10 OEIGIN AKD GROWTH OF AGRICULTURE. 



the savage is a miserable creature, enjoying less and suffering more 

 than the wolf or the leopard, to which a lawless, careless, predatory 

 freedom is truly natural, and which is at home with the elements, 

 as he never was nor can be. 



The savage builds no monuments — leaves but scanty proofs that 

 he ever existed save his bones. A hundred of his generations 

 come and go, leaving the earth and its living vesture essentially as 

 they found it. But let civilized man replace him for a bare lifetime, 

 and he leaves foot-prints that centuries will not efface. Our Atlan- 

 tic seaboard has hardly been known to civilized men for four genera- 

 tions ; yet, if these were to be swept away to-morrow, and the 

 wilderness untrodden by human foot were here to resume its 

 ancient sway, more memorials of these four generations would 

 challenge attention and reward inquiry two thousand years hence 

 than we can now discern of all the races that peopled this Atlantic 

 ;slope prior to the voyages and discoveries of Columbus. 



The rigors of Winter, and the experienced perils of starvation 

 •during its reign, gradually impel the savage to save and store the 

 ■grains and fruits of the seasons of plenty to subsist him through 

 the dearth which regularly follows : and he slowly learns to pre- 

 serve and tame the animals best calculated to serve him by di-aft 

 or as food. The grains which habitually grow and ripen on the 

 fertile intervales Of streams which annually overflow their banks, 

 ultimately teach him to increase their quantity and render their 

 reproduction more certain by cultivation. To plant the seed in 

 the most promising localities and take the chance of its repro- 

 ducing its kind ten or twenty-fold, is his first essay ; necessity im- 

 pels and experience gradually teaches more methodical and eflScient 

 cultivation. The loss of cattle by cold, by storm, by hunger, at 

 length suggests the curing of fodder for winter use, and the pro- 

 vision of such shelter as the climate may seem to require. The 

 suj^ply of food being thus doubled and trebled, population increases 

 correspondingly ; and thus is created a necessity for a still more 

 thorough and effective tillage of the soil. Thus pressed by want or 

 a justified apprehension of it, Man slowly learns to deepen his cul- 

 ture, to fertilize his .fields, to diversify his implements and improve 

 his methods, until the labor of one produces adequate sustenance 

 for many, and ever-enlarging conceptions, wants, capabilities, 

 achievements, enjoyments, expand his intellect, refine his nature, 

 and exalt his aspirations. His increased power over Nature is the 



