to form
a part. The expedients of the pioneers who first broke ground in the settlement
of this country, are succeeded by the permanent improvements of the yeoman, who
intends to leave his remains to moulder under the sod which he tills, or,
perhaps, of the son, who, born in the land, piously wishes to linger around the
grave of his father. - Only forty years2 have passed since this territory was a
wilderness.
    Very soon after the establishment of the independence of the States by the
peace of 1783, the enterprise of their citizens was directed to a development of
the natural advantages of their widely extended dominions. Before the war of the
revolution, the inhabited parts of the colony of New-York were limited to less
than a tenth of its possessions. A narrow belt of country, extending for a short
distance on either side of the Hudson, with a similar occupation of fifty miles
on the banks of the Mohawk, together with the islands of Nassau and Staten, and
a few insulated settlements on chosen land along the margins of streams,
composed the country, which was then inhabited by less than two hundred thousand
souls. Within the short period we have mentioned, the population has spread
itself over five degrees of latitude and seven of longitude, and has swelled to
a million and a half of inhabitants3, who are maintained in abundance, and can
look forward to ages before the evil day must arrive, when their possessions
shall become unequal to their wants.
    Our tale begins in 1793, about seven years after the commencement of one of
the earliest of those settlements, which have conduced to effect that magical
change in the power and condition of the state, to which we have alluded.
    It was near the setting of the sun, on a clear, cold day in December, when a
sleigh was moving slowly up one of the mountains in the district we have
described. The day had been fine for the season, and but two or three large
clouds, whose colour seemed brightened by the light reflected from the mass of
snow that covered the earth, floated in a sky of the purest blue. The road wound
along the brow of a precipice, and on one side was upheld by a foundation of
logs, piled one upon the other, while a narrow excavation in the mountain, in
the opposite direction, had made a passage of sufficient width for the ordinary
travelling of that day. But logs, excavation, and every thing that did not reach
several feet above the earth, lay alike buried beneath the snow. A single track,
barely wide enough to receive the