The clearings of Ravensnest were neither very large nor very inviting. In that day, the settlement of new lands was a slow and painful operation, and was generally made at a great outlay to the proprietor. Various expedients were adopted to free the earth from its load of trees; [33] for, at that time, the commerce of the colonies did not reward the toil of the settler in the same liberal manner as has since occurred. Herman Mordaunt, as we moved along, related to me the cost and trouble he had been at already, in getting the ten or fifteen families who were on his property, in the first place, to the spot itself; and, in the second place, to induce them to remain there. Not only was he obliged to grant leases for three lives, or, in some cases, for thirty or forty years, at rents that were merely nominal, but, as a rule, the first six or eight years the tenants were to pay no rent at all. On the contrary, he was obliged to extend to them many favours, in various ways, that cost no inconsiderable sum in the course of the year. Among other things, his agent kept a small shop, that contained the most ordinary supplies used by families of the class of the settler, and these he sold at little more than cost, for their accommodation, receiving his pay in such articles as they could raise from their half-tilled fields, or their sugar-bushes, and turning those again into money, only after they were transported to Albany, at the end of a considerable period. In a word, the commencement of such a settlement was an arduous undertaking, and the experiment was not very likely to succeed, unless the landlord had both capital and patience. The political economist can have no difficulty in discovering the causes of the circumstances just mentioned. They were to be found in the fact that people were scarce, while land was superabundant. In such a condition of society, the tenant had the choice of his farm, instead of the landlord's having a selection of his tenants, and the latter were to be bought only on such conditions as suited themselves. “You see,” continued Herman Mordaunt, as we walked together, conversing on this subject, “that my twenty thousand acres are not likely to be of much use to myself, even should they prove to be of any to my daughter. A century hence, indeed, my descendants may benefit from all this outlay of money and trouble; but it is not probable that either I or Anneke will ever see the principal and interest of the sums that will be expended in the way of roads, bridges, mills, and other things of that sort. Years must go by, before the light rents which will only begin to be paid a year or two hence, and then only by a very few tenants, can amount to a sufficient sum to meet the expenses of keeping up the settlement, to say nothing of the quit-rents to be paid to the crown.”