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for tillage. Much of it is swamp. The rivers do not terminate in as deep and long bays, with steep clay banks for borders, as they do north of the James. They are generally swamp-bordered in their lower courses, and not very well suited for settlements. The soil of these regions is generally rather infertile; it is especially unfitted for the cultivation of grains except near the shore, where the swamps can often be converted into good rice fields. Maize can be tilled, but it, as well as wheat, barley, etc., gives not more than half the return that may be had from them in Virginia. Were it not for the cotton crop, the lowland South would have fared badly.

All the shore belt of country is unwholesome, being affected with pernicious fevers, which often cannot be endured by the whites, even after the longest acclimatization. The interior region, even when not much elevated above the sea, or away from the swamps, is a healthy country, and the district within sight of the Blue Ridge and the Black mountains is a very salubrious district. This region was, however, not at once accessible to the colonists of the Carolinian shore, and was not extensively settled for some time after the country was first inhabited, and then was largely occupied by the descendants of the Virginian colonists.

The history of this country has served to show that much of the lowlands near the shore is not well fitted for the use of European peoples; they are likely to fall into the possession of the African folk, who do not suffer, but rather seem to prosper in the feverish lowlands. The interior districts beyond the swamp country are well suited to Europeans, and where the surface rises more than one thousand feet above the sea, as it does in western North and South Carolina, the climate is admirably well suited to the European race. It is probable that the English race has never been in a more favorable climate than these uplands afford.

This Carolinian section was originally settled by a far more diversified population than that which formed the colonies to the northward. This was especially the case in North Carolina. This colony was originally possessed by a land company, which

proposed to find its profit in a peculiar fashion. This company paid contractors so much a head for human beings put ashore in the colony. One distinguished trader in population, a certain Baron de Graffenreid, settled several thousand folk at and about New Berne, on the swampy shores of the eastern sounds. They were from a great variety of places, -a part from England, others from the banks of the Rhine, others again from Switzerland. There was a great mass of human driftwood in Europe at the close of the seventeenth century, the wreck of long-continued wars, so it was easy to bring immigrants by the shipload if they were paid for. But the material was unfit to be the foundation of a state. From this settlement of eastern North Carolina is descended the most unsatisfactory population in this country. The central and western parts of North Carolina had an admirable population that principally came to the state through Virginia; but this population about Pamlico and Albemarle sounds, though its descendants are numerous, perhaps not numerically much inferior to that which came from the Virginia settlements, is vastly inferior to it in all the essential qualities of the citizen. From the Virginia people have come a great number of men of national and some of world-wide reputation. It is not likely that any other population, averaging in numbers about five hundred thousand souls, has in a century furnished as many able men. On the other hand, this eastern North Carolina people has given no men of great fame to the history of the country, while a large part of the so-called "poor white" population of the South appears to be descended from the mongrel folk who were turned ashore on the eastern coast of North Carolina.

South Carolina was much more fortunate in its early settlers on its seaboard than the colony to the north. Its population was drawn from rather more varied sources than that of Virginia, New York, or New England, but it would be hard to say that its quality was inferior; despite the considerable admixture of Irish and French blood, it was essentially an English colony.

On the whole, although the quality of the climate would lead some to expect a lowering of the quality of the English race in

these southern colonies, it is not possible to trace any such effect in the people. Although the laboring classes of whites along the seaboard appear to occupy a physical level rather below that of the same class in Virginia and the more northern regions, they have great endurance, as was sufficiently proven by the fact that they made good soldiers during the recent Civil War. In the upland districts of these states, in western North and South Carolina, and especially in northern Georgia, the physical constitution of the people is, I believe, the best in this country. In the district north of Pennsylvania, the elevation of the mountains, or the table-lands which lie about them, is not profitable to the dwellers in these districts; each added height scarcely gives any additional healthfulness, and the additional cold is hurtful to most crops. In this southern region, however, the greater height and width of the Appalachian mountain system, including its elevated valleys, is a very great advantage to this region in all that concerns its fitness for the use of man. The climate of one half of the country south of the James and Ohio rivers and east of the Mississippi is purified and refreshed by the elevations of this noble mountain system. It is the opinion of all who have examined this country that it is extremely well fitted for all the uses of the race; an admirable climate much resembling that of the Apennines of Tuscany, a fertile soil admitting a wide diversity of products, and a great abundance of water power characterize all this upland district of the South.

A few words will suffice for all that concerns the mineral resources of the original colonies. At the outset of the colonization of America we hear a good deal about the search for gold; fortunately there was a very uniform failure in the first efforts to find this metal, so that it ceased to play a part in the history of these colonies. Very little effort to develop the mineral resources of this region was made during the colonial period. A little iron was worked in Rhode Island, New York, and Virginia, some search of a rather fruitless sort was made for copper ore in Connecticut, but of mining industry, properly so called, there was nothing until the Revolutionary War

stimulated the search for iron and lead ores. The discovery of the gold deposits in the Carolinas did not come about until after the close of the colonial period. These deposits were not sufficiently rich to excite an immigration of any moment to the fields where they occur.

Practically the mineral resources of what we may term the Appalachian settlements of North America never formed any part of the inducements which led immigrants to them. In this respect they differ widely from the other colonies which were planted in the Americas. The greater part of the Spanish and Portuguese settlements in America were made by gold hunters. The state of morals which led to these settlements was not favorable to the formation of communities characterized by high motives. There were doubtless other influences at work to lower the moral quality of the settlements in Mexico and South America, but the nature of the motives which brought the first settlers upon the ground and gave the tone to society is certainly not the least important of the influences which have affected the history of the American settlements.

To close this brief account of the physical conditions of the first European settlements in North America, we may say that the English colonies were peculiarly fortunate in those physical conditions upon which they fell. There is no area in either of the Americas, or for that matter in the world outside of Europe, where it would have been possible to plant English colonies. that would have been found so suitable for the purpose; climate, soil, contact with the sea, and a chance of dominion over the whole continent were given them by fortune. They had but the second choice in the division of the New World; yet to the English fell the control of those regions which experience has shown to hold its real treasures. Fortune has repeatedly blessed this race; but never has she bestowed richer gifts than in the chance that gave it the Appalachian district of America.

CHAPTER II

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY1

In a bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it cannot, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports." This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.

Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculiarity of American institutions is the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people – to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. Said Calhoun in 1817, "We are great, and rapidly — I was about to say fearfully — growing!" So saying, he touched the distinguishing feature of American life. All people show development; the germ theory

1 By Professor F. J. Turner. Extracts reprinted, by courtesy of the author and publisher, from the Fifth Yearbook of the National Herbart Society (University of Chicago Press, 1899). First edition printed in Report of American Historical Association for 1893.

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