s own, he will cross the seas, plant himself on the prairie
or amidst the primeval forest, and make for himself a home. The solitude
of the wilderness has no fears for him; the society of his wife and
family is sufficient, and he cares for no other. Hence it is that the
people of Germanic origin, from whom the English and Americans have
alike sprung, make the best of colonizers, and are now rapidly extending
themselves as emigrants and settlers in all parts of the habitable
globe.

The French have never made any progress as colonizers, mainly because
of their intense social instincts--the secret of their graces of
manner,--and because they can never forget that they are Frenchmen. [1815]
It seemed at one time within the limits of probability that the French
would occupy the greater part of the North American continent. From
Lower Canada their line of forts extended up the St. Lawrence, and from
Fond du Lac on Lake Superior, along the River St. Croix, all down the
Mississippi, to its mouth at New Orleans. But the great, self-reliant,
industrious "Niemec," from a fringe of settlements along the seacoast,
silently extended westward, settling and planting themselves everywhere
solidly upon the soil; and nearly all that now remains of the original
French occupation of America, is the French colony of Acadia, in Lower
Canada.

And even there we find one of the most striking illustrations of
that intense sociability of the French which keeps them together, and
prevents their spreading over and planting themselves firmly in a new
country, as it is the instinct of the men of Teutonic race to do. While,
in Upper Canada, the colonists of English and Scotch descent penetrate
the forest and the wilderness, each settler living, it may be, miles
apart from his nearest neighbour, the Lower Canadians of French descent
continue clustered together in villages, usually consisting of a line of
houses on either side of the road, behind which extend their long
strips of farm-land, divided and subdivided to an extreme tenuity. They
willingly submit to all the inconveniences of this method of farming for
the sake of each other's society, rather than betake themselves to the
solitary backwoods, as English, Germans, and Americans so readily do.
Indeed, not only does the American backwoodsman become accustomed to
solitude, but he prefers it. And in the Western States, when settlers
come too near him, and the country seems to become "overcrowded,"