36 The Winning of the West 



lution. Our blood was as much mixed a century 

 ago as it is now. No State now has a smaller 

 .proportion of English blood than New York or 

 Pennsylvania had in 1775. Even in New England, 

 where the English stock was purest, there was a 

 certain French and Irish mixture; in Virginia there 

 were Germans in addition. In the other colonies, 

 taken as a whole, it is not probable that much over 

 half of the blood was English ; Dutch, French, Ger- 

 man, and Gaelic communities abounded. 



But all were being rapidly fused into one people. 

 As the Celt of Cornwall and the Saxon of Wessex 

 are now alike Englishmen, so in 1775 Hollander 

 and Huguenot, whether in New York or South 

 Carolina, had become Americans, undistinguishable 

 from the New Englanders and Virginians, the de- 

 scendants of men who followed Cromwell or 

 charged behind Rupert. When the great western 

 movement began we were already a people by our- 

 selves. Moreover, the immense immigration from 

 Europe that has taken place since, had little or no 

 effect on the way in which we extended our boun- 

 daries ; it only began to be important about the time 

 that we acquired our present limits. These limits 

 would in all probability be what they now are even 

 if we had not received a single European colonist 

 since the Revolution. 



Thus the Americans began their work of western 

 conquest as a separate and individual people, at the 

 moment when they sprang into national life. It 

 has been their great work ever since. All other 



