sympathy with our free government; loyal to the old flag in the hour of
its greatest danger; fighting, suffering, dying, that the Union might be
preserved. To one who has spent any length of time on our western
prairies settled so largely with an emigrant people, the great
difference between the American born and educated people of the
mountains, and the naturalized American of the prairie, constantly
emphasizes itself. Here no new language has to be acquired, no new form
of government understood. A common interest, a common sympathy, a mother
country, binds one at once to this people as it never can to the
American importation which is found at the West.

Thirdly. I found homes and a home life, or rather the want of it, which
one would hardly believe possible among a white population in this
country.

The following illustrations are correct representations of what I
found to be average mountain cabins. Seldom do they contain more than
two, often only one, room. A single window, an open fire-place, and a
few home-made articles of furniture, comprise the whole. The home is
begun when its founders are yet children. Ignorant and poor, the boy
has "took up" with the girl, and it may be they are legally married. A
building-bee is announced, a little cabin erected, a few pigs bought
or given, a few trees girdled, some corn planted, in so crude and
shiftless a way that even an Indian, in his first attempts at farming,
would be ashamed to own it, and home life is begun. Into this home of
poverty and ignorance come the children. The families are
large--eight, ten, twelve, and sometimes more. The mother is too
ignorant herself to instruct, and had she the ability, neither time
nor strength to accomplish it are at her command. Life to her is a
struggle. At twenty she looks thirty-five, at thirty-five she is old.
Always she has a tired, hopeless expression, which simply to look at
almost starts the tears. The children have something of the same
expression; the babies even seem to realize that it is a sober, sad
world they have come into. I do not remember seeing a laughing, cooing
baby in all the cabins I visited.

[Illustration: MOUNTAIN CABIN.]

[Illustration: MOUNTAIN CABIN.]

Educationally, I found this people far below the emigrant on the
prairie. Seventy per cent. of the whole two millions cannot read or
write. The schools are the poorest. The school houses are built of logs;
a hole is cut for the window; the ground s