326 TRAVELS IN THE UNITED STATES: 
from any other settlement. Settlements are 
now scattered over the whole of the country 
which they had to pass through in coming to 
it. The house was commodious and well 
built, and the people decent,, civil, and repu¬ 
table. It is a very rare circumstance to meet 
with such people amongst the first settlers on 
the frontiers; in general they are men of a 
morose and savage disposition, and the very 
outcasts of society, who bury themselves in the 
woods, as if desirous to shun the face of their 
fellow-creatures; there they build a rude ha-^ 
bitation, and clear perhaps three or four acres 
of land, just as much as they find sufficient to 
provide their families with corn: for the 
greater part of their food they depend on their 
rifle guns. These people, as the settlements 
advance, are succeeded in general by a second 
set of men, less savage than the first, who clear 
more land, and do not depend so much upon 
hunting as upon agriculture for their subsist¬ 
ence. A third set succeed these in turn, who 
build good houses, and bring the land into a 
more improved state. The first settlers, as 
soon as they have disposed of their miserable 
dwellings to advantage, immediately penetrate 
farther back into the woods, in order to gain 
a place of abode suited to their rude mode of 
life. These are the lawless people who en¬ 
croach, as I have before mentioned, on the 
