The Pioneers | Page 6

of the
United States. The mountains are generally arable to the tops, although
instances are not wanting where the sides are jutted with rocks that aid
greatly in giving to the country that romantic and picturesque character
which it so eminently possesses. The vales are narrow, rich, and
cultivated, with a stream uniformly winding through each. Beautiful
and thriving villages are found interspersed along the margins of the
small lakes, or situated at those points of the streams which are

favorable for manufacturing; and neat and comfortable farms, with
every indication of wealth about them, are scattered profusely through
the vales, and even to the mountain tops. Roads diverge in every
direction from the even and graceful bottoms of the valleys to the most
rugged and intricate passes of the hills. Academies and minor edifices
of learning meet the eye of the stranger at every few miles as be winds
his way through this uneven territory, and places for the worship of
God abound with that frequency which characterize a moral and
reflecting people, and with that variety of exterior and canonical
government which flows from unfettered liberty of conscience. In short,
the whole district is hourly exhibiting how much can be done, in even a
rugged country and with a severe climate, under the dominion of mild
laws, and where every man feels a direct interest in the prosperity of a
commonwealth of which he knows himself to form a part. The
expedients of the pioneers who first broke ground in the settlement of
this country are succeeded by the permanent improvements of the
yeoman who intends to leave his remains to moulder under the sod
which he tills, or perhaps of the son, who, born in the land, piously
wishes to linger around the grave of his father. Only forty years * have
passed since this territory was a wilderness.
* Our tale begins in 1793, about seven years after the commencement
of one of the earliest of those settlements which have conduced to
effect that magical change in the power and condition of the State to
which we have alluded.
Very soon after the establishment of the independence of the States by
the peace of 1783, the enterprise of their citizens was directed to a
development of the natural ad vantages of their widely extended
dominions. Before the war of the Revolution, the inhabited parts of the
colony of New York were limited to less than a tenth of its possessions,
A narrow belt of country, extending for a short distance on either side
of the Hudson, with a similar occupation of fifty miles on the banks of
the Mohawk, together with the islands of Nassau and Staten, and a few
insulated settlements on chosen land along the margins of streams,
composed the country, which was then inhabited by less than two
hundred thousand souls. Within the short period we have mentioned,

the population has spread itself over five degrees of latitude and seven
of longitude, and has swelled to a million and a half of inhabitants, who
are maintained in abundance, and can look forward to ages before the
evil day must arrive when their possessions shall become unequal to
their wants.
It was near the setting of the sun, on a clear, cold day in December,
when a sleigh was moving slowly up one of the mountains in the
district we have described. The day had been fine for the season, and
but two or three large clouds, whose color seemed brightened by the
light reflected from the mass of snow that covered the earth, floated in
a sky of the purest blue. The road wound along the brow of a precipice,
and on one side was upheld by a foundation of logs piled one upon the
other, while a narrow excavation in the mountain in the opposite
direction had made a passage of sufficient width for the ordinary
travelling of that day. But logs, excavation, and every thing that did not
reach several feet above the earth lay alike buried beneath the snow. A
single track, barely wide enough to receive the sleigh, * denoted the
route of the highway, and this was sunk nearly two feet below the
surrounding surface.
* Sleigh is the word used in every part of the United States to denote a
traineau. It is of local use in the west of England, whence it is most
probably derived by the Americans. The latter draw a distinction
between a sled, or sledge, and a sleigh, the sleigh being shod with metal.
Sleighs are also subdivided into two - horse and one-horse sleighs. Of
the latter, there are the cutter, with thills so arranged as to permit the
horse to travel in the side track; the “pung,” or “tow-pung” which is
driven