Lands further off, are Still better than those upon which they
are already settled.--Lord Dunmore, to the Earl of Dartmouth.


INTRODUCTION

The romantic and thrilling story of the southward and westward
migration of successive waves of transplanted European peoples
throughout the entire course of the eighteenth century is the
history of the growth and evolution of American democracy. Upon
the American continent was wrought out, through almost superhuman
daring, incredible hardship, and surpassing endurance, the
formation of a new society. The European rudely confronted with
the pitiless conditions of the wilderness soon discovered that
his maintenance, indeed his existence, was conditioned upon his
individual efficiency and his resourcefulness in adapting himself
to his environment. The very history of the human race, from the
age of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened
civilization, is traversed in the Old Southwest throughout the
course of half a century.

A series of dissolving views thrown upon the screen, picturing
the successive episodes in the history of a single family as it
wended its way southward along the eastern valleys, resolutely
repulsed the sudden attack of the Indians, toiled painfully up
the granite slopes of the Appalachians, and pitched down into the
transmontane wilderness upon the western waters, would give to
the spectator a vivid conception, in miniature, of the westward
movement. But certain basic elements in the grand procession,
revealed to the sociologist and the economist, would perhaps