264 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



of which there will be no end so long as land is to 

 be had for little or nothing, hinder the taking up of 

 manufactures in the colonies ; for it is more befitting 

 the spirit of this population, and that of all America, 

 to support themselves on their own land necessitously 

 but with little work, than to live better continually em- 

 ployed for wages. This roving about, this propensity 

 for an independent life in the remotest parts, is not 

 without its advantages to those more regular and in- 

 dustrious classes of people who take the places of the 

 emigrants and carry on what has been left unfinished 

 by them.* These farthest colonists are rough and un- 



* The first residents, or planters, in Pensylvania, who came 

 over from Europe, desired to introduce at once the most 

 finished manner of cultivating the land, according to the Eng- 

 lish fashion, and began the preparation of little tracts, making 

 them absolutely clean with unspeakable trouble and waste of 

 time. There was to be not a stump, stone, or thorn left on the 

 land. The small area which in this way they were able to 

 subdue was, notwithstanding the newness and fertility of the 

 soil, insufficient to supply them with the expected or the neces- 

 sary maintenance. Thus many allowed themselves to be dis- 

 couraged and returned to Europe where they found fewer 

 difficulties and more productive harvests for their work. But 

 others who had no place in Europe to retire to, and through 

 poverty were compelled to attempt anything, plowed and 

 sowed the land, between the stumps or among the trees but 

 recently killed. The rich and easily worked surface returned 

 a better harvest than they expected, and richly repaid the 

 slight labor spent upon it. Thenceforward this mode of culti- 

 vation was generally adopted and those who settle in the 

 farther regions still go about their farming in that way; and 

 some of them do no more, but give up their plantations, thus 

 roughly begun, to other families, and move on to repeat the 

 process elsewhere. " In Pensylvania the impulse still con- 

 " tinues to migrate to the southern and western country." 

 Hamb. polit. Journ. May 1786. 



