no tow to spin into rope-yarn, nor straw to plait for hats, and we had come so late we could get but few walnuts to crack. We had, however, the Bible, George Fox's Journal, Barkley's Apology, and a number of books, all better than much of the fashionable reading of the present day-from which, after reading, the reader finds he has gained nothing, while his understanding has been made the dupe of the writer's fancy-that while reading he has given himself up to be led in mazes of fictitious imagination, and losing his taste for solid reading, as frothy luxuries destroy the appetite for wholesome food. To our stock of books were soon after added a borrowed copy of the Pilgrim's Progress, which we read twice through without stopping. The first winter our living was truly scanty and hard; but even this winter had its felicities. We had part of a barrel of flour which we had brought from Fredericktown. Besides this, we had part of a jar of hog's lard brought from old Carolina; not the tasteless stuff which now goes by that name, but pure leaf lard, taken from hogs raised on pine roots and fattened on sweet potatoes, and into which, while rendering, were immersed the boughs of the fragrant bay tree, that imparted to the lard a rich flavor. Of that flour, shortened with this lard, my sister every Sunday morning, and at no other time, made short biscuit for breakfast-not these greasy gumelastic biscuit we mostly meet with now, rolled out with a pin, or cut out with a cutter; or those that are, perhaps, speckled by or puffed up with refined lye called salæratus, but made out, one by one, in her fair hands, placed in neat juxtaposition in a skillet or spider, pricked with a fork to prevent blistering, and baked before an open fire-not half-baked and half-stewed in a cooking-stove.

The Woods about us.-In the ordering of a good Providence the winter was open, but windy. While the wind was of great use in driving the smoke and ashes out of our cabin, it shook terribly the timber standing almost over us. We were sometimes much and needlessly alarmed. We had never seen a dangerous looking tree near a dwelling, but here we were surrounded by the tall giants of the forest, waving their boughs and uniting their brows over us, as if in defiance of our disturbing their repose, and usurping their long and uncontested pre-emption rights. The beech on the left often shook his bushy head over us as if in absolute disapprobation of our settling there, threatening to crush us if we did not pack up and start. The walnut over the spring branch stood high and straight; no one could tell which way it inclined, but all concluded that if it had a preference it was in favor of quartering on our cabin. We got assistance to cut it down. The axeman doubted his ability to control its direction, by reason that he must necessarily cut it almost off before it would fall. He thought by felling the tree in the direction of the reader, along near the chimney, and thus favor the little lean it seemed to have, would be the means of saving the cabin. He

was successful. Part of the stump still stands. These, and all other dangerous trees, were got down without other damage than many frights and frequent desertions of the premises by the family while the trees were being cut. The ash beyond the house crossed the scarf and fell on the cabin, but without damage.

Howling Wolves. --The monotony of the time for several of the first years was broken and enlivened by the howl of wild beasts. The wolves howling around us seemed to moan their inability to drive us from their long and undisputed domain. The bears, panthers and deer seemingly got miffed at our approach or the partiality of the hunters, and but seldom troubled us. One bag of meal would make a whole family rejoicingly happy and thankful then, when a loaded East Indiaman will fail to do it now, and is passed off as a common business transaction without ever once thinking of the giver, so independent have we become in the short space of forty years! Having got out of the wilderness in less time than the children of Israel we seem to be even more forgetful and unthankful than they. When spring was fully come and our little patch of corn, three acres, put in among the beech roots, which at every step contended with the shovel-plough for the right of soil, and held it too, we enlarged our stock of conveniences. As soon as bark would run (peel off) we could make ropes and bark boxes. These we stood in great need of, as such things as bureaus, stands, wardrobes, or even barrels, were not to be had. The manner of making ropes of linn bark was to cut the bark in strips of convenient length, and water-rot it in the same manner as rotting flax or hemp. When this was done the inside bark would peel off and split up so fine as to make a pretty considerably rough and good-for-but-little kind of a rope. Of this, however, we were very glad, and let no shipowner with his grass ropes laugh at us. We made two kinds of boxes for furniture. kind was of hickory bark with the outside shaved off. This we would take off all around the tree, the size of which would determine the calibre of our box. Into one end we would place a flat piece of bark or puncheon cut round to fit in the bark, which stood on end the same as when on the tree. There was little need of hooping, as the strength of the bark would keep that all right enough. Its shrinkage would make the top unsightly in a parlor now-a-days, but then they were considered quite an addition to the furniture. A much finer article was made of slipperyelm bark, shaved smooth and with the inside out, bent round and sewed together where the ends of the hoop or main bark lapped over. The length of the bark was around the box, and inside out. A bottom was made of a piece of the same bark dried flat, and a lid, like that of a common band-box, made in the same way. This was the finest furniture in a lady's dressing-room, and then, as now, with the finest furniture, the lapped or sewed side was turned to the wall and the

One

prettiest part to the spectator. They were usually made oval, and while the bark was green were easily ornamented with drawings of birds, trees, etc., agreeably to the taste and skill of the fair manufacturer. As we belonged to the Society of Friends, it may be fairly presumed that our band-boxes were not thus ornamented.

