No other wild country I have ever
known extended a kinder welcome to poor immigrants. On the arrival in
the spring, a log house could be built, a few acres ploughed, the
virgin sod planted with corn, potatoes, etc., and enough raised to
keep a family comfortably the very first year; and wild hay for cows
and oxen grew in abundance on the numerous meadows. The American
settlers were wisely content with smaller fields and less of
everything, kept indoors during excessively hot or cold weather,
rested when tired, went off fishing and hunting at the most favorable
times and seasons of the day and year, gathered nuts and berries, and
in general tranquilly accepted all the good things the fertile
wilderness offered.
After eight years of this dreary work of clearing the Fountain Lake
farm, fencing it and getting it in perfect order, building a frame
house and the necessary outbuildings for the cattle and horses,--after
all this had been victoriously accomplished, and we had made out to
escape with life,--father bought a half-section of wild land about
four or five miles to the eastward and began all over again to clear
and fence and break up other fields for a new farm, doubling all the
stunting, heartbreaking chopping, grubbing, stump-digging,
rail-splitting, fence-building, barn-building, house-building, and so
forth.
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