How much of the land had been previously cleared by the aboriginal
tribes, it may be somewhat difficult to determine. They were but
slightly attached to the soil, had temporary and movable habitations,
and no bulky implements or articles of furniture. They were nomadic in
their habits. On the coast and its inlets, their light canoes gave
easy means of transportation, for their families and all that they
possessed, from point to point, and, further inland, over intervening
territory, from river to river. They probably seldom attempted, in
this part of the country, to clear the rugged and stony uplands. In
some instances, they removed the trees from the soft alluvial meadows,
although it is probable that in only a very few localities they would
have attempted such a persistent and laborious undertaking. There were
large salt marshes, and here and there meadows, free from timber.
There were spots where fires had swept over the land and the trees
disappeared. On such spots they probably planted their corn; the land
being made at once fertile and easily cultivable, by the effects of
the fires. Near large inland sheets of water, having no outlets
passable by their canoes, and well stocked with fish, they sometimes
had permanent plantations, as at Will's Hill. With such slight
exceptions, when the white settler came upon his grant, he found it
covered by the primeval wilderness, thickly set with old trees, whose
roots, as well as branches, were interlocked firmly with each other,
the surface obstructed with tangled and prickly underbrush; the soil
broken, and mixed with rocks and stones,--the entire face of the
country hilly, rugged, and intersected by swamps and winding streams.

Among all the achievements of human labor and perseverance recorded in
history, there is none more herculean than the opening of a
New-England forest to cultivation. The fables of antiquity are all