First came this silent hunter and fur trader, almost as
stealthy as the Indian in his movements; then the pale, gaunt, slow-
moving, half hunter, half farmer, too indolent to disturb the wilderness
from which he got a meagre living, planting his meagre crops among the
girdled trees of withered foliage, which he did not take the trouble to
cut down; then the backwoodsman, sallow as his immediate predecessor from
the shade of the forest, who with his axe made a little clearing, built a
"shack," turned his cattle into the grass that had grown for centuries
untouched, and let his pigs feed on the acorns; then the more robust
agriculturist who aggressively pushed back the shadows of the forest,
planted the wilderness with seeds of a magic learned in the valleys of
Europe and Asia, put up the fences of individualistic struggle, and built
his log cabin, the wilderness castle, the birthplace of the new American;
then the speculator and promoter (the hunter and explorer of the urban
occupation); and finally in their wake the builders of mills and factories
and cities--drab, smoky, vainglorious, ill-smelling, bad-architectured
centres of economic activity, fringed with unoccupied, unimproved, naked
areas, plotted and held for increment, earned only by risk and privation.
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