, began to turn their attention to
cotton instead of devoting themselves to the crops of their brethren
farther north; and cotton soon became their staple product. But as yet
the typical settler everywhere was the man of the axe and rifle, the
small pioneer farmer who lived by himself, with his wife and his
swarming children, on a big tract of wooded land, perhaps three or four
hundred acres in extent. Of this three or four hundred acres he rarely
cleared more than eight or ten; and these were cleared imperfectly. On
this clearing he tilled the soil, and there he lived in his rough log
house with but one room, or at most two and a loft. [Footnote: F. A.
Michaux, "Voyages" (in 1802), pp. 132, 214, etc.]

Game Still Abundant.

The man of the Western waters, was essentially a man who dwelt alone in
the midst of the forest on his rude little farm, and who eked out his
living by hunting. Game still abounded everywhere, save in the immediate
neighborhood of the towns; so that many of the inhabitants lived almost
exclusively by hunting and fishing, and, with their return to the
pursuits of savagery, adopted not a little of the savage idleness and
thriftlessness. Bear, deer, and turkey were staple foods. Elk had ceased
to be common, though they hung on here and there in out of the way
localities for many years; and by the close of the century the herds of
bison had been driven west of the Mississippi. [Footnote: Henry Ker,
"Travels," p.22.] Smaller forms of wild life swarmed. Gray squirrels
existed in such incredible numbers that they caused very serious damage
to the crops, and at one time the Kentucky Legislature passed a law
imposing upon every male over sixteen years of age the duty of killing a
certain number of squirrels and crows every year. [Footnote: Michaux,
215, 236; Collins, I., 24.] The settlers possessed horses and horned
cattle, but only a few sheep, which were not fitted to fight for their
own existence in the woods, as the stock had to. On the other hand,
slab-sided, long-legged hogs were the most plentiful of domestic
animals, ranging in great, half-wild droves through the forest.

Fondness of the Westerners for the Lonely Life of the Woods.

All observers were struck by the intense fondness of the frontiersmen
for the woods and for a restless, lonely life. [Footnote: Crevecoeur,
"Voyage dans la Haute Pennsylvanie," etc., p. 265.] They pushed
independence to an extreme; they did not wish to work fo