the acquisition of demesnes, to build up a new commonwealth
in an un-peopled region; they came with their wives, and their children,
and their kindred, from places where the toil of the hand, and the sweat
of the brow, could hardly supply them with bread, to a land in which
ordinary industry would, almost at once, furnish all the necessaries of
life, and when it was plain well-directed effort would ultimately secure
its ease, its dignity, and its refinements. Poor in the past, and with
scarce a hope, without a change of place, of a better condition of
earthly existence, either for themselves or their offspring, they saw
themselves, _with_ that change, rich in the future, and looked forward
with certainty to a time when their children, if not themselves, would
be in a condition improved beyond compare.

"There was also a third class of pioneers, who in several respects
differed as much from either the first or the second class, as these
differed from each other. This class was composed, in great part, of men
who came to Kentucky after the way had been in some measure prepared for
immigrants, and yet before the setting in of that tide of population
which, a year or two after the close of the American Revolution, poured
so rapidly into these fertile regions from several of the Atlantic
States. In this class of immigrants, there were many gentlemen of
education, refinement, and no inconsiderable wealth; some of whom came
to Kentucky as surveyors, others as commissioners from the parent State,
and others again as land speculators; but most of them as _bona fide_
immigrants, determined to pitch their tents in the Great West, at once
to become _units_ of a new people, and to grow into affluence, and
consideration, and renown, with the growth of a young and vigorous
commonwealth.

"Such were the founders of Kentucky; and in them we behold the elements
of a society inferior, in all the essentials of goodness and greatness,
to none in the world. First came the hunter and trapper, to trace the
river courses, and spy out the choice spots of the land; then came the
small farmer and the hardy adventurer, to cultivate the rich plains
discovered, and lay the nucleuses of the towns and cities, which were
so soon, and so rapidly, to spring up; and then came the surveyor, to
mark the boundaries of individual possessions and give civil shape and
strength to the unformed mass, the speculator to impart a new activity
and keenness to the mi