LIFE. 157 



floor, as he calls it, that is, made of split logs not sawed or 

 dressed, with a chimney of sticks and mud, and with one 

 door and one half-window. The chinks of the cabin are 

 stopped with chunks of wood and filled in with mud. In 

 this residence, consisting of one apartment, w^ith a furniture 

 corresponding with the style of the architecture, his family 

 of half a dozen find accommodation, and travellers are lodged 

 w^hen they ask it. 



Here he lives in content ; breaks up forty acres of prairie 

 and fences it, drops his seed, and, without the expense or 

 labor of spreading foreign fertilizers over his field, has an 

 abundant crop. His bread and potatoes come almost at his 

 bidding. He lives an easy and a happy life, certainly. He 

 treads upon flowers. His path is literally strewn with them. 

 The prairie around his cabin is a flower-garden. The dew, 

 which is only poetry to the man of imagination, and sparkling 

 romance to the novel-reading miss of the city, is to him an 

 every-day reality, bathing his feet when the lark sings to his 

 going out in the morning ; spreading his fields with a silvery 

 mantle, and filling his stacks with a golden harvest. 



But life in a new country has its privations and hardships. 

 Notwithstanding the ease with which he gets bread, there 

 are many of the comforts of living that he cannot obtain. To 

 the man Avho has been used to them, their loss is severely 

 felt ; but to the roving emigrant, to the real pioneer, they are 

 unknown. He has always hung on to the skirts of civilisa- 

 tion, but without knowing its advantages or comforts ; and, 

 whenever a new purchase has been made, his w^agon-wheel 

 has pointed the way to the settlers coming after him. Thus 

 he passes his life : sojourning in the purchase a few years 

 till another is made, and then hastening away to a new abode 

 to occupy that in turn till a settler upon a neighboring town- 



