wants to improve the land, chooses a piece, pays the landlord for 100 acres 10 Pound Sterling local money, and binds himself to pay an annual rent of half a penny for each acre,—he then becomes absolute owner, and the little ground rent can never be increased. Sometimes the hunter builds a wooden hut, and the nearest neighbors in the wilderness help cut the timber, build the log hut, fill the crevices with mud, put on the roof and put in windows and doors, and in return the owner pays them with a gallon of brandy, and by a like good service in turn. Then he lays out his garden and pasture and fields, cuts out the underbrush, tops the big trees and strips the bark, so that he can sow and reap, the trees die and hurt neither land nor crops. Many hunters have thus settled the wilderness,—they are soon followed by poor Scotch or Irish who are looking for homes,—these they find in this half improved condition,—they buy from the hunters, get a patent from the Proprietors, paying the usual charge. The hunter moves off into the wilderness and goes to work again. The Scotch or Irishman completes the half finished task, builds a better house of sawed timber, uses the old log hut for a stable, later builds a house of brick and his timber house is a good barn. Scotch and Irish often sell to the Germans, of whom from 90 to 100,000 live in Pennsylvania, and prefer to put all their earnings into land and improvements. The Scotch or Irish are satisfied with a fair profit, put the capital into another farm, leaving the Germans owners of the old farms. In Pennsylvania there is no law to prevent cutting up a farm into very small holdings nor to forbid the purchase of very large bodies of land. There is no danger from either course, for there is land enough for rich and poor, and the former prefer the larger profits from trade to the small return from land. In New England, unlike Pennsylvania, a good deal of land is let to farmers, for there are many rich owners of large estates,—this is so too in the Carolinas, and in other Colonies where owners of 10 or 20 or more thousands of acres bring settlers at their own expense to improve their land. Kalm mentions similar cases in New York.

When an owner of land dies intestate, and there are many children to inherit the father's farm, it is generally taken by the eldest son, and the younger children get in money their share of its appraised value,—the eldest son gets two shares, the other children only one apiece. The father of a large family takes from the Proprietary a large tract of land, which on his death can be divided among all his children. In New England improvement of the land is made in a more regular way than in Pennsylvania,—whole towns are laid out, and as soon as sixty families agree to build a church and support a Minister and a Schoolmaster, the Provincial government gives them the required privilege, carrying with it the right to elect two deputies to the Legislature, from the grant of 6 English square miles. Then the town or village is laid out in a square, with the church in the centre. The land is divided and each works his own, leaving however the forest in common, and with the privilege of laying out another village in time. In this way new settlements grow in New England in regular order and succession,—every new village touching on an old one, and all steadily increasing in wealth and numbers. Nothing of this kind is done in Pennsylvania, where the Proprietor wants only to sell land and as much as any one wants and wherever he likes. The mistake of this was shown in the Indian wars. On the border were scattered houses and farms, which could not help one another, and they were attacked singly, plundered and destroyed, and the ruined owners with their families took refuge with the older settlements, which became burthened with their care.

Blacks are found in Virginia, Maryland and the two Carolinas in large numbers, but very few