Page:Lives of the presidents in words of one syllable (1903).djvu/95

 to cook food in. There was a book which the moth-er well knew. It was the Word of God. She read it and taught them all to read from it.

In the cool days of the fall, Thom-as came home. He said he had found a great land, and that they must start for it at once, to get there ere the hard cold days came. So with a cart and a "four yoke," and all the rest of their poor goods, they took up their line of march to the far off land of In-di-an-a. At night they slept on the ground on beds made of leaves and pine twigs. Their food was game which their guns brought down. From time to time they had to ford or swim streams. No rain fell on them while on their way. They led a free, wild life in the woods for weeks. When at last they came to the banks of one stream and could look from there off to the land where they were to live, they saw naught but trees, as far as the eye could look, both down stream and up stream. There was no sound save that of the birds and small game.

On a knoll on which the grass grew thick, in the heart of dense woods, they made their camp of three sides and put a roof on it of split slabs. Through the cold months they hung up a screen of pelts or skins of beasts to serve as a door. A fire-place of sticks and clay was on one side.

The young lad was then in his eighth year, tall for his age and clad in a home spun garb or part skins of beasts. The cap was made of the skin of a coon with the tail on. While young, the boy knew the use of the axe, the maul, and the wedge, and with these he found out how to split rails from the logs drawn out of the woods. He knew the trees and shrubs by their leaves and bark and he found out what ones were good to heal wounds and stop pain. So