Pioneer Food.-We settled on beech land, which took much labor to clear. We could do no better than clear out the smaller stuff and burn the brush, etc., around the beeches which, in spite of the girdling and burning we could do to them, would leaf out the first year, and often a little the second. The land, however, was very rich, and would bring better corn than might be expected. We had to tend it principally with the hoe, that is, to chop down the nettles, the water-weed and the touch-me-not. Grass, careless, lambs-quarter and Spanish needles were reserved to pester the better prepared farmer. We cleared a small turnip patch, which we got in about the 10th of August. We sowed in timothy seed, which took well, and next year we had a little hay besides. The tops and blades of the corn were also carefully saved for our horse, cow and the two sheep. The turnips were sweet and good, and in the fall we took care to gather walnuts and hickory nuts, which were very abundant. These, with the turnips which we scraped, supplied the place of fruit. I have always been partial to scraped turnips, and could now beat any three dandies at scraping them. Johnny-cake, also, when we had meal to make it of, helped to make up our evening's repast. The Sunday morning biscuit had all evaporated, but the loss was partially supplied by the nuts and turnips. Our regular supper was mush and milk, and by the time we had shelled our corn, stemmed tobacco, and plaited straw to make hats, etc., etc., the mush and milk had seemingly decamped from the neighborhood of our ribs. To relieve this difficulty my brother and I would bake a thin Johnny-cake, part of which we would eat, and leave the rest till the morning. At daylight we would eat the balance as we walked from the house to work.

The methods of eating mush and milk were various. Some would sit around the pot, and every one take therefrom for himself. Some would set a table and each have his tincup of milk, and with a pewter spoon take just as much mush from the dish or the pot, if it was on the table, as he thought would fill his mouth or throat, then lowering it into the milk would take some to wash it down. This method kept the milk cool, and by frequent repetitions the pioneers would contract a faculty of correctly estimating the proper amount of each. Others would mix mush and milk together.

To get Grinding done was often a great difficulty, by reason of the scarcity of mills, the freezes in winter and droughts in summer. We had often to manufacture meal (when we had corn) in any way we could get the corn to pieces. We soaked and pounded

it, we shaved it, we planed it, and, at the proper season, grated it. When one of our neighbors got a hand-mill it was thought quite an acquisition to the neighborhood. In after years, when in time of freezing or drought, we could get grinding by waiting for our turn no more than one day and a night at a horse-mill we thought ourselves happy. To save meal we often made pumpkin bread, in which when meal was scarce the pumpkin would so predominate as to render it next to impossible to tell our bread from that article, either by taste, looks, or the amount of nutriment it contained. Salt was five dollars a bushel, and we used none in our corn bread, which we soon liked as well without it. Often has sweat ran into my mouth, which tasted as fresh and flat as distilled water. What meat we had at first was fresh, and but little of that, for had we been hunters we had no time to practice it.

In

We had no Candles, and cared but little about them except for summer use. Carolina we had the real fat light-wood, not merely pine knots, but the fat straight pine. This, from the brilliancy of our parlor, of winter evenings, might be supposed to put, not only candles, lamps, camphine, Greenough's chemical oil, but even gas itself, to the blush. In the West we had not this, but my business was to ramble the woods every evening for seasoned sticks, or the bark of the shelly hickory, for light. 'Tis true that our light was not as good as even candles, but we got along without fretting, for we depended more upon the goodness of our eyes than we did upon the brilliancy of the light.

TRAVELLING NOTES.

The Poor Man's Railroad.-The initial letters of the name of a railway terminating at Bellaire are “* B. Z. & C.” Ask people on that line "What B. Z. & C. stand for? With a quizzical smile they will often answer "badly zigzag and crooked;" having just come over it I can say that exactly describes it. Its name, however, is Bellaire, Zanesville & Cincinnati. Its projector and builder of that part within this county was Col. John H. Sullivan, Bellaire; a calm, dignified gentleman, clear and careful in his statements, whom it did me good to meet.

It was impracticable to build an ordinary railroad through the rough wild country of the Ohio river hills of Belmont and Monroe counties, so the colonel planned a narrow gauge with steep grades and sharp curves, and he called it The Poor Man's Railroad." From Woodsfield, county-seat of Monroe, to Bellaire, a distance of forty-two miles, on which passenger trains go about sixteen miles an hour, it cost but $11,500 per mile, a miracle of cheapness. This includes land, grading, bridges, tracks, everything exclusive of rolling stock. It was finished to Woodsfield in 1877, and all by private subscription. It is of incalculable benefit to the farmers of the Ohio river hills, for the cost of good wagon roads among them is enormous and a

serious drawback to the development of the country.

