Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/239

 and put out the fires, and cleared the air, and poured water down upon our beds. Great lumps of the clay, or daubing, stuffed between the logs, also kept falling on our heads, and into our beds, while it rained. We needed an umbrella.

Mrs. Ingle, a woman of superior sense and feeling, states that the prospect of seeing herself, husband, and children dependant on grandfathers and grandmothers, and uncles and aunts, and thereby lessening the resources of two distinct and worthy families, impelled them to emigrate. It ceased almost to be matter of choice. Still, love of country, former friends and comforts, from which they tore themselves, is inextinguishable, and frequently a source of painful thought. Such a good, proud feeling is very honourable, for with fair play in England, it would have kept them there, and increased rather than diminished the resources of grandfathers, &c.

11th.—By a conversation with old Ferrel, I find he began, thirty years ago, with nothing but his own hands. Striking each hand, he said, "This is all I had to begin with;" and it seems, that excepting his children, he has little more now, merely a quarter section just entered, and a {245} log raised on it. All seem very improvident and extravagant, the family sometimes eating four or five pounds of butter a-day, the produce of all their cows. Thus, with the corn-cake and bacon, a part of the year, (for they are almost always destitute of fresh meat, tea and sugar) is their table supplied.

Ferrel is a man of experience and discernment, and states that he would not fetch corn from Princeton, twenty miles off, of a gift, if he could grow it, nor would he carry it to the Ohio for sale, because it would not pay carriage and expenses. When (if ever) they shall have sur