One traveller would paint the frontiersmen as little better than the Indians against whom they warred, and their life as wild, squalid, and lawless; while the next would lay especial and admiring stress on their enterprise, audacity, and hospitable openhandedness.

Though much alike, different portions of the frontier stock were beginning to develop along different lines.

The Holston people, both in Virginia and North Carolina, were by this time comparatively little affected by immigration from without those States, and were on the whole homogeneous; but the Virginians and Carolinians of the seaboard considered them rough, unlettered, and not of very good character.

One travelling clergyman spoke of them with particular disfavor; he was probably prejudiced by their indifference to his preaching, for he mentions with much dissatisfaction that the congregations he addressed "though small, behaved extremely bad." [Footnote: Durrett MSS.

Rev.James Smith, "Tour in Western Country," 1785.] The Kentuckians showed a mental breadth that was due largely to the many different sources from which even the predominating American elements in the population sprang.