The country people still kept up a weak struggle with hordes of wolves, and there were few villages in which men and beasts were not decimated every winter.[23] If the small-pox broke out, or any other infectious illness came into the country, the people saw the white figure of the pestilence flying through the air and settling down on their huts; they knew what such appearances betokened; it was the desolation of their homes, the destruction of whole communities; with gloomy resignation they awaited their fate. There was hardly any administration of justice in the country; only in the larger cities were powerless courts. The Starosts inflicted punishment with arbitrary power; they beat and threw into horrible jails, not only the peasant, but even the citizens of the country towns who rented their houses or fell into their hands. In their quarrels amongst themselves they contended by bribery, in any of the few courts that had jurisdiction over them. In later years, even that had almost fallen into disuse, and they sought revenge with their own hands. It was indeed a forlorn country, without discipline, without law, and without a master; it was a wilderness, with only a population of 500,000 on 600 square miles--not 850 to the mile. And the Prussian King treated his acquisition like an untenanted prairie; almost at his pleasure he fixed boundary stones, or removed them some miles further. And then he began, in his admirable way, the culture of the country; the very rottenness of its condition was attractive to him, and West Prussia became, as Silesia had hitherto been, his favourite child, that he washed and brushed, and dressed in new clothes, sent to school, controlled, and kept under his eyes, with incessant care like a true mother. The diplomatic contention about the acquisition still continued, but he sent a troop of his best officials into the wilderness; the districts were divided into small circles; the whole surface of the country valued in the shortest time, and equally taxed; and every circle provided with a provincial magistrate, a judicature, a post, and a sanitary police. New parishes were called into life as if by magic; a company of 187 schoolmasters were introduced into the country; the worthy Semler had sought out and drilled some of them. Numbers of German artisans were hired, machine and brick makers; digging, hammering, and building began all over the country; the cities were reinhabited; street upon street arose out of the heaps of ruins; the Starosties were changed into crown property; new villages were built and colonised, and new agriculture enjoined. In the course of the first year after taking possession of the country, the great canal was dug, three German miles in length, uniting the Vistula by means of the Netze with the Oder and Elbe; a year after, the King had given directions for this work, he saw loaded boats from the Oder, 120 feet long, passing from the East to the Vistula. By means of the new