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men with whom they trafficked, had established their
houses among the Cherokees, the Muskhogees, and the Chickasas.
There existed no settlement, even of
Carolina, on streams that flow westward.
The abodes of civilized man reached scarcely a hundred miles from the
Atlantic; the more remote ones were made by herdsmen, who pastured beeves upon canes and natural grasses; and the cattle, hardly kept from running wild, were now and then rallied at central ‘
Cowpens.’
Thus, unheeded of the savage, herdsmen were the pioneers of colonization in the wilderness of
Carolina.
Philanthropy opened the way beyond the
Savannah.
The growth of the colonies excited astonishment in
England; and a British poet pointed with admiration across the
Atlantic:—
Lo! swarming southward on rejoicing suns,
Gay colonies extend,—the calm retreat
Of undeserved distress, the better home
Of those whom bigots chase from foreign lands.
Not built on rapine, servitude, and woe,
But bound by social freedom, firm they wise.
While the Palatinate poured forth its sons from their devastated fields; while the Scotch, who had made a sojourn in
Ireland, abandoned the culture of lands where they were but tenants, and, crowding to
America, established themselves as freeholders in almost every part of the
United States, from
New Hampshire to
Carolina,—the progress of colonization was mainly due to the rapid increase of the descendants of former settlers.
At the peace of
Utrecht, the inhabitants in all the colonies could not have been far from four hundred thousand.
Before peace was again broken, they had grown to be not far from eight hundred thousand.
Happy America!
to which
Providence gave the tranquillity
