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<title> "Instead of a garden I found a wilderness." </title>
When England started the colonisation of North America in the beginning of the 17th century, Virginia and New England were the first areas to be settled. The two colonies were different from each other; the environment and the reason to why they were made colonies. The different people who came to these areas had different purposes with the new land. They had great hopes for the new country and their future in it. They had been told that this was the land of milk and honey mentioned in the Bible. It would be like a new Garden of Eden. So naturally, they were shocked to find complete wilderness and a nature so unlike the English. They discovered that they were not prepared enough for this new life and they had to face many various problems with this environment.

Virginia in the south was a colony focused on business. The reason for the settlement was that the London Company wanted to gain profit from it. Virginia's soil was fertile and there was a large waterway system. Because of this, Virginia was filled with plantations and the main crop was tobacco. As for New England, the soil was not as fertile and the inhabitants made a living from corn, fishing and fur trade. Virginia was closely connected with Britain, while New England wanted to be as independent as possible. The New Englanders had left their old country because of religious persecution. They were separatists and Puritans regarding the new country as their Promised Land, and they believed that the Indians had no right to the land since they had not cultivated it. 
At the very arrival in America, the colonists' first impression was the abundance of everything in nature. Fruit and berries were bigger, and there were many unknown species of animals. People had to either experiment, or learn from the Indians about this nature; what was eatable and how to find and cook the food. They learned about roots and herbs that could cure pain and diseases. They compared the animals with the ones in England and learned to be aware of wolves when they had sheep on the plantation.

Some people criticised their English countrymen for ruining the wild nature with their "improvements", and in that way lost the real Garden of Eden instead of creating it. The English colonists were complaining about something that was already perfect. Instead of adjusting to their new environment, they wanted the new country to be like England. They had no respect for the Indians and their way of life, or the nature itself. The American Robert Beverley wrote: "If any one impartially considers all the Advantages of this country, as Nature made it; he must allow it to be as fine a Place . . . I must at the same time reproach my Country-Men with a Laziness that is unpardonable. If there be any excuse for them in this Matter, 'tis the exceeding plenty of good things, with which Nature has blest them; for where God Almighty is so Merciful as to work for People, they never work for themselves." (History and present state of Virginia, 1705)
Although some people had the opinion that the wilderness was a novelty that had to be appreciated, many colonists regarded the wilderness as their enemy. It had to be changed into civilisation. The wilderness was a threat to their survival, and savages and strange beasts lurked in the great forests. The civilised Englishmen were afraid of becoming savages themselves. The frontiersmen fought the wild nature not only for their survival but also in the name of nation, race and God. 

For the religious colonists, as the Puritans in New England, America was the earthly paradise people had dreamed of. But the anticipations of a second Eden quickly shattered against reality in North America. Instead of a garden they found wilderness. The Puritan leader Cotton Mather wrote in 1693 that wilderness was the stage through which they were passing to the Promised Land. They had to conquer the wild to make a garden and enjoy this country. The fact was that wilderness represented many fears; besides the Indian "savages" and the unknown animals, people thought that morality and social order seemed to stop at the edge of the clearing. There was no law in the wild forests, and struggling for survival in the wilderness made some people join Indian tribes. The Puritans believed that the tribes were possessed by Satan.

For the other kind of colonists, the utilitarian point of view was dominant. Wherever they encountered wild country, they saw trees as lumber and prairies as farms. Uncultivated land was useless, and when they liked some area of the wild nature it was because it looked like a place back home in England. The pioneers welcomed the wilderness as a challenge to create civilisation. Andrew Jackson wrote: "What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and raged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, an prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute." (Second Annual Message, 1830)

As mentioned, the first English people to colonise North America had different reasons for doing it, religion and profit. What they had in common was the belief in a new chance to happiness in a country of great riches. They were all impressed at the very beginning, but soon realised that they had to fight this wild nature in order to succeed with their mission. One can only imagine the difficulty in encountering this world so different from the English nature, which had been shaped and altered by their inhabitants for centuries. In America, the natives had lived in harmony with nature and they had not seen any reason to change it. The fight against nature and the struggle to survive in it have forced Americans to believe in their own capacity and have given them confidence, which can be noticed even today. The United States of America is the world leading country today, and one has to believe that is due to the fighting spirit of the this country's founders who set foot on shore in the early 17th century.
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