and unwasted strength will be secured to the mutual satisfaction of the North and the South. California and the Pacific Slope were faithful through temptation, as the Valley had been at an earlier period. No policy that could waste the common strength or resources was heeded. The East had ever been just and liberal, the West corresponded in gratitude and fidelity. The gold and silver of the mountains flowed to the East and passed into the common channels of trade, enriching the men of business-the merchants, manufacturers and commercial classes of the Atlantic States, and greatly hastening the development of the new regions and commencing industries of the Valley.

Then the barriers of distance and mountain heights disappeared by the extension of the telegraph and railway systems across the plains, the mountains and deserts; and the thought, the energy and enterprise of the whole country were massed and flowed freely back and forth between the two sides of the vast continent--and soon found equally free course between North and South. Such are the great results of the enlightened experiment of the English colonists of the Atlantic Coast. The children are reaping what the fathers sowed. All the resources that lie in the agriculture, the minerals, the sea ports, the manufacturing skill, of this comparatively sterile region are highly developed while the surplus wealth produced in the rest of the country flows here as to its natural home. The Atlantic Slope acted in a large minded and benevolent spirit and reaps the richest possible reward.

It has already been shown that the country was unified and thoroughly Americanized in the Great Valley, which put Europe out the thoughts of the people by concentrating attention on this vast interior and its boundless wealth, and by making the United States so largely sufficient to themselves. It may also be said that the whole country was unified by the Atlantic Slope, which sent its children-multitudes of its

best, most vigorous and most intelligent citizens-to colonize and develop the other regions; gave them all encouragement and aid when possible; and legislated for them or left them free to legislate for themselves with equal wisdom and justice. Its spirit was so enlightened and appreciative that its citizens, so transferred to virgin soil, at once perceived the broad features of the new situation by virtue of the comparative freedom from narrowness and prejudice of their Eastern education, and the intimate sympathy that existed through all parts of the country united the East and the West in the most perfect bonds. This common sympathy was the natural fruit of the highminded system of thought and conduct established and cultivated in the East.

It is true that this was largely due to community of business interests and so, in many respects, had a material basis; but this fact does not diminish, it enhances, the estimate to be placed on Eastern prudence and wise, far-seeing management. No people before known to history had been clearsighted and self-restrained enough to leave natural laws to exert all their influence unmolested. These Americans of the Eastern Coast had the unusual penetration to discover when to refrain from interference and when and how to give effective aid. The fundamental Law, or Constitution, was so clear and just as to allow the perception, or instinct, of each time and place to regulate current affairs according to their requirements. This is no slight praise, and met with no measured reward. Complete confidence, reciprocity and unity were the result, and the gains of the East were unbounded. When wealth was acquired in the Valley and on the Pacific Slope it tended to flow east with a fulness proportioned to the freedom with which it might ever act.

Business laws may, and do, reciprocate justice by warm gratitude. They ever tend to bless those who, by giving them entire liberty, enable them to secure the highest success. The violation of this rule in the later part of the eighteenth

century by the English Government cost it its thirteen American colonies; and the recognition of it in the nineteenth has preserved to it Canada and all its other colonies. So not even the large number of southerners who found their way to California and Oregon at the close of the Civil War could incline the new States of the Pacific Slope to seek independence of the mother Republic east of the mountains.

The Original States therefore had, in a large measure, to thank their own free and highminded policy for the extraor dinary stimulus which so developed all their interests.

CHAPTER X.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND PROSPECTS OF THE ATLANTIC SLOPE.

Settlements were first made on the bays and rivers having the readiest approach to the sea. From these tide-water points population spread in the direction of the best neighboring lands, which lay chiefly in the river valleys. There being an average distance from the sea to the mountains of one hundred and fifty miles in New England and two hundred further south, with much land of fine quality and very moderate markets in the early days, there was little temptation to brave the dangers of the interior for a long time. Even the upper Susquehanna was unoccupied at a comparatively late period. Its northern tributaries as well as the Mohawk-the principal western branch of the Hudson-were occupied by the Iroquois Indians, or Five Nations, the most imperious and politic and the most dangerous to offend of all the tribes known in those times. It was not till the generation preceding that of the Revolutionary War, or about 1750, that considerable settlements began to form under the eastern shadow of the mountains. The contest with the French for the possession of the interior of the continent, during which they had opportunity to compare themselves adequately with European soldiery, made them acquainted with their own eminent qualities and, at the same time, more fully with that interior.

At this time the spirit of unrest and adventure seemed to take possession of them in a much greater degree than before. They ceased to fear the Indians, and boldly ventured into the depths of the vast forests stretching eastward and westward from the mountains. By the time the Revolutionary War closed they had formed many new settlements, and acquired title to a section of country several times larger than that

actually occupied in 1750. Up to this time population had swung away from the Atlantic tide waters very slowly and reluctantly; part of it now renounced its attachment to the coast and eagerly sought distant localities. The fine valleys of central Pennsylvania and central and southern New York were as quickly settled as the eagerness to cross the mountains to the Ohio and its tributaries would permit. The Five Nations of central and western New York had taken the English side in the war. At its conclusion they found their power broken, their prestige gone, and many of them passed over into Canada leaving one of the finest farming regions on the continent open to settlement by the freemen who had shaken off the control of the most enterprising nation in Europe.

This region, which now seems but a step from the coast, was then reached with great difficulty. Although the chain of the Alleghanies here lost its usual height it was still represented by an endless series of hills and valleys, and the principal streams issuing east and south were so shallow and rapid as to be of little value as common highways. Yet population steadily pushed up the valleys, and was distributed over the fertile hills by tens of thousands. Soon the Erie Canal was conceived by Clinton, a Governor of New York truly representative of his race and century, and in the very dawn of great American enterprises, soon after the close of an exhausting war, it was commenced, being completed in eight years, or in 1825. It joined one of the water systems of the Great Valley with the tide-waters of the Atlantic, and was of incalculable advantage to the West, to the eastern cities and to central and western New York. The Ontario basin, the charming valleys opening into it, the verdant and fertile hills about it were immediately occupied, and their abundant surplus products found little difficulty in reaching a remunerative market.

This region was greatly favored. Almost the first extensive