Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/71

 The farmer on horseback at break of day, summons one hundred half-breeds and Iroquois Indians from their cabins to the fields. Twenty or thirty ploughs tear open the generous soil; the sowers follow with their seed, and pressing on them come a dozen harrows to cover it; and thus thirty or forty acres are planted in a day, till the immense farm is under crop. The season passes on, teeming with daily industry, until the harvest waves on all these fields. Then sickle and hoe glisten in tireless activity to gather in the rich reward of this toil; the food of seven hundred at this post, and of thousands more at the posts on the deserts in the east and {266} north. The saw mill, too, is a scene of constant toil. Thirty or forty Sandwich Islanders are felling the pines and dragging them to the mill; sets of hands are plying two gangs of saws by night and day. Three thousand feet of lumber per day; nine hundred thousand feet per annum; are constantly being shipped to foreign ports.

The grist mill is not idle. It must furnish bread stuff for the posts, and the Russian market in the north-west. And its deep music is heard daily and nightly half the year.

We will now enter the fort. The blacksmith is repairing ploughshares, harrow teeth, chains and mill irons; the tinman is making cups for the Indians, and camp-kettles, &c.; the wheelwright is making waggons, and the wood parts of ploughs and harrows; the carpenter is repairing houses and building new ones; the cooper is making barrels for pickling salmon and packing furs; the clerks are posting books, and preparing the annual returns to the board in London; the salesmen are receiving beaver and dealing out goods. Listen to the voices of those children from the school house. They are the half-breed offspring of the gentlemen and servants of {267} the