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.

We had no Candles, and cared but little about them except for summer use. In 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 chasm, 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

million of California trout and salmon; the 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

John Fink in his youthful days arose bright and early. He was smart, and so he got to Bellaire long before the town; indeed, officiated at its birth. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1805. Mike Fink, the last and most famous of the now long extinct race of Ohio and Mississippi river boatmen, was a relative, and he knew Mike-knew him as a boy knows a man. 'When I was a lad," he told me, "about ten years of age, our family lived four miles above Wheeling, on the river. Mike laid up his boat near us, though he generally had two boats. This was his last trip, and he went away to the farther West; the country here was getting too civilized, and he was disgusted. This was about 1815.

66

Mike Fink.-In the management of his business Mike was a rigid disciplinarian; woe to the man who shirked. He always had his woman along with him, and would allow no other man to converse with her. She was sometimes a subject for his wonderful skill in marksmanship with the rifle. He would compel her to hold on the top of her head a tin cup filled with whiskey, when he would put a bullet through it. Another of his feats was to make her hold it between her knees, as in a vice, and then shoot."

Captain Fink's Own History is a subject more pleasant for contemplation. He is a thoroughly manly man, and now, at eightyone years of age, in the full vigor of intellect. From ten to twelve years of age he was at work on his uncle's farm, four miles above Wheeling; from twelve to fifteen on the Wheeling ferry. Next he was cook on a keel-boat, where he learned to "push." He followed "pushing" for three years, first at thirty-seven and a half cents a day and then fifty cents. In 1824 he married, his entire fortune just seventy-five cents. A few days after he tried to get a calico dress for his wife on credit but failed.

The Early Coal-Trade on the River.About the year 1830, then twenty-five years of age, his credit having improved, Mr. Fink bought on time a piece of land on McMahon's creek, Bellaire, and began mining. He built a flat-boat, and took a load of coal to Maysville, which netted him $200. This. he tells me, was the first load of coal ever floated any distance on the Ohio. After a little he began a coal-trade with New Orleans. He carted it to the river bank, put it on board of flatboats, and floated it down to New Orleans, a distance of 2,100 miles. On a good stage of water they went down in about thirty days; once, on a flood, in nineteen days; half the time did not dare to land. He sold it to the sugar refineries, and it was very useful, for with wood alone they were unable to keep up the regular heat, so necessary for good

it on their shoulders up the river bank; sometimes the river was higher than the town, then they descended.

Each barrel held two and three-quarter bushels; weight, 220 pounds. The sugar

people paid him $1.50 a barrel. During a term of years he sold several hundred thousand bushels. In 1833 he went into the steamboat business as captain and owner, and. amassing a fortune, in 1864, at the age of fifty-nine, he retired from active business.

The Heatheringtons.-In his early mining operations here Capt. Fink found excellent help in the Heatheringtons, a family of English miners. They consisted of the father, John, and his four boys, Jacob, John, Jr.. Ralph, Edward, and a John More. They worked in a coal-bank, in the hill south of McMahon's creek. They would get to work about daybreak, bring their coal to the mouth of the pit on wheelbarrows, empty their barrels over a board screen, and down it would go sliding to a lower level with a tremendous rattling noise, which travelled over the cornfields and resounded among the hills around. At that time Bellaire was only a farming spot, and the farmers complained that the noise disturbed their morning sleep. After a while they became reconciled to this "eye-opener," for it brought money and business to the place, and the miners had to be fed-had bouncing appetites. The family were also musical; and evenings, after their days of toil, they brought out their musical instrumentsfife, drum, clarionet, triangle, etc.—and the old man, John, and his four boys, Jake, John, Jr., Ralph, Ed., and John More gave the valley folks the best they had; so if the eyeopeners had been a little hard on them, the night-caps made full compensation.

Jacob Heatherington. When I entered the lower end of Bellaire, in the cars along the river valley, I was struck by the grand appearance of a mansion under the hill, with a row of poplar trees before it. This, with the huge glass-houses with their big cupolas, and other industrial establishments of the place, the noble bridge across the Ohio, and the grandeur of the hill and river scenery, made an enduring impression. The owner of this palatial residence is Jacob, or, as he is commonly called, Jake Heatherington, one of the sons of the John of whom I have spoken. He is now an old and highly respected man of seventy-three years of age, and with a large estate, but he cannot read nor write.

The Miner and his Mule Partner.-He was born in England in 1814; at seven years of age was put to work down 2,400 feet deep in a coal-mine, and worked sixteen and eighteen hours a day; never went to school a day in his life. In 1837, when he was twentythree years of age, he rented a coal-bank from Capt. Fink, and bought eight acres of land on credit. This was his foundation, and it was solid, was indeed "the everlasting hills." At first he wheeled out his coal on a wheelbarrow; his business grew, and he took in a partner. The firm became known as