The length of time required to prepare a country covered by a wilderness, on a New-England soil, for cultivation, may be estimated by the facts I have stated. A long lapse of years must intervene, after the woods have been felled and their dried trunks and branches burned, before the stumps can be extracted, the land levelled, the stones removed, the plough introduced, or the smooth green fields, which give such beauty to agricultural scenes, be presented. An immense amount of the most exhausting labor must be expended in the process. The world looks with[i.30] wonder on the dykes of Holland, the wall of China, the pyramids of Egypt. I do not hesitate to say that the results produced by the small, scattered population of the American colonies, during their first century, in tearing up a wilderness by its roots, transforming the rocks, with which the surface was covered, into walls, opening roads, building bridges, and making a rough and broken country smooth and level, converting a sterile waste into fertile fields blossoming with verdure and grains and fruitage, is a more wonderful monument of human industry and perseverance than them all. It was a work, not of mere hired laborers, still less of servile minions, but of freemen owning, or winning by their voluntary and cheerful toil, the acres on which they labored, and thus entitling themselves to be the sovereigns of the country they were creating. A few thousands of such men, with such incentives, wrought wonders greater than millions of slaves or serfs ever have accomplished, or ever will.