quent, and it was not an uncommon trick of theirs to seize a tyrannical Governor and send him in strings across the seas to be tried for oppression and misrule! Alas, that so fine a custom should fall into disuse! But in general there was little of bloodshed. The war of the Regulators, which may seem to form another exception, was in reality a symptom and a part of the war of 1776, Few communities in this world can show such a record of peace. For a season of several months immediately succeeding the close of our late war, we were absolutely without law or rulers of any kind whatever; the military stationed in a few principal towns being unable or unwilling to take cognizance of offenses except in the immediate vicinity. And yet there never was a land in a more thorough condition of peace and good order. So profoundly was this regard for law impressed upon our people that it amounted in some cases to a sublime virtue. A reverend Scotch gentleman of my acquaintance, who, under the influence of mammon, had married during the war an invalid and rather hard-looking old maid for the sake of fifty negroes, was told by a joker after Johnston's surrender that the Yankees had set the negroes free, and were going to abolish everything done during the rebellion, even to the dissolution of all marriages contracted during that time. "Aweel, aweel, Duncan, my mon," said the over-married Scot, "we maun submit; I'm a law abidin' mon !"

I have often had the remark made to me by most competent Confederate officers, that in one respect the troops from North Carolina made the best soldiers in our army; and this was their subordination and the facility with which they accepted discipline. Yet the courage and fire with which they fought afforded another instance of the great danger of arousing the wrath of those quiet races who illustrate the truth of the Frenchman's maxim, "beware of those who grow angry with

reason."

In further evidence of our law-abiding character I am reminded that years ago, before the war, a very illiterate but honest and determined citizen of one of our mountain counties, was appointed a justice of the peace. Filled with the dignity and consequence of his office, he soon after attended a militia muster in his neighborhood. After the drill the treating by the candidates began, and after that came the fighting in the usnal and regular order. When the first couple began to strip for the wager of battle, the new-born squire, instead of turning his back, according to the good old fashion of our peace guardians, or permitting himself to be carried off with a show of gentle violence, as was sometimes done, marched promptly to the front, and sternly commanded the peace in the name of the State. No attention being paid to this reasonable command, and the crowd beginning to hustle him, and tell him to stand off and see fair play, he sprang in between the combatants, drew a home-made bowie, with a blade eight inches in length, and exclaimed, "Look here, gentlemen! I'm a peace officer, duly apinted by the Ginril Assembly, and I ain't agoin' to be fooled with. Now the fust man that strikes a lick in my presence, I'll dissecterate him with this! The peace shell be kept while I'm around;" and it was. The majesty of the law was vindicated by the shining steel of her zealous servant, and the fight was postponed as indefinitely as Felix's repentance.

RACE OF SETTLERS.

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One cannot fail to be struck with the remarkable length of time which intervened between the discovery and the colonization of North America proper. Mexico, the Spanish Main, and the West India Islands, engrossed almost entirely the enterprise of the Spaniards in the early part of the sixteenth century; whilst the English and the French did little in the direction of the great lands they were destined to occupy. Full ninety years-almost a century-after the discovery of the continent it lay without notice, or attempt to settle it, until Raleigh's ships came, in 1584. Several expeditions to Florida had been made prior to that time, but they were mainly for exploration and plunder. From 1584 to the settlement on the James, twenty years more elapsed. From that settlement to the first permanent lodgment in North Carolina, forty-five years more intervened, and it was quite one hundred years after that before the pioneers of North Carolina got in sight of the Blue Ridge. At that period, 1650, they had got westward as far as Fort Dobbs, which stood near the Yadkin river, some twenty miles west of Salisbury; and fifty years after this, in 1700, there was not a white man in that portion of North Carolina which is now Tennessee, if we except a few scattered French traders and emissaries to the Indian tribes. Thus, two hundred years after its discovery, beyond the seaboard and its vicinity, the greater part of our country was still an unpeopled wilderness; for the tide of population in North Carolina and Virginia kept nearly side by side in the march westward!

These States show not only the dangers and difficulties of

subduing a wild land and planting civilization within its recesses, and the weakness and poverty of our pioneer forefathers, but they show, also, the comparative poverty of the English people at that time. One great English steamer of the present day could with ease have transported every inhabitant (white) of this colony, with all their goods, including cattle, in 1670, seventeen years after the settlement began. The immigrants landing at Castle Garden every two years now would people the whole State of North Carolina as thickly as it was peopled in 1870. Such has been the growth of western civilization, with all its wealth and appliances.

The character of the people who settled and continue to inherit the State is worthy of the student's consideration. North Carolina owes less to foreign immigration than any of her sisters. Hers is almost a homogenious people. Her population is more nearly composed of those born in her borders, descendants of her original settlers, than that of any other State in the American Union. The census of 1870 shows that her total population is 1,071,361, and of this number only 3,029 are of foreign birth! Not only relatively, but absolutely less than the same class of any other State. To prove that this is not an accidental enumeration, the census shows the number of persons born of one or both foreign parents to be but 6,464; and of persons born of both foreign parents to be 4,328-the same proportion appearing in the census of 1860 and 1850. We are emphatically one people, of unmixe1 blood.

In the many political canvasses which I have made, from east to west, I have never, to my best recollection, visited a county, however distant, without being asked by some one about his kinsman living in my county. If the blood revenge of the old Scotch clans were practiced now-a-days, it would fare ill with the man-slayer who should attempt to conceal himself from his enemy's clansmen in this State. They would

spring from the earth around him in every direction, as the men of Rodrick Dhu did about the path of James Fitz James. Where did these men come from? Who are they, and of what blood? These are questions always worth asking and answering, though an excess of democracy has begot an unworthy indifference on the subject of a people's ancestry. The aristocratic feeling is almost entirely confined to the beasts of this age of physical progress. It is thought to be important to them to have great progenitors, but not so with men and women. A plain, democratic farmer will descant by the hour on the noble sires and dams of his horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and even his game chickens; but if you should in his should in his presence undertake to show forth the glories of his blood, he would shake his head and tell you it was aristocracy, that there was nothing in blood for people, and advise you to stand on your own merits. Most excellent advice, but founded on bad phylosophy, nevertheless. There is much in the race we spring from, affecting both the individual and the community. The physical and the mental traits we derive from our ancestors are not more marked and important in directing our destinies than are the prejudices, aspirations and traditions we drink in from childhood. No profound observer of human nature will ever estimate the capacities or conduct of a people without first looking at their genealogical table and noting the blood which flows in their veins. The much abused and misused term Anglo-Saxon cannot be properly applied to North Carolina. There is a large infusion of that element in our people, it is true, but the principal stream of our blood, as will be seen, was Keltic, such Keltic life, at least, as was left to Ireland and Scotland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the Highlands it was almost unmixed, but in the Lowlands and in Ireland it was somewhat commingled with the Saxon, Norman and Iberian races.

The first comers were English, from Nansemond, Virginia,