eagerly read in England, the rapidly developing West was particularly prominent. Curiosity regarding the East was readily sated—the West appealed to Englishmen as a new and unknown land, but lately the haunt of Indians and beasts, now the home of hordes of land-speculators and of a rude but interesting race of border-men. Enticements of every conceivable sort were thrown out to induce settlers thither—the salubrity of the climate, the fertility of the land, were extolled; freedom from taxation, and the benefits of a liberal government were merits glowingly set forth—here were homes for the world, ready for the taking. The more sober projectors did not fail to observe the immediate difficulties and hardships of frontier conditions; it was foreseen, however, that these were but temporary obstacles, to vanish before the will and energy of the active man, who by industry alone might possess that coveted boon of the Old World, land for self and posterity. English capitalists brought money for investment, colonies were planned, towns were laid out, families were transplanted to found a new Albion in the then Far West. Among these schemes the Illinois settlement of Morris Birkbeck and George Flower, described in Volume X of our series, acquired most prominence, and was widely extolled or fiercely attacked by succeeding English visitors.
The accounts of travellers—many of them less valuable than the paper on which they were printed—having in view a definite purpose either to increase or to discourage English emigration, might well have been ignored by American readers. But the sensitive pride of the people of the United States was aroused, when the English reviewers made such volumes of travel the medium of savage and cynical attacks upon American life and institutions.
