30 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



cation of the creative powers we now possess to the 

 development of a new country, can no more be governed 

 by the record of the past than the destructive agencies of 

 modern warfare can be directed by the military tactics of 

 a past age. 



Before the introduction of railroads the settlement of 

 the West was by a gradual process of accretion, a van- 

 guard of hardy pioneers keeping ever in advance, endur- 

 ing hardships and privations which could only be borne 

 by men unaccustomed to the ordinary comforts of civili- 

 zation. The better classes who followed were necessarily 

 governed to a greater or less extent in whatever further 

 improvements they attempted, by the works of their pred- 

 ecessors, and nothing approaching to scientific or artistic 

 designs of arrangement of extended areas, based upon 

 wise forethought of future necessities, was attempted. 

 The Government system of surveys of public lands 

 formed the only basis of division, the only guide in laying 

 out county roads, or the streets of proposed towns ; and 

 if the towns grew into cities it was simply by the indefi- 

 nite extension of the straight streets, running north, south, 

 east or west, without regard to topographical features, or 

 facilities of grading or drainage, and still less of any con- 

 siderations of taste or convenience, which would have 

 suggested a different arrangement. Every Western trav- 

 eler is familiar with the monotonous character of the 

 towns resulting from the endless repetition of the dreary 

 uniformity of rectangles which they present ; yet the 

 custom is so universal and offers such advantages in sim- 

 plifying and facilitating descriptions and transfers of real 



