32 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



illustrates how difficult it was to procure salt in 

 those days. It was told that on our farm, which 

 was bountifully covered with hard wood, when the 

 land was cleared large trees were cut into lengths 

 some twelve feet long, piled in great heaps, and 

 burned; then the wood ashes were gathered up, 

 leeched, and the lye boiled down in order to secure 

 crude potash salts. My Grandfather Burroughs 

 then loaded the crude product into a skiff which 

 he rowed fifty miles to Syracuse, where it was ex- 

 changed for common salt. So precious was this 

 salt that the sacks which contained it were put to 

 soak in a tub, the water afterwards to be boiled 

 down to recover the little that might otherwise 

 have been wasted. Unfortunately, during the 

 night, a horse strayed into the yard and, being 

 salt-hungry, drank too much out of the tub and 

 died. That salt, at any rate, cost more per pound 

 than loaf sugar, one of the seldom used luxuries of 

 the time, for horses were very valuable in those 

 days, oxen being used in place of them even to 

 carry the family to church. 



Before the erection of the grist-mill at Seneca 

 Falls, corn, wheat, rye and buckwheat were ground 

 at a little water-mill on the opposite side of the lake 

 and not far from Ithaca. Usually, two sacks 



