y and partial. A mass so heterogeneous in its origin
and tendency might not so readily amalgamate. Strife, discontent, and
contention, were not unfrequent; and the laborers at the same
instrument, mutually depending on each other, not uncommonly came to
blows over it. The successes of any one individual--for, as yet, their
labors were unregulated by arrangement, and each worked on his own
score--procured for him the hate and envy of some of the company, while
it aroused the ill-disguised dissatisfaction of all; and nothing was of
more common occurrence, than, when striking upon a fruitful and
productive section, even among those interested in the discovery, to
find it a disputed dominion. Copartners no longer, a division of the
spoils, when accumulated, was usually terminated by a resort to blows;
and the bold spirit and the strong hand, in this way, not uncommonly
acquired the share for which the proprietor was too indolent to toil in
the manner of his companions.

The issue of these conflicts, as may be imagined, was sometimes wounds
and bloodshed, and occasionally death: the field, we need scarcely
add--since this is the history of all usurpation--remaining, in every
such case, in possession of the party proving itself most courageous or
strong. Nor need this history surprise--it is history, veracious and
sober history of a period, still within recollection, and of events of
almost recent occurrence. The wild condition of the country--the absence
of all civil authority, and almost of laws, certainly of officers
sufficiently daring to undertake their honest administration, and
shrinking from the risk of incurring, in the performance of their
duties, the vengeance of those, who, though disagreeing among
themselves, at all times made common cause against the ministers of
justice as against a common enemy--may readily account for the frequency
and impunity with which these desperate men committed crime and defied
its consequences.

But we are now fairly in the centre of the village--a fact of which, in
the case of most southern and western villages, it is necessary in so
many words to apprize the traveller. In those parts, the scale by which
towns are laid out is always magnificent. The founders seem to have
calculated usually upon a population of millions; and upon spots and
sporting-grounds, measurable by the olympic coursers, and the ancient
fields of combat, when scythes and elephants and chariots made the
warriors