bold, impertinent, and vain. In the art of war (after the Indian
manner) they are well-skilled, are enterprising and fruitful of
strategies; and, when in action, are as bold and intrepid as the
ancient Romans. The Shawnese acknowledge them their superiors
even in their own way of fighting . . . . [The land] may be truly
called the land of the mountains, for they are so numerous that
when you have reached the summit of one of them, you may see
thousands of every shape that the imagination can suggest,
seeming to vie with each other which should raise his lofty head
to touch the clouds . . . . It seems to me that nature has been
wanton in bestowing her blessings on that country."

An excellent pen-picture of educational and cultural conditions
in the backwoods of North Carolina, by one of the early settlers
in the middle of the century, exhibits in all their barren
cheerlessness the hardships and limitations of life in the
wilderness. The father of William Few, the narrator, had trekked
down from Maryland and settled in Orange County, some miles east
of the little hamlet of Hillsborough. "In that country at that
time there were no schools, no churches or parsons, or doctors or
lawyers; no stores, groceries or taverns, nor do I recollect
during the first two years any officer, ecclesiastical, civil or
military, except a justice of the peace, a constable and two or
three itinerant preachers . . . . These people had few wants, and
fewer temptations to vice than those who lived in more refined
society, though ignorant. They were more virtuous and more happy
. . . . A schoolmaster appeared and offered his services to teach
the children of the neighborhood for twenty shillings each per
year . . . . In that simple state of society money was but little
known; the schoolmaster was the welcome guest of his pupil, fed