The foregoing statement needs the following qualification: Owing to the relative dryness and heat of the American summer, the forests are not so swampy as they are in Northern Europe, and morasses are generally absent. It required many centuries of continued labor to bring the surface of Northern Germany, Northern France, and of Britain into conditions fit for tillage.
Next to deserts and snowy mountains, swamps are the greatest barriers to the movements of man. If the reader will follow the interesting account of the Saxon Conquest given in Mr. Green’s volume on _The Making of England_, he will see how the tracts of marsh and marshy forest served for many centuries to limit the work of subjugation. In America there are no extensive bogs or wet forests in the upland district, south of the St. Lawrence, except in Maine and in the British Provinces. In all other districts fire or the axe can easily bring the surface into a shape fit for cultivation. In taking an account of the physical conditions which formed the subjugation of North America by European colonies, we must give a large place to this absence of upland swamps and the dryness of the forests, which prevented the growth of peaty matter within their bounds.
The success of the first settlements in America was also greatly aided by the fact that the continent afforded them a new and cheaper source of bread, in the maize or Indian corn which was everywhere used by the aborigines of America. It is difficult to convey an adequate impression of the importance of this grain in the early history of America. In the first place, it yields not less than twice the amount of food per acre of tilled land, with much less labor than is required for an acre of small grains; it is far less dependent on the changes of seasons; the yield is much more uniform than that of the old European grains; the harvest need not be made at such a particular season; the crops may with little loss be allowed to remain ungathered for weeks after the grain is ripe; the stalks of the grain need not be touched in the harvesting, the ears alone being gathered; these stalks are of greater value for forage than is the straw of wheat and other similar grains. Probably the greatest advantage of all that this beneficent plant afforded to the early settlers was the way in which it could be planted without ploughing, amid the standing forest trees which had only been deadened by having their bark stripped away by the axe. This rough method of tillage was unknown among the peoples of the Old World. None of their cultivated plants were suited to it; but the maize admitted of such rude tillage. The aborigines, with no other implements than stone axes and a sort of spade armed also with stone, would kill the forest trees by girdling or cutting away a strip around the bark. This admitted the light to the soil. Then breaking up patches of earth, they planted the grains of maize among the standing trees; its strong roots readily penetrated deep into the soil, and the strong tops fought their way to the light with a vigor which few plants possess. The grain was ready for domestic use within three months from the time of planting, and in four months it was ready for the harvest.