"This is the forest primeval."

A grand sight is the forest primeval when the birds fill all its arches with song, or we sweep through them to the music of sleigh-bells. A pleasant sight is the farmer, surrounded by his wife and children, with well-kept farm, ample barns, and well-fed stock. But what wild desolation once reigned where now these fine farms are seen! The great trees stretched on for hundreds of miles. The hardy settler came with axe and saw and slow-paced oxen, cleared a little space, and built a log hut. For a little time all goes well; then thistles, burdocks, mulleins, and briers come to pester him and increase his labors. Between the blackened log-heaps fire-weeds spring up. The man and his wife grow old fast. Ague shakes their[263] confidence as well as their bodies. Schools are few, the roads mere trails.

Then a village starts. First a country store; then a saloon begins to make its pestilential influence felt. The dance thrives. The children grow up strong, rough, ignorant. The justice of the peace marries them. No minister comes. The hearts once tender and homesick, in the forest grow cold and hardened. At funerals perhaps a godly woman offers prayer. Papers are few and poor. Books are very scarce. In winter the man is far off, with his older boys, in the lumber-camps, earning money to buy seed, and supplies for present wants. The woman pines in her lonely home. The man breaks down prematurely. Too many of these pioneers end their days in insane asylums. It is the third generation which lives comfortably on pleasant farms, or strangers reap that whereon they bestowed no labor.

This may seem too dark a picture. Song and story have gilded the pioneer life so[264] that its realities are myths to most people. It is better when a colony starts with money, horses, books, etc.; but it is hard enough then. Few keep their piety. I visited a community where nearly every family were church-members in their early homes; but, after twenty years, only one family had kept up the fire upon the altar. It is hard to break up such fallows. How different had a minister gone with them, and a church been built!

The missionary has different material altogether to work on in the natural born pioneer. I visited one family which had a black bear, two hounds, some pet squirrels, cats, and a canary; over the fireplace hung rifles, deer-horns, and other trophies of the chase. The man was getting ready to move. At first his nearest neighbors were bears and deer; but now a railway had come, also schools and churches. He said, "\'Tain\'t like it was at fust; times is hard; have to go miles for a deer; folks is getting stuck up, wearing biled shirts, getting spring beds and[265] rockers, and then ye can\'t do nothin\' but some one is making a fuss. I shall cl\'ar out of this!"

And he did, burying himself and family in the depths of the woods. The homesteader often takes these deserted places, after paying a mere trifle for the improvements.

Homesteaders are numerous, generally very poor, and are apt to have large families. One man, who had eight hundred dollars, was looked upon as a Rothschild. Many families had to leave part of their furniture on the dock, as a pledge of payment for their passage or freight-bill. But, homesteaders or colonists, all must work hard, be strong, live on plain fare, and dress in coarse clothing. The missionary among these people must do the same. A good brother told me that, on a memorable cold New Year\'s Day, he went into the woods to cut stove-wood, taking for his dinner a large piece of dry bread. By............