CONCLUSION 367 APPENDIX 373 SOCIETY IN AMERICA. PART II. CONTINUED. CHAPTER II. TRANSPORT AND MARKETS. "Science and Art urge on the useful toil; New mould a climate, and create the soil. On yielding Nature urge their new demands, And ask not gifts, but tribute, at her hands." _Barbauld._ Nature has done so much for the United States in this article of their economy, and has indicated so clearly what remained for human hands to do, that it is very comprehensible to the traveller why this new country so far transcends others of the same age in markets and means of transport. The ports of the United States are, singularly enough, scattered round the whole of their boundaries. Besides those on the seaboard, there are many in the interior; on the northern lakes, and on thousands of miles of deep rivers. No nook in the country is at a despairing distance from a market; and where the usual incentives to enterprise exist, the means of transport are sure to be provided, in the proportion in which they are wanted. Even in the south, where, the element of wages being lost, and the will of the labourer being lost with them, there are no adequate means of executing even the best-conceived enterprises,[1] more has been done than could have been expected under the circumstances. The mail roads are still extremely bad. I found, in travelling through the Carolinas and Georgia, that the drivers consider themselves entitled to get on by any means they can devise: that nobody helps and nobody hinders them. It was constantly happening that the stage came to a stop on the brink of a wide and a deep puddle, extending all across the road. The driver helped himself, without scruple, to as many rails of the nearest fence as might serve to fill up the bottom of the hole, or break our descent into it. On inquiry, I found it was not probable that either road or fence would be mended till both had gone to absolute destruction. The traffic on these roads is so small, that the stranger feels himself almost lost in the wilderness. In the course of several days' journey, we saw, (with the exception of the wagons of a few encampments,) only one vehicle besides our own. It was a stage returning from Charleston. Our meeting in the forest was like the meeting of ships at sea. We asked the passengers from the south for news from Charleston and Europe; and they questioned us about the state of politics at Washington. The eager vociferation of drivers and passengers was such as is very unusual, out of exile. We were desired to give up all thoughts of going by the eastern road to Charleston. The road might be called impassable; and there was nothing to eat by the way. So we described a circuit, by Camden and Columbia.