SOLON ROBINSON, 1844 383 



underpinning. In the first settlement of the country, 

 when brick cannot be obtained, a very good fire place and 

 hearth is made by pounding clay a little damp, into a 

 compact mass, the shape that is required for the fire 

 place, while the chimney is built of sticks and clay, which 

 if well done, costs but little labor and lasts for years. 

 But that is more than I can say of the wooden walls of 

 wells, for at first they give our "hard water" a very 

 ancient and bilge water like smell, and by the time that 

 is well over with, the wood begins to decay, and which I 

 have no doubt is one of the many removable causes of 

 sickness which is wrongly charged to the unhealthiness 

 of the climate. Also the sinful carelessness in which a 

 great portion of the inhabitants permit themselves to live 

 in cold, open, damp, uncomfortable houses, is the cause 

 of many a day of suffering from fever and ague. Your 

 profession, as well as long experience, has taught you 

 what all had ought to learn, that we are less liable to 

 take cold and contract disease when "camping out" in 

 the open air, than we are while living in what we are 

 pleased to call a house, through the walls and roof of 

 which, the old cat and all her kittens can go without let 

 or hindrance. And in such houses, a vast majority of 

 the inhabitants of the west stay, and not only for a sea- 

 son, but year after year, using water from such wells, 

 or what is more common, from some hole in the ground 

 that is familiarly called "the spring," (on account I sup- 

 pose of the frogs that spring into it,) and occasionally 

 going without bread, because it is too much trouble to 

 go to mill; doing without potatoes, because they were 

 to busy to dig them before they froze up ; doing without 

 pork half the year, notwithstanding they had a thousand 

 and one hogs, but they were in the woods, and did'nt come 

 up; and as a substitute, living upon fresh beef, green 

 corn and unripe wild fruits, and ten thousand et ceteras 

 of the fever breeding family, and as a most natural con- 

 sequence, shaking with the augue so much of the time 

 that they have no time to build stone walls, drain peat 



