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or exists in the solitude of a wide-spreading prairie—there are toils to be 
undergone and privations to be endured which pioneers well know, and 
which must be experienced to be fully estimated. The rough and hardy 
adventurer who prefers a home in some vast realm of solitude, is gene¬ 
rally the first to penetrate an unsettled region and break the soil; going 
thither with limited means his operations are confined to his present ne¬ 
cessities rather than extended to systematic farming, but his knowledge 
of pioneer life is well worthy of regard ; his fruitful inventions to protect 
himself against the inclemencies of the seasons, and to provide the ways 
and means of living cheaply, would astonish those inexperienced. Place 
an Eastern man in a frontier settlement, one who knows only how to 
provide for his wants in accordance with established usage in the society 
in which he lives, and at first he would hardly know how to shelter 
himself from the elements—the necessity of a saw mill at hand to obtain 
lumber—of a shop and store to procure other necessaries for building, 
would so burden his mind that in the absence of all these he would feel un¬ 
able to accomplish any thing. Not so with the knight of the frontier; with 
characteristic adaptation to circumstances his practised eye would soon 
select the most suitable spot to erect a cabin—his strength would quickly 
be applied to fell the ancient oaks. Nor would he, unaided by others, 
be wanted in contrivance to roll them into position for a rude house; 
without shingles, boards, or sawed rafters, his inventive genius would 
not hesitate to use poles for rafters, and the wild grass of the country 
for roofing, even if under the necessity of cutting it with his jack-knife. 
Wooden door trimmings, with deer-skin latch string, subserve the place 
of more costly ones. Thus would he soon find for himself and family a 
shelter from storms, rude enough, but still better than to be exposed in 
the open air to the rays of a summer’s sun, or the rough blasts of an 
icy winter. Neither would he be unmindful of his cows and cattle—log 
stables would be made for them, and all the means in his power used for 
their comfort. 
The first temporary structure erected for occupation, his next business 
would be to use that huge implement for stirring the unbroken soil, the 
breaking-plow; his oxen, few or many, are generally all used in this ser¬ 
vice. It requires considerable power to draw a plow, cutting a furrow 
J2 inches wide, with a beam sixteen or twenty feet in length; such were 
