It is astonishing how quickly this "yellow streak" in the population faded. No doubt the worst felons were promptly hanged, so that those transported were such as excited the compassion of the court in an age that recognized nearly three hundred capital offenses. Then, too, the bulk were probably the unfortunate, or the victims of bad surroundings, rather than born malefactors. Under the regenerative stimulus of opportunity, many persons reformed and became good citizens. A like purification of sewage by free land was later witnessed in Australia. The incorrigible, when they did not slip back to their old haunts, forsook the tide-water belt to lead half-savage lives in the wilderness. Here they slew one another or were strung up by "regulators," so that they bred their kind less freely than the honest. Thus bad strains tended to run out, and in the making of our people the criminals had no share at all corresponding to their original numbers. Blended with the dregs from the rest of the population, the convicts who were lazy and shiftless rather than criminal became progenitors of the "poor whites," "crackers," and "sandhillers" that still cumber the poorer lands of the southern Appalachians. THE FRENCH HUGUENOTS Probably no stock ever came here so gifted and prepotent as the French Huguenots. Though only a few thousand all told, their descendants furnished 589 of the fourteen thousand and more Americans deemed worthy of a place in "Appletons' Cyclopedia of American Biography." In 1790 only one-half of one per cent. of our people bore a French name; yet this element contributed 4.2 per cent. of the eminent names in our history, or eight times their due quota. Like the Puritans and the Quakers, the Huguenots were of an element that meets the test of fire and makes supreme sacrifices for conscience' sake. They had the same affinity for ideals and the same tenacity of character as the founders of New England, but in their French blood they brought a sensibility, a fervor, and an artistic endowment all their own. It was likewise a sturdy stock, and in the early days of the settlement it was no unusual thing for parties to walk from New Rochelle to church in lower New York, a distance of twenty-three miles. As a rule they walked this distance with bare feet, carrying their shoes in their hands. THE GERMANS