While the southerner finds the autumnal and vernal season on the Ohio too cool, to the northerner it is temperate and delightful. When the first wreaths of morning mist are rolled away from the stream by the bright sun, disclosing the ancient woods, the hoary bluffs, and the graceful curves and windings of the long line of channel above and below, the rich alluvial belt and the fine orchards on its shores, the descending voyagers must be destitute of the common perceptions of the beautiful, if they do not enjoy the voyage, and find the Ohio, in the French phrase, La belle riviere. After the immigrants have arrived at Cincinnati, Lexington, Nashville, St. Louis, or St. Charles, in the vicinity of the points, where they had anticipated to fix themselves, a preliminary difficulty, and one of difficult solution is, to determine to what quarter to repair. All the towns swarm with speculating companies and land agents; and the chance is, that the first inquiries for information in this perplexity will be addressed to them, or to persons who have a common understanding and interest with them. The published information, too, comes directly or indirectly from them, in furtherance of their views. One advises to the Wabash, and points on the map to the rich lands, fine mill seats, navigable streams and growing towns in their vicinity. Another presents a still more alluring picture of the lands in some part of Illinois, Missouri, the region west of the lakes, and the lead mines. Another tempts him with White River, Arkansas, Red River, Opelousas, and Attakapas, the rich crops of cotton and sugar, and the escape from winter, which they offer. Still another company has its nets set in all the points, where immigrants congregate, blazoning all the advantages of Texas, and the Mexican country. In Cincinnati, more than in any other town, there are generally precursors from all points of the compass, to select lands for companies, that are to follow. There are such here at present both from Europe and New England; and we read advertisements, that a thousand persons are shortly to meet at St. Louis to form a company to cross the Rocky Mountains, with a view to select settlements on the Oregon. When this slow and perplexing process of balancing, comparing and fluctuating between the choice of rivers, districts, climates and advantages, is fixed, after determination has vibrated backwards and forwards according to the persuasion and eloquence of the last adviser, until the purpose of the immigrant is fixed, the northern settler is generally borne to the point of debarkation, nearest his selected spot, by water. He thence hires the transport of his family and movables to the spot; though not a few northern emigrants move all the distance in wagons. The whole number from the north far exceeds that from the south. But they drop, in noiseless quietness, into their position, and the rapidity of their progress in settling a country is only presented by the startling results of the census. The southern settlers who immigrate to Missouri and the country south west of the Mississippi, by their show of wagons, flocks and numbers create observation, and are counted quite as numerous, as they are. Ten wagons are often seen in company. It is a fair allowance, that a hundred cattle, beside swine, horses and sheep, and six negroes accompany each. The train, with the tinkling of an hundred bells, and the negroes, wearing the delighted expression of a holiday suspension from labor in their countenances, forming one group, and the family slowly moving forward, forming another, as the whole is seen advancing along the plains, it presents a pleasing and picturesque spectacle. They make arrangements at night fall to halt at a spring, where there is wood and water, and a green sward for encampment. The dogs raise their accustomed domestic baying. The teams are unharnessed, and the cattle and horses turned loose into the grass. The blacks are busy in spreading the cheerful table in the wilderness, and preparing the supper, to which the appetite of fatigue gives zest. They talk over the incidents of the past day, and anticipate those of the morrow. If wolves and owls are heard in the distance, these desert sounds serve to render the contrast of their society and security more sensible. In this order they plunge deeper and deeper into the forest or prairie, until they have found the place of their rest. The position for a cabin generally selected by the western settlers is a gentle eminence near a spring, or what is called a branch, central to a spacious tract of fertile land. Such spots are generally occupied by tulip and black walnut trees, intermixed with the beautiful cornus florida and red bud, the most striking flowering shrubs of the western forest. Springs burst forth in the intervals between the high and low grounds. The brilliant red bird seen flitting among the shrubs, or perched on a tree, in its mellow whistle seems welcoming the immigrant to his new abode. Flocks of paroquets are glittering among the trees, and gray squirrels are skipping from branch to branch. The chanticleer rings his echoing note among the woods, and the domestic sounds and the baying of the dogs produce a strange cheerfulness, as heard in the midst of trees, where no habitation is seen. Pleasing reflections and happy associations are naturally connected with the contemplation of these beginnings of social toil in the wilderness. In the midst of these solitary and primeval scenes the patient and laborious father fixes his family. In a few days a comfortable cabin and other out buildings are erected. The first year gives a plentiful crop of corn, and common and sweet potatoes, melons, squashes, turnips and other garden vegetables. The next year a field of wheat is added, and lines of thrifty apple trees show among the deadened trees. If the immigrant possess any touch of horticultural taste, the finer kinds of pear, plum, cherry, peach, nectarine and apricot trees are found in the garden. In ten years the log buildings will all have disappeared, the shrub and forest trees will be gone. The arcadian aspect of humble and retired abundance and comfort will have given place to a brick house, or a planted frame house, with fences and out buildings very like those, that surround abodes in the olden countries. ... The first business is to clear away the trees from the spot where the house is to stand. The general construction of a west country cabin is after the following fashion. Straight trees are felled of a size, that a common team can draw, or as the phrase is 'snake,' them to the intended spot. The common form of a larger cabin is that, called a 'double cabin;' that is, two square pens with an open space between, connected by a roof above and a floor below, so as to form