the scene of such bloody strife, with most of the savage actors still living, and around them; and where their midnight dreams were likely to be filled with the visions of painted Indians, brandishing their tomahawks and waving their fresh scalps amid the screams of women dying in the grasp of savages, and the light of their burning homes. The progress of population was accordingly slow. A sturdy hunter in buck-skin trowsers and fox-skin cap, might be seen occasionally stealing along the margin of the water courses, in quest of game or tracts of choice land; but even he was not accustomed to venture out of sight of the smoke of his log house, and the sound of the bark of his neighbor's dog. What motive indeed existed for men in comfortable circumstances at the east, to leave the shores of the salt water, and to penetrate a forest then but little known, filled with wild beasts and savage men, and to a place where the most formidable hardships were to be endured? But they did go, notwithstanding all these difficulties, and as early as 1802, the population of Ohio had grown to an amount which warranted its organization into a state. All of Michigan consisted in a few of the French peasantry and English merchants, or American emigrants, who had settled near the old French posts; and a very sparse population had just begun to turn up the rich mould in the states of Indiana and Illinois.

But the natural hatred of the Indians towards the Americans, who were advancing upon their territory, soon manifested itself. Tecumthe and his brother, the prophet, probably taking Pontiac for their model, again confederated the lake tribes as they had before been confederated by the Ottawa chief against the English, to oppose the advancing power of the United States. The emigrants from the east, as the chances of Indian troubles seemed to have abated, had pushed their enterprises into the wilderness, and had made considerable inroads into the Indian territory. Individual traders had established themselves in their hunting grounds, and committed acts of outrage which are seldom countenanced excepting on the very verge of civilization: besides, the efforts of the English were apparent in striving to bring about the same result. As early as 1807, indeed, we find an agent of the prophet calling a council upon the shores of Lake Superior, and there making a speech tending to arouse the tribes in that quarter, and inciting them against the United States; at the same time telling the savages that the Americans were the children of the evil spirit, sprung from "the scum of the great water when it was troubled by the evil spirit, and the froth was driven into the woods by a strong east wind."* This Indian confederation, which had been long ripening, had got fully to a head when the war of 1812 broke out, and we pass rapidly by that period big with important events. Detroit, Mackinaw, and Chicago were surrendered, Frenchtown was yielded up, the American prisoners there taken were butchered, and it was only when the victory of Commodore Perry furnished a free navigation across Lake Erie, and the advance of General Harrison to the Thames effectually overthrew the British and dispersed the Indian force, that the territory again passed to the United States.

It was from this period that the first rapid growth of the northwest commenced. The broad acres which had been permitted, under the burdensome system of the old French and English policy, to lie in their original solitude, had been surveyed and brought into market under very advantageous terms to the purchaser, the old system of sale being partly on credit.

* See American State Papers, where this speech is contained at length.

The more indigent and enterprising classes of the east, hearing of a country where thousands of acres of the richest soil could be obtained on credit, and at a cheap rate, began to pour into the west with the axe, the plough, and the plane. The construction of a road across the Alleghany mountains, and the establishment of the great Erie canal, furnished augmented means and motives for immigration. The territory was considered the best "poor man's country in the world:" produce might be raised to a large amount with but little labor, and while the comparatively small demand, and the want of the means of transportation to the east, effectually cut off the producer in the interior from the eastern market, the means of subsistence were ample, and he could, if he pleased, command almost any thing else but money. But the west had its enemies. Accounts sometimes strayed to us of a certain Mr. "Simpleton," who made a tour to Ohio upon a fat horse, and who met a returning immigrant with his famished wife and half-starved children in a rickety cart drawn by a lean one, on whose bare skeleton the carrion crows were feeding; but all these accounts were deemed the offspring of a few jealous or disappointed spirits, who had gone out to the west expecting to find it an El Dorado, where corn grew spontaneously, and the pigs swarmed ready roasted; and who, meeting little else but woods, Indians, and cross dogs, adopted that occasion to wreak their historical vengeance upon the country. A permanent peace was at all events secured for the sturdy settler, who could now wander over the domain where he listed, fell the oak with his axe, and build his log hut undisturbed by the light of the red man's fire, or by visions of bloody scalps which floated in the sight of his predecessors like the airy dagger of Macbeth. Improvement advanced as circumstances would seem to have required, and equal rights were protected by equal laws. By the successive steps to which we have briefly alluded, the northwest has arrived at its present position, and to a consider. ation of that position we design to confine the remainder of our remarks.* What then is the actual condition of the territory of the northwest, and what are the motives which it holds out to colonization? In the first place let us consider the character of the soil. A great error has prevailed in the public mind respecting this subject, and we would remark that it is not, as the ancient geographer, and as even modern travellers frequently inform us, a country low, wet, and filled with swamps in that degree which renders it an uncomfortable place of residence. On the contrary, the northwest, in general, comprises a dry and rolling country; it is alternated by hill and dale, with springs of water which are tinctured somewhat with lime, that constitutes an element of the soil through which they run. Along the borders of the lakes is a low and swampy belt running back to a ridge which appears to have once formed its banks, and that would seem to have been left dry by the subsidence of the waters; but in advancing towards the interior, the soil swells into beautiful undulations. The error which we of the east have formed of the western land, is founded on the exagger. ated and partial accounts of travellers, who have gone to the west with expectations framed on the luxurious scale of comfort in which they have been accustomed to measure things in the old states, and journeying rapidly through only a part of this region, and having been cast away in the deep

