Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/20

12 is probable, however, that his portrayal of the animosity of political divisions is substantially accurate; and that not only did "politics run high" at the tavern and political club, but it controlled the social coterie, and in early American society adjusted lines of relationship more strictly than is evident today.

The areas which Cuming visited were those, with the exception of Tennessee, in which were to be found the most characteristic features of Western life. Western Pennsylvania and Northwestern Virginia comprised a homogeneous population, living under similar conditions. Closely allied was Kentucky, although it was beginning to be modified by settled conditions, the prosperity of low, rich pasture lands, and its distance from Eastern markets. In Ohio, however, Cuming encountered the New England element—but well mixed with Southerners on the Virginia bounty-lands, French of the Gallipolis settlement, and New Jersey and Middle States emigration to the region of the Miamis. His narrative, continued down the Ohio, shows the scarcity of population in Indiana and Illinois, and in Kentucky below Louisville; also the frontier character of that region as far down the Mississippi as the Natchez district. Here again, Cuming meets with an area of settlement begun under the British rule of West Florida, and continued under Spanish authority, until a few years before his voyage. In Mississippi, he portrays to us the beginnings of plantation life—the large estates, with gangs of negroes; the hospitality, cultivation, and charm of the upper classes, jostled by the rude waifs and strays that the river traffic wafted to their landings. In spite of diversities, the characteristics of Western life had much sameness—the mingling of the population, the shifting of people from all sections, and the dependence upon the rivers as the great arteries of Western