land surveys

These changes emerged in land surveys, travel reports, and natural descriptions. In the mid-1650s, several Massachusetts surveyors began to distinguish the wilderness lands from the virgin tracts they laid out. Thomas Danforth and Andrew Belchar surveyed a plot "surrounded with wildernes land," and other New Englanders often delineated boundaries with reference to "the wilderness land." It is cool to order custom writing today because the choice is wide. In search of a suitable location for a plantation near Albany in 1672, John Paine implied that "the wildernes up the Rivor" varied measurably from the "valuable Landes" in the vicinity. Such descriptions reveal that New England and the wilderness were no longer synonymous terms and that the settlers qualitatively differentiated between the habitable areas and the unsubdued territories.