Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 8).djvu/115

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hardy, intelligent and virtuous; her climate is salubrious and her soil fertile; her hills are covered with cattle, and her vallies wave with grain. Industry, economy, and mechanical genius are conspicuous characteristics of her people; and a thousand streams, intersecting the whole country, tender to the manufacturing interest their powerful agencies. In point of hospitality too she {13} is second to none; and the virtue, benevolence, and beauty of her daughters are, at once, the inspiration and the reward of valour.

Within a few years I have visited nearly all the states and territories of United America. I have noticed their respective moral and physical character, and have viewed them in relation to the ordinary causes of the rise and fall of nations. Should the freedom of this country ever perish, one of her last intrenchments will be in the mountains of New-Hampshire. Her citizens, however, must, by adhering to her constitution, and by proper systems of education, preserve in their minds a knowledge of the first principles of civil liberty, a due sense of the importance of morality, and a lively interest in the transactions of the Revolution. The whole history of that great event should, with us, constitute an indispensable part of education. But in speaking much of its battles, we must think more of its principles. The latter were so perfectly correct; and the manner of acting upon them was so candid, so humane, so firm, so steady, and so persevering, that no political event, since the creation of man, merits half so much admiration as the achievement of our independence.

Before leaving New-Hampshire I may say a word respecting Connecticut river. It is one of the most pleasant and useful rivers in the world. It generally preserves a distance of from eighty to one hundred miles from the ocean, and meanders through a very fertile country to the