CHESUNCOOK. 
127 
chored to tow rafts with. It was a very primitive kind 
of harbor, where boats were drawn up amid the stumps, 
— such a one, methought, as the Argo might have been 
launched in. There were five other huts with small 
clearings on the opposite side of the lake, all at this end 
and visible from this point. One of the Smiths told me 
that it was so far cleared that they came here to live 
and built the present house four years before, though 
the family had been here but a few months. 
I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this 
side of the country. His life is in some respects more 
adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for 
he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and 
there is a greater interval of time at least between him 
and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a 
tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; 
there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and 
other improvements come steadily rushing after. 
As we approached the log-house, a dozen rods from 
the lake, and considerably elevated above it, the project¬ 
ing ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly 
several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and pictu¬ 
resque look, far removed from the meanness of weather¬ 
boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about 
eighty feet long, with many large apartments. The walls 
were well clayed between the logs, which were large and 
round, except on the upper and under sides, and as vis¬ 
ible inside as out, successive bulging cheeks gradually 
lessening upwards and tuned to each other with the axe, 
like Pandean pipes. Probably the musical forest-gods had 
not yet cast them aside; they never do till they are split 
or the bark is gone. It was a style of architecture not 
described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted 
