Litchfield enquirer., 1829-07-02

t0WeHe-O1 prOolFotee eOlumnS,e ot cities
 once renowned and powerful reduced to
 miserable ruins and crowded provinces
 turned into deserts. While these latter ob- jects are thought suficient to reward the
 traveller for distant pilgrimage to foreign
 countries, he may well be pardoned for
 feeling himself attracted by the opposite
 spectacle which is presented to him at
 home a scene, not Ofdecay, but of teenl-
 ing life; OfimprOvement almost too rapid
 to seem the result of h6maI means.
 It is remark often quoted of celebra-
 ted foreign statesman, TaIIeyrand,) that
 America presents, as you travel westward,
 in point of space, ,the samesuccession of ap-
 pearances, which may be traced in Europe
 as you go back in point of time; that as
 you move from the coast toward the inte-
 rior on this continent, you pass through
 those stages of civilization which are found
 in Europe as you follow its history back to
 the primitive ages. If we take the abori-
 ginal tribes of our continent into the sur-
 vey, there is some foundation for the re-
 mark, but applied to our own population,
 it is rather ingenious than solid. The
 scene presented by our western country, is
 not that of. a barbarous, race, growing up
 like the primitive tribes. of Europe, into
 civilized nations but it is the far more in-
 teresting, because the more rapid and in-
 telligent progress of civiIized people, ex-
 tending itself through rude wilderness.
 and transplanting the mature arts of life
 into the hidden recesses Of the forest.-
 The traveller, who penetrates thousand
 or two thousand miles from the coast to
 the interior, may find, il is true, the log
 hut of the first settlers, as ke may ind witF-
 in the limits of Philadelphia and New York, aye, of Paris or London, many a wretched
 hovel far less conlmOdious but lie viii al- so find here substantiai dwellings; spacious and even magnificent mansions -the a. bodes of competence and Of abundance
 surrounded by all the Indications of the improved arts of life. have learned, to my astonishment, that within twenty years the city of Nashville has grown up,s from not exceeding four or five brick houses, to its present condition, as large, populous, and thriving capital, the mart ofa great and increasing commerce, exhibiting, for the number of it's inhabitants, as many costly edi6ces as any city in the Union.- The log houses have disappeared, not in the lapse of two thousand, or even of two hundred years, but in the lapse of twenty years-the primitive forts of the old hun Iers are gone, not by the decay of age, but in the progress ofsociety for 8 single gen-1 sration. Far as we are from the coast, we walk abroad and find ourselves not in the rude infancy of society, but in the midst of it's arts-its refnements, and its elegan- cies--the product not of centuries, but of the life of man. We are told that
 "A thousand years scarce serve to form . state,
 "An hour may lar i9sin the dpas,' g4s
 The reverse seems almost true. While we contemplate in Europe the fate of king loms, that have been toitering for ages , ,n the brink of decay, slowly dying for a 1, housand years, we behold our own repub- ics rising into maturity within the experi- nee of a generation. Were they not our ountrymen, our fathers did not the grey { airs of few surviving veterans carry con- ( fiction to our minds, we could scarce cred- { the narrative ofthe pioneers of the west rn settlements. It was not till 1764, that : ven Daniel Boone, whose flight from will erness to wilderness forms a sort of He- l ira in the west, made his appearance in Cast Tennessee. The first cession of land obtained by treaty of the Indians in this State is of no older date than April l775,l momentous month, as if the great order # events in the c9nntry's progress requi- | ed, simultane eonsly as the blow was seruck,l which gave independence to America, the portals of the western mountains should De brown open to her sons, who have hither- o been forbidden, by authority from the Grown, to extend their settlements beyond the Ohio. All those high spirited adsen- turers cannot have passed off the stage, who moved forward at the head of the column of the first emigrants. It is related that in the wear 1766, not c white man wasto0nd settled on the Tennessee or the Cnmber- land, by party who, in that year, descen- ! ded these rivers. The population of tho State, at tthe present period. cannot be less lhan 600, ,OOO. ssSssn s@stsd yss3
 But itsis not merely the rapid growth of the western settlemsnts into ,pcpulous States, that surprises the traveller from the sea coast. For this growth he must bel prepared, because he finds 1t set down in the statistical tables of the country, end be- cause, as mere matter Of figures, he can- not but comprehend is. Thaewhich strikes him with astonishment is the advanced