That part of Virginia which was most peopled during the war of Independence has a low and nearly level surface, and a sandy, and in general, very poor soil. Along the rivers there are tracts formerly productive, but even these have been exhausted by the cultivation of tobacco. The proprietors of these estates must have been early led to think of quitting their plantations for the fertile lands of Kentucky, then occupied, or rather overrun, by warlike savages, of whom they were the favourite hunting-ground. Some bold and hardy pioneers, at the head of whom was Boon, first ventured across the mountains with their rifles, and bravely sustained a bloody contest with the Indians. After many desperate fights, in which more than one unknown hero fell under the bullet or the tomahawk of some red-skinned Hector, after numerous assaults, in which more than one matron enacted the part of our Jeanne Hachette,[U] after many alarms and much suffering, the genius of civilisation carried it. At the call of the pioneers, roused by the fame of their exploits, the planters of the coast set out on their pilgrimage; arriving with their slaves, they cleared and cultivated large tracts, in the midst of which they led a patriarchal life, surrounded by their servants and flocks, following with ardour the chase of wild beasts, and sometimes of Indians, and too often spending the proceeds of their crop in betting on the speed of their horses, of which they are very proud, and whose pedigree is better known to them than their own. More lately, when the demand for cotton had increased, in consequence of the improvements in machinery, and the steamboat had opened the way into the heart of the Mississippi Valley, they have removed southwards, always taking their slaves with them; a prospect of future wealth and prosperity was thus opened for the south.
The industrious sons of New England likewise bade farewell to the rocky and ungrateful soil of their birthplace; loading a wagon with a plough, a bed, a barrel of salt meat, the indispensable supply of tea and molasses, a Bible and a wife, and with his axe on his shoulder, the Yankee sets out for the West, without a servant, without an assistant, often without a companion, to build himself a log hut, six hundred miles from his father's roof, and clear away a spot for a farm in the midst of the boundless forest. The first of these wanderers went from Connecticut, _the land of steady habits_, of Puritans among Puritans.