It may be well here to mention, that by the provisions of the ordinance of 1787, Ohio was admitted as a state into the Union in 1802, Indiana in 1816, Illinois in 1818, Michigan in 1835, and the territory of Wisconsin remains to be organized into a state.

mud of the Black Swamp, the shores of the Detroit, or the banks of the Maumee, have come back with the dolorous cry that "all is barren." The soil of Illinois, it is well known, is in the greater part composed of dry, undulating prairie, interspersed occasionally with groves of oaks, especially upon the banks of the streams, comprising tracts sometimes stretching into forest; it is even so dry that it is frequently difficult to procure water at all. The greater part of the settled portion of Michigan consists of what are called "oak openings," or groves of tall straight oaks, springing from a soil of dry sand, or loam, beautifully variegated with small streams, prairies, and lakes, and gently rising and falling into hillocks and dales. The soil of this state, with the exception of that tract upon the northern part of the peninsula, and extending towards Lake Huron, and the broad belt upon the shores of the Detroit river, is nearly as dry as the forest land at the east, and in its general configuration very much resembles the soil of western New York. The territory of Wisconsin is more hilly, and Indiana and Ohio contain dry and rolling land, as is a great portion of western Pennsylvania.

We admit that the soil of the northwest is in general lower and more level than that which prevails in the eastern states; that the climate is more humid; that in the more level and heavily timbered tracts, the surface of the land forms a basin for the rains; that the clay which constitutes a great part of its composition, prevents their suppuration; and that the rank luxuriance of the forest vegetation, will not permit the water to evaporate rapidly. We will grant that there are here and there standing marshes, which, in summer, present a thick green scum, that seems fitted to feed only the ge nius of pestilence; that there are swamps and fens which will probably remain forever the home of the water-snake, the turtle, and the frog; nay, we will not deny that marshes are spread out in the forest, and even cross the travelled roads,

"Like that Serbonian bog,

Betwixt Dalmatia and Mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk."

But this is not the general character of the western land. The greater proportion, as we have before remarked, exhibits a dry and undulating surface, with but comparatively little waste soil, where a moderate degree of agricultural enterprise may cause broad harvests of yellow corn and golden wheat to wave and bend to the sickle. This we happen to know, for we have wandered along the banks of the Ohio in sunshine and storm, performed a pedestrian excursion through a greater part of the Black Swamp, while our horses floundered in the mud, attached to our cart in the middle of the road, which cart lay shipwrecked like a vessel stranded at sea. We, too, have lodged in the loft of the "loggery," while the starlight gleamed through its chinks, reposed at night in the shadow of the forest by the light of a camp fire, and eaten salt pork, black bread, and venison, month after month near the waters of Lake Michigan.

Such, then, is the general condition of the northwestern land, and we pass rapidly to a consideration of the general character of the population and the local habitudes of the country. And, in the first place, we are led to inquire, who are the men that have been induced to people the forests and prairies of the west, to undergo the deprivations and hardships which necessarily belong to every new territory? Are they the opulent of the

older states, in comfortable circumstances at home; the denizens of the pavement, the theatre, and the drawing room, where their embroidered slippers rested upon Turkey carpets, and where their eye reposed in listless indolence upon the rich sculpture and exquisite paintings that adorned their own walls? Such clearly could not be the fact. Individuals of this class may indeed be scattered through the wilderness, but they are few. The great bulk of the western population is constituted of various, and in some degree, incongruous elements, the representatives from almost every trade, profession, and condition in life. The greater portion is comprised of recent emigrants, for the original pioneers of the west are nearly lost in the crowd of new-comers. Substantial householders who have sold out their domains at the east, have here made their clearings and erected their comfortable mansions on the soil; but the great mass of the emigrants is composed of men of limited means and large enterprise, who have adventured into this country to improve their condition, amid its great resources and expanding growth. The French population to whom we have alluded, and who are principally confined to the shores of the lakes, wearing the garb of their old French and Indian masters, engaged in tilling their worn-out farms, or as traders in the employment of the Hudson's Bay and American fur companies, are the only original white occupants of the soil that now remain. These, however, bear but a small proportion to the mass of the population.

