The planting of a new nation in America was no holiday undertaking. It meant grim, dirty, toilsome, dangerous work. Here was a great shaggy continent, its eastern third covered with pathless forests; its mountains, rivers, lakes, and rolling plains all upon a huge scale. Its northern stretches were fiercely cold in winter, its southern areas, burning hot in summer. The land was filled with wild beasts and peopled by a warlike, cruel, and treacherous people still in the Stone Age of culture. In many respects it was a forbidding land. It could be reached only by a voyage so dangerous that some ships buried as many as they landed. But despite all its drawbacks, it was admirably fitted to become the home of an energetic, thriving people.