south, who
desire to remove beyond the boundaries and influence of a slave
population.

Slavery in the west, keeps nearly in the same parallels as it holds in
the east, and is receding south, as it does on the Atlantic coast. Many
descendants of the Scotch, Irish and Germans, have come into the
frontier states from Western Pennsylvania.

We have European emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland. Those of the
latter are more generally found about our large towns and cities, and
along the lines of canalling.

The French were the explorers and early settlers of the Valley
immediately bordering on the Mississippi, 150 years since. They formed
the basis of population of Louisiana a few years since, but are
relatively diminishing before the emigration from other states of the
Union. Their descendants show many of the peculiar and distinctive
traits of that people in all countries. They possess mild vivacity, and
gaiety, and are distinguished for their quiet, inoffensive, domestic,
frugal, and unenterprising spirit and manners. The poorer class of
French are rather peculiar and unique. Their ancestors were isolated
from the rest of the world, had no object of excitement or ambition,
cared little for wealth, or the accumulation of property, and were
accustomed to hunt, make voyages in their canoes, smoke and traffic with
the Indians. But few of them knew how to read and write. Accustomed from
infancy to the life of huntsmen, trappers and boatmen, they make but
indifferent farmers. They are contented to live in the same rude, but
neatly whitewashed cabin, cultivate the same cornfields in the same
mode, and drive the same rudely constructed horse cart their fathers
did. In the neatness of their gardens, which are usually cultivated by
the females, they excel the Americans. They are the _coureurs du bois_
of the West.

The European Germans are now coming into the Valley by thousands, and,
for a time, will retain their manners and language.

_Cotton and Sugar Planters._--These people, found chiefly in
Mississippi, Louisiana, and the southern part of Arkansas, have a great
degree of similarity. They are noted for their high-mindedness,
generosity, liberality, hospitality, sociability, quick sense of honor,
resentment of injuries, indolence, and, in too many cases, dissipation.
They are much addicted to the sports of the turf and the vices of the
gaming table. Still there are many planters of strictly moral, and even
religiou