a parallelogram of nearly triple the length of its depth. In the open space the family take their meals during the pleasant weather; and it serves the threefold purpose of kitchen, lumber room, and dining room. The logs, of which it is composed, are notched on to one another, in the form of a square. The roof is covered with thin splits of oak, not unlike staves. Sometimes they are made of ash, and in the lower country of cypress, and they are called clap boards. Instead of being nailed, they are generally confined in their place by heavy timbers, laid at right angles across them. This gives the roof of a log house an unique and shaggy appearance. But if the clap boards have been carefully prepared from good timber they form a roof sufficiently impervious to common rains. The floors are made from short and thick plank, split from yellow poplar, cotton wood, black walnut, and sometimes oak. They are confined with wooden pins, and are technically called 'puncheons.' The southern people, and generally the more wealthy immigrants advance in the first instance to the luxury of having the logs hewed on the inside, and the puncheon floor hewed, and planed, in which case it becomes a very comfortable and neat floor. The next step is to build the chimney, which is constructed after the French, or American fashion. The French mode is a smaller quadrangular chimney, laid up with smaller splits. The American fashion is to make a much larger aperture, laid up with splits of great size and weight. In both forms it tapers upwards, like a pyramid. The interstices are filled with a thick coating of clay, and the outside plastered with clay mortar, prepared with chopped straw, or hay, and in the lower country with long moss. The hearth is made with clay mortar, or, where it can be found, sand stones, as the common lime stone does not stand the fire. The interstices of the logs in the room are first 'chincked;' that is to say, small blocks and pieces of wood in regular forms are driven between the intervals, made by laying the logs over each other, so as to form a kind of a coarse lathing to hold the mortar. The doors are made of plank, split in the manner mentioned before, from fresh cut timber; and they are hung after an ingenious fashion on large wooden hinges, and fastened with a substantial wooden latch. The windows are square apertures, cut through the logs, and are closed during the cooler nights and the inclement weather by wooden shutters. The kitchen and the negro quarters, if the establishment have slaves, are separate buildings, prepared after the same fashion; but with less care, except in the article of the closeness of their roofs. The grange, stable and corn houses are all of similar materials, varied in their construction to answer their appropriate purposes. About ten buildings of this sort make up the establishment of a farmer with three or four free hands, or half a dozen slaves. The field, in which the cabin is built, is generally a square or oblong enclosure, of which the buildings are the centre, if the owner be from the south; or in the centre of one side of the square, if from the north. If the soil be not alluvial, a table area of rich upland, indicated to be such by its peculiar growth of timber, is selected for the spot. Nine tenths of the habitations in the upper western states are placed near springs, which supply the family with water. The settlers on the prairies, for the most part, fix their habitations in the edges of the wood, that skirts the prairie, and generally obtain their water from wells. The inhabitants of the lower country, on the contrary, except in the state of Mississippi, where springs are common, chiefly supply themselves with water from cisterns filled by rain. If the settlers have slaves, the trees are carefully cleared away, by cutting them down near the ground. That part of the timber, which cannot be used either for rails, or the construction of the buildings, is burned, and a clearing is thus made for a considerable space round the cabin. In the remain ing portion of the field, the trees undergo an operation, called by the northern people 'girdling,' and by the southern 'deadening.' That is, a circle is cut, two or three feet from the ground, quite through the bark of the tree, so as completely to divide the vessels, which carry on the progress of circulation. Some species of trees are so tenacious of life, as to throw out leaves, after having suffered this operation. But they seldom have foliage, after the first year. The smaller trees are all cut down; and the accumulated spoils of vegetable decay are burned together; and the ashes contribute to the great fertility of the virgin soil. If the field contain timber for rails, the object is to cut as much as possible on the clearing; thus advancing the double purpose of clearing away the trees, and preparing the rails, so as to require the least possible distance of removal. An experienced hand will split from an hundred to an hundred and fifty rails in a day. Such is the convenience of finding them on the ground to be fenced, that Kentucky planters and the southern people generally prefer timbered land to prairie; notwithstanding the circumstance, so unsightly and inconvenient to a northern man, of dead trees, stumps, and roots, which, strewed in every direction over his field, even the southern planter finds a great preliminary impediment in the way of cultivation. The northern people prefer to settle on the prairie land, where it can be had in convenient positions. The rails are laid zigzag, one length running nearly at right angles to the other. This in west country phrase, is 'worm fence,' and in the northern dialect 'Virginia fence.' The rails are large and heavy, and to turn the wild cattle and horses of the country, require to be laid ten rails or six feet in height. The smaller roots and the underbrush are cleared from the ground by a sharp hoe, known by the name 'grubbing hoe.' This implement, with a cross cut saw, a whip saw, a hand saw, axes, a broad axe, an adze, an augur, a hammer, nails, and an iron tool to split clap boards, constitute the indispensable apparatus for a backwoodsman. The smoke house, spring house, and other common appendages of such an establishment, it is unnecessary to describe; for they are the same as in the establishment of the farmers in the middle and southern Atlantic states. B. Effect of the New Home on the Character of the Emigrant, 18321 While the frontier offered undreamed of advantages to the settler, it at the same time tested his courage by imposing on him hardships unknown in his old home. To secure the one it was necessary to undergo the other. Moreover, 1 The History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley. By Timothy Flint (Cincinnati, 1832), I, 187–90. |