The place the father had selected for their home was a beautiful spot.
They could build their cabin on a little hill, sloping gently down on
all sides. The soil was excellent, but there was one serious
drawback--there was no water fit to drink within a mile! Thomas Lincoln
had neglected to observe this most important point while he was
prospecting. His wife, or even little Abe, would have had more common
sense. That was one reason why Thomas Lincoln, though a good man, who
tried hard enough at times, was always poor and looked down upon by his
thrifty neighbors.

Instead of taking his wife and children down the three streams by boat,
as he had gone, the father borrowed two horses of a neighbor and "packed
through to Posey's," where he had left his carpenter tools and the other
property he had saved from the wreck of his raft. Abe and Sarah must
have enjoyed the journey, especially camping out every night on the
way. The father's skill as a marksman furnished them with tempting
suppers and breakfasts of wild game.

On the horses they packed their bedding and the cooking utensils they
needed while on the journey, and for use after their arrival at the new
home. This stock was not large, for it consisted only of "one oven and
lid, one skillet and lid, and some tinware."

After they came to Posey's, Thomas Lincoln hired a wagon and loaded it
with the effects he had left there, as well as the bedding and the
cooking things they had brought with them on the two horses. It was a
rough wagon ride, jolting over stumps, logs, and roots of trees. An
earlier settler had cut out a path for a few miles, but the rest of the
way required many days, for the father had to cut down trees to make a
rough road wide enough for the wagon to pass. It is not likely that Abe
and Sarah minded the delays, for children generally enjoy new
experiences of that sort. As for their mother, she was accustomed to all
such hardships; she had learned to take life as it came and make the
best of it.

Nancy Lincoln needed all her Christian fortitude in that Indiana
home--if such a place could be called a home. At last they reached the
chosen place, in the "fork" made by Little Pigeon Creek emptying into
Big Pigeon Creek, about a mile and a half from a settlement which was
afterward called Gentryville.

As it was late in the fall, Thomas Lincoln decided not to wait to cut
down big trees and hew logs for a cabin, so he built a "half-faced
camp," or shed e