When the tide of emigration began to flow from New England to the newly opened land of promise in the West, Vermont still offered virgin fields to be won by the enterprising and ambitious young men of the older States. Thousands of acres, capable of bounteous fruitfulness, still lay in the perpetual shadow of the woods, untouched by spade or plough; and the forest growth of centuries was itself a harvest worth the gathering, while wild cataracts still invited masterful hands to tame them to utility.

Some decades elapsed before the young State began to furnish material for the founding and growth of other new commonwealths, except such restless spirits as can never find a congenial place but in the foremost rank of pioneers. Such an one was Matthew Lyon, who, having borne his part in the establishment of the first State of his adoption, early in the century removed to Kentucky, then farther westward to Missouri, in whose territorial government he had become the most prominent figure when death set a period to his enterprise and ambition.Though there were yet vast tracts in Vermont awaiting the axe and the plough, the fertile lands of the West began to draw from the State a steadily increasing flow of emigration. The tales of illimitable acres unencumbered by forest, and warmed by a genial climate, were attractive to men tired of warfare with the woods, and the beleaguering of bitter winters. The blood of their pioneering fathers was fresh in their veins, and impelled them to found new homes and new States.

The first migrations were made in wagons drawn by horses or oxen, and beneath whose tent-like covers were bestowed the bare necessities of household stuff and provision for the tedious journey.

After leave-takings as sad as funerals, the emigrants sorrowfully yet hopefully set forth. Slowly the beloved landmarks of the mountains sank as the miles lengthened behind them, and slowly unfolded before them level lands and sluggish streams. The earlier stages of the journey were relieved by trivial incidents, and the new experience of gypsy-like nightly encampment by the wayside; but as day after day and week after week passed, the new and unfamiliar scenes, still stranger and less homelike, grew wearisome to the tired men and jaded, homesick women and children, and incident became a monotonous round of discomfort.

In 1825 a swifter and easier path was opened to the West when, two years after the Champlain Canal had connected the waters of Lake Champlain and the Hudson, the Erie Canal was completed. The new thoroughfare was thronged with emigrants, of whom Vermont furnished her full share of families, and of enterprising young men seeking to better their fortunes in the land of plenty known there in common speech as "The 'Hio," or in that farther region of prairies whose western bound was the golden sunset, and where they whose plough had turned no virgin soil till the axe had first cleared its path should behold the miracle of fertile plains that had never been shadowed by forest. When the long journey was accomplished, a quarter of the continent lay between them and the old home; and though they lived out the allotted days of man, the separation of kindred and friends was often as final as that of death.

Mails were weeks in making the passage that is now accomplished in a few days; and the grass might be green on the graves of kindred and friends in the old or the new home before tidings of their death brought a new and sudden grief from the distant prairie, or from the New England hillside, where its pain had already grown dull with accustomed loss.

The course of emigration tended westward nearly within the parallels of latitude that bound New England, and but few pioneers of Vermont birth diverged much below the southward limit of a region whose climate, kindred, emigrants, and familiar institutions, transplanted from the East, most attracted them.

The fertile lands of Ohio were chosen by many, while more were drawn to Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, in all of whom Vermonters took their place as founders of homes and free commonwealths, and gave each some worthy characteristic of that from which they came. When gold was discovered in California, many Vermonters flocked thither in quest of fortune, and many remained there to become life-long citizens of the State in whose marvelous growth they were a part.

From their inauguration, the great railroad systems of the West have made another and continuous drain upon the best population of the East; and in every department of the enormous business men of Vermont birth and training are found conspicuously honored for their ability and integrity.

The rapidly growing cities, the immense sheep and cattle ranches, and all the new enterprises of the whole West, have drawn great numbers of ambitious young Vermonters to every State and Territory of the wonderful region. Indeed, there is not a State in the Union in which some Vermonters have not made their home; but however far they may have wandered from the land of their birth, they cherish the mountaineer's love of home, and a just pride in the goodly heritage of their birthright.

Wherever in their alien environment they have congregated to any considerable number, they are associated as Sons of Vermont. Chicago boasts the largest society, as its State does the greatest number of citizens, of Vermont birth.[106] St. Louis has a large association of the kind, as have other Western cities. Even so near their old home as Boston,[107] Worcester, Providence, and Brooklyn, the Sons of Vermont gather annually to refresh fond memories, and celebrate the virtues of their beloved State.

To fill the place left by this constant drain on its population, the State has for the most part received a foreign element, which, though it keeps her numbers good, poorly compensates for her loss.

