It may be admitted at once that abundance of time was one of the main requirements for bringing about such a state of affairs, for colonies do not grow in a day, and putting aside all natural barriers, and those erected by the hostility of the old inhabitants, whom the colonists will in course of time drive from their own country, many, many years must pass before the tide of immigrants flows across the land. For those who come first naturally select suitable places nearest the coast, while those who come later settle within reach of their friends, exchanging commodities with them. Later arrivals are forced farther and farther away, till in time the settlements are found miles and miles from the coast. Look at North America to-day. She has added many states to those thirteen which existed in the days when Steve sat in the log hut with George Washington. Her people have overflowed the country, they have pushed the Red Indian back steadily, and to-day they swarm in almost every part. The virgin forest of that day, the haunt of the buffalo and the hunting grounds of the Indian, now resound to the clang of the hammer, to the crash of the train, and to the hum and roar of a thriving population. Thousands come to the land every year to swell the throng, and paucity of population is no longer a source of anxious thought for the governments of the various States. But it was in the year 1756. All told, the colonists of those thirteen States did not exceed a million and a half, while each one of the States may be said to have been of the size of England. It will be realised at once that it was all that such a population could do to colonise the neighbourhood of the coast, and that if the western border was to extend, thousands must come out to the country. As a matter of fact, however, few though the colonists were, their farms extended a considerable distance from the coast, and save in the towns, where they lived close together, the settlers were separated by wide intervals. They placed their huts for the most part in the fertile valleys, clinging to the rivers, thus having at hand the means of getting their corn and produce to the coast. And slowly, as the land was taken up, settlers took their farms farther and farther away, till some barrier arrested further progress. Such a barrier existed, and a glance at the map will show the position of the Alleghany Mountains, extending from Pennsylvania down to Georgia. It was not, of course, an obstacle which could not be surmounted, but it was for all that an obstacle which turned the would-be farmer back, for the simple reason that, with such a range stretching between him and the coast, there was no possibility of his getting his produce to market. Moreover, on the far side of that range Indians inhabited the forests, and they were an enemy to be reckoned with and feared. [Illustration: CANADA and OUR AMERICAN COLONY in 1755.]