Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/208

 At noon, I stopped at another log-house, quarter-section farmer's, with two fine healthy boys, much civilized, who, of themselves, have cleared forty acres of heavily timbered land, such as is seldom seen, and cropped it twice in eighteen months. What prodigious industry! It is, they say, worth ten dollars an acre clearing. It is; and an Englishman would, indeed, think so, and demand double and treble that sum, for that quantity of excessive labour. They, however, now wish to sell out their improved quarter section, and remove further from the road. These young men drink spring water, and like it better than whiskey, and look heartier and healthier than any settlers I have yet seen in the wilds.

I rested all night at another quarter-section farmer's, who, together with his brother and wife, has cleared thirty acres in eighteen months, without hired hands, and is now rearing a second log-house. They find a market at their door for all they can raise, and ten times as much, if they could raise it. They burn all the logs and trees rolled together in immense heaps, and prefer the wood-land to the barrens, the latter being thinly {208} timbered with dwarfish trees and shrubs. The wife, husband, brother, and three wild children, sleep in one room, together with three or four travellers, all on the floor, bedless, but wrapt up in blankets. I, being a mighty fine man, was put into the new house, which, though without either doors or windows, was distinguished by one bed on a bedstead, both home-made, and as soft as straw and wood could be. Into this bed was I honourably put, and at midnight favoured with a bed-fellow, a stranger Yankee man whom I had seen on the mountains; and at my feet, on the floor, slept two Irish, and one poor sick American, all pedestrians, who had wandered here in quest of employment.