Tlie Making of the Land in England. 
357 
was strewn with shattered boughs ; trunks of trees half-consumed by fire, or 
cleft by the wedge, were still standing in the track we were following. 
Beyond a field, at present imperfectly traced out, we suddenly came upon the 
cabin of its owner, situated in the centre of a plot of ground more carefully 
cultivated than the rest, but where man was still waging unequal warfare 
with the forest ; there the trees were cut down, but their roots were not 
removed, and the trunks still encumbered the ground they had so recently 
shaded. The master of the dwelling belongs to that restless, calculating, and 
adventurous race of men who do with the utmost coolness things only to be 
accounted for by the ardour of the passions, and who endure the life of savages 
for a time in order to conquer and civilise the backwoods. By the side of the 
hearth sits a woman wich a baby on her lap; her delicate limbs appear 
shrunken, her features are drawn in, her children are the true children of the 
wilderness, full of turbulence and energy. She watches them from time to 
time with mingled melancholy and joy. To look at their strength and her 
languor, one might imagine that the life she has given them has exhausted 
her own, and still she regrets not what they have cost her. In the one 
chamber of which the house consists the whole family is gathered for the 
night. The dwelling itself is a little world — an ark of civilisation amid an 
ocean of foliage ; a hundred steps beyond it the primeval forest spreads its 
shades, and solitude resumes its sway." * 
Our English ancestors have undergone at home the same toil 
and privations in their conflicts with Nature. The yvoXi had to 
be extirpated before the flock could be safely established ; the 
forest had to be cleared before the open field could be set out ; 
the great river to be embanked before the flood could be 
restrained, and the fen made only summer land. This, how- 
ever, was but a first approach towards cultivation. 
The communal occupation of this virgin soil soon came under 
the necessity of regulation and order, to become of any real 
service to an advancing and growing population not content to 
remain savages. The commonable lands had to be set out in 
strips with owners' rights, not yet indeed complete, but sufficiently 
appropriated to allow of some private enterprise in the growth 
of grain. The manor-house, the church, and the homesteads 
appeared on the scene, shelter for cattle was provided in winter, 
and the breeds improved. With buildings and arable hus- 
bandry and winter shelter, came the need for bridges, ferries, 
roads passable in summer ; unserviceable, indeed, in winter, but, 
such as they were, constructed and maintained solely by those 
who had subjugated and brought into cultivation the soil over 
which they passed. 
People now living may have seen decaying under the walls 
of a parish church the enormous wooden plough, girt and 
stayed with iron, which, as spring approached, was annually 
furbished up and brought into the village street. For this the 
owners or their tenants, acting in concert, made up joint teams 
De Tocqueville's ♦ History of Democracy in America.' 
2 B 2 
