It does not take long to build a new village on the prairie,—the hardest work, the clearing of the ground, is already done; but here in the dense forest it is a different thing, even when the railway runs through it. First the men go in, and begin to clear the ground. It is virgin soil, and not an inch of ground but has something growing. Giant maples—some of them bird\'s-eye, some curly—are cut down and made into log heaps; black walnuts are burned up, that, made into veneer, would bring thousands of dollars.

Such was the state of things within twelve years. To-day it is different. The settler will take a quarter section, bark the trees to find the desired kind, cut them down, and leave for another section.[108] Rich companies came in, and began to devastate the forests to make charcoal, until the State had to make a law that only a certain number of acres in the hundred may be cut.

In some few cases women will go with their husbands, and sometimes one woman will find herself miles and miles away from another. I visited one such house; and while the good woman was getting the dinner ready, I strolled about and took notes. On the rude mantel-shelf, I saw some skulls, and asked what kind of an animal they belonged to. She said,—

"Oh! them\'s beavers\' skulls. My! I wish we had some beavers here now; I would make you some beaver-tail soup."

"Why, did you have them here since you came?"

"Oh, yes! plenty of them. When I got lonesome—and that was pretty much every day—I used to go and watch them build their dams. I don\'t know how they did it; but I have seen them sink a log so that it would stay put, and not[109] come up. I tried it dozens of times, but could not do it. I had lots of time, nothing to read, and the nearest town fifteen miles away. I used to think I should go mad sometimes, and even a land-hunter coming from outside was a godsend. Indeed, I remember one coming here, and he took sick, and died in spite of all we could do. We had neither boards nor planks, nothing but logs. So we slipped two flour-barrels over him, and he looked real nice. We buried a little boy too. I keep the graves clear of weeds, and plant flowers about them, and often sit there with my work and think of those early days."

"How long ago was that?" I asked.

"Four years ago! Why, you know there wan\'t no railway then; but now,—why, I got Zeke to cut down the trees, and I can see the trains go by with parlor cars and sleepers. There\'ll be one pretty soon if it is on time." And sure enough, in a few minutes a long train thundered by.

[110]Sometimes a train stopped near us, and hundreds of men from the south of Ohio came with their dogs, guns, and men-servants, and went hunting and fishing; and, strange as it may seem, you can find ten times as many deer to-day as you could forty years ago. The settling of new lands has driven them into closer quarters, and the game-law does much good. The State fish-hatcheries supply the streams with fry; and at times the men sent out to stock the streams get misled by the settlers, who show them the different streams, and only too late they find they have put the whole stock of young fry into the same stream. The average conscience is not yet fine enough to see anything but a joke in this.

But to the building of our village. Often at first no house has more than one room. The men are making their homes, and will stop to cut out a piece of the log, and make a place for a little child\'s doll. Cupboards, too, are made in the same way.

[111]Water is one of the indispensable necessities; and, as a rule, the town will be built on a stream, or near a spring. Sometimes wells have to be dug over a hundred feet deep. Arrow-heads, and implements of the chase, and bones of men and extinct races of animals, turn up.

In one town I visited, before the wells were dug, the water for drinking was brought in barrels on flat cars, while melted snow answered for washing.

"But what did you do when that was gone?" I asked.

"Well, the maple-sap begun to run, and then the birch, which was better; but lor! you couldn\'t iron nothin\'."

I passed a little log house standing out of line with the street; and I thought it was a chicken-coop, and asked why it was built that way.

"My!" said the woman with a laugh, "that ain\'t a chicken-coop; that\'s our first meeting-house. Us women built that. We had one or two old men to help, and the children; and we women did the rest.[112] We were quite proud of it too. It cost fourteen dollars complete. For the minister\'s chair we cut down a barrel, and covered it with green baize."

A minister writes, "My room is one end of the garret of a log house, where I can barely stand erect under the ridgepole. My study-table and bookcase I made from rough boards. As I sit writing, I look forth from a window two by three, upon a field dotted with stumps, log huts, and charcoal kilns, and skirted with dense forests."

While I was visiting this section, a woman showed me her hands cracked with the frost. The tears came to her eyes as she said, "I tell ye it\'s pretty hard lines to have to milk cows when it is forty below zero." No man can imagine the arduous work and the awfulness of life in a northern winter. What is a joy to the well-dressed, well-fed man, with his warm house and the comforts of a civilized community, is often death to the poor minute-man and settler[113] on the frontier. I have sat by the side of the minute-man, and heard from him a story that would bring tears to the eyes of the most cynical.

One man I shall never forget, a good hardy Scotchman, with a brave little wife and four children. His field was near Lake Superior; his flock poor homesteaders and Indians. The winters have a hundred and fifty days\' sleighing; the frost sometimes reaches 50° below zero, and is often for days together 30° below; so that when it suddenly rises to zero, one can hardly believe it is freezing. Here is his story:—

"We were twelve miles from a doctor; and towards spring two of our children complained of sore throats. It proved to be diphtheria. We used all the remedies we had, and also some herbs given us by an old squaw; but the children grew worse, and we determined to go back to the old settlement. My wife carried the youngest, and I the next one. The other children walked[114] behind, their little legs getting scratched with the briers. We had twelve miles to go to reach the steamer. When we got there, one of the little ones died; and before we reached home the other expired. We buried our two treasures among the friends in the cemetery; and after a while I said to my wife,—

"\'Shall we go back to the field? Ought we to go?\'

"Her answer was, \'Yes.\'

"We went back. Our old parishioners were delighted to see us; and soon we were hard at work again. Winter came on, and God gave us another little one. You may be sure he had a double welcome; but as the cold became intense, our little lamb showed signs of following his brothers. I tried to keep my wife\'s spirits up, while I went about my work dazed. At last the little fellow\'s eyes seemed so large for his face, and he would look at us so pitifully, that I would break down in spite of myself.

"He died; and the ground was frozen[115] over six feet de............