Invasions of Vermont from Canada did not cease with the War of the Revolution, nor with the later war with Great Britain. On the contrary, an insidious and continuous invasion began with the establishment of commercial and friendly relations between the State and the Province. Early in the century, a few French Canadians, seeking the small fortune of better wages, came over the border, and along the grand waterway which their noble countryman had discovered and given his name, and over which so many armies of their people had passed, sometimes in the stealth of maraud, sometimes in all the glorious pomp of war. At first the few new-comers were tenants of the farmers, for whom they worked by the day or month at fair wages, for the men were expert axemen, familiar with all the labors of land-clearing, and as handy as Yankees with scythe and sickle; while their weather-browned wives and grown-up daughters could reap and bind as well as they, and did not hold themselves above any outdoor work.

After a while some acquired small holdings of a few acres, or less than one, and built thereon log houses, that with eaves of notched shingles and whitewashed outer walls, with the pungent odor of onions and pitch-pine fires, looked and smelled as if they had been transplanted from Canada with their owners.

When the acreage of meadow land and grain field had broadened beyond ready harvesting by the resident yeomen, swarms of Canadian laborers came flocking over the border in gangs of two or three, baggy-breeched and moccasined habitants, embarked in rude carts drawn by shaggy Canadian ponies. After a month or two of haymaking and harvesting, they jogged homeward with their earnings, whereunto were often added some small pilferings, for their fingers were as light as their hearts. This annual wave of inundation from the north ceased to flow with the general introduction of the mowing-machine; and the place in the meadow once held by the rank of habitants picturesque in garb, swinging their scythes in unison to some old song sung centuries ago in France, has been usurped by the utilitarian device that, with incessant chirr as of ten thousand sharded wings, mingling with the music of the bobolinks, sweeps down the broad acres of daisies, herdsgrass, and clover.Many Canadians returned with their families to live in the land which they had spied out in their summer incursions, and so in one way and another the influx continued till they have become the most numerous of Vermont's foreign population.

For years the State was infested with an inferior class of these people, who plied the vocation of professional beggars. They made regular trips through the country in bands consisting of one or more families, with horses, carts, and rickety wagons, and a retinue of curs, soliciting alms of pork, potatoes, and breadstuffs at every farmhouse they came to, and pilfering when opportunity offered. In the large towns there were depots where the proceeds of their beggary and theft were disposed of. They were an abominable crew of vagabonds, robust, lazy men and boys, slatternly women with litters of filthy brats, and all as detestable as they were uninteresting. They worked their beats successfully, till their pitiful tales of sickness, burnings-out, and journeyings to friends in distant towns were worn threadbare, and then they gradually disappeared, no one knows whither.

Almost to a man, the Canadians who settled in Vermont were devout Catholics when they came; but after they had been scattered for a few years among such a preponderant Protestant community, most of them were held very loosely by the bonds of mother church. Except they were residents of the larger towns they seldom saw a priest, and enjoyed a comfortable immunity from fasting, penance, and all ecclesiastic exactions on stomach or purse. On New Year's Day, perhaps the members of the family confessed to the venerable grandsire, but after that suffered no religious inconvenience until the close of the year. Now and then one strayed quite out of the fold and took his place boldly among the heretics, and apparently did not thereby forfeit the fellowship of his more faithful compatriots. But when the flock had become large enough to pay for the shearing, shepherds of the true faith were not wanting. With that steadfast devotion to the interests of their church which has always characterized the Catholic priesthood, these men began their work without ostentation, and have succeeded in drawing into the domination of their church a large majority of the Canadian-born inhabitants of Vermont and of their descendants, as completely as if they were yet citizens of the province, which Parkman truly says, is "one of the most priest-ridden communities of the modern world."

What this leaven may finally work in the Protestant mass with which it has become incorporated is a question that demands more attention than it has yet received.

The character of these people is not such as to inspire the highest hope for the future of Vermont, if they should become the most numerous of its population. The affiliation with Anglo-Americans of a race so different in traits, in traditions, and in religion must necessarily be slow, and may never be complete.No great love for their adopted country can be expected of a people that evinces so little for that of its origin as lightly to cast aside names that proudly blazon the pages of French history for poor translations or weak imitations of them in English, nor can broad enlightenment be hoped for of a race so dominated by its priesthood.

Vermont, as may be seen, has given of her best for the building of new commonwealths, to her own loss of such material as has made her all that her sons, wherever found, are so proud of,—material whose place no alien drift from northward or over seas can ever fill.

FOOTNOTES: