ir fields, they inclosed their homes with a
high stockade of logs, for defense against the Indians; or
if they built their cabins outside the wooden walls of their
stronghold, they always expected to flee to it at the first
alarm and to stand siege within it. The Indians had 20
no cannon, and the logs of the stockade were proof against
their rifles; if a breach was made, there was still the blockhouse
left, the citadel of every little fort. This was heavily
built, and pierced with loopholes for the riflemen within,
whose wives ran bullets for them at its mighty hearth, and 25
who kept the savage foe from its sides by firing down upon
them through the projecting timbers of its upper story;
but in many a fearful siege the Indians set the roof ablaze
with arrows wrapped in burning tow, and then the fight
became desperate indeed. After the Indian War ended, 30
the stockade was no longer needed, and the settlers had
only the wild beasts to contend with, and those constant
enemies of the poor in all ages and conditions--hunger
and cold.

They deadened the trees around them by girdling them
with the ax, and planted the spaces between the leafless
trunks with corn and beans and pumpkins. These were 5
their necessaries, but they had an occasional luxury in the
wild honey from the hollow of a bee tree when the bears
had not got at it. In its season, there was an abundance
of wild fruit, plums and cherries, haws and grapes, berries
and nuts of every kind, and the maples yielded all the 10
sugar they chose to make from them. But it was long
before they had, at any time, the profusion which our
modern arts enable us to enjoy the whole year round, and
in the hard beginnings the orchard and the garden were
forgotten for the fields. Their harvests must pay for the 15
acres bought of the government, or from some speculator
who had never seen the land; and the settler must be
prompt in paying, or else see his home pass from him after
all his toil into the hands of strangers. He worked hard
and he fared hard, and if he was safer when peace came, 20
it is doubtful if he were otherwise more fortunate. As the
game grew scarcer it was no longer so easy to provide food
for his family; the change from venison and wild turkey
to the pork which early began to prevail in his