KTAADN. 
28 
tered our boots, and how often a drowsy one was seen 
to sidle off to the bedroom. When it held up, I strolled 
up and down the bank, and gathered the harebell, and 
cedar-berries, which grew there; or else we tried by 
turns the long-handled axe on the logs before the door. 
The axe-helves here were made to chop standing on the 
log, — a primitive log of course, — and were, therefore, 
nearly a foot longer than with us. One while we 
walked over the farm and visited his well-filled barns 
with McCauslin. There were one other man and two 
women only here. He kept horses, cows, oxen, and 
sheep. I think he said that he was the first to bring 
a plough and a cow so far; and he might have added 
the last, with only two exceptions. The potato-rot had 
found him out here, too, the previous year, and got half 
or two thirds of his crop, though the seed was of his 
own raising. Oats, grass, and potatoes were his staples; 
but he raised, also, a few carrots and turnips, and “a 
little corn for the hens,” for this was all that he dared 
risk, for fear that it would not ripen. Melons, squashes, 
sweet-corn, beans, tomatoes, and many other vegetables, 
could not be ripened there. 
The very few settlers along this stream were obvi¬ 
ously tempted by the cheapness of the land mainly. 
When I asked McCauslin why more settlers did not 
come in, he answered, that one reason was, they could 
not buy the land, it belonged to individuals or companies 
who were afraid that their wild lands would be settled, 
and so incorporated into towns, and they be taxed for 
them; but to settling on the States’ land there was no 
such hinderance. For his own part, he wanted no 
neighbors, — he did n’t wish to see any road by his 
house. Neighbors, even the best, were a trouble and 
