were hostile. These rangers were the Leatherstockings, and they were succeeded by the pioneers, who usually appeared in small bands, numbering from half a dozen to a couple of scores, and whose first business was the erection of a stockade or rude fort at the junction of two streams, or at some other point which equally united convenience with capacity of defence. These bands would fell the timber necessary for the block-houses and dwellings of the fortifications, dig a well, plant some corn, and make all the preparation they could for the shelter of the women and children, who, if they had not already appeared, were the next to come.' The 1 The men went in the spring, the families followed in autumn.-Otzinachson.

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little community having got its habitation, and a name, which, if not Indian, at least savored of the wildness of the woods, proceeded to break the ground of the vicinity, and to till the land. The men worked ordinarily in gangs, carried their rifles with them to the field, and, with an eye to security, returned at nightfall to their families within the stockade. But, for the first season, by reason of there being no provisions except the little they brought along with them, and for many seasons afterward, from the insufficiency of the crops on account of the slow destruction by fire or frost of the stumps which cumbered the ground, the men were driven to eke out an existence by hunting. The order of nature so established it, that the game lasted until the fields became sufficiently productive, and thus the settlement was sustained.

The next step forward in the development of society was taken after the great Indian fight, which, occurring with invariable regularity, gave the rude flourish which really rung up the curtain of this little theatre. For, so long as the savages were in the neighborhood, expansion was difficult and dangerous, immigration was deterred, and the settlement was confined within sight or sound of the block-houses. With the defeat of the Indians, however, the vicinity was cleared of danger, and the families, glad to be released from their narrow confines, ventured to build cabins on the adjacent tracts of land from which each had made its selection. The stockade, being still maintained in the midst of the settlement as a rallying point in case of alarm, naturally became the resort of the settlers for supplies, and when the clearings had become farms, and the population had multiplied by natural increase and immigration, it is to be observed, that it too has burst its bonds. The breastwork and log cabins have disappeared, frame or brick houses have been erected, the road has become a street, and stores and shops have taken the place of the common magazine. In a word, a village, with its schools and churches, has grown up amid a farming community. One change, however, is to be noticed with regret; the beautiful Indian name is gone, and in its stead there flaunts some high-sounding title such as Athens, Rome, or, perhaps, Baalbec.' Before this, the frontier had long.

'Any one glancing at the map of our then Western, but now Eastern regions, might suppose that the demon of nomenclature, before smiting the door-posts of their towns, had just emerged from the index of some ancient history. In fact, it did, and this botch of the pedagogues, I regret to say, has been imitated all over the West.

ago followed the sun westward, and, departing, carried with it all trace of border life. The principles of law and order which are henceforth to control it now govern society.

But one step more is certain; the erection of a county. On that event, a court-house takes its place among the schools and churches; the village becomes a borough, the borough a county town, and all the first steps of civilization have been taken; it is now in full march. Perhaps the future will make a city of the borough, but, should that happen, society will only be an expansion of what already exists, and the course of civilization present a higher tide only than that which now flows.

Familiarity with the principles of government is not to be looked for among these simple settlers and hunters. They organized society from instinct, not from induction, and freedom of individual action was its animating principle, not from philosophical forecast, but because nature had ordained it to be the soul of their social life. These children of nature acted naturally, and therefore their development of society is in every respect as worthy of observation as was that of their ancestors, ruder even than themselves, the Angles and Saxons. Local self-government was the direct outgrowth of their blood, and was as natural to them as the surrounding forests were to the soil on which they stood. We, consequently, find it to be the beginning and the end of their organization. Whatever affected that, affected them; and, inversely, for what did not concern them, they did not care. Of the imperial government they knew almost nothing; it scarcely reached them and if even to the cultivated Virginian, royalty was but a sentiment, what a mere abstraction must it have been to those to whom the most positive evidence of civilization was a piece of calico, who laughed at writs, and whose notions of coercion. were limited by the number of rifles which could be brought to bear on an offender. Until the court-house appears, then, the influence of the central government may be entirely left out in considering their social development, and that of the colonial taken into but little account; for they looked to this only in distress, and turned their backs on it the moment they no longer needed its help.' The restraints of order in a dispersed society 'This independence of the remote governments, imperial and colonial, is

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were little needed, and what were necessary, difficult to impose : administration was therefore slighted, and its cares sat lightly on authority. Personal liberty was the soul of the settlement, and every thing like government was measured by the rule that alone laid down. That their ideas of freedom were limited to the person of the citizen, is to be expected when we observe, that they were a migrating people, whose roaming had a continent for its field, and was restricted only by the opposition of savages or by the forces of nature. It is natural, therefore, that among those whose notions of personal freedom were bounded only by the moral law, the spirit of liberty would be very arrogant, not to say fierce, and that their sense of allegiance, from the nature of things exceedingly weak, would be easily extinguished. So it was, and when the troubles concerning the Stamp Act arose, what affection these people had for the crown became in an instant alienated forever. Not that they were moved by the principle underlying a taxation their mode of life would rarely call on them to pay, but because their personal feelings outweighed their sense of political responsibility, at the recollection of the slights which had been put upon them during the French wars by the king's troops, the only representatives of royalty they had ever seen, and because they resented the arrogance which regarded them as fit only to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for those who sprang from the same loins and were no better than themselves.

shown by the fact, that, with an utter disregard for authority of any kind, settlements were frequently pushed far beyond the reach of civilization, and on disputed territory where accountability to either power was denied. Yet the process of social organization went on precisely as it did where the claims of government were recognized, and the remote governments were not submitted to, until civilization had reached that point where it always imposes central control on its children.

CHAPTER VI.

Manners in the Middle Provinces.

3. Between the Susquehanna and the Hudson, the manners of the people differed much from those of the Southern and the Northern colonies. In the agricultural portion of the Middle colonies we come to farms, and these were greater than the farms of New England, but were smaller than the plantations of Virginia and the South. On the seaboard we behold commerce in its best estate, and Philadelphia, the largest and most populous city in British America, outshines all others in trade, wealth, hospitality, politeness, and culture, and in every thing which gives a capital its peculiar features. It was a large and flourishing city when Boston was still fearing the rivalry of Salem,' when New York had barely crossed Wall street, when Annapolis, Williamsburg, and Charleston were yet mere villages, and before Albany, Pittsburg, Baltimore and New Orleans had crept beyond their stockades or had any greater distinction than what their names could give them. It was essentially English, though the most cosmopolitan of American capitals in aspect and character. It had been founded by the Friends or Quakers, who, for a long time, kept the lead in wealth and influence; but the inflowing population had brought hither a class which soon surpassed all others in culture and the higher forms of education, and to whom the colonial reputation of Philadelphia for refinement was mostly due. This class belonged, for the greater part, to the Church of England, and was that which built the now venerable and historic piles of Christ Church and St. Peter's, and the one whose tombstones, with their quaint inscriptions, still fill these church-yards. The Fam. Letters," John Adams, No. 5.