Page:A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania.djvu/14

 as flourishing communities, on every continent. Deriving our descent from this redoubtable people through Anglo-Saxon ancestry, we are in this land to-day the representatives of a civilization which has never lost a foot of soil to which it has been transplanted, nor yielded, by force of arms, to any rival or competitor for supremacy; for wherever Anglo-Saxon domination has been carried, there has it been permanently established.

The colonists of North America had all the qualities to secure a permanent foothold, and to extend territorial dominion. They seem to have counted the cost of relinquishing the attractions and advantages of European civilization, and having determined to cast their lot in a distant land, and settle in a wilderness, were ready to undergo the privations, hardships, and frequent perils incident to so bold an undertaking. With stout hearts, vigorous frames, firm and unwavering faith, and confidence in an unconquerable will to surmount obstacles necessarily to be encountered, they persevered tenaciously in their efforts, and, slowly emerging from their difficulties, were eminently successful in converting the primeval forest into a dwelling-place of abundance and luxury. The country they were preordained to subjugate, and to transmit as an inheritance to their children, was no El Dorado. To obtain gold or silver, or precious stones, from its streams or mountains, entered into the imagination only of the wildest dreamers; but it possessed a virgin soil of untold richness, and bays and rivers of vast proportions; and it had every requisite for the support of an industrious, enterprising, self-reliant people, who would bestow their labor without stint, and by the sweat of their brow render nature herself conducive to the acquisition of independence, prosperity, and wealth. The settlers soon discovered that their land of promise was a cereal producing country, by the cultivation of which bread could be produced in abundance for domestic demand, and to spare; that the plough and the sickle were the engines of present and prospective affluence, and that upon the use of these must depend everything that contributes to the erection of a flourishing community, of a first-class power among the nations, with its commerce,