Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1879 — A New View of the First Settlers. [ARTICLE]

A New View of the First Settlers.

The picturesque lines ‘ of Mrs. Hemans about the dashing waves breaking high on a rock-bound and stem coast were not applicable to the placid waters of the classic Jeems and the sunny shores of the Carolinas. Our Illustrious ancestors, in crossing the Atlantic, were, no doubt, animated by the noble nuqioße of having a good time. Theirmedical advisers told them they wanted a change of air, and that they mium’t work too much with their brains. Life was heavy in Europe. There wasn’t such a Paris then as there is now. This continent contained the fatness of the ages In its soil. Virginia was a vast park filled with red deer The rivers were flush with fish, the air was full of canvas-1 ricked ducks and houey-bees, the bays were paved with oysters, the soft-shelled crabs tickled the sea-weed, and the point clams bored the sands, while the diamondback terrapin ambled away over the salt meadows. The fragrant sassafras tree gave its buds and roots to make tea delicious as the beverage of the celestials —and in the deep woods were autumnal rains of nuts on the tinted leaves—walnuts, hickory nuts, beech nuts, aud butternuts —and the papaws and persimmons, richer than Spanish figs, grew mellow and yellow in the white frosts, and fattened the succulent opossum—a providential preparation to soften the asperities of life for the approaching African. Talk of the hardships of the pioneers! They had a variety of sea-food and forest game that would have confounded the old Romans. They lived on the cream of the universe, and licked it up to the utmost of their highly-cultivated capacity. _