Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/29

HISTOEICAL SKETCH. The men who began the settlement of the North-West, on the Ohio river, at the mouth of the Muskingum, in 1788, were men of culture; and, while cheerfullv undertaking the pei'ils and deprivations incident to a wilderness traversed by Indians, they provided that the refinements of art and literature should not altogether be denied them. The social and national festivals, which they had been accustomed to observe in New- England, whence they had emigrated, were maintained in their forest town. At Marietta the earhest orations and the earliest poems, as well as the first civil laws of the West, were produced. The hunters of Kentucky had, no doubt, snatches of rude song in which their heroic deeds were celebrated ; and, no doubt, earlier than the year 1789, leaders among them often made stirring addresses ; but the pioneer attentions to what may justly be claimed as Western Literature, were given at the first settlement made in the Ohio Company's purchase. At a celebration, on the Fourth of July, 1789, at Marietta, Return Jonathan Meigs^ pronounced an oration which concluded with the following lines, descriptive of the Ohio Valley as it then appeared, and as it was destined to become : Enough of tributary praise is paid, To virtue living, or to merit dead. To happier themes, the rural muse invites, To calmest pleasures, and serene delights. To us, glad fancy brightest prospects shows ; Rejoicing nature all around us glows : Here late the savage, hid in ambush, lay. Or roamed th' uncultured valleys for his prey ; Here frowned the forest with terrific shade ; No cultured fields exposed the opening glade. How changed the scene ! See nature clothed in smiles With joy repays the laborer for his toils ; Her hardy gifts rough industry extends, The groves bow down, the lofty forest bends ; On every side the cleaving axes sound — The oak and tall beech thunder to the ground : And see the spires of Marietta rise, And domes and temples swell into the skies ; Here justice reign, and foul dissension cease, Her walks be pleasant, and her paths be peace. 1 Then an attorney at law in Marietta ; in 1803, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio ; in 1804, Command- ant of the United States troops in the upper district of Louisiana ; in 1S05, one of the Judges of the Territory of Louisiana ; in 1807, one of the Judges of the Territory of Micliigan ; in 1808, elected Supreme Judge for Ohio ; in 1809, chosen United States Senator from Ohio ; in 1810, elected Governor of Ohio ; and in 1814, appointed Post- master General of the United States. He died, at Marietta, March twenty-ninth, 1825, aged sixty years. (13)