Along the shores of the magnificent bays and estuaries of the Atlantic coast had already arisen many populous and thriving cities. Boston numbered more than 30,000 inhabitants; her trade was great; her shipping bore the produce of all countries through all seas, either as carriers for others, or to supply her own increasing demands; her sailors were noted for hardihood and skill, her mechanics for industry, and her merchants for thrift and enterprise; her councils, and the customs of her people, still bore the stamp which the hands of the Pilgrim Fathers had first impressed. Moral, sober, persevering, thoughtful, but narrow-minded and ungenial, they were little prone to allow the enjoyment of social intercourse to interfere with the pursuit of wealth. Although at times oppressive and always intolerant themselves, they ever resented with jealous promptitude the slightest infringement of their own freedom of conscience or action. They despised but did not pity the Indian, and had no scruple in profiting largely by the exchange of the deadly fire-water for his valuable furs. At the time of which we treat, the people of the New England States numbered more than 380,000; they were the bone and sinews of British power in America; in peace the most prosperous and enterprising, and in war the most energetic, if not the most warlike, of the Anglo-Americans. Their hostility against the French was more bitter than that of their southern fellow-countrymen: in the advance guard of British colonization they came more frequently in contact with the rival power, and were continually occupied in resisting or imitating its aggressions. The senseless and unchristian spirit of "natural enmity" had spread in an aggravated degree among the children of the two great European states who had cast their lot of life in the New World.