The poor man at the east, with a large family, laboring, for example, upon the ungenerous soil of New England, finding that there is a country westward, where labor is dear and broad acres yielding an abundance of the necessaries of life are cheap, is induced to migrate with his household goods and all his effects, to this "land of promise," where provision may be made for his children. Houses must be built for the population. They require, as they advance, all the appliances which belong to a civilized form of society; and, to supply this demand, the mechanics in the various trades follow in his track, who are succeeded by the merchant, and he in his turn is followed by the members of the different professions, who find that the avenues to wealth and distinction at the east are more crowded than in the broad and growing region of a new country. To these are added, settlers, Dutch, Irish, English, Swiss, and immigrants from almost every part of Europe; and they all settle upon the soil from the same general motives. The discordant elements of society thus become strangely min. gled. Here may be found the ruddy-faced Yankee farmer, with his axe on his shoulder, or the New York merchant; there the volatile Canadian Frenchman. Here the scholar, ripe from the eastern schools; there the original backwoodsman, who may be classed among the early pioneers of the country. Here the English peasant, fresh from the markets of London, mixed with pale-faced Virginians from the banks of the Mississippi, whose fathers, perhaps, followed Daniel Boone through the gap of the Alleghany Mountains; the most of them without large wealth, the most of them in. telligent, and all anxious to advance their fortunes. The various forms of character thus thrown in contact, while they prevent any general and permanent moral traits, also exclude those settled prejudices always springing from the prescribed habitudes of a long-established and local population; and the necessary consequence of this condition of things is to cause the general frame of society to appear somewhat crude, rough, and in some portions, even lawless.

It is easy to trace the experience of an emigrant thrown as a settler into

the backwoods of the west. He is here cast upon a soil broad and fertile enough to be sure; but it does not yield spontaneously, and labor is required to cause it to produce. Necessity, in consequence, obliges him to look about for a subsistence. He can only purchase the remote and unsettled tracts at the government price, for the most valuable lots, perchance, have been taken up. If he purchases a tract of timbered land, he finds no habitation built, no road constructed; and that solitude bringing no change, although pleasing to the passing traveller, throws around him a melancholy and sickening gloom. With his axe he commences clearing away the place for his house, without the means and appliances that are common in an old country. This is no little labor, for the old oaks, gnarled and knotted, bow to civilization only by hardy and long-continued strokes. But perseverance conquers all things, and the sturdy trees are felled, the logs are pried into heaps, and set on fire. Some of the best of them are now taken, hewn on the end with his axe, piled upon each other, with grooves at each corner, to a sufficient height; a roof is composed of rafters covered with rough boards or branches of the trees, the interstices of the walls are partially filled with plaster or clay, a broad chimney is erected, with the top composed of plastered tiles; a glass window is set in, or if that cannot be obtained, a blanket is spread over the cavity, to shut out the cold and to let in the light. By continued toil a clearing is thus made, the log house erected, and the next year, perhaps, the rich crop of wheat or corn is scen growing upon the mellow soil between the stumps. For the first few years, it is obvious, that the life of the backwoodsman is a continued scene of deprivation and hardship, even if he should escape the bilious influence of the climate, which is incident to all new countries, and is not driven away by the clouds of musquetoes that blockade his path, and against which he is obliged to protect himself by a fire kept burning every summer night before his door.

It must be admitted that these discomforts are not without their allevia tion. If the settler has once cleared his farm, and placed it under a vigorous cultivation, it produces in abundance. He is impressed with a spirit of independence, always arising in the mind of every freeholder, for he looks down upon his own rich domain. We venture to say that this is the experience of nine-tenths of the agricultural emigrants to the forests of the west, when they first make their settlement. Those settlers who have selected the prairies, which are destitute of timber, have no clearing to perform, of course; but, under these circumstances, they are deprived of the trees, which are of considerable value even in the woods; and the "oak openings," that are but sparsely covered with forest trees, require much labor to prepare the soil for the seed. In our account of the experience of new emigrants to the west, we allude more particularly to those who have settled in the more retired and uncultivated parts; for we are not unmindful of the fact, that the more travelled portions along the main roads, present substantial and comfortable, if not elegant buildings, taverns, and thriving villages, as well as many of the luxuries of an older country.

The traveller, therefore, who passes through the interior portions of the west, although he cannot fail to admire the grandeur and magnificence of the scenery, is constantly coming in contact with objects that are repulsive to his pampered and luxurious taste. In traversing the country, clothed with all the opulence of luxuriant vegetation, where nature is unfolded upon a scale of extraordinary magnitude, he meets with unexpected inconve