sterile waste into fertile fields blossoming with verdure and grains
and fruitage, is a more wonderful monument of human industry and
perseverance than them all. It was a work, not of mere hired laborers,
still less of servile minions, but of freemen owning, or winning by
their voluntary and cheerful toil, the acres on which they labored,
and thus entitling themselves to be the sovereigns of the country they
were creating. A few thousands of such men, with such incentives,
wrought wonders greater than millions of slaves or serfs ever have
accomplished, or ever will.

It was not, therefore, from mere favoritism, or a blind subserviency
to men of wealth or station, that such liberal grants of land were
made to Winthrop, Dudley, Endicott, and others, but for various wise
and good reasons, having the welfare and happiness of the whole
people, especially the poorer classes, in view. In illustration of the
one now under consideration, a few facts may be presented. They will
show the amount of labor required to bring the "Orchard Farm" into
cultivation, and which must have been procured at a large outlay in
money by the proprietor. In the court-files are many curious papers,
in the shape of depositions given by witnesses in suits of various
kinds, arising from time to time, showing that large numbers of hired
men were kept constantly at work. Nov. 10, 1678, Edmund Grover,
seventy-eight years old, testified, "that, above forty-five years
since, I, this deponent, wrought much upon Governor Endicott's farm,
called Orchard, and did, about that time, help to cut and cleave about
seven thousand palisadoes, as I remember, and was the first that made
improvement thereof, by breaking up of ground and planting of
Indian-corn." The land was granted to Endicott in July, 1632; and the
work in which Grover, with others, was engaged, commenced undoubtedly
forthwith. Palisadoes were young trees, of about six inches in