The infantile state of all countries exhibits, in a greater or less degree, a prevalence of barbarism. The planting of colonies, or the formation of establishments in new countries, is ever attended with circumstances unpropitious to refinement. The force with which these circumstances act, will be increased or diminished in proportion to the remoteness or proximity of those new establishments, to older societies, in which the arts and sciences are cultivated; and to the facility of communication between them. Man is, at all times, the creature of circumstances. Cut off from an intercourse with his fellow men, and divested of the conveniences of life, he will readily relapse into a state of nature.--Placed in contiguity with the barbarous and the vicious; his manners will become rude, his morals perverted.--Brought into collision with the sanguinary and revengeful; and his own conduct will eventually be distinguished, by bloody and vindictive deeds. Such was really the situation of those who made the first establishments in North Western Virginia. And when it is considered, that they were, mostly, men from the humble walks of life; comparatively illiterate and unrefined; without civil or religious institutions, and with a love of liberty, bordering on its extreme; their more enlightened descendants can not but feel surprise, that their dereliction from propriety had not been greater; their virtue less. The objects, for the attainment of which they voluntarily placed themselves in this situation, and tempted the dangers inseparable from a residence in the contiguity of Indians, jealous of territorial encroachment, were almost as various as their individual character. Generally speaking, they were men in indigent circumstances, unable to purchase land in the neigborhoods from which they came, and unwilling longer to remain the tenants of others. These were induced to [100] emigrate, with the laudable ambition of acquiring homes, from which they would not be liable to expulsion, at the whim and caprice of some haughty lordling. Upon the attainment of this object, they were generally content; and made but feeble exertions to acquire more land, than that to which they obtained title, by virtue of their settlements. Some few, however, availed themselves of the right of pre-emption, and becoming possessed of the more desirable portions of the country, added considerably to their individual wealth.