Oftener than human voice, the sonorous call of the moose, the wolf's long howl, the panther's cry, awoke its echoes, and the thud of the axe was a stranger sound than the rarest voice of nature. The eagle, swinging in majestic survey of the region, beheld far beneath him to the southward, here and there, a clustering hamlet and settlements creeping slowly upon his domain; here and there a mill, where a stream had been stayed in its idle straying; and here and there on the green bosom of the forest the unhealed wound of a new clearing, the bark roof of a settler's cabin, and the hazy upward drift of its chimney smoke; then to the northward, as far as his telescopic vision ranged, no break in the variegated verdure but the silver gleam of lake and stream, or the rugged barrenness of mountain tops. Although the settlement of the newly opened region did not progress with anything like the marvelous rapidity that has marked the occupation of new Territories and States in later times, yet it was remarkable, in consideration of the tedious journeys that must be made to the new pitch, with slow ox-cart or sled, or on horseback, where, if there were roads at all, they were of the worst, or they were made by weary oar or waft of unstable wind. Furthermore, there was but comparatively slight overflow of population from the older provinces, or influx of immigration to American shores. The settlers in the Wilderness soon found their peaceable possession obstructed by an obstacle which they had scarcely foreseen,--not by the harassments of a foreign or savage foe, which now seemed hardly possible, nor by the inert and active forces of nature that had always to be taken into account, but by the jealous rivalry and greed of two provincial governments, both claiming the same territory, and both deriving their authority from the same royal source. This controversy between New Hampshire and New York, concerning their respective boundaries, began with the first English settlement of the region, and continued till after the close of the Revolution. It constitutes the most unique feature of the history of the commonwealth; and though it retarded its settlement, and afterward for years its admission into the Union, it was the real cause of its becoming an independent State. For undoubtedly, if the claims of either province had been undisputed by the other, the region would have quietly taken its place as part of that, and have had no individual existence. But the aggressions which the people were compelled to resist schooled them to a spirit of independence that most naturally led them to establish a separate government. FOOTNOTES: