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Later Geographies 345
of them have passed through several editions, some with great elegance and correctness.
Boston is built in a very irregular manner, on a peninsula, at the bottom of Massachusetts bay.
Southern Manners and Customs. The inquisitive traveller as he progresses southward no longer beholds so great a proportion of hardy, industrious, and healthy yeomanry, living on terms of equality and independence; their domestic economy neat and comfortable; their farms well stocked ; and their cattle sleek and thriving. On the contrary he discovers the farmhouses more thinly scattered, some of them miserable hovels; the retreats of small proprietors, who are too indolent or too proud to labour; here and there a stack of corn-fodder, and the cattle looking as miserable as their owners. A few miles distant perhaps he finds a large mansion house, the property of the lord of two or three thousand acres of land, surrounded by 50 or 100 negro-huts, constructed in the slightest manner; and about these cabins swarms of black slaves. But it is just to observe that many of the gentry are distinguishable for their polished manners and education, as well as for their great hospitality to strangers.
Cummings's Geography, 1814, apologizes in its preface for adding another " to the number of geographies, already so great as to obstruct, rather than promote improvement.,, This preface is very long, and is chiefly made up of directions " designed to assist teachers, who have had but imperfect, or no geographical instruction." It advises them to " let the pupils always set with, their faces towards the north." Then with their maps before them they will be in proper position to get the points of the compass straight in their minds. |
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