508 
The early settlement of the colonies 
hung for some time about the seaboard 
and upon the tide-waters of the larger 
rivers. Following upon this epoch it 
gradually penetrated farther inland, 
but until the weakening of the French 
power in Canada, the aggressive hos- 
tility of the Indians effectually held in 
check the inclination of the newcomers 
to open up and develop, in any general 
way, the more remote and unknown 
interior. Even the proprietors of the 
vast tracts which had been parceled 
out as rewards to those prominent in 
the various Indian wars did not them- 
selves know the extent of their hold- 
ings, and it was from the lips of the 
surveyors, who were finally sent to 
ascertain the true boundaries, that 
authentic word of the resources of the 
new land first came to stir the brains 
of the daring and send them inland to 
the “grants” they Had secured.” Phe 
labors of the grantees were of the sort 
to test “the mettle of men’; they found 
the wilderness as the Indian had left it, 
dotted and veined by the lakes and 
streams whose waters his canoe alone 
had disturbed, covered with the forests 
which sheltered the animals he had 
* tuted: 
Born and reared in the old world and 
unschooled to the life which confronted 
them in their mew home, 1 speaks 
forcibly of their power of adaptability 
to these new conditions that from the 
settlers, whether English or Scotch, 
Irish or Dutch, a type was evolved 
unique as were the conditions of its 
birth and worthy the name American. 
First (of. all, and by’ wirtue (of that 
ancient goad to human endeavor, Neces- 
sity, they became hunters and trappers 
and masters of woodcraft. Gradually 
the cleared areas about the log-huts 
increased in size, tillage became more 
and more an occupation, and the farms 
resulted. 
The policy of the proprietors toward 
the settlers on the whole had been a 
just and a benevolent one. Induce- 
ments to settle had been offered, such 
as the promise of a lot of land “to the 
RECREATION 
first male child born in town”; there 
had been abatements of taxes, substan- 
tial aid in money had been given in the 
precarious first years of settlement, 
range roads were laid out and even 
meeting-houses were built at the ex- 
pense of these fathers of the settle- 
ments. As immigration increased, the 
proprietors became less and less factors 
in the situation; they quarreled among 
themselves while “the man on the 
ground” grew in importance and inde- 
pendence. 
At length towns were incorporated 
and a new era began. In the very 
nature of things these earlier settle- 
ments were “towns” in name only, their 
incorporation serving but to link to- 
gether in a mutual dependence and a 
collective independence the scattered 
inhabitants of a wide territory. 
After the storm of the Revolution 
had passed the settlement of the coun- 
try took on fresh vigor, the hamlet, 
that earliest manifestation of man’s 
gregarious habit, sprang into being and 
the pulse of the East quickened and 
thrilled to the awakenment of new 
industries, to the culture of religious 
faith and to education. The farm was. 
however, the unit of this structure and 
its life the embodiment of the living 
principles which have bulwarked and 
bastioned the growth of the republic. 
In even the most superficial analysis 
of the forces at work in the formation 
of the New England character, we are 
confronted by one positive and omni- 
present condition—poverty. The term 
itself is an elastic one, however, and 
capable of as varied interpretation as 
its antithesis—riches. In the sense 
in which it is here used it shall not 
mean the state of utter destitution with 
which it is so often associated, but 
rather, following the actual source of 
the word to its prime significance of 
“preparing little’ or “providing little 
for one’s self,” describe a condition of 
very limited means which, if it denied 
much that we have come to look upon 
as desirable and even necessary to 
right living, still carries in its larger 

