record a similar process: but the solitary labourer, whose constant warfare with an exulting and exuberant nature does little more than assure him an independent existence, has no time to describe the course and the result of his toils: and the progress of the modern settler is recorded less by himself, than by a civilized society, whose offset he is; which watches his fortunes with interest and judges them with intelligence; which finds in his career the solution of problems that distract itself, and never forgets that he yet shares in the cultivation he has left behind him. Still the manner in which such solitary households gradually spread over and occupy a country, must be nearly the same in all places, where they exist at all. The family increases in number; the arable is extended to provide food; the pasture is pushed further and further as the cattle multiply, or as the grasslands become less productive. Along the banks of the river which may have attracted the feelings or the avarice of the wanderer, which may have guided his steps in the untracked wilderness, or supplied the road by which he journeyed, the footsteps of civilization move upward: till, reaching the rising ground from which the streams descend on either side, the vanguards of two parties meet, and the watershed becomes their boundary, and the place of meeting for religious or political purposes. Meantime, the ford, the mill, the bridge have become the nucleus of a village, and the blessings of mutual intercourse and family bonds have converted the squatters’ settlement into a centre of wealth and happiness. And in like manner is it, where a clearing in the forest, near a spring or well[124],—divine, for its uses to man,—has been made; and where, by slow degrees, the separated families discover each other, and find that it is not good for man to be alone. ----- Footnote 124: Water seems the indispensable condition of a settlement in any part of the world: hence, in part, the worship paid to it. It is the very key to the history of the East. -----