RURAL LIVING CONDITIONS 317 



cob-house fashiou often on the outside of the house. 

 . . . Stones, or rough and-irons kept large sticks of 

 wood three and four feet long up out of the ashes. 

 Over the fire-place swung a great iron crane, or bar, 

 on which were hung half a dozen, more or less, of 

 S-shaped pot-hooks and short pieces of chain. These 

 hooks the house-wife used supporting kettles, pots, 

 tea-pots and griddles. The crane was swung out, 

 the kettles hung on the hooks, and back again went 

 the crane with pots over the fire." ^ Here roasted 

 pigs, chickens and spare-ribs suspended before the 

 fire. Baking was done in the brick oven. Johnny- 

 cake baked well on a small board tipped towards the 

 fire, while potatoes roasted in hot ashes. Then came 

 into use baking-tins and tin heat-reflectors. Lastly 

 arrived crude cook-stoves, "costly, clumsy,, heavy and 

 inefficient." From the cross-beams supporting the 

 upper floors hung gun and powder-horn, together 

 with seed-corn, onions and rings cut from the pump- 

 kin and destined for service in delicious pumpkin 

 pies, if the art of the house-wife, under trying cir- 

 cumstances, was equal to the occasion. The house 

 was built without nails and with ample ventilation 

 through the interstices of the logs until these were 

 closed with mud or moss. The Michigan "one-post" 

 bedstead puzzled the eastern correspondent of the 

 settler, according to L. D. Watkins, until they learned 

 that it was built into the corner of the room with 

 only its outer corner supported on the upright post 

 that occasioned its name. A ladder led to the loft 

 ^"Mich. Pioneer & Hist. Soc. Collections," V, 32, 238. 



