294 
GEOLOGY OF THE FOURTH DISTRICT. 
they may be rendered the best kind of grazing land, and produce all other articles required 
for the support of man. So long as the belief exists that there is mineral wealth in these 
rocks, so long will the cultivation of the soil be neglected, and consequently the country will 
remain unproductive, not because the Creator made it so, but because man has proved an 
unfaithful steward. 
In these situations, as well as in all others, there is room enough for rightly directed enter¬ 
prise ; and a knowledge of what does and what does not exist, is of the utmost importance in 
guiding that spirit which has built up the thriving village, the lofty spires of the city, or spread 
the widely cultivated farms where the primeval forests but lately held dominion, and which, 
even to the remotest bounds of civilization, is drawing from the earlh treasures richer than 
the gold mines of the south. 
These show to us that our favored country, even in its widest extent, possesses preeminently 
the means of ameliorating and exalting the condition of mankind, and of promoting the arts 
of civilization in the highest degree. It is a wise arrangement, that those things which we 
prize highly should not be placed within our reach at every point, for they would soon cease 
to be valued. A variety of pursuit and production are necessary to the welfare and improve¬ 
ment of man, and the surface of the earth is so adapted as to compel this diversity of pursuit; 
and man, whether he will or not, submits to the laws imposed upon this earth and all its 
created beings. And although in some points man may reason that himself, or his neighbors, 
or his posterity might be benefited by a different arrangement of what he considers the rich 
or the desirable things, yet he is to remember that himself and those around him form but a 
small part — a link in the great chain of community, which is ordered and governed by laws 
which emanate from the great source of all order and harmony in the universe. 
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