Michaux, p. 63, etc.] Men fresh from England rarely succeeded. [Footnote:  Parkinson’s “Tour in America, 1798-1800,” pp. 504, 588, etc.  Parkinson loathed the Americans.  A curious example of how differently the same facts will affect different observers may be gained by contrasting his] The most pitiable group of emigrants that reached the West at this time was formed by the French [Footnote:  observations with those of his fellow Englishman, John Davis, whose trip covered precisely the same period; but Parkinson’s observations as to the extreme difficulty of an Old Country farmer getting on in the backwoods regions are doubtless mainly true.] who came to found the town of Gallipolis, on the Ohio.  These were mostly refugees from the Revolution, who had been taken in by a swindling land company.  They were utterly unsuited to life in the wilderness, being gentlemen, small tradesmen, lawyers, and the like.  Unable to grapple with the wild life into which they found themselves plunged, they sank into shiftless poverty, not one in fifty showing industry and capacity to succeed.  Congress took pity upon them and granted them twenty-four thousand acres in Scioto County, the tract being known as the French grant; but no gift of wild land was able to insure their prosperity.  By degrees they were absorbed into the neighboring communities, a few succeeding, most ending their lives in abject failure. [Footnote:  Atwater, p. 159; Michaux, p. 122, etc.]

    Trouble with Land Titles.

The trouble these poor French settlers had with their lands was far from unique.  The early system of land sales in the West was most unwise.  In Kentucky and Tennessee the grants were made under the laws of Virginia and North Carolina, and each man purchased or preempted whatever he could, and surveyed it where he liked, with a consequent endless confusion of titles.  The National Government possessed the disposal of the land in the Northwest and in Mississippi; and it avoided the pitfall of unlimited private surveying; but it made little effort to prevent swindling by land companies, and none whatever to people the country with actual settlers.  Congress granted great tracts of lands to companies and to individuals, selling to the highest bidder, whether or not he intended personally to occupy the country.  Public sales were thus conducted by competition, and Congress even declined to grant to the men in actual possession the right of pre-emption at the average rate of sale, refusing the request of settlers in both Mississippi and Indiana that they should be given the first choice to the lands which they had already partially cleared. [Footnote:  American State Papers, Public Lands, I., 261; also pp. 71, 74, 99, etc.] It was not until many years later that we adopted the wise policy of selling the National domain in small lots to actual occupants.

    Sullen Jealousy of the Pioneers. 
    Clouded Economic Notions.