A large part of the road is a succession of curves, trestle work and steep grades. In places the road rises over 130 feet to the mile, and some of the curves have a radius of but 400 feet; at one spot there is a reverse curve on a trestle. Where curves are so sharp the outer rail is placed three inches the highest to hold the cars on the track ; but the friction occasions a horrid screeching of the wheels. The Colorado Central, like this, is a narrow gauge. It leads from the Union Pacific to the mining regions of Colorado. Its extreme grade is more than twice that of this, 275 feet to the mile. Some gentlemen riding over it on a platform car to see the country said such was the irregularity of the motion that they were obliged to cling "for dear life" to the sides of the car to prevent being jerked off. From my experience I think the Badly Zigzag and Crooked" but a trifle less shaky. I extract from my note book :

Bellaire, Friday evening, May 28.-Left Woodsfield early this morning and got on the train for Bellaire; only a single passenger car with a few men aboard, but no women! I felt sorry; I always like to see 'em about. Their presence "sort o'" sanctifies things. Away we went on this little baby railroad, the "Badly Zigzag and Crooked.' The town I had left behind, placed high up in the hills, was quite primitive; it had scarcely changed since my first visit, in 1846. In a few minutes we were zigzagging, twisting down a little run in a winding chasm among the hills wooded to their summits, the scenery very wild, every moment the cars changing their direction and shaking us about with their constant jar and grind, and wabbling now to one side and then to the other. In twenty minutes I was peeping through charming vistas into a wild valley. In a few more minutes and we were in it; crossed a little bridge some six rods wide and paused at the farther side, by a little cottage in its aspect domestic and un-railroad-like, notwithstanding its sign "Sunfish Station."

The Pretty Sunfish.-Yes, this little, romantic stream was the Sunfish. I looked down the valley, a deep chasmı, narrow, tortuous, with its wood-clad hills, the lights and shades on the scene all glorious in the early morning light. What a pretty name-"Sunfish!" instinctively the mind takes in the little creature that dwells in the freedom of the waters and darts around clad in its beauty spots of crimson and gold, down there where everything is so clean and pure.

How I longed to get out of the cars and follow this winding little stream until it was lost in the Ohio, some twenty miles away; to feast my eyes with its hidden beauties, all unknown to the great outside world-beauties of sparkling cascades and laughing waters, and smooth, silent, dark reaches, where frowning cliffs and dense foliage and summer clouds seem as sleeping down below.

They tell me that the Ohio State Fish Commission in 1885 put into the Sunfish half a

the

million of California trout and salmon ; stream naturally abounds in yellow perch. At Sunfish Station a woman, humbly clad, with children and bundles, came aboard, when out of respect to the sex out spake the conductor; when out went through the window a vile Wheeling stogie-the poor man's cigar. It is said that city turns out annually tens of millions, and all this part of the country smoke them-the millions.

Then up out of the chasm our train went, again twisting, wabbling, squeaking, screeching with the same deafening, infernal grind, the engine one moment poking its nose this way and then that, like Bruno or Snow Flake searching for a bone. We were going up to the birthplace of a mountain rill that was on its way rejoicing to help along the pretty sunfish.

A Future Jay Gould.-After a little my attention was caught by a living object. On a cleared space of a quarter of an acre, ten rods away in a cleft in the hillside it was, stood a miserable log-hut without a door or a window in sight. By it was a single living object; a boy in a single garment, about six years old, gazing upon us. It would have been worth a plum to have known the mental status of that child as he looked out upon our train.

To be interested in motion is a grand human instinct. A great divine said to me once, "From my study window I get just a glimpse of the top of the smoke-stack of the locomotive on the railroad thirty rods away; but no matter how absorbing my study, I invariably look up at every passing train." This was the late Leonard Bacon, the identical person to whose pungent writings Abraham Lincoln ascribed his first insight of the wrong of slavery.

As I looked upon this child I felt an inward respect for his possibilities: felt like taking off my hat to him: a human being, anyway, is a big thing. He may be the Jay Gould of 1930. Certainly to be born poor and among the hills, seems to be no barrier to an eventual grasp of the money bags or, what is better than a grasp simply of externals, the highest, purest, noblest development of one's self.

Beautiful Belmont.-A little later we were in the open, elevated country of beautiful Belmont county. It seemed as though we were on the roof of the world. No forests in sight, but huge, round, grassy hills, on which sheep were grazing, and a vast, boundless prospect stretching like a billowy ocean of green all around, with here and there warm, red-hued patches-ploughed fields. We could see white farm-houses glistening in the morning sun, miles on miles away. Henry Stanberry, once riding in a stage-coach on the National road through this region, said: "I should have liked to have been born in Belmont county.' "Why?" inquired a companion. Because people born in a country of marked features have marked features themselves.

The Valley of the Captina was reached from