father of the family mounted the box. The horses were started and the great vehicle began to move. As they passed through the village which had been to them the scene of many happy hours, they took a last look at the spots which were hallowed by association--the church with its lowly spire, an emblem of that humility which befits a Christian, and the burial-ground, where the weeping willow bent mournfully over the head-stone which marked the graves of their parents. The children, who were old enough to remember, never forgot their playground, nor the white schoolhouse where the rudiments of an education were instilled into their minds.

Their road was at first, comparatively smooth and their journey pleasant. Their progress was interrupted by divers little incidents; while the continual changes in the appearance of the country around them, and the anticipation of what was to come, prevented those feelings of despondency, which might otherwise have arisen on leaving a much loved home. When the roads became bad or hilly, the family quit the wagon and trudged along on foot, the mother carrying the baby Fernando in her arms. At sunset, their day's journey finished, they halted in the forest by the roadside to prepare their supper and pass the night. The horses were unharnessed, watered and secured with their heads to the trough until they had eaten their meagre allowance of corn and oats, and then were hobbled out to grass. Over the camp fire the mother prepared the frugal supper, which being over, the emigrants arranged themselves for the night, while the faithful dog kept watch. Amid all the privations and vicissitudes in their journey, they were cheered by the consciousness that each day lessened the distance between them and the land of promise, whose fertile soil was to recompense them for all their trials and hardships.

Gradually, as they advanced west, the roads became more and more rough and were only passable in many places by logs having been placed side by side, forming what was termed corduroy roads. The axe and rifle of the emigrant, or mover as he is still termed in the west, were brought daily and almost hourly into use. With the former he cut saplings, or small trees, to throw across the roads, which, in many places, were almost impassable; while with his rifle he killed squirrels, wild turkeys, or such game as the forest afforded, for their provisions were in a few days exhausted. If, perchance, a buck crossed his path, and he brought it down by a lucky shot, it was carefully dressed and hung up in the forks of the trees; fires were built, and the meat cut into small strips and smoked and dried for future subsistence.

As they advanced, the road through the woods became more difficult to travel, the trees being merely felled and drawn aside, so as to permit a wheeled carriage to pass; and the emigrant was often obliged to be guided in his route only by the blaze of the surveyor on the trees, and at every few rods to cut away the branches which obstructed his passage. As the stroke of the axe reverberated through the woods, no answer came back to assure him of the presence of friend or foe. At night in these solitudes, they heard the wolves stealing through the gloom, sniffing the scent of the intruders; and now and then, then bloodshot eyes of the catamount glared through the foliage.

Days, weeks and months passed in this toilsome journey through the wilderness, so indelibly impressing it on the memory of Fernando Stevens, that he never, to his dying day, forgot that journey. At last they arrived at the landmarks which, to Albert Stevens, indicated the proximity of his possessions. A location for the cabin was selected near a small stream of running water, on the south side of a slight elevation.

No time was lost. The trees were immediately felled, and in a short time Fernando, looking out from the covered wagon, perceived a clear space of ground of but few rods in circumference. Stakes, forked at the top, were driven into the ground, on which the father placed logs, and the chinks between these were stopped with clay. An enclosure was thus hastily thrown up to protect the family from the weather, and the wife and children were removed to this improvised abode. The trunks of the trees were rolled to the edge of the clearing, and surmounted by stakes driven crosswise into the ground: the severed tops and branches of trees piled on top of the logs, thus forming a brush fence. By degrees the surrounding trees were "girdled" and killed. Those that would split were cut down and made into rails, while others were left to rot or logged up and burned.

A year showed a great improvement in the pioneer's home. Several acres had been added to the clearing, and the place began to assume the appearance of a farm. The temporary shanty had given place to a comfortable log cabin; and although the chimney was built of small sticks placed one on the other, and filled in between with clay, occupying almost one whole end of the cabin, it showed that the inward man was duly attended to; and the savory fumes of venison, of the prairie hen and other good things went far to prove that even backwoods life was not without its comforts. [Footnote: The author has often heard his mother say that the most enjoyable period of her life was in a pioneer home similar to the above.]

In a few months, the retired cabin, once so solitary, became the nucleus of a little settlement. Other sections and quarter sections of land were entered at the land office by new corners. New portions of ground were cleared, cabins were erected; and in a short time the settlement could turn out a dozen efficient hands for house raising or log rolling. A saw mill soon after was erected at the falls of the creek; the log huts received a poplar weather boarding, and, as the little settlement increased, other improvements appeared; a mail line was established, and before many years elapsed, a fine road was completed to the nearest town, and a stage coach, which ran once, then twice a week, connected the settlement with the populous country to the east of it.

This was the life the hero of this story began. It might be said to be an unromantic life; yet such a life was known to many of our American ancestors. It had its pleasures as well as its pains. It had its poetry as well as its prose, and its joys as well as its sorrows. The vastness of the forest and depths of the solitude by which he was surrounded, made its impress on his mind. He grew up in ignorance of tyranny and many of the evils of the great cities.

The cabin home and the narrow clearing about it formed his playground. His first toy was a half-bushel measure, which he called his "bushee!" This he rolled before him around the log cabin and the paths made in the tall grass, frequently to the dread of his mother, who feared that he might encounter some of the deadly serpents with which the forest abounded. He remembered on one occasion, when his mother found him going too far, she called:

"Come back, Fernando; mother is afraid you will step on a snake."

He looked about him with the confidence of childhood, and answered:

"No 'nakes here."

Just at that moment, the mother, to her horror, saw a deadly reptile coiled in the very path along which the child was rolling his "bushee," and with true frontier woman's pluck, ran and snatched up the bare-footed Fernando, when only within two feet of the deadly serpent, carried him to the house, and with the stout staff assailed and killed the rattlesnake.

He remembered seeing the wild deer bound past the cabin door, and one day his father killed one. The big dog called "Bob," on account of the shortness of his caudal appendage, on another occasion leaped on a wild buck as he was passing the house, and seized the animal, holding it until it was slain. Wild turkeys were common; he saw them in great flocks in the woods, and did not suppose they could ever become extinct.

Fernando never forgot his first pair of shoes. He had grown to be quite a lad, and his bare feet had trod the paths in