twenty inches thick was breaking.

In the neighborhood of our Wisconsin farm there were extensive swamps
consisting in great part of a thick sod of very tough carex roots
covering thin, watery lakes of mud. They originated in glacier lakes
that were gradually overgrown. This sod was so tough that oxen with
loaded wagons could be driven over it without cutting down through it,
although it was afloat. The carpenters who came to build our frame
house, noticing how the sedges sunk beneath their feet, said that if
they should break through, they would probably be well on their way
to California before touching bottom. On the contrary, all these
lake-basins are shallow as compared with their width. When we went
into the Wisconsin woods there was not a single wheel-track or
cattle-track. The only man-made road was an Indian trail along the Fox
River between Portage and Packwauckee Lake. Of course the deer, foxes,
badgers, coons, skunks, and even the squirrels had well-beaten tracks
from their dens and hiding-places in thickets, hollow trees, and the
ground, but they did not reach far, and but little noise was made by
the soft-footed travelers in passing over them, only a slight rustling
and swishing among fallen leaves and grass.

Corduroying the swamps formed the principal part of road-making among
the early settlers for many a day. At these annual road-making
gatherings opportunity was offered for discussion of the news,
politics, religion, war, the state of the crops, comparative
advantages of the new country over the old, and so forth, but the
principal opportunities, recurring every week, were the hours after
Sunday church services. I remember hearing long talks on the wonderful
beauty of the Indian corn; the wonderful melons, so wondrous fine for
"sloken a body on hot days"; their contempt for tomatoes, so fine to
look at with their sunny colors and so disappointing in taste; the
miserable cucumbers the "Yankee bodies" ate, though tasteless as
rushes; the character of the Yankees, etcetera. Then there were long
discussions about the Russian war, news of which was eagerly gleaned
from Greeley's "New York Tribune"; the great battles of the Alma, the
charges at Balaklava and Inkerman; the siege of Sebastopol; the
military genius of Todleben; the character of Nicholas; the character
of the Russian soldier, his stubborn bravery, who for the first time
in history withstood the British bayonet charges; the probable outcome